I See You've Called in Dead

by John Kenney

The thing is, though, when you listen too carefully, too closely, day after day, to that pain, to that keening, it can take a toll. Because to really listen is to feel it, isn’t it? Therapists are taught not to own the pain, not to take on the pain, but instead to simply observe it, at a distance. And you do, for a time. And then you don’t. Then you begin to let it in, to live it, if only for a moment. How can you not feel it some days? There’s a person on the other end of the phone and you’re asking them to talk about the most painful thing that’s ever happened.

She held up her hand as if she had been badly scalded and said that my attempt to mansplain in the context of my white, cisgender privilege was repugnant to her and that she frankly wasn’t sure that even an immediate apology would erase the trauma my words had caused but that if I wrote an essay asking for forgiveness for my tone-deafness to the LGBTQ community as well as people of color, minorities, and the non-able-bodied, that might be a start.

I want to quit now. I read books for their beauty and insight. I don't have any hope of insight from a white male author who punches down on trans, hard-of-hearing, people of color just to get the cheap laugh: "Man, historically marginalized people just expext SO much from white men like me, amirite?"

“We hold the past in our body,” she said. “It never forgets. But it can learn to let it go.”

Dude reads a little van der Kolk and fancies himself deep

Which is when the assembled started applauding.

Are you joking right now?

Louisa invited everyone back to Tim’s. There was coffee and wine and food. I don’t know how it got there but it appeared.

You don't know how it got there? I'm sure it was magic. . .or, you know, an organized woman.