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[thingsthatmademe]

This is a personal recitation of Nomy Lamm's poem/spoken-word-piece "You Don't Get to Decide What You Are". I have no idea where this lives in the world of fair use but the album it's on, Anthem, doesn't seem to have made it to streaming services, and the record label (Talent Show Recordings) doesn't seem to exist in 2023, and I'd like to talk about this in a future essay. Nomy has a Patreon so maybe check that out? https://www.patreon.com/nomyteaches

you don't get to decide what you are

what happens is you're nothing and then you pop out and the doctor says boy or else girl and that's that

for the rest of your life you're trying to be boy or else girl

if you are very lucky you will be called a man and you will feel like a man and everyone else will think you are a man and you will do all the things that real men are supposed to do and you will score lots of chicks

then you will be on top of the world the pinnacle of success a very powerful person

this is a catch 22 though because if you are called a man and you feel like a man and everyone thinks you are a man and you do all the things that real men are supposed to do then chances are you're a fucking asshole and I hate you

if you are called a woman and you feel like a woman and everyone else thinks of you as a women and you do all the things that real women are supposed to do then you are probably miserable.

if, like most people, you lie somewhere in between or beyond then you're also probably miserable

tough life

[thingsthatmademe]

Still good for a cry nine months in.

[thingsthatmademe]

Michelle Tea and Sliding Doors

Michelle Tea, Author: Rent Girl (2004). The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America (1998). Valencia (2000). How to Grow Up (2015)

Laurenn McCubbin, Artist: Rent Girl (2004), XXX Live Nude Girls

Rent Girl was the first thing I read by Michelle Tea, right when it was released, in 2004. In the next few years, I found The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America and Valencia and devoured them.

The draw was multifaceted. We don't seem to talk about it a lot these days, but to be gay or queer in the 80s, 90s, and even 00s meant you had no choice but to live outside of some nominal consensus on what "society" was. Michelle's writing in these three books painted a picture of a particular sort of queer life on the edges of the bigger cities. A roadmap for a young person trying to sort out exactly who they were and what their options were. Looking for any hint that there might be a place in some sort of queer community for myself.

It was always the lesbian and dyke communities that I was attracted to -- what I read, saw, and experienced of gay men was always more than a little disquieting to my sense of self. It never felt like me, but then wait maybe that's just internalized homophobia? The Kinsey Six boys didn't help things any either.

And of course the cognitive dissonance of being attracted to women's spaces when everyone had told me my entire life I was a boy or a man was equally disquieting.

Flipping back through these books today one thing that stands out is how angry Michelle's young memoir-self is at straight people and men. A similar anger is on display in XXX Live Nude Girls, illustrated by Rent Girl's illustrator Laurenn McCubbin. Looking back at that now I realize how much the expression of that anger made it impossible for me to imagine a place for myself in any women-centered queer community. Or to imagine the possibility that I might, or was allowed to be, a woman.

Looking back -- as exhilarating and intoxicating as these books were -- they were also part of the quiet guilt that settled into my soul around the desire to see myself inside these communities. As I started to figure out what sort of queer person I was going to be I found it easier to fall into the paths of the crossdressers and transvestites that came before me. To move in increasingly queer-friendly but still predominantly cisgender circles. To be a mild ontological gender terrorist.

It brought me no greater pleasure than when I overheard someone say Alan annoys the shit out of me but Alana is fucking hot, or when a friend would say she missed Alana showing up at parties. "Ha ha", I'd think, "I have inhabited the fiction suit that is gender and shown you all how arbitrary and unreal it is! I have vanquished you gender, my work here is done!"

The thing I've learned about your own gender is you can hit it as hard as you can, but it will always come back. Twice as strong and ready to show you how it's something you can't ever really outrun.

I still struggle with the anger towards men in communities of queer and feminist women. It's not TERF culture, exactly, but it's adjacent to it. It's the hammer TERFs use against trans folks. And I struggle with it because I can't bring myself to suggest that cisgender women work to make peace with it and not let it dominate their lives. I still feel like I don't have that right. I don't know how to reconcile the coping mechanism that cis-women have developed for themselves when some of those coping mechanisms can be actively harmful to trans women -- both closeted and out. Actively harmful to myself.

You don't need to tell me that's internalized TERF bullshit because I know it's internalized TERF bullshit. But it's still there. There's nothing more early transition than knowing something in your head but struggling to find ways to reconcile that with your heart, or with your fears.

Epilogue One

I turned 40 in 2015 and it was time for some changes. I had carved out a weird life for myself and the edges of that life were starting to fray.

My days of being an ontological gender terrorist had petered out in my late 30s -- the venues for those sorts of shenanigans had dried up and I had reached the limits of what drag, kink, random hookups, and other duel role gender performance could bring me. Unfortunately, the self-medication of my dissociation via alcohol had not petered out and I was starting to notice the negative effects on my health that daily drinking brought. My floating on the edges of poly communities for human companionship without deeper commitments (I think the kids call this solo polyamory?) was starting to wear thin. The weird independent career I'd pieced together was falling apart as markets changed.

In the next year I'd get my drinking under control, romantically reunite with a partner I'm still with to this day, and give up my independent career for a steady job and paycheck. I also told myself my days of gender experimentation were over. That I'd done the things I wanted to.

Sometime in that year I also read Michelle's latest collection of essays, How to Grow Up. There's a passage that's stuck with me.

I'd changed since my twenties. And though some of these changes had been life-altering, enormous enough for me to be very aware of them, many of them were small, subtle, and cumulative. In some ways I still live like a twentysomething, and I sort of prided myself on my youthfulness. But in most ways, I didn't. My ideologies had changed -- no small deal for a person who was once 100 percent ideology-fueled. My hobbies, the things I did for enjoyment had changed. What I did and didn't do to my body had changed. My income had changed, and perhaps as a result, so had my style, my taste. What I thought was acceptable or unacceptable behavior had changed. My friends had changes (my lovers, not so much). How I expressed myself had changed. I was not the person I was when I was twenty-five, and living with a bunch of twenty-something was sometimes-fascinating proof of this.

If the chaotic women portrayed in those early memoir novels could grow up a little and start to find some peace for herself and move forward maybe I could too.

Epilogue 2

In the end my gender came for me, chipped away, and finally worked me over with baseball bats until I saw the light at the center of myself. As I've been filling in the gaps of my own history, I came across Michelle's 2003 account of her stay at Camp Trans, published in the Believer Magazine. Transmissions from Camp Trans.

It's odd I can't recall ever reading this. All my googling of Michelle Tea, of being the sort of literary pretentious person who buys The Believer from time to time, etc. Or maybe I did see it, but the guards at my closet doors turned it away before I had a chance to read or remember it.

As I read through it now in 2023 I wonder what would have happened if this was the first bit of Michelle's writing that I encountered in the world. Someone a little bit older, humbled at her own misunderstanding/discomfort with trans people, reconciling the cruelty of the Mitchfest transfem exclusion policy with her own love of the things she'd seen at that festival. If I'd first read the name Julia Serano twenty years before I actually did. If I'd learned and believed that some women have a penis and some men don't, or read accounts of the cruelly some women from Mitchfest showed the women at Camp Trans.

I try not to fall into the sliding doors trap, but how different would my path have been if I had heard some of the loud clear voices saying it was OK to be trans?

[thingsthatmademe]

Taking the Scraps

Content warning for transphobia, old words we used, and violence/murder.

Frank Ironwine was part of a four-issue comic book series from Avatar Press entitled Apparat Singles Group and ran from November through December of 2004. Avatar was, and is, an independent publisher that appeared to have relationships with several authors who'd made their names at DC and Marvel and they published works with a much darker tone and subject matter -- sometimes in an artful way, sometimes in an exploitative way.

Apparat's bit is that each issue is a single episode in a nominal imaginary series. They're genre exercises -- detective story, science fiction story, pulp vigilante, etc. The series was written by the now notorious Warren Ellis. Ellis will probably come up again -- a large impetus for my original, pre-transition, vision of this website was my desire to reevaluate my relationship with Ellis's work and career where its energy intersected with my own. I say energy because I have zero connection to the actual players in that situation (but generally hope that everyone gets the closure and justice they need and deserve).

The artist on the book is the fabulous Carla Speed McNeil whose long-running aboriginal science fiction series Finder will almost certainly come up again.

Plot Synopsis: Frank Ironwine is a detective in the model of Sherlock Holes or Gregory House -- an eccentric, rude, hyper-observant genius detective who knows all and solves all. We meet Frank on the day his new partner, Karen De Grout, is fishing him out of a dumpster. They set off to solve today's murder.

The case? Gary Eigler's been found dead in his apartment. The first suspect, Alison (his wife), is quickly ruled out as she was shot two hours ago by a woman named Janie Guthrie. Through a compassionate interrogation, Frank determines that Janie believed her husband, Phil, was having an affair with Janie. She confesses to taking one of her husband's guns with the intention of using it to scare Janie off and that the confrontation got emotional, the gun accidentally went off, and Janie was dead. Janie says nothing of Gary, and Frank's partner Karen is frustrated by what seems to be Frank's credulousness.

Frank continues his scolding and belittling of his partner as they travel to Phil's residence, giving her New York City history lessons along the way. They arrive at Phil's apartment and inform him of what his wife's done. Then Frank proceeds to, via a recounting of his keen observations and transphobic conjecture, let Phil know he knows that Phil is trans and killed his secret boyfriend Gary when Gary wouldn't leave his wife. Frank's taunts eventually lead Phil to pull a gun, narrowly miss both cops at point-blank range, and then flee down the fire escape. Just as Phil leaves the alley Frank punches them in their face, arrests them, and has a quip for his exhausted partner who chased Phil down the escape.

So -- a grim detective story dripping with negative tropes and transphobia. We have both the trans woman as the murderer and, thanks to this history lesson from Frank, the trans woman as the murder victim.

We also have Frank's odd double standard -- Jane's reckless manslaughter of Janie is met with compassion. Phil's reckless killing of Gary is treated with cruelty and violence. Then the standard Ellis trope of the rude super genius who knows all and expects his female partners to keep up with the verbal abuse he dishes out constantly.

So pretty shitty by 2023 eyes -- but what's really messed up is in 2004 this could feel like representation.

First, there's the mention of a murdered trans woman -- Amanda Milan. As a story device this serves to clue us in that Frank Knows Things™ about the city and its history, knows about trans people, and lets the observant reader get to the conclusion before Karen does.

Amanda Milan was a real woman. Murdered in New York City in 2000 by two men, Dwayne McCuller and Eugene Celestine who were abated by a third, David Anderson. Her death was noticed because it happened right before pride in New York City, and trans activists made it their business to make sure the world knew about this murder. The primary antagonist, Dwayne McCuller, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 and a half years -- which means he's free today, (assuming the broken carceral system didn't grind him to dust).

The mention of this detail from Frank and his framing of it -- mostly because she was a transexual and she didn't give a shit what anyone thought about it -- can be read as sympathetic. This then-four-year-old bit of grim trans history promoted in a straight and cis space like Avatar comics could make the work (with a dollop of compartmentalizing) feel friendly and sympathetic to trans women.

You could even, if you had the self-reliance brain worms that so many of us in gen-x had, view Amanda's death as noble and tragic because she was out and Phil as ignoble because they were closeted and letting their feeling for one man screw up their life.

With a little extra compartmentalization, you could read the work and think "Oh -- people are trying to be trans out there".

It's very telling to me that I remembered this comic as Frank solving the murder of a trans woman and not discovering that a trans woman was the murderer and menacing them until they snapped. When there's so little representation of people who look like you you tend to take whatever scraps you get and construct a patchwork identity for yourself.

[thingsthatmademe]

Lone Wolves

A slightly different format today. Two comics and then a novel. Also, less of a full recollection of each than a theme I've been picking up on. How Loathsome, Frank Ironwine, and Nevada. I'll probably be returning to at least two of these again. Content warning about transphobia, some old language, and murder.

How Loathsome is a four-issue indie comic published in 2003 (collected in 2004) that's fictional, but appears to capture the energy of the goth and goth adjacent late-90s/early-2000s LGBT scene/community in San Francisco. Or maybe just a scene or a community. It was one of my North Stars™ when I made my first pass at gender non-conformity in my late 20s/early 30s.

Frank Ironwine is a one-off comic published in 2004 about a fictional hard-boiled uber detective, solving a complicated murder that involves trans people.

Nevada is a small press literary novel published in 2012 about one girl and another maybe girl doing the best they can and the book that tipped me over into full self-acceptance.

The one How Loathsome sequence I'm thinking about today is this one

I have to admit I was smitten. It had been a long time since I met someone whose general dissatisfaction matched my own

This entire sequence captivated and captured me the first time I read it -- just an ache to both have a queer history and then find that single person to pour that history into. More important for today is both Katherine's and Chloe's self-isolation which starts to crack slightly through this arc but then slams shut when the risk of intimacy centered in the present comes knocking.

Frank Ironwine is worse than I remember. Frank is a Sherlock Holmes-like detective solving what looks like a simple domestic homicide. My memory was that Frank was solving the murder of a closeted trans-fem. Re-reading it I discovered the murderer is a closeted trans woman with the denouement featuring Frank's transphobic taunts to force a confrontation.

There's a metric butt-ton of manure to unpack in this little comic but the trope I was thinking about today was the trans-feminine person living some sort of duel life in a small city apartment by themselves who will never be able to be fully themselves.

What strikes me about the energy from both these fictional universes -- one still resonant the other making me queasy -- is how they both reinforce this idea of the gender-non-conforming human being completely alone in the world. I grew up in a world without many visible gay or queer folks, and when you did catch a glimpse this was the energy we were allowed to see.

Put another way -- if you choose this life, it will be a road of loneliness and sadness ending in premature death or worse.

I'm realizing more and more how much the idea of the lone trans woman imprinted on me and how many decisions I made based on this nominal woman.

This brings us to the young classic -- Nevada.

I didn't read Nevada in its time. It was a small press novel that I might have come across but by 2013/2014 my embrace of a gender non-conforming life was in remission as I made the awkward transition from peak young person to The Rest of My Life™. I had started to put away my girlish things and presumed that part of my life was over. It's painful to me, as I write this, to do the math and realize I would spend the next nine years of my life trying to live as a man and sort out the parts of my 30s that were good for me and the parts that were a mess.

When I read Nevada in 2022 I saw Maria, an actual (if fictional) trans woman living that same mentally isolated life -- rejecting the possibilities for intimacy and connection that are around you, preferring the wind of a downhill incline on your bike, a bagel sandwich, the exciting possibility of a bag of drugs, only able to project yourself through Livejournal to a few hundred people you don't know, or playing out the fantasy of meeting yourself pre-transition and setting yourself on the right path. I saw an almost perfect reflection of myself at that time and age -- except that Maria had figured out and accepted she was, and was allowed to be, trans.

After a good cry in the fetal position on the kitchen floor, I got up and started figuring out what I was going to do next.

As I write this I'm about eight months past that low and five months into medical transition. Back in my (self-described) wild transvestite days I'd joke that we were all cats -- occasionally coming down to sniff each other but living our lives as solitary beings. I've realized that the thing that's made everything work this time is letting go of that isolation and inviting the love and wisdom of other trans people into my life.

I'm learning to be kind to that older version of myself and to have empathy for them -- they were doing the best with what they had -- but the world we're all building for each other today is so much richer. Whatever happens, we have each other, and we're never going back.

[thingsthatmademe]

Die #19

I will probably have a lot to say about the work of Kieron Gillen over the life of this emotional process blog but today is a quick note about a work that didn't mean much to me until it did, Die.

One of Kieron's ur works, Phonogram, is the one that got me. Specifically, The Singles Club. It came to me at the peak of my own late-blooming retro, goth, and indie-pop club years. Die, on the other hand, came later. The peak of the grim Trump and pandemic years in America and reconciling myself to my forties after a decade of heavy drinking, partying, and living in the moment. Trying to make my first attempt at cohabitation work and finding it incredibly difficult, not realizing how hard having another person around to perceive me as who I was (and more importantly, who I was not) was going to be.

It was the summer of '22 when all of that crested and I realized that I both was, and allowed to be, trans. But that's a different story and a different book for a different time.

In some ways, the concept of Die was perfect for me -- four middle-aged people revisiting the sins of their youth. In other ways -- less so. Role-playing games were a part of my past that I set down in my twenties and have not picked back up again. My particular brand of (faint?) borderline autism makes me a bit of a rules lawyer, and my creativity is something that's a very private thing. I love the explosion in gaming that's been ongoing for the past few decades (I live in Portland, OR after all) but it's not for me.

I still bought Die of course -- but it wasn't a must-read and I wasn't following the characters and story as intensely as I had with other comics. Part out of slowly growing out of living my life through fictional characters and part out of denial around needing reading glasses.

But also Ash, and not wanting to look at myself too closely.

I had put down drag and "the thing I could only call genderfluidity in my head and fantasies" sometime around 2012/2013. I had entered the club and kink scenes because they seemed like places where anything could happen. Over time you discover there are, in fact, only twelve things that can happen -- and having them happen over and over again gets a little boring. Growth is a thing, I suppose. And then realizing your health is starting a massive decline from the drink and occasional drugs and that you can only process feelings through altered states?

So my femme persona became a thing I put down. I shrugged internally and said "I guess that was something I did for a while" and other non-answers when close friends asked what was up. My venues for those opportunities were gone, and the need to show up professionally and spend some male privilege for slightly more financial security was in the air.

Every year, particularly around the dark holidays, an old familiar depression would haunt me. A crushing sense that my life was over and there was nothing to look forward to.

When Die #19 came along I wasn't quite ready to listen to the voice my resurrected depression was suffocating -- but unresolved feelings around genderfluidity with no clear model to guide you? Tying it up with sketchy problematic behavior in your past? Capital kay KNOWING this in your head but not knowing it in your heart or what to do about it? I played it off to myself as "oh that's interesting" and moved on.

It would take me another ten months until I was curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor crying my eyes out about who I was and the time I'd wasted.

Re-reading this issue today as I box up some comics the tears come again, but this time they're mostly from gratitude and joy. Mostly.

[thingsthatmademe]

You Shall Know our Velocity

I'm only now realizing how many items in my house are there to serve as memory prompts.

This is a copy of Your Shall Know our Velocity, by David Eggers. I picked it up while I was living back east because it was extremely popular with a certain set of west coast home-page/early-blog young people. People I was desperate to emulate. A group I'd first become aware of in the mid-late 90s while I was in college and whose first literary infatuation, Microserfs, had planted something in me.

I did not care for Your Shall Know our Velocity. To quote the most problematic of favs, it said nothing to me about my life. It's one of the first books I ever bought and put down after a few chapters.

I felt guilty about not finishing it because I was still coming out of a deep clinical depression that had dogged me for most of my life.

A few years later a concert friend and long-time crush-of-mine was looking for a tour companion. We'll call her Q——. I brought along You Shall Know our Velocity because I wanted to make one last attempt at reading it. She was a so-called "merch girl" and tour manager for a semi-famous modern folk musician and wanted a traveling companion for a leg of the tour. My memory begins to fail me here and even my pals at Concert Archives and SetList.FM haven't let me reconstruct the dates. The facts I'm sure of -- it was sometime between 2000 and 2005, and a three-or-four-date jaunt. For me, the tour ended in Toronto. The show previous to that was in a venue outside of Montréal.

My memory of the specifics starts to break down here. I THINK the show before Montréal was in New Jersey, but it may have been in an upstate NY town near the city -- probably Piermont, NY. This wasn't my only tour crushing-on-but-keeping-my-distance-from-because-of-fear-and-insecurity with Q—— and the details tend to mush together twenty years later. 

The emotional truth of that tour is crystal clear though. My falling out of crush with this woman (which puts it more in the 2003 - 2005 era of my timeline, when I was finally shaking off my depression and insecurity). It wasn't a disaster -- but the Quebec show was uncomfortable for a number of reasons. 

It was at a venue that also had a -- former? -- hostel above it but the venue owner seemed reticent to let us sleep up there. I wanted to start figuring out a hotel but Q—— shrugged and said it would work out and, for what it's worth, it did.

But the larger problem was an internet friend of Q—— who we met up with -- Gabe. Gabe was a shy, awkward, male presenting human and Q—— just seemed to delight in teasing him in a way that, between longtime friends, might be acceptable but sat wrong with me. Gabe seemed occasionally uncomfortable, and he reminded me of who I'd been just a few years earlier before I'd learned to mask better.

I also found in myself an ugliness that wanted to join in with the teasing to bond with Q—— at odds with wanting to stand up for the older, shyer, version of myself.

That night spent on the old hostel mattress I journaled about these feelings. They seem trivial now but at the time felt incredibly important to get down on paper (which means they were incredibly important to get down on paper). I had no journal so the inside cover of You Shall Know our Velocity served.

We had breakfast the next day with Gabe (and a pretty funny conversation about an infamous New York City dick dock) and then headed off for Toronto. I sort of detached from Q—— for this show -- I recall having a bit of a joint outside the venue (on the street? in broad daylight? what decriminalized paradise was this?!?) and spending a bit of the show with a woman, C——, who we would have described then as a baby-dyke. She was from our mutual concert-going community and had fooled around with Q—— and Q——'s partner in the past. She was desperate to see Q—— after the show and I recognized that intense draw to Q——'s charisma -- likely heighten by an actual sexual relationship instead of dissociative longing. 

I had a good time hanging out with this young, impossibly beautiful baby-dyke whose name I can't remember. She hustled me for loonies to tip the bartenders with (or perhaps just buy another cheap beer) and I was happy to give them up. Queer energy was something I was desperate for in those days for reasons I didn't always realize.

At some point, Q—— and C—— talked and it sounds like it didn't go well. Q—— put the freeze on her and I distinctly remember a distraught C——, crestfallen, mumbling out loud "she doesn't think of me at all".

Q—— was also visibility uncomfortable, and as we packed up was trying to sell me on the idea of my taking a bus home to Rochester instead of us driving there together. Exhausted by her antics (or, in retrospect, angry at myself for not seeing her clearly for who she was and not knowing who I was) I insisted on our previous agreements. It was an awkward three hours.

This week of my life was an emotional turning point for me, but I also felt bad about it for years. I tore off the book cover with my journaling. It may be lurking in some box in my basement or may be floating in a trash heap somewhere. I still have not read You Shall Know our Velocity. 

Years later, in 2010, I would meet up with Q—— and her partner in Los Angeles. I was there for work. I'd been out west in Portland and Seattle for five years and had come into myself. These were very much peak young person (if late blooming) years for me. We had a pleasant time but I remember seeing Q—— as an anxious nervous bundle of insecure energy. So many things about that tour jaunt in the early 2000s came into focus for me then and I realized I'd probably never see her again. 

It's thirteen years later and outside a note when Carol Channing died (there was a comedy bit, it's not important) I haven't spoken to her since. When I went poking around my long discarded drag/transvestite twitter feed from that era I saw she was still active and going hard with the "continued masking is oppression" brain worms.

If I was who I am now I'd probably try to gently engage with her about these things -- but if I was who I am now I never would have been in that situation. I even thought about reaching out to her after writing this but -- that's probably just vanity. Also the "continued masking is oppression" brain worms thing would be a lot to get past.

All that from a book I'll probably never read. Objects contain ghosts and we can talk to them if we want. Gabe, on the off chance yous see this, sorry for being a jerk 20 years ago. I hope you turned out OK. 

I did not care for Your Shall Know our Velocity. To quote the most problematic of favs, it said nothing to me about my life. It's one of the first books I ever bought and put down after a few chapters.

I felt guilty about no finishing it because I was still coming out of a deep clinical depression that had dogged me for most of my life.

A few years later a concert friend and long time crush-of-mine was looking for a tour companion. We'll call her Q——. I brought along You Shall Know our Velocity because I wanted to make one last attempt at reading it. She was a so called "merch girl" and tour manager for a semi-famous modern folk musician and wanted a traveling companion for a leg of the tour. My memory begins to fail me here and even my pals at Concert Archives and SetList.FM haven't let me reconstruct the dates. The facts I'm sure of -- it was sometime between 2000 and 2005, and a three or four date jaunt. For me the tour ended in Toronto. The show previous to that was in a venue outside of Montréal.

Memory of the specifics start to breakdown. I THINK the show prior to Montréal was in New Jersey, but it may have been in an upstate NY town near the city -- probably Piermont, NY. This wasn't my only tour crushing-on-but-keeping-my-distance-from-because-of-fear-and-insecurity with Q—— and the details tend to mush together in middle age.

The emotional truth of that tour is crystal clear though. My falling out of crush with this women (which puts it more in the 2003 - 2005 era of my timeline, when I was finally shaking off my depression and insecurity). It wasn't a disaster -- but the Quebec show was uncomfortable for a number of reasons.

It was at a venue that also had a -- former? -- hostel above it but the venue owner seemed reticent to let us sleep up there. I wanted to start figuring out a hotel but Q—— shrugged and said it would work out and, for what it's worth, it did.

But the larger problem was an internet friend of Q—— who we met up with -- Gabe. Gabe was a shy, awkward, male presenting human and Q—— just seemed to delight in teasing him in a way that, between longtime friends, might be acceptable but sat wrong with me. Gabe seemed occasionally uncomfortable, and he reminded me of who'd I'd been just a few years earlier and still was, really.

I also found in myself an ugly part that wanted to join in with the teasing to bond with Q—— at odds with wanting to stand up for the older, shyer, version of myself.

That night spent on the old hostel mattress I journaled about these feelings. They seem trivial now but at the time felt incredibly important to get down on paper (which means they were incredibly important to get down on paper). I had no journal so the inside cover of You Shall Know our Velocity served.

We had breakfast the next day with Gabe and then headed off for Toronto. I sort of detached from Q—— for this show -- I recall having a bit of a joint outside the venue (on the street? in broad daylight? what decriminalized paradise was this?!?) and spending a bit of the show with a women, C——, we would have described then as a baby-dyke. She was from our mutual concert going community and had fooled around with Q—— and Q——'s previous partner before. She was desperate to see Q—— after the show and I recognized that intense draw to Q——'s charisma -- likely heighten by an actual sexual relationship instead of dissociative longing.

I had a good time hanging out with this young, impossibly beautiful baby-dyke whose name I can't remember. She hustled me for loonies to tip the bartenders with (or perhaps just buy another cheap beer) and I was happy to give them up. Queer energy was something I was desperate for in those days for reasons I didn't always realize.

At some point Q—— and her talked and it sounds like it didn't go well. Q—— put the freeze on her and I distinctly remember a distraught C——, crestfallen, mumbling out loud "she doesn't think of me at all".

Q—— was also visibility uncomfortable, and as we packed up was trying to sell me on the idea of my taking a bus home to Rochester instead of us driving their together. Exhausted by her antics (or, in retrospect, angry at myself for not seeing her clearly for who she was and not knowing who I was) I insisted on our previous agreements. It was an awkward three hours.

This week of my life was an emotional turning point for me, but I also felt bad about it for years. I tore the book cover with journaling and it may be lurking in some box in my basement or may be floating in a trash heap somewhere.

Years later, in 2010, I would meetup with Q—— and her partner, Mark in Los Angeles. I was there for work. I'd been out west in Portland and Seattle for five years and really come into myself. These were very much peak young person (if late blooming) days for me. We had a pleasant time but I remember seeing Q—— as an anxious nervous bundle of insecure energy. So many things about that tour jaunt in the early 2000s came into focus for me then and I realized I'd probably never see her again. It's thirteen years later and outside a note when Carol Channing died (there was a comedy bit, it's not important) I haven't spoken to her since. When I went poking around my old drag/transvestite twitter feed from that era I saw she was still active and going hard with the "continued masking is oppression" brain worms.

If I was who I am now I'd probably try to gently engage with her about these things. I even thought about reaching out to her after writing this but -- that's probably just vanity. Also the "continued masking is oppression" brain worms thing would be a lot of get past.

All that from a book I'll probably never read. Objects contain ghosts and we can talk to them if we want. Gabe, if you're out there, sorry for being kind of a jerk 20 years ago.

[thingsthatmademe]

Hat tip to Snow Lattes (Elvin) for the avatar -- although the empty blog, the fact it's a Tumblr provided avatar, and what I know about the post startup post scale up tech business culture makes me worry that they either don't exist, or were ultimately treated poorly.