The Sandwich
Good afternoon from Portland, Oregon, where I just had a Chicago beef sandwich, dripping with juices, half dipped, giardiniera and roasted sweet peppers adding a complex vegetal note to a rich dripping sandwich. It was very good, and WAY more expensive than I expected. The nature of inflation, I guess.
I’m trying to keep it quiet after a busy weekend. Collecting my thoughts after hugging a thousand people. Which I love to do, but right now I’m a crispy mess of a girl.
Pride weekend
Like many things, Pride is different in Portland. It falls in July for many reasons. And because we are the trans capital of the world, there were about a million pink and blue and white flags all over the place.
Am I proud to be a trans person? I am a trans person. I exist. A lot of powerful people wishes otherwise, try to legislate me away. Being proud of my trans existence seems like a solid good. But I don’t feel pride. I feel happiness. I feel joy. I feel concern and rage. I feel exhaustion. I feel lust towards my trans body and other trans bodies: lust for results; lust for connection. But pride?
My two favorite events during Pride weekend are trans family picnic, and the big rainbow parade. I love both of those for the same reason: I love seeing queer and trans people in our multitudes, existing together. I love seeing old friends hug each other after missing each other for a long time. I love watching children dance. I even love the awkward dance of exes, trying to exist together, not make a scene, feel like twinge of regret And jealousy, and ultimately acceptance. I love the big pile of us.
Maybe the thing I’m proud of is our ability to exist together, in our multitudes, bound together by gender and sex and sexuality and redefinition of defaults. Yes, that I’m proud of. I am proud to be with you.
Who I saw at pride
An 80 year old trans woman who came out in the 1970s, and is still shuffling around town.
A feral creature who I’ve known since it was a baby, now old enough for shy trans men to ask me “do you think they would want my number?”
A thousand women I have met over the last decade, every one of them worth a million soldiers.
My best friend for brunch, talking about art and sex and cats and The Horrors but mostly laughing together.
A friend whose hand I fit in the night before, who introduced me to one of their partners who lived in my home town, and with whom I shaked my head in solidarity.
At least 4 girls who had had surgery within the last 3 months, and were gingerly out in the world again.
Different sets of exes, avoiding each other, but doing their best to be kind to each other.
One girl I thought was dead, and wasn’t, and goddamn am I grateful for that.
Humaning
Work is coming up, so I need to get the little things done.
I hate the term adulting. It’s so infantile to think that we can’t be adults and whimsical, that we need to separate the shit that needs to get done with the things that we do for joy. It’s humaning. It’s all humaning.
License plate renewal. Blood and piss and pressure work. A swim. Tire rotation. Groceries. Pay all my bills. Start meal prepping (I will not buy food during lunch hours). Notebook work. Laundry.
God, it’s good to be a living breathing person, an adult in the world.
Some Poems
Trans Family Picnic
Welcome to our beautiful blanket. There is no best way to be here. You are busted up by 30 years of trauma? Watched the dream of integration slide away like a hagfish down the river? Can’t pretend that this will never stop being adjacent to dreaming, that there is no done here? You can be bricked up for a lifetime, navigate your days in chinos and golf shirts, and I would still say welcome to my dear sister, in whom I am well pleased. You can wear diapers and cat ears, harnessed and collared by a girl barely able to keep her own shit together, let alone you, or you, or you, and I will swoop in with water, say drink. Enough of us learn how the powerful stay powerful: believe in enemies and righteousness, walk through life so cynical they will die lonely. I can’t believe in the bad girl. I can’t believe we have to live with our errors forever. Someday you will meet your ex, watch her find that comfort in her body and soul that you never watched, and you will learn to live in this big picnic with her, over here, with our gaggle of old girls.
Pride Parade
The banks want us now that we are married,
worried about mortgages.
Old men who survived their virus years,
now more likely to die the way every twink does.
Children dancing to marching bands and choirs,
joining in with men in thongs as the beat drops.
The fur suit contingent,
an army sweating in June heat,
waving in every direction,
dazzling the teens from their phones.
A thousand blue and white and pink flags,
waving for the living and the dead.
My surgeon waves to me,
waves to a thousand affirmed girls.
Two groups of leather dykes,
marching separately for all those kinky reasons.
Motorcycle women,
the lipstick dykes who love them.
Which flag is this?
And this?
And this?
Making out in the street with a long lost friend,
marching with the bath house that gave her community,
gave us the beauty and welcome we deserved.
It goes on forever,
an election year’s worth of stickers and buttons,
a dozen churches apologizing for God,
a years worth of community for the closeted girls
hoping to join next year.
Wisdom of Ancient Trans Women
No one said this would be simple:
breaking up with power to join the margins.
No one is going to protect you from stares,
from the judgment of mothers,
from lovers afraid of change or wonder.
Everyone around will be healing somehow,
making mistakes with your heart and body.
You will learn how to work: soul work
of forgiving, self work of boundaries,
body work of recovery, boredom and healing.
You will be poor, if you’re lucky, find others,
if you are blessed, make a life, if you can.
Get bloody for this: obsidian knives,
discarded bricks. Get ready to join in dancing
with the dead, to welcome them into every joy.
What I can’t teach you
How to walk like a woman. How to learn to love
your voice, no matter how much it resets time
and space around you. How to put up with women
who sir you while you are buying frozen pizzas,
how your screaming will not matter, your disruption
enough to ban you. How to learn to accept strangers
looking away quickly, or staring violence into your
heart. How to forgive your first girlfriend for failing
to protect you. How to forgive every girl that fills
their tub with blood, craters in their own skull,
lights themselves on fire outside city hall. How
to accept the gift of sunlight on broad shoulders,
freckled and beautiful before summer rains come.
Outro
Reed College now. Delightfully quiet. In a dark corner, enjoying the silence.
I hope you are all well. Find your space. Take your space. Eat something delicious. Move your body. Have some sex, if you wanna. Make art, because you need to.
Love and stuff,
Misha