Any Other City, page 11
—
In your letter, you said Buttons purred like mad for Timothy.
—
I’m flying home tomorrow. And I’m not sure what’s waiting for me. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a place to live. I don’t have you. I bought you twenty small gifts. (One for each year of your life. I’m a hopeless romantic. With the emphasis on hopeless.) I was going to give them to you over a slow, cozy dinner. Maybe I’d have made ginger, carrot, and squash soup. Now I don’t know what to do with them. Maybe I’ll still give them to you.
Now I’m sitting in the airport, waiting to board the plane. I’ve been listening to the going-away mixtape you made for me. I just skipped over “My Eiffel Rifle.” It hurts too much to hear that one. And now your favourite Scurvy Babies song is playing, “Bloody Metronome.” As I listen to Alec Scurvy sneer at all the flowery ways we describe our hearts, I imagine my heart, freshly torn from my body, bloody like a piece of raw meat, flopping on the airport carpet like a fish out of water, gulping for air. But, no, the song reminds me, it’s just a metronome that pumps blood through my body. It feels like it’s been damaged, but it’s fine. Under my rib cage, it’s still thumping, still keeping time, keeping me alive.
I just flashed on when you pressed your head to my chest and told me I had a good heart, that it made a nice thump.
Now I’m waiting in line to get on the plane, my passport and ticket in hand.
I once told you that the bloody metronome of my heart would keep time for you always.
And I still feel that way. I don’t know how to not be with you.
Apparently, we don’t get a meal on this flight. So far, I’ve eaten four bags of peanuts and two crumbly cookies. They’re showing a movie about a bumbling bellboy who discovers he’s a superhero. And now a stunning chambermaid has fallen for him. Of course she has.
—
I hope you don’t visit that colony of bats with Timothy. I hope you’re waiting for me at the airport. I’m sorry. I fucked up. I never doubted we’d always be together. I took you for granted. You once whispered that you’d love me forever. Then, you whispered, no, longer than that. I’ll love you forever and a day. Do you remember? I want to scoop you in my arms and bury my face in the nest of your hair. I miss the way your eyes sparkle when you look at me. Why doesn’t your heart twirl for me anymore? I love you, Astrid. My heart aches, my stomach aches, everything aches. I want to climb under the covers and nuzzle and doze with you. I feel sucky.
_________________
Preface to Side B,
or
Sex, Trauma, and Rock ’n’ Roll
THE EDITOR IS HOUNDING ME. She says I’m too slow. I tell her I’m a late bloomer. I tell her my petals unfurl slower than most. I tell her they’ll be gorgeous when they finally burst open.
When I signed a publishing contract, I thought I could stitch together a memoir that wasn’t cut from the same sad cloth as every other musician and trans girl. I’d sit in coffee shops, jotting in my notebook. Brainwaves came and went. I’d crack the code and spool out the thread for my masterpiece. Then, I’d hit a snag. This went on for a few years. I got a couple of extensions. I finally admitted to myself and my editor that I needed a co-pilot. In despair, I reached out to Hazel Jane Plante to collaborate with me. Eventually, we found the memoir’s two-story structure and wrote the book that you’ve been reading.
I’ve always loved architectural models. When I go to a museum that has models of buildings, I feel a shiver. I felt a similar shiver when Hazel and I hit on the two-story structure. I imagine my memoir as a skyscraper with an elevator that only stops at the twentieth and forty-sixth floors. You can get a sense of the other floors, but you don’t have access to them. You’ve already visited the twentieth floor, and now you’re zooming up to the forty-sixth floor.
I like gaps. I like things that wobble. I wanted my memoir to have gaps, to have a little wobble. I didn’t want to dust my life with powdered sugar. Aging has changed me. Relationships have changed me. Hormones have changed me. Trauma has changed me. A body is a mobile home. A body is a slow time machine.
While working on this book, I was reminded of all the ways trans women’s past and present lives converge and diverge. Hazel thinks there’s a trans collective unconscious, but that idea sounds batty to me. (Fun fact: I folded a few details from Hazel’s own life into my memoir. When I suggested it, she quickly agreed, saying it reminded her of a tailor sewing handwritten poems into the lining of a dress.)
When I sent a rough draft of this book to my sweetheart, she asked if I was sure about sharing this version of myself with the wider world. I’ve been asking myself the same question for a few months now. Am I sure? I’m not sure. My recent life has been steeped in sex, trauma, and rock ’n’ roll, and it feels important to delve into those topics. I want to show how I write songs, how I process trauma, and how I fuck. These things feel deeply important. I’m fed up with fear. I’m tired of shouldering shame.
I often think of Algy informing me that trans women are witchy. She’s right. We have power. We can transform things, including ourselves. We can muster magic. The truth is that we are too good for this world. It isn’t safe enough for us. It’s killing us. It’s especially awful for Black, brown, and Indigenous trans women. They deserve safety. They deserve love and pleasure. They deserve to live with ease.
Sometimes I think, There are countless ways to coexist on this beautiful pale blue dot, and yet humans are choosing to create this cockeyed world. How strange. How disheartening.
I’m typing this on my laptop at a wobbly table outside a tiny coffee shop. Nat King Cole is on the speakers right now, singing “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás,” which in English translates to “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.”
Perhaps you will feel things in your body as you read this memoir. I hope you do.
Perhaps you will be reminded that trans femmes are smart, hilarious, messy, and hot as fuck.
Perhaps you’ll think about how your own body has travelled through time, how you became the person you are, and how trauma, love, art, and sex shape your life.
Perhaps you will text a friend, I’m reading Any Other City by Tracy St. Cyr. It’s pretty fucking good. You should read it. Perhaps after hitting “Send,” you’ll ponder whether or not this world deserves trans women. Perhaps you’ll decide it doesn’t and wonder how to change that.
t.
xx
July 17, 2021
Caterpillar on the floor,
Can you teach me to transform?
And I’ll step right in and cocoon ’til I’m born
And I can’t say that I’ll miss my human form much
One hand to keep you warm
One hand to hold my chin
To be inside your arms, it’s all I’m asking
I see all the parallels
I see all the parallels
BIG THIEF, “PARALLELS”
I FIRST FLEW TO THIS LABYRINTHINE CITY over twenty years ago. I found a cheap apartment in one of the less-desirable parts of the Old Quarter. That trip realigned my life in ways that were heart-mending and heart-rending.
This time I’m renting a small apartment in Silver Alley. Its cobblestones are brushed regularly with fresh coats of silver paint.
—
I couldn’t stay in the same city as you, Johnny. After that awful night, I kept thinking I saw you everywhere. I needed distance to feel safe. You broke my brain for a spell. You scrambled my circuitry. I couldn’t fathom what you’d done.
Now my brain is working again, but all the bits that were once coated with warmth when I thought of you are gone. You rewired me. I’ve deleted all the images of you from my phone, because whenever I scrolled past them, my pulse would push into overdrive, and I’d be blindsided by panic.
I still have plenty of photos you took of me. I’m often looking directly at the camera, my eyes brimming with adoration. I’m staring at one of those photos now. I’m in your Unknown Pleasures T-shirt, grinning and holding an ice cream cone.
Do you remember that day? We split a waffle cone with a scoop of pistachio and a scoop of rosewater and saffron. It was my birthday. That night, you took me to a fancy restaurant, and we got the server to take a few snaps of us. But I had to delete them. I need to let you go.
—
Last night, I dreamt the strangest dream. I’d just stepped out of the shower and heard a chittering sound, like a baby bird might make. I scanned the room. When I looked down, I saw the small head and spindly arms of a delicate creature growing out of my abdomen. It was blinking up at me. It resembled a freshly hatched chick, except it had no feathers and no beak. It opened its small mouth. It looked thirsty, so I filled my palm with tap water and tried to carefully drip it into the creature’s mouth. It swallowed some water and licked the droplets that had splashed around its mouth. I’m doing my best, I said. I’m sorry I didn’t notice you before. It blinked up at me and made that chittering sound again.
I shivered and reached for my T-shirt. I paused before putting it on and wondered if I should cut a hole in the side so the creature could look out. Maybe it would have trouble breathing under my shirt. Or maybe it would want to be hidden rather than have strangers gawk and poke at it. As I was debating what to do, the creature coughed, and I heard something spatter on the floor. I looked down, and its mouth was covered in blood and there was a splotch of blood on the bathroom tiles. It looked up at me, bewildered and frightened. I tried to calm it by cradling its tiny body with my hand. It trembled and blinked wildly. It coughed up more blood. It looked up at me with wide, urgent eyes.
Then, I woke up. I opened my eyes, but the room was dark. I touched my hand to my abdomen. Nothing. I felt bereft. I couldn’t fall back to sleep.
—
The idea of you still occupies the space beside me in bed. And I still talk to you in my head. You hold a phantom power. Knowing this happens the world over doesn’t make things easier. It’s like when Hamlet is grieving for his father and his mom says, Buck up, kiddo, everyone dies. Fuck you, he retorts. I know everyone dies, but someone I love has just died, so please let me feel my feelings. I’m paraphrasing here.
I’m sure I’ll miss you for a long time.
—
This morning, I remembered the demo cassette my friends Algy and Eloise gave me the first time I was in this city. They had a band called Ink Moon. After some searching, I found a video online with the three songs on their demo, and everything from that time flooded back. Meeting them. Meeting Sadie Tang. Working part-time in a bakery. Weird gender stuff that was starting to bubble up for me. Wandering the alleys with a soundtrack of post-punk on my headphones. My girlfriend breaking up with me over the phone.
I’ve been messing around with the Ink Moon songs from the demo. I had doubts about flying over here with my guitar and some gear. But now I’m so glad that I did. Music is something I need right now.
—
I don’t have words for how I feel. I’m a muddle of emotions. In elementary school, we once had to make a poster that illustrated our lives. I wanted the background of my poster to include every colour imaginable. I squeezed bright tubes of paint over the thick paper and swirled the colours together. Eventually, the mixture turned poop brown. I added more colours, but that only made it a lighter shade of poop. I added even more colours, which made it a darker shade of poop.
Sometimes my sadness subsides and my frustration softens, but I never stop feeling bruised. Everything seems sepia-tinted and coated in sludge.
—
I got so lost in music this afternoon that I forgot to have lunch. I finally ducked out to get some street food at a stall nearby. After devouring some fried chicken and sticky rice, I washed the chicken grease from my fingers and started putting some basic tracks into Ableton. (We’ll never share an order of fried chicken, salty fries, vinegary coleslaw, and lemonade again. We will never cuddle on the couch again. It’s hard to get you out of my head.)
I’ve already recorded a ragged version of “Apples & Oranges.” Singing that song feels healing, especially the lines “Make me someone healthy and new / Please make me someone healthy and new.” I want to be made new. I want to stop feeling like an emotional geyser.
I recorded a sloppy, emotional version of “Deep Wound” today. I’ve been listening to the lo-fi video of Ink Moon’s demo cassette on repeat. It’s all I want to hear.
I’d hoped the Ink Moon video might allow me to track down Algy and Eloise, but it was posted by demoDemon99, who has uploaded thousands of lo-fi demos by obscure nineties bands. A potential path became a cul-de-sac. I’m allergic to social media, so I messaged my bassist, Marta, to see if she could find them. She said she’d see what she could do.
—
A friend recently reminded me that bodies don’t understand time. So, if you think about a painful moment from the past, your body doesn’t know it happened in the past; it thinks it’s happening right now. My body remembers so much stuff that I don’t want it to remember. I’m trying not to think about how you lashed out, because when I do, my body goes into a state of emergency. And I’m tired of being walloped by panic and sorrow. It’s exhausting. But that’s like trying not to think about a white bear or a pink dolphin. If you purposely try not to picture them, you’re already sunk. I feel stupid because it’s over and we’re both kind of okay. But I don’t feel okay.
—
In the apartment I’m renting, the previous tenant left a portable radio on an upper shelf in the bedroom closet. I took it down and plugged it in. A local radio station came in. It was broadcasting a song about heartache. Oh, now it’s playing a song about falling in love. Same as it ever was.
I opened my laptop and started writing an email to Jax Perry at Sir Gaylord Records. I’d gotten in touch a few months ago to say how much I adored their 7″ covers series, particularly their split 7″ of Jackie Shane songs done by Slippery Elm and Thao & the Get Down Stay Down.
Jax had said to reach out if I ever wanted to record something and told me how much they loved my music, especially Butterfly Valve. Of course, they didn’t mention my two newer albums, but even I knew they aren’t my best. Everyone loves my “brave” coming-out album. Yeah, trans girls are brave, like that doomed blue-faced dude Mel Gibson played. Aye, you may take our lives, but you’ll never take our freeeeeeedoooooom! Actually, I wanna stay alive, thanks.
I found my earlier email exchange with Jax, hit the “Reply” button, and started typing. I wrote some ecstatic sentences about Algy and Eloise’s band, how much their music meant to me, and how I wanted to release a 7″ covering two of their songs. I paused. Inhaled. Hit “Delete.” Exhaled.
As I’d been writing my message to Jax, I kept wondering whether they’d like my Ink Moon covers. I didn’t want to have a tiny Jax hovering on my shoulder like a gay devil. The deal with my label had ended with my last album, and neither of us wanted to renew, so I was in the clear to do whatever the fuck I wanted. Why not just record the songs in a cheap studio and release them on my own? DIY. Just like Algy and Eloise. I felt myself relax. Decision made.
—
Remembering when I was here for the first time, I keep seeing myself as a twenty-year-old girl, but I know that wasn’t the case. Or at least, that wasn’t how the rest of the world saw me. I think my first girlfriend might have seen me that way, which made it particularly devastating when she broke up with me. She saw who I was and didn’t want to be with me; she wanted to be with a cis guy. And when I returned to the city where I grew up, I tried to be a cis guy for a long time. And that’s especially fucked up, because I’d seen life on the other side of that wall. I’d met Sadie, Algy, and Eloise. Looking back, maybe Sadie had seen the trans femme in me. Maybe Algy and Eloise had too. But I knew that if I fessed up as trans, I’d be seen as a freak. I kept thinking of Sadie’s friend Em, the trans Thai shoemaker, about how I saw her as a dude in a dress. I figured that was how my friends would see me. And I couldn’t handle that. So I tried to tamp things down. And that worked for a time. But it’s like tamping down gunpowder. It gets even more combustible. Behind my denial beard, I was a femme powder keg.
Walking through the crooked alleys here, I recognize that I needed my life to twist this way and that way to get where I needed to go. A straight path probably would have led me to a land mine. I needed to take a circuitous route to keep myself alive long enough. But, of course, when I transitioned, shit was bonkers, because my band was just going from underground famous to almost above-ground famous. (You told me you loved The New Yorker piece on me that came out a few months after I transitioned. I still haven’t read it. I was trying so hard to say the right things and to wear the right things. I felt like I had to be perfect.)
—
Before arriving here, I was deep into camo. Everything in the clothing shops here has a leopard print. So, my current look is a mixture of camo and leopard print. It makes me seem feral and militant.
Today my friend Clarice sent me an image of a T-shirt with a silk-screened submachine gun and the phrase “JOIN THE TRANS FEMME MILITIA.” She added, i’m a lover grrl not a fighter grrl but i’d go to war w/ yr dirtbag ex to protect you! i’m here if you ever need anything. (yes, ANYTHING!) sending luv across the ocean to you!! She sent three kiss face emojis.
Thanks, I replied. I’m still alive. I miss you, friend. XO. I sent emojis of a leopard, a hug, and a bandaged heart.
—
I recorded one song on tour here a few years ago at a sweet little studio. It’s gone now, but the person who ran it has a new studio. I dropped by to take a look today. It’s a little unpolished, but it’s affordable, and the set-up is perfect. It has one main recording room, good sound isolation, tons of classic mics, and a Neve 5316 console.
