Well shit. It’s been some time, all. Life has taken some strange, albeit lovely courses lately. I ran a poll on Twitter last month asking what I should write about on vacation in Aruba. The results were mainly split between a review of Uberrime’s Night King and my ConCane, both are still works in progress. The ConCane is going to channel a pretty in-depth discussion of disability, community, interpersonal support, and reconstructing physicality. It’s going to be a great post, but it’s not time yet. The Night King is a beacon of positivity and everything about it sparks joy, but I want to wait until I can do it justice with a gushing (ayyyy, puns) review.
Right now I’m riding a plane back from Aruba to Newark Liberty. Everything seems connected these days with a very present recognition. Driving past the Newark Marriott and being flooded with memories of Masakhane’s workshop at NSEC, rereading old posts about Pride, registering for my MSW courses at Rutgers, wearing my staff shirt from PROUD while walking with Mike on the beach… I could never have expected the levels of synthesis in so many aspects of my life.
Perhaps it’s just that time of year when everything comes up rainbows, maybe it’s just a matter of moving, starting my new job, preparing my internship for HiTops, whatever. The world of queers was always a paradoxically woven one for me. Queer academics even more tightly woven. Queer academic activists working their asses off, even more recursive. It’s a matter of time and space, I guess. I’m almost 15 years in the field, still ambiverting my ways through various professions in hopes they might one day inform one another with crystal clear dimension, rerouting through past professional encounters and networking those beyond the exchange of a business card or LinkedIn.
I’m actually manifesting kinetic plans that build into each other instead of reducing their complex application to one single mission. I shouldn’t be surprised by the success. I shouldn’t be humble. I should be celebrating. The shifts in my life have been pretty drastic, and yet I still find myself marveling each day at new, subtle changes. I’ve been on testosterone for over a month, intramuscular injections each week that sometimes leave me limping in pain, bloodwork bruising my arms, my voice gradually dropping, a sudden inability to cry. Words come so much harder, my mania has subdued into a different species, something foggy and nonconforming to my baseline analysis or comprehension.
I stutter a lot now. I stumble over myself in person and online, and writing this post has been pretty daunting, if not for all my life changes than the reduced lexicon which once trademarked my writing for its verbosity and derailing. I worry a lot about this now that I am going back to school for my final Master’s degree. My thoughts, conceptions, and ontologies are my most confident parts, an intellectualized defense from years of being bullied at a very young age.
I did not understand how to hide my queerness in elementary school and programs like “Talented and Gifted” as well as switching to a private school, though pretentious and extremely fucked up in rhetoric and social strata, were the few institutions protecting me against almost daily physical and verbal harassment from my peers. Anyone who says children are incapable of truly harming one another is completely unaware of how harmful that very declaration can be.
It took me a long time to honor my queerness and simultaneously took me the same amount of time to learn how to code switch into straight culture. I spent my vacation week with an engagement ring around my finger, silver oak leaves entwined with a sparkly green gem. For me, queerness is a lot like this gem. I want it to shine and I want it to be seen, but I don’t want it to make sense to everyone. I don’t want it to be read as feminine, but with everything society attaches to what it’s supposed to look like, I’m left wondering how to reclaim its meaning.
People see me and Mike and some may think “straight couple.” They may see us and think cis, abled, monogamous, whatever. It’s not us. It’s not me and it’s not him. I hashtagged our engagement photo on my Instagram, saying #enGAYged, then wondered if that would lead to a critique of our queerness. I want to not give a fuck. I want to cherish this moment, to hold his hand in public and not fear the misinterpretation of heteroperformativity, but the reality of my life is that this misinterpretation IS privilege in and of itself. It does not carry the same risks of being read as queer, the inherent harm and discrimination against “visibly” LGBTQ folx.
But what constitutes the parameters for”visibility?” Who gets left out from that definition? I once said to be “anti-man” requires more unpacking at what signifies “man.” Do I deserve to get pissed at people misgendering me; do I deserve that discomfort or centering myself in that discourse? Am I reproducing inequalities and privilege by even writing about this?
I started this post on the plane ride home from Aruba. Mike accidentally spilled water on my laptop, so I saved the document and shut it down immediately. I wonder sometimes about fate, luck, higher beings, universes, whatever, because I really needed time to process and reflect. Three days have gone by, reconnecting with my neighbors, coworkers, gaming buddies, folx who want to see “the ring” after they saw my announcements on social media. And I find myself hesitant to show them. As though me, of all people, is not supposed to have a sparkly gem added to my already compulsory heteronormative token of perceived matrimony.
I want to say fuck the norms, I want to say I can have any damn gem on any damn ring of any damn finger and it means fuckall with regards to my sexuality and gender identity. I feel this need to tell people “no this doesn’t make me straight, or cis, or monogamous, or institutionally religious”…but that need just reinforces the duality of “normal” versus “subversive.” OMG like “nonconformity is just another conformity,” paging adolescent punky Avery covered in rainbows writing Anarchy symbols all over their locker… It feels like a projection, like I’m protesting too much. I aim not to justify my engagement when I know what feels right, but I also feel exhausted at the identity shifts that happen when I’ve become “permanently paired.” At least “fee-ahn-say” is pronounced the same no matter the gendered spelling.
I knew at a young age I never wanted kids but I never had many thoughts on marriage. I think everything’s still the same…my cat is my baby and a marriage is just an excuse to throw an awesome party celebrating a love that queered futurity. I see queer folx all the time in relationships with cis dudes and I don’t identify with these specific dynamics, but I also respect them so much. I’ve lived the “not trans enough” and “not queer enough” narratives to understand that my relationships are just another color to the spectrum, not necessarily a compounding layer of invisibility. I hope it stays complicated. I’m not sure I’d have it any other way.