I’m assuming the stance of another gender for Mike’s show tonight up at SFU, genderqueer cross dressing dancing and a show. I expect there to be at least one shirt entirely made of glitter. My hands don’t remember how to get the knot right on my tie, but I’m feeling the shift of solid hips settling into me without thinking about it. I don’t have to concentrate to be a boy, it holds my body like I was made to be someone who sits with open legs and wide held arms. There’s barely a shift, honestly, I tend to think a little too evenly for that. My eyes see equality where there isn’t any and my fingers trail across the edges of many cliches. (Oh come on, baby, don’t be that way.) It’s a blue collar rejection letter, the way my flesh expects my partners to be either sex or both, the way I slide my hands up the chest expecting to find breasts or down expecting to slip between folds when they’re pressing iron into me. I’m bad that way. There’s a beat I follow and it’s likely pounding over the floor at the gay clubs.
Hair in at ponytail snug a the base of my neck, body bound underneath my gentlemans jacket, fingernails scraped clean of enamel, I feel rather at home like this. It’s nice to look down and see my feet, (though the stud earring feels wrong). I look younger, I’m going to have to show me ID at the door. Last time I did this, I had a handful flurry of phone numbers to throw away. I felt guilty for the trees. If there’s time after, I’ll be heading to Lick for the aftermath of a femme reading night.
A passage from “The Colossus of New York” by by Colson Whitehead:
“The light changes and he has that wish again: that every step he ever took left a neon footprint. Every step, from his first to these. That way he could catch up with himself, track himself through the city and years. See that the last time he walked this block he was tipsy or in love. Here determined, there aimless like today, no particular place to go. If he could see his footprints, he’d know his uncharted territories, what was yet, and where never to return. Some of the old stores are gone since last time. What comes at their address is bright and shiny like new keys. New keys fit new locks. It is rare here that the new establishment is more downscale and if only he could make his self and ideas like real estate: ever higher. God knows he has tried to keep up with the changing market but his new shirt will only go so far- once they step inside they recognize the same old merchandise and demur. He has swept up, his brain gets so dingy sometimes, but they will not see his renovations and he is a dead trade, something remembered only by old phonebooks. Blacksmith, knife sharpener. Walk faster.
If anyone has this book, I want it.