I read this when I was personally struggling hard with alcohol and a failing relationship. And this just really broke me. After I read her draft I wrote her and was like “This is beautiful, and it gave me power and courage about a real hard thing that is happening to me right now, and it slayed my heart, and I can’t wait to edit it and publish it.” And she was very politely like “Actually you got the order of the chapters mixed up. It’s a non-linear story and in fact it ends this complete other way, she’s probably on her way back to Earth to go to jail.”
And I was like, oh.
So I think about that a lot! One, I think there is something cool there that speaks to the ephemerality of art, and how there’s no magical divide between the words that are here, in a printed book, and the words that flash on your computer screen in a doc file that you’re trying to wrestle into place. I mean practically there is a divide because of capitalism, sure, y’know, money, book royalties, people with jobs getting paid, the fact that this piece comes out of a talk I was invited to give at McMaster University in the fall of 2019 in a lovely theatre space. On a meatsack scale it’s all the difference in the world. What I mean is metaphysically they are the same thing. They’re still both words on a page that someone spent a lot of time on. I hope that makes some sense.
But also, the experience that I had with Jeanne. It also means something to me about how we get hope from books. What does that mean, if you get hope from a piece of writing---but that hope was based on a reading that wasn't entirely accurate? Now, as we worked on the piece, I saw its elements that carried hope and strength to it, elements I grew to appreciate deeply, and the story still means something enormous to me. But that initial read, which moved me so, was based on a plot point I didn't have correct. So what does that mean for my experience of that reading?
(BRAVERY)
When I first come out as trans, there were some common phrases I tended to hear from the supportive cisgender people in my life. They were all sweet, meant to be well-meaning, but a few kept cropping up regularly that always seemed a little off the mark. “You’re so brave!” That was one of the off-the-mark ones. The idea being that simply coming out and transitioning is a brave act in a transphobic world.
Now, on its surface, this idea certainly makes a lot of sense. Transitioning is pretty hard for most of us. It’s not a thing many get through without some damage. And yet “You’re so brave!” is a thing that rankled me. I’ve seen many trans women say the same thing, that’s it a phrase many of us have heard a bunch. I suppose perhaps it rankles because so often we don’t feel brave, and perhaps, because a lot of us had prior tried very hard not to be trans, not to transition, which brought us to the end of a very short road.