Repair

EJRRepair

#essay, #queerness, #gender, #trans

Let me tell you a story about repair. He came out a few years ago; back then his mother was not yet familiar with the concept of trans-ness. All she felt was a sadness which came with losing her only ‘daughter’. Pronouns, changes, short hair, and masculine clothing. All she could hear was God telling her no; he should accept the body that was given to him. She told him countless times: ‘Why can’t you be a butch lesbian, a butch girl, a masculine girl, a cool girl?’

All she could hear was NO.

When he found me, she was still not accepting. Misgendering. Ostracizing. Turning a blind eye. I was angry, claiming she failed at being a mother, failed at being a parent, failed at unconditionally loving and supporting. But I failed to see her trauma too. Overshadowed by his trauma.

Years went by and she became softer, more accepting, as she saw that it wasn’t just a phase; as he registered to the clinic, put himself on the waiting list, and found a loving and accepting partner.

Until she was at a funeral, with countless people that she hadn’t seen for years, that hadn’t seen her newborn son for years. An auntie asked if she didn’t have a daughter and a son, instead of two sons. She replied yes, she did, but her oldest son is trans. He

overheard the conversation. He sobbed when he got home, old pain, old hurt, old misunderstandings, all faded away. They were both on the way to recovery. The wound started to heal, got repaired, but left a beautiful scar. A scar reminiscent of the time, the history, and the moments past before the repair.

Refusing Instructions: The Word is Queer, and she’s Julian Moore

Queer a word with a history – feeble, frail, invalid, incapacitate, falter, weak, tearful, worn. Tear; wear; queer. A word that can be claimed, that should be claimed. An insult turned into a shield of protection. A safe space, a guard, a community, a life, a love. An insult made mine. A word that scares you shitless in high school but is worn with pride in later life. It’s a feeling: Something odd, something strange, something disturbed; something wronged.

We go through life and come out the other end weak, frail, worn, and torn to shreds; but nonetheless we have lived. I shall live, I will live. This word that we now carry high above our shoulders, is heavy with unspoken history, unseen lives, death and destruction; it embodies the decaying, the soft, the breaking, the quavering, and the wavering too.

My arms are tired of carrying the dead weight above my head.

Why can’t I just be? Why must I embody this word, let it seep through my skin; penetrating my organs, reaching my heart, until she beats just for her.

We reuse the word, we hold on to the baggage that she holds; a queer bag, worn and torn from the years of use and reuse, of carrying heavy weight and books full of history. A lucky backpack that saved our, well at least my, crush and slight queer icon Julian Moore from falling down and dying on the cliffs, in the second film of the Jurassic Park series. The backpack that might be ugly and worn, but she is the one that carries memories. We wonder at her tears, we love her for her worn-ness. She is the one that saves lives.

But there seems to be a right queer and a wrong queer: The boy that uses the key as a toy is the right type of queering because a child is expected to play with things that aren’t in their first use toys. But the boy that plays with the toy that is not intended for him, like the barbie, is the wrong kind of queer. The barbie is intended for a girl. Heteronormativity is filling the room, filling the cup, filling the mind, and all the intentions: The future. Barbie no, key yes. Living in such a world is like a trap. I feel myself disappearing, slowly, slowly, watered down, erased, diluted. Restrictions are the starters of perversion. A willingness to deviate from the right path: The straight path. Because I’d do anything not to be erased, diluted, or disappear. The assignment of performing time and time again; the assigned gender that was given to you. If you do not, structures change, and you are queering the rules. If that is the case then let’s be perverts.

And yes we can disrupt and should disrupt the meaning of that insult. History is not the only one making choices here. NO we do. We are the squatters, we are the disrupters, we are the complainers, we are the vandals. We kick in the doors of the places we are not welcome in. We make room for ourselves. We are the vandals of the nuclear family. They shiver as we break down their paths, with hairy legs and hairy armpits, cut off jean shorts and short hair. ‘Is that a girl or a boy?’ they say. We take out the stones of their path that they engraved for years and years for supposed heterosexual future generations to come, and we replace it with sand and grass. You must find your own way now, and in time a natural path will form for our generations to come. Because we will not be silenced, and we will not disappear. And we must, yes we must, come in the guise of a plumber or a gardener, promising to fix the hole, to fix the garden; but instead

of fixing we will widen the tear, let the water stream, let the flowers bloom wild. And in doing so we repair. We repair the hurt and the pain, we do it slowly because we must not forget the ones that went before us. The brave individuals that decided, yes this world may not be made for us but hell we are going to change it and create a world and a future where there is room for us. Not because we must, but because we need to. We need it; we need it like water, like food, like sex, like a room of ones own. And where there is a need, opportunities are created. Yes that kitchen may not have been made ‘intended’ to host book clubs and parties, but now she does. The kitchen becomes a queer space, because she is used in a queer way. My body is a queer space because I’m not performing the heterosexuality imposed on me. I refuse. I won’t follow my own user instructions. Fuck that. I refuse, I refuse, I refuse. I’m not following the path. My life will not be watered down to one assignment. Entering and reentering the same door.

It will not be easy my love, deviation is made hard for us. Let’s go astray, let’s linger. Queer use is to never get to the point. Lets get rid of the venerable and beautiful. We are destructive and loud, ready to cut, scratch, and break. We don’t want no polished nails, we want them nibbled down with dirt underneath, dirt from digging out those tiles. We will not polish, we will not refine. I will not shave my legs to make you feel comfortable, because according to you I’m dirty, so deal with it. We will take your institutions, that you hold so dear, like the family, and squat them. Tear, wear, break, shatter the container. We occupy, we obstruct, we disrupt the usage. We will force open the door we will queer use your space. We will queer the path, again and again. We will open them up, for the ones they were not intended for. We are here to unblock the system, but first we have to stop it from working.

But be careful of your position dear. We must disrupt the system from within, without being tempted to walk the path intended for institutional critique, since you might end up not changing anything at all.

‘Those of us who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns’ (Audre Lorde)

Although we might seem fierce and strong, and we want to kick in doors and take up space, sometimes we need to hide in order to survive. We become faint. We are fleeting, flickering, hiding in dark spaces where we are safe and unseen. As being seen can be dangerous for the ones that are deemed dangerous. Using the less used paths. The vacant places. Empty, useless, and safe.

Queer: A word with a history. Queer: A word that has been flung like a stone, picked up and hurled at us; a word we can claim for us. Queer: Odd, strange, unseemly, disturbed, disturbing. Queer: A feeling, a sick feeling; feeling queer as feeling nauseous. To queer use is to make use audible, to listen to use. Queer use as reuse. Queer use as coming after. Queer use: We linger; we do not get to the point. Hovering above each other’s bodies. The bliss of queer sex, there is no point, no beginning and no ending. Queer use; to live in constant threat of violence. Queer use; to not be ingesting, to spit out. Queer use: To not be properly proper. Queer use; to mind and queer the gap. Queer use; to be the vandal. Queer as snap, snap, cut, cut. Queer use; to open the door. Queer use; to create the door. Queer use; to go astray. Queer use: When we aim to shatter what has provided a container. Be an inconvenience, be an obstruction, disrupt usage. Do what’s necessary. To occupy. Queer use; in reusing old words for how we assemble we widen their range of uses. To damage. To become the leak. Queer use; to explode. To not be silenced. Queer use; to survive, to become faint. To be useless. To dismantle a world that only accommodates some. Queer use; the building project. To create shelter. To misfit and to make fit. To see limits and restrictions as openings for queer use. To hack. To inherit the past struggles

and past modifications that made it slightly easier for generations to come. Passing down. Secret passages. An appreciation of the wrinkle and the scratch. The expression of time. Queer use the work that needs to be done for queer use.

We scratch, we scratch, we scratch.

We queer the places where we have been and where we will be. A tail, a trail, a path. A map.

A child becomes a woman, a woman with a history, with an inheritance of chosen families and generational knowledge. It’s written in her blood. This history she cannot change. She can only draw a future that is entirely hers. Empty houses become meeting places.

Books become flower presses.

Paper is queer.

A body becomes a home.

Thinking of one of my dearest friends, an artist and activist. Never, to weaponize. Never, to indicate that we will not go back, but we will never forget. They cried as I held their hand when the word was tattooed across their chest. NEVER.

Never, we will never not be here. We will not be erased, we will refuse to disappear.