After the lab technicians unhook me, I head towards the cafeteria for lunch. Jake is on the line, sees me, says “Whoa, that was fuckin’ weird this morning.”
I nod. “Yeah, I hadn’t expected that. I mean, not quite that, at any rate.”
“So what’s this about? What’s he saying you did?”
“Well, I have some taped-up stuff on my door, I do that the same way that folks with cars have bumper stickers”, I explain. “I mean, when I was in college, in the dorms, we taped stuff up on our doors, and I got in the habit. Like, back in Athens, on my bedroom door I have a hand-lettered sign in all caps that says “IF I THOUGHT IT WOULD RESULT IN YOU UNDERSTANDING THE THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD I WOULD GLADLY PLUCK MY HEAD FROM MY SHOULDERS AND DASH IT OPEN AT YOUR FEET; I WOULD GIVE MY LIFE TO ATTAIN A MEANINGFUL COMMUNICATION WITH YOU.” Jake stares at me and I belatedly realize that perhaps that particular example wasn’t making me more relatable. “Anyway”, I continue, “I made a reply to his fancy office nameplate, with a nameplate of my own, with my name and my current qualifications, which are ‘H.B.’ for ‘human being’ and ‘Pt.’ for ‘patient’. Ballpoint and paper, black out the parts that aren’t the letters, so you leave white letters. Taped it on my door.”
Jake nods. Companionable silence for awhile.
Jake looks at me. “So you’re into girls. Like, who? Is there anyone here you think is hot or cute”?
“Nobody I got any kind of flirty stuff going on with, but if you mean just looking from the outside and saying who seems like... you know, like someone you’d like to have the chance to see where things go..., well, April. The other person,
maybe, is Ellen, oddly enough.” This all feels odd. I never really got into the habit of discussing my attractional portfolio with other males. It’s weird that I feel comfortable talking to Jake about it.
Hmm, now see?, remarks an internal self-questioning voice.
That’s a sign you’ve formed preconceptions. Thinking of yourself as essentially one of the girls. Now you react to male experience as foreign experience. But meanwhile you want female people to
not react to
your experience as foreign experience. So you don’t want to be
othered but I guess it’s okay when you do it?
Yeah, of
course you can be a genuine exception to the rule, and hence to the stereotypes. That can make you not able to occupy the roles. I don’t mean roles like The Daddy and The Mommy or for that matter The Breadwinner and The Mommy. I mean roles like Clark Gable as Rhett Butler or Sally Field as Norma Rae and so forth, examples of “check out who this person is and how they behave” that are shared complex character stereotypes, and they’re gendered for us. Those are roles. They are representative person-shapes we already hold in our minds, waiting for an appropriate person to pour into them and get interpreted as one of that type of character that we happen to know personally. Archetypes. It’s an oversimplification, yet it’s also a starting point in getting to know someone.
But since I’m complaining that the roles don’t fit me, maybe it’s not fair to then pigeonhole other people into role-identities of the type I hate being sorted into. And maybe I’m doing that whenever I see other males as a unified other.
Jake, maleness aside, doesn’t seem so foreign, although he is now looking at me oddly again, because I’ve gotten all distracted inside my head.. “...you get what I’m saying? I’m not doing a ‘hands off’ thing, like ‘she’s my girl’, I’m just saying, we been together, April and me, and that probably isn’t gonna change. That’s all.”
“Oh... well like I said, it was just a sense of ‘Hmm’, like if it could go in that direction, hey, maybe that could be good’. I like April. So, umm... good for you two to be together. Especially in this place.”
We wander over towards the lounge. Ronald and April and Joe join us. Now it feels awkward that I just discussed April with Jake. Why do male people expect to compare notes? No, that’s actually not what’s occupying my attention. Why do we want to be private about who we find fascinating and cute and have interest in? Also, why do people feel entitled to ask a lot of invasive personal questions about that stuff?
* * *
Hanging out in the kitchen, I describe to April and Ronald and the others what I would ideally change about Elk Meadow; I like some of what they’ve got going here, but there are severe deficits and issues, too, and I’m as entitled to evaluate them as they are to evaluate me.
I’m self-conscious lately about being pretentious. But I’m fired up and people kind of seem to be listening to me for a change.
“If I was in charge of setting up a place that people could go to and get help with things in their thinking or things in their feeling that they say they need help with... you know, first off I would still want to have a place where people confront their issues. Taking it seriously. But they would have the responsibility of identifying their issues.”
I pivot from facing left to facing right. I’ve been trying to remember to move around when I’m speaking, so this is good. “So first, when they come in, give them a wide range of clothes they can dress in, or, of course, what they brought in with them or anything else they want to bring in later. And in Arts and Crafts, they’d have a chance to develop anything they want, so they can communicate unobstructed. And there should be typewriters. And video recorders. And tape decks. But most important, there’s the front door. And you got a pass that says you’re a resident so you can go out whenever you feel like it and get back in at will. Go to the library and read books. Then go to the local movie house and catch what’s playing. Go hang out at the pub. Interact with people who aren’t here in the clinic. The clinic shouldn’t be your whole life. But the door is open so you come on back later on.”
“Yeah, you know, I’m tired of them thinking I don’t take this seriously”, Ronald tells us later on.
“If you aren’t taking it seriously”, I reply, “I don’t know who else could qualify.” I’m less convinced than he is that it’s entirely a complimentary assessment. But... hey, you know, it does make sense to think of it that way, that here at Elk Meadow there’s a competitive How Seriously Do You Take It discussion that’s part of your progress and levels assessment.
Hence Emily, now that I think of it. Yeah, of
course she’s doing that. It isn’t a farcical mockery, it’s willful obedience.
I’ll be exactly who you want me to be, just as competitively as humanly possible.April says, “We can’t ever do enough to please them. Not quite. We’ve always gotta owe them, something where we let them down.”
I say, “They always say it’s for us, that we’re letting ourselves down.”
April rolls her eyes. “Of course, they always say that!.”
April departs. We have sex-segregated wings and I head back with the guys. We pass an exterior door. I don’t know what prompts me to look down, maybe I catch something from my peripheral vision, but the little tongue of the electrically disabled door is retracted, as if someone were pushing on the bars to get out. “Oh, hey, check this out”, I say. The others stop. Glances go back and forth.
“Naaaw, man....”, Joe says. “It probably sets off an alarm the moment you try it.”
The brass-colored push bars have a loose chain wrapped around them on the inside. I figure with nothing stopping the unlatched door’s outward motion except the length of the chain, I could slither through comfortably enough.
Jake says, “I don’t think the alarm knows the door is being opened if it already can’t tell the door latch is pushed in like that. So yeah, if we can fit through there, we could be on the town, man. Go see a movie.”
Ronald glances out to the portion of the outdoors we can see from the window. “Where you gonna go? I don’t know anybody around here.”
“I actually do”, I say. “My parents know a couple, they were both college students of his from back when he was a professor. They’re really decent folks, so I might go pay them a visit.”
Joe tries the door carefully, and we watch as he presses the latchbar and pushes the door slowly open. He makes an “after you” gesture to the rest of us.
Ronald winces and says, “If I had anyone I knew around here.”
Jake looks at me. “I should fuckin’ do this, and I don’t see nothing wrong with it. I mean, don’t really get all stuck in the notion I do, cuz that isn’t how it is. I don’t think I’m going to, not this time, but I’ve done stuff like this in the past and I don’t regret it.”
So it’s just me. I squirm past the chain.
It’s kind of spontaneous but it fits my mood. I shouldn’t dignify the situation by describing it as a plan. But I am out, I feel like being out, and I’d been feeling like I needed to double-underline my voluntary status. I don’t
have to play. I don’t
have to be here.
And yes... I am wary of Dr. Barnes.
I stride across the Elk Meadow turf as if I have authority and a known destination. It’s actually amazing where you can go if you charge forth and behave as if you have authority and a known destination.
————
I'm seeking feedback on my book
Within the Box right here, one chapter at a time.
I'm hoping people will read it and comment on it as I go. I'm hoping that if they like it, they'll spread the word.
When I get to the end, I'll start over with the first chapter, by which point I'll no doubt have made changes.
Meanwhile, I'll keep querying lit agents, because why not? But this way I'm not postponing the experience of having readers.
—————
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my
Home Page, for both published books.
———————
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