They say a coward dies a thousand deaths. And I am wondering about all the times I have bobbed up from the dark water in moments of courage only to slowly pull myself back. I'm thinking specifically of coming out, of telling everyone I went to college with to call me she and wearing dresses and demanding so much from the world. Demanding respect and recognition. Only to arrive here in the sewer of adult life and cower from those demands. Having fear replace my determination. Fearing reprisal at work, fearing the terrible alienation and dehumanization of work. Pointedly thinking that my demands are ones that people won't meet. That asking will put me in harms way. I read on Hanif Abduraquib's IG a little bit ago, after the rapper Ka died, a fragment of an interview the rapper had given, in which he said that he would die one death. That got me thinking about my many deaths. About the shades of death I have been living in. Ka must have had a generational kind of bravery (he was a NYFD captain so it stands to reason) because most people have got to die a few deaths, if they're being honest. And being honest, I have been a coward more times that I would like.
My life of late has been so defined by- and we're taking a curve here- scarcity. And what is cowardice but a scarcity of courage. I moved to Tennessee in the summer, certain that I could land on my feet. Looking for a job was scarce. Nothing looked interesting, or fun, or novel or new. I was just hurling myself across the internet begging to do whatever bullshit anyone would let me do so I didn't have to kill myself. That felt really scarce. I sold my books and comics and a bass guitar. I sold plasma and still I wasn't even paying half the rent. That felt like death. That all felt like dying. Like life had been constructed for to make me a coward. All I could be was scared and cowering. I got a job and then I was scared still, driving to work, feeling like my heart was peeling off in small slivers like getting passed over with a vegetable peeler. When I step into work I step in with a very specific set of lies. I've lied my way into the job, I'm letting everyone call me sir and he. I'm presenting as though I want to be there. There in this case being a steak house chain. Working as a cook. The people were pleasant. Supportive even. The cooking wasn't too hard. And it got stupid busy and the chef tried to lecture me about frying French fries and then I left. Was that brave? or was that a cowardice of some other kind? Quitting certainly put me back in scarcity. I'm back to pecking over my books and gear for stuff to sell just to try and contribute, to buy food. I'm back to crawling over the internet hoping for a job. Going to sell my plasma again soon. There is also a scarcity of vision. These last few years my sense of what hope can even look like has dimmed and dimmed and dimmed, from when I was 20, imagining the ways I could be a beacon, I could construct communities and egalitarian institutions, to now, just hoping I either have the blissful courage to kill myself or find a job I hate little enough to keep showing up so I don't starve. The aperture of possibility has closed to a tight pin. More cowardice. A fear of possibility.
When I was twenty I came out as trans. I stepped into being a woman, unsure and terrified that I was making that choice for nefarious and ignorant reasons. And I use the word choice deliberately here. Not to trivialize the material of the trans experience but to forefront agency. That was a confusing time, and I could have found much different language to describe the sensation of wanting more from life, and gender, than those certain confines. That was seven years ago. I've quit probably a dozen jobs in that time. Been in the closet for a lot of that. I've thought off and on about transition. About the drugs and lasering the hair from my body. But it has always felt so out of reach. My survival to this point has been predicated on an ability to deal with incredibly inconsistent financials. Constantly quitting jobs isn't great for the bank balance. Transitioning felt like something I needed stability for. Stability I just couldn't see myself having. I wonder how all the many deaths will prepare me for the final one? My catholic terror keeps me skeptical of death, of the chance of the concrete disaster it could bring. I would like to start being brave, but so much of the world feels designed to elicit scarcity of self. If life keeps giving you what feels like minimum after minimum, what will death hold? So you're locked into living, afraid to risk anything because repeated exposure to failure and pain has trained you to reach for the least that you can survive on. I have thought about the journey of transition, and when I look over my own body and see the thousands of maybe millions of hairs that would have to be shaved, burned, lasered away. The bent of my body being itself 'unwomanly', multiple fronts of attrition to be waged constantly and daily. And all for what? The disapproval of people who'd rather give me death than grant me the blessing of womanhood. I never wanted to risk it. All the chances to fail. For sure I just wanted to live in my own body for a while. I grew mustaches, I grew beards. I was and remain the girl I am. I wanted to be butch, flagrantly hairy... And then I was unwilling to take the risk of people staring, or asking me about the bralet I was wearing and I felt trapped in my body like so many of my sisters feel.
Now, in some nominal attempt to be more feminine (and plus I have some weird skin thing that makes facial hair a bitch now) I shave fairly regularly. But I don't love shaving every day all the time. Being a butch tgirl is an experience in contradiction certainly. It's one where I have locked myself into a reality of social gender, where my womaness is defined by the people around me's willingness to grant womanhood to me. So in a context of loneliness or strangeness my transness all but disappears.
I am wondering, now, in the face of all this scarcity, how to be brave. Could I find it in myself to bear the cost of it? Could I shave my arm hair off. The hair on my knuckles. The hair on my chest. Is what I need to be shaved and raw? I'm not sure. What I know is that I've let fear, cowardice, dictate my life for a long time. And sure, I have never been afraid to leave a job. But that's not earned me a whole lot. Were standing, all of us, looking out over the beach. The clouds are fire, the wind hurts. And we have choices to make. Some will make the mean choices. To castigate people with nothing. To hold and claw around for what they can scrape up. And I'm thinking about making the nice choice. To do, to be unafraid of love. Still I fear the prospect, and there is much about my life that scares me. The only thing to know for certain is that we will push through this together. In needing you I must be courageous. I must build up in order to build out. I wish manifesting really worked, but I'll settle for biding my time and hoping to land a part time job and maybe go to graduate school. Maybe find another friend out here. Save a little dough. Move back north. Or stay down here, in the sweltering south. I will not be so full of fear that I refuse to live out, and I will go where that is possible.
