Missed Her, page 1
Missed Her
MISSED HER
Copyright © 2010 by Ivan E. Coyote
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
Suite 101, 211 East Georgia St.
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 1Z6
arsenalpulp.com
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.
Earlier versions of these stories appeared in Xtra! West
Cover photograph by Dan Bushnell
Photograph of Ivan E. Coyote by Eric Nielson
Letter on the back cover by Patricia Cumming Sr.
Book design by Shyla Seller
Printed and bound in Canada on 100% PCW recycled paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:
Coyote, Ivan E. (Ivan Elizabeth), 1969-
Missed her [electronic resource] / Ivan E. Coyote.
Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in PDF format.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-55152-389-7
I. Title.
PS8555.O99M57 2010a C813’.6 C2010-904287-5
This book is dedicated to Florence Amelia Mary Daws
October 21st, 1919 – May 13th, 2009
thank you Gran, for keeping us all together.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my family, again, for allowing me to write my version of our stories down. I know I never get it quite right, but you can’t say that I am not practicing. The more of the world I meet, the more I realize just how lucky I truly am to be from where I am from, and from whom I come from. Patricia Cumming, my grandmother, I will never forget the days we spent at your kitchen table unraveling bits of the story which appears in these pages, and the tea and the tears and the homemade soup we shared. Florence Daws, my grandmother, I feel truly blessed that I was able to be there with you and the rest of our family for your last days. Please know that I remember everything you taught me, and that pieces of you live on in the best parts of me. I miss you every single day.
I am most grateful to my mom, Patricia Daws, and my father, Don Cumming, for still loving me even though and in spite of and on top of it all. I promise to do the same.
I cannot write that this book would not exist if were not for my partner, Zena Sharman, because that would not be true. I will always write, no matter what is happening around me. I think this is what makes her love me, and I know that the kind of love we have built together makes me reach to be better. A better writer, a better partner, a better cook. Zena, you made the writing of this book easier, and more joyful. I promise I will keep the cupboards more organized while I am writing the next one. You are my family, too. Together, we are unstoppable.
I would like to acknowledge the ongoing work and support of Arsenal Pulp Press. Brian Lam, Robert Ballantyne, Shyla Seller, Janice Beley and the staff of that little office have become like another family to me. For over a decade we have worked, laughed, conspired, planned, fought, and somehow created six books together. I am proud of Arsenal and the amazing work they do to bring relevant, revolutionary, marginalized and queer voices into the light and onto the shelves.
I must also thank each and every person who comes out to hear me tell stories on stage, who buys my books and reads my columns, who clicks play or share or forward on my behalf. You are making it possible for me to do this for a living, and I thank you.
I especially want to thank the kids in the schools I visit, for your brilliant questions and better-world-one-day eyes and the heart-bending letters you write me. I want to acknowledge the freaks and geeks and queers and kids who, for whatever reason, cannot wait for school to be over. I want to you know we will all be here waiting for you. You are evidence that we are, indeed, carving out some space for all of us.
What a big, wide, beautiful family I am blessed to be a part of.
Contents
Resident Expert
Nobody Ever
Cooling Down
Which Doctor
Je Suis Femme
Hair Today
This Summer, at Gay Camp
Let Me Show You
Good Old Days
Straighten Up
Boner Preservation Society
Objects in Mirror Are Queerer Than They Appear
Truth Story
Gifted
Talking to Strangers
The Rest of Us
A Butch Roadmap
Hats Off
Straight Teens Talk Queer
Some of My Best Friends are Rednecks
One Among the Many
Throwing in the Towel
On Angels and Afterlife
Uncle Ivan’s Broken Hearts’ Club Plan
The Butch Version
She Shoots, She Scores
Only Two Reasons
Maiden Heart
All about Herman
Just a Love Story
Resident Expert
This morning in the Ottawa Valley was crystal blue clear and cold, a nippley minus thirty-two degrees Celsius if you factor in the wind chill, which I have learned it is always best to do. I had just gotten home from the road, and was still a little jet-lagged, my body and mind hovering blearily somewhere on the clock between west coast and eastern standard time. I was definitely not prepared for what was about to happen.
I stopped by the old corner store for a coffee just after eight this morning, on the way into the city for my office hours. Most of the regulars were already there, bundled up and breathing bursts of white warm air in the frigid back room, drinking drip coffee with their gloves still on.
There was the usual round of hellos and catching up to do when I get home from a road trip, and then Dan, the salesman, cleared his throat and fixed his gaze on me.
“Hey Ivan, have you ever heard of a guy by the name of Buck Angel?”
I flipped through my mental rolodex, and felt my heart speed up a little. I had, indeed, heard of a guy by the name of Buck Angel. The problem was, I didn’t really want to discuss Buck Angel in the backroom of the only store in my small town at eight o’clock in the morning. But I know Dan. Attempting to change the subject when questioned about a subject such as this one would only draw more attention to the subject I wish had never come up in the first place. Dan is a really nice guy, with a thirteen-year-old kid and a wife battling ovarian cancer. He likes classic rock and his surround sound stereo system and comic books and golf. He is not supposed to know who Buck Angel is, and I am not supposed to have to be the one to explain it all to him.
“Uh, yeah, I think I have,” I said, my voice cracking just a little. I silently cursed the Internet, and all that it makes available to everyone, no matter how far out of town they are living. “Are you referring to Buck Angel, the transsexual internet porn star?” My face and ears felt like they were about to spontaneously combust.
Dan picked up the ball and rolled with it. Everybody but me leaned in close around the old wooden table, fascinated. “I saw him on that show Sexcetera. He’s bald and tough, all full of muscles and covered with tattoos, a real scary-looking dude, I’d never pick a fight with him, anyways. And then…” he waggled all ten of his digits in the air in front of his face for emphasis, then raised his eyebrows and aimed both index fingers in the direction of his crotch. “Bingo bango, there it is. Dude has a vagina. The Man With A Pussy, he calls himself. Totally freaked me out.”
There was a round of exclamation points and guffaws of disbelief. Men with pussies was big news out here in the country. Only two of us at the table were noticeably silent on this matter, namely Patrick, one half of the only gay couple in town, and myself, who was seriously considering bolting for the back door. The only thing keeping my ass in my chair was the fact that running from the topic at hand would probably look bad.
I swallowed what little spit I had left in my mouth and said nothing. Clayton, the beef farmer, broke the moment of silence for me.
“So tell us, Dan, was he hot or not?”
Another round of hysterics broke out. Gwen, the office administrator, had sat down halfway through the story, and she looked a little confused. She narrowed her eyes at Dan.
“What the hell have you been Googling this time?” She, too, blamed the Internet.
Dan shook his head; his palms held up, empty, pleading innocence. “I saw it on the television, I swear to God. There was also a bit on the same show about the technique of fellatio. Fascinating stuff.”
“Oh, so it’s like an educational program?” quipped Pete, the guy who takes care of the skating rink. “Well, good for you, Dan, always seeking out knowledge. I’m proud of you.”
“Fellatio instructions, heh? On television?” Brian, the fireman, raised his eyebrow. “So, Dan, are you getting any better?”
Dan blushed. We all laughed.
“And here I had to go out and learn the hard way.” This, of course, came from Patrick, and almost caused poor Pete to spray coffee out his nostrils.
And just like that, the topic shifted, and we moved on. As I drove into town later, I pondered the whole ordeal, and second-guessed my panicked reaction. Maybe I should have seized upon this excellent learning opportunity, and taken it upon myself to educate my neighbours about trans issues. But it was eight o’clock in the morning, I argued with myself on behalf of myself, I hadn’t even had a full cup of coffee yet. Besides, here I was, living my life with my head held up and making no apologies in a town without a gas station, much less a gay bar. Wasn’t I already doing my bit? It only made sense that I would naturally be the one to come to with questions when it came to topics such as burly men sporting tattoos and vaginas, but I couldn’t be expected to have rehearsed and memorized all the perfect things to say all the time, could I? I consoled myself with the knowledge that whenever I failed to come up with the right answers for my new neighbours’ questions, they could always turn to the Internet, or at the very least, their cable TV.
Nobody Ever
It was raining the day I met her. The kind of rain that hits the pavement and puddles so hard it bounces back at the sky, backward and defiant. It was the kind of evening best spent inside, but there she was, standing soggy on the sidewalk, waiting to talk to me.
As soon as I emerged from the back door of the theatre, she speed-walked in a straight line towards me. Her name was Ruby, she told me, and she was from a small town, about three hours’ drive from here. She was almost twelve years old and she wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up, or maybe a marine biologist. Her mom had driven her here, so she could see me perform at the Capitol Theater. It had said on my website that I was going to be reading in Olympia, Washington, and since it was a Saturday and there was no school she had made her mom drive her all this way for my show, but then it turned out that since they were selling alcohol in the theatre she wasn’t allowed inside, not until she turned twenty-one, anyways, which was like, ten years away, practically.
She took a deep breath, and continued. She had seen me at the folk festival in Vancouver last summer, and I had read a story about a tomboy I had met at the farmers’ market, did I remember the one?
I nodded, yes, I did.
She shifted her weight from one sneakered foot to the other and back again, like she needed to pee, and flipped her head back to shake her shaggy bangs out of her eyes. She blurted out her words like machine gun bullets, like she had been rehearsing them for a while, her mouth pursed in a determined little raisin.
When she first heard that story, well, she was just amazed, she told me. She had begged her mom to buy her all of my books right there on the spot, but her mom only had enough money for one. She had to wait until it was her birthday, which was October by the way, until she could get my next book, and then she got one more from her aunt at Christmas, but when was I going to put out a new one? She liked them all, nearly the same amount, except for Loose End, which of course was her favourite because it had the story “Saturdays and Cowboy Hats” in it, which was the very first story of mine she ever found out about, when she heard me at the park in Vancouver last summer but she had already told me that part.
By this time I was ready to scoop Ruby up in my arms and hug her, but I didn’t, because her mom was waiting in the car parked two feet away from where we were standing and I thought it might seem weird.
Ruby stepped sideways, farther under the awning over the door of the theatre. She pulled a love-worn copy of my book out from her rain jacket, and held it out to me.
“Could you sign it for me? To Ruby, Love from Ivan? You could say, To my biggest fan, Ruby, too, if you felt like it. Whatever you want.”
I wrote “to Ruby, my biggest fan, Love from your biggest fan, Ivan,” and passed it back to her. She tucked it under her armpit for safekeeping. Her fingernails were bitten right down to the quick, just like mine used to be.
“Thanks. I really love your books a lot. Especially the one about the tomboy, cuz, well, the little girl in that story, she reminds me of me.” She paused for a second, met my eyes with hers, and held them there. “And nobody ever reminds me of me.”
I stepped back out into the rain, hoping that it would look like raindrops sliding down my cheeks, not big hot tears. I pulled one of my CDs out of my bag and passed it to her.
“Here you go, this should hold you until the new book is out.”
The last time I saw Ruby, she was waving backwards at me from the passenger seat of a beat-up station wagon. Her mom honked the horn twice goodbye as they turned and disappeared around the corner.
A while ago I was reading at a fundraising dinner in Ottawa, and I met a woman named Hilary. Hilary was in her fifties I would say, wearing black boots and old jeans. She used to own her own house painting company, but she was retired now. I liked how she shook my hand too hard, how the skin of her palms was still callused, how she spooned too much sugar into her coffee. I liked how she ate her salad with her dinner fork and didn’t care. Her hair was just getting long enough to brush the collar of her dress shirt and hang over the tops of her ears. This probably bothered her, and she probably had an appointment to get it cut early next week, before it got totally out of hand.
After the gig was over, she helped me pack the rest of my books out to my truck. We talked about everything and nothing: what it used to be like working on a job site twenty years ago, how it is better now but not by much, what a difference a good pair of snow tires can make, how the old back just ain’t what it used to be, stuff like that.
The snow was falling in fat lazy flakes. The parking lot was empty, except for two trucks, one hers, the other mine. Finally, she shook my hand hard one last time and then pulled me into a hug.
“Make sure you keep in touch,” she told me. “It was great to meet you. You remind me of me when I was a kid.”
Cooling Down
I call her my niece, even though technically she isn’t. She is my cousin Dan’s wife’s daughter from another relationship, but in my family that makes her my niece. I’m too old for her to call me her cousin, and too butch to be her aunt, so that makes me Uncle Ivan. Just like my cousin Trish in Toronto is really my Dad’s mom’s brother’s daughter, which I think would make her my second cousin, but to me she is just cousin Trish. Sometimes, with my family, it’s not so much about blood in the veins as it is water under the bridge.
The first time I met my new niece-to-be she was five or so, wearing a striped T-shirt and shorts. It was the heyday of those razor scooter things, and she was scooting industriously up and down the cracked sidewalk outside of my cousin’s apartment. Dan and I were standing in the long and sideways summer shadows of the trees in the park across the street, talking.
She rolled up beside me, braking skillfully. Dan introduced us, and then my future niece said the most awesome first line I think I’ve ever heard from a kid:
“You wanna see my calluses?”
Of course I wanted to see her calluses. She went on to explain that she had been practicing a lot on the monkey bars, and had in fact just today broken her all-time monkey bar record of over two hours without ever letting her feet touch the ground.
I was duly impressed with her accomplishments, and told her so. She made a little small talk and then excused herself. “Well, gotta get back at it,” she announced with a deep exhale. Apparently scooter skills such as hers required dedication and sacrifice as well.
She scootered off, the tip of her pink tongue placed determinedly between her lips.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him. “You said Sarah had a kid, you didn’t mention she was the fucking coolest kid ever.”
“I know. She’s something else, huh?” Dan smiled proudly. I knew he had taken to soaking his smelly feet in scented water before his dates with Sarah, and had even started wearing underwear and changing the sheets. There was something special about this new girl and her über-cool daughter. They were going to be around for a while.
Somehow, inexplicably, that was almost ten years ago. Dan and Sarah are married, and Layla is now fifteen, and just got her cell phone confiscated for not telling the truth and smoking cigarettes.
I went out for dim sum with her and Dan when I was in town last week. I had just spent the better part of the last three months sweating through a cold turkey nicotine withdrawal. I swirled shrimp dumplings in spicy yellow mustard, and described the first two weeks of insomnia, followed by a month of anxiety and random attacks of unexplained nervousness, topped off by a good six weeks of alternating crying jags and unfocused housecleaning.
