Rebent Sinner, page 2
We have climate change and North Korean nukes and child poverty.
And I can’t even move to Canada because I already live in Canada.
So what do I do to get through it all?
I punch Nazis in the face every time I get a chance.
Just kidding. I’m not the punching type.
Instead, whenever I get home from the road, I cook. Nothing fancy. Comfort food: stews, shepherd’s pie, potato salad, red curry, roast chicken. Then I make chicken soup with the bones. Like, really good chicken soup. I eat some and freeze the rest. I deliver it to friends with new babies or head colds or deadlines or final exams or breast cancer. A fairly wide selection of East Vancouver residents owe me my Tupperware back. “Shut up and show up,” my grandma Pat once said to me after her neighbour’s husband died and she was making her a pot of macaroni and cheese. “That’s what your great-grandmother Monica used to say during the Depression.”
Clean sheets.
Clean towels.
Clean clothes.
Clean house. I bleach stuff and scrub floors and take a toothbrush to the grout between the tiles in the bathroom. Pine cleaner and orange cleaner and stainless-steel polish and special stuff for the granite countertops. It might be a gimmick, but fuck it, I don’t even care.
Then there is my garden. I’m a condo dweller, so I don’t have access to any actual dirt in the ground, but I have two small balconies. I prune and cajole and water and pluck and weed and fertilize and spray and smell. My bleeding heart flowered like you wouldn’t believe this spring, and yes, I do think it’s a metaphor, and yes, I take it as a sign.
I talk to strangers in my neighbourhood. Neighbours and shopkeepers and delivery guys and the mail person and panhandlers and buskers and the ladies working the parking lot of the 7-Eleven up the street from my building. I listen to them. I learn their names. I learn the names of their spouses and kids and cats and dogs. I’ve done it for many years now, so there are now fewer real strangers in my neighbourhood.
I used to walk my old dog. My old deaf and blind and quaking dog. Two or three times a day for seventeen years, until March 1, 2016, a year and a bit ago. Now I walk my puppy. He’s seven months old and his name is Lucky. We named him after me.
I play the guitar and the ukulele. I’m currently learning all the hits of my misspent youth in the seventies and eighties. I do really killer versions of “Time after Time” by Cyndi Lauper and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” by Culture Club.
After I get home from the road, I see how long I can go without putting on pants.
I lift weights. I’ve been going to the same gym for twenty-seven years now. One time, a woman who had just moved to the neighbourhood went up to the front desk to tell them that there was a man in the women’s change room.
“Oh, that’s just Ivan,” the staff member told her. “Ivan’s been coming here longer than any of us have worked here. Ivan has outlasted the last three, maybe four, owners. If you’ve got a problem with that, there are yoga classes at GoodLife Fitness up the street. Would you like the address?”
I have dinner parties. Very big, very delicious gluten-free dinner parties. There are always leftovers.
I listen to records and drink really good coffee and smoke weed on the balcony. I drink bourbon, but only the good stuff. I don’t really believe there is such a thing as bad bourbon.
I do cross-stitch and collect neckties.
And if none of that works, I punch Nazis in the face.
I COOK MY way all through the dark part of the year. I burn candles and hang lights, and I decorate a live tree for solstice. I have pine and cedar incense that smells like a campfire from back home. I wash the sheets at least once a week and put lots of blankets on the bed so the covers are heavy on me. I spend time under the moon on purpose when it’s clear. Stargazing.
3. MARKET
THIS JUST HAPPENED at the grocery store: a woman in her eighties left her headlights on in her car. I locked my groceries in my truck and followed her back into the store. She was at the till already, cashing in a lottery ticket. I told her that she had left her headlights on, and she thanked me profusely.
As I was walking away she said to the young cashier, “Now that is what we need more of, nice gentlemen like that.”
The cashier said, “I don’t think she was a gentleman.”
The old woman shook her head hard and insisted, “I am old enough to know a gentleman when I see one. You should go out and find yourself one like that.”
The cashier smiled at me and said, “Okay, then, maybe I will.”
I GO INTO my local record store looking for a Larkin Poe album. It’s not on the shelves, so I ask the woman working there if she can order it for me. It’s just her and me, and an older, bearded, pretty straight-looking rock dude in a Metallica T-shirt, in the store. The woman looks pretty queer to me. You can’t assume anything, but I’m pretty sure she’s family.
She looks up the band—a two-woman group—on the computer. “Are they sisters?” she asks me.
“I think so,” I tell her.
“Because they have the same last name,” she continues, tapping on the keyboard.
Metallica T-shirt dude freezes and looks up at both of us. “Or they could be married, you know. You should think about that, before you assume anything.” He seems pretty indignant about it all, even a little miffed. He leaves without buying anything.
The woman and I crack up a little.
“Did he just chastise us for being heterosexist?” I ask her.
“I think that’s what just happened.” She laughs.
“I think that was my favourite part of this day so far,” I tell her.
“Best part of my day, for sure,” she says. “And if we don’t call you in two weeks it means we couldn’t find your record.”
SEMI-DRUNK AND DEFINITELY creepy dude in the lineup at the market says to uninterested young mother: “Is that a new baby?”
Young mom retorts coolly: “Is there such a thing as an old baby?”
Even the clerk laughed.
THERE IS A kid singing “I want to wish you a dairy Christmas” at the top of her lungs to her mom in front of the milk and cheese coolers at the market right now and it’s really cracking me up.
KID AT THE grocery store: “I don’t want vegetables. You don’t give me what I want. You are a bad daddy.”
Dad: “Bad daddy? I like the sound of that.”
And right there, all of a sudden, he got magically way better looking to me.
ME TO A guy wearing a baby in a carrier standing next to me in the supermarket lineup: “If you had a half-chewed piece of cracker stuck to the side of your head, would you want someone to tell you?”
Guy with the baby, with resignation: “Probably not.”
“Well, then,” I say, “forget I said anything.”
I SAW “MAN candles” in a store the other day. They smelled like misogyny and unshed tears. Just kidding. They smelled like cedar and smoke, but I would never buy them.
4. STREET
TWO YOUNG WOMEN, a bit drunk, are on the sidewalk in front of me just now. There is a dude sitting on the bench at the bus stop, and he opens his mouth to speak as they pass by him.
Dark-haired woman puts her hand up in his face. “DO NOT EVEN START WITH WHATEVER STUPID SHIT YOU WERE JUST GOING TO SAY TO US,” she yells at him.
He shuts his mouth. An old woman sitting on the other end of the bench gives both young women a thumbs-up. Dude says nothing. Old lady smiles. I crack up, audibly.
Dark-haired woman turns to me. “FUCK YOU LAUGHING ABOUT? YOU’RE NEXT, BUDDY.”
TODAY, AT NINE in the morning, I saw a woman walking her chihuahua in a bedazzled housecoat and furry high heels. And her nightgown. Drinking her coffee and smoking a cigarette. I salute her.
TODAY I WAS walking up the street and, as they were passing me going the other way, I heard a kid about seven years old say to her mother, “I don’t know why he was being such a dick.”
Mom said, “You shouldn’t call other kids that.”
Kid said, “Okay, then, I don’t know why he was being such an asshole.”
That’s all I heard. Been laughing about it all day.
LAST SATURDAY I was waiting outside my building for my bandmates to come pick me up to head out of town for a gig.
An old man slowly walked up the hill, and then stopped in front of me. “Is that a tenor saxophone you have there?” he asked, pointing at my horn case.
I nodded.
“You on your way to play a show?” he asked.
I said, “Yes. Yes I am.”
His face lit up. “I played the tenor saxophone all my life, until this happened,” he exclaimed, pulling his hand out of the pocket of his coat. It was pretty mangled, like maybe from an industrial accident of some kind. “I love the saxophone,” he told me. Slipped his hand back into his pocket. “You go and play your heart out tonight, son. You play that horn for both of us, you hear me?”
I told him, “Yes, sir, I will.” And so I did.
CORNER OF CLARK and Venables. I’m in my truck, waiting for the light. I notice a very beautiful femme I have seen out at a few events crossing the street. Two dudes in the lane beside me have their windows down and they catcall something at her that I can’t make out. She pretends to clean her ear with her middle finger, like she can’t quite hear them, and then gives them the same middle finger. So badass.
5. THERE
I HAD STRESS travel dreams all last night. I had four carry-on bags. I was travelling with fifteen people who were all late types. We nearly missed our overseas flight, but it was delayed. Then my bags were lost, and mine were the only ones missing. Maybe I won’t compile all my calendar updates right before bed again. Maybe that’s a morning activity.
ME: “I SURE get a lot of these pat-downs. These machines hate me because I’m trans. Did you press the pink or the blue button?”
Canadian Air Transport Security Authority guard: “These machines hate me too, because I’m covered in piercings and I have four screws in my leg. There’s no button for that, either.”
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: “CAN I get you anything to drink, sir? Oh, pardon me, ma’am. I’m so sorry.”
Me: “It’s totally okay. I prefer sir, actually.”
Him: “Of course. Yes, ma’am.”
Me: “I prefer sir, though.”
Him: “Of course. I’m sorry again, ma’am.”
Me: (Sigh) “I would love a black coffee with one sugar, please.”
Him: “Yes, ma’am. Coming right up.”
THE WOMAN ACROSS the aisle from me on the plane is having a giant coughing attack.
The man beside her is visibly disgusted. “You shouldn’t get on a plane when you’re sick like that. You’ll spread those germs everywhere.”
She looks at him deadpan. “I have lung cancer,” she tells him. “It’s not contagious. Though some days I wish it was. Selectively.”
TODAY AT TORONTO Pearson International Airport, I get on the train between terminals with a young woman, her maybe five-year-old daughter, and three airplane pilots, one female and two male.
The little girl clocks the female pilot, looks her up and down. “Are you a lady pilot?” she asks, very excited.
The female pilot smiles and says yes, she is.
The little girl is bouncing on her toes now. “That is sooooo cool! Like, do you ever fly a jet plane?”
The pilot nods and smiles.
The girl’s mother looks at the two male pilots and says to them, “It’s cool that you both fly planes, too. It’s just as cool.”
The little girl shakes her head emphatically and says, super loud: “No, it’s not. It’s waaaay better when SHE does it. Look! She has gold things on her shirt, just like a soldier. She can probably just fly anywhere.”
I’M IN A shuttle van in Ontario at nearly two a.m. and the driver’s got the eighties channel on the radio and it’s playing “Jump” by Van Halen, and I swear, Kim-Marie Rumley, I’m having a hard-core flashback to that sleepover party at Denise Lloyd’s on the hot springs road when all of us were still young and alive, and no one was divorced yet except some of our parents.
FLYING TO CALGARY, no checked luggage. I am waiting for my suitcase to go through the X-ray, when I see on the screen a giant dildo in someone’s carry-on bag. I glance nonchalantly at the woman beside me, and then at the man on the other side of me. Neither appears to notice anything. Then I realize that it’s MY bag up on the screen. At first I am very confused, having just packed my bag for a solo overnight work gig in Alberta, as a speaker for an interfaith religious conference of all things, and I know for sure my bag is sans dildo of any kind. The dude is looking at me. The woman is trying not to crack even a tiny smile. The technician is now looking at me as well.
“It’s a microphone,” I say to nobody and everybody at the same time. “It’s a vocal microphone.”
Nobody says anything.
“Microphone!” I repeat.
LAST FALL I was flying home after doing a storytelling festival in Montreal. The festival had booked me on a cruelly early flight, so I was lined up to go through security at about 4:30 in the morning.
It was pretty quiet still, a Monday, so there were a lot of business dudes in suits, and me.
The security guard looked like she was about eighteen and had borrowed her uniform from her older brother. She explained that I had been selected for a random secondary search. She motioned to her male co-worker to come over and pat me down, so I cleared my throat and spoke up.
“So, I guess this is where I should tell you that I am trans,” I said.
This was when she did something that it would be way easier to physically perform than it will be to capture in a word cage, but I will try to describe it anyway: First, she made a kind of one-person wave with her tiny body that started in her feet and undulated up to her shoulders. Then her legs and arms sort of ran away from her torso for a millisecond, and then returned, while her feet remained planted in her scuffed black uniform boots. She lifted both arms, and then dropped them again, her metal detector wand hanging limp against her thigh. Her eyebrows were raised like umbrellas above her over-wide eyes. She swallowed twice but did not blink.
“That’s okay,” she reassured me, though it was painfully apparent none of this was in any way okay with her.
“Thank you,” I said. “I know it’s okay.” I was trying not to smile, quite sure she was not as ready to find any of this as funny as I did.
“Okay, then.” She took a deep breath and looked up and to the right, like she was taking an exam and trying to remember the correct answer. “Here is what is going to happen. My colleague is going to inspect the parts of you that are male, and then I”—she lifted her wand, just a little—“will inspect the parts of you that are female.” She looked over at her co-worker. He was standing with his head cocked, waiting, unsure.
A small crowd of businessmen were gathering behind me, sighing and looking at their phones.
I opened my passport and showed her the picture page, showed her the F there. I was really trying not to laugh out loud now. “I know my rights.” My words were slow, and calm. I know what happens to people who get angry in airports. It never goes their way. “My reward for being trans in an airport is not an extra pat-down. The rules are that everyone has the right to be searched by someone of their own gender.” I allowed a tiny smirk to pull at one corner of my mouth. “But it is four-thirty in the morning, so good luck finding someone of my gender here right now. So I get to choose who I feel more comfortable being patted down by, and if it’s okay with you, if you consent, then I pick you.”
She nodded repeatedly, like she had just been told by the swim teacher that it was her turn to jump off the really high diving board.
She wafted her wand over my waistband, and then pinched it between her knees to free up both of her hands. She took a deep breath and then patted my flat chest with the backs of both of her hands once, like she was touching something dangerously hot with no oven mitts, and then stepped back and motioned for me to proceed.
“Thank you,” she said, without looking up, without meeting my eyes. Without ever smiling.
YESTERDAY I MET a woman named Hue. She worked in the housekeeping department at the hotel I was staying at. I was on my way to teach a workshop, and when I came out of my room, she said, “Hi, Ivan, how is your day?”
So I asked her how she knew my name, and what her name was.
The hotel gives her a report with all the guests’ names, she said, and she just remembers them. She has worked here for twenty-nine years, she told me.
She looked too young for that to be possible, so I said, “What, were you ten when you started here?”
She laughed and waved me away with her hand. “I’m forty-nine!” she told me.
“So am I!” I said.
“Nineteen sixty-nine?” we said at the same time and laughed, and she gave me a high-five.
“That’s impressive that you remembered my name,” I said. “I’ll leave you a good tip when I check out.”
She shook her head, said she doesn’t work tomorrow, she has Thanksgiving off.
“Should I just give it to you now?” I said.
She nodded quickly, and so I did.
I’M AT THE very swank hotel where the Melbourne Writers Festival is hosting the authors. Tonight, the ballroom downstairs is hosting the Miss Universe Australia beauty pageant gala. This is making for some strange mingling in the hotel lobby. There is a story here for sure; I just don’t know what it is yet. I just walked through a cluster of sequined gowns and tuxedos in my gym clothes, for starters.
YESTERDAY I WAS hassled again in a women’s bathroom, by a staff member of the restaurant I had just eaten in. She questioned me, and then left to gather a group of male staff to confront me. Here’s the thing about when this stuff happens: in addition to making me feel unwelcome and uncomfortable (and sometimes even unsafe) in a so-called public place, often the person doing the hassling is not only assuming that I am a man in the women’s bathroom but also inferring that I am there to do harm to women and/or children. So if I seem offended when this happens, it is probably because I am. It is this assumption of ill intent that really gets me. So much more hurtful than the plain old silly-man-can’t-read-the-sign version.
