I laughed out loud, and asked him why I should take advice on keeping a quality woman around. Maybe I laughed like a girl. Although I highly doubt it. Maybe he finally noticed that I have wrinkles and grey hair, but still don’t need to shave. Who can know what it was?

  He stopped for a beat, his eyes meeting mine in my reflection in the mirror.

  “You bring that lady in next time she comes to visit. You tell her I love her.”

  He held up the mirror in one hand and turned the chair so I could see the back of my neck.

  “Look at that now.” He smiled, patting my shoulder. “Aren’t you beautiful too?”

  This Summer,

  At Gay Camp

  He shone like a brand new dime, that first time. “I want you to meet my son,” she had told me. “I want him to meet more gay people. School has been hard on him these last couple of years.”

  I was in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, on tour with a mismatched set of other storytellers. It was the first week of June, and the roof of the earth was gearing up for summer solstice. The midnight sun stretched the light so far and long that dusk was bent over backward enough to bump into the next day. The sun cooked the dirt into dust that got into everything, grinding between back teeth and turning my new black boots grey. We were a seven-hour drive by mostly gravel road to Yellowknife. A hell of a place to try to hide yourself. A hell of a place to have to repeat grade ten.

  His mother was a solid, smiling Métis woman with a laugh you could hear from the other side of the lake. Her son stepped out of the car and onto the weary pavement of the parking lot outside of the only motel in town, which boasted a restaurant that served both Chinese and Italian cuisine, and I use the term loosely.

  He was wearing brand new sneakers, so white they caught the sunlight and bounced it right back, bleaching the backs of my eyelids when I closed them. His tracksuit was also white, both pieces, and so was the singlet he had on underneath. All of his clothes were crisp and pristine, with a fresh-out-of-the-wrapper look that stood out stark and sudden against the frayed and aging backdrop of this little northern town.

  He was sapling thin, with cover girl cheekbones and feather duster lashes. Easily one of the prettiest boys I had ever seen, all long fingers and fey hips and wrists. I could imagine him standing in a line-up on Davie Street in Vancouver, waiting to get into a club that would be pounding a dull bassline from inside, surrounded by his twinkie buddies in designer jeans and two-hundred-dollar T-shirts. That such a creature still breathed in a high school in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, seemed somehow unfathomable to me.

  A mud-coloured pick-up pulled up beside us, its tires popping bits of loose gravel sideways. Our hiking guide jumped down from the driver’s seat, wearing sturdy boots and a grey beard. He led us on a meandering route past the old graveyard and down a well-worn path through the pines, wide shards of sunlight showing the dust and dandelion seeds floating in the air that smelled so much like home to me. I kept stealing looks at my friend’s fairy boy son, him in his immaculate threads and me in my now dirty new Fleuvog boots and vintage leather coat. I loved him at first sight, flying his flaming flag so fiercely, here, so far from a pride parade or leather bar or Mac counter. All of fifteen years old and fearless already.

  Later, I pulled his mother aside and told her about a camp in Edmonton for gay youth where I was going to be artist-in-residence in a couple of weeks. It was probably too late for this year, I told her, but what the hell, send in an application, because you never know.

  The last week in July, he sashayed through the door of the education centre in Edmonton. Sixty-five queer youth for four days. I wondered if he had ever been around more than one or two queer people at the same time before. I wondered if he felt as overwhelmed as I did. A place where faggot wasn’t a bad word anymore. A place where he could be one of many. A place where he could just be.

  I got to work, teaching creative writing classes every morning and cajoling my group of youth to choreograph an a cappella synchronized dance number to “I Will Survive.” He was in my group, and I spent the better part of four days trying not to hug him too much in front of everybody else.

  On Saturday night there was a talent show. One of the local kids organized a fashion show, and he modeled a gold lamé gown complete with fake breasts and walked the runway in heels like he was born in them. I felt like the homosexual version of a hockey dad whose son has just scored in overtime.

  I watched him stand taller and smile bigger and swish wider every day. And then, of course, the inevitable came around.

  Sunday night. There was a lot of crying, the kind of tears that could only be conjured up by a bunch of queer kids about to return to High River and Moose Jaw and some little town just north of Edmonton. Alone.

  I couldn’t even look him in the eyes the last time I hugged him. I couldn’t tell him what I was thinking. I hoped that the new pride he held in his shoulders wasn’t going to be pounded out of him in gym class, or while he tried to learn trigonometry. I felt sad, but mostly I felt rage.

  Rage that we are beginning the second decade of the twenty-first century in what is supposed to be one of the most liberal and progressive countries in the world and still we haven’t made our schools safe for kids like him. That something as vital to his future as his education happens in a culture of fear and under the threat of violence.

  I reminded myself to be thankful that at least he has what a lot of queer kids don’t have: an amazing family behind him. I got an e-mail from his mom yesterday. She thanked me for getting him into camp, saying that he really needed this support, and that he seemed so much more confident and wiser since he came home.

  The four days of relative safety and acceptance from his peers really did him some good. Now we just have to get to work on the other 361 days of the year. He still has grade ten to get through. Again.

  Let Me Show You

  Sometimes I get to go home to Whitehorse for a holiday. I race around for a couple of days trying to visit everyone in the family, and by the time I get back on the plane I am more exhausted than I was before I went on vacation. The last few times I went home were for business. I ran from rehearsals to gigs to interviews, and in my down time I raced around trying to visit everyone in the family. This works best when someone has a birthday or cooks a turkey, then several of us can congregate at one house at the same time. Then I can multitask, visiting four aunts at the same time while simultaneously getting something to eat and waiting for my laundry to dry.

  Last spring I went home for the Young Authors’ Conference. I spent a couple of days teaching writing in the high school I once attended, was kicked out of, and eventually graduated from. The result was a complicated mix of feelings, the main ingredients being a potent blend of triumph and nausea. I was buying some Advil in the drugstore right after school on the Friday afternoon when I ran into one of my aunts, who had heard a rumour that a couple of my uncles were going to be at the bar shortly after five o’clock that evening. Perfect. I needed a drink.

  Turned out that Uncle Rob and Uncle John had had an argument about something a few days earlier, and were still not speaking to one another. The two brothers were sitting at separate tables five feet apart with their backs turned to one another. Small towns and big families. You just learn to work around things. I sat and had a drink with one uncle, then crossed the floor to join the other one. This quickly became ridiculous, so I insisted that they both come outside for a cigarette with me at the same time. My Aunt Cathy, Rob’s wife, picked up her purse and came along.

  John took a long drag and squinted at me. He had knocked off from work a little early, and had already had a couple. “That a clip-on tie you got on?”

  I shook my head. “No way. Double Windsor.”

  He harrumphed. “That’s no double Windsor.”

  Cathy snorted at her brother-in-law. “What would you know about tying a tie? Last one you wore was at your wedding.”

  This was a bit of an inside joke. John never got married.

  John reached over and pulled my tie undone. “Gimme that thing. I can still tie a perfect double Windsor. The old man showed us all.”

  He flipped up the collar of his denim work shirt and looped the tie around his neck.

  One of the other dudes who had been standing next to us smoking stepped forward, a giant gut bulging behind his navy blue T-shirt, blowing smoke from under the brim of a black leather Caterpillar baseball hat.

  “Umm … mind if I watch? My wife used to tie my ties for me. She passed away three years ago and I haven’t been able to dress up since.”

  This kind of broke my heart. I smiled at him and stepped back so he could join our little circle.

  John narrowed a beer-loosened eye at the tie in his hands. Things were not going well. He was drunk, and lefthanded. The wide part of the tie was hanging about four inches under his beard. The skinny part was dangling almost at his knees. The label was facing the front, and he had definitely tied some sort of knot, but it wasn’t a double, and it wasn’t a Windsor.

  Cathy shook her head in disgust. “Take that thing off and give it to your niece. Let her show you. Look, we’re gathering a crowd here.”

  It was true. A skinny guy in Carhartt overalls had now stepped up, claiming he was divorced and therefore also needed tie-tying lessons.

  I carefully smoothed the tie out on my chest, took a deep breath, and began. “Well guys, first of all you have to start with the right amount of tie on either side …”

  They all leaned forward, fascinated, and watched. When I finished, they all stood back, lit new cigarettes. The guy with the black leather baseball hat cleared his throat.

  “So … you, uh, having a sex change operation or something like that? You wish you were a guy or whatever?”

  This is what I like about good old Yukon guys. There is no fumbling around with political correctness. They just blurt shit out.

  “No,” I say. “I just like to wear men’s clothes. I feel more comfortable in them.”

  This seemed to be enough of an explanation for him, so I stopped there, hoping someone would change the subject. Instead, my Uncle Rob picked up the ball and ran with it.

  “Well, you did have that one operation.” Rob winked at me. “So everyone would think you were a man? You remember, don’t you? You know, that one where they stuck the tube in your ear and sucked out half of your brain?”

  The best and most hilarious part came next. Cathy laughed out loud and John choked on his smoke, but the guy with the hat crossed his eyebrows and said “Huh?” like he didn’t get it at all.

  Which he didn’t. Neither did the guy in the overalls. They both stood there, looking confused.

  I couldn’t write a punch line like that. I laughed so hard I needed to pee. So did my Aunt Cathy.

  “Well, gentlemen, if we are finished here, I am going to have to excuse myself. I need to go visit the ladies’ room.” I swung the old wooden door open for my aunt and left the boys outside. I love those guys. I can still see them there, standing in a circle, with the spring sun still hanging large and low in the sky behind them. The sound of big trucks gearing down on the highway in the background. Talking. Laughing. Smoking.

  Good Old Days

  I have forty new girlfriends, plus Howard and Warren. I’m leaving Ottawa to move home to East Vancouver as soon as this semester is over, and I’m going to miss all of them a lot. I’ve been teaching memoir writing to senior citizens, and as I sort through and stow away my favourite memories of my time here, I’m finding that I owe many of them to a small group of grey-haired ladies (and a few gentlemen); their hearts and their wrinkles and their good penmanship.

  It used to seem odd to me that a group of mostly women in their sixties and seventies and eighties would get on so well with someone like me, but I have given up questioning why this is and just learned to be thankful for being allowed the opportunity to spend time with them, to encourage them to write down their amazing lives, and to remind them that the history that lives inside their skins is interesting and inspiring and important.

  Last semester I had a woman named Catherine in my class. Her stories were poignant and introspective, and run through with a wide-grinned humour and humanity. Everyone in the class loved her. One day about halfway through the semester she stood up and read us a story about what it was like to transition from male to female at her job. What it was like to finally peel back a lifetime of pretending and live truthfully. She told us an amazing account of her co-workers’ acceptance and willingness to embrace this new her. No Well of Loneliness tale tainted with the taste of hatred; this was a story of tolerance and respect, told with dignity and pride. I had not brought up the kind of obvious question of my gender difference with the class before this, and now I didn’t need to. Catherine had taken care of it, reading in a soft but clear voice, her hands shaking only a little bit as she held up her papers and squinted through her bifocals.

  The last day of class we had a reading, where everyone could invite a guest or family member to hear a little bit of something they had written during the class, and partake in the complementary dessert trays and tea and coffee. I happened to overhear Warren, my only male student, approach Catherine after the reading was over. Warren was an ex-military man, a boxer in his prime, and a big fan of facts and dates and protocol and order. He thanked Catherine for teaching him to write from his guts, to be brave enough to include an emotion or two in his recounting of events. He shook her hand at first, and then stood back, all of a sudden a little nervous.

  “I was wondering if you would mind … if I might … if it would be okay with you if I were to give you a hug?” He smiled tentatively at her from under his silver brush cut. Catherine placed her Styrofoam cup on a desk and opened both of her arms.

  I can still see the two of them there, she in a respectably long skirt and sweater set, he in his button-down shirt and good dress pants, locked for a few seconds in an awkward and unlikely but heartfelt full body hug. He patted her back with his giant hands, then stepped back to clear his throat, his eyes shining a little.

  Last week one of my students was reading the class a story about the day that her lover passed away from pancreatic cancer. The class knew she was a lesbian, but this was the first time she had written openly about her partner. She talked about how they hadn’t made love since the diagnosis, how it would have been too painful, literally and figuratively, but how those feelings were still there, that the cancer hadn’t destroyed them. She read about bathing her lover well into her illness, and that one day she had leaned over and kissed her clitoris, just to show her that she still loved that part of her, too.

  I felt my heart jump into my mouth, and I looked up at the rest of the class to see if there would be any reaction to a real life lesbian uttering one of the c-words in public. Not an eyelash was batted. Except for mine, blinking back tears.

  After she finished reading, Hedwig, an eighty-seven-year-old Hungarian woman, spoke first, in a heavy accent.

  “Tank you, Hilary, for showing us in words that love is just love.” Everyone nodded in agreement, numerous little Kleenex packets were removed from large purses and distributed where needed, and then we moved on.

  During the break, one of my students who grew up in Europe during the Second World War brought me a snack. One of those little round Babybel cheeses in the red wax wrapper, a several-times-recycled Ziploc bag full of green grapes with the stems already removed, and a packet of Premium Plus soda crackers.

  “Eat, eat,” she said, pushing the shopping bag across my desk towards me. “You have had a long day.”

  She has taken to doing this every week now. I do as I’m told, except for the packet of crackers, which I sneak into my bag when she is not looking and feed to the squirrels in my back yard later. I cannot bring myself to tell a woman who remembers watching the Nazis drive their trucks into her village and take whatever they wanted that I can’t eat the crackers she brings me because I am gluten intolerant. It’s true. I have fallen in love with every one of them. I even like the sound of their names: Lois, Louise, Mary-Lou, Irene, Dorene, Eleanor, Elsebee, Ghislaine, Hilary, Hedwig, Isabel, Patricia, Margaret, Peg, Joan, Verna, Faith, Kati, and of course Howard and Warren. I know now why we get along so well. We all just love a really good story.

  Straighten Up

  I try to fit in, I swear I do. Just passing through small-town Northern Ontario, wearing a black parka, driving a silver truck with sensible snow tires, hair shorn recently. Still, the three good old boys smoking cigarettes outside of the only hotel that’s still open in town this time of year all stop in mid-sentence to check me out when I walk by. I nod politely, just enough eye contact to not seem suspicious, but not enough that I am looking for a fight. The bells on the door tinkle behind me and the waitress with smoker lady red lips taps the little table in the corner with a plastic-coated menu.

  “Right here, hon. Getchoo some coffee?”

  I nod. She winks.

  I’m getting good at telling, after all these years. No second look. No forced politeness. No clipped words. She thinks I’m a clean-cut young fellow. The old boys outside the front door, I’m not so sure. Maybe they saw a dyke; maybe they think I’m a gay man. There was definitely something about me. Goddamn Fleuvog boots. Have to remember to change into my Sorel snow boots, even though they are a bit hot for the long drives.

  I like to think that I am not overly hung up on gender, that I don’t treat strangers all that much differently based on the gender I perceive them to be. I also know that this is not quite as true as I might like it to be: my heart pounds faster when I’m alone in the park at night and I think the person walking up behind me is a man, and I would rather buy tampons from a woman.

  I do know that there are a lot of people in the world who have a whole lot invested in the man/woman dichotomy, and all of the requisite expectations. I know all this because I have to. I study it all every day. Calling it a survival tactic might be a little dramatic, but it would still be true. So I try to fit in, and most of the time I do. Ironically, for me, not bringing attention to myself means passing just a little bit more as the gender I was raised to call “the other.” For the most part, strangers read me as a clean-cut young fellow. But still, if they are looking close enough, there is something about me that doesn’t fit. A little gesture, something about my voice, or my hips, or my lips, that makes them take that second, longer, closer look. Some people don’t care at all. Some ask if I am in a band, and are we playing in town this weekend. Some just don’t like me all that much. And then there are those very few that want to kill me. Whether this is for being an effeminate or homosexual man, or a masculine or queer woman, I am never quite sure. I rarely take the time to ask.

 

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