Rebent Sinner, page 3
ON THE FERRY this evening I’m waiting outside the gender-neutral/accessible bathroom for nearly twenty minutes when a staff guy comes out of a nearby office.
“Is this the only gender-neutral bathroom on this boat?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he tells me. “We are just transitioning.” He looks uncomfortable for a second. “Uh, I mean, it’s a transition period. We are, uh, undergoing a period … of change. We’re trying to, uh, change. Be better. With this stuff.”
I smile.
He looks relieved.
SO WHAT, BURLY dude smoking on the ferry deck? So I screamed a little. So maybe it was more like a screech. So would you if a giant moth flew into your eye and then down the front of your shirt BEFORE you had even identified what it was. It was the not-knowing bit that threw me. Also, moths freak me out a little. So much more aggressive and random than their cousins: like a drunk butterfly, on a couple lines of coke.
I AM IN Port Alberni on Vancouver Island for a festival this weekend. A long way from a Pride parade. Still, I see a pretty boy swishing his way through the hotel parking lot just now when I go out for a walk.
“Good evening, fine sir,” he says to me, as we pass each other.
“Why thank you, m’lady,” I say to him.
Then we both smile, and he blows me a kiss, and then curtsies. I tip my imaginary hat. It is beautiful, and perfect.
A TEAM OF DRUNK twentysomething girls with wash-off dragon and unicorn tattoos are cruising me on this plane to Sudbury. The plane smells like cigarettes and has a propeller, which is making a strange noise. Great. Now I’m homesick for the Yukon.
“NOBODY SWIMS IN the lake,” the waitress Tracie with an ie tells me. “Nobody. I’ve never swum in Williams Lake, and I’ve lived here all my life.”
Tracie’s dad owns the place, and she remembers me from last time.
“Because of the mill?” I ask her.
“They say it’s more the sewage. From ages ago.”
“Are things harder here after the fire?”
“Which one?” she asks me. “There’s fires every summer now. But you know what? The people who lost their houses aren’t the ones complaining about it. It’s the people whose houses weren’t touched by any fires who say this town is so much worse now. It’s the people who never lost nothing saying those fires ruined this town.” She shakes her head. “You want more coffee? I can put on some fresh.”
DAWSON CREEK. I’M surrounded by femme tomboys. My gran used to call them tough broads. Eyeshadow and coveralls. Manicures and steel-toed boots. It’s nice to be north.
TODAY AT MY gig at the Moose Jaw Pride lunch in the basement of the United Church I met a woman named Jean. She was in her mid-eighties, maybe even nineties, I would say. She had a walker. She waited to talk to me.
“I’m here because I used to have a granddaughter,” she told me. “And now I have a grandson. I came to listen to you. They say you can’t teach an old dog, but here I am, learning. He’s an engineer. We’re all very proud of him. He’s done so well. God bless you, and God bless your stories, too. I went to the flag raising in the park last night and got invited to this, and so here I am.”
I asked her if she was a hugger, and she told me she sure was. She said God bless me about four or five times. I will never forget Jean from Moose Jaw. She gives really good hugs, too.
YOU WANT TO hear the other story that happened to me in Moose Jaw? I got called a dyke bitch in the elevator at the hotel. No one wants to hear that story, though. But that happened, too. I never once felt safe on the streets in that town, night or day, but that is so normal it’s not even a story. But it’s true.
THEY ARE VERY concerned about flooding this spring here in Winnipeg. I heard a guy on the radio today praying for what he called a gentle melt. I can’t stop thinking about this term, how much I like it, and how I need to adopt this idea, like, metaphorically speaking, into how I go about living life in general.
WHEN YOU ARE riding on a San Francisco Muni bus and it starts up a hill, a calm woman’s voice comes over the intercom and says “Please hold on” in a firm yet reassuring fashion. I am going to try to record it on my phone tomorrow so that I can listen to it all the time, no matter where I am. I think that would be good for me.
SOMETIMES THERE YOU are on the highway, and you drive right through a flock of memories, like ghosts. All you can do is keep your eyes on the road.
6. REBENT SINNER
FROM ABOUT 1997 to 2003 or so, I worked in the film industry, first as a lamp operator, and then as a props person.
We shot a lot in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood made infamous by the media, mostly because of the missing and murdered largely Indigenous sex workers who disappeared from its streets in the late 1980s, throughout the ’90s, and into the early 2000s, whose remains were discovered in 2002 on a pig farm in Port Coquitlam. More recently, the Downtown Eastside is known for what can only be called rampant gentrification of a part of the city that once, for all its complicated faults, contained the bulk of this increasingly unlivable city’s cheap and low-barrier housing.
When we used to shoot movies down there I was always troubled by the waste and flash of the movie business clashing with the poverty and need of our city’s homeless and addicted. I remember getting a memo from the production office of a TV series I worked on reminding us not to share our lunch with any of the residents, in case it invited even more crime to set.
I mostly worked on the props truck, and I always arrived early, to drink coffee and get myself organized and prepared for the weird hustle-and-wait pace of a day on location. Nearly every morning, when I got to my five-ton props truck at or just before dawn, there would be little rectangular signs, cut out of plastic foam core, or sometimes soggy cardboard, placed carefully under the windshield wipers or tucked under the padlock and latch for the back sliding door. The signs were always hand lettered, always in the same careful, rounded cursive, and they always contained only two words, the first in red ink and the second in black: Repent Sinner. Hundreds of them over the years, left all over the city.
But no one ever witnessed the person who created and left them. There were rumours that it was an older homeless woman, and I even spotted her one morning, disappearing down an alley like a phantom, the little signs peppered behind her, but I never actually saw her leave one.
One morning I found one propped on the tailgate. It appeared after I had already been to the props truck and hauled the on-set cart down the alley and up the elevator in the then-unrenovated Woodward’s Building, left it on set, and then returned to the truck. This sign was a little different from the others, though, like someone had bumped its creator’s hand mid-letter, and the p in repent had a little dog ear sticking up out of the top of it. At first glance, it looked like it said rebent, not repent.
Rebent Sinner. I read it aloud to myself and laughed, took it home with me that night in my backpack and thumbtacked it to the corkboard above my desk.
Rebent Sinner. That is my new motto, I thought, every time I sat down at that desk to write, until that desk and that wall and that corkboard and that sign were destroyed in a house fire in 2005.
It’s a great name for a book, I thought.
SO I GO into one of those outdoor stores because I’m looking for a pink plaid shirt, and there is a dude in there trying on hats.
He says to another customer, “My wife is not here and I need a woman’s opinion on this hat. What do you think?”
She shakes her head at him and indicates she doesn’t speak English. She obviously has no idea what he is on about and appears a little uncomfortable. She walks away.
He looks at me.
“I think that hat looks good on you,” I say.
“Yeah, but I need a female perspective,” he says.
“Well, technically, I was assigned female at birth, and I think the hat looks good on you.” I smile at him.
“Well, I need more of a … woman’s perspective.”
I probably should have ended our conversation there, but for some reason, I doubled down on him. Some days I can’t help myself; I’m not even sure why. “Well, I’ve got my period right now, and my perspective is you should wear whatever hat you like the best, no matter what any perfect stranger who happens to be a woman in here says about it,” I say, still smiling.
“And that is why I’m not asking you,” he says.
Now I notice there is an older woman standing there, too. I’m unsure how much of the conversation she has overheard.
“I think that hat makes your head look very, very small,” she tells the guy, whirls on one heel of her Birkenstock, and then winks at me and walks away.
I’m still laughing about it, several hours later.
TODAY I CALLED a spa to find out whether they had any gender-neutral change rooms and was asked, “Are you American? Because in Canada everybody is pretty cool about that stuff.” (Not relaxing for me. Just FYI, full-speed-ahead denial is not helpful.)
Sigh.
So right after that I went to trans-inclusive swim (which also welcomes family and allies) at Templeton Park Pool for some safe swimming time.
First, I want to thank all the folks who fought and worked to make this space happen for us. It really, really is a healing place for me. I am a water baby, always have been, and pools and beaches can be hard for me to navigate. I love trans swim.
My thoughts:
Some trans people show up to spaces like these after a lifetime of anxiety, fear, and even dangerous moments in change rooms and sports facilities.
We need to welcome each other when we get here. We need to smile and be kind. If you can, and if they seem open, say hello and introduce yourself. Because othering or excluding other trans folks in spaces that are supposed to be safe(r) is potentially really hurtful. They might not ever come back, and that is a tragedy. A kind of silent violence maybe even. From our own kind, to each other. A space is only as safe and welcoming as we all make it.
I say this as someone who is often managing my own anxiety, my own shyness.
Also, next Sunday is bouncy castle day at Templeton Park Pool—11:30 to 1:30. If you come, I promise to say hi.
THE PEOPLE ASKING if a nine-year-old kid can even know that he is gay should be asking how the other nine-year-olds already know to bully him for coming out.
I DON’T CARE what Rotten Tomatoes says. Cat People (1982) with Nastassja Kinski totally stands the test of time, ever since it first freaked the living shit out of me while also strangely being hot that night I was babysitting in grade nine on Clyde Wann Road in Porter Creek, the end, a story by Ivan.
I USE THE pronoun they. I am used to people using both he and she to refer to me, and I have used both pronouns for myself for different reasons in the past, before I knew about the they pronoun. I make myself be okay with people using either pronoun for me most days, mostly because I don’t want how my day goes to be decided by others’ language too, too much.
But I use the pronoun they, and the added respect and feeling “seen” I experience when people get it right feels so good and accurate and true to me. I really appreciate those people who ask, who learn it and then do it, especially when they just do it and don’t turn it into a production. Like, I really appreciate it.
DON’T BITE THE effing rainbow-filled Oreo, people. It’s a trick. Smoke and mirrors. Until a gay boy wearing eyeliner can walk safely up Commercial Drive in Vancouver right after Italy wins a soccer match, and our kids don’t get harassed trying to get an education, and young lesbian couples are not shot in parks in Texas, and there is no death penalty anywhere for being queer, and everyone can piss in a public washroom without hassle or fear, then I will swallow no rainbow cookie. Plus, think of the chemicals in those things.
IT’S ALL WELL and good to say what you think. But the catch here is that this, by definition, requires that you think before actually saying anything.
A FRIEND TOLD me today, “Don’t catch a falling cactus.” I did this only once, but still, it needs remembering.
IF HE IS a lone wolf, then why are there so many of him?
LET’S JUST MAKE one thing perfectly clear. We’re not asking for a special washroom. If a public building only has gendered washrooms, what that actually means is that women and girls have a special bathroom and men and boys have a special bathroom. Most of the time, everybody but trans people have special bathrooms.
It’s not a special bathroom. You can use it, too. And you. You’re all welcome in there. We would never keep anyone out of the bathroom because of their gender, or what kind of clothes they are wearing. I mean, seriously, what kind of an asshole would do something like that?
I want you to know that trans people, we don’t get up in the morning and make menacing steeple shapes with our unusually long and graceful fingers and plot new and creative ways to throw a sparkle-encrusted wrench into the engine room of your perfectly tuned gender binary. We really don’t. We are just trying to go to school, or go swimming, or use the weight room without being hassled. Just like you.
ON APRIL 19, 2016, I was walking from my apartment to the market along a very busy street in East Vancouver. About a half block up the street I saw something that just seemed a little off to me somehow. Maybe it was a body-language thing, maybe it was my trans person’s heightened spidey sense when it comes to anticipating potential violence or danger, but I noticed an interaction that seemed wrong. And I wasn’t wrong.
A very large man was looming over a woman sitting on a bus stop bench. She was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, and wearing a sleeveless floral dress. She had headphones in her ears and appeared to be trying to read a book.
The man weighed about 130 kilos (290 pounds) and was in his late forties, easy. He was so angry his face was a tomato, and he was screaming right into her face, spraying spit everywhere. As I got closer, I could hear what he was saying.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Why can’t you even say hello to me? Bitch. You’re a stuck-up little bitch.”
The young woman was shaking and silent.
I was about to intervene, but I was intercepted by a tiny and fierce woman in her early eighties, I would say, who squared off and gave the man a solid tongue-lashing in a heavy accent, wagging her finger and saying he was twice her age and twice her size, and did his mother know he roamed the streets talking to ladies like this?
He sneered and called her a dried-up old cunt.
That’s when I swallowed and stepped up, saying no, no, he couldn’t speak to anyone like that.
“Stay out of this, faggot,” he said, and pulled his ham-shaped fist back. But then the bus pulled up, and he turned and got on it.
The young woman did not. She watched the bus pull into traffic, and then turned to the old woman and me, and burst into tears.
“Oh my God, thank you both so much. I knew it. I should have just worn a flour sack or something, but I had a job interview. I just wanted to look nice, you know? I want this job so bad. I need to get out of my parents’ place and move into the city. That was the third time it’s happened to me today, and you were the only ones who said anything. One dude followed me right off the train, all the way down the block. I was so afraid and nobody helped me until now. Next time, I will wear a flour sack to take the bus and get changed when I get there.”
We all exchanged names and hugs. We told Alicia from the suburbs that she should be able to wear whatever she wanted and take the bus unmolested. Maria from Costa Rica told me I was a nice gentleman and I did not correct her.
When I got home, I wrote a quick little post for my public author page: Dear dudes everywhere: just leave her alone. She is wearing her headphones AND reading her book at the bus stop. What part of that says “I want to talk to you?” She’s not dressed up for you. She’s on her way home from work after a long day of dealing with assholes that look a lot like you. She doesn’t want to smile. She knows she looks good. You’re actually invading her space and making her uncomfortable. She is being polite because if she isn’t you could get mean and/or violent. She has been taught this lesson since she was a very little girl. She’s in a dress because it’s spring. She didn’t pick this bus because you are on it, it’s public transit. Leave her alone. Let her read her book. Tell your friends.
I hit post and forgot about it.
Until about an hour later, when I picked up my phone and it said I had 2,000 notifications. Within a couple of hours my post had gone viral, and over the next few days it was reposted or written about on Boing Boing and Reddit and HuffPost, and translated into Spanish and Portuguese and French and Czech and Russian. Media contacted me for quotes.
I was invited by a Russian feminist discussion group to Skype in to one of their meetings. They really wanted to speak to a feminist man, they wrote me. I said sure, but I didn’t identify as a man. I was a non-binary trans person, I told them. “Oh,” they replied. “Then we are not interested.”
That short, unedited, nearly punctuationless post of mine has now been viewed more than any other string of words I have ever written in any of my eleven books over two decades of writing and publishing has ever been read, ever. In retrospect, I wish I had considered paragraph or line breaks, but who knew?
In the midst of it all came the abuse. The men’s rights activist army was deployed. Thousands and thousands of comments and emails and tweets from men who took issue with anyone saying that they did not have the right to the time and attention of any woman in public, anytime, anywhere. Most of them assumed I was a man, and a man saying these things to other men sent them into a kind of collective fury and rage. Vitriol. Threats of violence. Dick pics. Disgusting screencaps of women’s faces with ejaculate all over them. I got death threats. Slurs. Levelled not just at me but also at the many, many women and girls commenting on my page. Jokes about the size of my penis. I had to look up the words “chode” and “cuck” and “neckbeard” and “white knight.” My favourite insult was dickless wonder. I think that would make a great T-shirt slogan, right? I like it. Dickless Wonder, that’s me.
