Care of, p.2
Care Of, page 2
I remember meeting a trans woman in Edmonton. It was thirteen years ago, and she was in her seventies, I think. She told a whole room of queer youth that if they were trans, they should go on hormones and get surgery as soon as they legally could. She said the only way to survive as a trans person was to try to pass as your (her words) target gender as much as was possible, that living in between the binary was simply too hard, and very few could do it. At the time I could not comprehend how she could say those things, especially with in-between me standing right next to her, about to speak to the very same youth right after her. I didn’t understand her thirteen years ago, but today I can sit here and see her a little better. She had been a schoolteacher, fired from her job for transitioning in Edmonton in the eighties, way before any hormones or surgery were covered by health care.
I’m starting to see that it is not my place to ponder what she felt her options were back then, or what decisions she might have made thirty or forty years into this future. I think my opinion on her means of survival back then is beyond irrelevant now. I know that my real job is to listen and believe, and honour and remember, and continue to fight and to write. Write it all down.
Maybe the point of writing it all down is not necessarily just so the next generations will find these words and read them and be convinced of anything, other than the fact that I existed. Maybe when I am dust I will have let go of this need to explain anything, or be understood by anyone. Maybe it will be enough to just not be forgotten altogether.
I think there is a reason for the divide between generations. I think these kids need to reinvent the possibilities for themselves, and in order to do that they have to, for a while at least, forget us, and our pain. They need to learn on their own to spit back much of what we had to swallow. They need to never know all the things that stood in our way. They need to take what we fought for and won for granted, so they can make room to expect so much more than we dared to ever hope about. Then we can all inherit new language, more words, a better day.
In the meantime, I will not forget you, or her, or myself. And, for as long as I am able, I will write.
2.
YOUR KATE
FEBRUARY 3, 2020
Hello Ivan:
It has taken me a very long time to find the strength and courage to reach out to you. I hope it is alright, I just have some things that have been weighing on me that I need to say to you. I saw you speak at the BC Federation of Labour convention in November 2018, and I so regret that I didn’t have the chance to speak with you then, but I found myself so overcome with emotion that I could only sit sobbing in my seat. In April of that year I lost my 21-year-old daughter to suicide. She was my world, and I was still grieving and coming to grips with what had happened. She began her transition when she was 17, and completed her physical transition the December before she passed. We had many many talks about her struggles and pain that she was going through over the years, and although I loved her fully and completely, I never could fully put myself in her shoes. She struggled to share some basic experiences that she went through because I will admit, I became fiercely protective of her, but also, she didn’t want to see me hurt because she was in pain. That day as I listened to you speak, it was like I was hearing the words that she wanted me to hear. You spoke directly to my heart, and I was finally able to understand the struggles and hurt that she must have gone through just in day-to-day life. And for that I need to say thank you. I appreciate so much that you were there when I needed those words, even if you didn’t know the huge effect that it would have on someone in the group.
I hope this doesn’t come across as some crazed fan, lol. I am coming to see you speak in Nanaimo in a few weeks, and if some short reddish-haired person tries to shake your hand but can’t form words to speak to you that will be me, and I hope you will just shake my hand and remember the words I have said here.
Thank you for your time,
Adri
This is a picture of my Kate
APRIL 3, 2020
Dear Adri:
First of all, please let me start off by offering you my condolences, whatever that might actually mean to a mother who has lost her child. I offer you my sincere condolences. My sympathy. I offer my pledge to you that I will continue to share my own stories, so that they might manage to continue to find their way to you, and bring you even the tiniest comfort.
I’m so grateful to receive these words from you, and I am honoured that you have trusted me with the small window that these letters offer me into your story, and your life, and your grief. I promise to choose my next words carefully, and with all of the compassion and tenderness my own heart is capable of.
Thank you for sending me that picture of your daughter Kate. She was a beautiful young woman. She reminds me a little of my niece (well, technically Layla would be my second cousin, she’s my cousin Dan’s daughter, but in my family, she is called my niece). In fact, I think there is even a photo out there somewhere of Layla with the very same hot pink streaks in her jet-black hair, the same perfect black eyeliner and mascara as Kate wore in that picture, the same leather collar and chains, and nearly the same nose piercing. I bet if they had ever met, they would have drunk strong coffee with too much milk and sugar in it, and exchanged sarcastic jokes while giving less cool passers-by immaculate side-eye between careful sips so as not to ruin their perfect lipliner.
I’m glad you and I got to shake hands at my gig last month, even though I didn’t realize at the time that you were the woman who wrote me this letter. I’ve put all the pieces together now. That was a special gig, that night at the library in Nanaimo. So many queer and trans people were there, like the non-binary kid in grade nine at the local high school, with their mom and stepdad in tow, all the old butches with their wallet chains and hiking boots and their reading glasses tucked into plaid shirt pockets. The femmes with their purses hooked on the backs of their chairs. My mom’s friend Rona was there too, and Ivan the old guitar player from the Yukon, and the library regulars, and that woman doing her knitting in the first row. Did you see the old man who offered me his handkerchief at the end there? A white, folded and pressed hankie, the kind that you buy in boxes of three in the menswear department at the Bay. My friend Shelagh from the CBC radio.
Every gig is different, but I admit that I most love the shows where there is no fee for the members of the audience. The library covered my wage that night, so it meant that I got paid, and everyone could be there in that room, they even had special accessible parking and seating, and I printed up hard copies of my script for my friends who are hard of hearing.
Some nights I really get to feel like I am speaking to all of the people, and February 26, 2020 at the Nanaimo North branch of the Vancouver Island Regional Library was definitely one of them. Some nights you can see and feel and hear the stories doing the magic that only stories can do in a room full of listening hearts. It is a sacred thing, it is a blessed exchange, and I am always crumpled and humbled and healed afterwards.
Lately when I am about to get up on a stage I do this thing, just before I start. I imagine that there is a giant seam that runs from the centre of my collarbone, just at the base of my throat, straight down past my sternum, right down to about where my belt buckle sits. I imagine that my ribcage can be split open by that seam, that my heart and my guts are behind two double doors made out of my ribs, and just before I step on stage I open those doors all the way, so there is nothing hard or made of bone between my inside bits and the people I am about to speak to. This spills me and holds me all together at the same time, somehow, and allows me to step right into the insides of the story I am telling, my own heart pumping there in both of my open hands. If I do it right I can feel it, I can feel the story looping out of me and into you, leaving little bits of itself behind, and then sailing back into me, still familiar but not the same anymore, somehow, grown bigger now and carrying tiny parts of every heart in the room along with it.
I can never sleep when I crawl into whatever rented or borrowed bed I end up in after, exhausted and elated. Believe me when I say that I still hold a little sliver of your grief inside of me, it lives now in the bones in my back, and it comes and sits some days on my shoulders, and reminds me why. It’s why I recognized your daughter in that picture you sent me, even though I don’t think I ever got to meet her. I carry her with me, and I remember. Her story reached in and rattled the ghosts that remain in me.
His name was Christopher. My aunt Roberta’s oldest son. My mom’s nephew. My awkward and gangly cousin. I was the oldest of my generation, and I was supposed to protect him but could not. I could not shield him from the cruelty of children, or stand in front of the fists or tongue of his stepfather. In the end I could not save him from himself. He was also 21.
I don’t in any way liken my loss to that of his mother’s. But I do still rent a room in my chest full of the regret and rage and love and guilt and what ifs that suicide leaves inside those it leaves behind, and I have come to realize after 26 years that this room in me will always be occupied. I cannot empty it. I am unable to lose the key.
Storytellers are not meant to forget these things. We are tasked with saving them.
I was raised Catholic. There are too many cruel things about my discarded faith to include in one letter, or one lifetime, not the least of which is what Catholicism preaches to its believers about queer and trans people. People like Christopher, and your Kate, and myself.
One thing I will never forgive the Catholics for is telling my aunt Roberta that Christopher’s soul is not welcome now in heaven. That his remains cannot be held in consecrated earth. I believe in no god that would ever burden a mother with such blasphemy. I don’t know where Christopher’s spirit lives most of the time, but I do know this: he stands just to one side and right behind me every time I speak to high school kids and tell them that they are blessed, and holy, and sacred, no matter who they love or who they are. I can feel him standing there, and I know he is smiling.
Thank you for writing to me, Adri. Thank you for shaking my hand in Nanaimo. I promise you I will never forget your words. They have their own little room inside of me now, and the fire is warm. You and Kate are always welcome to meet me there. I will leave the light on for you.
With much love,
Ivan
3.
OUR FATHERS
NOVEMBER 4, 2019
Greetings, Ivan.
Where I am in your new book is the chapter called “Twelve: Remember that Song?”. I had planned to wait until I finished it completely before writing to you, but I’m pretty excited about it, and maybe writing to you while I’m still reading it is a way of prolonging the whole experience.
I’m basically inhaling every word and when I go back to immediately begin re-reading it, I’ll be surprised if there’s anything left on the page. It’s been a very rough few years for me, so my usual solace of incessant reading hasn’t been there. Couldn’t focus.
Your book is bringing reading back to life for me at the moment and I’m pretty grateful for that. Also, it’s making me laugh, which is always a good thing.
I love that you mention Tom Spanbauer. He wrote one of my favourite books (I Loved You More). I’d say I’m obsessed with masculinity, though I still can’t define what the hell it is. And that book stands out to me as a gorgeous rendering of masculinity. I was transported when I read it.
I grew up in Saskatoon, so your Moose Jaw experience takes me back to the continuous violence I experienced growing up in Saskatchewan in the 60s and 70s.
Had to get the hell out of there, and am glad I survived it to get to Toronto at 19—even though I forever miss the flat land and seeing rain miles away and the northern lights and the sun dogs and the dry air and Cranberry Flats.
I never felt safe there either; never do in small cities or towns. My partner and I drove the Cabot Trail one summer and stopped in Mabou. I got totally triggered and someone shouted at me out of a truck and I couldn’t stop being scared that I’d be dragged behind the pub we were in and, well, you know exactly what I was scared of.
My friend lives in the Yukon and after my mother died in 1994 I drove solo from Saskatoon to Mile 1053 on the Alaska Highway. That was gorgeous and my friend lived on Kluane Lake then in a cabin with a permafrost pit in the back for a fridge. I’ve known her since we were both 4.
Last night I went with my partner and 4-year-old son to a dinner at a rented venue. It was a family event, a baptism celebration for her nephew. I was walking to the bathroom when the person in the coat check informed me that I could not use the Women’s . . . I did tell her a couple of times that I wasn’t a man, but by the time I was washing my hands, she had summoned another staff member who came in and said, “Sir, you can NOT be in here.” I told her the same thing and then there was the usual awkwardness and embarrassment on her part. The kind where you actually start feeling bad for the other person and even lean toward apologizing but stop short of it.
Then I went back to the table where I already felt pretty out of place in my suspenders and dress pants and boots. And I remembered all the times my bladder’s nearly burst because it isn’t safe.
When it happened the day before at the Y, it was an older naked woman and she looked really scared and I was able to find the humour in it all.
But last night I couldn’t and I had you and your book on my mind. So I just went to Facebook and looked at your photos and that helped a lot.
Then I read more of your book when I got home and tried not to read too fast so I could savour it. And that helped too.
I hope you don’t mind that I’m attaching a not very long piece that I wrote several years ago about my relationship with my dad. I say I hope you don’t mind because people probably inundate you with this sort of thing—and I’m not asking you to do anything but read it. Sending because there’s so much I relate to in you, so much cross-over between us.
It’s taken me this long to actually send you an email. Since Boys Like Her—that’s when I first “met” you. 1998.
Thank you for your lovely comment on my Facebook post about your book; I’m quite sure it opened the door for me to communicate with you in this way.
I don’t know how to thank you for all the other stuff you’ve done for me with your writing, your shows, your interviews, video clips, and your existence. But I think you’re a beauty and it’s a great solace to me to have you as a touchstone in this gawdfersakin world.
Love to you, Ivan.
fogel
APRIL 6, 2020
Dear fogel:
When I first got your email, I flagged it in my Gmail with the little red flag button, on my phone. I remember where I was when I read it the first time. Just home from the road, and sitting in my car outside of the Vancouver airport waiting for Sarah, my partner, to appear outside of the arrivals door. We had a big show two days later, and we drove straight from the airport to the rehearsal space to practice with the band. Didn’t even go home.
This is one of those letters, I thought to myself. It will take a while to properly answer this one. Put it in the special file. And so I did. That was five months ago come this Sunday. It’s a Friday night in April of the year 2020. Outside most of the world’s doors a virus is replicating and looking for hosts. Behind some of those doors that virus is weakening lungs and stealing the lives of the loved and the lonely alike. Everything has changed. I’m not on the road anymore, and no one knows when it will be safe again to gather together to tell and listen to stories. So I’m finally answering all those special letters.
First of all, I’m sorry to hear that the last few years have been rough ones for you. It’s weird, with you and I—I feel like I’ve known you for years, from fleeting meetings before or after gigs, and from social media messages and posts, but we’ve never had a drink together, or even sat at a table with two coffees steaming between us. Still I feel like I’ve known you for a long time. I think we first met in 1998 or so, does that sound right? I think we’re around the same age, maybe you are a couple of years older than me, but not much. It’s not just the butch (plus?) thing, either—I mean, it is that, but it’s more than that, too. I have always known you didn’t grow up in a big city, even though I’ve only ever seen you in Toronto. I recognize the neighbour in you, the elementary school you could walk to, the corner store where you would buy those gummies shaped like Coke bottles, and Fudgsicles and sour candies with change you made from collecting pop bottles and babysitting and mowing lawns. If I lived in Saskatoon growing up in the 70s we would have ridden our red five-speeds around the subdivision together under all that sky until the summer sun made long shadows on the dusty chip seal in front of our tires.
We are starting to get old together. Our hair is greying at roughly the same pace. My barber would know exactly how to cut your hair, and yours would mine. We probably own a couple of the same blue shirts. Are your Blundstones black, or brown, or do you own two pairs, like I do? I don’t know the name your father gave you, or if I ever did I forgot it decades ago, and you never knew the name my father still slips and calls me sometimes, and you and I, we both like it that way.
Those old names don’t apply anymore, and in most ways they never really did.
