Reversible Party Town

Crumpled boxes of tobacco, the kind

that come with papers. Cans of Coke and lager,

ringpulls popped. Ripped shreds of Rizla

and Gold Leaf. Filters. The unexpected light still on at home.

The walk through town on Friday night,

taxi rank queues swelled by rugby crowds.

The Metro station closed for renovation,

realisation coming far too late.

The walk to the Pink Triangle

to catch cabs at a less-attended rank.

The tent in the square by the Centre for Life:

the Ladyboys again.

The hunt through your bag for a hair tie.

Coming up short. The thought

of cis eyes gazing, cis mouths gawping

at the spectacle of colonised trans bodies.

‘You can hardly tell, can you?’

‘What does it mean if I fancy one?’

The man who tried to walk beside you,

strike up conversation. Fear. The way

your steps got quicker, how you slipped

deliberately between the groups of smokers,

the two men pissing in the alleyway you switched down.

How you remembered you’d told him

which bar you were going to.

Your relief when you found it too crowded,

too renovated, not the dive it was,

a hotel bar without the benefit of bedrooms,

full of gaping wallets

and curated beards.

The way the ultraviolet light

lit up the cotton shielding your breasts

on the dancefloor. The adjustments

you made in the toilet.

‘I hate it when the credits end, and there is only silence.’ 

The Balanced Act of Introduction

His preferred pronoun

is anything but they.

He says that he’s happy with he  right now

because he’s in boy mode today.

He thinks his feet are far too small

(he’s wearing purple Converse).

He says without his thick-rimmed specs

he’s basically blind.

I try them on, worried the dimensions of my head

will stretch the legs too far.

I tell him looking through them

is like being boxed with one of Bacon’s Popes.

I talk to him about the time

I was the Other Woman (how I found

that I could not connive in gaslighting by proxy),

and worry that I’m treating this as interview, am wittering.

He tells me he weighs six and a half stone.

I try to work out how many of him

would fit into a single me,  and give up.

Maths has never been my strong suit. 

Weekly round-up

It's been quite a busy week for me in terms of online stuff, so I thought it might be a good idea to post all the links here in one easy to follow digest.

First, last Friday, we had the Public Address: The Soapbox Tour trailer:

Then my review of the frankly absurdly luxurious Doubletree by Hilton London Docklands Riverside went up at Vada Magazine.

I was also featured as the guest interviewee on this week's Getting Better Acquainted podcast.

And yesterday I had another piece up at Clarissa Explains Fuck All, this time looking at what Katy Perry's being groped by a female fan, and the way this incident was reported, says about our double standards on sexual assault.

I also put up a new poem from the show I'm working on, but then if you're reading this blog you probably already know that...

Identities

You're an incredibly feminine guy
and that's how you self-identify
but you're chromosomally not XY
and that means that sometimes I wonder why
I call myself a lesbian
when I'm having sex with
a transsexual man

like a white boy who likes Eminem
but can't tell where nu-rock ends
and hip-hop began
I know what I want but don't understand
what it means
who it dreams
and where I should stand

on the side of a divide
that I'm not used to,
with a style I decide
I'm entitled to
without asking
if my masculine
partner's okay
with a woman shaggin' him
and still maintaining she's gay

Is it simply the fact that what I should say
defines my sexuality,
or do other people matter?
Do the objects of my patter
have a chance, can they choose,
do they have a choice
or will my speaking over them

drown out their voice?

If I like to claim dyke
does that mean that I am
if the guy that I like
sees himself as a man?

And if the bits that I kiss
will dictate what I be,
what exactly does this
indicate about me?

Closure

You will be allowed to form the impression that there is something called ‘closure’, and that this is something you can somehow ‘get’. You will chase this impression and you will do stupid things. You will confide in the wrong people. You will confide in the right people, but you will confide in them to the point where your confidences become a wearying burden, to the point where even you will be able to identify the micro-expressions of tiredness and tension that ghost across their faces when you open your mouth after taking your third drink. Gradually you will find yourselves not winding up at the same parties, and you will wonder if they are avoiding you. They will assure you they are not, but things are really taking off for them right now and they’re so busy and it’s a shame.

You will tell them you know how that feels! But you will think things are not taking off for me.

You will post things, in the middle of the night, that will lead people to send you messages asking if you have people around who can help. You will think if that was the case, would I be saying this here, asshole? You will think that’s code for ‘people other than me’. You will reply oh I’m fine really, just venting. My flatmates are sleeping. They’re here but they’re sleeping. I promise I won’t do anything stupid. You will feel that you have, in fact, just done something stupid.

You will form the impression that the way to get closure is not to surround yourself with Negative People. You will prune your friends list. You will be relentlessly upbeat. You will stop being invited to parties but you are okay with this because your body is a temple and alcohol is a poison. You will stand in front of your bathroom mirror repeating words and you will go to work and hit targets and smile and laugh at the jokes your line manager makes. You will focus on attracting what you want. You will start sharing photos with inspirational sayings on them from sites with vague titles. A friend will send you a long email, with links, explaining that one of the photos you have linked comes from a site which opposes vaccination for measles, and which by a conservative estimate is responsible for a global uptick in deaths from this disease. You will delete them. You will not surround yourself with Negative People. Another friend will send you a message explaining that one of the inspirational messages you have shared is actually a quotation from Mein Kampf. You will delete them. You will not surround yourself with Negative People.

You will go out to a party with the local Positive People you surround yourself with and at this party you will have your first drink in months. Three drinks in, the Positive Person whose album ‘Beach Pictures 2014’ you have committed to memory will start talking to you about how jet fuel cannot melt steel beams and you will realise that you have spent six months of your  life surrounding yourself with Aggressively Delusional People. You will suddenly realise that you are utterly sick of angels, love languages, changing profile pictures to spread awareness of colorectal cancer, betting your mother you can get 5 million likes and teaching your kids lessons about how quickly nudes can spread on Facebook. Five drinks in you will tell the Positive People how sick you are of all this, and ask them if they, honestly, aren’t sick of it as well? Don’t they know about measles? Don’t they know about the Hitler quotes? Have they ever thought of checking? Do they never think that okay, maybe it does take more muscles to frown than it does to smile but maybe those are muscles you might one day need, and if you can do Kegels every day then surely to God you can allow yourself to frown?

The party will wrap up halfway through your sixth drink. In the morning you will have fewer friends on Facebook. They do not surround themselves with Negative People.

Public Address: the Soapbox Tour TRAILER!

LOOK. It ME. In a TRAILER. Not gonna lie, so TOTALLY PSYCHED for this tour now!

Sometimes I call you mine (content note: contains discussion of sexual assault)

Sometimes I call you my rapist,

and that feels wrong somehow,

but I cannot keep saying the woman who raped me

every time I mention you,

and cannot say your name

because

I only know your first name anyway,

and in saying even that I turn accuser

and am too aware how easily my case could be undone,

an accuser who’d been drinking when it happened;

an accuser who’d consented, at the start;

an accuser who, at the time, was presenting as male:

an accuser who’d be bound to fail, in court.

So I, out of need for variation, name you mine:

My rapist. It feels wrong. Too intimate

somehow, suggests collusion, a joint enterprise

between us. It takes two,

they say. Two, babe: me. You.

It smacks of going steady and those creepy ‘50s love songs:

Every night, I hope and pray

this fear will go away,

but I cannot say your name, and

the woman who raped me sounds clunky and anyway

is legally someone who can’t exist:

English law defines rape as an act

committed only by the male. It’s sexual assault

when women do it. As if the two are easily distinguished,

but the woman who sexually assaulted me

is clunkier still than the woman the law calls impossible,

so, sometimes, you are my rapist,

and I wonder if, in some sense, that is true:

was I the only one? You seemed surprised

that I said no. Was it shock that spurred you on

as much as malice? Or instead of it?

And do I want that? Does it make you better,

or me special, if it was only the once?

It doesn’t matter if I’m one or one of many.

I may call you my rapist but we know that isn’t true.

Whatever law or rumour says, whoever else there was,

you were never mine. You were the rapist I ran into.