Laurustina

I’ve been reading Dave Eggers’ book, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” which had long been on my To Read list but found its way to me through the book bins at the Hospice Hope Chest thrift store. These are my favorite book bins, because all paperbacks are a dollar, except when they are 50 cents because its one of those EVERYTHING 1/2 OFF days. For some reason, which I have yet to figure out, they have the best used book selection in town and I rarely leave without an armful. It is one of those cases of the right book finding you at at the right time. I like when they do that.

wow. wierd. I haven’t been here in a while. Back in November, when I was writing every day, I got into this mindset of writing first thing in the morning, but way back in the day, when I wrote all the time, I did much of it at night. Now I don’t, and I don’t really know why. Maybe its because my hands hurt by the end of the day, or I got so used to my hands hurting by the end of the day that I just stopped even considering writing at night. And now that Mouse and I share this computer, we trade off a lot at night, so I haven’t fallen into an evening writing groove. But blah blah blah … all of that is really just a long-winded way to say that it feels weird to be here now, and it reminds me of the Capitola years, when Mr. J. and I spent our evenings on opposite sides of that big bedroom upstairs in that tiny condo, when my desk was set up on the built-in vanity which meant that all evening I sat at the computer facing a giant mirror, in which I could see the television, the back of my husband’s head, the children when they wandered into the room, and the dogs (Iggy and Fat Lola) sprawled on the bed. There are things I miss rather desperately about Capitola, but the condo is not one of them.

Mouse called from Capitola tonight. He’s visiting for the week, playing the piano in the coffee house late at night and dancing along the cement seawall on his way back to Mary Mary’s place. I look forward to him coming home on Friday. The house is too quiet when he is not here.

I finished The Letter this week. Finally. Its the one I have been mentally working on for more than a year, the one I wanted to send to the Board of Directors at The Pride Center downtown. Actually, it it a completely different letter than the one I first intended to write. But it is, I think, the right letter; the one I needed to send, anyway.Maybe that’s why it took me a year to write it, because I had to get enough distance to realize that what I needed to say and what was actually important for them to hear were not the same things.

I am sending three books for their library along with the letter. My sister made little stickers for me to put inside each one, which read: Donated to the Pride Center library in memory of Ashlie V.; beloved daughter and fierce friend. There is a part of me that wanted to keep the books as soon as they arrived. (I’ve read them all, but own none of them) but I also hope that some day, someone like me will wander through their door in search of information that they didn’t have when I wandered through their door, and someone will go to the shelf and pull down one of those books and give it to her. It is a small gesture and at this moment, even the small gestures feel like  milestones.

The smell of pot roast is oh so pleasant. The smell of Pinesol is also pleasant. However, the smell of pot roast mixed with the smell Pinesol is unpleasant in a clothespin-on-the-nose kind of way. I can only hope that the floors will dry soon.

Nothing feels finished, except that I met an arbitrary goal. I am pleasantly surprised and proud of having done so and I have learned a variety of things along the way. The simplest to articulate are as follows:

I am more myself when I am writing.
I am more connected to myself when I am writing consistently.

The above are related but actually very different things. Having learned (or at least remembered) them, it seems obvious then that I should continue in some manner to do what I have been doing. Maybe not to such an extent that I fuck my wrists and arms and hands up, but doing at least a little of it every day. At the moment, this feels like a safe space in which to do some of that and as long as that continues to be true, I’ll try to do so.

Early this afternoon, I was curled up on the bed with Mr. J. and the pups. We were drifting, half napping, half awake until J. got up and said that he was going to get into the shower. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. I shifted positions and then my cell rang, and I wasn’t aware of answering it, but somehow it was on the pillow and this loud, so loud, and horrible music came out of it, crescendoing until I though it was going to burst my eardrums and then nothing except a whisper of hushed voices from the same source. I tried to turn the phone off, but couldn’t move and the music got loud again, shook the inside of my head again, so loud and long and then the whisper, so quiet I could barely make out words at all.

All through this, I was calling for J. and after the second bout of terrifying loudness, I started to fall over the edge of the bed, still calling out for J. to help me. Then suddenly, he was there, at the side of the bed, having just come into the room from down the hall.

He’d heard nothing except for me calling him, just that last time. The pups were still sleeping. My cell phone was out on my desk and not on the pillow beside me. I was not falling over the edge of the bed, and other than the cold sweat and my racing pulse, everything was as it should be.

A little while later, when I had calmed down, I came in to the computer and looked up auditory hallucinations, wandering around a bit until I found an entry on Wikipedia about Exploding Head Syndrome. It reads as follows:

Exploding Head Syndrome is a condition that causes the sufferer to occasionally experience a tremendously loud noise as originating from within his or her own head usually described as the sound of an explosion, roar, waves crashing against rocks, loud voices or screams, a ringing noise, or the sound of an electrical short circuit (buzzing). Sufferers often feel a sense of fear and anxiety after an attack, accompanied by elevated heart rate. It can also cause the sufferer to feel an extreme rush or adrenaline kick going through his or her head, sometimes multiple times. In most cases, it occurs when they are in a state between light asleep and wakefulness and can be accompanied by Sleep Paralysis.

Well then. Welcome to my exploding head syndrome. I suppose that the good news is, it is not (as one prone to finding new things to fear and worry about might immediately worry about) a sign or symptom of encroaching madness, a brain tumor or some spooky poltergeist.

I open Facebook this morning and scroll down the live feed to see what I’ve missed in the night. There is a reminder tucked in among the status updates and Mafia requests and variety of links, a notice that November 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

They’re having a candlelight vigil in Santa Cruz tonight and I wish I could be there. I click on the reminder and it takes me to the page of the organization which founded the event, intended to raise awareness of violence against trans-people. There’s a downloadable spreadsheet on the site where someone has meticulously cataloged the names and dates and violent deaths of more than five hundred transgender men and women worldwide. It is a sobering read. In California alone, there have been 57 violent deaths this year.

The first trans-person I ever knew was not my friend The Poet, though he taught me more than anyone about gender identity. The first trans-person I knew was a woman I worked with in a little greenhouse company here in the valley, during my sophomore year of college. She was the daughter of the company’s founder and the sister of its CEO. To their credit, they did not ostracize her completely. To their shame, they tucked her away in a back office and kept her out of the public eye. She was in her mid fifties, a seemingly sad and awkward woman and the butt of many an office joke. Even then, knowing as little as I did about, well much of anything, I thought it was a horrible way to treat someone who so obviously had been through so much. But oh, a “man in a dress” is still one of those things that

makes people giggle
makes people stare
makes people whisper
makes people feel confused
makes people uncomfortable
makes people feel threatened
makes people fearful
makes people angry
makes people violent
makes people do things they wouldn’t do, if she would just

be normal
behave
be a man
be ashamed
be quiet and stay inside
her house
her office
herself
or wherever it is people should stay,
when being who they really are “makes” other people

giggle
stare
whisper
confused
uncomfortable
threatened
fearful
angry
violent

I count myself lucky to have known and continue to know my share of strong and lovely trans men, but somehow this day reminds me especially of the brave and beautiful trans women whose paths have crossed mine, of Edna, and Dax, of my friend who I like to call The Queen of Dangerous Shoes…

…and last though never ever least, it reminds me of a certain fifteen year old boy, one I’d known quite well when he was a child, but who had become a virtual stranger by the time he said quite simply, “See, I know why I’m always angry. It’s because I’m sad. And I know why I’m always sad, it’s because I’m a girl.”

Suddenly, she was twice the stranger that he’d been moments ago, and I can’t even begin to imagine the expression on my own face, when she smiled sheepishly and said, “I am Ashlie.”

Though I cannot be with my friends tonight, I want them to know that I am there in spirit, that I honor and mourn with them at the loss of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, parents and lovers and friends.

what does one do when one’s word-processing program starts autocorrecting each instance of the word “mother” to “motherfucker”? should one fix the program first and then worry about the implications or wash ones mouth out (or is it fingertips in this instance?) with Lava soap, pop a Xanex and take a nice little nap?

For two days, I’ve written shit, in that I’ve barely written and most of what I wrote was shit, which is interesting only in that I have apparently begun to qualify the quality as well as measure the quantity of what I’m writing.