SHORT:
Last weekend, I attended an exercise class and an old man was staring at me the entire time. I assumed he hated me & wanted me dead for being trans or ugly or something. Turns out? He thinks I did Aikido in a past life and “suggests I re-discover it in this one”.
MEDIUM:
The man-at-the-gym moment made me feel seen and special. Which is, of course, humiliating to admit. Especially because I had to google Aikido after. But I am trying to transcend my fear of schmaltz by noting and celebrating schmaltzy moments in my week.
Today, I watched a woman with a garbage bag full of girl scout cookies try to fit through the emergency exit door of my local subway station. When the police came to help her, she explained that she bought 50 boxes from her niece (who has been the top seller four years in a row) — “but getting all the boxes to work is another thing”. The gesture made me uncharacteristically emotional.
I really feel that the whole world must heal from its schmaltz-phobia. Perhaps I’ll write a Lady Gaga Born-This-Way-esque song about it. “It doesn't matter if you love schmaltz or capital S-C-H-M-A-L-T-Z”. I am going to pretend to not be embarrassed by my own schmaltziness until I actually no longer am… — “fake-it-til-I-make-it” like those boys on Instagram who throw up peace signs in every photo despite the fact that they haven’t felt a shred of actual peace in decades.
LONG:
I’ve been reading about cringe again. How society incentivizes our cringing and subsequent subjugating of the object we are cringing “at” in order to feel a semblance of power/control. I’m trying to stop marrying my cringe-reaction to things with my overall judgement of the subject/person exhibiting the behavior that’s triggering the cringe. Especially because most of the time, the person is ME. I love to wallow in the kingdom of morbid self-reflexive cringe — cringe at myself til the cows come home.
Being transgender, is, of course, a nightmare (I mean… a dream! haha! - nightmares are a TYPE of dream… which nobody talks about… ) when it comes to all of this. Being seen is the goal but also an impossible hell.
I have famously likened the navigation of it to when you’re taking a huge dump in a cafe bathroom and midway through, the lights go off. You’re on the pot, hyper-aware of everything that’s moving through your body… having a 100% carnal, almost painful, corporeal experience on the commode — textbook INCARNATE — and then?
*Snap*
The overhead light that’s on a timer goes out and you go from being definitively in yourself — to nobody at all… an undetectable whisper of a soul in the dark…
So you’re forced to wave your hands at the sky like a Sim — or a person on a deserted island trying to get the attention of a passing plane — in order to trigger the sensor and successfully re-illuminate the dam room. Which is tiring and humiliating. And oftentimes, the light goes out again, moments later — especially if you’re… dropping off a lot of kids at the pool.
The 900 trans people reading this right now are aggressively nodding in recognition and aren’t! at! all! being like: “you’re setting back the movement 50 years by likening our perception paradox to taking a shit at Starbucks”.
If you’re not transgender, but went through any sort of intense schooling, you’ve experienced a similar somatic phenomenon. You were born with a body. Then schooling and academics made you climb a little staircase into your head where you lived for so long you forgot you had a physical form until someone named Zach came along and took your virginity. Then boom. After a night of terrible sex where he was slapping all the wrong parts at the wrong times you were made FIERCELY aware of your corporeality once again
(I had the honor of trying to have sex on a lofted bed my first week of college and falling off midway through — which, I can only assume, was god playing a violent game of duck duck goose with me, shoving me down back into my tits and ass saying, “address what’s going on!” — something I, nevertheless, avoided until years later).
Anyway. We’re all doing a hellish dance to try and balance out the warring cognitive and corporeal (and I’m specifically working on being kinder to people whose dances make me want to pass away from embarrassment. Cuz lord knows my own dancing also does. And by dancing I mean writing and by writing I mean this newsletter).
C U Next Tuesday
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Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
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