549 lines
23 KiB
HTML
549 lines
23 KiB
HTML
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<title>Zk | Gender</title>
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<h1>Zk | Gender</h1>
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</header>
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<article class="content">
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<p><q class="comment">In <em>Eigengrau</em></q></p>
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<div class="verse">Her hair is tied with a ribbon
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Saying "This is not for you."
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She wears a pendant of stamped brass
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Saying "Non sum qualis eram."
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"I have been a hero since birth,"
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She tells herself,
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As though that will somehow
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Explain her scars.
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She pierced her own ears,
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But did a shit job of it.
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Her tattoos tease around
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the edges of her identity.
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Her bones are ley-lines,
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She tells herself,
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Strung with symbols
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Heady with meaning.
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She has a certain "fuck you" inflected
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"Je ne sais quoi" about her.
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Her clothes bespeak
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carefully constructed laziness.
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"I've got my own style,"
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She tells herself,
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While doing all she can
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To not be seen.
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She studied order through science
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and found it chaotic.
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She studied chaos through music
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and found it inviable.
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"I'll work with words."
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She tells herself
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She'll write a book,
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Or publish stories.
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She wanted to be a bus driver
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when she grew up.
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Then a linguist, then a biologist,
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Then a composer, a conductor.
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She never wanted to be
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What she became;
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The irony of which
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Is not lost on her.</div>
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<hr />
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<h2 id="post-op-images">Post-op images</h2>
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<p><q class="comment">In <em>Eigengrau</em></q><q class="comment">In <em>ally</em></q></p>
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<div class="verse">Saturday is for mechanics.
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Sunday is for terror.
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Monday is for acceptance.
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Tuesday is for purging.
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Wednesday is for anxiety.
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Thursday is for sleep.
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-----
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When I am asleep
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The world changes around me.
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In spring, I am changed.
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-----
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I'm no good at images, only words,
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and yet for days after surgery,
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as anesthesia and countless
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milligrams, milliliters, millions of
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drugs leave my system,
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I'm lousy with visions,
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each lousy with meaning.
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I lay in bed, unable to move,
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struggling to keep my eyes open;
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I know that if I close them,
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I'll be lost, I'll be lost, I'll be
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mired in waking dreams,
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coherent visions with all the logic
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of that paler side of consciousness.
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Perhaps the veil here
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is still too thin and vague,
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the pool too clear, the monsters too scary
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too lean, too mean, too hungry, or
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perhaps I was too close to death
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to come away totally unscathed,
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too close to completely survive.
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It's as though, laying here,
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stinking of hospital,
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I'm seeing emotions play out,
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Scene after scene, scene after scene,
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anxiety shown in heaps of discarded entrails,
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hope in the ceaseless ratcheting of gears,
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determination in the marching of feet.
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If I were an artist, perhaps
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I could hope to touch these images,
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but as it is, every word falls short,
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too vague, too inexact, too tight to
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hope to explain something so vast
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by the very act of attempting to reproduce;
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I can only hint from the margins.
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That poetry can accomplish what prose cannot
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in its economy of motion
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is attractive to me, here in recovery -
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so tired, so tired, so tired - so
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maybe I can hope to express the dire import
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of these visions dancing behind closed lids,
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or at least remind myself on rereading.
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Even now, a week out,
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I'm starting to lose touch with the visions,
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I can almost touch them if I squint,
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lie real still, don't move now, but
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even then, a shadow of the substance...
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I'm starting to consign to memory
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that which was probably memory to begin with.
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-----
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It is two hundred miles between what I expect and what I want.
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Two hundred long strides that seem impassible from one direction,
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and from the other a day's short drive.
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It is nine and a half hours between question and answer.
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A half hour of jazz, nine hours of sleep, a scant second of perspective,
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and I can only traverse in one direction
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It is eleven inches between who I was and who I am.
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Ten of those inches are pain, the eleventh is numb,
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There's pleasure to be had in there, I'm promised.
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It is twelve years between what I want and what I get:
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Ten years of remembering who I will become, two years running,
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Eight days dreaming.
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-----
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What have you changed?
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<em>My mind</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>Nothing</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>I am not who I was</em>
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What have you changed?
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<em>My name</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>The word</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>I am called who I am</em>
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What have you changed?
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<em>My looks</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>The light</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>I am seen as I am</em>
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What have you changed?
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<em>My chemistry</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>The substance</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>My form is my own</em>
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What have you changed?
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<em>My body</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>The knife</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>I am shaped how I am</em>
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What have you changed?
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<em>Nothing</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>I was accepted</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>I accepted myself</em>
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What have you changed?
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<em>Everything</em>
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What changed you?
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<em>Everything</em>
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What became of it?
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<em>I became who I am</em></div>
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<hr />
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<p><q class="comment">In <em>ally</em></q></p>
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<div class="verse">It is surprisingly hard to think something real
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when every indication, every word, all you feel
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tells you that that must not be the case.
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There's no easy way to make yourself face
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that which your emotions continually deny,
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no matter how true you know it to be.
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                 But why
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must all these contradictions claim events
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that mean the most to us? What prevents
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them from taking the unimportant? The small?
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Is the import just to big? Can we not fit all
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of the thing in our heads? Are we too weak?
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Is the life-changing too vast to explore, to seek
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out every corner?
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<blockquote>Have you considered that your constant seeking
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may be the problem? That your anxieties leaking
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all over may be what's preventing you
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from recognizing what's actually true:
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you can do things for yourself. It's allowed.</blockquote>
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It also doesn't help that there were so many delays.
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The scheduler losing my application, and me counting days
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after those who consulted after me got their dates;
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The mishap of the letters, and me rushing past gates
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and their keepers; countless thoughts of countless regrets —
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regrets which hadn't yet happened — as mom frets
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that maybe I will wind up hating my new body.
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And why not? Why not fret? Surgery! How gaudy.
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I fight with myself enough over how this surgery
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is plastic, how I'm just doing something sugary
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to somehow make myself somewhat more appealing.
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How trite. How selfish. How lame. How revealing
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of my bottomless shallowness.
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<blockquote>Your saving grace being, as always, dysphoria:
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more than any cough or cold, more than your chorea,
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it provided you with a problem. Something fixable.
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It gave you a tangible solution to something integral
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that plagued you.</blockquote>
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That I had something I could concrete at which to point
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that would be fixed by this act, I could thus annoint
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it as somehow more worthy, something worth doing.
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If I could go through some process of ungluing,
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excise this thing from myself I might become whole
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in some way never before imagined.
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                Ah, but the toll.
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There must always some arbitrary price to pay ---
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Self-actualization must never be free --- and hey,
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Everything in society must come with a reason.
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To come up with letters, proof, for that season
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of change must serve some sort of divine end.
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To wait eighteen long months, to refuse to bend
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to others' whims...
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<blockquote>You got your letters, you got your date, you did it.
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You did your labor, you did your time. They let you fidget
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and twist in the wind. Hell, they did it to you twice.
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Your letters only good for one year, you had to ask nice
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for a second set.</blockquote>
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Yes.
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   To preempt your 'why', I followed my own advice:
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If I feel the same when I'm depressed as I do when I feel nice,
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It's a thing worth doing. Eighteen months is time enough
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to let at least two depressive cycles call my own bluff.
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When they did not, when I panicked at having to reapply
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and still pulled through in time, well, no need to justify
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my actions any further. That's when it all became real.
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That's when I was in. That's when I could tell just by feel
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that I was ready for this change. I wasn't <em>ready</em> ready,
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but I was ready enough to come off as rock steady
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when I called the surgeon's office. I was visibly confident,
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even at the pre-operative appointments, totally cognizant
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that I didn't deserve this.
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<blockquote>Whether or not you deserve this is not up for debate.
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Not because you do or don't so much as because the hand fate
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dealt you. You had the job, you had the insurance, the means.
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You made the call. You took the step. You passed the screens.
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<strong>You</strong> did this.</blockquote>
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There are so many words that could be said
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about the preparation for surgery, all those steps that led
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to that six-thirty AM call. The days of purging.
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The anxiety. The drive. My husband's gentle urging.
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That night in the Airbnb. That last shower with the Hibiclens.
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All that has faded. It's distored at the edge of the lens
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of my memory.
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       No, what remains is the two hours before:
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the being so scared that I was reduced to the barest core.
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There was nothing left of me but fear, not even a name.
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I could still drive — the fear was quiet and tame —
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I could get us to the ambulatory surgery waiting room.
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But beyond that, I was a non-person. Or convict: my doom
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was in their hands.
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<blockquote>Non-person? Doom? Give yourself at least some credit.
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You still had agency. You still had a choice, could have not let it
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happen. You say of travel that getting you there is their job:
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you felt the same here. You crossed the doorway and let this mob
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of nurses do theirs.</blockquote>
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And that's exactly what happened. I crossed that threshold,
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and then there I was: a patient before a team ready to handhold.
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At that point, I was no longer bearing all that weight.
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I was able to relax and let them guide me, a piece of freight
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working through a system. I even had a barcode to scan.
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Some gabapentin. My belongings in a bag. A rundown of the plan.
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An IV, and a second after the first missed. Meet the surgeon,
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then the anaesthesiologist.
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            I felt myself then a virgin.
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I was at this point being prepared for some strange sacrifice,
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a process of pain and cutting, of rebirth. A cut, a slice,
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and I would become something more...what? Mature? More complete?
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Where I'd never put stock in virginity before — so obsolete —
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it fits well, now.
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<blockquote>It's the penetration. It's the being opened up. The breach in tegument.
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There is change implied in the loss of virginity. Something elegant,
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something beyond just the physical. Maybe it's maturity,
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maybe it's a coming of age, or even some strange aspect of purity.
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It's a one-way change</blockquote>
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That no-going-back-ness grew stronger and stronger,
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and the minutes just seemed to go longer and longer,
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as I got closer and closer to the fateful moment of change.
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I was laid on my back. I wwas wheeled to the OR. "How strange,"
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I thought. "That I'll never know where this room actually is.
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I'm wheeled here on my back, the surgeon does his biz,
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and I'll wake up in post-op." To this day, I have no idea.
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Did all of my friends go through this? Did Katt? Did Lutea?
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Were we all whisked away to some dreamside room
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where we would be changed? Some strange, perhaps-tomb?
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After all, this surgery, this procedue, none of this was riskless.
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Would this be where we died? Would we pass here, resistless,
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in the depths of anaesthesia?
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<blockquote>Was that really such a worry?
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               I mean, I suppose it had to have been.
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You spent all that time polishing your will. How could you begin
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to deny the death-thoughts inherent in a nine-hour surgery?
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That you didn't still leaves you feeling like you're living a forgery
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of a life.</blockquote>
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But then I was in. I was in that room with surprisingly green walls.
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The nurses dropped me off, and from down those hidden halls
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came surgeon, anaesthesiologist, what seemed like dozens of people.
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"Here, hold this over your face," someone said as a needle
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wandered into my IV's injection port. "It's just oxygen."
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My hand began to slip. Oxygen? Some sort of intoxicant?
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They laughed, repeated, "No no, you have to hold it up."
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Perhaps it was O2, but whatever was injected began to interrupt
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any train of thought. The jazz music they'd put on, at my request,
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was overwhelmed by static. My vision followed. Silence: blessed.
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Speed: surprising. Is this death? A rush of nothing. Is this death?
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Nothing.
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    Nothing. Nothing. Is this death?
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                  Nothing. Is this death?
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Silence, static.
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<blockquote>    Was this death?
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Nothing.        Nothing, death?     nothing
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                    Nothing,
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                             Nothing.
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    Was this death?
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Death?         Nothing.
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                          Death? Nothing.
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                 There was nothing.
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Silence.
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    Static.
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        Nothing.
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                  Death.
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              Death.
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                       Silence.
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                           Death.
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       Silence.
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    Static.
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Static.         Static.
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                Death, static.
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                         Death.
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And then you woke up.
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</blockquote>
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And then I woke up, and I was in the post-op recovery room.
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Disoriented, loopy, giggly, not yet in pain --- a small boon.
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There was the nurse, and there was JD. How long had he been there?
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After some indeterminate time, I was wheeled...somewhere.
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Yet more anonymous halls. Yet more competent nurses.
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Language was not yet wholly available to me, no verses
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yet to be had, despite the heady sensation of the opiate
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coursing through me; only giggles, however inappropriate,
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every time we went over a bump or up a ramp.
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And then I was in my room.
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            Me. A bed. My IV. A lamp.
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Square. Spacious. A bathroom I could not yet walk to.
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Hourly vitals. Friendly staff wandering through to talk to.
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And a button in my hand.
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<blockquote>That button, which you were instructed to press
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every seven minutes. A morphine drip, or dilaudid, at a guess.
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Every seven minutes, a bit of nightmare dripped into your veins.
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Every seven minutes, more entrails, more gears, more chains
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coursing through your mind.</blockquote>
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There was pain, too, and the drip did indeed lessen that.
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Still, the pain grew less, and soon I switched meds to combat
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that ebbing tide. Tylenol. Hydrocodone. The button was removed.
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Pills. Pills. Every four hours: pills. I complain, but improved
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nonetheless. Antibiotics. Stool softeners. Painkillers.
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The nurses wandering in and out became my tillers:
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They steered my days, steered my pain, steered my diet.
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We talked. We laughed. We shared private jokes in the quiet
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of the night over BP cuffs. They helped with bedpan duty,
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thankless though it was. Another patient would cry, flutey,
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and they'd hurry off. I remember none of their names.
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Every now and then, when he made it down to Portland, James
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would visit, perhaps spend the night.
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<blockquote>Your laptop unweildy, you spent most of your time on your phone.
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Even when no one was there, you were never quite alone.
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Hours on Taps. Hours on Telegram. Five long days on your back,
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and you, a side sleeper! Anything and everything to distract
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from that fact.</blockquote>
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It wasn't all monotony. The surgeon came in to check on me.
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They removed my dressing, and then my packing, setting me free,
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stepwise, from confinement. The last day was the biggest of all:
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The packing, catheter, and drains were removed. I tried to crawl
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from bed, found myself on the verge of collapse. I showered
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and saw my body changed. They measured my urine. Nurses glowered
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at how little. They threatened to put the catheter back.
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Embarrassed, I defecated, then tried again. Now on track,
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I was finally discharged. It was then that I finally saw,
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from my wheelchair, the hitherto only hinted at hall
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outside my door. It was somehow still unreal to me.
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Or perhaps I was simply to eager to finally be free
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from the room.
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<blockquote>Undiluted sunlight while you waited on JD to get the car
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hurt your eyes. You could still barely stand, afraid to jar
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your new body in your dizziness. Almost more overwhelming
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than the hours before the surgery was you helming
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your dissociating self.</blockquote>
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All the way to the B&B, crossing that street, getting settled,
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I was nothing. I was not myself. I was soft, bepetaled.
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I was new. I was raw. Cliché, sure, but I was a flower
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newly sprouted. Under anaesthesia, I ceased to tower
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over the earth and instead became one with it. Or my dream
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finally became reality and I had become a tree, the theme
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of growth omnipresent within me. It was too much, too much.
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So I slept. I waited for Robin to join me, just to clutch
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at things familiar. Something to anchor past me to the present.
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I had become a tree, had grown, and sure, it was pleasant,
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but all the same, I still needed something to keep me grounded.
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I needed to not be completely unmoored, to not be unbounded.
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But it was done.
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<blockquote>It was done. It was complete. You'd started taking action,
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and kept on taking steps until you were there, beyond abstraction.
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This was concrete. This was real. This was true. <strong>You</strong> were true.
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You weren't false before, but all the same, now that you were new,
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you were more true now</blockquote>
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What can I say of healing? Of life after change?
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I got used to it, bit by bit. I slowly learned my range,
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the extent of my new body. Proprioception caught up immediately,
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and there were no phantom sensations, and the immediacy
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was startling at first, but I got used to it, to my new form.
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Over the next weeks and months, I slowly learned my new norm.
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I learned by regaining feeling. I learned with every muscular flex.
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I learned by dilating. I learned by masturbating. I learned by sex.
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While I refused to let my happiness hinge on such a thing,
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a part of me hoped it'd make me more comfortable get in the swing
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of sex, and while it helped, I still was still largely okay without.
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|
My body was still my own. Whole and entire. My life played out,
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|
and I became more myself.
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<blockquote>This isn't going how you pictured it, this bit of writing.
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You were going to talk more about healing, about fighting
|
|
for permission to change, about your $76,000 bill.
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|
And here you talk of trees and growth. Did you not get your fill?
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|
Do you still need this outlet?</blockquote>
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Apparently.
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|
      Apparently I still need to revel in the newness.
|
|
Apparently, what I need out of this project isn't the trueness
|
|
of the concrete. We should really have expected nothing less.
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This is a project to dig for truth, a project to confess.
|
|
It is not a project for describing stitches stabbing me in the clit.
|
|
It is not for telling about each successive dilator testing the fit
|
|
of my new depths. Could I have gone into that? Yes. Perhaps.
|
|
Perhaps I still will. Later. For now, I still need to run laps,
|
|
to circle around some dark core and discern its edges.
|
|
Perhaps if I know that shape, if I peek over enough hedges,
|
|
I'll somehow know myself better. I don't know. It feels unlikely.
|
|
Maybe there is no knowing the self. Still, I have to try, rightly
|
|
or not.
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|
<blockquote>Fair enough. Still, at some point, discuss the concrete.
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|
So many have asked you to, and perhaps you'd feel complete.
|
|
Perhaps that, too, would be of use to you. Not everything demands
|
|
such thorough introspection. Not everything fits in the wetlands
|
|
of your subconscious</blockquote>
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|
Of course not. I know this. <em>You</em> know I know this.
|
|
I'm not deflecting, just focusing on this part of the abyss.
|
|
The concrete aspects are for writing with clarity,
|
|
not with verse. They're for writing with the sincerity
|
|
borne of experience, so that perhaps others can benefit.
|
|
Of this, only I need benefit. There is an etiquette
|
|
to writing for others. Here, there is only an ally.
|
|
This is for me and you. Your role is to hear my lie,
|
|
to call it out, to force me to correct myself, my words.
|
|
My role is to keep on writing, be it about surgery or birds,
|
|
and to learn from our discussions. To learn? To suffer?
|
|
Perhaps more the latter. To hurt, and grow tougher
|
|
by hurting.
|
|
<blockquote>You have been called on that, yes, writing to suffer.
|
|
And it's not wrong. You sit at your laptop and fill the buffer
|
|
with sentences and lines and paragraphs of memories and pain.
|
|
Do you really grow tougher? Is it masochisim, or do you gain
|
|
real insight from this?</blockquote>
|
|
I think I do. It's therapeutic to try and understand myself better.
|
|
is it not? With every paragraph and line and word and letter,
|
|
I think I reduce the borders of that abyss. Or if not reduce,
|
|
I spraypaint a red line five feet from them, so that I can deduce
|
|
my roughest edges. I'm often say that it's easy to discern boundaries
|
|
by crossing them. I've crossed them here, with you. Foundries
|
|
of thought and emotion are within me, ceaselessly toiling.
|
|
I want to tour them all. I want to see them boiling.
|
|
I feel them. I house them. I smell them and taste them.
|
|
I just also want to understand them. There's no chaste hem
|
|
to the subconscious, so I have to map it, map these crude sources.
|
|
Then I can experience thisness --- I hope --- when buffeted by forces
|
|
internal.
|
|
<blockquote>If you say so, I suppose. Do you think it'll work, though?
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|
Aren't such works unknowable by definition? They grow,
|
|
they wane. You can sense them by their effects and emissions,
|
|
but isn't seeing them, truly seeing, knowing their positions,
|
|
reserved for dreams?</blockquote></div>
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