Tender affirmation
I’ve been watching Pluribus recently for the third time and while I freely admit that I totally have a screen crush on Rhea Seehorn, she’s outstanding in this show, it’s the story that keeps me refilling my popcorn. Avoiding spoilers, Carol Sturka was married, lived a privileged life, and was concerned with the little insecurities, exasperations, and mundanity that such a life afforded. Until one day she finds herself suddenly completely alone in the world. To begin with Carol adapts, but beneath the surface the foundations of her psychology are eroding. Carol experiences a sharp, desolate isolation that grows a deep and abiding need within her. That need is what the story is really about. It is unspoken, disguises itself as a kind of sadness, and is only revealed to Carol as she begins to find ways to meet it.
It is a need for someone else.
Carol has one being with whom she can have something of a relationship. They are morally questionable, responsible ultimately for the death of her wife. But they are the only company she has. Under the hood the show is about what you are willing to sacrifice to keep someone, anyone, in your life. It explores how love is a need so fundamental that in isolation you will find ways to meet it even in otherwise deeply unlikely places.
Unlike Carol's, our world is replete with people. We are so populous that we have had to build walls to keep each other at sufficient distance. I live in this little rented flat with people within a few metres above me and to either side, with literal walls and floors between us keeping us apart. Beyond bricks and mortar we erect metaphysical walls of quiet, where we each keep our actions from unduly influencing the lives of the people around us. We are compelled to act in ways that minimise how much our lives brush uncomfortably against the people in our close proximity.
This is not how Humans are supposed to live.
We are surrounded by people but we keep ourselves alone. The walls between us risk isolation. But in that isolation there is opportunity to find connection, even in the unlikely places.
I went wheelchair racing on Saturday. I wanted to meet people, find friendship, and to work out my body in a way that means I can barely walk for days after.
One of the two men running the event, whom we’ll call Logan, was deeply kind. I mean they were both incredible men, this isn't the good person Olympics, but Logan really stuck with me. I saw him helping people in and out of chairs, asking them before he placed hands to help them, considering their needs, responding to their requests. He was also funny and charming and, I'll be honest with you, I found myself flirting with him a little.
Now I know what you’re going to say, dear reader, you’re going to remind me that I’m married. I’ll not say much about this here, but please know that I flirt with my partner's consent and she’ll be the first person I tell excitedly when I get home. I also know what you’ll say next, dear reader, you’ll say with some incredulity ‘aren’t you gay?!’.
Yes. I mean I think so.
For sure I’ve always been attracted to women. But there is something about Logan. He is kind, compassionate, willing to put his body under strain and, I suspect, no small amount of pain to help his disabled kin, myself included. Somehow I find that pretty attractive, I’m not going to lie. But this isn’t a sexual attraction. Well it’s not not a sexual attraction. But it’s also a source of a much more precious resource, desirable well beyond sexual fulfilment, that of affirmation.
As I enter a phase of my transition where my gender history slips further into the background of my life, I am starting to embody my whole self more comfortably. I think less about my transness, hardly feeling trans at all, and instead I just inhabit the world fully as myself. During wheelchair racing a woman I found abundantly hilarious was making me laugh and at one point she held out a hand toward me. I spotted the invitation for what it was, the opportunity to wiggle fingers at one another in a show of femme solidarity. I went one step further, reaching over to offer to hold her hand for a beat, and she reciprocated. The moment of intimacy we shared was lovely. I’m learning to just be who I am in the world.
But this occurs in a country, in a world, where being trans is considered an enormous secret to keep. Being trans is seen as fundamentally invalidating, as though not telling people is a clandestine act. Being legibly you as evidence of a good disguise. That conception smothers our identities. In this world affirmation is precious because it reminds us we’re real. It is water to our withering self-concept, nurturing it back into being. In this world affirmation is like oxygen to a dying flame.
Enter sexuality.
When it comes to affirmation there is one form that is more powerful than any other, that of romantic intwinement. When someone likes you, they like you, the version of you they see before them. It is very difficult to discount the affirmation garnered by attraction.
Logan found me attractive, or at least I think he did, and his flirtation was its own invitation, one I am again just learning to identify and accept. And for those moments where we were flirting, he made me feel like myself. He saw me. When he helped me up. When he was worried about the weakness of my wobbly legs, holding me gently to steady me. When we shared a little joke. I started to breathe as if for the first time in a long time.
Now I know that if I were to take our little flirtation further, I’d have to tell Logan about my gender history. I’d have to come out to him. There’s no other option in this country unless you want to get arrested. And that would suddenly make my transness immediate and apparent even if it didn’t change how he saw me. Though I’m sure he’d search my features for signs, question whether I was indeed femme enough to maintain his sense of his own sexuality, consider whether I was passable enough to satisfy his friends and family in their perceptions of his sexuality. And there’s always the possibility that this knowledge would more immediately threaten his sexuality, and the risk that he’d be angry.
Being a girl is exhausting. Being a trans girl is outright knackering.
But this interaction teaches me something about affirmation. These moments with Logan are special for what they are, evidence of a little attraction between us, and full of the affirmation that brings. Playing with this attraction is risky I know. And I still don’t generally feel attracted to guys. But like love, in a world devoid of validation, in the context of a sharp, desolate denial of your being, you will search for and find affirmation even in the unlikeliest of places.
And so I go on. In search of that spark that gives life to the parts of me exiled by an invalidating society. I find that fire wherever I can.