An open letter to the Indigo Girls

Hey Amy and Emily,

I’m writing this from an open garage door about 300 feet from my apartment. It’s raining hard. I’m annoyed.

The last time I saw you was on Transparent, providing your talents in a fictional version of MWMF. For that, I already want to thank you.

Well played.

Before I started writing this, I was sitting by the dumpster with half a beer, looking up at the sky. It was cloudy, and there was lightning racing across the clouds, but I thought for sure that it would eventually pass, and I would be able to take advantage of the weird *confluence of celestial events* that is supposed to bring to earth tonight one of the best Perseids of the lives of most living people who can type.

Meteors, y’all!

So far, I have been proven wrong.

While I was sitting in the NJ humidity, hoping that the metal dumpster wouldn’t attract unexpected attention from the lighting bolts above me, I thought of a line from a song:

“Too thick the heat of those long summer evenings, for a cool evening I began to yearn…”

I used to be embarrassed by my youth, but now that I am past 30, I am weirdly proud to think of myself, at age 11, deep in the 90s, figuring out that there were actual lesbians making music, and that I could compile their music by way of CDs and six hour Napster downloads. In this morass, I found you, and I fell in love.

This was late 1995, when 1200 Curfews blindsided me with the idea that gay women could make an album of live tracks, and the entire time, there was an audience behind them, listening and screaming.

Lesbian music was a thing. It blew my little mind.

I worked my way backwards from 1200 Curfews and Swamp Ophelia, to Nomads, Indians, and Saints, to Strange Fire and your self titled EP, discovering your music, and learning. It was a constant thing for me, immediate in the way things become when you are a queer teen, reaching out, grabbing.

It was my thing. I was always looking for the next rarity. I found some good shit, your addition to the Philadelphia movie soundtrack, outtakes from Atlanta bars in the late 80s.

My dad, the liberal music connoisseur, was overjoyed when Shaming of the Sun came out with fresh tracks that saved him from another round of “Galileo”. (For reference when it relates to his tastes, “Starkville” is his favorite of your songs. It’s in my top 5.)

While I was cresting the wave of your popularity, the queerness of your music came to me at the right time, and brought me to other acts like Ani Difranco, Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Team Dresch, Bitch and Animal, and Erin Mckeown — the most latter of whom, by complete accident, connected me to my partner of over 6 years now. (To take it back to the south: We ain’t killed each other yet, so thanks?)

But back to the past, again.

When I was about 15, and Come Now Social came out, I had gotten a figurative kick in the teeth by life and gender and identity.

I’d known since around age 6 that gender didn’t make sense to me. [I keep among my personal effects a photo of me at about that age, scowling and sitting on a tree branch (which later had to be sawed off due to termites) next to the butchest of my elementary girl friends in full Girl Scout regalia. If you ever happen to see it, I’m the one scowling in tiny sweat pants. In our modern age, it would be an Instagram masterpiece.]

As a kid, I’d been obliviously plucking the nuggets of control I could, without really realizing what I was doing: not shaving my legs because I was “too young”, getting my hair cut short because it was “trendy”, wearing longer shorts because it was “modest”, quietly bleeding all over myself because I “wasn’t old enough”, (and it was a fluke, obviously). As a little trans baby, I used culture to my advantage, without even knowing it, because I had unwittingly divorced myself from my culture.

During lunch breaks at my private all-girls school, I would drink 65 cent bottles of Mt. Dew and listen to my Discman. Lots of Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, and Le Tigre. Y’all were there with me when I hid in the stairwell by the gym, because I knew no one would find me there.

As I got older, I found I had a few trans friends of friends, but they seemed a mystery to me, mostly trans women working hard to join the ranks of *women* and blend in, or aggressive trans men who seemed entirely engaged by the patriarchy, ready to attack at any moment. There was no guidebook in my youth for a FAAB weird trans kid who just wanted to keep being himself and really didn’t want to take too many Tylenol PMs and die, if there was another option.

I spent a lot of high school days trying to convince myself that there was another option, and I succeeded. I made it to college, but things actually didn’t change all that much for me, internally.

College was a weird time filled with male friends of mine “suddenly realizing” I had a cunt and tits, and friendly girl friends either trying too hard or giving up. I think I lost my gender at some point around this time.

Then, in a collection of articles, Amy, whether you knew it or not, or meant to, or whatever, spoke the language of genderqueer, and a lot of other things.

You spoke.

[I know this was more that 15 years ago, and when I think about myself 15 years ago, I flinch, so I won’t actually link the articles.]

But, yeah, I got the message. It was sexy and strange, and so adult, but real. I got it, and it electrified me. Gender was what I always thought it was, pliable.

Still, I shut it tight into a box, the same “I’m a boy” box from my youth and middle school. I let you keep the revelation for a bit. I fucked up a lot, but I kept alive, and I breathed.

Even though I shut it down at first, I think what was important was the fact that an adult was saying what I felt. Someone grown up felt like me. Someone started the message. Eventually, that message leaked out.

It’s like when Emily sang “She’s saving me…” and I was 18, and wrote what I am assuming was a mediocre paper about it, by brute force, because, well, the song had woman singing about a woman, and I had an opportunity to write a paper about it, and I wanted and need it, so I took it. (I actually got an A, somehow. My professor was super chill.)

[David, if you happen to read this, let me know. It’s me, the only person you ever knew to successfully write a math paper about a pop song. I hope you and yours are well, among the linden trees.]

When you are young, and someone older says what you are feeling, there is so much validation. And, honestly, that is what this whole rambling piece is about.

Let’s validate each other.

As a kid, I always just wanted to be on the same plane as my idols, those grown ups who express what they mean, and what I wanted to mean.

Now that I am where you used to be — at least age wise — what I really want to say is thank you.

You said everything else for now.

This scared, quiet queer kid from South Carolina now has a steady job, has transitioned into himself, and is two semesters from a Master’s in Social Work. He makes friends daily. He is looking up at the sky right now, and he is happy.

Thanks for your part in that.

It actually stopped pouring down rain, though it seems unlikely that the clouds will disperse for a while, and I definitely can’t sit down by the dumpster. (Not in the mood for soggy ass at this point.)

I’m going in to edit this, and then I am going to go back outside for a bit.

Maybe I’ll end up with a shooting star after all.

(Also, “One Lost Day” is actually legitimately good. You guys regained hard.)

/We’re all sons of somebody.