Transmissions from Public Space (Part 2)
I can finally be me
[NOTE: I guess this is a series, so here is part 1.]
“These are not bad people. This is not a bad world. Do not make war on it but bring it flowers.” — Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion
It Is a Celebration
My face. Still my face. I look into the mirror, a process that has become less painful now that I can see the person who stares back at me.
A razor. Still a tool I must use, although no longer the same machete-like hacking at a perennially stubborn overgrowth. A few gentle strokes. I smile and it is finally my smile. With care, attention, and love, I have transformed this front part of my head into a clear window through which I can see and know others; no longer the mask it had been, undergoing every possible manicured iteration so as not to look like a mask. I can smile.
A new garment and a piece of jewelry that miraculously found its way back to me. Presentation is a form of expression and while standing in this hotel lobby, meeting my friend, I realize that this is the first time I have ever fully exercised my right to freedom of expression in all its forms. Face to face we see each other, my friend — one who has seen me blackout drunk on three different continents — gazes upon me in this new form and tells me that I look nice. And I smile because I believe him.
We walk to our destination and we are outside and the sun is still shining. There are many faces but mine does not attract their attention. They have seen people like me before. They see a person in a dress next to a person in a suit, and they may be thinking that we are headed to a wedding. And they would be right. A deep inhalation as we not only find our destination but cross through its threshold so as to enmesh ourselves within its merriment.
My fingers silently flutter amidst the heightened stimuli, the new environment, and the throng of smartly dressed and animatedly joyous humans, most of whom are unfamiliar to me. They are here for the occasion and I see that they are imbibing, a sight not surprising but not without anxiety. Years have passed since I learned that those liquids were a courage forever inaccessible to me. But a calmness prevails, radiates through me, and again I can smile. My fingers flutter but my hand does not shake.
Upon a brief survey of these new surroundings, we enter into a circle of humans familiar and amicable to us both. All I can do is smile because for the first wedding in my life, I am happy to be there. I can embrace old friends — people who knew me in an entirely different time, in an entirely different context, and in many ways as a different person. They seem unfazed as they call me by a new name, one that I know is wholly mine.
We hug to commemorate the reunion and the body that I feel pressed to theirs is no longer one that necessitates escape. Revelry reigns rampant and two bodies have cloaked themselves in white. They are the reason I am here, the reason we are all here. A request to save this date was sent to one name, then I sent an email to 37 people, and then my invitation arrived, addressed to a new name, to me. They invited me here, asked me to come as me.
Floral patterns subtly adorn each of their outfits, and a blossomy design similarly, although not as subtly, cascades down my flowing black dress. It is a celebration and we have brought it flowers.
The Joy That Envelops Me
A late arrival. One of the four attendees whom I knew before coming to this event, before coming to this place, before coming to myself. Our paths diverged, a familiarity interrupted, and she was not a recipient of news that anything in my life had cataclysmically upended. She has not seen me as I want to be seen, has no name to call me, for how could she know that I was absent during all the time we spent together.
My encounter visibly flummoxes her, for how could she know that this is the manner in which I can peaceably occupy space. I did not even know that people like me existed the last time I saw her. And I hear it, what people call a deadname, merely a marker that I have chosen to shed. I smile because I know that no trace of malice peppered her utterance, and I tell her: “I go by Mila now.”
This flummoxing incarnate was a chief terror of mine while trepidly standing at the precipice of inviting others to join me on this journey. But she took in this new information, looked at me again, this time seeing me, told me that I looked beautiful, and insisted on hugging me again. Apparently one cannot properly embrace when flummoxed. Our time in college together makes so much more sense to her. My nameless dread did not go entirely unnoticed.
She asks things about me, about this process of exploration and discovery. Upon hearing how long it has been since I first came out, she seems surprised: “You just seem so natural and comfortable, I would have thought it’s been years.” And all I can do is smile.
It is all at once and it is now and there is music and my enlivened limbs can move freely through space, even in such close proximity to so many others. We have gone to a bar, but it now lacks the shameful connotations that it did for so long. A sea of bodies spreads seemingly without end, almost all of them in some form of motion, almost all of them belonging to people I will never know.
We are here together and there is music and mine is a body that evokes neither confusion nor even a second glance. I am in a new place and they have seen people like me before. This is the world, the same one I have always occupied, but I can show up and I can be me. Melodious sounds boom and uninhibited movement is the obvious course of action for so many of these bodies, ephemerally co-existing in this shared space.
I go by Mila and I can show up here. My body can move freely and rhythmically alongside theirs without apology, entreaty, or explanation. This floral pattern on the dress that seems to fit me so perfectly is the organic byproduct of the joy that envelops me. This is how I have always wanted to show up. I just spent so long not knowing it was a possibility. I finally know what it means to dance like no one is watching.
I have brought flowers to this place and as I dance all I can do is smile.
