I’m simply not a credible source.
[No. 84]
DO YOU LIVE WITHOUT COMPROMISING YOURSELF OR SELVES IN ANY WAY? DO YOU HAVE MORE TO SHARE WITH US ON THIS?
A guest essay by Amelia Slater
Do I live without compromising myself in any way? That’s a complicated question. It opens the door as to who [myself] actually is. And seeing as I’m the only person with the floor as regards to the inquiry, that means parsing through the bevy of voices tumbling around in my consciousness in order to answer. And, seeing as I was asked to write something, a discursive approach is necessary.
Let me begin with describing the bevy of little things I do on any given day: brush my teeth, pick up groceries, answer emails, doomscroll Instagram, worry in neurotic fashion over my outfit choices for a birthday party later that night, study for the lsat, drag my depressed ass into the shower, lay on the bathroom tiles, and watch slow drops fall onto my arm as the barrage of jet streams impact upon my unshaven legs, which I’ve been meaning to shave but haven’t, because I don’t know for whom my unshaven legs will be meaningful beyond myself, as in, who do I want to attract? A man? A woman? An enby?
How do I want them to perceive me? Fun questions. Every time I’m alone with my body, there is now the specter of my sexual preferences and who I identify as looming over me. Is selecting one of these labels [gay, straight, transfemme, dyke, et cetera] a compromise? It seems so. And these are the big compromises. The smaller ones constantly run through my head as well.
Seeing as my time on this earth as a body is limited, I have worries over learning piano, writing a decent novel, feeling sexy, connecting with people I care about [making sure they’re sheltered, fed, employed, doing well]. Normal shit.
Not so small either when the whole mortality question is thrown in. And let’s not forget the backlog in any given person’s algorithm of thought on the average day. Should I hit the gym, change my diet, quit smoking?
We all get lost behind the sea of habits, the weeks turned to months turned to years of eating junk food, or binge-watching television, or missing out on the opportunity of having a body we love, connected to others who similarly care for themselves. That’s my problem. And who isn’t filled with missed opportunities, personal failures, secret shames? Anyone?
I smoke cigarettes, play a lousy piano [which I started learning a year and a half ago], and attempt to write novels. None of this is particularly compelling as far as what one might expect from a transwoman. I can’t really talk about whoever she is, because for the most part, she is a failure. She’s a terrible cook, a lousy income earner, not as attractive or healthy as she wishes, nor is she a bon vivant. At the same time, she’s not too great of a man either. She stopped playing basketball and going to drink with her bros and has no future with a wife and children. These are my prebuilt notions of femininity and masculinity, thrust upon me. Do I exist without compromising myself?
In all honesty, yes. Everyday. I think we all do. The self is fragile, undefinable, easily shattered. I saw this last night while in the backseat of a car with friends, cruising into the McDonald’s drive thru past a homeless man, who, while smoking a cigarette with red paint on his face, danced a little jig, twisted his arms around themselves as he pirouetted. My friend Kevin said, “Don’t look at him.” His advice was, of course, borne out of concern, to protect us from a potentially dangerous encounter with someone who might get mad or upset at us if our interaction went awry. What if I went ahead though and asked him the same question, on self-compromise? Would he respond with gibberish, an emphatic yes, or another dance? Of a more important consideration is whether any of us four passengers would consider him corporeally capable of answering the question, of whether he is in fact, a credible authority on who he really is.
Kevin’s question assumed that we had all already judged him on the basis of what he was doing, how he appeared. Why was this man the way that he was? The short answer is that the traumas of his past and his present have shaped him. Are we any different? We’re all shaped by the forces of our collective existence. Rampant misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia, from the white picket fence home I was raised in, the schools I attended, the friends who abandoned me, the father who taunted “fags” on the television, all turned me into who I am today, but so have the collection of queer people I know, the ones I’ve had to discover as I set my past aside. The story of who I am seems perpetually unwritten. I’ve found that the more house chores I do and makeup I wear in public, the more of a target I become for a passerby’s projections, of self-hatred, fetishization of the feminine, and everything in between, if I’m not outright ignored. But these are just words and explanations to a question that can’t be answered. Lately, all I’ve cared about is whether my actions fit the criteria of living in a way that align with personal moral values. Identifying as a woman, as it turns out, meets that criteria. Otherwise, everything I’ve written in this essay is no more than a little dance on the side of the road that you, dear reader, are driving through. And ultimately, you have food to eat, clothes to shop for, and Instagram reels to tend to. I’m simply not a credible source.