I prefer not to.
[No. 87]
HOW DO YOU TALK ABOUT THE THINGS YOU’RE MOST AFRAID TO SHARE? WHEN IS IT APPROPRIATE TO HOLD BACK?
A guest piece by Rowan Haber
I was named by a 16 year-old driving his mom’s Volvo in rural New Hampshire. Walking back to my artist residency at MacDowell with a few other fellows, a yellow station wagon rolled by, and a cheerful white teenager asked if we would like a ride. Hitchhiking is something I secretly like, but rarely allow myself. However, any one of us could have easily overpowered this child.
We climbed in. The teenager, who enjoyed driving misfit artists, asked us our names. When I told him, he misheard what I’d said. “Rowan?” he asked. Then, I felt light travel through my body, and a strong fuck yes. It was not a subtle feeling. Unknowingly, he had opened a door. He pointed to an exit, an escape from something I hated about myself for years.
Before the last name I hated, I actually had another name I hated. My first name [my given name] was so patently wrong that the minute I “came out” [womb, not closet] my parents immediately called me something else. The first name was delicate and deeply feminine, prissy and biblical. My second bad name was overly casual; it smacked of the fifties, belonged to golden retrievers and housewives. However, I kept it for three decades until this kid came along. This stranger.
I let the knowledge of my new name sit still before I did anything about it. I didn’t really want to contend with what changing my name meant. The questions from others about my gender, about my intentions for my gender and how I would live, the questions. Period. I enjoy my privacy, my little perch at the margins of things. I knew that before taking on the mantle of this new name, I had to prepare myself.
I had edged with my transness for so long, even been called trans by others who didn’t know me and who knew me well – but I had my own reservations about what it meant to be trans. I grew up during a period of time in which my trans role models were binary. They often either adopted the narrative of being trapped in the wrong body or had that narrative forced upon them out of medical and social necessity. We are always forced into a sort of pre-defined legibility. I didn’t identify like that. And as someone for whom authenticity is deeply important, I didn’t want to claim an identity that I wasn’t one million percent sure about.
It’s complicated to say, but now when I look back on this moment, with the knowledge of how beautiful it has felt for me to medically transition and live in a more binary way at the end of the day, I wish I had just allowed myself to accept it. Lately the joy of just passing, the relief of invisibility, has been nothing less than dreamy. However, privacy and the space to consider and incubate this knowledge– this new name– was essential to being able to understand and contend with my own feelings. It was a refusal to perform the expected gestures or walk along anyone else’s timeline.
I’ve been thinking a lot about refusal lately.
And in that, the old Melville story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” comes to mind. It revolves around a curmudgeonly worker who [when asked to perform any task] replies, [I would prefer not to]. His polite refusal bewilders his boss, who is trying to observe social mores but also needs his employee to work. Bartleby is not saying yes, nor is he saying no. He is choosing a third way.
Bartleby is a character defined by his refusal. In a world that demands self-definition, Bartleby denies the options. In that refusal is a radical freedom. In that refusal, he finds his power. I think we all deserve this sort of freedom, and especially as trans people whose existence, bodies, and minds are under constant scrutiny or benevolent curiosity, which is equally invasive and annoying. In a world that demands transparency, we deserve to be opaque. In fact, I believe everyone does.
So, back to the question at hand: how to know when to share and when not to?
Take your time.
Protect and know yourself before sharing. Share only if and when you feel ready. And, like Bartleby, you can always simply state, [I prefer not to].