045: If You Ever Need a Drummer
This one is off the cuff, today. It’s been a while. A lot seems to have happened, huh? I’m still kinda trying to avoid thinking, but I’m also not communicating and I probably should. So here I am, watching my comfort food (Metallica’s ...a Year and a Half in the Life) and writing on the tablet (last time I wrote one of these on the tablet it was fucked-up format-wise and I spent a lot of time fixing it before it went out, but this time I’m just gonna roll with it) and so let’s chat.
First I’m gonna cover the one bit of news I have for the future: I have a release date for THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT: March 21. I am also pleased to say that all three of the people I had envisioned for blurbs (that’s marketing speak for the nice shit that people say that goes on the back cover and the Amazon page to help you sell your book) have agreed to provide me with some. I intentionally went outside the world of poetry a bit while still staying within words, and I can’t be more happy that everyone agreed. More on that when I get closer to March. There’s some other big news that’s coming along with THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, but we’ll cross that bridge when it’s built.
As I mentioned, I’ve been avoiding thinking, which means a lot of video games–mostly Elder Scrolls Online and Gran Turismo 7. I have manage to read one thing since the election, and that’s Mattie Lubchansky’s Boys Weekend. Lubchansky is probably most famous for doing a fair amount of work for political comic site The Nib, and I was recommended this book from a couple different sources (including my spouse, who actually had it on their hold list at the library.) Things I loved: the art, the general plot. Things I didn’t: reliving my own trans micro- (and macro-) aggressions. One of the reasons I don’t typically seek out other queer writers is exactly that. Like, it’s different in a story, you know? The evocation in a story or poem is much different from hanging out with your gay sweeties in a cafe and commiserating about our bullshit childhoods. It hurts different. So I loved the book, but also, yikesaroo.
(...Year and a Half is over, onto listening to Billie Eilish now.)
The biggest thing, of course, is the election. The fucking. Election.
Physically? I’m probably pretty safe here in the ol’ Chi-town. But I am still basically immobilized. I can’t write. I can’t even imagine a future after January now. All my plans are now preceded by “If it’s still safe to…” all my trans peeps are terrified. All the women I know are furious. Everyone is trying to just… cope. If, somehow, you are confused by all this terror, it’s not just the fact that we’re facing another disastrous four years. It’s that the majority of adults in this country decided it was okay to just huck us queers under the bus for [made up reason here.] Half the country is so explicitly or implicitly hateful that they decided that whatever pet reason they have is more important than not allowing another four years of someone who has promised to do so much more than the last time around. And that coping I mentioned? It looks like people saying “well he can’t do that, it’s illegal” or “no one will like that” or “someone will stop him” and the thing is that no one did last time aside from some very specific instances. And he’s picked even more blatant yes-men this time.
And yet, we’re staying. By “we” I mean my family. We’re gonna look into passports, sure, and some medical and administrative decisions have had their timelines moved forward because we literally don’t know if we’ll be able to do these things in February. We’ll be closing ranks socially, and I implore you specifically to download and use Signal if you’re planning on discussing anything… resistant.
More than anything, I hope that my brain finally engages again soon so I can start being more proactive both personally and professionally. I was having existential issues before. Now it’s so much worse. You know how when it rains, parking lots end up with that chromatic sheen on their puddles where all the oil and junk that has run off from the cars floats on top of the water? That’s what I feel like. Greasy and unappealing and waiting for the water disappear so I, too, can be invisible again.
Thanks for being here. Thanks for the support both in the past and future. We are none of us alone, even when it seems the most dire. Hopefully the next one of these is more coherent… and hopeful.
Love youse.
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