Andréa, Canis Lanonbinary

Long, kinda rambly, really emotional...Journal...Thing. Yeah.

Last year I was driving home from a roadtrip, I think Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. I was nearly home and the song "Poison Oak" by Bright Eyes came on, and it...Broke me in a way a song never previously had. Listened to that album a hundred times across a decade, knew most of the lyrics by heart. This song was always a lower point of the album, good and emotional but not my favorite by any means. I was singing along and I just...Started crying through the second verse.

"In Polaroids, you were dressed in women's clothes.
Were you made ashamed?
Why'd you lock them in a drawer?
Well I don't think that I, could have loved you more"

I turned the corner onto my street, and didn't turn in home. I kept driving. The song wasn't over, I wasn't done making a journey, I needed to finish. I kept driving. I kept crying. I kept trying to sing along, gasping and sniffling and trying to sing and not knowing what I was feeling, why I was feeling.

"Well, let the poets cry themselves to sleep.
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam."

Kept driving, kept crying, kept trying to sing as I wound through the backroads past the orchards. The song ended, I wasn't done, I needed to try again. I was crushingly sad, stewing anger, confused confused confused and didn't know WHY or what was different.

"Poison Oak.
Some boyhood bravery."

Blubbering, shaky voice, blurry eyes.

"IN POLAROIDS YOU WERE DRESSED IN WOMEN'S CLOTHES
WERE YOU MADE ASHAMED, WHY'D YOU LOCK THEM IN A DRAWER?"

Snarling and growling the lyrics and my throat hoarse and raw.

"Well I don't think that I ever loved you more."

Raspy, almost a whine, whispering through the next verses, quieter, crying, recovering. Slow through town, back to the highway to loop around home again.

"BUT ME I'M A SINGLE CELL ON A SERPENT'S TONGUE
THERE'S A MUDDY FIELD WHERE A GARDEN WAS
AND I'M GLAD YOU GOT AWAY BUT I'M STILL STUCK OUT HERE
MY CLOTHES ARE SOAKING WET FROM YOUR BROTHER'S TEARS."

Turn off onto my street, bawling, screaming, hopefully driving fast enough still that nobody can hear me.

It finishes. I'm silent. "Road to joy" starts up, I pull in, I turn the car off. Just...sit there for a few minutes in silence. Baffled. Completely baffled, emotionally shredded, my voice shot, my brain buzzing with static. It's too hot, I gather my things and head back inside. I haven't been able to listen to that song without crying since then.

Until today. Poison Oak doesn't make me cry anymore.

I had a very emotional, powerful weekend with amazing friends. Just...Taking up space with other trans folks, sharing time and food and baring our hearts. Poison Oak doesn't make me cry anymore.

I queued that album up twice on my drive home from Vancouver. The first playthrough I kinda ignored. Bounced along with At the Bottom of Everything, but had to focus elsewhere with twisty night roads just busy enough to need to have to really pay attention to flicking my highbeams on and off. But then it came up again, and I was nearly home. Bracing myself, expecting to tear up when I got to that song, just like always. But I didnt, becuase I know who I am now. And I understand the things I couldn't last year. And something else came first and instead of swinging a bat at my stomach, it held out a hand.

"This is the first day of my life.
Swear I was born right in the doorway."

The lyrics felt different. The tone felt different. The whole fucking meaning and context of "First Day of My Life" felt DIFFERENT. That song made me feel...So very warm, hopeful, happy, and newly alive. I saw a new beginning and I heard a song very different from how I've always heard it in the past. I know it's not about trans stuff, but...I heard it as a song sung between selves. Newborn woman to the man she had to pretend to be and the old self singing back, so happy to see her.

"Yours is the first face that I saw.
Think I was blind before I met you.
I don't know where I am, don't know where I've been.
But I know where I want to go"

The new, true self singing to their old self, announcing their arrival, their birth, their beginning. Seeing him from the mirror, seeing her in the mirror.

"And so I thought I'd let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realized that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home"

It took a long time to get here. A long time to figure it out. And it'll be a long road ahead. Everything will take time. But I need you, me. I'm ready to come home.

"And I thought it was strange
You said everything changed
You felt as if you'd just woke up"

I didn't sleep the night I found out. Everything, everything, everything changed, and there was no putting things back how they were before. I just woke up.

"But you said 'this is the first day of my life.'
I'm glad I didn't die before I met you.
But now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you
And I'll probably be happy

With these things there's no telling
We'll just have to wait and see."

The old self singing back too, wishing her well. So glad he didn't die before he met her. We made it here together somehow. And who knows where the road will wind, everything is so much, so uncertain, but there's joy there, somewhere. Probably.

"Besides maybe this time it's different.
I mean I really think you like me."

I'm going to make damn sure of it. I'm really going to like the me that I am that I'm me that I can become.

Poison Oak didn't make me cry when it came on a few songs later, as I pulled off the highway and drove home. I was too full of hope, past the valley bottom I didn't know I was lost in last year. I'm scared and new and everything is uncertain still. But I'll probably be happy.

When I'm able to start HRT, I'm going to stand in a doorway, and take my first dose while listening to "First Day of My Life" by Bright Eyes. Happy birthday darling, we love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.

the sesame is the guys that happen when the ocean is like "hey, i want dogs as well." sealants are mammals which means they do the milky milky thing, but steel milk is like 60% fat - you shake one of these guys too hard and you're gonna make ocean butter. grim!! the shmo comes in all kindsa types: you got the sea line, the True Soul, and the Wilford Brimley guys. slobs usually live in the cold waters and they eat fists, penglings, those kinda ocean meats. they're super good divers and can hold their breath for like, more than twelve seconds, that's way better than i can do. so that's why the soup is bestfavourite animnal okayBYE

It’s like, super expensive so I have to stay away from the action. I have to zoom in all the time so the resolution is shit. But I still try to catch my friends in their best moments. We love watching them, in a basement, in an attic, on a tv in the A/V storage room. Even if the footage is shit and the audio is blown out, I still catch them. The glare of light, a voice as clear as birdsong. I catch it on video like a butterfly in amber. A monument to the good they have done. I am never on camera.

My right shoulder aches when we’re out at night but I will never stop getting out there when my pager rings. When they wrap up the problem of the night, I get the signal. A second page; I pack the camcorder and I'm back home on my bike, then carefully lowering the camcorder case by the strap into the basement window, then slinking into my bed. I have a ton of tapes. I have to hide them from my parents in the HVAC ducts; tied with dental floss threaded to the grate so they don’t get stuck and lost in there. I sleep in a cold basement with extra blankets, but I am only taking small risks in comparison. Whatever they get up to after I leave, it beats me.

But it’s nice to hang around them when I can. Everyone is happy to see me, asks if I was safe, asks about the tapes, and sometimes we do stuff as a group. We get to live our lives as if we are not being asked to take extraordinary actions in extraordinary times. Preten' like we're not facing the end of the world every week, or living through the end of a world every day. It's hard livin', and they should have someone who's not going through it to tell them that it's worth it. To celebrate them. Even if it's one guy with the camcorder.

I’m not saying I know what it's like in there, in those moments when the streetlights have you like the auditorium downlights. When all you got to get you through this week's creep is a good dress and a shiny gem. There I am, with a camera tucked away in an alley; I can't change that. I can't lose this fuckin camcorder. I feel like I have to stay put so that they know someone on the outside of their world is still rooting for them.

Like, do you promise not to tell any of them? That I'm scared of even thinking what would happen if their rabbit came to me and gave me one of those gems? That I'm scared of even wondering who I would be if I went on video?

That thought is intrusive.
It kills me.
I don't even let myself think of what colour the gem would be.

I'm terrified because I know why it's there. It's not there because I need to be somebody else (It is so important right now for me to stay me) It's there because there's something the camcorder never sees. It's something that both me and this fucking brick are blind too. There is a bond that seems unapproachable unless you go through one of those nights. There is a threshold that I am so terrified of even approaching, because I think that stepping up to it means that I won't get that page.

Nonetheless, if they beep I don' sleep. Like a ghost beckoned in a seance to haunt and help, I appear to participate in a life that I am not a part of but I yearn for. Something wonderful and strong that I don't think can ever come out of me. Only something that I can nurture and bask in.

That's who I am. The guy with a camcorder.