(this was inspired by the life-changing The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Astra. I’m from the general area where the book takes place.)
XXXX The real femme invisibility is that the femmes and their friends are all sick and dying and no one seems to care. They don’t even see our work, proof of our existence – they think the mountains just move themselves. XXX The femmes know that there is no such thing as between revolutions, that the revolutions are always happening, though nothing ever changes for us. The femmes carry the world on our bodies, from beds and psych wards and prisons - unseen, unacknowledged labor that is killing us - slowly and quickly. XXX The femmes and their friends don’t understand why the land of men and women is so fascinated with other people’s bodies. Some bodies walk, some don’t, some bodies are without color, some bodies are with color, some bodies have vaginas, some don’t, some are fat, some are not; the femmes don’t care unless you do. XXX Some of us go to the land of men and women and they think we are one of them. Some of us cannot go into the land of men and women unnoticed. Our visibility makes us targets. Especially for those of us with color. For some of us it depends on the day and the place and what they can understand of us. We never quite feel comfortable in their world, maybe we never have, maybe even before we knew how to understand that feeling, maybe even before we had any words for anything. XXXX The femmes and their friends trade tips like which psych wards are least traumatizing and which dates will rob you and which cheap lipsticks are the best. Trailer trash hookers, even those of us who sell our bodies in an office or a retail store or a restaurant. The whores lay in bed all day - alone - our body ours to do with as we please. XXXX The whores don’t understand why we are supposed to be ashamed about what we do. The land of men and women should be ashamed! Sex workers shouldn’t have to hide our professions, CEOs should have to lie about their jobs. XXXXX The femmes and their friends are gluttonous with their worship, polytheistic Heathens with pictures of Marsha P Johnson on our altars, posters of Dolly Parton on our walls. Infinite pill bottles and vape pens. Books by Dorothy Allison and Maya Angelou and Audre Lord and James Baldwin in our beds like lovers. XXXXXX The femmes and their friends are all sick and mad and brilliant and poor. Someday you will know some of their names. Most of them will have spent their lives traumatized, unappreciated, and broke. We will be hailed as “ahead of our time” which does no good for us because you will kill us by the time the world catches up to us. XXXX We’re all a lot closer to death than anyone but us knows. Our grip on the world is precarious, and the world cares too little to try to hold on to us. The femmes and their friends form human chains to tether each other to the earth, but sometimes our grip fails and no matter how tight we try to hold each other one of us gets lost. XXXX Then femmes and their friends weep with anger and grief and we all know it could be us next. XXXX The femmes and their friends take care of the kids - usually kids that at one time did not belong to us. (The radicals never help with this part - they seem to think adults emerge fully formed just before they attend their first college iso meeting.) the femmes know everyone belongs to us. |
The femmes and their friends form human chains to tether each other to the earth, but sometimes our grip fails and no matter how tight we try to hold each other one of us gets lost. XXXX The sicker we are the more caretaking we do and the poorer we are the more money we give. XXXX . The femmes and their friends are all dying and nobody cares We are underwater in sickness and loneliness and trauma and we can’t support each other the way we want to. As soon as one of us gets a breath of air - another goes down with a hospitalization, or a depression flare, or an immune system attack. Some of us don’t have anyone – the same things that isolate us make it impossible to connect. XXXX An hour and four decades away the faggots and their friends tried to build a utopia here. They understood that the country had something to offer queers. They knew that we are our communities and that rural areas have just as important a place in the revolution as cities do. Now, like everywhere else, we are just trying to stave off the dystopia up here, and the idea of utopia has never been more laughable. Queers from other places still say “I’m sorry” when I tell them where I live. XXXX Everyone says they love rural queers but no one ever comes to visit. XXXXX The femmes and their friends use “hurt people hurt people” like a mantra. Saying it to and about each other as a prayer for compassion for those who continue to hurt us. We have been so traumatized by the land of men and women and we have a hard time not taking it out on each other. But we are learning, and are getting better at holding each other both gently and with boundaries. XXXX Those of us that are sick and crazy go around knowing that at any time we may have to spend months, years, decades in beds and rooms and hospitals and appointments and even worse. When you’re sick for so long or too crazy even just once, your community bonds start to weaken. And then you are alone in bed too sick and crazy to do art or have friends and then there is no one holding you to the earth. And it would be so easy to float away. XXXXX But the femmes are too stubborn. The femmes and their friends have survived this far. Some of us are still here. Our elders are young but they are here. We are here. And you are here, too. And that has to be enough. Katie Tastrom is a disabled writer and sex worker living in upstate NY. Her work has appeared all over the internet, including HuffPo, Slate, and NBC News. Most recently she has been focusing on trying to not have panic attacks all the time. See more at katietastrom.com and the usual social media places.
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