Tomboy Survival Guide

by Ivan Coyote

  She shook her head, smiled at me. She looked tired. “Anyway. I hope this doesn’t make you feel weird. I’m excited to see you read tonight. Someone will be here at around quarter to seven to walk you over to the theatre. All the writers are meeting in the lobby just before then.”

  I checked into my hotel room, took a shower, ironed my shirt, and then stretched out on the lonely king-sized bed, opened up my laptop, and wrote:

  I get asked what it feels like to write such vulnerable things. What it feels like to make myself vulnerable like that, to lay myself and my life on the page like that. Isn’t it scary?

  Yes. It is scary to write about private, painful things. It is terrifying, sometimes. Sometimes the only way I can make myself finish a sentence is to tell myself that no one will ever read it. To promise myself that I can erase that line immediately as soon as it is out of my head if I need to. Sometimes I do this. I often cry when I write about difficult things, and feel the words heavy in me and on me after, sometimes for a couple of days. I worry what my mother will think. I wonder if I got it right, I worry that the reader will not take my words with the same heart that I had when I wrote them, I fret that I have left something out or that I’ve said nothing new. I lie in bed at night and deep breathe through the fear of my new words going out there on their shaky legs to be interpreted, critiqued, weighed, and displayed.

  But I don’t feel vulnerable. Writing about vulnerable things doesn’t make me feel vulnerable. Writing about my tenderest bits is the only way I know how to have power over them. Staying silent would leave me alone with them. My silence is what makes me vulnerable. My secrets are sharpest when I am the only one holding them. Writing them down turns all my secrets into something else. Something closer to strength.

  I flew home a couple of days later, and I’m still thinking about this now. I look up the definition of vulnerable.

  vul·ner·a·ble. It’s an adjective. It means to be susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm. Or in the case of a person, in need of special care, support, or protection because of age, disability, or risk of abuse or neglect. Its synonyms are helpless, defenseless, powerless, impotent, weak, and susceptible.

  Writing down difficult things has never made me any of those things.

  UNCOMFORTABLE

  com·fort·a·ble

  I looked it up. It’s an adjective and

  it means

  providing physical ease and relaxation.

  or

  physically relaxed and free from constraint.

  Comfortable.

  It means not in pain and

  free from stress or fear,

  free from hardship

  or,

  as large as is needed or wanted.

  A couple of years ago I published a piece on Slate.com about gender-neutral bathrooms. I get hassled a lot in public bathrooms, so, you know, I thought it might be nice to not get hassled in bathrooms. It was the first time any of my writing had gone out to a largely straight, high-traffic, fairly mainstream online audience. They published a full-colour picture of me, too. I didn’t get paid. I did it for the, you know, exposure.

  I was alone on a Greyhound bus in Alberta on tour when my piece went live. It started with a rumble in the stomach of my social media, and quickly barfed its way into my email inbox. My words, my name, and my contact information had been posted nearly simultaneously on a right-wing evangelical pray-the-gay-away website, and a radical lesbian separatist website run by women who spelled women with a Y and didn’t want to share anything with trans people, ever.

  You’re getting lots of hits, my publicist texted me. Just don’t read the comments. But I did read the emails.

  It was, how do I put it, illuminating? How many times I had to re-read those emails to see who was writing, to be sure whether it was a born-again Christian or a womyn-born-womyn, who had written what exactly.

  And two songs remained eerily the same, repeated in many different ways, over and over, by both seemingly ideologically opposite groups. But both of them said:

  No offense, but, if I had to share a woman’s washroom with someone who looks like you, I would feel … uncomfortable.

  And …

  Why don’t you just use the men’s room?

  Both sides drawing pictures of different kinds of monsters that sort of look like me. Both sides unsure where to put the possibility of me. But I just need to pee.

  I didn’t answer most of them then, so I will answer them now. First off, any statement that begins with “no offense, but …” is the ass-crack-smelling handshake of all sentence structure. I mean, it seems friendly enough, but it always leaves you sniffing the air afterwards, and wondering.

  If all the born-again Christians think I should just use the men’s room, then why do they keep passing laws saying I have to use the bathroom God gave me when he made me a girl?

  And if the trans exclusive radical feminists say they don’t feel safe with people who have or once had a penis in the women’s bathroom, then why do they assume I would be safe in the men’s room without one?

  Both sides selling out my safety for their … comfort?

  They say they are afraid of men in the women’s washroom because of what might happen. But I’m afraid of women in the women’s washroom because of what happens to me all the time.

  Meanwhile there is still not one single recorded case of a trans person assaulting anyone, ever, in a public bathroom of any variety. Believe me, when a trans person needs to use a public bathroom we are in and out of there faster than any of you can say, “But I didn’t even get to see their genitals.”

  But mostly here’s what I want to know:

  Who the hell decides who gets to feel comfortable?

  Flagging has never gone out. Should never, ever be allowed to go out. May all the secret languages of the queers and the bent live on in our pockets forever.

  LEARN PEOPLE BETTER

  Some people like to call it eavesdropping. I prefer to think of it as following Woody Guthrie’s new year’s resolutions for 1942. Right between “Listen to Radio A Lot” and “Don’t Get Lonesome,” he promises to “Learn People Better.” So, some might call it eavesdropping, but me, I try to listen to everything anyone within my earshot says whenever I walk anywhere, just so I can learn people better.

  The other day I was waiting at a stoplight close to a school. There was a girl talking to a boy, having a heated discussion. They were both about eleven years old. She was obviously pretty upset; he looked a little sheepish, dragging the toes of his running shoes along the sidewalk. “You just can’t treat me like this,” she told him, both hands on her hips. “I just won’t have it.” The boy looked down. Said nothing. Just nodded.

  The other day I was walking behind two men, one in his mid-fifties, steel-toed boots, working man’s hands. The other in his early twenties, sneakers, headphones around his neck. New York City. The older guy says, “She’s mad because she thinks you’re telling her how to solve things. She doesn’t want you to solve it for her, she just wants you to listen to her. That is all most women want, is for you to just listen to them. Sooner you learn that the …” He pauses, looks sideways at the kid. “Jesus, man, you’re not even listening to me. What the fuck?”

  The kid hitches his stride a bit, sighs. “I was. I was listening.”

  “Then what was I saying to you just now?”

  Kid says nothing. Lets out a long breath. Shakes his head.

  The older guy stops walking. Smacks the kid’s shoulder with the backs of his fingertips. The kid shrugs, pulls his pants up by his belt.

  “Well, if I listened to everything you told me every time you were talking to me, there would be no time left over for me to do any thinking.”

  Last Sunday on my way into Templeton Pool for trans-inclusive family swim, I pass by two kids kicking a soccer ball around, both about eight years old. The kid in the red shirt is guarding the street hockey net, the kid in the striped shirt is taking shots. Stri
ped shirt boots the ball really hard and nails red shirt right in the face with it.

  “Owwwww.” Red shirt is trying not to let the tears escape his eyelids. “You fag. That hurt.”

  The kid in the striped shirt traps the rebound under his toe and stands up straight, his face stark and solemn. “Dude. I’m sorry I hit you in the face but you can’t call people a fag anymore.”

  “Why not?” Red shirt is still pissed, squinting into the sun.

  “Because. Like I already told you. I’m pretty sure my mom is a fag.”

  And then, today, came a chance to teach people better. Be better.

  I’m on the phone with a credit card customer service woman:

  “Royal Bank Visa, and how may I help you?”

  “I have legally changed my name and I want to update my credit card,” I tell her.

  “What is the reason for the name change?”

  I pause for a minute, considering. “I’m transgender.”

  “Okay!” she exclaims, like I just told her I had a baby or got married. “That’s excellent.”

  “Most days it really is.”

  “I learn something new here every day,” she says. I like the sound of her voice.

  “Do you really?” I ask.

  “Well, no, not really. But I’m going to today.”

  WRITE THROUGH

  I write through missing you. I think about you but write about other things.

  I didn’t wash my sheets for four days after you left. Found one of your hairs on a pillowcase, another in the bathtub, another tucked between the couch and a cushion. Could not bring myself to throw them in the garbage so I threw them off the balcony, letting gravity and the wind take them from my open hand.

  In that liminal space between dreams and not quite conscious you come to me, I can feel your hand on my hip, my cheek, the top of my head, the soft spot at the base of my throat. I can smell you still on the handkerchief you embroidered for me. I tucked it into my suitcase just now, careful not to get too much of the smell of me on it because it has to last me for thirty more days. Sometimes I unfold it and hold it up to my cheek and just breathe.

  I whisper my secret name for you three times into the dark before I close my eyes every night.

  You said you saw me years ago and were just waiting for me to come around. You wouldn’t tell me what year it was, but you said you were glad when I quit smoking cigarettes. That it meant it was closer to the right time for us. That was going on eight years ago. I smile when I do this math.

  At the airport I saw you before I saw you. Something in your walk, moving just so through the businessmen on their phones and the lady with the stroller. I couldn’t make my feet move and you laughed at me. No checked bags. I’m still impressed by that. Fresh lipstick at eleven o’clock at night and a dress I had not seen you wear yet.

  You won’t eat anything that comes out of a microwave. I have started heating the dog’s food up on the stove in a tiny saucepan, just in case you are right about them.

  I am changed already, I can feel it.

  I have never seen you angry. You say you don’t get angry much and I am starting to believe you. Even that night. You could have gotten mad but you didn’t. We both cried and pulled it all apart with only our softest words in the dawn. Started fresh the next morning. When I woke up after we slept for a while I looked at you and I knew.

  I could be safe here, I thought, and felt my chest ripped open with all that hope escaping me. You slept right through my epiphany and the word love nearly fell out of my mouth fifty times that day.

  HEAT AND HOT WATER

  Tell me again how you love the half she and part he of me.

  Show me with your mouth and hands and hips that there is no lonely bit of skin of mine untouched. Untraveled. Unseen.

  Let me take that bag for you. I’ve got this, baby. I’ve got this.

  Let me hang up your coat and put the kettle on.

  Let my fingers find that spot on your neck that always hurts.

  Let me.

  I washed the sheets before you got here. Come here so I can remind myself of the smell of your neck and save it for later.

  My jet-lagged love. Missing you is my only constant thing.

  In the smallest hours I will wake up and remember that I get four more nights of you.

  You will slip your warm hand around my middle and move me in your sleep.

  You wake up before me because the day is half gone already in Toronto.

  Even my dog can’t take his eyes off of you dancing in my kitchen.

  You smile that smile you save for me and tell me not to put a shirt on so you can watch me make your coffee.

  Just like this, you say.

  Just like this.

  WHAT WE PRAY FOR (THE TOMBOY HYMN)

  CG/BC

  To play the drums

  FC/FG

  To be picked for teams

  CC/FC

  A safe place to pee

  EmAm

  Tall trees to climb

  FC/EG

  A dark blue bike

  CGC

  For her to notice me

  E

  Don’t braid my hair

  Am

  Don’t make me wear

  G

  That bridesmaid’s dress, oh joy

  CG/BC

  That school today

  FC/EG

  Will be easy I pray

  CGC

  Or to just wake up a boy

  C

  (Muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles)

  C

  Thou shalt learn to wink

  G

  Thou shalt learn all the knots

  F

  Thou shalt cuss liberally

  C

  Thou shalt not trash talk

  G

  the girls

  F

  Thou shalt not let the world

  make you hard

  C

  Thou shalt learn to dance and lead

  C

  (Muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles)

  C

  Thou shalt acquire scars

  G

  Thou shalt start a pine cone war

  F

  Thou shalt practice throwing punches

  C

  Thou shalt not wear a skort

  G

  Get dirty

  F

  In your pockets thou shalt keep

  A special rock a pocket knife your grubby mitts

  C

  And several melodies

  G

  Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy!

  FDmGC

  Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy!

  (Muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles) (repeating)

  C

  I always have a piece of string

  G

  I want to practice French kissing

  F

  Don’t cry so much all of the time

  G

  I shine my armour every night

  G

  Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy!

  FDmGC

  Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy!

  C

  Thou shalt learn to wink

  G

  Thou shalt learn all the knots

  F

  Thou shalt cuss liberally

  C

  Thou shalt not trash talk

  G

  the girls

  F

  Thou shalt not let the world

  make you hard

  make you bad

  C

  Thou shalt learn to dance and lead

  G

  Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy!

  FDmGC

  Just to be a good Tomboy!

  “Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.”

  —Leslie Feinberg

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to
thank Arsenal Pulp Press for their continued vision and support of queer and trans writers. I am always proud to look over the list of new books they publish every season, and to witness their stalwart belief in publishing marginalized voices. They publish the kind of books I need to read, and for that I am ever grateful to Brian Lam, Robert Ballantyne, Oliver McPartlin, Susan Safyan, and the best-dressed publicist in Canadian publishing, Cynara Geissler. I thank them all for their continued commitment and integrity. I am proud to be an Arsenalian, and consider myself lucky to share a publisher with so many smart and talented artists and thinkers.

  I would also like to thank my family for their unconditional love and support. We are able to have the hard discussions, and bend and break and grow and forgive, and then love each other better, and I think this makes me one of the luckiest people I know.

  Photo: Jourdan Tymkow

  IVAN COYOTE is the award-winning author or co-author of ten books and the creator of four short films as well as three CDs that combine storytelling with music. Ivan is a seasoned stage performer and an audience favourite at storytelling, literary, film, and folk music festivals as well as schools. Ivan lives in Vancouver. ivanecoyote.com

  ALSO BY IVAN COYOTE:

  Bow Grip

  Close to Spider Man

  Gender Failure (with Rae Spoon)

  Loose End

  Missed Her

  One in Every Crowd

  One Man’s Trash

  Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (co-editor, with Zena Sharman)

  The Slow Fix

  NOTES