Dang, are you still talking?
On taking up space when and where you are not wanted as activism and self-preservation, even when it’s about that time you visited a rattery and felt lucky to make it out alive
My children can talk. Seriously. Sometimes it takes them 90 minutes to get through a meal (usually dinner) because they keep talking. To each other. To me. To my wife. To the dog. To the walls. To their pasta. To themselves1. How does a kid who has been alive less than a quarter of my own life have so much to say?
The two squirts at my dinner table aren’t so unique. Kids talk about everything the see/know/wish/touch/interact with so that they can understand it better. They’re constantly testing the waters. They’re learning language, both spoken and unspoken. They’re growing. This is supposed to happen.
This entire topic was brought about from me reading another substack article by Tim Lott at Tim Lott’s Writing Boot Camp, called The Art of Shutting Up. Go check that out.
In thinking about The Art of Shutting Up, I felt obligated to ask myself what value my voice has. Am I saying something useful? Am I just shouting into the void? Am I being annoying like my kids at the dinner table?
Or could there be something more to it?
Why do we question our inherent value?
And why does our communication have to have some other type of value to make it valid?
In honor of this thought, I came up with a funny story that I’ve shared in a few places recently. It’s a good memory that brings me lots of laughs. Unlike other stories, this one isn’t very long. I still hope you enjoy it.
Rattus rattus
A number of years ago, a very good friend of mine, Stacy2, wanted to get a pet rat. She had known other people with pet rats, and it sounded like a good idea. Rats are smart, they’re friendly, they cuddle. [Side note, I didn’t know until recently that rats don’t have bladders, and therefore they pee everywhere they go (because that’s the only option), which might have been a nice way to head off this entire story before it went anywhere, but…] She found someone advertising they raised rats for pets, and we drove up to meet with them.
The house was built into a steep hillside, very characteristic of the Pacific Northwest. From the street level it looked like a small one-story bungalow. The first floor was very nice; hardwoods, real wood trim, nicely furnished, organized and clean. To the side of the living room was a tall cage with a mother rat and her small brood inside. The lovely lady took them out and showed them to us, mentioning that they all had future homes, but that there would be other broods to come soon enough.
I’ll admit, I thought that was the end of it, and I was ready to head back to the car and depart. But then she opened a door, and a stairway became visible. She took us down to (what I thought was the basement) the next level, and things intensified. There were at least six individual rooms down there, each with its own cohort of ratty inhabitants. Some were paired up, most were in larger groups, and the cages in each room were massive. It was clean, and the floors were freshly bleached. This was a rattery built on cleanliness, and it was clear that this woman really cared for her pets.
But just how many rats can you have as pets before things turn more… worrying?
All around us was the scrabbling sound of tiny claws on wire and plastic, of bedding being nested in, of metal water tubes being licked. It was a cacophony of rodent sound that began to trigger something primal in me, a feeling of being significantly outnumbered, like when entomologists talk about the quantity of bugs in the world. Yes, I know rats are out there, yes, I know human and rat populations grow in concert with one another. But still. The sheer sound of them was deafening.
Rats chewing.
Rats breathing.
My friend, Stacy, seemed just as transfixed by the rat population in that house as I was. Neither of us knew what was coming next. We were escorted down another level (the house was built into the hillside), which was floor 3, where more rooms of rats were on display.
The hallway on that level was distinctly different, like it had been remodeled specifically for the rat chambers. There were windows in the wall, much like what you’d see in some older hospital wards, checkered black and white floors… it was all very Nurse Ratched. And in each room there were cages lining the walls, cages free standing on tables in the center of the room, cages everywhere. And, though clearly very clean, the smell of rats and rat urine began to penetrate my sinuses.
At some point you have to ask if this woman guided us down into a pit dug out below the house where we would be extended a basket with lotion and warned about getting “the hose” if we didn’t comply. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t cross my mind at the next stage, three sub-terranean levels deep into a house of someone I didn’t know, nothing but a car key in my pocket and a stunned friend at my side. I’m not trained in self-defense. It could have gone sideways fast.
The woman put her hand on the next doorknob and said (in what could only be described as a creepy, foreboding voice), “And do you want to see the problem rats?” My friend – and yes, we are still friends – spoke when this would have been THE moment to shut the hell up. “Oh yeah, show us the bad rats!”
The fourth and final level of the house was darker than the others, narrower hallways, shallower ceiling height. The inmates in those rooms rattled their cages menacingly. I pointed at one of them, asking some question that wasn’t important only to stall the mounting feeling of terror in the pit of my stomach, and the woman immediately chastised me, “Oh, don’t put a finger near Pedro. He’s been known to chew flesh down to the first knuckle.”
I *definitely* had my hands in my pockets after that.
We took our exit shortly thereafter, and I know I walked double-time back to the car, slamming the door once inside. The moment Stacy got in, I locked the doors. “I don’t know how you feel, but whatever you’re about to say is going to determine the future of our friendship,” I whispered.
Wide-eyed, Stacy replied, “How about a fish tank?”
Where do stories come from?
Years later, I look back on that moment and laugh. This is not an uncommon theme in my life, chuckling at things that happened that COULD have flipped minutely and been tragic or horrific or something else entirely. The importance is, what would I have missed out on in this world if I and others around me chose NOT to ask, chose NOT to speak up, chose that moment to be silent or introspective or shy?
I think this is where the best stories come from. It’s not from that moment you played it safe, where you stayed in bed and watched movies all day. It’s from hitch-hiking as a runaway3. Our best stories happen from our worst moments and the least expected outcomes. They happen when we take chances. They happen when we forgo regret. Or safety…
Some of our stories are about NOT doing that thing we desperately wanted to. Stories of longing are important and poignant. The remind us that inaction is just as much of a choice.
But no matter the why, we need these stories. We need to hear them, and we need to tell them.
Sometimes it is so hard to speak up and take space in a world that doesn’t want you, doesn’t want your contributions, isn’t interested in your story. This is what it feels like to be marginalized. It is silence. It is shutting up.
And that quiet is bittersweet.
I tell my stories now because of this, because my voice is small but important. I add something unique to this world, and there are others out there (even people I have not yet met) who need to hear my stories. They need me voicing my fears and my thoughts and my celebrations to normalize those things for themselves. This is how we build the space of acceptance that becomes normalization that becomes emphatic joy.
Your trans friend,
Robin
Do you have a pet rat? Did you ever lose a finger to a rodent? Do you have a great story to tell? Tell me.
Full disclosure, I talk to myself all the time, especially on dog walks. It’s free therapy. It’s also rough draft time for arguments I want to have but likely never will.
I always change names to protect others. This is no different.
Yes, I did that.