What to do when you no longer exist
on being a dysfunctional erasable pen
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What to do when you no longer exist
Up until Monday around noon eastern time, I was a real, authentic human being who was verifiably alive. I totally existed. I existed totally. I was like the Velveteen Rabbit at the end of the story—real. Alive.
I’m not sure what I am now.
Maybe I’m illegal. I might be a thing that is in violation of the law, or a violation of something that might become a law in the not-too-distant future. My identification documents could already be invalid. Am I on a list somewhere? Do I get to be on America’s Most Wanted yet? I am tempted to walk down the street in flagrant violation of this so-called rule and just fucking exist without the license to prove it.
I feel flippant and dangerous, carefree. An outlaw.
Or perhaps I ought to be scared? I’ve heard that ICE is invading Chicago, looking for anyone who ‘might’ be an immigrant (legal or otherwise) so that they can deport people in batches. Platoons. Flotillas.
So is this moment more real than I am?
Are you real right now? Do you feel like you did last week or last month? Or do you feel ethereal too? I’d offer to pinch you, but that feels rude, and I prefer to be a nice person.
Oh shit.
If I’m not real anymore, the name on this publication is a lie, too. Well dang. I guess I’m stuck.
I could change it. I could think up something snappy to brand myself with so that I blend in. Hide in plain sight. You’d know [*wink*]. We would all know. But we wouldn’t really know [*wink*], y’know?
But then how would anyone find me? No, I should not erase myself even if I have been erased elsewhere. I should be like one of those “erasable pens” from the 90s that looked like a great idea and didn’t work anything like they advertised. Are those any better now, or did they give up on erasing ink?
I could be ink. Non-erasable. Indelible. Permanent. Skin-deep like a tattoo. Written into dermal layers of self-definition, too big to hide under the image of a skull or an octopus or a “mama’s boy” heart with a dagger through it. I could be that stain you never get to wash out once it sets in ten seconds after you spilled wine or marinara on your favorite white shirt, and you were probably warned not to wear white, but it looked so damn snappy you couldn’t help yourself.
You couldn’t help yourself reading my words, either, and it’s not your fault. You’re not guilty by association. I am the internet. I’m a contagion.
I am a belief system that can be out-believed, out-lawed, out-voted, out-outed. Closeted. Shamed. Excluded. Reframed. Hidden. Banished.
This whole language I used to discover myself, to translate myself into something you could read aloud, something you could interpret, something you could believe in—this language is open source, and they’re coming for it. They’ll take that, too, and then how will I tell you any of this?
How will any of us tell this story?
But if we don’t tell it, then we will always be “new” and “different” and “other” instead of our real truth—that we are elemental and ubiquitous and permanent. That we are verdant. That we are powerful. That we belong, and that you belong, and that I belong, and that there is nothing wrong with being what we are.
Maybe I still don’t exist, but I cast a shadow, and you can hear me whistling when I forget the words to the song, and I signal four times when I change lanes, and I always sign my work emails with a Thank you!! that has two exclamation marks and not one. That’s me. I’m real.
And so are you.
So let’s exist and piss someone off. I double-dog dare you.
Your trans friend,
Robin
"So let’s exist and piss someone off. I double-dog dare you." I am so far away and the fear reaches across oceans, but even more the bravery, the refusal to be silent -- as the wonderful Audre Lorde noted "your silence will not protect you" -- the least we can do is piss the ***** off.
The first rule in the playbook of authoritarian dictators is to make the populace fear the “other”. Could be trans people, could be migrants, no matter. That way the electorate doesn’t even notice when all their rights disappear.