Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman

Author:S. Bear Bergman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781551523880
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2010-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN IT’S GOOD

When it’s good, it’s perfect.

When it’s good, I feel like a knight, everything shining, pennant fluttering, victorious in an honorable cause, wearing my beloved’s favor against my heart. Like all the motions of time and space are in my skin with me, enriching my blood and enlivening my nerve endings one by one, like the runway lights along my spine have blinked on. Like I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. When it’s good I am with my tribe, casually having coffee and ice cream on the city hall steps in my small New England city, sitting all afternoon and collecting whoever comes along, the sun on our shoulders and our jokes familiar in both senses of the word, like we have the right to that space, and to each other’s company, and to our joy. I am walking down the street with my beloved wife, both of us dressed up and coordinated with each other, in step, her hand tucked through the crook of my arm; my eyes are up and my chest is out, there’s a spring in my step and I am glad-hearted. I am taking a young butch shopping for hir first dress shirt and tie, watching the helpless delight on hir face as ze catches hir reflection in the mirror for the first time in the crisp shirt, tie looped around hir neck; I stand behind hir and encircle hir with my arms, let hir lean back against the breadth of my chest and carefully watch my movements in the mirror while I knot hir tie. I am riding in the car, in the dark, with a butch I love, speaking our fears and hopes into the quiet that deepens between us, dense with secrets, and somehow in the telling we can both feel heard, and seen, and bound together. I am standing, literally, between someone and trouble—maybe a loved one, maybe just someone who sees me clearly and has asked my help in a difficult moment—standing there planted in my boots, praying that I can just use my size and calm forcefulness to solve the problem, but ready to do what needs to be done and so relieved to be there to do it. I am lifting another small child onto my shoulders for another ride, or spinning hir around until we’re both dizzy, or holding hir sweet, slack body against my chest while hir adult or adults watch with fondness and not a bit of concern. I am at the front of a classroom full of undergraduates, inert in their ignorance about gender, explaining and answering and joking while I stand there in my shirt and tie and blue jeans, letting them like me, helping them to understand, leaving them thinking about masculinity as a process and not a product; at the end of the hour I haven’t even gotten through all the questions and that’s all the time we have for today, the professor says, and they applaud

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