Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Author:Imogen Binnie [Binnie, Imogen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Lgbt, Transgender, tagged, Fiction
ISBN: 9781627290005
Goodreads: 18230141
Publisher: Topside Press
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

28.

The drizzle has turned into proper rain again as Maria is strapping her bike to the rack on the car’s trunk. She gets soaked. Her denim jacket was already soaked, and she doesn’t really have a heavier jacket. You don’t need a heavy jacket when you layer: tank top, collared shirt, hoodie, jacket, scarf. Of course, they’re all soaked. She gets the bike attached and locked and tries to figure out whether she should put plastic bags or a tarp or a blanket or something over it, but fuck it. Whatever. She’s a tough bike, she can get a little wet.

Steph’s car is a little green Civic from about a dozen years ago. Relatively fancy. Clean. There’s a CD player, a radio, a blanket, a water jug. They used to go on road trips sometimes. It’s been a while.

She clicks her seatbelt, lets out the clutch and realizes, Fuck man, how do I get to Piranha’s neighborhood again?

One time Steph observed that Maria tends not to be very performy, and when she is performy, it’s almost always for herself, not for anyone else. She thinks about that as she’s pretending to push buttons on an imaginary GPS on the car’s dashboard. It’s a problem, you grow up reading about punk and grunge and earnest dude rock in all the magazines and internalizing the idea that artifice is totally bullshit, man, and we wear these clothes because they’re comfortable, not for any kind of fashion statement, and we’re just trying to communicate, not be cool, and then you transition and realize, oh shit, there is going to have to be some intentionality in the way I present my body and my actions. I am going to have to break the patterns of clothing and voice and hair I’ve had in place all my life if I’m ever going to be read the way I want to be read. Like, it would be nice to believe that you could just exist, just be some true, honest, essential self. But you only really get to have a true honest essential self if you’re white, male, het, and able-bodied. Otherwise your body has all these connotations and you don’t get the benefit of the doubt.

It’s like the Buddhist thing where the Zen master goes, Show me your true face, and the student goes, Sure, here it is! And the Zen master goes, No, show me your true face, and the student goes, No, seriously, I am, this is my true face, and then the Zen master goes, Get the fuck out of my house, you are not showing me your true face, and then the student goes AAAH I AM SHOWING YOU MY TRUE FACE WHAT TRUE FACE ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT NOBODY HAS A TRUE FACE and takes a swing at the Zen master and the Zen master dodges it all easily and sits back and goes, ahh, there it was, you don’t have to leave my house after all.

There’s probably more

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