Treating Myself

 It was another life: A lifetime ago.  

It was April 1987.  I was twenty.

My parents drove up to State College on a Thursday to my apartment in Beaver Hill to pick up my things.  The school year was over, but I had one final left, the next day.  The next week, a subletter- the girlfriend of a fraternity brother, would move in.  My roomie, Marc, moved out the previous day.  I would never see nor speak to him again.  That's life.

Fortunately, it was a furnished apartment, so there was nothing huge to move.  They left a pillow for me.  As my mom left, my dad lingered behind.  He gave me a twenty dollar bill and said "go out and have some fun tonight."  Never mind that I had a final the next day, and was too young to get into the bars.  Also, all the people who meant the world to me had already gone home.  

I spent a part of the cloudy sullen afternoon cleaning.  I didn't want the new tenant to think we were slobs!  (We were.)  Then, in mid afternoon, I decided something.  I had $20 in my pocket, and I wanted to treat myself.  I walked several blocks downtown to South Fraser St, to a store then called Book Swap.  In addition to used books, they were also State College's comic book store.  I'd visit there occasionally, just to look and occasionally pick up a comic or two when I had money.  Well, recently, a collected edition of an amazing comic run was released.  I now had the money to buy it.  As I walked to the store, it started raining- first a fine mist which eventually become a light spring drizzle- the kind that leaves that slightly musty smell.  

I looked around the store a bit- I used to love book stores before I worked in one.  Still kind of do.

Anyway, I found the book I wanted.  Nowadays, this would be called a "graphic novel" but back then it was a trade paperback.  This one collected issues #227-231 of Daredevil.  As a story, it's called Born Again.  I read it in the original run, but wanted the collection.

Trade paperback cover

This arc marked the return of Frank Miller to Daredevil after a several year absence.  During that time, he'd remade comics with the publication of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One.  In the latter, he teamed with artist David Mazzucchelli.  For Born Again, he'd do so again.  

Without going into detail, it's a story of Daredevil's life being destroyed, and his steps toward rebuilding that life.  It's a story of redemption full of Catholic symbolism and amazing subplots (including my favorite version of Captain America ever.)  I took it back to the apartment, but didn't read it.  I studied for that final.  Later that day, I walked downtown again, through a purposeful rain to get a slice of pizza.

The exam was 8 AM.  I don't remember how I did.  After I finished, I returned to the apartment, grabbed the pillow, put the few bits I still had with me into the pillow case and walked up Beaver Ave to the fraternity house.  There I gave my fraternity brother my key.  From there I walked across town to the bus station, and boarded the bus back to southeast PA.  On the way, I read the Daredevil comic twice.  It's arguably Frank Miller's best work on Daredevil.  

From Born Again by Miller and Mazzucchelli

The past few days have been eternal.  I hate the holidays.  On Monday, I received bad news.  I was up for a job as transgender trainer where I work- exactly: 

1. what I do for the place as a grad student and 
2. exactly what I do for my PhD. 

The people deciding are a couple of my supervisors, some of my coworkers, and an HR person. I didn't even make the second fucking round of interviews for some reason.  I washed out on a PHONE interview.  

Now I know that my coworkers don't think I can do the job- that they think I'm incompetent.  Incapable.  A loser only fit for menial tasks.  That the first interview was a mere courtesy, and I was never even fucking considered for the job.  "Give it an interview to shut it up."

I wrote a whole blog entry about it, then took it down.  I didn't want anyone sending police over for a "wellness check."  Maybe I'll post it again after it's all said and done.  

Anyway, I've been very depressed since.  I decided today I'd take a walk downtown for the exercise.  The day was cloudy, cold, and heavy.  I found myself in Comic Swap- the shop is still there, but changed its name.  Now, I have a version of the Born Again story in a hardcover omnibus, but the paperback copy went missing some time ago.  Maybe it's in one of the still unpacked boxes I sealed up when I was thrown out back in 2013.  Who knows.  In any case, I was now in Comic Swap, the same store as long ago.  I have little money, and bills that are overdue.  My PhD program is such that I'm strongly considering withdrawing.  

There on the shelf, among a section of Daredevil graphic novels, was Born Again.  After all these years, it's still in print (that's how good it is.)  I looked at it, spined along with the other titles, with my older eyes.  My entire life was different now.  Then, I was a kid with dreams and hopes.  I was on the cusp of summer and there was so much to look forward to.  Now, I'm an old, fat, transgender woman whose life self-destructed a decade before.  So many dead friends.  So much pain.  So little left.  So little that like a coward I ran back to Penn State in search of refuge in academia.  I don't recognize the thing in the mirror with hollow dead eyes and thin scraggly long hair.  Back then, I knew how to smile.  I can't remember how to smile now- except to fake it for pictures.  

I removed the book from the shelf.  It was a newer edition with extra material.  I flipped through the familiar pages and remembered.  I decided to treat myself.  I pulled out the credit card I use only for "emergencies" such as when I have no money and need food.  I bought the book.  The worker put it in a slim paper bag, just like a different person had done decades before.  I thanked them, wished them a happy holiday, and walked up the steps to Fraser street.  I turned onto College Ave and walked toward my car, parked a few blocks down the street.  One block further was a new pizza place- it replaced a series of pizza places.  When I was in undergrad, it was Brother's Pizza.  Back then, it's where I'd stop for a slice.

I opened my car door and put the bag on the passenger seat.  I walked the extra block to the new pizza shop.  I'm treating myself.  I'm trying to drive away the holiday hate and the Darkness of my failure.  I ordered a slice of pepperoni and a drink.  Sat in a booth in the empty pizza shop alone, and ate it.  

After I finished, I returned to my car, and after another quick stop on campus, went back to the apartment.  My roomie/bestie Linda was at work, so I sat alone.  On the table sat the book chapter, one hundred pages long, that was assigned to me months before.  I simply couldn't pick it up and do my job- read the damn thing.  It's gotten to the point that I'm afraid of it.  

I sat on the couch, and the paper and I stared at each other.  The room was darkening- it was after 4, and it's winter.  Next to me on the couch was the paper bag containing the comic I'd read countless times.  My treat to myself.  I looked over at the Christmas tree, which I'd plugged in after returning.  

I removed the book from the bag, and read it again.  Anything to escape the wreck I've made of my life.  To escape the hellscape that elected officials are making for people like me.  In Born Again, the characters have Hope, and the good guys win in the end.  A life that was destroyed has been rebuilt but not restored.  Heroes exist.  

If only for an hour.

Be well.  Those who celebrate, please have a happy holiday season.  

UPDATE 4/24:  The copy I bought in 1987 which had gone missing has been found.  As expected, it was packed away in a box among other unrelated things.  So now I have two copies, both which have meaning.  Life is funny sometimes.

Sophie's 2023 TDOR Speech

 Sorry it's been a while.  Depression sucks.  In any case, on November 14, I gave the keynote speech at Penn State's Transgender Day of Remembrance.  It was on that day instead of the 20th because the students were on fall break the week of the 20th.  

This is what I wrote and delivered that night, pretty much word for word.

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Despite the fact that the news and policies and losses should’ve left us numb or calloused our souls to the Pain, I offer the following trigger warnings: murder, suicide, death, history, and Hope.  I also acknowledge my privilege as a person of white, western European colonizer ancestry, and that the land where I write this was once home to the Susquehannock people.   

Tonight, we solemnly gather to honor our dead.  We do this to remember not just those we will name tonight, but those whose names we will never know.  How many transgender people died and were then misgendered by the police, doctors, reporters, and families?  How many took their own lives never telling a soul about the pain that dysphoria inflicted upon their souls?  How many homeless transgender teens search dumpsters for scraps of food as cisgender teens order an extra shot of espresso in their grande cappuccino?

The poet Lee Mokobe wrote that “Oncoming traffic is embracing more transgender children than parents.”  Torry Peters wrote “If you are a trans girl who knows many other trans girls, you go to church a lot, because church is where they hold the funerals.”

Why?  Why is gender non-conformity a mortal sin, punishable by ostracism, pain, and death?  I ask for the 327 transgender and gender diverse people reported murdered worldwide.  95% of them were trans-feminine.  65% were people of color.  [Transrespect vs Transphobia Worldwide].  This is not new.  Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 for wearing men's clothing, which the Church referred to as "idolatry.”  The Inquisition decided that there was not enough evidence to have her convicted of witchcraft.   She was 19.

Bubba Copeland, the Republican mayor of Smiths Station, Alabama, pastor at Phenix City’s First Baptist Church, and father of three, shot himself in the head two weeks ago.  They’d previously led their town through the aftermath of a tornado that killed 23 people.   Despite this, a far-right website revealed that they were also Brittini Blaire Summerlin, a transgender woman who posted photos and transgender erotica online.  They begged the website not to do this, but, as always, the cruelty is the point, and they doxed Brittini anyway.  Brittini was buried last Thursday.

Dark days.  Transgender people face an onslaught of legislation like a biblical flood of hatred.  The purveyors cover up their hate with names like “Protect children’s innocence act” and Protecting Children from Experimentation Act”, and “Productivity over Pronouns act.”   We are called every name except child of God by far-right politicians who use us to scare people into donating.

Why?  I don’t understand.  I’ve studied this very question for the past four years and can quote the research, cite the sources, and discuss academic theories.  I am considered an expert on the topic.  But I am transgender.  I don’t know what it means to be cisgender.  Oh, I know what it means to pretend- I did that for 47 years.  How does it feel to not think about gender constantly.  How does it feel to not worry about your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness disappearing during election day, or due to the death of a judge?   Perhaps I just don’t understand the cisgender mind.

However... however... dark as these days may be, there is hope.  As the Bard wrote “True hope is swift and flies with swallow’s wings.” [Richard III' (1591) act 5, sc. 2, l. 23].  How do I know? 

A friend of Bubba Copeland’s, who didn’t know about Brittini, wrote “I just want to ask you people who thought it humorous to publicly ridicule him, ‘Are you happy now?’ What crime did he commit? Some of you people make me sick. I hope you are really proud.”  In the deep red south, an ally is forged.  Allies.  Friends. 

And that is what we need to go on.  If healing from these losses is possible, it will be helped along by friends and allies.  Transgender people can be very resilient.  After all, we’ve survived through the centuries, on the fringes, shunned or hiding.  We have community, but to actually heal, we need outside help.  We need people to understand one basic fact above all others:  that we are human.  That’s all- acknowledge our basic humanity.  Let us live our lives without superfluous laws designed to inflict cruelty, and with the basic rights afforded to human beings.

Friends and allies can be hard to find, but we are finding them.  We find them in the person who says “enough is enough!”  or at least “I need to know more before I make a judgement.”  We find them in people who extend their hand and say “let me help.”  Most of all, we find them in YOU: this current generation.  The generation of today has known transgender people most of their lives.  They have transgender friends and relatives.  They see positive transgender representation in movies, tv, and in books.  For them, being transgender can be just another facet making up a person, not something to fear.  These friends and allies join their voices to ours, lend us their strength when we need it, and vote out transphobic politicians. 

You help us heal from the losses.  You give us the strength to go on when everything seems bleak.  You give us HOPE- the hope that some way, somehow, things will get better.  You give us the hope that someday we will be accepted in society- that being transgender will be seen as no big deal, just another variety of people.  That day may come, but only if we all want it, and work toward it together.  Every vote, every voice raised in protest, every gathering can be another step forward.  They can generate the hope someone needs to stay alive.  As Cicero wrote “While there is life, there is hope.”

Sleep well brothers and sisters.  May the four winds blow you safely home.  We will take the baton and continue in your name.