Guest column by genderqueer,feminist poet, TC Tolbert. A beautifully written essay touching on vulnerability and transgender awareness issues.

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I am going to give up my writing space for a guest column by poet TC Tolbert. S/He is the Assistant Director of Tucson literary center, Casa Libre En La Solana http://casalibre.org/ where this essay originally appeared. I have the author's permission to share it in full. - Bill Wetzel


TC Tolbert Photo by Samuel Ace

Vena Amoris

by TC Tolbert

I'm on a relatively small plane on my way to Denver. I'm in the window seat. There's no middle, just the guy in the aisle seat whose elbow keeps grazing my arm. We're both white men. He's 6'1, maybe 6'2, muscular. I'm 5'8, 150. He is not unkind. I'm bad at this sort of thing but I'd say he's in the neighborhood of 220 pounds. Right away he put the armrest down and got comfortable. He's sleeping now or trying to. Elbows outnumber armrests. We are close but we are not intimate. Presumably we are meant to negotiate the space.

A few years ago I started a trans awareness project called  Made for Flight . I visit classrooms, Gay-Straight Alliances, and youth centers and talk about trans identities, violence, how to be an ally. We make a kite for each trans woman who has been murdered during the year. We walk with those kites during the All Souls Procession (and if you want to join us, we would welcome you - see below). I am constantly saying these words: Two trans women are murdered each month here in the US. A trans woman (usually a trans woman of color who is a sex worker) is murdered every other day worldwide. Does saying this change anything for trans women? What does it mean to be complicit? When Janet Mock says, Every time there's a trans woman of color in the media, she's getting killed. It wrecks our souls. To whom or to what is she pointing? Do the dead women give a goddamn about all of those kites?

It is on the plane that I realize how long it's been since I've felt willingly vulnerable. In "A Brief for the Defense," Jack Gilbert says, "We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight." I went to a performance of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes last night because my heart is absolutely desperate for surprise.

I grew up in a family (and culture) that treated those closest with the most utter contempt. The idea that intimates pose the biggest emotional and physical threat isn't entirely crazy. Statistically speaking, it's like Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler say in Connected, "If you want to know who might take your life, just look at the people around you." Still. These are the same people who are bound to save your life. Although they are undoubtedly related, sometimes I worry much less about politics and hate crimes than I do about what we agree to call love. Self-loathing, continual justification for bad partner behavior, far more struggle than joy. A fear of scarcity. I see it because I know it. An epidemic among women, trans folks, and queers. I'm looking for a new story about love.

I was at a wedding the other day -- a hybrid Jewish and Christian ceremony and the rabbi said that in Jewish tradition the wedding ring is initially placed on the index finger because an artery runs to the tip of the finger we point with -- the one that says "you, this, now, here" -- carrying blood directly from the heart. In this way we reveal more about ourselves by what we point to (or away from) than we ever could by saying how we feel.

I went to the John Cage performance last night for the same reason I get on an airplane instead of driving, which is the same reason I eat in public even though it would cheaper to have the same meal at home. Amy said intimacy isn't about sharing our worst stories, it's about sharing the stories that come up. Julia said Halloween is the only American holiday that depends on interacting with others across (and beyond our own) identity category in an exuberant gesture of good faith. Who are the monsters, really? What do we have to suspend in order to experiment with trust?

When Sam put his hand on my shoulder as he was walking by, it was a kindness rarely offered between men. I know that now because now I'm a man. I needed his hand. Even if I am scared of being touched.

TC Tolbert is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. TC is Assistant Director of Casa Libre en la Solana, adjunct instructor at UA and Pima Community College, and wilderness instructor at Outward Bound. Co-editor, along with Tim Trace Peterson, of the forthcoming Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books/EOAGH, March 2013), TC has two chapbooks: spirare (Belladonna* 2012) and territories of folding (Kore Press 2011). His work won the Arizona Statewide Poetry Competition in 2010 and his first full length collection, Gephyromania, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press. S/he is the creator of Made for Flight, a youth empowerment project that utilizes creative writing and kite building to commemorate murdered transgender people and to dismantle homophobia and transphobia. www.tctolbert.com    

Authors Website: http://twitter.com/billthebutcher2

Authors Bio:

Bill Wetzel is Amskapi Pikuni aka Blackfeet from Montana. His writing has appeared in the American Indian Culture & Research Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, Studies In Indian Literatures (SAIL), Hinchas de Poesia, Red Ink Magazine, Literary Orphans and various outlets. He is the founder of the Stjukshon Indigenous reading series at Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, AZ. He is a 2018 Peripheral Poet Fellow, and twice a Lijang Studio Spring Festival Writer-in-Residence in Lijang, Yunnan, China. He is the 2022 MFA Author Awards winner. He currently lives and teaches in Shanghai, China.