July 31, 2023
Salut love,
I know it’s quite early in NY. It’s 10am in Paris and after rereading your fantastic piece, I ruminated on where to begin. I find the best and simplest is starting with the origins. How did you arrive at using a pantoum for this piece? Did you find a pantoum a good vehicle for telling your story as someone with c.diff?
Warmly,
Joel
August 2, 2023
Hello my love!
I have just started Giovanni’s Room for the first time and I’ve been vicariously wandering the streets of Paris. Have you read it yet? Some folks were assigned it in school and I WISH I had it assigned to me because wow I am just eating it up. What has been your favorite thing to witness there so far? NYC is alright. I am recovering from another bout of covid and a “colonization” of c.diff, which, it turns out, is different from an infection. The term is so extra. Apparently C.diff spores can remain in my system without actually wrecking havoc on my gut, and they can suddenly arise and I can have another bout of infections again. This actually was what inspired me to do a pantoum! I found the form before I found the theme. In previous drafts I was trying to talk about quantum entanglement within these tardigrades— the first living thing to enter a quantum dormant state— But a lot of my work gets way too heady and I lose track of the heart. I sometimes envy those high class intellectual poets who can seamlessly weave philosophy into their works, but right now I find I’m locked in this shitty/goofy body. After turning in my thesis today I’m thinking thank god I’m not boring and stuffy like them. Half of the poems in this thesis include shit or sex, and the other half include cats.
I was assigned a pantoum from my professor after I wrote a version of a sestina and found the tethering of words to be a mind game that really prevented me from losing focus. I love the idea that words can weave and tether together sometimes, and run amok at others. The piece wasn’t working, despite the cuteness of the "moss piglets” as they are called, and I thought of something else that has a similar cyclical idea— C.diff. Each bout of C.diff can double the likelihood of recurrence for future bouts, and the fact that the spores can stay on surfaces for up to six months makes it all the more likely that you can get C.diff over and over. The form of the pantoum was helpful for this because though syntax of the sentences can change slightly, they remain constant in the information shared.
Here is a great example of the tethering I was talking about earlier— this one by the late John Ashbery. I admit, I don’t quite understand this poem. I see it as a tapestry of language. C.diff, to me, felt like one of those shitty playa bowl places that are buying out Ma and Pa shops all over NYC— they are selflessly indulgent in their display of love of capital, and are so peppy about it! Woo hoo! So I wanted to play around with the idea of their proliferation being a start up or new business. From there I just had fun with it. I found the structure to be ANNOYING in the way that makes you pull your sleeves up and try harder. It’s not an exact pantoum, and for that I feel shame, but I think also the body isn’t exact and I wanted the form to drip out and morph. C.Diff is also known to cause depression and other psychological phenomena due to the mind gut connection, so I wanted to see how language can reinforce the cycles we tell ourselves every day. Do you think that form is useful to you as a writer? A lot of times form is gate-kept by conservative poets who think it’s a binary of correct vs incorrect form. To me, form is a niche tool that has survived through the years simply because it’s good at the very specific thing that it does, mainly to work in a certain color palette of language and allow for innovation through constraint. The “/”s in your poem function in a similar way. I love them SO MUCH. How did you come up with them? Have you coded before? I love your use of the self-portrait and would love to hear about how you came to work within that mode.
I have been reading Belladonna*/Litmus press' collection “No Gender: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards. I feel like you would like it a lot and want to gift it to you when you are back from Paris! Here is a quote from kari I love: “identity is a tool for momentary defense against historical locality, historical permanence with borders, but the body is flux mechanics, writing a queer text is fluid, outside inside, inside a body space with no boundaries, a realization that there is no singularity without boards, dogma, and belligerent linearity” (“Subject: Statement,” EAOGH: Issue Three, Queering language). This quote resonated with the chronic issues I have, and reminded me of your work. I love how queer and flux you are.
Sincerely,
Ry
August 4, 2023
Hello Darling,
I’m writing to you from my childhood apartment building in Brookline MA. My brother just moved into the second floor of this building and I am visiting him as well as my stepfather, who I talk a lot about in my poems. My stepfather has VHL and it’s a constant struggle to deal with various chronic symptoms. I write a lot about him in my work, though often I feel that I’m somehow exploiting his illness for the sake of poetry, and mostly write about my perspective and love with him as his body changes. How do you write about chronic illness in your family? When I was hanging out with him last night he said he was glad we were both here, even if part of it has to do with his declining health. I never know how much time I have left with him, and yet I also can’t imagine people doing things for you just because you are declining. I think a lot about that in relationship to the tokenization trans people get from cis educators, coworkers, and friends. I’m sorry for the downer of a message. I hope you are enjoying your vacation and would love to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Ry
August 7, 2023
Good morning hon,
I am back in the states now and thoroughly enjoyed Paris. Something about getting caught in the rain in Paris with my best friend felt magical.
Second, I have read Giovanni's Room. I read it in a community college English course. Baldwin's novel was my introduction to his oeuvre and ever since I have consumed most of his work voraciously. I wish his work was shown to me during my younger years. I never really connected with a lot of the "classics" that are still being enforced in high school curricula. I remember being so entrenched in David and Giovanni's world. Did you finish the book? Are there any other Baldwin works that you have/n't read?
Third, congrats on turning in your thesis. You did it and in your own cool and funky way with cats, shit, and sex. Also, I am so sorry to read about you having another bout with COVID and C.diff. I think the use of the word colonization to describe the inner (re)workings of your mindgut, or as Eli Clare would call it bodymind, is a great word choice, particularly because of the issues that are arising across the nation that affect folx with dis/ff-abilities. Particularly with the continued waves of COVID and the lack of regulations to protect people, especially those who are immunocompromised, the use of the word colonization is apt since capitalism is a major symptom of colonization that is affecting us all. Also, thinking about how colonization as a tool for how "White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy" affects Trans and Gender Non-Conforming folx.
The great thing about your work, besides being able to rock a pantoum, is its amalgamation of criticizing capitalism while talking about how C.diff affects the mindgut/bodymind. The last two stanzas are so powerful and the pantoum for this piece is almost like those late-night adverts that would play in between reruns of popular t.v. shows (might be aging myself a bit)— a form of targeting to reach a very specific audience and in this case that being the mindgut. You mentioned spores can stay on surfaces for up to six months, your pantoum has 6 stanzas, was that a coincidence or intentional? I find numbers and the choice of them to be quite interesting. 6 can get a bad rap, especially from Christian religions but it tends to be associated with Venus, creativity, luck, and a caring nature. These latter descriptions can describe your piece.
Fourth, I think form can be a useful tool for poets to find their voice. That being said, I do concur with you about the snobbery surrounding specific taste palettes that expect poets to have a mastery of forms (i.e. sestina, villanelle, sonnets, etc). Form can be helpful and when done unexpectedly, quite lovely. However, for me, I remember during the fall 2022 semester, I kind of was like fuck form and just wrote. I was producing work that I thought was fun or interesting to play with, "Self-Portrait" being one of the poems I produced in Tim Donnelly's class.
My only coding experience came from Myspace and some web design stuff I currently do for my job. Before the birth of "Self-Portrait," I had 2 other poems that were my first times using code as a form. I do agree with you. Part of the charm of the "/"s were their constraints. For me, the "/"s were a physical manifestation on the page of the walls I hit when I'm in a depressive state. They also worked to show the tingling and prickly feeling I get when I am experiencing anxiety. You mentioned accepting the challenge of trying to get this form right, how many iterations of "Cdiff-A Pantoum" existed before its final version?
Fifth, I have to thank the magazine Winter Tangerine for the title. During National Poetry Month in 2018, they posted a prompt that said write a poem using the title "Self-Portrait as Rain" and I never had the opportunity to do it then, so I saved the prompt and who knew 4 years later I would finally write a poem using the title. Being able to use code, tech language, and colors to paint a self-portrait of the machinations of my mindbody felt like the most appropriate way to allow folx to come on a journey. The most compelling part of doing a self-portrait was having the autonomy to use myself as a canvas to draw out the colors and moments inside my bodymind that felt needed to be shown in my words. There is only so much the medical-industrial complex can diagnose. Hearing what others are saying in clinical language can never fully capture how my bodymind (re)works itself every single day. Self-portrait was a tool to take back myself and show not only the shitty parts but also the beauty that I find in being chronic. Would you write a self-portrait?
Sixth, the quote is quite fabulous. Thank you for your kind words and I would be honored to receive such a great gift. The quote touches on a bit of what I was getting at towards the end of the last paragraph. It's so hard when others read you, whether you are too dis/ff-abled, queer, ethnic or any other ways that bodies get coded by the various gazes. There are always people going to clock someone. Being able to decide who one wants to be and embrace our own identities regardless of the bullshit that others try to project on us ultimately is one of the best ways of saying "fuck you, I'm here to stay." Do you find poetry to be the best space to be able to be queer and flux? How do you think one can avoid boundaries and borders such as structure and form when writing poetry?
Seventh, your stepfather sounds like an amazing human being. I am so sorry for the issues that arise with his chronic illness. I have only ever written one poem about someone in my family with chronic illness and that was my late mother. She had a long-running list of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, kidney failure, Congestive Heart Failure to name a few. I think there is a difference between exploitation and exploration, especially when writing about people near and dear to us, and it is all about intentions. Your intentions seem purely about exploring the inner (re)workings of y'alls' relationship with one another and the one with his bodymind and VHL. My intentions were also about exploring the way my mother's illnesses (re)worked her bodymind. As the eldest child, I was privy to a lot of information or moments (ethical concerns about continuing to live as chronic) that my younger siblings weren't aware of and made it a point to only stick to the exploration part of the (re)workings of the bodymind.
Lastly, you raised the point about tokenizations by cis-professionals of Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (GNC) folx and I would be glad to fully discuss this further. As I mentioned, colonization as a tool has placed Trans and GNC folx in precarious situations, including being tokenized for clout. I remember back in 2019 on my first visit to New York, I made my way to Stonewall to pay tribute to my Black and Brown Trans, GNC and Drag Queen relatives who paved the way for what is now known as the Gay Liberation Movement. I remember being angry over the statues in Christopher Park, now a national monument as of 2016. All tea and all shade but why were the statues not made to represent the actual Black and Brown people who fought for the rights of the community? It was also around the time that RuPaul made some transphobic remarks about not letting Trans women compete on the mainstream hit show RuPaul's Drag Race. Since then, he has apologized and the past 4 winners of the American version have been Trans or GNC. All of this while under the shadow of 45's administration. I was furious by all that was happening at the time and wrote an essay for a class called "Gender-Bent: A Critique on Heteronormative Legal-Corporeal Transposed Boundaries." It clearly showed my ire and frustrations that came from living in a time when Queer and Trans folx were under attack (as we do today with over 400 anti-trans bills proposed or passed across Turtle Island). I need to revise that essay. But back on clout and RuPaul, I think he saw a big ticket item as a producer when folx (past Drag Race contestants and the 2sLGBTQIA+ community) were up in arms defending Trans and GNC people and recognizing the long hixtories that Trans and GNC folx have been a part for so long, and he has since welcomed Trans contestants, crowned Trans winners, and has even adopted a more androgynous dress. I don't want to be cynical and say it has just been a gimmick and hope that he really learned from his mistakes and has seen the beauty of being able to say fuck you to gender.
Please let me know when you are back in NYC. I would love to create a hybrid experience of this Conversation.
Warmly,
Joel
August 14, 2023
My Dear and generous Joel,
I have felt like mush the past few days. I am trying to find a job post thesis, and have felt drained and humiliated with my lack of success this summer. I want to focus on that word, humiliation, with you later, as I have been reading Wayne K’s “Humiliation” for my chapbook on cringe culture.
I love how our letters just keep getting larger and larger—it reminds me of unfurling the pressed sheets you need to spread out on the bed. I have always had trouble getting all the sides of the bed to cooperate with my effort, so I am sorry about this delay/messy response.
I am glad you are back from Paris, and would love to meet up. Where are you living? We can meet uptown or in Brooklyn. I can’t wait to hear about you and your friend’s experience abroad!
Second, I finished Giovanni’s Room on the train to Boston and didn’t feel it was the right time to cry (though I did shed some tears towards the end). I think crying in public can sometimes be a humiliating thing for me, as it forces me to lose control of my body in a space that others can perceive and judge. I cry a lot on the MTA, but rarely anywhere else. This was my first Baldwin, and I would LOVE any more recs for him as I fell madly for his prose.
Third, CONGRATS on YOU turning in your thesis as well—It is no easy feat. I would love to read it sometime soon. I wasn’t familiar with the idea of the “mindbody” but think it makes a lot of sense. It is all connected, and can’t just be solved with medication alone.
I didn’t intend for the form to be 6 stanzas but oh my goodness thank you for pointing it out. I love the number 6 and always have—the “x” in six always felt seductive and deviant.
Fourth, I agree with you Re: the form and would love to hear more about your relationship to it. I would also love to share with you some of my “Self Portraits” that exist within my thesis. In the manuscript there is this character I associate with named “Asushunamir”. They are a genderless Akkadian hero sent to rescue the goddess Ishtar from the underworld. Asu exists within the poem for 4 lines, and then is subsequently cursed for all eternity for aiding Ishtar in her escape. My goal was to talk about my life as it relates to the same fate that Ishtar’s rescuer was given, as well as think about how ancient scholarly works exist in the contemporary poetry world as a way for sexist and transphobic definitions to be perpetuated.
I have imagined the myth from the perspective of Asu’s journey in an attempt to show how genderqueer narratives have been around for thousands of years. In her work Cursed are You! Anne Marie Kitz paraphrases the work of J. Pedersen: “He identifies the three elements fundamental to every curse: (1) excommunication, (2) loss of honor, and (3) ban.” While reading Pedersen’s elements for the first time as countless laws are being passed banning trans people in the US, outing them to their families, removing their gender affirming care, and calling them “cringe,” I began to see that this manuscript could turn into a curse that curses the curses the world has cursed us with. In the process I found it has acted as an anti-curse for my own past. The self portraits in my manuscript act as moments where Asu’s curses and my own life come together—a sort of portal between the ancient and the modern. Do you believe in curses? I started out being skeptical and now I think I do.
Omg I want a myspace poem RIGHT NOW. I would also love to see the two other poems that use code as a form. Part of what I love about this particular poem was that the walls/constraints were there without specifically naming the “chronic illness” that the speaker is struggling with. Code and digital culture also help with the cyborg body that many trans people find comfort in (I’m thinking of Sophie’s Faceshopping rn).
Sixth, I like poetry because there are very little ways to make money off of it—and therefore it allows people to fully express themselves (for the most part) without capital looming over their shoulder. Wayne K writes that writing in itself is humiliating and I have always found comfort in this type of humiliation. I like looking back on old poems and cringing at my ideas of what I found to be “poetic” at the time, and yet there is this genuine seeking within cringey old poetry that I wish to explore more in this project I am working on. Cringe is a word that contains so much! It is a digital aesthetic, a physical sensation, a self debasing confession, and a way for alt right folks to shit on queer and trans people having meltdowns on camera. I think poetry is inherently cringe, and so are the chronic parts of my body. I feel cringe, but free within this label to attempt the genuine. I think a cringe poetics is an inherently queer one.
Seventh, I completely feel you re: writing about people near and dear to us. I am also the eldest child and have had to deal with a lot of info that my sibling wasn’t aware of. If you feel comfortable I would love to read the poem you wrote about your family.
Thank you for sharing that story about visiting Stonewall. I also found those statues to be in poor taste, and don’t even get me started on RuPaul (cringe fracking queen). I would also LOVE to read your essay. I don’t know as much about Drag Race as I would like to admit, but you bring up a good point around tokenization around marginalized communities in general. I want my poetry to be read not because I am Trans, but in conversation with my transness. How do you want your work to be read/who do you think your ideal audience is for your work?
I find our conversation to be affirming. I would love to meet for coffee or tea this week if you are free.
Love,
Ry
August 16, 2023
My beautiful Ry,
First, I am sorry to read about the slump you have been experiencing. I haven't had the opportunity to read Wayne Koestenbaum's book. Hopefully, I can make room for it before the summer ends. But I do want to respond to your que(e)ry about cringe culture and humiliation.
I just moved to the Bronx but I can meet you downtown or in Brooklyn. Yes, let's plan a coffee/tea/conversation salon.
Second, I highly recommend Go Tell It on the Mountain and Notes of a Native Son. I think I am finally going to read If Beale Street Could Talk. We should read our next Baldwin book and regroup.
Third, thank you. It has been a journey and I cannot believe how fast two years went. Now here's to the next part of our journey.
Six is such an interesting number. I think it's interesting that you highlighted how it feels seductive and deviant, particularly the x. X is a site for wonderment, danger, and being in the (un)know(n). X can be seen as trying to find the unknown as one does in a mathematics equation. X has been associated with the demonic or witchcraft but also has been seen as a sign for the wounds of christ or the cross he carries. X can be used to connote love and pleasure: signed xoxo or XXX. X as a sign of being doubled-crossed or crossing a sidewalk. X has been seen as a space for inclusivity but that can be argued against. AfroIndigenous poet Alán Pelaez Lopez wrote an article about the x as a wound, specifically within the word Latinx. So I can see why one could have a fascination with the number 6.
Fourth, when I first started writing I really didn't think much about form. I just wrote. I remember my 6th grade teacher encouraging me to write, s/o to Ms. Martin. But as I got older and indoctrinated by western literature and curriculum, it felt like form was discipline. Again, don't get me wrong, form is a useful tool and when someone does something unexpected with form I cheer the loudest. I remember growing up it felt like form took the joy out of writing. Depending on my mood, I (dis)use form. But most of the time I just wanna have fun and see what else can I do? Reminds me of your pantoum that is(nt) a pantoum. You created your work with a form in mind but out of it came the piece it needed to be regardless if it follows the pantoum model to a tee.
Thank you for sharing your "Self-Portraits" with me. I can't wait to dive into them. I do agree with you about Trans and GNC folx being erased from hixtory, especially in academia. It's like when historians see a gay couple and write in textbooks that they were roommates.
Again, thank you for sharing Anne Marie Kitz's paraphasing Pedersen's words about the components of a curse. I would rather be a curse, which I believe in btw. I feel that our theses are kindred spirits. With so much anti-Trans legislation against Trans and GNC folx, but also thinking about bans against drag as stealth attacks on Trans and GNC folx. It's not a safe world for us right now but that doesn't mean we're gonna rollover and take it. A curse to their, as bell hooks said, “White Supremacist Capitalist Cishetero-Patriarchy” from above the Village of Chamounix like Susan Stryker once wrote. I have a fun prompt that I would love to sit and write with you if you are down for it when we meet up?
Fifth, yeah, that was my rationale in using the "/'s" as a literal wall but also to highlight the symbol's (no pun intended) (re)working on the page but also within the mindbody. I find it enthralling that you bring up the image/embodiment of the cyborg and its use by Trans and GNC folx. I am no stranger to using the digital/cyborgy metaphor/embodiment. One person in workshop at Columbia described my work as “science fiction genderfuckery magic.” I hope to continue evolving and wear that title with pride. Furthermore, I cannot think about the cyborg without thinking about Donna Haraway and Sam Doran’s theories on use of the cyborg. Although Doran's theory is more aligned to Trans and GNC folx, it's like you said. There is comfort in the cyborg body but also recognizing that even cyborgs as a metaphor used by cishets highlights the anxieties surrounding the e/affects that are produced through projections onto the cyborg and the cyborg body. I recently heard of Sophie and was saddened to hear of their untimely death. Sophie's work has been on repeat ever since. One of my first cyborg loves was and still is Janelle Monáe/Cindi Mayweather. I still remember listening to the EP and being enamored with the music, concept, and politics that intersected within this piece of art. I know part of your oeuvre focuses on digital and Trans mythos, and thinking about the cyborg, what is your cyborg name?
Sixth, thinking back to yours and Koestenbaum's idea of humiliation in relation to writing. Writing as an act of humiliation is radical to me, thinking of the root word for humiliation, “humus,” which means ground or earth. Also, the root is shared with the word humility, so thinking of writing not as an act of being humiliated or being brought down a peg, or as an action done to a person. But rather thinking of it as recentering and bringing oneself back to ground, or an action one is doing (autonomy over one's stories, voice, and self).
I think cringe also falls into this act of being able to choose how one re/acts cringe. Yes, Cringe Culture is problematic asf because of the re/action being imposed onto "others," especially by those choosing to dictate and define the narrative of what is cringe. As a poet with a chronic illness, there are ways my mindbody cringes (in)voluntarily as a re/action whether it is embodied within me or propels me to find ways to ground myself within the a/effect of cringing. I feel with poetry, cringe can be a re/active force that poets can ride or use to build up to something. And you're clearly onto something when saying cringe poetics is inherently queer.
Lastly, I feel as long as our intentions are clear and writing our family as subjects rather than objects makes it okay. I would love to share the poem. I haven't looked at it since I wrote it back in 2016 (this was a few months after my mother's passing). I would also love to read pieces regarding your stepfather.
Oh yeah, how can I forget him fracking! And yes, I have similar sentiments. I'm Trans and my work has elements of Transness, but I am not a monolith. I am a multifaceted and intersectional being that has lots of interests, knowledges, and identities that make me who I am and inform and influence my work. Furthermore, I want my work to be read by people looking for a real bad bish lol. If you like to shake things up, talk shit about systems and institutions of inequality/equity, and fold in so many cultural references then come see my work, we'll have a real good time.
Here's to seeing where our conversation takes us next or as Emily Skillings' class taught us, where we will land after climbing down the many holes/portals/apertures that we have opened.
Faithfully awaiting,
Joel
August 18, 2023
Dear Joel,
Thank you for the generous response! How about we meet either Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday? I am down to go up to Hungarian pastry shop as I have some library books I have to drop off lol.
Sincerely,
Ry
August 18, 2023
Hi honey,
Perfect. I can do Monday and the Hungarian Pastry Shop works for me.
Warmly,
Joel
August 21, 2023, at Hungarian Pastry Shop
Ry : My voice is naturally higher pitched for microphone stuff. And I don't know what's going on with that. I did a lot of vocal training when I was younger. I wanted to be a starlet. I wanted to be the next Judy Garland or something. Maybe not Judy, but
*moment of hesitation and laughter between us as we realized what that would mean. (SIDE NOTE: R.I.P Judy)*
Um, no, but I did want to do that.
Joel: That's so cool.
Ry: Yeah. I still think theater is important.
Joel: I love theater.
Ry: Me too. Have you been interested in any plays or musicals recently?
Joel: Yeah, I've been wanting to see The Shark is Broken. Just cause Jaws is one of my favorite horror movies. And I just love a behind the scenes story. You mentioned Judy, earlier. There's a mini series that Judy Davis did, where she played Judy Garland. It's like Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.
Ry: Oh my god.
Joel: I go back to it all the time. You can find it for free on YouTube. I like behind the scenes things. I hear a bunch of revivals are coming to Broadway. Cabaret from the West End.
Ry: I'd love to see that.
Joel: I love the Liza Minnelli film version. The Wiz is coming. They're reviving Doubt, the play. There's a couple of other ones. There's Grey House.
Ry: What's that?
Joel: It's like a horror play. Laurie Metcalf's in it. And she's always serving.
Ry: I know! She is!
Joel: But that's really it. My mother-in-law is coming to town. I kinda wanna take her to see a show. We took her to see Chicago the last time she was here. Because she knows the story. I'm trying to find a musical where she knows the story. So, either The Lion King or Aladdin.
Ry: Mhmmm
Joel: I think she would honestly really like Wicked. It's a beautiful set. It's a great score. I would just have to tell her, like, it's about the witches of Oz. That's all you need to know.
Ry: My nana, during Seussical, didn't understand. I love Seussical. She couldn't conceptualize that they were on a clover, though. And she was like, where are they? What's going on? Why are they moving? I do feel like the space in the theater is sometimes confusing, especially if people are not used to the rules in which things happen. Whether it's movement or space. I find that very interesting. I feel like language is different because we use language every single day. We're not on stage every day, and therefore sometimes if you're not in that group, it might be hard. *in British accent* Something to ponder. I really want to know what you think about where should I start with James Baldwin. I have Notes of a Native Son. I want to also read Go Tell It On The Mountain. I haven't checked out his non fiction yet.
Joel: I would go with Go Tell It On The Mountain. It's semi autobiographical.
Ry: Oh, amazing.
Joel: I remember reading it for a class, and I was just like, wow. He has such a way with, I mean this is gonna sound cliché, because a lot of people are like, they have such ways with words, but it's like, no, James Baldwin, actually has such a use of language that is so technical, but there's such an emotive undertone that never loses its technicality, but also isn't bombastic or melodramatic.
Ry: Completely.
Joel: And, if he lived during a different time period, how would his work have been received? He was dealing with American racism, which is still very prominent with anti-blackness so ingrained into our society, and to think, would he have the same success that he does now, or? Yeah, there's all these things I think about, especially with writers of color.
Ry: And queer writers of color. The expats.
Joel: They were roommates.
*laughter from us both*
Joel: They shared the same bed. But they were just roommates.
Ry: Especially… in Giovanni's Room, I was like, Someone hurt him. That's a heartbreak novel if I've ever seen one.
Joel: It reminds me of someone who is spiraling. And you can't not look at it. It's like watching a moth go to one of those zapping things. And you're just sitting there watching like, oh, I know this isn't gonna end well. But, I think that you're just so invested in David and Giovanni's relationship that it doesn't feel voyeuristic. It just feels like, if David or Giovanni was one of your best girlfriends and they were telling you what was happening. And you just sit there trying to console. David is like I went and I got married, whatever, and I was just like,
*Ry laughs at a facial expression I made*
of course you did.
Ry: Yeah.
Joel: If you were afraid to actually live your life as your truly authentic self. It was just easier for you to keep running. That was your thing. You kept running from everything when it got scary. And even now, there's probably still, especially on Grindr, DLers, straight men playing with queer bodies or trans bodies. I don't know. I feel like you should just be who you are, and, okay, if you're a straight man who likes to have sex with other men that doesn't inherently mean you're queer.
Ry: No.
Joel: Like, yeah, you are, in a way by queering pleasure. I have a friend who just recently got married. She's bisexual and married to a straight cis man, and she was scared that she was asking, “am I not queer enough?” I'm like, no, you're still queer,
Ry: You’re still queer.
Joel: Let's get that straight. But, he's also kind of queer. He dated a bisexual woman, now he’s married to one, and that's a little queer.
Ry: That's a little queer, yeah.
Joel: Like, he's not queer, but he's kind of queering, like y'all are kind of queering relationships. That's what a relationship should look like. And that made her feel better *laughs*.
Ry: Within queerness, because we feel so marginalized from certain aspects of society, there's this aesthetic, we take on certain aesthetics. But when other people don't align with that… I notice that a lot with Trans stuff. When I didn't have the same Trans story as what fits the “normal” narrative for how people view Trans people, it's completely messed with me and I was like, “am I even this thing?” However you naturally come to this conclusion is the truth that you will come to.
Joel: You're right. Especially because my partner is a gay man who only dated gay men. So, when I started to come into my own Transness, it made him reflect on what it means to be dating as a gay man who likes cis men. To now, what it means now to date someone who is Trans non-binary. I think he realized that, yeah, I'm still a gay man that does like to date men, but that doesn't limit me. I think with relationships and identities and bodies, we're just limiting. Society also tries to limit us, especially Trans women. We've talked in our emails about gender affirming care being taken away from Trans children, and I think now some states are trying to take it away from Trans adults.
Ry: Literally.
Joel: You're playing with people's lives. You're trying to take away who they inherently are. Just trying to stick them into a box and police their body and their identities. It's gonna cause more problems. It's gonna fuck with them psychologically. And, not everyone, it's weird to say it, not everyone can handle that. That’s why we have high suicide rates in the LGBTQ+ community. Like, it's none of your business. But it's also like, they profit off of it.
Ry: Completely.
Joel: It's terrible.
Ry: I'm curious about what you think the intersection is between queerness and disability studies, and disability rights? And then also, chronic lives. You mentioned earlier talking about the body, the mindbody, and I love the idea of that being connected. I noticed that a lot of my friends and I, who struggle with chronic illnesses, tend to be a little bit less binary in terms of this or that, or like, I have to be this if I'm a gay man, or I have to be that. Because the body’s working in all sorts of ways that don't work. And because you live in that liminal space all the time health wise, it allows you to think of identities in a more nuanced and spectrum way. I'm curious, have you had experiences in your life where queerness and body stuff or chronic stuff have intersected?
Joel: Yeah, I think it extends from a place in history you can pinpoint. It started way before that. Like, when they put queer and Trans as a mental health issue in the DSM. I think that's where they realized, oh, there's a connection between queerness, Transness, and the body. But they demonized it, and were like, oh, you need help, and called it a “Gender Identity Disorder.” Colonization and capitalism also caused an even bigger fracture from the body, in the body, and in queerness and Transness itself. For me, there's the intersection, especially having a chronic illness. For me, illnesses are perceived as weird, because we're in a binary.
Ry: *laughs in agreement*
Joel: We need to enter in through binary. Like, you have a healthy body, and a non-healthy body, which is problematic. So, if you get a cold, you're already seen as a deviant, other than the normal body, which is terrible. I just saw someone post a graphic they made that read “my body isn’t a fire hazard.” And I was like, yeah, it's not. In general, every building should have accessibility, accessible entrances, exits, and regardless if someone in the audience or in the building is disabled or not. Accessibility should be accessible to everyone. There should be ramps everywhere, like, thinking of Dodge. Dodge's ramp is wayyyyyyy on the other side from the elevator. There should be a ramp on both sides? It's insane to me that there's no ramps on both sides. I think you're onto something about folx who don't identify within the binary, and having chronic illness. A lot of it stems as a side effect of colonization, and capitalism, or what bell hooks called “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” All these concepts are the actual illnesses in society that mutate and create these side effects within bodies, especially within different-abled bodies. But also in queer and Trans bodies. We have so many standards to live by, but we also are limited within those standards. It all started when colonization came. In 1492, here in the Americas. Did I answer the question? *laughs*
Ry: I loved it.
Joel: The short answer is there's just so many standards that one is expected to live by. You don't have to live by anyone's standards except your own. We were talking about healthcare before this. Healthcare should be a basic human right, but it's not. And some bodies are going to be more fractured because of a lack of basic human rights. Thinking of folx who have the means to continue on their hormone therapy or get electrolysis or all these other things that are accessible. A lot of it is a side effect of colonization and other systemic institutions, but also these fucking weird standards that limit us. Systemic institutions pushing against us and our bodies, while we're also trying to figure out the boundaries. Like you said, bodies change everyday.
Ry: Yeah.
Joel: One day I can wake up and spring out of bed. The next day, I'm in a slump. I can't even get out of bed. I'm stuck. And then people who deal with this will be like, “yeah, I know that feeling.” And then other people will be like, “oh, well, why don't you just get up?” Like, I'm trying. It's like something big is laying on me and I can't get up. I know I need to get up. My brain is telling me to get up, but my body's like, I don't think so. No, bitch. *laughs* Stay in bed.
Ry: You touch upon something that's very fascinating. The body doesn't react intellectually. But at the same time, why do we try to put this thought or this ego onto the body, when most of the time it does the exact opposite of what we think it wants to do? That mindset of the body doing something very different from what we want and sometimes what we need is something that's inherent to, at least for me, queerness and chronic illness. I don't know if I'm necessarily grateful every day that I'm Trans. I don't know if I necessarily wanted to be Trans. It just happened and now I'm like, here I am. And the same thing with this stomach stuff. Some days I do wake up and I'm like, oh shit, I can't go to work today because it's so horrible. And yet within that capitalist society, that's not explainable. You can't just be like, “Sorry, my tummy hurts too much.” It just doesn't work like that. And so, coming to terms with the limitations and the different choices that the body almost forces on you, is something that I feel like queer people are more accepting of– differently-abled bodies and chronic bodies, simply because they've had to deal with the fact that their body has done something different than what society has put onto them to begin with.
Joel: Yeah, I think Queer people have a better understanding. Because we're playing capitalism. Capitalism tells us it's bad to rest. It's bad. You need to be hustling all the time. And then, if you're in the Village going to a queer spot, you see there’s not a ramp. Capitalism is like, “Well why would we build a ramp? No disabled bodies are going to come through.”
Ry: Woah.
Joel: Yeah, they want to be in a space like this, but they can't because it's not accessible to them.
Ry: Literally.
Joel: And it stems from capitalism, and someone upholding capitalistic standards. The owner might not be an ableist by nature, but because of capitalism they are exhibiting signs of ableism because they know the money comes from cis, white, hot bodies, like what does that even mean? All bodies are hot.
Ry: Literallyyyyy. You touch upon a great point because then when people try to call out the systemic issues that people are unknowingly playing into, suddenly it becomes their own self myopic, like, “Oh, I'm not ableist,” or “I'm not racist.” When in reality it's about self-reflection. White fragility happens a lot.
Joel: Yeahhhhhh.
Ry: Like, you are contributing to this systemic issue, and you can easily try to think about it in a productive way in which you can learn, but if you're so fogged up by this whole, I don't want to be this way, I don't want to be canceled, I don't want to be like this thing, then you're not going to learn anything. I guess I get mad sometimes at family members when I call something out, and they're like, “Well I'm not trying to be this.”
Joel: Like, “You know me.”
Ry: Yeah, exactly. Very few people are trying to just learn. I feel like the people that are perpetuating those toxic standards are the same ones that are self-enforcing the idea that it's really bad to be that way. So I'm not the one yelling at you, you're yelling at yourself.
Joel: I'm just holding a mirror. *both laugh*
Ry: On a lighter note, when did you first get into this idea of peeking behind the curtain of certain numbers or roots of words? And how has that helped guide you throughout your writing life and your life in general?
Joel: It started in my early 20s with numbers because I realized my birthday was January 23rd 1991 and I was like “oh that's very odd.” From then I was really into odd numbers. And just kept going and looking at what a number means. Like, the number 13 is bad luck in Western society. You can even go to a hotel and they won't have a 13th floor. But like, the number 4, is bad luck in Chinese culture. It sounds too similar to death. Or the number 6 in Christianity. They're like, “666, the mark of the beast.” I'm like, it's just a number.
Ry: Yeah *laughs*
Joel: I’m thinking of one of my favorite shows, Charmed. The power of three, that was probably also….
Ry: Wait, what is Charmed?
Joel: Charmed is a supernatural television show. It had Shannon Doherty, Holly Marie Combs, and Alyssa Milano. And then Rose McGowan joins later. It talks about sisters who are witches, and they're stronger in the power of three. So I think watching that growing up is where it started. That's where my little queerness started too.
Ry: The catalyst of Charmed, I love it.
Joel: With words, language in general, I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I've always had an interest in language. Something that's said in Spanish, its literal translation in English would sound silly. Currently, I am teaching my best friend Spanish.
Ry: Oh, amazing.
Joel: I was telling her “You're welcome,” it's “de nada.” And she was like, “oh, nothing.” I'm like, yeah, you're right. Literally, it translates to, “oh, nothing.” But it really means you're welcome. “No big deal,” I guess would be the English equivalent. I just always had an interest in words. I think it's interesting where some words have similar roots, but they mean vastly different things. Like, humiliation and humility. I've always had an interest, growing up bilingual and then being at Columbia. Taking translation courses opened something in me even more. Some of my poetry has examined how language is an inaccessible thing. People are like, “Oh, I'm glad I speak English. Because learning English is a bitch.” And you'll see comedy videos of folx “learning English” and content creators making fun of the rules of the English language. Like, the word need. “I need something.” Or I’m kneading bread. They sound the same but are spelt differently. So, if I was learning English, I'd be like, “why can't I use this one?” It's like, well, you're not needing bread, you're kneading it. So, use this one. And, we have pidgin languages and we have slang. We have language that becomes accessible because of different bodies, different tongues using it. I hate when people are like, “You're in America, you need to know English.” I'm like, no, no, you don't.
Ry: No, you don't.
Joel: There were hundreds of languages before colonization. I don't hear you speaking Cherokee, I don't hear you speaking Pomo. I don't hear you speaking any of the hundreds of languages before colonization. Also, it's America, we're a melting pot. Our English is way different than what the British had when they were here, in the 13 colonies. It's interesting to be in school. They'll teach you Spanish, French, German, but it's very formal. I was in Paris, and no one says, “Comment vas tu?” Most people ask, “ça va?” And that's it. People are multidimensional creatures that are gonna use language to do with language what they want. And I think that's beautiful. Language should be fucked with. Why not?
Ry: Completely. When I worked on the tea farm in Japan, everyone was speaking a certain dialect. I realized that the dialect taught in the western schools is the Tokyo dialect. They just market it as Japanese, and not like this is Tokyo-centric Japanese. And because of that, I had to re-learn so much of what I learned about Japanese. The Kansai dialect, the dialect that I was learning, was thought of as a lesser dialect in comparison to the Tokyo one. There's so much power dynamics there and I didn't know any of it, because you're just fed on this platter, here is this language. Like, you are learning French, not a specific dialect of French at a specific time. And, maybe when I was in eighth grade, I didn't need to know that it was this particular dialect of Japanese, but now I would certainly like to know. There's so much lost when people teach language because they don't want to teach the nuance, but the nuance is some of the most interesting parts of language.
Joel: Which I think lends to the question you posed earlier of the intersection of queer bodies with different-abled bodies. We're taught a specific language of what a “healthy” body looks like, what a normal cishet body looks like. So, there's a power dynamic, when you have someone telling you, well, you're not in this category, this box that we built, so we don't really care about you trying to find medical care as a Trans person. Even as queer people, it's already hard to find.
Ry: Yeah.
Joel: There’s still homophobia, transphobia, inherent racism in the medical industrial complex. There's language built around our dynamic of what is a regular body versus the “other” body, the one that we don't really need to think about. And hearing about stories about fatphobia, like, “I don't feel well.” “It's because you're fat. You need to lose weight.”
Ry: Oh my god.
Joel: And instead of doctors listening to BIPOC patients telling them that “I know my body. I know this is not a regular feeling, but your little pain chart 1 through 10, or your little happy face or sad face chart doesn't explain beyond that construct.” And then deciding to disregard someone because the doctors are the experts, which is problematic as shit, because they took that Hippocratic Oath to serve Humans, so when someone's telling you that their body isn't feeling like what their body feels, you should listen to them.
Ry: Yeah, that's ridiculous. You're just ignoring reality at that moment. I wanted to bring up humiliation, more specifically Wayne Koestnbaum’s book Humiliation, which I actually brought with me today. Wayne mentions a lot of stuff in this text involving Eve Sedgwick, who talks a lot about fat bodies and fatness in humiliation and grief— contextualizing humiliation and shame as something that's proud to exist within.
Joel: Eve Sedgewick. I love her. The Epistemology of the Closet…if you haven’t read that yet..
Ry: I haven’t read it yet, but I need to! This is in the context of Devine and Pink Flamingos and Wayne said in Humiliation: “The act of making Edith a star, seeing her abjectness not as humiliating but as radiant and divine, came from the same universe of transvalued antipodes that made “Devine’s obesity” not “unlovable and powerless” but magnetically irresistible.
Stigma becomes glory. Fat becomes beauty. I'll close this fugue with an affirmation of fat, and a shout of praise for Sedgwick's energizing gesture of what she called “coming out as a fat woman.” She wrote, in a sentence that blasts apart any assumption of humiliation-destined people should be meek about playing in public space:
‘Demonization of oneself as a fat woman is a way… of Making clear to the people around one that their cultural meanings will be, and will be heard as, assaultive and diminishing to the degree that they are non-fat affirmative.’ In other words, if you don't affirm the worthiness of fat, you're a fat basher.”
That’s wild to me! So much of my learning as a queer writer is grappling with the joy that people already had these thoughts, and then the pessimism that nothing changed. But, in some ways things did change. I wanted to know what your relationship is to Eve Sedwick, and to shame and humiliation/chronic stuff in general? Has there ever been an instance in which you might have felt ashamed from chronic illness that later became a source of empowerment?
Joel: That’s a great question! I've only had some familiarity with Eve’s work. I read Epistemology of the Closet, and then in Jack Halberstam’s Queer Theory and New Materialism classes, we read an article she wrote on weather. So I’ve read some, but I’m not an Eve Sedgwick head. I do think she is one of the founding people in Queer theory. But, in relationship to shame and my chronic body, and coming to terms with that, I used to feel real shame in making plans with people and then failing because of my body. I know my body. If I'm out, even if I push through it a couple of times, internally, I'm not having a good time. I don't want to be here. I can't cry, I just want to be at home. The shame comes from myself. No one has ever shamed me for bailing. People get over it, but I don't think they realize it’s because of my mental health. I need to be more upfront. I used to feel such shame in not talking openly about why I need to do something or not do something based on the needs of my body.
The last time I bailed on someone I was upfront and said “I’m not in a good headspace today. I’m not gonna be good company, and I could fake it, but that’s just more work on me, so please understand,” and they said, “I totally get it, you take however long you need for yourself,” and I think that was combating shame. Of course I still felt some shame, but it wasn’t as bad as lying. My body just doesn't want to go out. Embracing shame can be a beautiful thing. I usually shame myself into doing something or going out when I don't have the energy, and it’s an internal battle. I am my own saboteur.
Ry: Honestly, if I ever respond to you or to any of my other friends— this is gonna be on the record, and say that I'm feeling under the weather, I'm depressed as shit. Like, that's just me using a white lie through the slipperiness of the words “under the weather” to say I am not well. I used to make an elaborate lie around illness and throwing up when I was having a panic attack and was not able to do school work. It’s this slipperiness of the fact that one part of the body not making sense is accepted in society– you get a free sick pass today, and the other parts of the body it’s like “oh no no. That’s not allowed.”
I found out recently that the C.Diff stuff is directly connected to the mind, so most of the time when I have a recurrence of C.Diff I can tell because I get really depressed a couple of days before. And I'm like, this is not a normal low. This is intense. Seeing that they're already so connected—in some ways maybe I'm not lying by being under the weather, maybe there could be something that is bugging my physical body even if I only feel it mentally.
Joel: All this ties back to what you were saying about language and power dynamics because, like you mentioned, people are going to give you a pass for vomiting but not for mental health issues. We are all socialized to think within the binary of abnormal vs normal bodies. And there is nothing wrong with being in an “abnormal body” but it feels like language gaslighting. My feelings and body, and the way my chronic illness is affecting them is valid. No one should try to regulate me back into normal.
Ry: Exactly! I recently went to the doctor's because I noticed my hair is a little bit thin, and the doctor was like, you have male pattern baldness, which of course opened up a whole can of dysphoric worms from the name alone. And then I talked to some folks who simply said “embrace how your body falls into place, and how it wants to be,” and in some instances that can be true, but also hair is such an important signifier of the femme expression of gender that I'm striving for. I feel like there is a part of myself that I am losing.
Joel: for sure
Ry: But i’ve been taking meds to try and fix it and one of them is called Finasteride, which is a hormone blocker—it blocks the amount of testosterone in the body, which is even more absurd when you realize that all these men that are making legislations about hormone blockers and minimizing testosterone in a trans panic, are secretly taking hormones blockers to avoid being bald. And I've had cis women friends who got Lyme disease and started going bald or had mono and am losing hair and yet the actual effect is so wrapped up in the language of gender: “Male Pattern Baldness;” “HIMS medicine;” “Roman solutions.” I'm not saying that we need to make everything sound neutral within the language, but I find it interesting that a lot of chronic illnesses and effects are already so gendered from diagnosis alone. All the genders go bald.
October 19, 2023
My dear Ry,
I am saddened by the "end" of this lovely journey and conversation we have been having. What does it mean to close something? Can one really receive comfort from closure? Closing and closure are such directives, technical languages, but everything surrounding those concepts can be so e-motional. I know this isn't a closing/closure. We will continue to be in community with each other. You have a big supporter in me.
Warmly,
Joel
October 20, 2023
My Darling Joel,
I have just started 2 new jobs in order to try to one day get enough credentials to get a job that gives me health insurance. I will be 26 in November and thus I will lose my mom’s teaching insurance. As I am sure you understand this is a big stressor for anyone, but particularly someone who has chronic health issues. I think I close things off and forget about them when I don’t want to deal with the spoons it will take to get through them. Whether it’s romantic, personal, or even the interpersonal—I always seem to forget. I think closing is about forgetting in the right way, or maybe forgetting the right things. If we had everything in our head all the time it would be too chaotic. I love your work, energy, and laugh. I don’t forget them but hold them in me.
One day I hope the revolution will come and will eliminate health insurance entirely. If we didn’t have to worry about these hyper objects all the time we would all be a lot better at closing things. Chronic implies an anti-closure; a door warped from weather. I would love to end this little correspondence with a list of things I am grateful to close in this world of openings. I am grateful I get to close my eyes at night, and grateful I get to close so many books with my fingers, as well close my laptop at the end of a work day. I am grateful for learning how to close more gently with therapy, and my ability to close my hole when I am done pooping. I am grateful to close windows when it gets too cold, and sentences when they get too long. I am grateful we can close with this gentleness.
I will leave the door open for you,
Ry