And now, after living beside you all these years, and wat­ching your wheel of a mind bring forth an art of pure wildness—as I labor grim­ly on these sen­tences, won­de­ring all the while if prose is but the gra­ves­tone mar­king the for­sa­king of wild­ness (fide­li­ty to sense-making, to asser­tion, to argu­ment, howe­ver loose)—I’m no lon­ger sure which of us is more at home in the world, which of us more free.

How to explain—“trans” may work well enough as shor­thand, but the qui­ck­ly deve­lo­ping mains­tream nar­ra­tive it evokes (“born in the wrong body,” neces­si­ta­ting an ortho­pe­dic pil­gri­mage bet­ween two fixed des­ti­na­tions) is use­less for some—but par­tial­ly, or even pro­found­ly, use­ful for others ? That for some, “tran­si­tio­ning” may mean lea­ving one gen­der enti­re­ly behind, while for others—like Harry, who is hap­py to iden­ti­fy as a butch on T—it doesn’t ? I’m not on my way anyw­here, Harry some­times tells inqui­rers. How to explain, in a culture fran­tic for reso­lu­tion, that some­times the shit stays mes­sy ? I do not want the female gen­der that has been assi­gned to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gen­der that trans­sexual medi­cine can fur­nish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don’t want any of it. (Preciado) How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irre­so­lu­tion is OK—desirable, even (e.g., “gen­der hackers”)—whereas for others, or for others at some times, it stays a source of conflict or grief ? How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people feel about their gen­der or their sexuality—or any­thing else, really—is to lis­ten to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accor­din­gly, without shel­la­cking over their ver­sion of rea­li­ty with yours ?

The pre­sump­tuous­ness of it all. On the one hand, the Aristotelian, per­haps evo­lu­tio­na­ry need to put eve­ry­thing into cate­go­ries—pre­da­tor, twi­light, edible—on the other, the need to pay homage to the tran­si­tive, the flight, the great soup of being in which we actual­ly live. Becoming, Deleuze and Guattari cal­led this flight : beco­ming-ani­mal, beco­ming-woman, beco­ming-mole­cu­lar. A beco­ming in which one never becomes, a beco­ming whose rule is nei­ther evo­lu­tion nor asymp­tote but a cer­tain tur­ning, a cer­tain tur­ning inward, tur­ning into my own / tur­ning on in / to my own self / at last / tur­ning out of the / white cage, tur­ning out of the / lady cage / tur­ning at last. (Clifton)