#this little guy is gonna be where i store that experience as a trans jew. it goes in the frankengolem

[iliothermia]

I won't be able to finish this drawing before the convention, which will take up my next 5 days.. But I want to talk a little about him.. I've been thinking about golems and Frankenstein, and the trans body, projection and misunderstanding, villainization and death.

The concepts of Frankenstein's monster and the golem have been swimming in my head for a while, and their lore intertwining.. The tragedy of existing being seen as a monster no matter how you try,.. And the Golem, a protector of his people and a servant whose only flaw always rang a bit close to home as an an autistic person-- being too literal in execution of his orders. He's tired and struggles with a yearning for death. His havdalah candles will be out.. The first flame of the week, a spark of starting over again-- The flame brings him fear. As much as he's kept himself together he doesn't know how much longer he can keep doing it, he fears failure- but the fear of what may happen if he's gone is even more terrifying. He's lived a long life, and over time the one who formed him has sculpted him to the golem's own wishes.. From nothing to the man he is- but even with that effort, to outsiders he's still a monster. His skin is different shades of clays from varying riverbeds as his people have travelled.. Golems are unformed, imperfect.. but even as outsides can be polished the insides can still be broken

[rebustein94-blog]

The Five Best People I Met Today (or: The Hard Bounce)

1.) The walls of the AirBnB I was staying in were basically cardboard. Over me, I could hear the owners creaking around the hardwood floors. Laughing, watching TV. Outside, I could hear the snow zapping against the windows. 

And next to me.

Next to me was the meanest, loudest, most consistent, most I’m-about-to-fucking-die-dear-God-help-me-est cough I have ever heard in my life. It exploded through the walls into my very brain, man. Wet, rib-cracking fuckers, these coughs. 

After an hour or so, I stopped feeling bad. In my mind, the cough was no longer attached to a man. It was just an apparition, floating anthropomorphically from room to room as it raged. A demented spirit tormenting me only accidentally. The cough tromped from the other bedroom into the bathroom. Hacked three or four separate loogies into the toilet. Flushed. Tromped back. Coughed in its room. Repeat. 

This went on and on and on.

In the morning, I was determined never to meet the man. I wanted him to be a beautiful, disgusting noise without a face. It would be so simple then. So pure and purely weird. My resolve hardened when I opened the fridge. Because inside, an almost-full box of pizza, a massive bottle of orange juice, and a plastic deli container of salad dressing had appeared overnight. I fell in love with the cougher even more and vowed, really vowed this time, never to set eyes on him.

I had a clear and horrible picture of him that I liked. He was old and crooked and bitter. He hated everybody. Especially the Jews. And the gays! He would point at people and list their flaws to them. He had a son in real estate. He liked butterscotch. Butterscotch!

Then just as I was leaving, the son of a bitch revealed himself to be this sweet young Pakistani dude in a towel. 

“Sorry about the cough,” he said quietly as he introduced himself. 

“Oh, that’s okay!” I practically screamed. He looked so miserable standing there in his towel. 

We talked for a while and then I left. 

He was so nice. 

If only he had been hate-able, I really could have liked him. 

2.) Everything in Manassas was closed. The parks, the stores, the people. Gone in the face of the snow. The only place I could find was a Cajun joint, where they let me hide from the cold even though they weren’t open yet. 

Very good spicy chicken wrap. 

The second place I hid, when I got jumpy after a few hours, was a bar that blasted old rock and served shit like the Honey Badger, which was all lemon and honey and bourbon and made my head itch. Which was my own fault because I drank it so fast. But only because it was so good.

So really, who’s to blame. 

The third place, though.

The third place was in an old church. The woman who served me explained that it had never been a church, actually. Which was confusing and somewhat hurtful because their whole shtick seemed to be about how they were an old fucking church. But no, they were a French restaurant first, then a Mexican place, then a tavern, and now a vague combination of American fare and Irish cuisine. 

It was the best place because it was the kind of place I was used to. They were all brick and the music they played was more mellow. After the jazz of the Cajun and the rock of the bar, their indie stuff was calming and smooth. I ordered an old fashioned and the woman brought me the most beautiful orange drink I’ve ever seen. It looked like marble or blown glass. Strong, too. It boiled my insides with every sip. Gorgeous. I almost didn’t drink it, it was so perfect. I thought I might just let it slowly perspire until I had to leave and stop appreciating it. Eventually, I just drank it and appreciated it that way instead. 

But the woman who brought it to me I loved simply because she brought it to me.

She had bad teeth, which made her better.

3.) and 4.) The train was delayed by about two hours. When I got to the station, the only other people in the waiting room were a man and a woman. They weren’t together. Just there at the same time. The man had a huge backpacking pack, and the woman was hunched and wore glasses.

The man was very interesting and soft-spoken. He said little. The woman was very dull, spoke loudly and slowly, and never stopped. 

Which is, obviously, just how it goes. 

“I’m hiking the Appalachian trail,” the man said in his quiet way. 

“Oh, my Roger has a cabin out that way,” the woman squawked. She said more, too, but I was concentrating so hard on looking like I was listening that I have no idea what the hell she said. 

“We have huge catfish at our cabin,” she explained at one point. “And I always wonder, how do you catch them?”

“Smaller catfish?” I offered.

“Cheese,” the man said. “Cheeseballs.”

Like. How did he know that? Amazing. 

The man also mentioned he had been a civics teacher since 1965, and in the same breath, slipped his massive pack on, no problem. 

I wanted to know everything about him. But when the train came, he left without saying a word, which I respected. 

The woman kept edging up to me and telling me things about her family and her recent trip to Brussels. 

“My Cynthia read a lot of strange books in college. She took a course on disabled, trans women of color fighting in WWII. And I just thought, who cares?”

“Probably other disabled, trans women of color,” I said.

She swept an arm out across the waiting room, as if it was the world. “Well, where are they?”

“For sure.”

“I had to chuckle because I only brought four books to Brussels…”

God, I wanted her to leave. 

I wanted the train to come. 

I wanted to get the shit out of freaking Manassas. 

5.) My second Lyft driver today was a middle-aged dude named Roman. Roman was really nice until the end of our time together, when he said casually, “Listen. There’s something I want to suggest to you.”

“Alright.”

“My friend knows this guy. He is an interpreter in two-phone applications.”

I have no freaking idea what that means, so I just said, “Alright,” again.

“He is looking for people on the east coast. And you can do this remotely. So. But you would be part-time. Salesman. And you do the thing. It’s a two-phone applications. Application for the phones.”

“Alright.”

“And you make money every time someone buys it. Then they make money every time someone buys from them…”

“Alright, Roman.”

I let him go on about it because he seemed so confident in himself. 

He asked for my email address so he could send me the orientation email. I agreed to give it to him. He handed me a slip of paper so I could write it down. I almost misspelled it on purpose. But I pictured him there at home, peering at his screen. Wondering what he was doing wrong to keep getting this hard bounce, which is when an email bounces because the address simply doesn’t exist. What a thing to experience. Sitting there, realizing he’d lost me. The sense of betrayal. I couldn’t do it. Especially after all of Manassas had just given me the hard fucking bounce. So I gave him my email and got the hell out.

Roman. He gave it a valiant effort, you know? 

Man’s gonna get fired if he keeps doing it, though. The dummy. 

(On train to Lynchburg, VA)