Service

Diplomacy

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time, I was invited to the table with a group of cisgender people from large NIH-funded organizations, who were voluntarily tasked with addressing transgender inclusion for their entire respective institutions. Another trans person was also invited, but after one meeting, she never returned. It was just me. Just one white guy without even a bachelor’s degree yet, who’d been out as trans for all of five minutes (a full year) at that point – and a whole group of well-intentioned cisgender professionals, every one of whom would surely insist they were a strong transgender ally.

I spent the first year in that group gently explaining basic concepts, like why the word cisgender is a medically and scientifically necessary word to use; often repeating, “Yes, I do hear you telling me you don’t want to be called ‘cisgender’ because you prefer to just think of yourself as ‘normal,’ but it’s factually inaccurate to pretend ‘cisgender’ doesn’t exist in the English language or apply to you.” People were afraid of me even before I spoke, not because of anything I had said yet, but because they were so much more attached to their emotional comfort than doing the right thing. They were afraid of being wrong; of messing up; of not being perfect; of causing me to sound upset or angry. Some of them shut down conversations to avoid this discomfort, because this was indeed more important to them than making progress on including trans people in the HIV research we had been fully excluded from despite being one of the most impacted populations.

With “allies” like these, I was terrified for the future of our healthcare. They were deliberately excluding a minority group from medical research studies, and they didn’t understand why that was a problem, even when I kindly explained the 1994 federal law prohibiting this exclusion to them like they were five years old.

By the end of the first year, those more challenging folks decided they had other priorities and left the working group. The folks who remained had a genuine commitment to scientific integrity, human dignity, and equitable inclusion of previously excluded and historically abused minority groups. They were wonderful humans I am deeply grateful to have worked with. These remaining allies asked if we could do something meaningful, rather than just sitting around talking about the issues.

As the only transgender person at the table still, they looked to me for answers on how to craft a training module series. The goal would be for these videos to become required training for every DAIDS-funded researcher in the United States. At this point, whatever I said was gonna be taken as gospel. So I said the only thing that made sense to me:

“You need to get a budget to pay people for what I’ve been doing free this past year. There are trans people of color all over the country with PhDs, and MPHs, and MDs who know this content better than I do. You cannot ask them to sit at this table for free, and you must ask them to sit at this table before you can even consider producing a training series like this. I can help you figure out getting started, but they’re the experts on the real subject matter. You need them.”

Within the year, a handful of brilliant trans folks of color from varied regions all came together to sit at a table on the beach in Florida and develop the first of five training modules, which are now required learning for all DAIDS-funded research staff.

This journey began with an unpaid job best described as cleaning up elephant shit at the circus. It wasn’t worth inviting any other trans person to do it, because half the cis folks were not ready to hear a trans person as their equal in the first place. If they had been willing, they would only have listened to the Caitlyn Jenners or Buck Angels who would have made them feel real good about being well-meaning cis saviors with terrible integrity and character, while requiring absolutely no change or discomfort from the harmful cis folks along the way.

These are the most dangerous kind of “allies,” who only want to hear from oppressed people on their own terms, in a way that doesn’t make them uncomfortable, even when they’re hurting us. They will discard any uncomfortable feedback and look for a different trans person to tell them they’re okay. Their personal validation and self-preservation is always the priority, not our survival or well-being. They make it difficult to get anything done, even when half the team is indeed showing up for the right reasons.

This past week, I’ve had 4 encounters with people who seem to think that because I’m new on their block, I don’t know much about how to get things done. Some folks think that because they don’t like my tone, I need to be told how diplomacy works. Some folks tell me if I “really want to be helpful,” the only real way to do that is to exhaust myself explaining my traumas over and over in the gentlest possible way to educate well-meaning cis folks with enormous amounts of political and financial power, without being compensated for my labor — unless you count the fact that there is a legislative gun to my head, and you consider the possibility of not being killed to be some form of “compensation.”

Here’s the real deal: If you require my diplomacy voice in order to hear me, then I am sorry I misjudged you as a friend I could trust with the difficult truth of recognizing the life trans folks are currently enduring in Arkansas. I assumed you to be the kind of ally who would remain on the team after all the half-assed, self-assured ego-strokers abandoned ship. I can accept being wrong, and I am sorry my approach wasn’t as gentle as you would have preferred.

When I have the energy for cleaning up elephant shit at the circus again, I’ll be sure to come sit down with you, and whomever else on your team needs me to do so, in a very gentle, empathic, compassionate, polite way. I’ll reassure you you’re doing the best job you can under difficult circumstances, and remind you that difficulties are temporary setbacks, not permanent conditions. I’ll agree with you 100% that your good intentions do matter, and say that we trans folks just appreciate the fact that you even care at all, when there are so many people who actively want us dead. The fact that you clear this bar really means a lot to us, even if some trans folks are a little rough around the edges and don’t often acknowledge our gratitude for your generous allyship. I’ll meet you where you’re at, like a decent person would do. You won’t notice even a hint of anger from me. I’ll forgive you for the ways that what you didn’t know before now has harmed us, and you can just try to do better moving forward, if you feel so moved. It’s fine. Everything is fine. You’re trying.

But today, my dear well-intentioned friend, I’m afraid the circus is demanding other tasks from me:

Swinging on the trapeze between the warring factions of my own community who are heartbroken and arguing over whose approach to resistance is the most valid. (Did you pay for a seat to watch this show? I don’t think we’d be doing this particular performance without white cis folks’ judgmental gaze upon us.)

Swallowing the flaming sword of losing friends to sudden-onset alcoholism while they mourn the loss of the life they’ve built and prepare to flee the state as refugees to protect their children from state-mandated child abuse.

Juggling the glass balls of intentionally disrupting multiple cases of self-harm, alcoholism, and drug abuse among my friends; giving pep talks; leading and organizing a crochet group; planning a 500+ person event this Spring; attending committee meetings; building up volunteer teams; and providing counsel to other leaders at a loss for direction in this highly uncertain historical moment….

While riding the unicycle of trying to be a decent lover, planning my own birthday party, learning guitar, doing a 70 hour a week job for a meager paycheck, and making time to be fully in love with life….

While wearing the many, often clownish, hats of non-profit leader, Democratic Party persuader, community builder, trucker, and friend, all at once.

Walking the high-wire tight rope of moving forward with my life after having been coercively sterilized by a doctor in 2014 because I am transgender; having a profound amount of transition-related regret that my own community usually forbids me from discussing honestly – lest it be weaponized against us; – wondering whether I can even continue living in my home state or if staying will necessarily result in my being forced into a prison camp like the ones my uncle gave his life in the US Army liberating people from; and keeping my feelings all bottled up and out of sight for the sake of younger* trans folks who are so beautifully bright-eyed and hopeful that what we are currently experiencing is a unique political moment rather than a continuation of long-standing horrors they’ve not yet had to worry about happening to them, thanks to the generations of trans folks who’ve already taken the metaphorical and literal bullets to make life better for them prior to this moment.

So if you are a cis person, and I bother trying to talk to you about any of this, it means I have some modicum of faith and hope in you. I believe you are worth expending my breath to communicate with. I believe, however foolishly, that you have some ability to make this unbearable pain hurt less – and that when you realize you hold this power, you will act on it for good. If I sound angry, it’s because I’m looking for a relief valve and asking you in the gentlest way I can to help me find that relief, without compromising my sense of self-respect in the process.

And it’s not even like I’m screaming at you. When I’m angry, I literally just say, “I am angry.” If I’m telling you I’m angry, I trust your humanity enough to appreciate that what I’m going through deserves anger. What my friends are going through, and the way trans children are being abused by the state, deserves anger. If I were not angry right now, I would not be a decent human.

But if you need me to “tone it down” so you can feel more comfortable — likely about the ways you have actually participated, however unwittingly, in sustaining this circus I’m trapped performing in like a caged animal — well then, okay. Sure. I can tone it down for you. I know how to be diplomatic just fine. If diplomacy is what you require before you can hear me pleading for my life, just say so, and you’ll never hear me raise my voice again.

But will you hear the truth in my whisper?

If not, it will become audible in my silence.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

*Note: generational age among trans folks is measured in time since coming out as trans, not biological age. Elders have been out for usually 10 years or more, and are many times younger than an older person who just came out last year.

On Service, Attachment, and Being in Love with Life

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to my 100th blog post. I am celebrating this occasion by telling you how in love I am with Life. Oh, and why giving of myself to others is a good reason for me to wake up every day, too.

This week I scrubbed an oven. I don’t know when the last time was that it had been cleaned. It’s a good oven, in a good space, loved by good people who make good baked things with it. When it recently needed a minor repair, I was asked to come over and clean it before the technician would arrive the following morning. It started out like this:

It was 1100 hours, and this was my task. The pursuit would total 3.5 hours of cleaning all by myself while the oven’s owner was at work, during which I had plenty of opportunity for introspection. It is nigh impossible for me to sit through 15 minutes of casual introspection without purging my thoughts into text, let alone an entire afternoon of the relatively intense stuff. I call this Compulsive Writer Syndrome (CWS). It’s a very real thing that I suspect one day the DSM will recognize. Maybe I’ll write them about it….

I texted to let him know I was about to begin the project, and he gave me a specific set of instructions in response: “Do the oven first. If you have time after that, oven cleaner works well on the stove top, too. It could use it. But oven priority.”

I don’t have adequate words for describing the whole-body tingle I experienced upon receiving that message. “Yes sir,” I typed. No, I’m not supposed to say that. That’s… no, that’s a thing I shouldn’t say. Even though it’s the only thing I want to say. Even though everything in me feels compelled to say it. No. Backspace. I thought for a moment, trying to respond in a way that felt less… non-consensual. “Okay”, I tried to type. My fingers wouldn’t budge. “Will do”, I thought might be more appropriate. It felt gross to say such a thing in that moment. Ultimately, I said nothing at all.

I set the music on my iPhone to shuffle, took my pants off (I didn’t want them getting dirty), and dug in. There is a certain loveliness, I think, to performing deep cleaning in one’s underwear on a beautiful summer day. The thoughts I processed may sound now as incoherent or peculiar as a dream sequence, but they accurately represent the innards of my mind in these hours. It began with focused attention: What am I doing? Why am I doing it?

I was not merely cleaning an oven; I was improving the world. I was making life easier and more relaxed for someone about whom I care deeply. I was accomplishing, creating something with my own hands, the results of which indicate to me a successful undertaking in life. I was finding meaning in my existence. That’s what I was doing.

Why? Well, I’m on this relatively brief vacation from being dead, and as is the case with all vacations, there’s only so much fun I can cram into it. Might as well pack as much joyful adventure and pleasure as I can fit, right? Only, I don’t actually like cleaning. Yeah, I spent some time examining that fact as I tied rags around my face for a makeshift mask to protect me from the god-awful oven cleaner fumes. I don’t fucking like cleaning. The question remained.

The scouring pad knocked loose chunks of crisp debris. I imagined him there towering over me as I cleaned. “I’m so glad I don’t have to do this,” he might say. Yes. Yes, that was precisely it. I hate cleaning. That’s why I want to do it — because why would I want him to be bothered to do it himself? Knowing that the harder I worked, the less he’d have to do, I felt infinitely joyful about this task. In hindsight now I notice: it never occurred to me that I should do the job just well enough to satisfy the repair technician.

There was only one opinion I cared about, and whatever I did had to be good enough for his appraisal. That meant giving it everything I had in me, nothing less.

I told myself, attachment is destined to cause suffering. You know this. What you’re saying is that the value of your work is contingent upon a standard over which you have no control. This isn’t the way we give gifts, Brandyn. This isn’t the way we give gifts. We give them with no strings attached, no expectations. If he comes home today, sees the work you’ve done, and never says “thank you” or “good job”, that has to be acceptable. If he isn’t pleased, even though it’s your very best work, that has to be acceptable. If it isn’t, it’s time we reevaluate our priorities and our motives. Are you giving your service-gift freely, or are you not?

I hate it when I’m right.

So the next long while, as I scrubbed, was invested in the examination of my motives. I had this conversation with a friend in Mexico about doing things we don’t like in order to get things we want: I had once approached a sadist friend and asked him to beat me. One day he asked me why I wanted him to hurt me, and I replied, “I want the snuggles afterward.” He decided that beating me was not an option after I’d said that, and he instead sat me down on the couch with him and held me in his arms. I cried like hell; I felt fucking awful about it. Giving me snuggles without making me earn them? What was this heresy! It was in Mexico that I came to understand that when I want something specific, it’s best to ask clearly for what I want rather than asking for whatever suffering I think I have to do to earn it.

Are you scrubbing this oven because you want a certain response? Is there something you’re not asking for?

This is an important question. I made a list of applicable statements in my head, all beginning with “I want”, hoping to get to the core of my motives. I want him to be happy. I want him to think highly of me. I want him to have a good evening when he gets home from work. I want him to feel relief that this task is done. Alright, if we’re being entirely honest… I want him to let me do this for him more. I want him to validate my work. I want him to be proud of me. I want him to feel warm and fuzzy.

Well now. That’s an interesting set of attachments to sever, isn’t it? Most of my motives were indeed pure and without expectation, but not all of them, and that was a thing I needed to nip in the bud swiftly and mercilessly. I have no idea what time it was when I realized all of this. My hands were covered in grease, my fingertips abraded. The pain was arousing, but the cognitive dissonance trumped the pleasure. I paused, poured myself a cup of water, and embarked on a meditation I find quite reliable in circumstances such as these. I mentally explored other possible outcomes than the one in which he would be happy at the end:

This may be the only time he’ll ever ask me to clean his oven. When he sees the work I’ve done, he may be satisfied that I did my best, but it may still not be up to his standards. There will be no reward beyond the privilege of giving it to him. What I am doing for him is a gift, and there is no wrong way for him to respond. He doesn’t have to accept it or want more of it, and it is not a failure on my part for this to be the case. He could bring home a goose and leave it in this oven until it catches fire and explodes this evening, obliterating all the work I’m doing right now. This is okay. I am giving him a clean oven. What he does with it is up to him.

Typically, when I give someone a physical object as a gift, this process is much easier. I just imagine them throwing it in the trash can the moment I hand it to them. If I can’t handle them doing that, if I feel upset or angry about it, then I need to reevaluate my motives for giving them the thing. What someone does with a gift is none of my concern once it belongs to them. Since I haven’t spent much time giving service, it seems there may still be a good amount of assumption packed away in it that I’ll likely spend a few months or more ironing out. Maybe I’ll get it all sorted out this winter while I sit on the beach contemplating my life.

Detaching myself from the after-effects of gift-giving is a daily exercise I spend a lot of time practicing, in every opportunity I can find. Being conditioned in this way, it didn’t take long to make peace with the infinite number of possible outcomes for this experience. I would have breathed deeply, had it been safe to do so. Relaxed and content, I continued my mission.

My mind grew calm and blank, nothing in it outside of this moment in which I was crafting a treasure for him.

Amidst the serenity, my mind was startled to recognize an insidious suffering creeping toward the forefront of my awareness. Why aren’t I using gloves? Holy fuck, this is burning. Oh gods, burning! Burning! Ouchmotherfuckerouch, burning!

Naively, I had hoped that running my hands under the sink faucet would somehow improve my condition, but it was futile. The Brillo pad had torn away enough skin and pulled back my flesh from its attachment point under my fingernails. There is, in fact, no safeword for chemical burns under one’s fingernails.

In this moment, I felt quite fortunate to be alone. Pain-induced arousal can be a very difficult thing to work through when given the opportunity to be distracted. I sent him a text message to let him know that there was suffering in progress, and this communication served as a sufficient relief valve for the experience. It wasn’t until a bit later that I would begin to overthink this — Would he rather not have known? Am I being disruptive while he’s at work? Is it strange to him that I’m deriving this particular flavor of happiness and excitement out of cleaning his oven? Is it strange to me that I’m deriving this particular flavor of happiness and excitement out of cleaning his oven? — but none of these questions crossed my mind in that moment where my thought-free consciousness was candid and forthright. For much of the time I was engrossed in this task, I forgot how to overthink anything.

After my hands began their plea for reprieve, another hour of scrubbing passed before I at last afforded them their rest. The oven’s (and stove top’s) condition still wasn’t as ideal as I wanted it to be, but it was as good as I could make it. There were a few specks here and there which I simply hadn’t the fortitude to remove. This raised an anxiety I’d not touched in a while: safewording.

Safewording is a thing I hate doing. I hate ending my suffering when it’s to the benefit of someone I care for that I continue it. But I’ve spent years now actively cultivating my ability to do it, to recognize and communicate my boundaries, and to enforce those boundaries accordingly. Like it or not, this is where I needed to stop. I sat with myself for a few moments, trying to achieve acceptance of this fact.

From the beginning, I’ve known how he responds to gifts of service I offer him. I went out and worked on that project with him back in the Spring, and I took breaks just to see how he’d react when I didn’t work as hard as I could have, I reminded myself. Never, ever did he complain. He’s always been appreciative and grateful for whatever I give him, no matter how little it was or how much more I could have done. I know this about him, I thought. I know he’ll be pleased with what I’ve done, because it’s as much as I am able to do. ‘As you’re willing and able’, he says. I am no longer able. It’s time to stop. He would be terribly disappointed if I didn’t.

I sent him a text message to let him know I was finished, along with the following photo of his oven:

Feeling peaceful about this process was not easy, but it was certainly possible. It required some trust, not in his response, but in the fact that his response was irrelevant. This was the best work I could give him. It seemed unlikely that he would be displeased, simply because of that fact and because he’s a decent human being who doesn’t take people for granted. After a whole afternoon of breaking apart my own anxieties, my own insecurities, my own fears, and my own assumptions, I received this from him: “Wow. Good job. Thank you.”

Wonderful. That’s all I’d hoped (and more than I’d expected) to hear. I have found that when I make a conscious effort to detach myself from expectations or external validation, the experience of receiving praise is far more valuable than when I receive it with a feeling of having “earned” it. When we work hard in pursuit of a certain goal, the achievement of that goal can often feel like something to which we’ve become entitled. I’m really not a fan of entitlement. By the time he said “thank you”, I had already overcome my own entitlement hurdles and made peace with not hearing it. Those words felt far more valuable to me in that moment than they ever could have if I’d felt he owed them to me.

I vacuumed the kitchen floor, wiped down the counters, tidied up the cleaning tools, and took my leave. I went home to attend to the, erm, sensation that accompanied feeling the undersides of my fingernails on fire. I’m going through puberty; gimme a break. So I’m in my room, I’m decompressing from the last 3.5 hours of intense internal self-examination, and I get another set of text messages: “Ummm. Apparently you fixed the oven. It was just dirty. Something was gunked up that you cleaned and now it works again. You may have just saved us hundreds of dollars. Thank you. I’m thrilled. Very well done.”

One of the great things about living without expectations is that you’re rarely, if ever, disappointed. One of the surprisingly difficult things about living without expectations is that when you’re pleased, you’re really fucking pleased. Holy wow, pleased. OMG-squealing-because-I-can’t-believe-he’s-so-happy, I’m-so-excited-that-I-was-able-to-do-this-for-him, I-didn’t-imagine-that-I-could-feel-this-gleeful-right-now pleased. I reveled in it for a bit, high on joyfulness just as intensely as if I’d been beaten. It was beginning to sink in for me that the chemicals my brain enjoys in the context of physical BDSM are the same chemicals it was enjoying from spending the afternoon making that oven look as close to new as I could get it.

It was nearly 9pm when the final wave of text messages rolled in, this time more enthusiastic than before. I assume that he had perhaps only just arrived home to see the results in person. I had just spent a few hours coming down from the high of his lauding in the afternoon, and here was this even greater, more intense expression of gratitude coming at me without warning:

“The oven looks almost new. You exceeded my expectations. Would it be presumptuous to say ‘good boy’?”

I exploded. Boom goes the brain-splat, squish squish flop. Brain was even leaking out the corners of my eyes. Brains are 75% water, you know. My brain was dripping down my cheeks. The joy was so intense.

It’s a vicious cycle when I begin to feel grateful that one of my biggest “problems” is my exceptionally intense, perpetual experience of gratitude. I am so completely in love with life.

“I don’t think it would be too presumptuous at all. Thank you.” I don’t know if I was happier that he felt compelled to say “good boy” to me, or that he is so completely devoid of entitlement that he would ask permission to say it to me. He’s such a marvelous human being. This is why I cleaned his oven, I thought. It’s not about the praise at all; it’s about giving this human whatever I’m able to offer in the course of improving his life, because the example he sets just being in the world has so phenomenally improved mine.

“Well then. Good boy.”

I took a deep breath. The tears tasted salty as they landed in my giggles.

“I am ecstatic,” he continued to say.

As much as I am? I wondered. I do hope so. This much ecstasy comes with a certain amount of suffering, I know; it’s intense and jarring, often. But I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world. What better way to spend my life than to be wholly and emphatically in love with it all!