Thin-skinned

And tender to the touch

The wonderful thing about being somewhere new is the sharp relief of it all.

Every street is a surprise. The birds are different – red-winged. There’s no way to ignore the things that will, over time, become commonplace. No matter how much you try to hold onto newness, eventually it leaks away like water around an imperfect rubber stopper in the bath. So, at least at first, it’s important to feel that newness while you’ve still got it.

Montreal is the biggest city I’ve ever lived in*. The only one with a metro. Maybe a truth about big cities is that people find ways to be in common with one another, just because otherwise it would be too much – we all have to agree, at least a little, about a few things, in order not to feel like we could be flung into space at any moment.

So, everyone wears jeans, but they are never jeans with holes in them. That leaves me with exactly one pair of pants to wear for now. People are aggressively resistant to rushing. They refuse to be jostled out of a pleasant moment. They sit on the balustrade by the chalet on Mont Royal in cycling clothes and talk happily to friends on the phone. They make a trip out of biking to the market and buying fresh herbs and carting them home in the little baskets bolted to the front. There is nothing else to do. What else could there possibly be to do?

I think the thing that I’ve noticed most is the closeness with which these people live to the surface. Whether you are ordering coffee, or buying your very first metro card from the little booth in the station, or approached by a stranger in a park, everyone is looking right at you. They haven’t been so exhausted by the world that they can only see parts of you, speak to parts of you. They are thin-skinned and ready to touch you. To be touched by you.

This kind of approach is exactly what I would hope for at this point in my life, as I have been shedding my thick skinnedness for many months now. I’ve been looking for ways to reduce the distance between me and the world. The many layers I’ve worn over many years – they’ve become heavy. And without them, things are a little too bright again, a little too sharp, but in a pleasantly painful way.

When something has been part of your daily routine for so long – like SPF or misery – it can be hard to identify the places where it actually cleaves away from you and doesn’t belong.

Like my identity of queerness.

It was a victory, at one point. A thing to celebrate. A flag to wave, even though I’ve never been a particularly flag-waving type of person. And now, suddenly, I don’t recognize this part of myself. It’s as foreign to me as my time on Vancouver Island. A layer that is suddenly too tight. A heavy winter coat worn long after spring has started to emerge, inviting something lighter and easier.

What makes something true? The things that have taken place in the past, or the things that you want to have happen now? It’s forever true, of course, that I have loved women. Deeply. In ways that changed my life. In ways that taught me who I am. It’s true that my first offering to the world of literature is decidedly and inarguably queer. It’s a truth that I needed to tell, and it remains that way, even as if it becomes less of something I own and more of something I’ve created and then clipped away from me, like an auxiliary hook of drying clay off a handmade mug.

But what now? There’s nothing in this world I can hold in my hands. Not even, as sure as I was, my need to be with women. My good friends know that this has fluctuated for me for many years, in a perfect and needed rhythm. But each time I went towards something else, I was called back, because of what being with women meant to me.

I hate to oversimplify, but can’t resist the satisfaction of doing so: I loved women and needed them to love me until I learned how to love myself. I needed to be loved by a woman, and it seems that I’m the woman for the job.

These things can change. Should change. My heart beats so hard at the possibilities that it might be clearly seen from underneath my skin as I stand on the metro (it’s too exciting to sit) or buy cheese from Jean Talon market. The question is tiring in its repetitiveness – I’ve asked it so many times. But can I call myself queer any longer? I’m not sure.

The wonderful thing about a world that can more easily hurt you, or bruise you, is how much better everything tastes. Birria tacos. Lemon loaf. Crystalline pears. Unsweetened flat whites. Someone else’s mouth. Someone else’s neck. It’s absolutely too much to contain. But I’ve been working a little too hard on containing. How could this tiny and impermanent body ever do such a large and impossible thing? I’m meant to open my heart, again and again, each time I exhale, to feel it all, the textures and flavours of a brilliant little life.

I needed a thick skin up on the 12^th floor in James Bay – the wind was relentless. It seemed to carry with it all the unresolved expectations that I’d allowed myself to claim. I was unsatisfactory in so many ways, and I allowed other people to demand more. I allowed them to know my address, and where I slept. What looked like daylight was something else. Darkness comes in many shades.

Here, I stumble down the sidewalk until my legs ache, and I lay in my bed and look at the cats in the back lane. No one knows where I am except the people that are meant to. I no longer need to protect myself from anything. That old sweater of grief can be folded and put away for the season.

*I’ve been reminded that I have, in fact, lived in a much larger city - Kiev, Ukraine, where I was born. Its population is twice the size of Montreal, and it also has a metro. Thanks, Dad.