Over the past years I have given myself increasing permission to write in the scattered, associative way my brain works now. I see my nonfiction as an invitation to conversation more than any kind of argumentation.
I’ve made some bad choices in life, but I really don’t think I’ve done anything personally as bad as fucking Heidegger.
Allowing myself to do this book-length, weird, surreal, glitchy poem opened a whole new world in my poetic practice and praxis. It felt like a carnival.
We can look at a rainbow crosswalk, maybe take a selfie with it, and feel recognized or represented in some way, but it doesn’t actually create a space for queer or trans belonging in any real sense.
I really don’t have a palate for total desolation in books. . . . So maybe as an unconscious decision I worked in these moments of hope or pockets of happiness that saved me from spiraling completely.
We’re all living in a historical moment that we can’t get out of.
You have to stand by your work at the end of the day, and honestly, if this book didn’t make me laugh, I wouldn’t have let it go to print.
I want to take things seriously, because these are serious things I’m writing about, but life is so funny, so ridiculous, and so bizarre—and the more bizarre I made the book, the more the book looked like real life.
All someone needs to do is open a window to a place like that and let me peer inside, and I’m intrigued.
I’m into spiky fashion and queer leather and outrageous looks and every so often an element of club kid. But different. I see queer fashion and the role it plays for me as one of adornment and resilience. Leather is another layer of skin, very protective. And spikes are a deterrent. So it’s a kind of armor.