Waterbody
by DEY RIVERS
Fid Thompson, grassroot, ink + carved block on mulberry paper, 5 X 7 inches, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.
WATERBODY
DEY RIVERS | JUNE 2023 | Issue 24
Oh, the questions they used to have. Still have. May never be answered in fullness. How does one flow in a new timeline as a light-skinned Black person with a deeply gendered childhood in the nineties and aughts?
A young life pushing against the dam holding them in place. Wearing dresses and climbing ladders, roofs, monkey bars, jumping on and off merry-go-rounds, feeling deeply they could be a boy, stronger than a boy, pass as a boy and often quietly tried. In pretend play they were a boy, pulling on baseball caps, taking the “boys” role in learning dance steps. They also wanted to dance the “girls” role, too. Once, they declared they wanted to be a hermaphrodite (knowing the term but not recalling how). Everyone pulled disgusted faces and said they were weird. Those kids didn’t play with them anymore.
Tomboy, as some called them, wanted the chance to try out for a boys soccer team (they weren’t very good at most sports except tennis, but the opportunity held the promise of freedom). They were not allowed. Expressing desires to learn martial arts for the beauty in the forms. Denied. While the boys (siblings) were offered the option. A friend introduced them to boy’s clothes. Oh! The comfort. The ability to wave limbs! They wanted to kiss that friend right on the lips during sleepovers, but was afraid that friend would think they were weird too. They tossed away scratchy girl clothes with glee, tight in the most annoying places and various shades of pink. Why are girls always pink? Why were boys always blue? They loathed pink. They don’t anymore. They decide their favorite color is chartreuse. A yellow-green seen in nature during the delicate birth of spring leaves lasting for a week if not days before a darker color takes hold and the moment has passed.
After realizing they were treated no different by dressing boyish, they look with envy at the women in their life (younger, same age, and older) who are content in their rippling femininity, able to bring their varying wants and desires to them on shining feminine tides.
Since Tomboy didn’t work. They take up the quest of becoming Cute believing it will provide some ease to their life. Femaleness is what they needed to emulate to be attractive, desired, to succeed. Ladylike. No spitting, sit with thighs closed, crossed at the ankles, roll hips while walking. Halter-tops, show the belly, cold torso, mini skirts, short shorts. Males lined up to call out from the shores about their appearance, asked if they are married, and to give ‘em a smile. A certain male “chivalry” appeared (though the calling did not end when they dressed up in “classy” styles), doors held open, as opposed to when they dressed down in jeans and sweatshirts and were effectively ignored. How strange! They tried to decode the secret ideals of womanhood laid out in magazines, opting for vintage or second hand shirts and dresses which they liked because the clothes were out of style from current mass produced trends (cheaper, too). They become smaller as they drip into the container of not being too opinionated, of acquiescing, of doing what others encourage them to do, not even knowing what they liked anymore. Moving into their own studio apartment they undertake a few heterosexual one night stands, prefer sex with one person, try out a boyfriend, then a fair-weather-friend, and spend a few years learning make-up, find bras which are supposed to fit, high heels, hurt feet, poking underwire, languishing eye powder cases.
One night, almost pass-out drunk, they tell their casual sex partner they could break his dick. In the morning they pretend they don’t remember saying it and also don’t feel bad or apologize for it. He doesn’t call again, neither do they. They are over Cute.
Set adrift for a liminal space called college.
Frustration once kept a bay seeped in. Temper frayed and bubbling. They are a walking talking meat sack sloshing around as they wear outfit after outfit and tight form-fitting things. Clothes don’t stay in rotation long. In two years they wear only one vintage dress. Nothing feels quite right against the skin or on the face or head. Except earrings and lipstick. They like those. Easy on, easy off, color and design. They stop shaving (reasoning with themself that they are too busy or broke to buy more razors, both of which are true).
They do not take gender studies. Instead, they follow reports of how many queer and trans people are murdered, how many Black people are murdered, how many Indigenous women are murdered and missing, how children in detention camps seem to fade away, how water is poisoned. How they were poisoned. They consider ending it all several times. How easy it will be to let go of the steering wheel on a mountainous hairpin bend. Manage to find themself in welcoming company of students who are non-comforming, unable to articulate the warm safe feeling in their belly. They do not participate in Gay Straight Alliance or silent protests, yet, shift pronouns when one of them says they are he/him without blinking. Still holding onto womanhood, they have an affair with a male professor and are laughed at about how cliché it is. They shrug. What does it matter? They are a well-dressed meat sack unknowingly hiding a torrent. At two in the morning they cut their hair completely off. Meeting a round-faced, deeply melanated woman, they break off the affair. The new relationship lasts six weeks. Six glorious weeks of being in a lesbian romance and dreaming of bringing their girlfriend home to meet the family which never happens.
A tsunami breaks over concrete walls, gathering them up in their heart ache and sends them
out
to sea.
A fervor takes hold at the realization there is a different language in this sea. A way of being which can exist for them too, brings clarity to their existence, starts to heal them. They swim in. Soft and squishy, firm and solid, not feminine nor masculine rolled over their tongue, letting shape and sounds slide around and fill up the cavities in their body quieting some of the dissonance. The first time they speak the words altogether it matches the flow of their spirit and temperature of their skin.
Queer. Non-binary. Poetry.
Ah! How they wished the questions ended there. Are they femme since they don an occasional dress or adorn themself in lipstick and earrings? They pause when needing to choose between a Black or LGBTQIA2+ mental health workshop and end up selecting Black. Do they go to women-only creative events and groups? They decide not to join and are asked if they hate women. There are demands about why people even put themself in named boxes called identity? They refuse to respond. How many times will they be called “ma’am” today no matter what they wear? They are called “sir” even fewer times when they dress masc and it doesn’t sit right either. They are reminded to show grace and give time/space to people who’ve known them all their lives under a different pronoun. Swallowing the sharp stab to the heart each time a born day card arrives declaring “daughter.” When will “sis” desist?
They gleefully never buy a bra again, seeing no need for reasoning with anyone including themself. Freeing the nipple until they try a binder. Then tape. A flat chest is nice, but not always. They refuse to disclose their deeper trauma’s to the circling, panting, thirsty public to lap up, choosing to instead discuss the efficacy of blues, purple, and orange. They learn one week may be different from the next. What feels good to wear one day or one year may not be the next and lean into the question: What new learnings, and sensations await this waterbody?
Dey Rivers is a non-binary Black american navigating mental health challenges, playing in fictional worlds and poetry, painting and collective dreaming where they reside on stolen land. Their work is based on Sankofa, in conversation with the past and present to imagine futures. They have an educational background in Fine Arts and mental health advocacy, and were selected for the 2020 Ooligan Press Writers of Color Showcase. Dey is currently revising a queer historical novel.
Fid Thompson is an artist, writer, gardener, wonderer, queer white human who grew up in rural England. Her art is informed by her bi-cultural family and the humans, cultures, creatures, plants, and landscapes of the places where she has lived. Her work inquires into inner and outer worlds and weathers, nature, mental health cycles, and portraiture of all the kinds. Fid has twice been a recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ Fellowship, including for her Queer Enough portrait project, and is a 2023 grantee of the Washington Project for the Arts's Wherewithal grant. She is currently writing about worms, among other things.