i moved directly into a four count when reading off my codewords. are you trying to type with my voice? “Yes, as best I can—with both of our voices, although mine is suppressed by the consonants—making room for another version of me to come in.” then I thought, “what is trans-queer? if I’m a woman and I like women does that mean I’m a heterosexual or does that mean I’m a lesbian? I guess it means I’m a lesbian.” So I assured Ursula that, although dressing up like a woman sounded interesting, i wasn’t a lesbian. I was a heterosexual more than anything else—and I say that with the confidence that can only come from painstaking years of questioning how I would be most happy. I figured if I acknowledged my queerness I might be able to “come out” but that never happened—i never thought of myself as gay no matter how hard i tried to make that ok and acceptable.
I couldn’t think of much at this point about how badly I wanted Ursula to be the president. then i thought of Mark Kelly’s—the Senator from Arizona’s—advertisement in which he asks you to add your name to a list to support him, but then he requires you to give him your email in order to do that. That really made me angry. “I’ll give you ten dollars once you win the primary.” I don’t know what she thought about that and I don’t care; the cost of living was too high—if I was going to donate I needed it to be for real. Now back to Superman, who, the more I learned about him and what he would do as president, the less I liked him. I always did get a bad feeling about him since I heard him swearing so much, and, frankly, you can’t move to the state of California to live because it’s too expensive. that’s on him—and, since he seemed more and more of a centrist—a politician with no clear plan other than saying whatever he thinks the majority of people want to hear, i don’t like him.
i was still having some difficulty typing in Ursula voice, our voice, but I was getting better at it. You can tell. She was so kind; she reminded me of Gwen—although I didn’t know much about Gwen other than the fact that she knew exactly what to say to me in order to cheer me up and make a lasting impression. i don’t think you have a chip on your shoulder – I didn’t think i did either, not even when I acted like it, a long time ago—that was a product of the impossibility of turning off my brain. Anyhow, once i told Gwen I didn’t want to know about her sex life, I think she understood, and didn’t mind me talking mostly to her mother—i’ll though I didn’t mind entertaining her company from time to time. As long as she understood that you had to use a shield to protect yourself from things you don’t want to know or things that other people don’t want to know.
That’s fine, Dad! I was spoiled rotten; I had such an amazing daughter—I could tell, already. And why wouldn’t she be amazing? Of course she is! Is Gwen trans? “We’ll support her if she is, but, if she has our support, it’s more likely that she isn’t.” what do you mean but that? had I put my foot in my mouth? “All i meant was that I wanted to save her the confusion i went through by letting her know that she doesn’t need to be something she isn’t.” It’s okay, Dad, I’m not trans, but I would try it out if you were trans-phobic. What was my sexuality, then? A test of how good of a kind of people my parents—and the world in general, really are? A noble cause, but that’s not exactly being true to yourself, which is more important than forcing a change.
I think Ursula was angry that I wasn’t getting the recognition that she felt I deserved or that would’ve been or should’ve been possible—which would have given us a much greater chance of getting together—and sooner, possibly, than later—although I insist it couldn’t be because I was accosting her. She had to find me. I insist on that. But you might say, “seize the day,” or something old-fashioned, like that, which didn’t really apply to real life since there were no daily chances of seizing anything, and, even if there were, nobody wants to be seized by their inferior officer. And that’s kind of how this is. No matter how talented I was I was the inferior officer here: there was a chain of command that applied to all people based on their standing with respect to their government—especially if the government wasn’t populated by Superman and Hakeem Jeffries. Darn them both.
Now I’m just typing because I’m trying to type with Ursula’s voice – i pause, and she says: you’re going too fast for me which might’ve had something to do with how much of what I was doing and saying she could understand or might otherwise mean that i was coming on too strong. She must’ve been thinking about getting pregnant when she didn’t want to. We’d already professed our love for each other; that was real enough. But I think she thought I was a bad tipper because I was only going to give her ten dollars after she’d won the primary. I think she expected fifteen dollars before she won the primary, and fifteen dollars after she won the primary. “I’ll think about it.”
i’m glad that you can feel my love “of course I’m glad too.” but can you wait for me? And I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant. Did she mean tolerate the fact that she was sleeping with somebody else? Or did she mean wait as long as possible to have a baby? baby. Ok—so, the way I saw it—I don’t know—it might not be best to get pregnant when you’re 45, even if you still can. But what could I do? She wanted to play it by ear—take the country’s temperature, i guess—so she was asking me to do the same, and, also, accept the possibility that the right time might never arrive – i didn’t say anything to that because i thought it would do the country good to serve a pregnant president—and I thought she had the backbone to stand her ground.