truck

K—

The first time I went to La Cueva was a warm and rainy night in 2009. Why were we there? Why not, I guess. It’s still on 26th St., the edge of La Villita, the snug bar near the door and the stage against the wall, the sound booth, the door to the dressing room.

All day it had snowed, then rained the shit snow away. D and I passed the bouncer into a room like a wedding banquet, a quince, a backyard party, a gala, bursting with swollen boughs of white flowers luminous over the tables, white tablecloths. Mother Monica welcomed D, who introduced me and I shyly approached her grand dress and elegant headpiece, beautiful beestung lips, left blessed with her kisses on my cheeks, mucho gusto mucho gusto.

You texted me and when I looked down at it again, how we are sent back and forth to each other joy like a knife, joy like a knife, I marveled around the room and told you I would write you. I was starting to write to you from the rainy Thursday at La Cueva, where we gathered to celebrate Transgiving and watch the performers and cheer and give flowers, give flowers, give flowers.

I’m certain I would not have had the words fifteen years ago, walking into the damp La Cueva, shy and something else at the women who brought us Modelos, better than Shakira, better than Talia. There were words I’d looked up for years: marimacho, camionera. Depending on who you know, those are words you should be careful about saying. Camionera literally just puts the feminine on the word truck (it can also be camiona). I could be sure I was a fucking queer, and certainly not a woman, but certainly not the man that could be a truck. The word felt close.

I held marimacho in my palms for a long time. I’d ask my friends about what it meant in their families. There were other words for dyke, for lesbian, for even just a lady queer, which seemed right for a long time. Marimacho, though. Say it enough, and it’s the word I could say in some of the spaces I slid through.

At the bar was a butch with a tight fade and clear, steel rimmed glasses, shirtsleeves rolled up. I ordered drinks for D and whoever else needed one, back and forth. Tequila y sprite, Modelo con sel, gracias gracias gracias. They were young, working furiously on Transgiving at La Cueva, movedup and down the bar, poured shots for girls and asked quieres Jack o Crown? Jack, me dice, Jack.

My friend D has taken photos of youth and organizers and members of the community. That night they were there to watch the subjects stand by the photos, to sweep the coverings off. The photos will go on billboards, display at bus stations, hang on websites. D tells me they went to the park, just the park, shot them in a day, took thousands, chose select few. When we came in, we were pushed to the food: chicken wings, arroz, frijoles, pasta alfredo, mac and cheese, chicken, carne asada tacos, tortillas. My plate was too full by the time we got to the pozole, where an incredibly glamorous human ladled D’s bowl full, con lettuce, radishes, cilantro, onions, avocado. We shared it at the table, and I thought: I could meet my end now now, eating pozole at La Cueva, in the glow of the lights and the chatter and gossip and bursts of flowers. I could meet my end like this.

But lately that has mostly been what is on my mind, that I don’t have much to say, and that I can’t end it now. There will be something to do. There are things to do now. Our joy as knives being whatever we can give, save, stitch, hold, and bear, and what we do not know we will have to do.

K, we have spent time over poetry and over beer, around patio fires, on stools at the Cove and Jimmy’s, staring out at the industry of the lake. Their are two genders, you and I decided, South Side of the Point and North Side of the Point. We are South Side of the Point.

So our kinship of poems and the wry exhaustion of sapphic spaces and Chicago, has meant the world, and also what has meant the world is your facile understanding of my own shores. I have been blessed to have been understood as something more, something not, something else. The transformation of the word truck, the softening of the word man. I will remain grateful to come and go where I am helpful, desired, understood. Because, and I suppose this is how it works, the fortune and joy of those who love and know and see you slipping so easy into who you are means the dissonance of the rest of it is obviously there to tell you something.

Perhaps I have been remiss. Perhaps I should’ve been better: younger, more articulate, more considerate. This is always how I have felt about myself, though. I do not want to explain, and I mostly want to remain a horizon where I will know people as they will let me receive them, over and over. Isn’t this all of us though? Or rather, all of the good ones. Isn’t this how it works? Out to the water and back, washed back in as whatever we have always been, whatever we are supposed to be. Of course after years, most of mine ended up queer. And most of who heads into the water, and returns to shore where I sit, has known who I am for a long time, slid easy into who I am.

Which is fucked, and shitty. I have sat within myself looking at the cowardice of the change I have not enacted, the destiny of body, when I know that’s not true. Knowing: I am this.

There was a time, and perhaps I am (coward as I am) holding onto it now, where I simply slid along with when some of the world used pronouns with me. It jars, now, though. Which I can’t parse. I’m never not going to be Latina, and I don’t know what that means. I’ll always be someone’s hija, I’ll always have my abuela’s name. Things I have never liked explaining.

Except actually, I know when the gendering is right, and when that is as we slip into the perfect water off the shore. What the fuck, K?

What’s the fucking point anyway? This body, these desires, this self, this understanding has to remain as whetstone for the knife’s joy. For me, for us, for everyone. Years unfolded, and who knew I’d be so lucky. I wrote it somewhere: I have no heroic chest, but I know it, and I know it will keep me breathing, I suppose. I remain who I am anyway. When FB assessed, matter of fact: “So using they is good, right?” and then, “We’re going to tell our children you can be Tia and Tio”. The legend between me and J where I simply couldn’t pick butch and announced to her, “There’s men and there’s women and I’m kind of a manly woman,” which, diction-wise, made more sense. When people make a point of it at work. When The Boxer held the words freely to me, gave them to me back and forth. When I remain some way I know I am, even if the whole of the diction falls apart.

We will shove joy like knives for as long as we can. Last week, my heart would maybe burst with something: with the speeches given by elders in Spanish, with their vows to keep going, keep going, with the reinas and their absolute killer performances, with the young people who deserve so many more flowers than they had. When they pulled down the cloths to reveal their portraits, we clapped like crazy. We will see them, no matter what, through our streets. I sat at the table and gifted the rest of my drink tickets to the little queers, alive and young and ready to dance.

I am not much for Thanksgiving. So I will credit the gratitude I have for being brought and welcomed into La Cueva again, 15 years later, on Transgiving, and to feel something I do not often feel would to this month of November, bewilderingly, dissonantly, wonderingly. I remain grateful for you, for the space, for the words you are bringing to us. I am grateful to everyone who sees or says or simply meets us, all of us, as we are, the ones who have known and loved us a long time, or pass us by on the dance floor. And grateful to see joy’s knife, how it will last, until next year’s Transgiving and the bowls of pozole.

xx

-C

Thanksgivings, Ranked

1. My friends in 2008 the last year of college, and how much of that I hold onto to this day, and one day hope to replicate.

Donate to El Calor here. Take care of each other. Ceasefire, now, for fuck’s sake. Stay kind. Be good.