The other day I downloaded a dating app because I felt the spot I occupied on the floor was a black hole, sucking me deeper and deeper into the parquet floor, through my landlord’s apartment down into the ground. I guess sometimes life feels a bit too much. Like you’re too much. Like a swipe from a stranger on a curated selection of photographs is going to change how "much" your needs are, what you see in the mirror, how at home you feel in your own skin.
l took a deep breath and sank deeper into the floor,which meant my buttocks slid further from the wall, my back went an inch down and my belly creased forming a little roll of soft tissue. Maybe I’ll manage to swipe somebody to kiss this portion of belly fat.
Anyway, I got stuck at the second question. Pronouns.
Pronouns?
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I once walked into a kitchen, it was a big, industrial one. There was a whiteboard with the name and pronouns of all the folks that lived or hung around there. Everybody could take the purple marker and erase their pronouns, change their name, leave a blank space or a flower. You could be “they” or “any” or “dykes” or “fuck the cops” for all that mattered. I remember being mesmerized, scared to add my own name there, puzzled by what I would put next to my name. Creative inquiry and gender identity taking a stroll in my head.
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There is this person I usually meet at a dance event that happens on Sundays. The group of people is quite loose and folks always trickle in and out, but I meet Jule everytime I go there. The event always starts with a round of names, pronouns, and how we’re feeling. Every time it is Jule's turn, they take a long breath and sink a bit deeper into the floor as they exhale. Air becomes a rock that weighs them down and leaves them there. Their posture is crouched, their hands laid between their legs. “Jule, whatever, pronouns are too confusing anyway”.
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Pronouns?
I take my friend’s phone and I start swiping for them on Hinge. Between photographs and height descriptions, one prompt asks what gender euphoria looks like. Z., a blonde folk in black skinny jeans, answers with a video of them opening a beer with an opener attached to the carabiner looped in their jeans. The beer erupts in a white-bubbled-foam, wetting Z.’s hand and the floor underneath them. Friends are laughing in the background and Z. cautiously drinks the remaining foam keeping the beer upright. I like the video and keep numbing myself by hyping my friend’s social life (maybe?).
On a different occasion, I ask the same friend what it means for them to be non-binary.
We walk past a public toilet with two separate entrances for women and men. It smells like stagnating piss.
We talk about the difference between gender euphoria and gender dysphoria. They tell me about the person they had a crush on, and how they used she/they pronouns. Fran started using she/they too. Everytime somebody would refer to them as “them”, Fran liked it. More than when somebody referred to them as “she”. So they kept playing around with it.
They also tell me about the fears of taking a space that is not theirs. What if I’m not really non-binary? I think it’s funny how we constantly tend to feel inadequate, even within a group of people that was told to be inadequate. Where do you put the line of being “inadequate enough”?
The screen of my phone goes black.
I look through the options given by the dating app, you need to select at least one option. Inadequate, nor leaving the space blank, is between them.
However, putting “she” also feels uncomfortable.
It feels like the one time my grandmother demanded I wore a skirt, instead of my usual trousers, to a family event. It was a blue skirt with white pois.
I didn’t eat for the whole meal.
I leave the pulsing line hanging on the screen.
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I open the notes app on my phone.
“Gender Euphoria looks like: climbing a hard route, opening a tight bottle, lifting somebody heavier and making it look delicate, a friend putting glitters on my collarbones, wearing matching lingerie, moving softly, the top of a mountain, a heart-felt laughter, screaming loudly, being silly on the dance floor, biking without hands, singing while biking, proving my point in a class discussion, wearing mismatched jewelry, climbing a tree, fixing a lamp, tidying laundry, hugging somebody crying, drunk peeing in the streets”
Does it mean anything?
I read my lists again, and still don’t make sense of what gender euphoria means to me.
Feeling good in my body? Sexy? Desirable? Strong? Soft? Kind? Proud? Free?
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Ocean Vuong writes “ you will wake- and mistake these walls for skin.”
Feeling home in my skin?
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I uninstall the dating app. I don’t like giving away my data anyway. They already know too much about my menstrual cycle and guilty pleasures and obsession over my ex’s ex.
I lay fully on the floor, my feet touch the bottom of the nightstand.
I’m figuring out what it means to feel at home in my own skin, navigating the tracks of a (non) binary system.
I close my eyes, and when I open them again I try to mistake the walls that surround me for skin.
There's a crack on the ceiling. The corner of a poster hangs off, the shadow of tape on its back discolors the image.
I close my eyes again and imagine to open them and my skin is my home.
What does that look like?