TransToulouse

Narrow streets of "La ville Rose"

More Toulousian musings on the themes of gender and identity.  Though it wasn't so much musing as it was just simply… experiencing in a closer, more personal way, yet another angle of the gigantic and wonderful diversity of Life.

I knew J. from San Francisco, having witnessed his part in a Theater for Change performance at CIIS, where he studied Expressive Arts Therapy.  His story (told partly in French)  had touched me deeply that day: a story of awakening to and accepting of her/his difference.  There on stage s/he had revealed part of the personal and political struggle s/he'd gone through in this hetero-normative and dualistic gender world.  Neither woman, not quite a man.  Gay, not quite lesbian.  J. has had to define himself outside of the reference frame provided by modern society.  

When I first contacted J., via email, I asked if he preferred the use of a particular pronoun.  He said he generally goes by he, "but like[s] the feminine plural."

J. has decided to begin taking testosterone.  His voice, his smell, his pilosity is changing.  J. is really beautiful.

I contacted him because I thought he might have some good French contacts for HE: a genderstranged clown duo.  I mentioned that we had met briefly once or twice, even though he might not remember.   I said I had the impression we'd get along pretty well, since I am into clowning - I had seen him stilts-walking during the Pride parade!- and drama therapy, and anarchist theory, as well as queer and gender studies - though I'm not half as versed as the real academics are on the subject (Foucault, Butler, etc.). 

He told me he had just moved to Toulouse and didn't know many people yet.  It might be hard to get us a show, but we or I could come visit anyway.

Harvey and I somehow kept our performances of ShameNoShame! in Berlin, but I thought I'd come visit J. in Toulouse.  I asked and s/he said s/he'd be delighted to meet.  And s/he could probably ask his squat-mates if I could stay there for a few days.

Funny how two beings with so many commonalities can live in the same city (SF), without ever meeting.  

Lovely how it can happen so naturally, two years later, on the other side of the Atlantic.  Given: there was the French connection.

"You can call me when you arrive and I'll come meet you", he'd said.

I was a bit nervous.  Was I cool enough to hang with J.?  Was I cool enough to hang at the squat?

When I called he asked, "how are we going to find each other?"

"I've got a big red backpack," I answered.  "And I'll recognize you I'm sure."

"Okay.. well I'm wearing a hat and… pants… kinda like a clown.. hehe."

Place Wilson.  I'm sitting on the bench entertaining conversation with a local man, busy trying to gage whether I should - and how and where to - draw my own opinions and boundaries, as the man passes judgements on a group of homeless young adults hanging around peacefully.  He asks me where I'm staying in Toulouse.  "With a friend," I say.  "He's coming to meet me any minute."

I used the masculine pronoun repeatedly, even though something inside of me wondered how androgynous-ambiguous J. might show up to be, and what reaction this narrow-minded fellow might  have.  I was eager to find out. 

J. and I found each other immediately.  He came to greet me. Kisses on each cheeks.  He shook my interlocutor's hand; I smiled.  I didn't remember seeing J. with facial hair before.

On the way to his house he told me he was in the process of changing his legal name:  "It's very complicated here in France.  I need a note from my doctor, which states that my decision to take testosterone makes my transition irreversible."

This is what I mean when I say that I got to experience the whole thing to a more personal level.  I know a few transgender folks, yet there is something about J. that I just feel so close to.  It's an essence.  It's the woman and the man in him.  It's the complete ease with which I see him as he is, forgetting and remembering the difference according to the moment.  It's the strangeness of my own voice when I refer to myself in the feminine.

Why am I identifying as a woman?

I don't actually feel the dire need to answer the question.  Maybe that's why.

"I came to a point where I realized that the only way I would be able to grow old was if I became a man" explained J.

Can you imagine?

Perhaps many of us cannot.  And I guess that's valid.  Yet, it is so real, and so freakin' beautiful to me.. integrity in complexity… evolutionary… beyond duality… You gotta respect.

But I left my new friend now that I'm on the bus towards Sevilla, Spain.  Last leg of this three month adventure.  

Yes, I am confident saying that I made a new friend.  It was a short time, but J. and I met straight from the heart.  The connection is undoubtedly timeless.  
Once again I met someone who's in a similar place: out of San Francisco and hoping to create a good life in a new place, hoping to share wisdom and care with the world, painfully seeing the many imperfections of this neoliberal system and trying to create something else, something better, more sustainable and ethical, at the periphery. 

But we didn't only talk.  We also danced.  First, he invited me to join his contact improvisation class, on wednesday evening.  And then again on Friday, him and his partner asked if I'd be interested in "helping out" and come to the studio to rehearse a session of "movement exploration." 

Because you see, J.'s girl has a passion ... for Butoh!  
Together they are crafting a workshop she will be offering at a festival in London.

Help out?  ah! ah! ah! Amen!

I met them at the studio, and then J. and I got a private Butoh class…

Connecting in movement, in breathing, in presence and exploration, in vulnerability and in freedom.


Butoh is a dance of in-between.  It's a dance of being with becoming... of being with transition.
How perfect.  How powerful.


---

"Parlas occitan?"
"Una soleta lenga sufis pas jamai!"

I also meant to write about Occitan, or Langue d'Oc, which is a latine language spoken  in eight regions of Southern France, as well as twelve alpine valleys in Italy, and in parts of Spain.  (It is quite close to Catalan.)
It was the language of the troubadours and poets, and it was widely spoken until the 14th century.  But then came the systematic imposition of the French language over the territory; first, when the king of France began to "unify" (read: conquer) the nation, and again with the French Revolution, because diversity of languages came to be seen as a threat to the Republic.
I'm just so fascinated with how languages morph and mix and become extinct...