Scenes from a Queer Life

The fifth standard students want my autograph. Forty five ten-year-olds in uniform clamoring around me in this hot room. Sir, please. Ma’am, my notebook. Where do you come from, sir? Ma’am, sign mine next. Thank you, sir, will you come again? I am signing as fast as I can, shaking hands. I have played a fraction game with them.

Then in the fuckwad pay toilet in Manducherry I walk out, pay two rupees like everybody else but then the attendant falls into deep consult with two uniformed cops. I am called back told to pay five instead he is gesturing toward the ladies room I just came out of saying something something gesturing to me. And the best I can make of it is I went in the wrong room (and no matter which goddamn fuck fuck room I go into in whatever pissfuck country I’m in it’s the wrong room) so he decided with the help of these two cops that the thing to do about it by what fuckhead logic I do not know but something must be done so they charge me a random number of rupees more. There. Pay five instead of two. Is it a cleaning charge for the ladies floor? I’ll never know.

How my body is a ticket in when women gather. How I am lucky this way, mostly quiet. Oh, when they get going. Boy on the wall.

And I’ll never know just what happened with the priest. This Catholic priest in Varkala who liked me liked me so much even I showed up like this in buttons with a firm handshake, even when we were on our way to see the rabbits and the pigeons he asked am I Catholic and I said not anymore. So the shitfuck priest who showed me around his school the enormous soccer field with the jungle beyond, the big buses and the breeze from the sea, the brightly painted kindergarten rooms with the tiny chairs took me to his own quarters, seated me on his leather couch and had juice brought. Snacks. A pile of old yearbooks for me to admire. Then he asked for perhaps the third time about my family here with me, my having focused just on the daughter and her schooling the last two times, so I tell him now about the beloved partner Elizabeth who is the mother and we are raising a child together and that’s my family. Then he couldn’t quite hide the change in his feelings about me right there on his leather couch he is processing processing, I am filling the deadened space with mmm how good the juice is here and how my daughter is brave and rides the bus chit chat chit chat I am thinking come on you can do it. Your God, I know Him well, is big enough for this. He made all us queers and dolphins and everybody so it’s got to be okay. Stay with me now. This jackfruit is excellent thank you. Om shanti. The least or your brothers and all that. Am I such a notch below leper beggar tax collector prostitute, irredeemable? Or are you kind sir too many notches below Jesus, which is it? But here I am on your couch unflinching, Hail Mary full of grace, and what if I could have managed this as an eighth grader where would I be now? Oh the weight of the Church on such a young one of course I forgive you, closeted so long young mystic who, I have to say, read the gospels oh so carefully and so of course believed, how not, the whole point being love, right? And then priests and learning big words like “hypocrisy” and yet the bones the bones they absorb all the unspoken so the smart smart kid who leaves the church to seek still has such heavy bones, falls in love at fourteen and doesn’t even know it. Thirty years later in South India, Father Pineapple Juice is working very hard to appear gracious still. He stands to walk me out, promising, as we’d decided before, that his driver will collect me the next morning so I can come and teach his sheep some mathematics. Shakes my hand on the front steps. The car, of course, never comes.

I want to be a temple boy. Shirtless with that string only, cracking coconuts for the goddess, lighting the lamps, devotion in my blood. I am bustling around the temple grounds, matter of fact about the most sublime things. Ringing the bell, ringing the bell.

The six-year-old with glasses who lives at the juice stall behind the park where all the rickshaw drivers hang out, my daughter’s new friend, she runs up to me, says, Uncle, uncle! This Blue Elliott, her bathtime is now? No, I tell her, she may play for longer. They run off to chase the ducks some more.

So here I am in India of all places telling the truth to priests who don’t like it and face to face not kidding with an elephant and I swear she looked me right in the eye. This elephant standing tall in the middle knows he is the diety in this grand procession. Ardhanarishvara. Look it up. This is Shaktishiva, Shivashakti. This is god-goddess, both in one. This is enlightenment: Shakti rises through the spine and unites with pure consciousness. So there I am, little white Daddy in a sea of thousands of Hindus, the blond child in my arms has two balloons, this one of eleven elephants is looking right at me, three Brahmans on each elephant fanning the diety, holding the spangled umbrellas and Shiva is speaking into my forehead stand tall stand tall stand tall. The drums the horns the fireworks, the central elephant does not flinch, proud. The dancers in a close circle of thousands of spectators I could reach out and touch this big embodiment he/she looking right at me. And I just have to say it again: I am standing there two-spirited in a sea of thousands of Indians each and every one so very clearly shorn in buttons or flowing in sari but not ever both and there before us this enormous living breathing celebration of the union of for lack of better words masculine and feminine energies, right there on top of those godblessed elephants gigantic images of the most dignified  diety you ever saw split right down the middle man/woman right there this one hot night, drums horns fireworks. Stand tall.

I was an altar boy in real life until the day the bishop came, 1979.

So there I am at the ashram with thousands of people from all over the world, right? And there I am sitting among the women because in this place there are two sides like the whole place is bathrooms. All day I am sent from one side to the other when people notice me, and I start to think maybe I’m pollinating these two orchards. So I’m nested there on the floor among the women draped in white and the saint is hugging there unconditionally and I am happy. I mean, thousands of people singing the world better. And there’s an espresso stand. So this woman from maybe Korea turns to me, of course, and says, “the men sit on the other side.” And I say, “I am transgender.” She is puzzled but before I can say anything the woman next to her, an American, maybe 67 years old, pretty eyes, she smiles and says, “She is both. That means she gets to choose.” God bless America. Next morning so early I got chai on the men’s side. Drank it. Got more on the women’s side.

I could scamper here and there apologetically, hoping nobody notices if I just roll my shoulders forward, pee fast and get the hell out. Or, or. I mean, really. This big world-wide set of rules simply does not take my good self into account. Does not apply. I am free like a birdy.

T. Thomas Elliott, 14 Feb 2012