Ruby's Drive: Fragments

We have entered an age in which honesty is a luxury, and ostentatious displays of it are mere priggishness. So many people have two profiles, multiple emails, private pictures stored on hard drives with innocuous titles. Passwords on a piece of paper stuffed inside a book. Pseudonyms confected from a bookshelf. Things being various. Us being things, escaping the pain of being thought things.

 I tried out the Dark Web a while ago. Nothing crazy. Just getting prepared, in case shit gets heavy. I liked it. It reminded me of using the net in the old days, no password autofill, no bling. It’s built by hobbyists, bodged together, ramshackle, always moving. Silk Road was an excellent name. Floating World would be another. As frustrating as it was I rather liked it: it seemed to have potential.

Fruit Flies Like a Banana

Three walks.

With Valerie down the country paths. Rus in urbe. Not the end of Newcastle but the beginning of Northumberland.

Four walks.

With Valerie by night. To Valerie’s, alone, on Ladies’ Day. The crowd at the Three Mile Inn, like a wedding, but who has that big a family, that many friends? The women getting off the bus in gowns and dresses, a clown car commercial for fake tan, depilatory cream, streak-free deodorant.

From Valerie’s at 4am. The strange sight of a city that works.

And out with Valerie, walking to town, looking for monsters.

We’d left Rob on the sofa, sleeping off the booze. We had battery packs for our phones, we had cables. Valerie had access to a website claiming to have access to the servers for the game. She said rarer creatures could be found in the University grounds. I said okay then, let’s walk there. I know a route we can use. I wasn’t psyched about rare creatures: I was psyched for any of them, a week later to this game than Valerie and the others, the same amour-propre that made me decide that as a 38-year-old woman I should start eating sorbet and drinking V and slimline instead of beer and Ben & Jerry’s telling me I shouldn’t waste my time looking for computer-generated manga-style fauna. More fool me.

I took Valerie on my usual route here from town, but in reverse. Up Matthew Bank, down Friday Fields Lane, past the Church of the Holy Name, through Jesmond, where the Tories glared and I stood briefly at a cashpoint between two young things treating their life like a scripted reality, which indeed it was, scripted for them by parental wealth:

‘I can’t believe you spent four hundred pounds on a coat!’

‘I know! The daft thing is, I’ll barely wear it!’

We did not warm to Jesmond’s people, but Valerie loved the architecture: the big, cathedral like parish church at the end of Osborne Road, the flowery design on the lodge by the Gosforth Rackets Club, the Jesmond Lawn Tennis club gate with its plaque commemorating Muriel Robb, even an electricity substation whose blocky construction and salmon-pink paintwork she found enchanting. Valerie stopped to photograph many of these things and although I feared, particularly by the substation, that we might be challenged as potential subversives, no hand gripped either of our shoulders and we proceeded on our way.

That we were regarded as subversives, at large in this new England, we knew from the reactions of those we passed: the motorist who shouted QUEERS at us as he drove past us on Matthew Bank, Doppler-shifting away towards the pub outside of which I’d clashed with Rob’s promoter; the truck-driver stopped in traffic by the Mansion House who made increasingly incoherent noises at us as we deprived him of the attention he desired; the stares.

Outside of an American-style barbecue joint I got into a virtual altercation with a sort of bird that refused to be caught. I spent almost a whole minute swiping my hand up the screen and muttering, until in the end it disappeared in a puff of smoke. Frustrated, we continued on, through the concrete subway that passes under the motorway to the Robinson, where Emma and I had mused about being included in female aggression. We caught a new digital beast by the Hancock, where I showed Valerie the rhino statue with its wonderfully Dadaist warning sign, PLEASE / DO NOT CLIMB ON THE / RHINOCEROS

Rob had informed me, during the brief space of time he was lucid, about a bad experience he’d had with a mutual acquaintance of ours, a cis woman, the night before. I was inclined to believe him, the woman in question being one of the few people I’d ever been threatened by online who’d genuinely scared me.

‘Man, I’ve been through some fucked-up shit,’ I sighed, as Valerie and I passed the Armstrong Monument and the concealed entrance to the Victoria Tunnel.  

‘Tell me about it. I am never walking through there again.’

‘Same.’ I wiped my hand across my forehead. ‘Are you hot? I feel like I could do with a chance to sit down and grab something.’

Valerie nodded.

‘Actually, do you know what I feel like? A milkshake.’  I continued.

‘Hmmmm.’ Valerie pondered. ‘There’s a Mark Toney’s up on the right.’

‘Huh.’

‘What?’

I looked at her, gothed up against the weather in her hat, her black top and waistcoat, the pleated skirt she’d bought from Oxfam just a day or so before. ‘I don’t know…’

‘What?’

‘There’s just something about the way you say Mark Toney’s. It’s hard to explain. Hearing it in an American accent…’ I saw her smile. ‘…it’s like me saying Walgreen’s or Duane Reade, or something, you know? Slightly off.’

‘Well, yanno, that’s the way it is for me with most of the stuff around here. Even your Wal-Marts are called something different.’

‘Yeah, I dunno…maybe it’s that Mark Toney’s is specifically a North East thing? So it’s like me saying something specific to Kansas City.’

‘Or like you saying sore bay and my mom saying sherbert.’

‘Yeah, exactly.’

‘Two nations divided.’

‘Oscar Wilde, yeah.’

‘You want a fucking milkshake?’

‘I drink your milkshake.’

‘You drink your milkshake, I’m getting a Pepsi. And maybe a waffle. And a sandwich.’

‘Holy shit you’re ravenous.’

‘Well yanno I couldn’t really eat with all the noises your friend makes in his sleep.’

‘Yeah, he’s, ah, he doesn’t sleep lightly in any sense of the…’

‘He’s shitfaced is what he is. Jesus, Ruby! The guy was passed out on your couch!’

‘I know but…’

‘What?’

I shook my head. ‘He wasn’t always like this, y’know? It’s…kind of sad. I worry, especially with Fringe coming up.’

Valerie got to the counter first, and gave her order. I waited in line. ‘Do you think bubblegum’s a good milkshake flavour to ask for?’

Later, seated, I leaned in to Valerie and whispered: ‘It’s also kind of like the way you say cunt.’

‘What is?’ she said aloud.

I looked around and whispered again. ‘The way you say Mark Toney’s. It has different connotations, like it does when you say the word cunt. It’s hard to explain.’

‘Or like when I say the word wench?’ Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

‘Well,’ I demurred, ‘that’s more specific to me I guess…’

She smiled. ‘You’re a little excited now, aren’t you?’

I looked down at the table as my milkshake arrived, smiled at the waitress then turned back to Valerie and mouthed the words fuck you. She laughed.

‘So anyway,’ she said. ‘Article.’

‘Article?’

‘I got an idea for one. I’ve been thinking about something you said, and I want to write an article about it.’

‘And you want me to help?’

‘I’d like you to look at it, yeah.’

I put my milkshake to one side and rooted through my backpack, finding and pulling out the spare power pack for my phone.

‘Yeah, sure, I’ll give it a once-over. What’s it about?’

‘Well, I only really have the title so far…’ She slid her phone across the table to me. ‘What do you think?’

I looked down at the screen of Valerie’s phone, took another sip of my blue milkshake, and passed the phone back.

‘That is brilliant. Have you ran into any yet?’

‘No, but apparently the St Mary’s Lighthouse area’s known for it. And there are monsters there you can’t find anywhere else. Sooner or later, it’s going to happen.’

I chuckled. ‘Man, I wish I could be there when it does.’

Valerie laughed. ‘I know, right? When Pokemon meets dogging. Like, how the fuck is that gonna oh hey –’

She looked at me in silence for a moment while the waitress put her sandwich down before her.

‘How the fuck is that going to go down?’ she whispered. 

Val 'n' Rube

'So.'
'So.'
'If you could fuck any superhero, who would you fuck?'
'That's easy. Jenny...Century?'
'Who?'
'From the Authority? British woman who had electricity powers?'
'Oh, you mean Jenny, whatserbucket, sparks!'
'Yes, that's it!'
'Why her, though?'
'Think about it. Jenny Sparks controls electricity...?'
'So?'
'...our nerve endings run on electricity.'
'...'
'Fucking Jenny Sparks would be like fucking a violet wand.'
'Oh. Damn...'

Ruby's Drive: A Second Coming (2016)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twelvescore years of mission creep

Were hexed in primetime by a Shepard’s fable:

What rowdy zeitgeist, des Zeit nun gekommen

Kreucht, um geboren zu werden, Bethlehem zu?

Saturday Session #2: Outside of Pride

And welcome again to IoT's regular Saturday Session, in which we peel back the dignified facade of narrative and I talk directly at you about something rather than obliquely through the voices of our characters. The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed we didn't have a Saturday Session last week - this is because last week was Newcastle Pride, and that's sort of what I want to talk about here.

Obviously enough, given the subtitle, the cast of IoT are, basically, a bunch of queers. Many of them are both queer and trans; the only cis character we've heard from so far is Kizz, a lesbian weed dealer (whose name is not meant to be a bad misreading of 'cis', which I've only just noticed). So it feels relevant to this blog to talk about the fact that I was both at and not at Pride this year.

I was at Pride because I took part in the parade, which is my favourite thing about Pride most years. Pride is a march, Stonewall was a riot, we don't win our rights by being nice and quiet. One thing I share with Ruby in IoT is a belief that taking to the streets is important, the physical space you can take up and hold is an expression of your commitment to queer liberation. So getting to do the Pride parade, getting to hold up traffic in town on a Saturday at the height of summer, that is an important expression of power and intent. This year, in the wake of Orlando and the Referendum, it seemed even more important. Racists have felt more free to utter their hateful bollocks since the Leave side's narrow victory, but I think I've noticed more homophobia and transphobia too. The kind of people who complain about 'political correctness' feel as if they've won (I think their victory will be rather Phyrric once they realise they've fucked the country into a shit-can, but for now they're riding high). I sensed a little hostility from some of the people we passed, and if you know anything about me, you know that only convinced me all the more of why we needed this parade.

But the parade is only part of Pride. The other half is the 'festival', and I use quotation marks because Newcastle Pride is one of the most tacky, rubbish, disappointing excuses for a festival I've ever been to. Full disclosure: I have performed at Pride in the past, once in the women's tent and twice in the trans tent, partly because I was asked to (I'm polite; if you ask me to do something, there's a good chance I will), and partly because the women's tent and the trans tent were the only places at Newcastle Pride where you wouldn't hear shit music. I mean you might still hear shit music from outside the tent, but inside it would be gravy. I don't know why getting a sufficiently high number of cisgender gay men together causes their aesthetic appreciation of music to drop to a level so low that the phrase 'Headliners - the VengaBoyz!' becomes a tenable proposition, all I know is that women and trans folks seem to be immune to it. Admittedly there was a little too much earnest acoustic guitar emoting in the women's tent at times, but at least it was fucking live.

You'll notice I'm using the past tense to describe both the women's and trans tents at Newcastle Pride, and the reason for that is that Northern Pride Events Limited, the private corporation which runs the event, decided they were going to have neither a trans nor a women's tent this year. Which meant that anyone going would only be able to experience the main festival.

Newcastle Pride likes to bill itself as the UK's largest free pride, and you get what you pay for. Which means indigestion-inducing food, overpriced drinks (I like fresh fruit as much as the next fat bitch, but if I'm paying five quid for a can of Pimm's decanted into a plastic glass the fruit should only be a fucking garnish, not half the receptacle), the kind of fairground rides you usually see set up on wasteground at the end of an industrial estate, corporate stalls selling all kinds of rainbow tat because smaller, more interesting and, let's be honest, queerer groups are priced out, and z-list pop stars interspersed with the cream - or, to put it more honestly, the putrefying, stale yoghurt - of Newcastle's unbelievably dull, conservative, lowest common denominator drag scene.

Yeah. I'm not a fan.

Tara Stone goes into a lot more detail about the problems with Newcastle Pride here. Perhaps the biggest issue is transphobia - 22 transphobic incidents were reported during the 2015 event, and I have no doubt the figure for this year will be higher. One friend of mine actually had to deal with transphobic harassment from one of the security guards at this year's shindig. So it's little wonder that this year's event saw the first Newcastle Alt-Pride, a volunteer-organised collective picnic outside the main site for anyone too trans, too bi, too female or just too queer to consider hanging around a shitshow like the main festival. That's where I hung out on the day, and its where my characters would hang out too.

There is a reason this blog is subtitled Living Queer in Times of Crisis. This blog isn't aimed at the kind of cisgender gay dudes and straight tourists who think the tepid, embarrassing corporate mess that is Newcastle Pride stands for anything other than ripping off enough dehydrated Geordies to make a dent in its debt-to-capital ratio. This is for the kids outside. It always will be. Because it was the outsiders who made Pride possible, and it's the outsiders who are truer to what Pride should be about than a private corporation running an employment scheme for bad comedians who went into drag because it was that or joining Ukip as far as last scoundrel refuges went.

And if you're from Northern Pride, and you're reading this, and you're thinking what a bitch - I thought you liked bitches, hun? Or is that only when the bitch in question is a cis man dressed as a misogynist caricature?

So yeah, that's what I think about Northern Pride. If you have an alternative opinion, or a tale of being excluded from Big Cisgay Party Time of your own, or you just want to know when Ruby and Valerie/Emma/Kizz/that crazy racist chick from the anti-EDL protest are going to make out, or whatever, either comment on the posts - if you must - or email me at TrespassSaturdays@gmx.co.uk so I have something to put in next week's Saturday Session instead of just having another big ol' rant.

Keep trespassing,
AJ

Ruby on silicone

'Okay, so, look, this is the thing about silicone dicks. 

They don’t ejaculate, don’t get soft. Putting your lips around one

will not make it change its shape. But: this means 

they have no function but to dominate. When a lover shoves a 

dildo down my throat they do it purely to put me in my place, 

to say which one of us stays 

on her knees, 

to make me gulp, to make me gag, to make me gasp for breath: 

I love that. It’s the purest topping possible.'

Mad Dogs and Englishwomen

Woke up at 4am stuck to the leather couch in Valerie’s sitting room by a combination of my own sweat and the sofa’s weird adhesive properties. Once I’d peeled myself away I found I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to head out. I began to get my stuff together. Pulled my t-shirt, the sleeping owl, part of the first woman’s pyjama set my parents bought me, late last year, away from my body and over my head. Rolled a white cotton sports bra down over the sunburn on my shoulder from Saturday’s Pride parade and around my breasts, which have grown since I started doubling up on my oestrogen dose. Areolae for days, now. Dr Way says they need to ask the endocrinologist about officially upping my dose but I’m pretty confident they will. And when they have I’ll no longer find myself coveting the 1mg sachets Brianna leaves lying around in her room.

Every trans person has thought, at some point, even if only for a moment, about stealing another girl’s hormones. It’s a shitty thing to do, an impulse I’ve never acted on, but I understand the temptation to do it. The rationing out of this shit is oppressive. In conditions of scarcity even the most upright will contemplate theft, and trans people always operate in conditions of scarcity as far as hormones are concerned. The clinics give us just enough to keep us on our leashes, it seems sometimes.

Bev has been a good doctor though, I guess, much better than that Tory bitch back at the start. Of course you’ll have to lose some weight to pass and I thought bitch I live in Scotswood, I’ll walk out of my door and find you a dozen cis women with at least ten pounds on me but I was trying to be good then. Following the ridiculous advice on my ‘speech therapy’ leaflet: smile more. Practise walking with decorum. Ladies never put their hands in pockets thinking none of this sounds much like speech therapy to me.

I go to the kitchen and pour myself a small glass of milk. Valerie and Brianna like the full fat kind, being Americans. I’ll have it on cereal but since my diet last year I prefer fully skimmed. I’m only drinking it now because of the heat, and because I realise I haven’t taken my Lisipronil in a while. I push two tablets out of each blister, 10 and 20mg, swallow them down with the milk. Then I go next door.

‘Oh, hey.’ Valerie is up, lying naked on her mattress and looking at her phone. ‘You having trouble sleeping too?’

‘Yeah,’ I find my jeans in the chaos of Valerie’s floor and pull them on. Black jeans in this heat, a stupid idea but it was night when I came. Finding my trainers I press my bare feet inside them. ‘Thinking I might walk back to my flat. I feel like I wanna move before it gets too hot.’ Mad dogs and Englishmen, I think.

‘I haven’t slept yet.’

‘Wow. Holy shit, that’s, um, wow.’

‘Yeah. Heat’s messing with me too.’

‘Hmm. Do you want Laura today?’ I point to a pendant on Valerie’s desk.

‘Hmmmmmaybe? Haven’t decided what I’m wearing today. You haven’t worn her in a while though.’

‘Yeah, but I know you’re stressed at work.’ Valerie recently started a job at Timeslip Books ‘n’ Coffee, the comics/sci-fi/gamer food paradise which functions as a kind of unofficial day centre for Newcastle geeks. She’s the Assistant Manager. This is the most responsibility she’s ever had to deal with on a day-to-day basis and, like me, she’s perpetually worried she’s fucking it up. I suspect that, again like me, she’s actually probably doing way better than she thinks but I know getting her to see that will be a job and a half. Again, like me.

‘Hmmm. I dunno. Do you think Laura Palmer is a, uh…’

‘An appropriate totem? Yeah, maybe not, unless you want to wind up being killed by some sort of um, otherworldly…’

‘Some dude who needs to spell out his name. Ooh! Do you think maybe in the new season we’ll get to find out the rest of Bob’s name?’

‘Ha! Yeah.’ My memory of Twin Peaks is fuzzy, and I much prefer the film to the show. There are still bits of season two I haven’t seen yet, and my memory of bits of season one isn’t great either. There was something about Bob’s name?

This happens a lot with me and Valerie. She mentions some geek nugget I don’t fully get and I nod and go along with it, not because I’m trying to be smarter than I am but because I don’t want to interrupt her flow. Valerie does a sort of nerd version of the thing Waugh describes Sebastian and his posho chums doing in Brideshead, not doing you the discourtesy of imagining you aren’t entirely familiar with what she’s talking about, though with Val it’s more likely to be the history of the Carol Danvers Captain Marvel than The Waste Land or who Anthony Blanche blew last weekend.

I pick up the pendant by the layered chain and look at Sheryl Lee’s smiling face. ‘I’ll leave her here then. Give you the option.’

‘Thanks. Hey, could you maybe spot a sister a li’l bit of weed?’

‘Sure,’ I reply, ‘find the bag and take what you need.’

‘Okay. See ya.’ Valerie grins and pulls the whole baggy out from under the blanket balled up at the foot of her mattress.

‘Fuck you, bitch,’ I smile.

‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that to ya. Just a scoash.’ She busies herself pulling buds from the clear plastic and I check to see I didn’t leave anything else in her room. Then I head back to the living room, briefly, to put my sweaty t-shirt back on (much as I’d love to not bother with it I think the people of Gosforth will take a dim view of me walking home with my bra on show, especially this rather grotty sports number, bought before my boobs began to grow).

Satisfied I have everything, I go back through to Valerie’s room and pick up the last thing I need. ‘Sure you took enough?’ I ask.

‘Well you know me, I’ll always want more but I’m not gonna deprive ya.’

‘You’re a pal. I’m off now. I hope you get at least some sleep before work.’

‘This’ll help,’ she says, packing the ground buds into her vape. ‘See ya!’

The door to Brianna’s room is open throughout this entire exchange, but neither of us is all that worried about waking her. Brianna is a heavy sleeper. I once put up with listening to an entire episode of some American Gordon Ramsay gubbins blaring out of her laptop before I realised she’d fallen asleep in front of it.

I hate the way Americans always call him ‘Chef Ramsay’. To me, that seems way too respectful to the bad-tempered, abusive, bullying cunt but Brianna loves these macho cooking shows. I can’t really complain while she copies the recipes though, that woman is a damn good cook. And anyway, at least she doesn’t snore.

I close the door behind me and oh my God it’s so much cooler. Val and Brianna’s living room is like a sauna in this heat. It’s double-glazed, it gets the sun, and the bottom windows can’t be thrown open in case Hiro wanders out. A perfect storm.

So many houses on Valerie’s road have every front window thrown open, probably their back windows too. The English don’t cope well with such extremes of heat. A window left open all night brings the risk of moths and burglars but, in this weather, must be done.

I follow the road up to the Asda, buy a couple of pink Lucozades from the kiosk at the front and pay for them at the robot tills, trying as hard as I can not to get under the feet of the staff prepping the store for the morning rush. Twenty-four hour shopping is a godsend if you don’t work in a shop. But I don’t want to make the walk home without something to cool me down and keep my sugars up. I put one bottle on its side in my satchel, and keep the other out. Realistically the one in the bag will probably get a little shook up, but it shouldn’t take me long to make it home. One bottle ought to do it.

Leaving the car park I decide to go left instead of right, to follow Hollywood Avenue instead of making for the High Street. If I’m right, I’ll come out by the footbridge over the Metro line, just down from the depot. Not far to home from there. But first, a walk through Garden Village, built for the workers on a precursor to the Metro, yesterday’s utopia. Past the cemetery which, like pretty much every graveyard in the last ten years, now sports a solemn Commonwealth War Graves sign on its gate. Past the allotments, and the tiny bridge over what Brianna always calls the creek.

I photograph a few things on the way: the slogan on the back of a fishmonger’s van, which I send to Valerie; a sign for Gosforth Depot with the old Metro logo on it, or was it Tyne and Wear Transport and not Metro? That wavy sigil, the chance meeting between a pound sign and a portcullis. Haven’t seen it in years. You’d think they’d get new signage, for the depot. Though maybe not: no passengers will see it. Just the men in hi-viz gilets who let themselves in the gates by the side of the track. Mounting the footbridge I find a gate with tiny concrete pyramids in front of it, the better to put off the casual track invader. For a moment I think that the gate only opens with a simple bolt and I could get onto the track I think, but then I see the padlock. A relief.

Protect me from what I want.

Not far to go now. Coming up on 5am. I pause on the bridge for a moment, looking out towards the depot. Haven’t been up here since the morning after Valerie told me she wouldn’t date me, chain-smoking Marlboros for the first time in a decade. What a day that was.

Turning my gaze toward the never-occupied Northern Rock building by Regent Centre, I find myself happily surprised by a Metro appearing seemingly from behind the building, bound for Pelaw or South Hylton. Something about the whole arrangement, the millennial office block, the moving train, the redbrick depot in the morning light, the snaking lines, it all seems wonderfully busy for a moment. For the duration of this pause the city seems as if it’s working. Newcastle, I think, will never match the tourist bits of London, but at times like this it makes a passable stab at being Deptford or New Cross, the parts of the city where people still live and lights don’t burn in empty speculative buildings. For a moment, I’m glad to be here.

I take a swig of Lucozade, then turn away. There aren’t miles to go, exactly, and I’m not all that sure I’ll sleep when I get home, but I need to keep going. I shoulder my satchel, I hitch up my jeans. I start walking again.