26 May queer in pieces, By Katie Daynyko-Pavlov
- introduction
There’s something that draws me to the act of writing a body. A body that’s incomprehensible as a whole, but can be broken down into a set of features to investigate. There were many years where my body was nearby but I was not inhabiting it. I tried everything to close the distance. I dressed it up. Took it apart and shoved it back together. Tried controlling it, but it slipped away from me. Realized that the social implications that came with it made up a foreign language I couldn’t understand. Realized that womanhood was harder for me to write than a body.
- arms and legs
At age twelve, I had an ongoing arm-wrestling tournament with a boy in my class called Ajay. I was a strong kid, in the gym four times a week, could pull myself up a rope with just my arms. It was no surprise to me that I won.
He wanted a rematch. 2-0. I would lightheartedly taunt him about the score, tell his friends and mine. Every few months in the schoolyard, we’d remember our contest.
3-0.
The summer before, I raced up a mountain. Jasper, Alberta, 2016. A Scouts trip. Though no one had told me, I knew it was a competition. My world was running, pushing, climbing, scraping, training until I was dizzy. This was no different. Calves were burning, feet were heavy, mind was on the two boys in front of me. Legs pushed onward, past songs, and jokes, and gasps at the scenery below. Pushed and pushed and pushed. Then silence. Sky. Fresh air. Shivers. A triumphant huff escaping my smiling lips. I wasn’t on that mountain at all until I was at the top. First.
4-0.
Ajay and I were both in Jazz Band. After our concert at the local high school, piles of cased instruments and sound equipment had to be moved from the truck back to the band room. I was no rookie at this job, and waited my turn in line as the truck driver handed cased trombones, racks of music stands, and parts of drum kits to the boys. I approached the front, and moved to grab a snare drum before being cut off. “Why don’t you take this one, sweetie?” The truck driver held out a round, black leather cushion, part of the little stool our kit drummer sat on. I froze. Excuse me? Not even the entire stool? Wait ‘til you find out you’re looking at the four-time winner of the greatest arm-wrestling tournament this school has seen!
But I felt something else in the presence of this man, a new muscle being engaged, a type of hesitation not yet familiar to me. I looked at him, and took the little cushion into my arms.
4-1.
Patting powdered chalk onto my hands at the bottom of the rope, my memory bleeds bright red. I am taken away from the gym, to my kitchen. It’s 2009, and I’ve just coloured my entire palm with Crayola’s Washable Cherry Tomato. I march up to my mom and present my creative expression. No words spoken. Wrist grabbed, dragged to the kitchen sink, red violently scrubbed away.
4-2.
She says I will look so pretty, five years later, sitting me in a salon chair and placing my fingers on the table, ready to be primed and polished. My toes are already glossy pink. These stains are okay.
4-3.
There are rules about my legs. I am told I need to follow them. At least once a week, she says. And when you’re old enough, wax, and when you’re older than that, laser. Then you’ll never have to worry about it again, she says. It’s going to be summer soon and people will see your body. You can’t let them think you are careless. All people have legs, yes, but these are girl legs. You will discover you are a girl.
4-4.
My first time at Toronto Pride, eighteen, feet in converse with rainbow beads threaded through the laces, sitting in the cousin-of-a-coworker-of-my-best-friend’s backyard. Caroline and I went rock climbing that morning, the first time in many years. My arms felt sore, but reawoken, the left one donning a two-month-old tattoo of a gramophone emerging from an anatomical heart. I knew it would be the first of many. Sparkly gel pens in her hands, Caroline sat down next to me. She grabbed my arm, and filled in the gaps of my gramophone-heart with vibrant colour.
5-4.
iii. hair
Long hair has always been a weight I couldn’t hold. The brushing, curling, tying it up. A battle that would pull on my scalp and give me pounding headaches, a daily act of making up a girl.
I started dreaming of cutting it off. After my parents were asleep, I turned my nightlight back on. Careful not to make too much noise, I rummaged through my closet for a winter hat. I put my hair up and flipped it forward, securing the hat on top, fanning the end of my pony tail out like bangs. Eyes meeting the mirror, a seed was planted in my chest.
It took a year of arguing with her to get what I almost wanted. There was a movie on TV called Blended where Adam Sandler, playing a single dad, dressed his three daughters in masculine clothing and had their hair cut short. This was a bad thing. She pointed at the screen, “You’re going to look like those girls. They’re barely even girls!” Drew Barrymore came in and put Adam’s eldest daughter in a dress, curled her hair, applied mascara and blush. This was a good thing. But did the eldest daughter discover she was a girl? If I did these good things, would I? Finally sitting in the hairdresser’s chair, an increasingly familiar hesitation caused me to ask for a chin-length bob rather than a short boyish cut. But it was a start, a sapling taking root.
Two years later, quarantined at home, no haircut since. The nights of flipping my hair into hats returned, this time accompanied by some interesting attempts at photoshopping other people’s haircuts onto my head. Branches inside of me were pushing outward, expanding, gaining strength, getting cramped. I needed to create more space for them, and put myself to work. In the middle of the night, the first of many, I snuck into the bathroom with craft scissors. Inches fell to the ground. Each cut bolder, shorter, more desperate. I’d go to sleep peacefully, but wake up in fear of what she’d say this time.
- face
She says there is a catalogue of permitted emotional expressions you can shop from. Your face can wear gratitude, kindness, selflessness, sincerity, compassion, warmth. Poised, calculated, pretty emotions.
You can also wear makeup to feel pretty. Because your face is a girl face, she is taking you to an appointment at Sephora you didn’t ask for, the day of your middle school graduation. They will put thick paint under your eyes because girl eyes can’t be tired. They will put neon blush on your cheeks because you must always look enamoured. They will paint a smile on your face. She will say you are so pretty.
You will look in the mirror and feel like your skin isn’t yours. Like someone took your face away. She will be so proud, you will shut down. You will tell her you don’t like it, she will take a picture. You are being dramatic and ungrateful, and girl faces aren’t allowed to be dramatic and ungrateful. You will get home and wash off all but the eye shadow. You want to keep the anger in your stare.
In the middle of the night in your bedroom, lit up by your night light, you’ll experiment with your own makeup. You’ll take eyes, lips, and noses from magazines, and create new people. A catalogue of faces with red lips and beards, smokey eyes and rosy blush, pointed noses and deepened brows, thick black lines and rainbow shadows. Some will be beautiful, and some will be jarring. You will figure out which ones are masks.
- chest
I am not my body. I can’t be. Everything I do to care for it is an act. Every part I’m supposed to love is a parasite, and every part I love is wrong.
My first underwire bra was supposed to give me answers. But my chest rejected it. It held them too high up, made them such obvious protrusions, no matter what I wore on top. Why would anyone want that? I felt farther from my body than ever before. And I could justify my hatred: it was too tight, too uncomfortable, too pokey. Sports bras were much more suited for me anyways, as I still spent four days a week at the gym, and flattening them just made more sense.
In my childhood room, I spend a lot of time inspecting my body in a small oval mirror. It’s hung up with green ribbon on a butterfly wall hook above my dresser, and projects close-up frames of my arms, legs, hair, face, and chest. I have to contort my neck, move closer and farther, close an eye to view more than one of these at the same time.
When no one is home, the spyglass sees me in a flattening sports bra with a white collared shirt in hand stolen from my dad’s closet. It sees how I shrug on the too-long sleeves, how my hands aren’t used to the buttons being on the right, how I do them up carefully, from the bottom to the top, feeling their smooth edges under my fingers. It sees me take a deep breath, and close my eyes. Then I turn, come face to face with it, and open.
- heart
Wide pupils. Hands slide down my chest. Brisk turn. Holy crap. Seeing it from the side. Mouth gaping. Heart drumming. Hands sliding down again and again, feeling flatness, feeling the fluttering from within. It’s not supposed to feel like this. This is the eldest daughter before the makeover. The craft scissors in the bathroom. This is everything I’m not supposed to do. But I do it. I do it, and my heart sings.
I work at a craft store, and everyday my eyes are caught in the endless pools of light swimming in glassy beads. At every opportunity, I hide in this aisle, gliding my fingers along the hanging strands of amethyst, jasper, quartz, and aventurine. It’s almost unavoidable that I’ll use my employee discount at the end of my shift, bring home a few to bend into new creations. Today I wear last week’s yield: swirling gold wire hugging the amethyst shards that fall on my too-tight chest. What should I make next? A voice suddenly startles me out of my dreaming: “Hi, I was wondering if you could help me find something?”
I turn and notice their makeup first: shadows and highlights perfectly sculpt their nose and cheekbones, eyes are speckled with white eyeliner and pink glitter. Then their hair: smooth calico braids fall to their shoulders, and perfectly curled curtain bands are framed with a bandana. Then their ears: at least three pairs of earrings fall from each. Then their expression: open, smiling, warm. My heart relaxes. “Of course, what are you looking for?”
I’ve discovered the superpower of going to the mall with friends. My closet grows with boxy shirts and button ups that fall straight down instead of clinging to my body. Combined with my tightest sports bras, I can completely get rid of my chest. At first, they stay folded in the dresser, and only are tested in the mirror at night. But they pound on the dresser drawers. They want to burst out.
I have to leave in five minutes. The mirror sees my shaking arms pull a baggy black shirt over my flattened chest. Breath in. Breath out. I can do this. My hands slide down the front of my body, sparks igniting from the feel of my chest. I have to do this. But my chest is missing something. My eyes catch the sagging arms of my T-shaped jewelry tree, and consider the curling wires, glowing beads, shining stones, the calluses on my hands. I select a few to layer, and consider my reflection. Beautiful beads between my broad shoulders. Hair that I finally cut above my ears. Eyeliner tracing my eyes, lips glossy. Chest hidden. I grab my bag and run out the door.
On the bus, I convince myself everyone is staring. What are you? they ask. I arrive at the store, clock in. Try to shake away the feeling that I’m doing the bad things. I’m at the register and call up the next customer. I meet their eyes. Their braids are nowhere to be seen. Instead, messy curly hair falls out of a Jays hat. “Hi!” they chime. I just stare. Black studs in their ears, no makeup, but I know that smile. Warm, inviting, calming. A pride pin on their bag. Something clicks, settles my heart. I smile back.
It came time for prom, and I was told to look for a dress. The one I ended up with was beautiful: long, flowing, sparkly gold. There might have been other things I would have dreamed of wearing, like the shirts in my dad’s closet I had come to know so well. But I can say that I enjoyed wearing this dress. And I knew how to make it my own.
I did my own makeup. I made my jewelry. My hair was cropped and free. By the end of it, I had transformed myself into a beautiful prom persona. I knew there were other parts that didn’t feel quite like me. That in some ways I was performing girlness. But I could do that for a night. Maybe it was the shining light in my friends’ smiles, maybe it was the knowledge that a new chapter was on the horizon, maybe it was the work I put into making myself up. But I felt a distance close. And I knew in my heart my body was not a girl’s body.
vii. putting the pieces together
I never shave my legs.
My nails are short, but love black lacquer.
I’ve found love in my arms, and the arms of others.
My hair will never weigh me down again.
I’ve figured out which faces are masks.
My body is home when a binder hugs my chest.
I smile at strangers who remind me of my younger self.
My heart tells me what things are good things.
I still make most of my jewelry.
I would still arm wrestle Ajay if I saw him around.
I am becoming whole.