Quick Bit of Throat Clearing

A lot of people warned me that this was potentially going to be a wrenching chapter, and it certainly has a lot to take in. That said, when I read it I had the ironic distance of being a pretty different kind of person than the women who warned me about it. So, I think it hits different for trans women, to a potentially disconcerting extent.

I know sometimes I leave Important lines and scenes on the shelf and don't find them remarkable until someone tells me why they hit them like a truck (like, that one about "giver her an inch and she'll waste ten years of her life" was an example that comes to mind.) I'm guessing there's gonna be a lot of that here, so caveat emptor.

Granting all that, this chapter should be in whatever the Perrine's equivalent is these days. Greaves wrote a great piece of time-lapse literature and I think pretty much everyone of a certain reading level ought to get to it even if they don't read Dorley in its entirety. I found it revealed a lot about what I've lately been imagining as a nameless not-boyhood, not-girlhood, impoverished third mode of childhood (no story is universal &c., but there are these zags vs zigs in Mark's life that are really glaring to a cis guy reader.)

It's a really striking piece of writing, and a pretty big accomplishment to make some of what Melissa went through as a child even remotely legible, even if it's just revealed in contrasts like that. The way Shahida's perspective comes through as written, and the peripheral way that Russ isn't, are fascinating as well.

A Naming and Pronoun Worry

I use "Mark" and "he/him" consistently throughout for the past, and I believe I use "Melissa" and "she/her" for anything retrospective. I think that's right, as it matches the chapter text itself, but if I fumble that anywhere and it clangs, please do let me know so I can correct it.

Bow Wow Road Dogs

This week we're reading Everything Must Go. It's a very good chapter! I don't think it hit me like it hits trans people who read it!

I think it's a masterwork piece of writing. I like the sort of scab-picking Greaves does with most of Dorley. She takes a concept and just, keeps digging into it, and that leads to such wildly different places than I'd expect. But without that in the forefront, I paid more attention to some of her other talents as a writer.

The way she can do these sort of "T-shaped" scenes so smoothly means that we get the sense of a character's life through specificity, but we're never mired in some dumb bullshit for too long. There are no "Frodo and Sam wondering around a bog for 100 pages" sections of Dorley to date.

Recap

The Jelly Crisis of 2006

Dessert was just jelly, anyway, and Mum brought some up on tiptoes while Dad was watching his shows.

No wonder the Brits left so violently to go so many places. They can't seriously mean like, jelly, that's made out of fruits and boiled down on the stove? Perhaps someone went out and killed a jelly from a JRPG and ate it after hanging it up to rot in a shed for 6 weeks. Now enough punching down at British food, back to my corn-based existence.

Right off the bat we learn that Mark tried to take his own life at eleven years old. That sets the tone; Mark is only tenuously attached to the world. His family up and moved to Almsworth, which is probably for the best.

All New Everything

New house. New town. New school. New start.

And a new narrative perspective (Melissa first showed up as a perspective character in the previous chapter, and now we're seeing what happened between her-as-Mark and Shahida.)

Quiet Time

these hours are his, are the only time he gets any peace

Sneaking around at night is a rite of 11-ness I think. Which is funny because as an adult I sleep like a goddamn rock most nights. A bear could come inside and as long as the dog didn't bark I don't know if I'd wake up.

I think I get where Mark is coming from here. I pretty much blag, run, parent, work, parent, sleep, most days of the week (I've given notice at my current job so an especially distressing amount of time is also currently spent online. Help.) That's no especial hardship (we could maybe create a set of part-time jobs for our graying populace to work as parental aides if we wanted to address the crisis of senior isolation and parental overload, but this is a book blog not a science fiction story.) But it is a reason to wake up early. It's nice to have a little time to one's self, and you can't really get it back at the end of the day, I find.

And, for Mark, being witnessed is exhausting. So, if being seen feels like work and/or suffering, I can see why you'd want to be out and about before the birds are awake.

Homunculus 2007

being seen

I didn't realize that was a trans thing. I have a trans man friend and former coworker that I've mentioned briefly before. We met at our keyboard jobs during the COVID lock-downs, and there were all of these "cultural bonding" Zoom meetings at the job we had that were terrible. He'd ham it up about the "horrors of being perceived" pretty often in the context of avoiding those meetings through any excuse available, and I think there was a protective ironic shell in that which I maybe didn't pick up on.

That makes sense too, though. To go back to Greaves' water motif, trans people have to flow up hill, and that takes work. So if you're in the early stages of accomplishing that work you might not be ready to have an audience. Or, it's not A Thing, it's just a thing. Always some risk in generalizing.

Scars

Girl Friends, Girlfriends

he’s not quite the same person around her as he is at school, and he finds himself wanting to spend time with her as much as she apparently does with him

Can't remember if I've explicitly commented on this yet, but there's this older-sister younger-will-be-sister pattern that keeps showing up in this book:

• Melissa had Shahida
• Aaron had Elizabeth
• Maria and Bea
• Steph had Melissa (who could have been fulfilling that role for her implicitly?)

And then, of course, the sponsors, obviously. Who are, maybe partially standing in for older cohorts of trans women and partially acting as that naturally occurring phenomenon from the outside.

I might be extrapolating where it's, you know, fiction. Excuses made, the kind of wistful friendship Aaron had with Elizabeth or even Melissa had with Shahida strikes me as pretty different from my friendships with girls growing up. Those were, a little bit less oriented around care-taking?

I met my girl friends through clubs, music, sports. So they had that kind of built-in side-by-side thing you hear about with men sometimes (although I think that's oversold as a "Men are from Mars" thing -- my best friend and my most common activity is to go for a walk and talk.) And the rest of them were usually, "you're dating another one of my friends." Getting coffee and playing grown-up, studying, gossiping. It's a long chapter so maybe there's just only so much ink in the well to use.

But the difference in Dorley between these kind of mystical load-bearing friendships and the ones I've had imply a qualitative difference.

2008 Sucked

Bit of the ole Bulimia

What if Good Things were Actually Bad, but Seriously

He’s still getting on well enough with the boys at school. They’ve accepted him into the periphery of their groups, but the more he talks to them, the more he listens to them, the less he understands them. They don’t hate the way they look or the way they talk; in fact, judging by the way they jealously compare themselves to each other, and the way they speak of this or that aspect of their masculinity, they’re proud of it all. He likes them well enough, but he can’t call any one of them a real friend; they’re too different from him in some fundamental way he can’t properly express.

This is one of those "zags" I mentioned. Mark's reflexive disgust with his body as a boy. For me, puberty was when things started to feel a little more possible. All of the stuff I'd wanted to be able to do I started to. I could look in the mirror and see the man I was going to grow into.

Like, it's obvious that in the context of actualizing one's gender, "trans" and "cis" are polar opposites. Though, as a cis person it's not obvious which of the feelings I had as an adolescent are the ones that are alien to a trans person.

So reading that gave me a little more of a template. Some of it I think I've gleaned from the prior 23 chapters. But going through it in this time-lapse way made it clearer.

Master of the Single Entendre

he hides what he’s doing to himself

Unintentional double meaning? Intentional double meaning? Greaves likes to enmesh irony at every opportunity, so hiding your body's unmitigated mode of puberty via disordered eating is just as much in the text as hiding your disordered eating from your family.

Shitty Dads

Mark's dad, is a bad dad. Drunk, belittling, layabout, later violent. I don't know what I'd do if my wife had a terminal illness. I typed and deleted (and typed again) "but I certainly wouldn't act like that," because who knows? Mark's dad has been shitty from the jump, though.

Maybe some of that is Mark's being an adolescent egg (I'm sure I'm harder on my dad than objective reality is), but the hard events of the text seem to agree pretty strongly with him.

Stef!

Pulling frayed sleeves down over thin fingers

Mark meets Stef! Who is clearly (to the reader) afflicted as Mark is.

A question I have for later when we run into Russ again (which, we must right?) is whether or not he resented all of this. Losing a sibling and a friend to one another, more or less. I think that I would be resentful, but maybe that's just uncharitable.

Mark adopting Stef constitutes another little inversion of male puberty, it's perhaps worth observing. Boys are, as a rule, kind of annoyed with or else disinterested in their little brothers' friends, in my experience. Not always, but certainly that's the median outcome I think.

2009

More scattershot observations here. Mark's mother passes away, not before giving him her iPod. We see the start of Mr. Vogel's racist nonsense. And we see Mark's school-aged friend group come into focus.

My Precious Boy

The bow he unties carefully and, borrowing a little of her cheekiness, ties it around his wrist, covering the scar. “Look, see?” he says. “Gone.”

That's a tidy bit of metaphor for Melissa's experience of the world; scarred by growing up without the language or recognition of being a girl, with that scar hidden but not actually gone.

Mark's Dad

I told her that leaving her alone was the biggest mistake of my life, and she said that if she hadn’t met your father, she wouldn’t have had you. Remember that, kiddo.

The Crying Thing

He doesn’t cry. He hasn’t been able to for a long time.

More of that. Steph couldn't cry early in the first book, either, of course, and from what people replied to that post, that's a kind of common phenomenon.

Rectory Street

Swimming at Rachel's, we meet the other girls, and it becomes clear just how bad Mark's eating disorder is. This is about the place that I'm Glad My Mom Died came to mind for me, except that it's Mark's unspeakable need for a girlhood that drives him. As opposed to McCurdys's need to satisfy her mother's unreasonable demands. Or maybe, that un-expressible need in the context of his abysmal family situation.

I worry I'm being repetitive but it's really clear in the text just how much damage it does to Mark that he doesn't have the words to frame his problem. Mark is despairing, or in trouble, but he can't frame the sentence "I am a girl." And that affordance is the on-ramp he needed. That really illustrates the importance of having these kinds of terms accessible to children, when they might most benefit from them over a lifetime.

Abusive Dad

After Mark gets back late, his dad hits him for the first time. What a strange thing. Maybe it's that he was a little bit happy. Maybe it's just control, or losing control, or despair, or being reminded of Mark's mother.

I don't remember if I've written about it, but my dad was at times abusive. It's an oversimplification to leave it at that, but I don't think it's of much interest. I mostly bring it up to mention that he'd stopped hitting me by around the time I started going through puberty, so I was surprised that Mark's dad started to hurt him at such a late age. I have no expertise on paternal abuse; maybe there's no age pattern in it.

2010

Good for Rachel, naturally.

That a bit of turmoil was perfectly normal, and puberty should sort me out

Well, that's the difference summed up right there isn't it.

Mark tries to take his life and Shahida saves him. On the plus side, he cries again?

I am having a hard time self-editing on the subject here, frankly. When I write about the people I've known to take their own lives, it seems morbid, ord saccharine, or self-indulgent. So I'll leave it at, it must seem like such a failure to Shahida later. That mark can't bear to see her anymore, that he's back in his self-destructive pattern again. That she'd come looking for him even after all that, even years later, is really something.

2011, or 'see, Shahida says “tank top”, why can’t you be more like her?'

Shahida sneaks Mark out of a kiddie party and dresses him androgynously, which is apparently horrid for him, and/or a moment of reprieve that then gets borked when his mind crashes back down on it.

all it takes is one pretty boy

Very curious where Shahida is headed.

I was worried about Mark drinking, it seemed like it’d end catastrophically for him given his delicate state and family history of alcohol abuse. Luckily that was a red herring: something worse happened instead! It sounds like a weird party honestly. Never been at one that has all of this wristband stuff. And, Brits drink earlier, I forget that.

But the gang play some Kirby, always a good choice. I'm sure there's something in there about the profundity of the void in Mark's life and how imitation can only temporarily fill it. Or, sometimes a Kirby is just a Kirby.

Shahida makes her move on Mark as the night winds down, and touches him, and it goes very badly very quickly. Jesus. Poor Mark. Poor Shahida.

It sounds so stupid and maybe over simplistic, but it’s like you took the magnitude on all of this teenager stuff and just switched the valence. Almost all of the stuff that’s hurting him so much is like, exactly what feels amazing when you’re a later-blooming straight guy, basically.

At risk of being redundant again, God, and not having the language for it! Obviously I’m against banning trans literature &c just on free speech grounds, but I don’t think I comprehended the special layer of harm of not having the words for what's happening to you.

2012

Mark doesn't want to see Shahida again. And again, poor Russ. Growing up in a house with booze-zombie dad and purge-zombie sister-to-be.

2019-12-11

Maria tells Aaron close to everything that we know as readers.

What seems feasible for Steph is ridiculous the moment he tries to apply it to himself

It's darkly funny to see Aaron picking up the self-doubt that Steph left lying around. Last action of a man indeed.

Aaron:

I’m not a girl. I can’t be a girl. Maria, I’m me.

Maria:

We don’t take in people who can’t do it. We don’t

The exchange between Maria and Aaron is a great expression of the book’s central tension. “These women are all happy and better off” versus “no they’re not.” The null hypothesis is tricky for your basic underground torture-err-reform dungeon.

I think it's clear that Aaron can do this in the context of the novel. It's also, although not coming from the same attitude, another rephrasing of Steph's attitude from early on, that it was too late to transition. The primary difference being, I suppose, that Aaron believes that it's too late for his mind, vs what Steph felt about her body.

That's an interesting line of inquiry, leaving aside the usual conversion-therapy/torture-dungeon ethical and practical questions. Has Aaron, at this point, come to see becoming a woman as a desired but impossible state like Steph did at the outset of Dorley? I don't quite think so? But with Aaron, who can tell. I've been waffling back and forth on if he was an egg for about half a dozen chapters so there's probably some "there" there.

[H]e can’t leave, that he’s missed his chance to end himself, because this girl — yes, this girl — is someone he can’t bear to hurt like that, and damn him for ever considering it

Living for Someone

Having someone to live for isn't enough (or, at least part of the reason needs to be for <INSERT AARON'S FUTURE NAME HERE>), but having anything at all to live for is vital. This is another moment too where Steph's presence starts to unravel Dorley's patterns a little bit I think. Aaron's learning this about Maria really early it sounds like, and without Steph, it kind of seems like he'd, what, wash out? He'd be a different person by now, at least, and maybe would have taken his own life.

I'll follow his attitude towards his own transformation with great interest. He's still deflecting his self-actualization onto someone else, even if it's Steph and it's driven by love.

Melissa and Aaron

Everyone who ends up in Dorley has a sin, except maybe Steph. "Sin" isn't the word I want there, exactly, because it carries a little bit too much blame and too much religiosity, but I can't find another that quite captures my meaning. Everything else is either too diagonal ("splinter" that needs removing? "Flaw"? Meh, bad) or too criminal ("sin", "crime", "debt" &c.) Seriously, there's probably some good solid German word (Schuld? I dunno I don't speak German) used by a 20th c. philosopher whose Frevel (I should just use "oopsie") was that he didn't help Hannah Arendt tha's perfect.

Anyway, everyone but Steph, supposedly, as she's Dorley's "first innocent." This, I think, gets at what you could say Melissa's oopsie was. Personally I don't think taking one's life is a sin (but do think it's a pretty irrevocable oopsie.) Your death is a problem for me, not for you, but that doesn't mean you're dying "at me."

Melissa's real oopsie might lie in her consistent (maybe even continuing) willingness to define her worth down to zero. I don't think the language of blame makes any sense for her there; she was suffering and largely abandoned by the people who were supposed to support her. All the same, it was a mistake to close herself off from her brother (easy enough mistake to make in context, look at what happened with e.g. Will.)

And a mistake-almost-a-sin-maybe to stop talking to Shahida; I'm certain it felt impossible to then-Mark. But he was so close to crossing that uncanny valley. Dressed a little more like herself, in the company of understanding people, it must have felt electrifying for her. And/but Aaron's language here captures the kind of damage that she didn't seem to consider.

I'm uncomfortable with this assessment. It feels half-complete. And it assigns what feels like both too much and too little responsibility to Melissa for her social failure there in an impossible to navigate period in her life. But all the same, the kind of half-hiding, loudly-failing pattern she got locked into ended her up in Dorley, so I think it's worth mulling it over along the same contours as anyone else who ends up in the basement.

I will, perhaps, return to this as we go on. Dorley is, in part, about the cost and burdens of community. So it's worth pulling at what the book seems to think the appropriate vs inappropriate burdens are. I have not completed that task with regard to Melissa's youth, but I strongly suspect I'll get another bite at the apple when she and Shahida see each other again.

2019-12-12T

I knew a girl from Manchester. She told me that I had a “posh brolly.” Inconceivable that the UK was a world power once.

Vogel is, what, “bird” in Dutch? I'm tempted to look for something more there, because Shahida's last name seemed significant. But honestly, first idea best idea; birds, hatch from eggs. Give me the award for good good English students now please. God. Ugch.

Anyhow, and now Melissa knows about Steph.

Why didn’t Abby tell her? Probably not her fault. Probably ordered not to.

Again, we can agree to disagree on that line of inference. Also, when Melissa learns that that's not the case, I think it will be, messy.

Errant Thoughts

A lot of these this time.

Mohsin

Mohsin, the open internet tells me, is derived of/etymologically connected to Muhsin. That's a familiar name to me, I knew a Muhsin in school. Given the Pakistan connection, it seems safe to say that mr Vogel is that specific kind of a racist. A bit of Wikipedia tells us something kind of interesting about Shahida.

A family name derived from a masculine given name, meaning "benificent." So, well named, Greaves.

If the shoe fits, no need to write more about it.

Jennette McCurdy

A lot of rippling echos of I'm Glad my Mom Died in here. Not so much in the character of the mothers -- Melissa's seems like she was a perfectly charming woman -- but in the disordered eating and later dysfunction.

Mixtape

Something like 10 people have sent me the playlist, and that was very cool of them. I don't keep track of things very well and it also really struck home that the playlist was part of it. Normally I don't read along with music, but I'm glad I did this time. If nothing else, remembering the Manic Street Preachers songs that aren't on here ("Faster", "Your Love Alone is not Enough", "Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart") was worth the price of admission.

Incidentally, on the off chance that someone's on Tidal, here it is for Tidal.

Right off, Manic Street Preachers and Placebo are kind of perfect needle drops for this little period piece. For one, Richey Edwards' whole deal is pretty Dorley-compatible. An unhappy man (revisits the lyrics of "Yes", decides still somehow to stick with he/him for the moment) disappears. I'd misremembered and thought he was known to have taken his own life, which dovetailed well enough, but maybe kicking around is even more entwined with the events that led Steph to Dorley Hall.

I don't know much about Placebo biographically, but, yeah. That band's whole deal feels apt. I always liked "Slave to the Wage" and "Every You Every Me", but your mileage may vary, naturally. Aside from the little biographical detail, they're both the music of my oldest sister and her most-burnout friends.

Something I took from the playlist that maybe I'm misreading was, Melissa's mom cared so much about her, and/or stayed a bit more with the times than a lot of people her age. I know the playlist isn't literally what was on the iPod (Transgender Dysphoria Blues is anachronistic, &c.) but I'm working from the assumption that it's at least in part an impressionistic version of the MP3 player's contents.

Could've put some Crystal Castles in there I think, without loss of fidelity.

What do we Think?

Set-piece chapters like this and "Simply Irresistable" pack such a wallop when Greaves writes them. They're not without risk; if she weren't at the top of her game this could be a ruinous chapter for readers, or worse, a slog. Honestly I think this series is going to age about like Moby Dick, good-great-book-no-notes.