A Pronoun Primer

Oh, Pronoun Dressing Room, my lovely new friend! Here, a pronoun usage lesson, just for y'all! (Altered excerpt from "The Piebald Hippogriff" by Karen Anderson.) 

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"The edge of the world is fenced off stoutly enough, but the fence isn't made that will stop a boy. Blue tossed zir pack and coil of rope over it and started climbing. The top three strands were barbed wire. Ze caught zir shirt as ze went over, and had to stop for a moment to ease zimself off. Then ze dropped lightly to the grass on the other side.

The pack had landed in a clump of white clover. A cloud of disturbed bees hung above, and ze snatched it away quickly lest they should notice the honeycomb inside.

For a minute ze stood still, looking out over the edge. This was different from looking through the fence, and when ze moved it was slowly. Ze eased zimself to the ground where a corner of rock rose clear of the thick larkspur and lay on zir belly, the stone hard and cool under zir chin, and looked down.

The granite cliff curved away out of sight, and ze couldn't see if it had a foot. Ze saw only endless blue, beyond, below, and on both sides. Clouds passed slowly.
Directly beneath zim there was a ledge covered with long grass where clusters of stars bloomed on tall, slender stalks.

Ze uncoiled zir rope and found a stout beech tree not too close to the edge. Doubling the rope around the bole, ze tied one end around zir waist, slung the pack on zir back, and belayed zimself down the cliff. Pebbles clattered, saxifrage brushed zir arms and tickled zir ears; once ze groped for a hold with zir face in a patch of rustling ferns.

The climb was hard, but not too much. Less than half an hour later ze was stretched out on the grass with stars nodding about zim. They had a sharp, gingery smell. Ze lay in the cool shadow of the world's edge for a while, eating the apples and honeycomb of zirs. When ze was finished ze licked the honey off zir fingers and threw the apple cores over, watching them fall into the blue.

Little islands floated along, rocking gently in air eddies. Sunlight flashed on glossy leaves of bushes growing there. When an island drifted into the shadow of the cliff, the blossoming stars shone out. Beyond the shadows, deep in the light-filled gulf, ze saw the hippogriffs at play."

Being Not Being

I think, sometimes, about the community that I am technically a part of. I live a life of involuntary seclusion. I don't know many people, let alone LGBTQ people. I know one person in that category who is over 50. I often wonder how they feel about the world today, this world that is so different than the one they grew up in. Do they feel joy at the progress that has been made towards equality? Do they glow with pride for the work that has been done, and with hope for the future? But is that pride and hope tinged with bitterness over what they never had? Do they think of the days when they were demons and deviants, and wonder how their lives might have been different if they had been born 50 years later?

I wonder about the people who share my own little niche in the community. Do they feel the anger and bitterness that I so often feel at my condition? Even as they climb, cicada-like, from the shell of their missed often births, do they gaze in the mirror at their soft and vulnerable new bodies and feel a presure in their heads as the mist and the red leaks into their vision? Do they curse, or cry, or shrink under the weight of it?

Do those people, my people, ever look at the community at large with a sneer and a heavy sigh? Do they think "how lucky you were, hiding in your closets and your bars, that you weren't also hiding in your own detestable flesh"? Do they watch, elated, as the shiny new coach pulls into Acronym Station? Does that elation turn to rage as those of us who are the L or the G as well as the T are stuck at the platform, waiting to be herded onto our own separate bus? Rage that those who rail against their own reduction to parts and bedroom habits reduce us to parts and bedroom habits, and reject us with the same fervor that the world has long rejected them? We of the T know the agony of a single printed character. We understand the depth of green a pair of eyes can reach as they watch the courthouse steps from the confines of their "straight" marriage. When we are run down by the bus that the L and the G now sit in the middle of, do they ever think to stop and pick us up, and welcome us into the empty seat beside them? Or will we continue to lay on the cold pavememt, wishing the bus had crushed our hated parts into dust that could be swept up and dumped into the closets that our estranged brothers and sisters had so recently abandoned?

I keep waiting at the station, hoping my bus will arrive soon, and I'll find a comfortable seat next to a fellow G who will know me as his brother. But the longer I wait, the more I fear that my misprinted ticket - that little T that obscures my G - will leave me standing in the cold, choking on exhaust.