Punk Pinocchios gotta go, gotta go

In a way, we’ve been here before, and it’s a little shocking just how unsurprised I am to find myself here again. Look, it’s borderline impossible to not write about the events of the day and this is all to say that Trump won the election that people have sworn up and down for the last few months he couldn’t possibly win. I remain shocked how unsurprised I was to read the news. Late at night it looked grim, and so I went to bed and woke up to a headline that said, in a bold Arial font: TRUMP VICTORY IMMINENT on CNN and that’s a lot to wake up to at 4 am. 

I started the coffee and took Bowie for a walk and when you’re out for a walk with Bowie or an equivalent dog at 4 am all the headlines in a bold Ariel font aren’t real for as long as you deny them their power. 

We’ve been here before. Trump won this same race people swore he couldn’t win in 2016, and it felt the same, although to be honest it also felt worse. It felt unimaginable, and with no imagination the terror of it all crept in like a bitter wind on an otherwise perfect fall morning. In 2016, with a Trump victory in the headlines, I worried and panicked at the state of all things, and when it felt like everything was at its worst, I came out as trans because fuck it, what is there to lose when everything feels lost already. 

Imagine the best time to come out as trans, and then in the portrait of your mind's eye picture doing it right when Trump becomes the man in charge. 

There’s a lot to be said about saying fuck it and grasping for all your desires when everything feels like it’s falling apart at a rapid clip. This flies opposite to my general sense of doom and dread, and this runs counter to my firm belief that if there was to be a zombie apocalypse I’d want to be the first to go. Who wants to fight to survive in all this? When I played The Last Of Us in 2013 on the Playstation 3 long before it was a TV show I struggled to understand why Joel and Ellie were fighting to live when it seemed so much easier just to punch out and be delivered to what’s next. Just like the two of them though, I fought to find life in a world that challenged me at every turn with questions about how much of this was even worth seeing what tomorrow might look like. 

So I’m thinking about that again this week, as the hours move beyond the bold Arial fonts and the portents of doom. After I read the news I moved away from the terrifying headlines and into spaces that might still hold some joy. A few weeks ago, De La Soul dropped a video for “Oodles of O’s”, a track from their landmark 1991 record De La Soul is Dead, that serves as a promotional video of sorts for a donut pop-up the surviving members of the group have opened in New York, and a memorial to honor the life and legacy of Trugoy the Dove, who passed away in February of 2023. The video, shot in soft lighting and vintage filters that tugs at memories of memories features cameos of the groups friends and community gathering, eating donuts, drinking coffee and tea out of mugs that look like flower pots (a reference to the broken pot on the cover of De La Soul is Dead) . 

You can feel bad whenever you like, but it takes work sometimes to feel joy and peace and desire for something further down the road that lies ahead. Every time I watch this video, which has been on regular rotation in various Youtube playlists I employ in the early hours of the day to focus my brain while I wait for my ADHD medication to kick in and take the wheel, I think about needing to get to this pop up before it closes. I think about finding someone to grab me one of those mugs that looks like a flower pot. I think about drinking coffee out of it when the weather turns cold and feeling the heat in my hands and the easy pleasure of limited-run merch and these are all desires for the future too. Simple, small things I can look for, or imagine. 

This song was never an official single, but it was always a fan favorite and at the end of the video there’s a clip of Trugoy the Dove talking about a song he would want to make a video of, “Oodles of O’s”, how they could shoot the video in New York because it’s got a dark gritty vibe to it. Circle the video back and watch again, and the grit is there, but it is texture, it is aging pavement under feet standing in conversation, it is a brick wall with a portrait spray painted carefully on it's face. There is sun coming in through the window too, and there is heat rising from mugs, heat that lingers as vapor in the air and fades with the wind. The grit is there in the bass sample, from Tom Waits’ “Diamonds On My Windshield” off The Heart of Saturday Night, and the drums from Lafayette Afro-Rock Band “Hihache”, an oft-sampled track in hip hop songs. The grit gives all of this life. 

This isn’t easy. I don’t want to pretend it is or will be. Next year I have to think about doing a book tour in America, and I have to think about being a trans person in the world when increasingly people are telling us they don’t particularly care about looking after us anymore. I watch people blame us for the downfall of the democratic platform, I see people search for a bus big enough to throw us all under it, and I worry about the days ahead. People say “we survived Trump before and we’ll do it again” when in fact a lot of people did not survive Trump the first time and the same will be true again. People have not survived Biden, the president of a country who has refused to stop providing arms and support to Israel as it decimates and devastates the lives of Palestinians, Palestinians who are now being told they can no longer return to their homes in Northern Gaza. This news was lost in the wash of American election stories, the headlines not in nearly as big a font, but it’s important that people remain aware of what is happening in countries that are not the ones we live in. We are all affected by these actions, we are all part of these machines that create destruction, we all carry a terrible weight. We are none of us free until all of us are free. 

After the news friends texted to check in, say hi, say I love you, and I maintain that the greatest thing to come of getting older has been finding excuses to tell friends you love them. Say it everyday, at the end of every text message or voice memo you record while walking in the wind in the afternoon while the leaves crunch under foot just loud enough to be captured with a microphone. Tell your friends you love them with all the days you have together and hold fast to whatever bonds you can grasp. 

It’s easy to say that now is when we look to our community, but now is when you can most afford to live up the loftiest possibilities of adopting a grand fuck it kind of attitude. If all is truly lost then there is nothing left to lose and with that you can be and do anything. Plan for safety, find others who need help to do the same. Find where your communities gather and meet there together. We, all of us together in our grandest fuck you fashions, will save ourselves together. We will gather and meet, march on the streets when needed and sit with tea and coffee when it's granted, and find ways to survive together. We will continue to be the grit that gives these streets life, and at the end we will be the sun shining in through the window. And maybe that’s enough for a little while.