I’m suicidal again. That probably isn’t a surprise if you saw my Substack notes last week. Sorry about those. If it makes you feel any better, I scared me too. What happens when a perfectionist finally snaps, breaks, shatters? I’m trying not to find out. I just sent an email to my department chair asking about medical leave. Anger and desperation rage inside me. I am filled with the knowledge that all someone has to do to save my life is to take a little chance on me—to believe in me. It can’t just be anyone, it has to be an authority figure: an editor at a publishing company, a literary agent. I just need to figure out how to quit sex work. I just need to figure out how to graduate with the PhD I’ve spent the last five years working on. I just need something to do afterwards that won’t make me even closer to that simple, easy, big bottle of Tylenol.
I am the #84 “Top Bestseller” on Substack’s Philosophy’s list. I guess philosophy doesn’t pull in the big bucks. I have forty-two thousand followers on Instagram. My self-published novella Reverse Tomboy sold over a thousand copies in its first year.[1] I have a seventy-thousand-word novel, written in a bout of productive angry depression last year, that a famous and well-respected novelist has called “one of a kind” and told me that she loves it and thinks it needs to get published. And I really almost killed myself Thursday night.
I almost killed myself because a publisher that I had been really hopeful about rejected the book. It wasn’t the first rejection. At this point over a hundred literary agents I’ve approached have told me that “just isn’t the right time to sell a debut trans novel”. Unable to get a literary agent to take me on as a client, I did not know what to do. Honestly, I was beyond desperate. Then a rather famous figure in the Canadian art and literature scene decided to introduce me to a few people and see what connections he could make for me. He can’t actually publish the thing for me. But he was kind, and he knew a few people who could publish it. I was able to temporarily circumvent the agent and approach a couple publishers directly. Everyone praised the book. No one was able to get it published though. No one wanted to “take the risk”. And publishing is a risky business. Most books don’t sell enough to make a profit. So, it is about taking chances. You know that most books you sign will bomb, but you hope to get lucky on enough that they cover the losses of the ones that didn’t pay off. Except, I’m virtually a guaranteed pay off. I’ve proven again and again that my writing sells. Reverse Tomboy sold, my Substack “sold” and my free writing on Instagram built me a large and dedicated cult following. I don’t use AI. No one has ever accused me of using AI. My book isn’t particularly experimental or dense. It’s not “inaccessible”. It’s a literary thriller.[2] I’m about as small a risk as you could possibly take on a debut author unless Mr. Beast has a manuscript I’m unaware of.[3] Yet, I cannot seem to get anyone to take me seriously.
I walk around Indigo[4] and my eyes are assaulted with cheap cash grab slop. Romantacy, hallmark movies turned books, trashy legal thrillers and police procedurals that might as well be AI generated (perhaps a few are), non-fiction that is subtly aimed at men who are a step or two away from becoming neo nazis, cookbooks for people who don’t want you to know that they get their recipes online like the rest of us. It’s hard to tell how half of these books got green lit. I remind myself that most books lose money. I want the opportunity to lose money. I want to prove that I won’t lose money. My body fills with rage it refuses to release. Part of me says to turn it inwards, against myself.
I drive through the city late at night, the rejection email overheating my phone, burning through my trouser pockets, branding my skin. I’ve dropped a friend off at the house of another friend’s. I could veer into that bus, off that bridge. I could take that turn a little too fast. Ahead of me someone runs a red. I could run a red. I could let that transport truck collapse the driver’s side of my little old car. Earlier that day a friend took me to see Tony. It was bad. It valorized what it tried not to. It was too interested in the wrong things. I think about how fascinating it is that Anthony Bourdain spent years getting slapped around, being the bad guy that bad things happened to. The beloved celebrity chef, tv star, and most importantly author somehow survived an entire decade of heroin use where his main job was to fire people at a revolving door of failing restaurants someone had put him in charge of because that was what he was known for handling. Then, sober, famous, successful, he killed himself. Maybe he did it for love, or maybe he did because of the ghosts from his past. A young lout in a supped-up Mitsubishi swerves around me at twice the speed limit. I think how easy it would be to turn my wheel. Bourdain slowly fades from my memory. My car is loaded with my friends’ camping equipment. My partners at home are waiting for me. My friends can’t go camping tomorrow if I am not there to drive them. I take my foot off the brake as my car plumets down the side of Montreal’s mountain. The light turns red in front of me. They wouldn’t know it was intentional. I brake.
At home I cry into my partner’s laps. It is ugly and undignified. I cried in the car too. I sat in it, outside my apartment for an hour after I got home. I cried and cried there so that I would not cry inside. Not everything works out. I just want someone to take a chance on me. I think about how upset everyone would be if I killed myself. I think about how it is when notable people die. Everyone always talks about if they’d only knew, how much they would have helped. I can already see the Trans Day of Remembrance posts. I can see the various celebrities I’ve known, interacted with, chatted with, saying how they wish they’d done something, how deeply the loss would be felt. Rage fills me. I need help now. I can make you a profit. I can sell this damn book. I have a plan. I have plans. I will work harder than anyone you’ve ever seen. Fuck, I’ll die for this. I pause. I consider if the book would end up being published posthumously. That would be nice. Would it be worth it? Probably. Yeah, if that’s what it takes to publish my book, yes, I will do it. Happily. In a heartbeat. It would be an easy button to press. I care far more about publishing a book than I do about living. I look into my boyfriend’s wet red eyes. I remember that we lost a close friend to suicide earlier this year. I decide that I can’t just kill myself without giving people a chance to help. I’ve written about being suicidal a few times online. But I’ve never posted from the dark of the pit. If a bunch of connected people follow me who are going to post about how they wish they’d known, how they wished they’d helped, once I’m gone, I’m going to give them the opportunity to help now. They can see crazed and unravelling. I post on Instagram. I post on Substack. If they’re going to post about how they wished they’d helped, they’re going to have to do it with the knowledge that they didn’t, that they’re lying. I cry and I post. A few paid subscribers instantly unsubscribe. I don’t care. Death awaits me. I look at the posts again. I know people will freak out, people I care about. Nothing is a lie, but I don’t want to worry anyone. The shame rides through me on rickety rails. I wake up early. I don’t feel any better. A few friends are checking in. No one has materialized to help. I delete the Instagram post. I go camping.
Camping is with sex work friends. We’re far north. We fuck. We cuddle. There is no cellular service. The world does not care about us. We cook and kiss and build a big fire. Every now and again one of us goes into the tent to scream into a blanket from fibromyalgia pains. The others comfort and check in on whoever’s turn it is. We talk about fibromyalgia as if it is a real thing. We talk about it like it’s just the name of some disease, like cancer or diabetes. We don’t talk about how it’s just the blanket term for when a person (primarily a woman) has severe pain that can’t otherwise be diagnosed. We don’t talk about how it’s the name given when doctors can’t figure anything else out. And we certainly do not talk about how even with underreporting of rape and underdiagnosing of PTSD well over forty percent of fibromyalgia patients also have PTSD, or how a woman with fibromyalgia is three times more likely than the average woman to have been raped. We do not use terms like suppression, repression, or sublimation. We care for each other. We cook for each other. We fuck each other.
Sometimes we fuck together as a group, and sometimes separate as couples. I think about how this life is so many cis men’s fantasies. Could you imagine what the average cishet man would give up to stumble upon and be welcomed into this group sex camp site full of a mix of cis and trans sex workers and porn stars? We’re just trying to survive. We’re just having what fun we can on the periphery of society. The average man would eyes wide shut himself for this shit. He’d risk so much. And here we are, having what I consider a pretty normal time. How strange it is that entire TV shows exist committed to telling men that if they’re very hot, and lucky, and charming, and lucky they could do what this girl who almost died broke and broken last night considers a normal day. Two and a Half Men spent over a decade, twelve years in fact, telling audiences that the average guy longs to experience either a porn star or a threesome. It told them that they would never get this. This, apparently, is aspirational. Then I think about Chainsmoker Cat, the anime of the season, about a bunch of women who experience brutal systemic intergenerational prejudice and discrimination, and turn to substances to cope, and how those substances become intergenerational. I think about how these catgirls are sexually fetishized, both in their lives and on the screen. I think about how they process their poverty and their suffering. I think about how they fuck each other. They fuck each other hard and gross. I wonder about the men watching them. I wonder if those weebs watched Two and a Half Men. I wonder if they can tell the difference. A beautiful girl crawls over to me in the tent. Her pain has subsided. Big, gorgeous brown eyes stare up at me from between my legs. A smile is almost hidden in my bush. She looks needy. I wonder if she can mimic this expression at work. She asks if she can eat me out. In the question she includes a little pet name she’s hoping I won’t notice indicates her crush on me. I nod yes. I hope we cuddle.
When we return to traffic and glass skyscrapers, we’re just as wanted and unwanted as before. My book is still one step farther away than it was last week from being sold. The shame hangs like a cloud above the city. My desperation returns. It dings up a notch with each worried text that materializes, my phone now reconnected to the grid. How pathetic of me to need so much! How shameful to let everyone know just how badly I am doing! Why can’t I just learn to accept poverty? Why do I need to keep fighting? Why are my options to die or to succeed? So many people are capable of simply living a miserable life. Why is that not my temperament? Why must I write? Why do I have to share it with people? I demand far too much. I want the chance to be taken seriously. I want the chance to have my book succeed or fail. I write this. Maybe I’m trying to show you how systemic transphobia makes it almost impossible to succeed even when all the data and statistics are in your favour. Maybe I’m trying to tell you how whorephobia creates pocket societies on the periphery of reality in which sex workers care about and for each other. Maybe the point is that sex workers and trans people are permitted decadent behaviours provided that we exist in poverty and pain on the outskirts of life. Perhaps I’m trying to elucidate a tension between how cis men perceive the women they desire as cool experiences to be bought or won, without ever considering to reckoning with the reality of our day to day lives, of us as people. I’m doing a little of all of that in this essay. But I am also asking for help.
The title of this essay is derived from Art Garfunkel lyrics to the song “Bright Eyes”
The following people are “founding member” paid subscribers. That is, they are people who decided that my work was not only worth supporting, but that they could afford to pay more than the rate I was asking. On both a financial and emotional level these people mean an incredible amount to me. I screamed aloud the first time anyone ever became one. I cried when a second person did. The least I can do is thank each one individually. They give me hope. Thank you to:
Hopestill, derf, X Valentine, T S, i.m., Rachel K, jessie, and Vailliante
You have filled me with joy, and helped make this writing possible.
[1] Which I’m told is excellent for a first self-pub.
[2] That is largely but not entirely about trans things yes.
[3] After a quick google, it turns out that yes, he did “write” a book that is coming out in September. And oh, it’s a thriller.
[4] Canadian equivalent of Barnes and Nobel
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