A Goddamn Sunbeam

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

Hi all,

I’ve got another newsletter ready for you all — an analysis of a bunch of responses trans/gnc folks shared with me to do with their worst experiences interacting with (mental) healthcare providers …

However, I’m holding that for now because I wanted to briefly write some here about Andrea Gibson — a poet whose work and life you are maybe familiar with. I was moved when learning about their passing yesterday to write a thread about them on Bluesky; I will expand upon my little story here, for anyone interested.

tl;dr: I’m just urging you all to go (re)discover Andrea’s poetry …

As I wrote about later on, coming out publicly as nonbinary amidst an ambitious first-book tour was very challenging. I admit: My book tour was thusly ambitious mostly because I was forcing it to be that way. I kept pressing forward, no matter what resistance I encountered. I did so because I was finding, really wherever I went, there were always people who wanted to have these conversations, the ones my Uncle Bob had me thinking about in my book — ones to do with society, normalcy, cruelty and kindness, power, so much else.

I did like 35 - 40 events for AKOMP, depending on how I count, thinking back. I tend to remember mostly the very empty ones and the very not-empty ones, including the ones that surprised me. Like I’ll remember Portland, Oregon, Powell’s, just a week after AKOMP’s hardcover published.

I knew roughly ~3 people in Portland (and all 3 seemingly did attend) but the place somehow was packed — full of people who’d brought their raised hands, their intense lines of inquiry, their also intense stories about their careers working in mental health or their diagnoses or their family members’. Whenever I think about that night at Powell’s, I remember the fully barefoot person in the first row …

Or I remember the couple who stood in line to shake my hand, told me weeping about their son, his diagnosis my uncle’s, who had died like mere weeks before. They thanked me for what I was doing. I remember the guy in the lobby trying to hand me information pertinent to the topic he was hoping I’d write my next book about. Many more like him would soon follow. Every stop, I tended to have this full range of folks, as I’d soon experience.

By that first week, I could also sense already my book was, numbers-wise, sales-wise, not some success. I sensed the retreat from me energetically, perhaps. Sensitive guy that I am, I felt terrible about all of this. I took it super hard, blamed myself (probably not to an extent I would now). I felt ashamed that my book had been ignored by the NYT book review for example (then under Pamela Paul’s leadership, a situation that, let’s say I have … a few questions about now! Who knows, of course!!!)

Sure, as I came out alongside my first book, initially as “nonbinary” — which was what I said at first while still hoping I might avoid the t-word — I indeed worried this might negatively impact my career. I hoped not. I hoped people weren’t that shitty, I suppose. Back then, as I’ve written about, I couldn’t stay closeted any longer … I just wasn’t going to survive. Whether the alcohol or finally leaping off a balcony or driving off some cliff, the closet was going to kill me.

So I had come out, privately, beginning in 2017 and by the fall of 2019, I had concluded my hardcover tour and (brief) paperback one. I was by then profoundly exhausted, increasingly publicly nonbinary and trans identified and trying, as ever, to just power forward.

Inside I was running out of energy in a big way and it scared me. I sensed this was what folks call “burnout” … its threat anyway. I was just so worn down. From the negative attention online, from the negative attention in public. Nowadays, if I published a new anything, however many compliments it received, some strangers might attack me, as well, just because of my gender, my difference.

Same if I released a new podcast episode or anything else “good” (my show itself was then new and getting some attention); much good attention and some bigots. And I hadn’t stopped traveling either, book tours notwithstanding … I still reasoned I needed to travel to report stories like this one about the Voice Hearers. Or to give speeches, somehow earn a living …

Traveling-wise: Worst was the TSA, them frowning at my ID and then me and so forth. Their horrendous boy-girl machine with its pat-down alternative (either way: very terrible for the likes of me then). I’d regularly watch them shuffle around in a panic, given my … existence’s disruption of their little fantasy worlds, their (to me) obviously confining and impractical binary-based protocols and systems.

Airports tended to be challenging bathrooms-wise too; and should I get delayed and stuck, that could get really bad. I sensed my increasingly androgynous-leaning-male appearance contrasting with my high voice was very challenging for strangers to parse — or to ignore, evidently. Everywhere I went I got stared at, or so it felt. And I was hardly like, safe in some big city in Europe or whatever; early off a red-eye in an Amsterdam airport bathroom, I’d had a woman snarl something at me as she entered the space and saw me, standing at the sink, minding my own nonbinary business.

So by the fall of 2019, what felt like my last remaining fucks steadfastly waning inside, I wondered what I was going to do ... My panic internally was formidable but I mostly pretended I was alright. Back then I didn’t know what I was going to do. Back then I still feared starting T, for various excuse-y reasons I’d picked up and repeated inside (including not wanting to “kill” my singing voice; which is comical, in hindsight, like all my prior excuses tend to now feel). Back then I couldn’t then see my future, the one I’m living now: Coming out all the way, as a trans man, starting T, this glorious metamorphosis, becoming myself.

Back then … I just felt this sharp pain inside whenever I’d hand some TSA agent or anyone else my own ID and they would say my deadname back to me or misgender me. It hurt, too, hearing my own voice. Or like, contending with whether to enter “women’s” bathrooms still … or not … (I’d begun reporting what would become my 99% Invisible episode about gender-segregated bathrooms themselves and potential better futures).

It was all becoming so challenging. By “it” I meant … I wasn’t sure … Being alive — in public, at least? Or in the presence of (cis) strangers? Traveling? Having my career? (What should I possibly do instead? I often wondered.)

This is all why, by the time COVID hit some months later, I’d already started becoming a hermit. (As would become the topic of my This American Life first piece in June 2020, “Applied Bob Studies.”) I’d started becoming a hermit because … well, I’d been recovering from top surgery, for one. But also because I was retreating from … everyone, from their stares and their judgments. From their pronouncements about whether I belonged.

From their decisions about whether I — just because of how I showed up here on our shared earth, inside and out — am somehow unworthy …

I explain all this to contextualize me, myself, that fall 2019, when I flew solo to The Hague to report at my second-consecutive Annual World Hearing Voices Congress — the largest yearly gathering of Voice Hearers and their professional allies on earth. I’d attended the previous year’s such gathering in Boston; both times I’d been the only press there, to my knowledge. The conference organizers never seemed to know what to say when I’d write them, requesting a press badge. They’d ask me to just fully participate and I’d say fine.

Which was fine, truly. I never explained back then all my own reasons, but by 2019, I’d been reporting on the movement domestically for two years already. Many of the better-known American Voice Hearers in attendance at The Hague knew me, suffice to say (like the types who’d give keynotes and such). Some greeted me with hugs. Figure they to some extent already knew I was one of them; beyond our many one-on-one hangs and interviews during my repeated reporting trips to visit them, I’d by then attended closed-door meetings and had spoken some of my own truths, very off-the-record. Mostly hanging out with Voice Hearers like this, I tended to not focus on myself, but more would bring up my book, my Uncle Bob.

That week in The Hague, over our brown bag lunches, I remember striking up a conversation with Akiko Hart; I’d known both her and her colleague Jessica Pons by name (Jessica had written a review of AKOMP for ISPS-UK). This is an organization of professionals advocating for more humane alternative approaches to what some might call “psychosis.” Her write-up of my book, coming from this particular sort of organization of mental health-care professionals, this had meant a lot to me when it had happened — as I’d told them both in person during this gathering. We’d even gone out some evenings, shared meals and spirited conversations.

I was feeling more comfortable, therefore over lunch I started sharing with Akiko about my struggles with being visibly nonbinary and trans — online and in public. About my challenges traveling especially, the TSA agents and their horrible boy-girl machine.

Akiko seemed quite familiar with what I was lamenting about (which itself surprised me); then she said something to the effect of, “You’re like the yellow line down the middle of the road, the Andrea Gibson poem.” I had to be explained who Andrea Gibson was, because I wasn’t familiar.

Later on, back in some Dutch woman’s narrow apartment (my temporary home that week) I listened to an Andrea Gibson poem for the first time, the one Akiko had referenced, this one. And I sobbed so hard.

I invite you to do the same:

I believe I ordered all Andrea Gibson’s then-existent poetry books before I’d even landed back in the States. I’m not huge into poetry (in the scheme of two-English-degree-havers like me, I suppose), but my library’s smallish poetry section sure includes a bunch of Andrea Gibson.

My (circuitous) point: I hope you’ll read/listen to some Andrea Gibson poetry — today or any day. They are someone who’s truly inspired me — for many reasons, which may or may not be evident already to you, depending on how well you know my work and theirs. I had also through recent years greatly appreciated their appearances on Glennon Doyle’s podcast, speaking with such candor and wit about their own life and mortality.

It’s hitting me hard, this loss. I’ve heard from others (strangers and friends alike), who are really feeling this loss too. Especially others who are also nonbinary and/or trans.

What’s Helping Today: Andrea Gibson. I feel lucky to have heard about their work that day all those years ago in The Hague, reporting amongst the Voice Hearers, as I was still gathering the strength to show my full self. I’m grateful to Andrea Gibson for sharing all they did of their art and their tremendous soul.

I’m sending them gratitude, eternal — from a fellow “goddamn sunbeam.”

Love,
Sandy 

p.s. As some of you may already know, Handsome podcast co-host Tig Notaro co-produced a documentary about Andrea … one I admit I’ve still not yet seen but I will, now, of course … when I feel I can handle it.

p.p.s. Speaking of chatting with friends on the Handsome pod, here’s some other comforting content (just, personal favs of mine) … Re-sharing for fun/in case.

p.p.p.s. Also just in case: Re-sharing my more “advanced”-level advice for the very worst times …

p.p.p.p.s. A wonderful poet I happen to know is Sarah Kay and I’ve just recently re-listened to our Mad Chat conversation on Killing Eve / empathy / sociopathy / psychopathy, which was just excellent. Repeating myself but I have really delighted in listening back to these old-but-evergreen Mad Chat episodes (which for the time being are only on YouTube). I hope you’ll check the episodes out! Especially if you haven’t yet before …

p.p.p.p.p.s. I said this on Bluesky but if you’re a fan and you want to send me even just a few bucks via my Buy Me a Coffee … in your message, if you like, you can request what you’d want me to cover for Mad Chat Season 2 (anonymously or give your name if you’d want a shoutout someday) … Supposing I should figure out how to make another season of the show. (See: Me asking you all for money!! And this very sometime incentive!) So in sum: Tip me any amount, in your public or private message (if you want), suggest a movie/TV show/etc. for me to someday discuss on Mad Chat. You could also suggest potential guests … For the first season, I already covered (in addition to Killing Eve) … Frasier; Donnie Darko; Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; Bojack Horseman; Reefer Madness (both the old movie and the enduring eugenicist construct); Halloween (the whole holiday); Batman: The Animated Series; one episode of Dawson’s Creek; and Six Feet Under. BTW, if you want to hear way more on the Hearing Voices movement, check out that conversation, with Caroline Mazel-Carlton (an activist and Voice Hearer and someone I just admire a ton) ...

p.p.p.p.p.p.s. I also spoke about the Hearing Voices movement some during my recent appearance on Cancel Me, Daddy, so listen to that (our deep discussion about transphobia in media mostly) if you haven’t already … Or see our faces on YouTube.