Mardi Gras is a State of Mind

Source image: Swine maskers, Mardi Gras day by Caroline Wogan Durieux, 1946.

The Heart · Mardi Gras Is A State Of Mind

What can a body do?

This story is about the ritual drug-induced shape shifting of Mardi Gras, and an attempt to shift via testosterone with a friend. What does it feel like to be a lesbian separatist who might also be a man?

This episode was written & produced by Mara Lazer and hosted by Kaitlin Prest. Phoebe & NK edited this version of the story. Mara wants to thank Linden for being a friend, Elizabeth Steeby for editor topping, and Ari(el) Mejia for always believing in possibilities. A version of this story won the Best New Artist award at the Third Coast International Audio Festival.

You heard clips of a conversation between Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor from the film Examined Life and writing from On Liking Women by Andrea Long Chu.

transcript

Kaitlin Prest:

Welcome… to the Heart.

[low bass beating like a heart]

I'm Kaitlin Prest. The piece that you're about to hear began when NK, Phoebe, Mara and fellow radio maker Ari Mejia all hung out together for the first time. They spent a week apartment sitting, taking care of a pit bull and a one eyed cat. They gushed about fantasy audio projects they want to make and did poetic rituals to inspire poems within themselves. 

Mara's friend Linden lived around the corner from this apartment, and this story is about their years of friendship. It's about how it feels to be trans, how it feels to shapeshift. It's about celebrating the chaos of being one person. 

Here's Mara. 

[snare drum begins, horns join] 

Mara:

Sometimes when it's springtime in New Orleans, I walk in a roving pack. 

[Ernie K. Doe sings "Here come the girls", chorus behind sings along, man sings in falsetto "girls!"]. 

With my proverbial girls, I'm usually covered in someone else's glitter, rhinestones, yarn, face paint with Jameson tucked in my pants. Too many small, revolutionary minded parades surround me to count. 

[beat from loud music, two people loudly in unison, "Happy Mardi Gras, Mara." then laughing]

[sound of train screeching, becomes louder]

But this year, I asked my friends to send me audio of Mardi Gras. 

I live in New Orleans and wanted to escape my little world down there, remind myself life does exist outside the city. 

[sound of a late night dance club]

So I booked tickets to New York, one of my best friends moved there, this friend and I had top surgery together. We drove to Florida to have the same chest masculinization surgery within a few days of each other. It took years of late night talks with radical dykes and queers to get to that moment. 

Sunaura Taylor:

I could go into a coffee shop and actually pick up the cup with my mouth and carry it to my table, but then that that becomes almost more difficult because of the... 

Mara:

I couldn't stop listening to this conversation between Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor, an artist and disability rights activist. 

Sunaura Taylor:

The discomfort that that causes when I do things with body parts that aren't necessarily what we assume, that they're for... That seems to be even more hard for people to to deal with. 

Mara:

I was terrified and thrilled about treating my milk ducts like medical waste. A few trans men I know were happy with their chest from this doctor in Miami. It's the only surgery he does and it's popular. He flattens chests five times a day, three days a week. I wish I could have donated my chest to my favorite drag queen, but my surgeon had a response like Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development. 

Lucille Bluth, Arrested Development:

I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.

Mara:

The night before my nip tuck, though, I actually felt like a pretty terrible misogynist. Such a failed feminist. I was cutting up my own female body. But I have to remind myself that living as default feminine is not helping other women. Ruminating in self torture and loathing is not an inspiring feminist strategy. It is a strange feeling to desire masculinity in 2020. 

Who wants to be a man? ugh! 

[tuning car radio]

As a kid in the 90s, when I would ask for the boys toy in the McDonald's drive through, I'd watch my moms worrying eyes lingering on me in the rear view mirror. 

[radio clicks off]

When I told her I wish I was a boy, she just stared and said, Why? Maybe her gut response was feeling rejected, like I was rejecting her as a woman, as a role model. Did she also worry I would be like some other unhealthy or pathetic men in her life? But I don't want to be a solitary, depressed, nobody knows trouble like I do kind of man alone in my office until 4:00 a.m.. I feel like even if I wanted to fully transition to be a man, it's not possible. I could only be a man who was raised as a girl, survived middle school because of riot grrrl, a man who almost everyone reads as a huge lesbian. And what a privilege.

[beeping of train door closing]

Right now, I'm a faggy lesbian separatist visiting New York City. I am reluctant to say I'm non-binary. It doesn't feel like the category that holds space, edgeless like leftovers, it doesn't exist without referencing what it isn't. Saying it out loud feels like I'm just saying sorry, not that one, thanks! I get lost in my head breaking down what gender queer even means and wondering who doesn't fit that category. 

I want to feel full and desirable. 

[muted bass drum beats twice]

My desire is formed through refractions, off of things and ideas. 

[muted bass drum beats twice]

I prefer this phrasing to I constantly compare myself to everyone around me. 

[whistle and marching band drumline begin]

Mara:

Fat Tuesday in New Orleans is a day for ritually drug induced shapeshifting. This is the culmination day for Catholic feasting public masking, costuming, young and old bodies are on full display. 

[crowd yelling swirling]

I won't even call it gender bending because it's beyond the category of gender. 

[somewhat messy marching band plays, sounds like eastern European influence]

It's a riot bursting with sound and deep, bright, shiny colors. Historic struggles over who is allowed to parade, who owns the streets happens live on TV simultaneously to the news coverage of drag competitions. 

TV news announcer:

And the police strike didn't stop the annual drag contest in the quarter. This year the usual feather boahs and thrills gave way partially to the macho man leather look with many sporting construction hats.  Spectators and participants alike well, they jammed Bourbon Street is what they did for blocks in both directions. 

Mara:

During my visit to New York, my friend was scheduled to get Androgel testosterone cream. A gift from the gay gods. I've debated taking testosterone shots before and put it off. But Andro gel isn't as strong as the shots. Also, you can actually spread testosterone through skin contact after applying. I'm a sucker for ceremonial bonding.

[pages turning]

On Fat Tuesday, the gift of AndroGel was supposed to be placed in our hands. 

phone answering service:

Thank you for completing the survey. Goodbye. 

Mara:

But as the patriarchal, bureaucratic garbage world that we live in would have it, there was a weird insurance issue. 

[after hearing phone message] Oh, my God. 

Linden:

This is the number they have listed on their website! 

Mara:

Despite having multiple credit cards, we couldn't get the hormones. So our afternoon T Party was put on hold. 

[synthy mysterious music playing]

But I wondered if we had to be the AndroGel we wanted to see in the world, what does that mean exactly? We had the entire city of New York and burning hearts. I couldn't be satisfied with just a slice this afternoon. No matter how cheap and delicious. We decided to have a ceremony to make us really feel like those small, revolutionary minded parades were a state of mind. 

I will keep repeating feminist mantras, on Mardi Gras and beyond. Copy and pasting somatic rituals as I figure out what the fuck works for me. [repeated and layered with bouncy synth underneath]

We bought a lottery ticket [computer game dinging sound of moving to the next level], wrote things down, shared Judith Butler quotes, made a list of qualities within ourselves and types of men we want to burn. 

We tried to peel back the dulling sensors and talk fast and loud and publicly about things we want to do, how we want to be in the world. [coin spinning, instead of falling sound echoes to infinite]

We tried to burn our list, but it took a while. It was windy and literally freezing. It was another forced metaphor. And this Judith Butler quote is still vibrating in my head. 

Judith Butler:

They use their anus for, or what they allow their anus to be used for. 

MaraL

Well, that one. But really this one. 

Judith Butler:

What can a body do? We usually ask, you know, what is a body or what is the ideal form of a body- But, what can a body do is a different question. It's  not like there's, you know, what a body should look like. It's exactly not that question. 

Mara:

When you, the plural you, stood there with your coat unzipped and laughed. You clapped and spread your arms in motion for me. C'mere, you said, and no, my subconscious wasn't too messy. You put your gloveless hand on my chest in my mostly zipped up jacket and said It's warm in here. I felt my head spin. I felt trans. 

After the ceremony, we went to Walters for giant martinis at the bar. We read excerpts of Andrew Long Chu's article On Liking Women. [sound of people talking and glasses clinging at Walter's in the background]

Linden:

She says, "I'm trying to tell you something that few of us dare to talk about, especially in public, especially when we are trying to feel political. As if the cure for dysphoria were wokeness. How can you want to be something you already are? Desire implies deficiency. Want implies want. To admit that what makes women like me transsexual is not identity, but desire is to admit just how much a transition takes place in the waiting rooms of wanting things. 

Mara:

Reading this out loud. My eyes turn to flames ignited by yet resigned to trans desire. The idea of men becoming women thrills, the lesbian herstory archivist in  me, even though physically I'm moving in a different direction. 

I cut my tits off. And right now I'm actively flirting with the idea of rubbing so-called male hormones all over my body. 

I wonder how thoroughly high do I have to be in order to continue believing I can move forward on this twirling trans journey without taking testosterone? 

I can't force generic maleness onto myself. And why would I want to? I feel strangely comforted, thinking desire implies deficiency. There's a relief in acknowledging what I don't have in order to more clearly see what I do have: desire. With my flame eyes I tell misogynist men I don't want their dicks, I already have one. I consider it a perk that my dick will never give you an unexpected pregnancy. 

But yeah, I would love to come on your ass. 

Linden:

[sound continued from Linden reading at Walter’s] Call this the romance of disappointment. You want something. You have found an object that will give you what you want. 

Mara:

Maybe you were trying to show me how to be sad and silly and proud.

[to Linden] Come on! Just a tiny microphone.

Linden:

No!!

Mara:

[narrating] Or maybe that was me doing that. 

Mara:

[to Linden] Okay. Do it once yourself. And then once there was a couple to see you fall — we'll do a couple takes. 

[Mara and Linden are recording themselves singing in high pitched voices] "are you ready for your blessing, and you ready, for you miracle!"]

[Chance the Rapper's song picks up underneath Linden singing]

Mara:

[narrating] I extended my trip in New York, but the testosterone never arrived. This may seem like a missed opportunity. And sure, yeah, undoubtedly. But it's not surprising. I don't feel sad. I feel lucky. The possibilities swirling around my head feel otherworldly. 

I'm fantasizing about writing love letters to my friends, my Irish Catholic mom, her sisters, you. I want to talk to everyone about the possibilities of their faggy lesbian separatist genders. 

I want to have ceremonies where we take our shirts off and rub AndroGel across each other's chests. Maybe my moms is an empowering, cleansing ritual, a quick release from the caretaking. Maybe mine is kind of like a small orgy. 

Imagine the feeling of a room of transsexuals lathering themselves in wishes, a room full of chests with scars that say something happened here and I want more of it. [piano chords building]

Kaitlin Prest:

This piece was written and produced by Mara Lazer. Phoebe and NK edited this version of the story. Mara wants to thank Linden for being a friend, Elizabeth Steeby for editor topping and Ari for always believing in possibilities. Mara won Best New Artist at the 2019 Third Coast Audio Festival for this story. In this piece, you heard clips of a conversation between Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor from the film Examined Life. You also heard writing from an article titled "On Liking Women" by Andrea Long Chu. The Heart is Nicole Kelly, Phoebe Unter, Sharon Mashihi and Kaitlin Prest. That's me. This show is now over a decade old and has a long history of queer feminist storytelling behind it. 

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