 All right, it's seven o'clock. Thank you all for being here. And we wanna welcome you beautiful people here to San Francisco's SFPL Live in our virtual library. And we are here tonight to all celebrate Matilda Bernstein-Sickermore and celebrate her new book, The Freezer Door. Before we get started, I have some library updates and library info and all kinds of great library stuff to tell you about. First off, we'd like to acknowledge that we are residing here on the unceded land of the Ohlone Tribal people and acknowledge the many Romutish Ohlone Tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we reside. SFPL is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live together. SFPL encourages you to learn more about first-person culture and native heritage. And we do this by providing lots of book lists and lots of resources that we have. And that is included in the document that I added to the link. SFPL also wants to acknowledge that we are not a neutral institution and stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement as well as ending structural, systemic and institutional racism in our own house and community. As a library, we're here to help our community by providing useful and factual information. And that same document will have a lot of reading lists on being an anti-racist, on social justice, police reform, becoming anti-racist, but also a lot of information about Black joy, Black love, Black art and all sorts of other and Black queer, lots of Black queer books as well. So check out those book lists. And like I said, you could shout out what land you're on tonight. We'd like to hear that, call it out. And I also want to acknowledge that tonight's event is brought to us by the GMC Hormel LGBTQIA Center. This center is the gateway to the library's broader collection, documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and allies history and culture with a special emphasis on San Francisco Bay Area. So we're very excited tonight to have Matilda Bernstein-Sicomor in conversation with CA Conrad. Matilda Bernstein-Sicomor is the author of three novels, two nonfiction titles, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Her new book, which we're all here to celebrate, The Freezer Door, was described by Maggie Nelson as a book about not belonging that left me feeling deeply less alone. Sicomor's novel, Skeshtasy, was one of NPR's best books of 2018. Her memoir, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her most recent anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots, Blaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. And joining Matilda tonight is CA Conrad, the author of Amanda Paradise. Their book, While Standing in Line for Death, won a 2018 Lambda Book Award. They also received a 2019 Creative Capital Grant as well as a Cue Fellowship in the Arts Award, along with the Believer Magazine Book Award and the Gil Ott Book Award. They regularly teach at Columbia University in New York City, and the Stromberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. And I just realized I did not go through any of my slides, so here's the quickest introduction. Wear your masks, please, and join us for all of these amazing events and tonight's book is, we're highlighting dog-eared book, Castro. You can shop online and I will link all of these into the chat box when we get going, and you can call them, they do are open daily, they are taking COVID measures, but please pick up your book local and you can also pick it up from libraries to go. So without further ado, tonight's event, Matilda Bernstein-Sigmor will start us out with a reading. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for coming. It's great to be at the San Francisco Public Library, which is always one of my favorite places to read. So it's good to be able to read from the distance. Usually when I do a reading, I tell everyone to do whatever you need to take care of yourselves, you know, jump up and down, laugh, cry, you know, run out of the room, stretch, have a snack, but you all know that now because we're all in our own homes. So what I'm hoping is we can bring that comfort of home and combine it with the feeling of being all together in this communal space. Feel free to light up the chat while this is going on, throw your questions in there. I'm thrilled to be in conversation with C.A. Conrad tonight. And yes, so I'm gonna read a little bit from the book, then we'll chat and then there'll be time for audience questions. So thanks again for coming. I'm gonna read from 71 pages into the book. Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm fading away. One day I'll wake up and it will just be that gray between day and night, that hovering of everything between, that blinking of eyes into somewhere else and not the harshness of stomach tension pushing my insides out. My insides in, not the obliteration of the crash but the softness of the glide. The world we try to make into our own even as it makes us into the people we don't want to hate but do. So often we do and we hope for more consciously and unconsciously trying to get somewhere that maybe we've never known. Outside there's a girl gang of shirtless boys jogging in their underwear. Is this the new wave of violent crime that everyone's talking about? A mannequin wearing a brightly colored, dramatically layered cartoonish outfit labeled street style by anonymous. In a museum show displaying outfits made by exclusive designers that all cost several thousand dollars each. Was there a time when creativity didn't feel like such a desperate act of self-preservation? One problem with language is that it's still language. I'm wondering if queer will ever become something that holds as much as it harms? Will we ever actualize our rhetoric? If queer is a dream that we don't have to die in order to go on living, what would it mean to create a community of care? And have I ever really witnessed this? This cab driver says, what is it with these people? They think they live in a city but this is just a big suburb. I like this cab driver. He says, there were three guys in the back seat laughing about something. What are they laughing about? They weren't even talking to one another just sitting with their phones in their hands texting back and forth. The people here, he says, they don't know how to be people anymore. One problem with narrative is there's always a master if dreams are literal and we are literally dreaming, then what is a dream? When I was 12, I went to a sleepaway camp in West Virginia where there were a bunch of kids from Florida. There was a hail storm in August and they thought it was their first snow. I could never be part of other kids' celebrations anyway. The feeling of saying I love you to someone for the first time in a way that means comfort. And is this hope or help or helplessness? I'm just so sick of friendships that get stuck somewhere between mutual expressions of commitment and the other person's next relationship. What does it mean to love? When this is all it means, Adrian and I walk into the bar and while he's ordering a drink, the hottest guy there waves me over. He says, how come I don't know you? Do I know you? Let me add you on Facebook. He's touching me already, complimenting my sweater. He says, it reminds him of someone so far. Of course he's on a date. I'm stuck between losing the hope for connection in the places and spaces I used to believe in and wondering how to find that connection in the spaces I will never believe in. Going into worlds I already know are corrupt in order to find what isn't. A body without politic or a politic without a body. This is not a choice I want to make. Some people invoke this search for pleasure as pleasure in the search. But how is there pleasure if there's no pleasure? Knowing you will never escape and then you do. But does your body ever really figure this out? Thunder is an understatement. It's the sky meeting the earth and somehow everything's more alive. Maybe not everything but everything you can feel. Sometimes it's hard to write when you're in the moment because you're in the moment. I wanted to tell you about walking into the bar. When was it? Almost two weeks ago. Was that the last time? It feels like it's been too long. Confession. Sometimes I write in present tense but I'm not actually there. I mean, now Adrian and I go to the bar to gather. The second time I went there or the second time I went there but not just for the photo booth, Adrian spotted me and said, Matilda, what are you doing at Pony? He'd been to my book launches over the years and he reached out when I moved to Seattle and we exchanged numbers but that was on Facebook and I hate Facebook. So when Adrian didn't call, I didn't call him. But then when I ran into him at Pony, he said, if you ever need someone to go out with and so now that's what we do. We walk through Cal Anderson on the way there so I can lean against trees to even out my body and stretch on the jungle gym. It's one way to appreciate the rain. Sometimes when Adrian starts to get drunk, she asked me to point out everyone in the bar who I'd go home with and I kind of like playing this game because no one's ever asked me to play it before or maybe they did but I thought I was tired. I mean, it is tired but we're at a gay bar. There's no way to avoid tired. I wonder whether Adrian's flirting with me and I wonder whether I'm flirting with him and maybe this is part of the game. Then Evan walks in and he's grabbing me all over. He is the one I told Adrian I'd do anything for and I can tell we could go home together if I stay but I can't stay because it's getting too late. If I stay too late, then I won't be able to sleep and then my life will be over. Of course I'm not fragile. What happens to the moment? If you're not in the moment, the feeling of not being able to exist without not really existing, I can go outside and hope the air will clear my head but then there's my head again without air. What does it mean to open? I refuse to allow any flower analogies. If I refusing to allow them, I allow them. Thank you. So now, yeah, now let's bring C.A. Conrad in so we can have a little chat. Hi, darling. That was really wonderful. Oh, thank you. I was so excited when you, you know, we didn't talk about what you were gonna be reading. I mean, you said where you were starting. I was hoping you were gonna get to page 77 because one of my favorite lines in the whole book is there. Wait, I just had it. Oh, wait, 77, let's see. Going into worlds I already know are corrupt in order to find what is it. Oh, perfect, perfect. Okay, good. I feel like that sort of says, that's the book in many ways to me, you know? Absolutely, I agree entirely. Yes, it is about that. Oh, that was terrific. Thank you so much. I wanna back up just a handful of pages from where you started though. Yeah, perfect. You mind if I read, it's very short. I'm gonna, I just wanna read this because I have two questions about this. Absolutely, I love it. Please go ahead. From page 64. It was always the girls who gave me shelter, but also they were looking for shelter. I mean, we gave each other shelter. So I was always told I was a girl and told I could never be a girl. So many faggots have this story to tell and yet there are so few spaces we can embrace it. So I have a couple of questions about this. I love this passage so much. And could you tell us about one of those spaces where you were able to fully embrace the story? And what were the feelings in your body, in the room? Do you mean the spaces where it could finally be a girl? Is that what you mean? Where you can embrace this, yeah. Where I can embrace. Well, I don't know if those spaces fully exist. I think they are always in moments. So for me, one way is dancing. So dancing for me is when I'm completely unafraid. And so in a way, I'm not even in, I'm like so in the space that I'm in my own space, right? And so the gender that I exude then in many ways, it's fully, I'm fully embodied and I'm fully unafraid. I think that's the key. It's that existing without fear. And paradoxically, or maybe not paradoxically, of course, that's what, I mean, that is when I feel the most alive and the most to connect with other people. But at that same moment is when people are often the most afraid, you know? It's like I could go into a bar, no one's dancing and I'm like dancing, you know, like bringing it all out. It's like, what is this space for, right? Except for this. But it's like, I mean, they could just flee like that. They're just like bye, you know? And in some ways, in some ways, I think inhabiting faggotry, queeniness, trans feminine glamour, all of it, in some ways always involves not giving in to other people's fear. Not giving in to their hypocrisy or their silencing mechanisms or their demand for, especially for girls like us, socialized male, you know, socialized to be a particular thing that we will never be. And I think when we realize that we don't want to be that, right? That's the moment of freedom, right? But the world is still there telling us our whole lives and it will always be there. But I think the feeling in those moments is that utterly unafraid. I think that, and also it's a, I think it's a connection to the air in a certain way. It's like a spatial grounding and an embodied spaciousness. Great, there's my answer. I love that. That was a gritty answer. I was expecting like a story done full of a particular place. That's even better because it's, it can be anywhere anytime of the day actually, it sounds like. Absolutely. Now, I wanna just repeat the first line of that passage. It was always the girls who gave me shelter, but also they were looking for shelter. I mean, we gave each other shelter. So can you please tell us about one of these times when you gave each other shelter? Yeah, absolutely. So I think, let's say when I was a child and let's say second grade going on to the playground. Now, the playground's supposed to be a place to relax, I think, but it was never that, you know, for me it was like a place of like being shunned or tortured. Mostly by boys, right? But so finding the girls and one of the things we did was trade stickers, right? So I always had the puppy stickers and the change stickers. I wasn't allowed to have like the dolls, you know like the, I can't even remember, you know there's like Shirley Temple, no, not Shirley Temple. There's a lot of doll stickers. So they will get really excited because they wanted like the, you know there's googly eyes cause that wasn't like girly, you know so we would trade those and we would and we were bond and while we were there all these boys would come over and harass them. But we were in our own little world, right? And so it wasn't, I don't know that we knew exactly. Well, no, we did know. We knew that it was us against them and they knew it too. But that's I think one of those moments where yeah, where we were giving each other shelter but at the same time, yeah, and I was welcome and I was a part of that, but at the same time, you know I was still harassed in a different way, you know but then the rest of the girls would have been harassed, you know, and so, and I also remember the transition part because it was always kind of us against them but it's the beginning of puberty I think was when that shifted because then suddenly, because we all hated these boys together, you know but suddenly around puberty, a lot of these girls were socialized into that particular kind of femininity where now they're like, look at that hot boy, you know and then the boys were all coming over to flirt with these girls, but they still hated me, you know and I was still an object of scorn and so that was an interesting moment in a way where I was abandoned on all sides and that was when I realized, oh, I have to, I have to find a way to project everything that I, to protect invulnerability in a way even if I wasn't invulnerable, I had to evoke it so that I could find, you know other people who would, who we could create our own shelter together. Thank you for, I had about 12 questions for that but let's stick with those videos. I love that passage. It's a really great passage. Thank you. Now, even though I'm talking about something that's from your past, it's not necessarily nostalgic. In fact, you have this great line later on in the book where you say, I don't believe in nostalgia because it camouflages violence. And I wanted to know what point in your life did you first realize this? Oh, that's so interesting. I think the first time I realized this I would not have known the word nostalgia but it was when I was a kid and adults like let's say adults would lean down but I could remember this actually as early as like six or seven and they would lean down to me and they would be like, or they might say something like my, how you've grown or something like that or like, oh, like some, you know they were impressed by something I would like I knew the capital of like some country, you know or I knew the name of something to be like, oh and then they would say childhood, you know enjoy it while you can and I would look up at them and I because I felt broken, you know I was broken, I felt hopeless, I felt trapped I felt completely vulnerable and I felt old in a way I did not feel young and I looked at them and I remember thinking, okay they're either lying to me or they're lying to themselves and to me but it's not, there's no other option, you know and I was like, because they're, or they just forgot you know, I was like, do they really think like childhood is a good thing because I did not want to be a child, you know because I knew that being a child meant that I had no power, you know and that I would always be vulnerable and that I could not escape and so I think that was while I wouldn't have known the word nostalgia that was the first, that was probably the formation of that politic that has really kind of lasted my life because I feel like the opposite of nostalgia is truth, right and so if we can talk about everything and all of its complications and all of its nuance and messiness and then that's a more honest way of thinking about the past and then we can integrate it and become something else but as long as we're thinking of, you know this kind of golden age that almost surely never existed then we can't create that golden age now. Beautiful. And you know, the thing is nostalgia is often wielded as a weapon by celebrity and this is something that you bring up in the book you talk about Patti Smith and Kathy Acker and the abuse of that, it's very brief but I was so glad you brought that up and is there something you've seen in the past and other people that made you be more aware of it in celebrity? Oh, that's interesting. I don't know, it's interesting because I was thinking about this recently like I never really believed in celebrities. I mean, definitely when I was a kid, I would look or not actually when I was a little kid, I didn't really yeah, I mean, but when I was maybe a teenager, early teenager, there were certain people like there would be like any faggot looking person with like bleach blonde hair and I was like, oh my God, I want to be Howard Jones I want to be like George Michael or the edge in you too, you know or like be slash be with, you know but I never really believed in it, you know like in a larger sense than that and so I think that's always made it possible for me to see that hypocrisy. Although I should say, no, there are people like let's say Tracy Chapman definitely when her first album or I don't know if it's her first album with the famous one, you know like Fast Car, like that song before I could drive, I would like sit in my bedroom and I would just sing along to Fast Car like thinking about drive, drive, drive, drive away, right and she's talking about abuse she's talking about getting away and I was or Jane's addiction, Jane says I would sing that with my friends, you know and like, you know, she's done with Sergio, you know and it's like, we're all gonna get out of here but we're stuck, you know, we were stuck and we knew it and so in a way those kinds of celebrity allowed me maybe to imagine getting out but it was through realizing how stuck we were it was never like they're gonna show me the way because like those songs, they don't really offer hope I mean, not in a conventional sense, you know they're about being stuck and so, but so I think and maybe it was because, you know like as a kid, as a young kid I was like the very obviously kind of traumatized child like retreating into books to escape the world, right so I was like, like in, when I in sixth grade yeah, sixth grade I read War and Peace, you know and like, then I read Dostoyevsky, you know I was like that kid, right because I just wanted the most elaborate world that I could get out of, you know like I loved, you know at the beginning of told story where they have like 10 pages just telling you the names of all the characters and like it's basically like a map of these basically families that are falling apart it's all about families falling apart Budenbrooks by Thomas Mann that was like another one I loved because it was like there was an illusion of something that you can escape into but it was always about falling apart and but then I think, but I was just you know, that was just internal that was like in my head, right I was like, woo let me just go in there I was like chewing on hard candy like just nonstop just like, woo get out of here, right and but then I think when I started to come into a place of self-actualization which was around, you know 12, 13, 14, 15 it was about knowing it was about finding the other kids that everyone else refused to see and trying to help those kids know that the ones who told us that we didn't deserve to live they're the ones that didn't matter, you know and so it's about like sort of creating a kind of outsider status so that was sort of that was my formative moment and so I think because of that I didn't really believe in these things that were sort of packages and celebrity was always a package I mean, I definitely fell for Tracy Chapman and then, you know when I moved to San Francisco when I was 19 and people were like oh, there's her mansion and her three BMWs I was like, oh, okay maybe it's not quite as I thought, you know so there are definitely things that I fell for for a little while but not in the way that like became a part of me, I guess and so I guess that's how I've always been able to see see the way that mechanism works. Oh. And you have this line that I wanna read you don't mind me reading some of your line sheets. Please, I love it, absolutely. If sex work helped me to learn how to assert boundaries public sex spaces offered around where I couldn't initiate touch without worrying about crossing an unseen boundary. So sex work helped you making your boundaries clear but what other things has sex work helped you with and understand or assert or reveal to you about the world? Yeah, that's interesting. Well, it's interesting we're talking in San Francisco because of course when I was 19 I moved to San Francisco in 92 and I moved in search of radical outsider queers, right? So like anarchists and activists and freaks and outsiders and whores and sluts and vegans and dropouts and runaways and that's where I- Do I put sluts and vegans in that order? I kind of like- Yeah, I mean, aren't we all? Yeah. Doesn't one come with the other? And so part of that world, sex work was just a way to make a living and to make a living and not give in to dominant cultural norms, right? So it was like how to make a living without having to have a 40-hour job having to like change the way we looked in order to conform. And so I didn't, but I started sex work like right after remembering I was sexually abused as a child. And so for me, when I started sex work I was like the thing I can't do is leave my body. So this isn't how everyone starts sex work but for me, sex work is how I taught myself to stay in my body. And so like I would be having sex with someone who I may or may not find attractive, often not. But I was like, okay, how do I stay in my body? Because all this, I realized around that same time just maybe a year before that or less. Yeah, about a year before. Maybe I was 20 when I started sex work. About a year before when I realized I was sexually abused, I realized I always left my body when I had sex at a certain point. Like I would, it would be hot at first and then something would trigger me and I would leave my body. And I remember I would think, oh, well, you know, he's having fun. So I should, you know, I shouldn't stop, right? I mean, I didn't know how, because it wasn't something. So when I remembered I was sexually abused, I was like, okay, I have to stay in my body. And interestingly, sex work really taught me how to find. So let's say in an environment, because I mean, sex work is about money. It was about making a living. It wasn't, you know, there was no other, that was the central thing, right? But it was, in a way, because I would think, okay, how do I move torque? So let's say someone was touching me at that time, like on my neck, I would leave. So I was like, okay, well, let me move his hands to a place where it's actually sensual and where I feel present. And so it really did teach me that, you know? And it also taught me, yeah, to assert boundaries because before that I did not know how. You know, I did, oh, I knew how to assert boundaries before, like, you know, oh, I don't wanna do anything with you. But once we started having sex, I didn't know. And sex work, you know, you have to sort of outline what you do and what you don't do. And then they're like, oh, wait, I wanna do this. And you're like, no, I can't say, I will not pretend that I didn't, I always, that I always did that. But it taught me that. And I think it also taught me, I think it taught me that the ways, the full range of desire in a certain sense, because certain things that people found hot, that I'd be like, what the hell are they thinking? And then I'd be like, oh, let me try that. And I was like, oh, you know, this is interesting. Even when it wasn't necessarily hot for me, I could see, yeah, so I think that, those are probably the main things that I learned as well as in San Francisco having like a culture around me. I think that was the most important part, a culture where sex work was not stigmatized, where it was just something we did, you know, and where it was like a way of making a living that enabled us to focus on what really mattered. And what really mattered to me at the time was activism, was friendship, and was creating sustainable way of being queer, like, you know, creating our own ways of living and loving and musting for one another that weren't predicated on dominant straight organ norms. Thank you, Matilda. Absolutely. There's a running theme through this book that is in most of your work. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that. I'll just have some of the quotes. I just love, I have such an affinity for your ideas in the world about this. I remember when faggots kissed hello, and because I'm wearing a purple hat with a flower on it, faggots are so afraid of flowers. Sometimes I think the main tension among faggots is between, this is on page 207. Sometimes I think the main tension among faggots is between those who see masculinity as a burden and those who see it as a pleasure. Between those who see masculinity as a refuge and those who see it as a, as refuse. Masculinity is an ideal and the ideal of refusing masculinity. When I say attention, I don't mean to suggest that there are two equivalent sides, the wrong side has already won. And this is something that I, and then it leads right into this other bigger point you make, which is without the trauma of mandatory masculinity, what would I be? And I think about this in terms of many things you've done, including your anthology that you edited, why are faggots so afraid of faggots? Which I was very excited when you wrote to me about that. And could you talk a little bit, because you've been part of, you know, gay shame, gays against the military or against the military. I just wanna talk about this with you. Sure. So this tension, the sort of mandatory masculinity, is that what you, and the tyranny of that? Yeah, and I think more than anything, the idea that the wrong side has won. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so why are faggots so afraid of faggots? Those who don't know is an anthology I edited and Sia Conrad has a brilliant piece in it. And so, yeah, for me, gay male culture shelters some of the worst aspects of straight normalcy. So whether that be racism, classism, body fascism, misogyny, ableism, self-hatred, homophobia itself, right? And I do think so much of that is a willful rejection of feminism, right? And a deliberate sort of the placement of traditional masculinity in sort of like the realm of the gods, right? So it's completely unquestioned in a way that even in straight normalcy now is questioned by feminism, right? And so there is this kind of, and along with masculinity, of course, comes the sort of dominant institutions of accessing straight privilege becoming the measures of gay success, right? And so, we have marriage, we have, and the military, of course, being the most thrilling accomplishment, right? Like what could be better than to be able to press a button and blow up a village in Somalia and call that progress, right? Because now gays can do that too. Now gays can press buttons in Nevada and blow up a village in Pakistan or Somalia or they can go abroad and kill people and get away with it, right? So that's gay masculinity. And so when I say the wrong side is already won, I mean that, that's the macro side, that's the macro political side, but on the micro side, which is more, I think what I focus on in the freezer door is the embodied sense of how that plays out in the intimate realm, right? Where like let's say, even let's say public sexual culture, which is where I've figured out how to be, how to have a sexual self in many ways, but the way public sexual culture works is like, you know, if you're interested, you have sex, if you're not interested, you push someone away. There's no conversation, there's no negotiation, there's, you know, for the most part. And then that's just assumed. And I think, so in a way, I wanna talk about the internalized harm that that creates and especially for faggots and femmes and freaks and flamers and trans feminine girls and, you know, genderqueer weirdos, non-binary. Like, yeah, and I say that in some ways, I'm gonna go in another direction because this is another thing I've been thinking about is the spaces that formed me were basically dyke spaces in the mission in the early 90s, you know? And there were fags there too, but we were like a really small minority. And in order to exist in those spaces, we had to prove ourselves worthy, right? Because we were already seen as the enemy, like just by our bodies being in the room. And when I was 19, I was like, okay, that's okay, I get it, you know? And so we had to prove our politics, we had to prove like, you know, our loyalty to like feminist ideals, basically. You know, it wasn't like, literally, we weren't given a test, but it might have all been that in a certain sense. And so I think there is a reason why, you know, and why that sort of mentality existed and it's a valid reason, right? Because gay male spaces sheltered so much of this misogynist, racist, you know, homophobic violence. So, but the thing that I feel like has happened now, especially, and I talk about this in the book, like being in queer spaces, let's say in Seattle, like when I was in queer spaces in San Francisco in the early 90s or like, they were majority dykes, basically, in that time period, it was still very binary the way people were thinking. So it was like dykes and fags, but you know, or female socialized people learning to reject that female socialization, but mostly not male socialized people, but there was still like, let's say 20%, you know, but in Seattle, more and more, or in a lot of places, I feel like it's more like 99% female socialized people, transmasculine spectrum people. And even though the rhetoric is about inclusion, is about self-determination, is about, you know, creating one's own gender, sexual, social identities, there is still this mentality of, like I will say for myself, like if I go in these spaces, this is like 25, 30 years after originally entering them, and I am not recognized as like Matilda Bursi and Sycamore, like the feeling I feel is, get out of here, faggot, you know, and while that's not, it's not the homophobia that I would feel in a straight space, and it's not the femmephobia in a gay male space, it still has like a exclusionary violent aspect to it. And so I guess in the book, you know, the part we were talking about at the beginning where going into spaces I already know are corrupt in order to find what isn't, is because I no longer believe that there is a space that isn't corrupt. And so I believe that it would be great for us to make it, right? But I don't think it exists. It doesn't exist for me, I should say. It might exist for other people. And so that's where that exploration comes in, you know, because there isn't a world where I can exist in an embodied self and be met in that embodiment. Yeah. You know, I was on the opposite coast when you were going through this. I was in Philadelphia in the 80s and 90s. And if it weren't for the lesbians, I don't know what we would have done because everybody was dying around us. And I don't know, I was getting in fights all the time in gay-only spaces, especially if I was at a party and everybody who was left was just gay men. The most misogynistic things I've ever heard in my life would be said. And I would get into these huge fights. And I wrote this book called The Book of Frank, where I wrote these poems like going after them about it. Like here's this giant vagina coming to eat you kind of thing, you know? But I feel like that's more prevalent than ever though, this misogyny, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and the misogyny plays out, you know, against women. It plays out against trans people and it plays out against other fags. And I think that's also, when I invoke fag and I think it's similar for you, I'm sure, like it's not within masculinity. It's as a rejection of that, you know? And so, but I think in the ways of like radical queer worlds now, even though they would say they are not binary, there is still this binary about, you know, sort of certain bodies are welcome and other bodies are not. And that's, I think a question I ask, if only the bodies that are desired are welcome, then maybe desire is a dead end. That's sort of a question I'm asking in the book. You know, one of the things I love about this book is the ice cube tray and the ice cubes. And do you mind, can we see your ice cube tray? Oh, my actual ice cube tray? Yeah, I'm gonna see your ice cube tray. It's like a character in the book, it's like part of the book. I think we have to imagine the character in the book. Oh, all right, we can't see your ice cube tray. Do you really want to? May I see your ice cube tray? I would love to see your ice cube tray. Well, all right, I'll be right back. Okay, good. So for those of you who haven't read the book yet, you'll be very surprised by what I'm saying. I don't want to give it away. The ice cube tray and the ice cubes are characters around the book. Oh, there it is. There it is, it doesn't look as... Oh, wait, hold it, let's make a screenshot, hold on. Okay, okay. Oh, that's lovely, yeah, that's good. How about like this thing? Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, one more. Yeah, that's beautiful. Perfect, this will be a legend. It'll be like, there's the moment where C.A. Conrad asked Matilda to get her ice cube tray out of the freezer. Okay, I'll be right back. I don't want to keep it out too long because you know what happens when the ice stays out of the freezer. Yeah, they're not happy. Okay, back. Does you have a question about the ice cube tray? I just love that you use the ice cubes as... And the conversations are, is this a realist injection and into the whole thing that frames everything you... Every each time the ice cube tray and the ice cube comes up, I feel like it reframes everything that I just read and also prepares me for what's next. It's kind of a brilliant thing. I've never seen anybody do that in a book before. It kind of reminded, I hate doing compare and contrast but I will just in this one time, I felt a little bit like I was reading like a really weird queer Richard Brodigan book. You know, like there's like, you know, Richard Brodigan, but anyway, but I think it's far and more interesting. Yeah, I mean, oh, were you gonna ask something? No, no, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, I think so the ice cube and the ice cube tray, basically it happened, it initially is introduced in the book it's basically when the text can no longer hold. And I think it starts, I say, I don't understand why nothing ever heals or something like that. And then the text can no longer hold because the book in a way is, I'm searching for embodiment, right? I'm searching for an embodied self in a world that is constantly attacking that, right? So in a world on the street, just random passersby, a gay world, a queer world, none of them are really allowing that embodied self. And so the text also, it's not just what's happening but the text is also in search of that embodiment, right? And so the text kind of circles around itself, you know, one question leads into another question, one statement, you know, maybe reversed, you know, next and so everything I'm doing for me is like moving toward feeling. And so the feeling might be a feeling of pleasure or a feeling of connection or a feeling of satisfaction or commonality or community, but it also might be a feeling of disembodiment or loss or longing or failure or being trapped. And it's in those moments when the text can no longer, like in a way I'm sort of, I'm searching, I'm trying to do with language what language cannot do. And it's in those moments when it just sort of breaks and goes into this conversation between the ice cube and the ice cube tray. Now they, like most ice cubes and ice cube trays are stuck in the freezer. This book is called The Freezer Door. There is a literal element to it and they're having a conversation, you know, about their relationship, right? The ice cube of course is in the ice cube tray. The ice cube tray is forming the ice cube. The ice cube is maybe, is the ice cube melting? Is it staying, you know, the same? And they're having in some ways a very philosophical conversation about their relationship. The ice cube has questions, you know, like explain gentrification to me. And then the ice cube tray says, wait, I forgot, crushed ice. So, and ice cube, oh, so how do you, you know, explain anarchism to me. Nobody understands anarchism, you know, explain democracy to me. This is democracy. And so, so in a way, like you said, I love the way you said it. It sort of frames some of the central questions in the book in a very different way. So that in a way, I said this in a different conversation. I hadn't thought of this before, but I feel like there is, like, I don't know if I believe in innocence usually, but in a conversation between an ice cube and an ice cube tray, I think I can believe in innocence. And so I think there is an innocence in the questions and in their own search for embodiment and in their own sort of revelations or exploration of feeling like, what could be more trapped than being in a freezer? But this is their world, right? There is a world out there that they're also talking about, like TV and art shows and Keith Herring. And, you know, they have conversations like we have, but they're condensed into like it's most, well, it's an interesting condensed, you know, like ice maybe, I don't know. But, and I think, yeah, I think they allow the rest of the text to also break, you know, to be fragmented and to shift, to really shift pretty dramatically and also to have a kind of like flow that is in some ways it's not a, it's like this, you know. You know, it also moves there and there, you know, and there. But I think overall it's, you know, and this probably like that too. Well, they, and you know, and I love how like also they said Keith Herring before he was famous, they wanted to talk about that. Right, yeah, yeah, the ice cube. Oh, right, the ice cube tray. Yeah, only likes the graffiti artists before they were famous. The Ice Cube says, oh, like who? And the Ice Cube Trace says, I can't remember their names, you know, so. There's another theme in your book that I just, I know we want to get to other questions from the audience. Yeah, sorry, give me one more. Give me one more. Okay, so I was thinking about this when I was reading your book. Eileen Miles has a line in their book, Not Me, where they write, I pick up a book and another book and memory and separation seem to be all anyone writes about. Now, I thought about that reading your book. The line suggests coming to realization about writers and books, whereas your new book, The Freezer Door, is often very overtly questioning these subjects, separation from your own layers of yourself, separation from queer space, separation from cities that use gentrification as separation as a weapon, wedges varies constantly. Even the Ice Cube Trace separates Ice Cube. So I was just wondering if you could address this. I think it's a big overarching theme and it's brilliant. And by the way, it's just, it's one of my favorite books. I just love it so much. Oh, thank you so much. So this question of separation and of not being able to be fully present in the spaces that are supposed to allow it. Is that the question you want me to address? Yeah, this idea that we're always searching. Let me just read Eileen's, their quote again. I feel like this is where it kind of gets in. I pick up a book and another book and memory and separation seem to be all anyone writes about. So the thing is when I first would read that quote, it's like you kind of have to like think about it. But with your book, it's just that's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, I think maybe that also speaks to that idea. Like I am writing against nostalgia and nostalgia is always, you know, searching for this golden moment in order to, basically in order to create a consumer product that we can all consume. And that consumer product often is ourselves, right? And so for me, yeah, I guess I do want to. So the first line of the book is one problem with gentrification is that it always gets worse. And that line sits on its own page and gentrification is the landscape in which the book takes place. And so everything else, whether that's desire, whether that's memory, whether that's search for community, whether that's dancing, or whether that's chronic pain, or whether that's, you know, thinking about, you know, artists that meant something to me, or artists that their hypocrisy, or just walking down the street, you know, all of it is taking place within this landscape of gentrification. And so gentrification makes our cities into places where the suburban imagination has conquered urban space. And so instead of what I see as the city or the dream of the city, you know, the place where you can find everything that you never imagined, not what you imagined, but what you never imagined, right? So if we, I'll go into the Patty Smith moment for a second. So Patty Smith, you know, she has this book called Just Kids, Everyone Loves It, right? The book Just Kids is about Patty Smith moving to New York and she just finds everything, it's in the 70s, you know? She finds everything she needs and she suddenly becomes famous because she has so much talent, you know? And so it presents this idea of New York that never really existed. She doesn't talk about what she actually did to get famous, you know? She doesn't talk about, she just ran into Sam Shepard. Oh, it wasn't Sam Shepard. She didn't know it was Sam Shepard. She just thought it was this guy with his steak in his pants who had just stolen it from the store, you know? And so it's this mythology of this kind of golden age when there were no borders. And I think it exists in some ways because of the cities that we have now which are all about borders. And but at the same time, it makes those borders stronger, you know? Because it says that there is, because that never existed. And there's never existed a time when you just randomly became famous and permanently famous like Patty Smith. Like, you know, Garrett, like we need the book where Patty Smith tells us like every horrible thing she did in order to get there. It doesn't mean she's not brilliant. It doesn't mean she doesn't have, you know, or art doesn't mean something to people. It just means, let me tell you the truth, you know? And it's not just in the book, of course she's also using Robert Mapplethorpe who everyone knows was like ruthless, you know, cunning, vicious. So she uses him as like a foil and he of course was her best friend who died of AIDS. And so she uses his death of AIDS as a way to naturalize her talent, you know? And so maybe I'm getting a little tangent there but I guess the reason I'm saying this is because that idea of like talent, you know, is another, it's another wall, right? It's like, you know, we all have talent. We all have like beauty. We can all create something. Like that's what I'm actually after. I'm after a city where we don't have borders, where we don't have people who are stars and people who are not stars or like the ones who like, you know, found the truth, you know, and the ones who didn't, right? We can all have that. And so I guess what I'm after in a way in the book is going into these, like we said before, going into the spaces that are corrupted in order to find what isn't. But part of that corruption too is this idea that there is something pure, right? And so I guess in a way, I, yeah, I want to, I want, and also in the book, also everything is fused. So memory is not necessarily different than walking down the street now. You know, something that happens in a dream is not separate from what happens in the world out there. Something that might have happened like 20 years ago is also happening right now, you know? And so that's another way I think that I'm working against that sort of that separation or that hierarchy of narrative itself, you know, and of telling the story itself in order to create something that's maybe a little more, a little more honest, a little messier, but also very like crafted toward feeling instead of having the craft surround the feeling and like package it in, you know? It's like, whew, where's my outline? You know, like, I mean, a structure emerges, but the structure emerges from the writing rather than the structure like holds the writing in. Thank you. Thank you for these amazing questions and for this wonderful conversation. And yeah, maybe, oh, go ahead. Turn it back over to you in the library, people. Thank you, San Francisco Public Library. Everybody needs to get this book and I'm gonna just listen now while you talk to everybody else. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. It's been such an honor to have this conversation, everyone needs to read your work as well and it's great to be in conversation in this particular way. So yeah, maybe Anissa, if there are any questions from the audience, just let me know. There are, we have a couple about how you write. So let's go with, did your publisher let you publish the book the way you intended? Well, that's always a good question. Yes, I would say yes. You know, luckily I was working with Semiotext who believes in experimentation, who believes in creating the work on our own terms and who believes in my words in, you know, I would say destroying literature, creating our own, destroying literature so that we can create our own literature. So there were things I had to argue about. So interestingly, the conversation between the ice cube and the ice cube tray, I had to argue to keep that in. But it isn't, right? So it was a conversation where we were talking in a deep and intimate way about the text so that I could keep it on my own terms. Some more writing questions. Maybe we have some writers out there. I know you have used speech to text to write your work. Did you do this with the freezer door? And if so, how do you think that helped or hindered with the flow? Yeah, so I, you know, deal with devastating chronic pain and have for about 20 years and somewhere around maybe 2003, I started using voice activation software to write basically. Now it took about, I would say three years before, at least a year or two before I could even have like a sentence that made any sense whatsoever. It was version three then, now it's version 14 I think. So it isn't what people think where you're just talking and then it says what you say. It never works that way. Even now that I've been using it for like 17 years. I do use it for all my writing. I don't think it's, I think it's kind of the reverse. Like in a sense, I had to learn because writing with my hands is what has always been the way I've written. So I had to learn how to do what I do with my hands with my voice. But in talking to the computer, I also, you can't talk to it like you would talk to a person. You have to talk, you know, sort of to a person but like in a more like, you know, let's say, like let's say I would say that sentence. I would say you can't talk to a computer like you talk to a person. And then I would type, you can't talk to a computer like you would purse, sit, house. And then you're like, oh, select that. You know, and then you have to change that. And then by that point, you're like, what the hell was I even saying? So it is more fragmented. It's actually more fragmented rather than more fluid. But it has, I don't know that I can answer whether it helps or hinders my process anymore. I will say that it makes editing way more annoying because it's very hard to edit that way. And I do end up editing by typing. And, but it has become, it's so much a part of my process that it's integrated in it. Interestingly, text to speech, I mean, speech to text on phones, the software is actually better. So I've never tried to write that way but just doing little things. I don't know why it's better, but yeah, so that's a little bit about that process. How about, how are you connecting to dance movement during this quarantine and shelter in place? Oh wow, it's so sad. Well, I'll try, stretching now is a little bit helpful. Yeah, let's all stretch together. That's, I would say, like before the quarantine, you know, COVID started, I had really, I felt like I had found a way to have about 50% of the touch that I needed in my life. And that was almost entirely through dance, ecstatic dance, contact improv. And then quarantine started and I went to zero. And I'm still somewhere around that. I think the dance that I have is dance with trees. So I do do kind of like contact with trees and with shrubs and hedges. But I find it, I think for some, because I deal with like devastating chronic exhaustion, like going into a space where people are dancing, I get the energy from that. And then it brings me into another place. But like dancing in my apartment, I can't really get there. So I think I would say mostly with trees. Trees are nice. They're not as soft as people though. So it's easy to get insured. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. There's lots of wonderful comments and compliments on the book to Matilda. And we encourage you all to pick it up from the library or from dog year. Support our local books, stores. And I'm going to unmute everyone so we can all give Matilda the biggest love ever.