 please visit jamescarrenewpollett.com. James, take us away. Good afternoon. It is a great, great honor to be here with you and to start this beautiful reading off. I should say that my book Martian, Saint of Loneliness launches Tuesday. And I actually have a copy over here. And I'm going to give you a little sample. But first, this is a poem that's relatively new. And it's called Sapphire Grape's. Angel of God, aromatic antelope of jasmine and cedar, bouncing above gravity. Crunchy afro, cheekbones, arrowing the jaw. Divine and delicious, we dare not speak of this again. Exodus of eyelashes, eyes resisting echo, fragrant, fashionable, and highly favored. The game is on grind, hella herbals, hella ass, hella humid with the barest glaze of sweat. Incense of inner thigh meat, junk, sea also tender, juice, sea also fruit, knuckle kinship, wee knights of suede and leather, lemon and tomato, lick luggajurious, milky mouth too supple not to touch. New ports, nasty and nonstop, overindulged, overanalyzed, objectified, pennies pitched to the gutter, filth from smudged with brown sugar for sacrament. Our youngest qualifier asks too many questions. Rough housing, rumbles in musky jungles, sinned smoke signals strut with swagger, throat singing tenors with thyroid infections, unwavering, unbent, utter utopia under the surface. Vulture and virtuoso of voluptuous vixens, while we walk, air wrestle, worship a clock of hip bones. Our yoke of youth, its yummy divinity, zestfully clean, yet yawningly unzipped. And in that introduction, I believe you used the words weird, tender and exuberant. Yeah, that describes the mood of this poem I'm going to do from the new book, Saturnalia. The new book is called Martian Saint of Loneliness. The poem I'm going to do is the poem that I had a discussion with my editor about as to whether I should include it at all because I felt self-conscious and slightly embarrassed. And she said, yes, include the poem. And here's my reading of it. This is called Saturnalia. Zeus must be laughing his ass off, watching me chase Caliope's rash sea calves, their church bell praise song, summer salting in the air. Lord, you none caught me riding dirty, high-stepping my obedient emptiness, hustling to be filled with something fortified and warm. Since my body prison brewed its way through puberty, there remains a compound of failure in my blood. Let me not remain so sensually challenged, illiterate in every language set the blues. My tongue losing its intimacy with words, mistaking touch for rupture, or lust with lethargy, or et cetera, or et cetera. Never before have I rattled with so many impatient corpses. Never before have I needed so little from a stranger to be recognized, to be handed a thing gently, a dollar's change palmed back to you as if it were an ultritional hatchling. For certain strangers, I am easy kindling my ashes sweet to taste. Just ask the saint of loneliness about my labyrinth of weddings. Ask my dead about the witchcraft of memory. Ask my hands the origin of their humiliating nicknames. They stay in my pockets while I hike mile-long steel and glass canyons, passing several identical uncrowded coffee shops just to stand in line and briefly see you. Worship at the altar of your legendary eyes, famous only in my private theater of cruelty, and spin my rings around your fingers soft ballet over all my hardened denominations that resist being broken down. The smallest prayer I got on me is, our father, what's wrong with me? And it remains uncashed beneath this mirroring sky that never stops falling. How you looked up, genuinely surprised that any word shrunk between us was worth keeping, even as its suggested promise was not. A promise with the same weight as the gossip and dirty limericks eighth grade boys salt each other with in their clubhouse patois. I remain unnamed on your tongue as any of the problematica and spittle in the vinyl compilation spinning colors around Saturn. Thus my desire for anything reaches across to you unanchored, unanswered, unwanted, yet who besides me has ever offered to hold the sun through your embrace? Let me bite the brassy spark igniting the chasm between us and plunge my nostrils into your lotus blossom afro with the slam dance of a bee in a ballhouse of pollen. The fibers of flaking stamen sprinkled like crumbs of atoms in your star-gazing eyes. Your lips dewy from narrating privately screened dreams, dreams, small-town playhouses that parody waking actions, cabarets blinking from orange to indigo to magenta and back in twilight darkness. Its ecstatic soundtrack, a nervous bird in a man's ribcage, my mouth harmonizing with rhythms loud as a river's choir, solving a sacrifice to be drowned in its desperate skin. Your complicated dreamscape ending in morning reflections that approach and admire you first. You steaming fragrant as fresh bread to find purchase in the world. Any part of the world with you in it, raw naked as a vegetable, electric fibers erect and reaching all sticky, sweaty with earth, your bouquet conflated in a promissory blossom and ooze. To go any further, I will have to inquire your expectation of a lips sugar. What pushes the simplest song into a hymn? What triggers desire to go viral? What veins sustains it? What lures anything to burst forth blooming? April's black cunt, sagebrush buttercup? Can I drink from you to resize me? Goldenrod, Columia, Crimson Columbine? What visions might your fermented nectar reveal? Camacia lily, blackbeard shrub? Along my face, light waves like severed butterfly wings are a mockery of beauty. I'm a demoted planet spinning, melting in an unmoved corner of space. I'm a bygone reptile that hungers prescription flora and truffles of the body. I'm drawn and fluttering under your black light of lichen ears, lightly salted, cinnamon hot, bold and buttery, perfectly foamy and fresh, holding a spring's yield of aggressive rouge, dimpled lacquer, shouting nature by its myriad names. With my hair snagged in your thorny fingers, your tongue bookmarking my Bible. I break out in Pentecostal devotion. Where have all the maps of bliss promised to lead? The shower and scrub of ultraviolet pollinators, the ecstasy of scratching every itch at once. My skin's unfinished spit shine beneath the complex solar halo of your caramel eyes holding me down, captive, captivated, broken, open and drowned in teasing, tonguing petals, bucking across an operatic keyboard of size, notes of varying touch. What have you done to me? What have you done through me? What have you done with this amused stillness, this solid river, this silent garden of eyelashes? What solves the riddle of my true name? I eat children down to their spongy rind, tone-tender, sucking salted skin, clean as crevice, loud and desperate, my mouth dripping emptied bodies. What remains after sucking gunpowder out of red hot shells? Thank you very, very much. That was absolutely stunning and so blown away. Thank you so much. James, do you have one more work or are we moving on? I know that we have an interview. It was so awesomely long. I thought those two were, I certainly can do one more if you would like. Yeah, let's close it off with the final poem that you selected. Thank you. For which I forgot, oh, okay. Which I forgot that I submitted that because I thought that second poem was so long. I was like, yeah, that's about 10 minutes in and of itself. This is also from the book. This is called Interview with a Rose, curved as a lip pouting for a kiss. Sponge of sunlight, my tiniest filaments stand in ceremony to your song of color. Insects decide to walk the labyrinth of your perfumed path. Are you tickled by these cellular inspectors sipping your sweet wine of particulates? Would you have preferred to be a robin burdened with the sky's most unique song? Do you wish you were the moon, a whole planet of petals with an atmosphere of cologne, a dolphin bathing in the coral medicines of an oceanic garden? You itch when you are closed, shy and anxious, unconcerned with weather, death or dementia. You are the earth's soldier of love, desire. Yes. What do you know of it? Okay. Thank you so much for closing us off your section with that wonderful interview with the Rose. Thank you. Alrighty, well, let's move on to our second reader. Excited to introduce Lydia Elias. Lydia is a queer Ethiopian-American woman based in Oakland, California. Her work includes poetry and personal essays. She has performed spoken word around Northern California. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and she enjoys spending time in nature and investing in community engagement in the Bay Area. Join me in welcoming Lydia to the stage. Hi, everyone. I'm so honored to be sharing in this space with you all today. The essay I'll be reading is How to do a three-strand twist. And this is a braided essay. And for those who are unfamiliar, braided essays weaves in multiple threads together to make one cohesive essay. As you listen, try to see if you can recognize the different threads that make up this essay. How to do a three-strand twist. Before you begin your twist, be sure to wash and condition your hair thoroughly, twice with shampoo and once with conditioner. Brush your conditioner-filled hair with a comb in sections. Wash out the conditioner. I never knew how safe home could feel like until I lived with you. What it felt like to want to come home every day. What it felt like to wait on the couch and hear the key turn and see your face and feel my whole body glow and smile. I did not know I could be this happy. I did not know I could feel this safe. But I did with you. After you leave the shower, you must have the four following materials to properly twist your hair. Denman brush, a bore bristle brush, Cantu's Curl Defining Cream, and a hair oil of your choice. There was always so much happening on campus. Classes, parties, extracurriculars, midterms, exams and events. So much freedom. More freedom than either of us do what to do with. I was scared and so were you. I never told you though. You never told me either. Being away from your home where you always felt safe terrified you. Being away from my home where I never felt safe terrified me. We were okay as long as we were together. We watched stand-up comedy in the apartment. We laughed until tears fell. We cuddled. We talked about everything and nothing. I was your home away from home. You were my first real home. I do not wanna write about my mother. I do not wanna write about my dreams and my fear of those dreams never coming true. I do not wanna write about the time my parents betrayed me. I do not wanna write about the grief that has not left me for years. You will work through the twists and sections. Put half of your hair up in a ponytail while you work on the other half. Split the half that you are working on in two. First focus on the half that is closest to your face. Take a dollop of Cantu in your hands, rub it together and spread it through the first section of your hair, from the ends to the roots. Rake through your hair with your fingers, then brush through it ends to roots using the Denman brush. You cried a lot. I didn't, you cried so much and I cried so little that I wondered why that was. I watched as you furred your dark brown eyebrows and ejected whimpers from your throat as tears fell and parts of your face, mostly your nose began to redden. Why couldn't I cry like you? Why couldn't I let it out? If I did, it would kill me, I would think. That scared me, so I stopped asking myself. I do not wanna write about making myself small so my mother could feel worthy. I do not wanna write about the loneliness I felt when I was with her at her house and the loneliness I feel now in my home. I do not wanna write about numbing my emotion since I was nine years old. I do not wanna write about never being good enough for her. Spray or pour the oil onto your scalp in that section only. Massage it in, put oil onto the ends of that section, rub it in, brush again using the Denman brush. After that section is properly moisturized, use the bore bristle brush to brush flat the top of your hair a few times. Shortly after I broke up with my girlfriend at the beginning of the fall semester of our junior year, I knocked on your bedroom door. It's me, can I come in? I asked. Yeah, dude, come in. You quickly responded. You're laying on the extra long twin bed they provided in our on-campus apartment. You began to sit up to make room for me. I sat at the foot of the bed. I wanted to tell you what happened but I did not know how. I opened my mouth and closed it. I tried again. We see, we broke up. I broke up with her. I gassed and tears started to fall. I felt the violent wave of emotions began to release from my body. I looked into your eyes. You quickly took my hand and yours and wrapped your other arm around my body. I immediately relaxed and allowed myself to release more tears, more pain. I do not know if I was crying about the breakup or if I was crying about something else but I did know that as long as you were holding me it was okay to let it out. I do not want to write about my feelings of hopelessness that have been a theme since I was 12 years old. I do not want to write about the near suicide attempts. I do not want to write about my poor body image or my mother's poor body image or my sister's poor body image. I do not want to write about my eating disorder or my mother's eating disorder. Separate the hair into three equal strands. You will start by braiding your hair until you see the root of a braid. Loop the most left strand of hair over the middle strand then loop the most right strand over the middle strand and under the most left strand and tighten it against your scalp each time. Repeat this three times to see the root of the braid. I had just given my two week notice at my job as I walk onto the campus of your graduate school. It was strange. I was going to see you after not speaking for five months. I felt guilty and ashamed for cutting you off after graduation before we both moved to California for pushing you away for all of our senior year for being the reason for your tears. But when I reached out to you last month, you responded to my text the same day. When I asked if I could meet you to talk, you agreed. That had to mean something. I do not want to write about my childhood. I do not want to write about the house that was never a home. I do not want to write about my mother's abuse and mixed messages of love and hurt towards me. I do not want to write about the homophobic Ethiopian culture I was immersed in for years. I do not want to write about the hands wrapped around my neck. Now begin your three strand twist. Take the most left strand of hair and wrap it over the most right strand and take the newest most left strand and wrap it around the most right strand of hair. Continue to follow this pattern of wrapping the left strand past the middle and all the way around the most right strand. If the amount of hair in each strand becomes overly unequal, redistribute it evenly in between your twisting. When you are near the end of your three strand twist, you will convert it to a simple two strand twist to finish it off. Take the three strands and evenly split it into two strands. Twist the left strand over the right, tighten and repeat. You have now completed your first three strand twist. Repeat this process for each twist. When you sat down in front of me, I became shy. I started to smile and bit the inside of my cheek. I always smiled when I was nervous and you knew that but you did not smile. You sat there waiting for an explanation. You deserved one. You were my best friend after all. The explanations I gave our last year of undergrad were not genuine, just a delay of this inevitable conversation and the one we would later have in my home that month. But for now I needed you to understand. So I explained what I had been keeping in for so many years growing up. I said the speech I rehearsed at least 20 times in the mirror and I watched as you slowly began to soften. Tears fell on your face and when I finished you said, okay, we can hug now. It was strange. I was running from you for over a year and during that time I forgot that you were my safe place. But I felt it again. I felt so good. I felt good that you were tall and I was short. When you held me, my body got lost in yours. I did not tell you that I was in love with you. That would come later. You did not reject me that day. That would come later. We did not stop speaking to each other. That would come later. It was time for good. At that moment, all I could think was, I am finally home. I do not want to write about gray areas. I do not want to write about the anger and hurt and confusion and love. I do not want to write about the uncertainty of my future. I do not want to write about providing unconditional love to my mother and never receiving it back from her, the person I needed it from the most. I do not want to write about that heartbreak that steps in unison with me each day. I do not want to write about any of this anymore. That sometimes, that is the only way I can move forward. The only way to get back up, let go and move on. Thank you. Thank you so much for that essay, Lydia. That was really beautiful. Don't forget that we do have a Q&A session at the end for our readers. So feel free to think a question, prep them away, or we will return to them at the end. Next, please join me in welcoming Charlie Jane Andes. Charlie is an author, columnist, and speaker living in San Francisco. She has written multiple science fiction books, including the Unstoppable series, and has published a book of essays. Never Say You Can't Survive about how creativity bolsters resilience. She also hosts a recurring literary event, Writers with Drinks, in which local writers share their work with an appreciative and tipsy audience. Welcome, Charlie. It's actually Charlie Jane. Hi. Yeah, so I'll keep this kind of short. I'll just read part of a story that was in Zizava a while back called This Is Why We Can't Have Nasty Things. And I'd love to see people reacting to the chat. If you're in the audience today, please go into the chat and chat because it feels like we don't actually know there's an audience unless you're actually in there responding. So, you know, love to hear your thoughts in the chat. Okay, I have something to tell you. I'm leaving. I still love you, but I can't love this city anymore. Wanda gestures around, indicating the remains of San Francisco. Smoke break. Wanda and I pass a pre-roll back and forth on the sidewalk in a crowd of five people. Girls in skimpy clubwear, guys in either track pants or wrinkled business suits that they clearly just wore on an airplane. A homeless guy watches us from across the street. The same guy who was just telling us the city seized all his belongings after we gave him 20 bucks. I can't help loving this town, I say. I'm one of those weird people who is a slut, except when it comes to cities. Yeah, but when Wanda blows a hot, fragrant, invisible cloud, they kill to our bar. Glamrock isn't actually dead yet, but it's holding its own wake tonight. This sticky-floored railroad-shaped dive bar has nurtured and protected and sometimes annoyed generations of trans girls, punk sluts, sex workers, drag performers, strippers and random queers. It's the sort of place where the bathroom stalls have no doors, so nobody can have sex or do drugs inside them. And it's going out of business next week. San Francisco used to have a million pockets and folds in her long, flowery skirts where the strange and the barely loved could create their own reality, but lately, not so much. This is why we can't have nasty things, Wanda grumbles. The joint burns all the way down to her fingertips, so she tosses it and heads back inside and I follow. Random memories overwhelm me when I venture inside Glamrock. Over here, over here on this tiny stage, I did my first and last performance in the Friday Night Drag Show, which was mostly trans women. I lip synced to an old Sheena Easton song about walls made out of sugar. Over there, some creepy dude grabbed my ass under my tiny pleather skirt and thong and demanded to know about the status of my genitalia. The back corner with the long bench against the mirrored wall is where I used to hide with five or six trans friends from the brat army snarking about everything. And right here, by the women's room with the busted hand dryer is where I met Wanda for the first time ever. They were playing an old Destiny's Child song and something shifted inside me when I saw her long dark hair, huge false lashes and fuck everything, smile. I can't describe the feeling in terms of a physical sensation except that there was this valve inside me that had rusted shut, maybe never opening fully since the end of adolescence and somebody suddenly grabbed a pair of pliers and yanked it all the way to the left. Something flowed that was warmer than blood and twice as oxygenated. My head floated. I felt Destiny's Child in the soles of my feet. We danced on and off surfaces with and without rhythm. Eyes open and eyes closed until our hands became petals for our stamen faces. I couldn't believe Wanda actually wanted to go home with me out of all of the pervert stars in this place. Mouths glued together, hands on each other's elbows, grunting, giggling as we rolled around on my futon. But we also never left this bar at all or at least we always came back every weekend and many weeknights. Dating Wanda meant getting to know every filthy inch of this place and the names and backstories of a dozen semi-regulars. Our whole relationship centered on this one watering hole. There are places where you go to get picked up or to pick someone up, but then if you spend enough time in them you find yourself getting adopted instead, becoming part of a whole scene. I told this to Wanda once and she laughed. Sometimes the best communities come out of people just trying to get laid. I love that moment where we start taking care of each other instead of only wanting to fuck each other. Wanda works as a graphic designer and her phone is full of work contacts but also people she had sex with five years ago who will still move everything, sir who will still drop everything to help her move a refrigerator. That's just how it works, Wanda said. It's true. Back when I first met Wanda, I had so many lovers that I had no more bandwidth for all their problems. Like Gravy was getting evicted and Jerry's bed frame shattered and Roxy was getting evicted and Suzie's water heater broke down and ZQ was getting evicted and Frankie's truck was making a noise like one of those truffle, sniffing pigs all the time and also Frankie was getting evicted too. I couldn't be there for all of them so I just started networking them with each other like I got Frankie to replace the bed frame while Gravy fixed Frankie's truck and I was also sleeping with a housing rights attorney named Trini who helped everyone to fight their evictions. I basically became a referral service among all the people I was fucking. Inside Glamrock, everyone mourns raising dirty shot glasses to catch the flickering black light and dancing on their stools to the club music. Ricky hugs two people at a time. Wilmot keeps buying me drinks, Jess wants to take selfies in front of the neon sign with anybody who comes near. I'm seriously going to have no place to go anymore where I don't feel like an endangered species. Angela yells over the vintage techno. We drink and we drink but we don't get drunk because Glamrock has always watered its drinks like tropical ferns. The next smoke break, Wanda starts talking about all her lovers who live in other cities. There's the cute NB in Portland, the soft bearded boy in Detroit and so on. Maybe it's time to become poly itinerants or polynomadic, polyperipatetic, traveling around from lover to lover, living nowhere except for a dozen sweeties bedrooms all over the place. Wanda has a job that she can do from anywhere and an apartment that she doesn't mind abandoning unlike me, every city a different body. You're really just going to up and leave, I say. The neon sign sputters and goes off for a moment. I'll come back. Wanda looks into the gutter. You can be one of the lovers that I visit. I don't want to be a way station. I don't want to have to reconnect over and over again and keep disconnecting. I want to be the place where Wanda comes to rest. And I'm going to stop there. Thank you so much, Charlie Jane. I loved seeing the world of Glamrock and thank you for inviting us into it. Last but not least, I'm really excited to welcome Leo Min to our virtual stage. Leo has listened to, played and performed and written about music for most of their life. Their debut novel, Beating Heart Baby is about boys, bands on Los Angeles. They've profiled and interviewed acts including Japanese breakfast via Sayawama, Mooney, Caroline Palaszek, Christine and the Queens, Ravina, Tashi, Speedy Ortiz and Mitski. Leo, welcome. Thank you so much. Hello, thank you for having me and the other readers here today. So yeah, BHB, Beating Heart Baby is out now but the thing that I'm going to read today is an essay that I actually read a little bit of at The Last Writers With Drinks. That was hosted by Charlie Jane Anders and it's called Talking to Girls in the Bathroom Line. I sense them, those radiant celestial beings glittering like craft store floors. Girls, girls, girls waving at their friends who are somehow always at the front of the pit asking, is there something in my teeth with a strange voice, lips pulling beyond their smiles, blowing a strand of hair out of their eyes while tapping their fingers on the steering wheel waiting for the train to finish crossing, wiping their forehead with the back of their hand, touching the stove when it's still too hot and yelping, holding their breath under sweeping waves, cupping their hands around their friends' ears to bequeath quotidienne or astronomically life-shattering intel, pinching their screens and tilting their wrists to conjure other versions of themselves or maybe taking their hair down or up or turning on some light in the background or off to their side or maybe they're talking, chattering to the listeners who may or may not exist, chanting their prayers as they unroll their lives, their magic, their misery, their potential and possibility. They're almost and could've beens and still want tos on calls and work calls and emergency calls to friends and lovers and friends who could almost be lovers and lovers who will never be friends or family or the ones who've earned the mantle or professionals or priests or magicians or just God themselves, listening to music through headphones on the way to the corner store right after twilight, down streets shivering with music and more music and laughter and shouting and crying and life, all that life just for girls. Within the cosmology of girls, there is no girl quite like the girl you meet in line for the bathroom at a party, somewhere between the hours of five more minutes and is this forever? She might look intimidating but she smiles when you accidentally on purpose meet her eyes. Yeah, you can't believe how long you've been waiting, just like what's going on in there? Are we short? Hey, are you sure the door is actually locked? Can you try knocking again? Giggling even as some gear in your mind slips its teeth. Sometimes you meet a girl in the bathroom line who hits you like a tuning fork and the two of you symbolically kiss both sides of an imaginary clasp, an interlocking ocarina that somehow only plays one song. You talk yourselves into two halves of a locket and you talk endlessly, feeling the rapidly contracting silence around you because you trust each other here. You want to trust each other, sharing a clamshell universe until the door clicks open to let one of you in and when it's time to pass the baton, you don't let your palms touch in the handoff. And sometimes you bump into someone and you wait for something that used to happen to happen again, but something has happened to you. And as you walk away, she watches you with not fear but not suspicion. All of this is to say, one of my favorite parts of going to parties at houses, at clubs, used to be bumping into girls while waiting for the bathroom. You'd learn so many names and share yours so many times. You'd very quickly pick up various scripts and situations such as if a girl is crying or there is nothing like a crying girl in the bathroom of the club, she's married, she's more married than married. She's the dawn that Juliet faced and the dawn that gilded her death. Secrets and snot and bold-faced intentions flow like a skating waterfalls. Sometimes you'll walk away with a promise. Let's hang out again at curdles once you step back into the party. But it felt good to be believed. It feels good to be believed and received and rewarded. I'm amping up the drama a little bit. Really, most bathrooms at most parties unequivocally suck. The floors can be so sickeningly sticky like you're walking on a honey-lathered tongue. The smell is usually a mixture of piss and your least favorite flower. But every now and then, you talk to a girl who leaves an etching of herself in your inner eyelids. You might not remember what she looked like, the sound of her voice, the way she carried herself as she talked with you. But she's an extra flourish around a cursive capital letter, an example that justifies the rule. And she's who you remember when you remember the girls. I'd been injecting myself with testosterone for four months before the office I tempt that shut down for shelter in place. I'd already changed my name on the communication channels and answered some questions and dodged more. On my end, I was taking a bus and then a train to get to therapy where I talked for what felt like hours but was usually more like 40 minutes nonstop about the slowly growing certainty that my gender was emerging into some unexpected final form and that the chrysalis of womanhood was beginning to choke it slash me. But once I ejected from the orbit of my office life, I had unexpected time to build another cocoon from the privacy of home and I dissolved in anticipation of transformation. For the longest period of my life, I had my body pretty much to myself. No one besides one to scan, judge or praise from a distance or as close as I wanted. My partner and I settled into a new rhythm and hit repeat. Every day passed as a showering of leaves scattering and smattering light and shadow like diffusing rain. I got used to not thinking about my body though I did startle a few times over the weeks that turned months and then years caught by the reflection in the mirror realizing that something was different. Then the engine of commerce coughed and clamored as the world opened up, I tiptoed around the degraded contours of my scheduled life but eventually did begin going to parties again performing the rituals of seeing and being seen. And I did what I thought I always did as me who I was am bopping and blushing from my heart to my toes. And talking to girls, including a girl I met at a party where the host was painted blue and the rented lights were blue and the strobing halo around her head left a blue after image in between flashes of starlight. She asked me if I was on drugs and seemed surprised that I wasn't and that I didn't ask her for any. She complimented my energy and then she held me in her all blue eyes. It was hard to see anything clearly through the fog regardless she regarded me and I felt this inner ear frequency shift and then dawn in a flash. She knew she was a girl and she wouldn't phrase it like this but she was curious where exactly I landed. What exactly I was? Mostly she didn't know how to talk to me or she thought she knew but now wasn't sure and I knew that I'd gotten exactly what I wanted. I don't remember what she looked like, the sound of her voice, the way she carried herself as she talked with me but I remember that shift, a spilled open shaft of pure sunlight like a smear of mascara across the cheek of the world. Of course I had to lose something to step into that light but it gained something so much sweeter than it was bitter though the bitterness did linger and linger still. There are a few things more intimate than taking off your clothes in a space occupied by other people but there are things like stepping on a seashell or lighting fireworks in the street or licking a trail of ice cream up your wrist or reaching for the same plumb as someone else at the farmer's market. The last few times I used the women's bathroom I was uneasy about how uneasy I was, how badly I handled the specter of attention which was sometimes real but mostly not and how desperately I wanted to explain that maybe people who look like me belonged here but I knew I didn't belong here but old habits were hard to shake and I still didn't have the courage to face or trust myself completely. Intimidated not by the intimacy of undressing which at least always occurred behind the stall door but instead the fake intimacy of mimicry. I knew enough to know what I should do in that space and how to do it. I also knew enough to know that I didn't want to be there and that every effort I made to unravel the Gordian knot of my intentions, desires and actions would be better spent just changing which meant giving up the girls who are actually no monolith except in my memory but with whom I used to swim in a school, at school, at the club, at a rest stop, at a show and of course in the line for the bathroom trading glances and compliments and cruelties and collective madness and toilet paper under stall seats. All those girls who built me up and tore me down all those girls who knew I wasn't one before I knew myself and all those girls who arrived at girlhood in the same way I've departed. I tugged the ribbon in my hair and it unfurls and keeps unfurling as an illusionist prop my own shy but sure sleight of hand a magical girl transformation in reverse that keeps going farther, further until I hit the beginning of the universe or at least my life. She's still there wrapped around my wrist like a balloon string or a charm bracelet or a child's hand captured in photographs I can look at and ones I can't recorded in writing where she wonders why, why, why? She raised her palms to the sky and planted them on the ground and pressed them together in her mimicry of prayer. All she'd wanted was to make it to the future and I brought her there in the ship of Theseus my mimicry body which over time has become real in the ways I wanted it to and real or still in ways I never knew it I could be. I've never chatted with anyone in the line for the men's bathroom in any way there usually isn't one. Inside the guys don't talk or they stop talking when I walk through. I feel the glances like mats on a hot day but everybody has to piss. I do what I came into do and then I wash my hands dry them off, stretch out my shoulders and emerge back into our ugly, gorgeous world grateful and relieved living the life that used to only be a dream. Thank you so much Leo, that was wonderful. Really enjoyed that. So that brings us to the end of our readings for this afternoon. I'd love to open it up to a general Q and A from our audience. So if you have any questions for our readers please enter them into the chat. Give a few moments for people to hopefully do that. And also if any of our readers have questions for each other I'd be also really happy to help facilitate that as well. I kind of started with like at least one question for all of our readers. Something that I noticed that was common between all four of your pieces was there is like there is like a deep sense of reverence and almost worship for different types of spaces or memory. So, you know, in James' piece there is like, you know a literal address to the gods and in Lydia's there is the exploration of like the college like dorm room as like a space where intimacy is created. Of course, in Charlie Jane's work we have glam rock and this queer space that is changing and the question of what happens when we depart from it. And then finally, we have Leo Min's this ode to the girls in line at the bathroom which is such a specific space. So I'm really curious about about, yeah, where these like kind of divine spaces like how they exist in your work. Like what questions you bring to them and curiosities you bring to them. And I'm curious if in listening to everyone else's pieces it's brought in new ideas about the space that we consider to be sacred. I just have to say like one of the things that it's I think partially because I also miss this a lot while, you know, we were all in shelter in place and not running around was like the idea that there is something so specific about being able to like not even necessarily like make contact with someone in a space like that but to like just be around other spaces like that where it's like the ability to have like a chance encounter, you know, or to have like that moment with a stranger or to have a moment of intimacy just surrounded by other people so that it in some ways like takes the pressure off of yourself in that way. That was like something that I just noticed in the other pieces too. And I was like, yeah, like I don't know maybe it's like the edge on that is just sharpened because of the isolation that a lot of us have gone through recently. Yeah, I'll go really fast. I mean, I'm really interested in how we build community and what kind of spaces bring people together. And I think part of what I wanted to talk about in my piece that I wrote for Ziziba's Bay Area issue is partly how we're losing a lot of spaces that are really important and how we have to really fight to keep the spaces we still have because especially here in San Francisco you know, gentrification and displacement are just driving away communities but also destroying the places where we're able to gather. And you know, I feel like there's this kind of idea that in order to have a really great community space you have to be kind of take it really seriously and build something that's like very kind of institutional and very kind of, you know, kind of sanitary. And I feel like, no, actually the best, a lot of the best communities spaces that I've belonged to have been ones that were kind of dirty and kind of like people who just came there to get laid but then they ended up sticking around. And like, I feel like that's been my experience of queer spaces especially is that we come together just because we want to party sometimes and then it actually turns into something deeper and more meaningful and I think that that's actually beautiful. Yeah, I think it's essential for all of us to make sure we document our safe spaces as a way of kind of like illustrating to other people how the fact that no two safe spaces are kind of alike and the fact that it's possible to create a safe space unique for yourself that may be unorthodox. It's kind of like to listen to the variety of artists discussing the creation and the claiming of certain spaces help and validate other people to create something unique and special for themselves. So it's kind of like as we talk about our own situations it seems to help and validate other people to go out and claim space for themselves purposefully. Yeah, I just want to add on to that. I think the physical space is so important. Charlie, Jane, when you were reading your part it painted such a clear picture in my mind the emotions that you spoke and it also brought my own memories and I think that's something that I think we've had to learn to create and foster community in new ways with the pandemic but with a physical space you go into that space again even after years or months and it brings on those emotions likely and it brings on those memories and I think that's something about a physical space whether it's a campus, a club, a house whatever it is, whatever it is for you. So I think that that's something that's just very valuable. Yeah. James, I know you're unmuted. I want to give you a chance in case you have anything left to say. No, no, I'm good. No problem. Yeah, I really appreciate all of your answers and this exploration of what it means to build community especially as a queer and trans people and Charlie, Jane I really appreciate what you said especially about the Bay Area and San Francisco and how urgent it is that we preserve those community spaces for us. We have one more question from Min in the chat that I would love for the four of you to answer before we depart. So Min wrote, I'm really struck by how much vulnerability you all shared as a writer. I'm curious how you know when you're ready to put a story to the page. I guess I'll jump in. Oh no, you go, Leo, you go. I mean, we can keep the fee, it's okay. We can maybe go through the same order as we did before just because I started talking and now the onus is on me. I think that like for myself, like this has been one of the things that it was just the kind of memory that would not leave me. And there was a moment where I was just kind of like rolling the central idea of like, I don't go to parties and like talk to girls the way that I used to talk to girls at parties or the way that I talk to girls at parties just feels different now. And eventually it's like, that is, you know, your hypothesis in some ways. And the way that I tend to write my own like personal writing is like, I'll take that and then just start spitballing around everything there. And if I end up feeling like I have enough to say about it then it eventually makes its way down on the page because that's how I process this stuff. I don't really personally like to talk about this with other people. So then it's kind of like, if I'm feeling some kind of way, you know, most human experiences are not so specific that there is no kind of common theme. And so it was like, okay, like this is my thing but then how does it, how is it now becoming like a thorn, like sticking into other like the other thoughts that I'm having just being alive. And at what point do I have to address the thorn? And that's how, that's how I know. Yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like in terms of vulnerability in my writing, sometimes that some of the things I write are more vulnerable, some of them are less. Like if I'm writing something that's just like a fun adventure with like people shooting each other with like ray guns, that's not necessarily as vulnerable but then you find unexpected vulnerability in there sometimes that kind of sneaks up on you when you get to like something that's like emotional and kind of intense and personal in the middle of that. And that's often what I try to dig towards. Like I try to kind of dig down to whatever that is. But sometimes I really make a conscious effort to write stuff that's more personal and vulnerable because I feel like that's part of keeping your writing fresh and keeping it like honest. And so, you know, I'll have moments where I'm like, I really want to write something that's more kind of like that speaks to me and my situation more. And that's often a lot of trial and error and just kind of like kind of writing a bunch of versions of something until you find the version that feels kind of true. But it's all super messy. It's a messy process. Well, I guess I'll do it. I guess I'll go next. When I started doing poetry, I did not really hear or see, excuse me, a lot of black men talk very personally and very closely and very intimately and very vulnerably about anything. And I realized that the reason I wrote anything at all in my journal for myself, stuff that was never intended to be shared or poems that I was working on, anything that sent me to the page was this sensation of something larger than me that I both am puzzling about and in the process of figuring out and want some kind of validation for, want to be seen for. In my life, I'm not very chatty. I'm not very friendly. I'm not very much in people's faces, but I feel like what my vulnerability is comes out in the art because I periodically feel cornered by something. And when an animal gets cornered, you respond in a certain way. And I respond by creating art. I respond by exploding in a sort of like understanding and that vulnerability and that ability to take those elements and put them on the page is an act of courageous movement and it's something I was taught in some open mics by some other poets, but it also seems essential to me to be honest and to be truthful on the page because honesty to me is a version of intimacy. And intimacy is something that I don't get a lot of, I guess personally in my life, they're not people I can go grab and share this thing in my heart so that thing in my heart gets placed in art. And that version of intimacy and vulnerability gets exercised on the mic. And it is something that works for me. And it is scary and it's also incredibly relieving because it is a sense of finding validation for oneself and creating like a pearl, like an oyster might a pearl, creating something of beauty based on a slight irritation that's going on personally. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, this is such a good question. I think it depends sometimes when I'm writing poetry, often for me that just starts with emotion. It's a emotion that I need to get out and I just need to put it on paper because that's a release for me. If I share it as a whole other story, but that's usually how I sort of work with poetry and then with other stories, sometimes it is something that is sort of reoccurring that keeps coming back to me, sort of like calls to me to write about. And sometimes those can be the ones that are more vulnerable like the piece that I read today and they can be harder to write, but also important for me to write them. Yeah, but I think it depends. And sometimes I don't know that something is going to be a story until I'm already in the process and I have started and then I say, okay, maybe this can be something and expand on it. Yeah. Thank you so much everyone for those answers. I'm James, I think that the image of being cornered by something and having to respond through art was really stunning. If it's all right with everyone, we've got one final question that I think was really compelling that I would love for our readers to answer. So Dior asked, wondering if any slash all of you can speak to what constraints, if any you were writing through or writing up against as you were writing what was shared today. I'll go first this time, just, you know, I mean, I had a deadline, it was due for Ziziva. Also, I was writing kind of obliquely about real scenes that I'd been in and real places where, you know, you wanna make sure you get it right and don't like step on other people's memories and you wanna make sure that when you're talking about spaces where there's like sex workers and where there's like all these contested things going on with like sex workers and also with, you know, people who behave inappropriately sometimes who are, you know, some of the visitors to that space, you have to handle it like honestly but not like, you have to be careful. And so I really did feel a huge responsibility to be careful and get this right and be respectful of that space that I was one space in particular I was thinking of. Yeah, I think for me, I had never done a braided essay before. So that was something I was sort of experimenting with. So just doing a different type of form and structure was interesting and playing with those threads. And I think another constraint came actually in the editing process with Foglifter because the guest editor I was working with kind of pushed me a little bit, but in a good way. And I, the very last thread at the end was something that I had added on after the fact. And I'm glad that I did, but it was also very hard for me to write because it was, I think one of the most vulnerable parts. So yeah, definitely I think just a lot of emotions can come up when writing about vulnerable topics. I think for me, oh. No, no, no. No. I would just say that like I, my book came out this summer and it was the first long form fiction writing that I've done since I was a child. So then obviously I'm trying to write another thing like that, but it's been in the process of working on that book, besides picking up like other freelance reporting assignments because that's my original writing background. I haven't really had a chance to just kind of like play with language in the way that I used to kind of for fun through short form fiction and stuff like that that I wouldn't necessarily share or finish. But it's like as I've tried to reorient the way that I write in all these different forms that are both now I'm used to it and now that I'm also like in a very public facing, I guess like I'm working through stuff publicly now versus before it was like there was no expectation that any of this would ever actually be seen by people or heard by people. And it's like I have never written poetry formally before but I've always really admired the way that poetry comes alive when it's spoken. And that was something that now that I'm doing this stuff and thinking about actually performing this work and performing this, all of this, that part has pushed me into playing more with the actual music of language as it's spoken. Instead of always thinking about it as something that someone is reading in a magazine or online. Now it's like if I'm going to do this like I should set the expectation on myself coming from a music background to perform it like music to perform it like song and to write something and to continue honing a writing style that actually places that intention first which is why being a part of a reading series like this is so freaking cool. Cause now you have like the onus is on that and it's like, okay, now that I know that this is a path forward for like for myself and like I can both appreciate the bravery of everybody who regularly does this kind of thing. And also I'm just kind of working toward that bravery and that whole new world for myself. Yeah, I was just going to say which even as I think it sounds like marketing copy but I realize I don't really think, I think I feel constrained in my personal life. I only actually feel free when I'm writing. So I don't think in terms of constraint or constriction in the work itself I just feel it dealing with people and with myself on a day-to-day basis. I always love questions about what your writers are kind of challenged with especially after we get to be blown away by their work cause at the end of the answer that always feels so connected and feels empowered by knowing what you're working with and knowing what you're working through. So thank you so much for giving such thoughtful answers to those questions. I think with that, that'll be the end of our question and answer session. Thank you so much for those who have said in those really wonderful questions. So thank you so much for our readers. Again, if possible, please like give them love and the chat, another round of applause. Thank you so much for sharing your voices with us. I'd also really like to thank the San Francisco Public Library for hosting this really wonderful event. And thank you too for everything that you do for Career and Trend Stories and for everyone who attended. I'm gonna quickly give it back to Kevin who will do a final wrap up of this event. Thank you, Misha. And yeah, I just wanted to thank all of our writers for those truly stunning readings. Thank you so much for sharing today and for being here. And thank you, Misha and Boglitzer for creating this wonderful program. And thanks to our audience for being here on a Sunday afternoon and for your great questions. It was really wonderful. So we'll see you next time. Have a great day. All right, you too. Thank you, thank you everybody. Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you.