 All of the jokes that I've been receiving today is how they invited the Canadian to come and read on election night. Thank you so much for the invitation. And I have such deep roots with radar as someone who sort of, I feel like I came of age in San Francisco at a time when I was not doing a whole lot of writing and doing a little bit more partying. And I remember sitting in this room with Michelle T and someone asked a question about publishing or writing and she looked at them and said, you know, my advice to all writers is write the book first and then figure out what to do with it. And I come here with my first book project. It's called You Only Live Twice. It's out with Coach House in Canada. And it takes up my transition from female to male and my friend Mike Holboom's Near Death from AIDS in the 1990s as Starter Blocks for Second Lives. And I'm going to read you two short pieces from the book today. Do I have to be very close to the mic? I do. Okay. Great. No. I once walked in on my parents having sex, which was a remarkable feat as I'd only ever seen them kiss a handful of times. I was eight, it was Mother's Day, and I had gone downstairs early to make coffee. I'm not sure how I did that exactly, but after a successful brew, I carefully tiptoed up the carpeted stairs and opened the lever door with my elbow, hoping to surprise them with my two cups of Joe. Rounding the corner toward the bed, I saw them on top of each other, not really moving and making little to no sound. Startled, but also as if I had been rehearsing for this moment for my entire life, I turned around slowly and closed the door again behind my back. My next step, to set the coffee cups down on the floor, take a deep breath, knock on the door, pick up the cups, and enter the room again. Of course, after the knock, they had taken up positions on opposite sides of the bed, probably never to have sex again. A few years later, a friend introduced me to a public access radio program called The Sunday Night Sex Show with Sue Johansson, wherein people would call in to ask for sex advice. The show was awkwardly timed six to eight p.m., which was earlier than my bedtime, and I was not one to go to bed before I had to. Successfully faking a stomach ache one night, I huddled into bed, eager for a secret listen. Unfortunately, the cord of my earphones wasn't long enough to allow me to remain settled on my pillows, so I had to spin around and put my head where my feet would be normally. Halfway through the show, my mom walked in to check on me. Startled by her entrance, I jolted up, pulling the headphones cleanly out of the stereo jack. And then you can ease the penis into the vagina, replied Sue to a curious caller. My stomach is feeling better, I said. This next section is called Funeral. For years, my mom asked me to accompany her to see my grandmother. At the time, my grandma was living in an assisted care facility on the outskirts of a town in which I grew up, a rich, white, steppward-wise... Whoa, can we just start this whole story one more time? I just realized that I'm not an ambidextrous bookholder. I'm gonna need to do some work. For years, my mom kept asking me to accompany her to see my grandmother. At the time, my grandma was living in an assisted care facility on the outskirts of the town in which I grew up, a rich, white, steppward-wise-inspired place I never wanted to be in that town again, let alone its outskirts. I had left home for California at 18 as a blonde-haired, over-achieving girl with a boyfriend, only to return home almost a decade later as a tiny, mustache-sporting, tattooed man. Such a transformation rendered details like my prior over-achievements and past-boyfriends narratively insignificant to the majority of people I encountered thereafter. And other than acknowledging awkwardly obvious and unnecessary statements such as, hey, you look so different these days. I hadn't felt the need to explain anything to anyone. My grandma was a wicked woman. It's a strange thing to remain sympathetic to someone so cruel. Something about cycles of abuse and realizing that she was acting out on her kids in a way that she was acted out upon. As if her manic hysteria was somehow the only available resource to her and therefore we, as her kids and grandkids, were supposed to forgive and forget. In my most recent request for my company, my mom told me that grandma was dying and while, yes, she had ostensibly been dying for decades, the time to visit was really now or never. We drove out to the nursing home together on a frigid, snow-blown January night. A dutiful daughter, my mom had been making these trips periodically all the while acknowledging that such care for her would never have been reciprocated. On the drive, mom warned me that grandma was uncomfortably thin and not particularly lucid. The walls of the home were painted a mute green and smelled of alcohol swabs. Walking down the hall to my grandmother's room, I felt my stomach contract involuntarily. The silent combination of anger and potential shame was only mitigated by what felt to me like Game Day adrenaline. If grandma was gonna fuck with us, I was gonna be ready. My mom and I locked eyes knowingly and shared a deep breath as we approached the curtain-off area. But before we could turn the corner, a nurse sporting oversized scrubs and a 1970s lesbian haircut stopped us in our tracks. I'm so sorry, but she just passed. We froze. Right now, I asked quite genuinely, even though I'm sure it sounded extremely sarcastic, just moments ago, she said. As if we were trapped in the second act of a Neil Simon play, my mom's younger brother and his wife surreptitiously emerged from the elevator to join us for the news. Right now, asked my uncle in disbelief, just moments ago, the nurse repeated. Outside every room at the nursing home were small glass vitrines filled with trinkets and memorabilia specific to each patient behind each door. Walking the corridors, one might assume that everyone in firm was a war veteran, or at least in love with one. I gazed upon the gold frames, tiny ceramics, and fake flowers staged in the box on my grandmother's behalf. Even if she hadn't been dead, her memories certainly were. My mom reached for her cell phone and my aunt followed the nurse down the hall. Well, Chance, I'm not really sure what to say, said my uncle. When I changed my name to Chase, I did not consider its associative similarity to the word Chance. Nor did I understand the confusion that would ensue when Chas Bono decided to transition and choose something so phonetically similar. Anyway, my mom returned from making calls and excused me from talking to my uncle by requesting that we speak for a moment in private. A generous, soft-spoken woman, my mom's conversion from Christianity to Orthodox Judaism in the year prior continued to intensely inform all of her choices. In my faith, she said to me quietly, we never leave a dead body alone. Okay, I responded quite plainly as if I had just been given the weather report, and I have to go make arrangements for the funeral home to come and pick up her body, so I need you to go sit with her. Walking through the curtain, I wondered what it must have felt like to call that room home for so many years. Turning the corner toward to see her, I was immediately overwhelmed. The staff hadn't unplugged her from the ventilator yet, which meant that a machine continued to rhythmically pump her chest up and down. She couldn't have weighed more than 80 pounds. Her lips looked dry, and her fingers were purple. Well, now at least we know, said my aunt as she walked in and sat beside me. Nobody wants to admit the limits of their labor and taking care of a dying person, but everybody knows that those limits exist. My uncle followed her into the room with my mom just a few steps behind. So I guess it's probably time we bring out Bill, he said. Bill was my grandma's second husband. Bill asked my mom. Grandma has been hiding grandpa in the closet, they exclaimed. Crossing the room where grandma still lay, my uncle shuffled through boxes of clothing and shoes in the bottom of her closet to reveal a large, bronze-plated urn cast into the shape of a golf bag. She wanted to have him forever, so we hid him under the shoes, they said. My mom looked as if she was attempting to contain a mouthful of marbles while sneezing. The urn was set on a side table now, making us a room of six. Aunt, uncle, mom, me, dead but still breathing grandma and dead but in a golf bag, grandpa. It's a very nice urn, I said. It is, said my uncle. I wonder if we could put her in there too. In the golf bag, questioned my mom. Will they want to be together forever, said my aunt. Without so much as skipping a beat, my uncle reached into his pocket and revealed a small Swiss army knife attached to his keys. Do not open that urn in here right now, said my mom. We laughed. The anxiety in my stomach was momentarily replaced with such excitable glee that I could have opened that urn with my teeth. The nurse returned to the room with paperwork that she needed everyone to sign. We asked if she could turn off the respirator while she was there, and with a flip of the switch, the room went silent for the very first time. I'm gonna need some whiskey after this, said my uncle. We said our goodbyes in the parking lot before the funeral home people arrived to take grandma away. According to the care staff, watching a body leave the building in a bag is not good for anyone. In the parking lot, my mom and I were quiet. They're gonna put grandma in that golf bag, she said. And I bet she's gonna fit. Thanks very much.