White girl

hello,

hello to all of you;

To the onlookers, to the oblivious, to the bad actors and the peeping toms. I see you. I see you, I see you, I see you. 

Welcome. Hello.

Hello to the 17 year old assistant at work who keeps talking about classic rock and fantasizing about hitting cyclists with his pickup truck. Hi Kevin. Hello. Continue to assist, Kevin.

Hello and welcome to the video engineer who sits across from me quoting Robin Williams before adding 'You know, Ms. Doubtfire always made me uncomfortable'. Hello Chris, hello. Do you know who I am Chris? Do you?

Hello to the Brazilian woman who is my assistant director and does not know what a Rick-Roll is. Hello Bruna, hello. Thanks for coming tonight.

 

 hello

 hello to all of you

I've gathered you here to indulge. I often dare wonder - do you see me? Really see me. Have you cracked the case? Have you put this brow with these hips? What about my hands? Or maybe my voice? Have you done the arithmetic? 

I think not. I know not. This privilege is so numbing. Bruna, did you know that I have twenty four thousand, eight hundred, ninety three dollars and twenty six cents in my savings account and that it's enough to pay for your green card? Did you know that I afforded a nine thousand dollar nose job? And that because of it, strangers no longer assume I was swaddled in a pale blue blanket shortly after my birth?

Now they assume - seem to know for certain - that I received a pale pink blanket. They believe that in middle school I gossiped with the other girls in the bathroom and that I ache with the moon each month. They seem to know me better than I know myself. 

This is the privilege I am awarded. 

Chris, how would you react to learning that rather than gossiping in the girls bathroom, I cautiously stepped a mere seven feet inside on a late summer night after everyone had gone home? That all I wanted was to exist in a space exclusively for those who ached with the moon - that I longed to be among them? Did you know, Chris?

This is the privilege I am awarded. 

Kevin, do you have any idea how close I was to being like you? That every Thursday as a child I donned a navy blue button up emblazoned with a barren array of iron-on patches while I struggled to understand what a clove hitch knot was, and how to create one? I think not, Kevin. Continue to assist, Kevin.

This is the privilege I am awarded. 

Sometimes I still attempt to tabulate just how much time I spend thinking about who I am, who I was, and what it all means. And honestly? I have no fucking clue. Time and trauma work in mysterious ways; ebbing and flowing, but never standing still. You can't separate the two. It makes me ache behind the eyes. 

Regardless, I know what I am now: a pseudo-cis white girl.

With love,

Solstice Everston