entertainment

Heard Aaron Raz Link, Anthony Hawley, and then Harley Jane Kozak read tonight. Aaron twists my mind in lovely ways with his complex understanding of gender having been born "a girl" but then finding himself a boy and then making himself a boy, in the meantime kind of traumatizing his poet/editor feminist mother who was so happy to have a girl. It was interesting to see Aaron and Hilda's interaction. I'm not gossiping, but they have made themselves public figures by writing about their lives, and they are not private. They believe, after all, that the world needs our stories. Watching their interaction tonight and using my intuitive powers, I watched Hilda beckon to Aaron as Anthony read a bit in one of his poemies about how when babies are born, parents call out a name. "You see," Hilda seemed to be communicating to Aaron. "I wasn't trying to have a girl. It's what they said we had, so it's the name we gave you." In Aaron's poetry, he indicated that he'd felt hurt by the way his mother apologized to him for the girl stories she'd given him as a gift to use in life. She told him that she'd told him the wrong stories. "But those stories helped me," he was saying. Does it really matter that I'm not a girl? Hilda struggles with feeling like she was mis-reading her child all those years. But Aaron is saying, "I'm the same person. I'm just not a girl." They re-read their relationship with Aaron looking differently and seeming a different gender role, only it's the one that feels authentic to him.

to be continued on Harley Jane...