How to Enchant Your Life, part 4 - Leave the Game
How to Enchant Your Life, part 4 - Leave the Game
The Magik of Stepping Off the Board
[Part 4 of a four-part series, How to Enchant Your Life. Go here for Part 1.]
A friend texted me about an unsettling encounter in a Denver bar. A man sat beside her and said,
“What are you? Are you a man? A woman? A thing?”
My friend walked out, not wasting a word on the intruder.
The Papa-Culture Gambit
That’s Papa-Culture male privilege. What he can’t control, he labels and puts onto a gameboard.
He tried to turn my friend into a game piece. With the spurs of alcohol and arrogance, Papa moved one of his game pieces to defy decency and try to make my friend into a thing.
Methinks Papa Culture (and his minions) treat themselves the same way, subconsciously asking the mirror every morning, “What are you?”
My friend did the right thing in walking out. No response was needed, and she kept the situation from escalating.
Un-Belonging
Everyone feels like they don’t belong in this game. Unlike the game-piece intruder, my friend is doing something about it.
She’s transitioning, which flips Papa Culture’s gameboard. Since our youth, he’s hoodwinked us into playing the game like there’s nothing else. But he never tells us why he needs us to be that way.
Those who step out of the game scare the hell out of him.
That’s the way we enchant ourselves and the world.
Trans Magik
It’s not idle words or reassurance. Pre-surgery or post-surgery. Before or after laser and facial treatment. Regardless of what we wear. ALL of it is examined and questioned because trans folks walk out of Papa Culture’s game. We get to be ourselves, and that makes people fear us as threats.
In the end, every person has to rise from the game table, look in the mirror, and like what we see. That’s the way to stop playing games. Trans people are a few of the many witches in this world who see that.
Wonderful Witches
We witches don’t ask permission to leave the game and to be who we are.
The game isn’t whether we’re trans or cis, man or woman, in or out. There is no game. We step off the gameboard to be ourselves.
The Cosmos Is Happy
Pause the clack of dice in your hand. Look at the other game players, and say this simple phrase:
“The cosmos is happy.”
Say it when you’re deliriously happy.
Say it when someone questions you.
Say it whenever, ‘cuz, why not?
Say it enough times, and we finally believe it.
The cosmos doesn’t need us to say it in order for the cosmos to be happy. We need to say it to know that we’re the cosmos … and, well, WE’RE HAPPY!
Facing the Struggle
It’s okay to cry. Everyone struggles. Being a witch means facing it daily. Like Neo finally seeing the Matrix, we glimpse a universe beyond Papa Culture’s gameboard. We can’t go back, thank the Cosmos! In doing so, we don’t have to deal with any bystander’s game-enforcing questions.
We’ve done the truly playful thing in stepping away from the game table.
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