Last Exit To Brooklyn – Hubert Selby Jr

Until I read “The Queen Is Dead” chapter in this book I hadn’t found the authentic trans experience set down in print. I say “authentic” but the consciousness stream, the “girl” doings, the slap and shit and drugs, the rhythm of the thoughts and days, was all I knew of American trans lives and in some way exceeded even the furthest reaches of Narcissus to be found in the British scene. It was more raw and more artificial. It existed somewhere between drag and trans and queer. At times it actually hurt to read, and still does. Now memoirs are everywhere and the trans novels are heavily-styled and self-consciously literary. Selby was a queer bird and a troubled soul in a troubled body but made up the best of his writing from what must have been a hell of an adolescence and early work on the docks and created his style out of that. So, authentic in style and substance. “The Queen Is Dead” was his first story so he must have been well in with the girls from early on, and listened and shared a lot of talk-time with them. If anybody feels like getting too principled or moralistic about trans they should read it.