Miss Major Speaks - Toshio Meronek and Miss Major

On this site the poetic focus which includes “story” is represented by two Chinese characters. One “story” refers to “life” and the line of time, the life-line, which is the way story is mainly understood by the human brain. The second refers to “world”, and the idea that to journey through events is to be in a landscape, a world with its own special character and meaning. In all of the story-tellings which we come across one type of story is more or less important than the other, although both are involved. A routine memoir is more “life” but “The Lord Of The Rings” is about a “world”. And all that’s true of accounts of trans lives. “Miss Major Speaks”, as a published book, is a “world” book. World books have a centre, and often a main character, and Major Griffin-Gracey is the lens through which we see the world, which is made up of appearances, events and lessons learned. You get the feeling that Miss Major wouldn’t be interested in telling a life, all in good order and connected, so it’s as well that we have dedicated assistant Toshio Meronek to draw out the telling and condense it all into a series of transcribed interviews. And without Toshio’s Introduction-cum-biography it would be hard to establish Miss Major’s chronological becomings. In fact, hell, it’s really hard to be quite sure when Miss Major did what, and sometimes why. Just as this is not an argument for justice, nor a blow-by-blow account of transition, so it is a slightly blurry record of someone who did stuff out in the world and has derived a philosophy of life from it all. When they did or didn’t have surgery, or comings-out, is subject to interpretation. That said Miss Major has, by her own account, had a hard-core life. Truckdriving, sex-work (naturally), charity work, oh, and Stonewall, all just for starters. Whatever she’s telling, she tells it well, and her world comes with some built-in attitude. A hard-core life often narrows down to the basics – as in, despite our best efforts in life nothing changes, and there is only getting along, getting by, and hard times. I am defined by my obduracy, my resistance to pressure and oppression. I have a high pain threshold. So the basics define Miss Major as a survivor. In contrast with recent memoirs by, say, Travis Alabanza or Joshua Ferguson, who examine their life-alternatives through the lens of their sensitivities Miss Major does not do Compromise. Everything is anchored to the needs and situations of her “gurls”. This is ego, but a particular kind of ego, a particular kind of American ego – and that can be a problem for some people. When the story of the world is told through an American perspective it comes out different. The orchestration is bigger, more emphatic. The myths of frontier survival and resilience and endurance over-ride other things. When a note is hit, when an American relates an experience, you can hear bigness around it. Everything is an epic. This can be a challenge to a non-American sense of things. When I first saw Kate Bornstein perform, a show about her family relations it scaled such emotional heights and resounding depths that I almost wanted to give up trying to perform. The importance of it all was daunting. And here’s Miss Major raising “the American question” again. The ego is saying, if you’re not black and trans in a female modality you know nothing, buddy. You don’t know the world unless you’ve lived this life, lived at the intersection of all this. But this ego says, sorry, that won’t do for me. Respect is due in both directions. I am a white European who works for trans recognition and knows a few other worlds beside the one you live in, and in some of them compromise and self-doubt fulfil the needs, not just of me but of others. And I, and others like me, have our song to sing. Demythologizing is a thing now and if the Wild West needs demythologizing so do some of our trans myths. Cowboys became a thing after the West was Won. Not all trans are drag queens, and never were. To her credit Miss Major declares early on that “Stonewall never happened” and she is the latest testifier, - although from personal experience - to take apart the conventional gay version of the story, in the process, of course, of creating another myth, of a kind of trans separatism.. Don’t ask America to dismantle America. But just as we are harvesting a crop of trans self-testimonials at the moment which wear their struggles on their sleeves so something a bit tougher and categorical can be a tonic, so Miss Major has a place in our hearts. But don’t read “Miss Major Speaks” for questions, even though it’s a dialogue – just live with the answers.