Tears in the Gallery

the echoes of a single sentence

Let me preface this post with one quick health update and two brief writing updates.

I went for another hearing test. The results were slightly different, but still indicated asymmetrical hearing loss, with the loss in my right ear worse. The next step is a hearing aid evaluation, scheduled for May 14.

I have updated my website, as my agent Alisha advised, to make it easier to find the different awards I’ve earned. And hey, the social media links at the bottom of each page on the site finally work.

And then this happened late on Thursday.

Lambda Literary is a polestar for queer writers, and I have been applying to their programs (unsuccessfully—the competition is always fierce—although I made it to the waitlist last year) since 2021. Lambda is also renowned for its annual awards for the best in new queer writing, so I am both happy and proud to earn this opportunity. I will be working on my second memoir, tentatively titled The Twenty-Year Engagement, which charts the journey Hiro and I shared to reach our marriage, alongside the history of the marriage equality movements in the United States and Japan.

The only downside to this acceptance is that I was not awarded a scholarship. Tuition is $1,100 (a number that shocked Hiro but one that is a quarter of the cost of attending other famous writing retreats like Sewanee and Breadloaf), and I have established a crowdfunding campaign to help me get there. I know, painfully so, how tight money is for everyone these days, and so I will be absolutely grateful to everyone who might be able to help out. Your generosity will not be forgotten.

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Two weeks ago, on Sunday, April 12, I was still in Williamstown, and although the mini-reunion events had wrapped up the night before, I was still with two other dear friends. We decided to visit North Adams, one town to the east, to visit the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, or MASS MoCA.

I always hesitate when it comes to contemporary art, which is more a reflection of my own insecurity—will I understand what the artist wants to say or hopes that I feel?—than anything else, and, in all honesty, there were a few exhibits at the museum which left me confused. But then there was also one very powerful exhibit.

Jeffrey Gibson’s Power Full Because We’re Different is an exploration of the two-spirit identity claimed by queer people among the tribes that existed in Turtle Island long before Columbus. The exhibit mentions the 1990 genesis of the term two-spirit as a broader umbrella for tribe-specific identities that defied the colonialist gender binary, such as the winkte within Sioux communities.

When I entered the first room of the exhibit, a large space dominated by color and the sound from multiple video installations, and in which were displayed some of the seven garments that Gibson used in a dance video presented in an upstairs room, my eye first landed on the platforms beneath the garments. The colors and patterns seemed to vibrate with intensity.

But when I raised my eyes and looked beyond the garments to the back wall, also vivid in color, I read the words there and stopped dead, suddenly crying.

Sometimes your body changes, and you don’t remember your dreams.

What dreams have I forgotten? For I know my body has changed over my six decades.

The first of those changes might have been puberty, and although I know I started writing at an early age and can recall some of my childhood dreams—I wanted to be a beautician when I grew up—I also know that the sudden understanding that I was not like other boys created a closet for so much of my personality. I was a distinctly feminine little boy, and although I can’t find the photo of me in my mother’s clothes and wig, rest assured, my wrists were limper than overcooked asparagus.

And let me enter this into the photographic record.

That’s me, at left, coyly clinging to my Aunt Regina. Also, mad props for my fashion sense! Those pants! That belt!

What dreams did that little boy have? What dreams were forgotten?

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Some family members have remarked on my memory. Although the Watson side of my family had more storytellers in its ranks, I remember different stories from the McManus side. Some were centered on cruelty, I admit, but those bad memories make the beautiful ones all the more tender. I can still see (and hear) my maternal grandmother guiding a very young and curious Brian through her garden, explaining how ants help the peonies to bloom, and informing me that the dogwood flowers remind us of Christ’s crucifixion. How lilacs were her sister’s favorite flower.

But for me to think that there are dreams I once had yet have since forgotten makes me grieve. I can remember so much of my childhood and adolescence, so much of my decade in Japan and my thirty-three-year relationship with my husband, but to know that there are dreams I once had that I have since forgotten is a sobering notion.