LITTLESWORD_EXCERPT
It's spring and I've been thinking about the flowers. Here's an excerpt from a piece I’ve been working on. This one’s for the girls.
Unsurprisingly for a shoot about queer joy, the photographer - a cis gay guy - asks me to hold a flower, as if on cue. I hesitate, then oblige. He pulls a gladiolus from a bouquet in the vase, cut just beneath the blooms, its thick stem still wet. I hold it at a distance, like a humourless man holding his girlfriend’s handbag, then move into the next pose. Being asked to hold it felt like I was being made to hold my pre-mones dick. Hard, wet, with purpose.
*
September again. I break up with my boyfriend and go to work. Call time’s early, I leave home and walk across the Roman road to the other side of town, to an old industrial building that has been repurposed as office and studio space for artists and creatives, renamed The Archives. I’m assisting a friend, carrying lighting equipment and kitsch furniture from Facebook Marketplace across the car park, up the goods-in lift and down the hall to a photography studio. On set, a teenager’s bedroom has been erected against a white cyclorama wall: ugly wallpaper from a home improvement store is glued to a backdrop then clipped on a C-stand, cheap fluffy fabric from the market fills in for a rug on the floor; in between takes we make small talk about our work, awaiting further instruction.
The shoot is for a non binary transmasculine clothing brand; the set designer ties supermarket flowers to the spokes of the wheels on the model's wheelchair with clear wire. Again, among the flowers, gladioli appear. Softly, I ask the set designer if the flowers will be damaged by the spin of the wheels: the model's partner chimes in, having thought the same thing. The set designer reassures us that she has thought about this, her fingers moving nimbly, gaze fixed on the task at hand.
About a month later, I look it up. Gladioli means little sword.
*
Over the year, it becomes common for me to meet C by the statue of Winston Churchill. The bronze statue is always shrouded by tourists and police, C is always accompanied by a bike and a bag and we are always making our way to a protest or a vigil. Either one of us is usually running five to ten minutes late. Afterwards if there’s time, we debrief over noodles and beer on life, work and the movements of our desires. This time, we make our way towards the Home Office; a queer migrant woman has taken her own life in hotel accommodation waiting for asylum. Blood is on their hands. Summer has ended - it’s seven PM and we all stand around in the dying light. Familiar faces abound: an organiser, a friend from choir, a chaser from FEELD dot the crowd and we smile and nod or turn away in acknowledgement amongst the assembled chorus.
As the speeches come to an end, the organisers hand out white roses to lay down on a makeshift shrine of placards and candles on the polished marble entrance of the Home Office. I approach one of the organisers and am handed a rose. I step aside and shyly attempt to peel the petals back gently, encouraging the flower to open before offering it to the altar. "Sister", I hear a voice say coming from behind me. Another trans woman, one of the speakers, who is slightly older stops me. She tells me to hold the flower upside down and roll the stem quickly between my fingers, like you might rub your hands together when they are cold, and just like that, the greeny-yellow white rose opens.