What’s in Pierre’s Closet
Grief follows me to the Berton House Residency. I call my mom the first morning and she tells me her partner of 25 years has died. It’s not a surprise, before I left we had helped him get settled in palliative care. The past two years have been one health catastrophe after another. He was ready to go; my mother was ready to let him go.
What lingers for the rest of the residency is an ache to hug my mom.
The House
I set up in Pierre’s kitchen. It was the room that spoke to me the most. When I saw the enormous window and heavy wood table, I knew this would be my view. When I first enter Berton House, I am met with the oil smell they warned me about. It is no longer the subtle undertone mentioned in emails. I say goodbye to most of the living space by using packing tape to seal myself into the newer addition which doesn’t hold the oil smell. It is a pungent ghost left behind by a removed furnace. A new solution is underway as I leave.
I wonder if I have failed the residency by not writing in Pierre’s study. I wonder if I have failed the residency often. I wake up to find the northern lights each night and miss them yet another failure on the writer’s trust dime. I meet another artist in residence, we co-work and talk about how we constantly feel like we’re failing our residencies. I drink coffee, they drink tea, we fail together.
I am winning with the dogs, and there are so many, like blueberries just everywhere close to the ground and nourishing.
The City
Dawson City is the main event. With its Parks Canada historic tours that are in alliance with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and developed with the First Nation Peoples, the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. I join tours where they speak about the realities of the impact of the Gold Rush on the first people of the land. I am with the art school kids. I wish I had come when the American tourists were doing the tours. I can only imagine that tension.
I have never been anywhere on Turtle Island where there have been settled land claims and no reservations. Is it strange to say the land feels at peace? The Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in get UNESCO designation from the UN while I’m here. The city celebrates having worked together for 20 years to achieve this. So many joyful songs and words are lifted up. I feel a hope like a kite in my hand.
What else is this city? It’s a city that has painted murals of glamorous historical sex workers, it has unlocked doors and rusted cars. It holds full memories of the inhabitants growing up and failing, but trying again. It’s a town that looks like it has halted time, but has grown more than any place I’ve been. It’s a city of artists and miners and tourists gambling, drinking, destroying and creating. It’s where I finally feel like I can rest, let my heart beat without clenching.
The Queers
The first time I see a non-binary person sauntering downtown, I get city level worried for them. Soon I realize, his town’s too small to waste on hating each other for what we cannot change. It’s a town that survives the massive isolation of long dark freezing winters, that recently stopped a flood together. A town that bands together. I wonder about leaving, but I am too eager to hug my mother to even contemplate staying, yet.
I spend the Million march counter-protest with Yukon Pride. We hang out with kids and dogs and binders full of resources and so many cookies. One truck honks, we all cheer. What is this town? In the weeks before I leave Toronto I am called a faggot and had my life threatened two days in a row so I wrote a poem about it a few days later, and someone called me a faggot while I was writing it. This is today’s Toronto, or maybe it’s just a regular gay man’s life and that’s how I look post top surgery. I’m used to other gender’s harassments.
Back at Pierre’s home I gather many of the
clothes leftover by other writers, tie them onto me, head downtown to be in the
drag show at The Pit, a local legendary bar, I debut as Ded Nayme. My final
outfit is a cop onesie I claim is Pierre’s, but wonder who it actually belonged
to. I gaze at the list of the writers who came before me. Which one of you was
it? I do the same with the leftover sunscreens. I make sure to include ACAB in
my drag bio. Later we all dance, and I feel the room change as the straights
and tourists join. I feel eyes on me, see them pointing. What? You’ve never
seen a trans man in a cop onesie with a harness on before? I leave before the
night is ruined.
The Work
I work on three projects. 1. Create poems about top surgery for a new manuscript and get to know about rural access to trans health. 2. Create music and performance videos for my second manuscript, which is based in spoken word theatre. 3. Rehearse my next play, “No one’s special at the hot dog cart”, something between spoken word, music, theatre, storytelling and a de-escalation workshop.
I am healing after four surgeries, only one of which was cool and trans. It’s been quite a year. I start with little hikes and always river walks. I have a whole new body to deal with and so many scars to anoint. I have my first shirtless swim post top surgery. I write a poem about it and joy cry while reading it in the Dawson library which is painted as bright as a crayon deck melting in magic hour.
I find a purple floral scarf in my mother’s favourite colour. I wear it often to try to get my scent on it, then wrap it up and send it to my mom with a note that this is the hug I can send right now.
The River
Can an english poet ever find the words to
describe the energy of the Klondike (Tr'ondëk) River? Our language can be so
clunky. I meet the Yukon River in Whitehorse, full of stories, action, and
silt. We meet again where it joins the Klondike at the beginning of Dawson.
They co-exist like Neapolitan ice cream. A perfect line between two rivers
running at different speeds, one clear, on silt, and by the end of the town,
they are one. Oh, to be so close to a perfect metaphor. My crush sends me the
sound when I’m back home and I cry at how lovely it is, even on a phone film.
The Absurd
I wonder at Pierre, write a poem called “Pierre’s Breasts”. How would he have reacted if he’d woken up with breasts on his chest like I did? I wonder at trans people during the gold rush, at sex workers, at the yesteryear queers. We are always everywhere, we just don’t have to hide as much anymore.
I am most at home in their downtown vaudeville theatre, where I get permission to put on my spoken word theatre show “Mel Malarkey Gets the Bum’s Rush”. This becomes my fourth project. The whole crew is trans, we have the best of times. Which is perfect because it’s essentially a highly amusing trans propaganda show.
I mention the show and the town gets behind it immediately, supplying all my props and costumes, from the wooden dildo, to the magician’s hat which showed up at the dump 10 mins after I wished it, this town is ready to get behind its artists. My crush drives me to all the places. Shows me what life could look like.
The dump is life, the dump is what our future could be, sorted into what’s useful and what’s actual garbage. People build cars out here, find replacement bulbs in junked stoves, build homes in the bush from discarded materials. I find a bounty in the clothes and games area. Everything is sorted, nothing wasted. I think that I should return for the apocalypse.
Truly it feels like a place where you can run downtown and say “I have a harebrained scheme, who’s in” and there will be a resounding “heck yeah”.
The Goodbye
I pull the tape off both sides of the door, clean the place. I go around town giving back all the props, wigs, makeup, and Tupperware. There is never enough time when you want it to slow down. How can I leave this town that hasn’t threatened my life? That doesn’t yell Faggot at me? I promise to come back. Maybe we all do this. My crush drives me to Whitehorse and I get to meet a school’s worth of future adults. I do all I can to ensure they know how to speak up when they’re called to. I really believe the youth is going to change the world. I have to believe this.
I get on a plane, then another, and it’s some time before I can hug my mother, and when I do, a little bird that’s been fluttering inside me, folds its wings and rests.
Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, musician, lighting designer, and host, Petch was the 2017 Poet of Honour for the speakNORTH national festival, winner of the Golden Beret lifetime achievement in spoken word with The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor and workshop facilitator. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award, and was named "Best of 2021" by The Walrus. Their film with Opera QTO, Medusa's Children, premièred 2022. They have been featured on the CBC's Q, were the Writer In Residence for Berton House (2023), were long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2021, and will be debuting their solo show "No one's special at the hot dog cart" in 2024 at Theatre Passe Muraille.
