#small blue thing

A small white thing

Made of paper

Made of silk

I am small

And creased

And listening

I never speak

I am folding in your hand

Folding in your hand

Today i am

A small pink thing

Made of sugar

Made of clay

I am small

And loud

And nostalgia

I never plan

I am softening in your grip

Softening in your grip

Today I am

A small grey thing

Made of steel

Made of bronze

I am small

And shared

And oblivious

I never lie

I am cold against your palm

One week ago, sitting on a hotel bed wearing a one-shoulder dress and a full face of contoured makeup and a head of softly brushed-out corkscrew curls, waiting for a wedding to start, I texted a group of my friends, I'm in drag as a straight girl. In the pictures I look like a regular person but I captioned every selfie I sent that day with the clown emoji, dabbed nervously at the crumbles of lipstick caught between my teeth and didn't dare look in a mirror until the sun and sweat of a two-hour outdoor photo op melted my coating of immaculate champagne-gold dust into something that felt more like ordinary, familiar dirt.

I look like a girl, I know. I look like a girl and I feel like a girl, or at least like something closer to a girl than not a girl, but if “Small Blue Thing” were an option on the portion of forms labeled Gender I would choose it every time. I've always felt best with clean short nails and heavy boots and skin scrubbed bare by cool water. I balk at ornament. I would like best to be something totally impermeable, a smooth hard surface, like a marble or an eye.

I haven't read enough to signpost the way to the relevant texts here –– I'm not an expert in anything except the way my own skin sits against my bones and barely even that –– but it makes sense that this is a song about gender because this is a song about performing, about being looked at, about existence in relation to. It is not simply a declaration of self but a declaration of self juxtaposed against other: I am cold against your skin / you are perfectly reflected.

I think every non-man, at some point, is forced to confront the violence of perception, the terror of being seen. And, above and beyond that terror: the terror of being seen wrongly, of being read as something that you aren't. How do you cope with being held up to the light and looked at, pitilessly? The small blue thing looks back, but even the strongest, coldest gaze in the world can't stop it from being watched, can't free it from the eternal pirouette of turning in your hand, the hand which, to me, never stopped being the handsome fist from “Marlene on the Wall.” Like Marlene, the small blue thing adapts by reversal, calling the fist’s bluff and trying to beat it at its own game. I am cool and smooth and curious, I never blink / I am watching you. A perfect reflective surface.

At fourteen I wrote in my notebook, when I like boys it makes me more of a boy and when I like girls it makes me more of a girl. I felt right in Chucks and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow but I could make do with a butter-yellow silk skirt and a flower tucked behind my ear as long as I longed for those softnesses on someone else. Still, I felt so obvious, so clumsy and wrong-footed and terrified among girls who bore girlhood gracefully, so certain that I’d out myself as an impostor only to be turned on, snarled at, spurned.

"Those Whole Girls (Run In Grace)" still hits me like a wave of nerves, that high school hallway feeling, that summer camp shaky-kneed unease. There's a terror in it, true, but it isn't the same terror of the handsome fist. There's more awe. More aching. The slow prowl of the guitar, the way Suzanne Vega bites each word through to the core like teeth sinking into stone fruit until flesh gives way to pit. Precision. Perfection. They’re wolves, these girls, but they’re pure light too. Blaze and stun. Sleek and dazzling, ready for anything.