Psalm 22

Chapter 7

I WAS WORKED UP all week due to deadlines but most importantly because another album was being created at this moment. I was asked to write a book about the behind the scenes of this album. It won’t be credited and released by a single band but it will be launched under the name ‘people’. 

We are inside Mackenzie’s Studios. It’s a residential recording complex surrounded by pecan orchards and located east of an international airport. The studios adjoins a traditional Spanish hacienda with twelve individual bedrooms, gym, kitchen, and a pool. Biking and hiking are possible throughout the two-thousand three-hundred acre property along with basketball, tennis, frisbee, and ping-pong. 

There are in-house engineers that they invite to help and participate. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in my room thinking where to start. 

I should be finishing another novel or at least start a book about people but I can’t write anything. I can’t think straight. It’s not that I’m demotivated. I am stuck in a place where instead of focusing on the people closest to me, I think about a future that’s not guaranteed. 

What if the album flops? Do I get discredited again? I’ve been to ashes and back. I don’t want to suffer and lose myself again just to please the world that is blinded by false truths. This is a thankless job. What we want to do is create a community that loves music and understands the message behind every lyric. And to go down that road, we want to expand more on a well-written story about each individual that is involved in this project, the concepts the songs are based on, national and local issues that are warranting the attention of the officials but turns a blind eye to, everything that can be talked about under the sun. 

People come and go in our hacienda but some of us prefer to stay. I didn’t want to be alone in a house with two girls that are too narcissistic to even have a real conversation with. I didn’t get a lead about the car that almost caused a man’s death in my neighborhood. 

I don’t want to see Kurt’s house and have to imagine him alone in it, especially now that they signed the papers finalizing their legal marriage. That’s where it really hit me. 

I couldn’t even be there for a friend that is hurting and not having to announce it to people for us to actually care about him. I asked him to be on this project but declined and said he’d rather take care of his dog and nurse his misery. I wanted him to be here. The change of environment might help him. These are dark times for him. Being divorced and close to bankruptcy, paying his wife’s alimony. He’ll come around once CJ personally asks him. 

I felt like playing around the property would be a luxury even though I am allowed to do it. I’d feel guilty having fun instead of getting work done. I didn’t want to force myself to write. I could barely stitch a sentence or two. I brought my recorder with me so I interviewed people and initiated a conversation. 

Even though I got more done in my real job, the process to start a book about this collaborative album is really draining. The pressure is real with this one. Others would be joining me next week and maybe by then we could form something out of my messy outline.

***

WE’RE HAVING A bonfire in the middle of the property. We got a grill on the side, barbecue and hamburgers for dinner. Tonight we’re sharing our experiences from the last time we saw each other and had a barbecue party like this. 

CJ started it. In his words, “South of the lake, I saw this couple who were negating and arguing with a trans. I knew about the person being a trans woman because that was the whole point why the couple was arguing with her. The trans woman was with her friends and they were taking a picture and she was wearing revealing clothes. And when you look at the couple, they were sunbathing. The fu/cking privilege! 

“They were saying, she can’t be wearing those types of clothes because it was meant for women, and she is not it. ‘It’, the transphobic woman said. And then they go off asking if she still has a pen/is. Did I step in? Did I counterargue how the trans woman being there would be a nuisance in their sunbathing? How was her revealing clothes distracting the couple when they were almost naked? They were just ganging up on her for the sake of humiliating her. 

“These people who barely knew the woman and they’re already trying to invalidate her identity are beyond me. I don’t know how someone could house an opinion and belief like that. They hide behind how she’s not a woman, how she can’t be wearing little to no clothes, how she can live her assigned gender and no one should ever change it based on what the person is truly identifying one’s self, what a bunch of smartasses. 

“Other people were making the trans woman and her friends leave because the couple are not backing down and it will only escalate if they don’t leave. Them leaving would be a success for the couple. It would only invalidate the fight of the trans community if they go now. So what did they do? It wasn’t right to make them leave just because a couple were uncomfortable with them being around. They stayed, of course. It escalated into a whole ‘nother thing. 

“They were saying, the trans community is asking too much. Too much? When is it ever too much? They are always publicly shamed and left out. They are only gaining basic human rights now, they are just getting recognized with the help of rallies and protests from allies and many communities. Why is this an argument? They face lack of legal protection, poverty, harassment and stigma, violence, they are without proper identity documents. It’s not their fault they were born with different s*x. You know what I mean? Why am I saying this? I want to incorporate that in our designs and narrative. That s**t is disturbing to witness. I wanna fight for their rights.”

“I saw a whole ‘nother thing in my neighborhood,” said the producer. “They were peacefully holding a protest on the sidewalk. Key word: peaceful and sidewalk. It raised a lot of questions why the police came and arrested some of the trans and people who attended the march. 

“How was it peaceful, you may ask? CJ already mentioned why they are still protesting—lack of legal protection, most especially. Anyway, they stood there with their signs, as low key and as colorful as they could be. They respected the small businesses that asked for no megaphones, no theatrics, as they can be damaging to a day’s revenue when people would rather be somewhere else than to witness a protest. When police officers arrested some of the civilians without mentioning why they were being taken away, that’s where things got complicated.”

“These are some of the things we see on the streets,” CJ said. “It will take years before we completely witness equity. As long as we are not down on that path, we shouldn’t stay silent.”

“Have you heard of the catfishing story orchestrated by a woman against many trans women over the years?” one of them asked. “It was all an elaborate plan of a woman who was hiding behind the statement that she only did it because she was a victim of a gay teacher in high school and was proved to be a lie by her schoolmates and some by friends. She was a co-worker of an acquaintance and they dropped her like a hot potato. I haven’t heard any updates since that story came out, only that she was fired.”

“Yeah, I heard about that story,” I commented. “She disappeared on all social media platforms. It’s never enough how they’d eventually have a taste of their own medicine. After all the people cancelling her, however toxic that culture can be, what was the follow through? She’s obviously out of her wits for her to mastermind plan a to z. Finding a victim, having her friends act as the boyfriend, continue the relationship through texts and the pretend boyfriends would sometimes have s*x with them.”

When I hear stories about the modern day persecution of people in l***q+ community, they still have a long way to go. There would still be people who will antagonize and invalidate them and it’s important to stay educated about what’s happening in many communities that need protecting. 

We can’t settle with equality because what’s applicable to us may not be working with them. Laws can’t be impartial nor can we. The takeaway here is that never be an enabler of oppression. 

We exchanged other stories and it ended with the producer saying, “On that note, not because we’re not experiencing isolation from the rest means that everything is a-okay. It’s called privilege. Keep waking up, everybody. Our duty is for the public’s interest with no one left behind. So stay safe.”