Something That May Shock and Discredit You

by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

  Marie bends over him and starts to peel off the Mascoderm. Irving’s wife bites her nails. The crowd gasps. “Jeez,” Marie says. “This shit really works.” The two fall into each other’s arms.

  “What are you doing to my husband?” Irving’s wife says, horrified. “Irving, are you crazy?” She pauses a moment, unsure of how to take this in, how to read what she’s seeing. Then she starts hitting them both with her handbag, but Navin and Marie just keep kissing. Rising up and floating right down to the end of this coronet, right through here, through these valves, right along this tube, and right up against each other’s lips.

  INTERLUDE XVI Did You Know That Athena Used to Be a Tomboy?

  ATHENA: You know, when I sprang out of my father’s head fully formed and kitted out in battle armor head-to-toe, if I’m honest, I was doing it for his attention, too—for male approval. What I’m saying is, I get it. I didn’t want to be a girl, either, but then I learned to love myself, and to become the tutelary of Athens. Have you tried being the tutelary of Athens?

  DEUTERAGONIST: I just don’t want you doing anything extreme. It’s not that I don’t understand where you’re coming from. God, no! It’s not that I’m not sympathetic. We’ve all been there. Currer Bell, and so on. Slick my hair back, spit on the subway, and demand a raise. But you have to know where to stop with this sort of thing. But I get it! Your heart’s in the right place, and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, so most of your body is in correct working order.

  CHORUS: Look, we hate to see you go. Hate to lose a valuable member of the team. But we understand—all good things must come to an end—but could you do us a favor? Could you just talk for a few minutes about what you think we could have done to keep you as a customer? Anything we should bear in mind for the future, anything that might have encouraged you to renew your contract? Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind? We hate to see you go. You know, we all used to be tomboys, so we get where you’re coming from. You know you don’t have to take it all the way. Look at Athena! Sprang completely grown from her father’s head—probably had eight or nine older brothers who taught her how to work on cars—bypassed her mother entirely; born in full battle armor—and look at her now. Tutelary of Athens! Goddess of owls, and so on. You can be the tutelary of Athens and still be a woman. Have you tried being the tutelary of Athens? Have you tried everything?

  ATHENA: You know, if I were to spring out of my father’s head fully formed and kitted out in battle armor head-to-toe nowadays, they’d probably diagnose me with dysphoria, too, and have me signed up for dick-installation surgery before dinnertime. And I really don’t think it’s fair to sign someone up for dick-installation surgery before they even get the chance to become the tutelary of Athens.

  CHORUS: Well, of course we’d all be trans now, wouldn’t we? Anyone born nowadays, that’s just a given, they just—someone tells you at school, or something—everyone’s trans now. Not like when we were kids, when people still understood when someone was being metaphorical. We’re all a little bit that way, so I don’t know why you have to take it so seriously. It’s a little embarrassing. Did someone put you up to this? You can tell us. If you want to just climb a tree, climb a tree!

  DEUTERAGONIST: I used to think I was a boy all the time, when I was a girl. Thinking you’re a boy is a big part of being a girl. We all thought we were boys, but thank God no one took us seriously. It’s time to take girls seriously about not taking girls who are boys seriously. When I was a girl, I thought of boyish things, but when that which is complete has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a girl, I spoke as a boy, I understood as a boy, I thought as a boy; but when I became a woman I put away boyish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but soon we shall see face to face. Welcome to being a woman. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

  ATHENA: What about all the little Athenas who are springing forth from their father’s heads as full-grown adults in head-to-toe armor? What kind of a message is this sending them, about what it means to spring forth from their father’s heads as full-grown adults in head-to-toe armor while also being women? There are lots of different kinds of women, some of whom spring forth fully formed from their father’s heads in battle regalia, fully forth and fully formed and fully sprung and full-fathered, full-figured and fully women, and what kind of message are they picking up? Not to mention Artemis. What kind of message is this sending to vulnerable, virginal goddesses of the hunt?

  DEUTERAGONIST: I mean, if I were thirty years younger—if I were twenty-five years younger—if I were eighteen years younger—God, if I were just ten years younger—if I were a year and a day younger—if I were a month younger—if you’d asked me just five minutes ago, four and a half even, if I’d picked up on the first ring instead of the third, I’d transition. Hell, I’d transition. Oh my God, I wish I could transition. Ask me again, but sooner. Come back yesterday. Come back a week ago. What good are you to me now, when I am—this? Where were you when there was still summer in my heart? Come back a month ago, a decade, but come back to before I had to forgive you. Just come back and ask again; I’ll wait if it takes forever this time.

  CHORUS: She was such a pretty girl. Shame.

  ATHENA: Oh, I don’t know. Let’s not get carried away—she wasn’t that pretty.

  CHORUS: Pretty enough, then. Still a shame, though.

  ATHENA: Oh, yes, still a shame, that.

  CHAPTER 18 It’s Hard to Feel Sad Reading Hans Christian Andersen Because It’s Just Another Story About a Bummed-Out Candlestick That Loves a Broom and Dies

  When I was twelve my father and I went to Boston Market every week to discuss the work of Søren Kierkegaard (my father’s idea) and to eat as much roast chicken skin as possible without exciting commentary (mine). My general impression of Denmark at the time was that it had produced two deeply unhappy redheaded men, Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen, who invented fairy tales, broken engagements, and being gay and religious at the same time. I found them both deeply compelling, although it was clear to me from a much tenderer age which of those weeping Danes had the lion’s share of my attention and affection.

  I was interested enough in learning about Søren Kierkegaard, and particularly interested in watching what Søren Kierkegaard did to my father’s face as he discussed it. He became animated, choked-up, organized, earnest, charismatically tapped into a long legacy of persuasive male sadness. My father was a very disciplined eater, and his order was always the same: one-quarter chicken (all white meat, no gravy), steamed broccoli, green beans, no to the complimentary corn bread. If the cashier nonetheless absentmindedly placed a piece in his order, he would section off a tidy two-bite-sized chunk and set it aside to act as dessert, throwing the rest away, though I was always happy to finish whatever corn bread remained. My father always made a show of restraining his appetites but never his sentiment.

  The first story Hans Christian Andersen ever published was about a candle that did not feel appreciated, which is in some ways representative of his life’s output. Women, generally speaking, didn’t want to marry him; men, generally speaking, didn’t want to exchange love letters with him. Charles Dickens found him an unwelcome houseguest and said so to anyone who would listen. Even Kierkegaard thought him a chump: “He sits and cries over his unhappy heroes, who are doomed to perish, and why? Because Andersen is the man he is. The same joyless fight that Andersen himself has fought in life is now repeated in his poetry.” I myself often felt deep resentment upon finishing one of his stories, as if he had written them with the studied intention of spoiling my fun: I have to carry the weight of the personal tragedies of candlesticks around with me now? But he wasn’t wrong, Hans, and of all the miserable chumps in the world, his was the most joyful chumpery. Yes, every object in one’s home, from silverware to shoes, was imbued with longing and frustration, but there was always transformation and death to look forward to, an abrupt and massive metamorphosis w
ith a built-in heavenly audience. And sometimes the stories ended in big, showy weddings instead of death (or both, which was the best kind).

  I was already half convinced in the way many children are that the objects in my room were alive in the way people were alive, capable of receiving and transmitting spiritual impressions of experiences like rejection or insult. This was especially true in matters of seniority. I knew Toy Story to be a lie when I saw it at age nine because it tried to tell me that my toys were persons in the same way I was a person, that they simply waited for me to leave the room before playing out their copy-versions of my life. I knew their aliveness was nothing like mine. Outside the suburban-casual rules of the Midwest held among my peers, my bedroom was a Hapsburg court. As the primary player with the toys I was responsible for soothing hurt feelings, paying tribute to age and rank, stifling social rivalries and dampening feuds, not a sovereign but their highest-ranking servant. Their souls were slower and older than mine, their relationship to language significantly streamlined. They were either pleased or displeased with the order in which I took them out and played with them, their nightly resting places on my bed or in the closet; I was either acting in accordance with their wishes or in defiance of them. Whatever games I was playing with them throughout the day, whatever adventures I took them on, there was always the shadow game underneath of making sure they were all satisfied with how they were being handled. Hardly a night went by that I knew I had not shorted one of them, that at least one of my dearest companions had been tucked into bed with a grievance against me, that I would wake up in the morning already at a social deficit.

  Hans Christian Andersen knew this. Søren Kierkegaard may have asked me to consider the anxiety of Abraham, the anxiety of readiness, of “Here I am,” of the possibility of murder and an uncertain number of sons—to prepare to deal with God. But Hans prepared me to be a god. Everything around you is alive and bursting with unrequited love and it’s your fault, or at least your responsibility—what are you prepared to do about it?

  THAT MIGHT MAKE FOR SOME HIGH-INTENSITY FAIRY TALES, BUT HE SOUNDS LIKE AN EXHAUSTING HOUSEGUEST

  It’s easy to imagine why Dickens found him an unpleasant roommate. One can picture him tiptoeing down the hallway at two in the morning, whispering “Are you awake?” (in the tone of someone who knows perfectly well that you aren’t awake, they’re just afraid to commit to saying, Wake up, I want to talk to you) because he wants to know if you think pine trees ever get lonely.

  “I’m sure pine trees have lots of other pine tree friends,” you-as-Dickens might suggest in the hopes of returning to sleep.

  “Yes, but what if this one didn’t? What if all the other pine trees were cruelly indifferent to him, and then he was chopped down and made into firewood, or the cross that Christ was murdered on?”

  To which you might respond that the Romans didn’t make crosses out of pine trees, hoping the conversation might end there.

  “What if a serving ladle fell in love with snuffbox, but they could never touch?”

  To which you would have no proper answer.

  The premise of so many Andersen stories fits in neatly with the kinds of questions very young children ask: What if a tin soldier fell in love with a music box and then they both caught on fire? What if a flower fell in love with a bee that died of thirst? What if a girl stepped on some bread and turned into a bird that flew directly into the sun? What if a needle wanted to die but couldn’t? What if your skin hurt so bad that no matter how carefully you were wrapped up, no matter how tenderly you were put to bed, nothing helped? What, then?

  I can think of myself, twelve, at a midwestern Boston Market, eating discarded chicken skin, and picture either a remarkably messy young girl or a strangely fussy young boy trying to follow along to Fear and Trembling. Nothing was quite fixed at that point. But at thirty the great question of my life became What if you were a man, sort of? Never mind what “sort of,” “were,” or “man” meant in that moment—the question itself felt to me ridiculous, intrusive, unhelpful, a joke carried too far, a distant acquaintance living in Scandinavia taking “Well, look me up if you’re ever in town” as an excuse to move in with me and my family for five weeks and throw fits on the lawn. Hans tried to warn me that the world was full of too much feeling, not too little, and that I was going to have to pay attention to it.

  THERE’S A LITTLE TOWN OUTSIDE OF SANTA BARBARA THAT COSPLAYS AS A TRADITIONAL DANISH VILLAGE WITH A HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN MUSEUM

  I’VE NEVER BEEN INSIDE THE DANISH VILLAGE MYSELF BECAUSE THAT TOWN IS TRANSPHOBIC AS ALL GET-OUT (OR STAY-IN)

  LAST YEAR I STOPPED THERE FOR GAS AND I GOT HUSTLED OUT OF A PUBLIC RESTROOM AND MY GIRLFRIEND GOT YELLED AT IN A BAKERY

  IF YOU’RE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD COULD YOU LET ME KNOW IF THE LOCAL MUSEUM OF DANISH-AMERICAN HISTORY IS ANY GOOD AND ALSO PICK ME UP A WIENERBRØD OR SOMETHING

  I DON’T THINK THERE’S ANYTHING INSIDE THAT MUSEUM THAT COULD TEACH ME SOMETHING ABOUT HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN I DON’T ALREADY KNOW

  I FELT ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE OUTSIDE OF THAT RESTROOM AND I FEEL TERRIBLE THINKING ABOUT IT NOW

  NOT FREEZING TO DEATH IS HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

  I don’t mean to suggest that Hans Christian Andersen knew I was trans before I did; I’m not sure it’s strictly correct to say that I was trans before I knew I was. But I knew in that Boston Market, and in my childhood bedroom, and my whole life long, that Hans Christian Andersen knew something about me that Søren Kierkegaard didn’t, and that whatever he knew was going to be tricky—was already tricky. The Little Match-Girl works in the same way:

  This little girl is going to freeze to death!

  This little girl is going to freeze to death!

  This little girl is beginning to freeze to death!

  This little girl is going to freeze to death!

  This little girl has frozen to death!

  That was the greatest appeal Hans Christian Andersen (and most nineteenth-century child-adjacent literature, really) had for me: how often and in how many different ways he could ask the question “What if you were extremely beautiful and then you died, and dying made you even more beautiful, and then a lot of sympathetic people watched you dying and said things like, ‘Oh, how terrible that someone so beautiful is dying, how awful’?” My appetite at six, at nine, at twelve, at thirty, for stories like that were as boundless as my appetite for roast chicken skin; any fantasy that involved doing nothing when faced with important decisions while being praised for my appearance appealed to me. But one must, if one does not spontaneously die, do something when faced with important decisions.

  In 2011, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) approved Amendment 10-A, which relaxed the rules against gay parishioners seeking church office, allowing each member-church discretion in deciding whether to ordain them. Both the San Francisco and San Jose Presbyteries voted “yes” on the amendment. Three years later, my parents’ church voted to leave the denomination, officially citing “ease of operating multi-site churches,” and joined a relatively new denomination known as A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, whose Essentials of the Reformed Tradition declares “We therefore hold one another accountable to . . . maintain chastity in thought and deed, being faithful within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman as established by God at the creation or embracing a celibate life as established by Jesus in the new covenant.” The church paid PCUSA over $8 million in order to buy back the titles to its own property; no one in the church leadership ever cited gay marriage or ordination as a reason for the move, and I was very careful never to ask. I wanted very badly for it simply to have been bad timing.

  * * *

  In “The Tinder-Box,” a frightful-looking witch advises a soldier on where to find a great treasure:

  “On entering the first of the chambers, you will see a large chest, standing in the middle of the floor, and upon it a dog seated, with a pair of eyes as large as teacups. But you need not be at all afr
aid of him; I will give you my blue checked apron, which you must spread upon the floor, and then boldly seize hold of the dog, and place him upon it. If you would rather have silver money, you must go into the second chamber. Here you will find another dog, with eyes as big as mill-wheels; but do not let that trouble you. Place him upon my apron, and then take what money you please. If, however, you like gold best, enter the third chamber, where there is another chest full of it. The dog who sits on this chest is very dreadful; his eyes are as big as a tower, but do not mind him.”

  I used to have the hardest time remembering the difference between bathos and pathos (a rapid-fire shift from something meaningful to something banal and an attempt to arouse sympathy or sentiment, roughly and in that order). I might have had it explained patiently and clearly to me one hundred times, but I could still never get much further than “pathos with a ‘B’ on it,” especially because some of the time, apparently, bathos really is just short for “a surfeit of pathos.” In a pinch I could remember that Alexander Pope invented it, but when it came to retaining any further information on the subject, my brain was like a wet, angry dog in a bucket.