“CJ” Until Further Notice 

I’m going to try and keep this as painless and close to cliche-free as possible. So I’ll start with this: names are fucking weird.

My first “real person” job out of high school was logging (a tech-y term for naming files in a very conventional and systematic way. Tl;dr: a_lot_of_underscores) for a television show in the basement of Montana PBS. My boss at the time gave me a dreamily-formatted sheet with the rules of file-naming on it and I went to work. For hours on end, I would type names that were written out as “S11E04_InsertBandNameHere_C5_S12_2015” or “BZN_D12_S34_2012.”

No sarcasm: I had a ball.

The thing about names is that they seem, at the very least, to fit. My file names at the TV station came to being through pleasing formulas known and typed by my real-life human being (“being” as a verb) hands. They were filed perfectly in our database with coding that I will never understand, but can be found in mere seconds given a keyboard, monitor, and mouse. These file’s names fit not only the files themselves, but the operating system they were created by and for. When friends tell us their “almost names,” we’re shocked because their names fit them so snugly like a favorite knit sweater. They’ll say, “did you know I was almost named Gabriella?” To which we reply, “NO WAY! You don’t look like a Gabriella at all!” Maybe if they were named Gabriella in an alternate universe, we’d feel the same about the name they hold in this reality.

*

There’s this lyric from my first favorite Girlpool song, “Chinatown,” that goes, “I’m still looking for sureness in the way I say my name” (Girlpool 1:42). These words, for me, are made all the more poignant when you take into account that they are sung by the band’s trans frontboy, Avery Tucker. Avery first sang these words before their transition. When I heard them at the point of the song’s release, I was a girl (or something like that) in my freshman year of college on the top floor in the library of my university. Now, about eight months into my known (read “accepted,” “lived”) nonbinary life, I watch a video of the duo singing “Chinatown” and my heartstrings are pulled when Avery sings the very same lyrics in their beautifully-dropped voice.

Hearing those lyrics for the first time in the library as I pretended to study, a memory lodged within a cobwebby corner in my head was yanked loose. It’s one from 2001: the first music class of my childhood in public schooling. Our music teacher placed a large single-key marimba in the middle of the room as we all watched sitting criss-cross applesauce. One by one, she called us up to the box with a piece of wood pitched to a deep and bassy C on top of it and gave us two sticks with rounded felt on one end. Placing the mallets in our kindergarten hands, the seasoned teacher asked that we each say our name aloud, and then rhythmically strike the key the same way we said it. Syllables were seamlessly converted to music notes as names like “Kay-tee,” “Char-lee,” and simply “Ben” were played in and on the literal key of C.

When the time came to play my name, I stood up and approached the box, still getting used to the feel of my feet on carpeted cement. I held each mallet in the same two hands I use every day as a for-real adult (we ALL used to be kids holy shit), took a deep breath, and quickly said my name (“Care-line,”) followed by two hits of the key. My teacher kindly said, “no, honey, it isn’t ‘Care-line,’ it’s ‘Care-oh-line’,” her eyebrows raising as her voice raised on that second vowel-sound. I tried saying my name in the new-to-me way, struck the marimba key thrice, and quickly sat back down.

Up until that point I’d never given much thought to my own name. I gave it the most thought when my mom taught me how to spell it, singing “C-a-r-o-l-i-n-e” with each letter as a note of the ascending C Major scale (this trick came in handy well into my young adulthood). It never even crossed my mind that I could be saying my own name wrong. Now, my teacher didn’t hurt or upset me by any means (in fact she was pretty much a baller and retired after that year and I missed her very much), but that moment brought a new, heightened self-awareness. Introducing myself to people was already nerve-wracking and embarrassing enough. How could I tell people my NAME when it was hard for me to physically say it correctly and confidently?

Well, that adds a whole ‘nother layer to the parfait, now, doesn’t it?

For example, I worked at a watch shop while I was in college. 7 times out of 10 people thought my name was Karen when I’d pick up the phone and quickly say, “thankyouforcallingtheshop, thisisCaroline.” Considering the space I felt my name take up was something I’d only ever done quickly and efficiently.

*

And here’s the obligatory stand-still transition where I say something along the lines of “then, in March 2020, I had all the time in the world to consider my life” or whatever the fuck.

But what the hell, it’s true. Cliches are cliche because they distill some of our most specifically lived moments into a couple of words. They tend to feel too simple or even err on the side of generalizing. But when you really feel a given cliche in your bones for the first time, it’s pretty powerful. So let’s keep going.

(Actually one quick thing: the first sentence of this section isn’t even true. I didn’t ‘have’ any time, like what does ‘having time’ even MEAN? I was trying to complete a Bachelor’s degree in the early days of an international pandemic in my studio apartment with a messy refrigerator, a pantry packed with old stale pizza boxes, and a newfound marijuana dependency).

Oh, and we’ll come back around to the weird fuckery of names and identity here in a bit. I promise it all ties together.

From the proprietary view of March 2021, the thought of mid-March to early-April 2020 gives me the giggles. My first thought goes to that not-quite public but definitely not counterpublic space called Facebook. I’d hop on Zuckerberg’s webpage and be greeted with a corporate message of “even apart, we’re in this together” with a 2D hug emoji or something impersonal like that. As I scrolled along, I was lightly bombarded with post after post with varying topic sentences of, “I’ve learned so much about myself,” “these unprecedented times (Hey! That’s almost the name of the journal!) are a gift in disguise,” and “we’ll all emerge from our homes and finally appreciate one another” (with Tiger King and Animal Crossing: New Horizons memes sprinkled throughout). I think it was one day in late March where one post in particular made me sit up in bed and ask my Squirtle plush, “okay, Karen, what HAVE you learned? That your favorite television series is The Office and bagels are a staple food group? We’re two weeks into this thing and our lives literally JUST changed. It isn’t even April yet. Get real.”

I spent a lot of time in bed in the early days/months of the quarantine era (after writing that I’m trying to guess how many times that sentence or sentences close to it have been written in the past year. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? We talking millions? Much to think about). I didn’t just finish an undergraduate degree beneath my down-comforter. I also:

• Read all six books in Frank Herbert’s Dune series

• played waaaaaay too much Tetris

• Fell more in love with my darling sweet one than I already was (and I kept falling. Spoiler alert we moved in together and sleep under the very same comforter TOGETHER now!)

• Kept a keen (anxious and admiring) eye on the people I looked up to fighting their good fight.

• And much, much more!

Four months later and well into *~the new normal~* I was STILL on my bedroom bullshit. On one particular July day, still afraid to go outside, I sucked on my vape pen and listened to producer-extraordinaire Arca’s album, KiCk i, for the first time. I had been a fan of her’s for a while, and was pulled into this new project by the album’s cover: Arca, a recently out-andproud trans woman, stands tall on cyborgy stilts, fit with long prosthetic claws on her arms and back, shining as a beautiful hybrid of flesh and matte metal, gazing at the viewer from behind her bangs, donning pigtails.

KiCk i’s first song, “Nonbinary,” kindly hit me over the head as soon as I pressed play.

Arca talk-sings to the listener as if she’s cooly wagging her finger out in front of her, face beat to the gods, and blinking long lashes with attitude as she proclaims, “ask me how I got here / Bitch, I worked hard. Ask me about my luck / Yeah, I’ve been lucky / And I’ve been unlucky. It’s both / Don’t put your shit on me / Bitch, I’m special, you can’t tell me otherwise / That’d be a lie” (Arca 0:37). Early into the song I knew this woman understood *something* about me that I hadn’t put my finger on just yet.

She keeps going, as the instrumental plinks along (the best I can describe it is soft mallets hitting bassy, tonal crystal balls. It’s magical and deliciously charmed), “Who do you think I am? / It’s not ‘who do you think you’re dealing with,’ no / ‘Cause you’re not ‘dealing with,’ there’s no deal / Bitch, it’s real on my side” (Arca 0:54).

It is real on my side. Has been real. What IS it?

Arca STILL wouldn’t stop. The song’s interlude repeated over and over, “speak for your self-states,” with little alterations like “MOVE for your self-states,” ending on “move for your self” (Arca 1:19).

I started thinking about Self with a capital S.

At this point, I was sitting straight up in bed, mouth held slightly agape as a side effect of a blown mind. I wasn’t ready for the song’s ending: “What a treat it is to be nonbinary / Ma chérie / Tee-hee-hee! / Bitch” (Arca 1:53).

I paused the music. On my maiden voyage with an album I never skip songs or hit pause; I want it delivered all at once. But I felt compelled to sit with everything that had just blissfully washed over me like a waterfall made of Sierra Mist if Sierra Mist was colored lavender and had sunshine, sparkles, and fairy giggles in it.

I didn’t feel called out. I felt called on.

This beautiful self-made superhuman had just extended one of her gorgeously crafted claws to me and I was reaching out to feel with and among people like her. Because I was,

had been,

am people like her.

I walked to the kitchen, opened my journal, and wrote down the date (July 6, 2020). In purple marker, I wrote, “I am not a woman” in all caps. I looked at those words, recorded the colors I was feeling (lavender, yellow, soft dark green), and sat with it all.

*

I kept sitting with it all for months as I slowly clued people into the Me of me I’d found in me. I kept sitting with it all as I navigated a life-altering haircut and figured out how to action-verb WEAR my clothes instead of just putting clothes on my person. I sat with it as I, in tandem, sat with everything this pandemic has thrown at us all. I tried to catch, categorize, and understand it all.

I then began thinking about ways of knowing, ways of being, and names. I decided to use the novel coronavirus as a case study of sorts. I heard people respect it: “Coronavirus, man,” “COVID-19 in 2020, huh?” I heard people talk around it: “I don’t want to catch it,” “they might have it.” I heard people play with it: “the dreaded ‘vid is out there,” “Miss Rona needs to let up so I can enjoy my summer.” I even heard people demean it with hateful derogatory labels like “the Chinese virus.”

The other aspect of This Whole Thing that I found fascinating was, is, and continues to be the tenses people use when addressing it. People like to say, “when the pandemic was happening.” What’s with this “was” business?! The pandemic is happening, and I have to wonder what the cut-off period or date was that the pandemic felt like it stopped, and denial or acceptance or whatever the fuck started? “Quarantine” is another one. People still actively quarantine when they’re labeled as a close contact at school or work, but there was also the quarantine period of mandated lockdowns. There’s the verb and the measure-of-time adjective “quarantine.”All of this is to say that in ten or so years, anthropologists, sociologists, and ESPECIALLY linguists are going to have a field day and I just can’t wait to read it all.

As I mulled over all of these ways of knowing in my weird little noggin, I couldn’t help but wonder: what was my way of knowing me? (Yes that was a loving Sex & the City reference.) How could I create a way to let others know me? While I had already struggled with wrapping my mouth around my name, it no longer fit my vessel or person which was not feminine. It had served me well, but I knew it was time to head back to the ol’ name drawing board and find something that fit. Names are tricky because they are given to you out of the love and goodness of VERY loved-ones hearts. I played around with “Caro” (a cute shortened version of my name used by my buds) and “CJ” (my initials, which 3 out of 4 of my close fam have as well. A fisherman beaver in Animal Crossing: New Horizons does too). “Caro” was kind of hard to say, and it also almost sounds like “Carol,” whom I am not. All I knew was that I felt content with CJ: with saying it, with being it, with the sound, how it could easily just be a nickname if need be, and ultimately, with the flexibility. To me, CJ evokes the opening lyrics of that lovely Arca song: “I do what I wanna do when I wanna do it” (Arca 0:13).

*

Making a name for yourself is no easy task. I’m not talking in the “make it in America, climb to the top of the corporate ladder, carry on your family legacy” sense. I’m talking about MAKING a name for yourself. A kind of “making” that evokes mental images of craft: construction paper, glossy plasticky scissors, purple glue sticks, pipe cleaners, glitter glue, popsicle sticks, googly eyes: making. “Making” that calls vigorous searching hands that will not stop until they find juuuuuust the right materials to bring something into being.

I’m talking about Self-made making. Self-made making that compelled Arca to create and further develop her body’s vessel into her own exactitude. Self-made making that allows for one to move and make shapes that mirror the multitudes within. I have made a name for mySelf that lives within the side-table drawer next to my heart that’s known to hmmm ten people? and I will not let it loose from my beloved drawer until I have made myself for myself, unafraid to continue making myself. There’s a future sense that I can FEEL SOMEwhere within, around, and in front of me. And oh hot DANG what a treat it will be, to BE (action-verb “be”) the Me of me. And I am the Me of me. The Me of me is ME. But, for now, I am “CJ” until further notice.