I have just reread for my friends the preface to Karen's book. I am lying supine on the couch, fighting drowsiness, and Carl and Francois each have claimed a comfy chair. This is so much less space than what we have been used to in the mansion, but Carl and Francois both seem to be adjusting, downright comfortable here, with me. I am still fighting this sense of invasion, and I know I will get over this, but it is still annoying, this feeling suddenly on guard, on edge around both my new friends. But they are just that, they are new friends. We have the three of us a huge road ahead of us.
"Here is the first chapter: "Becoming."
"How can I describe this little town north of Thunder Bay, Ontario? It is still small, and now it is occupied by an entirely new generation of people. I don't expect things will have changed much otherwise, except that now they spread and feed their ignorance and hate all the more quickly, the more voraciously, with their computers and smartphones. From time to time I have glimpsed comments from some I could even recognise as offspring of some of the brutal young men who used to taunt, harass, and occasionally beat me up should I find myself in the wrong end of the street on a Friday or Saturday night When I was sixteen they had to fly me to hospital in Thunder bay with a broken arm and head injuries. Not even having a girlfriend was enough to persuade them that I wasn't queer, that I was, if not exactly one of them, then at least I didn't pose a threat. As if one skinny little closeted transkid was about to jump on them all and rape the daylights out of them. I who couldn't even smack a puppy...
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