I Saw ‘I Saw The TV Glow’ — not quite a review
Originally written in June 2024, available early to Ko-fi subscribers
One of my earliest memories is of my father slamming my tiny body down onto a counter and pinching my face hard. My mother rolls her eyes as if he had only made some annoying sound with his throat. He screamed at me that I looked like a boy and that no one wants a pretty little girl to make herself a boy. I wasn’t quite 3. I didn’t book the haircut. I didn’t make any final decisions. It was a little thing, half bob half bowl cut. Deeply 90s. My mother leaves the room laughing at my father’s anger. He screams “dry it up” at me until I shove the cry down. Only then does he put me back on the floor.
I watched To Wong Foo and Dirty Dancing recorded onto the same VHS several nights a week for years of my life. Patrick Swayze is the most beautiful person I have ever seen. I practice being Vida and Johnny when I’m alone in my room. When I teach the final dance (yeah, I was that kid) to other girls, I announce that someone has to be the man and that obviously it will be me. A grown up tells me there’s no man here, so just say who will take the lead. I say that’s not what I mean.
In 3rd grade I cut my hair off again. I do it myself so it’s even shorter when a hairdresser tries to clean it up. In the waiting room for the dentist office another child approaches me as I play with the blocks. “I can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl.” I point to my earrings. Pink roses, like Sailor Jupiter. “That’s a girl color,” I say. “I don’t want to be a boy.” The other child shrugs.
Photos are back from some summer day when all the cousins got together and played. I think it’s the summer between 6th and 7th grade, from the size and existence of my brothers in my mind. I am excited to see them because I wore a dress I liked. I finally liked dresses now that I was old enough to not accidentally get them dirty or something, to be told over and over and over how unladylike I am. My stepfather pulls me aside and shows me one photograph. I have cleavage now. He tells me that I am a smart and funny girl but that if I show cleavage that way people will only think about that when they look at me. I tell him I don’t want the cleavage. He laughs and says some women are glad to have it. I just say, “no,” and go to my room. I cry myself to sleep.
I tell my high school boyfriend (and best friend) that I think about kissing girls but that I don’t think of myself as a girl when I do it. That night, we lay back to back on the carpet of his bedroom after he assaulted me for the first time. He tells me that he worries that I will go to hell.
My high school drama teacher has decided as part of her emotional abuse Olympics that I will not get to do a show all semester. Even so, she has me run every scene in front of the class so that everyone can just mimic me for each part. She tells the girls if someone with my combatant shoulders or intense gait can be feminine and flirty, anyone can. She tells the boys I am the only convincing man in the room. I pretend and pretend and pretend.
In college, a friend I am painfully in love with shows me photos of a time they put on makeup and tried on dresses. They ask me to keep it a secret. They ask me what I think. I tell them they are beautiful. I make a bad joke when I do it though. It feels like a sword slowly splitting me in half from my throat and all the way. Once I say it I can’t unsay. It ends up okay. She becomes her. I keep feeling something chew at me, like I’m not a good enough friend, like I should be doing more. I don’t know why. I just feel something chew and chew and chew. It feels like jealousy and anger and I don’t know why.
It is my first audition on medication. Gender blind casting. Gender blind Shakespeare. Auditioning is easy when you can catch a panic attack or flashback before it starts, when your ADHD is just a quiet bass line, when the words on the page and your self expression get to drop at least one filter. It’s the best audition I’ve had in years and the first one I haven’t hated in my life. They call me a week later and say they just don’t think the audience could forget I’m a woman (I went hard for Brutus). They ask if I want to run tech.
I, a notorious hater of Game of Thrones for many years, watched a bit of press for the then upcoming show, House of the Dragon. Emma D’Arcy describes Rhaenyra, “She’s someone who I think is at odds with her gender.” I have played that statement over and over again in my mind ever since.
Tonight (last night — it’s 4am and I haven’t slept) I saw I Saw The TV Glow. I shook and cried through most of it. I think maybe she/they isn’t some casual thing. I think maybe I’m trapped in this body. I think maybe it’s a vice. Gender, identity, orientation, Pride, it sticks in my throat and I try to cry around it.
