Friday Feature: Marchaé Grair

Marchaé Grair (they/she) is a storyteller, spiritual seeker, and facilitator making meaning of life’s liminal spaces. They are an alum of residencies and workshops presented by Tin House, Anaphora Arts, Voices of our Nations (VONA), the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and Roots. Wounds. Words, where they were also a writer-in-residence. Marchaé’s work embodies their Black, queer, nonbinary, disabled, and polyamorous experiences. They are working on a queer, young adult romance novel loosely based on their life and other essays about identity. When they are not writing, they are rewatching their favorite rom-coms, downloading the new Sims expansion pack, or laughing a little too loudly at their own jokes.

She/Not Her

Before you fly, you always pack your clothing first because clothes take up almost all of your suitcase. After all, you are a Taurus Venus and never know when a surprise special occasion will call for sequins. And if forced to choose, you will stuff your suitcase with that just-in-case little black dress or those just-in-case little black briefs before you pack your migraine medicine or allergy pills.

You stare at the edges of your carry-on suitcase as if they will magically expand, but the black zippered lining attaching the metallic blue, hard cover to the soft, gray inside doesn't budge. You remember the day you bought this carry-on from T.J. Maxx. You were in the middle of a travel spree; in January, you’d gone to Chicago to see one of your platonic loves, then driven to Montreal to vacation with your partner. Your last stop would be in the Dominican Republic to vacation with your long-distance lover. Your pregnant wife was traveling to California at the same time you were traveling to the Dominican Republic. You already felt bad enough for having needs, including needs that meant loving and fucking other people, so you certainly weren’t going to ask your wife if you could take the only household carry-on with four wheels. You both needed her to have that win.

So you went to T.J. Maxx and walked around the suitcase section for fifty minutes. This was not the fancy, downtown, two-story T.J. Maxx that mesmerized you when you got lost years ago leaving your new job in downtown Boston. This was a reasonable T.J. Maxx in the Boston suburbs with a suitcase section so small that you missed it multiple times when you first scanned the store. Yet, it still took you almost an hour to browse through the carry-on suitcases because you didn’t know which one looked like it was made for someone like you.

If this were the you who used to work downtown, you would have taken one look at the brown, faux-leather purse and carry-on hybrid bag in the corner and called it a night. Back then, you had a work wardrobe, and it was all discounted, from women’s department stores, and business casual. You were a young Bette Porter if she grew up in small-town Ohio and found her way East instead of West. You posted a now-hidden Instagram photo on your first day of work downtown in your favorite outfit: a black, form-fitting, Calvin Klein dress and a complementary Calvin Klein red and black blazer with pointed shoulders. Your hair was crocheted into long hair extensions that were worsening your then undiagnosed alopecia, but the braids made you feel beautiful. This version of you only showed up to work in an assortment of Fenty lipstick shades; Covid and gender confusion were years away, so you weren’t masking. 

Present you hasn’t bought a purse in years, unless you count additions to your collection of tasteful fanny packs. Past you decides against the faux leather purse and other carry-ons like it. Past you notices pastel Jessica Simpson carry-ons close by. You imagine yourself rolling pastel luggage behind you while wearing a hoodie, baggy jeans, and a t-shirt, and you shake your head. Your eyes land on a carry-on with a picture of a white businessman on the cardboard label of the branding. This carry-on is on a central display set apart from the other suitcases, so it must be special. You’re not exactly sure what your gender will be when you fly, but you know it won’t be white businessman. The other carry-ons to the left of the smiling white man whisper to you, “You don’t fly in first class, and you know you can’t even afford first class carry-ons at T.J. Maxx.” You’re unsure why these imaginary voices are so rude, but like most Bostonians, they are both rude and correct, so you keep circling the suitcases.

You stop in front of the metallic, ice-blue carry-on. You can see yourself wearing anything from sweatpants to a dress with this suitcase in tow. You know you will pack more feminine clothes this trip because you’re going to the Dominican Republic, an unfamiliar place, and unfamiliar places always bring out the woman in you. It’s not that you’re uncomfortable in women’s clothes; you especially love your summer dresses that are all cleavage on top and tradwife from the waist down. You just hate yourself a little bit for defaulting to ultra feminine clothes when you travel and need a shield—whether it‘s protection from men who are nicer to women they desire or protection from confused stares when people can’t quite guess if you’re a tomboy or a trans boi or a lesbian or a middle-aged Black woman trying to channel Billie Eilish. 

You look at your phone and message your friend who you promised to visit after a quick trip to T.J. Maxx. You’re “coming, promise!” You think about a dinner you had with this friend years ago at a mediocre neighborhood bar and restaurant that is now a Life Alive. You’re glad it was still a bar then because you needed that tequila-based liquid courage with the pink salt rim to tell your friend you were using additional pronouns. You wished you could have also purchased liquid amnesia because your friend responded by saying nonbinary people were only in the cultural conversation because women weren't given enough room to be butch or more masculine. You said that wasn’t how it worked, then swallowed your tequila cocktail and your pride and changed the subject.

You imagine yourself having more tequila-infused conversations about gender in the Dominican Republic, but this time, it would be with your lover who you met as a woman in 2010. She may still think of you that way since your body’s only gotten softer and rounder with time. She calls you beautiful, and you love it and believe her, but you wish she called you handsome sometimes, too, because your partner does that, and it makes you feel alive. You wonder if anyone who knew you fifteen years ago will ever think of you as the gender-bending switch you know yourself to be inside your head and beneath other people’s tangled sheets. You love your tender places, but you refuse to be reduced to those places alone just because you live in a Black, fat, soft body. The world expects you to mother it, but you’re not interested in your future child calling you mother, let alone being the whole world’s mammy. You understand your resistance to motherhood will be a one-way ticket to erasure in your child’s life; nurses and doctors already don’t acknowledge you during your wife’s prenatal care appointments because you’re not carrying the baby, and you’re not a man, so they don’t know what they should say to you, so they say nothing at all.

You snap out of daydreaming about your future rejections because you are Black in a store with aggressive surveillance. The stacked video screens greeted you before anyone said hello. You’ve been at T.J. Maxx long enough for an extra “How may I help you?” to feel like a threat. You are a Sagittarius rising, so you text your friend that you’ll be on your way home soon, not knowing how soon, soon will be and grab the metallic blue carry-on off the shelf. 

You pay $92.42 then fill the carry-on with your most feminine clothing for warm weather—a red one-piece you wore on Miami Beach when you wanted to look like a Baywatch lifeguard even though you can’t swim; a too-small red bikini top that hurts to snap but makes your boobs look less 40B and more 40C so you keep wearing it; black and white bikini bottoms that just cover the belly ring you should have stopped wearing 15 years ago; a blue jumpsuit with a deep dip at the chest that makes men do a double take that you are ashamed to admit you like; the jean shorts that are sexy when they’re sitting on your hips just right but more SNL-mom-jeans skit when they’re sitting all wrong; and some plain women’s tank tops because something has to be simple. You’re glad you won’t wear shoes at the beach because it’s one less thing to pack and one less way for you to be gendered.

The last clothes you select for your trip are for the departure flight. You lay this outfit on the ratty gray comforter you won’t replace because you can only afford one new bed set, and you’re not sure what kind of bedding says you’re into sex but not as often as being non-monogamous might imply. Your airport travel outfit is always the same. A classic black and white Adidas tracksuit. You started wearing Adidas in high school, another time in your life you were hoping common brand names and neutral colors would make people treat you as less menacing. You hadn’t realized then that the leap from blending in to being invisible is less leap and more soul-crushing freefall. That every time you choose a jacket, or a shoe, or a lover, or an identity just to make someone else comfortable, you get farther away from yourself, and it isn’t that easy to find your way back. Even in your teens, your deepest desire was to be understood, and you learned the hard way that it’s impossible to be known when the mainstream paints your authentic existence as dangerous. People have always been too comfortable telling you all of the things they dislike about you without you asking. Too loud. Too opinionated. Too Black. Too scary. Wrong clothes. Wrong pronouns. Wrong body.

You got tired of being told you were too much, so young, you learned how to make everything from your hair to your personality less big. You fried your scalp with sodium hydroxide for decades hoping to fit in, and in exchange, you got broken edges and a broken heart. Now, your natural hair is braided into old cornrows, so you pull a silk-lined, tan hat from a messy, plastic drawer by your bedroom door and lay it by your airport uniform. You grab a sports bra and tattered, pink, Victoria’s Secret underwear, the kind of underwear you never wear in the early days of a relationship because God forbid your lovers know you own granny panties. You would have chosen your gray, black, and white Tomboy briefs, but you remember the time a bulge in your sweats and the gathering of your briefs meant getting an extended pat down from TSA, and you refrain. You will wear your black and white Hokas with the Adidas sweatsuit because you’re a sometimes woman of a certain age, and your days of wearing shoes for style instead of function ended when you gained 50 pandemic pounds and got plantar fasciitis. 

The last part of your travel wardrobe ritual is choosing your airport t-shirt. You open your overcrowded top dresser drawer and push aside all of the t-shirts reminding you who you are. The homemade Marxist shirt from your upstairs neighbor. The black Beyoncé concert t-shirt because you’re not fully anti-capitalist, especially if the dance floor is calling. The Boston Dyke March cutoffs you never wear in public because you’re unsure if word reclamation translates beyond those who do the reclaiming. The discolored t-shirt you bought in downtown Cleveland the day after the Cavs broke their championship losing streak and you realized you needed to break up with your abuser. The pink shirt with the wavy font listing all the reasons you believe in abolition. Your often foggy brain reaches for the Malcolm X quote that says something about the most disrespected person in America being the Black woman. You wonder what he would say about the Black trans person. You are no Malcolm X, but your existence is also threatening because your truths might make someone else want to be free. You choose a blue fitted Adidas top and start packing your toiletries. 

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