thirty-six questions

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

I would like to eat with my grandma one last time, and make her the recipes her mother invented.

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

Maybe, if it was due to my nascent novel idea or because of a great contribution to human rights or flourishing. I would want to be famous enough to be comfortable, give back, and speak at events, but not so noticeable that anonymity becomes impossible.

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

When I make personal phone calls, I generally do not rehearse anything, because I don’t know what the other person will say after my opening spiel. Sometimes I make a list of points I know I will need to hit or want to talk about with my conversation partner. Or my friends just call me randomly and there is no way to prepare for that.
I used to rehearse every interaction I could, and found that I was taking too much control of the situation, trying to solve my conversations and leaving no space for exploration and curiosity.
For work, I have a set list of things I’ll need to tell or ask every client, but it is absolutely impossible to rehearse calls when everyone has a different and hyper specific issue.

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

>wake up with wife (nonbinary)(aspirational)
>walk to cafe and get a large strong strawberry matcha with wife
>read books that i brought to cafe
>swim at beach directly outside cafe
>go home with wife
>prepare for immigration law hearing on behalf of asylum seeker
>prevail at immigration law hearing held via webex
>pet my cat
>go out to dinner with wife
>go dancing
>go home
>get high, watch educational lecture online together curled up in bed
>go to sleep
>have interesting lucid dream

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

Yesterday, listening to Carly Rae Jensen in the car. Or last Wednesday, making up a song about cleaning.
To someone else? Promiscuous at karaoke.

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

Body. I have faith in my mind.

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

It’s not a secret, and not a hunch, but I would like to die scuba diving in an undiscovered cave while on a high-nitrogen oxygen mix, after being diagnosed with a terminal condition, after the condition is deemed untreatable and I am placed on hospice. I would feel no sadness about this death, as long as I had continued to live each day accomplishing everything I wanted to within it.

8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

Some things I hope I would have in common with any future partner are an unwavering commitment to honesty and truth, creative and freewheeling inclinations, and the understanding that we are a cosmic mote of dust and we should make life easier and happier for each other.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

All the love I get to experience, especially when I notice as it’s happening.

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

I would make it so I understood I was allowed to have feelings, and that I was transgender. I would have liked to grow up as a boy.

11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

I don’t remember much of my childhood. I remember my first flight, as if I was looking at myself from above, three years old, hands walking a Bear in the Big Blue House stuffed toy across the tray table. Then I’m at school, reading in the back row in second grade, signing in the Catholic choir, praying, playing soccer in the yard, meeting my friends for the first time. Falling out of the car and ripping my knee skin in the gravel, crying, my mom tells me nothing is wrong as the blood drips into my sock. Running through my best friend’s large yard, her dad driving us around in the tractor, chased by her dog. Light streaming down on us at the zenith of the afternoon. High school, learning about Nirvana, painting my eyes with dark liner and being berated by my mom. She forces drugs that give me violent panic attacks. I dream of being a rocket scientist. I realize I am bisexual. I date a boy I think I like. I go to state college. I become best friends with my boyfriend’s best friend while he ignores me. I drop out of engineering and enroll in the humanities. I realize I’m someone but I don’t know who it is. Study abroad applications are due and I go to Rome, for an English exchange program, learning travel and writing. A new friend makes me drink prosecco from the bottle on my twenty-first birthday. I feel love. I look into the eyes of countless skulls. I read 1800s American Literature and commune with Dionysus. I give massages to my friend late at night. My boyfriend starts screaming on a Berlin train station platform because he is so hungry, like a toddler. We return to the states and I break up with him after four years, after he complains I didn't get him a nice enough present, despite painting for him and paying for his trip. He screams in the street when I tell him; I don't walk alone for a week. I graduate college with two degrees in three years in bed platonically with the friend who fed me the prosecco. I get into a horrible relationship with a fascinating person. My internship lays me off because of COVID. I play Animal Crossing and read Judith Butler. I get into law school, then my application is rescinded for administrative bullshit. I circle an eddy and learn Zen meditation and multitask. My boyfriend dumps me, because I do not want to dump him, because he has horrendous abandonment issues. He says it is because I didn't watch enough youTube growing up. (His mom was murdered by his stepfather.) I work at my old university, then get into a different law school, with a scholarship, then run a discord for a few idyllic months. School begins and I date my last man, cut my hair and visit my grandmother for the last time unknowingly, fall in love with a woman for the first time and then she lies to me. Visit my best friend a few times in different cities, text him every day, my cat I got at a Halloween party knows his voice. I transition under the tutelage of dean spade and get my law degree, drop acid in a pond, pass the bar. Is this who I am? Life moves so fast now.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

I’d like the ability to explain to the ultra-wealthy why they should redistribute their wealth and immediately act to prevent climate change and all genocides etc, in a way that would actually make them do these things. A peaceful, instant revolution.

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

I would like to know what my worst flaws are, for sure, so I can further improve myself.

14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

I would like to go to Vietnam and scuba dive in a marine preserve with sea snakes. I have not done it yet due to the crushing gears of capitalism as well as because my passport is in my dead name.

15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

Being alive every day. Feeling.

16. What do you value most in a friendship?

Resonance. Zing. Laughter.

17. What is your most treasured memory?

Any time 16. happened.

18. What is your most terrible memory?

My horrendous ex-boyfriend throwing things at my head as I wake up on Valentine’s day.

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

I would live more recklessly, and I would spend more money differently. I would travel more. I would stop holding back. Reputation over a lifetime, relationships over decades, are far less important when you know the end of the line is close.

20. What does friendship mean to you?

Resonance. Zing.
Support, care, humor, love, play.

21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

They are the currents on which everything else floats, and when they are not present the river is dry.

22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

Smile, laughter, wit, physicality, warmth, friendship, challenge, morality, aesthetic, humility.

23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

My family is warm, sometimes too hot, but they all care deeply. They are from deeply dysfunctional people and they are, on the whole, trying their best. I think my childhood was incredibly happy, but I do not enjoy comparison, and I do not remember much of anything in particular.

24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

It is a black shadow over my life, but she is a warm light. At the same time her hands are covered in thorns, her face is ringed in soft petals.

25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "We are both in this room feeling …"

We are both on this website reading.
We may have much in common, if we were to talk with each other.
We must breathe deeper.

26. Complete this sentence: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share …"

everything.

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

I would like to be silent with you. I cannot always speak, but this does not mean I don’t care for you.

28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

What do you like about yourself? How can I help you express and deepen those characteristics?

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

In my torts class, my pants ripped after returning from Thanksgiving break. Oops!

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

I cried in front of my parents at the hotel breakfast last Sunday. My mom said the distribution of gifts wasn’t fair between my brother and I, I'd received more, and I wanted him to have everything he ever wants, and I was sad about my grandmother dying, and my clients are so poor and my family had just spent about $2,500 on me so the economic dissonance was mind bending, and I am generally not emotionally stable currently. I cried about all the same things about 15 minutes before breakfast in my hotel room.

31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

That you have listened to me, that you have heard all this and stay, that you have that particular set of experiences which let us cross paths, and that those memories have generated that beautiful light in your eyes.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

Certain types of living death.

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

This girl that I love(d) her. I haven’t told her cause I’m scared to, for very little reason other than scaring her away even though I don’t have her. In ways I’ve moved on, but some part of me is still there.

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

My vintage midcentury dining table and family heirloom dresser, or my hand painted stingray sculptures and paintings.

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

My brother’s death will ruin me.

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

I have an insanely paranoid and suspicious nature because a lot of my friends have fallen in love with me, and people who fall in love with me often abuse me, and I feel suspicious that anyone I try and befriend will eventually try and batter down my boundaries and hurt me. When I see my friends, or when I feel their love towards me, I sometimes get so panicked I have to leave and go home early. I desperately want to relax these walls and have both healthy friendships and a life partner. We all need love to survive. How can I become open to connection?