Cavar (they/them) is a PhD student and writer of transMad things. They are editor-in-chief of Stone of Madness and swallow::tale presses, and their writing can be found in CRAFT Literary, Split Lip Magazine, Electric Lit, and elsewhere. Cavar's debut novel, Failure to Comply, is forthcoming with featherproof books (2024). More at www.cavar.club, @cavarsarah on twitter, and at librarycard.substack.com.

transfinite::a dialogue

cavar

Text on black screen: “transfinite / a dialogue”

Enter: My overstrewn closet. I am fucking with this closet door, every which way.

I leave my closet door open all the time. Mostly because it refuses to budge, no matter how hard I push. A trait I can’t help but find endearing.

The rare times it doesn’t jump the track, it’s just even harder to open up again, and I’m squeezing myself into all these shapes just trying to see inside.

Blink. Black screen opens to a blank, lined page. My hands. I am writing: “figured it was the universe / making me / some ch– ”

So eventually, I gave up on trying. Figured it was the universe making me some cheesy metaphor about being queer. Like I made that line break in the script for this video, like some kind of poet.

...Like a poet who says like too much and talks types in sentence fragments so you’re, well, like, what the fuck kind of poet is that?

Blink. Black screen ––

Anyway.

Opens to my closet. I jiggle the door fruitlessly with one hand.

I’m trying to frame my closet door as a metaphor here, which isn’t anything new. Like other sorts of containers –– marinara-marred tupperwares, plastic bottles hour glasses in the hand.

Blink. A blank white wall. A flash of Cavar, dressed in a pink collared shirt and dark blue pan––

Blink! A return to the blank, lined page. I have completed writing: “figured it was the universe / making me / some cheesy metaphor / about being queer.”

I strike out both stanzas.

Closets are made with closure in mind.

I close the cuffs on my pink shirt.

Everyday, a person reaches into their closet, selects their vestments, and seals it once more, all with the assumption that whatever they’re wearing is sufficient to wherever they’re, uh, whereing.

Blink. My crowd-lined page reads “where-ing.”

Blink.

Interviewee [1]: So, the problem here is, obviously, I’m queer.

Interviewer [2]: You mean you’re ashamed of being gay?

Interviewee: No, there are just too many of me to wear all at once.

A blank white wall.

I enter, wearing my late uncle’s old tiger t-shirt and a pair of olive green shorts. My tattoos and bare-hairy legs are in full view. I pose. I leave.

I used to be a girl. I sucked at it, but it was fine, until I started becoming a woman, during which time I decided I no longer wanted to be part of that whole scene. I didn’t do the thing you expect of “transmasc narrators,” mostly because I’m not “transmasc.”

I enter, wearing my striped shirt that reads “fluid” with long yellow corduroys. I pose, hands in my pockets.

I didn’t go the whole tomboy to lesbian to trans route, as if any of those categories were mutually exclusive in the first place.

I am back in my pink shirt and blue pants. A lingering glance reveals my pink shirt to be dinosaur-patterned.

I was a little girl who loved American Girl dolls and Lego kits, but mostly ended up gravitating toward books.

A blank white wall. I wear the olive shorts with a teal t-shirt. As I narrate, I put on an oversized blue flannel.

I found nonbinariness online as a preteen and claimed it, along with queerness, for myself several years later.

After all of that, I realized that I –– a trans person, seeking “biomedical transition” could also be a lesbian. I was allowed to be –– to have been –– all of these things.

Interviewee: We’re all taught to see identities like these as contradictory, as if there’s one big
Truth we’re all going to settle on eventually. This makes it easier for cis people to rationalize the
existence of trans people, acting like we basically have the same genders as them, but are a little
slow on the uptake.

Closet shot.

Interviewer: Okay, Sarah, but what about your closet?

Interviewee: I’m Cavar. There are some Sarahs –– she’s and they’s both –– in my closet.

Blink.

I button my blue flannel, beginning at the cuffs.

I have to keep my closet door open because I’m so many.

Blink. I am shirtless but for an unzipped grey vest. I wear the yellow corduroys and a post-op chest.

When I use the pronouns “they/them,” I’m talking not only about the me I happen to be –– though I am talking about that singular person, too, even as they’re ever-shifting –– but I’m also talking about a litany of selves, a plural they. I was yesterday’s me.

I fasten each button on the blue flannel.

Assuming I live to see tomorrow (and if you’re listening to this, I have, or, at least, someone has) I’ll be tomorrow’s, too.

I open my grey vest to see the scars. I walk offset.

“Cavar::Sarah” appears.

[1] The view from their lower right-hand side. They wear glasses, blue plugs, and a burnt-orange long-sleeved shirt. Their hair is in a man-bun.

[2] The view from their lower left-hand side. They wear no glasses, blue plugs, and a floral blouse, with the burnt-orange shirt underneath. Their hair hangs loose, except for a small ponytail at the crown of their head.