I book my next client, Handstandbuck, for 12:30, which is forty minutes from now. He’s this middle-aged man who works at Scotiabank. He prefers twinks, he says, and has a deep appreciation for “Native Americans.” He really admires our traditions and thinks our culture is beautiful. I text him: “Like me?” and he sends me a winky emoji. He has a wife and two kids but secretly wants to sleep with men. That’s where I come in. He’ll take his lunch at 12:30, go to the office bathroom, turn on his iPhone, and Skype with me for thirty minutes until he comes all over the bathroom stall. He’s an easy one since he doesn’t yet know what he wants; a flash of skin and some dirty talk usually gets him off. He’s a quick twenty bones.
But forty minutes? That’s a long time to wait and I’m already feeling horny again.
I play with my hair to make myself feel good, it reminds me of how it felt when my kokum would run her rough hands from my widow’s peak to my crown. There’s this young new-age couple who live above me and I’m not sure if it’s the banging of their washing machine or if it’s they themselves who are banging—but there are these loud frequent noises they make, like drumbeats, that remind me of my kokum. Sometimes I’ll sit against the wall to feel the vibrations and smoke a cigarette, thinking the tobacco is an offering that filters through me. My landlord says I’m not supposed to smoke in the building but I really don’t give a fuck, I think I’ve every right to destroy my body, to be ceremonial on settler land.
An elder told me once that I could heal myself of my drinking habits if I went to a sweat lodge. He said that I’d have to wear something modest. I planned to go with my kokum, who was going to wear a long skirt adorned with ribbons that she had made. I loved it so much that I asked if she could make me one. She smiled, sent me home with a slab of bannock, and when I returned the next day, she had sewn me one just like hers. But when we arrived at the sweat lodge, the elder wouldn’t let me in. “Modesty,” he repeated, “is key.” My skirt apparently did not meet his ceremonial expectations; he told me to take it off and put on a pair of XXL Adidas shorts he had, or to return at another date in proper attire. While my kokum argued with him in Cree, I flipped him off and stormed back to the van. It turns out that tradition is an NDN’s saving grace, but it’s a medicine reserved only for certain members of the reservation, and not for self-ordained Injun glitter princesses like me. This tradition repeats throughout my life: I’m expected to chop wood for ceremonies rather than knead frybread, learn how to hunt with my uncles rather than knit with my aunties, perform the Fancy Feather dance when I really want to do the Jingle Dress dance. “Man up” was the mantra of my childhood and teenage years, because the dick between my legs wasn’t enough proof of ownership of NDN manhood. There are a million parts of me that don’t add up, a million parts of me that signal immodesty. When I think of masculinity, I think of femininity.
Everything’s finished in beauty.
I used to dream about a dress that had the colours of the medicine wheel: black, white, yellow, and red. I finally made one from some clearance clothes I found at the Sally Ann: I ripped out the stitches down to the original panels, cut out pieces from a McCall’s pattern I found at Value Village, and restitched them back into a dress that drapes over my body like a second skin. I hole-punched recycled soup can lids and sewed them to the dress instead of bells. It jingles gloriously when I dance around my living room in it. The dress is lovely and makes me feel like an NDN Sally Finkelstein.
Since I would never have been allowed this dress on the rez, I felt rebellious in my creation of it. I had to make my own. And to really put the cherry on top, I added a “modest” slit up the leg à la Angelina Jolie.
I am my own best medicine.