Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

Captive Genderswhen I did laundry in short shorts. Cluny would turn off fava beans Ihad cooking in the kitchen. Under the guise of Southern courtesy, Clunymade it a point to strictly abide the UVP’s less charming photo ID requirementsto repeatedly misgender my guests when addressing them. Imean this is fucking San Francisco. He’s lived here at least as long as me.All he had to do was to write their information down and shut the fuck up.An anti-authoritarian since birth, I was magnetically drawn to theguard cage, Cluny’s back turned, pencil scribbling copiously. Did I makeout or think I made out the names of my neighbors? Why was this happening?There was another detail to all this logging: the class dilemma ofme witnessing Cluny’s difficulty with it. If only he were writing anythingother than a fucking young adult rat novel in that funky guard cage. Iuse “funky” with regard to the guard cage’s layout. There was special attentionpaid to how the square shape of it canted off-center 20 degreesto the floor plan of the lobby. Its cant is parallel to the window’s line, asthe window-door-window triptych arches away from the street. The fence,contributing one wall of the cage, continues this cant, cutting the lobbyin half at all but one point: the gate that the guard must buzz. Since livinghere, ADA requirements have forced management to make the gate openand close on its own, completing the sensation of a cell block. I’m sickof guests complimenting the design of this gate. The funky cant of theguard cage and gate are examples of certain notions in postmodernist architectureof form exceeding function, and I recall the architecture of theLGBT Center. Also, a cafe/laundromat that I washed dishes at. These environmentsexpress the neoliberal meanness of style over substance that Iwill forever associate with San Francisco. I imagine the historical momentwhen the Altamont’s remodel was complete and it was outfitted with allthese cheap deconstructivist flourishes, what this style signified. Cluny’splacement in this cage might constitute a come-up, and he prides himselfon the pain it takes to maintain this station. As if style could transforma prison, the violence of capitalism, the role of a warden. The log’s pageswere dense, unbroken, obsessive, to-the-margins. At one point, it becameevident that nothing was possible in our relationship. This is that moment,Cluny reacts, slams the log shut, shouts, huddles over it, guarding it. Iasked if I could read the lobby guard log.I tried telling Cluny that some component of abolition actually includesopting out of the status quo. It’s dicey to insist that total abolitionbegins and ends with squatting and squatters. Fewer people get hurt, sothese liberating dreams rest in better hands than those of a 501(c)3, which92