Think Pink

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Gilberte Martin was a fan of beginnings.

As Gil took her early morning flight from the Keys to Toronto, she tried to think of all the best first lines of books she’d liked. When she realized she truly had not read as many books as she thought—and the only really good first line she could think of was for Moby d**k—she moved onto movies. She recalled the opening robbery of The Dark Knight, the first kills of Scream and Jaws, and then the softer and gentler musical openings of The Lion King, La La Land, and The Sound of Music.

All good, all classics.

But all mere distractions from the real beginning she was still thinking about, over and over, no matter what: the close up shot of Pearl in her movie called Pearl’s Dream.

Gil wasn’t just heading to Toronto for a weekend of fun. The tenth anniversary of the film she’d made when she was twenty-six, and still so naive from her own artistic explorations, was going to be held in an indie theatre just outside of the Art Gallery of Ontario. After the showing, there would be a large panel for Q and A from the author and director herself. Then an after party. Time to catch up with old artist friends and the new artists friends she’d made in the meantime, all without trying.

Gil’s indie flick had received numerous accolades and buzz in the ten years since its release. It would never be as popular as the Marvel franchise, or even as well-known as some of the indie films like Roma or Boyhood, but it had left its mark in some very particular communities. And all during the years after its release, after Gil had essentially given up on it as a failed project, packed up her stuff, and left for…anywhere but here.

So while Gil had been running away from her aborted project, and slinging limes and tequila in numerous bars before she finally ended up with Dean’s See Shell, Pearl’s Dream was added to classroom syllabi for both film classes and l***q studies. It had been analyzed and argued over during classroom sessions and during Pride season. Gil had even seen a handful of emails from profs describing some of their better papers about her film. It should have been cool. It should have been amazing.

But Gil just wanted the movie to be forgotten.

As Gil took a cab to her hotel, checked in, and then assessed where she was supposed to be next, she realized her stomach was on a knife’s edge. She was just as bad as that woman she’d run into—Selene—and feared that she may lose whatever food she had in her system. Luckily, Gil was in a hotel already, and could spend another two hours hugging the toilet, and not have to resort to the bright pink bag that Selene had used.

Gil smiled, still thinking of their brief conversation. Selene had been cute. Sweet. She’d seen Selene as yet another patron in her bar, and desperate to ignore the fact that she was going to be treated as some bizarre academic celebrity in the next couple hours, had seized the moment. She wanted to talk to her like a human. Like a person.

Gil just wanted to talk to people. Always and forever. That had been why she made Pearl’s Dream in the first place. It was supposed to be a conversation, one between her and Pearl as she was dying. You didn’t know that, of course, when you started the film. That reveal—Pearl was dying of cancer that no one would treat because she was a trans woman—would be discussed later. There was just a single spotlight on screen that then focused on the image of Pearl’s face as she spoke about her first memory, a la Proust. She had lines around her mouth, a tight expression, and her hairline seemed as if it wasn’t in the right place. But there was a charm to Pearl, one that had hooked Gil from the moment she first saw her in a club in downtown Toronto, and it was that charm she’d managed to get on film as she spoke quietly about riding a horse.

Gil still had the movie on her laptop. She never watched it, but seeing Pearl’s face in the icon was like having a cameo to a loved one. Pearl was always with her. Even if she wanted to forget, she never truly could.

Gil opened her laptop on the desk in the hotel room. She sent a quick text to Tiffany, the woman who was organizing the event tonight, and asked what the latest time she could show up would be. She didn’t expect to hear back right away, so Gil opened the movie.

The ethereal music at the beginning still gave her chills, though she had not watched this in at least seven years. Gil counted back in her mind. She saw each of those seven years pass through a different dress, a different woman on her arm, and a different tattoo to remember them by. Gil rolled up her sleeves on her shirt and examined the cross above her wrist. It was ornate and almost neon, like the kind in Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet. It had been worn down over the years, through sun and general life. She rubbed her finger over it now as Pearl started to speak, and the movie truly began.

“I have two beginnings,” Pearl said. “One was in Tallahassee when I was born Alistair Merton. I was riding a horse as a boy, but unlike all of my previous memories—of my mother, of eating and my brothers, this one came with an awareness that I was having a memory. That I was engaging in something important, and so, I should try to remember it. So I felt the wind on my face, the sun on my skin, and the pressure of my legs against the animal’s sides. That was magic to me, that something else could press against me as I could press against it. That something could be so wild, so moving, so free.”

Pearl shifted. The image of her face on screen was suddenly transparent as childhood photos dissolved into the space left behind. “That was my first beginning, as that boy on a horse. The second beginning I had was in a dream at age thirteen. That was the one where I realized my name was Pearl. And it was that dream that I would spend the rest of my life getting back to.”

The music became louder now as more photos from her youth transitioned and became the bulk of the movie. The beginning was over—yet the movie still played.

And so, Gil still watched.

Gil had never liked the fact that Pearl had wanted to start the story with the false narrative first. With the boy narrative. Back then, she could only think in black and white terms. False narrative, boy narrative, straight angry white kid narrative. Then contrasted with the dream, the true narrative, the girl narrative, the one where Pearl was kicked down a lot, but still just as stunning, wild, and free as that horse.

That was the right narrative.

But Gil never waited for that story to begin. She shut off the movie after another ten minutes. It ended badly. It would always end badly. Worse than the harrowing final seconds of The Mist, the several non-endings within The Dark Knight, or even that bizarre ending of Grease when the car randomly flies into the air, Gil knew bad endings as well as she knew good ones. Endings were hard. Just as David Lynch and Dennis Hopper, who resorted to using Alan Smithee as a pseudonym to separate themselves from their films. It was hard to get everything right. Even harder when you had no more chances to fix it for yourself.

After another ten minutes of pacing her hotel room, Gil turned on the film again. She only watched the beginning, then wound it back to do it all again.

She really did like that beginning so much more.

* * * *

The drone of the death soundtrack began on screen.

Gil shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She’d been the one who selected this damn song in the post-production process. She’d been the one who cut the frames like this, who made the decisions to film this as it was. She may not have been responsible for Pearl’s death, but she had captured it on-screen. She’d turned it into the end of the movie, as half a poetic decision on how dreams truly do end—without warning, without conclusion—but also as a clarion call to those who didn’t take the plight of trans people seriously. She needed them to see that everyone’s mistreatment of Pearl had ended up with her death.

Gil had not written the movie, but she filmed it in this manner. Now, as the music that signaled Pearl’s last words filled the auditorium, Gil had to look away. She couldn’t witness this anymore. She had no idea how she’d ever been able to film it, her eye behind the camera, and one hand in Pearl’s. How had she done this? And why? Gil knew the answers logically, but on screen, everything fell apart.

The love of her life died. She was a husk.

And then she still kept the camera rolling.

“Oh, my Pearl,” Gil said in the movie. “You will stay beautiful forever now.”

Gil sighed. She looked at her phone. Her friends back in the Keys had sent her several encouraging messages.

Keep it up, girl, wrote Matty, a drag queen regular on Duval Street. You’ll get an Oscar soon enough.

When she’d not replied to that, he sent her photos of the local wildlife. A rooster had wandered into the parking lot and wouldn’t stop cawing. One of the customers here thinks the c**k-a-doodle-do outside was a cell phone and wants me to shut it off. How do I tell them that there is an actual c**k outside? Will that help? I don’t know.

Gil smiled at the message.

Then she realized the movie was over now, and that she’d been smiling as the so-called love of her life faded on-screen.

Her guilt came back to her like a fist to the chest. She wanted to throw up again, but everyone was clapping. Everyone was looking at her. Everyone wanted something from her—which was to say, they needed her to speak for Pearl now.

“Thank you so much for that wonderful reception,” Tiffany said. She positioned herself behind the podium where she’d first announced the night’s agenda and message. The lights of the auditorium came back on slowly and bathed her in yellow light. She was a regal woman, nearly in her forties like Gil was, yet she held herself with the youth and aplomb of the twenty-somethings who filled the room. The screening was open to anyone, but the people who seemed to come out in droves were the new generation of baby queers who were still digging their teeth into the complicated history of their community.

“We live in interesting times right now,” Tiffany said as the room quieted around her. “We see trans people in the news and in media more than ever before. It is still not the perfect situation, but it has steadily been getting better for decades now.

“When the production of Pearl’s Dream began, there was no such thing as the transgender tipping point. Most trans women and men transitioned by themselves, in private, and did not tell anyone. They were forced to undergo medical procedures that they did not always want or request, and they were forced to forget about the life they had before the doctor’s office. But Pearl Merton refused to do that. She wanted to remember everything that happened to her, and so, this is where Gil Martin comes in.”

Tiffany gestured to Gil’s presence on the stage. She was sitting at a table, where two professors from the local art school were also positioned for the question-and-answer period. Gil had the opportunity now to say something, and while she had a dozen things prepared in the notes app of her phone, she had only been looking at Dean and Matty’s messages. She scrolled through old photos of the roosters from her bar, the ones that often woke her up at dawn, and the ones that Amber, the still-new baby queer bar hand, was getting used to herself. And then she was thinking of Matilda, or Tilly, the actual trans woman and former drag queen star of the Keys, who really did seem like a reincarnated Pearl when she’d first arrived.

She didn’t want to think about anything else.

But then she’d let herself get dragged back here. And so, since she’d already sealed her fate, Gil tried to at least do a good job.

She rose from her seat to stand at the podium, but every single move felt like a mistake. How did you face a room filled with people, all of whom hung on your words, and all of whom thought your movie was the best thing to depict class, medical, and gender inequality since Southern Comfort or Silverlake Life: The View from Here? She thought of all the fancy words from the dissertations about her work. From the emails between herself and Tiffany.

Gil looked at the crowd, too, and she could only see Pearl’s dead eyes in her camera.

So she didn’t speak about that. She didn’t speak about the negatives, only what was good.

“You know,” Gil said as she gripped the mic and adjusted it to meet her mouth. “I was always a bigger fan of beginnings than I was of endings. So I’m going to tell you all about meeting Pearl for the first time, rather than about my movie. If you still have questions, I’ll answer them, but I think….” Gil caught a hopeful expression from Tiffany on the sidelines, and continued with her plan, “But I think Pearl would have wanted it this way, too.”