Disappearing

What I'd like to say now, in my angelhood, beautifully-fledged, pearls for teeth, gold dust for breath and absolutely NOTHING between my legs- a void, a hole, an exit, a nothing, sweet nothing at all- is about before, when a sickly slug shrivelled against my cold thighs.

That is the pretty way of saying I am a transsexual, of saying they took my head and made a nose from it, took my miserable thigh muscles and made shy, withered tits and- yes, yes- tore off my cock, cut and shaped the poor servant into a pleat and took all its roots and goo and all the red, foul, filthy shit inside it that I wanted to cut off at birth with the doctor's grinning scissors and then tried to bite off with my milk teeth in the bath with my sister (I had void envy, penis anxiety) and, yes, they disappeared it. It's a decommissioned spy, dead, once lurking in a space above my intestines, incubated in my bloated guts, long abandoned, now gone, gone, gone. Allgone. First thing I ever said but it took forever-ever to happen.

What a grand entrance, oh, flashbulb burnt out, honey. Look how I ended up uglier even than before, a swollen, bleary-eyed beast caged in a high-rise, fucked and drifting down the infinite green gloom of the hallway, hunted by gangs of anaemic skinhead children smoking cigarettes and pretty girls throwing glitter in my face as I sob, poor tormented Tiresias, oh, yes, the tower block's anguished, ancient Orlandon't, expiring, tears echoing down the stairwell. No, but you would've seen seen me on a late night broadcast when you were stoned, nodding out to soft jazz and Ceefax, badly made black n' white freeze-frames of my face (that hideous, miserable couple, before and after) cut and rushed between footage of a riot in Chicago in 1994 or slow motion CCTV shots of kids on methedrine stealing cars. And I would have a pseudonym: become again, another, finally, unfussily extinguished phoenix, I would be Girl A, no, no, Patient A, never Girl A, no. I need a pseudonym, like one of Warhol's girls. Be like Holly Woodlawn, trilling on the big black telephone, snorting speed off silver foil for breakfast as Bobby D. stares at the camera, hollow-headed Dylan scoring horse on the fire escape before walking to the cemetery with Allen- Edie, Edie, babe, you seen my copy of Time? (And one of us crows, 'Yeah, it wounds all heals!') Oh, but we pity Edie, stroke and mother her, our poor androgyne, emaciated speed freak, cooing, coming down, lost on a pillow in the kitchen. Poor little rich girl. Our walking abortion. But all that glory is gone, lost in that terrifying lap dissolve into the '80s, girls clinging to the ghost of an image, disappearing, fading into bad blood, New York winter, taking new names.

I wasn't ghost-written or imagined by a phantom. I'm not hiding, fake, finished like a book. Neon and ink names are nothing against flesh- the skin, bile, tissue and bone in everything. Girls name themselves after birds and famous tigers: no name reaches for the beauty of flesh and its soft, slow decay. What about my condition's name? I reach for the textbook and I shudder. Did I have dysphoria? Oh, yes, a million times yes, a brain in a unfamiliar skull and eventually, a dead shell. But look, look out the window! 'Condition' is inadequate. It was not a particular 'thing', or a singular residue, trauma or bruise that caused me to sob, shriek and tear at the skin which I just bragged about. There was nothing about me, howling, helpless in my hair-shirt, that could be fixed and corrected in a shot. Look out the window, over the car park: see the family in coats, cold, holding each other, walking to their car. And nothing else around at all. I don't know their names, I can barely see them, can't feel them, and if I spoke- I wouldn't, I wouldn't. It is exactly that. I was disconnected from everything: nothing had the right name. Existence is the condition and the root, the home of the disease and the sickness. Nothing else at all- all inside burned and buried. Ashes.

Fourteen Howls

First howl begin like this: Say I wasn't even tired, but louder like faraway, I wasn't even tired- howl- so skinny, gaunt, a ghost, yes, louder, first howl ends like that.

Second howl is an image: Starlight scarred across the glass. Girl flinches against the light.

Third howl on tenth floor: Miserable juveniles stealing from refrigerators, fucking on freezing floors, still scared of dogs. A howl echoes at that height. Sleet or frost on window. If you fall from the window you become an angel.

Forth howl is American woman howl: 'If it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all.'

Fifth howl responds: 'Huh?' The rabbit scratches his head, slumps against the kerb, slurps his milkshake and gives the ground a good thump. The rabbit tells someone his mother died. Listen: the silver crackles around Cassiopeia, the smog groans through the trees, and gradually all the light is exhausted.

Sixth howl is a separate howl, it concerns everywhere I have never been: Borges' house, Auschwitz, a school in a devastated district of Detroit, that abandoned room full of children's things in Bristol, Cemeterie Saint (I forget) in Paris, a television studio, various relations' graves and the woods. Where are the woods exactly? And I have never been to Kent. This list would go on forever.

Seventh howl- the halfway through howl: Two wolves have a conversation near a supermarket.

-Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

- Yes.

- How?

- I know it was tranquillisers but I do not remember so I guess really I do not know but the records say that and when I woke up there was this growling, grumbling low in my stomach that really hurt and the postman came, no, the doctor came, and said, That is because of the pills. I nodded, I did not want to speak, I was sick of words. I'm so anxious about words.

Interference: The wolves didn't say anything, they can't. Well, they can but we don't understand. I saw a wolf at a zoo once and she did not howl at all. Her eyes were pinned like they were marbles. She didn't produce a breath. Perhaps it was a model I stroked and not a wolf at all.

Eighth howl is from a starving body: Not- I don't, I didn't- I practised fasting because it's howling- it's holy. I was never, um, diagnosed an anorexic girl, and I never said anything- but I felt there was a hole there- a big, black hole, and I thought starvation would block it. Plug it. I didn't- it... and now the whole is bigger than it was, before.

Ninth howl tells a lie: Certain swans are richer than the entire Danish royal family because swans have their own economy based on things children forget in the park.

Tenth howl takes MDMA: Look at that light falling. I don't want it to stop. Oh, there's another wave. Yes, yes. Shhh....

Eleventh howl from a mother: Please, come home, come home, come home.

Twelfth howl is silent and allows for peace between the calls and lets us observe the inclination and the glittering of our stars.

Thirteenth howl is from Robert Wyatt, 1990: 'There's a lot of words that don't exist yet and I can't be bothered to wait for them to exist.'

Last howl end like this: Children always play angels. Are we anxious from them to die? So we pretend they're dead, or faraway, archived in the sky, at work in the huge black void, the great, cold night? All angels once were drowned girls, overdosing Ophelias- teenage suicides- miserable, brittle boys who faded out in cold bathrooms or stopped, asleep, and felt their voices disappearing in the dark, or exhausted their veins in flats, leapt from roofs, sick from paint, starved, collapsed, crashed, cracked... yes, last howls late at night. End like that.

Rabbit and Bear on a Rock by Paul McCarthy and frontispiece to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by John Tenniel. No copyright infringement intended.