In Regard to the State of My Gender

I got food poisoning and ran a high fever last night. Following is a list of the fever dreams I remember, while they’re still fresh in my head:

- Could not fall asleep because I kept hearing wolves, which I later decided upon were actually coyotes. They were running around upstairs and howling. The worst part is I woke up from this, as in, I woke up from the frustration of a dream of me not being able to fall asleep.

- My (deceased) mother was in the basement because she wanted to play basketball, but because the stairs were made of water I didn’t want to descend them and get all wet. She admonished me for this and we argued about it through a heating vent.

- Woke up, knew the room was filled with grasshoppers and I was paranoid about accidentally killing one, so I had to lay as still as possible.

- It was Christmas, and my husband and I were celebrating inside my old high school. I was gifted a weightless, blindingly bright shining ball of condensed light that caused anything in proximity to it to appear engulfed in flames. Not actually on fire, simply appearing to be so. I ran around trying it out on different things, then eventually myself by hiding it inside a hat and putting the hat on.

- A new law was passed in the U.S. that allowed someone to submit a “likeability test” through the court system to anyone they simply disliked. I received one in the mail and had to answer a list of bizarre, seemingly unrelated questions to determine my likeability. (How long is your left arm? Do you ever think about trumpets? Exactly, to the second, what time of day would you use cocaine?) Many of the questions had to be answered in french. After submitting it, I had to appear downtown in a lavish, overly ornate courtroom covered in Antediluvian artwork while dressed in foppish eighteenth century garb. Everyone talked in (badly mimicked) old time-y ren faire British accents and I was to receive a score based on my decided likeability. I scored low because I am trans.

- I was hit by a car but found out I couldn’t die because instead of actually dying, a corpse simply “fell out” of my body. As in, I effortlessly shed an exact copy of myself that was dead while my real body just stood there watching it happen. It was also always naked. To make the most of my abilities, I decided I could get around town quicker by simply climbing over buildings and then falling off, making a beeline to my destination. I left dozens of nude corpses all over St. Paul.

- I had the ability to create artwork on my skin by willing it to exist. I would give myself different tattoos every day, and later found out I had the ability to give and take away the art on other people’s bodies as well simply by touching them. I lived in a small apartment downtown and ran a lucrative business giving people these “tattoos” that bloomed out almost instantly from my touch. My apartment walls and floors were covered in half-finished images because I could use the skill on inanimate objects as well, however I didn’t do it very much because it caused my ears to bleed. I also learned that I could kill people with my skill by “over-coloring” their bodies and causing their internal organs to shut down. Because of this, I was investigated by the FBI who forced me, at gunpoint to take a Likeability Test. I again, scored poorly because I am trans.

Well, that was fun.