naming the dead

tomboy nation

Naming the dead. The first name I remember responding to was Kit. Little brother two years younger called me Kit. I called him brother. His name is Ethan middle name Holmes. My folks called him Ethan. Two point five years younger my shadow. I loved that kid like my own hand. I’ve been talking to that little fucker as long as I’ve been talking to myself so yeah I hated him sometimes. At least as often as I hated myself. brother looked just like me the red headed brown eyed chill version of Chris. I was blonde with green gray eyes. The baer boys both played soccer since they were kids since they could run in the streets in Milan. Earliest memory has me and brother standing in white pool of refrigerator light dad telling Ethan say when boy he must of been maybe eighteen months not yet two but walking and dad is pouring us apple juice say when brother but he wasn’t two yet brother didn't believe in time or the notion of when. Ethan say when shut up Chris don’t be a dick. If you grew up in Memphis you know what that shit means. Every damn Chris you know is a cold motherfucker. Names are how we protect ourselves and how we lose our minds some of us. Numbers and fucking names. Names and numbers we torture and waterboard ourselves with these symbols. Drawings we scraped in the dirt a few thousand years ago symbols triangles circles lines crossing spirals eights we made symbols to represent reality. Symbols to become words. False idols. And we lie to ourselves with them with words and numbers how we define reality. Millions of our people lose their minds or splinter or snuff themselves over shit we don’t choose can’t control. To be born at all. To run this fucking gauntlet again. The big spin we are all of us haunted by numbers and names.

I’m born in Mississippi or Italy doesn’t matter I was coming back I’ve been running this eleven year loop since I dipped back into the slipstream. When we name things we bring them to life. We give them power and voodoo. I named my dog mouse and yesterday day said to self hmm maybe need to get mouse a cat to play with. The rare perfectly upside down image. Ever since I was a kid numbers were colors. Synesthesia. Eleven was gray pale mystical. Four was green. My sacred numbers were eleven four and seven. Seven is a ghost like zero seven had a phantom color I can see it but we don’t have a name for it. Seven was a ninja so my jersey number was 7. Or thirteen if some other older cat some other Chris already got seven. Nobody took zero when we were coming up we didn’t believe in that shit yet. Which religion was it that invented the concept of zero. Two is blue sometimes purple most perfect most fragile most rare most precious. The color in nature most difficult to replicate. Two was always blue sometimes purple. My hair was blonde when I was a cub my eyes green my perfect imperfect family was four. Green was safe. Three was orange. Three is hardcore. Holy. Dangerous. Three kept fucking me up. Triangles and the trinity. Rock solid if you’re building a stool or a faith. The orange three the one with fire. Drop three men in a hole together two of them will kill the other. Building a chair a family you want the green the four. Four is safe. Orange is a bad motherfucker volatile and hard why do you think Tarantino called him mister orange. The three is orange and the rule of three is real the rule of three is truth and I go days weeks months doing everything in threes. Nah you can’t buy two black t-shirts unlucky dude get three. My eyes are green but I’m told they shift they turn gray I don’t know I try not to look at them freaks me when they shift. But those are my colors too my numbers my eyes green blue gray four two purple eleven is gray four is green for me blue is two the most rare in nature the hardest to describe.

Whenever it was the first time I first noticed this kink in reality that two was blue or that colors were numbers and numbers colors and by age four I was learning french so now all the numbers had new names. No worries they were all just colors to me. Perfectly honest most words and letters definitely the vowels all have colors and numbers too. When I was two I came online my consciousness resumed fell back into the slipstream. Two was blue. Family of four safe solid green always lucky never had 4 on my jersey because odd numbers are stronger more anchored in reality seven is a prime impossible to divide without a mess seven is a ghost. Where was I. First memory say when boy but Ethan wasn’t two yet didn’t believe in time he could still cross into the ether time travel he was just my shadow he was the kid brother taking form still arriving I was watching out for both of us sorry dad he doesn’t get it yet the shadow still taking form. But yeah from first breath mom and dad are calling you Chris. Mother named you christopher because she wasn’t ready for you to be born yet she was 22 she was in Italy she was a traveler from Mississippi so she prayed to the original asshole the patron saint of travelers ghosts thieves the christ bearer not yet she prayed not ready for this christopher this asshole I’m going to adore so you were born three years later orange years born in 66 six has no discernible color six is murky. born in Mississippi not Italy she called me Chris when it was just whatever Chris hurry up let’s go but I was Christopher when she loved me when she was surprised when she was angry I was Christopher. Uh hold the phone dude back up. Who the fuck is Kit.

Brother my perfect shadow my better half the one I had to protect first before myself he had a speech affliction when he was a kid could’t bend his tongue right kicked in when he was two blue not purple red hair five is red five is a rock but two years old solid sky blue and just coming online family moved to Montreal the colors and numbers get new names. Because soon as brother turned two blue and came online now we’re speaking french. Pleading allegiance in french singing songs in french at a montesorri school. Every girl whoever loved me screamed Christopher at me in both pleasure and rage at least once. Pleading was a freak spot-on typo or autocorrect back there so it remains. Soon as you leave the nest and go to school you’re standing in line what’s your name boy what’s your number. William Christopher Baer. A mouthful yeah break it down. Dad named me william after his grandad the first Will another writer and pop’s favorite baseball player was Willie Mays but everybody knows in the south if your name is William you better choose quick when coach calls your name you got a hair trigger second to identify as Will or Bill or Billy if you insist on William you might be a dick or british. You did your thesis on Shakespeare your other thesis on Faulkner and your master’s thesis on Mr Orange. Anyway I know a bunch of those cats too. All the Williams and Bills are my people. That said when I was a kid and you called me Bill more than twice it was gonna be a fight. Never sure why. Bil Brown at naropa another brother Brown a darkly talented photographer from another timeline a sin eater like me capturer of souls but Bil is safe brown is eight. If you’re a Billy or Willy in the south you’re a wildcard. Teachers called me Chris. The principal called me William. Three was orange two was blue sometimes purple five was red. Three was orange fire. Nine was black sometimes terrifying yellow the most fearsome of the colors yellow claims no number the numbers fuck with me torture me fascinate me born 66 brother born 69 my number some satan shit murky your number’s a dirty word brother black with yellow. Both my folks were 25 when I was born. Blue and red makes phantom seven. 25 is one of my sacred numbers. A great many of my best lads were named Chris and a lot of my enemies my guardian angels arch rivals blood brothers ghosts over the years were named Chris or William so by my math a lot of yours were too. I’m gonna name these dudes they know who they are and look everyone of them had more than one name. And I expect yours were assholes too. Everyone of them. Why you think Rock called his show everybody hate Chris. Every Chris is the same right. Cool cat for the most but don’t mind being an asshole. one of my neighbors is a white guy named Chris. Lawyer down the DA’s office smooth cool cat kind and polite total southern gent my size but I wouldn’t rec fucking with him and my best friend tightest ally my kinfolk at the hospital where I tried to disappear my mind his name is Chris. The black version of me. He goes by James on the clock. His folks call him Chris. My little brother from another at the hospital my other best kinfolk his name was Christopher too but he wore Blaine on his badge a girl’s name you called him Feathers his last name but deep down Feathers was a Chris he could be an asshole when he needed to be with a smooth quickness. Another guy on that crew his first name was Christopher but called Blake okay stay in the green. Brother called me Kit then my folks the family moved back to Italy age seven and five our best numbers brother was one of those kids who picked five or eight for his jersey number he was zen like that focus stay in the green James was just like Ethan. Two years younger the same size as me made the same score as me on the SAT. James was in Memphis on the the other side of town blood turf maybe never remember doesn’t matter but he’s a nomad like me affiliated or at least cool with all the colors. The whole time we were coming up my shadow my brother the other chris named James our paths crossed when and where they were always going to cross. I called him James at work cause that’s what he put on his badge and called him Shead his last name on the street but I call him Chris in my heart. I put Chris on my badge not really thinking. Or maybe I was every time I was arrested I was Will in jail I was Will in county lockup when I was 22 did 45 days in county what fucking year was that an unlucky as fuck year broke my own heart twice had first near death experience wrapped that little brown Toyota around a tree blackout drunk who was driving who took the first drink who took the that last the one pushed you into the black yeah that was Chris that asshole. Brown is safe brown is eight the infinity symbol but not always. Odd perhaps but it funny too. Made sense to me and still does. I was Will when I was locked up. I was Will in rehab I was Will when I got 401’d age 22. A deeply fragile but special year. Anyway I put Chris on my badge and as it happened there was only one other Chris working there at the time he was just like the rest of them cool cat but willing to be an asshole. Maybe somebody called me white Chris him black Chris never noticed don’t care the patients called me Wolverine. More on that particular nickname later.

Brother ethan was the same size as me. Red hair brown eyes. Eight is brown double fours eight is safe not sure did I say. Brother was the same quick the same smart as me. Our grades test scores everything the lot. We played imaginary games just the two of us for my first eleven years of consciousness. We were in Italy the colors and numbers had new names brother still called me Kit my favorite name but it bugged the fuck out of him too because he couldn’t say chris properly and woe to the asshole that teased him about it. Next earliest memory think we were five and two red blue seven some kid threw a rock or hot wheels car cracked brother’s head made him bleed and the story is Kit jumped on that kid hollering you killed my brother and tried to kill him back. The rest of my life that was the one law. Don’t fuck with my brother. Anyway he walked around the house saying the red rabbit ran through the rain in three languages I said it with him til it made us both crazy. By then we were speaking a mix of english french and Italian plus a secret code language too nobody else could grok. Meanwhile mom and dad couldn’t understand brother half the time when he was talking regular english and making me translate which pissed him off so I was proud of him when he could say Chris out loud so we let Kit die or rest Kit would stay seven forever. But he was still having trouble getting his teeth and tongue to cooperate and make the TH sound and that’s not a sound they care to fuck with in Italy their tongue is too smooth and elegant so out of the blue brother decided fuck this Ethan business and changed his name to Gaetano. No shit. For three orange years brother was Gaetano. I remember being pretty ambivalent about that yeah he was Gaetano on the playground on the street made sense but at the house he was still Ethan sometimes but I just called him brother. In my head I was still Kit and he was brother for decades forever. The Italian kids called me Christo. My memory of those years is knife edge bright. Having three languages and five names swimming in there was untroubling to me. Languages were easy but I was most fascinated borderline obsessed with english and taking it apart. I was eight. Brown. I was safe. I thought about being Kit again when we moved back to Memphis I liked being Kit plus somewhere in there I read a book about a cool cowboy mountain man Kit Carson but Kit is kind of a girl’s name in the south and I already got into plenty of fights on the playground being little and an asshole. So yeah we moved back to Memphis when I was nine and brother was seven. Nine is black sometimes yellow black with yellow inside. Nine is a dangerous number nine lives on the edge disappearing into ten. 24 is pink as the golden hour 24 is a circle flat. Six for me was always hard to see. mercurial six. Strange thing I have a photo memory that plagues and spoils and fucks with me and some legit time travel skills but numbers with a six or even numbers in general are hazy. I don’t remember even numbered years well they dip in and out of phase. Memory is fluid time circular in your head and hard to be sure which number which color is up because of the way brother’s birthday and mine are situated sometimes I was two years older sometimes three and it always seemed I was more volatile during the three year stretch the orange. My first girlfriend when I was thirteen was named Kelly another tomboy name. Thirteen is another edgy sort of number. One is a hazy sort of white that turns gray when it becomes eleven so it’s just dark orange but dangerous unpredictable. The Kelly stories are another long ramble for a another day. Anyway nine back to Memphis. Decide to be Chris or haul Kit out of the halcyon and best decide quick boy nine you’re in the black sometimes yellow decide to just let Chris keep on working the front desk let that asshole ride the clock.

My best friend from middle school up was a girl named Jamie a boy’s name. Blonde with blue. Farrah Fawcett vibe and look. Taller than me. We shared a locker for three years but she was never my girl just my sister bloodsister my best friend. Her name is actually spelled Jami but Jamie too is a sacred name for me. I had a brother another shadow in high school a white kid from California kind of a surfer named James but we called him Jamie. Then knew two Jamies at the hospital one a bear of a dude who saved my ass more than once the other a cool girl a tomboy alcoholic that Jamie lives close to my heart she drank herself to death after lockdown. One of my closest friends another soulmate from another timeline at the hospital was named Karen and the stupid bullshit with her name irks the fuck out of me. No shit I would faster say the word nigga live on the internet than use Karen as a slur. Trust me. Ask my black friends my family. Everyone of them will say yeah Chris don’t give a fuck. That white boy cool as a fan but for real that nigga don’t give a fuck is a sentence I heard a dozen a hundred times coming up and if you’re a white boy that shit means what it sounds like it means. In Memphis public schools half my posse was black and getting called my nigga is what it sounds like. Badge of honor wear that shit. I live on crip turf today back full circle the neighborhood I came up roaming is crip ground and look I have brothers who are deep affiliated high ranking cats who are all from different families the guys I worked with at hospital all wore different colors on the street red blue purple green but blue is my color I wore a blue Dodgers cap ever summer all summer from the time I could hold a ball. Not even sure when that took hold think I read a biography of Sandy Koufax another androgynous name when we were still in Italy somehow. never ever was another pitcher like Koufax. Like a science professor on the mound. Greg Maddux came the nearest. Then my dad told me stories about seeing Jackie Robinson play and the mythical pee wee reese moment they claim now never happened that shit totally happened in my timeline. Anyway dodger blue bandanas were all I ever used long before I heard about the colors and the turf but I have another frankenfiction essay coming telling some truth about gangs nobody seems to get. And on the hospital job the only color that meant anything was the color of our scrubs. Nurses dodger blue techs and me maroon another magic color that chooses its own number. But a bit too near to blood to really make sense who made that decision anyway when I was in county the cats I walked with were crips named Skinny Pimp and Big Black legends both.

The first girl I was ever sure I was in love with whose heart I broke before she broke mine or no she broke mine first I don’t know we broke each other’s hearts a fistful of times her last name was Gray her name was eleven. Hand to god. She was from another timeline or I was we couldn’t stay in the same reality long enough not to hurt each other. Her little brother was a year behind mine. His name was Christopher never Chris. He was a cool kid cool and beautiful like his sister but I remember shivering thinking christopher eleven. Ominous goddamn name. I met the girl named Gray in eleventh grade at seventeen. Dangerous age and much gray in the word eleventh. Magic numbers can be unlucky sometimes. The girl named gray was scary pretty whipsmart cool another tomboy I always fall for them. I mean. She had the coolest short silvery sort of rare blonde hair perfect pale skin. The perfectly faded jean jacket. She was a nerd girl tomboy future scientist in a cheerleader’s body she could do anything in my eyes. The girl named gray drove a perfect blue mustang the James Dean the ‘67 the most classic like how does 17 year old Chris the sometimes cool sometimes moody charming asshole how does that Chris process all that without losing his mind. Also when I first met her. I need want to tell the whole girl named gray eleven is gray story later. Need to find her ask her be sure she’s cool with that it’s her story too. Anyway she was also one of only two people I’ve ever met who had eyes that shifted from gray to green to a dangerous gold pale sort of yellow and I fell in love with them both. One of them has a boy’s name too Adrian Lee another tomboy the rare legit tank girl in fact and two boy’s names a serial killer name with terrifying hypnotic yellow eyes but she is a total girl too and the other was the girl named gray. Eleven is gray. Gray is eleven. I think of christopher and his sister the girl with yellow eyes every day and say a prayer for them both for the gray kids. For the elevens.

Meanwhile in high school there are a dozen cats named Chris and they were all assholes but cool assholes and everybody called us by our last names anyway. McComick was a big bastard and hilarious he wanted to put my head through a wall sometimes but he was a gentle giant too and looked out for me when he could. McComick and McAfee were both guardian angels more than once when I was in the soup somewhere being a dick or in the black being jack. Chris McAfee was Mac or goddamn McAfee if he was on a drunk but he was a big brother to me. The Chris I trusted most and I called him Chris when it was just the two of us Chris and Chris we are the asshole brotherhood. Nicholson was Nick was the biggest craziest asshole Chris of them all Nick was the dude in trainspotting who was always starting a fight. Nick and I got into a lot retarded trouble together I still hear him hollering man fuck you Baer in dreams within dreams so yeah I was just Baer for three years which was fine but still Chris to my friends. Will to the cops and bear cub to my baseball coach and Kit on the inside. Best friend on the baseball team was a country boy named Kelly another Kelly another androgynous name who dated my best friend sister Jami. Kelly played third base orange the hot box I played second and short. Shortstop was my favorite I’d been a little Tanner as a boy and it’s a ninja position a ghost with no base. One day summer league tenth grade Kelly and I turned no wheeled a wicked 5 -4 -3 double play red four orange. The numbers have slight variations in tone viewed in numeral roman arabic or word form.

For a minute there when we were first back in Tennessee brother decided Ethan was a weird too obscure name so he was changing his handle to Joe. Mother was not down with that scheme at all not having that but I called him Joe off book for years. In my phone he is saved as his middle name Holmes because now my son is called brother and shit gets confusing. The Holmes family goes way back in Mississippi. Like on one hand I know that Holmes county is named for my mom’s folks but this knowledge doesn’t do me much good really. I’m proud of mom’s maiden name Holmes means brother but also just another odd artifact of chance freak spin of the dial that I was born in Mississippi but it’s my mother state and Faulkner country so I’m loyal but still I keep my head down driving through Holmes county because Chris is cool but an asshole sometimes and when he was really feeling it or if he was slipping into the black there was never enough white privilege to keep that motherfucker out of lockup and Will doesn’t want to do time in Mississippi. Where the fuck was I. Kelly my first girlfriend age thirteen dark orange. Her brother Patrick was friends with me and brother first he was a year between us so the three of us ran wild in the neighborhood in the summers. Pat called me Jack sometimes. Fuck you jack most often still my other favorite nickname but I already had too many names. I called him Trick when he was being a punk because I’m an asshole. Names and numbers they haunt us all. And look this is the south. Lot of folks play around with giving their kid two first names and hope he doesn’t go serial killer on you. William was Henry another shadow brother I called him Hank and Mike was Fred and Fred was Mike. Another brother his number is 23. brother Richard had plenty of noise with folks calling him Rick. Or making the mistake of calling him Dick. Another best lad a brother named Craig overdosed in ‘99 a most double nine of a year the black yellow and eleven years later I meet another brother named Craig but I never call him Craig I call him Clevenger or lad. The Craig who died my dead brother he wasn’t alone he was at a dive bar in the village with Alex another lost brother another androgynous name. I dated a girl Alex once she was cool but the name thing tripped some with her. I can’t. Not ready to channel to stream the story of losing Craig not just yet it kind of. Shattered us for a while after. All of us. Craig Schindler goddamn. When Craig died I. Craig was the heart of that wolf pack. After we lost him I went to dark places. Darker places and stories for another day.

Names and numbers haunt us shame us bewilder and divide us and I wonder sometimes in the coming years if we will have issues deeply weird complex and conflicting issues with naming the dead. Conjuring and condemning the dead. We have a whole generation walking around with the notion of dead names twisted up with thinking of themselves in third person in a way that nobody knows what to do with.

My best friend my bloodsister in grad school the Boulder days her name was Max. Another androgynous name. Her given name was Mary but only her girlfriend her mother and I were allowed to call her Mary and only then when the situation was particularly dire or emotionally charged. Max was a tomboy a lesbian from day one and she was a top. She was also tiny and adorable. Which she found maddening. Max dressed like a teenage skater punk and wore overalls and baseball cap. She wore a binder kept them wrapped and bound and too big boy’s clothes because her cute tomboy girl body was too. Soft pretty too everything. This was the ‘90s post boys don’t cry and crying game and everybody was starting to glimmer that yeah some guys liked to wear a dress and some girls liked to wear boots and wallet chains and get dirt on it. On everything. Max pulled her hair out sometimes when her walking nightmares got to her and she hated her breasts. I never saw them but one of her girlfriends told me that of course god had cursed Mary with a lovely set of tits. Max was a touch me not girl so it meant everything when she touched me on the shoulder or didn’t flinch when I touched her. She had a double mastectomy in ‘99 or that’s when she told me. Before anyone thought to give it the gutless meaningless tag of top surgery. Official reason also true breast cancer ran in her family but she just was exhausted with hating her body. I hated that for her hated that she was dropped into that body against her will or choice. Nobody chooses to be born. To be black or white girl or boy. Nobody chooses their given name. Nobody has free will nobody chooses who they fall in love with and nobody chooses their numbers. Max was a poet. She had game but writing took its pound of flesh from her. She was good but never seemed to get joy from it. Max was a badass chick and totally a dude. I’ve lost touch with her now and hope she knows I love her and I know too she would understand how and why I’d be sad if she rang me up and said Mary is dead that’s my dead name now. Because I loved Mary just as much as I did Max. If anything I was more protective of Mary but I miss hell of them both.

I wore a skirt to the Antenna club at least twice in 1990 same year on track to county but it was just a skirt stretchy black with I don’t know red yellow flowers the sort of very basic ren faire peasant skirt the hippie chicks were wearing at the time and about kilt length on me. Worn with black doc Martens. I heard anecdotes about that for years. Seriously. That dude wore a skirt to the club. The first time you put on a skirt in Memphis in the deep hot as balls south in July or August and you’re 19 a white boy with long hair in love with a series of cool tomboys you put that skirt on and feel the breeze on your gear and think ah yeah. This is why the Scots wear kilts. None of this shit is complicated. If anyone was carrying a camera at the Antenna in the summer of 89 or 90 may have a snap of me in a skirt and docs smashdancing around like a madman doing flips offstage with Jamie then head butting Nick. Totally plausible on any given Wednesday for a stretch there. And what the fuck is the mystery. Androgynous people have been the sexiest most desirable beautiful most mystifying among us since the first cave dweller was scratching on a wall with paint made from berries and blood. Tomboys have been the coolest chicks you ever knew forever since Joan of Arc at least. Nobody was twisted up about fucking pronouns. And just to get that third rail out of the way my policy is whatever you pass for however you present that is the pronoun you get. There is no ownership of pronouns. I’m not gonna memorize your pet nickname either. If anything the pronouns I use to refer to someone else are my pronouns. They come out of my mouth and I shall own them if I say the wrong shit. To misread someone’s gender at first glance is nine times out of ten a mistake a goof a blunder.

I came up in the south so I learned to always address adults sir and m’am and miss. At the hospital everyone is mister or miss. Mister chris and mister James. If the patient is older than you it’s always mister and if you don’t know her name it’s miss lady.

Nine is black. Nine can throw yellow in certain light. I was seven the first time I got drunk. Longest stretch ever stayed clean remained sober also seven years. After my daughter arrived. That sevendrunk day the first time I crossed over into another consciousness and the addict in me was born. I came back changed and maybe this was the day Kit disappeared into dreams into a box in my head. The irony of this is not lost on me. I was nine when we landed back in Memphis and by my eleventh birthday I had stopped thinking and dreaming in Italian. First loop completed. Eleven is gray and gray is eleven.

Troubled and troubling but I find it kind of deeply weird odd bewildering that everyone on left and right has made such a massive clusterfuck out of the gender war the conflict over identity and how you identify not who. Nobody realized this shit was even a problem until the gender studies people bless their hearts had deconstructed the whole notion of self and sex and identity into smoke into dust and what did TS Eliot say I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Half the time I don’t pay it much mind. Though I did and still do believe the girl athletes who don’t want dudes with autogynephilia in the shower with them especially if that dude is into chicks and has the balls the gumption the unholy audacity to be high minded and lofty and frankly bitchy as fuck about it. Or the left trying to gaslight some teenage girl into being cool with it don’t worry sweetheart that’s not a penis you see before you not an erect package in a speedo and look little miss if you can’t get on board then you’re a bigot and probably need psych treatment how bout some benzos for that angst. Seriously what the hell are we doing to girls. to boys. to the ones who fall between. if I know and love a Max a Mary then I’d imagine millions of others do too. I should mention too that my brother and I have slung the line pull up yer skirt Mary stop being queer forever. Or long before I met Max. The south is full of assholes and the gay dudes and lesbian chicks I came of age with back in the day would get it and not be offended by it. The one fact that nobody mentions calls out or even seems put off by is the mindfuck nuts fact that by and large most maybe all of the trans women who don’t pass and act like bitches about it those are mostly white dudes. Seriously it would be funny if girls and women weren’t getting knocked up in prison by those white dudes. I don’t know. Tomboy nation rise up.

Random number fact that basically reaffirms my suspicion that we are in fact just bits of data in the big simulation. The involuntary commitment code in Tennessee the number 401 green ghost gray and the phrase I and all of my family have used a million times you got 401’d or yeah that dude bout to get 401’d. That green gray number is also the error message number for a dead link a website that no longer exists.

My belief my warning or advice to anyone out there thinking of changing sides and declaring their given name dead remember Kit. remember Will. Gaetano and Joe. remember Mary and Max and tell that asshole Chris in your life that you love him even if you want to kill him sometimes.

And look. This is the neuromancer age. The matrix devours and becomes us. Everyone had a moment some years back whether to go with their given name on the internet or use a handle. I put Chris on my badge for the reasons above but also because I’ve clearly maybe sometimes been laying down a smokescreen to cover my tracks for decades. Prepping to disappear. I haven’t googled self since 2013 when brother my son Elias McCulloch told me the internet thought I was dead. I call him brother now because that’s what sister calls him. I save him in my phone as kid E because e is a magic numeral the color of seven and because the radiohead album kid A was on all the time the summer of 95 black red when the boy was being born’d as he used to say and that summer I sent out a few short stories. I’m still playing with my byline my pen name then. My name name and my alt name. The name that would go on the covers of books I hadn’t written yet. Not just chris baer because. Asshole. I didn’t like christopher baer reminded me of christopher robin and it left christopher too exposed hanging in the breeze Christopher was special mom named you Christopher and I wore a saint christopher around my neck for decades the coolest one I’d ever seen given me by kid E’s mom. William Baer nah. That sounded like a stiff who didn’t make partner at some bank in Virginia. Will Kit Baer was a possible. I sent out a wave of stories with different bylines. Will Kit and Will Christopher and will christopher made five hundred bucks with his first publication in Story mag. Old will kit came up short and we are nothing if not superstitious. And I think it amused me some that depending on how you phrase it the name is a question and I’m the writer who never uses question marks. The stolen kidney dude.

The 70s and 80’s were a trip. the male icons were Captain Kirk. Bruce Jenner. Shaft. Dirty Harry. Rocky. The name Clint is one of the most gangster names in this universe. I have another lost brother named Clint the best guitarist I ever knew in real life the coolest cat you ever saw and like me grew up in multiple countries multiple languages brother Clint understood me better than most he knew from day one I could be an asshole and for the most he dug that side he trusted that asshole till he didn’t. My fault that but. Complex webs cells within cells interlinked. He was the first brother I ever wrote song lyrics with. The first cat who ever sang words of mine. Clint never knew his father and by all accounts his dad was an asshole probably named Chris and when Clint married Angie they took his mother’s maiden name as their name. Wagner. A solid name and boss move. His father’s name that was his old name. I don’t remember him calling it his dead name. Plus his retired name was still getting mail but I won’t give his dad’s name breathing space here because I reckon Clint would not either.

Bruce Jenner was on the wheaties box my whole childhood. He rocked gold at the olympics in the decathlon. The most manly goddamn event in track and field. The female shot putters high jumpers and javelins are bad dudes too. I get that Bruce is no more. What twitches me is this. I mean yeah the name is dead but are we saying Bruce is dead. Are folks ever going to say Kaitlyn Jenner used to be on the wheaties box. because Bruce won those medals. Give that cat his due. Bruce Jenner was a bad dude. Kaitlyn I don’t know. She seems okay I don’t know her. Kinda looks like a bitch but the one episode of the kardashians I ever saw in ‘09 or whenever it they started taking over the world I remember seeing Bruce and anyone with eyes could see he was shaving his legs and cutting his hair funny and yeah I do remember thinking something is up with Bruce.

Ellen Page to my mind was the best girl actor of her generation. Legendary in hard candy. The ultimate emo tomboy in Juno. A perfect Kitty Pryde in the X-Men movies. and she was a cool kick ass architect chick with a tomboy nerd girl vibe in Inception named Ariatne. I haven’t even touched on my obsession with character names and what they mean. I have a Molly in all of my books because Molly is a lucky name and I have niece named Molly. Love her like a daughter. Her brother Huston my daughter’s mother’s maiden name. Love him like a son and call him boy. I call him nephew. If the Judas movie had not got vanished into development hell I would have hounded my agent to get the script to Ellen Page for the role of Eve or Lucy Poe. In another timeline the KMJ got made and Page was a heartbreaking young Lucy. By the time Inception dropped it was pretty common knowledge or so I remember that she was bisexual. She dated girls and dudes. Had a gorgeous husky voice. Did sex scenes along the way with both male and female partners opposite. But I remember sitting in the theater when the second level of the dream kicked in and Ariatne was wearing a skirt and heels sort of a business chick ensemble. I remember being surprised. Ellen Page never wore skirts and dresses. Dressed like Max off the set. Too big boy clothes or very low key girl clothes. Beautiful though. Never butch to my mind. But definitely a cute girl with a weary boy inside. Regardless of where she was along her path his path to my eye Ellen was visibly uncomfortable in those hotel scenes. Never made sense to me. Not sure why Christopher Nolan yeah another bad dude named Chris did that. But the final bit of that scene had the dream thieves in a zero grav situation and Arthur hovering the bodies of the other characters into the elevator and I kept thinking why is she wearing a skirt. Ellen is gone now. But did she die. Was there a funeral or time of mourning. Because if she had gone out like Heath Ledger after Inception wrapped it would have been just as heartbreaking. And there’s a freaky Mandela effect vibe about how all of her credits on IMDB were disappeared like a witness protection level data wipe but her name still appears on various DVDs in my collection. I know this. Ellen is still in there with Elliot. The way Kit is tucked in here with me. Mary with Max. The brave as fuck teenage girl who made Hard Candy and owned that movie like a tomboy gangster is still in there. Hard candy is a movie I want my daughter to watch soon. The young tough smart Ellen Page is exactly the girl role model for her. It took guts for Ellen to make the crossing the transition to become Elliot. It was Ellen who made that decision or I’m sure Elliot was in there with her but still. The girl Ellen the tomboy she made those movies she was the one who was brave enough to walk around and become Elliot in the public sphere. Ellen gives Elliot all her strength and he is equally a brilliant actor. Vanya and Victor are the heart of the Umbrella Academy and Page is killing the role.

Eddie Izzard’s dressed to kill show was the only stand-up set I ever showed in class when I was teaching. The fact that he did that tour in elegant drag was irrelevant to his genius as a comic. I quote Izzard all the time. The phrase cake or death the whole bit even passes my lips or sparks in my head a half dozen times every day. I still love and respect him and regard him the goat of this generation of brilliant comics but the name Suzy is slow to take form or attach to Izzard in my mind and I like to think she would forgive me that lapse. I just call them Izzard in a pinch.

There are so many names still I want to explore and take apart my character names my narrators in particular. The method acting approach I take with getting into stream of consciousness mode and the long term effect it may have in terms of devolving self flirting with destroying self. My kid’s names both start with E and my daughter is Emerson another androgynous name her middle name Jane the most girl name ever named for my grandmother and my dad’s sister. I told her to change her online handle to emersonjane the other day if she feels twitchy about strangers asking her if the kidney dude is her dad. And how my kids they too grew up referring to the other as brother and sister. Hey brother what doing. Come on sister time for dinner. Music to the old man’s ears but was never conscious of teaching them to do that. Also their mothers both had magic and multiple names. My explanatory obsession with names that begin with E. My mom too is named Ellen. My dad was Dr Baer and doctor baer was a legend among my friends the dopest dad on the block. Doctor baer was a rock and my official reason for never finishing phD myself. Penelope Lee the patient weaver. My odd obsession with the middle name Lee. Or how my shadow my brother started sleepwalking when he was four. Four is green four is safe but sometimes cracks slip through and I nearly lost brother in the snow that night. Brother was on my right he was my right hand sometimes and I have a Dr. Seuss cap E tattoo on that right forearm now. For Elias for Elias for Ethan for Ellen. For my mother’s name. But will end this for now with a revelation of sorts. From 2002 a purple or green year depending the pov back when google was still in beta I had the gmail address willchristopher@ then in 2013 angry orange I lost access to that box in one of the botnet swarms that churned through the net post the stuxnet worm like locusts. I spent weeks months trying to get back into that gmail box I had eleven years of correspondence and attachments in there but it was hopeless. I eventually abandoned it and set up a new email. In 2017 signed up to facebook not meta as will christopher with 66 friends. Amuses me now watching Musk try to dead name twitter. Are you stupid man the verb tweet is all you have and to my mind the new sheep are the ones now calling it X. Hospital staff never use their last names working in psych if they can avoid it but by 2011 or so I had already been googled by some patient or other and was now the stolen kidney dude. Not just the dude who started the stolen kidney urban legend trope. I was the original dude who got his kidney stolen by a ninja assassin girl named Jude another boy’s name. Uh huh that’s him that’s the dude hey mister Chris show us that kidney scar come on Wolverine. And when I signed up for instagram in 2019 became will7christopher don’t remember if I pondered much what about will four christopher either way I am will seven christopher now I’m realizing when people ask me how do I find you what’s your name I just say will seven christopher. I’m proud to be half baer half holmes to the death and maybe it’s a tad psycho to keep Will and Kit around as alt personas and odd otherkins for Chris but nevermind fuck that dude. Everybody hate chris. Tomboy nation rise up. Recognize the asshole brotherhood and 401 family represent.

peace.