Machatunim

I had wanted to see S Bear Bergman speak at Bar Wotever, where I was sure he would be far queerer and less 'family friendly' than he would be at JW3, a Jewish community centre in North West London. But I was away for that event, so off to JW3 I went, along with another queer Jew of my acquaintance who was in a similar position, although more worried than I about drinking the tea of the occupation. (It was Oscars night at JW3, and my friend and I were surrounded by opulently dressed, exquisitely-groomed Jews who politely skimmed their eyes over us, the raggedy queers drinking g&t and peppermint tea in their midst. Apparently there was a real Oscar statue there, but I didn't see it.)

There were maybe 40 people in attendance, and I assumed that people had taken the write-up seriously, and brought their parents and grandparents to the event. It was nice, I thought. Bear's storytelling was marvellous, of course, and there was a lovely jumble of queerness, Jewishness and family in every story. 

It wasn't until the q&a at the end that things went awry. The very first question was "So ... you mentioned the word 'transsexual'. What ... er ... can you ... say more about that?" Bear answered that he is transsexual, and apologised (in a gloriously polite 'sorry not sorry' way) for not including the information as part of his introduction. Then he quipped that the line about his grandma asking him, as a youth, if he had a boyfriend yet, would have made a lot more sense with this information, and something about the amount of head-nodding in the room must have given the game away.

On going round the room, Bear discovered that there were 3 separate groups of people who had had no idea what they were coming to: about half the audience in total. At least one of the groups was a work outing. And in another group, one man explained their presence thusly: "Well, it was this or Wolf of Wall Street."

Another man, sitting right at the back, tried very hard to be polite as he explained that queer means homosexual, and that we don't really use the word here, as it's derogatory. (Outraged gestures no it doesn't! yes we bloody do! from the queers in attendance.)

Bear, to his credit, handled the whole thing tremendously. He was nothing but polite and sympathetic to the confused and they, for their part, were mostly respectful and seemed genuinely interested. There were some awkward questions ("So how long ago were you a woman?") but Bear handled them all with aplomb, and at the end, while the queer side of the audience huddled together to recuperate, it was wonderful to see that the other half of the audience had gathered around Bear. I was in the other half, of course, but I hope they were being nice to him. Maybe apologising a bit, or asking more questions, or just getting to know him.

On our side of the room, we were conducting shaky post-match analysis. I don't think I was alone in finding the q&a quite traumatic: for much of it I was near hysterical with a laughter which wasn't always happy, and others were acting similarly; I can't know their feelings, of course, but my companion confessed afterwards that she had felt the same. After things had calmed down, I found myself so shaky and short of breath that I recognised the sensation of an anxiety attack. Texting each other afterwards, S and I discussed the strange feeling of 'coming down' that we were both experiencing; S said her immediate response had been to want to get drunk, and that she knew she'd feel very tired soon. That's not how I processed it, but it certainly feels familiar! In the immediate aftermath, there was a feeling of euphoria amongst the leftover queers - we were laughing and talking, greeting old and new friends, bonding in a way that reflected the strange intimacy of what had just happened. I'm not overstating the post-traumatic feeling, for myself at least. It felt like we'd survived something together.

The leftover queers

And that brings me to machatunim. Properly, this Yiddish word means 'the parents of your child's spouse', but in his book Blood, marriage, wine and glitter, Bear expands it to refer to a kind of 'chosen family' which resonates particularly with his queerness: whilst queers might not have uncomplicated access to the traditional family framework that most people operate within, in its place we can access a different kind of family - a deliberate family. Bear's most recent book is all about this kind of family: mixed in with tales of his parents and grandparents and brother are stories about people tied to him not by blood but by love and kindness and choosing - wine and glitter, in fact. I've written before about the homo head nod, the sense of safety and support that can come out of being similarly marginalised, and this is what machatunim means to me. 

It means silent, fleeting recognition on the street, and heartfelt welcome in a hug. It means webs of connectivity across facebook and tumblr and gay bars and queer book readings. It means the shaky, euphoric release felt as we exchanged with one another broken fragments of the strange thing that we'd experienced. The ease with which we opened up. Becoming more than a handful of strangers in an anonymous room. Becoming, just for a moment, family.