The trans Martha Stewart: Interview with TT Jax

Photography by Mick Davidson

Very seldom does a Southern narrative of a transgender man’s adolescence resonate with an awkward Muslim girl from a small California town.  TT Jax’s “we are not ashamed, we said” captured a vulnerability that is both admired and feared.  We applaud those who write that which we at times believe is better left unaccounted, but we fear ever doing the same. Somewhere between polaroids, bottles, sobbing, and bare breasted boardwalk trips, I found something in TT Jax’s piece that piqued my interest.  I read “we are not ashamed, we said” about six times.

Each time, I was looking for something else–another clue into who TT Jax is and to a certain degree who he once was. I thought of emailing just to say hello, or even commenting in the hopes that he’d reply and answer a sundry list of questions. Unexpectedly but rather conveniently, I stepped into the position of Interviews Editor.  Now, I am in the perfect position to learn more about some of my favorite emerging writers without seeming like a lurking admirer.

Last week, an email exchange between TT Jax and I developed into an insightful interview where he gifts us five lines from his newest pieces, shares his love for Jack Kerouac’s work, and reintroduces himself as the “trans Martha Stewart…albeit of the dumsptered, repurposed, queered sort”.

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I’ve read “we are not ashamed, we said” six times. Each time, I find something new to love. Your story deeply resonated with me. Your vulnerability pushed me to think more about the memories I edit out of my own narratives. Can you share a about your writing process for this story? 

Thank you. I grew up feeling distinctly alien from the world as I knew it. From a young age my drive to write was intimately linked with my need to feel seen, to connect. Although I feel far less isolated now than I did previously, I write with the memory of that raw need to be heard, and with the assumption that there are others who wish to hear some facet of their own story told.

When I wrote “we are not ashamed, we said”, I wrote it to who I was then, and to all of the people who are burdened with the shame of stories they never hear told.

Some of the commenters situated your story in the Southern Gothic genre. Accurate or far off? How would you categorize it? What were you hoping readers felt after reading “we are not ashamed, we said”?

TT Jax

When I read those comments, I was simultaneously thrilled and dismayed. I have to admit, I never set out to be macabre– I pretty much just told it like it was. I suppose that some– okay, most– stories of my life are innately disquieting. (I admit to passing a few of them off as fiction– and they were labeled as fantasy and horror!) But you know what, I personally still call it creative non-fiction. There isn’t a real pretty way to say that your good friend shot his face off, you know?

In terms of what I was hoping readers would feel after reading “we are not ashamed”– really, it’s in the title. I hope that readers come away from it inspired to more fully tell their stories, to evoke their own experiences in life and art without shame, regardless of how macabre and disquieting or painful and dangerous these stories may feel to others.

“we are not ashamed, we said” is a short piece, which I like because I have a short attention span. Each paragraph feels like it could amount to a chapter alone and even with my attention span, I would have eagerly read. This reminded me of what makes for a good story: leaving something hidden, never fully satiated the reader. I wanted to know more about Faith, more about the polaroids, and more about the day you stopped wearing boys clothes. I guess that is the nature of short pieces–the brevity of beautiful prose only teases the audience.  As a work of creative non-fiction, do you have any interest in exploring this in the form of memoir? If not, why not? And if so, what areas of your life would you explore more?

Lately, I’ve been drawing more from this period of my life in my writing, although I don’t think that I would ever write a memoir about it. The stories are not all mine, for one thing, and I could never extricate my own path from the complex threads of the full story. It’s a deeply painful story, and I would rather let it rest for those of us who no longer wish to tell it.

But I do intend to tell it in pieces, in poems and flash and play and even fiction, where the characters meld and mutate and sometimes have happier endings.

In “we are not ashamed, we said”, you wrote “My unofficial title, to many of my girlfriend’s boyfriends, was ‘that dyke who fucked you.’” Have you acquired new unofficial titles?

Being a dyke who fucked someone? Lemme think. I’m frequently called the trans Martha Stewart, because I just love me some interior decorating and holiday parties, albeit of the dumsptered, repurposed, queered sort. My cousin-in-law calls my transman partner and I “the gals”; my partner was additionally dubbed “the bearded woman”. In the queer community, I’m “that poor poly kinky writer transguy who used to be a single parent who lives in south ga, you know, the guy who worked with the who-who Organization and did the what-what at the rally and blew that guy wearing the mini skirt and the tiara at his birthday party.”

As I was reading, I was thinking about a turning point where writing made sense to you. Like that moment of urgency. When did you first begin writing?

I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember ever not writing. I think the first time anyone really noticed that I was a writer I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and wrote this truly awful song called “Fly” that a friend of the family sang as a country song. (Of course it was great to me then– I cried as I wrote it.)

In addition to writing, are you involved in the visual arts at all? 

Oh yes. I still claim photographer, although the darkroom photography that I love is becoming more and more obsolete and inaccessible. I’m also a mixed media artist and a ceramicist.

“we are not ashamed, we said” focuses on your early adolescence which leaves me more than a bit curious about the awkward stage that moment and so-called adulthood. How might you describe this time in your life?

Short. When the candle is burning at both ends like that, your options are pretty much to die or grow up fast. I grew up fast.

You and your partner have a kid. What’s it like raising a kid in a small Georgia town? Does the kid ever make their way into your stories?

We actually have a petition going around right now about what that’s like, lol. It is a continuous uphill battle with moments of profound beauty, a struggle primarily aimed towards getting the hell out of here. My kid does come into my stories, although I’m selective and careful about where, when, and how.

I am partial to Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner. Do you have any favorite writers?

This has actually become a somewhat difficult question lately. I’ve been most influenced by the Beat writers, particularly Kerouac– also Charles Bukowski, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Irvine Welsh, Etgar Keret, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kafka.

You’ll notice a conspicuous absence of female writers there, and a lot of frequently asshole white men. Once I caught on to that, as well as to it’s problematic underpinnings, I of course pushed myself into a much broader idea of literature than I’d been taught.

But you know what, I couldn’t tell you who my favorite writers are now. I feel alienated from those that used to be (see the white asshole men part). I’ve read some amazing, profoundly moving and beautiful books since then, books that have changed me and inspired me. But I don’t know if I’ll ever love another writer the way I used to love Kerouac, and that sort of makes me feel really old.

Like most writers and creative types, our craft does not pay the bills. 9-5 gig? And does the job provide any working material for your writing?

My former jobs certainly do. But I’m actually unemployed right now, which gives me ample time to work on my writing. I’m also getting certified as a doula and celebrant, and I start a study in midwifery this winter.

Are you working on any new pieces? Can we get a sneak peak–maybe a two sentence teaser?

I’m working on about five new pieces right now. A sentence from each:

1. The headboard slammed against the wall, grim and raging like a heartbeat.
2. The man beside me shivers, shifts in sleep, cries, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you!
3. “So, how’s Jon?,” she says, brown eyes twinkling mischievously as she shifts her ass a little, parting the lips of her pussy to reveal a slim gleam in a swirl of pink and smoke.
4. You’re a pretty city boy, I say. Hope the alligators don’t get you.
5. forward it speaking than point the to more gets backwards ass shit telling sometimes But

10 years from now, TT Jax will be…?

Thinking god, I can’t believe I wrote that!

Anything else you’d like to add TT Jax?

Just a big thank you. I’m very excited to be a contributor to Specter!

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Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985) is a photographer, writer, and high school history teacher born and raised in East Palo Alto, CA. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY where she is a co-founder of the Mambu Badu Photography Collective and a Visual Arts writer from The Liberator Magazine.  She is opposed to dresses without pockets, is fascinated by Sufjan Stevens, loves poet Haryette Mullen, and enjoys researching fringe religious movements of the 1960s.