jacqui

I've been having some thoughts about the concept of passing.

I'll try to avoid jumping straight into my default deconstructionist standpoint on this. It's difficult, because it seems like such a binaristic notion. Passing and not-passing.

I feel like a lot of the transgender people I talk to about passing have some kind of internalised idea of incompleteness. This is understandable to me, as a disconnect between internal and external identity is what drives a lot of us to come out. I just wonder if in focusing on passing we declare the sum of our identities as some kind of failure.

Do I pass to my transgender friend when she says I'm becoming “more passable?” Will I ever pass to her under her standards? Will she? Do I pass to the man who texts me saying he wants to drill out my nonexistent pussy? Do I pass to myself when I see someone in a distant reflection, and think “Wow, she's cute,” only to realise that reflection is my own?

I feel like different 'tests' are being applied here.

I think, as a trans person, that the widespread, binary conception of gender does not pass for a valid representation of who I am. I am sometimes spoken to in ways that make me feel uncomfortable, and feel physically out of place, when I am forced into a side of this binary. I simply position myself where I am at least somewhat comfortable, as a woman. In our current cultural context I feel the expected presentation suits me best, clothing, mannerisms, that kind of thing. But I do see it as a sort of stop-gap.

When a person calls me she, ma'am, her, lady, hell, I'll even take dear or sweetie, they have passed. I am pleased.

In that moment, I don't care for the details of what they think I am. They have treated me in accordance with who I know I am. A femme. That is a form of gender euphoria for me.

However, another thing that is passable to me is being treated neutrally. Not attracting long stares, or being treated as any particular gender. Feeling a break from being assigned to a gender role. I think trans and non-binary people are often doing important revolutionary work through the normalisation of (not always) non-traditional presentations of gender.

In this way, I don't want to pass. I want to be visibly transgender, I want people to know that moving outside the stereotypes for their assigned gender is something they can and should do.

If a theory doesn't fit all possible cases, the theory is wrong. It does not pass.

So, let's lift the burden from our shoulders and instead make society pass.

Realness or not, your outfit can never betray you – every flawless touch or telltale sign is a shattering blow against preconceptions of gender. – Terre Thaemlitz

Stock of sensimillia, growing in my back yard, Stock of sensimillia, growing in my back yard. Stock of sensimillia, growing in my back yard, yeah Stock of sensimillia, it's a-growing all over. – Sylvester Burns, “Sensi Cafe”

A few years ago I was killing time in town before the bus left, browsing the only CD store in the city. Looking for something new, and cheap, something I'd never heard, but within the sorts of sounds I was used to. Something not too aggressive, something people can talk over.

A distorted, mischievous face with a puckered smirk peeks out over a rack of CDs. “BUY ME, I'M CHEAP!” – at seven dollars, I'm tempted and draw closer. I parse the title 'Joint Venture'. I giggle to myself. Like smoking a joint, maybe. The person on the cover is winking to me from under his beanie, walking fast, on a mission. Asking with his eyes, and acknowledging with his digitally stretched smile that you're in the know.

I have decided to give this joker-faced, fast-walking man my seven dollars. Whatever he's selling, I don't want to miss out on.

By the time it's in the CD player, I've learned its vintage is 1999. Sub bass swells like a sunrise sped up, reversed, looped. At times the drums lazily punctuate our drawn-out silences, then they're doubled-down, intense, rapid-pulsing embers. A voice crows out over chords that echo and linger, copied like smoke, sparse, measured, “back on the road again... smoking weed in public...”

Over the next few months, Joint Venture became part of the place I lived, part of my daily rhythms. A creation of a mysterious “Sly 'n' Mo” – I hadn't given their identities much thought other than showing one of my friends that the album was recorded in Austria. Nor did I give much thought to the fact that the CD was still inside my stereo when I sold it to pay rent.

It took me a while to realise that a tiny piece was missing from my life. One day I said to myself, “Oh, shit. The CD!” and resigned myself to it being lost, sitting on the floor of someone's garage. I still had the case which helped in my efforts to find it on the internet. Even scouring the absolute bottom of the barrel, subjecting my browser to ad-filled sites that require you to register for fake download links, my searches turned up no downloads. It seemed the physical releases, CD and vinyl, were the only way to get my music back, and the shipping was prohibitively expensive. I took another look at the case.

My initial search queries were for the vocalist credited and pictured on the back cover, next to some goats (?). This was Sylvester Burns. Presumably, he was the Sly of Sly 'n' Mo. They turned up nothing of relevance, even “sylvester burns austria” gave me nothing. So I searched for its catalog code 'uptight30', the 30th release on Austrian label Uptight records. I found an entry for the release on record cataloging site Discogs, with little information but a link to an artist page for Sly 'n' Mo. I clicked it and saw only:

Real Name: Stefan Mörth

This was our Mo, of Sly 'n' Mo. But where was our Sly? Had he featured on any other releases? I found an artist page for Sylvester Burns on Discogs, featuring a single track 'Sunset Loafing', on a compilation called 'Escape to Formenterra', evoking the sound of a beach party with oceanic synths, a bouncy sine bass, and shuffling breaks – all in all, pretty good, but the Facebook page for his alias Stretch Silvester showed that this Sly was a red herring – a British impostor in my search results.

It turns out Stefan Mörth is still producing music under the name Stereotyp for his label Crunch Time records. While on Facebook, I visited his page and asked him:

Hey Stefan! I picked up the Joint Venture CD a few years back and it's one of my favourites. Do you know if Sylvester Burns has worked on any other music?

A few days later, I got a reply:

Hey,.. No sadly he was only here for a few weeks , went back to Antigua to do reggae Musik on the beach . I don’t blame him though 🙂 I have similar stuff on my label https://crunchtime.bandcamp.com/

Antigua. Antigua was the missing piece. How could I have missed it? It was even (mis)printed on the back cover: Special thanks to Sylvester for the freshest Antiqua freestyle lyrics

Back to google I went, armed with the query “sylvester burns” “antigua”, making sure that the results would include this critical keyword. I had been looking for music, but instead I discovered a creative project of a totally different kind. My search had returned a single news article that totally blindsided me. Sylvester Burns had been quiet, but very, very busy.

In 2007, eight years after the production of Joint Venture, Sylvester Burns and six others were arrested in a “joint operation” between police, the Antigua and Barbuda Defense Force, and the Office on National Drug and Money Laundering Control Policy (ONDCP). Citizens of Antigua, Dominica and St Vincent, they had been caught trafficking a staggering 1336.7 pounds of marijuana. That's enough to roll nearly six hundred thousand one-gram tinnies. Turns out the “stock of sensimillia” was no lie.

In open-mouthed amazement, I read on:

Law enforcement agencies involved received information that a boat carrying what appeared to be bales of drugs had been spotted on the eastern end of the island. The vessel according to reports arrived in Antigua from St. Vincent.

The only other potentially relevant information I discovered were records of abandoned property, and a listing from an Antiguan customs auction, in which one bag of the unspecified general property of Sylvester Burns was sold.

I wonder what that bag contained. Was it the unreleased music I had been looking for? Or just trinkets from a life so-far lived, an ashtray, an empty CD case?

Nobody knows except Sylvester Burns. Someone who truly suffered for their art.