Travis Alabanza - None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary

First published in Great Britain in 2022

by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2022 by Canongate Books

Copyright Travis Alabanza, 2022

The right of Travis Alabanza to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 83885 431 7

eISBN 978 1 83885 432 4

Likeall my work this book is firstly dedicated to mymum. Thank you for defying all the odds.

Iwould also like to dedicate this book to any transperson who is confused, questioning or in the middle ofchange. This book is to honour that state as aplace that still deserves dedication.

I love us.

T he only prologue Ive written before this one was for the published script of my theatre show, Burgerz (Oberon Modern Plays, 2018). I wrote it in haste, having forgotten the deadline was imminent. For opening night, I typed what I thought would count as a prologue on my iPhone notes, without any sense of a future reader in mind.

In that prologue, I wrote how Burgerz which was created after a burger was thrown at me in broad daylight was about making sense of this violence. I talked about how the show was trying to grapple with the reality of someone throwing a burger at me whilst they were yelling a transphobic slur. I said that the play aimed to figure out why and how it was happening; said the purpose of it was that, through understanding, we could stop this act happening again. That by trying to understand why people throw burgers at trans people in public, in particular at me, I would feel better. Sure, there were other sentences in there as well. Some words about being only 22 and having something published, about not quite believing that to immortalise something on paper you did not have to be white, or posh, or a man all things I am not. I could sense a similar feeling to one that is trying to bubble up to the page now before I write this book: a questioning of worth. Not that the words were not valuable, but was I worthy of the words I aimed to write? Yet underneath those sentences alluding to my self-doubt, I could feel a simultaneous desire to show I had it all figured out, almost as an overcompensation. The only destination I was aiming for was that of understanding. I wanted to put an experience in a box, to tell myself and you why and how the specifics of transphobia towards non-binary people exists, and then to move on. As if explaining the cause of the violence would decrease the pain. As if understanding was the end goal. As if understanding burgers being thrown at people was even possible.

I write this, my next prologue, three years on: instead of writing it in five minutes before a show begins, the global pandemic has stopped all live shows and it feels like I am writing in the opposite of haste. I remain not entirely sure what a prologues goal is, yet carry on because it is what I assume I must do, a part of me wondering if its just a thing posh people do to avoid getting to the point. Like the fancy dinners I sometimes go to now, where they have a million tiny starters, instead of just giving us the thing we are there for: the steak. Yet as I sit down to write this appetiser, I feel myself still being pulled towards this need to make sense of something. Before I can even think about what I am going to write here, my hands start to type an explanation of all the things this book will figure out.

I start to write long sentences about how None of The Above will bring you an understanding of what it means to be neither male nor female. That this book will help you understand how race and transness intersect. That it will help you understand what it means to grow up a faggot on a council estate. That it will help you understand why the gender binary in society is harmful. That it will help you understand why anti-trans feminism is flawed. That it will help you understand why the gender binary is racist. That it will help you understand the history of non-binary experience. That it will help you understand what it means to date as a trans person. That it will help you understand how trans politics will free all from gender oppression. That it will help you understand how being trans helped free me. That this book will help you understand.

That this book is about understanding.

That our end goal after reading this is comprehension.

That to understand something is what makes something successful.

That to understand this book, and in turn me, would stop the violence.

My hands pause. Outside my window, I see a mother put a mask on her child as the child asks why she needs to do that. They repeat this game for about two more minutes. The mother responds with something inaudible from my window, yet it looks like the words because we have to, or because Covid, and then the child nods in agreement, before becoming bored and taking the mask off a moment later. Each time the mask is removed by the child, you can see their lack of ability to grasp the world around them. And the mother does not have the words to explain to them either. Understanding feels out of reach. Only actions seem to make sense. The child carries out the action even if they do not understand it. In writing this book, I feel like that child.

Now with so much uncertainty around us, when even my writing feels questionable, how can any of us pin a fact with certainty to such a moveable playing field? A global pandemic can do so much to rupture your idea of what you understand as certain. Yet I am reminded that the world has always been an uncertain project; it has always asked more questions than it has answers to give. It has always left us with inexplicable results. It has always existed between so many lines. However, there is something about writing this book whilst the world is both metaphorically, and literally, on fire, that makes me think so acutely about discarding old habits especially the desire to make things neat.

Despite some universals, the year 2020 will be known as many things to different people. What I witnessed was a year of people being uprooted. Things that we thought we could do, we no longer could. Moments that we thought were safe, became dangerous. Things we believed would always work, no longer did. The week I am writing this particular page in September 2020, Beirut has experienced a devastating fire just a month after damaging explosions, a new rule has been announced by our government that feels like an impending second lockdown, and there are large areas of California on fire which many are saying was started in part by a gender-reveal party. I know that when you are reading this, many elections that I am currently worried about will have been held, the planet will be even hotter, and people will still be having gender-reveal parties that burn things down. The chaos is both deeply worrying and calming at the same time.