Gender Diary: Names & Ancient History (Patreon)

I've spent about 15 hours writing and basic-editing-for-coherency the story you're reading today.  It's a mixture of Montréal memory-lane and current adventures. It's about circus, training, transness, and names.

[This is somewhere around a 20-25 minute read; I've included lots of photos from my vault, for fun].

Since getting back to Montréal post-indie-movie, I've found myself back in a familiar (if uncomfortable) place: compartmentalizing myself, sectioning off parts of myself, in order to get what I need.

When younger trans people ask me about how working in film or working in circus is as a trans person, usually it comes with anxious questions around what to do if someone doesn't recognize you for who you are, won't use your name, won't use your pronouns, expects you to wear a costume that makes you feel dysphoric, etc.

I don't have an answer for a lot of those questions that feels in line with "Be yourself!" "Be brave!" "Be proud of who you are!" Instead, in my professional life I find that there are so many moments where it's obvious to me that it might be strategic to edit my disclosure of self to someone else rather than just doing a proverbial giant ballet leap into the proverbial room with a proverbial trans flag. I've become used to this in the context of film & TV work.  I'm less used to it in the context of circus work, in recent years.

Sometimes I don't think about it at all. Sometimes it has exactly zero negative impact on my mental or emotional health. Other times it really does.

I feel like I'm supposed to have something that's less thick-skinned, less crushing, less defeated than: "You have to decide how much you can tolerate editing yourself; you have to decide if it's worth it to you." In the end, I can't bring myself to say this to anyone else in the context of advice-asking, and I try to find resolution for whoever I'm speaking with through another path in the conversation.

Because there's always going to be people that don't get it, don't understand, won't understand, can't understand.

A 63-year-old Russian man from the former Soviet Union who doesn't understand what the word 'androgynous' means (in English, French, or Russian – I tried all three) might fall into that category.

The 63-year-old Russian man in question is one I have an enormous amount of love and respect for, and is the focus of today's stories.

Hope you enjoy the reading as much as I've enjoyed the reflecting. I'm trusting all of you with some deeply personal touchpoints in this one.   (If you make it to the end, or something resonates with you even if you don't make it to the end, leave me a lil' note to let me know I reached ya ❤️) Without further ado . . .   

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I hike my uncooperative messenger bag higher up on my shoulder as a blast of hot air shoves me out of Place d'Armes Metro and onto the street.

The strap slowly scrapes it's way back down my traps to the sore spot on the top of my shoulder that I've been icing on and off all summer. Months-long, lingering, tendonitis-y regret for trying out kalashnikov back in February. Whoops.

I could just switch the strap over to cross my body diagonally, but the temperature is inching past 30C (86F) and I don't want anything resting against my already-overheating body.  I'm on my way to an aerial straps lesson.

William ––the coach I've been working with all summer for the Barbette project–– is currently on a well-deserved vacation in the South of France with his family. He recommended keeping up on my technical training goals with another coach while he was away. There's only one other person I've ever trained straps with in Montréal, and his name is uttered with either adoring or matter-of-fact respect by anyone here who voices it.   Victor Fomine.

It's my first lesson with him in 3.5 years.

Since using "Ess" instead of the name he met me with.  

My first lesson with him since top surgery (twice).

Since starting testosterone.   

I'm already sweating.  

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The lesson is happening at Cirque Eloize – a beautiful, historic building called the "Gare Dalhousie" down at the bottom of Rue Berri. It was originally a train station – in 1889, the first train leaving from Montréal for Vancouver departed from there.

This space is where Victor Fomine has been coaching his students while searching for a new, permanent studio space for his "École Léotard": his long-running studio known around the world in circus circles as the place where world-class swinging trapeze and aerial straps artists are created.  

The first iteration of École Léotard I ever trained in was housed near Metro Assomption, in the back of a sprawling warehouse complex that was home to a GoKart space, a brewery, and a shipping & freightage company. To find the studio at that time, you'd walk around the side and back of the warehouse, dodging and dekeing the sometimes-frozen, sometimes-swinging heavy machinery that moved shipping containers around like Tetris pieces to get to an unlabelled door. Once inside, you'd weave through towering columns of precariously-stacked shipping pallets to reach the white tarps that stretched from floor-to-50-foot-ceiling: inside those curtains was Circus Mecca.

[Early Victor Lessons; 1st École Léotard; circa 2017]

When I trained here with Victor, I was a long and lanky version of my current self who had fallen in love with aerial straps but never really thought about seriously performing with it.  I was a little circus baby with stars in their eyes trying to pull double-duty balancing a nascent stunt career in the film/TV industry with my contortion training; I was travelling to San Francisco as often as I could to work with Serchmaa Byamba – but I just couldn't stop thinking about aerial straps. There was something magnetic about it, to me.

"If you're serious about it, you have to go train in Montréal," my Toronto peers told me repeatedly. And so I did. I pushed myself to train both straps and contortion, thinking distantly that one day, far off in the future, maybe I'd want to (or need to) shift focus in my disciplines. It'd be smart to start building a foundation now, I thought to myself.

These were my years of zero core stability and low funds. I'd buy the heavily-discounted "cheap Tuesday" ticket from VIA rail that would get me from Toronto to Montréal for a mere $40, crash on a fellow circus friend's floor near Berri-UQAM Metro, and train my ass off for 5 or 7 days before heading back to Toronto to try to make some more money doing a stunt or two. I was constantly bruising and injuring my ribs as I fought to build the strength to hold a simple flag. I lived off good cheese, tomatoes, and the little chocolates that Victor kept in a bowl at the entryway to the studio.

[That's Victor in the bright red t-shirt in the background, hauling my heavy carcass skywards. Circa 2018]

One summer, the warehouse management abruptly announced that the brewery needed to expand. Victor's lease was ending. They had to find a new home for École Léotard, and giant warehouse spaces that allowed for swinging trapeze –for affordable rental rates– were getting harder and harder to come by in downtown Montréal.

By 2018, the studio ended up far north of the city in the entirely different municipality of Laval, QC to share space with an existing flying trapeze school called "Trapèze la Voltigeur".

[The author at Trapèze la Voltigeur, AKA École Léotard 2.0. Likely writing an email to the composer who made the track Troy & I performed to at Cirque de Demain {which took place 2 to 3 months after this photo was taken}. Note the festive decorations to warm up the cold corrugated steel walls of the warehouse. Winter 2018]

The space was frigid, loud, and full of concrete dust, but the walls were decorated with the same familiar posters, photos, and mementoes that had graced the walls of Victor's previous studio. It was a kind of home.

It was also a 20-minute highway drive to get there from the north of Montréal, or a 90+ minute bus ride requiring a transfer to a totally different municipality. Getting there was difficult. By this point in my stunt career I was able to afford renting a car occasionally, which was the only thing allowing me to continue chasing this circus side quest: I'd trek out to the Voltigeur warehouse that stood alone in the midst of some desolate, windswept fields in whiteout conditions during the harsh Montréal winter and train and train and train.

[November 2018, Trapèze la Voltigeur; contortion training with Sergey Volodin, likely immediately after a straps lesson with Victor]

Making the effort to train with Victor was like circus pilgrimage, and it was a pilgrimage that other professional and would-be-professional artists from around the world recognized and upheld themselves:  It told me that I wanted it badly enough; it told me I was doing what it takes to achieve my goals, no matter what. It made me feel like I was part of a history and lineage of circus that reached across multiple generations of artists. It made me feel like I was part of the story.

I made that trek up to Laval all the way until the end of 2018. After that, the 40eme Cirque de Demain happened.

Performing around the world with my former duo partner, Troy James, happened. Top surgery happened.

A pandemic happened.

Life happened.

My income fluctuated especially wildly in those years and soon I couldn't afford renting the car to go up to Laval and Victor's school.

I met Jen (Cirque Physio!) on Instagram and she generously invited me to share lessons with the coach she'd been working with: William Bonet, a young, encouraging coach from France who worked on staff at the École Nationale de Cirque and took on students outside of school hours at a couple different downtown training spaces.

I grew with William, even as a part of me felt distantly guilty for not continuing to work with Victor. And it was William who I felt confident and comfortable enough with to approach to work with me on the Barbette grant project, to talk openly about trans things with. William held space for pronoun conversations ("il" made more sense for me in neutrality-challenged French than "elle") and was unfazed by surgery scars.

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It's pleasantly dim and cool inside Eloize today. The century-old stonework of the building is as deep as the breadth of my shoulders and insulates the space from the oppressive heatwave outside.

I call out a greeting in French to the front-desk lady and make my way across the lobby. The faint mechanical whirrrr of swivels and 4-to-1 pulleys reaches my ears as I push open the double doors leading to the training space. I kick off my sneakers, bend down to retrieve them, and cross the threshold into a massive, vaulted room. A straps artist, mid-lesson with Victor, is swinging powerfully through the air on one arm in circle after circle after circle. One-arm dislocs, says my brain automatically.   The limited vocabulary of a Victor–straps–lesson echoes through the high-ceilinged space:

EE– (a Russian-tinged "et–", or "and–) (to prompt the student to begin)  Encore! Again.    TIREZ! PULL!   Poignet TOURNE. TURN the wrist.    And, occasionally giving permission to have a momentary break:  Respire! (breathe!)

It sounds exactly the same as it did before.

I'm not the same, though.

It's been an entire transition since then.

[Interior of Cirque Eloize, Summer 2022]   

"Серунчик!" ('Serunchik!') Victor calls to me across the studio.

For the uninitiated, Victor Fomine is a quiet, humble giant in the world of contemporary circus. He's a slight man of average height and few words. He's 63 or 64 years old now. One of his shoulders doesn't lift higher than 90-degrees; he's had a hip replacement; he's -recently, as in several weeks ago– had several abdominal hernias fixed; and yet manages to spot 170-lb/77kg students as they flip and spin around on one arm during straps lessons with a strength and agility that belies his small frame.

Nothing makes him happier than seeing his students learn, work hard, and succeed. When he's happy with you, his smile makes his whole face crinkles up around his eyes and lifts his cheeks into rosy round apples. When you're struggling in your lesson, his face is calm and smooth: decades of experience lending him a zoomed-out perspective on the ups-and-downs of the learning process. A quiet, reassuring confidence that you'll get it, after enough repetitions.

His entire adult life has been dedicated to coaching and the quiet, unassuming impact he's made on the world of contemporary circus can't be understated: he and his early students completely revolutionized the way that people performed swinging trapeze; he and his early students revolutionized the way that aerial rope was performed.

He's coached countless students hailing from every corner of the globe to long-running contracts with the biggest circus companies in the world, and to prestigious prizes and gold medals at some of the most important circus festivals in the world, through the National Circus School as well as his private studio, the École Léotard.

At ENC, and his private studio, Victor's expectations for (and ability to produce in his students) high level technique, precision, and clean lines has made a mark on the ranks of young acrobats that come through Canada to receive the training that will help them succeed in their performing careers. These students then make their way out into the world to share and carry on the well-respected reputation Canada holds internationally as a producer of some of the best contemporary circus artists in the world.

If there's a high-level straps or swinging trapeze artist that you admire who has spent any amount of time training or living in Montréal over the years, the chances are not low that some of their technical excellence can be traced back to Victor Fomine.

Sure, there's contention and debate within Montréal's circus community about the "Russian style" coaching technique, and whether or not it's limiting artistically, or produces carbon copies of the same kinds of artists, and yadda yadda –– but at the end of the day, while you wouldn't know it to look at him, and he certainly doesn't behave like it, Victor Fomine is . . . a big deal.   

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"Bonjour, Victor!" I call back brightly.

It's hard not to feel happy when I see Victor, even as my heart thuds a little heavier against the inside of my ribcage. His smile is clear from across the huge room: a lowercase 'c', turned on its side.

Does he remember what my voice used to sound like? I wonder self-consciously.  Is he going to say anything about it?

The student he's currently working with slips the straps off his wrists and turns away to get a sip of water. Victor walks towards me, pulling off the heavy leather gloves he wears when he's pulling lines* (*hoisting them up in the air on the rigging system) for his students. He clasps my hands warmly in his, we kiss once on each cheek, and I scurry off into the corner to warm up for my lesson as he turns back to his student for their next exercise.     I begin slowly working out the stiffness from my hips, my back, my shoulders with gentle stretches and Theraband exercises.

I shift positions to move to my next stretch, pausing to re-tuck my shirt into my leggings' high waistband for the fourth time. A nervous reaction.

I had stood in front of the mirror at home a few hours ago, scrutinizing what my shirt did as I raised my arms, twisted, flung them behind me and in front of me.

It'll stay in place, I concluded.

In my lessons with William over the course of spring and summer I had become more and more comfortable wearing loose-fitting garments with large arm holes or even –magically, amazingly, affirmingly– taking my shirt off completely on the hottest, most humid days. William couldn't care less. It felt amazing.

[One of the aforementioned recent William lessons, July 2022]

This did not feel like an option with Victor, though.

Victor –along with the other Russian coaches in Montréal– have plenty of students (privately or at ENC) who are gay (or, in very recent years, open about being trans or non-binary) and coach everyone just the same.

The impression I always got was that the focus for everyone was getting better at whatever circus discipline was being worked on, and whatever students did in their personal lives, outside of lessons, didn't matter.

I could feel intuitively, however, the limitations of this model when I had to confront the fact that Victor met me and still thinks of me as a girl. When I first came to Victor to train straps I was only at the beginning of figuring out my gender stuff.

A transguy had been in town over the summer to train with Victor; we were discussing the above briefly in between lessons one day. He had been training with his shirt off. 

"Did Victor say anything...?" I asked. 

"No," the other student replied. "He pointed at my scars one day and asked about them but I just kinda shrugged and said not to worry about it."

"And what did he do?!"

"Got all excited and lifted up his shirt to show off his new hernia-surgery scars."

We laughed. There was something cute happening there. Victor might not understand what top surgery scars 'mean', but there's always the universal circus-artist bonding technique of "Hey, look at MY gnarly scars!"

In my case, though, I didn't have the benefit (if we can call it that) of training with Victor after all these recent years of surgery and hormones. Even if there was a desire or curiosity to talk about why I looked or sounded different, I was pretty sure that the chances of someone like Victor –in their 60s, from the former Soviet Union– having a framework to talk about, let alone understand, transness as anything other than mental illness or bizarre fantasy was ... slim.

I figure it's not that far off from how my German/Austrian grandparents used to scoff during Toronto Pride season, when I was a kid ("It's fine, but why do THEY have to be so ... LOUD about it?! Keep it to yourself!") (NOTE: with one trans grandkid and one gay grandkid they've now updated their views from diet-homophobia, but it's taken a couple decades and personal connection).

If my shirt flew up while spinning or inverting or throwing switches with Victor, I ––well, I didn't want to find out what his reaction would be. 

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"Серунчик!" Victor calls again. It's time for our lesson to start. I note the slight twinge in my stomach at the Russian-pet-name-ification of the name I didn't use anymore. Will anyone else in the space notice? Probably not.  If they do, can they piece together what the root name was? Possibly not.

"Qu'est ce qui sont lesobjectives?" [What are the objectives?] Victor asks quietly in Russian-tinged French.

I check that my shirt is firmly tucked into my leggings [again] and clip my straps onto the waiting rigging point as I think about my response:

"J'aimerais continuer à améliorer switches & tempos à un bras," [I'd like to keep working on my switches and on-arm tempos], I say slowly, carefully. "S'il vous plait." [please].

"D'accord," [Okay], Victor nods. He walks away to the end of the line to pull the equipment up to height and tie it off.

I know I'm about to hear that name repeatedly for several weeks though. I need a mental Band-Aid-solution so that hearing that over and over doesn't distract me from training.

[Cirque Eloize, with Victor Fomine; August 2022]  

Years ago, I remember asking Roberto Campanella (the choreographer who worked with Troy and me for Cirque de Demain) if he knew any unisex or masculine versions of my birth name in Italian. Roberto had laughed at the time: "Yes, 'Saro'. But it's an old man's name. You can't be 'Saro'. No one calls their kid 'Saro' anymore." I cajoled and begged for all of 5 seconds before allowing Roberto the fallback to the nickname he preferred for me ('pretty boy')(not inaccurate).

More recently, I've come across a name that's a pleasing (partial) homonym for the one my parents gave me:

Seraphim*, or Serafim.

(*Unfortunately, that the only other person I know by this name in real life happens to be another straps artist, and my first impulse is to think that the circus world likely isn't big enough for two 'Sera's who do straps, but whatever – it's all in my head, anyways. For now.)

Unisex.

Means fiery, or refers to the badass 6-winged angels that hang out around God's throne, apparently.

I watch as Victor locks off the line and walk back towards me. I wish I'd come across that name earlier, I think to myself. I put my hands through the waiting wrist loops, sliding the little chokes that cinch the material more securely around my wrists into place.

I decide to imagine that that is the name Victor is shortening and pet-name-ifying when he speaks to me in class.

Works like a charm. The itch in my brain is scratched and I stop ruminating on it.

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Victor stands next to me, ready to spot my hips in moments that my strength is insufficient to complete an exercises, or push on an outstretched hand once I've gotten into a position to generate a spin. We begin the lesson:

Skin-the-cats, leg lifts, holding flag (reverse meathook) statically, holding flag while spinning. Warm-up exercises for the front and the back of the body to get it ready for dynamic moves like switches and flares.

These used to take up 35-40 minutes of my lesson, I realize, pausing to catch my breathe before the next drill. It takes under half an hour now.

My workout hasn't quite become my warm-up, but it's getting closer.   

"Серунчик," Victor says, interrupting my thoughts. "Pourquoi Maggie a-t-elle écrit ton nom que "ESS" quand elle t'a programmé?"   [Why did Maggie write your name as "ESS" when she scheduled you?i]

Shit. I was hoping we'd just avoid this conversation entirely.

"Uhhhhh..." I stall.

When I was trying to just get away from my birth name, years ago, it didn't feel particularly important to find a new name, to me. So much of my life was sectioned off into pieces, back then: there were the parts of it where I was able to explore what transness felt like to me, and there were the parts of it where I had to continue playing the role I'd been playing. For family. For coworkers. For coaches. I didn't mind it. It felt practical and safe. It felt like a way to give myself time to figure things out with less external judgment.

As a (theoretically) temporary solution, I'd settled for shortening it to the first letter ('S') and then spelling that out when Facebook wouldn't let me use a simple initial in their webforms (thus, 'Ess'). It was a placeholder name that I never felt particularly strongly about, one way or the other.

It's also, now, the name that I'm known by professionally in what seems to be an ever-expanding capacity, and I feel somewhat (neutrally) stuck with it. The few people I've explained this feeling to are surprised to hear it. I've used Ess long enough, met enough new people, drifted away from enough previous-life-chapters people, that nobody gives it a second thought. I've dragged my feet on pursuing name-change paperwork partially for this reason: a name is supposed to be special. 'Ess' is just a name of ... utility. I'm not sure that it's The One. (Though it will continue to be for public-facing/professional purposes, indefinitely).

"C'est comme un ... un ... je ne sais pas en français, mais comme un ... 'nickname'", I say untruthfully.  [It's like ... I don't know it in French, but like a ... 'nickname']

It's not a nickname, grumbles a voice in my head that sounds like it'd like to kick speaking-Me in the shins.

Shut up, I know.   "Ah," says Victor. "Pseudonyme."  "Oui." I paused. Come on, come on. Grow a pair. Just ... try.

"...Et," I continue slowly. "Vous savez que je travaille en cinéma, oui?"  [And, you know I work in film, right?]

"Oui," Victor says, face impassive.

"Okay, donc–" I pause, searching for the words in French. I use the empty space to re-tuck my shirt into my leggings. "Souvenez-vous que j'étais jouer des monstres?" [Remember how I was playing monsters?]  "Oui."

"Donc, des fois je joue des femmes. Et, des autres fois, je joue des hommes." [So, sometimes I play women. And, other times, I play men.]  

Victor laughs, looking a bit perplexed. That I would be asked to play characters who are men is, perhaps, unbelievable to him. "Okay..." he said slowly.

"Et," I push on. "Des fois, je joue des personnages qui est ... qui est ..."  [And sometimes, I play characters who are ... who are...]

How the fuck do I say ... well, it's 'non-binaire', but what are the chances Victor is gonna know what that is. I don't have enough French to explain that. I can barely explain that in English.

I wrestle with sacrificing accuracy to convey meaning, but eventually give in: "Des personnages qui est androgynous." [Characters who are androgynous]

Victor just looks at me quizzically. His face is making the "Huh?" expression.

Damn it.

"Androgynous?" I try again. "Savez-vous...?" [Do you know...?]

Victor frowns and shakes his head.

"Non?" I persist.

Victor just deepens his frowny-face.

Well, I guess that settles that. If he doesn't know, he doesn't know.

"C'est comme les deux. Kind of," I say, trying to put a button on it.  [It's like both. Kind of.]

Victor shrugs the kind of shrug that says, I-have-no-clue-what-you're-talking-about-but-it's-cool. I shrug back with the kind of shrug that says, I-know-that-you-don't-know-what-I'm-trying-to-explain-but-that's-okay-too-Let's-just-get-back-to-training.

Victor turns to walk over to where the rigging was tied off. It's time to start the part of the lesson where our dynamic movement vocabulary required him to lift me higher, up into the air.

He turns back for a moment.

"Ah–" he says, a moment of recognition. "'Ess' est unisex."

I'll take it.

"Oui. C'est mieux pour mon travaille que ..." [Yes. It's better for my work...] I trail off, not wanting to say my old name. "Mais vous pouvez appelle-moi Серунчик," [But you can still call me Серунчик] I say, smiling. For old times sake, I think.

It's not perfect.

It's not comfortable.

But it'll work.

[History repeating itself. Cirque Eloize, with Victor Fomine. August 2022]

* * * * *  * * * * *  * * * * *  
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Dénoument:

There aren't many people that I opt-in for doing this personal-identity-enterology* act for, these days. (*that's that act where a person stuffs themselves into an impossibly tiny box). The moments where people-who-knew-me-before crash into the people-who-know-me-now are often where this performance occurs. 

"Don't worry," that other student (the transguy) said to me before he left Montréal. "It won't be like that forever."

I know he meant it as a reassurance. The sentiment was nice. But I'm not sure I believe it. I'm also not sure that it's weighted entirely as a negative thing. It might just be ... a Thing. 

I love Victor's passion for the art, for his students, for his quiet confidence that through repetition and fortitude the impossible can be achieved. My dynamic with Victor is a clear-cut one, with plenty of affection, good-will, respect, and gratitude baked in: I pay him money, he coaches me and helps me improve at aerial straps.

I also know that the version of myself I've grown into, the version of myself that I feel happier with and safer with, isn't one that he might be able to understand, or be willing to recognize. And I'm incapable of ignoring how sad it makes me that I someone I value so much wouldn't understand.

This recent training makes me appreciate even more how my now-regular coach, William, all the more – William who can hold space for these things.

I don't need Victor –or anyone else– to understand that I'm trans. But it's a very weird experience that both of us seem to know that the roles we each are playing involves a certain amount of simply pretending that nothing at all is different.

Is this tolerance? Mutual respect despite differences?

Or am I hiding from something ugly that I want to pretend doesn't exist in someone I have a lot of love for?

I don't know.

I don't know that I need to know.

Not right now, anyways.

We're going to be continuing to train together while William is on vacation; even when William returns, he and I will be shifting gears into choreography-mode while I keep up with basic technique maintenance with a Victor lesson once a week or so.

I'm making great progress with Victor; there's so many good feelings that come from working with him again, too.

I need our relationship to stay the way it is.

I need our relationship to be functional.

I need our relationship to be just about training.

And so, I need to be a version of myself I'm not entirely used to performing anymore.

There's something very ironic about this happening in the broader context of working on my Barbette grant (which I'll probably need several months space from to be able to unpack properly).    Until then, until next time, stay strange & wonderful --

xx. Ess