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I want you to be in my writing Maybe not you exactly Someone like you Will you like this version of you? Maybe not Will you recognise this version of you, as you? I hope so She has some of your qualities I say she because you are a trans woman, and it’s something about trans women that I’m writing Maybe you are central to it, or maybe incidental Either way, you figure in the text What makes me think I know anything about you? And what makes what I think I know something I can put in a piece of writing to which I own the rights?   As it happens, I’m a trans woman too Yay for girls like us! We’re at the bar at Mood Ring I buy us drinks Once our server is out of earshot, we dish I’m sorry you got harassed on the subway That happened to me just last week Oh, we saw the same surgeon His office never returns your calls It’s hilarious that we both fucked that other trans girl – she sure gets around Ah, but you have some stories I don’t Now, honey, tell me all about your pain   Wait, something’s wrong here If this is our shared story, why do I need you to tell it so that I can write it? Because of things we don’t have in common I’m white, middle-class by origin, with a good education, living in an apartment my partner and I own I transitioned late after securing a comfortable life In a word: bourgeois A bourgeois life brings relative freedom from pain But it’s boring This is the dilemma constitutive of bourgeois literature So I look to you for a good story I have the luxury of having feelings about other people’s feelings To feel, but also to judge, at some remove It will be your story, in my text – and my copyright It’s the business of bourgeois literature to stake claims to property rights over others’ pain   I don’t know that a book can even make a claim