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And rub it in their faces she did.
She paraded her boyfriend around all of the embittered divorcees whod made her childhood hell.
She took others out to dinner her treat!
I would be like, Oh, go read my big article that just came out!
You dont read English.
Though fun at first, herPretty Womanmoment proved to be a hollow victory.
After a while, I realized, why am I doing all this shady shit?
Like, what gives me the right?
What does give you the right?
She pauses to think.
If thats what I need to do, why do I have to care about her feelings?
Why cant my feelings be more important for once?
She sips her drink.
They had to be Soluna nothingbut Soluna!
In 2009, she was jailed at Rikers on drug-possession charges.
They put me with the women, and the women physically assaulted me.
They put me with the men, and the men sexually assaulted me.
One of the guards told me its very expensive to have your own cell, she says.
(She became a U.S. citizen in September.)
She was also able to enter a recovery program for addiction.
A lot of people were telling their friends, Why are you waiting for hormones at Callen-Lorde?
They give it to you right away!
Theres this crazy woman named Cecilia who fast-tracks everything!
We had 20, 30, 40 people coming in a week, right?
I didnt have time to write my monthly reports.
A lot of people at Apicha started calling me Mom or Mother, Gentili continues.
I cringe because every time I think about motherhood, I think about my mom, who was aterriblemother.
She bursts out laughing.
When you dont have a good relationship with your mom, it can be hard to be called Mother.
Im your case manager!I didnt think of myself as someone who could handle that responsibility.
But I realized that this is a different kind of motherhood.
Now, Gia is my daughter.
Rio is my daughter.
Gogo is my daughter.
Serena is my daughter.
I have this extremely chaotic life where I cant say no to anything, says Gentili.
Ive been saying yes to everything because I never had any opportunities when I was younger.
I was queer as a child, trans in my 20s, an addict in my 30s.
When you come out of scarcity, every opportunity feels super-important, Gentili says.
Thats productive, right?
Fitzpatrick first encountered Gentilis work at a reading many years ago.
At first, Gentili struggled to figure out how to translate live storytelling to the page.
The beauty of my stories is that theyre never the same.
Telling stories without an audience seemed meaningless to me.
They could totally work as letters.
Gentili appreciated Fitzpatricks editing style, which the former likened to a kind of editorial T4T relationship.
She finds that worlds narrative expectations limiting at times.
They want the inspiration, like, Oh, poor trans woman living a terrible life!
She made it through all that terribleness and succeeded!
Still, withFaltas, shes not trying to kindly anybody, not even her editor.
She no longer feels that she has something to prove.
She just wants to tell the truth.
I was, like,reallytalentless.
Ive never told a bad story, she says.
