Work Text:
Josh crowds into a tiny, dark room between Mark and Debby, pushes his way through the people milling about until they find three seats next to each other. It isn’t hard, really--poetry slams are generally fairly popular, but this one is still tiny, run in the basement of a local bookstore of the next town over. It is the kind you really only hear about if you are a poet, or knew someone who is.
Josh is the poet between the three of them.
Well, to be fair, Debby writes poetry, too, but she still isn’t comfortable performing it, not yet. Not like Josh is. Mark is just there for support.
“I’m gonna go sign up,” Josh shoots a pointed look at Debby and laughs at the light shove he gets in return, then sidles out from the row of chairs. He writes the title of his poem and his name down on the line right under ‘How to Love Your Body in 10 Easy Steps - Tyler Joseph’ and takes his seat again.
The first few poets are good, and he recognizes a few--the young white guy talking about his OCD, the older black woman fearing for her sons, the teenage girl who wrote a letter to straight people. It’s a nice atmosphere. Josh’s fingers itch anxiously, like the always do before he performs, but the other poets are talented and more than once he loses himself in the way their words feel.
And then this girl walks up on stage. She looks to be around Josh’s age, hair just grazing the tips of her ears, tattoos banded around her arms, tall and lanky but fitting.
Debby turns to him and he now feels how tense his body has become, lets out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding, “Josh?”
“She’s pretty,” is all Josh says, and Debby smiles and pats his arm. Josh is good at becoming enamoured by pretty people.
Someone announces that this piece is called “How to Love Your Body in 10 Easy Steps”, and that the speaker is named Tyler Joseph.
People murmur.
Josh blinks.
The girl on stage begins.
“How to love your body in ten easy steps. One: stop eating,” The girl, Tyler, commands the stage, voice soft but demanding an ear, “You may not think you are fat but eating less will make you feel as if you have control. Two: pretend you believe in God. It will give you a reason for why you have no control.
“Three: welcome the anxiety as a friend. Bring it with you to every social function and hold it close to you when you sleep, this anxiety is the only guarantee you feel anything,” Josh inhales sharply and feels Debby’s hand slip into his own.
“Four: read the comments after pro-transgender articles. Read every person who calls you a mistake and invite them into your home, construct an altar every time they call you a freak, unnatural, unlovable, the Catholic church reserves a special spot for you in Hell,” Tyler’s smile is bitter and her--his--their voice slows, softens, “Take this as a compliment. Believe these insults as if they were prayers.
“Five: bind your chest. Bind unsafely, bind for too long, this binding is the only way you can trick yourself into feeling complete.” Their voice rises again. Josh can hear little gasps for breath between each sentence, can feel the emotion pouring out of their mouth, and tightens his fingers around Debby’s, “Run, even though your lungs can’t fully expand due to the constriction. It will hurt when you breathe, and you could puncture a lung from the pressure. Be grateful. A lung full of blood is a quicker death than most people would wish for you.”
Someone in the back whistles at that, and people “ooh” and “aah” around him as they always do when words hit harder, speak more truth than usual. Josh drops Debby’s hand and leans forward, elbows on his knees and eyes stuck on the person on stage. They are beautiful like this. Josh is captivated. Tyler doesn’t skip a beat.
“Six: change your name to “it”. We all know the logical progression; “he”, “she”, “it”, man, woman, whatever. You are the whatever, the most general thing to hate. This “it” is the closest thing they will give you to a name, a legal recognition of your gender,
“Seven: blame your body for this. Blame your breasts, blame your cheekbones, blame the places you bleed, do not call it what it is. Do not call it transgender, do not say dysphoria, just say depression, no qualifier,” Tyler’s voice rises further, speeds up, and this is the part of poetry Josh loves the most--when the emotion is so raw, when someone is splaying their chest open for everyone to see, when they get so caught up that it all just spills out at once, “Call it self-hate, call it “I just need an alone day”, take an alone day every day.”
There are people clapping, calling out praise, and Tyler calms again. “Eight,” They pause, and when they speak again, it feels like they are whispering compared to how they sounded only moments before, “Pretend you do not still love her.” Tyler touches their chest, and Josh sees for the first time that they are shaking, “Her. The woman inside of your chest. The one who pains your lungs as you breathe, the one who binds your mouth. Pretend this is her fault, pretend she is only a prescription written for someone else, a bottle of Vicodin you would only become addicted to.
“Nine,” Tyler pauses again, eyes dropping, and their gaze meets Josh’s for only a second. Josh is almost positive that he is falling in love. “Stay calm. Smile when people spit in your face, say thank you every time they misgender you, every time they tell you that you are not allowed to know who you are. Blame yourself for not being a more convenient sin.
“Ten: claim this hate proudly. It is how the world taught you to love yourself. It is the only way you know how.”
Then Tyler disappears off the stage, and around Josh the crowd erupts into shouting and clapping and praise. Josh just sits and stares at the place Tyler occupied.
He is next, but he knows he needs to find Tyler after, before the night is done.
He has to.