they look over at the overblown buildings on the other side of the river
the usual clashing mish-mash of the capital’s monstrosities
Morgan gets lost in this city, their senses assaulted to the point of disorientation by the jumble of high roads and side roads and relentless traffic and the pressure of millions of people walking too fast
who’ll mow them down like convoys of unstoppable army tanks crushing their spidery self
they can’t get their head around city-dwellers who complain the countryside looks all the same to them when it’s this city that’s chaotically confusing
Morgan has no problem navigating the Yorkshire Dales, Peak District or the wilder reaches of Northumberland
with an uninterrupted view of the sky to keep one’s line of vision empty
and psyche
healthy
they’ve only been here a few hours and are already missing the North, where people are more genuine, friendlier, and don’t put on airs and graces
Londoners think they’re the centre of the bloody universe, ignore the rest of the country and keep up their relentlessly unfunny jokes aimed at the peasants who live ooop North, eat fried Mars bars for breakfast, get so hammered at weekends they end up pissing their pants in the gutter, and are generally inter-generational, unemployed scroungers
as Morgan encountered from two Londoners on the train down from Newcastle this very afternoon
who’d amused themselves by spoofing the stereotype, not for a minute thinking the black person sitting opposite them was a born and bred Geordie
Morgan’s badly missing Bibi, too, they only said goodbye to her this morning, caught the train down, and will see her again tomorrow
they feel vulnerable being so far away, after six years together the two of them are in synch with each other’s rhythms
their lifestyle is quiet, peaceful, compatible
they’ll happily spend their evenings sitting side by side with Bibi on the sofa reading, something Bibi insisted Morgan take up in order to broaden their mind, imagination and intellect, I can’t be with someone who doesn’t read books
Bibi reads non-fiction, her latest hero is Gloria Steinem, Morgan reads thrillers
sex is interesting, they enjoy sharing their reinvented bodies with each other, giving and receiving pleasure
according to what works for them
every other weekend they visit GG from Friday night to Sunday morning, help out with stuff around the house and farm, go on long walks
GG can’t get a handle on Morgan’s gender identity – understandable when she’s spent ninety-three years living on the same farm in one of the remotest parts of the country
GG’s incredibly fit for her age, and incredibly stubborn, she won’t move out of the farm and into a home, Morgan and Bibi worry about her, have given up trying to persuade her it’s the best course of action
I was born here and I’ll bloody well die here, she said last time they tried, and anyone who says otherwise can sod off
the last time they visited, GG said she’d changed her will and left it to Morgan on the understanding it’s kept in the family, invite all your non-binding people to come and stay and be themselves if you like, and when you die, you can pass it on to the family member most likely to look after it: why should I give it to my bairns when they abandoned it as soon as they were legally able to abscond and will have estate agents poking around before I’m cold in the grave
after they’d got over the shock, Morgan thought it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them, so long as they survived the inevitable shitstorm from the rest of the family, who’ll accuse them of sucking up to GG to get hold of her estate and might even contest the will, say GG was of unsound mind
Bibi was totally game, they’d since discussed the idea of reinventing the farm for people who have reinvented themselves
astonished that GG had come up with such a radical idea
Morgan recently arranged an Ancestry DNA test for GG which links people with blood relatives who’ve also had it done
GG had talked a lot recently about her own mother, Grace, who’d not known her father, a seaman called Wolde from Ethiopia, it bugged her right until her death
it was the big mystery of Ma’s life, she said, and GG felt sad that Wolde would forever remain a mystery
Wolde, who stopped off in South Shields in 1895 and impregnated Daisy, her grandmother, before buggering off
which is what Morgan will shortly do from this awful after-party
they were asked to review the play for a fee for the lifestyle magazine, Rogue Nation, on account of their Twitter following of over a million followers
which apparently turned them into an ‘influencer’
as opposed to a high school dropout who wasted too much time online and had no discernible career to speak of
as they joked to Bibi who didn’t disagree with them
@transwarrior was initially used to chart their journey from tomboy to non-binary, these days they use it more widely for general trans issues, gender, feminism, politics
it’s good for lobbying and adding their outraged voice to protests
their Twitter account brings them invites to everything: concerts, first nights, film premieres, book launches, private views, hotels, edgy fashion shows
Morgan doesn’t have a clue how to analyse or contextualize a play, book or film, it doesn’t matter, it’s their following that counts, not the quality of their critique or prose
soon there’ll be no need for proper critics, the so-called ‘experts’ who’ve been running the show since forever, most of them here in London, it’s all about the democratization of critical opinion, the papers say, and that includes someone like Morgan whose tweets get more readers than the proper critics
it can go to a person’s head if they’re not careful
as Bibi reminds them
Bibi keeps them grounded, says the so-called democratization of reviews means the lowering of standards, and that subject knowledge, history and critical context are at risk of being lost in favour of people who only know how to write in attention-seeking soundbites, I don’t mean you, Morgan, Bibi reassures them, you’re a true trans warrior who’s making people pay attention to important issues
sometimes Morgan thinks Bibi does mean them
Morgan
turned down an invitation to write their autobiography, told the publisher they couldn’t imagine writing more than 280 characters at a time, and anyway, they really didn’t want to write hurtful things about their family, the angle the publishers were after, a ‘how I triumphed over my painful childhood’ number
on that note, things have improved with the folks at home to the point where Morgan is on good terms with them these days
Mum dotes on Bibi, of course she does, she’s feminine
Morgan has already posted their first comment on the play
Just seen #TheLastAmazonofDahomey @NationalTheatre. OMG, warrior women kicking ass on stage! Pure African Amazon blackness. Feeeeerce! Heart-breaking & ball-breaking! All hail #AmmaBonsu #allblackhistorymatters Book now or cry later, peepalls!!! @RogueNation
it’s been liked 14,006 times and retweeted 7,447 times and the numbers keep ratcheting up
there’ll be more to come on that score: Unmissable! A tour de force! Go see, transgirls, transboys, ladyboys & butchies, all the queers & all the queens & the intersectional warriors out there and all my fellow non-binary darlings #africanwomenshistory4everyone
Morgan
throws the wine glass into the Thames where it’ll sink to the bottom to join other objects like leather shoes and goblets preserved deep in the river bed from before the Roman invasion
as Londoners are proud to brag in those documentaries fronted by posh gits who’ve been to public school
they take a last drag of their third roll-up, stub it out, will slope off to the expensive hotel room in King’s Cross in order to get the first train out of The Smoke in the morning, when they see someone familiar standing talking to a black bloke they recognize off the telly, Roland somebody, all poncey in a bright blue suit