Checked In Safe

Not in PV, Not in Kansas

Sunday morning, just over a week ago, we were rushing to check out of an Airbnb, return a rental car, and get to the airport when I got a text alerting me that my flight had been canceled. I was already on edge. Krista and I were scheduled to be leaving through the same airport that had given me a humiliating pat down the last time I’d gone through without TSA Precheck.

That morning, Kristi Noem had announced that she was suspending TSA Precheck. So I was folding the kids’ laundry and collecting scattered socks, phone chargers, and homework assignments while mentally preparing myself for discussing my genitals with strangers, in front of strangers.

The best cope I’d come up with was “Well, you’ve already done it once, and this time Krista will be there!” It wasn’t doing much for me. When the “your flight has been canceled” text came in, I was unloading my kids’ stuff into my ex’s house and yelled, “Fuck!”

I went back to the Airbnb to search for alternative flights on my laptop. Everything was a week away. I called customer service. They said they could put me on a flight from Newark to Mexico City that day for “only” $900. Desperate, I gave them my credit card number, but my instincts kicked in by the time I got to the “three-digit code” on the back of the card. Why were they asking? They had my card number on file. Oh, because I had misdialed by one number and fallen for a scam. I was honestly a total bitch to my dad about it when he fell for the exact same one. I yelled “Fuck!” again.

While we rebooked travel with the actual airline, the text messages started coming in from friends and family: Were we safe?

“Are you safe?” is an unsettlingly open-ended question in Trump 2.0 America. That day, I’d been reading about the latest updates to the “Anti-Trans National Legal Risk Assessment Map” which had been updated to reflect the recent Kansas laws invalidating trans IDs and putting a bounty on trans people who use public bathrooms. I’m always surprised when cis people even know about things like this - usually, anti-trans actions sail through the world lubricated by Gavin Newsom types who make our eradication seem like a reasonable compromise with the Epstein class.

So, it wasn’t a surprise when I realized the Sunday texts weren’t about domestic anti-trans policy, but rather the fallout from the US-backed assassination of “El Mencho,” the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.* Cars were burning across Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. The airports were being evacuated. It looked like the Costco was burning down.

The Costco was, in fact, not burning down.

This is all, obviously, bad. The cartel in Jalisco was recently found to have a crematorium with several hundred shoes and the remains of at least 50 people on a farm near Guadalajara. But, the cartel wouldn’t gave the ability to commit atrocities like this if it weren’t for the US appetite for drugs and a constant stream of US guns, where strip mall gun stores like “Carter’s Country” in Houston become major suppliers to cartels. Historically, decapitating cartels of their leadership has produced more bloodshed and chaos, not less.

And it was shocking to see Puerto Vallarta on fire. I sent our kids videos of cars and buses burning on the streets where they’d posed for pictures last summer. Look how fragile this beautiful place is! But flying to Mexico City put us far away from Jalisco. It’s something like the literal distance from Chicago to Minneapolis and at least some of that psychic distance.

We spent Sunday night in an airport hotel out of the path of the blizzard. We got on a 6 am flight out of the snow and made it back to CDMX in time to welcome Krista’s mom here. I decided that once I’d caught up on sleep and work, I’d take some time to learn more about the geopolitics that caused El Mencho’s rise and fall and develop some kind of thesis about what might happen next. But, before I got to that bit of citizenship homework, the US and Israel launched joint strikes against Iran, so now having a POV about WWIII has taken priority.

Nonetheless, all the messages of concern made us feel very loved and very grateful to be safe and checked-in-upon. The thing I’d love to see most in my lifetime is less scarcity of safety, less necessity to parse which dangerous thing someone might be asking you about.

I’m new to the etiquette of we’ve-removed-two-heads-of-state-and-one-cartel-leader-so-far-in-Q1 US politics. It feels inappropriate to even have good news, let alone share it.

But I have good news, two pieces of good news that I’d like to share with you.

First: I’m going to Reykjavik, Iceland, in March. My pilot, We/Us, a family comedy extrapolated from the vibes of me and Krista’s short film Funny Face, was accepted into The Whale Screenwriting Lab. This is exciting to me for many reasons, but as media in the States gets more conservative and more consolidated, I’m especially curious to connect with people internationally who have an appetite for supporting trans stories.

My previous trip to Reykjavik, February 2001

Second: Speaking of people who support trans stories, I’m going to Reno, Nevada, after Iceland to direct the short film, Holy Shift, which was written by Maren Curtis as a tribute to a trans relative and the well-meaning Christian family who struggled to accept them. Maren has written a very funny script that I relate to both as a parent doing my best to raise good kids who live their values, and as a trans person who has been rejected to make room for other people’s bigotry. The premise? Two evangelical parents cross-dress on a family outing in an attempt to cringe their trans kid out of gender non-conformity.

As I continue to pursue opportunities to direct TV, I’ve been hoping for chances to direct things that I didn’t write and don’t act in. Maren’s script is the perfect version of that, and she’s brought in a collaborative, respectful team of people I’m excited to be making the film with. We’re casting, storyboarding, location scouting, and doing all the fun dreaming that starts this process.

Many people who read this substack already support me financially with subscriptions (amazing, and profoundly appreciated). Many can’t or wouldn’t, on principle (so valid, and diminishes my love for you not one iota). And of course, as the joke goes, all of the same trans filmmakers just pass the same $20 to each other year after year via crowdfunding. But in case you happened to win one of the Powerball drawings I lost when I was on the East Coast, here’s the Seed & Spark Campaign Link, where you can donate or just follow along:

Anyway, thank you for checking in on me. I hope you and the people you care about are safe and that you’ve still got some good news coming your way.

*Faithful readers of this substack will note that in a prior edition of this substack, two of El Mencho’s employees were abducted while selling drugs to American queers in Oaxaca.