This essay was selected through Sixty Literary, a biannual call for literary writing from writers and artists based in the Midwest. You can learn more about Sixty Lit’s inaugural call for writing here.

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I once wrote, in one of my frenzied poetic states, that I am a machine who produces dissonance.¹ Once full of angst, the line retrospectively seems prophetic: this year, for the first time, I am regularly kicked out of both men’s and women’s restrooms.

Hormone therapy is undoubtedly the best thing that happened to me. It taught me what sunlight and desire feel like. Though, I still hold my body like a girl’s body—a habitat I have not been able to shake. My bones seem hollow, easily swept up by a strong gust. But on HRT, the induced heat of my blood keeps my body hard and my feet solid. Grounded and clumsy.

This has been particularly apparent recently, as I have begun to participate in couples dancing (mostly two-step), as well as line dancing, at a gay bar in Chicago. I love watching the pairs—lead and follow—swirling around each other, sometimes bumping shoulders, but still cacophonously synchronized. Like birds in a flock—silhouetted at sunset against the abundant midwest sky, between the bricked buildings or above bushes of a park. The dancers, as a flock, fly around each other, responding and mobile together: messily and orderly. As the rhythms shift and fade, the group moves, diagonally, linearly, and fluidly.

I would never call myself a birdwatcher (that label assumes a certain investment and knowledge), but I do like to watch. I have always found the intense interest that we humans have in birds amusing. In most cases, that interest is conditional: there are good birds, and bad birds. Desirable, and undesirable. Clean, and dirty. An example: bluebirds, and pigeons.

To find the Good/Desirable/Clean birds (those Interesting and Rare²), you must go to the designated urban zones called Bird Sanctuaries. These are in sharp contrast to alleys, CTA platforms, and cement parks where the common pigeons and sparrows live and die. Though “wild” and “natural,” cities often invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into these manicured spaces. Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, certainly the most famous bird watching location in Chicago³, is no exception: during its opening in 2001, the city invested $400,000 in native plants alone for the site.⁴ Since then, it has seen more development, and more money.

Montrose Point was originally built as part of the 1930s Lincoln Park extension project, and was originally slated for architectural landscaping.⁵ But, during the Cold War, the military claimed the space to house Nike missiles, and planted Tartarian honeysuckle bushes (this growth later became colloquially termed “the Magic Hedge”⁶). These non-native bushes, which leaf earlier than their native counterparts,⁷ are incredibly popular for migratory birds—brightly colored warblers, passerines (perching birds), and the famous piping plovers.⁸ After the military vacated the area, Chicago birdwatchers petitioned the city to officially designate it as a protected area, and in 2001, that intent was realized. Montrose Point became an official Bird Sanctuary.

But the honeysuckle bushes, sweet and thick, drew another flock: cruisers. Though there is no definitive start date of when Montrose Point became cruisy (the secret history being, in fact, secret), the documented evidence of policing dates to the early 80s.⁹

And, as late as 2010, those looking for a trick in the honeysuckle bushes of Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary could be charged with Public Indecency, an intentionally vague crime, which allowed for an easier prosecution of those charged—often gay men, pushed out of gay bars by decades of raids and violence.¹⁰ Seeking refuge from these dangerous commercial spaces, they fled for the trees, bush, and grass.

Public is sometimes the best place to hide. As a non-commercial space, it is free, for one thing. And queerness, rhetorically deemed aberrant and abnormal, is easily received among the soft wind, bird calls, and whispers of grass grazing skin. It is particular, then,¹¹ that the wild spaces that can hold queer secrets are within a designated zone.

The secret history of Montrose, and the obfuscating bushes, have a certain allure. In the day, they are alive with migratory birds, hoping to rest for a moment on their seasonal journey. And in the night, alongside the whisper of wind, you can hear soft moans filtering through the leaves. Maybe you catch a glimpse of a wrist watch between the bows of a tree, or a belt buckle glinting in the branches of a bush. Instead of hot and heavy steps, the ground feels the rough touch of knees, moving slightly, rhythmically, quietly. Shuddering in the fragmented light.

This was the closest I ever came to a hawk: when wandering through the trees I saw it—so close I could almost reach and touch it. As big as my forearm, and sitting, quietly. I often only see hawks from below, watching them soar above me, and so witnessing one at eye level shook me. The once inaccessible was now right in front of me. In the delineated, yet porous, zone of the Bird Sanctuary, it did not seem so majestic.

Space and location will always be unclassifiable, not out of direct defiance, but because the world simply does not operate under strict boundaries.

Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary is a concealed, thick place; its layout —”wild” and manmade — reminds me of a party. I pride myself on having a good sense of direction, but the Sanctuary’s winding paths often confuse me. The direction of the sun is no help—the trees reflect and obscure the sky. I often come out from a different end than where I started, and always unexpectedly. 

Cicadas scream. I can barely hear my own footsteps, or the footsteps of the other figures, hazy in the low light. For a moment, I confuse a leaf with the fluttering of a wing. In the thicket of the trees, desire paths branch off from the half-hearted fencing. Westward, near the bushes, you find the men: hidden in their ubiquity; I turn a corner (wander down a path), and dusk turns to night in the dark trees.

The candidness of my t4t relationships can be jarring. I have always felt ashamed—at least momentarily—to take my pants off in front of a lover (new or old). The secrecy, subtlety, and dark spaces of cruising are simultaneously intriguing and intuitive. Though I, as a trans person, would have required obfuscation to participate in, or been excluded from, the community that formed around the Point in the eighties through the early aughts, I cannot help but feel that I participated. Easily, I imagine myself cloaked among the bushes, making eyes in the low light, alert to any passerby, loud sound, or vehicle.

In the decades since the Point’s cruisy inception—across the raids, state and national campaigns to frame sex as dirty, and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic—the way many of us move through and co-create space is certainly different: sex and death have become intertwined.¹² The pleasure of an unknown hookup was burdened with a new potential hardship—you risk not only legal fallout but physical wreckage from an unseen contagion. The public image campaign condemning sexualities that paralleled the AIDS epidemic further fractured public gathering and communal space.

Though we live in a post-PrEP world, and there is less stigma attached to HIV status, the devastation of the AIDS epidemic will take a while to heal, yet. And of course, with the advent of smartphones and app culture, a large amount of queer cruising is relegated to dating and hookup apps.

In the silence of digital space, you cannot feel the heat of another’s body. The immeasurable, maybe mystical, energy that passes between bodies in physical proximity is not only absent, but nullified. Maybe this is why, when I wander through the wooded area now, the atmosphere of subtlety and sex feels historic. Hot from fear, I face the terrifying experience of having to look another in the eyes, and trust in their flesh. But, in the shade of the Sanctuary, the wind cools the sweat on my skin. Unable to be parsed by a device, or located by GPS, I am instead a dissonant body, reflective of the bird, trees, and shadow. 

Within a queer relationality,¹³ things that may not look like sex can be sex. While exciting and expansive, this can also serve a practical purpose when hiding in sight.

In the secrecy of the prairie grass, she asks me to put my cigarette out on her chest. I hesitate, just for a moment, watching the ember illuminate her skin wet from the summer air and sweat. I don’t want to touch her; the summer is suffocating and my palms are sticky. As an extension of body, substance, and desire, the cigarette seems an appropriate tool to bridge the gap between us. The moisture on her skin makes the tip stutter for a moment, and smoke. The fizz in her skin, the sharp inhale as she bites down on a bandana, is the only sound for a moment. 

As a mark-making method I do not prefer burns. Rather I like those that emerge from the inside: bruises, really, but even scratches and bites. The internal is unknown, but expresses itself in indications, marks, and signs. 

In this dark unknowable space, the mystic and magical may emerge. This holds true for the shade of trees in low light: your eyes often trick you, and that which seems real—a hand or wing in the dark—can easily turn into another, older, fantastical thing. A hawk, flexible to its environment, dissonant to expectation, becomes a soothing gesture in the shadows (like a hand on your thigh, tugging at the seams of your pants). 

Darkness is for the margins. It is for the unknown, and confusing, illegible. To live in that space is to live in defiance of a modernist¹⁴ gaze that insists on legibility, often to a detriment.¹⁵

Those wild, unknown, fields are important, even if they live within a fence. 

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Footnotes

1. Incorrectly plagiarizing Baudrillard. ↩︎
2. In this darkly ironic designation, the “rare” birds are of an elevated status, but their rarity is a result of environmental degradation, either a direct result of urbanization (their forests are now cement) or the indirect catastrophe of climate change (equally devastating). Take the case of the piping plover. The species’ mating habitat is being destroyed, and so, in an unprecedented event, they have come to Montrose to nest—their rarity becoming minor celebrities. ↩︎
3. Chicago Bird Alliance, “Chicago Bird Alliance,” 2014, https://chicagobirdalliance.org/chicago-area-birding-hotspots-1. ↩︎
4. Chicago Tribune, “Dog Owners Claim Portion of Montrose,” September 2, 2002, https://www.newspapers.com/article/chicago-tribune-dog-owners-claim-portion/145542357. ↩︎
5. Indeed, Alfred Cadwell, the designer of Promontory Point, developed a design for Montrose Point. However, the project never came to fruition. Interestingly, his design did not have a “magic hedge.” ↩︎
6. There is an enticing art documentary of the same name by local filmmaker Frederic Moffet (2016): https://vimeo.com/147115930. ↩︎
7. Kim Medley and Travis Mohrman, “Invasive Bush Honeysuckles: Ecology, Spread, and Mitigation,” 2020, https://www.magnificentmissouri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/White-Paper-Invasive-bush-honeysuckles.pdf. ↩︎
8. Since then, other bird-friendly native shrubs have been planted as part of continual park refurbishings, like nannyberry, serviceberry, and sumac. ↩︎
9. Matt Simonette, “When Cruising Goes Bad: The Private Aspects of Public Indecency,” Windy City Times, 2013, https://windycitytimes.com/2013/05/08/when-cruising-goes-bad-the-private-aspects-of-public-indecency. ↩︎
10. Ibid. ↩︎
11.  Though not peculiar. ↩︎
12. Alex Espinoza, Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, (Los Angeles, CA: Unnamed Press, 2019), p. 118. ↩︎
13. Specifically that which rejects a hegemonic relational structure. ↩︎
14. James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020). ↩︎
15. And, regardless, the insistence on legibility often does not hold up to epistemological scrutiny. ↩︎

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