The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

I’m going to get around to interviewing S. Bear Bergman about hir new book, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, I promise.

For right now, though, I just want to say a few things about Bear’s writing.

I read a lot of books about gender, and even more about trans stuff. Some of them are smart, some of them can be funny, and many even make me think in ways I haven’t thought before.

But Bear – zie does all of that, & something else entirely. As I was reading chapter after chapter of this heady, layered, sexy memoir, I kept thinking about Marc Bolan & the lyrics of a song called “Spaceball Ricochet” which go:

Book after book
I get hooked
Everytime the writer
Talks me like a friend

That’s what it is that makes this book, and Bear’s Butch is a Noun, really stand out. Zie trusts the reader to think as hard as zie does, to laugh as hard, to fuck as hard, to work as hard to live as a decent person in the world. There is such a deep care for things – for hir love, hir family, hir tribe. It’s humbling, as a fellow writer, to feel so safe in the palm of another’s work.

So go buy it, and read it, & get back to me with your questions for Bear, and I will, by flattery or threat, get hir to answer at least a few of them.