David Davis

find me at the NYC Trans Oral History Project

When I was in elementary school, my report cards always came back with the same caveats: smart, but doesn’t speak up/participate/socialize enough. My teachers saw that I preferred to spend my time either reading or with the wrong kids (bad homes, behavioral problems, etc.). The solution was clear: I needed to learn how to win friends and influence people—the right people—if my academic promise wasn’t to be wasted.

Not every teacher regarded my shyness as a problem. Anticipating the kind of women I would gravitate toward as an adult, the motherly, no-nonsense Mrs. Evans would permit me to spend recess under her yard-duty umbrella, blithely tolerating my data-dumping about medieval England. But others were on the hunt for the upwardly mobile extrovert within, like tough-loving Mr. Crandall, who cast me as the lead in the fifth-grade play to scare me out of my stage fright. From leadership programs for at-risk girls to Toastmasters-style speech contests, years of interventions never made a dent in my introversion, let alone the mumbling, shaking, and full-body sweats that still show up at my readings today.

Now in my mid-thirties, I’m still better able to articulate myself on paper than in person. Listening to my recent interview for the NYC Oral History Project, to which I was invited to participate by Jay Graham, I’m exasperated—but not surprised—by my ums and whatevers, my inability to stay on topic, and the limitations of my verbal vocabulary. But I’m also a little pleased to recognize the natural ellipticallity of my reasoning animated by my speech. As I wrote last year, “I speak, which is to say that I circle, with the hope that the person listening has the patience to wait for the final descent, if it’s even worth making; that whatever’s down there is animated by flesh and blood, and not a trick of the sunlight or my own hunger.” I’m not pithy or parsimonious, but I’m learning to appreciate that about myself.

If you’d like to hear me circle about my books, my politics, and leather in Oakland and NYC, you can listen to my interview here. I also recommend checking out other NYCTOHP interviews, including those by the recently departed Cecilia Gentili, the foundational Bryn Kelly, and local leatherman Santos Arce.

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