PHOTO SARA DAVIDMANN
I knew something was wrong when friends started posting cryptic things on social media about grief and loss. I wasn’t in anyone’s inner circle, so I never got The Call, but I guessed that something horrible had happened in that creepy Facebook way. A few days later there was a name, Bryn Kelly, and a word, suicide. Laverne Cox posted a eulogy and people began to clock what had happened: another trans woman had died prematurely. At that point Bryn became more symbolic than real and it became too painful to read on.
I didn’t know Bryn personally but I admired her writing. She published pieces about her life as an American trans woman with HIV, stories of grit, poverty, humour, sex, survival. I thought her work offered hope for people, like me, who long for edgy, non-assimilationist queer realism in art, who value political writing and who want to see marginalised people take up space. She was getting her first breaks and I looked forwards to seeing how her work developed over time. I am angry because that future has been brought to a halt and, meanwhile, I still need voices like Bryn’s for my own continued existence.