Newsletter No. 69: FALL 2014

The Trans-Can

It’s hard to say where this story begins, ends, or if it really happened at all.  All I know is I felt as though I’d be startled from a dream and suddenly found myself speeding down tiny roads deep in the Saskatchewan badlands in our own little Star Trek TNG-era-style shuttlecraft on wheels.  I wondered aloud if we might be lost.  Noah was unsure.

Siri had lead us astray so many times already in this first 5000 kilometers that we never quite knew what (or who) would await us once we left the trans-Canada highway.  I wondered aloud if we might have died as the Strumbellas  blared over our beloved Westfalia Bessie’s speakers.  Noah was quite certain that we’d not in fact died.  Before I could even begin to question his logic, we found Castle Butte, navigated past the apathetic cows, and got lost in the vastness of southern Saskatchewan and the overwhelming smell of sage for a couple of blissful hours.

Previously, our technology had lead us down overgrown and flooded roads where cows actually do look at you funny because no one ever drives past them.  We’d been directed to provincial parks swept away years ago by floods, now only inhabited by birds that certainly sounded carnivorous, even if they actually weren’t.  Our flawed maps also lead us into the path of Clara Hughes’ mental health tour (repeatedly!) to the point where we worried that she thought we were creepily following her.  We weren’t.  
When people ask us to tell them about this bizarre Co-operators-funded summer tour we just did, we almost never quite know what to say.  

The easy thing to say would be that people were pretty universally excited to see us at every Pride we popped up at, and we truly had a blast spreading the good word of sex-positivity and anti-capitalism.  In fact, so many of you were so excited to see us in your hometowns, that we’d love to see some of you take up the torch and start thinking about starting a co-op sex shop of your very own.  If you’re serious about living the co-op sex shop dream, get in touch - we’d be happy to help!

The harder answer, of course, is that many Pride committees deemed our sex-positivity too challenging for their ‘family values’ and we were banned from attending their Pride events.  We generally have a policy of not going anywhere we’re not welcome, but unsurprisingly as a couple of trans-identified guys on the road, conservative Pride committees were in fact the least of our worries.

Outside of the time we spent enjoying our many workshops and Prides, our life on the road was primarily defined by long stretches of driving punctuated by pit stops and provincial parks and an assortment of incidents caused by transguys trying to use public washrooms outside of urban centres.  If anyone ever makes a transguy-road-trip-buddy-film, the comedic hook would have to be washroom humour.  We can provide ample material to any interested parties.