The Argonauts

In a world where identities are increasingly fluid yet fiercely debated, where love transcends traditional boundaries yet faces institutional resistance, we find ourselves navigating uncharted territories of human experience. The conventional language we've inherited often fails to capture the nuanced realities of contemporary relationships, parenthood, and self-discovery. How do we express the inexpressible when words themselves seem inadequate to hold the complexity of our lived experiences?

This remarkable memoir offers a profound meditation on the relationship between language and identity, love and transformation. Through intimate storytelling woven with theoretical insight, we encounter a narrative that refuses easy categorization—much like the lives it portrays. The author invites us into a world where academic brilliance meets tender vulnerability, where queer theory intersects with domestic reality, and where the personal becomes a lens through which to examine larger questions about family, society, and what it means to be human. This is a book that will challenge your assumptions while offering deep comfort, expanding your understanding of love while affirming its transformative power.

The first encounter between the narrator and Harry unfolds in a dingy bachelor pad, where philosophical differences about the adequacy of language create an unlikely foundation for love. While she believes deeply in Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea that "the inexpressible is contained—inexpressibly—in the expressed," Harry maintains that words are not just insufficient but actively corrosive to all that is real and flowing. Their early relationship becomes a passionate debate about whether language can truly capture experience or whether naming something inevitably destroys its essence.

Their arguments echo through late nights and early mornings, each defending their position with the fervor of true believers. She reads aloud from philosophical texts, shouting "Slab!" in reference to Wittgenstein's language games, while Harry counters that once we name something, we can never see it the same way again. Yet even as Harry argues against the power of words, language streams behind him like a wake, revealing the very eloquence he claims to distrust.

This fundamental tension about communication becomes more complex when the question of pronouns arises. The narrator finds herself becoming "a quick study in pronoun avoidance," learning to navigate conversations without the linguistic anchors that most people take for granted. She masters the art of grammatical gymnastics, using names repeatedly and taking cover in what she calls "grammatical cul-de-sacs" to avoid the awkwardness of misgendering someone she's learning to love.

The dance around pronouns reveals something profound about the relationship between language and recognition. When making airline reservations or dealing with bureaucracy, the narrator experiences flashes of shame—not her own, but a borrowed shame for systems that can't accommodate the complexity of human experience. The inadequacy isn't in the people being described, but in the limited vocabulary available to describe them.

Through these intimate linguistic struggles, we see how love requires us to develop new ways of speaking and being. The couple's debates about language aren't merely academic—they're negotiations about how to create space for experiences that don't fit existing categories, how to honor both precision and mystery in human connection.

Harry's journey with testosterone and top surgery unfolds against the backdrop of the narrator's pregnancy, creating a parallel narrative of physical transformation. The night before surgery in a Florida hotel, they watch the Discovery Channel and eat meals cooked on a hot plate in the bathroom, their bodies on the threshold of irreversible change. The narrator's fear about the unknown effects of hormones mingles with excitement about the relief they might bring to Harry's long-constrained existence.

The recovery period reveals the profound intimacy of caring for someone through physical transformation. The narrator becomes expert at emptying drainage tubes filled with cherry Kool-Aid colored fluid, watching Harry sleep propped up on pillows in what they call "the king's sleep." She administers testosterone injections by spreading skin over Harry's tattooed back and plunging the golden, oily substance into muscle, each injection a gift of possibility and peace.

Their surgeon had warned that the testosterone might change more than just Harry's physical appearance—it could alter mood, energy levels, even personality. The narrator pored over Canadian medical pamphlets, trying to map the geography of potential changes, fearing she might lose the person she'd fallen in love with. But the reality proved different: rather than losing Harry, she witnessed someone coming more fully into themselves.

The changes that do come surprise them both. Harry's sexuality, once primarily cerebral, begins to disseminate throughout his body "like a cottonwood tree in a warm wind." Heat surges, muscles develop, body hair appears in new places. Meanwhile, the narrator's pregnancy brings its own cascade of physical changes—nausea that makes all touch sickening, breasts that feel like they belong to someone else, a new sensitivity that might be permanent.

These parallel transformations become a meditation on the fluidity of embodied experience. Both discover that becoming isn't a destination but an ongoing process, a series of adaptations to new ways of being in skin that continues to surprise them. Their bodies find each other again and again, even as they remain changed—aging, which is perhaps the most radical transformation of all.

The narrator's introduction to stepparenthood comes through folding tiny socks and underwear, marveling at the miniature proportions while learning the delicate art of Fallen Soldier, an elaborate game where she plays the Good Blue Witch healing a wounded warrior. Through repeated performances of this ritual, she studies her stepson's face in repose—big almond eyes, freckled skin—while he lies motionless in imaginary armor, trusting this near-stranger who is rapidly becoming family.

Their decision to marry happens suddenly on the eve of Proposition 8's passage, rushing to Norwalk City Hall among crowds of same-sex couples desperate to secure their unions before potential legal doors close. The ceremony itself takes place at Hollywood Chapel, officiated by Reverend Lorelei Starbuck in a space decorated with fake flowers and peach faux finishes. Despite the rushed circumstances and tacky surroundings, they find themselves unexpectedly moved to tears, "besotted with our luck."

The aftermath brings new challenges as they navigate systems designed for traditional family structures. Harry's driver's license creates awkward moments with waiters and cashiers, leading to shadow moments of potential violence when documentation doesn't match appearance. "It's complicated," Harry finally says to one confused pumpkin vendor, who responds with unexpected grace: "No, actually, it's not. Not complicated at all."

The narrator reflects on stepparenting through the lens of her own childhood experiences with her stepfather, recognizing the structural vulnerability of the role—always at risk of being seen as interloper rather than family member. Yet she also witnesses the profound bonds being formed, watching her stepson delight in his baby brother, dragging him around the schoolyard asking classmates, "Who wants to touch a really soft head?"

These moments of connection exist alongside ongoing legal uncertainties about custody and recognition. The family exists in a space between visibility and precarity, celebrated in some contexts while remaining vulnerable in others. Their love creates its own reality while constantly negotiating with external systems that struggle to recognize what they've built together. Through ordinary devotion—bedtime stories, morning pancakes, dance parties in the living room—they construct a family that exceeds any single definition while remaining grounded in daily care.

The narrator's labor unfolds in careful stages, beginning with birds chirping inexplicably in the middle of the night while she labors in a bathtub rigged with duct tape and plastic bags. Jessica, their birth attendant, has tricks and apps for timing contractions, but the night passes in a time that is "no time," measured only by the rhythm of pain and the slow opening that must happen for new life to emerge.

The physical reality of labor defies romanticized expectations. The narrator finds herself counting through twenty-second intervals of agony, thinking that "any kind of pain must be bearable for twenty seconds." The hospital room overlooks a Macy's, and news of Whitney Houston's death drifts through conversations with nurses. The narrator throws up red popsicle and yellow bile, pees without meaning to, and discovers that the "urge to push" is exactly that—an undeniable biological imperative.

Parallel to this birth story runs the account of Harry's mother's death, told in italicized passages that capture the vigil beside a hospital bed. Harry speaks to his unconscious mother about honeysuckle and fireflies, assuring her that her work is done, that she has "set us all up very well with her love and her lessons." The death comes at 2:16 AM, marked by a final, dignified jutting of the chin and eyes that seem to be looking at something in another place.

Both birth and death require a kind of surrender that resists planning or control. The narrator must "be willing to go to pieces" to let the baby out, while Harry must learn to let his mother go, even as he wishes to keep the moment of departure infinite. The cervix must thin from an impenetrable wall to an opening; consciousness must thin from presence to absence.

These experiences of ultimate transition reveal the fragility and strength that coexist in human experience. Birth brings not only joy but also proximity to mortality—the narrator recognizes that she has "touched death along the way" and knows it will return for her someday. Yet this awareness of finitude somehow intensifies rather than diminishes the preciousness of what emerges: new life, lasting love, and the recognition that we are held in relationships that both sustain and survive us.

The final section weaves together themes of fluidity and commitment, exploring how radical acceptance might look in practice. The narrator describes writing much of her book while hooked up to a breast pump, "words piled into one machine, milk siphoned out by another," embodying the multiple identities that resist simple categorization. She is simultaneously mother, writer, partner, and individual—roles that intersect and separate in complex rhythms.

The question of identity becomes playful rather than anxious. When filling out Iggy's birth certificate, they choose the name Igasho, meaning "he who wanders," after a confusion about Harry's Cherokee heritage that turns out to be imagined. A Pima lactation consultant gives them her blessing for the name, explaining that "Pima" itself was a misunderstanding—a corruption of the phrase meaning "I don't know" that tribe members said to confused Europeans.

This embrace of uncertainty extends to their approach to family life. They create rituals and traditions—dance parties to Janelle Monáe, bedtime stories, morning walks—while remaining open to change and growth. The narrator's stepson, now nine, has outgrown Fallen Soldier but continues to evolve in relationship to his expanding family. Harry transitions not from one fixed identity to another, but into a more comfortable inhabitation of complexity.

The book concludes with a meditation on the happiness that has emerged from their unconventional arrangements. The narrator recognizes her time with Iggy as "the happiest time of my life," characterized not by moments of joy but by "a happiness that spreads." This contentment doesn't deny difficulty or uncertainty—they still navigate legal vulnerabilities, social misunderstanding, and the ordinary challenges of any family.

Instead, it suggests that radical acceptance might involve embracing both/and rather than either/or: queerness and parenthood, theory and domesticity, individual identity and deep connection. Their life together becomes a daily practice of "ordinary devotion," creating meaning through attention and care rather than through conformity to predetermined scripts. In choosing love over categories, presence over ideology, they discover possibilities that exceed the limitations of binary thinking.

Through intimate storytelling that weaves together birth and death, love and language, theory and daily life, this memoir reveals how transformation happens not through dramatic gestures but through sustained attention to the complexity of human experience. The author demonstrates that our most profound growth often occurs in the spaces between categories—between male and female, parent and child, self and other—where conventional language struggles to reach but where authentic relationship flourishes.

The book's greatest insight lies in its refusal to resolve the tensions it explores. Rather than offering easy answers about identity, family, or love, it suggests that wisdom might lie in learning to hold multiple truths simultaneously. The happiness the narrator discovers isn't based on achieving perfect understanding or social acceptance, but on the willingness to remain present to whatever emerges from genuine care and attention. This is a revolutionary act in a world obsessed with certainty: choosing to build a life based on love rather than fear, connection rather than control, and the radical faith that ordinary devotion can create extraordinary transformation.