Grateful for Creative Shields

I'm grateful, this Thanksgiving, for an encounter yesterday that showed me that I AM getting better at walking in the world with suffering and pain--open to it, but protected--
and specifically that the girlettes really do serve as shields, and they can also be bridges between me and other people...

I can't remember if I've mentioned here that a regular customer in BOOK's, a transman I'll call bobby, lived in a collective punk-house where there was a mass shooting this summer--about a mile from the thrift store?

I didn't know this right away.
We'd exchanged phone numbers re a certain book, and I'd texted him  that that the book had been donated.
He texted back that there had been "some deaths in my community", and he would not be in for a while.

I put two and two together, googled, and discovered that, yes, bobby's community was the punk house, which was queer/trans community too. (Big overlap there.)

Oh, I think I did blog about this--about the bizarro question that arose for me, What's the etiquette around mass shootings?
What do you say?
I actually googled that and the answers I found were uninspired.

I turned to the girlettes.
I knew bobby had written his masters thesis on Jean Genet. I texted back that I was sorry about the deaths and while I wasn't sure what to say, I wanted to show my sympathy by sending this photo of one of my dolls (SweePo) dressed like Genet (from five years ago, with--how weirdly apt--Genet's novel Funeral Rites):

bobby didn't reply, but I didn't take that as a bad sign, necessarily, but I did hope sending a DOLL didn't come across as too slight...

But no. Yesterday I finally saw him at the store, looking at books. The first thing he said was, "thanks for that message", and we got talking about Genet.
I said I'd been surprised at Genet's tenderness in Funeral Rites, which I loved, while much of his stuff is disturbing to me.

bobby agreed. "Genet is drawing on his own grief in that book..."

Then I said, "I don't know you well, but I want to ask if there's anything you need that I could do for you."

"No," he said, "but just that you asked..."
And, I was so surprised--his eyes got teary.

He went on to tell me the police have done nothing to catch the shooters, had clearly signaled that they didn't care about the community.
(I've seen enough of our neighborhood cops to know this is not paranoia speaking.) But also that justice wasn't justice, and he wasn't sure he even wanted the killers to be subjected to it!

(I've heard people on the street say this too--that even if they were beat to a pulp, they didn't want to call the cops on their attacker, because they wouldn't wish that on them.
That's some effed up justice system we have.)

And then bobby and I talked more about creative distancing--my dolls and his performance art--and overall, ways to be in the world and to stay both open and protected...
Tender in grief, and brave in art.

Whatever it takes to protect ourselves so we can be Intrepid Galactic Explorers, I am grateful for that.

Thanks to all you, out there!