[REVIEW] Nails by Emma Alice Johnson

Lazy Fascist Press, 2017

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Imagine you have a life. You work, spend time with friends, and love your family. Now imagine there is someone else inside you, someone who you are too afraid to show everyone else. However, the person inside you is a huge part of who you truly are, so you have to run away to another state in order to let this person out once in a while. This horrible scenario is the backdrop for Nails, a rough-yet-hilarious novella about a trans person learning to navigate a world of inside/outside dichotomies, fear, pain, beautiful nails, and acceptance.

Nails has a deceptively simple plot: Johnson goes out to Los Angeles to enjoy a weekend of long nails, dresses, music, and being in the company of other trans folks. However, not everything goes according to plan, and between too-long nails, folks screaming at her, and one trans person who keeps leaving her hanging after they make plans time and again, the narrative becomes a vehicle to explore the inner life of someone forced to hide and the possibilities of a future out in the open.

Nails, which comes it at just 80 pages, is a quick read, but it lingers for a while after the last page has been turned. Johnson is brutally honest. There is nothing she won’t discuss in this novella, and that makes for a very interesting read, as well as one in which cringing is as common as laughing out loud. This balance is strange given the subject at hand, which constantly reminds the reader of how awful people can be when confronted with someone’s who is different, but Johnson’s straightforward storytelling and raw honesty help readers who understand her sympathize and, hopefully, helps those unfamiliar with trans folks understand a bit more about their frame of mind:

“I try not to get too caught up in pronouns though. I don’t hate being a “he.” I just hate that my masculinity is such a hindrance to my femininity. I wish I could wake up each morning and decide whether I wanted to be a girl or a boy, depending on what part of me wanted to be in control. Sometimes I wish I did hate my masculinity. I wish I could say that I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body. Then I’d have an easier time – well, definitely not easier. But if I felt like a woman all the time, instead of some of the time, at least I’d know I wanted to start popping hormones and growing boobs. Sometimes I feel like I should just assert toward female, but I couldn’t do that, because then I’d be subverting my masculine side, and I don’t want to. I like him. He’s just a bit of a bully. Arg. Men, right?”

Plenty has been written about the trans experience, but Nails offers something new and unique. This isn’t a serious essay about discrimination. This isn’t about the physical realities of a very tall man stepping into high heels and getting long nails done. This isn’t about the way we are sometimes forced to hide our true self from others. This isn’t an academic deconstruction of masculinity as it relates to the trans experiences. This isn’t a funny story about a trans person escaping reality and having the world constantly collapse around her. No, this is all of that and more. This is all of that and a very personal look at a life in secret. This is all of that and a window into someone’s life a bit before they decided to stop living this way and announced to the world who they really were. This is all of that and an emotional, hilarious, incredibly sad, sometimes angering narrative of a real double life and the conflicting emotions constantly swirling at its center:

“Oh shit, now I’m crying. Big fat tears are bouncing down my cheeks. Snot is crawling from my nostrils. This is a full-on balling session. All I can do is go with it. Here I am, by myself, in this rental car that smells empty, in a city where I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me, in a fucking world where nobody knows me, the real me, because this is the real me, a big fucking makeup-covered ball of emotions, and I hate it. I hate that this is what I have to do. But it is what I have to do. It’s what I’ve always had to do since I was a kid, so I can either fight against it – and I’ve tried that, I’ve tried so hard – or I can deal with it the best I can. And it’s going to continue to be awkward. And it’s going to continue to hurt. But I have no choice. I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live like this.”

This is a frightening novella; a real slice of life filtered through a unique experience but full of humanity and humor that acts as a shield against the world. More than that, this is precisely the kind of narrative that should be read and shared as it can help everyone understand a bit more about a specific type of Otherness, and how the person inhabiting it deals with what the world throws their way.