Although I won’t be so bold as to say Kathy Acker, if alive today, would be non-binary, she did actively defy the gender binary in the way she refused things that were expected of her, in both how she presented herself, and how she acted in the world. She was also a bit narcissistic and flippant about the emotions of others. Her writing is not perfect but it is alive and furious, and she carved out her own way of being. She was introduced to me by a close friend, and I find her endlessly fascinating. 

I would certainly not want to be Rachel Cusk, it seems a quiet, isolated, slightly cold way of living. This might just be her narrators. It probably is. But there is a certain tone, a way of seeing the world that penetrates every Cusk book and reflects this iciness. The thing about Rachel Cusk is she wrote three auto-fictitious books and other novels and personal essays, and still you do not walk away as a reader feeling like you know much about her. She is deeply private and refuses to defend or justify or explain herself to others. She only wants to understand people, and interpret the world, and so understands the role of the writer. I think she’s a genius. 

I’m thinking specifically about her book The Monkey’s Mask which is an incredible piece of writing. A queer crime novel in poetry set in 90s Australia. It’s gritty and weird and did something no one else was doing at the time. It’s also filled with an undercurrent of contempt for women that isn’t self-consciously investigated, which is to say it seems born of the author’s own ingrained misogyny. One gets the feeling Porter both hates and loves women and it’s an intense collision to witness.  

Because she refuses to present herself as anything other than human, and so is flawed. Because she investigates nuance, rigorously, and this is not done as frequently or meticulously as it should be. Because she wrote about sex from the female perspective, not as being penetrated, but like being a swallower. Because she has articulated so many small specific things I didn’t realise, until I read her, were felt by anyone else, were universal, but of course they are. Because she is always resisting how people want her to define things, instead seeking her own truth, shifting, never looking to soothe, instead looking to articulate something elusive. 

Because she is perhaps the only person on earth who can make me feel headache-inducing anger and intense love within the space of two seconds, who shits me to tears and inspires me to no end. Who gave me not-insignificant mother-issues, a tool the writer can only dream of having in their arsenal. Who will no doubt be upset about what I have just written, and then forgive me, as she always does, for which I will be deeply grateful.