by John Janelle Backman

The whole dream was as black as his helmet. We stood over a lake, at either end of a causeway barely wide enough for two men, which I thought we were, based solely on appearance (my moustache, his muscles). He glided inexorably toward me, and my dread grew with each swish of his cape.

Three feet away, without a word, he held out a tiny pink light, an LED like the ones on Christmas trees, dangling off a delicate hook. I received it, cradled it, and he walked on.

Every time the dream comes to mind, a soft breath whispers through my chest, like the ghost of a breeze on a hot day.

The pink light came first, long before the other colors.

* * *

We had to make soul collages. Our instructor fanned out magazines on a round table, then told us to page through them silently, see what images touched our deep selves, and collage them. We were training to become spiritual directors, people who help others discover God’s movement in their lives, so deep-self exercises were part of the curriculum.

The flowy hot pink dress with the halter top found me quickly. She ended up cascading down the left side of the poster paper we used for our collages, beside a stone statue of Buddha, some flowers, and the words my home. The piece touched me like a finger to a clitoris: gasp, breathless, intimate. Maybe that’s where my deep self lives.

* * *

Words aren’t pink, so my new name isn’t either. If I had to assign a color, deep purple comes to mind. So do vibrant, saucy, bold, deep, and other synonyms for Janelle.

Her name thrust itself into my journal one day, without warning. I’d been chronicling the latest spat with my wife when the writing took a hard turn into gender. Then:

Janelle.

I am Janelle.

The electricity that rushes through me as I type this out loud is almost sexual, it is so powerful. A sense of power I have never known before—except perhaps once: when I painted my toenails.

 * * *

Perhaps Janelle seemed purple because my toenails were purple, or so I thought till I read the bottle and discovered the color was navy. A dull sky and inner gloom had moved me to break out somehow, do something outlandish. Three options came to mind. Starting an affair, taking up smoking…both impossible, not with a wife whom I adore, who has asthma. That left option three, and I stared at my toenails for a few seconds before shaking the bottle and unscrewing the cap.

As I glided the brush over my big toe, a jolt hit my spine and radiated to the edges of my body. In an instant, this had gone from lark to sacrament. It was the instant I knew that who I was and how the world saw me were two different things. All the other colors, before and after, radiate from here.

 * * *

The pink light gave me solace for years, long after it was clear my gender was nothing like people assumed it was, but something much more complicated than even I knew. Oddly, it was in that long-after time that I uncovered the dream’s meaning, which seems laughably obvious now. Especially the pink light, the pink girl light, the tiniest of lights that enlightened everything in its path.

The lightest pink of all the pinks and purples.

After everything else, I still cherish the light but don’t need it anymore, because the colors went deeper as I went deeper. The pink dress, navy toenails, violet Janelle, each stepped out in their own time from somewhere I can’t begin to fathom, somewhere that makes deep self sound like a shallow pool, unutterably beyond what lives on our faces and between our legs.

John Janelle Backman (she/her) writes about gender identity, ancient spirituality, the everyday strangeness of karma, and whatever else comes to mind. Janelle’s work has appeared in Catapult, the tiny journal, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Tiferet Journal, and Amethyst Review, among other places. Her essays have also made several contest shortlists and earned a few Pushcart nominations. She can be found on the web at backmanwriter.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/john.backman.37 and Twitter/X @backwrite.