"I never thought I'd write a book," writer-performer Quinn Alexander Fontaine tells me. We're finally meeting over coffee after a false start or two; I had to bump him from our "3 Questions" section because Dolores Huerta is coming to town, but he graciously appreciated the gravity of such a reality. Fontaine is sick today, too, but that didn't stop him for coming out during the gloomy, rainy day to chat. "I had sat down to write my third solo show," he continues, "but nothing was coming—it was beyond writer's block."
For a writer like Fontaine, that's shocking. A trans man who has been to hell and back more times than he can count (in this day and age, sadly, what trans person can't say that?), he should have plenty of inspiration, but it just wasn't coming. "Luckily, a dear friend and his wife had just started a publishing company, [You Speak It Publishing], and I called them up and asked how they did it, if they could get a book out of me." That's exactly what they did.
Hung Like a Seahorse: A Real Life Transgender Adventure of Tragedy, Comedy, and Recovery is a deep look at Fontaine's transformative journey, from a painful youth trapped with a sexually abusive father—and, he says, in the wrong body—all the way through drug addiction, repressed trauma, sex addiction, suicidal depression and, ultimately, transition and finding himself. Filled with thoughts, essays, photos, stories and humor, it's bold, sometimes intensely intimate, and ultimately a story of hope.
Fontaine grew up in Virginia, where he says "there wasn't even a word for me." He doesn't remember much from the time, however. "My mom would say, 'Oh, do you remember when this or that happened?' and I'd say, 'No, I don't,' but then she'd show me a picture, and I was there," he recalls. It wasn't until he was 37 and on a trip with his father to Bermuda that repressed memories began bubbling to the surface. "It stirred up all this cellular memory," he says.
He's still not 100 percent on all the details, but the gist is that his father, a military man, had sexually abused him when he was young. "My whole energy became 'Fuck life!'" Fontaine says. The years that followed became a whirlwind of sex, drugs and therapy—though Fontaine says, "I just didn't care anymore. It's very real how people split from trauma."
Rock bottom, however, is real as well, and Fontaine eventually got his act together. "I crawled into Santa Fe and the Life Crisis Healing Center 12 years ago," he says. "I had to work on my addictions, which was difficult. But if you come to Santa Fe to heal and you don't, you're doing it wrong." He would heal and get well; he would begin writing one-person shows again; he would become a whole person. In 2014, Fontaine began the process of transitioning. "I just always knew," he says, "from a young age, I just always knew I was in the wrong body."
These days the words flow better and more succinctly, Hung Like a Seahorse being the most apparent example. Fontaine also says he has new shows in the works and a few other projects he isn't ready to reveal just yet. And as schmaltzy as it sounds, he is inspirational. The openness and clarity he's gained makes for good reading (and good conversation), both of which can be learned about firsthand this Saturday at his reading at Collected Works. "A lot of people like to say 'Peel the onion,' but I like to say 'Peel the artichoke, because at the center of an artichoke there's a heart," Fontaine muses. "But the beauty of life is that we aren't our stories." True, though Fontaine's stories are riveting—they're just not the sum of who he is.
Quinn Alexander Fontaine: Hung Like a Seahorse reading and book sigining
6 pm Saturday Oct. 7. Free. Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St., 988-4226
