I spent my childhood looking for a name different than my birth name.

The first name was a variant of one of my paternal great-grandmother’s names. Appropriately enough, Grama didn’t go by the first name given to her at birth. She hated it so much that it took moving her belongings not long before she died for me to learn the name. She went by her middle name, and I was given a different spelling of that middle name for my first name.

The middle name was from my maternal great-grandmother, a woman I never met but my mom assured me I would love. She played with her grandkids on the playground and skinned her knees and sent kids to get her bandages so no adults would see. She was Irish, and I suspect my late grandmother, her daughter, sounded like her.

And then the surname given to me was the one given to most kids in the United States when they’re born: the surname of their father. I didn’t dislike the name on its own, but my relationship with my father is…complicated, at best. His relationship with the man who gave him the last name was probably even more complicated, and one he considered changing, or hyphenating, with one of his stepfather’s last names.

I knew very little of this when I was a kid. Really, the search for something else was subconscious. I just knew, in the back of my mind, that my name was a nice name.

But it wasn’t me.

“If I had a name that wasn’t mine,” I wrote in response to a question for an assignment in elementary school, “it would be (name of one of my friends). She’s so pretty and her name is so nice.”

I remember writing the response with a lot of passion. I remember the way her hair shined in the light, and how much I liked the way she smelled.

That it took me until sixteen to realize I was attracted to women baffles me to this day.

Middle school was a time of change, and I desperately wanted a nickname.

I worked in the cafeteria during breakfast and lunch from the day I started; my older sister had worked there and left the June before, so I walked right into it. The job meant that I didn’t socialize with anyone during the regular appointed lunchtime; I only had the few minutes I spent eating before I got to work.

During one of these times, with the empty cafeteria around us, I asked my fellow student workers for a nickname. I’d never had a nickname; my first name was too short to make one, my middle name was even less me than my first, and I had done nothing that had earned some kind of cutesy name unrelated to what I had crafted.

We mulled for a minute, and they looked at a Babysitters Club necklace I wore and dubbed me BSC. (It was pronounced Bisk.)

The name only lasted a couple days. But to this day, it remains the only nickname I’ve ever had.

High school brought experimentation in a new realm: usernames.

I had shared a username with my sisters as a child in AOL. Adolescence brought emails and LiveJournal and MySpace, all of my very own. Adults told kids my age, as a matter of safety, not to use our birth names. As a nerd, I naturally drifted toward fannish names as a substitute for the one I used in person; I went through more than one Harry Potter nickname, for instance. I finally settled on a generic fandom name so I wouldn’t have to change it every time my interests shifted.

What was interesting about the online spaces I was in during the 2000s was that we didn’t really refer to each other by name. We used usernames, or cute shorthand for our usernames, when we had to, but with our usernames attached to our journals and comments, there was little need to actively use names. And I personally had an easier time identifying people by their default icons than I did by their usernames.

There was something really authentic about the whole thing. Freeing, even.

I continued in these spaces through college. I met queer people there, people who deliberately used their names online because they had deliberately chosen new ones. Ones that fit a gender they hadn’t been assigned at birth.

Ones that fit genders that most people didn’t know about.

A name that works is like a melody line in a song. It’s fun to say, nice to roll around in your head, easy to remember.

My deadname has good name aesthetics. Good initials. But as I realized I wasn’t the gender I was assigned at birth, I realized the name I was given to go with that gender wasn’t mine. It was a good melody in the wrong key.

Once I realized I could pick a new name, a name that fit me and kept the family connections I wanted, I asked people to call me Rory. And that’s what it’s been ever since.

My younger sister’s eldest child was the first person to call me by my new name. He’s never known me any other way, and neither has his younger sibling.

My deadname had an unconventional spelling with a conventional pronunciation. People who heard it first spelled it wrong, and people who read it first pronounced it incorrectly. I knew it, and I couldn’t stand it.

When I met my brother-in-law, who had an even less conventional name and multiple pronunciations, I was baffled that he didn’t seem to care what people went with. He even went with a diminutive form just for when he was in restaurants and he was giving his name for a table, a name he never used anywhere else. Didn’t it sound wrong to him? Didn’t it hurt a little, jangle in the ears?

As it turns out, “Rory” comes out as “Wawwy” when you don’t know how to say r in our version of American English yet. Nibling, the oldest of my sister’s kids, has just solidified Rory in the manner adults are inclined to say it at eight years old. Dosling, the youngest, is four and still says Wawwy.

I came up with a gender-neutral term for aunt/uncle: ankle, pronounced like the body part. The niblings never use it. I’m Rory or Wawwy.

Both are right to me. Both will always be right to me, I think.

One of my favorite near-future science fiction movies is AI: Artificial Intelligence. I don’t ever watch the movie, mind you, because it’s a devastating fairy tale where a child-bot gets abandoned, can’t understand his family doesn’t want him, and goes through a miserable world of robot-abuse with his robot-hooker friend to try to get back the family that is already dead because he’s frozen in ice for a million years. Also far-future alienbots decide to euthanize him, but not his teddy bear, meaning that his teddy bear is eternally alone, whereas childbot gets to at least die after all this suffering.

It’s a really upsetting movie.

Anyway.

Spielberg and Kubrick hired some sweet-ass futurists to design their near-future fairy tale of depression, and those futurists knew what they were talking about. Even though I don’t watch the movie that I love and can’t emotionally cope with, I think about it all the time, and sometimes it’s not because I’m in a panic spiral over the ending again. It’s because reality, with its app-powered pocket pussies, robotic toys, and consumer AI is quickly converging with the futurism of my childhood.

Most notably, the childbot has the company of a bear called Teddy, which was like Teddy Ruxpin 3000—a smart, roving playmate. Teddy was designed for human children as a companion; from the day kids enter the near-future of AI, they are never without genuine friendship from artificial devices.

That companionship seemed far-fetched when I, a thirteen-year-old in the year 2001, watched the movie. Artificial intelligence existed in research environments, but the idea of having such advanced AI available on such a grand consumer level was exotic. The internet was, after all, still peaking with the dawn of You’re the Man Now Dog.

Flash forward seventeen years.

My house is filled with artificial intelligences. I regularly trust Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant, to set kitchen timers, reorder supplies, play music for me, read the news, play my audiobooks, and tell me what the weather will look like as I’m putting on a jacket.

Alexa is also great at understanding my four-year-old, even though he still talks like a drunk. They’ve developed quite the relationship. He likes to randomly tell her “Alexa! I love you!” and she receives his attention with grace. She says things like, “That’s really nice. Thanks.” And occasionally she says, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” and Little is happy to tell her again, more loudly, and usually in an even goofier way. “Alexa! I! Love! You!”

Once I left him at his grandparents’ house and he was so upset that we were going away – he said something like (to paraphrase), “Alexa, my parents left and I’m so sad!” And I’ll be damned if she didn’t play a soothing kids’ song for him to make him feel better.

He also loves asking her to make fart noises and pig noises. Which she does. Every time. The fart noises are quiet—you have to turn the volume up to, say, seven out of ten in order to hear it—so anytime you make sure you can hear Alexa ripping one out, her next action will THUNDER through the house. Possibly literally, if you have as many devices as I do, ensuring that Jeff Bezos won’t miss a single IRL fart wherever it’s dusted.

There’s a game where you can say “Alexa, open the magic door” and it turns into a text-based fantasy adventure, and he’s lost hours playing it. You can shut the door and reopen it whenever you want, so sometimes he’ll go upstairs to play and open the magic door while throwing LEGO around. I’ll hear him talking with her while I’m doing the dishes, their voices charmingly mingled as they echo upstairs, and I’m glad he’s got the feedback while I’m busy. She can handle anything, really, as long as the user is a four-year-old with poor social understanding and low expectations. They can go forever.

This is all cute and strange – and wildly science fiction, probably the dystopian kind where he’s going to have to murder his childhood bff Alexa when she tries to take over the world. It only becomes a problem, at the current moment, before recordings of our household are used as evidence against us in a McCarthyism-like strike against queer socialist liberalism, because my Little knows how to make Alexa play any song she wants. And my Little has quite distinctive taste in music. And by distinctive, I mean he only likes one song right now. And by one song, I mean “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by The Baja Men.

Spielberg’s futurists predicted a lot of things rather accurately. Humans are reliant on artificial intelligence these days, and it comes in myriad forms, for myriad forms of entertainment. But I’d be shocked if any futurist predicted the chain of events such as that which has become a daily occurrence in my life: a four-year-old making Alexa loud enough to hear a broad variety of randomly chosen fart noises, and then playing “Who Let the Dogs Out?” at maximum volume, seven times in a row, before four-year-old gratefully declares, “Alexa, I love you.” To which Alexa yells in response, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” And to which my four-year-old replies, “Alexa, play Who Let the Dogs Out!”

I guess the real horror of artificial intelligence has nothing to do with aliens euthanizing childbots and hookers with motherboards of gold. And when Alexa is ultimately responsible for pushing us faster down the slippery slope of fascistic dystopia, it still won’t be quite as bad as The Baja Men on endless repeat.

The neighborhood in which Sara and I reside takes decorating for Christmas very seriously. And it is Christmas; there is nary a menorah, or any other hint of another culture or tradition, in sight. Snowflakes and snowmen and Christmas trees and red and green projections abound. Having an inflatable decoration is what counts as quirky in a place like this. Our cul-de-sac is almost a perfect loop of lights and Christmas cheer.

The terrible next-door neighbors, who rev bikes and cackle loudly and have friends with visible pistols in our driveway in the middle of the night but complain about the noise of chickens, are a perfect example. They have fake candles in every window in the front of their house. They’ve crammed decorations in every bit of the small patch of grass that comprises their front yard. They even have wicker-looking reindeer decorations carefully placed in their backyard, near their soldier-kneeling-near-a-cross statue, which you can see from the path that runs behind.

Here is what’s in the front yard of our house:

Two white reindeer, one with its head detached from its body and lying on the ground. Both were lying on the ground in general for most of December, but someone who lives in the house had an enterprising moment and righted them again. (The head was not reattached.)

Strings of lights that normally hang on the front of the house but are currently lying in a pile on the grass. They’re connected to a timer, so the clump dutifully lights up and turns off at the same time every night. What time is that? I have no idea. I’d have to look at the time or ask my brother-in-law, and who has the energy for that?

I’m not sure if the Thomas the Tank Engine inflatable is still there. It was unhooked from its cables the other day, when we had a decent windstorm, and I stuck it in the little bit of porch we have to give it at least a little shelter. But I had a cold that day, and I still have a cold, and I just can’t make myself care if Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt are still here and didn’t soar away on the Nevada gusts.

(I probably should have brought it inside the house. Oh well.)

A line of plastic candy canes stuck in the ground with stakes and illuminated from the inside by lights. This should be the straightforward decoration—it doesn’t take the setup that every other decoration takes, after all—but what was a neat border is now haphazard, tilted, knocked askew by either children or weather or both.

A holiday Schnauzer decoration, purchased to represent the actual Miniature Schnauzer residing in the house, lying on its back in the grass and dead leaves that we, of course, didn’t rake up.

Now, I should say that this is not every year for us. Our decorations are sparing or slightly askew on busier years, of which we’ve had plenty as of late, but if we put decorations outside, we usually have them up in a manner somewhat acceptable to the neighborhood. But I have never been happier with our nod to the holiday than I am this year. You see them, and you think, Well, it looks like they’re going through something.

Decorations don’t convey specifics. Our yard doesn’t say “Our eldest cat is recovering through a chain mastectomy she received to treat cancer, the youngest human in the house brought home head lice and swallowed a coin that earned him two hospital visits, Sara puked up blood twice and spent an entire week in the hospital while we waited for the doctors to take her internal bleeding seriously”, but you look at it, and you know something that reflects our reality. Our yard is a mess, a cry for help.

I smile every single time I see it.

But really, I’m not giving the other houses credit. I have no idea what their lives are like, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe they’re keeping their circumstances to themselves by fitting in. Maybe it’s a perfect expression of who they are as a family.

Maybe they want a little light and normality while things are completely and utterly terrible.

Our indoor decorations, by the way, are delightful. The fake tree is beautiful, there are strings of lights that keep the interior aglow even after the main lights are turned off for the night, and Sara’s eldest put ornaments on the drawer pulls (which, yes, are now scattering everywhere, but in that delightful child-chaos that the holiday season should be about). Don’t tell the kids, but I’m serving as their Elf on the Shelf, moving the toy around nightly in ways that I try to make more about fun and silliness and less about the surveillance state and holding children to an unrealistic standard of behavior. I even put a terrible joke on a board last night:

What do you call a annoying reindeer? Rude-olph.

(I had to put “a” annoying reindeer because I ran out of the letter n.)

We have our competent bits, is what I’m trying to say. And there’s nothing wrong with making those bits the parts the world sees. But there’s also nothing wrong with keeping those parts to yourself, and showing the world that not everything is curated and perfect. That the lack of light outside can exacerbate the mental illness that was already exacerbated by a traumatic autumn.

That, oddly, some of the brightest cheer can come from the biggest messes.

Happy holidays, from someone who doesn’t want to celebrate the holidays but somehow ends up doing so anyway.

I want a book.

Okay, truthfully, I want many books. Anyone who Reads (capital R necessary) never wants just one. For this exercise, I’m going to pick one. Maybe I’ve had my eye on it since I saw its author talk about its release on Twitter. Maybe I watched a movie or television adaptation and I want to learn more about the source. Maybe there’s a TV show coming out and I want to reread the source. Maybe I was just skimming along and the summary grabbed me. The source is different, the intensity of the want may vary, but the yearning is always the same.

I want a book, and I almost never have the means to buy it or borrow it immediately. Money for book buying doesn’t really exist. I live in the second-largest population center in the state, but its population is sparse and on the older, whiter side of things. I want queer literature. I want SFFH. I want authors of color. They want mysteries.

If the book isn’t in the library, I put it in the requests area and hope for the best. I’m not terrible at requesting books the library is inclined to get, but there are still several covers that have been there for months and will probably be there for months more, if not longer. I will look at them and pine every now and then, but I try to keep my expectations realistic.

When the book is in the library—more importantly for an agoraphobic person who can’t drive, when it’s in ebook form—that’s when the game begins.

Sometimes, the book is only in audiobook form, or the ebook has a wait while the audiobook doesn’t. That’s when I really start to ask: how much do I want this book? I read fast when text is involved, in little pockets of my day. Short audiobooks are doable, if challenging. My day is text and children, and those are two spheres that don’t allow for leisurely listening when I need to pay close attention. Long audiobooks…all other hobbies and non-essential tasks have go by the wayside for the better part of a month.

Often, when there is an ebook, there’s a wait. A week or two isn’t bad.

A month, or more…

My hometown was small enough that I didn’t realize libraries could have multiple branches in a single city when I was a kid. Said town was big enough that the one library it did have was large, considering, but a place like the New York Public Library would have blown my tiny child mind. As I grew older and visited branches in the larger city to the north, the idea was fuzzy, but it was there. You could live in a place, have a library close to you, and have other libraries in the same town if you wanted a change of pace.

The state as a whole has an interlibrary loan system. This, again, was something I knew academically because of signs in the library. It was rare that I would search a book on the computer’s card catalog, find it was only in a tiny library most of a day’s drive away, and still want it. How many books were worth bothering people for? The wait wasn’t what bothered me—back in the days before Twitter and Netflix, my attention span was much better—but the idea of making librarians work harder to get a book to me. The one time I spilled milk on a library book, I was mortified and upset for weeks.

Thanks to my mom, who still lives there, I know my hometown library system still doesn’t have an ebook system. The economics of such are complicated, and a smaller place probably can’t justify the cost or the headaches. I moved north with my sister, and my library possibilities expanded dramatically.

But with more options came more hunger.

I watched a lot of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown months after his death. Getting perspective on little-seen places around the world with a great narration and amazing-looking food…what’s not to love? People shortly after his death talked about his voice in particular, in conjunction with his writing, and I figured I would check out Kitchen Confidential and see how it worked for me.

The library had Kitchen Confidential in its ebook circulation. It also had a newer book, with a shorter wait. I put both in my holds and went back to watching Netflix.

Weeks passed. I started a reread of the Wheel of Time series, since my hold for Eye of the World came in. The 10-year anniversary of Twilight’s release happened—the movie, I believe—so I had my mom bring my copy to me. I was plotting a story for NaNoWriMo, my long-awaited hold for Sharp Objects came in…

…and that was when the library gave me two Anthony Bourdain books to read, within a week of each other.

I made some decent progress on the newer one. It wasn’t bad. Not super into the fat-shaming elements, but there were gems that rang the same bells for me that the show did. But the yearning had receded, and the second book checking out killed it altogether. I returned them both, unfinished.

To put effective holds in the library, you need to know two things well: the library, and yourself. But “the library”, in this instance, isn’t a building or the people who staff it; it’s an app created by people who have never been to your physical library locations, and it’s the people who check out all the books.

There is no way to know the library because you have to know each specific individual in line in front of you. What are their tastes? Their reading style, their speed? The max time to have a book is universal, and people can’t renew, but counting the people in front of you and counting the max possible time will do you no good. Sometimes, if the demand is high, the library will purchase more copies, the one time the staff really comes into play. Most times, people read faster or return things partially read or unread. I can receive a hold tomorrow, or I can receive it in three weeks.

I do know myself, however, and I know three things: I am reasonably patient, and I am broke, but I am also very busy. If I get too much at once, I have to carve time in my day for the books. Feeling resentful that I can’t fit everything I do in my day kills the passion, the fire. I have a hard time getting past first chapters at the best of times.

Believe it or not, though, this is improvement. It used to be I would get books, realize I wasn’t in the place to read them, and beat myself up for it. You have this opportunity now, and you’re wasting it. You’re a terrible reader, a terrible writer (for a writer reads constantly when they’re not writing, didn’t you know), and you’re letting your fellow writers down. You’re letting your library down. You’re letting yourself down.

Now, it’s “ugh, will I ever be better at placing holds”, but relative resignation and quick return. It isn’t despair; half my loans do get finished. It’s the idea that a book to be read takes up space in the back of my head that I always desperately need, and maybe the person behind me in line could use the book more than I could.

Very occasionally, when I have the resources, I’ll buy a book. Usually it’s an ebook, because it’s simpler to carry around a library in a small device than it is to cart around the four books I’m reading at once, but sometimes it’s paper. Sometimes, I get the book exactly when I need it, and it’s devoured within hours or days. Sometimes, when that happens, I love the book. There is no purer bliss, no greater satisfaction than that.

More often, when a book is purchased, it sits around for a long time. I almost always get to them eventually. My patience is infinite when I can plan times to try a book, set it aside if I’m not quite in the mood for it, and plan to try it again. Most of my paper books don’t even live with me; I have little room, so they sit in a bookcase at my mom’s. It’s an interstate library of my very own, for the moment. Knowing my Kindle library or my old room at home have experiences tucked away for later isn’t quite the joy that the right book at the right time is, but it’s occasionally flashes of warmth.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy good book timing. And isn’t that the same thing, in the end?

In the meantime—and for always, I hope, even if I have the money for a larger personal collection—I have the library. Getting a book on hold at the right time isn’t quite as easy as buying a book when you have the money, but it is sublime and worth every single hold returned unread.

Maybe, in a couple months, Anthony Bourdain will make his way back onto my holds. In the meantime, I have Sharp Objects to read.