A while ago the concept of Russia as modern-day cyberpunk was noted to me and since then I’ve craved to reread that literary literal description of it as such, “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson. I did so now, just started. Last and only time I read it before was in the mid-2000s. Still it stayed with me in ways I am only now openly recognizing.

Gibson’s style is per definition pretentious as ass-all fuck, to be vulgar, and that neither helps nor harms I think. I actively (consciously) visualize all that is described. And I recognize what it is and why it affected me. The novel paints the contemporary world as interesting and complex and adventurous (cyberpunk tone for mundane tech), and the characters live lives I found extremely cool, exploring vast ranges of every level of human society, touching all strata. More to the point it is POV of a very calm, very nerdy woman entirely free from all aggression, apologetically being herself. It is the same as in “Howl’s Moving Castle” – I found descriptions of a female subjectivity in both heroines that I could fully embody while reading.

And reading it back then felt like such a guilty pleasure, wanting to be real, subjective, alive, feeling, enough in myself even while hurt and empty and sad, like these girls. Being a girl. The wish felt illegitimate, why would I get to care about that, wasn’t that fetishizing? Why would it matter? The characters could easily be genderswapped too without changing the story much, their femininity is not stereotypical, they are clearly women and that does not constrict so much who they otherwise are. Why would this be so extremely peaceful and pleasant for me to immerse in? Well, I know now. Other trans girls did crossdressing, I read books with female POVs I could identify with and never forgot them.

Continuing the read will be interesting – as will the two sequels I never read nor even knew were there. Because now my life has changed, my world has changed. By effort, and planning, and fifteen years and expatriation and transition and a quest for the most pretentious reality I could find, my everyday life has grown closer to what is there, even as the books themselves aged. It feels in a way like coming full circle, coming home, realizing how much I wanted and how much of what I wanted I have now done, and how much more I plan to do. There’s no disappointment so far, only pleasure.