Character Sketches: Vins Square Martenne
Image description: an abstract image drawn in oil pastels on a brownish gold background. Three smooth blue, black, and brown shapes point upward. At their base they meet horizontally curving lines and then an undercut slope. A small reddish cluster hovers toward the bottom right.
You’ll see Vins up on the mountain. Or down in the valley for a moment. Like the mountain goat they’ll soon be halfway to the summit again. Their stores of steady, persistent energy seem to be endless.
Vins’s spiritually muscular body is one of their greatest assets. They’re not fast, not flashy, but they radiate strength and endurance that transcends the physical. Their power lies in their ability to navigate the most treacherous challenges of being human with a high-altitude grace, a stabilizing nimbleness, and an unstoppable will.
Getting the work done is so easy for Vins. It feels right to carry the load on their shoulders alone. At dawn they scale crumbling rock faces and disappear over the highest ridges. They go down and up several times during the day as they function and labor and move giant existential and literal boulders. At dusk, back at lower elevation, they finally pause for a few moments. But they can’t remain still for too long: staying in constant motion is the only way they can prevent themselves from becoming lost in a fathomless headspace of inner critique that hammers out all the ways they fell short that day.
Accepting that they’ve done enough, that they are enough, is a direct threat to Vins’s system. The adjacent gaping chasm of worthlessness is too vast, too close. Work is the one thing that keeps them perched safe on the ledge (at least temporarily).
That’s why they’re up here now, balancing on a sheer cliff face with wind whistling past their ears and hundreds of feet of empty air yawning out below their heels. They took this job at the national park because it would break them physically and exhaust them into numbness. As long as they can go up and down and check off boxes and keep pushing past their limit day after day, they won’t be pulled down by the pain that nips at their heels and barks out a promise to end them.
The thing that Vins will barely admit to themselves even in the inner sanctum of their mind is that they long to be attended to. Despite Vins’s outer appearance—the completeness that seems to ooze from their pores, their earth-solid, self-contained competence—something in them yearns to receive and be passive rather than having to actively ascend and achieve and master.
It’s impossible for them to get further than a half-acknowledgement of this need though. If they begin to imagine themselves lying back, being waited upon, a cluster of grapes offered to their mouth, they sputter into panic, fighting off a tidal wave of dysphoria. At Vins’s core nestles the most tender pool of yin energy, but they found out a long time ago that someone who looks like them doesn’t fit the societal standard for someone who should be taken care of. So rather than be rejected by others, they deny their own being.
Ironically, as they find themselves constantly mired in self-negation, they have no way to perceive their inherent power of attraction. In reality, they exude a profound steadiness that draws others in like flies to heat and sweat. They way they inhabit the world, managing tasks both mundane and complex, leaves others in awe.
During these recent sunny days in the park, the gatherings of tourists include quite a few that stay taking in the view for more than just the natural splendor. Vins has no idea that there are admirers tracking their progress from below, people lowering their binoculars to fan themselves, crossing and recrossing their legs as they envision competent muscles rippling under sun-warmed skin.
Vins goes about their work, unaware that something is coming for them. They may have trained themselves to be comfortable with the familiar bites and tears of self-attack, but soon they will come face to face with a threat of a different nature: their deepest fears in an all-too bodily form.
Image description: a closer-up view of the reddish cluster from the image above. Purple specks surround the red part and a pink blotch lies at the center. Above and to the left are textured strokes of gray, blue, black, and tan.
***
Martenne lives in a house of mirrors. In the grand, wideopen dwelling she shares with Sath and Plumón she can see herself reflected everywhere. In polished surfaces, in walls of windows, in the ocean below. In the floor-to-ceiling mirror in her light-filled bathroom where she spends delicious moments appreciating her own electric transfemme form. And in the faces of her two partners.
Image description: an abstract image drawn in oil pastels on a purple background. Straight and curving lines in sections of light blue, light green, dark blue, and light purple run close to one another. In the bottom right corner is a large circle in variegated tones of orange, red, and yellow.
Just as Martenne would not be Martenne without her long, flowing hair or her perfectly manicured beard or her impulsivity or her clearly delineated self-assuredness, she would not be who she is without Sath and Plumón. The three have been romantic partners since forever and although Sath and Plumón are both much older than Martenne, she holds her own.
Sath, serious and structured, often lectures Martenne about making rash decisions, focusing too much on the moment and not thinking about the future, spending too much time redecorating the living room.
Intense and controlling Plumón struggles with jealousy when Martenne leaves the house to host parties and fundraisers at local art galleries and wine bars. Of course Sath and Plumón are always there with her, two pairs of eyes tracking her as she flits between groups of people, delighting everyone with her striking appearance and putting them at ease with the harmonizing effect of her words.
Martenne is good at conversation and taking turns and being in relationship. She knows how to make the person across from her feel seen and heard. She has a gift for saying what she wants without causing upset or offense. Her relationship with Sath and Plumón works so smoothly because of Martenne’s natural ability to give and take. She brings Plumón down from his spiraling heights of burning need or up from his brooding depths of resentment. She reasons with Sath and relaxes them when they are constricted with the pressure to achieve or turned rigid by the demand to meet expectations.
In return, Martenne is taken care of. The protective bubble that Sath and Plumón generate around her is impenetrable. She is safe. She’ll never be hurt.
The only problem is that Martenne has a secret fantasy that she usually keeps hidden even from herself. The image is her, on her own. Not just alone for a few minutes in front of the mirror, but truly independent. Free to take any risk she feels moved to. Solely responsible for her own choices. Liberated from the necessity of considering others’ needs and adapting to society’s expectations. Empowered to pursue her desires without being terrorized by the fear that they will consume her.
All of this is there, buried deep inside her. She rarely allows this fantasy to surface because when she does it brings with it an overwhelming charge of pent up rage. The fury that boils up inside her—toward Sath and Plumón, toward society, toward herself—is too much, so she applies a lot of her energy to keeping it under lock and key. But these days, it’s getting harder to contain it.
On a long weekend trip with Sath and Plumón to the nearby national park, an area of spectacular towering cliffs and sheer rock faces, Martenne encounters something that rattles her control. The three of them are lounging on the patio of the lodge with cocktails, taking in the view of massive rock formations colored by the lowering sun, when someone points out a figure up on the mountain.
“Look at that person. Incredible.”
“Up there all by themselves. It’s amazing what someone people are capable of.”
“Thank god it’s not us. Cheers, my dears.”
Martenne weakly clinks her glass against Sath’s and Plumón’s. She thinks she must have swallowed an ice cube because her throat feels suddenly blocked. She can’t tear her eyes away from the the mountain, the person so small way up there and yet even at this distance so clearly assured in their every move. Despite the ice cube Martenne feels heat rising in her chest.
She’s scared. She’s at a loss for words. She’s turned on. She’s suddenly furious, irrationally and terrifyingly and completely.
But she can’t let it show. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
“Let’s go to bed.” She jumps up and tugs on Plumón’s hand, lays her palm on Sath’s shoulder. Sath looks at her questioningly but rises as Plumón grins and pulls them both close.
Image description: a closer-up view of the image from above. Textured strokes of dark blue and light purple run alongside and swirl around one another. In the upper left corner are a few lines of light green. In the bottom right corner is a wedge of orange and red.
Martenne uses the cool night air to return herself to her role as delightful seductress, practiced partner, the reflection in the mirror. She glides along in front of the two who are always there, the two who define her. At the door to their cabin she caresses and smiles at each of them. After they enter, she can’t help but look back up to the mountainside. The sun has set but she can still make out the nimble movement of the lone person navigating with purpose in the falling darkness.
Something is coming for her; she can feel it. She thinks she should run, enclose herself in familiar safety. But then she feels a pause. She could let it take her. Or she could go after it herself.
