Arch, startx and Pulse in user space?

[Linux for blind general discussion]

So this has stumped me for a few days. I've got it working once, but...

I've got my quick and dirty vanuilla Arch install set up. I want to log 
in via startx and have pulseaudio come up so I can just have orca 
autostart. Tha's the goal to have startx just launch into a talking Mate 
desktop so I just have to do one command and be good to go without 
having to mess around with a ton of extra stuff.



I can get startx to launch Mate without a problem. I've got Pulse all 
set up good to go.

Now here's where I run into an issue. I'm stuck on how exactly I'd get 
Pulse to recognize an X session is running. The Pulses service is 
enabled and loaded in user space. Yet somehow, going from the CLI into 
the xorg session via startx causes it to not recognize that the xorg 
session (and thus the desktop) is loaded

once I do startx and have it ready to go.
Currently I have to do systemctl --user restart pulseaudio every time I 
log into the desktop. I already have start-pulsaudio-x11 in my startup 
apps on Mate by default. Admittedly I've not tried putting systemctl 
--user restart pulseaudio in there, mostly since I'm not sure it'd work.

So what's the easiest way to solve this. Is it simply to have the 
startup apps do systemctl --user restart pulseaudio, or can I tell the 
.xinitrc hey, you're loading an X session and executing mate-session so 
automatically restart Pulse.

Or is there an even easier way I'm overthinking? I don't want lightdm at 
all. Ideally I'd like to run it all through startx (or as much as is 
possible)


For reference my .xinitrc is the default one I copied over from the 
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to /home/jace/.xinitrc

I took out all the twm/clock/xterm stuff so after the final fi it merely 
has exec mate-session in it. I've tried putting pulseaudio related 
things in and around that line but no joy so far


Also no, I'm not interested in switching to Pipewire, no. Pulse works 
fine once started and the Mate desktop comes up. I don't want to change 
something that works