A Prurient Proof

So, funny story: a week or so before flying to Montreal, I start talking to a young woman online who lives in Atlanta. She's smart, pretty, showed me glimpses of her *huge* diction... I'll spare you the graphic details. Anyway, it just so happened that, to save money, I was already scheduled to take a bus to fly out of Atlanta. And we figured that, since I was going to be there anyway, we ought to do lunch before my flight.

So we did. Her train was delayed so I got there first, and she surprised me by walking out of the subway tunnel with a bouquet of yellow roses. Not gonna lie: I swooned. She didn't know the area well, so we kind of wandered around until we found a sub place (for lack of anything else). She made some flimsy excuse for buying me lunch. We ate. We were both sleep-deprived, so it was somewhat awkward. But it was a nice diversion from thinking OMG SURGERY OMG SURGERY like a stock ticker in my head.

When our time was getting short, I suavely and subtly said, “I wish I could just pull you into a corner and make out with you.”
She said, “Yeah, that would be nice.”
Heartened, I took the classy route: “Well, the bathroom is a single room.”
She promptly responded “Well, I'm finished eating,” dropped her sandwich, and started walking. I, as you might imagine, swiftly followed.

Lovely, lovely makeouts commenced. It happened so fast it was almost unreal; I'm not used to other people taking the lead in matters of the sexy and sordid. Anyway, lurid details might prove superfluous, but suffice it to say I had somehow gone through life never being thrown against a wall and furiously kissed and now I have.

Eventually, as you might imagine, someone tries the handle outside and finds it locked. We start to compose ourselves when I discover that I have a huge erection.

Like, a huge one. Bulging against my jeans for all the metropolitan area to see, no doubt no way no how. And I realize that I honestly cannot recall a time where this iconic happening-to-penis-havers has been a problem. Two days before the surgery, and I'm going to have to walk to the subway station in downtown Atlanta beside a really hot girl with a giant hard-on. The poetry of the divine, indeed.

So I do what any sensible person would do and awkwardly angle my bag to cover the front of my pants as I walk down the street and wait for the subway.  Someone fortunately gives me their seat on the subway (on account of my luggage) and, aside from my date's amused grin, I escape major embarrassment.. Soon she gets to her stop and kisses me goodbye (*sigh*). And, as she's gone and I can finally stop being turned on, I think to my penis, resting smugly and far-too-snugly in my jeans, “Q.E.D., motherfucker. Q.E.D.”

It might be an understatement to say that I had the last laugh.

On Crying Alone

On the night after the surgery, my hospital roommate (call her “Kate”) phoned her mother. Kate had been in significant pain all day. Whereas I was fortunate enough to merely have the motion sickness-esque nausea and headache that usually accompany my forays into anesthesia, she hurt terribly. And as time went on, the pain worsened.

Pain medication provided temporary relief but only fleetingly. And, of course, that's cause for even more distress: the gradually dawning knowledge that modern medicine can only do so much to save you from the mysteriously individual agonies of the body.

So, in unrelenting pain, no end in sight, she did what many of us would do: she called her mommy.

She did not ask for much, after their brief salutations and Kate's preface regarding her pain. She said, merely, “Tell me a story.”

And though I can only hear Kate's side of the conversation, I can make a good guess what happened.

“I don't know any stories,” her mother replies.
“Surely daddy or Uncle Tommy's done something funny recently,” Kate says, almost begging.
“Nope.”
The subtext is clear. And Kate, uninhibited by pain, gingerly jumps to it: “Don't you love me anymore?”
“I don't even know who you are. You murdered my child. How can I love you?”

Kate, sincerely, pleading, “I didn't murder your child, mama. I'm right here. I'm still your child.”
“You aren't my child.”
“I may sound different and look different, but I'm still your child, mama.”
“You aren't my child. You promised me, you promised me that you would never go this far. You promised me. And here you've gone and made yourself into some kind of freak. You promised me.”

“Mama, I didn't know what I was saying! I didn't know it would mean that much to you, I was just trying to make it easier on you and I didn't really know what I wanted and I'm sorry mama.”
“You promised me.”
“Mama, I'm sorry. I love you, ok mama? No matter what happens, I'm still going to love you. And I just need you to love me, that's all. Right now, I just need you to love me.”

Silence
“Alright. Bye, mama.”

Kate was so calm. She wasn't angry, she wasn't hurt. She wasn't crying. At least that she showed, of course.

I was, though. And, tear-stained from across the room in the darkness, I choked out “That was so terrible.”

Kate made excuses for her mother. Said her mother is the “most selfish person I know.” Explained the gaps in the conversation I'd already guessed. Said “Daddy will take up for me, I know it.” And that was that.

So I cried for Kate. Cried the tears she couldn't, fueled the anger she didn't, felt the hurt she blocked. And I reaffirmed my commitment to keep working towards a world where this bullshit doesn't happen.

***

Later, though, I wondered: given Kate's obviously fraught relationship with her mother, why had she called her, of all people, that night?

I don't really know. It's not really my place to ask, and it's arguably not my place to tell the story.

But I wonder: who would I call?

The day I flew back, as a product of exhaustion and hormone fluctuations, I started sobbing for twenty minutes straight. There was no definite reason. I was just... overwhelmed. My mother was in the room when I started, and I tried to hide from her. She's great if there's a physical/medical problem, but, as mentioned, she has her own significant barriers to trust and intimacy. I did call a friend who has talked me out of killing myself an embarrassing number of times and can at least roll with the punches, even if  she lacks the emotional vulnerability to be comforting. But when she didn't pick up? No one. I cried alone, just as I went to Montreal alone, just as I've done most of the hardest parts of my suffering and changing alone.

In other words, I don't have anyone I can call who can make me feel better. Not a single person who will be able to make me feel understood and loved and safe and cared for.

The reasons are legion, of course. I don't need to revisit my childhood here, but it doesn't take an expert in object relations to tell you that alcoholism, abuse, paranoia, and deadened stoicism don't foster trust and openness in a child (or her parents, for that matter).

But being trans, pre-transition... how can you be truly intimate with someone? Intimacy is all about knowing someone better and better, but when you haven't transitioned the person someone else is getting to know isn't you. Not really. Not in the way that matters most. My first and only long-term relationship was with one of the sweetest, most affectionate people I know. But whenever she touched me, it was as if she was blocked by stone. The person she was trying to reach, the person she was attracted to, the person she loved was not who I really was. And that's an obstacle no one can surmount.

It's not just being trans, of course. It's anything that makes you feel like you need to keep essential parts of yourself hidden from others. I sometimes, in my pettier moments, start to roll my eyes at LGB people getting so torn up about being closeted because, you know, at least the world sees them as who they are even if they don't recognize who they love, right? But it's the same fundamental thing: hiding part of yourself makes it harder for others to get close to you. The bigger the hidden part, the more distance between you.

This certainly isn't the case for all trans people. But I wonder: now that my active transition is nearing its end (vagina dynamics aside, I mainly have to get electrolysis finished, and the rest will just be dilations/HRT for the rest of my life) and I'm finally reaching a point of relative emotional stability for the first time in my life, will I be able to get closer to others? Will I find myself in five, ten years in some emotional turmoil and be able to call someone who I know will help me feel comforted and loved on some essential level?

I don't know. But I think there's more reason now than ever to hope I will.

Two and a Half Weeks Out

Every day seems to follow the same pattern: I wake up feeling nasty and terrible, dried out and poorly rested, not to mention seeing spots on my bed/bed pad from discharge. I dilate. I take a shower and douche. I feel recharged and ok. I dither around for a few hours. I eat lunch. I dilate again. I sitz bath. I dither. I dilate again. I eat dinner.

And then I start to worry. I look at my vagina. I see this horrible white stuff that is most likely "fibrinous sloughing" or something. It creates constant discharge. I get pissed off that my bed pad is full of spots where I've sat, that I'll have to get more pads, that I'm wasting pads. I look at forums and google and everything trying to figure out if I need to do something. Because I can wait, that's fine. But needing to do something and not knowing about it is terrifying. I dilate again. I sitz bath. I douche. I try to go to sleep. I eventually do.

***

I emailed back the "follow-up" questionnaire my surgeon's office sent me yesterday. I got an auto-return email saying they'd be on vacation until August 22, effective that day. I'm furious that they'd just up and leave and not even warn us about it. I don't know what to do about the white stuff. I don't know what's normal.

I'm light-headed and my thoughts are foggy. My doctor here said that if I got light-headed, I needed to reduce my anti-androgen. I don't want to; I've already regressed so much from the month I had to stop hormones. I hate having dark facial hair again. I hate having greasy hair and rougher skin. I read a forum post about "adrenal fatigue" with the fogginess lasting years.

I don't know what normal is. And that's the problem. I don't have pain. I don't have that much bleeding, aside from the discharge. It just looks bad. And foreign. I want to lie naked in bed recovering, knowing that I'm doing everything right. I don't want to sit here terrified that my incompetence is going to produce lifelong sideeffects, botching this entire surgery. The only people who can really say are on vacation for six weeks. There's a metaphor in that somewhere.

***

This is easier than I thought. This is harder than I thought. This is so incredibly worth it. This might be a gamble turned disaster. I have so many people who support me. I'm, essentially, alone. I'm so looking forward to living. I wouldn't mind dying. I literally had a fainting fit of vertigo after I wrote that. I don't know what to do. I don't know if there's anything to be done. I need someone to tell me. I'll get someone who says "Wait and see." This isn't that hard. This is far too hard.

I want to be well.

The Way We Were

Ever since I was a child, I have wanted nothing other than a vagina. I would lie awake at night, fantasizing about its majestic curves, its mysterious crevices, its supple and moist texture. I could imagine nothing hotter than being penetrated by a hard, erect penis, feeling it pound against those beautiful walls deep inside me. I knew that I could not be whole, nay I could not be human without one.

But society was stacked against me. My parents hated it when I wore dresses. I was a boy, they insisted, and that meant I was supposed to play in the dirt with guns and sticks and foosballs or something. Of course I knew better: inside, there was a little girl howling to be let free. But it took me 23 years before I was finally able to build up the courage to say that yes, I truly wanted to be a Vagina American. 

I wanted to be a woman. And what's a woman without a vagina? A man, that's what. I wanted to be anything but a man. I wanted to let the woman trapped inside me out. And I knew that she could only escape through that glorious, flowing opening betwixt my legs. 

But first I had to convince everyone I was really serious. I dressed as a woman for an entire year. It was hard and all, but once my therapist saw I was serious she gave me papers saying that people shouldn't give me shit because I'm mentally ill and it's not my fault. Wearing makeup and a dress felt so freeing! Some people laughed and mocked me, and they still made me use the men's restroom at school. But I could kinda get that, though; I mean, I wasn't really a woman, not yet anyway. I was just some freak. I hadn't earned it.

It was hard. It was really really hard. But that's the price of real womanhood, you know? Well, that and $20,000. I worked really hard to save that money: nothing was more important. And when I had finally saved enough, finally gone through all the tests and therapy, finally proven myself, I made my appointment. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

As the time got closer, I was scared, sure. But I knew who I wanted to be: a woman. Not a drag queen or a he-she fag or a crossdresser. And that's what a vagina is, ya know? It separates the men from the girls!

Anyway, after so much time, I finally made it to Montreal. In just a few short hours, Dr. Brassard was able to work his magic. And when I woke up? It was like being reborn. I was a women. A real woman. And no one could ever take that away from me.

Now, I'm recovering. And it will certainly take awhile. But after that? I'm done! For all intents and purposes, I'll be just like any other normal woman. All of this “trans” business will be behind me. I can finally just be “me.” And that will be the sweetest thing of all. 

 *** 

In case you haven't already surmised from my subtle and urbane satirical narrative above, this is not going to be a conventional retrospective about Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS). If that is what you're seeking, one need only google the term to find countless videos and articles about SRS, most of which will be produced by cis people, for cis people (although the discerning searcher can find trans owned narratives with a bit of work).

As such, if one wants to write about SRS, it's impossible not engage that narrative. Indeed, the vast majority of cis people equate being transsexual to having Sexual Reassignment Surgery. It's a point of fascination, both morbid and mocking, for the culture at large. Increasingly, much of this is well-intentioned: progressive people, in particular, love to see marginalized people become happy with themselves and their identities. But this is undermined by the inordinate focus upon SRS even within these circles: never have I seen celebrations of name changes, of starting Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), of even simply coming out as trans that match the congratulatory and celebratory joy from cis people regarding a transsexual person's surgeries. It always has been and remains the most familiar and intriguing aspect of transsexual people's existence for cis people. And that creates a host of problems. 

Because SRS is not just about surgically altering one's genitals to be closer aligned to one's true sense of self. It's about legitimacy, legal, cultural, and social. It's about wealth. It's about those who don't or can't have SRS as much as those who can and do. It's about cis people's deepest fears and suspicions of trans* people. It's about definitions. It's about biology and culture. It's about relationships, sex, and love. It's about “real.” It's about verisimilitude. It's about impossible standards. It's about women, it's about men, and it's about everyone and anyone involved in that inherently limited binary.

I cannot write about this without writing about all of that. And if you think I am angry, then you are right. I am furious. And excited. And hopeful. And terrified. And thankful. And resentful. And a whole host of emotions complicated by the fact that I had quite invasive surgery two weeks ago that will take a year to really recover from.

These feelings, together, do not fit the conventional narrative. And, as such, this exploration is going to make you uncomfortable (and not just because I'm going to go all "nonlinear postmodern" on your beautiful butts). But I want to ask you to engage with that discomfort. Chances are, what you want, what most people want, is to read a story about how I was sad because I was a boy and then I became a girl and then I got surgery and then I became a real girl, and now I'm happy. You want to celebrate with me, unambiguously, to embrace unmitigated positivity. And believe me when I say I appreciate so much about that sentiment. And I will write about that. But I need to challenge it, too. Because the only way this story is coated in unmitigated, celebratory positivity is when we don't want to see anything else. And there is just too much else there.

Hopefully, I can find a way to show a bit of everything.*



[*Well. Almost everything. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.**]

[[**I mean I'm not showing you my vagina. Which is kind of ironic, because that is what this is all about, right? And yet, you not seeing my vagina is also kind of the point. Isn't that deep? It'll be deeper after I dilate. *drops mic* GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY.]]

Hitting Us Where We Live

Lately I've been thinking a lot about "place." I've lived in Knoxville, TN my entire life. And while there are undoubtedly worse places to be stuck in for 25 years, I'm increasingly wondering if there are better, too.

Because here, I feel dissatisfied.  It's not that there aren't progressive people doing great things. It's just that so often they seem... defensive. There's not much openness, trust, and impetus to growth; most progressives seem oriented towards survival and simply being open about voting for Obama alone is often a battle for them. And those who aren't get out when they can.

And I get that. People don't feel like they can challenge themselves because they're being challenged externally constantly. Many of you have probably heard about the laws coming out of our state. And unlike Memphis and Nashville, Knoxville votes conservatively every election, a complicit if not active player. It's often an uneasy, combative environment.

For a long time, though, I've assumed that everywhere has "its own problems" and that Knoxville's as good as anywhere else. But in graduate school, most of my peers are from elsewhere, and hearing about Portland OR, Seattle, and Southern California (for instance) has really started challenging those notions for me.

So my question to y'all is about you and your relationship to your geography: How do you feel about where you live now? Have you lived in different places before, and, if so, how did the change in environment affect you (if at all)? What kind of effect do you feel these place(s) have upon the people around you? And any other thoughts you have about the relationship between you and where you live.  

Sympathy for the Snakes

[[Someone on okcupid asked me to tell her a story and, upon my prompting, asked for it to be nonfiction magical realism, which I found incredibly clever. So here's my attempt.]]

My grandparents’ home was a peninsula of open space surrounded and interspersed by forest. The home itself was like ours in the suburbs, but we had no deer, had no baby rabbits, had no hummingbirds, had no horses. We had no stars and moon. We had no lightning bug chorus. We had no horizontal sky. We had internet and population density and generic accents. But we kept them chained in fences, not hemmed by trees.

And when it came time to socialize, we could no longer speak to dogs and cats and boys and girls. We could talk to each other. Or we could talk to grass. And seeds. And ticks. And songbirds. And mosquitoes. And, of course, snakes.

Oh, the snakes. My grandmother *hated* snakes. I suppose she disliked the things they said. And goodness knows, I wouldn’t give a snake the time of day. The dead eyes, the sharp teeth, the wicked scales. I have doubted much, but never that Satan chose wisely for his avatar.

But in the woods, one does not always choose one’s conversation partners. Sometimes they choose you. One day I left the confines of my grandparents’ home, stepping onto their porch. I imagine I frolicked or fell or attempted some other feat of acrobatic adolescence. And, after I was adolescenced out, I decided to go back inside. But the door was locked. I stood on the porch and knocked. I happened to look to my right. And there, on the brick wall, was a snake.

He was brown with spots. And he stared at me. And I stared at him. And I screamed. And I ran.

But as I reached the yard, he called back, “Where are you going? I’m just here to talk!”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied.
“Why on earth not?” the snake said, trying to hide how wounded he was.
“Because you’re a snake. And you’re scary. And I don’t trust you.”
Indignantly, he said, “ ’Because I’m a snake?’ I could have sworn we were past the days of such displays of speciesism, at least in public, but here you come and say it right to my face for all the world to hear! I’m just here to have a nice conversation, what is so unbelievable about that?”
“Aren’t you going to bite me? Aren’t you poisonous?”
The snake rolled his eyes and said, as if he’d had this exact conversation a thousand times, “Oh good lord. Let me ask you a question: When was the last time you had an honest-to-god conversation with a snake?”
I hesitated a moment, then said, “Well… never.”
“And why not?”
“Because I always scream and run away.”
“And what happened the last time you screamed and ran away?”
Somewhat sheepishly, I said, “I told my grandmother and she came out and chopped the snake’s head off.”
The snake choked down his anger, “Did the other snake bite you? Were you poisoned and hurt and nearly  dead?”
Beginning to feel guilty, I said, “No… it didn’t even touch me. I was just scared.”
“So. You got scared. And for that fear alone the snake lost his or her *life*?” The snake responded sardonically.
“Yes.”
“And what were you planning to do before we talked?”
“Going inside to tell my grandmother.”
“And she’d come outside and chop my head off?”
“I guess.”
The snake, now visibly upset, said “Why do you want me to die like that? I’ve not done anything to you! None of my kind has ever done anything to you! You’re just afraid. That’s all you are, you’re afraid of something you can’t anticipate and can’t understand. And because of your fear alone, you’re going to go inside and tell your grandmother and she’s going to come out here and chop my head off just because I had the audacity to come to her house and expect to have a conversation with you. That’s it, right? Right? Tell me I’m wrong. Please, please tell me I’m wrong.”

The snake was, of course, right. And I really was feeling guilty, now. Watching my grandmother decapitate a snake was grizzly and it’s not like it had done anything to deserve it. Other than, you know, being a snake. It wasn’t fair.

But I was scared. And I was young. And I didn’t know what to do. And I really didn’t want to be bitten.

So I went inside and told my grandmother. And she came outside and she chopped his head off. And, since then, I have not spoken to another snake.

On Owning Hurt

Until you can say "I was wrong" without pausing to defend yourself, there really isn't much hope.

This is really key, for me. As I was transitioning (and still sometimes now), people would commonly slip up on pronouns and my new name. And almost invariably, they'd respond defensively when I said something about it, saying "I didn't *intend* to hurt you" or "I'm still learning" or "I didn't know." 

And it's infuriating and exhausting. Because I know most people don't intend to be cruel. Even when they do cruel things, they make up all kinds of rationalizations about how their cruelty is just or deserved. It's rare that someone does something purely out of malice. People make mistakes and those mistakes often hurt others. But when they don't own those mistakes, the hurt isn't validated, it isn't "deserved" and you have to convince yourself that it's ok, alone.

What I really just want is for people to say "I'm sorry" and then to keep trying. It validates my hurt, it assures me that the other person values how I feel, I don't have to feel threatened or scared, and I can trust the person to try to not hurt me again.

Being able to own your mistakes is really difficult, but it's central to engaging difference and respecting others. I have said and done some really cringe-inducing, hurtful things out of my ignorance. But owning those actions has helped me not repeat them. I'm rather inclined to agree with TNC that any other way isn't likely to work.

(From my comment in response to this post.)