Gay Survival pt II
It's june 27th. I went to bed late and woke up close to noon, the latest I've woken up in weeks, maybe months. I eventually get out of bed after uninstalling instagram again, and decide to shave after a few days of not getting around to it. I've also started not getting around to taking my pills in as regimented a way as I did when I first started transitioning. It's strange to feel less exhilaration at taking my meds than I did at the start, when it felt more life and death and pure euphoric. I'm about 4 months away from being 6 years on anti-androgens and almost 4 years on estrogen. I remember being so scared getting on estrogen because I was so worried I'd become something my family couldn't approve of, just by existing. That I'd blossom into this gorgeous flower and I'd look exactly like I pictured when I put on makeup or put a faceapp filter on myself, and they'd take one look at me and cast me out for my Truth. It's why I stayed on anti-androgens for so long, until I felt a plateau hit and my doctor was quietly begging me to make a decision. It all feels so melodramatic now.
I've still visited my family in Florida numerous times since then. It becomes harder and harder to keep on the facade while I'm there because I'm both trying to be comfortable there but not too comfortable, lest I rest my body a little too effeminately or giggle a little too lightly. There was a time where I felt some sort of reclamation in being masculine. Like I was more comfortable to wear suits and dress shirts at my family's big occasions because I knew there was a refuge waiting for me back at my house where I could be around gay people again. Even now when I'm there for a week I feel like I mentally overstay my welcome. But of course they miss me and I miss them and we all silently wish every job would end and we could all commune together in one village like our ancestors did. Before countries and borders and capitalism and idividuality became the norm. I think a lot about how for most of humanity existed where no matter the awful conditions and lack of Innovation, we could live in a community with our loved ones just a few yards away from us. Now if we have one friend down the street from us we act like we're on a sitcom where all our dreams come true.
It's hard not being so cynical about everything happening all the time. Would I feel less radical if I was short enough to be clocked as a woman more often? Would my gender be less confusing if I had a higher voice? Is it bad of me to feel the least connected to womanhood and femininity I have since before I transitioned? I feel myself retreating back into a nonbinary identity after a couple years of wanting to feel like a weird, artistic, but ultimately binary woman. Like I feel some kind of kinship to cis women who distort their body and identity and dress however they want but still unquestioningly say that they're just a woman. I think making the binary seem more elastic in expression feels more groundbreaking than just proudly saying that feminine people who wear pants can use they/them. Ideally there'd be so much overlap between every gender that clocking pronouns via profiling would be a moot point, much to the chagrin of every right wing pundit who thinks of that as a nightmare scenario. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that going back to feeling nonbinary feels like a regression in my eyes, just because that label kept me sane in college, but also held me back from realizing more about my gender, medically, for a number of years. Maybe that'll be the thing that gets me in hot water in 20 years time in queer circles. Maybe those future circles might be more underground and discreet to the point where discourse like that isn't the priority.
I still don't know how to interface with the larger transgender community. I think when I know people enough they Get It, especially other trans people in Chicago. When I was in New York in April, I hooked up with a trans girl after both getting bought drinks by this bisexual chaser guy at a fancy Japanese bar. We all met at stonewall bar, after I had sorta boy-moded but as a means of practicality. I was gonna be walking for miles around the city, so a sensible shoe, no makeup, comfy jeans, and a t-shirt+hoodie made the most sense. I don't know why I still feel like dressing like a normal woman feels like boymoding, but it's maybe because i'm invisible to cis people if I dress like that. To this middle aged semi-retired tech guy, he saw nothing but man. To the other trans girl, she saw something else. But later on, she asked for pronouns and I said She/they, which she affirmed saying she knew I didn't look cis. I also told her my name, which is just my birth name, and she seemingly asked if I thought about any other names. I said not really; that's the one I like so it's still my name. I think she took that as me being earlier in my journey than I was. When we got back to her place, she seemed shocked at how much bigger my boobs and nipples were. I told her how long I had been on hrt and she seemed shocked further that she was seemingly newer in her transition yet had achieved more "passability" to both herself and that dude we ditched at the bar. After a very sapphic hookup that ended with her just getting sad thinking about her ex-situationship, I left in a hurry to catch my uber, and she left me with a parting affirmation that she thought I looked very clearly like a woman the entire day.
It's pride month and I still use the men's bathroom half the time. It feels bad to dress like Hannah Einbinder's character in Hacks and still feel unable to go into a costco bathroom. Like my foundation of femininity is so unstable as to not be able to get a little lesbian with it and immediately feel invalid as a woman. Like I have to flash my tits to enter. Maybe it's the internalized dysphoria and self-esteem issues, but I still feel like I look masculine enough to use the men's bathroom without ruffling feathers. But maybe I'm actually not, and my sort of halfway gender confuses guys in the airport bathrooms. I mean this is a ultimate goal of those people who write those bathroom bills: Complete isolation and ostracizing from culture and society. I mean i can barely hang out with my friends let alone piss at a restaurant that doesn't have a pride flag hanging in its front window nowadays. Those flags used to feel so performative but now they feel like protective shields protecting me from the outside barrage of arrows. It saves me time and energy from having to google stuff like "queerest planet fitness in chicago Reddit"
In January, i entered a dark and anxious place mentally, seemingly caused my too many Instagram reels, the negative degree weather, and a vitamin d deficiency. Although later i retroactively added that my hormone levels might have dropped way down as well, because I was in such a bad mental state I could barely eat let alone take my meds on time. This went on for several months and I only started feeling more like a person in march/early april. I feel like I lost some weight and also my hair looked thinner as well, both things my mom pointed out when I visited her in April. She noted I wasn't taking care of myself and truly started acting in a way I've never seen her, worrying that I would never talk to her again after saying what she said. She's accepted what I've told her about my gender identity and hormones, but I guess because I've felt hesitant about her calling me her daughter, she's also been more weird about how i dress and look. She says that I act different from how i was years ago, and that alarmed her in a way she's never been. Maybe Chicago slowly changed my attitude after 3 years. Maybe her being a boy's mom for 20+ years means that me being my mother's daughter is making her react differently to me. Maybe she's just noticing that I've been more on edge and defensive recently. Whatever it is, I let her take me to a great clips to get my hair trimmed. I later got another haircut in chicago that cut a couple more inches off the ends, but gave me bangs. When I sent a post-cut selfie to her, she said I looked really good.
It feels like my laziness towards gender is ultimately rewarded. That Not living as my most idealized and truest self is a success marker in society because I can become less woman shaped and more cog-shaped. More malleable by outside forces than by my own love and interests. I guess it's not laziness, more-so an intense mental energy I expend to seem nonchalant gender-wise, as if me being more feminine is still a herculean feat that I have to muster against all odds. I still base all of my personal appearance decisions off of things that I can hide or remove when I visit my family in Florida. I post things on main that I think my family won't immediately dislike. I base what bathroom I use off of if I'm wearing a skirt or not, because I guess women can't piss and wear pants. I feel like a charlatan trying to voice train, despite feeling (problematically) that tall women with deep voices are not something society acknowledges or wants to exist. I try and dress gay but mainly because it's cheaper to dress like a dyke than spend $70 on one dress. It feels weird to not be a baby gay anymore. I'm in my late-20s, I'm approaching 10 years of internally realizing I wasn't cis, and sharing that with my immediate close friends. But what advice do i have to show for it? In another 10 years I'll be considered a queer elder, but will I be someone to look up to? Sure, I make the art I want to make in Chicago, and dress how I want to dress most of the time, but will the parts of me I strategically repress be looked back on poorly when gender expression becomes (hopefully) becomes easier and more accepted? Or will future generations look at our survival instincts with kinder, sympathetic eyes?