Like a Ser

[Squick warning for needles]

The night before, I had to shave my legs. Under my arms. Wash away months of growth, months of waiting for my light hair to grow thick enough to be visible. I went to bed at five in the morning and was up at nine.

Because driving in Boston is akin to a trial of Hercules if you’re not used to it, we were driving to the outskirts and taking the subway in, which was much cheaper and faster than the train. But there were no more spaces available in the parking garage, and my mother was getting hassled and was starting to snap at me. So since she was only there for moral support, I had her stop in front of the station.

“I’ll go by myself,” I said. I knew the area around the MGH stop rather well, and I knew the MBTA even better than my own father.

My mother was hesitant, because even though I had become depressed and angry and was less like myself than ever before, she still had love in her eyes. But I was almost nineteen and she was just dead weight on the subway, so I stepped out of the car and said goodbye while wedging earbuds into my ears.

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Going into this, I might have fully expected to one day wake up and feel as masculine as possible. Just BAM, I climb out of bed and I walk with a swagger and I stand without putting more weight on one foot than the other and I will never ever do the ‘limp wrist’ gesture ever again. The sheer intensity of my manliness will somehow overtake everything. The tropical theme of my room will evaporate and dissolve into hunter green and there will be a buck’s head mounted upon the wall, surrounded by all of the sea bass I have collected fishing bare-handed in Boston Harbor. I will hawk loogies like its nobody’s business (which I already do but they are not epic magical loogies).

This has obviously not happened yet. My blog is pank and I come down the stairs on my tiptoes like I’m wearing some kind of strappy high-heeled sandals; I still watch stereotypical girl movies with my mother because she laughs at everything and I find it contagious (though rom coms have irked me as of late). I might have that One Direction song in its own little playlist on Spotify, so that its on a permanent loop. 

I don’t know why I expected all of my feminine qualities to go away. And even though I know gender is fluid and everyone can spit between their freshly manicured feet all they want, regardless of their goolie bits, I still kind of expected something. Like declaring my gender would create some kind of motivation in me to toss out all of my feminine things. But now I find myself clutching my only pair of high-heels to my chest, cursing the heavens that society does not allow men to wear them because god damn I am short and they are so fun. Also, my ass looks great in them.

So after struggling with my inability to wrap my feminine self in a cocoon and emerge a beautiful butterfly of man stank, screwdrivers, and hockey, I’ve just decided to go with the flow. Whatever happens happens. If I want to dye my future mohawk pink and blue for my trip to Provincetown (and if its currently purple now), let’s do that shit. And if I might look at orange eye shadow and find that I like it, whatever.

I’m still a man, even if its taking me a little while to get used to it.

Some days I can deal with not being able to bind. Usually they are the days when I need to be out of the house really quick; shit Gabe we need milk to make pudding no we can’t use the almond soy milk you barbaric Wiccan heathen so I need to hop in my twelve year old bright blue Oldsmobile and drive to WalMart or Stop&Shop because I don’t have time to squeeze myself into a binder and duct tape it shut because if I even take one more second that pudding is going to be ruined.

Its usually when I have actual plans that the dysphoria starts to sink in. Procrastinating until the last second because I know that my binder is still in the weird black hole my mom stores the dirty laundry because she knows we will resort to wearing wrinkled damp clothing if there is nothing else. I will never find it until it is as clean as she wants it to be, which could be anywhere from two days to a week and a half.

I never felt dysphoria so bad before. Yeah in college but that was more of a weh I’m in a small space and I am homesick sort of thing. This is so much more different. So much more sneaky. One minute you’re feeling good and then BAM you walk by a mirror and HOLY SHIT IT HAS TITS and you crawl under the couch.

The couch understands your feelings.

Guess who went to WalMart?

ME.

And guess what I got?

UNDERPANTS FUCK YEAH

(say hi to Thelma and Louise. My binder is missing at the moment and I suspect my dog is using it as a bed)

(also yeah I had to get a 2XL because my ass is really big. Hence why I can wear one as a FUCKING BABUSHKA)

They feel…

different.

Not bad just…

different.

Kind of like there’s a penis missing and all that extra fabric is bunching up in fear like WHOA WHOA WHERE THE FUCK IS THE COCK WE WERE PROMISED.

Essentially its just waiting for me to shove like a pair of socks down there. Oh you precious underpants.

I almost didn’t do it.

I was standing in front of the women’s restroom, watching all of my friends go into it. I almost automatically followed them in to continue to join in the conversation we were having (it was probably about butts, not gonna lie), but I stopped, thinking that this could totally be my chance. The park was busy. There were at least six thousand middle school field trips happening, so no one would really notice a hairless, shapeless, admittedly high-pitched and loud boy walking into the men’s room.

“I’ll…I’ll be over there,” I told another one of my friends, one who wasn’t in the bathroom. I got her attention and pointed over to where I had spotted the universal sign for a men’s restroom, which was passed a kiddie ride shaped like a school bus.

Walking up to the bathroom, I hesitated. There were a few teenagers hanging around near the entrance. One a middle schooler and the other maybe a relative, who was older and probably in high school or just a really developed eight grader, like damn. I immediately wanted to just run back and pee where ever, I didn’t care. I’ll drop trow and squat right in those bushes there, the one shaped like a duck.

But then I remembered Anime Boston, where I promised myself I was going to piss like a man and whatever. And then I wussed out and slinked into the woman’s restroom, and doomed myself to a weekend of being called miss by the hotel staff, even after havingGABE shrieked at me several times in their presence.

So I gathered myself, walked up to thee high schooler/really developed eight grader (like damn) and like a complete tool asked him if there was a line for the bathroom. Regret punched me in the face as soon as the words left my mouth (though I will give myself credit for forcing my voice to stay relatively deep, especially since it has a tendency to go up an octave or two or seven when I speak to strangers or get excited or y’know just assume I always sound like I am either on helium or extremely camp). Is it just a problem associated with the woman’s bathroom to always assume that if there’s people standing outside of the bathroom, there’s a 87% chance that its the line to pee?

I earned myself a funny look for that, but apparently they were just waiting for their family or friends so whatever.

I took my first steps into the men’s bathroom and marveled at how suspicious it smelled. Not like bad, but just kind of like stank and urine all layered over the dampness that comes with being a restroom ten feet from the Boston Tea Party ride. It coated the walls. The first time I was in there I didn’t really notice, being too high off the euphoria of peeing like a big boy, but the next 68 times I went in there I did (the aforementioned flume ride soaked me to the point where the tape keeping my thangs in my binder started to peel, and I had to reapply it several times).

It went well. Men really don’t look at other men in the bathroom, because holy shit guys if they made eye contact with another man right after that man was done touching his penis, they might turn gay (or you know they just don’t feel the need to look strangers dead in the eye as they piss. That too). I fit right in because I kept my head down so low that I am pretty sure my chin was touching my chest, desperately hoping they all thought I was just a really chubby thirteen year old. I was short enough.

And then I was putting my roll of electrical tape back into my backpack, and one of the bright green pads I stuffed in there because I had been feeling ewwie that day and it would be just my luck for the Russians to invade when I was wearing tan pants and trying to present, fell right the fuck out and landed between the divide between my stall and another. One that had been occupied when I had slipped into mine.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming in horror and grabbed it, stuffing it back into my bag and almost leaving the stall without flushing. I rushed out of that fucker so fast that I almost smacked into someone using the urinal right in front of my stall. I ducked my head down and washed and booked it out of that bathroom, that first bathroom, the one near the Boston Tea Party flume ride and right next to that kiddie ride shaped like a bus.

My friends were waiting for me outside to witness me jumping up and down like a kid getting ice cream. And then at the end of the day, during one last rest break, I held the bathroom door open and an employee at the park looked at me funny and I had another moment of excitement because hey, I totally just confused somebody in the bathroom. Man this is a day of firsts.

Pretty good day, overall.

My aunt announced the breaking of her heart over my chosen name, which she loves. We discussed how I came upon it, which was an embarrassing combination of the fact that I spent a good chunk of my time on baby name sites, looking for candidates for nameless characters I’m making, and an intense interest in Supernatural at the time, WHICH ONLY LED ME TO REALLY LIKE THE NAME. I swear to God I did not name myself after the Richard Spieght character. If anything I totally intended to be named after Gabriel Iglesias. Hot & Fluffy since 1992, bitches.

Despite the fact that they’re both said numerous times that I will always be [insert birth name here]to them and that I’ll always be their niece who used to never shut the hell up and once declared my uncle Scott as my husband go ‘way (which was toddler for fuck you I love him more), they have also firmly told me several times that they will royally fuck up anyone who dared hurt me. Of course they don’t understand my intense hatred for Republicans or Mitt Romney and NO AUNTIE PEEWEE. WE MUST FIGHT ANY BIGOTRY. DOWN WITH THE SYSTEM. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. PANIC AT THE DISCO.

Shit where was I.

So yeah they’re being really great about stuff, though I can’t/won’t enforce pronouns or names with them. Probably never, even if one day I have top surgery and sport a full mountain man beard and they greet me at the airport with squeals of THERE’S MY BEST NIECE GIVE AUNTIE A KISS. Its okay if they use the wrong pronouns because it can be passed off as Confused Old People In Florida. I know some people might get on my case about that, but these people kissed the birthmark on my left buttcheek at one point because I was a baby and they were to consumed with joy that THEY MUST EAT MY CUTE BUTTCHEEK LOOK AT HOW CUTE (almost verbatim) and I don’t know where I was going with that but the point is they are very good people and I don’t want to force them to do anything that is uncomfortable for them because the wrong pronouns doesn’t really upset me. Most of the times. Usually not when said by a seventy-something year old man with a busted knee and shoulder who just said that he will wup some serious ass if I was ever treated wrong.

Did I just tell the internet about the birthmark on my left buttcheek. Yeah hi its shaped like a heart. There’s some kind of symbolism there but I am too hot to figure it out and put it in a humorous format.

Also, did you guys know that Florida is REALLY different than Massachusetts? I went to WalMart with my uncle yesterday and I learned three things: 1) I am a judging asshole and laughed at the GIANT TUBS OF BUTTER THAT I SWEAR TO GOD I HAVE NEVER SEEN IN ANY OF THE WALMARTS I’VE BEEN, 2) southern accents are still really cute and I am totally gay for every southern man so if you are one you probably have a chance with this sexy ass, and 3) I pass completely here. I don’t know if its because people are more closed-minded down here and can’t fathom the idea of a transperson, or if it was the four layers I wore while it was ninety degrees out, or maybe I’m just that good. Either way I like it here and I am never leaving and you can’t make me.

It is the very early morning of Sunday, the twenty seventh of May, in the year 2012 (also known as the year giant scoops of ice cream will take over the earth and end the world).

2:40am WOW I AM LEAVING IN LIKE TWO HOURS I SHOULD MAYBE PACK

2:45 throw maybe four acceptable t-shirts, three button downs, the only pair of shorts I own, three pairs of jeans, and a pair of khakis onto the bed and wonder if you can make it through ten days with just that. 

2:46 add bra to pile. Weep

2:49 dubiously throw swim trunks in pile, despite the fact that they are tight on the ass. not give a fuck

2:51 freak the hell out because you buried your beloved dachshund under the monstrosity and she hasn’t resurfaced. Dig through clothes and find her contentedly licking the crotch of a pair of old underwear. Classy.

2:53 finish throwing all of the clothing into your suitcase, which is powder blue and manlier than you.

2:55 creep down hallway and into bathroom and gather the bare necessities of toiletries, i.e a toothbrush, hair gel, saline solution, retainer, and 65 panty liners. Forget deodorant and feel the vague slap as Future Gabe attempts to bend time and space to WHUP YOUR FUCKING ASS.

3:03 HA done packing in less time it takes your dachshund to have a decent poop

3:10 attempt to finish your rereading of Eragon so you dont have to bring two honkers of a book onto the flight. Ignore pressing need to pack carry-on

4:44 woken up by frantic father after falling asleep because of Eragon’s dubious dialogue. Should be leaving in a minute. Fuck.

4:47 MUM I NEED LIKE TEN MORE MINUTES TO GET READY THESE DAYS WHAT WITH ALL THE LAYERS.

4:48 YES DAD THIS IS A FUN GAME I LIKE TO PLAY. I GET GREAT KICKS OUT OF HAVING TO RUSH THROUGH AIRPORTS. ITS NOT LIKE I SHARE A TRAVELING ANXIETY WITH YOU IN WHICH I MUST GET THERE NINE HOURS BEFORE TAKE OFF.

4:50 throw two honkers of a book into backpack, as well as laptop, cord, 3DS, and ipod. Forget chapstick and once again feel the ghost of a sting as a gay boy with severely dry lips tries to SLAP YOUR FOOL HEAD OFF from the future

5:04 ready to go fifteen minutes late. dont even curr. tune out parents bickering, which is their way of showing affection, me thinks.

5:34 at Logan airport not even an hour before 6:40 take off. pee self

5:36 someone’s toddler is having a meltdown in the curbside check in line. make great effort to NOT JUDGE but stare anyway because babies are cute. Even shrieking ones. Also hilarious when toddler throws self down on sidewalk.

5:55 after getting slightly confused about where to go, am finally in security check line. Its huge. Apparently the asscrack of dawn is prime travel time.  Also for some reason the boarding pass you received says my plane takes off at 6:10 and also 6:40 what

5:56 LOL thAT SAYS BOARDING TIME HA you are fucked

6:05 THERE ARE NO PLASTIC BINS AT THIS STATION SIR WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY SHOES AND LAPTOP slide shoes and laptop directly on the table and continue to not give a fuck.

6:08 be stared at by someone’s toddler for a solid minute. Hear theIs that a boy or a girlquestion asked about you for the first time. Tear up in joy.

6:11 make it just in time to board plane, at the very end of the line. Chat with very nice man about how airports are silly.

6:13 this is not a JetBlue aircraft this is a Colgate toothpaste tube

6:20 the announcing steward is setting off your gaydar like its no tomorrow. He is also super nice. The entire back of the plane is empty so the woman sitting next to me goes back there for a seat. Spread out like an amoeba.

7:03 drinks are served. order one of the little meals JetBlue offers for six bucks. it has crackers (of which only two are completely intact), a bag of pita chips, a peppercorn cheese spread, tiny salami slices, a warm hunk of cheddar, and a bag of dried fruit. Dubious

7:05 NOMNOMNOM THIS IS FUCKING DELICIOUS. Gracelessly gobble everything in sight and eat peppercorn spread out of container with pinky finger when there’s no more pita chips left.

7:11 nothing is on TV. Realize you can actually write on your laptop, since no one is sitting next to you and your anxiety of NOBODY CAN SEE WUT I WRITE UNTIL I SAY SO. Bang out a good page and a half of decent writing.

8:46 Sneeze loudly. Hope to god nobody heard the fart resulting from said sneeze. Damn cheese.

9:40 land about twenty minutes early. Cell phone touch screen is being a total whore and can’t call uncle yet. Whisper to it that you will toss it in the toiler once you get your iPhone next week.

10:05 LORD ABOVE IT IS HOT IN FLORIDA.

10:27 finally at aunt and uncle’s house, which is a tiny little thing in a retirement-like village. Its a nice place.

10:29 GET MAULED BY TWO LABRADOODLES

10:30 ignore all reason and maul dogs back

10:34 OH GOD THE FRENCH BULLDOG IS A CUTIE PIE declare undying love for bulldog and dedicate self to him.

12:03 - the end of time. LORD GOD IT IS HOT I AM NOT MADE FOR THIS PEOPLE EXPECT ME TO MOVE

12:13 go for a nap with french bulldog and realize he makes noises when he farts. which is a lot. Also realize he likes to spoon.

God damn its good to be home. I’m pretty sure my bedroom at home is as big as my dorm room at college. I rearranged some things, put a lot of the useless stuff (like a jewelry box full of stuff I have literally never worn and the 67 wicker baskets my mum thinks organize shit). I even convinced my mother to maybe possibly let me get rid of the massive desk and the weird cabinet I have and let me buy two bookshelves from IKEA, because I have so many books that I have turned some of the more durable ones into a staircase so my dachshund can get onto my bed without waking me up in the morning. 

(I missed my dachshund too. Manly Squee~)

The feeling is mutual and shit. *grumblegrumblefart* (Also note the hideous Caribbean bedspread and the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Limited Edition guide, because AC is the one thing I will spend stupid amounts of money on)

Thankfully, my dysphoria has almost completely disappeared now that I’m out of that stifling dorm room and out in the open and my friends can actually make plans RIGHT NOW and not in three weeks. There are still periods where I curl up in a ball on the kitchen floor and freak the fuck out about how bad my chest looks while binding and how far the reduction is and the fact that I am leaving for Florida this Sunday and I have yet to come out to the people I’m staying with.

I wanted to wait until I had recovered from surgery to go so I could enjoy it, but my uncle is getting surgery soon too - on his knee not his boobs - and they have two very energetic Labradoodles, both of whom spite poop in front of the door when left alone for too long. I will also be taking care of my Uncle’s boss’s new dog, a babbu French Bulldog oh my god.

I hate flying, though. I am not only claustrophobic, but I am afraid of, y’know, plummeting out of the sky and dying in a fiery blaze. I will be binding during the flight, because I might as well die a man. I’m actually not sure if its legal or not to wear a binder in an airport, but fuck it’ll be funny if I forget to take change out of my pocket, get scanned, and they tackle me because they think I have cocaine strapped to my chest.

That would be a really great excuse for my super lumpy chest when I bind. No ma’am, its just the kilo of skag ‘neath my undershirt.

And yeah the lack of the HOLY SHIT OH GOD WHAT NOW air of school is probably the reason I’ve been posting so much. That and the fact that I’m having a phase were everything I write sucks but at least there’s that blog thing I do occasionally. Haha there’s a flood of creativity during school when I have textbooks up my ass but not during my vacation when there’s little else to do.

A week or so ago I had an appointment with a plastic surgeon at Mass General (I almost spelt that as “Mass Genderal”. One track mind, people) to help make a case to my insurance company about the fact that I might medically need reduction surgery.

We had it all planned out. I was dressed girly (ish. I had on jeans and a women’s t-shirt. Its a real cool shirt and I like it so whatevs) and I had all of my responses to any and all possible questions at the ready. All of them were pre-planned reasons why I needed this reduction, instead of why I wanted it; stuff like the fact that my mother had had breast cancer and hey less boobs equals less of a chance (right?Right?), that my back feels like I carry fifty pound weights all the time, ect ect.

It’s easy for me to talk about stuff like this when I know a lot of guys get dysphoric due to it, mostly because its hard to ignore the giant aliens latched to your chest. So I cope and it totally pays off when I have to show random doctors my chesticles for photo evidence that, yes, they are indeed stupidly large. Its only the difficulty of binding that freaks me out, and then frustrates me because my binder was bought from an Asian store online and is therefore made for Taiwanese guys who weight a hundred pounds soaking wet, and not my hefty Italian tits, which were passed down to me from a long line of Sicilians who all shared the degrading teenage nickname Bubbles.

Anyway, the day started off well. Because Boston traffic is literally Satan, my father drove us in on his way to work and my mother and I were going to ride the subway back. We got there a half an hour early, and lord almighty I had to pee. I ran to the restroom while my mother was finding out where the plastic surgeon was; I didn’t even give a flying whup that I had to use the women’s room, because it wasn’t like I had grown the balls to use the men’s room yet.

Our appointment wasn’t for another twenty minutes, and I hadn’t filled out the forms my mother gave me the night before yet, so we sat down in the hospital cafe so I could. I casually looked over the food that they offered and decided seven dollars was too much for a breakfast sandwich that labeled ham as Canadian bacon. My mother had coffee.

I filled out the forms, which had questions that normal adults would be able to answer easily, but I floundered on them because I was five years old and had no idea what my insurance information was because it was in my dad’s name. Luckily there were no prying questions about my gender identity on there, though they got extremely prying. I have no idea why they asked if I was sexually active. I really don’t and it kind of hurt my feelings to be reminded that I get absolutely no ass.

And then I let slip that I might maybe need to pee again. My mother fuckingpouncedon it.

“Maybe you should go,” she said casually, as she would the next 7645 times she told me to.

We took an elevator to the fourth floor, in which my college habit of getting angry at people who took the elevator up a single floor resurfaced and I became unreasonably enraged at an elderly man in a wheelchair. It wore off when he left and I slumped against my mother for the rest of the trip, exhausted with my own stupid, righteous anger.

The office we were in was labeled with stainless steel letters that screamed PLASTIC SURGEON because I wasn’t already feeling like a Valley Girl going in for a nose job. I tried to pretend I was instead going in for top surgery, which didn’t help fyi, and checked in. And when I talk to strangers or am simply saying something nice, my voice goes up an octave or seven, which is why I never present well, but here it was helpful because YES I AM COMPLETELY FEMALE IGNORE THE SHORT HAIR AND MANNISH WALKING. I am an adorable nineteen year old sweetpea please remove 90% of my breasts for free.

After the clerk photocopied and cataloged my insurance card and driver’s license (so that the picture on said license is now forever preserved in all its horrendous glory) I sat down with my mother, took out my book, and twitched as my mum told me to go pee.

“I am NINETEEN mum,” I hissed, trying to read.

“Yes but -“

“NINETEEN.”

It took a full hour for my name to be called. During which time my mother told me to go to the bathroom 7644 times and seethed at how long it was taking. Right before they called me she was about to get up an complain; it was as if the office had timed it just right to push her buttons but called it right before she could march right up there and bust out the skills she had developed over years of dealing with the lazy ass school system in my town. Bitching to a medical surgeon was nothing like bitching to the stupid ass office ladies in my high school.

The nurse who took pictures of the goodies was very nice and understanding. The last time I had to do something like that, the doctor actually asked my parents if I had been sexually abused because I did not jump at the chance to wiggle my bitties in front of her. This time I had prepared. I had spent the night before practicing. With my dog substituting as the medical practitioner, though its really easy when you pull out a boob and the doctor looks at it with a vacant expression and then licks herself. 

This time the nurse was totally understanding that, hey, a person might not want to show their boys to someone let alone have them take pictures of it because Blue Cross Blue Shield might not believe someone then they say they have the equivalent of two newborn babies on their chest. She quickly took snapshots of the twins while I stared off into space with my shoulders thrown back and pretended I was a deliciously handsome man and she needed to show her girlfriends my amazing six pack or something (omg that caused many nervous giggles on my partHA SIX PACKspoiler I am fat).

The rest of the meeting went fine. The doctor also made me take out my boobs and once again I did it LIKE A PRO even though she touched them (if only to marvel at them). At the end of it she was like ‘Yeah I think you’re going to be funded’ because GOD DAMN YOU GUYS. And she also didn’t even bat an eye when I said that I wanted to go down to A-cup range (because OH MY GOD IMAGINE IT. ITS LIKE NOT EVEN HAVING THEM. I COULD STICK PASTIES ON THEM AND BAM, GOOD FOR THE DAY) because apparently she just assumed that nineteen years with huge boobs had just TUCKERED ME OUT.

At one point she told me that the surgery could and probably would make it impossible for me to breast feed and I could lose all sensation there. To which I replied “that’s of no relevance to me” which is snooty English major talk for LOL I DONT EVEN CURR and then I tap danced away. Because really I expect my poor chest to be kind of like beef that’s been beaten like a naughty, saucy filly after my transition. I expect to be numb from collar bone to navel after the reduction and top surgery. I mean the breast feeding thing kind of made me want children (which I already do because BABIES) but that’s about it. Woop-de-doo wasn’t planning on it anyway, but we shan’t tell the doctor that.

I mean my kid might be a little messed up if they knew daddy nursed them.

My aunt said this as she cut the Mothers Day cake, slicing through a layer of rippled white frosting and cleaving a pink rose in half. I answered with a drawn out noooo that was followed immediately by a small chuckle while I cried a little on the inside.

I have probably mentioned before how much I love my family. They are not perfect, but our get-togethers are often fun. Its more than just everyone being friendly - there’s so much love it nearly overwhelms you. My grandmother’s laugh is in the air. Someone knocks over my Nana’s breathing machine, nicknamedThe Baby, and it makes it signature wail until its righted again. My father and his three brothers all tell stories about how they used to wrestle over the television remote.

All the while I sit on my grandmother’s couch with a Word document open, trying to put down how this felt. This was something important, I knew. My grandmother’s arthritic boxer Rocko rests his head on my thigh and grunts, staring at the Greek pasta salad on my plate. I rubbed his silky ears (which were too small for his anvil of a head) while I pondered how it felt to have the hard block of my gender identity crushing everything.

Everything that happened was overshadowed by the fact that I was keeping a secret.

Haha! Eighty-six year old Nana is eating a sausage as big as she is oh my god I’m transgender and I need to tell her.

Oh yey uncle Steven made chicken holy shit I have to tell them before Christmas.

And the worst part is I don’t know how all of them will react. Obviously I’ve been successful coming out to people despite the fact that I make stupid voices and stumble over my words and how do I English. Its mostly because I’ve probably softened the blow over the years by being as feminine as a velociraptor. But some of them haven’t been around me long enough to have seen me in a vest and tie on occasion. They have only seen the outfits I was forced to wear for holidays: velvet doll dresses when I was younger, overly swishy shirts when I grew older and attempted to hide my breasts for reasons unknown to me.

I roll over as I try to sleep at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering if I could just avoid them until I was six months on T and pretend the Old Me had gone off to England or something and been replaced with Gabriel, the long lost son from New Hampshire. Perhaps the combination of (hopeful) weight loss and the changes on testosterone would disguise me enough that I’d never need to fumble over my words in front of them, or explain why I was male.

I am perfectly happy to have a fuck you attitude to give to the world - I’m pretty sure my entire graduating class is going to have one pissy transman at their high school reunion - but there are so many exceptions. My friends, for one thing, get a free pass in everything because I say so and because they’ve gone with with flow and never make a big deal about misgendering me.

And my family, of course, because they’ve all had their moments too. They’ve had the entire family talking about them too, have probably had the same crisis while lying in bed at night, totally sure that they were going to be shunned for knocking up their girlfriend or for bringing their same-sex partner to Thanksgiving.

They’re alright in a pinch, I guess.

This is not an advice post. Mostly because I blow ass at buying clothing for myself.

When I go on a big shopping spree with my mother, I buy about ten things and regularly wear maybe two of them. Occasionally I will become convinced that my favorite pair of jeans is in fact an imposter and I will refuse to wear them, and instead wear a pair that I have never worn ever before but suddenly they fit great. I rotated about three pairs of jeans in college, sometimes stepping over into my one massive pair of khakis.  Same with t-shirts, which have to be on the billowing side With Boobs, and can be anything whatever Without Boobs. If anything is too tight With Boobs, then our relationship won’t work out and it will be banished to the closet or the bottom drawer.

My mother had been trying to get me into ‘nicer’ clothing before the transliness happened. 90% of my closet is full of shirts with V-necks, girlie hoodies that clung in weird places and itched my very fucking soul, and other remnants of her attempts to turn me feminine. There is one pair of favorite jeans she actively shrank because they used to be massive - instead of suddenly loving the fact that they showed off an ass I never wanted and outlined the goolie bits I wished I didn’t have (as well as dug into the belly that I actively add to on a daily basis), I carefully folded them and hid them and we don’t speak of them.

And while I am more confident in how I look when I bind despite the fact that I was bullied ruthlessly in elementary and middle school by girls who would whisper wide load as I walked by and ridiculed my frizzy hair and weh somebody hold me - amazingly only a little bit of my crippling self-consciousness resides in that unpleasantness - I find that my ass gets in the way of buying the clothes I really want.

Because while I like pretty, frilly things (I do believe I bought and wore two dresses this summer for my graduation, both of which were extremely nice and I only felt a little traumatized after the fact) and if you don’t hold me back I will buy an entire jewelry store because shiny, fuck all if I will wear them. They are just too uncomfortable and dysphoric (and also holy shit how do women wear shirts where the sleeves are sown on weird and I literally can’t wear certain shirt styles because it burns me to my very soul and makes my genitals clench). And with men’s clothes I will actually look for a chance to wear my sweater vests even if its the ass crack of summer and its 98 degrees outside and I’m in Florida so with the humidity its hotter than the surface of the fucking sun.

I don’t even think I can make you comprehend how I feel about clothing. Clothing and I have had a turbulent relationship ever since I was twelve and I started to realize I was overweight. I spent the entirety of sixth grade in track suits - not the kind Sue Sylvester wears, but ones made of like clingy velvet-type fabric - with a sky blue one standing out vividly in my mind. Jeans and I didn’t get along until I was thirteen. Nothing worked with my hair, which earned me the nickname Mufasa (I literally have no idea why the kids in my school system took ridiculing names from The Lion King, because I was not the first to get this time of nickname oh no). I tried to be pretty until high school started and suddenly holy shit guys I can’t handle these feels and both extremes of my self-consciousness reared their heads and I wore giant shirts to hide both my boobs and my stomach because yeah as much as I try to laugh it off I am a little sad that I resemble a potato. A really gay potato, since I have a tendency to do the ‘limp wrist’ when I roll up my sleeves.

Pictured: the result of layering oversized shirts with sleeves too big for my chubby babby arms, with my brother’s sandals and my only pair of men’s pants. My hair looks nice though.

Buying men’s pants when you have a lady’s butt is…difficult. My fellow transmen will know what I mean. Men’s pants were not meant for my ass. Usually this is solved with pants that are a few sizes too big, but unfortunately to fit my waist I need to get around the biggest size that most regular stores carry, and my ego just can’t withstand the blow of shopping in a Big & Tall store. I have never been motivated like this before. So many things rely on my ability to lose weight: getting pants that fit, fitting in the pants I bought in anticipation. Hell, I won’t even go on T until I hit a certain size - on T body fat migrates to make a more masculine body shape, which is with 90% of the fat in the stomach andoh lord Jesus no.

And now I end graciously on a fabulous picture of myself and 2/5ths of my friends staring into the Taunton River at a red pool tube.

It baffled us.

I am getting really used to hearing Gabe instead of my old name. It has gotten to the point where there is a real difference between the two; I view the old name as something that legitimately happens in the past. I mean I’m still called it like 60% of the time, by teachers and my relatives and my parents, and it probably won’t get full time use until my reduction surgery and (fucking hopefully Jesus fuck)I’ll be able to bind full-time, but this is nice for now. Kind of like easing into a hot bath, except not even close. Unless being transgender is also like taking a nice long bubbly bath.

I’m still not really used to male pronouns, probably because people don’t often speak like I’m not in the room because excuse merude.

This year is almost over. Another week, mostly filled with being the old me because I have work and they don’t know and won’t know until fall if I can help it.

I have eight a.m classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I do not sleep easily, so when I wake up at seven I am less than rested, usually. I need me a good ten hours of sleep, kind of like a lion but also like a lazy fucker.

I still use the female restroom, partly because I doubt a school that’s making a fuss about putting me in a dorm for 21 year olds when I’m (fucking gasp)only going to be 20, despite the fact that its the only gender-neutral pod n the entire fucking campus, is going to let me use a men’s room when I so clearly have a vagina. And also partly because I really don’t care at this stage in the year. I’ve said before that I’d rather come back next year as Gabriel than become this giant blob of old me/new me and confuse the shit out of everyone.

When I get up in the morning, there are very few fucks that I actually give. Like maybe a margin of a fuck if I’ve gotten my ten hours and the hall is on fire or something. I don’t even completely walk - I shuffle like my father, who has a distinctive rasp-shuffle he makes because the bottom of his feet are drier than the Sahara. I don’t open my eyes all the way because the hallways are always lit and I’ve just been in almost complete darkness for several hours (you know the experience, waking up in the middle of the night to go take a piss and you turn on the bathroom light and its like staring into the sun).

So I shamble down the hallway in my flipflops, wearing either pants with roosters on them or very weird, billowy short things that show off the fact that I’ve embraced my hairy man side and haven’t shaved my legs since October (I think its awesome - my mother’s still horrified), and usually a huge fucking shirt that might or might not have stains from mac and cheese from a cup. My hair might either be completely vertical or mashed on one side. I might have drool somewhere on me.

And I shambled into the girl’s bathroom like a zombie with deadleg and there are usually one or two girls at the sinks. And suddenly its like I’m in a fucking face wash commercial. They’re all bright eyed and clean and somehow have like makeup on even though its seven ten in the morning. They splash water on their face and have all of these supplies to clean their teeth, and I’m standing in the corner trying to sneak passed them to slip into a stall and piss, with eye boogers and hyperaware of how uncomfortable I am in this bathroom.

My personal favorite thing happened this Monday, when I had stayed an extra night at my house and came back to Salem via the train. I had woken up at four, which is so early that Ginger, my dachshund, who always sleeps with me when I’m home because we have this totally close bond - she boogers all over herself and I clean her up and give her cheese - just kind of cracked an eye at me, yawned (which is like taking a small nuclear blast of shit breath in the face), and crawled back under the covers instead of following me into the bathroom like she normally does. But explaining to you how early this was is just to emphasis how little of a fuck I gave that day when I stumbled into my dorm.

I had been binding of course, and was trying to rush to the bathroom because I had gotten iced coffee on my favorite button up shirt to wear when binding, which is white and really comfortable and relatively hides the fact that I get super uniboob because my tits are of unreasonable size. I wasn’t going to be able to wash it for another few days, and there was no one else in the bathroom even though it was like eight in the morning (which is usually prime traffic hour for the people with nine a.ms), so I shrugged it off and started to dab at it gayly with a damp paper towel. I was wearing an a-shirt underneath, so it wasn’t like I was totally in my skivvies, and I was listening to my iPod so I didn’t hear it when one of the doors opened and a girl walked in.

I looked up when I saw a ghost of her reflection in the mirror, and we kind of just stood there for a moment, staring at each other. I had never seen her before, so she could have been from the third floor, where maybe the bathrooms were being cleaned or something. Or she could have been on my floor and we never crossed paths, because I don’t have any nine a.ms, but either way she had no idea who I was. At least most people on my floor kind of understand what I’m going through and don’t blink when I bind. She had her little bucket of dental hygiene supplies and I smelled like Axe. Remember when I said I haven’t shaved my legs? There’s also a small ecosystem beginning underneath my arms.

It wasn’t anything really dramatic. She didn’t scream and there wasn’t a moment when we grappled and it looked like we were canoodling when someone came in to investigate the drama. She just kind of did a double take, looked at the sign on the door again, and probably silently declared me a really disgusting girl.

But for one moment she really actually totally thought I was a guy. Of course, it was also incredibly embarrassing having someone probably see my binder, but that’s beside the point.

I am so lucky to have my small group of friends.

I cannot think of anything about them that is bad or anything that should be removed.

When I told them that I was trans they all said ‘yes yes this is great we’re right here’. When my parents tell me that I need to go out and find other transgender people so that I can have people who know what I’m feeling and can support me I get so mad. I have everything I need in my current support group, even though I don’t think any of them are transgender to this degree.

They have no idea what I’m going through, but I know that if I were to start having a truly hard time with this transition they would be there. They would understand everything. They would hold me while I cried and then afterwards they would call me a big gay and everything would be alright again.

When I told them that I wanted them to start using my preferred name and pronouns, they immediately did so. It was such a quick and smooth transition that I’m almost positive that it gave me a slight case of whiplash.

The degree to which they’ve mastered this new me makes me feel as if they’ve always known who I truly was, and were simply waiting for me to catch up.