tell me your stories.

minutes before he left the drop in tonight, a youth came up to me to tell me something.

“can we talk over here?”

of course.

“i want you to know something. it’s something i don’t want a lot of people to know. my mom knows but we don’t talk about it. i don’t want to talk about it. i want you to know why i am the way i am. it’s because my sister’s brother raped me when i was little. it’s why i’m bisexual.”

my stomach in knots. his friends pulling him out of drop in to catch the bus. this kid, who earlier in the night told me all the different colors of skinny jeans he has and how he wants purple ones and why he isn’t on the football team even though he wanted to be but is in theatre instead and asked me if i was bisexual or a lesbian, whose brain i could see building new connections when i explained what queer meant to me, what pronouns i use, what it means to call myself trans.

that is why you think you are bisexual?

“yes.”

i know you have to go, do you want to check in with me and talk more about this next week?

“no, i don’t like to talk about it. i just thought you should know. i don’t want anyone to know. i told my one friend, she knows not to tell anyone.”

thank you for sharing that with me. i know that is a hard thing to share.

he is in and out of the space a few more times before the gaggle of youth finally exit to catch the number 6 bus south. he asks if he can hug me before he goes and makes his rounds to everyone left in the space to hug them all before he leaves. it is only his second time at drop in.

i am reminded of k’s undergrad thesis about how histories of abuse affect coming out. no one wanted to talk to her about it. service provider after service provider avoided questions, explained that they “only serve women” and “refer their lesbian clients to a different organization.” we were all astounded. some of us because of the disconnect of the folks who were supposed to be serving us. some of us because of immediate knowledge that yes, these histories of violence affected us, affected the ways we understood our bodies and what gets us hot and what makes us shut down. these histories are not the cause but they are part of our stories.

what i wanted to say to him:

i’m sorry that happened to you.

keep talking to me. tell me your stories.

why do you think this is what made you bisexual? can you conceptualize your sexuality outside of this rape? what would it look like? when did you first draw that connection? how do you heal yourself?

instead, i hugged him and told him i’d see him next week.

education.

learning to problem solve my body.

lots of stretching. m suggests writing the alphabet with my toes.

learning to problem solve my body.

weekly injections. 60 mg a week for the first 11 weeks. 80 mg a week 4 weeks and counting. 980 mg in my body over 15 weeks. and counting.

listening to this.

learning to problem solve my body.

needles on my chest that match the needles in my thigh.

letter to parents: draft #1

i’m not writing this letter because i want to. if i could avoid it forever i would. i’m writing this letter because i have to. i owe this to you. to myself.

here are the things i will say to you:

i legally changed my name from xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx to xxxxx x xxxxxxx.

i’ve been taking testosterone since october 14th.

i’m seeing a doctor, getting things all checked out. i’ve been paying more attention to my body and my health than i have in a very long time, maybe ever. i’m exercising, trying to eat healthier, not drinking as much, stretching. i’m learning how to be accountable to my body.

i’m excited about the changes that are happening to me.

i’m sorry i didn’t tell you right when i started, or before. i was scared–i still am–and i wanted the first few months of this to be about my process. i wanted to experience the changes that testosterone is bringing without feeling guilty or hurting because of your reactions.

i was scared i was going to feel a lot of emotional changes. i don’t. i get a frustrated or annoyed a little quicker but it’s not the extreme i was scared of. this is reassuring for me. i’m finding in general lately my mental and emotional health has been very stable. there are a lot of things i’m working on in my head and in my life and i’m feeling really positive about the way that those things are playing out.

i don’t expect this to be easy for you. what i want is to trust that you are working on your own feelings around this. i want to know you are getting the support you need. i can help you find that support. i cannot be that support.

what i can be is your kid. i can listen to your thoughts. i can share mine. i want to talk to you about this process if you want to hear about it. if you don’t want to hear about it, we don’t have to talk about it.

this is still me. i haven’t changed any more than anyone else does as they grow older.

i want to be part of your lives.

i love you.

here are the things i wish i could say to you:

this gender of mine is pliable. i work it between my fingers and my teeth. i have always been this constant shifting. this has always been me.

these hormones are an adventure for me. they don’t define me. they don’t limit me. they expand me.

i’m not moving from one box to another. but one day it might look like i have.

i am trying to save money for top surgery.

no matter how much of a boy i am, i am always still the little girl i’ve been.

i’m really fucking scared of losing you.

i’m fighting the instinct to run away.

i want to be part of your lives.

i love you.

here are the things i will never tell you:

about the places where my gender intersects with my sexuality. where my sexuality intersects with violence.

i love sticking these needles into me every week.

even if you stopped talking to me, i will be happy i decided to take testosterone.

i want to be part of your lives.

i love you.

memory of a body

i am learning to run the way you fuck me.  chest forward, muscles braced against the resisting wind, the concrete.

slowly remembering different parts of my body, the tendons between them stretching to accommodate pace. trying to keep a steady, measured breathing.

losing track of it. chest heavy and firebursting.  shins splintering off into jagged fragments.  feet throbbing.  face hotcoldhotcold.

setting my sights. over the hill. after this corner. the next street. pushing past the incline to continue 3 blocks after the decline.  taking the next corner.  4 more streets to the park.

regaining the sensation of my walking pace. letting my sore feet sink into the wet. mud. grassy field. breathing into the ground.

the afterstretch. my hands pressed to push my muscles into place. the give of warm connective tissue.

after, i like you to hit me. hard smacks across the face to settle me back into my skin. i breathe easier.

now, 6o crunches. 20 pushups. a quick, stable ripping and rebuilding of muscles.  a summing up of what the memory of a body feels like. re-acquaintance. back into my skin.

the last full week of the year.

there is just so much happening. my body jumps ten feet in front of me and i’m suddenly in a new place, unable to remember how i got there.

well. that might be a bit dramatic. but that sensation of being pulled ahead, head thrown back, breath caught. it’s there. in my body every time. i think this is what emotion must look like. just a blur.

over a week of navigating other people’s emotions. not to mention work. luckily not an emotionally taxing work week, though maybe i’d be able to shut this blur down a bit if it had been.

here is what came as a reward: purpleblack bruises spreading over what sometimes seems like acres of my skin. raised red welts, still tender. teeth in skin, my own dental record bank. needles demanding entry, then teased and taunted. fists on chest, the very foundation of my frame earthquaked. souvenirs in the form of day later aches and sore muscles, slightly chapped wrists. hands around necks. hands around waist. hands around arms. so many hands. across face. in hair. blindfolds. gags. all the feelings in my throat dropped down to my stomach. sobbing.

here is what came as a reward: bubblebath hot water. snow shocking my senses. kisses on the forehead. ice cream. giggling from hunger, exhaustion, my own nervousness. a story read to me, tears still coming, my breath still uneven from sobs. being taught how to breath again.

here is what came after: the processing always being a process. coming up against the wall of people’s emotions. trouble, and not necessarily the good kind, beckoning at me from three days into the future. having to rise back up to the surface of my body. silence.

half of me wishes i could take the whole week back and try again. half of me is pushing forward. and there i am, stuck motionless.

going to push forward.

three things

1.  bruises, found hours later, felt instantly. that one that popped up, spread bluepurple deep under dermis. everytime i move, it sends buzzing through me. i push one; gasp.

2.  the realization that it is only wednesday. everything that happened sunday, monday, tuesday and today.

3.  noticing, for the first time, your chipped cuspid, the bone fitting perfectly around the metal in your lip.

insomnia

at the point where productivity becomes null.  where the sleep has crept out of your eyes and into your bones, pulling the weight of every musclecell into the mattress.

robot and dactyl are asleep at the foot of my bed. they’ve been passed out all night, heavy breathing warm little bodies. i think they’ve stolen the sleep out of me.

and it felt like the longest ride ever

i am riding home from dinner with you. dinner where i felt the distance as soon as i walked into the paradox cafe and imagined that it was just because i hadn’t seen you in weeks, that we had just recharged all that nervousnewcrush energy. i am riding home down belmont then morrison then 20th then fremont then 10th. feeling very portland queer at the moment; the gossip on my broken headphones, a slight mist over my glasses making me wish i had tiny little wipers on the lenses, a 2.50 dollar microbrew warming my belly from the first bar i went to upon my arrival in portland. dead guy ale. our first beers in this city.  the excitement turned s’s dead guy hangover the next day. but tonight my tender tranny heart is twinging after your decision. “i don’t think i can go on dates with you anymore.” my frustration at the inevitable.

so instead i am thinking of the way my muscles feel when i bike. i am thinking that the day i take my shot, the thigh i inject into feels more sore than the other one, feels like it’s straining more against jeans and bones.  instead i am thinking about my bladder. i am thinking how hot it feels, pressing against all of my internal organs, pressing against my bike seat.  instead i am thinking about how if this were chicago i wouldn’t be on a bike, i would be walking from the L platform, squatting in an alley, pressure released. i am thinking how i don’t do that in portland, pee in public.  i am thinking of the one place of public urination in my time in portland, some half alley half driveway in the pearl, off some street i can’t recall, because i don’t know most of the streets on the westside.  i am thinking of chicago, of missing it after five-hundred-and-one-pages of reading crossing california and five-hundred-and-one-pages of rogers park references and five-hundred-and-one-pages of northside chicago jewish culture and familiar sounding names and prayers and food.  i am thinking about how fucking much i like the new gossip album. i am thinking how portlandqueercliche that is or maybe how portlandqueercliche it would be if i turned my nose up at it, had seen them before they were cool, had knownsomeonewho’dknownsomeone who one of their old songs, the classic songs, was written about.  i am thinking how your friend described the album as if one had opened a door in a gay club. i am thinking about how the album manages to bridge the gap between throaty riot grrl growl and ass-shaking, faggy, club beats. i am thinking this album might be a really good musical representation of my gender.  i am thinking how great it would be to have a joint to smoke when i got home, how romantic that sounds. i am thinking i will go home and recline in my bed and write about how great zie looked tonight and how much i wanted to kiss zir and how my tender tranny heart is feeling dejected and my testosterone charged sex drive is feeling disappointed and i will listen to mournful, folky music with guitars and whiskey smooth voices and i will smoke a joint. i am thinking how good i am at not thinking about you, but rather thinking about how i will write about not thinking about you. i am thinking this is dissociative behavior.  i am thinking thank god i’m home and i can finally pee.

changeable instantly

i noticed hair on my upper thigh today. the thinnest, most spaced out little dark hairs. it excites me as much as the tiny dark fuzz creeping in above my lip.  i wonder how the hair will grow around scar tissue; translucent pale cords of healed skin in neat little rows.

many of them are growing into the skin around them. many of the ones on my arms still retain the cold bump of hypertrophia, the most recent almost three years old.  but the ones on my legs have stretched and shrunk in size over the years.  running my fingertips over the rows it feels almost smooth.

i have often wondered, since the age of 14, what my skin would look like unmarred. who would i be without them? would the scarring have reappeared in other places in my life? in liver failure? in normalcy? maybe. i’ve always been apprehensive about their disappearance. used it as an excuse for more cuts, deeper ones. something to hold on to.  have had only one clear moment of wanting them gone.  of being ready to let them go.  that moment has passed, and though they aren’t the anchor they once were, i felt a turn in my stomach when noticing their slow fade. they are not my anchor anymore, steelheavy and unmoving, but they root me. have breathed in the soil of my skin and pushed me upward.

i began cutting away pieces of my body at age 12.  pulled pieces of skin from muscle from tendons from bone. kept them tucked away in scraps of paper shoved in pockets, the bloodier ones in the bottom of the trash with the used condoms.

i’ve burned memories into flesh. desired to keep them as much as i run from them. used metal and plastic and ink to remind myself where i am.

now i seek new scars. smiling-half-lidded-eye scars. boat-shaped-scars.  goodbye-suffocating-mesh-binders-scars.

imagine productive scars, like tattoos; sutured skin like salvation, like a dream, like a whole self ready to dance.
————————————

i don’t want to privilege surgery. don’t want to prioritize cellular change, removal or addition of body parts as the championship ranking in my communities.  but i know what feels right for me.  and i want to tell you about these changes from my own experience. not speaking for anyone but my own skin while honoring all the other stories. tell me about your genders.  i’m listening.

lost boys

i find the boy in glitter. i find the way that my skin has changed over years, and just within the last month. the lines beside my eyes. the way my jaw has set and decided to hold fast to its silouette.

we sat in a treehouse; you, e, and i; hidden from everyone except the few determined to find us. i realized how i’d missed you. then, home again, we sat on our front porch and my fingers held your toes encased in footie pajamas. again, i’d missed you. you felt solid in my hands.

and now. in bed and smiling over internet interactions. silly and just what i need for a night like this. the wind howling outside.  i turn my music off and hear silence. try to listen to silence.  in these moments of corners of lips turning upwards, of blood rushing to body parts, it is easier.

i find the boy in moments i don’t expect. in a sweep of eyeliner. in the thumbnail painted in purple. in every place the boy was told not to exist.  in the excitement of a red toolbox opening to someone new. i find him. coax him out with the promise of ferocity, of breathless challenge, of tangibility of flesh. coax him with $20 checks written to professionals who promise to guide me, with solidity of needles, with avowal of a future we will have together.

 

 

the power has gone out. the wind took technology from us and left 13% battery power to keep my words warm.