Assertion and Outings

This is less a gossip post and more of a reflective post, so be warned. Less glitter and boozing and more facing realitiez.

As long as I've been out I've been in the shitty-feeling position of correcting pronouns. The scenario is familiar enough: I'm at a social gathering of some kind with some people I've just then met. I'm introduced as Russell, but the friends we have in common haven't, perhaps tastefully, prefaced the acquaintance's meeting of me with "Oh, and by the way, Russell is a TRANSSEXUAL even though he looks like a girl."

So, conversations are happening, and inevitably one of these innocent uninformed acquaintances who has assumed that I'm the faggiest butch they ever met will say, referring to me, "No, that's her sequin headband." or "She is fucking killing everyone in Cranium!" or "That girl makes the strongest martinis I've ever had."

Now, if I was a good, noble transsexual who followed my out and proud politics, I would say "I use male pronouns, cisgendered scum!" I do this sometimes--not "...cisgendered scum!", but "who you calling lady?!"--when I'm drunk, but remember, this is just a nice pleasant social gathering, a potluck or something. It's a lot easier to let it slide.

And it's not that I'm ashamed or any of that business. It's just that when, as a person who doesn't pass, you assert your actual gender, it can alter the conversation. It can easily turn from microbrews and bands to all those tedious and uncomfortable-making medical and physiological details I'm rarely in the mood to discuss in pleasant social settings. I don't always want to suddenly become The Transsexual At The Party, and a lot of the time asserting my gender--which is to say, outing myself as trans--amounts to making my gender the subject (abject?) of conversation and scrutiny.

But not correcting people is problematic, too. It makes me feel shitty, makes people with me feel awkward when they use the right pronouns, and invalidates my (and his) queerness if I'm with my dude.

And hence the seductive beauty of testosterone. As I look and sound more like a dude, correcting pronouns will not necessarily out me as trans. It will be more a case of, "Yes, I'm such a femme man that you could understandably think I was a girl, but you're wrong." Which will, instead of inviting unwelcome questions, will make whoever made the mistake wildly embarrassed. That's the kind of social interaction I'm comfortable with.

8 Weeks and Surgery and Insurance Woes.

Yesterday marked eight whole weeks on testosterone, which seems at once a long time and not that long of a time. The Changes have been slow but exciting, and after this much time they seem appreciable. My voice is starting to sound like a man voice, albeit a high nasal smurfish man, and I keep noticing little body things (thighs having more muscle than fat? WTF?) It's hitting me that this is all actually happening, for realz.

I've been thinking about top surgery in a way I haven't really before. Previously (by which I mean before the last few days) it was this event in the future for which I was saving up money, though the exact date didn't really matter because the T was exciting enough. Now I'm feeling more like it's something that I need to think about more actively, to save specific cash for, to look into doctors for; basically to happen asap.

Part of this concern is probably based on the fact that my employer, beset by financial woes, is cutting my health insurance in April. Not that my health insurance would cover surgery or that I would plan of raising the money by then, but without health insurance I'll have to pay for all my standard transition related doctor visits (which are covered) out of my own pocket. This plus student loans kicking in in January means that I'll be putting a lot less money into savings per month, and will probably have to get a second job (which could potentially be another layer of lousiness, having to explain to some coffee hut manager why there's an F for female on my various government IDs, or alternately, if I present as female, why a girl like me is growing sideburns.)

So, as a warning, I'm about to launch a deliciously decadent fundraising campaign to cut off my boobs, complete with paypal donation button and fun pie chart graphix. Look out!

Welcome to the Jungle (Juice)

I had some good passing amusements this weekend. After an all too perfect Friday Night/Saturday Day combo of Stonehenge/drugs/Withnail and I/Shari's/buying glitter at Fred Meyer/buying an entire crossword puzzle themed outfit at various thrift stores, Ben and I went to my co-worker Juliane's birthday party. It was a rather eclectic mix of recently graduated fairly conventional women's studies majors, UO bro dudes of varying ages, and OSU freshman bedecked in Beavers gear. Needless to say, Ben, in his deep pink v-neck t-shirt, lightning bolt earrings and "celestial" makeup scheme, and I in my crossword outfit, stuck out a little. But the jungle juice was flowing and people were amiable, and credulous of my gender, even if I was kicking back shots of goldschlager and wearing clip-on earrings. I dropped it on some drunk girl in a Zoo York shirt and one of the OSU boys said, "White boy can dance!" Um, sure.

We ended up in way too long of a conversation with a bro named Avery who "really likes shopping" and had Jesus tattoos all over his body. I think he called both me and Ben "dude" initially, but toward the end of the night he said something like "thank you, miss" to me (when I lit his cigarette, no less,) and of course I was drunk enough to call him on it loudly. To which he responded: "Sorry man, I thought you were a dude at first, but where are your pecs? You gotta hit the gym, bro!" Which I thought was doubly funny, because Ben recently decided that the Xiu Xiu hit "Fabulous Muscles" is "our song."

Officially "normal."

I got my lab results back from some blood tests checking my testosterone levels. The tests were done the day before my shot, so the levels reflected are at the "trough", or low point, of where my levels would conceivably be at any point during my two-week cycle, as it were. I got 355 ng/dl, whatever that measurement means. Point being, average male testosterone levels are 350-1200 ng/dl, according to the internet, so I'm officially out of the Androgyne Zone (forgive me, I've been reading The Cardboard Universe) by five whole points--and that's just at my "trough" level!

Somehow reading this, along with my doctor's comments ("these levels are EXCELLENT for this early in your transition"; literally, all caps EXCELLENT), gave me a strange confidence. Looking in the mirror I see my face as a man's face [/transsexual cliche]. Assigning a number to my physical masculinization doesn't change it at all, but there's something a bit delicious and satisfying about quantitative assessment of progress. But maybe that's the testosterone talking.

I'm playing a show tonight at Stonehenge, and in practicing yesterday I realized that I'm going to need to start changing the keys of my songs asap. It's kind of frightening, and a bit bittersweet.

Will Nature make a man of me yet?

I keep feeling like there's news, and there isn't news, though I guess it depends on what you consider newsworthy. If I don't shave every day I get imperceptible blond stubble on my chin. I think this is fucking awesome, but who am I to say?

The voice keeps droppin'. I've had a whiskey-and-beer-and-rollies-induced cold hanging over from Thanksgiving for the past few days, and though it's a little bit of regular cold-lower-voice (I'm just going to keep hyphenating words into new words), it surprises me. But then, when I hear my voice played back to me, like when my shitty phone echoes back snippets of everything I say, I'm still girlish, or butchwomanish.

I went up to see Morrissey on Monday, which was fucking amazing. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see a 50 year old man take off his shirt, which he did twice. He also played This Charming Man, among other old anthems, which I appreciated. But in (not) passing news, my crew and I were stopped at a crosswalk downtown on the way to the Roseland, when an old homeless man walked up. He counted, "one, two, three, four"--which confused me, since there were five of us--and then said to me, "Four men! You are one lucky girl." I rolled my eyes. Lucas later amended it to "You are one lucky twink," which in a way, I suppose I am, though not in the way the old man insinuated.

I think that's it, unless you want to read about my dream involving a magic wish-granting vibrator, which you probably don't.