Last Friday I took a shot a day earlier than I was supposed to since I was going out of town for the weekend and didn't want to bother with losing an $80 vial of golden boy serum to an uncompromising TSA chump. Maybe it's just that visiting Las Vegas made me a ball of nerves, but since the shot (and since coming back) I've been either a bit of a downer or a seething pile of vague rage (, I'm speaking in hyperbole to a degree, you must understand; I'm not actually that angry, just more angry than I usually have been, which is to say angry at all.) Granted I haven't done anything violent--just a lot of very forceful housework (you should SEE our refrigerator!) but I'm getting tired of it. I almost miss my depressive anxiety over this new active impassioned kind. It only gets worse, too, because I get frustrated with myself for being mad, and then it just turns into a feedback loop of listening to country music and scrubbing dishes and yelling, "I mean, COME ON!" Any thoughts on how to be calm? I've never had to work at it before.
There were some amusing passing bits this weekend, I suppose. I had a nice 100% success rate of airport clerks and officials calling me "sir" even as I was handing them my ID with the big F on it. I've always said I would start using the men's as my default bathroom (I usually only use it if the place seems especially queer-friendly) if I ever got hassled in the women's, and lo and behold I got a dirty look as I was putting on pink liquid eyeliner in the ladies' room in the Vegas airport when I first got in. I did use the women's a few more times since that incident--some guy was taking FOREVER in the stall at Caesar's Palace and I didn't want to wait around to sniff the outcome of his labors--but when I got back to the airport in Vegas, I boldly strode into that gross, frightening men's room with all the confidence of an effete pubescent teenage boy.
A brief PSA: I'm at the point in passing where I don't want to talk about it when it happens. It's less and less of a surprise or an accomplishment in and of itself, and when you say "That waitress totally said "he" about you!" or when you give me a knowing glance when I get that "Sir" in line at the airport, it just makes me feel self conscious and patronized. I know it may seem like a double standard since I have this whole damn blog dedicated to chronicling the minutiae of who sees me as male and how often, but I'd like you to trust me on this. I don't want anyone to walk on eggshells with me and never ever mention my gender either--that would be silly--but maybe try to keep it in the realm of actual conversations about gender, and not just bring it up all the time, if you could? Kind of nitpicky, yes, and I'm very lucky to have people around me who are excited for me to pass, but if I can't peeve here where can I?
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Odd Angsts
It's been far too long, I know, since I've posted last. There has been plenty of gender-related sillyness.
I was involved in a top surgery benefit show for myself and two other trans men this past Friday. It didn't exactly go as smoothly as planned for a number of reasons, but we made a few hundred, which is a start at least. I'm tempted to whine about what went wrong (and whine especially about the phenomenon of a lot of friends not showing up--I'm sorry kids, this wasn't just a Pegasissy show, this was a chance to support my transition and show that you cared about this struggle; not to be lame, but I'm a little hurt) but it's not so productive. Oh well. I suppose this is what happens when you invest yourself emotionally into something that happens at a bar (though the bar in question, Cowfish, was exceptionally gracious and kind in letting us use the space for free.) And a lot of things did go perfectly fine. A co-worker of mine came with his partner and seemed pretty amused by it (by "it" I mean my maudlin performance in a "chill wave Roy Orbison" outfit and my participation in the fashion show segment wearing a blond toupee and a bridesmaid dress with nipples embroidered on the front.)
Speaking of bar incidents--and I'm not going to into it in depth here--but I had a crazy anti-trans experience with the staff at John Henry's a couple weeks ago. Briefly, a friend and I got our IDs checked for gender by a bouncer when we were trying to use the bathroom. Pretty fucked up. If you want strong drinks for cheap in Eugene, just go to my house. JH's doesn't need your business, and you don't need their bullshit.
Let's begin properly with the physical changes. My voice dropped down a little more after my shot last week, though I'm still trying to work it out. My voice does this thing where when my voice first drops, it actually sounds pinched and high because I'm still trying to resonate it in my throat instead of my chest. I'm working on this. I think I might start attempting to actually talk from my chest and not be a totes squeakbox all the time, just as an experiment. I am slowly acquiring sparse but definite sideburns, and I keep shaving 'em in the hopes that they will one day blossom into something reasonable. My increased hirsuteness (not to be confused with hir cuteness) is, while not necessarily troubling, a bit of a marvel to me. Today my endocrinologist mentioned how lucky I was to not have gotten any acne, though I was a tad alarmed earlier this week when two zits appeared on my face simultaneously, an occurrence more or less as rare as conjoined twins.
Testosterone-fueled emotions continue to be a wild and interesting ride, but one I'm lately more able to predict and get a handle on. I've had occasion recently to feel irrationally possessive in a way that is perhaps stereotypically male, and though it kind of put a damper on my night at the time, I've since worked it all out. My post-T emotional patterns--I'm just going to politically-incorrectly call them my "male" emotional patterns--are kind of a double edged sword, if you will. I find myself feeling things like possessiveness and rage that I hadn't previously experienced, at least to this extent, but somehow my left brain has been freed up too in a certain way, so I can, increasingly successfully, step back and dissect the venom out of the raw emotions and figure out what I'm actually angry about (which is rarely the thing that sparked my anger in the first place.)
It was in one of these dissection sessions that I realized I'm not totally out of the woods as far as being completely satisfied with this trans business. I like to believe that, now that I'm just over ten months into this testosterone stuff (!!!), everything has stabilized and I'm totally home free. But I realize I'm still pretty self-conscious and nervy about this sometimes. I keep trying to write about this in detail and then realizing that my personal insecurities don't need to be on the internet. Ugh.
I was involved in a top surgery benefit show for myself and two other trans men this past Friday. It didn't exactly go as smoothly as planned for a number of reasons, but we made a few hundred, which is a start at least. I'm tempted to whine about what went wrong (and whine especially about the phenomenon of a lot of friends not showing up--I'm sorry kids, this wasn't just a Pegasissy show, this was a chance to support my transition and show that you cared about this struggle; not to be lame, but I'm a little hurt) but it's not so productive. Oh well. I suppose this is what happens when you invest yourself emotionally into something that happens at a bar (though the bar in question, Cowfish, was exceptionally gracious and kind in letting us use the space for free.) And a lot of things did go perfectly fine. A co-worker of mine came with his partner and seemed pretty amused by it (by "it" I mean my maudlin performance in a "chill wave Roy Orbison" outfit and my participation in the fashion show segment wearing a blond toupee and a bridesmaid dress with nipples embroidered on the front.)
Speaking of bar incidents--and I'm not going to into it in depth here--but I had a crazy anti-trans experience with the staff at John Henry's a couple weeks ago. Briefly, a friend and I got our IDs checked for gender by a bouncer when we were trying to use the bathroom. Pretty fucked up. If you want strong drinks for cheap in Eugene, just go to my house. JH's doesn't need your business, and you don't need their bullshit.
Let's begin properly with the physical changes. My voice dropped down a little more after my shot last week, though I'm still trying to work it out. My voice does this thing where when my voice first drops, it actually sounds pinched and high because I'm still trying to resonate it in my throat instead of my chest. I'm working on this. I think I might start attempting to actually talk from my chest and not be a totes squeakbox all the time, just as an experiment. I am slowly acquiring sparse but definite sideburns, and I keep shaving 'em in the hopes that they will one day blossom into something reasonable. My increased hirsuteness (not to be confused with hir cuteness) is, while not necessarily troubling, a bit of a marvel to me. Today my endocrinologist mentioned how lucky I was to not have gotten any acne, though I was a tad alarmed earlier this week when two zits appeared on my face simultaneously, an occurrence more or less as rare as conjoined twins.
Testosterone-fueled emotions continue to be a wild and interesting ride, but one I'm lately more able to predict and get a handle on. I've had occasion recently to feel irrationally possessive in a way that is perhaps stereotypically male, and though it kind of put a damper on my night at the time, I've since worked it all out. My post-T emotional patterns--I'm just going to politically-incorrectly call them my "male" emotional patterns--are kind of a double edged sword, if you will. I find myself feeling things like possessiveness and rage that I hadn't previously experienced, at least to this extent, but somehow my left brain has been freed up too in a certain way, so I can, increasingly successfully, step back and dissect the venom out of the raw emotions and figure out what I'm actually angry about (which is rarely the thing that sparked my anger in the first place.)
It was in one of these dissection sessions that I realized I'm not totally out of the woods as far as being completely satisfied with this trans business. I like to believe that, now that I'm just over ten months into this testosterone stuff (!!!), everything has stabilized and I'm totally home free. But I realize I'm still pretty self-conscious and nervy about this sometimes. I keep trying to write about this in detail and then realizing that my personal insecurities don't need to be on the internet. Ugh.
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