It's been too long. Too long! Though, honestly, not a ton has happened on the gender front. I went to my friend Samuel's Gender Bender birthday party last week repping as many genders as I possibly could: doc martens, tights, booty shorts, ripped up 70's t-shirt, lacy poet blouse, blonde wig, drawn on mustache, and a fucking ton of glitter. Plus a clip on earring with an empty vial of testosterone dangling from it. One person "got" the significance of the vial and I got to briefly do the "how has it changed you?/that's so fascinating!" song and dance, but otherwise i somehow still generally passed as male. One group of dudes said, "How did you get your hands on a vial of testosterone?" to which I ambiguously replied, "I have my sources." One of the guys suggested, "From your weightlifting days?", and I said yes.
I went to San Fran with Gracie for Thanksgiving and hung out with her wild and amazing family. I also made a lot of martinis for a lot of aunts, and ended up charming a lot of them with my mixology skills and my good-natured slavishness. I was definitely playing the Jack McFarland to many Karen Walkers. Only Gracie's immediate family and a couple of lesbian aunties knew my deal (though with the frequent hot-tubbing there may have been some raised eyebrows I didn't catch,) but everyone was at least polite enough to not say anything.
The lesbian aunties did keep saying, rather cryptically, "And you're so BRAVE!" I've discussed this meme with others, including other trans men, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's nice to have the occasional struggles of transness acknowledged, instead of just getting massively awkward personal questions. But then it seems a little presumptuous. This isn't exactly a choice of mine; calling me "brave" feels a little like saying, "congrats on not committing suicide, having an irrecoverable nervous breakdown, or otherwise failing at life more than you have!" But the intention is good, and I don't really mind, and morbid as it is, it's a little nice to be congratulated on not being dead.
Perhaps needless to say, my politically-correct compulsion to be pansexual has passed with the falling leaves and the pumpkins. At the same time, I realized the other day that perhaps I don't want a relationship at the moment. I'm applying to grad schools, I'm busy as hell, I'm frighteningly content to read The Sun and watch documentaries and make curry and hang out with my cat. The whole throwing myself at people in the hopes that one of them will be intrigued game has become a bit exhausting. Here's hoping I end up in a metropolitan area with cool boyz.
