From The Vault

Editorial Note:  this was written back in March of 2012, but I saw it sitting in the draft queue and it looked so lonely and complete, I thought I'd give it life in the public sphere.  Perhaps I'll write a real post sometime soon; perhaps I'll be too busy scrambling to get a semester's worth of work done in the next three weeks.  Only time will tell.

Yes, it's true, I'm finally posting again after nearly a year of not. This is partially due to the recent boon in my life of pilfered internet at my apartment and a new-used laptop, as well as generally missing the self-indulgent mewling blogging life.

I'm also going to be speaking on a panel of trans people tomorrow for an event scheduled by YEPSA, a local youth sexual assault prevention organization, and I've been tasked with filling ten minutes with some at least vaguely enlightening thoughts on my experience as a trans person. Even worse, I've put down my topic as the interstices (I don't think I actually said interstices) of gender identity and sexuality. Oh, bother. And so I've come to you, tender internet, to work out my thoughts on the subject and stumble across some potential personal revelations (this is where you cup your hands to your mouth and yell, "Go back to Livejournal!")

But first, a proper update, starting with the physical as always. I'm manly-looking as ever, I guess. I'm growing out my sideburns for the second time with thorough results, and if I don't shave for three or more days people start to ask if I'm growing a beard (the mustache area is still sparse, alas.) My gut is increasingly hairy and unfortunately guttish. My voice is unmistakably male. I've been mistaken for a woman exactly twice in the past year, once when I was wearing a large flannel jacket, and once when it was very dark. Both times, people corrected themselves the minute I opened my mouth.

Also in the physical realm: last April some doctors found a tumor of questionable intent the size of a nilla wafer hanging out on my thyroid. It ended up being benign, but to discover this they had to cut it out, give me a rad scar across my throat, and charge me several thousand dollars, which wiped out the majority of what I had been saving for chest surgery. And so, here I am, coming upon my fourth anniversary of binding on the regular, still be-chest-icled. My feelings about this are complicated, and I might save them for another post, if you don't mind.

In Defense of "Faggoty"

I just wrote this letter to the Eugene Weekly, defending my friend and colleague Sally Sheklow's use of the word "faggoty" in her essay on seeing Joan Rivers. Someone wrote to question her non-PC usage, and I thought I'd come to her defense. I'll add some more commentary later, I'm sure.

Dear Editor,

I felt compelled to write regarding Jessica Zuckerman's Letter in the 2.3.11 issue, in which she called out Sally Sheklow for using the word "faggoty" in her piece on seeing Joan Rivers. I can't personally speak for Sheklow. I also can't speak for "the LGBT community," which is incredibly diverse and not in the habit of making unilaterally agreed upon recommendations on word usage.

To me, the use of "faggoty" in Sheklow's piece made perfect sense. She clearly uses it as a term of affection: "...we were loving the conductor," she writes. "Faggoty" in this context expresses inclusion and solidarity, not exclusion or derision--it says, "We have faced similar oppression, and though we may be strangers, we are members of the same queer family." "Faggoty" also makes sense in a piece on Joan Rivers--Sheklow is borrowing a page from Rivers' book, using brash "offensive" language to convey a campy appreciation. And, as Sheklow points out, Rivers is a gay icon...and they're playing the overture from Gypsy, for crissakes! The conductor, Joan, Sally herself--they're all taking the potentially hateful "faggot" stereotype and performing, reinventing, and celebrating it as the radical and delightful identity it really is.

To answer Zuckerman's question: yes, LGBT people get to say faggot out loud, hopefully as loudly and enthusiastically as possible. Like other reclaimed slurs against marginalized people, its history is ugly and its use controversial. I'm sure not everyone, gay or straight or what have you, would agree with me. But in my experience, the people who bigots call "faggot" are among the most resilient, self-aware, daring, admirable people I have known, and I am honored to claim them as my brothers, sisters and others in faggoty faggotry.

Russell Melia
Faggot

"F" to "M" in the eyes of the State of Oregon

So, yesterday I had the gender marker on my ID changed from "F" to "M." The whole deal, like most bureaucratic experiences and bureaucratic sanctionings of experience, was pretty surreal. In Oregon, at least (and I think this is a fairly recent development,) surgery isn't required to get your ID changed (I suspect social security and birth certificate changes are a different story,) just a letter from an approved mental health professional stating that you've been on hormones for a "long enough" time.

So, firstly I must say it was strange to get an official letter in the mail signed by two therapists stating, "Russell is a female-to-male transsexual." Not that it's not true, of course--it just seems so final. With every step of this process, there are all these little (or big) milestones that seem to signify, "This is really it--no scampering back to the relative safety of a cisgendered life."

The DMV was beyond easy. As I stood in line the guy at the counter was telling one of the clerks an amusing story about how a car thief tried to steal his car on an empty tank and left it four blocks from his house. I went up to my clerk and said something along the lines of, "Hi, I lost my wallet and I need my ID replaced...and I need to change the gender marker on my ID." To which she said, "What?" To which I said, a little louder, "I need to change the gender marker," and the guy at the stall beside me got uncomfortably quiet. But the DMV ladies were just great. My picture turned out looking like a stoned tortoise as played by the guy from Eraserhead as played by Stephen Fry, but oh well. At least there's the little "M."

In tearing through all my possessions trying to find my birth certificate and social security card, I found all sorts of relics from the past: letters, postcards, pictures, journals, ridiculous diagrams I'd drawn of lovers, CDs I'd never legitimately released (incidentally, if anyone wants a copy of the Geoff McCreedy and the Massive Faggots album, I'd be happy to sell you one for a cheap donationish price.) All of this (maybe Geoff McCreedy aside) got me feeling pretty nostalgic, nostalgic and a little lost as to my place in the world now. Simple man/woman romance seems exactly that, in retrospect--so incredibly simple. I'm not too proud to admit that a part of me misses that simplicity, the ease of just being some guy's girlfriend and having a clearly defined, if mutable, social role. Of course, when I'm in that line of thought, I'm ignoring the reality of how stifled I felt as a woman and how rather right I feel as a man, or as my kind of man. And, if at times strange and ragged and lonely (I keep being reminded of this Pedro the Lion song with the line, "Is it special when you're lonely? Will you spend your whole life in a studio apartment with a cat for a wife?), being trans and gay and a domestic-minded Romantic is certainly an adventure, and it can be wildly wonderful to create new,unusual arrangements of love and beauty and good-feeling.

But this "my kind of man" thing may be another little stumbling block of the M on my ID--in some ways, I still feel like such an androgyne--a faggot, a queen, a dude at best, but not "male." Though "male" is closer to accurate ("Closer to Fine," anyone?) than "female" is, neither seems quite right.

And now, of course, I'm going to start having to personally give a shit about gay marriage legislation, when before I had a delicious loophole. Oh well. Plus, Ladies' Night discounts will no longer apply. Luckily I'm incredibly poor and having to cut into some of my surgery savings money to pay rent, so I'm cutting down on going to bars anyway. This would be a good time to throw some money in the surgery coffers. Or help me get a second job. Or a new one.

Under Radarz.

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.

Female Trouble

So many things to report, I'm sure. I'll start of with the physical, as usual, though there haven't been so many significant changes in the last month. Facial hair continues to march boldly onward. I look at pictures from a few months ago, and I notice how I've come to look more masculine about the face (regardless of any glitter) than I did then. My jaw is more square, etc.

I got my DUI out yesterday, after (TMI warning) three weeks of especially ridiculous cramps and constant blood. I had kind of a funny Planned Parenthood experience, as usual, in which the nurse practitioner asked me all sorts of fairly irrelevant questions (the ever popular "...so, bottom surgery?") and didn't know anything about the battle royale that is testosterone vs. hormonal birth control. I already feel a return to the sharpness of mind (not knocking the alternative) that I associate with my preferred T-heavy hormonal balance, which is nice and comforting. But perhaps expect a return to me muttering curses under my breath at cars.

I'm a little over a week away from my one year testosterone anniversary, so I feel I should put together some sort of State of the Union. Expect that in a week or so.

Once again, as is my apparently yearly tradition, I'm in an intellectual quandary about liking/being liked by women. I realize it's possible that anything I fret about to this extent isn't worth pursuing; I should just do what feels comfortable and leave it at that. On the one hand, I know I'm a faggot: I love men and I love being with men, and I love what it means to be man into men. When I am pursued by a woman I feel disoriented, if you will. On the other hand, this isn't to say I don't feel interested, or intrigued, or various other things one feels in a romantic/sexual situation--I just lose my bearings. I'm realizing this is especially true now that I'm a guy, and more-convincingly-a-guy to others. The concept of being involved with a straight woman baffles me--I never learned how to do it, and I generally disliked the girl/guy dynamic when I approached it from the other side. Am I expected to be the big spoon all the time? How am I supposed to initlate action without seeming like an invasive creep? Is it weird if I talk about faggoty shit? Do I even count as a faggot anymore? Am I just another dude? Is there anything terribly wrong with that?

I'm beginning to realize that I'm so fiercely (not in the Christian Siriano sense) faggoty because my ability to be a gay man has been so hard won (no pun intended.) There is a part of me, I admit, that feels like being gay--well, being "queer" in identity (as in having a varied and "radical" and decidedly non-hetero gender and presentation), yes, but "gay" in orientation, as in just into dating men--ties a nice little bow around my otherwise messy sex/gender life. Sometimes I get exhausted and sad trying to parse this all out, and declaring my orientation at the very least to be relatively simple makes me feel like I have some modicum of control, or even, dare I say, normalcy.

But then who am I to be so hung up on gender? Shouldn't I be open to women in the same way I would hope the boys I like would be open to trans men? Isn't a gender just a set of signifiers, and isn't there enough overlap of signifiers between genders as to render the specific label, at least in this case, a bit irrelevant? Can't I just buy into that old bi/pansexual maxim, "I fall in love with people"? Is it entirely necessary to consult a sociology textbook every time I get smiled at by someone who doesn't have a dick and a moustache, to use my friend Joey's phrase?

Who's to say. Clearly there's not a real answer to this nonsense, but this is what I've been thinking about lately. That, studying for the GREs, which are totally bilking my mellifluence.

Sad/Amazing, Hot/Sprung

Last night Gracie and some friends of hers from California and I sneaked into Cougar Hot Springs. I'd never been, but I fucking love it up there (which is to say up the McKenzie.) The stars are so incredibly bright and the air is so delicious. It had me seriously considering giving up this whole library science dream in favor of working as a park ranger of some sort. And this isn't hyperbole; I think the answer (or one of the answers) to me being pleased and happy with my life involves being surrounded by trees for several miles in any direction.

The hot springs ended up being quite the social occasion; we ran into some of Gracie's other friends there who were camping up the road, and about 20 minutes after we got there who should show up but Jessica, Cordell and Pat, swigging whiskey and smoking their menthols in the steam like hipster snow monkeys.

But where is the trans-relevance in this? It was weird being naked in front of so many people. It was weird having just met Gracie's friends, and not being out to them as far as I know, and then suddenly taking off my clothes and revealing myself in that way. Nothing horrible happened, and no one said anything--no one used female pronouns, even--but I still felt a self-conscious, and I still got a slight feeling that people were uncomfortable or at least a bit surprised. Maybe it was even stranger since I couldn't wear my glasses in the steam, so I had the peculiar feeling of being seen while not being able to see anyone else.

The experience made me anxious for top surgery. There's a certain level of acceptable discomfort I have with my chest, but at this point, and generally, it doesn't bother me too much in the short term as long as I keep it bound down. But being not just unbound but naked in front of people, even in a dark/foggy situation, was kind of a mind fuck. It made me realize that, though I've gotten pretty good (with the help of hormones) of appearing male, the basic shape of my body is as it was, which was surprisingly frustrating.

So I had the thought of, "If I got top surgery, I wouldn't be having this problem." But then I realized, of course, that my lower business isn't going to change (or rather, given the current expense and modern technology and my own personal reasons, I'm not planning to change it) into something male-appearing in a standard way. This gave me the sad realization that I'll probably never be comfortable at a hot springs again: where once I felt like my body was awesome and babely, now it's something that needs an explanation, something that is inherently challenging, something that makes me slightly defensive. And this just made me feel sad and doubtful and frustrated and like I've fucked up my life.

Angry Mood Swings and "You, sir, in the glitter and the kidskin loafers!"

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?