At 9:50 a.m. on March 14 at Stacey Pool in Austin, Texas, where I often swam before moving from Austin to San Francisco in 2004, I took off my shirt and got in the water.
I love swimming. It was one of the things I thought about a lot when deciding to have top surgery. With very small breasts, I could have gotten away with binding or even just having my nipples reduced if I didn't want to be able to take my shirt off in public.
The other men swimming at Stacey Pool on March 14 were old. One younger guy was pretty overweight, so what remains of my seromas didn't make me stand out all that much.
As I left, there was a bearded Texas hippie type preaching the gospel to a young blond lifeguard. There's a richness of experience in Austin that you don't get in San Francisco.
Later that day, I indulged my inner cowboy, who was bucking for attention while I was in Texas: I bought some cowboy boots at Allen's Boots -- one of the last real-Texas businesses on South Congress. (When I lived there, there was a gun store across the street.) I told the cowboy who rang up the sale that I hoped I would wear them because in San Francisco, you have to create your own space to be able to wear cowboy boots.
His response was "You're a Texan, man!" It was especially beautiful because he had already checked my driver's license against my credit card.
It was my last day in Austin. Later, as I changed planes in Dallas heading back to San Francisco, the gate attendant called me Scott, my last name, even though my boarding pass, as required by the FAA, listed my full name. I thought it was a clever way of not dealing with what he didn't understand.
But as I waited in the gateway to board the plane, he came up and asked me if I was [NAME REMOVED].
Yes.
He continued, with a line full of people behind me, that my boarding pass listed me as [NAME REMOVED] and said that [NAME REMOVED] was female. Did I have an ID identifying me as [NAME REMOVED]?
I asked him if he'd like to see my genitals. Then I boarded the plane. Everybody knows Dallas sucks.
But, yeah, it's time to change my official IDs.
If you enjoyed reading this post, please consider making a small donation to help me finish paying for my surgery — or you may buy a photograph with proceeds going to the surgery.
Showing posts with label top surgery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label top surgery. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Monkey on Your Back That Defines You
I could list a hundred reasons why I like working out enough to make it to the gym pretty nearly everyday, but let's be honest: The most pressing thing that gets me there day after day is vanity. Just a few extra pounds and my ass goes from that high-up defined arch that I like to a jiggly mass of womanliness — or so it seems to me. And if I neglect my muscles long enough I cease to look like a powerful block of bulldagger and start to look like a wee wisp of baby butch.
The other thing that spurs my gym addiction is a sense of accomplishment: Every day, I set goals that I can meet without depending on anyone but myself. If only the rest of life were so easy and gave such immediate satisfaction! The overarching goals of lean, mean fitness and big, defined muscles in my upper body — bulking where no woman dares to bulk — have given me purpose for the last decade.
Then I started injecting myself with testosterone, and the trapeziums that I haven't been able to work out much thanks to a nagging shoulder injury are piling up like snow drifts on my shoulders. The abs I never bothered to work too hard — knowing they'd always be hidden behind a soft belly that I'd have to become a full-time aerobics instructor to pare off — are peaking out in two faint but thrilling lines.
This is good news. But I find myself wondering: What will I do if vanity doesn't drive me to the gym everyday? Will I still work out? And who would I be without my fitness addiction?
In my own mind at least, I'm someone who has to work and work and work to make any progress at all toward my life goals, so I've begun to see the work itself as progress. I'm not one for inspirational aphorisms, but one that struck a chord with me went something like: Success is getting knocked down 18 times and getting up 19.
Testosterone is like instant goal attainment when it comes to physique. Or at least it seems that way initially: I imagine that if I ever get to a point where I'm passing as a man, I will start thinking about how short a man I am, and how my hands are too small and I wish I didn't have to limit myself to European-cut shirts and a shoe size small enough not to be available everywhere. Who knows, maybe I'll become a meathead with a Napoleon complex to compensate. Right now, I know I should just enjoy the goal-in-a-syringe thing that I've got going on.
But it's this kind of seemingly unimportant, and maybe even a little wonderful, shifts that signal just how much rests on the gender identity each of us queers has built — and that, in my case, I feel like I've built with no small amount of elbow grease. Who are we, after all, if not our habits and the familiar tracks of self-criticism playing in our heads?
If you like this post, or you just want to help me pay for top surgery, please consider a small donation. 100% goes to the surgery.
The other thing that spurs my gym addiction is a sense of accomplishment: Every day, I set goals that I can meet without depending on anyone but myself. If only the rest of life were so easy and gave such immediate satisfaction! The overarching goals of lean, mean fitness and big, defined muscles in my upper body — bulking where no woman dares to bulk — have given me purpose for the last decade.
Then I started injecting myself with testosterone, and the trapeziums that I haven't been able to work out much thanks to a nagging shoulder injury are piling up like snow drifts on my shoulders. The abs I never bothered to work too hard — knowing they'd always be hidden behind a soft belly that I'd have to become a full-time aerobics instructor to pare off — are peaking out in two faint but thrilling lines.
This is good news. But I find myself wondering: What will I do if vanity doesn't drive me to the gym everyday? Will I still work out? And who would I be without my fitness addiction?
In my own mind at least, I'm someone who has to work and work and work to make any progress at all toward my life goals, so I've begun to see the work itself as progress. I'm not one for inspirational aphorisms, but one that struck a chord with me went something like: Success is getting knocked down 18 times and getting up 19.
Testosterone is like instant goal attainment when it comes to physique. Or at least it seems that way initially: I imagine that if I ever get to a point where I'm passing as a man, I will start thinking about how short a man I am, and how my hands are too small and I wish I didn't have to limit myself to European-cut shirts and a shoe size small enough not to be available everywhere. Who knows, maybe I'll become a meathead with a Napoleon complex to compensate. Right now, I know I should just enjoy the goal-in-a-syringe thing that I've got going on.
But it's this kind of seemingly unimportant, and maybe even a little wonderful, shifts that signal just how much rests on the gender identity each of us queers has built — and that, in my case, I feel like I've built with no small amount of elbow grease. Who are we, after all, if not our habits and the familiar tracks of self-criticism playing in our heads?
If you like this post, or you just want to help me pay for top surgery, please consider a small donation. 100% goes to the surgery.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Guest Blogger: Am I a Man?
My friend Danna Zeller, an aspiring writer lately of Brooklyn, wrote this. I think it's a work of art and genius.
Yesterday I went to Marshall's, a discount department store right on the border of Danville and San Ramon, because my coworker Alice said they had a great sale on ceramic bakeware. Department stores have always depressed me partly because of the lighting, partly because of the blistering motion of careless mass production, partly because of the chemicals they put on the clothing. Nevertheless, there was an entire clearance rack of men's pants and i found some exciting lemon yellow Tommy Hilfiger golf pants for 8 dollars and a really nice dark reddish-brown pair of thick dress corduroy slacks-- a style which I've never understood conceptually, but which would be perfect for work--, and for only 11 dollars some bright orange cargo three-quarter length shorts which i thought would be a great addition to my wardrobe if i ever got top surgery and then decided to go back to Waikiki. Anyway, on my way into the ladies dressing room something happened which had never happened to me before. Usually if someone thinks I'm going into the wrong room they say "um, this is the LADIES room" or "are you SURE you're in the right place?" or they look around panicked wondering if perhaps they're in the wrong place, as if they are on a ship that's just hit a wicked jerk of waves and they're wincing for the storm. But yesterday, as i was heading into the ladies dressing room with my ridiculous pants the apparently female employee who chatted with me for a minute and gave me my plastic thingy with the grand total number of my pants not to exceed 6, stopped me and said accusingly: "Are you a MAN?!" Well, I was stumped. No one had ever asked me this before and it sounded like a rhetorical question. Am I a man? What separates the boys from the men? For once it didn't seem to be a question about gender or how far i can throw a football, but about the direction of my life. Have I learned anything in the last decade or do i keep making the same mistakes over and over again? If I am finally a man, am I a mensch? And am I never to be a boy again? Does being a man mean I will suddenly start to do things right for a change, or that I will handle my ongoing bushels of fuck-ups with more grace and less vanity? Rites of passage as an inquiring, slightly paranoid, and often remorseful butch are vague and troubling and here I was being faced with a question I'd only toyed with in those joking with myself moments. But surely it's about time I take myself seriously. I stood still for a minute holding on to my pants. Stammered a little. Said "no." Walked right on into the Ladies Changing Room feeling strange and proud. I will have to add the term butchlekeit to my yiddishkeit slangishkeit. I am a man and I'm not a man and this knowledge is rich and complex in ways which i hope the intellectual butter of life will always be churning-- and yet is that because I'm an emotional masochist or because in my heart of hearts I feel we should all be confounding the most difficult questions with simple answers, and asking ourselves the most simple questions and making the answers harder than the pecs I get to imagine flexing above the hot waistline of my new orange shorts.
Yesterday I went to Marshall's, a discount department store right on the border of Danville and San Ramon, because my coworker Alice said they had a great sale on ceramic bakeware. Department stores have always depressed me partly because of the lighting, partly because of the blistering motion of careless mass production, partly because of the chemicals they put on the clothing. Nevertheless, there was an entire clearance rack of men's pants and i found some exciting lemon yellow Tommy Hilfiger golf pants for 8 dollars and a really nice dark reddish-brown pair of thick dress corduroy slacks-- a style which I've never understood conceptually, but which would be perfect for work--, and for only 11 dollars some bright orange cargo three-quarter length shorts which i thought would be a great addition to my wardrobe if i ever got top surgery and then decided to go back to Waikiki. Anyway, on my way into the ladies dressing room something happened which had never happened to me before. Usually if someone thinks I'm going into the wrong room they say "um, this is the LADIES room" or "are you SURE you're in the right place?" or they look around panicked wondering if perhaps they're in the wrong place, as if they are on a ship that's just hit a wicked jerk of waves and they're wincing for the storm. But yesterday, as i was heading into the ladies dressing room with my ridiculous pants the apparently female employee who chatted with me for a minute and gave me my plastic thingy with the grand total number of my pants not to exceed 6, stopped me and said accusingly: "Are you a MAN?!" Well, I was stumped. No one had ever asked me this before and it sounded like a rhetorical question. Am I a man? What separates the boys from the men? For once it didn't seem to be a question about gender or how far i can throw a football, but about the direction of my life. Have I learned anything in the last decade or do i keep making the same mistakes over and over again? If I am finally a man, am I a mensch? And am I never to be a boy again? Does being a man mean I will suddenly start to do things right for a change, or that I will handle my ongoing bushels of fuck-ups with more grace and less vanity? Rites of passage as an inquiring, slightly paranoid, and often remorseful butch are vague and troubling and here I was being faced with a question I'd only toyed with in those joking with myself moments. But surely it's about time I take myself seriously. I stood still for a minute holding on to my pants. Stammered a little. Said "no." Walked right on into the Ladies Changing Room feeling strange and proud. I will have to add the term butchlekeit to my yiddishkeit slangishkeit. I am a man and I'm not a man and this knowledge is rich and complex in ways which i hope the intellectual butter of life will always be churning-- and yet is that because I'm an emotional masochist or because in my heart of hearts I feel we should all be confounding the most difficult questions with simple answers, and asking ourselves the most simple questions and making the answers harder than the pecs I get to imagine flexing above the hot waistline of my new orange shorts.
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