Original Composition
January 2012
Posts Tagged ‘transgender’
Sometimes I see a transperson in a public place, in a restaurant, in a store, standing with an acquaintance… and I know. Or I think I know. Our eyes lock and there’s a moment where I recognize them — and maybe they recognize me — as someone who lives their life in the gray area between genders.
It happened to me just now. I’ve heard other transpeople talk about it, too — that moment of recognition. It’s agonizing and reassuring at the same time. You’re immediately curious about them, entranced by them, you want to know what about them set off your bell that says “you are like me.” They may or may not be trans — you can never tell for sure. But there’s something about them that draws you.
It’s agonizing because you can’t just walk up to them and say, “Are you like me? What’s your life story?” It’s not exactly an appropriate grocery-store conversation. But, maybe, sometimes, you can smile and nod and acknowledge that you held eyes… and maybe acknowledge that you’ve recognized each other.
That’s the reassuring part. Seeing that there are others like you, out living their normal lives, doing their normal things while living in the gray area like you.
We moved when I was three and a half years old. I only have two memories from that house, before we moved. One, really.
The vaguest memory is just a picture-memory. A static picture of lights and colors, of how the house was set up. I remember looking at the rooms of the house from the hallway. I remember looking into the blue-light of the rooms, filled with the light of the day, probably of the morning, and seeing nothing in the rooms. Knowing they were my brothers’ rooms. I was vaguely aware of a room down the hallway, and another at the other end, and of the den or living room behind me.
That’s all. It must have been the day we moved because I don’t recall any furniture, just the carpet on the floor. It’s a memory so vague and fuzzy that I’m not even sure it’s real.
But I have one other memory from that home. One single memory. And it is my earliest cue that I might be transgendered…
I was standing in the living room. I was a child, probably three years old. The room had high, vaulted wooden ceilings. The walls were wooden, and there were no windows so the room was filled with the yellowish light of lamps reflecting off of the brown walls and furniture. The carpet was brown, too — light brown. I remember laying and rolling on that carpet, savoring the feeling of it as I rubbed my hands and forearms across it over and over again.
I was standing in the den in my whitey-tighties. No, my plain white underwear; just in my underwear, as girls are wont to do.
But in my mind, they were white briefs exactly like the ones my brothers and dad wore. Just like them. And I had a bulge, like the boys. I was proud of it. It felt so natural and normal. I looked like dad.
I had taken a golf ball and put it down there. In my crotch, so I could look like them. It seemed the way it was supposed to be. It felt good; it looked good. This memory wasn’t the first time I had done it; it was just something I did every now and then. Golf balls were a typical toy for me then. Dad had plenty of them around the house. I probably got the idea when I heard someone joking about “balls” with reference to their crotch.
I don’t know if my parents ever noticed. I kept on doing it, but I don’t think I ever did it in public. I’ll tell you more about it later.
I’ve gotten a lot of comments about my hair. Several people have told me that I’m the only transman they’ve seen who has long hair.
It takes a fairly high level of gender security for any man to have long hair; any man who has long hair will occasionally be “ma’am”ed.
It doesn’t matter how “masculine” you are; if you have long hair, there will always be someone who mistakes you for a woman. And that’s exactly why I have long hair: to prove them wrong.
I want to join the leagues of bikers and hippies and faeries and other men who grow their hair long and defy the gender norm every time someone realizes that they’re a man with long hair.
These men already oppose the norm in some other way, and their long hair is a visual opposition to the tyranny of the norm.
“Men do not have to be this way,” is what a man says every time he wears his hair long. They are no less a man for having long hair.
I am one of those men, and that is why I keep my hair long.
I think this is one of the sexiest pictures I’ve ever had of me.
Webcam pic. Taken a few years ago, probably close to or before a year on T.
I think the mystery behind the winky face is what makes it so sexy.