Food, Glorious Food! Hot Sausage and Mustard!

Oh, for heaven’s sake, IT’S BACK. I have two pimples and my stupid period. The organism is determined to survive – if my uterus were in a plane crash in the Andes, it would eat my liver, of that I’m absolutely convinced.

Notes from the field:

As I took my constitutional yesterday * I noticed I had new relationship with my gut. I was letting it hang over my waistband, on purpose. When I was a woman, my belly was a pooch, the signature of the curvaceous or Standard American Overweight breed of broad. I was not a little mortified by its insistence on hurling itself over my jeans’ top. Now, it’s a gut, and I’m free to let it fly. I almost want a Big Mac to celebrate. (I think I just threw up in my mouth.) Seriously, I have a wholly new sense of my torso, if you disregard the boobs, and guys are notoriously able to compartmentalize, particularly when it comes to their own body image. A lot of beginner transguys like their belly because it masks the boob shelf. I just feel like I earned this gut: hey, I paid a lot of money and ate a lot of delicious meals to look like this.

M and I traveled to Greensboro last night for my first Triad Gender Association meeting. It’s run by Drew, who also created and moderates Tarheel Transmen, a local listserve, and his amazing wife, who is MTF. There were a ton of women, and the three of us guys, so we retired to the smoking room so they could talk about us.** It feels amazing to be with a group of people who know exactly who and what you are. To not have to listen to people trip over my pronoun, to be experienced as a man, was a sweet sweet homecoming. My friends do their best, but 80% of them don't get it. They don’t see me as a man, and they cannot understand the importance of that vision, to me. Hell, I don’t think I even knew, I’d repressed it for so long. Here, my gender was not only understood, it was welcomed by women. “Here come some men!” a woman squealed from the mosquito-ridden southern porch as we debarked from the Jeep. Hallelujah.

I’d made some calls to this guy last week about my van, which had blown a head gasket. He can put a junked engine in it and fix it, something I’m unwilling to do. On the phone, my voice is deliciously deep and I’m Sam. When he came to my house, he looked at the car title, looked at me and asked “where’s ‘Samantha’ because she’s the one gonna have to sign this.” Internally I raised my fist and pulled down hard: FINALLY!!! I could’ve kissed him on the lips, but that would’ve created something waaaay messier than a blown head gasket.

I find myself withdrawing from friends and acquaintances whom I feel are “not trying.” It’s possibly not fair, but it is true. Mostly everyone I know does their best, against the tide of their own discomforts – some even embracing the exoticism, remarking to their lesbian friends “You can take the back seat: we’ve upgraded to tranny.” It’s hilarious, to be someone’s exotic; now I look forward to being eroticized as an FTM. Go ahead, find me sexy as a type, a genre! Why do people take issue with that? Don’t we all have a little sumpin-sumpin we ineluctably desire, gravitate towards? Black men, big girls, moustaches, androgynes, leather-wearers, large noses, stiletto heels, Italians! I’m just grateful in that smorgasbord, I made it to the table. Hell, I can’t wait for someone to make a meal of me. I’m a delectable tranny morsel.

*Homeboy can EAT SOME FOOD, YO. My metabolism is jacked and my appetite with it, so in an effort to not put on any fat I’m exercising more. When I’m skinny my body is pretty boyish so I keep telling myself to drop the weight. I could do it now, right!? Easy! But I’ll be damned if I can’t stop stuffing Coconut Milk Ice-cream and Veggie Chips into my gaping man maw. I'll stop today, when I finish the pint.

**this incredible conceit, this egotism I’ve had, always? You can't convince me it doesn't look RIGHT on a DUDE.