It's Not the Men In My Life That Counts - It's the Life In My Men

The Menses has gone missing. Finally. I have had cramps all week long – as reflective (self absorbed, neurotic) as I am, I got a little paranoid it was the onset of polycystic fibroids, which have been said to afflict the FTM on testosterone. I do not miss my period. One of the best things about being a heroin addict, and I’m sure you’ll agree, was not having it.

So I’ve had these interesting responses to my little tranny-blog here, from some friends of the lesbianic persuasion. There’s a lot of crossover, bleed, if you will, between dyke and trans, when your flavor of dyke is tomboy or butch and your flavor of tranny is straight dude. Those of us who grew up feeling frantically itchy in dresses, who did not envision the skort as a reasonable athletic solution, who spent our girlhood in creeks, up trees, loving the crack of the ball against the bat; we who pined for girls, whose jealousy towards our boy friends’ manifest destiny towards same and towards everything else too drove us to tears of frustration and weltsmerz, who never, ever, really felt comfortable in a female body – well? We’ve got a lot in common, the dyke and the transguy.

When does the velvet tip, as it were? At what point does the dyke cry “Enough! I shall be a woman no more!” and ascend the treacherous Mount T? *

Christ, like I know.

I hit a wall. I just couldn’t deny, anymore, that I was really sad to be a woman. That I felt really oppressed. It’s hard to segregate this more personal gestalt from the global: if you’re remotely conscious you feel oppressed as a woman, right!? But my brand of suffocation was that I was in the wrong body. I never got over being seen as a girl, because internally I never thought I was one. It was a time of terrible sorrow, my surrender to this confinement. I overate and became hyper-sexual. One way I could conquer a male body was to sexually trap it. It was the only way I could feel powerful over it. That’s distinct from getting female sexual power by fucking men; there, your power lies in your femininity to some degree, your ability to use your wiley woman ways to get a man in bed.

For me, it was more like cannibalism. Like if I fuck this guy (eat his heart, brain) I will consume him and have his essence. But alas (a lass), I only ever felt betrayed again by this body that softened and bled when I longed for it to muscle and harden; no matter what I did in bed, nor how I got him there, it was always me that was consumed.

Lately I’ve thinking about making some sexy times with a man. I kind of want a last hurrah while I’m still marginally a “woman.” My hour for heterosexual hijinks is well-nigh, and even now I may have some ‘splainin’ to do once nekkid.** While the effects of testosterone can take up to two years to really manifest, the first things that change are the voice and the pants stuffing. But this desire to sleep with a man is largely intellectual, and that’s not really a hot place. And while I’m sure everyone would have a good time, why do that to myself and someone else when I don’t really “mean” it?

I don’t know that I’ve answered anyone’s questions, about me or themselves…I can state unequivocally that seeing the (tiny) patch of whiskers emerge on my chin makes me so happy. When I was a woman I was like “pluck that shit! If I’m in a coma, please pluck that! Why on earth would I want to sport 10 hairs on my chin?!!” As a dude I’m an adolescent boy; I know I’ll have to be talked out of not shaving my darkening upper-lip fuzz. My downstairs growth thrills me. The thickening shoulders, the appearance of new leg-hair makes me ever so happy.

When I fantasize about kissing a man, feeling that chin stubble against my face, embracing that denser, more powerful torso, I can only ever conclude that the man I most want to have sex with is me.

*that Prince song, “When Dykes Cry.”

** Of course, that would depend on the man – some are less observant than others, and some are just glad to get some.

much thanks to Kristy MacD, my new BFF, whom for some reason NO ONE SAW FIT TO INTRODUCE US WHEN SHE WAS HERE IN CHAPEL HILL and so we had to meet online.