"A Dame That Knows the Ropes Isn't Likely to Get Tied Up"

I had a shocking experience with body dysmorphia last night, after the gym. As I undressed, I caught my profile in my full length mirror and was alarmed to see breasts. Really fine ones, too. I think the workouts that boost my pec size are giving my boobies a generous elevation. I observed these breasts with two minds: one was remarking on the general sumptuousness of said jugs whilst the other was panicking, fleeing from the scene, dissociating from this vision it could not make sense of, this vision of two breasts on a man, on MY BODY.

Is testosterone enhancing some interior sense of being, or am I finally allowing myself to experience what has always been true? I have had breasts since 1977 but I thought my head would explode yesterday. It was so dissonant, such a horrible joke. Have I woken into a bad dream?

I used to work for a glbt rights lobby. I had several volunteers that were MTF. They seemed sweet, but they were all troubled, on tons of meds, with abusive boyfriends, all the symptoms of a metastasizing low self-esteem. I watched friends in the lesbian community transition. It was baffling to me. We had created a space for gender fluidity, playfulness, political activism – why can’t you stay a woman within those elastic perimeters? It didn’t make sense, and if one could be said to be for or against transitioning, I was possibly against.

I had a brief but electric affair with a woman who had been a man. I could see the vaguest outline of a man in the body because she was tall and densely boned, but there was little male energy signature. She was incredibly powerful, so gentle, sweet, funny and smart, as mysterious and beautiful as only the opposite sex can be. She had in her embrace all the qualities that make a woman irresistibly alluring to me, and yet her trans-status was the elephant in the room, always. I found myself unaccountably agitated sharing the space with this politicized pachyderm.

In 2005 I sponsored a young woman in transition. She lived in the woods and tramped around the country the way folks used to ride the rails. Women I had thought highly of would come to me after meetings and say “so and so is uncomfortable because Robyn is using the women’s bathroom!” No one ever wanted to say anything directly to me, or to her. I got a taste of what it might be like, to present as something others struggle to see, or even wince and balk at seeing.

But I always separated myself from those experiences. It wasn’t happening to me, right?

Around 2000 I was herding a team of homo telemarketers for the lobby, when a friend of one of my team members barged in drunkety drunk looking for him. As I introduced myself, he took my hand, made some comment about all my tattoos, and pretended to be driven to the floor by my Popeye Dyke strength. It really upset me. Asshole jerky drunk guy. I was visibly shaken, and pointed the finger at the sot. My co-worker said “You’re homophobic! Your own butchness* is freaking you out!”

I thought “She’s right! I AM homophobic! Why am I so repulsed by my own butchness? What does that mean for me?” I never wanted, never want, to be perceived as butch, even as I was stomping around in Docs, ciggy stuck to my snarl. So now, I ask myself, have I always been a lesbian homophobe, or was I so invested in being read as “female” because anything otherwise was completely threatening to this carefully constructed woman (albeit tomboy) template I’d (with tons of help) imposed on myself?

It still saddens me that I’m read as “butch dyke.” I want to relate with women like a man, or better, a transman. I’m not interested, nor have I ever been, it turns out, in being a woman with another woman. My butch friends seem so comfortable within that lesbian hegemony; by all appearances anyway they have found a dynamic where they are in confident evolution as themselves. Will I find that space? Is it the Land of No Breastesses? Please, pass the Sport Scent Speed Stick; it’s sticky up in here. **

*There’s a breed of butch I’ve never been comfortable with. I recognize an aesthetic snobbery; I came out in the 70’s when women looked like rugged hell for the revolution, all bitter around the mouth when I wore eyeliner and ran away from home to find Patti Smith.

**Okay, really? "Sport Scent?" That's like amyl nitrate labeled "Locker Room" being sold as a "room odorizer."

Unce, Tice, Tee Times a Mady

Being on testosterone is like having a V-8 engine in a V-6 frame. I feel like I’m revving at higher speeds, which, being as it boosts metabolism, I guess I am. This has the unfortunate effect of boosting my already jacked-up levels of stress and anxiety. Here’s the dramatic backstory:

In January 2008 I decide to clamber into the diving bell and drop deep into my wakening consciousness. Reports from the depths indicated that this human might actually be male. I decide to investigate these reports with characteristic zeal and curiosity. These traits almost always impel me into waters I will have heretofore found murky, impenetrable, even terrifying.

I dive into this “I think I might be a man-thing.” Meantime, I’d made the decision, as an older lady, to go to college. I mean 47 aint even MILF-land anymore. It’s post-MILF. (Hey, I could’ve been a mother! Fine, I wasn’t even near that country; you get my picture, smartass.) I’m old and in frickin Community College, which frankly is also not a tad terrifying for me.

I’m starting full-time college, when the woman I’m pretty sure I want to spend the rest of my days with leaves me. Now, in her defense* her departure probably had nothing to do with my decision to go all trans-nova and such. But when one has committed to profound life changes with the implicit trust that one is supported by one’s partner…well shit. We’ve all been there – made the decision to go ftm and had our loved one dump us.

Anyhoo, so that’s happening. I’m literally waking up every morning thinking I’m going to have a heart attack and crying – nay, sobbing – at every mealtime, and this is before I start injecting the T. Fortunately, I’ve begun to connect with other transguys, and cling to them in what have become extremely choppy waters. I don’t know that I’ve met one guy who was in a relationship that wasn’t dumped when they decided to be themselves. I know that’s not unilaterally true – it’s just that the Universe put men in my life that I could relate to and draw strength from. The Universe is cool like that.

I begin gender therapy. It’s required: you must do 12 sessions of therapy in order to get your man papers** so you can get your hormones. In April my closest friend dies. In May my other dear friend gets gravely ill and I travel to be at what might be his death bed. I am fuckity fuck fucked UP.***

Buried beneath these successive heartbreaks, I’m also freaking out about becoming a man. I’m not sure I want to do this thing. Two months after being on T, I’m waking up going “what the fuck am I DOING!? I WANT TO BE A WOMAN!” This is unsettling.

In this place, I am completely alone. I meet people who are sympathetic, but no one is put in my path who has had this experience. I am praying for guidance, for clear signage, a billboard maybe with David Beckham and his enormous package on it (although how would I interpret that – I want to be him, or I want to do him?). “Please God, I’ll do whatever the fuck you want, you know I will – just fucking tell me if you want me to be a man or a woman!” That, by the way, is a typical and fairly effective prayer, should you need it.

I’m confused. I’m grieving the loss of my (me) woman, but it’s complicated by all these other transitions, passages. I think I might just die myself. I think I might just wake up dead one morning.

My therapist tells me that for me, being a woman is like staying in a bad relationship. You have a couple good days and you fall prey to the comforting delusion that it aint so bad, after all.

Going somewhere else, liberation, is too frightening. I’m clinging to the rock I know, even as it’s become increasingly slippery with seaweeds and goopy creatures, which as a guy you think I’d find interesting and indeed I do, but it’s time to loosen the grip. The water is actually fine now.

Jesus I’m scared. She tells me I should say these affirmations, that I am “a strong and courageous man.” She tells me to say them in first, second and third person. I wince; my personality balks at well, this kind of crap. But I do it. It’s a testament to just how miserable I was that I will say what I now call my Manfirmations. And by golly, something shifts. Within days of repeating my Man-tra, it occurs to me to create a checklist for when I’m doubting my transition, which looks like this:

Do you feel as though you have man stuff hanging twixt your fleshy thighs? Strangely, yes!

In your mind’s eye what does your body look like? Kind of…manly, actually!

Did you or did you not say that being a woman is “something you finally figured out how to do” like it’s a shtick? Aye, that I did!

Do you think real women have these thoughts, about their intrinsic gender, their body image? Nay, it’s unlikely Laddie, unlikely!

And there you have it, in a nut sack.

*and I did defend, sometimes! There’s this interesting phenomenon: when you’re heartbroken and devastated, sensitive people intuit that it’s ripe time to tell you how they really feel about your ex. I'm quite sure she received her share of "well meaning consolation." Bless us.

**this is a letter from your counselor saying that you meet the qualifications of “gender identity disorder,” that you’re – beyond being a big ol’ trannyman – of sound man-mind if girl-body. I was calling my letter my “man visa” in the hopes I could get it stamped at titty bars and NASCAR.

***Those friends that DIDN'T DIE are the best friends ever. Without Jessica, Judith, Kevin, Hadley; sans Betty, Jerilynn, Aakara, Keith and Eric I surely would've upended upon that rock. R.I.P. David Clay, the sagest, "zoomiest" most genius guy role model I've ever had the privilege to be in love with.