This Van Was Rockin' When Kali Came a' Knockin'

Me: You should like me to what!?
Universe: mumblemumblemumble
Me: Excuse me?!
Universe: schprat.
Me: Okay, lemme get this straight. You want me to inject testosterone, cease menstruating, sprout random body hair while possibly losing pieces of my thick and luxurious mane? Is that right? Hack off my boobies, grow a weiner and STOP SHAVING MY LEGS???
Universe: Michelangelo

I have felt, at times, like Noah and Ark, like “oh, really! That’s your divine purpose for me? This ludicrous, over-the-top, nose-thumb of my reality!? What’s up with that?” But God knows this little human won’t mind being the butt of some cosmic joke if I get to look hot doing it.

My narcissism is my greatest narcotic. For all I know I can snort dried lion sperm* for the rest of my days and never look truly dude-ish to the outside world, but my interior view shall ever now keep me safe and warm. Thank god for this protective membrane of delusion because when I do see myself as I am, my brains feel like they’ve been trash-compacted.

I’m not sure why the dictum** from the heavens came when it did. Was I feeling safe? Was my path clearer? I was in a relationship with someone I adored, but she was soon to leave me. I was going to begin college, which terrified me. Things were completely unstable – my jobs, my housing – but they held the promise and hope of becoming stable in the near future. As “luck” would have it, all of those things became wildly unpredictable, as unstable as some mutant sci-fi atom threatening to split. And then came the aftershocks, of losing David and nearly losing Keith.

For my friend M, it was when the Universe completely cleared his plate. Typically, this comes in the form of a personal Katrina, meaning, he lost everything dear to him, his job, his longtime partner, his sister. The space of absolute grief has its own laws and dimensions. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about. It’s not the world the rest of us walk in: it’s a between-the-veil place. If you’re present to it you can perhaps get the gift it offers, which is the gift of liberation. Being atomically smashed by loss means

• You’ve got nothing left to lose.
• You appreciate, on a molecular level, the temporal nature of anything.
• Carpe diem, and whatnot.

You can begin to co-create a life for yourself around no-one else’s (perceived) needs but yours and thing that made you. You see the futility and ludicrousness of living in anything but your true nature; you begin get glimmers of what is really important, has been all along – that all we have is each other and everything and that all we have is transient, impermanent, dynamic, ever-changing, lives and blooms and sweetens and crumbles.

To have that distillate nectar of grief placed on your tongue is, like a hit of pure Owsleyan LSD, to be given carte-blanche to travel anywhere you want to go.

M’s therapist said to him “well, you’re free now. What is it you’d really like to do, that you’ve put aside, hidden, from yourself and everyone else? You can do that now.”

To which M replied, eventually having his breasts and uterus surgically removed, giving himself testosterone injections, losing his hair, growing a beard. He walks with a zen calm and meaning now I suspect he never had before.

I look forward to that place. I still feel grief-distracted; I’m still grieving, not the least of which is this “old” me, the one that the rest of the world still sees, the one with boobs and the unmistakable softness of middle-aged woman. But I’m willing stay the course, because I get to see the outcome, in guys like M and others, who literally stand straighter (not having to hide their chesticles), live larger, expanding in their own consciousness because they are growing, unfettered, into their true nature. Why wait for the natural hand of Great Disaster? Why not just do it now?

*thanks, Joshie!

**not a term for what trannies have in their panties.