The Battle of Your Bulge

So let’s review, shall we? Since the dawning of Testosterone, the little human called “Sam” has been observed:

Wearing the same shirt for days at a time, or at least desiring to

Ascertaining a heretofore unknown appreciation for AC/DC and Ted Nugent

Spitting the “c” word* at humans engaging in “poor driving skills”

Discovering that his eyeballs have their own dirty little agenda and that it requires all his new muscularity to divert their disconcerting predation on human parts, of which he has nothing to do with.

Thanks be to The Great and Wise Tranny Gods that I have stayed out of a relationship for a year. Almost exactly. My first 9 months of transition, my gestation, required a self-absorption and return to focus that another human would have diverted me from. The Gods, in their sagacity, withheld another from me until I had basted in my manly gravy long enough to be something savory. And a transguy, no matter how delectable, is not to everyone’s taste.

I wondered how it would be to make the sexy times on testosterone. Would I come a lot? Would I come once and then have to wait for it to get back up? Would I be an attentive lover, or would the urgency of my own overweening drive find me begging like a teenage boy for “just a blow job…no? Okay baby but touch it, go on, touch it…Please baby, please!”

For those of us who, as ladies, could have sexy times all day, T will not present all that much of a difference. My drive has always been high and I have always been able and willing to fuck the day away when given the opportunity. My therapist sees this as prima facie evidence that I was prehistorically a dude-in-the-making, that my sexuality has ever had a masculine flavor.

There is an…exigency, a demand from the nether regions, that distracts on occasion. I heard myself the other day, say with utter seriousness, “Baby, if I don’t come now I will die.” I do not recall any such utterances before T, issued with such fervor and conviction as I feel now. I feel I was rather more gentlemanly, BT;** there is pressure here that hadn’t existed prior. I meant it: I will die without release. There is a violence, or perhaps I’m surrendering to an already extant condition, in my sexuality, an athleticism and muscularity enhanced by the pressure-cooker of hormones, a cock-teased cocktail laced with spinach, an iron, heat-seeking depth-charge one must quickly find a barren island for its detonation.

I’d like to think it makes me a more interesting partner, hotter, but that may be more evidence of (delusional) masculinity.

Speaking of masculinity, it appears I have fallen for the charms of a sweet Nelly Boy. I assume this makes me a fag, but I know this is treacherous terrain for assumptions. Nevertheless, I heart faggotry, and so will embrace this construct, whilst hopefully ripping the sweet hell out of it. It, not s/he. How do gay men feel about dykes and trannys appropriating their culture, their desire? For whatever reason gay male culture is always the most marketable, the most fantastically designed, pre-packaged, hanky-coded bundle of semiotic hot mess – you can’t say that about dykery, really, which certainly has its own cultural signifiers. Dykes are to fag culture as white people are to black culture, only less successful at marketing. Dykes will assimilate fag culture, but it’s always too specific and marginal, too – dare I say – amateur, to be mainstreamed immediately. Don’t mistake the use of “amateur” as a pejorative: I have deep abiding love for the amateur, way more so than pro anything.

Take Kinging, for instance. Drag has been around forever, but Kings as Dyke Kulture are really recent. Lip synching men dressed like Vegas showgirls have never done it for me. Well meaning people have taken me by the hand to performances they regarded as “edgy” – queens yanking fetuses from their Hershey-coated loins; dragging to Yoko Ono or L7 – but I remain strangely unmoved. Kings, on the other hand, always seem to have a sort of boyish (!) exuberance, an Andy Hardy “hey kids let’s put on a show” vivacity that appealed to me, even if, again, I find most drag oddly unmoving. I love cardboard props, seams and strings, crowns of aluminum foil and commitment to “let’s pretend!”

I had a good friend in Manhattan who did drag, lived drag. His daily drag was Rock n’ Roll Bad Girl, Bikini Kill drag. I played guitar for him at the Pyramid Club one night as he sang “Sister Morphine” – we were both smacked out of our minds. It’s a performance that gives me The Shames to this day; I was that fucked up. He was brilliant, high as a kite, Marianne Faithful to no-one, not Mick, not Keith, and certainly not his own gender. He had AIDS, I remember, and every shot we took together made me feel like I was helping to load his gun for Russian Roulette. In those days I wanted to die myself, and everything made me sad.

Today nothing makes me sad for long. How sad can I be when I’m living this ridiculous, delicious, hilarious trope, this parody/homage to man/woman? Believe me, you can laugh or you can cry, or both: streams of tears and I am pissing my pants I am laughing so hard. It is riDONKulous to be a transperson. HIGH Larious. Be yourself in a gang of humans. Choose the group. Watch them. Observe yourself with them. Are we not funny? And by “we” I mean Every Last Manjack of us?

Dude, I’m a cartoon. Maybe that’s why drag never drew me in, although given my history of homo- and transphobia there may be more going on there than garden-variety ennui. I live drag. I’ve been dressing like a twelve year old boy since I was..well…a twelve year old boy. You should see me: I’m nearly 50 and everything I own has skulls on it. It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.

So again, what have we learned today? Let’s see. I have a truly raging hard-on. I think I am very, very sexy, but have a nagging suspicion this may be the wonderful symptom of living in a T-bubble. I have a big freakin’ crush on a big hompin’ Pansy, with whom I yearn to dance and jazz-hand, between bouts of royal reaming and schtupping. I may actually be wearing a clown suit, RIGHT NOW. I tell you, I wouldn’t know it.

So laugh, Tranny, laugh. It’s the best medicine, better than porn even. Honk on your boobs, or your surgically tweaked boy-nips, sashay Shanté, do-si-do and make a left, grab a Drag King, turn her round, and plant a big wet one on her moustached mouth. You can do no wrong; just keep dancing. We’ve got a war to win, don’t forget, so let’s keep up the morale of the troops while we’re at it.

*thanks, Jessica, for reigniting a love of the juicy “c” word.

**Before Testosterone, for the uninitiated.