Decrying Gravity

[Another fairly explicit post, particularly towards the latter half, though not as bad as two weeks ago.  Rape and explicit sexual writing are both quite present.]

I've always felt that lesbian relationships were "pure" in a way sexuality is normally not.  It's not a reasoned or rational opinion; it's quite literally how they feel to me.  This is, at once, illuminating and problematic.

I've mentioned before that one of the forces that truly pushed me to finally commit to transitioning was seeing Naomi Watts character in Mulholland Drive.  The film starts with some light-ish romance that eventually goes awry, leaving Watts's character to masturbate in a gutwrenching and desperate scene as she tries to recall whatever it was she might have had.  And it haunted me.  It was almost impossible to tell whether I wanted to be her or fuck her more.  She felt so real.  So... resonant with how I truly felt.  I identified with her and wanted her so very badly.  And she simply wouldn't fade away.  The desire was too strong.  The longing was too entrenched.

Although I wish it was otherwise, this... holy affinity I feel for lesbian relationships extends primarily to "straight-looking" women; "femmes," I suppose you'd call them.  I certainly don't have anything against butch women, but, all told, I have a hard time understanding on a visceral level why a woman would want to mask her femininity (as defined by traditional norms).  I like movie/TV lesbians.  The (usually) fake ones that are meant to be titillating for straight men moreso than representative of lesbian identity.

That's not to say that there aren't femme/femme lesbian relationships (and, certainly, even such distinctions are problematic and ultimately trivial).  But I'm acutely aware that the women I'm attracted to and the relationship models I feel affinity for tend to mirror "straight-male fantasies."

What's perhaps odd, then, is that their allure only works in television or cinema.  Lesbian pornography does little for me.  I'm still primarily turned on by humiliation, terror, self-hatred, and those are usually (but not exclusively) caused by men in pornography.

By contrast, I find men, usually, tainted.  As if the very idea of a blowjob requires some element of degradation and compromise (whereas cunnilingus is practically a sacrament).  And again, this is felt not thought.  I smile at cute gay couples.  In certain pictures, where the male/male partnership, butch/butch, butch/femme, or the female/male partnerships seem to make both parties feel "loving" and happy, I "enjoy" their joy but I'm usually not aroused by it.

No, it's really only in TV/film where I have emotional investments in the characters that their relationships become poignantly felt.  For instance, in the series I'm watching tonight.  It's revealed that a character you thought was having an affair with the photographer is actually sleeping with his wife.  And I instantly fell for both of them.  They're not... artificially feminine, but they trended towards straight norms of beauty.  And it felt so pure!  It felt divine.  I envied them, so much, but even moreso I just felt... peaceful.  Like that was the ideal.  Two beautiful women gently kissing each other, playfully teasing, simmering with lust and love.  I want it so badly that I almost can't acknowledge it for fear that it will never manifest.  It seems right in a way that nothing else does.

And I don't understand it.  I don't like attaching such arbitrary corruption to "the male."  I fantasize about being fucked by a man and, honestly, I really do want to perform oral sex on one/some, but I can't help but feel a significant part of both would just be to reaffirm my femininity.  Imagining myself fucking/being fucked by a woman is about me, her, and love.  With a man, it's... sex.  It's carnal, it's me, small and girlish, him larger and with the capacity to hurt me he has so much strength.  He doesn't, and although I have rape fantasies, none of them are of *real* rape.  It's kind of sweet, in a way.  He says I'm beautiful.  Thinks I'm pretty.  I sit on his lap, I put my head on his chest as we lie in bed, he fondles my breasts because they're so goddamn wonderful and "other."

It's fun.  Cute.  Binary traditional.  Only after sexual reassignment surgery.  But it never seems realistic when I try to love him.  I want him to throw me on a bed, wrench my legs apart, and fuck me til I howl and he bursts inside me, withdrawing as his semen leaks from me.  I want him to stick his cock down my throat and use my head as a proxy, fucking me until I taste him, savor, and swallow.  But beyond fucking?  I'm sure he's nice and all, but he's not who I want to fall asleep beside every night.

 And maybe that'll change.  Maybe I'll find the right guy, as I've found a very small handful of young women, and I'd love him.  But I worry I'd just be loving my femininity, using him as a foil instead of loving him as a person.

Again, I don't like it!  I don't know how much is me, how much relies upon my visceral notions of what gender is, how much is a reaction to my hatred of myself and my body, whether that is merely a backlash against authority structures coded as male and summarily rejected.  I don't know.  I don't know that it matters.

I want to be a thin, pretty (by straight norms) lesbian.  Not just a woman.  A lesbian.  I suppose there are worse things to want to be when you grow up, no?

I tell myself this is a cocoon to make myself feel as if it's part of a natural growth.  But really I'm just biding my time.  While others progress with their lives or, at the very least, sustain them with income, I'm the pinnacle of privilege and failure: living with my mother, sleeping 10-12 hours a day, and playing World of Warcraft when I'm awake.  There are a few things I do that have implications of productivity: I'm increasingly active with the high school students at church.  There are some LGBT things I do on campus.  And there's "research" I volunteer for.  But they may as well just be reasons to get me to wake up before 4p each day.  For all intents and purposes, I'm  worthless.

Of course, I'm not entirely sure how to change.  The only immediately viable option is employment and while I could risk prejudice and daily terror if I needed to, I don't.  And I really think that's what I'd be in for.  This early, I'm still not very confident about passing.  So that fear (and the possibility of situations arising) combined with the soulcrushing nature of retail/food service (what other jobs could I get?) makes the experience sound terrible.  The couple hundred dollars a week I'd make from working just aren't worth it.  I still have most of my money from undergrad saved and while WoW may be a lot of things, expensive it is not.

So I'm waiting.  Waiting to hopefully hear back from graduate schools.  Waiting to grow into Juliet more.  Waiting for S to claw her way out of hell.  None of this is new.  But I don't feel like I have ever really had a period of my life *wasted.*  Up until now, I have always been making progress, always been inching forward.  And now?  Now I'm not.  And I can't wait until I am again.

That is true.  Partially.  But as I've been able to, essentially, fall apart without consequence, I've found myself increasingly afraid to leave home.  I don't know what I'm afraid of, exactly.  But I feel safe and ok here.  And out there?  Out there has become a constant exercise in vulnerability.  And while it's one I can face, I don't really want to if I don't have to.

The safety, within my self and without, that I've found in my cocoon has led me to be more open, I think.  I cry a lot more often, now.  Some folks on the trans forums have said they do too, and they often attribute it to the estrogen.  But I think it's also a comfort within myself to access those hurt parts of me and let them out.  I've cried more since June than I think I cried in the previous... 11 years combined.  And I'm kind of glad I can and do.  I'd feel better if it was crying too someone instead of just alone and vulnerable.  But even then, it's nice not to feel so protected all the time.  So twisted and wrenched and wrong.  Now, I'm fluid.  I'm easing into myself.  And while it's difficult, it's wonderful at the same time.  For just as I often burst into tears, I also find myself sitting and feeling like Juliet, feeling female, and I'm so glad to simply *be.*  I'm becoming me.  I'm becoming real.  And that's as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

It's puberty, really.  And as much as I don't like the wait, I think it'll be worthwhile.  I just have to keep telling myself that and have the patience to endure while I wait.

[Small note:  I'm still engaging in escapism, but I don't *need* it as much as I used to.  I love my female avatars.  And I love being called "Juliet" and "she" in our voicechats.  I've been playing with a few gay guys I found via another game/online forum, and it's nice to have a close group of friends I just kind of... hang out with every day.  Outside of gaming, I doubt we'd have much in common.  But, to them, I'm female.  And the "escape" isn't nearly as necessary as it used to be.  I'm biding my time, certainly.  But how I don't need to completely detach from reality anymore.  And while I envy my avatar to an extent, I also feel like she's a representation of me instead of some fantasy ideal.

Related voice notes: My voice isn't perfect, but it's passable.  When the nurse at the clinic asked if I wanted my "yearly pap smear," I knew I'd made it.  It's also fun for folks to come into our voice chat room and say "Who's the girl?" after they hear my voice.  I'm the girl!  And, listening to me, that's what they think I am!  It's *real!*  And most of you have no idea how wonderful it is.]

I've briefly mentioned before that I read threads of comments about transsexual people to center myself, if I find myself growing too complacent or feeling safe.  That action's problematic, in and of itself, but it's not really what I'm thinking about now.  What I am wondering about is what, exactly, I'll say when someone challenges my identity.  Thus far, such challenges have been relegated to when I've come out to family members who have cast it as a "youthful indiscretion" and tried to talk me out of it or otherwise stressed that I am too young to be making/taking this seriously.  As is this case in pretty much every "argument" about myself[or maybe "discussion" would be more apt], I've a plethora of reasons and well-thought out rebuttals that, at the very least, leave me having answered every concern (even if it can never be to their satisfaction).  In short, I know why I'm transitioning.  I've exhausted my alternatives.  And what every argument boils down to is whether someone knows me better than I know myself.

A person thinking they understood another person better than that person knows themself is an almost surprisingly common attitude.  Certainly the scores of people who think even homosexuality is "a choice" are guilty of such thoughts when so many homosexual people tell them otherwise.  But it can be as innocuous as presuming someone's motives to thinking you know what another person wants.  It's the logic behind "no means yes" and "I'm doing this for your own good."  And although I'll grant that it may be occasionally accurate, I think in the long run it's bound to do more harm than good.

I'm guilty of this, too, but predominantly just with my father (and I'm getting better about the few others).  His paranoia and depression seem so clear to me, stemming from various traumatic events in his past, and he fits one of the profiles I've seen developing of abusers: mainly by making your victims believe that they are the ones who are hurting you and never stop accusing them, even when they call you on it.   That's how, I think, my father can believe that I'm transitioning because I hate him so much.

He's done it his whole life.  When I was six and told him "I love you" and he said "No you don't" with no way for me to convince him.  When my parents were divorcing and he called me a "traitor."  When I've been one of if not the only person who has never stopped talking to him or visiting him no matter how afraid I've been, I still hate him.  I can't not believe that he hates himself and could never believe anyone cares about him regardless of what they did and remain sane in the face of everything he says.

But otherwise?  Like so much else, I've tried to learn from his example, remember how what it felt like when he did it to me, and not to do the same to others.  For some people, it's quite hard to do.  But if transsexuality has taught me anything, it's that no one knows you like you do yourself.  And, ultimately, no one deserves an explanation for things you do with yourself (that don't hurt others).  Whether that will be enough... I have no idea.

Goddamn it.  It's been a few weeks since I've been on the trans-forum.  For awhile I'd check it as a proxy for doing anything tangible, particularly when I had my beard.  It was encouraging and helped, but oh the envy.  Things have been progressing recently [and Indians are taking up an increasing portion of my time.  MY LIFE IS BEING OUTSOURCED!?!? True story?], so I haven't felt compelled.

But tonight I did.  And goddamn it.  I swear, it's voodoo.  There are before and after pictures that make me want to scream.  Pretty standard looking guys transitioning into beautiful women.  I mean it.  You doubt, if you haven't seen for yourself, but you not only cannot tell they were even male, if you're attracted to women it's ever-so-much a moot point.  If you know what I mean.  And you might, I don't really know.  I'M TRYING TO SAY THEY'RE REALLY PRETTY, OK?

Anyway.  It bothers me.  Yes, there are some who are... not.  And I have a lot to be thankful for, in so many regards.  But I see so many of the others, so gorgeous, as if by magic, and I want some of their magic.  I want to know where I can find it, what I have to do to implement it, how I can effectively replicate this magnificent transformation.  Because, honestly, I feel like all I do is change clothes and use a smidge of makeup.  I shave, too, and sometimes it's enough to make my stomach not feel repulsively infested for a day.  But they... they're beautiful.  And I so, so want to be beautiful.

I am making progress, though.  I'm 2/3 through with LHRT [lazer-hair-removal therapy, and it's delightful not feeling compelled to shave anything but my upper lip unless I'm otherwise inclined [although the upper-lip is ghastly].  I've been on hormones for ~four months, although I've only been on my "full" dosage since early July.  I'm not great at noticing differences, except that my arm hair is growing back clear, and I now have breasts.  They're undoubtedly A-cup, but they're also really breasts [I never had manboobs, for better or worse, so it's a novel experience].  My hair is smoother, thanks to prolonged and consistent conditioner use.  And it's entirely possible that various body hairs are regrowing blonde ["invisible"] without my knowledge, although that doesn't stop me from staring at them with so much ire.  My voice is higher as a baseline, although I think I can still improve it.

And I'm progressing socially, too.  I've told just about everyone, aside from the grandparents/my mom's conservative family.  I'm pretty consistently Juliet at home.  And, hell, I went to campus on Monday and no one explicitly confronted me, even as I nervously strolled through the Commons.  I am progressing.

But I can't help but feel stagnant, too.  Part of this, I think, relates to never having felt "like a woman trapped in a man's body."  Certainly, I can pretty safely say I've almost always wished I was born a girl.  But I didn't feel as if I was a girl.  I felt I was a boy.  One who hated himself and wished so desperately that he was not, but a boy nonetheless.  So now, as I transition, I can't help but feel I'm still... kind of a boy.  "Juliet" still sounds strange, especially when people introduce me/I introduce myself.  I think of it in the same way I think of receiving compliments about my insecurities: it hurts, and I want to immediately counter by saying "Oh, no, no, I was Dylan.  But now I'm Juliet.  I don't deserve to be seen as a woman, if you were tempted to do that, which you probably weren't, because I'm pretty clearly a boy in women's clothing, right?"  I have a hard time requesting it, if people don't ask about it.  As if I don't deserve to be called Juliet if they don't think I do.  It's as if I want to have a giant asterisk hover next to my body that, when pushed, says: "THIS BODY IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION FROM MALE TO FEMALE.  PLEASE IGNORE/TOLERATE THE AFFRONTING INCONGRUITY YOU SEE BEFORE YOU AND ACT AS IF NOTHING IS WRONG EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY IS."  Yes.  Caps and all.

Am I Juliet yet?  Well, kind of.  In the right lightning.  With the right mood.  In the right frame of mind.  I am not Dylan unless compelled, certainly; I won't sign my name as Dylan unless I have to, I won't refer to myself as Dylan unless I have no choice.  But Juliet?  It's almost of a form of self-hate to say I'm not quite her yet.  At least, not all the time.  And I don't just mean when I'm presenting as Dylan for my grandfather, and going back to Juliet when I'm at home.  I mean, even dressed as Juliet, I can look in the mirror and sometimes see a rather cute woman looking at me and sometimes see a disconcerting mess of a person, a male with cavernous hollows under my eyes and cheeks, egregious and conspicuous facial hair, a hair style that is "eccentric," and cartoonish features.  Hell, I can look at pictures from the GSSE prom and see the same thing.  For instance:

I can see arguments for both sides.  Makeup helps a bit [I rather love mascara], and I guess I could brush my hair, too.  But that's how I look with clothes changed, and it doesn't improve [too much] otherwise.  Everyone reading this knew me as Dylan before Juliet.  So that somewhat colors what you see.  It affects what I see, too.  But what does everyone else see?

Gah.  It makes me think of Mulan, a transnarrative by another name [although a good case can be made for The Little Mermaid, too].  Indeed, it's entirely fitting that Mulan is painted and fit into the trappings of gender performativity to begin with, and as the song progresses she exposes its artifice as she wipes it all away.  [It's disheartening and ironic, though, that the initial image is of a woman with a "beard" made for comical effect.  Oh, look, a woman who is not entirely feminine, even masculine.  Let us laugh.  Oh, wait, isn't that exactly contrary to the film's message?  Disney, Disney, Disney...]



"Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
or a perfect daughter..,
Can it be 
I'm not meant to play this part? 
Now I see 
that if I were truly 
to be myself 
I would break my family's heart. 

Who is that girl I see 
staring straight 
back at me? 
Why is my reflection someone 
I don't know? 
Somehow I cannot hide 
who I am 
though I've tried..

When will my reflection show 
who I am inside? 
When will my reflection show 
who I am inside."


You can read it twice in different ways, struggling with decided to transition and then struggling while trying to transition.  It depends on which "part."  If that part's male?  Definitely, not meant to play it.  But what if it's female?  Will I ever pass for a daughter, much less one fitting conventional norms?  What if I'm not meant to play female, either?  Hell, who is that person staring back at me?  When will that image be who I feel expresses the me I feel inside?  And how do I recognize hir once ze's there?  Or is it from the inside out, me  coming to terms with how I look and owning whatever femininity I have?

I don't know.  It's all still new.  Juliet, as a named identity, is not even a month old.  But god, I see the magical transformations of those gorgeous transwomen.  And I'm left staring at my reflection, wondering if I'll ever see something so beautiful myself.

So, as of... now, I'm twenty-four.  It's not terribly noteworthy; I've been referring to myself as 24 for two months now, and I have no plans and don't feel bad about it in the slightest.  But I suppose it's as good a point as any for reflection upon where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going.

I took the opportunity to look over some past entries around my birthday over the past 6 or so years that I've kept a blog.  I considered linking to them, but they're honestly rather embarrassing.  My 18th birthday post is so very indicative of the tension I negotiated for most of my newly adult years: irreverent, distracting humor and hints of hurt begging to be seen, felt, and touched.  My 20th birthday post is a direct reference to this tension, with a more mature articulation of the dynamics involved and signs of my increasing wariness with keeping up a veneer that was so very evasive as to be fruitless to all involved.

I say I'm embarrassed because the writing seems distinctly different.  It is not real, not honest, not the relentlessly exposing force I've turned it into.  I struggled with authentically engaging my emotions for years, and I suppose I still do.  But then, even as I felt miserable, I danced around them, hated them, tried desperately to intellectualize them and fight them instead of just acknowledging them as real regardless of what I thought they should be.  I was intensely aware that I was being read, and even as I strove for more authenticity, there were still fears of an audience that may or may not have existed.  There were still fears of admitting to myself the depth and truth of what, exactly, was going on inside of me.

I read the madcap attempts at humor on my 18th, attempts informed by puns and randomness, and I cringe.  It's a type of ridiculous, absurd humor that rather leaves me cold, today.  I read the poem with its stilted rhyme and all-too-blunt messaging, and I cannot help but shake my head.

The entry for the 20th, two years later, already shows more realness.  At that point, I still felt an intense desire to create something that would truly express myself, something that would give my life some meaning by the value it had to others.  I am not as brash, I am not as manic, I am not as.. young as my younger self's post makes me seem.  But I also feel old, feel desperate, feel that time is wasting.  At that point, Meredith was an increasingly distant memory and Elise was a raw and fresh pain, a reminder of my continued ineptness in lieu of any kind of validation.  I was still grappling with purpose and personality, identity by any other name.

But in that process, I was also becoming more artistic in my language.  It's rather pleasant to read something your past self wrote that you rather like.  In this case, it's the imagery evoked by humor.  "But humor cuts.  Humor stabs, humor gores, and its targets bleed laughter."  Its targets bleed laughter...  I really do like metaphor.

And I say this to say that I honestly feel I have grown, have matured over the past six years.  I am so thankful that I am who I am today instead of those people then.  I feel as if I have a handle on who I am and who I want to be.  My worries are decidedly terrestrial, at the moment.  And I know that's a phase. [I will relish the time when I will have solved my relationship with my self to a sufficient degree so I can focus more completely on how I relate to others].  But, aside from fits, I do not have existential dilemmas.  I do not feel that I am underachieving; unfulfilled in the challenges presented to me, perhaps, but I am not doomed to a mediocrity beneath my potential, traveling upon my present course.  I do not feel intense desperation over love, for I had one that was valid, and I now have one that may, perhaps, be sound.

I am becoming my own.  "Juliet" sounds so queer to my ear; it hurts the same way it hurt to hear the wonderful things my students described me as at governor's school that wonderful/terrible final night.  As if I don't deserve it.  As if it's not me, no matter how badly I want it to be.   But I am increasingly looking in the mirror and seeing her staring back.  I recorded my voice today, and I liked the way it sounded.  I can run my hand along my face and appreciate the new smoothness after the lazers have done their sci-fi magic.  I can cup my nascent breasts, stand topless, side-to-the-mirror, and see femininity sprouting.  I can fantasize about love and sex and not feel as if I am in an unnatural role with unnatural expectations.  I am not there, by any stretch.  But where I once felt primarily fear with small hope, I now feel so much hope with small fears.

What has changed me?  "Age," in and of itself, is unlikely to be the culprit.  Certainly, cognitive growth may have some minor role.  But in the years since I was 18, I have taken hundreds of hours of college courses.  I have become a feminist and immersed myself in its culture and philosophy.  I have written over half-a-hundred short essays for my peers to read.  I watched "The Wire" and defined my political philosophy.  I've begun to embrace the process of making Love a religion.  I loved and been loved for the larger part of two and a half years.  I've awakened my sexuality and grown into it.  I've come to terms with my gender dysphoria and begun transitioning to a self that expresses me authentically.  I've endured terror and finely-honed anxiety on a daily basis for a school-year and survived.  I've changed a not-insignificant number of lives for the better.  I've made better friends than I ever expected; friends who keep in touch no matter how far they are; friends who have not left when it's convenient.  I've been thoroughly humbled by being poor at something I tried to do.  I've been thoroughly encouraged by being good at something I wanted and enjoyed doing.  I've found someone who mirrors my strengths and insecurities with an uncanniness that defies reason.  I've begrudgingly embraced intuition, appreciating a knowing that operates outside of pure logic.  I've failed.  I've survived failure.  I've come to appreciate many of my strengths, come to acknowledge many of my weaknesses.

So even though I am unemployed, skeptical about my future plans, lacking in backups, at a perilous place in my expression of my identity, even though I am so much uncertainty in a place I never expected to be, I have grown and I am glad for it.  I think of the seventeen year olds I know (and there are an eerie number; it's senior year of high school all over again), and I wonder how much they'll change in the same time frame.  Hell, I think of myself, six years from now.  I will likely have been Juliet as an adult just as long as I was Dylan.  And, outside of that, who knows what will have happened and where I'll be or what I'll be doing.  If I've learned anything, it's definitely that personal prognostication is a fool's errand.  But I've learned that change is possible.  That hope is not illfounded.  That terrible, heart-wrenching things can happen, that depression, anxiety and stress can reign supreme, that failure can manifest its ugly head daily, and that, despite all this, I can survive and come out on the other side a better person for it.

And yes, this is a passing mood.  Just yesterday, I was self-doubting, terrified, bruised and raw.  But, at the moment, I'm thankful.  And I'm glad for the growth.  And I so look forward to a lifetime more.  Happy birthday, indeed.