Mr. Homo Girly Man

I thought there was a distinct chance that testosterone would make me gay, but it never occurred to me that testosterone would make everyone think I’m gay. As a child, I was a tomboy; as a teenager, I walked with the dyke swagger; as a dyke, I was sporty and jockey. I was always a tiny bit masculine, stereotypically speaking, so it’s somewhat of an surprise to come off like a pansy.

Some of the shift probably has to do with personal choices–I’m now comfortable pulling my hair into a half-pony, throwing on a purple shirt and grabbing a hula hoop. Some of it probably has to do with my socialization as a woman–I’ve always talked with a mild valley girl lilt, and maybe some if it even has to do with me being little for a guy. But what this shift in perception shows me is how fundamental and deep the male=masculine and the female=feminine goes in our culture. Swap out my shell and different traits bang up against the container, new characteristics are brought into relief. In the end, all this queer can say is a flaming, faggoty, “hallelujah!”

My First Dance

A couple weeks ago, I went to the monthly dyke party that I used to go to in my early twenties and have rarely been to since. While some queer spaces like the Lexington Club have changed to accommodate the changing clientele, this monthly party hadn’t changed at all. It was FULL of women. At one point, I searched the crowd for least one person who might identify as boi/boy, genderqueer, trans-masculine, or even use the pronoun “they.” Nada. I didn’t care. It was a sunny afternoon and I wanted to dance (tequila was involved).

I joined a friend dancing with a woman with shoulder-length hair, a newsboy cap, a black sweater vest, a decent-sized chest that didn’t seem to be contained by sports bra nor binder–in short, a soft butch, or me eight years ago. Back then, I never would’ve danced with this woman same as I wouldn’t have fucked my mirror. But next thing I knew, I was grinding up against this woman, my packer pressed into her crotch. I guess I expected her to turn away or run, but she smiled. She probably thought I was gay. Maybe she knew I was trans. Regardless, she didn’t care. It was awesome, the first time I ever really danced with a lesbian, or maybe the first time I felt included by one without having to be one.

Hello Ladies…

After exchanging several emails with a friend to decide on a specific date for a dinner party, she sent a mass invite to the larger group with the opening line, “Hello Ladies.” I wasn’t quite offended as much as I didn’t want to be part of an event that would in any way be defined or organized around gender, especially one that didn’t include me. Plus, having exchanged emails with my friend that morning, I wondered how she failed to notice the slip up.

But when we spoke about the incident later, her explanation made sense to me. She said she uses “hey girls” or “hey ladies” the way someone (including me) would say “hey guys”–a phrase that many people no longer think of as gendered, problematic, of course, because the only reason that male words (like guys) or words that contain male parts (like human) are gender-neutral is because of the history of patriarchy. So yeah, “hey ladies” is one hell of a trigger phrase for me, but I couldn’t argue with a woman subsuming men under her gendered term for a collective when the opposite has been going on forever.

The bottom line is neither “guys” nor “ladies” cuts it anymore. I received an email from a friend a few days later addressed to “Lesbian separatists and their boyfriends” and I knew she was talking directly to me and all my friends.

Cocks are like snowflakes

I was discussing gay porn the other day, trying to express to my friend Derek the vast and remarkable diversity of dicks, something that he knew but that I’ve only recently discovered, and he said, yeah dude, “Cocks are like snowflakes.”

1. I can’t grow a full beard, nor proper sandpaper stubble, but when my laziness reaches the week mark, I do rock a full face of pubescent fuzz. A few weeks ago, before I went to the doctor, I made it a point to shave. I was going to the gynecologist; it just seemed like a respectful thing to do.




2. For the past month, between travel documents and medical records, labs, and doctors I had to use my old name a lot, which meant I was constantly alternating between “Nina” and “Nick.” (I’m physically fine, though I did have an anal probe to determine, again, that I have a chronic and mild case of JewBowel, or GI conditions common to those of Eastern European descent.) I got the to the point where I couldn’t remember what name, boy or girl, to use.




3. Although there are VIP locker-rooms at 24hr Fitness, none have a stick figure sign for “boy band member”–my gender identity of the week. In these VIP locker-rooms, just like the regular ones, the men’s side has open gang showers and the women’s side has doors on at least some showers. Despite being recognized as a guy all the time, I STILL use the women’s locker-room (to shower before returning to work) AND nobody has commented yet, even when I don’t shave. I know, I know, but what am I to do? I don’t take hormones to acquire “male privilege” any more than I take hormones to spend my lunch break naked in gang showers with large, smelly, hairy men.




4. I am addicted to gay dude porn. I watch it regularly, obsessively, without any forethought. I can be checking my bank statement and find myself on Xtube before I’ve even noticed. I had to upgrade my Macbook several months ago because it was too old for good streaming video software and I couldn’t handle watching one more glitchy blowjob. Now I have a small collection of DVDs, made up entirely of gifts from exes, women. Because here’s the thing, I only date and pursue sex with women. I love women. But I cannot stand watching women in porn, so instead I fill my head with dick and balls.




5. Sometimes, I think I’ve broken down sex into poles, holes, erogenous zones and positions, and that I can see through sexual orientation entirely. Sometimes, I think I’ve deconstructed gender, isolating the pieces–names, body parts, hormones, locker-room used–all of which may have something gendered associated with them, but from which there is no sum, no gendered whole. Sometimes I think I’ve transcended it all, and then I realize I’m only one paradox away from a full-on identity crisis.

*NOTE: I’ve shared certain things above that I may not be willing acknowledge again and wouldn’t want others to bring up about me. Also some of those topics are not comfortable for all trans folk. Being a paradox is funny until a doctor won’t provide you with service, someone purposely ignores your preferred name, or security is called while you’re in the “wrong” bathroom.

This weekend I interviewed a trans artist friend of mine. We spoke about his music, dance, writing, as well as my writing, about our identities, trans experience, activism, being “out” in the public eye, and the intersection of it all. Before we met, I’d found myself oddly interested in a fact about him and his work for a reason I couldn’t explain. He’d recorded a song, “Little Girl,” that for the first time in music history had a transman sing alongside his former voice.

I understood that the song was groundbreaking, but when I heard him speak so emotionally about how personally definitive this song was, it got my thinking about something that was already on my mind a lot, the working title of my manuscript in-progress (or the “book” or “memoir,” as I also call it, though those words are really too far ahead of where I am).

My manuscript is tentatively titled, “Nina Here Nor There,” a phrase I don’t say aloud very often though I type and read the phrase all the time, consider its unspokenness between me and new friends who discover my blog and now know my former name. So, it felt a bit weird when I actually said the title during the interview, as if I were breaking the seal on something I could potentially see for the rest of my life. Some of my trepidation comes from that, the title of my first book is simply, in and of itself, a huge deal, but there’s also the concern over making my birth name so visible.

I recently read S. Bear Bergman’s collection of essays, “The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You“–most of them about being a former dyke, queer, Jewish, tranny with faggy tendencies. Let’s just say I had a love/hate relationship with the book, as can only be the case when faced with a writer and person so similar and yet so so so so different from me. (I also had complete respect and admiration for hir and hir work.) Bear, who prefers gender neutral pronouns, is very open in hir essay, “What’s in a Name?” about stating hir birth name. Ze makes it clear that certainly family members, airline personnel, and other people with special privileges, can refer to hir birth name.

Reading the essay as a trans person, I completely understood the underlying message, or at least my interpretation of it: There’s a time and a place for given, birth or legal names. This doesn’t make them real names (that’s Bear’s main point) or names to be used at the discretion of others (that’s my point). After Bear published the book, ze pointed out on hir blog that the media included hir given name in reviews–as if it would be remiss to forget this “fact” the “real” truth. I wondered how these reviewers had missed the whole point of that crucial essay.

Ever since then, I’d been profoundly afraid of what the media, the greater public, will do with my former name on my book, how they will abuse it. Until recently, I’d been saying one of my reasons for wanting “Nina” on the cover of my book was to commemorate it, memorialize it, give it a sort of gravestone. In my book, the characters refer to the narrator as “Nina” a handful of times, and each time I write those moments, I hold this name close to my heart.

The reality is, I see “Nina” more often than others probably realize, almost daily. It’s on mail, my taxes, my driver’s license, passport and any piece of important paperwork. I hear it at the doctor, dentist, library, and occasionally the gym. It’s on the bottom, my signage, of very old strings of emails at work, and on all my travel bookings. The super cute woman who cleans our house (and whom I have a crush on) says, “Hello, Nina” when she calls once a month. It took me six months to figure out why I couldn’t tell her my new name. I love the way she says “Nina.” It’s so beautiful. Too beautiful to tell her the truth and have it disappear from her mouth.

Sometimes, I miss “Nina.” Not as my name, but as the name that was once mine. Sometimes, when I meet new people, when I get over my fear that they’re not  seeing me in a way resonates with how I see myself–the trauma of a many years being seen as a woman–I want to pull them aside, whisper in their ear, “For thirty years of my life, my name was Nina. Thirty years of my life. That was me. How I was known. Nina.” Sometimes, when I’m with trans folk and we don’t have to protect ourselves so fiercely, we drop our guards and remind each other, again and again, to mourn.

This weekend, when my trans friend spoke about the combination of his voices on one track, he captured the fear he felt on the cusp of potentially losing his voice (or whatever the uncertain results would be to his vocal chords), the fear of losing everything, of letting it all go. Another thing he said, one of the many that I’m sure I’ll be thinking on for days, was how trans stories are really human stories, striking at something that’s often hard to see in the shock-and-awe factor of gender transition–the universality of the trans experience, of the way people change. My book, while also being an alternative transgender narrative, is, in more general terms, a story about a person finding the courage to let go of who she was.

Hearing my friend speak of his definitive song made me think, at least for the time being, it would be cathartic, empowering, triumphant to have both my names on the cover of my book. How often do any of us get to hold who we once we were and who we are in one place, or have such a defining way to mark the journey, both the fear and the reward. For him, it was through music, his voice. For me, a writer, it is through my words.

Nina. Nick.

There’s a lifetime between those words. Or at least a book.

James Earl Jones

My voice is deep. Like super deep. It’s all anyone can say despite knowing that this is exactly what was supposed to happen. Last week, a trans guy asked me if the men in my family had especially deep voices, like I might be genetically predisposed to a bass. If I call my bank, or my cable company, they’ll start the conversation using my legal (account-holding) name, only to fall into Mr. Krieger within seconds. Unlike muscles and the tiny weeny, a deep voice wasn’t one of the things that I was especially looking forward to, so I’m surprised by how much pleasure I’m taking in it. I call people I could easily email, and I sing aloud to songs, privately of course. But the best is hearing myself “Om” in yoga. The vibration is finally primordial, eternal, resonant.

Cry Baby

I can still cry. The first time I cried, a month or so ago, I wondered if it was a fluke. But these past couple weeks, I’ve been getting it out, a few trickles and one big bawl. About ninety percent of the trans guys I know say they have a hard time crying, or can’t at all, even when they need to. Sure, I’m not crying nearly as much as I was before T, but I feel significantly more in touch with my emotions. I trust them. And I don’t necessarily think it’s a man/woman thing. It’s more like I feel solid now, whereas before I was fuzzy—my shadow kinda askew, my doppelganger trailing me by a millisecond, something slightly off. I’m not entirely sure how this ties into crying, but I think I’m trying to debunk the myth of the “no crying, unemotional, irritable, aggressive T-infused trans guy.” The reality is I’m peaceful and softer inside, a more emotional version of myself. I’m coalescing in such a way that when I cry, it’s not just something my body is doing. It’s an experience that I actually feel deeply connected to.

The Pleasures of Gay Porn for a Pansexual Who Still, Thankfully, Loves Women

I have to admit that my ability to cry sometimes makes me think I’m not taking enough testosterone. (Although there’s significant debate on the subject of dosing, I take three-quarters of what some consider a “full dose.”) But then I pull something out from my expanding gay porn collection, and I know there’s plenty of T in my system. It’s simple–I used to *like* dude-on-dude action, and now I watch more of it than I ever thought was humanly possible. This is somewhat standard for trans guys, so I won’t go too much into my obsession. It’s also somewhat standard, or at least a possibility, that trans dudes on T go full-on gay. When I started T, there was a lot of speculation from those close to me, and a certain level of concern on my part, that I might no longer be attracted to women. At this point, I think I’m in the clear on this one; I’m still very very much into women, even if I’d prefer not to see them in porn.

When I was in high school, I was a sex educator with this group called HITOPS and one day we had the GLBT council from the local Jersey universities come talk to us. I remember the “bi” girl talking about how cool her sexual orientation was because it meant she had twice the chance of getting a date. Straight at the time, I was jealous; I held onto her comment, kinda dreamed of being like her some day. Now I am. Going out is just so much more interesting when I know there’s the chance that I’ll find anyone and everyone attractive. That said, I know enough to keep my head down and avoid eye-contact when I walk home through the Castro.

Growing Up

I recently saw a trans friend who left San Francisco about a year ago, around the time he started T. I’d bumped into him six months ago, and he definitely looked different, but when I saw him a couple weeks ago, I didn’t recognize him at first. It was partially the complete beard, the button down shirt and vest, the chic glasses. It was also his calmness, a confidence and ease I’d never before seen in him. And it was all wrapped up in his maturity, the movement from child to adult, from boy to man.

When I saw him, I saw the reason I started taking T, or the instinct I had the awareness to follow, a desire to grow up. It  used to frustrate me that I couldn’t see my future. Now I realize it was that, from where I was before, I didn’t have a future. I was aging in a holding pattern. I think there are a million ways to mature, a plethora of experiences that can shape and inform us, teach us how to take care of ourselves, take care of others, but until recently, I’d never had the opportunity to witness my own physical maturity in my reflection, to be proud of the little boy who’s finally growing up.

Confession

I’m still occasionally, absentmindedly, doodling my old name.

Carded Anew

I’m carded almost anytime I get near alcohol. Once I pass over my driver’s license–the photo is over a decade old–the bartender, bouncer, whoever will inevitably quiz me on my zip code or date of birth, or will say, “There’s really no way you’re 5’7″.” Explaining that I used to play basketball, thus padding a few inches, doesn’t always help and backup ID is required. But the other day I got a new test. The bartender held up my ID and said, “Let me see you smile.” I laughed, knew exactly what he wanted, and busted out a smile that nearly revealed my wisdom teeth. “You can’t fake that,” he said, before pouring my drink. I’ve always held onto my eyes as the one physical trait that won’t change on T, and I point this out to those fearful that I may stop being familiar to them. Until I was carded at the bar, I hadn’t thought of the smile, how little that changes. I carry a picture of my brother from around age 4 in my wallet. He has a blond bowl cut; now he has a brown Jewfro. He looks nothing like that childhood picture, except for that crooked lady-killer smirk, and I’m pretty sure that’s why I carry it around. Because some things never change.

Passing vs. Being Seen

I was explaining to a new queer friend that I was “passing” more often lately, using the word “passing” out of laziness, knowing that in our shared lexicon she’d understand this to mean I was being recognized as a guy. “But do you feel like you’re being seen?” she asked. I often tire of identity discussions, of queer polemics that have become their own thoughtless cliches, like “nobody passes.” But my response to her question felt new.

When I’m amongst my friends and my community, those who have known me for years, or those who recognize the infinite possibilities within genders or perhaps recognize the transgender in all of us, I feel fully seen. When strangers or acquaintances or new hires at work recognize me as a man, I don’t feel seen in my entirety; I am actually “passing,” occasionally feeling like an impostor or a fraud, words that although partially accurate hit too close to the transphobic vitriol of the past fifty years. A tourist passing as a local is more appropriate, and the point that I’m attempting to make is that while “being seen” is liberating and allows me to connect with people in a way that had never been possible before, “passing” has its place too.

Passing is new and scary, dangerously exciting; it allows for an exploration from the inside, a cultural education, seamless learning, an induction. I don’t feel fully seen but therein lies the beauty, being in a position where I can shed my history, my baggage of womanhood, absorb all that I’m only now able to because men may look at me and think, You’re one of us–as wrong and right and complicated as that may be.

Mother and Child Reunion

I saw my mother this past weekend for the first time since she was out in San Francisco for my surgery almost a year ago. I was nervous–my chest is flatter than it ever was with a binder; I’ve gained about five pounds, almost all in the muscles in my pecs, shoulders, and arms; my face is more angular; my neck is thicker; I have zits that my friends say I cannot call acne yet; I smell different; I shave my face; my voice is definitely deeper. But then again, it’s me, so I notice everything. My mom, although conceding that my voice sounds “hoarse,” and that maybe my face is bigger, says I don’t appear different to her.

I am torn between feeling a great sense of relief that my mom finds me familiar and frustrated that she cannot see the physical changes that mean so much to me. At one point at the end of the trip, she said, “I just don’t see you as a man. I’m sorry, I don’t.” I wasn’t angry with her, because even if she couldn’t see it, she spent two days acting as if she could (barring her complete inability to remember to call me Nick), referring to me as “mister” instead of “lady,” or pointing me to the men’s room instead of the women’s room. But part of me did want to shout in my mom’s face, HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE ME AS A DUDE? What part of my body, chest, face, anything is reminiscent of female to you?

Her comment made me see that maybe she hasn’t thought of me as having a gender for years. Sure, she placed me on the woman side as a matter of procedure–my birth certificate, biology, and recognition by society said so. But my mom, much like me, sees women as being able to do all the same things men can. And maybe the physical attributes, the change in my chest and face and body don’t signify anything about gender to her. Maybe to her I am genderless. And in that respect, I will never change.

*I’m not the biggest fan of the term “transition” in gender-speak; it implies starting somewhere and arriving somewhere else, of moving from female to male. I don’t see it that way. I have made decisions, and continue to make decisions, and they are, in a sense, separate.

*I am passing as a dude more lately. All of my feelings surrounding this are complex. Sometimes, when I’m in a group, I feel a new and unusual uncertainty about what to say and not say about my history, my age, my daily experiences because I have no idea how I’m being perceived. I also know that someday, perhaps, maybe, I might pass as a guy all the time, and for me the impending loss is so profound it makes me want to stop time. But mostly I feel a swell of pride when someone acknowledges me as dude; that shit is downright euphoric. My favorite passing moment (and some version of this happens surprisingly often) is when a bouncer or voting booth attendant says, “hey man,” then looks at my uber-girly picture ID or asks for my legal name, and then says, “thanks man.”

*I shaved my face for the first time, and it was AWEsome. It turns out that men’s shaving cream smells way better on my face than it ever did on my legs. My friend Derek *taught* me how while my other friend filmed us, and turning the experience into a big event that could be shared and captured was the best part. When I consider the things I’ve dealt with in my gender journey–knives, needles, pain, sadness, discomfort, fear, the constant phobia of public bathrooms–shaving was one of the only truly fun things. Plus, I love the way my fresh face looks, and now I get peach fuzz stubble, which is more exciting than peach fuzz.

*I am feeling some unease about publishing a book, and maintaining this blog, with my former name in the title. While it means my old name will be accessible to the general public forever, something I do think I’m okay with, it also means that when I meet new people, mention and eventually promote my book, my old name is one of the first things they will learn about me. This is not upsetting as much as it feels weird. I don’t have any interest in the given names of trans guys I meet, and prefer not to know, which makes me think that others might prefer not to know mine. I once thought that having my given name on a book cover would memorialize it, but now I’m wondering if it might instead transmute ”Nina” from my former name into a title, and perhaps I should just let it rest in peace.

*Confession: I still use the women’s locker room at the gym. I often workout during the day at lunch and need to shower before I return to the office. The women’s room has single stall showers. The men’s room has open gang showers. The situation makes me alternately frustrated and enraged. And although I keep my head down, eyes focused on the floor, and do not speak to anyone in the women’s locker room, I know it’s only a matter of time before someone asks me what I’m doing in there. I don’t want to be in there. But it is easier. More comfortable for me. At least for now. When provoked, I wonder if I’ll have the balls to say that I’m transgender and this side is safer. Or if I’ll start bringing a bathing suit to the other side to hide the fact that I don’t have balls.

I started taking testosterone on July 21, 2009. There are a lot of reasons why, and none of them have to do with weighing a pro and con list, questions like “Is it worth muscles if I’m going to get acne?” or “Is it worth a few centimeters of dick if I’m going to get ass hair?” There is no picking and choosing; it is all or nothing. Of course, I always have the option to stop, or to flip it into more positive terms, to make a conscious decision to continue every time I pick up the needle.

Sometimes I mull over this unrealistic scenario: If I were to approach a 14 year old boy and tell him he could remain as he is forever, never having to shave or smell raunchy or have zits, that girls would still swoon over him, and hot ones at that, that he would never have to worry about balding, what do you think he would do, freeze time? Am I the same? I don’t know. But I can tell you how I feel.

I feel stuck, not in the antsy, anxious, American fill-the-void kind of way that makes me take an extra handful of cereal when I’m full because I want something, anything more. And I don’t feel stuck like I do in a bad job or in a bad relationship where I just need out. It’s more like a brick wall is in front of me, maybe ten feet high, and I’m standing on my tippy toes, trying to see over, wondering not if “manhood” is on the other side, but adulthood, if there is a dog, or child, or family, something or someone to care for — a future.

Let’s scrap that one, just so there’s no confusion that this is about me trying to get somewhere — it isn’t. I want the feeling of transition, or puberty, or having testosterone, more specifically exogenous testosterone, inside my body to connect me to the experience of no one thing, but the totality of being a teenage boy, a mature man, and a transguy — a person who sticks himself every couple weeks and very slowly plunges a viscous fluid into his quad, a person who carries with that dull tingly sensation nearly thirty years of life in which he was recognized as a female.

I am a writer and so I find it ironic that the words I’ve arrived at seem empty to me — “instinct,” “the wisdom of the body,” “feeling like a man.” I cannot possibly tell you what it means to feel like a man, but occasionally you will hear me utter that phrase, then cringe because I am at a loss to explain or deepen. Maybe I am too logical for something that defies ration, and although I can let philosophy and theory wash over me, I can’t quite explore myself through those lenses.

I can always turn to narrative, even though the term is so dangerous and loaded in the transgender lexicon because of the historical pain it has caused so many people, myself included. Narrative is a construction, a way of connecting dots, of linking elements whose truth is as fleeting as a millisecond tick on a stopwatch. But as Joan Didion writes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live”; I know I do. And the thing about these stories, about my own narrative constructions is that I’ve earned my words.

It is hard to look back at my time with breasts and call myself miserable, mostly because I didn’t feel that way at the time, or wasn’t aware that I did — we do what we do to survive. But over the three or so years that I struggled to arrive at the decision to remove them, I heard from a plethora of people a countless number of times, “Do not cut off your breasts.” I was foolish and human to listen, to keep beating down instinct with reason. By now, I’ve earned my faith in myself, to listen to the wisdom of my body even if I can’t explain where it comes from or what exactly it is.

As for “feeling like a man,” I still don’t know what that means, but I know that when people call me “he” or I hold my breath from the stench in the men’s restroom that I feel as I imagine other men might feel, and that when people call me “she,” I have no idea whom they are talking about and when I go into the women’s restroom, I feel not like a woman, nor a man, but an outsider, an invisible person. Does this mean that my entire construct of myself is based on pronouns and toilets? Please forgive me if I’m enforcing a binary that I don’t believe in, but I spend a large portion of every day using words and bathrooms.

When I first started exploring testosterone, it was for writing research almost three years ago. T was not something I was actively or even passively considering and I watched an acquaintance receive one of his first shots. I didn’t sleep for a couple weeks. It would be melodramatic or crying wolf to say I contemplated suicide, especially since people do actually kill themselves, more than are counted, for being transgender. I did, however, contemplate what my life would be like should I *have* to take the route of T. It was that fear, envisioning the insurmountable challenges, that had me wishing myself dead.

I’m rambling now, getting off a track I never saw in the first place, spinning around an infinite number of ways to explain how I got from there to here, even when I know it doesn’t really matter at all. I’ll probably come back to these ideas again, revising and refining or changing my story entirely. Until then, it’s the following words that I keep coming back to. They come from a teacher, and although I cannot make complete sense of them, I find them comforting…

The asana is in the transition.

I just turned 31 years old and received my first birthday cards addressed to Nick, as well as my first “Happy Birthday, Dear Nick”s (including one “Happy Birthday, Dear Nick? Nick? Nicky?” My friends think my mom wasn’t confused or giving me a nickname as much as she needed two syllables.) I also received my first check made out to Nick.

I know I shouldn’t make fun of this check-writing relative. Changing one’s name legally is not only possible but done by many people who are not transgender, like women who embrace patriarchal “tradition” by taking a husband’s name, which they’ll keep long after the divorce having discovered the first time around what a huge pain it is to change a name.

I usually try my best not to mock trans ignorance, but sometimes I’m ready to explode. Like last week, an English teacher referred to my past as a time when I was a “she” whereas now I am a “he.” I wanted to shout in this grammarian’s face that a person cannot be a part of speech. “He” and “she” are simply pronouns, words used as replacements or substitutes for nouns.

But I shouldn’t make fun of my check-writing relative because she was probably being kind and supportive or thought I’d gone through the legal channels, but part of me just knows she’s one of those people who believes in transitional magic, that if I say “sex change operation” three times while rubbing my genitals before bed, I’ll wake up in the morning with dick. Man, I wish. The reality is that me and my friends sit around (when nobody else is listening) discussing the various T-gels, pumps, and mediocre surgeries to grow an extra 2 or whopping 4, not inches, but centimeters.

Instead of making fun of this relative, I’m going to share why I haven’t changed my name. To start with, the petition for a change of name costs $335 (there are fee waivers I wouldn’t qualify for) and this is just the first in a long bureaucratic path that includes a newspaper announcement (to notify the public in case I’m trying to escape my bookie), court appearance, trip to the DMV and the social security office, not to mention contacting passport agencies, banks, credit card issuers and other financial institutions. All of that I could do, but haven’t because this is the exact same path to change gender, except with more paperwork and higher hurdles to clear.

The various agencies have different criteria to change gender; phrases like “surgery to alter sexual characteristics” or “completion of sex reassignment surgery” help, as does luck, the mood of the paper pusher drawn. Once again, I’m in a huge position of privilege here because I was able to afford top surgery, and since there’s no dick fairy, top surgery can sometimes qualify as SRS completion (at least in California if the doctor says so). Taking testosterone (more affordable than surgery) doesn’t do the trick. This means that there’s a ton of dudes walking around this city with the official designation of female, whereas I, simply boobless for now, could legally change my gender.

I haven’t changed my name because I don’t know what to do about my gender, and I want to avoid the process twice (as well as shelling out an extra $335.)

Perhaps I’ll change my mind, hence the wait, but now, I just don’t give a shit about having an “M” on my license, my passport, anything. I do care about my safety and my health. And this is where my main concern lies. If all of my official paperwork recognizes me as male (and it’s recommended that documents match up), I worry about my health insurance. I am a dude and my gynecological care matters to me. At the same time, as I move towards starting testosterone, I worry about looking like a man with an “F” on my license and passport and the harassment, abuse, physical and sexual violence this could inspire.

There are ways to work through these things, loopholes to uncover, employers and insurers that can, maybe, be reasoned with. I don’t have all of the information and knowledge yet. Most of what I learned came from a presentation by the awesome Transgender Law Center and from talking to friends. The most interesting and scariest part is that nobody has all of the information. It doesn’t exist. The law, as well as the semantics, are still being argued and fought over. The system doesn’t know what to do with us any more than society knows what to do with us.

What’s that old cliche about laughing instead of crying? Maybe it has something to do with my desire to mock the check addressed to Nick. Which, as I’m sure you could guess, was still very easy to cash.

He was hoping it was a boy, an 18 year old at least. She was hoping it was a girl and maybe she would get lucky.

What are you hoping for when you catch a glimpse of me?

I look to your reflection to put together the pieces of myself.

It’s not approval I care about, only survival.

The guys from the warehouse pushed me around, trying to be friendly, he says, I don’t know what kind of guy I am but I’m not that guy.

There are trade-offs: The Mach3 for Tampax, Propecia for Midol, an injection cycle for a menstrual cycle.

I shredded the pros and cons list months ago. Now I cross my legs, breathe, and wait.

I watch him push his way onto the subway car. He is overweight, balding, and greasy, a bad combination of running late and male hormones.

I am in the bar, the one I am always in, the only one to go to, and I am surrounded by the sameness that I love and hate and cannot walk away from.

I fear I’m walking the plank to invisibility, nudged by the sword of instinct.

What form will I take as I turn to the fun house mirrors of my daily life in search of elusive truths?

We are here to be better men, he says. My tears form but will they spill before my body becomes a no-crying zone?

I’d turn cartwheels for your beard, dark and thick and slightly effeminate, like that of a lumberjack faggot. Please forgive me for asking but did it come with a back hair?

Sticks and stones may break my bones but your ladies and ma’ams will kill me.

So where do you want it, your ass or my thigh, once a week or every two?

I don’t know. I choose D. None of the above. All of the above.

Can I phone the slumdog millionaire?