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.

Paul Auster has written fifteen novels and claims he doesn’t know why he writes. But he knows why I do…

“I don’t know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn’t have to. But it is a compulsion. You don’t choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. When young people say I want to be a novelist, I’d say, think very carefully about it. There will be very few rewards, you probably won’t make any money, you probably won’t become famous, and you will spend your whole life locked up in a room by yourself worrying about how to survive. You have to have a tremendous taste for solitude. I think all writers are a bit crazy; Damaged souls, incapable of doing anything else. On the other hand, when I am writing, even though it’s hard and I do struggle often, I am happier than when I’m not writing. I feel alive. Whereas when I’m not writing, I feel like your common every-day neurotic. I feel that the act of writing, in and of itself, is a tool towards probing that which you wouldn’t without that pen in your hand. It’s a strange, almost neurological phenomenon, and the words seem to generate more words—but only when you’re writing. You can’t do it in your head. There are certain phrases in books of mine, and I don’t know where they came from, or how I was capable of thinking up these formulations. It’s only in the heat of composition that these things occur to you.”

-Paul Auster (from The Rumpus interview)

I am single. And when I caught myself saying yes instead of no to something, well more than one thing, so outside my comfort zone, I realized that I do occasionally exhibit my traveler mentality at home, that telling myself “at least you’ll be able to write about it” always helps, and that when I am single, I do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do.

Occasionally I come up with rules, like I won’t travel over 30 miles or won’t spend over $50 or won’t declare my love for someone I haven’t kissed, but then I do, or at least I have.

These are a few of the things I’ve done for a variety of girls–none of whom  I dated or slept with–over the past decade.

1. Attended “Gay Day” at Great America with her.
2. Bicycled to her office and read three legal pages of handwritten sentences that all started with, “I love your….” or “I love the way you…”
3. Wore skin tight hot pink Paul Frank pants to a bar to make her laugh.
4. Did splits at a party to impress her with my flexibility.
5. Went to the End Up every Fag Friday and chain-smoked Newports with meth-heads while she danced to house music until the sun came up.
6. Wrote her a ten page story in which she was the main character and gave it to her as a birthday present.
7. Drove over an hour to meet her at the beach even though I’d never met her and she’d sent me an e-card with a poodle on it.
8. To see if we were sexually compatible, I went to the book store after our first date to read erotica written about her.
9. Drugs.
10. Met her mother, and her brother, and paid for a Yonder Mountain String Band show.

*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.