Sometimes he feels almost detached from the trans thing.
It’s impossible to forget that he is trans all the time, of course. There’s that awkward moment when he hits the shower and realizes he still has breasts. And the mirror that refuses to reflect him only when he’s fully dressed and actually liking himself. Oh, and putting on the binder, sure. Maybe even that feverish feeling around the injection spot around the day of his T shot. Or each time he ponders on the (im)possibility of getting naked in front of someone new.
“His birth name – dead name – has been cast into the depths of oblivion..”
But the rest of the time, it has become quite easy to ignore it. After three years of HRT and coming out of the closet countless times with his whole environment – dozens of students, all the beautiful people he works with, relatives, friends, acquaintances, acquaintances of acquaintances, neighbors, owners of dogs his Golden Retriever plays with, all the staff from the nearest pizza place, and such a big etcetera that it sort of explains the unnecessary anxiety he used to feel after each “talk”, he is a man in the eyes of everyone he ever interacts with. Never again a “her”. His birth name – dead name – has been cast into the depths of oblivion and cheers to that.
But.
There’s always a but, isn’t there?
What happens when the not so young anymore (trans, lest he forgets) man comes to realize, in a rapture of lucidity that is as inevitable as it’s unusual, that:
- He feels almost detached from the trans thing.
- That it is not as good as it used to sound because he is, in fact and forever, trans.
- There is a community out there, which he has chosen not to belong to, as he has always chosen not to belong to anything that may give him even the ghost of a sense of belonging.
Except. But that except is going to hurt, so he skips it for now.
That’s when the much less younger than he looks, that’s for sure, unusually lucid boy – because he still feels like a boy facing the immensity of life with eyes of wonder – remembers the LGBT* scene. And though his soul rebels against the idea of needing a special habitat to fit “people like him” (“There are no men like me. Only me.” He can almost hear his favorite character say at this point) he wonders. Cage or safe place? And isn’t every safe place a cage in the end?
