Queer vibe

It’s snowing hard outside and the temperatures are dropping drammatically again before plummeting well below freezing tonight and tomorrow. Everything is coated in white and I’m glowing inside. Today I got picked up at the climbing gym. By another queer person. 

I haven’t experienced this kind of simply fun, uncomplicated mutual attraction in so much time… and with a queer person very rarely. And it feels so damn good! It would be nice if it led to “something” but it’s also fine and fun and welcome even if we just go out only once and realize it’s not going to go any further. It’s wonderful to see that this kind of thing can still happen to me. It’s really reassuring and relieving for me. And healing after all these years of complicated or impossible relationships and heartbreaks. 

I’m also reveling in the pleasant novelty of the circumstances and feelings of something like this happening to me with — I think I can safely assume — a lesbian. 

Since my own changes and shifts in gender-identity and gender-performance, since the ways I have been presenting and behaving have been changing more and more explicitly, the reactions or behaviors of the world around me have also been changing towards me. I’m no longer getting that “male gaze” that I had gotten so used to — whether I liked it or not. Within the social circles that I am mostly in, straight cis-men now seem to fall in one of two behavior groups towards me: they either (pretend to) ignore me or they connect with me more easily/spontaneously like a buddy, like one of them (this is the dynamics that I’m experiencing and loving so much with my climbing buddies). On the other hand, though, there’s a whole new world of people who seem to find me attractive and to whom I’m also more and more attracted myself: other queer persons. It’s as if my “queer radar” had gone on and I were exuding a “queer vibe”… And honestly, I don’t mind it at all. I realize that the more I’m coming into my own masculine, queer, and non-binary gender identity, the more my own “gaze” on men is changing. I’ve always interacted a lot with men, my entire life, and enjoyed it and very often sought it out. But my relationships with men have rarely been completely platonic (except for mentors, father figures, and professional situations). Whereas my exposure to, and involvement with, the queer world had always been quite limited and restricted mostly to gays and lesbians with whom my relationships were totally platonic. I have had a couple of crushes on women, which I’m pretty sure were mutual, but nothing ever came of them. Now, instead, while I still feel some kind of almost visceral or primordial physical attraction for some men or for some “types” of men, I often find myself looking at them more with a genuine and detached curiosity, wondering whom I will/would resemble thanks to my HRT — or wishing I could resemble this or that guy. Wishing I could resemble them, wishing I could look like them: not wishing I could go to bed with them. My romantic and sexual desires or curiosities are turning, instead, more in other directions, more towards queer, trans, and non-binary people. 

Before starting the medical steps of my masculinization process, some of my trans/non-binary friends who were ahead of me in these processes had warned me, “Your dating pool will very likely change”. And in fact, to be honest, that was one of the things that worried me a little: that nobody would feel attracted to me anymore or that the people to whom I usually seemed to be attracted (cis-men) would not feel physical/sexual attraction for me anymore. Now that I’m getting deeper into my masculinization process and more and more comfortable with my multi-faceted, non-conforming, queer identities and preferences, the changes in the “attraction landscape” don’t scare me as much anymore. I’m actually finding them interesting, fascinating, and in some ways very welcome. It wasn’t until today, though, with the teenager-like excitement of that mutual attraction, that I felt the sheer glee of all the new possibilities opening up to me (forgetting those that are closing down).

A good omen on Winter Solstice?!?