“Shades of Man”

[Trigger warning: some explicit description of the masculinizing mastectomy procedure.]

Eleven days ago, I undressed and changed clothing and poses, enjoying and celebrating my body — and in many ways bidding it, or parts of it, a farewell —to the notes of this and other songs by Khruangbin for my pre-surgery “memorial” photoshoot with a very talented and sweet trans-masculine photographer. 

Last night, I slowly danced and swayed to those same notes from “Shades of Man” and a couple other of my favorite songs by this artist to gently welcome this new body into the world, into my life. 

My dancing is very feminine. It always has been. My sensuality is mostly feminine. And yet, it has always been my masculine upper-body & torso that I’ve admired & enjoyed when dancing alone, naked after a shower or workout. Moving in a sinuous way that is considered more “feminine”, for years I looked at myself in the mirror imagining a completely male torso, trying to imagine that those small breasts weren’t there. 

Two long black scars, each almost 20 centimeters long, crossing a bruised chest. A flat chest. My “new” chest. 

The tiny tits are gone and with them also the old nipples that were removed, resized, and replaced on my chest in a different, more masculine, position, and are now hidden under two small bolsters to help them heal in the hope that they don’t die, that they are “accepted again” by my body. 

The scars pull and itch, forcing my torso and shoulders into an uncomfortable (& for me unnatural) hunched position. The binder constricts me to a degree that is hardly bearable and the little bolsters are sore. But I can shower and also move more than I instinctively feel like doing, so last night I once again danced with my naked upper-body, gently, slowly, gently gently gently welcoming it into the world almost a whole week after the last time I had danced like that but with a different torso, with my “old” chest… 

At my first post-op medical appointment yesterday, when the assistants removed the tight corset and other binding garments slowly exposing my “new” chest, I burst into tears and sobbed wholeheartedly for several minutes, grateful for my friend’s hand I could squeeze and for the safe space I was in. 

It wasn’t the physical pain that made me cry. There’s some discomfort but not much physical pain. I sobbed in grief. The grief just washed over me like a tsunami. 

It’s not grief for the physical breasts (my “tiny tits”) that I got removed. It’s a deeper grief with two causes, one relatively new and one very, very old. 

The recent source of sadness is the opportunity that I nearly had, and then missed, of pre-surgery physical intimacy with that person I had started seeing. It would have meant a lot to me, for many reasons: it would have been the last moment of physical intimacy with someone I liked while I still had my breasts, sort of a final farewell to my breasts shared with someone else; it also would have been my first experience of physical intimacy with a woman, and as such the first & last time for me to have physical intimacy with a person who had “my same given body”; and last but not least, to me it felt like a gift to both of us, a seed in our budding relationship, as this person would have been maybe the only one to see and share intimacy both with my “old, given” body with breasts and with my “new, chosen” body with a masculine chest. Up until the very last minute, it seemed that I, we, would have this special moment of physical intimacy together, until it evaporated a couple days before my surgery. Last week, I shelved, almost suffocated, that sadness as I had so much else to face for my surgery. But now, with the procedure having been safely performed, the actual sight of my “new” chest yesterday brought back that sadness with the full strength of grief: the reminder that that moment, that experience with that person, is lost and gone forever for me. 

The older and probably even more intense grief that is coming up for me now is very deep and has been there almost unheard for so long that when it emerges it can be totally overwhelming: it’s the grief for that boy who wasn’t allowed to be for so long — for years, for decades. Seeing him slowly emerging through my “new” chest now, through this battered chest I have at the moment, is almost more than I can bear… He’s there, still trying to come through. He never gave up in all these years, but it’s been an effort — and now this effort, even the physical effort, is clearly visible in those huge scars, in the bruises, on my battered chest, in the stiffness and pain of my upper-body. 

This boy is going through yet another battlefield and the tears I’m shedding now are for his pain. But my gentle dancing is also for him, to celebrate him and encourage him to come out and live, to let him know that he is welcome and accepted and loved — one of the many possible “shades of man”.