Reveling in my “bro time”

I’m very tired. Fortunately, a relaxed type of tired now, but tired nonetheless. The past two or three days have been particularly intense. 

For the first time in months, I am feeling really comfortable and safe and at home in the place where I am staying. 

After the climax of domestic abuse from my housemate on Thursday, I found refuge in the home of friends: a lovely family who has adopted me as both an adult friend and a teenage boy. I feel safe and welcome and seen here — such a huge difference, the opposite, from how I was feeling with my housemate. 

I am soaking in all these feelings of safety and love and validation. 

To have this kind of support during and after traumatic events is invaluable, life-saving. And I feel extremely fortunate to be able to get it from so many friends here, in so many different ways and forms and aspects. 

On top of finding refuge in this warm and loving and safe home environment, I’ve also been able to nurture my soul & heart and bring some solace to my hyperactivated nervous system by doing fun and relaxing things with some of my best buddies. 

For over 24 hours between yesterday & today I was immersed in that buddy/bro atmosphere that feels so comfortable and validating to me with a few of my closest cis-male friends here. One of my dearest climbing buddies came to visit me from out of town and I was able to let him actually stay at my friends’ place while they’re away for the Spring Break weekend — such a wonderful and welcome change from my ex-housemate’s controlling, territorial, and ungenerous behavior towards me (not allowing me to have guests). This climbing buddy had already visited me a few times when he could stay over at the previous house where I was living, and his visits are always lovely. When I’m with him, it feels like I’m in a different time or in a different dimension. Partly because he’s originally from the region of Europe where I went to grad school, very close to where I grew up, so there’s a cultural component that draws us instinctively close, that drew us immediately, spontaneously close from the beginning: when I interact with him, in many ways parts of me that are usually dormant come alive again, culturally, linguistically, and in body language. Partly it’s also his character or the dynamics between us that lead me to relax and go with the flow more than usual when we hang out together. We click, we resonate. And it’s beautiful and very affirming for me to see, to feel, how comfortable and encouraging and fascinated he is both by my non-binary gender-identity and by my gradual but steady masculinization. His spontaneous admiration for my flat chest or for my strong shoulders & back, his explicitly comparing my torso to his own, or his genuine enthusiasm to see my new men’s clothes and his sincere, well-meaning comments like, “I’m curious to see what men’s style you’ll have”, are some of the most heart-warming and validating reactions and messages I can receive. I revel in them. 

As I reveled in the company of the three guys with whom I went out for beers last night. One of them was this climbing buddy visiting me from out of town; the other was one of my closest climbing buddies with whom I go climbing very often here; and the third was one of the latter’s oldest friends, whom I hadn’t met, yet, but of whom I had already heard a lot. For me, it felt like when I was back in school, particularly in grad school, when my friends were almost entirely cis-males and with whom I felt totally comfortable and at ease in ways that I can hardly explain but that feel profoundly spontaneous and “natural” to me. All four of us are climbers so climbing and other risky activities were an easy topic of conversation. But beyond that, the conversation flowed easily all evening, for hours: climbing, risk-taking, religion, politics, work, sex — we spanned topics with an ease that I remember having with my guy friends in grad school and have often found hard to find afterwards (when in a group, or more-than-two-persons, setting). 

And as I often felt with my guy friends in grad school, again last night I felt just like “them”: these straight, cis guys were neither hitting on me nor treating me any differently from each other (nor moderating their language around sex nor was I mine). I felt like a boy among other boys — and even better, like with most of my close friends from grad school, a boy among boys who haven’t been ruined by the toxic masculinity that is often drilled into males. Which is probably why they accept me just as I am and why I can feel so comfortable with them. With these cis-men who are profoundly sensitive and not ashamed of showing their sensitivity, their fears, their pain; these white cis-men who go to Black Lives Matter protests, march in favor of abortion rights, and ask me for information about the Transforming Gender Conference so they “can learn more” and join me there next time; these straight cis-men who admire my flat boy’s chest and encourage me to become who I really am and want to be, probably seeing their own teenage selves in my reflection.  These guys who feel like brothers to me and whose “bro” feelings, whose homoeroticity, I believe to truly and profoundly understand: because somehow, somewhere deep down inside me, I am like them, I am one of them.

I know I keep writing about the importance, the incredibly profound importance, the life-changing importance my cis-male friends have had throughout my life and are having now. But these feelings are precisely the proof of my being trans(masculine) and I need to revel in the lovely, warm beauty of them as well as record them over and over. As I need to record every time any of my friends says to me sincerely, “I see the (teenage) boy that is you”, and revel in the lovely, warm beauty of such a validation.