Sometimes I wish I were a gay guy

If I had to describe, or label, myself on a personal level mostly around my gender identity & sexual orientation, I would say that I am, or feel like, a genderqueer/non-binary pansexual gay boy. Maybe I’d even say that I’m a genderqueer/non-binary pansexual gay guy, as in growing up from a trans boy into a trans man… 

But the part of this multifaceted, almost contradictory, identity that feels the strongest now is the gay guy. 

Maybe it’s the gradual but in some ways also sudden increase of body hair, mostly on my limbs and a bit on my cheeks. 

Maybe it’s the recent celebrations of the big anniversary of my gender-affirming top-surgery which included going out dancing at a queer (mostly “gay guy”) club with friends. Maybe it was all the validation I got from my cis-male friends even on that occasion, when they came to the queer club with me as well as and treated me just like a guy even in that context (as they do when we go climbing together). 

Maybe it’s been some recent comments from one of my closest (cis-male) climbing buddies who said he thinks people take us for a gay couple when we’re climbing or traveling together, him being read as the “twink” and me as the “butch” because I “have such a masculine vibe” (in his words).

I know the gay guy part of me isn’t the whole of me. I know there’s a genderqueer/non-binary part and a strong trans identity that I don’t want to lose, I don’t want to become invisible to the world; and I know that there’s a bisexual/pansexual component to my sexual orientation that has actually become stronger & more clear to me in the past 2-3 years. But somehow the gay guy part now feels like the one that needs the most attention and attending to in this moment or phase. I feel a yearning for being around guys, but being around them as another guy (not as the attractive and/or athletic girl as often happened in the past). I want them to take me as one of them. I want to hang out with them. I want to have sex with them (some of them, potentially, but none of my buddies). But I’m also scared. I’m scared of being “discovered” as a transmasculine person, i.e. “not a man”, when I use the men’s changing rooms or restrooms (internalized transphobia?). I’m worried that my cis-male friends might feel uncomfortable around/with me if they realize how much of a gay guy I am, i.e. that I mostly like boys rather than girls (internalized homophobia?). And I’m also partly scared when I go to a gay club, worried that the cis gay guys there might not like me or exclude me or, even worse, insult or attack me, if I’m “discovered” as a transmasculine person, i.e. “not a man” (internalized transphobia?). 

Sometimes I wish I were just a (cis) gay guy. I know life wouldn’t be completely easy (it would actually be very difficult in many places) but it seems like it would be easier than the tangle I have to deal with as genderqueer/non-binary pansexual transmasculine person.