“Jagged Tao”

Today I feel that I’ve been made whole. 

I think this was sparked by listening to the poem by Dean Atta, “Some men have vaginas”, last night. 

Throughout the night, in the sparse moments of lighter sleep, the phrase “some men have vaginas” kept coming back to me, to my mind, to my heart, to my soul, filling me with a sense of wholeness and belonging. 

I slept better than most nights, almost nine hours straight to the morning, and had a very vivid dream which seemed a little nonsensical and puzzling at first but that I understand now: it represented the masculine and the feminine in me finally uniting more peacefully. 

I also finally made sense and somehow fully understood & wholly accepted within me the meaning of my relationship with my European (gender)queer ex-lover/friend. A week ago, I was explaining to a common acquaintance how our (me & my European (gender)queer ex-lover) being both non-binary in the specific sense of they describing themself as a “bearded lady or woman with a penis” and me identifying as a “boy with a vagina” had been one of the most important and special reasons for our uniquely profound connection — both on the level of our souls and sexually. As I explained this to our common acquaintance, I said to him, “We were like the Yin & Yang, taking turns in a fluid, dynamic, and natural way between the two roles/forces”. 

But last night it dawned upon me that, while it was indeed true that we were like the Yin & Yang, taking turns in a fluid, dynamic and natural way between the two roles/forces, it wasn’t exactly like the Tao with the soft, curved lines: it was more like the “jagged Tao” that I drew for myself several years ago and now have tattooed on my left shoulder-blade. There are jagged edges between the two forces, the two colors, the Yin and the Yang: those rugged edges are what cut between us, what my European (gender)queer ex-lover and I weren’t able to smooth out together, and thus led to us hurting each other with the still inherent sharpness. 

Those jagged, sharp edges were also what was in between my masculine and feminine sides, cutting one another and almost feeling like they couldn’t coexist. 

But in last night’s vivid dream, I think they came together. I was in some European location where there was both historical city and wild nature (also two opposites that define my life, my experiences, and my longings), on a weekend trip with two friends of mine who didn’t know each other. One was a boy from my middle-school years, one of those boys who are very cute and grow earlier than most but who is also shy and kind and struggles with ending up in the spotlight for being “the cute guy in class”; we were in class together for three years and had secret crushes on each other in different moments. The other was a young cis-woman with whom I was friends when I was living in California, especially before the pandemic; she & her partner/husband were very heteronormative in some ways, and thus very different from me, but she was also very “non-girly” in many ways and, among other things, she was a scientist & runner (like me). Neither of these people are present in my life now nor have they been for years but I’m sure there is a deep meaning to my dreaming specifically about them: each one of them represented parts of me, parts of my identity. The young, cute but shy teenage boy; the scientific & athletic, “no-BS” young woman. Also, both these people have names that start with the letter “A”, like mine (as well as my European (gender)queer ex-lover’s name). And specifically, the young boy from my middle-school years was called “Andrea”, which means “man” in Greek: so one of the two persons in my dream was actually a teenage boy called “man”… And in my dream, I was bringing these two people who didn’t know each other together with me as a “mediator” or “go-between”. 

The dream ended before I could see the whole weekend pan out for the three of us so, like the broken-up relationship with my European (gender)queer ex-lover, it’s a “jagged Tao” rather than the perfect Tao with the smooth curved lines between the black & the white, between the Yin & the Yang. 

That — the perfect Tao with the smooth curved lines between the black & the white, between the Yin & the Yang — is still a goal for me to work towards, but at least now it’s a goal I can see and feel, a goal that has been brought to my awareness, not only in my head, but also in my heart & soul.