18 months!

Today, my boy-chest turns 18 months old — or maybe I should say, or would rather say, 18 months young! 

Part of my celebration for it included going swimming at the local outdoor pool and letting my whole body, wearing only short, tight Speedo-like trunks, bask in the sunshine and revel in the water. 

I think swimming bare-chested, and letting everyone see me “topless” at the pool, is the most powerful and gratifying of the feelings since having had gender-affirming top-surgery — even more liberating and validating than climbing or running bare-chested. I don’t know why exactly, but there’s something that feels incredibly powerful and empowering for me to walk into (or out to) a swimming-pool and feel the water wash over my whole body with only a tiny Speedo in the way. Part of it has to do just with me, my body, my sensations; part of it, though, I’m sure also has to do with it being a public, and often relatively crowded, space. Doing it in front of other people feels more assertive than if I were doing it just by myself. And there’s also the transgressive aspect for me that is present at the pool but absent if I’m climbing or running bare-chested: wearing only a tight Speedo (unlike climbing pants or running shorts) makes my whole body very “clear”, almost as if I were naked: between the scars on my chest and the shape of my groins, it’s pretty clear that I’m nonbinary trans — and I love that. 

This confident, empowered, and almost challenging attitude, though, hasn’t always been there for me, within me. On the contrary. I’ve struggled a lot to feel this ease with/in my nonbinary trans body. And sometimes it still disappears, when I least expect it. Like two days ago with the physical therapist. 

I’m doing physical therapy to recover from my thumb injury. The forms and restrooms at the PT center only have binary options, so the way I present & the way people consider me there is very “binary masculine”. Despite this, I have also done nothing to hide tears during some of our sessions when my thumb was particularly swollen & painful, saying “I’m a boy who cries”, and I’ve also talked about Pride events. I think my physical therapist knows I’m trans, but I’m not sure. So I had this weird feeling there of almost having to “keep up a façade” — maybe because I still have that old fear in me that if I admit I’m not a cis-male, then people will start misgendering me again. On Wednesday, I needed to show the physical therapist a concern about my right shoulder & shoulder-blade so I had to remove my T-shirt: so for the first time she saw me bare-chested and therefore saw (or, at least, could have seen) the scars on my chest, i.e. what to me feels like the “proof of my transness”. And all of a sudden I felt terribly naked: I felt vulnerable, almost ashamed, scared of being “discovered”. The physical therapist (who is a very nice cis-woman) needed advice on my shoulder from a colleague whom she went to call into the room (after asking for my permission). Her colleague — a cis-man, I think — arrived and I felt that vulnerability, that shame, that fear all over again. With both of them I felt the impulse to cover my chest, to cross my arms over my scars. I didn’t do that but I could feel myself hunching, not standing as upright, and definitely not as confident, as usual. It was weird, almost painful, and very disorienting for me. 

So when days like today happen and I feel the ease and confidence of inhabiting and showing to the world my nonbinary trans body, I will soak in every drop of that glory.