Today’s the big day: my first rehearsal with the gay men’s chorus!
And I’m feeling positively terrified.
These next couple days will be an immersion in masculinity in different, and diverse, ways: this afternoon I’ll be cross-training at the gym with my closest climbing buddy and then we’ll get food together, to have some of our “bro-time” while we’re both nursing injuries; then, this evening I have my first rehearsal with the gay men’s choir; and on Tuesday I’ll be leading an inclusive climbing event centered around healthy & diverse masculinity at my local climbing gym (& to that end I’ve been rereading bell hook’s book on “men, masculinity, and love”, The will to change).
I have been immersing myself in masculinity for months now: it was partly intentional but partly also just happened to be that way, with most of the people I’ve been engaging with over this relatively solitary (& somewhat lonely) summer being men.
But today and Tuesday feel different — really monumental — maybe because they’re events, or milestones, towards which I worked and put effort into for months and are doors into a broader experience of masculinity for me, not limited to myself with my buddies but opening up in a more visible way to more people, including many strangers.
Since getting the news of having passed the audition and been accepted in the gay men’s chorus, I have been counting the hours to my first rehearsal with them today. I couldn’t wait to start. I still am feeling impatient to start. But I’m also feeling terrified. I’m not simply nervous: I’m positively scared in a way that I rarely feel.
Why am I so scared?
Because it’s a world — that of gay men — that I really don’t know.
As a nonbinary transguy who is in some way gay but also aro & ace, I feel totally safe and comfortable around my straight cis-male friends: I know exactly where the boundaries are; I know we can get close and intimate with no sexual or romantic implications. But what about in a group of over a hundred gay men? How do they interact with each other? What do those interactions mean? How will they interact with me? How should I respond? What if I don’t look masculine enough? What, especially, if I don’t sound masculine enough? After all, even though my singing voice is officially a baritone, I still get misgendered and called “m’am” on the phone sometimes — the latest incident being just a couple days ago… What if my voice cracks while I’m singing???
I’m in such a “teenager panic” mode over my first rehearsal tonight that I don’t even know what to wear…!!!
I’m telling myself that this is just a group of people with voices in the lower range who enjoy singing together and sharing a community: nothing more and nothing threatening. I will be assigned a “Big Brother” to help me in this initial phase, so I won’t be alone in navigating it all by myself in a sea of strangers. The few people in the choir with whom I’ve already interacted are positively lovely. And I have been practicing some signing most of this week and my voice has been just fine. All that really matters is that I can sing baritone — focus on that!
But still, I wish I had someone holding my hand in this big step I’ll be taking tonight. Because it is a huge step for me. I wish my dad could hold my hand, lead me up to the door of the rehearsal venue, pat me on the shoulder and reassure me, “You’ll be fine, kiddo — You’ll be fine, son”.
The Little Prince and the Fox 