Once again the topic of male closeness.
Yesterday, I finally climbed again with my first climbing partner from Colorado. We met almost two & a half years ago, through my Italian climbing buddy.
I’m not sure what to make of J. or of our relationship.
The first time we met, we were the two only people from a group climbing chat who could climb on the given day and we headed out into the canyon despite having never climbed together, or even seen each other, before. It was May, I hadn’t started GAHT yet and I had only just finalized my decision of getting gender-affirming top-surgery that coming winter. Although I was regularly using “they” pronouns by then and telling people to use “he” pronouns if “they” was too difficult, I still looked and sounded quite feminine — still had breasts and climbed in my sports bra when it was warm — probably coming across like a strong, lean, athletic “woman”. J. was a “no-vaxxer” and that sort of prejudiced me against him on our very first outing. I was feeling anxious for my own unexplained reasons that day and when we got to the spot at the creek where we should have crossed on the Tyrolean (something I had never done before), I froze and said I couldn’t do it: we hadn’t even gotten to the crag yet and I had to bail on him. My headspace just wasn’t ready for climbing that day and I had to back off. I felt awful. He took it totally in stride, actually thanking me for my honesty and awareness that would keep us both safe. I drove us back into town, dropped him off, and thought I would never see him again. It was actually thanks to my Italian climbing buddy that we met again as we all three went on a hike and then for beers & burgers together a couple of months later. My Italian climbing buddy eventually returned to Europe but J. & I finally started climbing together. It’s been sporadic and not as frequent or regular as I would like but it has allowed us to get to know each other better, finding and focusing on our commonalities rather than our differences, like the fact that both of us have been going through a major life change in our late thirties & early forties, at an age where many people are well settled in their lives/ways. He’s seen me change — the first time we went for a dip in the creek together, two summers ago, I was wearing a sports bra, this summer he saw me enjoy the cold water on my bare chest; and once we were in the men’s locker-room together at the climbing gym and I was bare-chested, he smiled and asked me, “How does it feel?”. As my looks have changed, and probably also as we’ve gotten closer, he’s been treating me more and more “as a guy” in a sweet, validating way: like my closest climbing buddy (whom I also met a little over two years ago when I still looked “feminine”), despite not being at all queer, he not only takes me as I am but also affirms me in my masculine identity. He freely comments on how “jacked” I am and we share tips on exercise & nutrition in the typical way male climbers do with each other, in a way that to me feels like fun and healthy and affirming “bro-time”. But we also talk a bit about feelings, emotions, relationships, in ways that are not that common or typical or easy among cis-men. Granted, we do this while climbing, not sitting down for a chat, which is very “stereotypically male”, but it’s something.
It’s something but somehow it’s not enough or it’s confusing for me.
In some ways it’s similar to how I used to feel (& sometimes still feel) with my closest climbing buddy: like we want to get closer, open up more with each other, but don’t know how to. They, as straight cis-men, don’t know how to because of how they were socialized and because of the normative circles they still live in; I, as a gay trans-guy, because I’m afraid of crossing a boundary and scaring these straight cis-men away. J. & I have tried to organize a couple of climbing trips together but they have never worked out for scheduling reasons; now we’re trying to organize a short climbing trip in a couple weeks; every time we discuss this topic, I get the feeling that he’d really like to do this with me but that he also feels a little scared or uncomfortable about going just the two of us — is that because I’m trans? On the other hand, the fact that I am trans, i.e. was socialized as a “woman”, is probably one of the reasons he can actually open up and talk emotions with me… The other day as we were texting to plan our climb for yesterday, I wrote “Looking forward to climbing with you again!” I wasn’t expecting a reply but it came immediately: “Me too, dude”. And then yesterday, after I let him in to the gym for free on one of my guest passes, he offered to buy me chai (something we both enjoy) after our session: he had done this once before but the difference yesterday was that we sat outside the coffee shop together for almost half an hour chatting. And he actually talked a lot, shared a lot of emotions with me: it felt beautiful, like a magical yet delicate moment, something super fragile, and while I enjoyed it, I could also feel the fear in me of it breaking, of doing or saying something that might break the spell. On the one hand, I can feel the desire in these straight cis-men to open up, to get closer, probably sensing a “non-threatening masculinity” in me; on the other hand, I can also sense their fear of opening up, their fear of getting closer lest it be “too close”.
Later yesterday evening, I found a text message from this climbing buddy asking if I wanted to join him at a fund-raiser at a micro-brewery in town. Unfortunately, I was already back home in a different town so I had to decline but I added that I would be happy to take a rain-check on something similar sometime soon. And while we were chatting over chai yesterday afternoon, since we had mentioned how we’re both in between jobs with relatively flexible schedules and in need of some structure now, I suggested we pencil in a regular climbing session together one day a week, e.g. every Thursday, and he said that sounded like a good idea. But will he take me up on that? And if so, will he do half of the work of reaching out and keeping in touch instead of leaving it mostly up to me?
Are J. & I slowly building a friendship here or was his a random “social mood” yesterday and/or was he in need of company/talking and I just happened to be around?
And what am I really looking for when I’m seeking out closer, yet platonic, connections with these (straight) cis-men? Why do I crave these connections, this specific type of camaraderie, this closeness to “males”? Why does it feel to me that we get close but never really “close enough” as if they were afraid of getting “too close”? And is it possible for me to have an open, direct conversation with these straight cis-men about our relationships without scaring them away and/or without making it awkward?
The Little Prince and the Fox 