I can use many words to describe this weekend retreat with the gay men’s chorus: fun, playful, interesting, tiring, long, intense, healing, liberating, powerful, wonderful. And they’d all be appropriate. But if I had to pick just one word to describe it, I would choose precious.
This weekend retreat with the gay men’s chorus to me was precious.
There were a couple of disappointing or frustrating or simply awkward moments — e.g. when I was left to finish up dinner by myself when the other people at my table, including my Big Sibling, just got up and left when they were done eating, instead of waiting a few more minutes for me to finish, too; or the conversation with explicit details about anal sex at lunch yesterday that was finally interrupted by one of the guys (I was the only AFAB/non-cis-male at the table) saying that it probably wasn’t a “meal-appropriate conversation”. This guy’s intervention at lunch and the pep talk on the phone with my artist/swimmer friend back in California on Saturday night when I was disappointed & hurt about dinner really helped “save the moment” for me.
But those were the only two instances where I felt uncomfortable. The rest of the weekend felt precious to me, filled with moments and experiences that for me shone like jewels and I will always treasure.
Probably the most precious, and definitely the most intimate, of these treasures was given to me yesterday morning when a choir member who had until that moment been a total stranger held me — held me physically — in my grief.
Yesterday morning we started by working on “Joy”, which is one of my three favorite songs in our holiday concert. It’s a very moving song about the joy that is found in love and in being able to live as one’s true self; a song about the protagonists of our holiday concert story finding joy again in being loved, in loving, and being finally able to live as their true self. I find the melody of this song and its canon structure extremely beautiful and stirring. On top of that, the lyrics also resonate with me in a very profound and intense way. I get goosebumps from it every time we sing it all together. Yesterday morning, though, I could also feel it stirring something deep and physical in my chest, in my heart. After the more technical aspects of the study, the director focused on the emotional meaning of the song: “This line says, ‘I am loved’: by whom? by whom are you loved? Don’t answer me — think about it while you’re singing it”; “And here, ‘now at last I can live’: living as our true selves… the meaning this has for us in the LGBTQIA+ community”… By this point, the tears that were welling up in my eyes started slowly rolling down my cheeks (or into my N-95 mask) and it was all I could do to keep going and sing the rest of the song to the end. Once we were done with it and it was clear we were going to move on to a different song, I nipped out of the room where we were practicing, removed my face-mask to blow my nose as I walked past the first set of couches where two or three other chorus members were sitting, and slumped into the first armchair I found with nobody nearby. I sat and breathed, thinking that just a couple minutes and deep breaths would soothe me and the storm would be over. But no, the storm had only just started, and after a couple deep breaths the dam broke: tears were gushing from my eyes and before I knew it, I was sobbing. I wanted to stop, I didn’t want to be heard, I wanted to take myself outside at least, but I couldn’t, it was too overwhelming: I was like a tiny wooden raft in a powerful ocean storm and all I could do was try to stay afloat waiting for it to pass. But suddenly, I wasn’t alone: I felt an arm around me, their bare skin on mine (I could even feel the little soft hairs on the arm), gentle yet firm. They were holding me, crouching next to my armchair and literally holding me. My face buried in my hands, I had no idea who it was, but they were there with me, holding me gently and firmly, those arms in silence telling me, “I am here with you. You are not alone”. They hold me for the rest of my cry out, patting my head a couple times when my sobs intensified. And once I stopped crying, they didn’t pull away immediately, so I was able to put my right hand on their left forearm wrapped around my left arm/shoulder: I kept my hand there for a few moments, a silent way to say “Thank you” and “Stay a moment longer” but also “This hug is totally OK” (I am one of those people who wants & needs to be hugged, without being asked, when I’m crying).
Words are simply insufficient, inadequate, to express the power, the importance, the depth, the intimacy of that moment.
There were many other wonderful moments for me during this weekend’s retreat, moments that were fun, playful, liberating, empowering, healing. Maybe I simply, finally, found myself: found my “old self” by being able to be more outgoing, as I usually am in other groups/environments; found my “new self” as a “queer person who sings” (as opposed to the “self” I usually am as a (queer) scientist and athlete).
I had interactions and conversations with people during practice and breaks, initiating the connection myself sometimes but also enjoying the fact that I was actually being seen and/or included more than during the past rehearsals. And in a couple of interactions, when I shared about how practicing the song “Joy” had made me cry so much, I got responses (from cis-men) like “Yes, something similar happened to me yesterday, I cried so much but if felt so good — singing together is so healing”.
In conversations about our past singing experiences (many of the people/guys in the chorus sang in choir at school), I told them that I started as an adult but also added, explicitly, “I am trans so I used to have a different voice so this is a new experience for me to sing with my new voice”, and I got responses along the lines of “That’s wonderful! How does it feel?”
I finally not only made peace, truly and profoundly, with my voice but actually felt something shift within me and came to see, to hear, to feel my “trans voice” as a super-power. Saturday morning, the director was giving us baritones & basses advice on how to hit some very high (for low voices) notes in a couple of the songs and I suddenly realized that I can hit those high notes so much more easily than most of them, while still also hitting the low notes like them, “just” by tapping into my own physical resources as a trans AFAB person. All of a sudden, something shifted for me, as if a switch had been flipped in my brain: something that until now had been felt like a flaw to me, finally became a super-power; and as I shared that feeling with a couple of the men I know/trust more, their reply was, “Yes, you really do have a super-power, and that’s wonderful, so tap into it!”
I also felt able/safe/confident/comfortable enough to wear a skirt to the social events on Saturday night! My favorite flimsy silk mini-skirt over leggins, with a cool tank-top and little jacket that both have a gay-boy/gender-neutral vibe, and my bright blue gay-boy tennis shoes. It felt so liberating! And so fun! (And I got so many compliments!) Somehow, being surrounded by so many cis-men wearing flamboyant, playful, colorful, and even feminine clothes helped me feel comfortable to let go. Skirts are fun to wear, colorful outfits are fun and pretty, jewelry and makeup can be fun and pretty, too: there’s no intrinsic gender in any of this, unless/until we attach some gender to it. We can do so or not. I can wear a skirt because I want to express the girly part of me or I can wear a skirt just because it’s pretty and fun and I like the way it looks and feels. Either way, it’s wonderful and liberating and fun. (And I find it somewhat ironic that it’s the contact with a bunch of (queer) cis-men that is helping me reconnect to my own femininity more openly.)
I cried this weekend and I had a couple moments of frustration or disappointment or loneliness. But I also laughed a lot. I connected: to myself more deeply, more expansively, as well as to others. And I felt the love and care: there was so much love and care, i.e. people just had (& overall showed) so much love and care for one another.
During the “group building activity” on Saturday morning, one of the chorus members asked me, “You’re one of the newbies, right?”, and as I replied “Yes” he said, “Welcome to the family!” Not just “Welcome”, but “Welcome to the family”: for someone like me, rejected and estranged by my family of origin and living with the loneliness that almost inevitably comes with being “single” (& aro-ace), those words meant the world.
Like all families, it’s not perfect — far from it: there are preferences and cliques and dislikes and squabbles and disagreements and differences. And they were present/evident this weekend, too. But they paled in comparison to the intensity and strength of the love and care. The preciousness of the love and care.
The Little Prince and the Fox 