Tu vas me manquer, dude!

[Note: This entry will be very long, and partly flow-of-consciousness. This is probably a piece that will eventually, hopefully, go into my memoir. So please read with sympathy and feel free to comment as long as it’s gentle & constructive feedback.]

“Elle parle Français et beaucoup d’autres langues!” my French buddy cried after the pair who had just exclaimed to me, “Oh, so you are French!” 

“Maybe I misheard him”, I thought to myself. But then he repeated it in English, probably realizing that the other people hadn’t understood his exclamation in French – “She speaks, like, five languages!” 

This time, I certainly hadn’t misheard. So I stared at him and then half asked, half exclaimed, “She?! With this face?!?”. And as his glazed eyes focused on me again, regaining more control from whatever substances were making him a little high, he looked at me, appalled at himself, exclaimed, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I can’t believe that happened!?!” And he hid his face in his hands.

I was on my way out, leaving my French climbing buddy’s farewell party. And I teared up. And, of course, he thought I was tearing up because of the misgendering. But no, that didn’t really upset me. I was tearing up because I’ll miss him. Because, even though we rarely got a chance to climb together or even hang out in the past couple years, he is particularly dear and special to me. 

He is the first friend I made here in Colorado, meeting him within a month of when I had moved out here three years ago. It was a cold but sunny day in February. I was having my first symptoms of what later turned out to be thyroiditis. I still had my old car — the first car I had ever owned and the vehicle that had brought me to Colorado from California through a couple of snowstorms a month prior. Once I got here, within a week I was already reaching out to make new climbing buddies, mainly using a WhatsApp group from the gym as a way of finding new climbing partners. And I was taking many leaps of faith, going on several “blind climbing dates”, so to speak. This one Saturday (or Sunday?), I had agreed to meet one guy and two friends of his to climb up in the local canyon. 

As I drove up the canyon, the engine temperature dial on the dashboard started showing the temperature rising beyond safe levels. This had happened once already, crossing a pass a month prior, on my way out from California to Colorado. So I did my homework: turned the heat on as high as I could and kept going, while keeping an eye on the dial. The temperature rise slowed down but didn’t stop. So I had to stop. I waited several minutes at a pull-out and then, determined to go climbing, kept driving up the canyon. I made it to the pull-out of the crag where I was supposed to meet the other three (unknown) climbers. Just in time: the engine was steaming (partly also because of the outside near-freezing temperatures). I stepped out of my parked car to assess the situation. And as I did, a cute, friendly-looking, tall, blond guy with a strong French accent came up and asked me, “Do you need help?”

“Yes”, I replied, as I realized that I was going to have to call for a tow but that there was no cell-phone reception in this part of the canyon. “Can you drive me a little further up to where I have reception so I can call for road-side assistance?”

“Sure!”

And so we hopped into his car, he & I sitting in the front and his friend who was visiting him for a few days in the back seat. 

They were both very friendly and we got chatting quickly, so I asked them, “Vous-êtes français?” 

“Oui! Tu parles Français?”

“Oui”.

I think that’s what jump-started our friendship. That and the fact, that came out almost immediately, that we both ride motorcycles. And that, apart from climbing, we both love back-country skiing. And that we had both, literally, just moved to Colorado from California. 

After we had been chatting for a while, it came out that they were actually “the friends” of “the guy” with whom I was supposed to climb at the crag that day! So once we got somewhere where we had reception, while I made phone calls for my car issue, he handled the communication with our “common climbing buddy”. 

He waited for what was probably an hour for me to get a tow arranged. Then he drove us back to the crag and tried to insist on waiting for the tow with me, but I insisted in turn that they should all just go climbing. He took care of me that day and checked in on me a few days later. And then we started climbing together. I met his girlfriend. He met the nonbinary person who at the time was a “special friend” for me. He took me on my first free solo adventure. We gave each other rides when one of us didn’t have a functioning vehicle. 

Then we both moved out of the town where we had both been living, to different towns. I got a new job. His girlfriend moved out here and in with him. We had different schedules and often different goals, or styles, for our climbing. So we climbed and hung out less often, but the friendship remained. We kept in touch. We invited each other to birthdays & house-warming parties. We got lunch or coffee together. 

And eventually, in January 2023, almost a whole year after we had met, he was the person who drove me to & home from my gender-affirming top-surgery. He took complete care of me for almost two full days in one of the most vulnerable and important moments of my life. 

When he & I met in February 2022, I still looked like a girl. An adventurous, athletic and androgynous girl, but “female” nonetheless. I was already using “they” pronouns at the time, which he respected, but in his native French he probably defaulted to the feminine “elle”. But he never made me feel “like a girl”. He was always very affirming and validating of who I was as a person. 

As my first friend here in Colorado, he was also one of the first people to start seeing, in person, the effects of gender-affirming hormone therapy on me, and he marveled and rejoiced at the changes with me. 

And our dynamics shifted because of my shifting looks: as I started looking and sounding more and more masculine, he instinctively started treating me more like a “bro” or a “buddy” in ways that were affirming, validating, endearing. And given that we saw each other every few months, the changes in me were more evident, or startling, to him than to myself or to friends who saw me more often; so every time he & I hung out, it was like a new discovery and celebration of the boy I was turning into on the outside.  

When I arrived at his farewell party last night, after not having seen each other in over six months, it was the same enthusiastic welcome: exclamations of “dude” and “bro” and “buddy”; hugs with a pat on the back or shoulder; and, maybe above all, the admiration of the changes in my face – the jaw-line, the facial hair. 

This is why his misgendering me three hours later, when he was a little drunk, didn’t upset me. He has really seen the “girl in me”. I looked like a girl the first time we met; I looked like a girl for many months that were the building blocks, or corner stones, of our friendship. Yet he never “made me feel like a girl”, on the contrary, he has always seen, encouraged, celebrated, affirmed, validated, and even supported practically the boy that I am. 

This is why I’ll miss him, this is why I’m sad that he is leaving, even though we got to see each other so rarely in the end. 

I shall miss him being here. I’m sad that he won’t be an hour’s drive away from me, because he is, arguably, one of the most important people in my life. 

And I won’t miss only his affirming, enthusiastic support of me in my gender-journey. I shall also miss the enthusiasm he puts into things, into life. Something that we share – maybe the very thing that really brought us close that first time we met and kept us close beyond/despite our diverging goals or mismatching schedules. He goes into things – activities, relationships, dreams, projects, life – enthusiastically, whole-heartedly, with openness, with generosity, with full dedication to the other person(s) involved and with a resounding “Yes” (if he can). His “yes” are full, simple “yes”, not “yes, but”.  

And that’s the type of person that I want to have in my life. That’s the kind of person that I want to surround myself with and fill my life with. Not people who give in a stingy way. 

So yes, I shall miss my French (climbing/adventure) buddy very much. 

“Tu vas me manquer, dude”.