The Little Prince and the Fox

Wonderful validations & liberating clarifications

Last night, I went to the birthday celebration of one of the more outgoing & friendly people in the gay men’s chorus, joining folks at a queer club.

Overall, I really had fun and the night felt affirming and liberating in several ways that are still making me glow now.

Fortunately, my closest nonbinary transmasc friend went with me and one of my baritone friends was also there (he came to the party at the club especially for me). If it hadn’t been for their presence, the social situation(s) would have been harder for me, in particular the ones on the dance floor, but overall I’m really glad for how things went.

Apart from the fun and getting closer with some people from the chorus, last night brought me some wonderful validations and liberating clarifications from which I’m still feeling empowered now. I finally not only have a clear sense of the dynamics or “degrees of closeness” between me & people in the chorus, but also got this sense confirmed indirectly from chorus members last night and validated explicitly by my nonbinary transmasc friend who was with me at the club.

There are three men in the chorus who are friends to me, true friends.

The rest of the chorus can be divided into three groups of dynamics or “degrees of closeness”.

There’s a “neutral group”, as there probably is in any group/community with so many members in it: these are chorus members with whom I hardly interact beyond, maybe, a polite “hello” if/when necessary. There’s no hard feelings or dislikes, just indifference or neutrality due simply to the sheer size of the chorus.

Then, there’s a group of people who, albeit not being “real friends”, are truly, genuinely & sincerely, friendly and/or affectionate and/or supportive and/or jokey with me. With most of these folks, we’re not going to exchange phone numbers or see each other beyond/outside chorus events, but at chorus events they are nice to me in a genuine & sincere way: they don’t necessarily miss me when I’m not there, but they like me genuinely and are sincerely happy when I do show up (& they let me know they are).

Finally, there’s the hostile group. Harsh and sad as this may sound, it’s real. During my first rehearsals when I had just joined the chorus seven months ago, I remember feeling (& writing about) a sense of hostility I was getting from some of the chorus members. Then things improved at least partly and I convinced myself that I had been wrong. But no, I hadn’t been wrong: my gut knew, as always, my gut had sensed it perfectly correctly. Indeed, last night, thanks also to the dynamics at the queer club (rather than within chorus practice) and the observations of my nonbinary transmasc friend (who has been in queer environments & around gay men for much longer than myself), I know that the hostility I had sensed was/is real.

There is a small group of chorus members, most of them the femmy/gender-bending and/or flamboyant and/or bottom types, who very clearly dislike me. Some of them outright ignore me, look through me or past me, and avoid saying “Hi” to me even when we’re right next to each other and together with some common acquaintance from chorus. Others say “Hi” to me and maybe even attempt a “How are you” or “Nice to see you” but it’s totally insincere: they are forcing themselves because they “have to be civiil within the chorus family” but it’s not genuine, it’s false and fake. And these are the guys who last night on the dance floor at the club first ignored me & my nonbinary transmasc friend when we moved over to dance with them, and then actively ostracized us by staying in their own circle and turning their backs to us. And for once, this attitude cannot be blamed on my wearing an N-95 mask which might “push people away”: I didn’t wear a face-mask at all last night and, in fact, the chorus members who genuinely like me were extra affectionate and open and easy going with me. The attitude on the dance floor was so bad, so blatant, that it was my nonbinary transmasc friend who commented on it when we left the club last night. This friend of mine not only has more experience than me in queer environments & around gay men, but is also a generally less harsh person than myself; so the fact that they actually commented on the behavior of these chorus members on the dance floor, saying these guys had been “not inclusive, actually excluding us, closing their dance circle and turning their backs on us”, is really telling. And very validating for me.

There’s lots of social cues I don’t pick up on because of being autistic and there’s lots of dynamics or behaviors I don’t understand in gay environments because they’re still unknown or unfamiliar to me. But I am perceptive and I — or my gut — pick up on things anyway. My gut picks up on things correctly. My gut had told me all along that this group of people (who, interestingly, is the clique that hangs out with the gender-bendy gay guy with whom I had hooked up) dislikes me.

At this point, I really don’t care if this small group of people dislikes me and I can even put up with their ostracism or veiled hostility or false friendliness, at least as long as I have some true friends or allies with me. But having got a clarification last night of the dynamics for me within the chorus and the validation both of the ostracism & of the genuine affection felt really liberating.

Really, really liberating. Liberating and empowering.

A week of strengthening & broadening bonds

This week I’ve been able to see close friends every single day since getting home from Chicago on Monday. That in and as of itself has been lovely; but what has made it even lovelier has been a strengthening or broadening of the bonds with them.

The Chicago trip, just as the Durango trip a few weeks ago, was good for my spirit despite being stressful due to the constant sensorial overwhelm from being in such a big city & having to fly.

I had a lot of time to myself in Chicago, which is part of what made the trip so good for me but also caused a renewed sense of loneliness, especially as I found myself processing the final conversation of shared closure that I had had with the gender-expansive gay guy the previous week. So as I sat waiting to board my plane at the Chicago airport on Monday, I texted friends to make plans for my return because I knew I wouldn’t get through this week without their support. And maybe it was partly my vulnerable openness, telling my friends that I was feeling lonely or sad and in need of company, that allowed for those bonds to be strengthened and broadened.

On Tuesday, I met for brunch and a short walk with my oldest climbing buddy. Despite having met three years ago, our friendship really started to flourish only a year later and then to really deepen over the past six months. And now our friendship is so deep and authentic that we hang out even just for chai & chat to catch up and/or support each other with or without exercise in the mix — he’s the cis-het guy who in December wrote to me, “Miss you, bro” and who a couple of weeks ago texted me saying, “Hey brother, I’m in a funk and I need help”. So I told him honestly that I felt lonely this week and his reply when I texted him on Monday was, “I’m here for you”. And indeed, he was.

On Wednesday, I had a great gym session with my closest climbing buddy who actually changed his plans with his wife to accommodate me since I was in his town that day. And then, after our climbing session, he invited me to join him out for dinner with two coworkers of his (who are also European).

On Monday and Thursday evenings, I met up with my two closest nonbinary friends, separately, and with both of them we each leaned into our friendship not only emotionally but also with more physical affection, walking down the street with our arms around each other, which I don’t usually do with them (or anyone) but really felt good to me. And with my younger nonbinary friend on Thursday night we went to a concert together, for the first time, and for the first time we danced together. Enjoying the concert together was really fantastic — something I need, the “shared joy”, the “shared fun”. And dancing together, bumping shoulders and/or hips, was such a novelty, and a sweet one. The night out with them, just as our evening out together for Valentine’s, felt like a queerplatonic date, and I loved it.

Yesterday, I went climbing with my most recent close climbing buddy, someone with whom I’ve had a good friendship for the past eight months. He’s still recovering from a bad injury to both of his Achilles so he cannot lead-climb, yet, and until now he hadn’t even belayed lead-climbing for almost six months. But yesterday he was ready to lead-belay (& I was ready to lead-climb) again and we had a very joyful moment of bonding delight after our first shared lead climb.

Last but not least, last night I had the fourth “group writing session” since the end of the poetry course. When that course ended this winter, I suggested to the other participants to keep meeting to support each other in writing and half a dozen of them agreed enthusiastically, so now we have our “buddies writing group” biweekly. It’s a really nice group of people and we already have a rapport, an ease with each other coming from having been in a poetry course together for eight weeks this winter. Of the half-dozen people, most of them have been attending the past four meeting a bit irregularly, except for myself and one other guy who shows up every time.

And now, after last night’s writing session with him, I know that he’s really a “writing buddy” for me. I’m pretty open and authentic in an unfiltered way almost all the time, even with this group of people; and we’ve been getting more comfortable and closer over the course of the past four meetings; but last night, as it was just me & him, he also loosened up much more to the extent of saying to me explicitly, “I’m also queer”. He’s a cis man and has talked about his wife briefly/vaguely, but somehow I had a feeling of there being something queer about him — but of course, I didn’t say anything about it and dismissed the idea because he hadn’t said anything. So his coming out to me last night felt really lovely: a very precious moment of bonding, an additional step in getting to know each other and getting closer, and also the proof of his feeling safe & comfortable with me. And then at the end of our writing session last night, he also said explicitly how grateful and happy he is that I initiated these “writing meetings” for us all, how helpful these sessions have been for him. It felt so good to hear that — what I felt was, “Oh my gosh, I really have a writing buddy! …and he’s a queer guy, too!”

Conversion therapies of all types must end once and for all

[Note: in addition to gays/lesbians, conversion therapy has also been forced on autistic children/youth in the form of “Applied Behavioral Analysis” therapy, a.k.a. ABA.]

Re-blogging an excerpt from one of the LGBTQIA+ organizations here in Colorado:

“This administration is continuing to use harmful rhetoric to stoke fear, chaos, and division within our communities. The recent HHS report is just another in a long line of tactics being used to further target our trans community. In the face of this we must stand firm in the truth that our trans community has and will always exist. We must recognize the narratives being spun about our trans community are not new, but simply being rebranded from the movement that tried to “cure homosexuality.”

This report is nothing more than a PR stunt for rebranded conversion therapy. The American Academy of Pediatrics has consistently opposed conversion therapy and affirmed that gender-affirming care is safe, effective, and medically necessary. In their policy statement, they emphasize that “ensuring comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care for all children and adolescents is a critical part of pediatric care. You can read AAP’s statement HERE.

The Trump Administration is trying to push the same dangerous, discredited conversion therapy agenda that fringe therapists have been pushing on gay youth for decades. They tried to shame gay kids into hating themselves and rejecting who they are, and now the federal government wants to do the same thing to transgender young people.Similar to being gay or lesbian, no amount of pressure or talk, including conversion practices, can make a transgender person not transgender. Trying to do so leads to distress, and—too often—lasting harm.

Just like being gay, being transgender is not a choice. It’s rooted in biology and genetics. No amount of pressure or persuasion can change biology and pretending otherwise is false and increases stigma and stereotypes and has historically been used to shame LGBTQIA+ people into conforming.Trans folx are not a fad, we have always existed and nothing will change that.

The biggest takeaway from the HHS report comes from the Trump Administrations own summary: “[The Review] is not a clinical practice guideline, and it does not issue legislative or policy recommendations.”

We know this report is being used to spark fear, but we also know that our community is strong, resilient, and filled with love. ”

Desperate urgency & holding the line

I’ve been trying to understand my unwillingness to keep up a friendship with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up unless he also takes concrete steps to initiate our meetings/plans. Why am I drawing such a hard line with him that I don’t necessarily draw with other friends? After all, isn’t friendship — aren’t all relationships — about meeting people where they’re at and compromising?

But friendship — as all relationships — isn’t a one-way street: it takes both parties, all people involved, to take steps towards the other(s), to take steps to meet each other where we’re at.

With my closest climbing buddy, I have been the one reaching out to initiate/make plans for months now. With one of my good running friends, I’m often the one initiating our plans together. With some of my older friends who don’t live in Colorado, I’m often the one reaching out for a chat on the phone. On the flip side, there have been many moments in my life when I was “in a funk” and my close friends reached out to me and made suggestions or initiated things over and over for a while. But there are some important differences between the dynamics with these friends and the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up.

Firstly, in the case of my good friends, I often initiate but I don’t always have to: they also reach out and make suggestions; whereas with the gender-expansive gay guy it was always me reaching out and making suggestions.

Secondly, my meetings or chats or activities with my close friends leave me feeling extremely nourished and loved and cared for: even when I’m the one initiating or making suggestions, I feel that the other person(s) involved are brining a lot to the table, and it feels good.

Thirdly, there have been and still are times when I go incommunicado or when I’m more in need and don’t reach out as (pro)actively: and when that happens, my friends show up and reach out and check in on me.

Last but not least, there’s the polyamory aspect. I am blessed with many good friends and have several friends in each “relational area” that is important for me: with all my friends there is a deep emotional and intellectual understanding as a base; on top of that, we have different types of connection and/or intimacy: climbing/adventure partners; running buddies; queer friends; friends from grad school and/or other important phases of my life before Colorado. But one “relational area” that is important to me is still uncovered: a more sexual physical intimacy, i.e. “friendship with benefits”.

I am polyamorous and I do platonic polyamory within the close friendships I have. The poly part is very important for me: it is key to keeping those relationships healthy. If things had gone the way I wished with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up, we’d be friends with benefits. But at the moment, he’d be my only friend with benefits, which for me could be a little tricky: i.e. I would feel more comfortable either if I had two or three friends with benefits or, at least, if the effort/responsibility of reaching out & initiating were shared equally, to balance things out. Each person is unique and I value each of my friends individually, of course, and time with each of them is uniquely precious in ways that aren’t interchangeable; but having several people who can meet similar relational needs “lightens or spreads out the burden”. If all my needs for sexual physical intimacy can be met only by one person who leaves it up to me to reach out & initiate all the time, this is an extremely unbalanced situation which would lead to a potentially very unhealthy relationship.

And there’s an additional factor, in my specific case now, that would make this unbalanced in a potentially unhealthy way: the urgency I’m feeling for sexual physical intimacy with this body that I have now. It’s not only that I’m haunted by the idea of soon not being physically attractive anymore, of having only this small window of time in which I can be physically attractive. It’s also a sort of curse that I feel needs to be redeemed or reversed for me: I got so much sexual attention and even so much sex when I wasn’t really myself, when I was forced to live in a body & within a whole identity that wasn’t fully me, that now I feel a desperate urgengy to balance that out and to make up for that “wasted time” or “thwarted, twisted intimacy”.

I feel a desperate urgency to be liked physically & sexually as the aro-ace nonbinary trans gay boy/man that I am. And it is this desperate urgency of mine that puts me in an extremely vulnerable, and potentially dangerous or unhealthy, position if I were to pursue a friendship with benefits with anyone who’s not going to make an equal, balanced effort towards me, reaching out and initiating.

This is the reason for my drawing that hard line with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up. This reason is vital for my well-being and I need to stand by my clear line, even if sometimes it can feel painfully hard.

The broken chain & the rings that remain

Monday, almost a week ago, was a “Big Day”. A day of “one big beginning and one final ending”, I wrote then. But it turned out to be a day of two beginnings.

For almost half-a-dozen years I had been wearing a silver chain around my neck with two silver rings on it that are very meaningful and precious to me. I never took this chain off except when I had to for practical/safety reasons like surgeries or MRIs. Like my tattoos, this silver chain with the two silver rings had become part of me, part of my body even.

On Monday night, the chain broke in my sleep.

On Monday, I broke a chain. A chain of patterns that I had been repeating for years, for decades, with my behavior in specific types of relationships or situations. These behaviors served me well for many years, they even saved me several times. But they are serving me no longer: on the contrary, in more recent relationships or situations, these patterns have led to increased pain for me (& maybe also for the other persons involved).

The ‘chat for shared closure for our “winter fling” / “attempted friendship with benefits”’ ended up being more of a heart-to-heart clarification with repair and intention-setting for the future. Whether we’ll be able to have an actual friendship moving forward remains to be seen and will depend on both sides’ availability (& his efforts), but that would just be a bonus, the icing on the cake. What matters here is that I finally broke that chain, I finally stepped out of a pattern that wasn’t serving me anymore. I turned around and knocked on the door that I had slammed shut as I walked away from yet another painful disappointment. And fortunately, this time, I found someone who was available/willing to open that door again — or keep that door open — for me. Someone who sat and listened to me and took all the shit from me, and owned it, and apologized. And at the end said, “I still like you and I would still like to see you, if you’d like to”.

Realistically, we probably won’t hang out one-on-one again because he will likely not reach out and I’m done making that effort. It’s the end of this particular relationship, but a sweeter end than most of the ones I’ve had in the past. And it’s also a beginning: the start for me of a new way of handling break-ups or disappointing/painful relationships.

When my silver chain broke in my sleep last Monday night, I was able to find the rings, fortunately, and put them on a thin leather band that I’m now wearing around my neck.

It’s the rings I want to keep with/on me at all times, not that particular chain.

It’s the sweet, shared memories and the possibility of friendliness that I want to keep with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up, not the chain anchoring me in my anger towards him. And having shared my anger with him, too, I freed myself of it and can now lightly & gently hold onto those shared memories like little gems, like my precious silver rings.

My painful longing to find a way into “Boystown”

I’m visiting Chicago for the weekend. And this afternoon I spent a few hours exploring the streets of Boystown, Chicago’s official (& the nation’s oldest officially-recognized) “gay quarter”.

I probably should have gone on a different day — I hadn’t realized there was an event going on which led lots of people to visit this part of town to tour many of the venues tasting the food & drinks & vibes, so it was crowded and felt “touristy”.

Still, I was able to enjoy it to some extent and satisfy my curiosity at least partly. But, as I often do in similar places/occasions, I also felt sad and lonely. I see all these queer people, mostly gay men, and wish I were really one of them, integrated into a friends group of gay guys all going out together for fun. I see these groups of gay men out together and I long to be one of them and I feel the clear, sharp pain that I’m not.

When it comes to gay men, I’m still the outsider, and I’m afraid I always will be, and this is terribly painful for me.

Conscience, or vocational, crisis

I’m at a quantum workshop & recruiting event at the University of Chicago theoretically “chaperoning” two students whom the program that I manage is supporting.

But I’m doing a lousy job. Because I’m too upset.

First, the restroom incident this morning started off my day very badly — for the thousandth time at events like this one.

And then, this afternoon, some students protesting for Palestine’s freedom disrupted the event — and I found myself agreeing with the protesters and feeling that I couldn’t put up with the quantum event any more. But the disruption was only temporary, then things continued as if nothing had happened. And, what’s worse, people in our audience acted irritated towards the protesters, some folks even sniggering or complaining.

My job is, officially, to help “build the quantum workforce” and my advisor & I are trying to focus on schools that serve underprivileged populations and students from groups underrepresented in STEM. So, at least on paper, it’s a “good job”, I’m one of the “good guys”.

But am I really?

As I see all these professionals, as I sat there listening to the panelists, despite them having been chosen from groups underrepresented in STEM like BIPOC and women, what I really see is all of us — including the latino and female students I’m accompanying — trying to play by the rules, or get a piece of the cake, of the white cis men in power.

Are we really doing DE&I, are we really trying to make STEM & Quantum more diverse and equitable, or are we just trying to make more people buy into, or play by the rules of, a colonialist capitalistic exploitative power system?

Is it going to be sufficient to bring more women & BIPOC into these companies to change the way things work or are we only perpetuating this colonialist capitalistic oppressive power system in a different way?

Battle for pronouns & restroom equity at CQE (University of Chicago)

STEM events, even in “liberal” or “progressive” places like the University of Chicago, are still very lacking and behind when it comes to restrooms.

When I got to the event this morning, of course name tags had no pronouns on them and the only way to get one’s pronouns on the tag was to write them by hand.

And the only restrooms that were clearly marked with explicit signs were the women’s and men’s — until I complained and a sign was put up to indicate the location of a gender-neutral bathroom (hidden on the uppermost floor in the employee’s wing)…

United under the Rainbow

This is my first time flying with my new Colorado DL/REAL ID, going through TSA with an ‘M’ (instead of ‘X’ or, previously, ‘F’) on my ID.

And it’s been wonderful for now.

Not because of the ‘M’ — after all, I’ve been “sir’ed” and “man’ed” when traveling through airports for at least a couple years now, at least since my top-surgery.

It’s been wonderful because of the brief but heartwarming connections I’ve made with three people — three men of color.

I’m wearing my three Pride wristbands (rainbow, nonbinary colors, trans colors) and a short-sleeved T-shirt, so the wristbands are evident; my T-shirt has a big progress flag on its front, right on the chest; and I have a small progress flag sticker on the bag that I am carrying.

The Black man who helped me at the drop-off for checked luggage saw my wristbands. He didn’t say anything about them and I’m not sure the nonbinary and/or trans colors meant anything to him, but I could tell he registered the presence of my wristbands. He and his Hispanic colleague “sir’ed” and “man’ed” me, of course, but then they also joked with me in a very pleasant, relaxed way from which a sense of camaraderie transpired clearly.

A short while later, as my security interaction with the young Black TSA agent was ending and I headed towards screening, he smiled and said, “I like your shirt. I like that it also has the brown & black colors in the flag”.

Such a completely different experience from typical TSA checks. Instead of the usual nervousness or detachment, all at once I felt this wave of connection, brief but powerful and heartwarming: not only did I feel seen but also, and maybe foremost, I felt that I had extended my hand — figuratively, thanks to the progress flag on my T-shirt — to a fellow human and allowed him to feel more comfortable with me.