Big little steps

Amid all the stress and difficult emotions of the past weeks, there have been some good moments, too, moments in which I’ve been able to relax a bit, counting on the shelter of friends, on their support, love, and practical help. And despite all the stress, I have also had a couple of moments of glee — pure, teenager-like glee — this week: it’s those two moments I want to record and share here now. 

Due to my various injuries over the summer I was often forced to train on the stationary bike at the climbing gym because that was all I could do. It was extremely boring — the death of the soul! — but I did get a chance to see lots of good (& good-looking) climbers working out. Usually they have just an athletic, and sometimes platonically aesthetic, appeal to me. But one of them sparked something different in me: I felt drawn to him in an irresistible, almost obsessive, way. Honestly, I think it was due to the fact that he reminds me of a mix of my European (gender)queer ex-lover and the Californian boulderer. Anyhow, I found myself looking at him more than I usually look at people at the gym and a couple times our gazes seem to meet for “longer than is usual for guys at the gym” (whatever that is or means). For a few weeks I was almost obsessed by the desire of getting to know him but I was also completely at a loss on how to do so, mainly feeling terrified about how I might come across to him — as a gay (cis)guy making a move on him and maybe sparking some homophobic reaction in him? as a weirdo with a strange body? 

For weeks I didn’t see him again so I eventually forgot about it. Until Tuesday. There I was, twenty minutes into my one-hour cross-training on the stationary bike, and he showed up for one of his strength/kilter-board workouts. I hadn’t expected it so I didn’t know what to do, but I did know that if I didn’t try and speak to him I would regret it a lot. So I kept going on my stationary bike, trying to focus on the workout and music in my ears, and texted two of my old friends who knew about this whole “teenager drama” and their replies helped give me the courage to find a way to approach him. The words of some of my local cis-het-male friends also helped, as they told me that, even if they wouldn’t reciprocate, they would feel flattered if a gay guy made a (respectful, non-aggressive) move on them. Plus, I remembered my closest climbing buddy’s words: “All you really have to do is ask him to climb — climbers are almost always happy to have a belayer — and you know he’s there to climb because you’ve seen him do it”. So, during the next forty minutes of my stationary-bike workout, I made two attempts to go and approach him at the kilter-board, but aborted them both as there were always too many other guys around: I just felt too shy, too self-conscious, even scared, to approach one specific guy amid a whole group of strangers and ask him to climb with me out of the blue. Honestly, I was also afraid that his response might be (negatively) influenced by the other guys present because of possible internalized homophobia. At last, though, he was done with his kilter-board session just as my stationary-bike workout was ending and he was walking in my general direction (going to the weights room nearby). So I stumbled off the stationary bike, still bare-chested and sweaty, fumbled with the cords of my headphones and cell-phone to turn off my music and sent my phone flying onto the floor as I did so — which, of course, caught his attention. I felt terribly embarrassed and self-conscious but determined to go through with it, so I walked straight up to him and blurted out, all in one breath: “Hey, I’ve seen you do the kilter-board a few times and was wondering if you’d like to climb with me some time”. There was a fraction of a second pause — I had already prepared myself for a polite “Thanks but no thanks” — but then he said, “Sure”. So I finally introduced myself by name and he gave me his phone number and told me to text him if I wanted to climb at the gym together. And fist-bumped me as a Good-bye — which is very typical especially among guy-climbers and has a very buddy/bro-y (male) vibe. 

The other moment of glee — smaller and more transitory but still valuable to me — came yesterday afternoon. Towards the end of my run along the creek I crossed paths with another runner/athlete: he seemed to be cooling down from his workout and was jogging bare-chested. His torso looked beautiful to me (in a platonic, aesthetic sense) and I found myself letting my gaze linger on it for a moment instead of having the usual forced/learned reaction of looking away “because that’s what you should do, especially as a guy”. And then I felt a smile forming on my lips, spontaneously, uncontrolled. I wasn’t looking at him and had no idea whether he noticed all that — I was in my own little world, in the flow of running on a trail and enjoying what to me looked like artistic beauty. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I was back at my car, sitting on the open trunk changing my shoes, bare-chested myself now to cool down. And the other runner walked by, wearing his T-shirt now, saw me, smiled at me and acknowledged me with a small wave of the hand that felt a little friendlier than the usual nod guys give each other as a form of general acknowledgment. 

What feels so good — and so important — to me about both of these interactions is that I was able to “just be myself” and not let the worries due to my internalized homophobia (& internalized transphobia) paralyze me or fill my head leaving space for nothing else. I was able to just be a person, a human, with other persons: I wasn’t being creepy, neither of them were being creepy, we were just athletes doing similar things and acknowledging each other’s presence beyond or despite the fear of being perceived as “a creepy guy”. I also find it interesting that on both of these brief interactions I lost a definite sense of my gender, and not in a bad way: to me, the importance of my gender fell away and it felt somewhat liberating while also bewildering. I’m pretty sure I was perceived as a guy, as a “male”, by both of those guys. But I didn’t feel like a guy, at least not wholly: some feminine part of me, the girl in me, was also present, although I cannot explain in what way; and there was definitely a teenager in me present in both interactions (especially in the fumbling and stumbling with the climber at the gym). But also, and maybe more than anything else, there was a gender-neutral, nonbinary, agender/gender-less me present in those interactions: I was just being me, not letting the worries of social conditioning block me. 

The beauty and power and importance of these two little moments for me stem from the contrast with the difficulties and confusion I often feel as I’m re-learning to behave with people around me in my “new appearance” or male presentation: this is what makes these “little steps” effectively “big steps” for me.

Regression?

[Trigger warnings: childhood trauma/wounds.]

Apart from the heavy sexual jokes and the feeling isolated because I’m unable to socialize with people in the chorus, the other big factor making me feel uncomfortable not only during rehearsals but even for hours and days afterwards is that I cannot recognize the person I become when I’m there: and I hate this. 

Despite my initial shyness in new groups and my being mostly an introvert, I am a friendly person, I have learned to make friends (or, at least, aquaintainces) quickly and easily in various settings, and have even become quite confident (or, at least, comfortable) within most groups and/or with strangers — the latter being something that has become easier for me as I feel and look more aligned to my true self. So this incredibly shy, skittish person that I turn into at choir rehearsal, curling into themself and unable to socialize or hardly utter a word, is someone I don’t recognize: it isn’t me. Or, rather, it hasn’t been me for years. But it used to be me in many circumstances years ago. That’s child me, me in elementary school, me in middle school, me in some groups of people where I couldn’t be my true self. This version of me that wants to be seen, yearns to be seen, but is also terrified of being seen because they feel they don’t belong is me from my childhood, me from the years I was forced into a “binary female role” that didn’t fit. 

That’s regresssion. 

It’s scary. But it’s also infuriating. And I believe that part of the fury I felt on Sunday night — I really “saw red”, wanted to throw stuff or punch something — is due to that: the re-emergence of feelings that hurt me so much, and for so long, in the past, in situations that I fought so hard to change and/or to leave behind me. And here they are again: those situations, those feelings, that version of me that I don’t want, that I don’t like, that I don’t deserve, that I fought so hard to liberate myself from. 

What is happening to me? Where is this regression coming from? What is causing it? 

“Daddy issues”

[Trigger warnings: explicit sexual references/language; childhood trauma/wounds.]

Once again, on Sunday I had an extremely hard time at rehearsal with the gay men’s chorus. I once again had a near-meltdown and then a tantrum afterwards. 

Some of the reasons for the difficult emotions were my own, partly even unrelated to the choir: my general burnout; the stress from my messy, piecemeal move; the renewed wave of grief, or anyway sense of an ending and loss, generated by my move — a clear, concrete indicator of another phase of my life ending, at least partially. So I wasn’t in the best place emotionally when I got to rehearsal on Sunday evening, I really just wanted to be by myself or with (a) close, trusted friend(s), not with a group of what are still basically strangers to me.The three men in the chorus to whom I had written my email earlier last week to express my concerns and difficulties as a newbie and who had responded in lovely, understanding and supportive ways were true to their word and came to find me during breaks in rehearsal and tried to make some conversation and even show some (maybe genuine) interest in me as a person. But I was in such a difficult place myself that I couldn’t fully appreciate that and their kind efforts to help me shrunk completely in comparison to the instances that hurt and upset me in the chorus: the fact that most of the other people still ignore me completely, including the ones I end up sitting next to during rehearsal; the fact that I can see most of the other newbies interacting and socializing with at least one person; and the jokes, the heavily sexual jokes. 

I can take sexual jokes, in a “reasonable” amount. Light sexual jokes, even the fallocentirc ones, with my cis-het buddies feel comfortable to me because I know they’re well-meant and their making those types of jokes around/with me feels affirming because it’s one of the ways that I’m included “as one of the guys” despite my not having a penis. But within the chorus it feels like too much. It doesn’t happen every rehearsal but I’ve noticed that the two or three rehearsals when it’s happened, I have felt more uncomfortable. Within the gay men’s chorus, when this “sexual jokes vibe” is present during rehearsal, it’s all about “coming in” and “coming on strong” and “top” and “bottom” and “bear”, and the sexual references have a very performative, fallocentric vibe that make me — as a person without a penis — feel extremely uncomfortable, left out. Those are the moments when I feel keenly that I am AFAB, feel keenly that sense of “So am I not part of this group because I don’t have a dick and don’t fit into any of your boxes of ‘top’, ‘bottom’, ‘bear’, or whatever else?” 

As I drove home (back to my buddy’s place where I was staying for the weekend) on Sunday night, the fury red and hot inside me, I found myself crying out, “I don’t know anything about tops or bottoms! I’ve never been loved by a man as a man!”  

There. There it is: one of the knots I’m dealing with and that have come to the comb (as the Italian saying goes, “tutti i nodi vengono al pettine”). That exclamation of mine compounds so many of those layers: first of all, the equation of “sex” and “love” — which, of course, are not the same thing. And then the images that went through my head in that moment, driving back on Sunday night, when I cried out, “I’ve never been loved by a man as a man!”: the images included some of my “boy-friends” from when I looked like a girl, my father, and my European (gender)queer ex-lover, i.e. the AMAB people I’ve loved the most, and felt betrayed by the most, in my life. 

There is so much more than just singing involved for me with this gay men’s chorus: there’s a huge onion with many, many layers. There are some outer layers, like my lack of knowledge of the “gay men’s world”, which are environments I’ve rarely been in; my being AFAB; my asexuality — all valid reasons for my feeling like an outsider. But there’s some deeper stuff going on here that I can see quite clearly but I’m trying to keep at bay. It’s a Pandora’s vase that I’m scared of opening… but maybe it’s been opened already — it was opened the moment I joined this chorus?  

Burnout

I’m burned out. Not as a figure of speech: I’m actually, medically burn out, i.e., if I went to a doctor with these symptoms, I would get diagnosed with burnout and have the right to paid medical leave from work (at least, in Europe). 

I tend to be a very energetic person. I had serious fatigue for months due to long-COVID (or a slow recovery from COVID) in 2020 and there have been other times when I’ve felt very tired and/or stressed. But this is worse. This is more — this is far beyond what I thought was possible to feel from the viewpoint of exhaustion. It’s not only physical (& even physically, it’s “massive tiredness”). It’s mental, mostly mental: I’m so tired and stressed that I simply cannot take any more, I can hardly think, I’m overwhelmed and beyond the limit of what I can take, what I can handle, what I can parse through. 

It’s terrifying. 

If anything else came my way now that required attention or to be dealt with, I don’t know what I’d do, because I simply have “no spoons left”. 

And it feels extra terrifying for me in this moment because I need that energy, I need that focus to job hunt: I’m unemployed and single and estranged from my family of origin, so I really need to find a new job to support myself, to pay bills, to pay rent, to pay for healthcare… 

It’s terrifying and exhausting — and I’m exhausted.

It’s not all on me

I’ve decided to write to three of the gay men’s chorus members with whom I feel relatively comfortable and who are in more leadership positions to voice my struggles in feeling welcome in the choir. 

I know that a lot of it is on me, due to my own impostor syndromes, internalized transphobia, shyness, and maybe even neurodivergence. But I also know that I’ve never struggled so much, for so long, within a new group of people. So it cannot be all on me. 

Encouraging, supportive words from my friends have been very helpful. Several of them have repeatedly told me, “You belong there. You have a good baritone voice and you’re a gay boy” or “You passed the audition so that shows you belong and they want you there” or “You can do this but you don’t have to do this”. My closest climbing buddy, when we were hanging out together before my first rehearsal with the choir a month ago and I was telling him how nervous I felt, said to me, “You’ve done the hard part: you passed the audition. At this point it’s on them: all you have to do is show up, be yourself, and sing; it’s up to them to make you feel welcome”. 

All these comments from friends are sinking in a little more and reminding me that even in this situation, as in all relationships, it’s not up to just one person (or one of the parties) to solve things or to expect the other people/parties involved to understand the issue without it being made clear and explicit. 

And that comment from one of the more established chorus members who said something like, “We need to help the newbies feel welcome. If someone is silent or sits by themself, we should reach out to them, talk to them: they might want to be by themself, and then we should respect that, but they might also just be too shy and need the encouragement to feel welcome” is not only really resonating with me but also making me realize that maybe it’s not “just me”…  

Baby steps forward?

Maybe there are some improvements for how I’m feeling in the gay men’s chorus. 

Once again yesterday I was a nervous wreck before rehearsal and feeling anxious and isolated during rehearsal to the point where it was a huge effort to even sing and I escaped to hide in my car during the halfway-break. 

There were some external, maybe even objective, factors worsening my sense of alienation yesterday: the lack of appropriate communication around the dance audition results; and the fact that there are three guys in my own section who are not simply passively ignoring me (as many of them generally are, probably because I’m so skittish) but actively ignoring me, e.g. they say Hi or chat with someone who is right next to me and maybe even talking to me and actually, almost pointedly, ignore me (one of these guys is the one from whom I felt an openly hostile vibe at the first two rehearsals). These instances don’t help, they actually fuel the fire of my sense of not belonging there. 

So why am I still there? Why do I keep trying, why do I keep doing this — apart from my desire to sing, which is sometimes hindered anyway by my anxiety there? 

Part of it is mere curiosity: I want to get to know the world of gay men. Part of it is a desire, or wish, to get some of my needs met there.

And there seem to be some improvements, too…  

My Big Sibling is getting more affectionate and a little more proactive in his support towards me: once again yesterday he came to find me before rehearsal started, caught my attention by touching me on the shoulder, gave me a hug (without my needing to ask), and asked how I was doing; he came to look for me during the break (but I had escaped) and then again as soon as rehearsal was over; when I told him about my upset around the lack of communication for the dance audition results, he offered to bring it up with the board on my behalf; he offered to room with me on the retreat in three weeks; he apologized for not being more proactive about reaching out to me in the past weeks (although I hadn’t said anything to him about this) and said he’ll make a point of touching base with me every Wednesday (we’ll see if that really happens!); finally, he asked if I still felt like going to the place across the street for drinks/food with (most of) the rest of the chorus and helped by introducing me to some people there (even if then the conversations fizzled). 

I was still unable to talk to anyone even at the bar except a few brief, sporadic sentences mostly with members I had met at my singing audition in August. And I did notice that many of the other newbies, instead, were totally integrated in some of the groups, easily talking and eating and drinking with other chorus members — that comparison hurt. I still have none of that ease. But maybe I will eventually get there…? I still feel the difficulties, and the differences keenly and yet I’m still going, I’m still trying… the small improvements keep the allure alive — e.g. the more proactively supportive behavior from my Big Sibling and his continued, spontaneous touchy-feely-ness with me, which I really like; the spontaneous hug that one of the other guys who had been at the dance audition gave me when we saw each other briefly last night; the few conversations or exchanges that I was able to have; and the free drink that I got from the gay bartender! 

I find it interesting that it is the older cis gay men who are being generally more proactive in trying to help me feel welcome & comfortable as well as more vocal with the other established members saying out loud things like, “We need to help the new members feel welcome. If someone is silent or sits by themself, we should reach out to them, talk to them: they might want to be by themself, and then we should respect that, but they might also just be too shy and need the encouragement to feel welcome”. Yes, I am one of those silent guys who sits by himself only because he’s too shy: it’s not that I don’t want to interact, it’s just that I need the extra encouragement from the established members to come out of my shell… 

The person with whom I spent most of my time chatting at the bar last night was the artistic director — which feels a little weird, almost like when I was a kid and the person I would feel most comfortable talking to might be a teacher. In this case, the situation isn’t that unbalanced (he & I are actually the same age) but still it isn’t the same as socializing with the other singers: he & I can’t really become friends, we couldn’t become buddies even if we wanted to. But he is the person with whom I feel most comfortable speaking and opening up, and I think he also genuinely enjoys talking to me and feels comfortable sharing some of his own vulnerabilities with me (e.g., his internalized racism because of being black, one of the very few persons of color in the chorus and in Colorado in general). Probably it’s largely due to the fact that I was very honestly vulnerable, like an open book, from the onset with him, from our very first conversations this summer when I was considering auditioning for the chorus. As a cis (gay) man, he cannot understand my gender qualms but as a black (gay) man, he can understand and empathize with my “feeling different” and my additional phobias due to my gender identity (on top of the homophobia that we probably all deal with). And I just find myself talking with him like I do with some of my closest friends — e.g. I shared with him how I feel uncomfortable around cis gay men partly because I don’t really know how they function and he laughed and replied, “Neither do I and I’ve been around them for decades!”

This natural ease I feel with him feels a little weird and a little sad because we cannot really be buddies, but it did help me: even if for only half an hour last night at the bar, I was able to loosen up and actually have a conversation and enjoy myself… before retreating back into my shell, rushing off to the bathroom, and finally leaving unseen… 

“Inkpot Gods”

Per Papá & für A***:

“

Oh, what? These, these aren’t tears

It’s just the rain that wasn’t brave enough to fall

And what they hear isn’t laughter, after all

It’s just your voice learning for once to stand up tall

And when the rain came down

I made a vow out to the dark

“Please, let her live just one more day

Cause she is so much more than all her scars

And if she doesn’t have the will

But it seems the whole world does, I’ll stay, because

I will be the man my father never was”

And what you hear is not silence

It’s just the trees waiting to hear what next you’ll hum

And what you see is not the dark

It’s just the gods upturning ink pots ’cause they know what you’ll become

And to those gods, I will speak bluntly

“We’ve an accord, if you ever touch or harm him

Please, rest assured that you might not fear a man

But to a woman, by the end, you’ll kneel and plea

‘Cause I’m more than what my mum told me to be”

And I can hear her sing

And I know she’s giving up

And I don’t know what to do, how to help her

How to bring her home

And I can hear him break

And he doesn’t understand

And I wish that I could take his hand

But where I’m going is for me and me alone

And I can hear her sing

“If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along”

“If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along”

“If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along”

“If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along” (loved you all along)

If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along

If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along

If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along

If I don’t make it back from where I’ve gone

Just know I loved you all along

“

[“Inkpot Gods” by The Amazing Devil]

Craving platonic human touch

I miss human touch. But I’m also terrified of it. 

I have similar contradictory feelings when it comes to the desire for connection with & interest from gay men. 

I think both of these contradictory desires of mine boil down to the same thing: I crave platonic human touch. I not only want human touch, I need it — I remember writing similar things a couple years ago when I was reading the book on trauma “The body keeps the score” that, among other things, mentioned the devastating and traumatic effects on humans from the lack of reassuring/comforting/soothing/safe/consensual physical touch. 

I wish I had more platonic touch in my relationships. Somehow, I feel I’m unable to get it, to even verbalize this need, partly because of my upbringing and the resulting fear that my desire for touch will be misinterpreted as “sexual”, and partly, I guess, because I am asexual & neurodivergent myself. 

When I met the “Big Sibling” that was assigned to me in the gay men’s chorus a couple weeks ago, I was relieved that he greeted me and introduced himself only by shaking hands with me (instead of going in for a hug like many of these gay men seem to do so easily right off the bat with each other). I was especially grateful when I realized that my “Big Sibling” is a touchy-feely person, which shows some sensitivity on his part for respecting personal space on our first encounter. The second time we met the following week, we both spontaneously gave each other a side hug when greeting each other, and that felt good to me. This past Sunday, after my debacle at the dance audition, I really needed platonic, reassuring human touch. So when my “Big Sibling” came to find me during a break and caught my attention by touching me on my shoulder, it felt good, and I spontaneously leaned in for physical comfort and asked for a hug — which I received. 

That’s the type of human touch I want, and not only when I’m upset and need to be comforted or reassured: I’d like more occasions of platonic human touch with friends or people I trust, and I would really like to be able to lean into and partake of the touchy-feely behaviors these gay men have with each other. But I also feel a huge block — shyness, embarrassment, sense of not belonging, fear of “sexual misinterpretations”. And probably I give off some message with my body language, like “Stay away from me”, without being aware of it. 

Part of the problem is also that I’m entering a world that I don’t really know, a world of which I don’t know or understand the rules, so I don’t know how to act or behave. And this is one of the things for which I would really need a “Big Sibling”, i.e. a cis gay man who will guide me through this world, like a brother, as I learn to navigate it. Which is one of the things that my European queer ex-lover did for me a year and a half ago… But it’s a while back, at this point, and it wasn’t enough: I only managed to get a glimpse of it and I still need more guidance… 

How do I solve this?

My internalized transphobia

I had another awful afternoon & evening at the gay men’s chorus’ rehearsal. Gone was all the euphoric gender-bending of the past few days; back was the internalized transphobia in all its visciousness.

Since the second week I have been going to rehearsals without wearing my two “statement wristbands” (the nonbinary-flag colors & trans-flag colors) and this has helped me feel less exposed. But today that wasn’t enough. 

Before rehearsal, this afternoon the dance audition was held and I tried out for that. I love to dance. I really do. It’s one of the activities that gives me the most joy — an authentic, non-performative/non-competitive, youthful, childish joy full of liveliness and glee and sensuality. When I dance, it’s one of the few times that I can really let go and not think, and really go beyond all genders, also tapping into (my) femininity with joy and pride. I enjoy dancing and I’ve been told time and again that I am a good dancer (& that often I look like a gay boy dancing). So I was expecting the dance audition to, at least, be fun for me. Instead, it was torture and I eventually left early — I actually fled. 

The dance audition was organized so that the dancers (ten of us showed up to try out) had to perform a choreography that was given to us then and there by a dance instructor. We had to learn it all together and then perform it to the instructor and chorus director in small groups. 

The feeling of not belonging started gnawing at me almost from the very first moment: I was the only newbie auditioning for dance and everyone else knew each other, not only from the chorus but also the dance instructor. So I was the only newbie, the only one who didn’t know the rest of the folks there, and the only trans person. The other auditionees were all of the more flamboyant feminine cis gay type and as we danced, instead of being able to tap into my own natural femininity, I felt (& probably looked) like I had swallowed a broom. Movements that are usually natural and fun for me when I dance, movements that I’m usually good at with music, like hip-swaying and arm-waving, just felt impossible to me. And it got harder and harder as we proceeded. Instead of loosening up, I tightened up more and more, feeling the panic rise within me, that sense of not belonging, of being different, of not being capable to do this. Two-thirds into the group audition, during a short break before starting to perform the second piece that I just couldn’t get my body to do, I left. I just couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t force myself any more — I had tried but it just wasn’t enough, it wasn’t coming to me. 

The transphobia is there, always laying ready in the shadows to pounce upon me and crush me. Or paralyze me. I felt like a deer in the headlights —  and reacted like one, too: first I froze (i.e. was unable to dance), and then I eventually fled (literally leaving the building and coming back an hour later for the normal singing rehearsal). 

The transphobia is there even if people are nice to me. During a little break we were given in the audition, some of the other guys who were closer to me introduced themselves to me and asked my name and included me in their conversation about the weekend (to which I was anyway unable to participate, my throat constricting and refusing to cooperate). They were nice, I could sense their genuine interest or willingness to include me. But during introductions, when I said my name, one of them asked me if I used “he” or “they” pronouns: a great question, a very appropriate question that should be the norm everywhere, a question that I usually wish people would ask everyone. And yet, there, it hurt me tremendously: I didn’t hear it as an appropriate question; I didn’t even register that he put the “he” pronoun first. What I registered was that he made the hypothesis that I might “be a ‘they’” and in my head that implied that he could tell that I am trans. And then the story in my head continued: if I’m trans, I don’t belong; they don’t like me because I’m trans; I’m unable to make friends here because I’m trans. And on and on and on…

Generally, in most environments and situations, I am open and explicit and proud of being trans, I don’t hide it, I often show it through the wristbands and even some T-shirts I wear. But here, I try to hide it at all costs. Here, in this gay men’s chorus, all I want is for people to think I’m cis or not know that I’m trans. Here, I’m constantly afraid that they might look at me, or hear me, and realize that I’m trans — and therefore not like me, not accept me completely. Here, I have a constant fear that the reason for my not making friends is that I’m trans. And that I’m too shy, that I’m unable to connect — like today, when a few of them tried to connect with me during the short break in the dance audition and I shut down, I couldn’t manage to really enter the conversation despite the interest they showed. I eventually fled. Will that forfeit my making any friends in this chorus for the rest of the season?

And especially: how can I endure the rest of the season this way, with this constant up-and-down of emotions, this constant fear inside me, this constant impostor syndrome and internalized transphobia gnawing at me, eating me up, shutting down my brain, freezing my body even to the point of constricting my throat so that on days like today I can hardly sing? 

Love vs. Romance

There’s a quote in a book on asexuality (by Caterina Appia) that I can relate to very deeply, a quote by Michela Murgia about what could be considered aromanticism. While Michela Murgia didn’t openly identify as an aro person, so neither the author of the book nor I want to describe her as aromantic, I can relate to Murgia’s words (from an interview for Vanity Fair) in my own aro perspective, i.e. her words seem to express very well how I feel as an aro person: 

Interviewer: “You never fell in love again?”

M. Murgia: “What does this word mean?”

Interviewer: “You tell me.”

M. Murgia: “If you mean that lightning bolt that makes your heart beat [faster], that makes everything else go blurry and focus only on that person, no, because I believe it to be a form of psycosis. I love a lot. But I don’t fall in love.”

For me, Michela Murgia’s words from that interview express — probably better than I ever could — what it means to me to be a “romance-averse” aro person (with absolutely no judgement towards people who feel differently from me).