I was given a sieve when I needed a bucket

If my right wrist weren’t injured still, I’d be on a birthday climbing trip with my closest buddy. 

We finalized plans ten days ago and then I finally told him that I wasn’t sure how much, if at all, I could climb because of my wrist injury. It was hard for me to actually say this because I was afraid of losing what to me felt like “one chance of intimate time” with him. His response was to try and find alternative activites we could do in case I couldn’t climb. And then he made another suggestion: a rain-check for the climbing trip (even proposing some specific locations and crags) for when my wrist has healed and a hike & dinner for my birthday. He wasn’t bailing on me, he was actually trying to find ways to see each other while also having fun and celebrating my birthday. And on Saturday, he drove up to my town where we went for a beautiful hike in the snow and then he took me out for my birthday dinner and we discussed logistics for a winter climbing trip when my wrist has healed (& dodging holiday commitments). 

As I almost always do, I had a lovely time with him. So lovely that I then, like other times, needed a while and some intentionality to self-regulate “back to normal”. Self-regulate “back to normal” because our time together had been — as it almost always is — so intimate despite there being absolutely no sexual or romantic attraction between us. Self-regulate “back to normal” because he had shown me, concretely, so much care & love that I didn’t really know what to do with it, where to put it, how to hold it. 

This is a difficulty I have in general, with all my close friends: I struggle to let the care & love sink in, I struggle to hold onto it in a permanent way so I often end up feeling “unloved” or “not loved enough”. But it happens even more specifically with my cis-het male friends close to me in age. So I don’t really think this is a “daddy issue”. I think the problem is that I was socialized as a “cis-het girl” and thus taught to interpret love and/or care and/or attention and/or admiration from (cis-het) male peers only in terms of sexual and/or romantic attention/attraction from them. I fought this notion for decades, as early as elementary school, I can remember vividly. But still cis-heteronormativity along with amatonormativity have been polluting my brain since my youngest age. So now that I’m actually living my dream, i.e. of receiving love and/or care and/or admiration from (cis-het) male peers as buddies or comrades, on the platonic level, devoid of the romantic or sexual layers that I/we don’t want from each other, I’m unable to really hold that love because I was given a sieve when I needed a bucket.

Existence is resistance

I am queer. 

I am a transgender person. I’m nonbinary transmasculine. I’m gay but also asexual and aromantic. 

I’m polyamorous and believe in consensual non-monogamy as well as in a universally expansive definition or application of the term “marriage” as a union that can be formed/undertaken between two or more adult persons who care for each other, of any sex, gender, or sexual orientation (and that “care” can be platonic, doesn’t necessarily have to be sexual or romantic).

I am “pro-choice” where that choice entails anything and everything regarding one’s own body: contraceptives, abortion, hormonal therapy, gender-affirming surgery, euthanasia. 

I grew up in a family where almost every single thing I just mentioned about my identity and beliefs was considered wrong or, worse, “sick”, “to be fixed”, “to be cured”, to be changed or avoided. My mother and sister would tolerate gay couples in a patronizing way while also saying they would never allow them to adopt children; they were less gracious about lesbians. My father straight out said “homosexuality is against nature”, quoting the Bible (or, at least, some Catholic interpretation thereof). Marriage could strictly be only between “a man and a woman”. Transgender didn’t even exist (or wasn’t considered).

And now I’m living in a country where more than half of the population sees everything I am & believe in as monstrous — or, at least, endorses an individual who ignites hatred and encourages violence against anything and everyone who’s “different” or “other”. In a country where evidently more than half the population wants to be led by a man who, among other things, endorses limiting other people’s freedom of choice over their own bodies, over their own lives.

Let’s not forget history, horrifying events that are barely a few decades in the past, ongoing horrors in some unfortunate parts of the world even today against anyone who’s “different” or “other”. 

In other times and in some places even today I could not choose the gender-marker on my documents, I could not walk into the men’s room, simply because someone looked between my legs when I was born and decided I was a “girl”. But I will continue to use the men’s room, if I want to, and I will continue to put that Pride flag on my locker — in the men’s changing room — at the climbing gym. 

I am queer and I am here.

We are queer and we are here. Our simple existence is resistance. 

Sensory immersion: memories from a year & a half ago

Loud music. Deafening loud music in a hot room with dazzling lights. The air is stuffy but not with that musty, moldy stuffiness of old age: it’s stuffy from youthful life, exceeding life and sexual energy. It smells of sweat. Loud music and dazzling lights in the darkness, heat and sweat. It’s crowded, one can hardly move, bodies bump into each other while dancing, bare skin on bare skin. 

The cool air outside in the back patio is almost a shock. It’s not cold, not even chilly, really. Just cool and fresh – so fresh after the heat and sweat inside. People talk, almost in whispers – it feels so quiet. Silence – at least, relatively. 

And then back inside, into the crowd, bodies pressed together, sweat dripping down my forehead, my chest, my back. My tank-top and jeans are soaked – when I finally leave, in the dead of night, I can wring my dripping tank-top. The clean, dry T-shirt feels so fresh on my sticky skin. 

By the time we get home, to their place, the sweat has dried in the cool night air leaving a cold layer on my skin. The hot water pours down on my head, running down my body, cleansing and warming my skin. And then the smell of sweat is gone, replaced by a more neutral smell of freshness and cleanliness. 

I slip into bed, under the clean, white sheets, so clean they’re almost crunchy. They’re smooth and fresh, almost ecstatically pleasant on my skin. They smell nice, too. And so does my European (gender)queer ex-lover: we both do now, after our showers. 

The light is dim, soft, warm. The sheets are white and clean. My heart is pounding in my chest – “Darf ich näher kommen?” – “Ja, natürlich”. 

Their skin is so soft on mine – our skins are so soft – and so is their beard. And so are their hands as they lightly cup my chest, the scars, the breasts that once used to be there – as they hold my boy chest.

Horror

I’m in shock, in disbelief still. 

That’s probably just because I’m naïvely optimistic, to a fault. 

The brief moments when reality sinks in, I feel devastated.

Fear and fury. That’s what I — and many of us — are feeling now. Which is not a healthy or “normal” way to feel in a democracy. If the “other side” wins in a democracy, we shouldn’t feel devastated or afraid or furious. And yet, we do now. And rightly so. 

Feeling the end

[Trigger warning: end of life.]

The other persistent feeling that I’ve been having for a little over a year now (I can remember telling my swimmer/artist friend in California about it in September 2023) is of having reached my end, i.e. of having nothing left to do here, in this life, and it being time for me to go. 

I’m not feeling depressed or desperate. I just feel I’ve done, or at least tried, what I had to, what I was put on earth to do or try, and now time is up. Like the old wise ferryman Vasudeva in Hesse’s Siddhartha, who eventually walks off into the woods when it’s finally time for him to go, when he knows it’s time for him to go. I wish I could also just walk off into the woods… 

Papa’ e’ morto

[Trigger warnings: death of parent; losses; grief.]

The other persistent feeling of the past few weeks has been a stronger wave of grief due to a new, deeper realization of my father’s death. 

He died over a year ago and yet I don’t think I ever really grieved him. Apart from the first couple days right after his death, I hardly thought about it, I didn’t really realize that he’s gone forever. That I’ll never see him again, never talk to him again. That he’ll never know me — the real me — and I’ll never truly know him, either. 

I think that when he died last summer, at first the pain was too intense to bear and I was in shock; then, that grief was pushed aside and covered up by the grief around the painful separation from — and subsequent, permanent loss of — my European (gender)queer ex-lover. And then life — the need to survive, to get practical things done, etc. — took over. 

Now, the ending of not only a job but a whole career direction for me along with a more definitive move to a new, more stable house/living situation has allowed that old grief to resurface and actually be given some space. And it catches me in the most unforeseen moments — the sadness, the emptiness, the sense of loss, sometimes still the incredulity. And the tears — so many tears… 

My gender is a rainbow

In the past several weeks I’ve been feeling three sensations persistently. 

One of them — the bright, or light, one — is a liberating and profound sense of my gender being a rainbow, or maybe a kaleidoscope. 

I wouldn’t call it “fluid”, as in genderfluid, because to me it doesn’t feel like it’s shifting or flowing but rather more like a rainbow or kaleidoscope in that my gender contains all colors, all facets at once: masculine, feminine, boy, girl, everything that is in between but also beyond, neither masculine nor feminine, nonbinary — genderexpansive, genderneutral. 

It bothers me tremendously when people still refer to me as “she/her” or “m’am” sometimes — whereas “he/him” or “sir” hardly bother me. 

I like my more-masculine-leaning body but I also love that it’s really half and half or in between: masculine at a first glance but not wholly, if one looks closer. 

I love that my body technically is nonbinary, that my body itself contains and can express/show both the masculine and the feminine and also the neutral in its being a sort of “linear body”. To me my body looks mostly neutral and asexual in its lack of “external appendages” and I love it this way because somehow it represents me. And then I can bend this neutrality playing with presentation, often leaning more into the masculine but also rediscovering the joy and pleasure of mixing in some feminine. 

I don’t know exactly what has been bringing up, or bringing back, this sense of genderneutrality to me but I feel that at least part of it is due to three relatively recents factors or events that have brought it to my awareness more clearly now: being part of the gay men’s chorus; the brief (& awkward) interaction with the guy I like(d) at the gym; the half-marathon race I did & won in the nonbinary category a couple weeks ago. These situations have highlighted the non-binary & gender-neutral aspects of my nature to myself and I’ve enjoyed it. 

I like my gender kaleidoscope — and maybe I like it now because to the external world I look masculine…  

Precious weekend

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.

Grief and that unrelenting yearning

[Trigger warnings: loss, death of parent, grief.]

Ten days ago, the weekend I was staying with my closest climbing buddy and his partner, after my solo hike on Sunday I could feel this lump in my throat, this knot in my chest as I relaxed. Grief. Grief that needed to be honored and released. 

I put on the song “Inkpot Gods” by The Amazing Devil and the tears finally came: sobs. Sobs out loud and jumbled words in my mind related to a terribly painful yearning that will never be satisfied: the yearning for my father and for my European (gender)queer ex-lover, both tangled together.

A couple days ago, on Tuesday evening, with my body and mind relaxed after getting a massage from my closest nonbinary/transmasc friend who’s studying to become a massage therapist, as the song “Somewhere over the rainbow” by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole came on, I unraveled and the lump in my throat melted into sobs again. This time the only words going through my head were, “I want my daddy”. As my friend put their hand on my chest, on my heart, and held space for me, I didn’t dare utter those words out loud, lest they be too much for my friend — maybe too much even for me. But those words were screaming in my head — that child was screaming in my head. 

Yesterday I went on a hike in the mountains with my oldest climbing buddy from Colorado: our first long drive together, our first time spending many hours together and doing something different from climbing (because of my wrist injury). And as we were driving up into the canyon my buddy shared some extremely personal and vulnerable experiences and emotions with me, including the fact that this week had been the third anniversary of his father’s death. That allowed me to also share that I had lost my dad last summer, just over a year ago. My friend held space for me and then asked me how I felt about it. And I shared with him some things I have hardly ever said to anyone explicitly (other than some things I’ve written here and/or mentioned to my runner & former-neighbor friend). 

Last night I went to sleep feeling a desperate need to be held. 

This morning I woke up with a similar yearning. 

At breakfast, I told my housemate that I’m struggling with an unexpected return of grief and as they replied kindly I felt the wave wash over me again, tears welling up in my eyes, the lump in my throat and knot in my chest loosening up a little, until the tears started streaming down my face, almost sobs. And again that voice in my head: “I want my dad. I lost my dad and will never have him back again”.

Goddammit. Grief bites us in the butt when we least expect it. And to have this wave of grief washing over me now is really tricky — this is a very delicate state of mind & heart for me to be in for this weekend’s retreat with the gay men’s chorus… it puts me in a very vulnerable state and that worries me.