The Little Prince and the Fox

Last night I attended a “masculinity group” organized by one of the bigger local non-profits that supports the LGBTQ+ community (& I am specifically using the reduced/reductive acronym “LGBTQ+” here, rather than the more expansive/inclusive acronym “LGBTQIA+”, because I believe that this organization, despite all the good it does, still has great shortcomings towards “I” & “A+” people). 

Only half a dozen people attended the affinity group last night, all of us transmasculine. And the overall atmosphere was very welcoming and comfortable. It was the first time I had ever been in a space with only transmasc persons and it felt really nice. 

However, an incident occurred that irritated me and hurt me deeply. One of the people in the group said, “before coming out as transmasc I was, or thought I was, a lesbian, like I think all of us here”. 

While I know many transmasc people did indeed “live as lesbians” in their “life prior to transition”, the above blanket statement contains two assumptions which are very harmful to me. 

The first is the blatant, explicit assumption that every transmasc person in the room last night had been, or identified as, a lesbian before coming into their transmasculine identity — which is probably the expression of an even broader (& wrong) assumption that all transmasculine people lived or identified as lesbians before coming into their transmasc identity. 

The second, less explicit but equally painful, is that everyone in the room was allosexual — which is also part of a deeper and more wide-spread (& wrong) assumption that we are all allosexual & alloromatic. 

Both of these assumptions are wrong, and they hurt me and anger me very deeply. The moment those words came out of the other person’s mouth, I felt totally alienated last night — alienated, invalidated, and invisible within what should be “my own community”, what should be a safe and inclusive space for me. 

I am a non-binary transmasculine aro ace gay boy. I never in my life identified as a lesbian and hardly ever was in lesbian circles (except for the rare occasions in which I hung out with my oldest friend & her soccer-friends, who were mostly lesbians). And on top of not being, and never having been, a lesbian, I don’t even experience sexual or romantic attraction toward any gender. 

I like being around guys, including cis-guys (which also feels like a “sin” in most queer circles outside of the gay communities), and I enjoy different types of intimacy with them but I’m neither sexually or romantically attracted to them — nor to anyone else.

Moments like last night’s blanket statement dripping with assumptions are painful and infuriating, and they remind me of how much work still remains to be done even within “our own communities”… 

One of the big themes in the book “Under the whispering door” by TJ Klune is the distinction between what we need and what we want. The meeting and love between the two main characters brings them (& one of them in particular) to articulate this explicitly around their relationship: how it brought him to realize “not what he needed, because that would imply he was lacking in some way, but what he wanted. Which is something people often don’t recognize the difference between.” 

I feel that this lonely summer and my having found words for my sexual & relational orientations as ace aro have helped me to better understand what I need in/from my close relationships and also realize that I often should express or explain those needs more clearly to the other people involved in the relationships with me. 

But are those needs or wants for me? Are those things that I feel I’m nor getting in my relationships things I actually need or things I “just” want? I instinctively call them needs. And I would argue that they are, indeed, needs since connection is a real human need: it’s a proven fact that disconnect, isolation, and loneliness impact our health very negatively. 

So is it my relational needs or “just” my relational wants that aren’t getting met and therefore are leading me to feel so lonely? And if it’s my needs, then does it mean I’m somehow lacking? Or, if it’s my wants, then does it mean they’re less important and I should “just deal with it”?

This morning was one of those mornings that I was woken up by loneliness, i.e. the feeling of loneliness was so intense and unbearable once my sleep was light that I had to get up, despite the lingering tiredness, to get out of my head, out of my heart, and into my body, to move, to act, to do something to keep the pain and almost anxiety at bay. 

The loneliness of this summer exacerbated by the lack of exercise and travel due to my injuries is taking a toll on me. 

Or maybe this specific difficulty today is the effect of the book “Under the whispering door” by TJ Klune. After blazing through most of the book, reading 50-60 pages per evening before bedtime this past week, now that I’ve gotten to the last 60 pages when reality hits, where “the end” is really near and incumbent, I cannot read more than a few pages at a time and even those are hardly bearable for me. The last few days before the ultimate separation of two people whose souls met, who love each other deeply but cannot be together, are probably still too much for me to read. They still remind me too closely of the two huge losses I endured last summer. 

And being so lonely here, now, makes it even harder. 

I do believe that this summer I have found, or rediscovered, and mastered some deep tools of self-regulation and capacity to just be with myself even without intense exercise or travel. Having been forced into loneliness and forced to inaction by external factors this summer, I think I have been able to cope with it and handle things much better that I thought I could. In that sense it’s been a growth spurt or a rediscovery of inner resources similar to the worst times of the pandemic in 2020-2021. It’s good to see I have these resources within me, this capacity. But it hurts nonetheless. 

It’s terribly painful and lonely. 

Sometimes the solitude is good. But overall this loneliness is really hard on me.

Yesterday I auditioned for a big chorus that was originally for gay men, and whose majority of singers still identify as such, but that is open to whoever can sing in the low vocal ranges (tenors, baritone, bass) regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. 

The layers of meanings that this audition had — and still has — for me is hard to put into words, hard to even parse. 

The three strongest emotions I can feel battling within me are a burning desire, a craving to join this chorus, to be part of this group, part of this community; the fear of what that might actually entail if I do get in; and the fear of not getting in which would lead not only to disappointment and sadness around not being able to join a community that I so much want to be part of but also a blow to my gender identity. 

That’s a lot. And as I write this here, now, I’m realizing that I might not be the only auditionee feeling this way, there may be others who also want to be accepted by this chorus because they need a sense of belonging and/or validation. I definitely do. And that’s why I put some much work (& hope) into this over the past couple months. 

I’m trying to brace myself for Tuesday, when we’ll get the results, for the most probable outcome that I did not make it. Because realistically that is the most probable outcome for me. My nerves still get too much in the way when I sing in public, actually tensing and constricting my throat and thus reducing my singing range. So my range sounds narrower than it really is, I can do less than what I could really do when I’m relaxed, at ease, like singing by myself or surrounded by other people/voices in a choir. I don’t mean this as an excuse for myself, to let myself off the hook, but as a reality of my situation as a transguy: because part of the restriction of my singing range, the one involving higher notes, comes from a deep fear I still have of being misgendered. I’m still afraid that if I allow myself to sing higher notes (even if they are “high” only in a relative sense), I’ll sound like a woman. I’m still afraid that if I allow myself to sing higher notes, I’ll hear my old voice again and I don’t want that. 

I said all this to the artistic director: I told him in our very first phone conversation in June and then again in a last-minute check-in call on Wednesday. On the one hand, I felt instinctively comfortable, at ease, and safe with him even in that first phone call; on the other, I figured I had nothing to lose by telling him. But still, I guess it took a good amount of faith in someone who’s basically a stranger and a willingness to be vulnerable on my part, which maybe is courage or maybe is just the only way I know how to be: “this is me, what you see is what you get”. 

I was terrified yesterday. I was nervous like I hadn’t been maybe since major exams in college. I literally panicked at lunch time, at home, as I was practicing again and suddenly felt I couldn’t do it, just couldn’t do it, and for a minute or two really considered not auditioning as I felt the terror of showing up and not being able to get a sound out of me or getting the notes wrong— or, even worse, of sounding like a “woman”. 

But I had to try, I couldn’t let this goal slide away, too. If nothing else, I’d learn. I told myself that even if I did get the notes wrong and make a mess of it, at least I would experience the first musical audition of my life and feel more relaxed the next time; I’d see what a musical audition is actually like (at least with this chorus); I’d get some feedback from a professional, who is also a very nice person with whom I feel safe and comfortable; and I could get confirmation of where my voice actually is in the musical range. 

I calmed myself down enough to go and I sang in my car almost the whole way there. I was still a nervous wreck when I got there and didn’t bother too much to hide it — I couldn’t have anyway even if I tried. I don’t know if I passed the audition, I don’t even know if it was considered a “good audition” from the outside. All I can say is what actually happened and how it felt for me. 

Once again, just as on the phone, the artistic director put me at ease, and quite wonderfully so. I was the first auditionee and in the general mess no one thought to bring up that I had prepared the part for bass voice; the artistic director began to play the song we had been given to prepare on the piano, humming some of the notes to me, and I just couldn’t do it, the notes were simply — physically — too high for me. And then, he realized he was paying the part for tenor voices! That little mishap at the beginning of my audition was a blessing for me and maybe one of the main things that actually allowed me to find my voice: I had the concrete proof that my voice was — is — in the bass range. And then I was able to sing. The artistic director played on the piano and hummed the part for bass, and I sang. I just sang. It started barely more than a whisper, but it shifted as I went along. Something in my brain, in my body, shifted. Most of the anxiety fell away, I forgot the details of where I was, I didn’t really see the third person in the room with us or even the artistic director anymore. I don’t even know if he stopped humming at a certain point and just played the piano as I sang. All I remember is that I found my voice and sang. I messed up a few notes a couple times, but I kept going, hearing my own voice clearly and faintly, in the background, the piano, registering it only as much as I needed to in order to keep time but not enough to distract me from my notes. It was only a couple minutes but it was like going through a little portal to another dimension for a short while. Then, I was asked if I had a song of my own that I wanted to sing, so I sang the first part of “Monsters” by CoCo & The Butterfields a cappella. And there again, it was like going into my own little world for a minute or two: eyes closed, keeping time by tapping my fingers on my stomach as I always do, just me and my voice. 

As I said before, I don’t know if I passed the audition yesterday. Part of it doesn’t even depend on how well, or not, I did personally but rather on who else shows up and how they do, and the musical needs of the chorus in terms of voices & ranges. But I passed an “inner exam”, an exam for and with my own self. First of all, I got confirmation that I can sing. I guess I had already got this confirmation when I sang in different choirs and groups back in Europe, but that was a decade ago at this point and I had a different voice then, and I guess the impostor syndrome coming from being told as a child that I couldn’t sing (“your sister is the one with the singing voice”) is still there. But no, I can sing, I can hold a tune, I can get notes and tempo right, I can recognize and reproduce notes. Secondly, and maybe even more importantly, I got confirmation of really being a baritone: a confirmation that is more of an affirmation, a validation, that despite all my doubts and impostor syndrome around my gender identity and voice, I actually, technically do have a low voice, a voice that is typically a “male voice” and that is lower than many of my cis-guys’. 

As much as I would be disappointed and sad if I did not get accepted into this chorus now, I want to try to focus on these facts, on these confirmations, affirmations, and validations that ultimately are little victories in my own journey.

Another step toward finding my own voice. 

I’m trying to make sense of this summer. 

It’s been — and still is — a very lonely summer. 

Three months ago I was terrified of what this summer might bring — all the loneliness, the grief, the sense of loss, especially given that I wouldn’t be able to do many of my favorite activities because of my UCL injury and gum surgery. 

It’s hasn’t been as bad as I feared. 

But it also hasn’t been as good as I hoped, as good as I tried to make it. 

When I learned, and finally accepted, that I wouldn’t be able to climb or ride my motorcycle (two of my favorite activities) for three months because of my UCL injury, I set out to give myself other goals, to make alternatives plans, including a half-marathon this weekend, my first full-marathon in October, and bagging fourteeners over the summer. But logistic obstacles have kept me from bagging fourteeners; another, recent, injury is preventing me from doing the half-marathon this weekend (one of the few with non-binary category and awards) and has actually kept me from running or hiking at all for two weeks now; and if this injury doesn’t get resolved soon, I won’t be able to do my first full marathon in October (a goal that means a lot to me since I’d like to do it while I’m still 42, before I turn 43 in November). 

The surgeries on my left thumb and gums, with their recoveries, and all the other old injuries flaring up now that I’m tackling with physical therapy have also kept me from traveling or exploring much. 

So many of the things for which I enjoy the summer, that make me feel so alive — the outdoor activities in the heat and sunshine and with long days of sunlight; the traveling; the exploring; the hanging out with friends outdoors and socializing — have been barred for me this summer. 

I’ve been spending most of the time by myself. Running between doctor’s appointments, doing physical therapy to try and get my body to not fall apart, making plans that then get ruined and fail. And I’ve been reading a lot. Reading tons. Reading like I hadn’t in years, devouring books, partly living vicariously through them (is that healthy?), partly finding myself reflected in them, finally understanding new or old parts of myself, finding words to define myself and describe the world more clearly. In that sense, this summer has been a summer of self-therapy for me. 

Maybe that’s what this summer is supposed to be for me, or what I can make of it? A summer of healing? Healing both physically from a multitude of injuries and mentally/emotionally from inner wounds? A summer of self-discovery, even while sitting still in this house, in this town? 

“Life is made of moments”, says the climbing buddy to whom I feel the closest. 

This summer has definitely had “moments” for me: like the ones in Salt Lake City visiting my Ragnar buddy; like the week when my European friend from grad school visited me here in Colorado; like the evenings out with my non-binary friend listening to local musicians play live; or the dip in the creek and walk&talks along the creek with my non-binary transmasc friend; or the dip in the creek and photo-shoot with my friend visiting from California; or the hikes in new places with my climbing buddies temporarily turned “hiking buddies” because of my UCL injury; or the solid presence of my neighboring running buddy. These were all beautiful, meaningful moments.

And there’s been healing. A lot of healing. I know it, I can feel it, some of it is still happening even now, I can feel it unfold within me.

But were those moments enough? Is this healing enough? 

Why is it bugging me, why does it hurt, that this is all I’m getting this summer? 

Now that I’m two-thirds through the book “Under the whispering door” by TJ Klune, I think I know why my European queer ex-lover gave me a copy of it last summer… 

One of the things they were trying to say to me was: “If not even death can separate two souls that connect and love each other, what’s a mere ocean between them — us?”

I’m aromantic and on the asexuality spectrum, yet I still identify as a “gay boy”, too. 

Does that make sense? 

Maybe this question itself is proof of the romantic brainwashing and/or compulsive sexuality in our socialization. I guess the affirming, non-gaslighting reply would be: “Yes, that totally make sense because it’s simply how you feel about your identity and you don’t have to find (a) reason(s) for it”. 

Yet me being me, I feel the need to find (a) reason(s) for this definition of myself, of my identity. 

Why do I feel like I’m a gay boy if I’m aro and ace (or gray-A)? Or what does it mean for me to be a “gay boy” if I’m also aro & ace? 

I think part of it is my presentation: overall I look & sound very masculine now — to the point that I hardly ever get misgendered anymore and it’s become totally surprising and shocking on the rare times I still am assumed to be a “woman”. But I probably have a “twink vibe” given my slenderness and relative lack of body/facial hair. And I often wear clothes and/or accessories with rainbows, trans-flag colors and/or nonbinary-flag colors: things that most non-queer men wouldn’t wear (except for maybe as allies at a Pride parade). So even if I could generally “pass” as a cis-guy, I have a “queer vibe” (which is intentional) and often the most easily assumed “queerness” with respect to a cis-guy is that he’s gay — hence my “gay boy” presentation. 

But it’s deeper than that for me. 

The truth is that, while I have and cherish friendships with people of all genders, I’m mostly a “guy who likes guys”. And by like I mean it without romantic or sexual attraction (on my part). I like to be around guys — and by “guys” I mean “nice guys” — I despise and try to eradicate toxic masculinity as much as any other sensible person would. I like to be friends with guys and I have at least a dozen nice guys who are (& many of them have been for years) important in my life and close to me. I like to have camaraderie, intimacy stemming from “good bro-time”, with my guy friends. I crave male adventure buddies. I also tend to like masculinity more than femininity in the aesthetic sense: I generally prefer to look at male bodies, find them more aesthetically pleasing to me. I enjoy the energy I feel when I’m around nice guys, I feel comfortable with the dynamics with them. And I’ve always felt that I wanted to be one of them, one of the “nice guys” — and hopefully now I am one of them. And I feel mirrored by them when I’m with them.  

These are the senses in which I feel I’m a “gay boy” while also being aro & ace. 

So yes, the mug I got myself at Salt Lake City Pride still feels appropriate to me — almost even more appropriate with the first line now feeling, to me, like a shout out of my aromantic asexual identity in that uppercase “A”. Now I can read that “Fuckin’ A — I’m gay” as a bold declaration of my aro, ace gay-boy identity!

I’m pissed. 

I wish people would stop suggesting I go to psychotherapy — or ask whether I have “someone to support mental health” — when I say I’m lonely. 

This type of response is inappropriate, especially because most of the time it comes from people who have almost all the privileges: mostly non-queer persons, often white, and always in amatonormative relationships. 

I don’t care how well-meaning this type of response is. It is offensive. Offensive and painful. It causes a “second” or even “third arrow” to the pain I already experience. It’s offensive because it only reinforces their privilege(s) and their amatonormativity and thus my painful condition as queer & non-normative person. And I’m sick of it.

No matter how well-meaning the suggestion of seeing a psychotherapist is, in reality it reinforces toxic, normative, and pathologizing attitudes. It sounds — or is supposed to sound — like caring advice but really it stinks of “go get fixed” type of advice or “pay to get what you need” type of solution. 

Love, companionship, community aren’t something you can get by simply paying for them: you can’t get those from a therapist or counselor. 

If I feel lonely because one of my oldest & dearest friends has gone back to Europe and I live by myself and don’t have amatonormative relationships, it is not me who needs to be fixed. It is society that needs to change so that everyone — including people like me, and not only non-queer and/or amatonormative persons — can feel welcome and happy and fulfilled in their relationships. And people who have the privilege to be in situations that lead them to not experience as much loneliness as I do should have the decency to refrain from their normative, narrow-minded advice. Instead, they should learn to understand that solutions to such deep issues do not lie simply within the individual(s) — and especially not within those who are already marginalized and/or oppressed — but within society at large. And they should use their privilege to actively help change society for everyone’s wellbeing.

From the last chapter, “Where are we going? Where have we been?”, of Angela Chen’s book “Ace”: 

“

Adrienne Rich wrote that compulsory heterosexuality rendered lesbian possibility invisible. It made lesbian possibility “an engulfed continent that rises frequently to view from time to time only to become submerged again”. It will take courage for straight feminists to question the natural state of heterosexuality, but Rich promises that the rewards will be great: “A freeing-up of thinking, the exploring of new paths, the shattering of another great silence, new clarity in personal relationships”. 

These are also the rewards of working toward ace liberation, because compulsory anything is the opposite of freedom. Ace liberation is a complicated term. Asexuality is not inherently politically progressive. Not everyone who identifies as asexual identifies as politically progressive, and that does not make their asexuality any less legitimate. But the goals of the ace movement are progressive, and the potential of the ace movement is greater than aces being more visible in the culture and more important than aces proving that, except for this one thing, we’re just like everyone else. As CJ Chasin, the activist, has said, aces push the envelope. Once it is okay for aces to never have sex, it becomes more acceptable for everyone else who isn’t ace too. Ace liberation will help everyone. 

It comes in rejecting sexual and romantic normalcy in favor of carefully considered sexual and romantic ethics. The meaning of sex is always changing and the history of sexuality is complex. Compulsory sexuality and asexuality have changed across time and space; they can, and will, change again. The goal, at least to me, is that one day neither the DSM criteria nor the asexuality-as-identity will be necessary. It will be easy to say yes or no or maybe — to sexuality, to romantic relationships — without coercion, without further justification, without needing a community to validate that answer. Sexual variety will be a given and social scripts will be weakened; sex will be decommodified. 

The goal of ace liberation is simply the goal of true sexual and romantic freedom for everyone. A society that is welcoming to aces can never be compatible with rape culture; with misogyny, racism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia; with current hierarchies of romance and friendship; and with contractual notions of consent. It is a society that respects choice and highlights the pleasure that can be found everywhere in our lives. I believe that all this is possible.

“

(I wish I had Angela Chen’s optimism right now…)

Along the lines of CJ Chasin, I would also like to add: “Once it is okay for aros to never have romance while still having deep, caring, committed relationships, it becomes more acceptable for everyone else who isn’t aro too.”

Most of the people I know have someone to go home to: a spouse, partner(s), housemate(s), child(ren). 

I don’t. 

That weighs on me. 

As much as I enjoy and even need a lot of time & space by myself, as difficult as it can be for me to compromise with other people’s schedules and/or needs on a daily basis, I would like to live with, or at least share more time with, someone compatible and close to me. 

I like to make space for (a) close friend(s) visiting me. I enjoy cooking and eating together. It feels comfortable and cosy to relax watching a movie with a friend at the end of the day — I’d rather cook and eat and watch a movie with a compatible friend/housemate instead of always do it by myself. 

I’ve learned to do things by myself, to “turn loneliness into solitude”, to “focus on my own goals to keep myself going”, but it’s not easy. It’s a big, almost continuous, effort — and sometimes it’s really sad and painful.