The Little Prince and the Fox

What forms our consciousness? What gives us our sense of “self”? 

This question has always fascinated me, as it has thousands of people. Since fully realizing and wholly coming to live my non-binary trans identity, though, this question has acquired a deeper meaning, maybe more complicated and/or simply more personal. 

As I stepped out of the shower last night, I saw my reflection in the cabinet mirror: my head, my face, my neck and shoulders and the upper part of my chest, to just below my nipples & pecs. And I recognized myself. 

“Of course”, you’ll say, “of course you recognized that person in the mirror!”

But no, that’s not all I mean. 

I recognized myself more wholly than almost ever before. “I recognize this guy” was the thought that went through my head. And the feeling that went through my soul was, “This guy has always been there, has always been me”. 

Of course, I have always recognized myself in the mirror, as in superficially known who that reflection belonged to and who I am. Superficially. On the surface. Mirrors have always been reflecting my image back to me and I’ve always recognized “I as I”. 

But last night the recognition was deep, profound, as if the reflected image finally reconciled with my soul but also with the deep knowledge — a knowledge that went into the bones, a bodily knowledge, a knowledge that went beyond rationality and filled the soul — that this “guy me” has always been there, has always been “the true I”. 

I had a similar feeling almost a year & a half ago, when I went to my first post-op medical appointment after my gender-affirming top-surgery and saw my new (& still battered) boy-chest and blurted out, “Oh my god, that’s real me…! I’m really trans!” 

It’s hard to put such a complex and mid-boggling feeling into words… words fall short, inevitably. 

But it’s also intriguing… What is it that makes me, us, feel this way? 

What is it that makes me feel that only now, at last, the way I look on the outside (despite this temporary wave of dysmorphia) corresponds to how I feel on the inside? And, moreover, that this feeling on the inside has always been there, I’ve always known it, despite all the social conditioning and pressure to make it (& make me) otherwise? 

I don’t know, I don’t fully understand it. But I do know that this is probably the main reason that for me I am not transitioning. While I understand the choice and/or meaning of the words transition/transitioning (even etymologically) and respect whoever feels that way, that’s not my truth, not the truth of my gender-journey, or of my journey in general: for me, it’s about having “my inside align with my outside” and coming into my “self” wholly — but this self of mine has always been there. Which is why “I recognize this guy” when I look at myself in the mirror now, feeling that “this guy” has always been there, all along, no matter how I look(ed).

… Would my father ever have been able to recognize “this guy”, too? 

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

Sometime between tonight and tomorrow (I’m not exactly sure because of the 8-hour time difference) it’s going to be the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. 

I don’t really know how I feel about it. 

It seems so distant, almost unreal, belonging to another life.

All of last year’s days around this time — my father’s ultimate hospitalization, his last days, my tribulations both around him and with my European queer ex-lover, my last message to my father, reconnecting with my European queer ex-lover, my father’s death, the weekend grieving and being held by my European queer ex-lover… All of it feels so so distant, almost unreal. 

Is it because of my recent gum surgery and all the surrounding worries? And/Or all the other preoccupations or emotions or events in my life now and lately? Or am I generally feeling partly numb because of a light, generalized depression due to my having been injured and/or convalescent (& thus not in my regular work & exercise routine) for over two months now? 

I look at myself in the mirror now and don’t like what I see: unfit, with a skinny upper body and once again round thighs. Is it this — these symptoms of dysmorphia & slight depression from lack of exercise — that is numbing me now and making last year’s events and memories feel so distant, so unreal? 

Or is it simply how grief works, hitting us when we least expect it, like in May & June of this year rather than now? 

Or maybe this is an effect of the “refathering” & “reteenagering” I’ve been doing with myself, concretely for the past 3-4 weeks also by “repeated exposure” to an intense father-son relationship through TJ Klune’s books of The Extraordinaries series? 

I guess it is what it is.  

Grief is a wild, unpredictable beast and the fact that I’m not feeling it in a strong or acutely painful way today doesn’t mean that it won’t bite tomorrow — or next week, or next month, or next year. 

Or the next time I go to a Pride event with loving, open-minded fathers offering “Free Dad Hugs”… 

[Spoiler alert: details about the stories & characters in TJ Klune’s books “The Extraordinaries” & “Flash Fire”]

I’m devouring the book “Flash Fire”, TJ Klune’s sequel to “The Extraordinaries”. 

Once again, like with the first book, I cannot put it down because of living vicariously through the story, identifying very strongly — maybe too closely — with the main character. But there’s also the aspect of not being able to set the book aside for dozens of pages on end because I feel the need to get to the “good parts”: to the conflict resolutions, to the clarifications, to the situations in which everything is safe and/or going well. I need to be reassured that “everything will be alright”. Almost as if reading it in a book like this will give me hope that everything will be alright in real life, too… 

With this book, “Flash Fire”, I’m feeling it even more than with the previous one, “The Extraordinaries”. And I think the key, the sticking point, is lies. 

In the first book, “The Extraordinaries”, there were important things that were being kept from the main character Nick — e.g. his best friend Seth actively hiding from Nick the fact that he was the Extraordinary known as Pyro Storm — but there were a couple of aspects that made this “secret keeping” (or actual “lie telling”?) more acceptable, like legal “mitigating circumstances” in a courthouse. On the one hand, there were the “mitigating circumstances” of love & keeping loved ones safe: Seth had decided to use his extraordinary powers to keep his best friend Nick safe and had kept his alter ego as Pyro Storm hidden from Nick to protect him, so these secrets or lies on Seth’s part towards Nick were acts of love — or, at least, justified by love. On the other hand, it was so blatantly clear that Seth was Pyro Storm (in fact, the other close friends understood it on their own without Seth needing to tell them) and Nick is so irritatingly self-absorbed, that I couldn’t help but blame Nick for not seeing the truth all along. 

In the sequel “Flash Fire”, instead, while Nick still has the irritating tendency to be quite self-absorbed (a tendency which, unfortunately, I recognize in myself), the secrets being kept from him are not obvious, they would require conversations, explanations, and sometimes straight-out confessions. Nick is being kept in the dark about extremely important truths about his own self, his deceased mother, his father, and his Extraordinary boyfriend/best friend Seth/Pyro Storm. The two people Nick loves the most and trusts the most — his father and his Extraordinary boyfriend/best friend Seth/Pyro Storm — are keeping huge secrets from him and even lying to him big time. Moreover, these two characters who in the first book seem to be wonderful heroes are turning out to have dark sides that feel painful and/or disappointing in this sequel. 

I know this is just a story, these are just fiction books. But the topics addressed are very problematic and, I’m realizing, activating and almost triggering for me: secrets, lies by omission, flat-out lies, on the one hand; each individual’s freedom or privacy even in the closest and most intimate relationships, on the other. 

When is it OK to keep something secret from a loved one? How far does our care or wish to keep the loved one safe justify our keeping a big secret from them? Or maybe even lying to them? How much is a “lie by omission” a flat-out lie? And how much, on the other hand, does our own privacy and freedom, or the privacy of a third party involved, allow us to keep an important secret from, or even lie to, someone who’s very close to us, someone with whom we’re very intimate?  

These questions are extremely important, and even somewhat triggering, for me. 

I have lied to someone who was very close & intimate to me. Twice. Almost twenty years ago, the first time, and almost ten years ago, the second. In both cases it was “lies by omission” and I did it with the persons who at the time were my romantic&sexual partners in a moment when our relationships were in crisis and/or close to the end. I felt terrible about it at the time, it felt so much “not like me”, and I swore to myself I would never do it again (my partners never found out so I didn’t have to make any promises to anyone else). The reasons I kept those things from those partners at the time was mainly my (and partly our) lack of tools to deal with such situations: I lacked partly the language, partly the concepts, and partly even the courage to have those difficult or awkward conversations. Now, ten or twenty years later, I think I would have the concepts, the language, and the courage to face such conversations. But, as a recent situation with the transgirl with whom I broke up and this book “Flash Fire” are reminding me, being completely, wholly honest about everything isn’t always easy, especially when there are third parties involved. 

Where does one draw the line of one’s own privacy and/or freedom? Where does one draw the line of the third party’s privacy and/or freedom? How far can trust go? How far should trust go? 

There’s a line in these books by TJ Klune in the “Extraordinaries” series that reads “Sometimes, we lie to the ones we love most to keep them safe”. Is that true? Is that acceptable? 

I think these topics and these questions are so important, and even triggering, for me for two main reasons: childhood wounds that are getting reactivated, on the one hand; my being polyamorous and into consensual non-monogamy, on the other. And I guess the solution, at least partial, to these conundrums, is clear, open communication. Which doesn’t necessarily mean to tell each other everything always or everything right away: it means having conversations to agree on what we tell each other and what is OK for all parties involved to omit or “hide” or keep for themselves. That type of clarifying conversations and mutual agreements were the key factors lacking in the situations that caused my childhood wounds, in my “lies by omission” with my two ex-partners, in some upsetting or bothering situations with recent polyamorous partners (last summer with my European queer ex-lover and a month ago with the transwoman), and in the fictional stories by TJ Klune. In all these cases, the people involved didn’t have — or weren’t able to have — the necessary conversations to clarify the boundaries between “lies” and “personal freedom”, between “secrets” and “privacy”. 

Maybe keeping this in mind, having processed this here now, I’ll be able to continue reading “Flash Fire” just enjoying it as a pleasant work of fiction and not letting it get too much under my skin… 

I feel like I’m a mix between a teenage boy trying to figure out his queer-related conundrums and an adult going through an existential mid-life crisis. A combination that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone! 

As I’ve mentioned before, I feel like I’m going through puberty all over, a queer teenage boy trying to figure things out. Lately, though, I don’t even feel like I’m a sixteen-year-old boy, I feel so confused that it’s like I’ve regressed to thirteen or fourteen. While another part of me is an adult trying to decide what to do with their life, even from practical viewpoints like professional career and living situation. 

Going out last night threw me for a loop again so I need to parse things out a bit. 

I went to a queer club with an “acquaintance/loose-friend” (who’s also a non-binary transmasc person) and a few friends of theirs whom I didn’t know. 

In my head, my plan was to dance (which I really enjoy when there’s music I like), meet new people who might become new fun acquaintances and/or new friends, and immerse myself in a fun queer environment to explore my gay boy sides. 

Well, I basically achieved none of that. As I walked into the club and then out into the club’s patio and saw that most of the patrons were gay guys (the first Friday of the month, the biggest queer club in town has a “Ladies+ night” so the other clubs end up inundated by all the cis gay guys), I exclaimed to my friend: “Oh my god, there’s so many gay guys! I’m in heaven! … I’m so overwhelmed…”

And then the overwhelm took over for the whole rest of the night.

And that can feel like a debacle. But I can also learn from the experience and try to figure things out better for the future. 

In hindsight, I realize my expectations for the night were unrealistic and/or misplaced. And now I’m going to break it down (mainly for myself so hopefully I won’t make the same mistakes again). 

Point one: I love to dance but only to specific types of music that I like, e.g. rock ’n’ roll, rock, rhythm & blues, bluegrass, music from the 80s & 90s. If I want to dance to that type of music, I need to seek out venues & events where that music is played, not just go to a random (queer) club. 

Point 2: if I want to make new fun friends, i.e. meet people with whom I can just go out for fun & dancing, I need to really be in the mood for it, and in this period of my life I’m probably not there; I’m in more of a “monastic phase” feeling the need to maintain the well-established, safe, platonic friendships I already have or branch out specifically only in situations that might lead to “gay boy relationships”. Which brings me to…  

Point 3: if I want to try to understand & explore my gay boy sides and make gay guy friends, going to a gay/queer bar/club isn’t going to work for me, with my personality or, at least, with the place where I’m at in my life right now. Going to gay/queer bars/clubs like I did last week in Salt Lake City or last night can help me explore but only as an awkward-feeling-onlooker or outsider. I can basically do “exposure therapy” and shyly look around and in my head think about what types of guys I like and which I don’t, but that’s pretty much it. As in most big, crowded spaces indoors, also in gay/queer bars/clubs I shut down — unless there’s music I like and in that case I get totally carried away by the dancing and won’t meet anyone new that way either. I’m not going to ever meet anyone in these places, I’m just unable to. I end up either hunkering down behind the protection of safe friends (like in Salt Lake City) or getting carried away in my own little bubble dancing or else just shutting down, finding a quiet corner to sit, staring mostly at the floor or my phone (like I did last night): in all of these cases, what my body language is saying to the outside world is, I think, “Stay away from me” (which is maybe why no one ever approaches me or tries to make a move on me). So maybe there’s two different points here. On the one hand, going to gay bars/clubs and/or queer spaces in general can help me understand & explore my gay boy sides, or my queerness more broadly, but only as long as I’m willing to put up with my own shyness and feeling awkward, knowing and accepting without judgment that I’m like a very young & confused teenage boy as far as my own sexuality & gender identity are concerned right now. On the other hand, if I want to make gay guy friends, I need to go to other types of places/spaces/events: if my goal is true connection, I need to do things and/or go to places where I can actually meet and talk to gay guys. And with my personality, that’s not going to be gay bars/clubs.

My favorite book as a teenager was “Extraterrestre alla pari” by Bianca Pitzorno. 

I don’t even know how it turned up in our house… Maybe my parents found it or traded it in at some local library thinking it was a science-fiction book, from the title, and that I would thus enjoy it because of my love for science & sci-fi. I don’t know. Somehow, one day when I was fourteen or fifteen, I found this book hidden in the back of a bookshelf and read it out of curiosity, knowing nothing about it and also expecting it to be only about sci-fi. So what a surprise when it turned out to basically be a children’s manifesto of feminism and what could now be hailed as an “LGBT book” and/or a critique of the gender-binaries (& probably banned in many places here in the U.S. because of it)!

It’s the story of Mo, a teenager from Deneb, who spends a year as an “exchange student” on planet Earth, in an Italian household where the main/nuclear family is composed of father, mother, and twin siblings (a boy & a girl). The “alien” Mo & all inhabitants of Deneb look very much like humans, except for some “small” differences, some of them genetic (like the inability to tell a person’s sex on Deneb from external sex characteristics or DNA tests), some of them social. The main social difference is that persons on Deneb aren’t assigned any sex at birth: every baby is raised and educated and dressed and treated in the same way, regardless of their sex; when Denebians turn twenty, they go up a mountain where an old sage tells them their sex; and then they just move on with their adult life, free from the influence of sex having determined what they studied or what they chose to do or how they behaved or whom they loved. 

When Mo is sent to planet Earth, the host family is given detailed information about their guest: basically everything except for Mo’s sex. So of course, the first thing everyone in Italy asks themselves is whether Mo is “a boy or a girl” and the host parents put a huge amount of time and effort into trying to find out Mo’s sex (through “psychological tests”, “behavioral tests”, “genetic tests”, etc.) because that will influence how Mo will dress, with whom Mo will be allowed to play (the brother or the sister in the host family), how Mo will be expected to behave, etc. And throughout the book, the various tests performed on Mo give different results, sometimes “boy”, sometimes” girl”, sometimes “unknown”. 

I remember reading this book (twice) and feeling strong, mixed emotions: an intense yearning for it to be that way (like on Deneb) on Earth as well; a voice deep inside me crying, “See, I’ve always thought this, I’ve always said this, why don’t we do it already, why doesn’t anyone listen to me?!?”; pain, anger, hope; and, like now with TJ Klune’s stories, a sense of living my wishes vicariously through that book. 

Now, I have several friends or friends of friends who are having or have recently had babies and are not gendering them (even if the parents are in a cis-heteronormative relationship): they’re giving them gender-neutral names, referring to them simply as “the baby” or “child” rather than “boy” or “girl”, using “they” or mixed pronouns. I find this wonderful. It gives me hope — hope that at least in some areas we’re going in the right direction, towards a better, more equitable world. 

But sometimes, on days like today, that hope isn’t quite enough to lessen my own grief and pain and anger… 

[Trigger warning: some explicit references to body parts (incl. genitals) and body shapes.]

I wish I had been “born a boy”. 

Today this desire is almost excruciating, full of pain and of anger even (of course, I always feel angry when I’m hurt). Because I actually was born a boy but nobody saw it. Because I didn’t have a penis. 

Today, the pain and anger I feel toward society for putting labels on us based on the bodies, or body parts, that we have, are huge. (This goes well beyond gender and gender-labels, of course, into broader and deeper issues including ableism, fat-phobia, etc. I’m just focusing on the gender aspect because it’s the closest to my experience right now.) 

I’ve been off testosterone for a couple weeks. Taking a break from it, once again, because of issues with my body hair. Against my doctor’s prognosis, my body hair is growing in new places and/or getting darker & coarser in places where I already had some. And I don’t like this on myself (I have no problem with body hair on other persons!). 

Should I just stop HRT? At this point, I’ve got what I need for society to see me as a guy: my jaw is more square than it already was; my facial hair, albeit still light and fuzzy and present only in patches, is evident, especially my blond mustache; my voice is low and quite clearly masculine (except for rare occasions). And these details paired with a definitely masculine chest and boyish haircut are sufficient for people to put me into the “male bucket” with hardly any hesitation at this point. 

I don’t mind how I look and sound now. I actually like it. And I don’t regret in the least getting my masculinizing mastectomy: I really like having a body without any “appendages”, neither above nor below the waist — honestly, it’s so practical (e.g. for climbing)! 

But I hate the fact that this is what it took for the world to see me how I am, how I always was, how I always felt. For me, it’s not breasts or penises that make us a woman or a man or any other gender. For me, it’s how we feel inside. I’ve always wanted to get rid of, or at least ignore, my breasts as much as possible, just as much as I’ve always preferred short hair: because they are practical, they feel comfortable and easy to me. But I was a boy even when I had breasts or when I had a higher voice and no facial hair or less body hair. I was a boy even when I was born and the doctor (or nurse?) proclaimed me a girl because of my genitals. And not having had this recognized for decades is a huge loss and source of grief and pain and anger for me now. Because it influenced and shaped so much of my life, so many of my experiences. 

And I wonder if even the type of relationship I would like to have with (a) guy(s) now — being friends and bros and adventure buddies before possibly expanding it to the romantic & sexual levels — is something I’ll never have because of how I was socialized and because of all the years as a “woman”… 

—————— 

P.S.: (reflection) I guess one of the things I’m saying here is, that while the masculinizing mastectomy feels like something I would have done anyway, anyhow, once I was given the chance, HRT is something I felt/feel the need to do because of how our society works, in order to be seen by others the way I feel inside…

[Trigger warning for the first paragraph: grief, loss, death of parent.]

One year ago it was probably the worst 4th of July of my life: I was devastated by grief as I had just received the news that my father had been hospitalized for the final time and been given less than two weeks to live. Thousands of miles away, he lay dying in a hospital bed and would never know the true me. 

Two years ago was my first 4th of July as a Colorado resident and my second 4th of July here in Colorado (the first one having been the previous summer). I spent them both with friendly acquaintances who still saw me as a “woman” (albeit androgynous and/or boyish). The 4th of July of three years ago was the first that most of us were spending in company again after the worst of the pandemic and I had just started using “they” pronouns. Today, when I go to the community event hosted for the 4th of July by a local cafe later, I’m pretty sure I’ll be seen as a guy and referred to as “he”… 

In the space of three years, so much has changed that the world has in ways turned upside down for me — my gender journey being only one (albeit the most prominent) of the big changes. 

Two summers ago, as I was settling into my new State (Colorado), I was living temporarily in a big house by myself, part renting, part house- & garden-sitting. And I often felt so lonely that I had little attacks of anxiety. 

Now, after over a year and a half of living with housemates, I’m living by myself again, once again housesitting for friends. There are still moments of loneliness, especially in the mornings, but nothing like two years ago. 

Despite all my fear of a sad and lonely summer, moving out of my housemate’s place three weeks ago was one of the best things for me and probably just the right moment for me to do so. A year ago, it was a blessing to be living with my housemate and her son and partner. Now, I need space for myself. And as I relax on my solitary evenings going out by myself to listen to live music or traveling to visit other friends or immersing myself in a book, I feel a delicious spaciousness inside me. 

I feel that I am creating space — or letting space be created, letting space take form — inside me. 

I am letting my mind, my heart and my soul declutter. 

There’s been a lot of cluttering in the past year and a half. Some of it necessary or inevitable, like all the phone calls and appointments for the practical things I’ve needed to get done for my moves, my career change, my gender journey, and my injuries/surgeries; some of it forced upon me, like living in a house filled with someone else’s clutter; some of it caused by myself, as I’ve gone through periods of seeking out new connections to build new relationships, sometimes spurred more by loneliness or fear of loneliness than actual availability/need for connection. 

The clutter in my living situation is gone now, and this per se creates, or allows for, an immense amount of space — physically, around me. 

The “clutter” in my practical life around job-hunting, house-seeking, and medical issues is not over but I am managing to keep it at bay and put it on hold for a while. 

The “clutter” in my emotional life is the one I am most healthily getting rid of. I am not letting my fear of loneliness dictate the dynamics of my relationships. I value relationships, I treasure friendships and am intentional about them. But sometimes, especially after all the “departures” and moves and losses from the past several years, I seek out and try to hold onto more friendships than are healthy for me or hold onto relationships even when they’re not really working. I think that’s the main thing I’m learning not to do anymore. I am taking what feels like leaps of faith, sometimes scary, by choosing to spend more time by myself and/or by severing ties that aren’t serving me (or anyone) anymore. This creates emptiness, inevitably. But it is precisely that emptiness that is allowing for more healthy space, more space for me to actually listen inside me, to find myself more clearly and grow further — to slowly understand or discover who I am deep inside and what I want to do next (even from the practical viewpoint) with my life. And in this phase I realize that old, well-established, platonic relationships and/or male friendships are what feels comfortable and healthy for me now: people who really know me and whom I know well, without needing to explain too much or to put on some kind of “persona”. Relationships that are simple in their depth and established trust. That doesn’t mean they don’t require effort or intentionality: but for me it means there is a security in knowing where the effort & intentionality lie, and thus there is more space in my mind & heart to be able to be myself and grow into myself. 

When I am with these people and when I am by myself, I can actually feel the space within me, more space within me, as I can relax and breathe… 

————————–

P.S.: I’m not saying I don’t ever feel lonely anymore. I still do feel lonely sometimes — e.g. I wish I had close friends or partner(s) or family with whom to grill and watch fireworks today/tonight. But I also know this loneliness is partly due to social conditioning, partly due to my own attachment wounds, and probably also a necessary part of my own personal growth… 

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

[Spoiler alert: some details about the book “The Extraordinaries” by TJ Klune.]

Last night I finished reading the young adult fiction book “The Extraordinaries” by TJ Klune. 

I devoured it. 

I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable and even judgmental with myself for the way I’ve been not just reading but actually devouring young adult fiction books recently. 

Usually, I’m a slow, methodical reader. But with these books (three books from the “Greenglass House” series by Kate Milford; “The house in the cerulean sea” & “The Extraordinaries” by TJ Klune), I just cannot put them down, cannot set them aside, as I stay up into wee hours plowing through the pages and even skipping ahead to try and find passages that I enjoy more (like conflict resolution and/or romantic moments) and then go back to. 

It’s almost like I’m trying to live vicariously through these stories, especially through the ones by TJ Klune since they involve many queer characters in the main roles. 

Is there something unhealthy and/or concerning about my reading these books and craving these stories like this? 

Or am I, rather, doing some healthy and necessary self-therapy (e.g. reparenting/refathering and/or “re-teenaging” for myself)? 

Last summer, when I sustained those two huge, extremely painful losses, especially when my father died, my housemate (who is a friend of mine and also an experienced & professional psychotherapist) suggested that I pick some happy-ending young-adult fiction books to read, to help myself in my grieving process, to do some “refathering” and/or “re-teenaging” for myself. At the time, though, I wasn’t able to do it. But maybe the time has come and I’m doing it now…? Now, a year later, a year after those painful losses. And also now in a period of my life when somehow I’m trying to find my own way of being a gay boy, my own way of growing into a transguy, my own version of masculinity, my own flavor of queer. 

Maybe that is exactly what I am doing by reading these books, devouring these stories: I am “refathering” and “re-teenaging” myself. I am giving myself the opportunity to live, even if only vicariously and only for a shorter amount of time (months vs. years), puberty in the way I would have wanted it and couldn’t have it.   

In the book “The Extraordinaries”, in particular, the aspects & topics that pull at the strings of my heart are mainly two: the love story between the two queer teenage boys who have been best (platonic) friends for a decade; the difficult but loving and close relationship between the main character (gay boy) & his father. These are both topics that are extremely dear to my heart, especially because I feel I didn’t have these experiences that I would have wanted in real life when I was a teenager.  

While the relationship with my father is “lost and gone forever”, something I didn’t have and will never have, these books can remind me of some of the things that I did have, at least partially. Like the friendship & love story with my sailing buddy who was also my first serious boyfriend, my first “true love”. We met in the summer of 2000, when I was 18 & a half and he was 16. We liked each other instantaneously and had a summer fling but we also built a solid friendship (which lasts to this day). We were kids, both of us, and we loved each other with the intensity of teenagers, and particularly of teenagers who are misfits among their peers and have troubled households/absent parents. We were friends, sailing buddies, lovers, and in some ways even brothers. He’s straight and would definitely not have felt physically attracted to me if I hadn’t looked like a pretty girl two decades ago — that’s a true fact. But it’s also true that he never treated me like a girl. We played like boys together — our play encompassing many aspects, from sailing, to dancing, to sex. Even though I looked like a girl and he was attracted to me because of my female body, it never felt misgendering to me because we always acted like two boys who loved each other. The way we were there for each other, the way we loved each other, the ways in which we interacted were in many aspects similar to the relationship between Nick & Seth in “The Extraordinaries”. So maybe even if I didn’t have exactly what I would have wanted, because I wasn’t allowed to be (or wasn’t even fully aware of being) my gay-boy-self, I did have some experiences as a teenager & young adult that filled my heart & soul in similar ways…

So maybe these books will help fill that hole in my heart and then I’ll finally be able to live with my grief without being overwhelmed or hardened or dried out by it? And then maybe I’ll finally be able to be the adult that I’d like to be, an adult who is capable of loving (romantically) & being loved (romantically) unconditionally?

This trip to Salt Lake City has been extremely healing. 

I feel like I’ve found new pieces of myself — or maybe pieces of me that were already there have fallen into place more clearly, more coherently, with more confidence and peace. 

I’m feeling more at peace, more centered. 

Today I went back to the SLC Pride festival at The Gateway by myself after having been there yesterday afternoon with the two cis-hetero friends (& allies) who are hosting me. There were booths and stands and three stages with music, apart from food-trucks and drink stations. And so many flags, flags everywhere. I was particularly struck by the fact that the most prominent one, together with the Progressive Pride Flag, was the Trans Flag. In a similar way to last summer’s Pride events, once again I felt lots of intense, overflowing, and even contradictory or mixed emotions. But this year I was less overwhelmed by the emotions and was able to feel the nourishing ones more deeply than the ones connected to sadness or loss. And when I went back by myself today, I found the courage to go up to the “Dragon Dads” stand and asked for, and received, a “squishy bear hug”. It made me cry, of course, but it brought some healing — for all the hugs I would have wanted/needed and didn’t get (& will never get) from my own father. When we went by the “Dragon Dads” stand yesterday, I got very emotional and cried and my buddy from Ragnar (who knew the reason for my intense sadness) came and gave me a kind “side bro-hug”. 

It’s been very nice, and healing, to get to know my buddy from Ragnar better. I really hardly knew him, having spent only the Ragnar weekend together before this visit. But in the past nine days here we’ve gone on four runs, two hikes, and multiple walks with his dogs together. We spent a lot of time in silence but just as much talking openly about deep and intimate topics in the way that “good guy friends” do and it felt really nice. Very validating and affirming to me. And healing to both of us, I’m sure. 

Last night we even went out to a gay bar just the two of us. His wife was too tired from the afternoon activities so my Ragnar buddy went along to be my wingman. And that also felt wonderfully nice — and so new to me. In many ways, from the practical viewpoint, it could be partly counterproductive for me to go to a gay bar with a straight guy friend — I know this and actually my buddy & I joked about it yesterday. But still, it was fun and healing. We got drinks, chatted, and then even danced. And I felt more comfortable with the people and in my own skin in this type of space. I still had two little moments of panic when it seemed that someone was beelining towards me — I felt myself tense up and then relax as I realized that in both cases the guy was going somewhere else along my path. So there’s still work for me to do there, or room for growth, but overall I really enjoyed myself and felt quite comfortable (dancing outside in the parking-lot-turned-dance-floor like Friday night). And at the very end, just as my buddy & I were leaving, the DJ put on a remixed version of “Girls just want to have fun” by Cindy Lauper and I finally got to do what I had been wanting to do all night: I took off my gay-boy-tank-top and danced bare-chested! I felt a bit self-conscious but especially I felt super-liberated. And comfortable/confident enough to actually do it, even if for only a few minutes in a corner of the parking-lot-turned-dance-floor: I let my beautiful trans-gay-boy self dance bare-chested — Heck Yeah!

I discovered Cindy Lauper’s song “Girls just want to have fun” in my first year of college. I can still remember the sense of fun, liberating joy and almost ecstasy I felt then, listening to it & singing & dancing along to the song with one of my then-closest friends (who was a fellow Physics major and a sporty cis-girl). 

I still feel that sense of liberating joy every time I hear that song even to this day. 

The DJ played it last night. And on top of the usual liberating joy, last night I also felt a special trans joy hearing the song and dancing to it. 

I felt so trans and happy & proud of my “transness”.

There’s still a part of me that aligns to that song very closely, I resonate with the feeling of “girls wanna have fun” because there is part of me that is a “girl” and there probably always will be, especially when I dance. I don’t know what that means for me exactly, how that part of being a girl also fits in with being a gay boy — maybe it’s a “twink side” of me or my being non-binary trans. 

But it’s there and last night, with that song, it felt alive and joyful and proud again.