The Little Prince and the Fox

Today, my boy-chest turns 18 months old — or maybe I should say, or would rather say, 18 months young! 

Part of my celebration for it included going swimming at the local outdoor pool and letting my whole body, wearing only short, tight Speedo-like trunks, bask in the sunshine and revel in the water. 

I think swimming bare-chested, and letting everyone see me “topless” at the pool, is the most powerful and gratifying of the feelings since having had gender-affirming top-surgery — even more liberating and validating than climbing or running bare-chested. I don’t know why exactly, but there’s something that feels incredibly powerful and empowering for me to walk into (or out to) a swimming-pool and feel the water wash over my whole body with only a tiny Speedo in the way. Part of it has to do just with me, my body, my sensations; part of it, though, I’m sure also has to do with it being a public, and often relatively crowded, space. Doing it in front of other people feels more assertive than if I were doing it just by myself. And there’s also the transgressive aspect for me that is present at the pool but absent if I’m climbing or running bare-chested: wearing only a tight Speedo (unlike climbing pants or running shorts) makes my whole body very “clear”, almost as if I were naked: between the scars on my chest and the shape of my groins, it’s pretty clear that I’m nonbinary trans — and I love that. 

This confident, empowered, and almost challenging attitude, though, hasn’t always been there for me, within me. On the contrary. I’ve struggled a lot to feel this ease with/in my nonbinary trans body. And sometimes it still disappears, when I least expect it. Like two days ago with the physical therapist. 

I’m doing physical therapy to recover from my thumb injury. The forms and restrooms at the PT center only have binary options, so the way I present & the way people consider me there is very “binary masculine”. Despite this, I have also done nothing to hide tears during some of our sessions when my thumb was particularly swollen & painful, saying “I’m a boy who cries”, and I’ve also talked about Pride events. I think my physical therapist knows I’m trans, but I’m not sure. So I had this weird feeling there of almost having to “keep up a façade” — maybe because I still have that old fear in me that if I admit I’m not a cis-male, then people will start misgendering me again. On Wednesday, I needed to show the physical therapist a concern about my right shoulder & shoulder-blade so I had to remove my T-shirt: so for the first time she saw me bare-chested and therefore saw (or, at least, could have seen) the scars on my chest, i.e. what to me feels like the “proof of my transness”. And all of a sudden I felt terribly naked: I felt vulnerable, almost ashamed, scared of being “discovered”. The physical therapist (who is a very nice cis-woman) needed advice on my shoulder from a colleague whom she went to call into the room (after asking for my permission). Her colleague — a cis-man, I think — arrived and I felt that vulnerability, that shame, that fear all over again. With both of them I felt the impulse to cover my chest, to cross my arms over my scars. I didn’t do that but I could feel myself hunching, not standing as upright, and definitely not as confident, as usual. It was weird, almost painful, and very disorienting for me. 

So when days like today happen and I feel the ease and confidence of inhabiting and showing to the world my nonbinary trans body, I will soak in every drop of that glory.

Last Wednesday, I spent most of the day with a dear friend whom I had met in California during the pandemic. They were here for several days to visit their partner’s family and made time to spend a day with me. It was one of those “gems” although it started out with me bursting into tears only a few moments after my friend arrived at my place here in Colorado. 

We had never seen each other outside of California and even since I’ve moved away we’ve seen each other only a couple of times when I’ve gone back to California. So seeing my friend here, in my new home or “my element”, was very special for me but also overwhelming. Several factors contributed to my hypersensitivity at my friend’s visit: the fact that I’ve been spending so much time by myself this summer, getting used to and even basking in my solitude as it’s feeling comfortable and safe, but also getting unused to interacting with people, especially on a close, intimate level; my fear of loss since this friend would then be going back to California and I probably won’t see them again until next year, at the earliest; my fear of sharing deep, intimate feelings or thoughts or emotions with this friend, which is something we usually do, but then also having to put up with the separation; hormones (damn them!). We got over the hump, though, and had a very nice day together. And I think three main factors contributed to this, three factors that I see being common to other relationships that feel particularly comfortable and/or safe to me: firstly, my friend said explicitly that we needn’t go deep into emotions if I/we didn’t feel like talking about them; then, the fact that we spent almost the whole day, i.e. many hours, together; and last but not least, that for part of the time we spent together we did active things together. 

I think these are all key factors that I see also in my close, comfortable relationships with my climbing (or hiking or running) buddies. Unlike the artist friend who visited me last week, these people are cis-men so for the most part they were socialized differently and not really encouraged or taught to “sit around and talk about emotions”. That actually turns out to feel much more comfortable and safe to me. The three or four cis-male buddies who are close to me and I do talk about emotions with one another, but it’s always while doing active things together. And most of the time we meet up, we’re spending many hours together, often a whole weekend day together, or at least a few hours at the gym and then happy hour together. Thus, our meetings have come to have some sort of built-in ritual: meet up and often carpool to some place together (or warm up at the gym), which provides a warm-up or ice-breaker to our meeting & relating to each other (what I was feeling the need for when my artist friend visiting from California showed up at my front door last week); share an activity together that gets us into our bodies, which provides a bonding time whether we talk about emotions or only about the weather; cool-down, either literally stretching after the workout or figuratively by going to get food and/or drinks together. I need these steps: they help me ease into the relationship and then ease back out of it; doing something active together helps me self-regulate (and probably helps both me & my buddies co-regulate together), if we talk about deep stuff; and spending several hours and/or possibly a whole (weekend) day together feels meaningful because it’s such a concrete, explicit commitment taking so much time out for each other. (The trip I did for the half-marathon activism/protest in April with a couple of friends was also this kind of experience for me.) 

I don’t know what all this means about me, my relationships, or how I function. I realize I’m in a phase where I’m really dissecting the way I relate to relationships — or maybe looking at things through different lenses and removing the filters that are usually given to us for relationships. To a certain extent, I’ve done this my entire life, but I think I’m doing it much more radically now, also thanks to one of my non-binary European friends who is ace and the books on asexuality they recommended to me and that I’ve started reading.

At this point, I’m feeling very confused about how I function in, and relate to, relationships; so this is just a sort of flow-of-consciousness ramble about some of the things I’m noticing that work (or don’t work) for me in close/intimate relationships.

In the second half of the first book of The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune, when Nick & his best friend Seth are still grappling with their own “beyond-platonic” feelings for each other, there’s a very touching moment when Nick cannot help himself and blurts out to Seth, “You make my heart so full I think I’ll die”. 

I know that feeling. I’m fortunate to say that I’ve experienced it quite a bit especially since moving to Colorado. 

For me, though, this feeling is platonic. I don’t want to say “only platonic” or “limited to the platonic level” because those wordings seem reductive or discounting of the depth or importance of the emotions & relationships & people involved. What I mean is that in my case, at least with the people involved now, the feelings and relationships are undoubtedly neither romantic nor sexual. They are, however, of paramount importance. They have a depth and breadth, an ease as well as a solidity and a commitment to them that they often make my heart so full that it feels like it will spill over. 

It feels like there’s so much love that I don’t know where to put it. 

These moments, these feelings, these people — they are gems. (And I’m so excited that one of my “European gems” will be visiting me here in a few weeks and will be able to meet one or two of my “Colorado gems”!) 

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I was feeling so lonely that I felt my heart would break, would just crack and bleed. But then, unexpectedly, one of my “Colorado gems” reached out to ask if we could meet up in the afternoon — and we did, going for a dip in the creek (our first “post-op topless baptism in the creek” together!) and spending some very meaningful time together, talking and empathizing and enjoying the beautiful summer weather. 

This morning I woke up exhausted. I felt like I should just take advantage of the bad weather forecast to skip the hike with my buddy and stay home. But my climbing buddy (who doesn’t really like to hike and is doing it as a way to keep up our connection) was determined to take the risk of bad weather to attempt having a day out with me, so we went. As we’ve done before, we defied the weather (& got lucky) and had a wonderful time together — not just hiking: the hike, as beautiful as it was, was an excuse. The gem was our “bro-time” together: the flowing conversation; the comfortable silences; the sex jokes; the laughter — oh, so much genuine laughter! And, as my buddy called it, another milestone we hit: after the hike, we went to get a late lunch at a place that doesn’t take credit cards so we had to get cash from the ATM at the back; as I got up from our table out front to go to the ATM inside, my buddy gave me his card and asked if I could get cash for him, too; “Sure, but don’t you have a PIN on your card?” I asked; “Yes”, he whispered, “it’s ****”, and then he added with a smile, “Look at us! I think we’ve hit another milestone”. And it’s true: I know we have.  

I love these people. These moments with them, these gems, make my heart so full that it’s hard to find words for them — or, maybe, words cease to matter.

Another thing that I could feel, I could hear in the moment of clear semi-awakeness last night was the words “gay boy, gay boy — but what type of ‘gay boy’?” 

These two words keep coming back to me when I think of myself on my own and even when I describe myself to friends or close acquaintances that I trust: “I am a gay boy”. And to me this description feels quite complete as it encompasses both my gender-identity (mostly) and my sexual orientation (although the latter is feeling up in the air and controversial at the moment). 

But I don’t really know what it means to be a “gay boy”, a ”gay guy”. I don’t have any close friends who are gay men and I was socialized as a woman. So what do I mean when I define myself as a “gay boy/guy”? 

However, what hit me last night was more along the lines of “What type of ‘gay boy’ am I?” 

And this question has more than one facet for me, more than one layer to it. 

I could ask myself, and try to answer, like Nick in TJ Klune’s series of The Extraordinaries does, by exploring the lists of definitions of “twink”, “twunk”, “bear”, etc. That is one part of it, a part that I haven’t figured out yet and might want to explore or understand. 

But there’s also another side that to me feels even deeper. This is more along the lines of “What type of guy do I want to be?” Which is a question that has been prompted in my head, repeatedly, and brought more keenly to my attention, on one hand, by the loss of my father (& thus not having had a close “male model” available) and, on the other, by the conversations between Nick and his teenager friends in series of The Extraordinaries, particularly when it comes to how & why to use their extraordinary powers. 

Now, I know those are just books, and with a lot of fantasy, and that there’s no superpowers in real life. However, as I start appearing as a “man” to the outside world around me, I am somehow endowed by society (strangers, not my friends) of some power that comes along with being a white cis male. The fact that I am not, and do not feel like, a cis-man is partly irrelevant (to society at large, to strangers) since that is how I am perceived. So I need to ask myself: “What type of guy do I want to be?” 

It weighs on me. And it’s hard to find an answer. 

When we’re raised, we’re strongly conditioned and socialized to become either a “man” or a “woman” (at least, my generation and previous ones were). And when we’re growing up, we’re asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But what that question really implies to ask is, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”, i.e. who do we want to be only on the professional level, what career do we want to have, and maybe whether we want to have children of our own or not. We’re not asked what type of person we want to become. At least, I wasn’t prompted that way nor were my friends growing up. And now I find myself asking myself this question insistently, prompted mostly by my gender journey. 

I am terrified of becoming a “creepy guy”. And I’m also very confused about the meaning of being a “gay boy” in my case. And this fear and this confusion are often becoming paralyzing for me in social interactions. When I’m around my cis-male friends and only two or three of my very closest queer friends, I loosen up and let myself truly be “my whole masculine self”. But when I’m with (or talk to) any of my other (AFAB) friends, no matter how close or trusted, I find myself involuntarily “dialing it back”: my voice gets higher again, I try to soften my manners, my language changes. I’m afraid of being “too much of a guy” with them. And when it comes to social interactions in public, with strangers, I basically freeze. On Sunday, I went for a dip in the creek with one of my close cis-male climbing buddies and a cis-woman friend of his. I asked the two of them how they had met and they replied, “In a café”. I had to bite my tongue to avoid asking, “How do you do that??” Yesterday, I was spending time with one of my closest queer friends who was visiting from California and I told them about Sunday and asked them: “How the heck do people make friends and sometimes even meet sexual/romantic partners randomly in cafés? That seems to be something everyone is capable of doing except for me!” To which my friend reminded me that they & I actually became friends because I started chatting to them and offered to exchange phone numbers outside a swimming pool back in California during the pandemic. Yeah, good reminder. But there was a huge difference, which I pointed out: I looked like a woman back then and as such I had two advantages: on one hand, I had been conditioned and socialized for decades on how to behave in such situations so the interaction was performed following a clear, well-known, almost automatic script for me; on the other, presenting as a woman (even if personally/internally I mostly didn’t feel like one), I knew almost instinctively that I would not come across as a “menace”, I would not appear “creepy”. [I’m not saying this is right or wrong, or that it makes any sense.]

Now, everything is — or feels — super complicated for me. I wasn’t brought up (i.e. conditioned or socialized) as a “guy” and I’m only very gradually coming into this identity for myself, my gender journey having become clear to me only recently, after decades of suppression/repression. And I feel a lack of role models, at least partially. I have had many “surrogate father figures” who made up for the absence of my biological father in my life; and I have, and have always had, plenty of cis-male friends who are really nice guys, “good guys”. I guess these could be my role models, although none of them (with the exception of my European queer ex-lover) were/are gay. So there’s a lot for me to figure out right now, which is why I can relate to, and identify with, teenage characters so much now. And also why I keep insisting that this gender journey of mine is a “becoming”, a “coming into myself”, rather than a “transitioning”: I’m not “changing side” (as the term in a binary worldview could imply); I’m “becoming myself” — or, at least, I’m trying to. 

So, what type of guy do I want to become? And, as one aspect of that: what type of “gay boy” am I?

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

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

Last night I had one of the sweetest moments in a dream ever. 

In the past couple of evenings, the parts I’ve been reading in the book “Heat Wave” (the third book in The Extraordinaries trilogy by TJ Klune) have been very sensitive and particularly touching for me: one involving the main teenage character Nick and his father reliving the loss of Nick’s mother, grieving together, actually crying together and holding each other; the other being a very sweet, partly humorous, and explicitly detailed description of the first time Nick and his best friend & boyfriend Seth have sex. 

Last night, in one of those dreams where you’re half-awake, I actually saw and felt my current self sitting on the couch reading that book to my younger self, to the boy me, to the teenage me. Wrapping my arms around little boy me, holding teenager me.

It felt so, so sweet and so powerful but with that power that comes from sweetness, from love, from a calm, safe, tranquil strength. I can still feel it now.

And I’m crying now as I write this, tears pouring freely at last after days of what maybe was suppressed grief and/or semi-numbness. 

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…