The Little Prince and the Fox

[Spoiler alert: some details about the book “Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe” by Benjamin Alire Saenz]

I’m reading the book “Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe” by Benjamin Alire Saenz. A novel about the friendship, bromance, and love between two teenage boys in El Paso, TX, in the late ‘80s. 

Usually I’m a slow reader but last night I couldn’t put the book down, I devoured over a hundred pages. 

I had started reading this novel a few months ago, when my housemate had just finished it and, having really enjoyed it, she offered it to me as a light, “sweet, heartwarming, and adorable” book as I was still feeling the sharpness of my grieving pain. So I started reading it then but had mixed feelings around it and when finally Dante tells Aristotle that he’s leaving at the end of summer, having to go to Chicago with his parents for the upcoming school year, it hit home too painfully for me — too recent of a reminder of the separation from my European queer ex-lover & their return to Europe in August. So I put the book down, on hold. 

In the meantime, I’ve healed and read many other good books, including “Queer Theories” by Donald E. Hall and most of the heart-wrenching novel “Giovanni’s room” by James Baldwin. 

Somehow last week I felt ready to start reading “Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe” again, alternating it with “Giovanni’s room”. 

Both of these novels are pulling at the strings of my heart very strongly and intensely now. They both touch upon, revolve around, one of the themes that I’ve been going back to over and over in the past three or four years: deep, close, intimate friendship, even love and romance, between two boys/men. 

I had to put down the book “Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe” a couple months ago because Dante reminds me so strongly of my European queer ex-lover, Dante is them and Ari is me. Just with a difference of three decades in age. 

What would it have been like to meet them (my European queer ex-lover) back then, as teenagers? 

But this novel doesn’t pull at the strings of my heart so strongly only because of the romance & love with my European queer ex-lover. It pulls at the strings of my heart in a bittersweet way also because it partly reminds me of my adolescence, of my being — or trying to be — a boy with the boys, of my bromances with my guy-friends. It also reminds me, though, of what I really would have wanted but couldn’t fully have. Because despite having deep, fun friendships with boys and being able to get close to them and be accepted by them almost as one of them, it was never quite like it would have been if I had been allowed to be a boy fully. It wasn’t my friends’ fault or a biological difference: it was society’s fault, a cultural problem. Actually, thinking back at the environment in which we grew up and were living our bromances, it’s really quite amazing that we were to able to get that close and somewhat break the rules, inadvertently tearing down the walls in our young, spontaneous way. And yet, I wish I had had more: I wish that our genitals had not made a difference. I wish I had been brought up in a world where only our spirit, our identity made a difference, and not our genitals (& ensuing sex assigned at birth). 

I wish I had been allowed to be a boy, to be a boy fully, to be my whole pansexual, genderqueer boy self, already in my teens (& later as a young adult, too). 

For some reason, the disconnect I had had with my deepest emotions for the past couple months became unendurable this past week. A mechanism that had been working, and even serving me well, for the past month or two, came to its breaking point — and so intensely that I almost felt like I was going insane, like there were two of me, some sort of “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde”.

On Thursday, in my 90-minute psychotherapy session, I finally reconnected with my deepest emotions, reconnected with myself, reconnected myself to myself. By allowing myself to feel the pain, the sadness, the sense of loss, the longing; by allowing myself to sit and cry; by allowing myself to talk more openly and explicitly again about my deepest loves, including, and especially, for my European queer ex-lover. 

This reconnection of myself with my deepest and most vulnerable emotions, of myself with myself, allowed me to bring even more compassion and empathy to work, to my students & mentees, yesterday — thus allowing myself to see my “better self” reflected in their eyes. 

And this morning, maybe for the first time ever, really, in my life, I woke up feeling love — true, deep, compassionate, unconditional love — for myself. And I must say, it is one of the most beautiful feelings I have ever experienced. And I think it comes from the love I’ve seen in the eyes of all the people who’ve loved me sincerely, compassionately, unconditionally, all the persons in whose eyes I’ve seen the “better, potential me” reflected — all those people, whether they knew it or not, taught me how to love, including how to love myself. So to them I am, and will always be, infinitely grateful. 

I’m a little worried that my non-binary climber/skater friend with benefits & I might have different expectations or levels of attachment — theirs being stronger than mine. I hope that’s not the case — and I need to clarify ASAP. 

Where I stand in this relationship, as with many of my closest & most meaningful friendships/relationships, is a desire or willingness to explore together, while still leaving each other plenty of independent room. 

For me, exploring together is a very powerful way to build trust with someone. It requires a base of trust to start with, that might even just be instinctive or an intuition at the beginning. But then exploring together, going on adventures together, is what strengthens the bond for me and builds trust. 

It’s always been this way for me: from my sailing buddy (& sexual/romantic partner) from over two decades ago, who’s still a close friend; to a dear friend with whom I went on a “fun girls trip” in the summer of 2019, exploring activities and parts of the U.S. that were new to both of us to help each other get over respective heart-breaks; to the little trips discovering new parts of coastal California and Southern Colorado with my dear friend from Iowa; to exploring art and gender through photography with my artist/swimmer friend in California; to exploring Pride events and queer clubs and sex and gender through sexuality with my European queer ex-lover this past spring & summer; to the exploration of emotions, thoughts, identity, and gender with many close friends here in Colorado and elsewhere; to the climbing adventure in Utah, driving through a snow storm and trouble shooting car engine problems with my closest climbing buddy a month ago. I’d like to be able to explore together with my non-binary climber/skater friend with benefits, too — do some trips together, both here in the U.S. and abroad, since we have similar traveling styles & desires; explore sex and gender though sexuality together; and simply, but also maybe most importantly, overall explore the possibility of having a very deep connection, a relationship that includes emotional closeness, intellectual alignment, sexual & romantic aspects without being in a standard relationship, being “royal chosen family” for each other (as they put it) while avoiding the “relationship escalator”, i.e. queering it together and thus building more & more trust. 

Is that possible?

Yesterday, I felt sad. A mixture of sadness due to some specific reasons together with a more vague melancholy like a blanket or veil covering everything. I’m still feeling it a bit today. And while it’s not fun, or pleasant, to feel this way, I am also grateful because I am feeling something, I am allowing myself to feel something other than the general “emotionless groundedness” dotted with moments of joy or anger/frustration that I’ve often been experiencing lately.

Lately, I’m often, usually, feeling empty of emotions. 

After all the turmoil and roller-coaster of emotions from the past year — discomfort and anxiety from the place where I was living (i.e. the person with whom I was living); fear and trepidation for my gender-affirming top-surgery; relief and joy in the new place I found to live and opening up to springtime, summertime, and life again; joy and love and excitement in the romantic relationship with my European queer ex-lover; and then also pain, sadness and anger related to them; grief and sorrow around my father’s final hospitalization and death; pain, effort, and anger around having to defend/protect my boundaries from some attacks coming from people I love — now I feel almost uncannily calm, grounded, centered. And often almost empty of emotions. Or far removed from deep/strong emotions and only able to feel “superficially”. 

Often now the only things that bring back strong(er) emotions to me are related to getting into my body, connecting with my physical self, through (intense) exercise, sex, music. In order to feel emotions, I need to set my body in motion… 

Is this a “natural”, “physiological” phase of sorrow or post-grief?

In the healing process that I have been undergoing over the past two or three months since this summer’s losses, I have often, albeit intermittently, been feeling a greater sense of “distance”, sometimes even “detachment”: from my deeper, most vulnerable feelings; from troubling memories; from some close friends. 

Can I really, in only a couple of months, have gotten over the grief of my father’s death and the pain of the separation from one of the greatest loves of my life? 

And why, when I talk to some close friends, do I feel such difficulty in expressing my emotions, a chasm, not between me & the friends — I’m aware that the friendships are still there, intact, solid, deeper and healthier than ever — but between me & my emotions, between me & the feelings I’m trying to recollect and recount to my friends? 

Is it the crazy busyness of extra work this semester? Is it a defense or survival mechanism in my own self to get back into the world, to function in this world without being overwhelmed or paralyzed by the grief? Is it my neurodivergence getting worse (can ADHD and/or ASD get worse?)? Is it the effect of HRT? 

I’ve heard from other transmasc people that testosterone can make one lose some connection to one’s emotions and/or make it harder to cry. I’m always extremely wary of any idea that “biological differences” (such as hormones or other bodily attributes) between “men and women” are the unavoidable cause for “men and women” being irreversibly “different” because it can easily lead to dangerous and toxic theories, like the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” crap, that underlie a lot of discrimination and stigmatization. Some differences are real and can be scientifically proven by rigorous measurement, but many differences are socially/culturally induced. I do, generally, feel more “grounded” on testosterone: there might be a “chemical” component to this, due to the hormones, but I’m sure it’s also, and probably mainly, due to the fact that I’m more aligned with my inner self now thanks to HRT. What I’m wondering now is whether this current “groundedness”, after the emotional turmoil I felt during the summer, is “real”, i.e. the result of having processed and overcome things effectively, or rather an effect or symptom of losing touch with my deepest emotions? 

For the past couple months, I have been feeling able to connect fully only with people whom I see or talk to very regularly or with my cis-male climbing buddies or with some old cis-male friends. With the former, we are aware of each other’s almost daily emotions and/or ongoings due to circumstances; with the latter, there’s a baseline intimacy coming from climbing camaraderie and/or “bro-type” dynamics, which feel partly new to me, partly familiar to me from when I was younger, and generally comfortable. 

Why am I unable to feel fully connected in other circumstances/interactions/relationships? Is some part of me keeping an instinctive distance to protect myself/itself from further pain? Or is so much going on, so much changing and evolving in me super rapidly, that it’s hard to convey all this when catching up every two or three weeks (or even more rarely)? 

While I do feel the need to stay grounded and function in my daily life, I don’t want to lose touch, neither with my own deepest emotions, nor with dear friends… How do I keep a balance?

Today’s ten months since getting my gender-affirming top-surgery… YAY!!!

Four months ago, at the half-year mark from my gender-affirming top-surgery, I celebrated it with my European queer ex-lover. It was our last long weekend together before their return home, to Europe. We went out for dinner to one of the places that had become one of our “usuals” for our Friday nights together, a sort of hippie, queer place that makes only vegan food. At the end of the dinner, my ex-lover surprised me with a gift consisting of one of my favorite, rare, dark chocolate bars and a little candle in the shape of the number “6” lighted as if on a birthday cake. And then we went to get ice-cream before finally heading back home (to their place). 

One month later, at the seven-month mark, I was in the deepest of grief and sorrow from their departure (& my dad’s death). 

And now, ten months after my gender-affirming top-surgery, it still feels weird sometimes, this new chest of mine… It’s almost a “Dr. Jekyll – Mr. Hyde” type of sensation: on the one hand, feeling that this was the chest that always belonged to me, the torso that I’ve always had; while on the other, still seeming incredible, almost unreal, that I actually have a boy’s chest now, and also having some “ghost limb” sensations sometimes. 

It’s not the first time that I’ve had deep, intense emotions related to my gender identity — feeling a deeper & broader sense of exploration, discovery, and understanding of my gender — through singing or having sex (both with other people, not just myself). But I hadn’t had either in a while and I’ve experienced both again just recently, so the feelings are fresh in my mind, in my body, in my soul. 

After the sexual intimacy with two non-binary friends this past spring & summer, the grief and pain from the loss of my father and the separation from my European queer ex-lover left no room in me for the desire of sexual intimacy with anyone. Throughout August & September I actually went through a phase where I could feel my body & soul rejecting the very idea of sexual intimacy with anybody at all. So when a couple months ago I asked my non-binary climber/skater friend if they wanted to come visit me for a few days in November, my invitation was coming from a place of mostly platonic feelings. Yes, this friend & I had already been romantically involved in the spring of 2022 and had slept together (in all senses of the word “slept”) during my visit to California this past June 2023; but we were both clear about not wanting to be in a “standard relationship” with each other, both on the same page about the platonic aspect of our connection being the most important & lasting one, and both in a phase of getting closer to each other, rebuilding the trust & emotional intimacy that we had had in our friendship prior to our breakup in May 2022. When we were planning their visit to Colorado this autumn, I still felt uncertain about my readiness for sex. But over the past couple months I have healed immensely, healed so much that it’s hard even for me to believe. And indeed, when my non-binary climber/skater friend arrived in Colorado, I was more than ready for sex. And being able to explore physical intimacy with a transfem person was/is not only a whole new experience for me but also a wonderful way for me to continue discovering my own gender identity. The masculinity that has always been there inside me and that had already started coming out slowly, tentatively, in previous instances of sexual intimacy with this friend and others, is now almost bursting forth, gently and consensually but with a spontaneity, conviction, and confidence that is still new for me (& for the boy in me). 

Something similar is happening with singing. I sing in a trans choir and this has been one of the most important ways in which I have been able to explore and gain confidence around my gender identity, specifically through the use of my voice — this part of our bodies, this instrument, that so often leads people to (mis)gender us and thus is one of the ways in which we can experience our own gender both within ourselves and in relation to the world. When I sing, my voice goes very low, lower or more easily deep than when I speak, and I love it. I love to hear that bass timbre that comes out of my throat, my chest. I love to feel the vibrations in my throat, my chest. And when I sing with other people, this is enhanced, it feels even better: apart from the wonderful sense of connection that comes from doing music with other people, which has always been there, for me now there’s also the additional aspect of hearing my “new” voice, this voice that is still changing, still developing, in relation, in comparison, to other voices, which are often higher than mine and thus enhance a sense of gender-affirmation for me. 

Throughout my life there have been, and there still are, many instances of gender exploration, gender expression, and gender affirmation for me through clothing/dressing and, more deeply, through exercise & physical activity. Indeed, activities like motorcycle riding, sailing, and, especially, rock climbing have been for years a vital way for me to explore, express, and affirm my masculine side even before I had the words for it. (And I know that having had these outlets, and the validation coming from these activities, helped me survive during all those years when I wasn’t allowed to be myself wholly.) Rock climbing is definitely the most consistent source of wellness/happiness to me, not only because I enjoy it so much as a type of exercise but also because of the gender-validation I get both from the physical aspects and from the “bro-connections” or “bromances” with my climbing buddies. But while this type, or source, of beautiful gender-affirmation for me is now quite regular (fortunately!) and also in some way familiar from previous experiences in my life, the kind of gender exploration & validation that I get from having sex/physical intimacy and singing with other people is relatively new and still somewhat bewildering to me in a wonderful way.

In one of my dreams last night I had a beard. Still in its infancy and very fair, a light blond beard, but clearly a beard. It’s not the first time that I’ve dreamt of suddenly having — or suddenly noticing that I have — a beard. And I’m always a little upset, or troubled, by the discovery. Having a beard isn’t really — or maybe “yet” — one of my goals. I don’t know if it ever will be. 

In my dream last night, though, I can remember myself thinking distinctly, when discovering the beard on my cheeks, “Well, I can shave it off if I don’t want people to see it”. It was more of a discomfort with respect to the external world than with my own self. I didn’t want to be perceived wholly as a man, as a cis-man. 

For brief, superficial interactions, like traveling, going through the airport, or out for dinner with my cis-male buddies, I don’t mind, I actually enjoy, being perceived as a man. But on the whole, in my life, in the connections and interactions that count and/or that last, it is important to me that my queerness, my “non-binary-ness”, my “transness” doesn’t get lost. In fact, in my dream last night, I thought or said explicitly to myself, “I can still wear feminine clothes for fun, if I ever want to, even with a beard, that’s precisely what queer is, what genderbending means and what I want to do. But it will feel uncomfortable, at least at first, out in the world.” [Probably these feelings and thoughts were, at least partly, spurred by my recent reading of the book “Queer Theories” by Donald E. Hall.] 

But regardless of the shyness or awkwardness that I might (eventually) feel when presenting (even) more queer and/or when genderbending, the certainty of NOT being a woman, NOT feeling that I am a woman or feeling that I am NOT a woman is stronger than ever. It hit me again last night, after my shower, as I was preparing for bed: I saw myself in the mirror and saw him, saw the boy. Yes, I was socialized as a woman because of the genitals I was born with and I can sympathize, even empathize, with cis-women on many points, especially in the STEM world. But I am NOT a woman, I am actually a beautiful, beautiful boy and this seems so evident, so clear, so blatant to me, that I cannot understand how anyone could see anything else, ever. This thought, this feeling, I realized, is always there for me, but last night after my shower, as I saw my reflection in the mirror, it was there stronger and more clear than ever. It was almost as if the reflection in the mirror had taken on a life of its own to say, to tell me, “I am a boy — here’s the boy that you are — how could the world ever have seen a woman or anything else here?!”

I’m at a work event at a National Lab for the annual meeting of the big scientific collaboration that funds my advisor’s grant that pays my research, i.e. pays my bills. I arrived Sunday evening, the meeting started yesterday morning, very early, and finished late yesterday evening, and again another long, tour-de-force day today. 

I’ve been feeling horribly uncomfortable the whole time. 

For many reasons, both personal and professional, I’m new to this meeting and hardly know anyone. Moreover, I’m one of the few people wearing a face-mask and I still feeling uncomfortable/unsafe in closed spaces with lots of persons so I often sneak outside during the breaks and other times meant to “socialize” around food (& thus unmasked). But it’s not just the fear of getting sick and the unsafe feeling around crowds that leads me to sneak out and seek solitude as often as possible. It’s also, and mostly, deeper and more complicated feelings, like the returning impostor syndrome, a feeling of not belonging here, of being “too different” and/or out of place. The fact that one academic acquaintance recognized me from a couple other interactions/events, remembered me and said “Yes, you asked tons of good questions”; or the fact that my poster, the poster presenting my research work done over the past year with my advisor and our student, almost won the best-poster award last night (the judges told me) — these facts don’t sink in. These facts that somehow prove that I am good at my job, that I am smart, that I do know science and am also able to communicate/present it well — all these positive facts don’t register for me, I don’t believe them, they roll off me as if they had never happened or had never been said to me. What sticks with me is all the things I don’t know, all the people I don’t know and all the barriers I feel in going up to them to start a conversation. What sticks with me is that feeling — that assumption which might even be wrong — of being the only or one of the very few queer person(s) here, of being the only non-cis person, the only person struggling to find a restroom where I can feel comfortable, the only person who feels alienated or othered. What sticks with me is the feeling of not being wholly American — or not being seen as such — but also of not being wholly European — there are so many Italians at this meeting and yet they don’t recognize that in me anymore, in half of my name, and I cannot speak to them in Italian because I wouldn’t know what gender to use for myself (Italian, as many other Indo-european languages, has a much more “gender-heavy” grammar than English). What sticks with me is how old I am to still be a postdoc or to be a postdoc again, over a decade after the failure of my first postdoc. What sticks with me is that the wonderful results I presented in my nearly-award-winning poster still remain unpublished — and are still unpublished because I cannot harness enough respect from our student running the simulations to prioritize this work and my advisor somehow blames me for the delay while not really putting pressure on the student. Where did I go wrong? How can I be unable to have enough authority both with our student and with my advisor? 

And then there’s all this toxic (male?) STEM attitude, this toxic dick-measuring between the “big guys” (including some of the women who’ve made it to the “top”). It’s awful. 

At the lunch break yesterday I was inadvertently rude to one of the (female) organizers. I had been struggling all morning with this sense of not belonging, of otherness & alienation, of impostor syndrome, of isolation. From the practical viewpoint, I had had my usual lack of pronouns on badges and bathroom struggle of not having an all-gender restroom to use. Then, at lunch I got to the food bar when all the vegan food was gone and there was only meat and salad (the latter with cheese) left. That was the last drop. I went to this organizer and asked, exasperated, if there was no vegan options. She said more food, including rice&beans, was on its way. I also vented with her about the restrooms. I truly didn’t mean to be rude, I was just exasperated. But somehow word got around to my advisor that I had been rude to her so he came and talked to me and I then went to apologize to her. This caused a deluge of difficult emotions for me. I felt awful for having been rude at her — at anyone. But I also felt attacked/threatened and misjudged for having been considered rude. And I felt humiliated for having been told off (& talked about negatively at the meeting). I apologized sincerely to the organizer and also tried to explain to her where my frustration was coming from; but while she seemed to accept my apology, she seemed to not be open to hearing my “human side” of things. So I dropped it and apologized one last time, thanking her for hearing me out. While I feel awful for venting with her and coming across as rude in the first place, which was simply wrong on my side, I also believe it would be important to understand where my frustration was coming from — not because it was mine, per se, but because I think it’s an example of how people who are othered/marginalized have a harder time to navigate the world and thus might “flare up” more easily (or shut down and hide to try and disappear). Her brushing off the reasons of my feeling uncomfortable felt like gaslighting. And while I know I shouldn’t have vented to her and I truly did not mean to be rude and I meant my apologies sincerely, I find it unfair that my venting for not having a restroom to use is not OK while a famous male or “macho-acting” scientist can have his know-it-all, dick-measuring, condescending attitude towards everyone around him without anyone criticizing him or asking him to apologize. On the contrary, everyone is looking up to him, considering him a “big shot” and trying to get within his graces. And by the way, didn’t anybody notice all these “big shots” going overtime with their talks and that the few women or non-macho-acting-persons presenting were also the few people meekly staying within the (short) time allotted them for their presentations? What the fuck?!