The Little Prince and the Fox

I’m feeling tired and delicate and fragile. 

I feel a desperate need to relax, to let go completely, almost melt, but unable to do so. I can never fully let go. Never ever. 

I’m not even able to get restful sleep.

I’ve been having recurring dreams with looming dangers and threats in them for several months. The latest two were early this morning and early Friday morning. 

They seem to be dreams of two types with common themes but different types of threats. 

In one type of troubling dream, the threat comes from above, literally from the sky. In one very memorable dream, it was the full moon in plain daytime spinning on its axis before plunging into the bay in front of me. In most of the other dreams of this kind, it’s jet-planes falling from the sky. The commonalities in all these dreams, apart from the very evident danger falling from the sky, is that I’m there with many other people, all or most of whom are strangers, and we’re always near a sea or ocean or bay or beach. Also, although the danger is always very real and imminent, in these dreams I’m always able to save myself or get myself to safety or we’re all spared, at least for the moment. And it’s always daytime in these dreams.

In the other type of troubling dream, the threat comes straight at me in the form of a person — usually a cis-man — who wants to kill me. There’s often a weapon (e.g. a gun) involved, sometimes a vehicle instead (car, motorcycle, attempting to run me over). In these dreams it’s always nighttime and it’s just me and the person trying to harm me. Sometimes there are other people or figures, strangers from whom I try to get help, but they are somehow less relevant or more removed than in the other type of dream. In these dreams, too, I survive — or they end before I know how they could end up. And of course, these dreams always leave me feeling very unsettled, sometimes even deeply shaken, afterwards. 

Another commonality between these two types of dreams with looming threats is that there’s often a component of lucid dreaming to them. Usually, after a while, I realizing I’m having a dream of this type and I start controlling it, trying to save myself, as if I were a film director making a movie — in fact, some of the ways in which I save myself are similar to the far-fetched ways in which the super-star of action/sci-fi movies save themselves in dangerous (& improbable) situations. 

What are these dreams trying to tell me? What is my subconscious trying to tell me through these dreams? By what or whom do I feel so threatened? Who or what is threatening me from above? And what about the men trying to kill me? Is that (my fear of) the masculine part of me taking over the whole of me? Or my fear that to the world only the masculine part of me will be what is left to be seen, thus “killing” the other parts of/in me?

My climbing buddy brought up this favorite phrase of his (again) on the weekend of my double anniversary celebration at the end of January. I think he meant it in an uplifting way when he said it as we stood around chatting after having gone out dancing at the queer club. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this phrase, “Life is made of moments”, since then. 

As much as my buddy says it & probably feels it profoundly, he does have a level of deep continuity in some aspects of his life which seem important: he’s had the same job and the same romantic/sexual/nesting partner for almost a decade and they have been living together in the same part of the world (this area of Colorado) for almost a decade. This is some major continuity that almost seems at odds with his phrase, “Life is made of moments”. Or, if it’s not at odds, it at least lends some counterbalancing stability & continuity to the ever-shifting nature of the idea that “life is made of moments”. 

In comparison, I feel that my “life has just been made of moments”, with no real stability or continuity, for years now. No continuous career, no stable living-place, no long-term romantic/sexual/nesting partner(s) for years. 

Am I just drifting? Or it this such a deeply-set part of me & my identity that all I can do is come to terms & make peace with it? 

I keep coming back to this fact, to the two sides of the same coin that seems to define me & my life: the need & search for freedom, independence, exploration, adventure, and change, on which I thrive, on the one hand; the sense of fragility and lacking any form of continuity or stability, on the other. Does the pain or fear or self-doubt or self-judgement connected to this latter side, leading to a desire for some form of continuity or stability, arise from some other deep part of my identity or is it instead due to social/cultural conditioning that is toxic for me (because not aligned with whom I really am or how I function)?

I discovered the term, or acronym, “MSM” in the book “Erotically Queer” edited by Silva Neves & Dominic Davies. 

“MSM” stands for “Men who have Sex with Men”. 

It was coined with the intention of making it as comprehensive and inclusive — and as such, hopefully, less stigmatizing — as possible. It is meant to include all “men” who have sex (in whatever form or definition) with other “men” — straight men, gay men, bisexual and pansexual men, including cis-men, trans-men, and non-binary persons who have/feel/express a strong masculine part.

I like it. 

I like that it is so general and all-encompassing, as it feels inclusive towards myself, too. 

And I like its “matter of fact” wording: as such it becomes a neutral, judgment-free expression of acts or facts or preferences or events. 

It doesn’t matter whether one is — or identifies as — straight or gay or bi, cis or trans or non-binary. If someone feels and expresses some level of masculinity and has sex (in whatever form) with someone else who feels/expresses some level of masculinity, they have a term, a phrase they can use to describe it. 

It gives me, too, a phrase to describe it, to describe one of my identities, an important and strong aspect of myself, and maybe one of the parts of me/my life that has been present & consistent for the longest time, a part of me that has been there with continuity. Which in a “life made of moments” is significant. 

One of my closest climbing buddies says that life is made of moments. That’s one of the first things on which we resonated and connected when we first met in the summer of 2022, the idea of there being some special, beautiful, meaningful moments in life, often brief and all temporary by nature but important and intense — ”gems”, we call them. 

For the past couple months, my life has been quite full of such moments — important, meaningful events that feel extremely intense and seem to last forever in the moment itself but then are actually gone — like a comet. It’s been feeling more like a meteor shower in the past couple months. It’s been an ongoing, incessant, often self-generated stream of intense and/or meaningful but brief moments of this kind. Most of them associated with positive emotions; but some also feeling very difficult and hard. 

Today, I’m drained. Totally drained: physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. 

Maybe this incessant stream of gems has gotten the better of me. Maybe now I’m just feeling the harder parts and unable to tap into the brighter ones. 

I think I’m still feeling the harder emotions from discovering, a week ago, that I won’t have a job after this summer. I can only feel the worry and disappointment, the sense of loss and confusion and disorientation, or numbness, shutting down, but none of the excitement or hope or relief. 

I think I’m also drained from the recent forms or dynamics of my social interactions. For the past two weeks they have been mostly for work, with acquaintances, new people and/or persons with whom I don’t have a deep or familiar connection. In some cases, that deeper, more familiar & relaxed connection might come later — hopefully will come later, especially with the two people I’ve started “dating” or “seeing”. But that deeper, more comfortable connection isn’t there now so, while it is fun and exciting to be meeting new people and having such an active social life, it’s also draining. Especially because I haven’t been able to connect enough, neither in person nor on the phone, with my close friends, with the persons that I know well and feel comfortable/familiar with in a relaxed manner. I need those closer, deeper, more familiar and relaxedly comfortable interactions: those friendships and interactions nourish me. I’ve been missing them, feeling the reduction in those interactions, in those types of connections over the past couple weeks.

And now, after a sleepless night full of bad dreams, I am feeling really drained, like there’s nothing left in me and all I want to do is cuddle up & be held — or head out into the desert by myself for a few days. 

I need to find a way to re-nourish myself, or to let myself be nourished (again).

In so much of my life I’ve gone through so many shifts and changes but the ones I’ve been going through in the past 3-4 years, and especially the past couple years here in Colorado since really embracing and jumping into my ”gender journey”, have been more intense, more mind-boggling, more stark, and more rapid — almost so continuous that’s it’s hard to keep up with it all. 

The world around me feels like an ever-changing kaleidoscope: dizzying and bewildering but also colorful and beautiful. And, at least to a certain degree, in my own hands. Maybe I am the one spinning this kaleidoscope to turn the world around and see it in different shapes, in dazzling colors. 

As my gender expression changes, the way the world around me behaves towards me and/or reacts to me changes, too. But also, as my internal gender identity changes or, rather, as the level of self-knowledge & confidence & awareness in my own gender identity increases, my way of relating to the world around me, of building and pursuing relationships changes. 

The dynamics with my cis-male climbing buddies is becoming more and more platonic while also getting stronger. I do believe that both they and I are getting more and more used to, and maybe comfortable with, my being “one of the guys”: that’s my “bro time”, my “bro space”; we climb together, plan/go on climbing trips together, and change in the men’s room together. I’m finally getting the closeness and intimacy and camaraderie with nice cis-men that I’ve yearned (& sometimes had) my entire life without having to be sexual or romantic with them. 

On the other hand, I’m finding myself to be sexually and/or romantically attracted to non-cis-men more and more, and maybe exclusively to queer persons. For the past couple years at this point, I have been consistently attracted (in a sexual and/or romantic way) to people who are queer and most of the time specifically gender-queer as well. And genderqueer people with more feminine energies but not exclusively feminine (regardless of anatomies). 

I think different parts of me — and specifically different aspects of my masculinity & gender-fluidity & being non-binary — are coming out and being expressed within these various spheres of relationships. With my cis-male climbing buddies, it’s the strongest and “toughest” parts of my masculinity; I’m just a “boy with the boys”, “one of the guys” in that space, almost fully to the masculine end of the spectrum (while still being happy & proud about not being a cis-man!). With my platonic gender-queer friends, there’s more of a rainbow of identities of mine that come out, spanning a wider range of the gender spectrum. And specifically, with the gender-queer people with whom I interact romantically and/or sexually, there’s still a lot of my masculinity finding its expression, but in a different way than with my cis-male climbing buddies. Within the romantic/sexual gender-queer interactions, the part of my masculinity that comes out is a complement to their feminine energy, rather than being “on the same wavelength” of my buddies’ “bro-ness”; in some ways it’s gentler, or calmer; and it’s also less far on the male side of the gender spectrum, a little closer to the non-binary or gender-neutral center, leaving more space for my own gender-fluidity as well as the other person’s gender-fluidity. 

In both spheres it’s a new way for me to relate to people and to experience how people are relating to me: it’s a new way of relating to & being treated by cis-men as well as a whole new world being around other gender-queer people. 

Colorful and dazzling and ever-changing, like a kaleidoscope all around me — or is this kaleidoscope inside me?

It’s been a tough week, it started really roughly on Monday, and I’m struggling with difficult emotions now. 

The aspect of shock from being told on Monday that my contract could not be renewed has subsided, leaving space for the other emotions: disappointment, sadness, worry, anger. 

One of my close friends asked me on Tuesday if I felt let down by my advisor. I wasn’t sure then. Now I know: yes, among other things, I am also feeling let down by my advisor. And abandoned or neglected or rejected by the whole department/institute where I’ve been for almost two years now. I sense a painful confirmation of an undercurrent feeling that has been there for a while now: I feel undervalued, not valued enough, not really seen for my full & real professional (& human) potential. And this is hurtful, disappointing, painful. I feel sad and hurt but also angry about this. 

I’m also feeling sad and angry because I’m pretty sure this was my last shot at a career in academia and I blew it. And it’s not wholly my fault: I wasn’t really given all the chances or means to grow professionally, I feel that I wasn’t fully supported in this position. And this is additionally hurtful and disappointing for me because it was my last chance in this field. 

Additionally, I’m feeling angry and hurt and disappointed because I don’t think I’m getting the support I would deserve specifically as a non-binary trans person. And I feel this lack of support both from my employer and from the medical establishment. 

On the one hand, professionally, I believe that if I had had more “common” medical issues such as needed parental leave or needed extra care/leave to recover from child-birth related issues or if I had needed time-off for mental health reasons, I would have been given more slack and/or my relative “unproductivity” would have been understood & accepted. But as is, nobody really understands (or accepts) that what I have been going through in the past couple years is so hard and can be so crippling that it does impact one’s life, albeit temporarily, even on the professional level. 

On the other hand, I realize time and again that I’m often not getting the best care, or really careful care, from the medical establishment. “Trans medicine” is understudied due to biases in the medical/scientific establishment (one example of many scientific biases, unfortunately). But on top of that, I believe I’m not really given the whole picture of options or solutions for my medical issues related to gender identity. The latest example is “ablation”. Since the beginning of my “medical gender journey” I have always made extremely clear to all my physicians that I identify as non-binary, more towards the male side of the spectrum but not fully as a “man”, rather more like a genderqueer “boy”. Thus, I’m not interested in bottom surgery (I’m actually very happy to not have a penis!) and body-hair feels just as dysphoric to me as breasts did — and I’ve always made this clear to the physicians treating me. Hence the low doses of testosterone for my GAHT. One of the consequences of this is that I still bleed and get my period randomly, anywhere between every 2 to 8 weeks. Which is frustrating and can be dangerous for one’s health (chances of endometriosis, among other things). So when I discussed stopping my period/bleeding with doctors, the options I was always given were either hormonal (using “female” oral contraception, i.e. “female” hormones) or hysterectomy. Both of these alternatives are totally unacceptable for me, for important & serious reasons. So the only other solution presented to me to reduce/stop my bleeding was to increase the testosterone which in turn increases body-hair growth. Exasperated by bleeding every 2 weeks, I increased my testosterone GAHT in January and promptly my body hair started growing so fast & coarse & abundant that I got gender dysphoria and stopped GAHT — which in turn has affected my mood, of course, because probably the estrogen produced by my ovaries is taking over again. Only yesterday was I finally given another option to stop my bleeding: “ablation”. A simple, easy, safe surgical procedure that would not only stop my bleeding without the need to increase my testosterone but also make me sterile (YAY!). 

Now why the heck wasn’t I given this simple option, that aligns so well with my medical needs & gender identity, sooner???

[Spoiler alert: several scenes and topics of the movie “Mutt” described in some detail.]

Last night, I watched the movie “Mutt”, recommended to me by one of my genderqueer transmasc friends. 

My only qualm with this movie is that in two distinct moments it gives a clear but wrong message that getting on testosterone as GAHT for AFAB people can eventually serve as birth control. This is untrue: for AFAB persons who keep all their “female” organs, testosterone alone will not be sufficient, or reliable, or safe birth control — as any responsible physician will tell you!!! 

Other than that point, I think the movie is excellent and very true in showing what it means to be trans — and specifically transmasc — not only for the trans person but also for those close to & around them. 

There are several scenes in the movie that really touched me deeply, with which I could fully relate and have experienced myself. 

The scenes in which Feña has interactions with strangers and all the (mis)gendering issues come out are powerful and very relatable for me (I’m not sure what pronouns the transmasc main character, Feña, uses in the movie, so I’ll use he/they here). There’s the instance at the bank that is extremely frustrating especially in its daily reality. Feña is trying to cash a check but the name on the check (issue by his/their employer who uses his/their chosen name) doesn’t match the name on the legal/official ID so the teller says she cannot cash the check. Feña tries to explain the situation, saying clearly that he/they is a transmasc person — which in itself already requires a lot of courage and vulnerability. Despite Feña’s polite and transparent clarification, the teller not only still refuses to cash the check but even addresses Feña as “M’am”. Feña looks at the teller, sad and disappointed but also like this has happened so many times before, and just says, “‘M’am’, really? I’ve just told you I’m transgender”! Oh boy, how many times has this happened to me… it’s so infuriating! On the other hand, the scene at the pharmacy where Feña is addressed by the elderly man pharmacist as “Sir” and “young man”, and you can see the evident joy mixed with incredulity in Feña’s eyes, is also very real and relatable for me: those moments in which you can hardly believe that the person in front of you is actually seeing you as you feel (or at least close to how you feel, in my case, because unfortunately most people are just unable to see anything other that “men” and “women”, “Sir” or “M’am”, which is a whole other, infuriating, topic). 

I also really appreciate the direct manner in which it is made clear that transmen can like men and that sexual attraction is something different from (albeit at least partly related to) gender identity. One of the instances when this is made clear is in a difficult conversation between Feña and his/their father, whom they/he hasn’t seen in two years, since transitioning. So, of course, this is an extremely loaded encounter which for me has additional levels of potential trigger due to my own relationship with (& recent loss of) my father. But there’s a moment when exasperated Feña exclaims to their/his father, “Liking men doesn’t make me a woman”! Such a great truth! But also one of my own fears: what does it mean to those around me that I like (also) men? 

Another scene that I find extremely truthful and powerful and (for me) very relatable is with Feña’s cis & straight ex-boyfriend John and John’s young cis-female cousin who’s turning 22. Feña & John have just run into each other by chance at a club after a painful breakup and not having seen or heard from each other for a year and a half, since Feña’s transition. John’s cousin invites Feña to join them in sharing her “birthday coke” so they all go to the bathroom and John’s cousin (who apparently has been told that Feña is transmasc) asks Feña if they/he has a penis. So Feña replies, “First of all, you should never ask this. But no, I don’t have a penis”. The cis-woman cousin is relentless, though, and proceeds to ask why: “Don’t you want to be a real man?”. And here I find Feña’s reply wonderful (& to me extremely relatable): “You don’t need a penis to be a real man”!

But the interactions that maybe touched me the most deeply and tenderly are probably those between Feña and his/their cis straight ex-boyfriend John. The scene in the laundromat where they take shelter together after having got caught in a downpour of rain: here they are now, after clubbing, soaking wet to the bone, in the middle of the night in a laundromat. John offers Feña one of his dry shirts to change into. At first, John takes it for granted that Feña, who has had top-surgery, will just change & be momentarily bare-chested in front of him, but Feña asks him to turn around. John is confused and replies, “But I’ve seen you naked!” but Feña replies that this is different. So John turns around but then actually gets to see Feña bare-chested in the reflection of the washing-machine in front of him and when Feña realizes this, he/they is terribly upset. Once Feña is less upset, though, and facing John again, John gently asks if he “can see” and Feña says “Yes” and takes the shirt off again. Then John asks if it hurt (i.e. the surgery). And Feña’s brutally honest reply is so perfect — “yes, they [i.e. the breasts] were cut off and it was all a mess inside and I had tubes coming out of my body and couldn’t really move my arms for two months”. And then Feña lets John touch: touch the scars, the new nipples, the chest. And John asks if Feña can feel [the touch] now and Feña replies, “Yes”. This whole scene and this particular moment of it are, in my opinion, extremely sensual & erotic and one of the most tender of the whole movie. I could relate to this scene so much, so deeply: the fear of being seen naked, bare-chested by someone with whom there is, or has been, some form of deep physical intimacy; the vulnerability of letting someone see, and touch, those scars; the vulnerability but also the liberation in telling the whole brutal truth about top-surgery; that mix of fear and yearning for physical intimacy & touch; the sweetness of being seen and touched physically, intimately, once trust is established. 

Feña & John eventually have sex (it’s not portrayed in the movie but it’s clear that they have PIV intercourse). And while it troubles me that their sexual intimacy happens when they’re both still partly drunk and/or high, I find the explicit representation of John’s own internal demons or fears or questions about being sexually attracted to someone who identifies as a “man” or “guy” to be extremely truthful & real for so many “straight” cis-men. 

Finally, I also find one of the moments between Feña & John towards the end lovely and tender and very relatable. Feña asks John if he/they look different to him. And John replies something like, “Yes, but it’s still you, I still recognize you. The difference is mostly that you look more comfortable now, you’re not tense when you move”. And Feña smiles, like this answer makes sense, and adds, “People say I look happier now”. Gosh, how I understand and can relate to this conversation!

All in all, I find movies like this one extremely valuable and powerful and necessary.

[Trigger warnings: unemployment, big changes, loss, grief.]

I think I’m in shock. 

I’m feeling similarly to when my father was hospitalized and when he died. And in some ways similarly to when my European genderqueer ex-lover left last summer. 

Even when one is mentally or rationally prepared for the loss, the shock is always real when the loss actually occurs. 

I needed one more year at my current job so badly. Not so much from the professional viewpoint, really: I needed it emotionally, mentally; I needed a year of “coasting”, a year of relative stability, a year without (too many or too big) changes after all the changes & challenges I’ve been through, non-stop, in the past 2-3 years. I needed a break. I needed to be somewhat in autopilot with at least one part of my life feeling like it didn’t need to be “thought about” or “rethought”. 

At this time two years ago I had been in Colorado for just over a month. I was taking a break and considering rebuilding my life, or restarting, and was quickly realizing that I wanted to stay here and not go back to California. So I started job hunting here — two years ago, almost exactly to the day. 

Here I am now, two years later, having to start job hunting again. But in the meantime so much has happened: especially, I have changed so much. 

Two years ago, I was still using my (female) given name; I was still relatively new & gradually getting used to using gender-neutral “they” pronouns for myself after decades of feminine pronouns used for me; I still had breasts; I hadn’t started testosterone/GAHT, yet, and had very little body-hair; and I hardly had any idea of the trans world, which I actually started exploring then. In many ways, I still knew myself much less and was a very different person. 

When I left California for Colorado a little over two years ago, I was a gender-nonconforming non-binary wanderer feeling very confused. Now, I am a genderqueer trans-boy trying to find his way in this place that mostly feels like home. I have a different name, a different body, a different voice, and in some ways different dreams, or needs, than two years ago. But I’m still just a toddler, I feel like I can only barely stand on these new legs of mine. And as I’m trying to learn to walk on these shaky new legs, I feel like the rug has been pulled from under my feet and I might topple over any moment. 

How can I know what job I want, or can, do next if I hardly even know my “new self”?

From the practical viewpoint, the job I had these past 18 months allowed me to discover and come into myself or, at least, start coming into myself fully. But I really would have needed an extra year, a little more professional continuity for another year. Rocking the boat, rocking what to me still feels like a shaky raft, is a huge blow for me now. And it feels like a big loss. 

There is also, mixed among all these difficult emotions of shock and loss and grief and failure and fear, a sense of relief, of sense of liberation & freedom almost. A sense that this current job ending in 5-6 months will allow me to catch my break, to pause for a moment, and to reinvent myself even professionally, if I want/need to. There is a sense of hope and excitement even. I know that is part of me, part of who/how I am: the adventurer in me, the curious person always seeking growth. It’s the other side of the same coin: uncertainty or loss, on one side, and freedom & discovery, on the other. 

But in this moment, the shock, the sense of loss and the fear and confusion are greater and hard to bear.

…and if there’s one thing, even only one thing, that I’ve learned in life, it’s that the body knows. 

At least, my body knows. 

My body knows.

[Trigger warnings: unemployment, loss, grief.]

For the first time in my life since finishing grad school, I’m finding myself in the position of being (almost) unemployed but unwilling to move. 

For the past fourteen years it’s often been the opposite: I’ve quit many jobs because I wanted to move, or to move on, or both. 

Actually, a similar situation happened to me a decade ago, when I was living in Barcelona: in the spring of 2014 the start-up where I was working had financial difficulties and had to fire almost all its employees, me included. At the time, I was happy in Barcelona and unwilling to leave just then (I was ready to leave a year later), and the several months being unemployed there turned out to be one of the nicest periods of my life then. 

So many difficult and intense emotions have been activated by the news I received from my advisor this morning that my research contract can most likely not be renewed past this summer that I don’t even know where to start to process them all. 

I guess a good point to start would be my body. 

My body is telling me to stay. My body is crying — I am physically crying, tears are falling from my eyes (despite the testosterone from GAHT). 

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to uproot myself again, not yet, maybe not ever. Definitely not now. 

My advisor is encouraging me to take the academic job in California, if I get an offer (which is not at all to be taken for granted). But my whole body & soul balk at the idea. 

I don’t want to leave this area of Colorado, and definitely not to go back to California, especially not that area of California. 

This is home, here. I want to stay here. I need to stay here for now. 

The sadness and grief I feel at the idea of not working at this institute anymore in six months time is huge. I’ve been part of this institute, part of this town, for two years now. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to change again, not now. There are so many memories, so many people, many of them so important to me, connected to these places. 

And I’ve built a life here over these past two years. I’m still building it and it has started to really look up and feel really good only in the past couple months — really good as in like pre-pandemic, even better than pre-pandemic because I’m happier here than I ever was in California because I was so lonely there. 

If I can avoid it, if I can do anything about it, I don’t ever want to be so lonely again in my life. It would kill me. 

I recognize part of what I’m feeling now: it’s similar to what I felt last summer when the losses connected to my father’s death in Europe and the departure of my European genderqueer ex-lover really brought it home to me, made it clear to me at a physical level, that this is home for me here in Colorado. That I don’t want to leave here, not even to “follow the love(s) of my life”. 

I don’t know what job I’ll do. I’m too sad and hurt and confused and scared to really know now even what type of job I’d like. But I know I’ll start looking with all the motivation and intentionality that I have. And with all the hope that I’ve felt reborn in me, truly & deeply, in the past couple months. 

This might yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise: yet another challenge, yet another big change, and as such maybe yet another opportunity to grow and shape my life in ways that could be even more aligned with me & my dreams. 

As one door closes, another might — or must — open. I’ll start looking for that door.