So, a few weeks ago a friend of mine invited me out with some of his friends. They were nice enough people. I liked one of them in particular. I got the sense he liked me too (he kept scanning me, however surreptitiously he attempted). So I asked my friend to give this new intrigue my phone number.
Saturday, lunch date. Sunday, home date. Sunday night, got a little rowdy. Monday morning, had coffee and conversation with the parental units. Went well.
When I told my close friends this, they decided to name my new paramour "The Escalator", since the relationship escalated very quickly. I didn't and won't bother to mention the multiple one night stands and the one "relationship" that started even faster than that. But this one is different. Sure, I might have had feelings for the last "relationship" (quoties for a reason, dear), but I wouldn't claim they were anywhere near this strong. There's this elation, that's a bit familiar and yet every time feels like the first and only time. With the last, I knew from the moment I met him face to face that this was not going to last. An unlove at first sight. But this one, I like him. Am I conceptualizing a future? No, but I haven't disqualified the existence of one. Not entirely, anyway. We have very different life paths; from the perspective of realism this is temporary, for fun.
But in my oxytocin-washed brain it is very, very real. I like him, a lot. But I hesitate, because, yes, this went fast. I did take the time to probe his mind, he offered up his past, I feel that I know him well, as compared to other first dates. Surprisingly, I feel like I can trust him. He's much bigger and stronger than me, but I'm not even a little afraid that he'll ever hurt me. So I took a leap of faith and offered up the most important points of my messy, infected life. I'm trans, I've cheated, and there's an ex that won't go away. I'm bothered that the trans bit is what bothered him most, but I won't let it be a deal-breaker. Ideals are nice to have, in theory, but life is too short to wait for the world to become the perfect place you envision in your head before you let yourself have some fun in it. God made me beautiful, even if for a long time I wished (and, in a more sedated way, continue to wish) for everything but. I've finally given up that dream, I think. Work with what you got. I'm not going to magically change into the person I was supposed to be. Maybe I'll re-approach the matter later when I find myself in the "ideal" situation. But life's too short. I have a beautiful man who thinks I'm beautiful and we're going to have fun together and if he wants what he sees as me rather than how I see myself then I need to just keep a lid on it and not go batshit crazy clawing at the peak of Maslow's pyramid. I used to think I could happy self-idealized, even alone, but now I know better. I crave intimacy above and beyond finding myself. I need another person to love me, more than I need to be trans. I guess this is a taste of how homosexual children in unsupporting families feel.
Maybe its in the language. I self-described as transgender because it was the only word I could grasp onto to describe my introspective identity. But now a new term has popped up. Genderqueer. And that term is much more forgiving, much more malleable. To describe oneself as genderqueer is to allow oneself to move seamlessly between identities as they fit best at the time. I think this can serve to reflect a more dynamic view of self. After all, my self-names have changed pretty consistently as I've grown, as well as my ideas about intimacy, and family. It allows me to safely navigate (what I see as) a contradiction between my fantasized identity and my real sexuality.
Over time my innate self-identity seems to be more, at peace, with my born gender. In dreams I am often my born gender rather than my transitive. In my dreams, my aesthetics are befitting of my born gender, and the androgyny I attempt in my daily life is lost. But these dreams are usually in context of my sexuality. Being sexually interested in a man grounds me to my born gender. I still can't decide if this is a betrayal of the person I was born to be, or if I should embrace the serendipity, and take my dreams and fancies as indicators that I have grown into a changing person. I do not abandon my transitive identity entirely. I do, however, entertain the possibility of accepting myself as dynamic, as non-binary, as genderqueer.
Its exciting to see how this field is evolving under the care of diligent and caring minds. Even as our society becomes more aware of the incredible variations in human gender and sexuality, the fluid non-binary nature of it all, we are now developing a language to talk about it, to put things in categories the way human brains can understand themselves. Even though we don't fit into categories, we often feel a need to organize ourselves as such anyway. The brain is incapable of conceptualizing the brain. And so terms like gender identity, gender expression, sexual identity, can help us organize our thoughts about the incredibly diverse and complex subject of these interrelated aspects of what it is to be human, but human in the way that connects us to our evolutionary ancestors. It's an exciting time to be alive. I'm glad I can share it with you.
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