I came out to my beautician!
I went to my favourite new beauty spa to eliminate the growth of hair that had emerged since the last time I went to the spa about 6-8 weeks ago. My hair is so fine that it does not respond to laser treatment, and that is a blessing in a way, as you almost can’t see it even when it is fully there.
Anyway, I showed up in a skirt and changed into those cute little paper panties for a waxing. When I went for my first waxing and a few times after, I was so worried about getting an erection that I would almost always nearly get one. Plus, it was right in the time when I was seeing a Dominatrix who was inserting her fingers into every part of my psyche. I had a special sound on my phone for her, and whenever it went off, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I got hard.
Well, let me tell you. In the spa one time for a Brazilian, ex-Mistress was pinging me so often and just wondering what she was writing to me about had me in a real spot of bother. I had to start speaking about car accidents, shark attacks, and God to the aesthetician to maintain some semblance of decency.
Anyway, those danger days are long gone—I don’t know if that is because I have been waxed so often that it is no longer a problem; or that I no longer have a domme, so my libido has come back down to earth; or because I am feeling the effects of a cocktail of hormones I am playing with and that these have an effect of calming everything down…who knows.
I love this particular salon in that they often have as many as three women working on me at once. It feels like being in a kind of beauty surgery, where they are all fussing about you and the net result of this is that you are more beautiful for it. But when it comes down to the intimate parts, the crew drops to one. That’s when the conversation gets interesting!
“I’m getting divorced,” I said.
“Sometimes that’s what happens with couples. They just fall out of love.”
“I still love her, but she hates this,” I said, gesturing to what was going on.
“Live and let live,” she said as she yanked some sensitive hairs out by the root, “why does she care?”
“Well, I told her I was trans before I married her, before love even had the chance to grow, right when we first started dating.”
“You are trans?”
“Yes.”
“That means bisexual.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does,” she said, giving a determined yank to the wax on my intimates.
“No. Trans means that your gender identity doesn’t match your physical sex. That’s all.”
“Excuse me,” she said, stopping her work, “but why transition to be a woman if you don’t want a man.”
“I hate men. I don’t like anything about them. I like women.”
“What? You want to be a woman and be with women? To be a lesbian?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard of that. That’s crazy. You are the first.”
“It’s very common.”
“No.”
“It is. I promise you.” She pulled out her cell phone and googled it.
“You mean like Eva Robbins? You want to be like Eva Robbins?” she said after the famous trans movie star showed up in her search results.
“I’d love it,” I said. Eva Robbins is an Italian heroine of mine who came out in the Bunga Bunga parties of a younger Silvio Berlusconi. I knew her as an acquaintance in college as she used to hang out at a nightclub where my roommate worked, and I met her casually there—nightclub friends. I found her so deeply attractive and inspiring, and boy did I love her voice, so gravelly and sultry (a bit like an Italian version of Lauren Bacall), and my roommate knew that about me. So, roomie made it happen. Good egg.
“Eva Robbins is beautiful,” I said.
“But she did it to attract men.”
“Maybe in the movies, but when she was young, she always had girlfriends.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I sort of used to know her and her partner.” Oh, she registered and then went to back work.
“I know a gay man and he has been cross-dressing his whole life. But he just likes that because he wants to be the girl to a man,” she said.
“That’s not me.”
“I have many lesbian friends. I will have to ask them about this.” I decided that going into what a non-binary was, was too complicated.
“And you don’t like men?”
“Think of it this way. I dislike men so much that I don’t want to be one…that I don’t want to have anything to do with them. That I want to be in a world that is filled with women, and to excise from me the things that make me a man.”
“This is very interesting. Well, now that we know each other better, you need a pedicure. And you need to do something about your eyebrows, and my God, your nose hair. Not acceptable. Next time, we can do a beauty day.”
Let me just note as an aside, having your nose hair waxed is seriously eye-watering.
I said I wanted the pedicure, but that I loved my crazy, “bushy” eyebrows. Just kidding…they aren’t bushy at all. They are so sparse and light coloured, that they have no definition. She set me up with a very attractive beautician who would do my nails…She shaped them and cut them, she treated the skin, removed all the crap, the cuticles. Good Lord, the work! She gave me lessons in how to care for them, products to use.
She asked if I wanted a base coat, “it will give the nail more strength.”
“What about these?” I asked, pointing to a bank of colours to choose from.
“Oh, maybe a little colour?” she asked, so innocently delighted all of a sudden…a kind of wicked fun lay ahead. “Which one?”
“I was going to ask you, but I do like this pink.”
“Or that pink or this one next to it. They are both beautiful, natural, subtle, they will go well with you.”
“I’ve never had a pedicure before.”
“Really?” so she explained everything. The concept of gel v. nail polish, the steps, etc. And then she painted my nails with the most delicious and delicate soft pink colour.
“And the eyebrows?”
“Yes,” I said, preparing to relinquish my kooky eyebrows that I have cherished for the past 20 years. Five minutes later I had elegantly shaped brows, and I have to admit, they looked a lot better now that they had been shaped.
“Next time, I will colour them, and that way you will be able to see them better.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea how to do makeup.”
“You can learn. But this will be semi-permanent. It will last for several months.”
Interesting. I look forward to what lies ahead.
One thing I am noticing on these early steps of this journey? That the content of conversations I have with women are changing. It is a subtle difference which I am really enjoying. And I find that men are staying away from me, unless they are a certain kind of modern man who is comfortable with a shifting world order. Rare is the man who can walk up to a stranger, a trans-fem in a dress and give them a compliment without being or feeling awkward. Those moments are quite treasured.
Beyond Non-Binary 