I have spent the past 10 days on a shoot for a book, working on a chapter, climbing right inside of what it is about, capturing the energy in it, and living it in every way. Not just me. A “crew” too. And the presence of a group of people who are all consummate professionals, filled with amazing ideas of their own has pushed me in ways I never expected.
When people know you as you are, there is no longer any need to explain yourself. Everything is already understood. And that means we understand each other. Yes, I can work on my own. The life of a writer (am I such a creature?) is inherently solo. That suited me just fine as an introvert, but the process of turning myself inside out which is what gender transition has become, has made me an extrovert. Thus, it has been a new experience to work with a group of people who have become collaborators. And it has enriched the work in countless ways.
My authorship of this effort is central to it but allowing this incredible group of people to do and be their best and to shape and contribute in really meaningful ways has resulted in something that seems to just get better and better with every passing day. Challenging, however, was the backdrop of the country we were working in. It is illegal to be trans. Were I to have been working “out”, I risked being arrested, a fact that my wife sought to keep front and centre.
Blessed colleagues nurtured, protected, and worked with me, staying focussed on the task at hand…and living 10 days in full boy mode became bearable except one day when I couldn’t stop crying in the morning. That little cry gave me the fight to not just go on, but fuelled a level of output that was not expected. We had to get 4 perfect dishes, a menu, but we managed to deliver three menus and a handful of bonus shots…and they are really, really good.
Have you ever done something, and you just know how much it rocks even before any feedback has come in? When you know that you just did something you didn’t know you could do, you can just feel it. That’s what was happening, and it left all of us jazzed up, pushing each other, jamming with each other. A visual feast.
I don’t know how I ever lived all bottled up. How could I have forced myself to be in the closet? How could she have been denied her voice?
Today, at the airport, going through passport control to head home, for the first time, and even though I was in boy mode still, he looked at my picture and then at me and said, “this isn’t you. Is this your brother? Your cousin?” He was having trouble linking my photo with how I look now, and I have to admit that oestrogen is gradually reshaping how I look. And it feels so delicious. For the first time I was “mis-gendered” in the direction of travel…that people called me female, gave me female pronouns, and I was dressed as a boy! Oh dear heart.
Androgyny is sexy to me. When I see the reflection in the mirror for the first time in my life I don’t hurt anymore. The rush towards a female physical and spiritual self is headlong, and while I will never be fully female, what is coming out is just enough. And it allows an intimacy with my female friends and strangers that is non-threatening, not to me, not to them…and I don’t want anything from them. It is like a sweet caress. And the men in my life, while some of them are not sure what to do with me, are mostly holding space for me, accepting the journey, accepting the changing physical form, and very much accepting that this experience gives me something to say that they are curious about, not threatened by, and that is very sweet.
We live in enlightened times. How do we make such a feeling true for everyone?
New friendships are coming to me, and I am meeting some really lovely, wonderful people. I am also nearly destitute thanks to the divorce process that my wife is running—and yes, she is completely setting the tone, which has meant her spending on legal fees is about 5x what mine is…I will tell you later if this is good for me or whether I am going to get shafted. But truthfully, I don’t feel as worked up as boy me might have done. She wants to burn the house down. Sad for our kids, but let her. This phoenix will rise again.
I was asked to speak at a conference on being a trans-woman and being in business. I declined. I am not ready. I don’t want to speak of what could be, but what is, and I will wait until what is becomes something that speaks well of society and the opening up of opportunity to people like me.
Every now and again I have to put on a business suit and go to a meeting. I have to wear a chest binder to hide my growing breasts. There is no mistaking my chest, and while by breasts are still small, I need to wear a bra. And boy, does it hurt like the dickens to bang into them, or to go running without a really tight sports bra. Respect to my cis sisters.
The death of my whotsit, now fully confirmed from a chemical standpoint—my hormone levels are completely female now, like a teen girl, has been strangely liberating. Not just me but for the small number of people with whom my lips have had the pleasure of caressing. My submission has returned. It has helped to be open about it. Somehow it means that my openness has given space to the people I interact with, and they have been freer with me too. This is delicious.
Erotic touch is delicious. And coming from a trans-woman, it seems to be less threatening to anyone—and I have a comfort with my “play” partners that is built on beautiful guiding light of consent, but also underpinned that female sexualilty is not about conquest but about connection, about the present moment.
The trans-feminine community spoke of the death of libido from spironolactone, but the holy trinity of GAHT (gender affirming hormone therapy) which also includes finasteride and estradiol, has this effect. It was scary to hear that libido would die. It has been exercising me for quite some time. I clung to the discussion in support groups that it comes back in different ways. I didn’t dare believe it could be more intense, and at some point when I can really concentrate on the body feeling that comes with it, I will describe it.
I still can’t bring myself to play with my whotsit, though I do know several transwomen who do, and what they describe is something that you might think is half male, half female, in physiological response. What I am feeling is not at all genital.
It is more in my guts and is way more diffuse. It reminds me a lot of sub-space too. And sub-space was always a very hypnotic body feeling for me, intensely arousing, totally sexual, a feeling which induced a kind of paralytic stupor that just vacates my mind. Have you ever been pet by someone, gently stroking your hair or neck and you just get this faraway feeling, kind of out-of-body? That is what it feels like. Only it seems to come upon me when someone who I know is dominant is exerting their power in subtle ways around me, or just touching me in commanding ways—and I don’t mean in an overtly kinky way or anything at all sexual, I just mean they might hold my wrist in their hand, perhaps just between their two fingers, or just push the hair away from my face, or touch me gently, and I can feel that little touch reverberate through my whole body, these subtle little electrical pulses.
Yes, she is not submissive, or at least not in the same way that boy me was. She is profoundly physical and erotic, and that sexual feeling is now just triggered in so many other ways, not just by power dynamics or by kink…it is wild and definitively more accessible. It is also less “needed”. I don’t have to have it, don’t have to talk about it, don’t have to seek it out. It just seems to be swirling all around me.
“I’m a baby,” I said to her, and she just smiled, and that was a prelude to the most divine and relaxed caressing that I can remember experiencing. Our openness begets openness. It is almost as if we express ourselves as musical instruments, and the more open we are, the truer to ourselves, the more notes we can make, and the better music we make with others.
Oh, and within five minutes of the plane taking off, I had taken my pants off, rolled my skirt down, and felt all of this stress and tension melt away from me as I put on a divine playlist that never fails to transport me to this beautiful journey that carries me forward.
Yours without shame.
Beyond Non-Binary 