Such a silly question, yet one I have posed myself since I was young, barely out on my own. Back then, I lived in New York, Brooklyn, and in truth, really didn’t like it. The starving artist shtick didn’t work for me. Shame it didn’t as I might have fallen in with the right people. Instead, I found Mammon.
The absurdity of my question plays out in stark counterpoint to lived experience. The most important job attribute I have is that I am willing to go pretty much anywhere at the drop of a hat. Have suitcase, will travel. Silly me, I have maybe 50 suitcases. That is being conservative. I like to think of them as my closet, in the trans kind of way. What do they say? If you ever need to up sticks, you should never take more with you than what you can fit in a suitcase. Ahh the liberation. I can taste it. I took that advice to an extreme and know I can practically move house with all my cases.
One of the gifts of accepting and stepping into being trans, is that at long last, the power of Mammon to rule my life is falling away. It isn’t that I have the smug comfort of middle class assets…actually I have nothing. This is a peculiar quirk alluded to in various posts, but as a slave in life, even if the women I married didn’t accept my slavery in an overt way, she certainly enjoyed its fruits, and now is laughing all the way to the bank as she owns it all. I am strangely calm about the whole situation.
This calm is a gift of manifesting my transition. Were I still sitting in a male body, male mind, I might be moping, looking into the distance of female experience, still wishing to get on the bus. But now that I am on the bus, and male me is falling away faster and faster every day, taking with him a lifetime of shame, embarrassment, and leaving only more fundamental values, I find myself turning elsewhere for sustenance. The spiritual aspects of life are rising. And I am sure that I need not know even how. My faith in everything finding its place, is complete.
I am a witch. I have wondered how this power manifests itself within me, for it is strong. I am learning to channel it, and it is finding a voice. It is as a healer that she finds her self-expression. The signs are not only all around me, but they are flashing in unison, to the beat of my own heart. And you know what the best part is? I get to practice every day. Kindness. Being selfless in a sense of acting for good not because I will get something in return. But also, learning to receive.
I joined a women’s workshop last night about finding our fundamental power. It was an incredible group hosted by a magical woman, and she taught me two things which resonated deeply. The first, women’s power, female energy has a gift of receiving. Of welcoming. What else is a mother’s embrace? It is the most giant “welcome home” ever created. The “come to mommy” that everyone craves, and which causes more pain when taken away than few other things. This is a palpable difference in my psyche on oestrogen.
Ex-Mistress attempted to work with me on this back before I crossed the Rubicon to my alchemised self. It was hopeless. But now it seems to come naturally. It is rather amazing to think that the way we are can be so fundamentally affected by a chemical’s actions in our bodies. If you step back for a second and into the belief that we have souls, and that our souls transcend sex, but rather are eternal facets of the divine, then this becomes more powerful still. Being trans is just an obvious way of feeling a disconnect between our bodies and who we really are.
I have this growing feeling of being an ethereal being looking through these eyes of mine, of feeling only loosely inside my physical body. This came to me full force during a non-sexual experience with shibari, the Japanese bondage art form which is gradually finding its way into my life. For the sake of simplicity, I will call it “out of body”. But the being that was tied on the floor and suspended from the ceiling felt objectively detached from me. It had the curious feeling of connecting me with my spiritual self.
Later, when I looked at pictures of me tied in that way, what I saw was a slab of meat. Nothing to do with how I felt in my body. You know when you listen to a recording of your own voice, and you think, ‘I sound nothing like that?!’ This was an extreme version-drawing on all the senses.
I live in a slice of paradise. I am surrounded by some of the most gorgeous mountains in the world and can see them clearly just a few steps from my house. My city is filled with gardens and glorious villas, estates of times gone by, many of them now a shared heritage, others still held by the old families who built this city. The cost of living is low, the food is exceptional, every day life is easy and joyful. But pleasure of this most simple kind is the only reason to be here. Its chief advantage for old me, working me, is its proximity to a major airport with flights to everywhere.
New me, extrovert me, loves human connection with evolved and enlightened people. These people seem to congregate in major cities which are also trans-friendly. I do feel an obligation to the trans community to be fully out and to role model certain behaviours: I am not a victim and being trans is not a state of victimhood. Instead, it is the most extraordinary gift. Being a ballerina giraffe is ungainly and precarious, but delicate and beautiful too. In other words, we can exist, and have a life which is desperately normal.
At first, people stared at me. Really, a lot. Some of them continue to ostracize me, or attempt to convey the intensity of judgement through the stillness and steely spark of their gaze. But mostly, people are getting used to me, to my presence, and treat me as if nothing is any different with me than with anyone else. And that is the way it should be.
But there are places in this world where affirmation is constant. New York has been chief amongst them for this trans person. London is a close second. Amsterdam has also been delightfully welcoming. So too, has Madrid. Lisbon. Oporto. Milan. Buenos Aires is an utter trans gem.
I live in a gilded cage with wide open doors. I can fly at any time. Part of my kink as a human being is to delight in taking care of people. Service courses through me, and if I like you, I will want to do things for you. It seems that I can’t help it, nor would I want to, and this just seems to grow now. It has been decoupled from kink.
My bestie is coming to visit, and we will barrel around various sites, countries, experiences. I can’t wait. I live in a beautiful place, in a beautiful home, surrounded by beauty. What gilds the lily is a visitor.
I am “seeing” a woman who is encouraging me to develop all these strands and to open a restaurant in my home. To cook for people in their homes. To lead food tours around the world. I’d say she has a good idea there. And this all started because I have begun to cook for her as a way to explore service–only our acts of service appear to be mutual.
And for that, what do I need? A suitcase. And me. I already have enough.
Beyond Non-Binary 