At ballet class I finally find my bliss

Gender transition is a real thing on so many different levels, and I do try to note the changes here as they happen.  This serves as a kind of time marker for the changes that transition makes on all levels: emotional, physical, sexual, sensual, spiritual.  Sometimes the changes are faint, happening slowly, almost imperceptibly, but also in areas where changes are not so obvious.  Singing for example.  We don’t exactly burst out in song every couple of minutes, so finding that my singing ability has changed because of oestrogen was a surprise that just crept up on me.  I think mostly oestrogen has helped me to hear pitch better, and so my voice seems to land in a more sure-footed way exactly where it should, but also the emotional changes in me seem to have made my voice more capable of reflecting my feelings better, both literally and in song.

The changes to my skin and my body are obvious, however.  Felt so early in the process and ongoing.  My breasts remain sore on their journey to fullness, and my dream of lactating comes ever closer.  Maybe I’ll be able to pump and dump…I think that would be rather joyful…I know I would enjoy drinking my own mother’s milk and although I have always wanted to taste someone else’s, for lingering reasons (and it may be impractical), I shall take this as even better, a final stake in the ground that I am here, that I can nourish the parts of my body and soul better than anyone, in ways that will compound my own spiritual development.

The area of my changing body that has sparked this post is movement.  Dance.  I love to dance and have always been a very expressive dancer.  Not a ballroom dancer, though I do love salsa, pressing each other close as we really swoon into each other’s bodies on the dance floor.  And yes, even if I don’t like men, I could imagine the feeling of being led on the dance floor, and I do have a clutch of male friends who are superb rock and roll dancers, superb, world class, and I would very happily agree to dance if asked.  And because they are gallant, I would say there is a decent chance that at least two men will ask me to dance at a major event in my not-to-distant future.

One of them will want to dance with me with pure intention, and the other not.  The first one knows I love his wife, have always loved his wife, but also knows that I admire him, have said so, how gorgeous he is, they are.  They have always been kind to me, especially in that they have always indulged my outrageous flirtation with the wife, encouraged it even. They were secure and safe in their love for each other. I also knew she could see into me, and knew that I am innocent, just bursting with love.  This man will ask me to dance because he will wish to stand in support of me in a visible way, and by taking this intimate skill he has, and twirling me around, be making a very public act of support.  The other man will have this same intent, but not from a purity in his own heart, but rather thinking about what it looks like.  He will also have lingering resentment in him towards me, for the woman he was to marry fell in love with me and they broke up.  She and I never hooked up, and in honesty, I never knew of her feelings for me until after they had separated, but I did know that they grew in her back in our twenties, exactly because of what is happening with me now.  She was one of the few people who knew about me as trans when I was still in the closet.  She was a very good friend. And she wished to be male, as badly, it seemed, as I wished to be female.  And lastly, there is an aspect of jealousy which he has for me, an insidious one, a kind of emotional covetousness. Such a thing must corrode when we are anger-jealous because our neighbour is somehow better than us. I never saw this but it was pointed out to me by a mutual friend.  So, he will ask me to dance because he wishes to dominate me, possess me, stand in triumph over me.  And I will let him.  I will submit.  Because surrendering to the flow of those feelings will simply empower me, and in the end, he will discover that I am as wispy and unpossessable in his arms as the gentle tendrils of smoke which represent my spiritual self when I can see them.

One of the fun conversations I had with my TERF-friend-turned-patient-advocate was that when I got the invitation to the Ball, the first thing I thought about was what to wear.  She laughed and said the samje thing.  “Welcome to the sisterhood,” she said, and then we talked for at least an hour on what to wear.  It was easy as a man.  I have a beautiful smoking.  A dark green velvet evening suit made for me on Saville Row.  It fits me so perfectly it is like a second skin.  Without question, in boy mode, I should wear it to such an event, as I have for so many years.  But this time, I shall be out before thousands.  The gown matters.  Sexy, elegant, opulent.  I will look my very, very best.

But I also have to consider my ability to move.  There will be lot’s of dancing.  That means fitness will be paramount.  So too, flexibility.  But most of all, being able to dance, in heels, in a way that reflects the joys of my body.  I do know that I will be the only out trans person present—with almost complete certainty.  This is a grouping of pure privilege. Trans people are as rare as a snowflake in the tropics, even more so in these rarefied circles. Out of a cast of 2,000 or so, I will be the only one–at least the only out one.  And yet I will be there, shining like a diamond.  And there are so many people I have known for so long, who will see me for the first time on that night.

And I will just want to dance.

Over the past months my desire to dance is so great that I announced to my children, “I will be getting rid of the living room furniture.”

“Why?” they asked in unison.

“I want to set up a dance studio.”  Well, they might have rolled their eyes, yet another one of their father’s crazy schemes.  But what they didn’t realise was that I was not only serious, but the wheels are in motion.  The stereo is in place.  A big chunk of the furniture is already gone, so there is already space…and the movers are coming to take the grand piano away…and boy, will I have room then!

My desire to dance is coming from an inner need of physical expression.  I am feeling very different in my skin, and that feeling has a different sense of rhythm.  I think that my body is developing more complexity in its expression.  I certainly feel that when I talk, I move differently, more in what is a “female” mode of expression.  And this is not at all a conscious process.  I have been testing it out in dance to music I love, funk, soul, and it feels as if I can do more at once than before.

My therapist suggested belly dancing, and I have been on the search for that, finding one eventually that is an hour drive from me.  I’ll go to try it out, but I need something closer to home for the regular.  I have signed up for a salsa class this week.  But I have also called every dance school in the vicinity.  Some don’t teach people “my age”, capping out at 25.  I don’t really know my dance forms, but shuffle, hip hop, modern, jazz, and classical ballet all seem to be on offer.

One particularly highly rated studio wrote me back and said I could come for a trial, which is rare this time of year, as they all seem to follow the academic year, so we are literally at the end…but this school operates all year.  It just so happened that the days and times that fit perfectly into my calendar were for classical ballet this week, jazz next week.  So last night, for the first time in my life, I took a ballet class.

I wore the same thing I wear to yoga.  My fellow students wore what I wore when I had my very first girl clothes of my own.  One of them, an absolutely stunning woman who is almost my height, wore an almost identical outfit to the one my mother found when she asked if I was a ‘fag’.  Leotard and tights, both black, leggings, and a wispy wrap skirt with ties.  As I sat there chatting with the instructor as she went through some of the most intense and flexible stretches, blabbing away as she demonstrated how supple she was, and I struggle alongside doing my own version of inflexible flexibility (and thanking myself that I had stretched for an hour at home just before driving over), I had this incredible feeling that I have been waiting my whole life for this.  And as the other women trickled in, all ‘ciaos’ and kisses, settling into small talk about whatever, stretching away while we waited for class to begin, I felt a kind of bliss that I’ve never felt before.

This calm sense of ‘yes’ settled over me, all through me.  It was silencing.  I was in the zone.

We went into the studio, 5 of us, and had a “light” class, which was essentially two hours of stretching, leg and butt exercises which any woman who has taken ballet will be familiar with, and very gentle and graceful movement, on the floor, with the barre, or at the end of class, in the middle of the studio.  One of the only readers who occasionally pops in here will know that the bliss went into overdrive when the end of the class was working on the splits, a life-long goal of mine.

The owner of the studio, the only man present in a building with several dance studios, and several different classes running through the evening, popped his head in from time to time probably in part to see how I was getting on.  I was doing a pretty good job I think, fairly able to follow the movements as long as the teacher was doing them at the same time, though as we progressed, either it became harder for my brain to process the quicker movements, or I just needed to get used to them.

It was an amazing workout, but it was also all about lengthening and stretching and building strength without bulk.  It is the essence of all exercise I do already, coming together in this perfect art form which teaches posture, poise, movement and grace.  I was once asked by a dominatrix to move in her presence as if I was before the Goddess.  And I took it to heart, but other than being conscious and intentional, it was abstract.  Last night, it became very concrete.  I will move like this always, and I will learn.  I signed up.

You know, a ballerina giraffe needs to be able to express herself physically.  What better training than ballet?

I do need to think about what I wear.  As I go out in my daily life, I often choose very feminine things.  Last night, all of the women present wore the most ballerina-like outfits.  All wore wrap skirts or gently flowing tutus, a costume I have had a lifelong affinity for.  They were powerfully feminine.  But I am also conscious of the optics here, in ways that are very different than when I am out and about. I do not wish to imitate or compete with their femininity.  The instructor wore dance-friendly trousers.  I shall do the same.

What a gift this class was.  Bliss.

P.S. When I was young, perhaps 11 or 12, I remember pulling up the yellow pages in the US city where I lived at that time, and finding dance shops and also dance studios. I called the dance shops and said I was taking ballet and wanted to come in and buy what I needed. And I did. I spent all of my meagre pocket money on a pair of tights and a leotard. And I did buy a wispy skirt.

“Can I see that?” I asked pointing to it. She handed it to me.

“That’s for girls,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I want it.” I bought it.

She wanted to sell me a “support”, I guess a kind of dancer’s jock strap. I was having none of that. I didn’t want to think I needed it, and besides, already then, I imagined soaring into a life without that piece of my anatomy.

What else did I do? I called a ballet school and signed up. But I never went. I never told my mother. Never told anyone. I’d call a different dance school from time to time and ask about the classes, informing myself, yearning, but never taking it further. Shame was powerful. More powerful than my desire to be. That toxic legacy fell away yesterday in ballet class, I could feel it fall off. I am decades late, but I’m here.

P.P.S. At the beginning of the evening, the teacher took the time and effort in her grammar to refer to me as “lui” which is him. I have not shared this part of me yet, but I don’t need to, it will just happen. By the end of the evening, however, she was using the plural female with us, “ragazze”, Italian for ‘girls’. This is grammatically incorrect, for the tyranny of a male presence in a sea of women means the pronoun and gender is meant to become male, as this is the “neutral” position. I loved that it did not. To be gendered by language is a beautiful thing when it includes where I’m going.