13 days to go until V-day…St. Joseph and the Immaculate Conception

I love that I get my vagina on the day that St. Joseph is celebrated, that Christian cuck, true father of Jesus, but no credit for it…and I’m thinking, ‘what a con on the poor man to be told that it was God what begat his son’. Apologies for my irreverence, but I too am a cuckold, but in this case to myself. I am like the Hijra of India, both male and female, and that shall always be thus, only I am in this liminal space between the two now which is a much more comfortable home for me…I can be sexy and seductive and playful and whimsical and free and expressive and emotional in ways that I couldn’t access with testosterone coursing in my veins. Now, fey oestrogen is my mistress, and this slave is the happier for it.

My wife likes to tell my children that I am “unwell”.  As in, soft in the head.  We have had many laughs over the characterisation.  As a feminist, and yes, to the bone, I am relishing reading a book called Unwell Women.  I shall undoubtedly review it one day.  It tells a story in data of how women’s range of feeling has been characterised as ‘not well’.  Man’s discomfort with women, spiritually, sexually, but mostly physically, is born from this fear of hidden things.  The gestation chamber of life.  What goes on in there anyway?

What do they say?  Men are born and spend the rest of their lives trying to crawl back into the womb.  In my case, I have become the womb. Boy me has crawled back inside of me, and I shall be his mommy for now and forever more.

There are just 13 days to go until my operation.  My surgeon team has scared the pants off me for the first time.  Not their horror videos about all the things that can go wrong, but rather the 20+ pages of instructions, do’s and don’ts.  How many times do I have to read it before it sinks in?  I feel like I will be reading it over and over until I get to a point where we are close enough to surgery that my eyes will skim the words and no longer see a thing.

I am in contact with the patient co-ordinator at the hospital, with my surgeon’s assistant, and with my minder/keeper/companion/friend/police officer/moral support/shoulder to cry on/emergency caller/caresser/cook/reader to person who is quite literally going to have to wear all my crystals while I’m under the knife.  Kuan Yin will be happy.  Tara will be happy.

I’m going all spiritual on the final stretch.  I spend my days in quiet contemplation, going to ballet and kundalini, focussing down on the essentials. I love that every time I go, my legs can turn out further, that I can open my hips more, that I can stand straight in ways that were not possible before, I love how it makes me longer.  

I packed a week ago; I started a month ago.  My suitcases are sitting with ants in their pants in the basement, ready to get loaded into the rental car.  The whole house is on tenterhooks.  I can feel her all around me.  A bosom of love and comfort.  She’s a good home, and I look forward to sighing back through the door after this is over, and I have healed, 99 days after I leave. The symmetry is an accident.  Going to sleep again in my own bed.  Feeling space for my own love to exist.

When I tell someone about what I am going through, which seems to change every day, they always say, “you should write this down,” and I am torn. 

“Oh, but I do.  I write a blog.”

But then the question is, “Gosh, I sure would like to read it, what’s it called?”

“It’s anonymous.  It’s quite compromising.  Mostly about sex.”

“Oh.  You sure?  I don’t mind.”

“How would I write about you then?”

“You better not!”

“Then don’t look, and don’t ask.  I have a sixth sense for these things.  Mainly, I write for an audience of one.  My wife.  I know she loves to read about what I think of her.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.  She reads your blog?”

“I don’t know how often, but it is a secret means of communication.”

“Not so secret.”

“So it seems.  I lace it with subliminal messages.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t look.”

And so the million variations of that conversation might go.

I am now experiencing a sense of unreality.  Like everything is going so fast and is a blur.  I have so much lined up activity-wise, with doctors, dentists, errands, shopping (I get to buy diapers, menstrual products, and some gross things like prune juice and stool softeners). Do you know the noise we distract ourselves with. But it also comes with a calm efficiency. No more noise. I can’t hear anything but my heart beat.  I nearly bought a plastic thingy to help put on socks, but instead I just brought a pair of my house slippers.

The doctor has spooked me because they only want me in the hospital for two nights.  They have also moved my start time from noon to 6:00 am.  I am actually happy about that, as it means the doctor will come in at about 10:00, and feel all fresh and perky, ready to work their magic.

I am attending a vulva class this week.  Everything from form to function, to pleasure…Can’t wait.  I do think that if you are a man and you are afraid of the vulva, of the vagina, the best antidote is to just have one.  I can assure you, once you are confronted with your own, you will never be fearful again.  I am ready to just dive in.

My beautiful and loving care team now consists of an incredible collection of 8 women, all of whom mean so much to me, even the ones I barely know.  Can you believe it, one of them is someone I met as an AirBnb hostess—talk about friendship in unlikely places.  She’s proving to be an absolute Goddess.

I do firmly believe that the people meet in life we are meant to meet.  Sometimes we never find out why, but if we listen well, we often do.  I also find that the less I ask for, the more I get.  This is the hardest lesson of life so far.  When you are just sweet and kind and curious about people, they pour themselves right back into you.  This transactional nonsense, networking, what can you get from so-and-so, how to work a crowd, how to work a room—it is not as effective as just being a sweetheart.  Maybe it depends on your objective, but I think that when people want to help you, then you are onto something.

Receiving has always been a struggle for me.  There is an aspect of surrender to it, or that you might end up owing someone that crowds into the mind.  At least into mine.  I am being forced to let go of that, and to feel these women, and other members of my family and my friend circle really rally to me.  It really does feel like a coming out party, coming of age, a huge milestone, a retirement, a wedding, a graduation, all rolled into one. And all these people are clapping.

We all need a trans woman (or man) in our lives.  There are between 1 per 100-200 of us according to estimates, so that should be enough for everyone to be at least acquainted with one of us.  I can assure you that we are very magical people.  Some of us quite literally.  Speaking of which, I am doing sex Reiki on a friend tomorrow morning.  I joked with another friend, “I’m a sex witch,” I said in all seriousness.

“I am too,” she said, and when she looked at me, I really knew it.

“Will you teach me?”

“I’d love to.”  Lessons begin next week.

Plus, I get to see my butch lesbian lover next week too…I get all mushy inside.  She said how embarrassed she was that she was not more femme, and I’m like, “are you kidding me?  Would you please put your hand on my throat again.”

I mean, my wife is making sure that everything that can fall apart is falling apart, and then she blames for what she is doing.  I’m okay with it.  All the loose pieces are rattling off, but the core is so solid.  The only thing that can stop me now is if for some reason, the doctor or I need to reschedule at the last minute.  But I don’t feel that.  What I feel is this sense of wonder, of passing through the tunnel and into the light.  I have this feeling that my doctor is a spirit guide, a magical human, who is going to take my hand and walk me through this, and help me give birth to the person I promised to become.

My shaman is working with me on my names and ancestry and setting up an altar, getting the blessings of the spirit world, those whose names I have taken up, those whose names I let go of, for boy me is in a twilight now, like a black and white TV from the 1970’s drifting lazily from channel to channel, no longer tuning much of anything, while girl me is blazing out in surround sound and technicolour.  

What’s in a name.  I am finding out.  The women’s names I have chosen shared one unusual characteristic, which I have discovered after choosing the names.  They all represented the death of the male line in a patrilineal society, and became conduits to grant title, property, money, prestige to their husbands, in some cases inducing the husband to adopt her name, because she was more than him.  Given the age and time that they all came from, I am rather fond of this idea.  I feel it call out to me.

My boy name was a given name.  It shaped me.  My new name will shape me too, but it is an assumed name, a name that I have taken on.  I like what my new name stands for, energetically, socially, spiritually.  She doesn’t mess around.  She’s certainly not a doormat.

I still have my male anatomy.  But I almost don’t see it or feel it anymore.  I had a beautiful orgasm the other day.  I think that my state of arousal is just going up.  Taking the extremely high levels of hormones that my controversial endocrinologist is pushing has a libidinous plus to it…but my doctor’s admonition to not get aroused for 6 months, as it might stress the stitches is hilarious.  But also serious.

I feel like I don’t have enough time.  So many loose ends to tie up.  It is as if I am really leaving.  And boy me really is.  And I realise I love him.  I picked up one of my photo albums from my childhood and I could remember what I was feeling when the pictures were taken, could see right into my own soul…and this feeling of standing on the cusp, here, now, about to realise a dream that was so deep and protected inside of me that I can’t help but cry as I look at my past me and console him, and let him know that we have almost made it, almost. 

Baby, we’re almost free.