A postcard from transition on International Women’s Day

A day of pilgrimage leads to a real date with my vulva

I am living in the Twilight Zone, a weird state of unreality that has taken over my life.  For those of you who are afficionados of re-runs of weird black and white Americana from the 60’s and 70’s, you might know how I feel—everything is a simulacrum—all seems normal, but nothing is at all what it seems.

It is a bit like sleepwalking.  

I am a last-minute person.  Especially when it comes to packing.  But not when it comes to arriving at the airport, where I always leave plenty of time.  This may be a legacy of a lifetime of flying internationally, thousands of flights, gold cards with every airline group.  Those days are gradually slipping away, to be replaced by what?  I don’t know yet.

This time, however, I packed 4 weeks ago.  On my return home from the West Coast of the US, where I will be having my surgery, I immediately began packing.  I had gone to the US to lay the groundwork, to take away the unfamiliar from a place that will soon become very familiar.

I rented an apartment, set up a life, began to meet people, established myself, made appointments for my return, found my way towards creating home.  I travelled out with 2 suitcases, added two more whilst there with essentials for post-op recovery…I’ll spare you the shopping list.  I came home with none.  This time I travel with much luggage, but sitting in the back of the plane, something this giraffe has not done much of.  Sadly, the long-haul leg is so full that there is no chance of an upgrade, paid or accidental…though my journey began with an upgrade to my favourite seat, 1A.  Last on, first off.

I began packing immediately upon my return home, thinking and rethinking what I would need for my comfort.  There are some improbable items in there.  Rope.  What does a girl do who is confined to her bed all day?  Self-tie.  

A coffee grinder.  My children need good coffee.  Oh, and a half a suitcase of Italian coffee because it is so much cheaper and better in Italy.  Actually, that suitcase is shared with one of my children who has to bring it as they are the one likely to drink it—I am off coffee now for a month and will stay off until I am well enough so swim, about 12 weeks post-op.

Once packed my suitcases languished in the garage, ready to go, and were in the car already the day before departure.  This is very unusual for me.  But my efficiency went through the roof as I readied my home for being away for 100 days.  I am spending 99 nights in my cocoon.

I call it that, because that is what it felt like the moment I walked into it.  A space in which I could heal.  The landlady was disarming, and not necessarily in a charming way.  An interior designer, a bit disengaged, a bit full of herself, a bit aloof, and most definitely screening me, but also not rejecting my transness.

“What are you going to be doing while you’re here?”

“I’m coming for a long-awaited surgery.  It isn’t serious, you don’t need to worry, but it has a very long recovery.”

She wanted me to vacate before I wanted to, as she had a big booking to follow mine.  I just booked my dates.  She was miffed, but I saw she could still cancel on me.  She wrote to feel me out.

“I don’t like noise.  I care who stays in my place.”

“Don’t worry, I will be quiet.  It will mainly be me staying (in a three-bedroom apartment) with friends who are taking turns to take care of me.  I will just be sleeping a lot.”

“Good, because I work from home.”

She didn’t cancel my booking.  Instead, she wrote to me telling me I could extend, as she had decided to not let the other people book.

“Oh no, they sounded like a good booking.”

“I don’t let just anybody stay in my apartment,” she said with a big smiling emoji.  And in that moment I knew that she is a witch and that she is there to protect me too.  I could feel it when I read the message, and could feel it in the energy of the apartment.

“I’ve been making some upgrades and changes for your comfort and well-being,” she said.  She has organised to show me how to be as comfortable as possible in this place.

I was asked by a cherished reader what do I do all day.  As a person who feels guilty about not always being busy, the question has continued to resonate with me.  Right now, I am focussing on one thing.  It is not every day that one changes sex.  I came out two years ago and have lived almost without fail every single day in my chosen gender.  I am past hiding or shame of any kind.  But a sex change is a momentous operation.  It is 12 hours of surgery, which in my case will be half that as there will be two surgeons working together—one doing abdominal surgery to harvest tissue from my abdomen, then cutting a hole in pelvic floor, and creating a vaginal canal, all with a robot—and the other, the lead surgeon, a genito-urinary specialist who is taking my boy bits and upcycling them into girl bits.

I want to cherish this moment and relish the experience with every ounce of attention I can muster.  Having a cocoon of an apartment, a womb, to heal in, and to be visited in, and to be a place where my friends can stay, my children can stay, and everyone be comfortable and happy, is a big part of it.  I don’t think I will be up for socialising, but I like that they can keep each other company while I sleep and dilate.

The hypnotic state I am in is just this feeling that it isn’t real.  It can’t be real.  That this surgery I have waited so long for is finally happening, and that it is so profound.  I have been “mis-gendered” repeatedly today, including by a security guard who found the abundance of soft tissue protruding from my chest was actually soft tissue and not some prosthesis.  At least she was a woman.  The man who looked through my bag because it was flagged, get this, for a book, also called me ‘sir’.  I appreciate the gesture, I guess, but when you are so clearly not ‘sir’, it seems a like a passive aggressive slur.  As if to say, ‘I don’t know what you are so I will call you ‘Sir’ so I am seeming respectful.’

“Can you open your bag for me please?”

“What are you looking for?”

“A book.”

“Has it been flagged as seditious material?”

“Sometimes the machine doesn’t like books.”  This is next order dystopia.  I am thinking, ‘which title would it be that I am carrying?’  My upcoming reading list including: 

• Whore of New York: A Confession by Laura Roux;
• Valencia by Michelle Tea about dyke San Francisco;
• Girls Can Kiss Now: Essays by Jill Gutowitz;
• To My Trans Sisters: A Love Letter to Ouyr Community from the Women who Understand, Edited by Charlie Craggs;
• Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life and Life Is Long if You Know How to Use it, the original Stoic Philosopher;
• Burn it Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution, by Breanne Fahs;
• and Hannah Arendt’s The Freedom to be Free.  

The one that attracted their attention?  The trans one.  Go figure.  But after he swabbed my book for explosives, not just explosive content, they let me have it back and sent me on my way.

“Thank you, sir,” the security guard said…and then as I was packing and thinking, why is he ‘sir-ing’ me given my painted nails, obvious boobs, lipstick (yup), jewellery, short skirt and heels, and should I say something? But then he made small talk.

“You going someplace for business, for pleasure?”

“Neither.  I’m going for surgery.  I’m going to have my dick cut off.”  Do you know that endearing way that some native-born Indians nod their heads to say ‘yes-no’ in a way that in the West we find confusing?  Well, he did this with his whole body when I said that.  It was like a little wriggle that rippled all the way through him.

“Oh,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “It’s an improvement.  I’m already a woman.  Now I have the corrective surgery to finish the job.  So, the next time I come through here, please don’t ‘sir’ me.”

His whole expression towards me softened, and his demeanour became gentle: spotted, one trans-woman in the wild.  

“You take care of yourself,” he said.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” I said.

“That’s all right.”

“Have a nice flight.”

“Happy International Woman’s Day,” I sang.  And he said it back.

Are you in a book group?  I am in two, mainly because I love the people who set them, and I love what they think about and what they choose to read.  I share some of the book selections with close friends.  I love being able to discuss them.

There are times in my life when I feel the witchiness in me very strongly and there are times that I don’t feel it at all.  When I was young, pre-puberty, especially in the years 10-12, I felt it so strongly.  I had visions, I flew in my dreams almost every single night, and would wake up elated.  I could often tell what people would say or do, what would happen, before it happened.  Along with this came a sense of calm, of belonging, and also of power.  Intense power.  That is what it feels like to be in the flow of the universe and to know it.

There are little things that make this feeling disappear, for example, eating.  When I eat, my body loses its ability to tune in to these energies.  I have been practicing Reiki nearly every day on myself, and the more I do it, the more I feel it.  I have also been practising on others, and also being with my Reiki Master, who is one of the women who is walking me across this existential threshold that is represented by my formal passage into womanhood.

There are entire periods of life where the feeling of being a witch completely vanished from me.  In the main, this was the period from when I was roughly 17 until I just before I began the coming out process.  I can understand that.  The witchiness in me is something I understand now to be linked to the feminine in me.  As that has come back, so too has this feeling of connection and connectedness.  And there is no rational mind that can examine what happens to me in life and conclude that something magical is taking place.

This is not a conscious process.  At least always.  I do cast spells.  I am a member of a coven.  I do “practice” as a witch…and randomly, I meet witches.  They seem to make themselves known to me, reveal themselves.  It is very odd.  But quite welcome.  

Part of my somnambulism right now is that I am not feeling particularly feminine, nor particularly witchy.  And yet, people are mostly reacting to me in the most beautiful ways.  Men too.  But mostly I think of these incredible women in my life, made more incredible to me for what they show of themselves, and how they teach me in ways both big and small about being a woman.  And I watch them and listen to them with a playful fascination.

And I think that this is the core of my somnambulism.  I do not feel any longer as if I am playing at being a woman.  I have just become one.  And the witchiness is not something which comes and goes any more, it just is.  And it is much stronger even when I don’t feel it.

My Reiki Master tells me that the more I practise, whether on myself or on others, the more powerful the energy will become.  I find this, almost as if it ignites my hands the moment I think of channelling it.  And more and more, it ignites my third eye.  

What else.  Packing up to leave my home in Italy for 100 days is a strange thing to do.  To know that what is in the fridge will still be in the fridge, to close the shutters on all the windows of the house, turn off the heat, turn off most of the power, it is all a kind of surreal locking up.  And this home has become a seat of my power.  And it almost feels that the house is alive, protecting me.  And it is.  

It is also so filled with crystals and messages and little notes and wishes and dreams on scraps of paper, that it is a magical emporium.  My children are addicted to being there.  Apart from the near-constant parade of wacky and fun visitors, the energy of the space is palpable.  I do have a legitimate fear that my wife will try to gain entry during my absence.  She has expressed a desire to do so, and given her behaviour, sadly cannot be trusted to not do something so low.

This is part of the reason that I have asked several women, protectors, shamans, witches, to cure and hold this space for me during my absence.  I don’t do curses, but I do protective spells, and for someone with intent to harm to cross a protective spell is to invite trouble into their own lives.

My wife has joked about my witchiness in the past, but she also knows it is all around her.  I am not sure that she knows that the coven I belong to is centred on the village where she currently partially resides.  That was not a conscious decision by me, but rather how things played out.  Sooner or later my wife will leave that place and she will be better for it, for she is stuck, holding on to things which no longer exist…and when you feed on falsehood, self-made or the lies we ask people to tell us, we waste away in the Spirit Realm.

Because my wife likes to tell our children that I am ‘unwell’, and dear reader you might think so too after reading such a post, I came across a beautiful book Unwell Women, which is another one of my convalescence reads.  I love to read, but given that my trans sisters have told me that I won’t have the energy to hold an iPad, we shall see what I do with a book.  But I fear that needs must, and my preference would be to read and sleep, but I am also fully down for binge-watching Mexican telenovelas on drug cartels and other fun and ridiculous things like that.

And in other news, one of the most beautiful women I have ever met, a gorgeous and sultry FSSW, has tentatively asked me if I would do a double with her.  She has a client who wants a transwoman to tie him up and beat him.  You can’t make this shit up.  She is coming over this weekend to sample the wares and see just how good I am with the rope.  Be still my beating heart!  I think you might be able to guess how welcome the thought of that might be.

But I have to think about the idea of tying a man…as I have only tied women thus far, and regard it as a deeply sensuous and connecting, erotic experience.  This is not the type of energy exchange I have had or wish to have with men.  Enter the whip.  But to tie and whip at the same time?  Will have to make the rope simple and the whipping elaborate.  I don’t mind cuddling a man or holding him when he is whimpering and crying as it all comes tumbling out, which seems to be what happens when a whip brings it all up to the surface.