Speaking of Pride

• Miss Furr and Miss Skeene – Gertrude Stein & Linda Dusman
• Howl – Allen Ginsberg & Lee Hyla
• Fragments – Miriam Suzanne & Nathan Hall

Fragments (lyrics)

We have a story in my family. My brother is young, nursing his favorite doll. He says I’m going to be a mommy when I grow up! Mom is proud but corrects him –  boys grow up to be daddies.

He sets down the doll, and never picks it back up. Cis doesn’t mean simple, he tells me now, a father of two. I keep my dolls much later in life, their unexpected aunt.

I never felt like a girl. What do girls feel like? I didn’t always know, and dream of wearing dresses. I wasn’t consistent, insistent, or persistent. I was frustrated.

A friend asks me what it means to be a woman. I have no idea. What does it mean for you to be your gender?

Hanson is on the radio.
Why is Hanson on the radio?

If I had a story like that, maybe everything would make sense. Maybe I could string this together into a narrative: beginning, middle, and end. Life doesn’t work that way.

A visiting trans friend asks where I get my Testosterone. I make it inside my body, I tell him. I’d give it to you if I could.

Hormones are slow magic.

In my dreams, I’m transgender.
In the mirror, I’m uncertain.
In public, I’m a woman.

In Colorado, your chosen name has to sue your given name for the right to exist.

I don’t get to put all the pieces together. “Passing” is not something I do, but something that happens to me — not a way of presenting, but a way of being seen. Fickle. In a single moment I can be seen and not seen, gendered and misgendered. Ungendered, and undressed.

I don’t believe in authenticity, but I do believe in pain, and doing something to survive it.

Trying on clothes to see if they fit is way better than trying on clothes to see if your gender fits. I didn’t know there was a difference, until everything changed.

I can finally hate my body for the normal reasons.