Sometimes I have trouble writing these blog post thingies. I get overwhelmed because of all the possible things I can write about – it’s hard to narrow it down to one thing, or even just a couple of things. I feel like every time I sit down to write I’ve got to do a complete encyclopedia of the universe or something, with drawings and footnotes, no less.
I don’t know. Whatever. It’s getting cold – no snow on the ground yet, but it can’t be long. My cat is standing on a box, smelling it. He’s been weird today, I was even a little worried about him; first he licked a chair, then started to chew the side of a book, and then he attacked some black smudges on the floor. That’s not very normal, right? But then we had a nap together for an hour or so, which I guess might mean he’s all right and everything, just a little off his nut today for whatever reason. I stayed home today, and while I don’t regret it exactly, I do regret that it made my mom freak out so much – I thought when you were sixteen your parents couldn’t give you that much crap over not going to school. I thought that was a thing that was supposed to happen. Apparently not. She even sank as low as to call my grandma over, (the very scary French one who I get along great with, but who is also very scary), and had her try to get me to go. I refused. When I need some time off, I need it. I planned to stay home and write and have a nap, and that’s what I did. I mean, I’m glad I have parents who really care – but she doesn’t need to. I’m fine. I’m in a way, way better place than I was a few years ago, anyways – I’m actually going to the freaking school almost every day, as opposed to when I wasn’t, when I was hiding in my room staring at walls.
It’s time for the “Transgender Crap” segment. That’s my new name for it. That appointment I’m supposed to have about it got pushed back nearly a month, which is frustrating, but not even a little bit surprising – I have very little faith in the speed of things I really want to happen. Whenever I’m desperate for something, it takes forever. I’ve accepted that. Doesn’t mean I like it, but at least I’m holding back from getting angry about it, which would be pointless, anyways. I could show up at the pediatrician’s office, cloaked in scarves and bearskins, dragging my team of dogs behind me, and thump on the door without being invited – and exclaim in the voice of a 19th century arctic explorer, ‘Ho! Let me in, I say!’ but I won’t. Anyway, it’s freaking cold outside; we might have to bring out the bearskins regardless. Canada, man.
You know what I’ve noticed? Trans men (that’s female-to-male) sometimes speak with an odd girlish inflection. They come off as gay guys. No disrespect intended, naturally, because I’d be an idiot if I disrespected myself – but am I the only one who’s noticed that? Like Katastrophe, the rapper, and Buck Angel (who’s a porn star, which needs a “blech”, but he’s actually a reasonable guy), they both have this “valley girl” voice that makes me cringe. You’d think they’d drop that girly accent, or just have not picked it up in the first place – it’s just so weird. Trans women have that voice too, but that actually makes sense because they’re women. I know voices mean basically nothing in the grand scheme of things, who cares what you sound like, but it just bothers me slightly. I don’t want people to get the idea that all trans men are flamboyant, which they aren’t. Me, for instance. I never picked up the “girly” way of talking – my mom doesn’t talk like that, my friend Zoe doesn’t talk like that. So WHY do trans men talk like that?
Whatever. Who cares. My cat is still standing on the box. Well, now he jumped down because I looked at him, and he’s walking over, now giving me a stare. He’s all jumpy because he wants me to get him some food. Yes sir, in just a moment – I’ll make you your kibble, with just a dash of water for a bit of oomph, and of course I’ll swirl it around just so to your liking.
I just had to go feed him because he was pushing things off the table to get my attention. He’s actually rather smart, that cat – even though his brain can’t be much bigger than an average-sized clementine.
Outside the balcony windows the sky looks beautiful – dark blue above, pale blue below, and light yellow-white at the bottom, beyond the bare branches of the trees of the forest, past the depressing cookie-cutter rooftops of the new development over the fence from ours. The good news is we’ve still got the forest – it’s right next to our apartment, and a family of deer lives in there. It would be nice to be a deer – do animals have gender issues? I doubt they do. My cat’s fixed so he’s kinda third gender, I guess. I think he secretly likes the neighborhood cat that occasionally walks onto our balcony and bothers, and is overcompensating by freaking out and hissing and stuff every time he comes by.
The thing about life is that often it sucks. I might be spoiled, having grown up in awesome progressive Canada, but I hate that I have to wait until mid-December to see that pediatrician about my transgender stuff. I’m sort of desperate at the moment; what with the everyday strife of being biologically female. And you know. Boobs. Ew. My best way of explaining my discomfort is that it’s like having a third arm – just sticking right out of my face. How do you get past that? You can’t. Everywhere you go, you try to pass off as a regular two-armed person, but everybody’s like ‘Dude, you have a third arm sticking out of your face.’ Really hard to ignore that.
And so it is, being “female”. When I go to see Dr. what’s-his-face, I’m going to tell him straight off that I want to get things done as soon as possible. Boobs must go, very soon, or the cellar boy will blow a gasket – also, pronouns. The mental aspect of this whole thing is going to be the toughest part, but it has to be done, the same as everything else – however, people won’t feel right calling me he if I’ve still got that third arm sticking out of my face. And I don’t want to force anyone to; I want to wait until I look like who I am, and then we’ll go from there.
I don’t feel all that optimistic, at least not yet, anyway. I figure, with the speed of the Canadian health system, I’ll be stuck for years before everything I want gets done. But I could always march back and forth in my bearskin and scarves in front of the general hospital with a little sign on my chest that says Remove these, thank you and wait until they take me up on it. Whatever happens in the future, all I know is that for right now I’m desperate and really uncomfortable and I can’t imagine getting through another summer, without being able to wear sweaters and coats and stuff.
I read the woefully unhelpful Wikipedia page on trans men, and that’s how I found out about Katastrophe, and others. I also happened across a certain Jack Bee Garland – who was a nurse, a writer, and, get this: an adventurer. An ADVENTURER. I get that he lived in the 1800s and adventuring was a thing back then, but still, holy crap! Can I be an adventurer too? I love that he didn’t just want to settle for being a boring old nurse and writer, he also wanted to travel to the Philippines and be a goddamn adventurer. There are no words to properly describe how awesome that is. You have got to have guts, not only to be openly trans male in the 19th century, but also to go on god-freaking adventures. I feel very inadequate all of a sudden.
There’s also Alan what’s-his-face, who pioneered some sort of medical system – in his picture he held a pipe in his mouth and gazed through a pair of glasses like any old genius scientist. Despite being unhelpful, the Wikipedia page did have a lot of links to pages about really interesting trans men – who did all sorts of things, were professors at universities, scientists, authors and poets, (and unfortunately also porn stars) – but it’s just neat, to me. That being transgender doesn’t have to stop you from being successful and awesome – like in Jack Bee Garland’s case, especially. Some of these guys lived a long time ago, when this stuff wasn’t nearly as accepted, when death was one way of dealing with them – and they still did their thing. They were still successful and, hopefully, happy.
I don’t know, now I’m getting all cheesy and sentimental. But it’s nice that I’ve got some seriously awesome affiliates, or whatever they are – people who are or were in the same boat as me, who absolutely owned their lives and did good. Makes me proud that Jack Bee Garland and I share the same whatever it is, issue, I guess. An adventurer. Wow. I’m no adventurer – although you could argue letting out a secret like this is sort of an adventure – but I’ll just get through it, anyways. I live in modern times, in a progressive country, surrounded by good people – that’s nothing compared to an adventure in the goddamn Philippines.
thecellarboy 