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Transition Home ~ Legal Transition ~ Physical Transition ~ Reflections

41 Weeks

It doesn't seem that long. Not honestly. I still vividly remember the trembling fear sitting in my endocrinologist's waiting room, thumbing through old copies of Reader's Digest. Then I was getting blood taken, waiting again after that for the nurse to show me how to drop my pants, fill the syringe, and then inject testosterone into the muscle of my thigh. A simple task. Then the nurse was kind enough to write me a letter about carrying my needles with me on a plane, and I was done, walking out the door with my little box of supplies, out to catch the bus back to campus, and go to work. Just another day for most people. Not for me. A nice crisp, cool October day in 2002 was when I started a new life.

Now it's a thick, hot summer day forty-one weeks later. My voice has dropped from its girly heights to a more moderate voice that while getting a "sir" from telemarketers, is still mistaken for my mother's by family over the phone. I used to sing a high alto in my high school's chorus. Now I guess I'd be more of a baritone, but I'm not sure. My sideburns cause my best friend to tease me about doing an Elvis impersonation, and the hair on my torso and limbs is coming in thick and curly. Thank you, French-Canadian genes. I have more hair on my legs than my father. The hair on my head is thinning more than it had been, but I just comb it back instead of parting it, and it's hard to tell. Friends I met three months on T were surprised to learn I wasn't born male. My body is becoming my own again, after a brief (seemingly eternal) hiatus as a teenaged girl.

It's rather strange. Part of me feels like I've slipped through a crack. Gone is the big strapping dyke that used to move carefully on the street, vigilant for gay bashers. In her place is the big slightly femme boy with bad enough fashion taste to pass as a straight man. Talk to me enough, and my hand motions will have you guessing I'm a little light in the loafers, but walking down the street my gait is farm-boyish enough to warrant including me in that boy's club that doesn't hide the sexist ogling of scantily clad coeds or raunchy comments. Waiting at the bus stop, I'm just one of the guys. Unless you notice the rainbow keychain hanging from my belt, or read the multitude of queer and pagan informed pins on my knapsack. Now I know to listen for cries of "hey faggot!" instead of "hey dyke!" even in this heavily queer area I call home.

I feel a little invisible to the queer community. I still read The Advocate and even Curve, the nation's top selling lesbian magazine. I went to Northampton's Gay Pride march, and picked up some pins at the local trans activist group's table. But now I'm in-between. I'm a man, but not male. I'm attracted to women, but I'm not a dyke nor a straight man. I'm lost in the desert, a queer with no name. Forty one weeks. I'm finally myself. I can breathe in my own body. Now it's just my community that's wanting. A little crisis of faith. Where do I fit in? I'm not sure anymore. I understand the gay men, trying to find a masculinity that isn't the butch heterosexual model society puts up for us to emulate. I understand the lesbians, loving women in a (mostly) female body. I understand the bisexuals, caught between two worlds. And I understand the trans people, the few of us there are, struggling to figure out our identities and even our names in a society that says we're circus freaks.

My friends, the close ones, basically identify me culturally as a gay guy who likes girls. Too bad I don't have the fashion sense and culture of the Fab 5 from Queer Eye... maybe then I wouldn't dress like a dork.

Forty one weeks. More than enough to birth a baby. And guess what? It's a boy! It's a Monday morning, folks. Guess I better go fill that syringe. It's time for what my lesbian buds affectionately refer to as my "boy poison." And dude, am I aching for my poison. It's one way to make me like the start of the week.

Alex Kimball, 4 August 2003