Moon Memo: Trans Naked
Last night I read in front of a large crowd
of queer and trans people
trans naked,
meaning in my underwear and knee socks.
It was cathartic.
It was healing.
It was extremely hard.
I'm glad I did it.
And I am depleted.
And the dead keep speaking to me.
So if I'm distant for a while. Know I still
love you.
Here’s the piece, for folks that couldn’t be there:
Hello friends.
If you are not ready to be confronted by a fat trans body, this is your chance to look away. I know! There's nothing more horrifying.
I wrote this in October. On election day I had this horrible urge to write something for tonight called "Donald Trump Cracked My Egg", because the first time another trans woman said to me "well, at least you can enter the end of the world as a woman" was the day after the 2016 election.
But I don't want to give false optimism here. I don't want to say it's all going to be ok here, in front of a bunch of cisgender folks who don't understand what it's like to be weaponized in ads during an election.
Who don't know how many of my friends are glad they've had surgeries during this magical time between Trump elections.
The number of friends I have who are now worried.
The number of my friends who have jumped through so many hoops. The number of my friends who have been gatekept from affirming care.
And this piece feels as relevant as ever, as trans health care is attacked during the next 4 years. And the question about surgeries becomes even more painful.
This is called "my answer when anyone ask me when I'm getting "the surgery".
First, who has asked me:
A Cab driver to the airport, who wouldn't stop driving in circles around the terminal until I either rolled out of the still moving cab, or answered.
Kind faced fellow teacher who stopped inviting me to his family's house to watch Mariner's games after I came out, but who asked me in front of other teachers at a faculty meeting.
My mother.
A dozen trans women as I drove them home from their orchis, their vulvaplasties, their top surgeries (pssst...a top took me home from my top surgery...).
A single serving lover at a sex club, lying in a puddle of her cum after my mouth had found a way to make her clench against me again and again, asked why I kept my panties on, asked me when I...
A cis gender coworker at my queer ass org, who hugged me tightly at pride and said "welcome to womanhood" after I told her my doctor said I had to lose 175 pounds to even get onto the wait list.
My friend who cried against my breasts, left a smiley face of snot and tears after she got news her surgeries got postponed, who later filled a syringe with estradiol and fentanyl, turned blue, resurrected when the mist in our friends backpack hit her brain, who said afterwards "we get to dream, don't we?"
"Some of us do," I replied.
Listen: surgery does not make a woman.
I am AFAB.
I was assigned faggot at birth.
I was 7 years old when my granny found me in her closet, wearing her church dress and stolen lipstick (this color, right here).
I was 9 years old when a group of boys drowned me in the bathroom for being too girly. I was 10 when it happened again. I was 11. I was 12. I was 13. I was 14. I was...(you get the drift)
I was 17 when my grandfather last beat me for being too girly.
I was 18 when a pastor told me he was broken inside, knew I was broken inside, that God helped him with this camp he went to, do you want to go to this camp I went to? I didn't want to go the camp he went to.
I was 20 when a counselor at my evangelical college told me the same thing when I told her I thought I was a woman, when I stopped going to counselors for 15 years.
I was 27 when my now ex wife found out why we had to wash so much of her underwear every week, that I had been wearing them in my classroom to feel good in my body.
I was 30 when my father in law said I should man up, take control of my household, it's what god wants.
I was 35, sitting in my new apartment after a friendly divorce, the dress I had bought from Amazon laid out before me, my face a topography of cuts after shaving my shame beard, my first dose of hormones on top. I put it on. I melted blue minty pills under my tongue. I left my apartment in a panic. I rode the bus to meet all the other girls who knew a cis man didn't hang out with only trans women, told them my name was Misha.
I was 36 when a lover first rejected me for my still hairy body. I cut my chest to ribbons with a razor. I still cut my chest to ribbons once a week.
I was 45 the last time that a lover rejected me for my body. I am 45 now.
It was this week a cis woman last asked me about the surgery.
Listen: the surgeries won't make me beautiful.
I am beautiful.
I write about sex and death because sex with other trans people makes me feel happy in my body for once, the alchemy of their hands across my soft breasts and tiny clit, my big belly, my ass for days...loving my body is my salvation.
This is me loving my body.
This is me hating my body.
This is me crying every time I'm at the doctor and they shake their head when I'm still too heavy. This is me finally giving up surgery, learning to make my way as a fat woman who doesn't need a surgeon to define me.
This is me telling other trans women that we should get to define our bodies as enough even if we have surgeries. They are enough if they do or do not have the surgeries.
This is me answering the question in a room of cis and trans coworkers and friends and strangers that I am a woman, and no gatekeeper gets to tell me otherwise, that I won't join my friends who have noosed and slit and overdosed and shot themselves away, that I will die an old trans woman, that a surgery wouldn't change that. And yet. And yet. And yet.
Also it's really fucking rude to ask, you assholes. What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop making decisions about my body and it’s worth. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t.
Thank you.