"Bucket lists can wait"
I was hoping to get top surgery this year. In the grand scheme of things, I know, that isn’t such a big deal. I didn’t have the money to get it before hospitals started cancelling so-called “elective surgeries,” including all kinds of gender confirmation surgeries, and it would be irresponsible to proceed with surgery plans now, when the medical system is already overburdened. It didn’t work out this time, and it probably won’t for a while. That has to be all right, because I have no other option.
I am lucky in that I didn’t have a surgery date booked, I didn’t pay for a consultation, I didn’t have any firm plans to mourn, and I am by no means alone. But I still feel a pang of loss at the deferral of a dream I’ve been chasing for years now in one form or another. Before I came out as trans in 2017, I still dreamed of having a body that existed only in my mind. Since then, I’ve been putting money towards this goal a little bit at a time, hoping for insurance coverage, asking friends and family to contribute. I had started taking steps to pursue it more seriously, still afraid it was too good to be true: I got a referral from my doctor; I got in touch with a surgeon; I asked my therapist to write me the letter required to prove that I should be allowed to decide what body I spend the rest of my life in. I started saving more out of every paycheck, cutting down on all my other spending, doing my best to put away all the money I wasn’t using to pay rent or bills or buy groceries. Now I am using those savings to cover the same living expenses while I’m out of work, since I won’t be able to pursue surgery for at least several months in any case. These paragraphs are the only place I am letting myself mourn, for now. This is a small, private grief, with any luck a temporary loss. The uncertainty is the worst part, as it always is.
I also don’t know when I’ll be able to go back to work. Right now that isn’t as much of a concern, since my husband and I have the money we’ve saved, and the incredible generosity of strangers, to carry us for a while. But at some point, it will start to be a pressing question again. I’m not sure what’ll happen then. I am biracial, half Chinese and visibly so. Even at the salon, where all my coworkers are well-intentioned, this is not a frictionless way to live in Ohio. Coworkers have come up to me and greeted me in Japanese, a language I don’t speak from a culture of which I am not part. Clients have called me “exotic” and “Oriental.” I’ve overheard conversations about how alien and disgusting Chinese food is. Once, a coworker described her child’s eyes to me as “chinky.”
Right now it is not a good time to be Chinese in America. This is not the first, nor the worst, instance of widespread xenophobia against Chinese people in this country. We remain the first and only group banned from the United States based on ethnicity. Right now, President Donald Trump (R) is taking active steps to brand COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” even as his administration leaves no preventative measure unbotched, no public health response unfumbled.
There is already a Wikipedia page listing instances of violence against Chinese and other Asian people as a result of COVID-19. It is not a short list. It is never a good time to be a person of color in customer service in Ohio, but it is worse now than it was before, and time passes slowly here. I suspect it will remain bad for a while. The last few times Dylan and I have left the house, I’ve worn sunglasses and thought about the way I felt when I was trying to figure out how to tell my coworker she shouldn’t describe her non-Asian child’s eyes as “chinky,” something that had clearly never occurred to her before.
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The pot roast turned out very well, by the way. Dylan added some brandy at the last minute, and it made the entire house smell good. Yesterday we roasted about a pound of green beans with lemon salt and garlic, and today he’s making chicken soup with a local bird we picked up from Kauffman at the West Side Market. I think we’re going to confit some tomatoes, as well.
Overnight, the temperature dropped ten degrees. We have fresh sheets on the bed, and it’s good sleeping weather. I’m thinking about Anaïs Mitchell’s cover of “Tam Lin,” and holding tight.
—R.