I guess I could’ve mentioned this, rather than disappearing…
But the manuscript for my memoir, Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender, is due mid-Oct. So, that’s where I am, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, when I’m not panicking, of course.
Apparently the book will be in stores May 10, 2011. Assuming I finish, that is. I guess I should get back to it.
Check back here in Nov. Something new will be on this site…
Mr. Homo Girly Man
I thought there was a distinct chance that testosterone would make me gay, but it never occurred to me that testosterone would make everyone think I’m gay. As a child, I was a tomboy; as a teenager, I walked with the dyke swagger; as a dyke, I was sporty and jockey. I was always a tiny bit masculine, stereotypically speaking, so it’s somewhat of an surprise to come off like a pansy.
Some of the shift probably has to do with personal choices–I’m now comfortable pulling my hair into a half-pony, throwing on a purple shirt and grabbing a hula hoop. Some of it probably has to do with my socialization as a woman–I’ve always talked with a mild valley girl lilt, and maybe some if it even has to do with me being little for a guy. But what this shift in perception shows me is how fundamental and deep the male=masculine and the female=feminine goes in our culture. Swap out my shell and different traits bang up against the container, new characteristics are brought into relief. In the end, all this queer can say is a flaming, faggoty, “hallelujah!”
My First Dance
A couple weeks ago, I went to the monthly dyke party that I used to go to in my early twenties and have rarely been to since. While some queer spaces like the Lexington Club have changed to accommodate the changing clientele, this monthly party hadn’t changed at all. It was FULL of women. At one point, I searched the crowd for least one person who might identify as boi/boy, genderqueer, trans-masculine, or even use the pronoun “they.” Nada. I didn’t care. It was a sunny afternoon and I wanted to dance (tequila was involved).
I joined a friend dancing with a woman with shoulder-length hair, a newsboy cap, a black sweater vest, a decent-sized chest that didn’t seem to be contained by sports bra nor binder–in short, a soft butch, or me eight years ago. Back then, I never would’ve danced with this woman same as I wouldn’t have fucked my mirror. But next thing I knew, I was grinding up against this woman, my packer pressed into her crotch. I guess I expected her to turn away or run, but she smiled. She probably thought I was gay. Maybe she knew I was trans. Regardless, she didn’t care. It was awesome, the first time I ever really danced with a lesbian, or maybe the first time I felt included by one without having to be one.
Hello Ladies…
After exchanging several emails with a friend to decide on a specific date for a dinner party, she sent a mass invite to the larger group with the opening line, “Hello Ladies.” I wasn’t quite offended as much as I didn’t want to be part of an event that would in any way be defined or organized around gender, especially one that didn’t include me. Plus, having exchanged emails with my friend that morning, I wondered how she failed to notice the slip up.
But when we spoke about the incident later, her explanation made sense to me. She said she uses “hey girls” or “hey ladies” the way someone (including me) would say “hey guys”–a phrase that many people no longer think of as gendered, problematic, of course, because the only reason that male words (like guys) or words that contain male parts (like human) are gender-neutral is because of the history of patriarchy. So yeah, “hey ladies” is one hell of a trigger phrase for me, but I couldn’t argue with a woman subsuming men under her gendered term for a collective when the opposite has been going on forever.
The bottom line is neither “guys” nor “ladies” cuts it anymore. I received an email from a friend a few days later addressed to “Lesbian separatists and their boyfriends” and I knew she was talking directly to me and all my friends.
Cocks are like snowflakes
I was discussing gay porn the other day, trying to express to my friend Derek the vast and remarkable diversity of dicks, something that he knew but that I’ve only recently discovered, and he said, yeah dude, “Cocks are like snowflakes.”
The photo below has been posted near my desk/writing area for at least five or so years. It’s from a road trip around Tasmania. I was 24 years old, had just quit a decent job, and was at the beginning of what would end up being a four-month backpacking trip around Australia, Thailand and Laos. I had no idea where I was going and what I would do with my life. All I knew was that I wanted to run to the end of land, climb up to the highest rock and launch my arms up into the sky.
The next picture is the background image on my laptop now that technology has replaced the need for me to literally hang pictures near my desk. It’s from last month, my yoga retreat to Guatemala. I like it because the inspiration is so different from the one above — I’m flipped upside down, rooted into the ground. If asked if I can do a handstand, I would say no. A friend held me in this pose, running out of the frame only an instant before another friend snapped the picture. But when I look at this image I believe I can do a handstand. I believe I can do anything.
It is way harder than writing a blog. And don’t get me started on writing memoir, which is perhaps the hardest kind of book, maybe not to write, but to live with writing. We’ll save that dumb move of mine for another day. But writing a book is harder than writing blog posts because I have to think about things like characters, description, narrative, plot, scene. Not just once, but like, in every chapter, for many, many chapters. Then, there are the words themselves, approximately 65,000. And I fondle all of them, even the little ones—conjunctions and articles–and I’m not talking one-night stand fondle either—I have full-on relationships with each word. My brain feels like mush, like split pea soup. And I can’t tell if that’s a metaphor or a cliche. Because I’ve lost all perspective. Which is why I’m deleting the next five paragraphs or random incoherency I spewed in the past couple days and ending this post. Apparently writing a book is so hard, I can’t even blog. At least not right now.
My Final Hurrah
Last Monday, I went into the women’s locker-room at my gym. I did my typical head down, hair in my face, wrap my towel around my neck for extra coverage thing, and perhaps this finally made me look suspicious because everyone stared at me. Everyone.
I had tried to prepare myself for this moment, or rather I’d come up with a response to the “What are you doing in here?” question. I even practiced my answer. In my sweetest voice I’d say,”I’m transgender and I feel more comfortable in here.” But that was months ago, before my sweet voice had gone baritone, before the hard angles had settled into my jaw. Never did I think I would last so long in there. I lasted so long, I may have convinced myself I could stay forever.
There was one woman in particular who must have stared at me for a full five minutes. She was quiet a bit older, and as I waited for her to question my presence, I knew I would never utter my practiced line. In my head, it had actually mutated into a whine, complete with some fist banging on my thighs, an “I don’t wanna use the men’s locker-room, goddamnit! I just don’t wanna.” I almost stopped going to the gym entirely, but the only thing worse than acting like a victim of my situation is acting like a big old baby.
Have I mentioned this thing I have at work I like to call “tranny privilege”?
You see, I have my own private bathroom with shower. Well, it’s two private bathrooms actually, ever since I asked HR to replace the “men’s” and “women’s” shower signs with “unisex” since both rooms are the same. When I changed my name and pronouns at work, to save everyone some discomfort, I’d requested use of these bathrooms, even though they’re only supposed to be used when showering. Recently, a co-worker asked me if she could use them, because no one wants to take a dump in the stall next to their boss, and I said, “Nope. There’s a sign inside that says ‘no exceptions.’ Unless you’re me. Sucker.” So yeah, I can shit, jerk off and shower in privacy at work–tranny privilege.
Back to the big baby thing. With the shower at work, I didn’t even actually need to shower at the gym. It’s just that I didn’t want to be there all sweaty, have to change into street clothes, walk back to work, then shower there, especially since I liked to pretend nobody knows I disappear from my cube to run at lunch, even though my co-workers often ask how my run was? Yeah, I know, woe is me. I didn’t want to change my routine. I was scared of the uncertainty. Who knew what I’d find behind the men’s locker-room door.
A New Beginning
Last Thursday, I decided to check it the men’s side, starting slow with a simple investigation in the late afternoon, an uncrowded time. It turned out the “gang” showers that intimidated me weren’t of the “drop your soap and get nailed by an offensive lineman (WR or RB if it’s a fantasy) kind. They were just shower stalls without doors; one even appeared to be in a corner. And though I kept my head down inside, it wasn’t for my previous reasons–fear of being caught–it was more like don’t invite what you can’t deliver (though I’m told this gym location isn’t known for “activity.”)
Overall, it was a bit uneventful, though I will say there’s a huge difference between a men’s restroom and men’s lockerroom. One has urinals, the other has naked men. Everywhere. It was the closest I’d ever been to such pervasive male nudity and although most of the guys needed some extra time on the treadmill, while I was washing my hands, I noticed the ridiculously ripped super sexy guy standing next to me in a towel. I’m pretty sure that switching to this locker-room immediately made me gay-ish-er.
I showered back at work that day, a rather pleasant experience, but the next time I went into the men’s lockerroom, I showered in one of the doorless stalls, just how I sometimes did on the other side when the lines for the private ones were too long. From the backside, I could be any gender with a hairy ass, and I figure if anyone catches a glance at my front, my dilemma is obvious—I only have two choices.
The locker-room I use doesn’t define my gender. It’s just a locker-room. And using the men’s side doesn’t make me a man. I could say I made the switch because it was time to accept a responsibility for what I look like, to respect the widespread system of binary categories even if don’t believe in it. And maybe that is what I’m saying, but I’d rather phrase it differently. I’d rather say it’s because I’m a person, and I just don’t want to be the kind of person who scares little old ladies in the locker-room.
I knew that once I made the switch, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the women’s side. I’d used every toilet, showered in every stall, had probably used half the lockers in there. I kinda wish I could’ve weighed myself one last time, or looked at my reflection in the mirror against a backdrop of female flesh. It may have only been a smelly, nasty locker-room, but I can’t help but think something inside deserved a proper goodbye.
*NOTE: I’ve shared certain things above that I may not be willing acknowledge again and wouldn’t want others to bring up about me. Also some of those topics are not comfortable for all trans folk. Being a paradox is funny until a doctor won’t provide you with service, someone purposely ignores your preferred name, or security is called while you’re in the “wrong” bathroom.
***Part I: Obstacles***
There are thoughts that always seem to spring up during my yoga practice:
“I bet I look ridiculous right now, like a monkey doing an arabesque”; “I was pretty good at basketball, and soccer. Tennis, too. Boy, those were the days”; “Why, oh why, is my right hip so tight? What is in there? Daddy, are you in there? I know you’re in there. Get out of my hip!”; “How thankful am I to have a body that works. Okay, fine, how thankful I should be to have this body. I am thankful for my body, right?”; “If only I was still with that last girl, or the one before that, then I could think about hot sex while stuck in this stupid room balancing on one foot with my legs and arms crossed”; “That second paragraph in chapter six, maybe I should use ‘patio’ instead of ‘deck.’ No, no, deck. Or patio. Deck. Fuck!”
I expected those thoughts and so was truly surprised when the one I hadn’t anticipated trumped them all, lodged itself into a huge ball in my forebrain: I am transgender. I am DIFFERENT.
I guess I don’t have to think about that as much in San Francisco, or in the Castro where even if I’m the only trans person in my yoga class, my ego is at least comforted by the knowledge that in the distance between my studio to my home, I have received both a girl’s phone number and a guy’s tongue in my mouth.
But the second I arrived in Guatemala, I felt my difference: I laughed uncomfortably when the hotel concierge said, “That’s not your real name right, you don’t strike me as a Nina,” and I quaked in my zip-off pants when a uniformed officer with a gun said, “Good afternoon, sir” while staring at my open passport with the big letter “F,” and I panicked for a moment at a bar in San Pedro when I was directed to the “bathroom,” a cement hole with only a bare bones partition blocking it off from the center of a crowded courtyard.
And the second I arrived on my retreat, I felt my difference: When I met my new roommate, who was upset to have been matched with a guy, me, I took on the burden of the situation, as if I had solely caused the problem, as if my being was an irreconcilable problem. And when I removed my shirt, I realized that even though top surgery was without a doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me, I still felt stigmatized, a tiny bit ugly, when my scars were acknowledged: The mom who asked, “Are you okay?”; The child who asked, “What are those lines?”; The massage therapist who asked, “Are those tribal markings?” And every time I heard someone address the woman named “Mina,” I felt my entire stomach drop before I’d realize that nobody knew my birth name, that the present incarnation of myself was safe.
At this point in my life, I find it easier to out myself instead of biting my tongue when I’m about to tell a girl I used to play sports against her all-girls school, or explicate that I played in the Sydney Gay Games as a dyke not a gay dude, even though I’m at least kinda gay-ish now. It’s also easy to out myself because I’m writing a transgender memoir and since writing is what I’m most passionate, it’s often the first thing I want to share with new friends.
Within the first few days, I’d told several folks I was trans (although I always said the full “transgender” and tried not to wonder if they had any sense of what I meant by a word that I believe holds a great deal of diversity). If I didn’t tell someone, I assumed they either heard or figured it out, and then, once everyone knew, I developed it into a new worry: I am only a Trans Person, that’s all I do, all I am, all I have to offer.
Different may have been the word I used to describe myself initially, but separation, isolation, and loneliness were the blocks that I turned it into inside my head.
*** Part II: Intention ***
On Tuesday, when I had settled into the retreat enough and still knew I’d have enough time to relax when done, I pulled out my manuscript. It took me a day-and-a-half to get through, and I read it as planned, in a hammock without a pen in my hand and without an eye towards revision. But I also read it with an intention I would not have considered had I not had a brief exchange at breakfast with my teacher who framed my upcoming task as a “nod to the work done.”
Four years of my life, a great deal of pain and triumph, and hundreds of hours writing, revising, writing and revising went into those pages. Some of those paragraphs had been sentences that became chapters that became words that moved from chapter 3 to chapter 5 before finally finding a home. I nodded in acknowledgment, in awe really, of the journey my words had taken. When I bumped into my teacher later, she said I looked clear. She wasn’t aware that I’d read my manuscript, and that after four years, I believed, for the very first time, that I may actually have a book on my hands.
But perhaps the clarity came from the experience of reading a story about a narrator who just happens to have been me, and the new perspective this gave me. For I’d just read a “book” that at its core is a queer coming out story about a person afraid of becoming an outsider, of not being “normal.” And there I was now, a person so comfortable in the Castro as a queer and outsider that “normal” people scared me. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself, at the circularity of my course.
***Part III: Yoga***
We practiced yoga every morning and every afternoon, except for the one morning when a few folks climbed a volcano, an adventure I didn’t even consider after focusing on this concept of intention and setting my own for the week: not to go anywhere or do anything; to banish “should” from my head, to let go of any notion of achieving anything.
Yoga can be a complicated endeavor. It can be about trying to get my leg behind my head (I’m not even close). It can be about learning that my pelvis has a floor and if I can just convince it to feel like its holding onto a tampon for dear life, I might be able to do a handstand. It can be about discovering that there are words like kapalabhati and uddiyana bandha that I cannot physically understand, nor even pronounce.
Yoga can also be profoundly simple. It can be about being compassion to oneself and being compassionate to others. It can be about learning what happens when a handful of people who do not know each other take off work, leave behind children and husbands, drop some cash, shed their defenses, and connect. It can be about discovering that my experiences, my story, may be different from that of others, but that a good story, a real story, is universal—that we all experience joy, worry, pain, sadness, anxiety, passion, loss, grief, pressure, fear, loneliness, and if we’re lucky, some gratitude.
***Part IV:Transformation***
In the end, I didn’t leave the retreat property for six days. I’d wanted to see what would happen if I stopped moving, what would move inside of me if I stayed still. I’m not sure when it happened, or how it did, but I visualized the change in a ritual, an image, my separation going up in flames, and in the experience of diving into the icy volcanic lake every morning and sloughing off my coat of isolation
What took its place shocked me: the words of a friend who said I seem “really happy” and another who said I’m “magnetic” and exude the sense of someone who knows it; a friend on the mat by my side, stabilizing me with her steady strong breath; the pale blue eyes of a friend locking her drishti onto my heart every time I opened my mouth; the ease of skinny-dipping in the womb-warm watsu pool under a swollen moon; the cohesiveness of a circle, undulating, and the flickers of light that powered us from our center.
***Part V: Return***
I went to yoga class on Monday night, the first day I was back. I’d told myself I didn’t *have* to go, but after practicing daily, it seemed easier to go than not to, to stick with a good habit rather than force myself into a bad one. And besides, it was less than a five minute walk to the studio from my house, only a few minutes longer than the walk from my retreat room to the yoga palapa. I’d just spent a week with people who flew to Guatemala from NY, Minnesota, and Colorado to practice with my teacher, and now, back in San Francisco, the distance to her seemed even shorter.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was happy to see me, for she is human and not immune to the retreat withdrawal I was experiencing; she too had to let go of the community we’d created; she too had to acclimate back into the urban chaos.
After class, she was excited, telling me that she could see it, that my practice had shifted. Although I downplayed it, as I do, I would agree. I’m a little stronger, a little less self-conscious, a little more aware of my body, able to breath a little deeper. But it is off the the mat where I’ve noticed the shift the most. I waited for the panic to hit when my travel plans went awry after I left the retreat property, and I waited for my job annoyance to hit when I went back to work, and I waited for the overwhelm to hit when I got back to my manuscript and realized I have less than five months to finalize this book. But nothing hit, at least not as hard as it used to, not hard enough to knock me over.
After bandying around quite a few possibilities, I finally found my spring vacation, a yoga retreat to Guatemala. When I told my pal, who’d heard each of my previous trip ideas—all good none great—she said, “Now that sounds like a Nick vacation,” and I knew there was no turning back. I was equally excited and terrified, the two ingredients that make the most enjoyable and meaningful adventures for me.
I am going alone, which is usually no problem, except this time I’m going alone but with people. I’m meeting about fifteen or so strangers there, the lucky one to be my roommate. Yoga is twice a day, early morning and early evening. Have I mentioned I suck at yoga, that yoga is a physical workout but more than that it’s a mental challenge unlike anything I’ve ever encountered? I have a seven-day date to waltz with my demons while twisting my body into positions that are actually natural but that have been strayed from for over thirty years of habitually trying to mask, hide, and avoid pain, and while doing this, I have to breathe, breathe, breathe. I hope the volcanoes are as imposing and inspiring as the pictures, the lake as majestic as it appears, the setting a cradle to hold me.
I have put a great deal of trust in my teacher, Janet, and she’s earned it after two years of picking me up, consoling me, guiding me in times of struggle. Hers was the first class I ever attended as part of my journey into yoga. It was Friday night mellow flow class, happy hour and a half. I remember being surprised to find an actual DJ in a yoga class and as much laughter as sweat. When my girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks later that Friday night class became my refuge, Janet’s words my salve. It was the one night that I didn’t have to make plans to fill the space and distract myself, an activity I could do alone but with others, a place where I learned to put down the memories of what was, the story of what I hoped could be–it was remarkable actually, that without those two things constantly clouding up my head, the weight of suffering was lifted, if only for a moment.
It was a similar feeling, not nearly as devastating as this time in 2008, but similar in what I’ve now come to recognize as the need to return my attention, energy, and focus to me that opened my ears. And so it was, on a Friday night in February, after months of listening to Janet mention her upcoming yoga retreat that I finally heard her, the invitation became personal and the idea lodging itself inside me, the potential expanding. In the end, it was one word, one explanation, that sold me:
Rasayana. The path to rejuvenation.
There are terms I often use to rationalize and justify my actions, like deserve. Used in a sentence: I deserve this vacation because I haven’t taken a trip since Turkey last April, I work 6- 7 days a week between my book and can’t remember the last time I took more than 3 days off of both. But “deserve” doesn’t work so well for me—I think it encourages me to beat myself up so that I will deserve my reward. Permission is another term, a therapy word, and it’s a tiny bit better. Used in a sentence: I am giving myself permission to blow a shit-ton of money, more than I’ve ever spent on a vacation, staying in hotels rather than hostels, and pampering myself for no reason at all. Permission lacks the “because” element, which makes it more of a skill, and although crucial to my life, it’s not the perfect word.
I like “rejuvenation.” Used in a sentence: I am taking a vacation to rejuvenate myself so that I can return fresh, strong, and grounded to the things I love—waking up before dawn to write my book, going out and being social with my friends, pursuing new relationships, and doing a decent-enough job at my workplace.
Aside from the yoga there will also be the pleasure that I find in every trip, like the time to read. Although this trip is too short to truly develop a travel booklist (I’m even breaking one of my rules and bringing library books) I packed: Robin and Ruby (K.M. Soehnlein)–the new novel by my friend and teacher that I’m ridiculously excited to read; Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger) because Salinger’s death triggered my return to his brilliance and reading short books in one sitting is a favorite vacation pastime; Happy Baby (Stephen Elliot) and Jitterbug Perfume (Tom Robbins) as dependable back-ups; and finally, my book, or manuscript in-progress.
It’s sitting right next to me, 200+ pages printed and bound with a large clip, scaring the living bejesus out of me. I am not bringing my computer and will not write/revise my manuscript while I’m gone, but I have promised myself I will read the whole thing. It’s necessary and it’s time. I haven’t looked at this book holistically in years, or ever really, certainly not in any form resembling this current draft. I’ve spent the last several months immersed in the first 6 chapters and now, as I turn to the last 6, I can barely remember what I got down on paper when I first drafted them this past summer/fall. It is part of the rejuvenation, of both my writing process and my book’s narrative to take in the whole story for another big push, the one final push. I do not know what I will find when I read 65,000 of my words and I am truly afraid to find out.
But it is the unexpected that holds the excitement and terror, the adventure. What will it feel like to be outside my comfort zone in Guatemala? Who will I meet, connect with, what conversations will inspire and move me? How will my body and mind feel, starting and ending every day will yoga, feeding it with nourishing food? How will being transgender change my travel experience, my perspective, from that of all my previous trips? What will fill my journal, my blank composition book—will my words come from the triggers in my pocket notebook, the projects I’m currently in the middle of, or will they be fresh and new, born from the present. Will I desperately need to hit publish and share my words with you? What will enter the space once I create it? What will rejuvenate me?
I know they were all out because it was, or certainly felt like, the first weekend of spring. They were everywhere in the Castro and Mission, and all over Dolores Park. Every street and corner, every bar and cafe. I’m sure they were always there. The dykes and lesbians that is. I’d just never seen them so clearly before, never noticed them from the outside.
Some trans guys talk about feeling or becoming “invisible” once they transition, mostly surrounding the loss of lesbian community and the loss of blatant queerness. I’ve been waiting for this to strike me now that the physical differences between me and women have widened.
I sat in front of Harvest on Market St, eating sweet potato soup and thinking about this late yesterday, just watching all the dykes go by. I saw ponytails and dreadlocks and short styley hair, basketball jerseys and soccer shorts and softball uniforms. I saw women who certainly didn’t need and most likely didn’t want boobs as large as they had, and super boyish looking women who were probably pretty stoked about this. I felt like I was watching my entire twenties walk by. I didn’t feel invisible. I felt old. When I got up to leave, I caught my reflection in the glass. It surprised me a little, the young man staring back at me. How goddamn handsome you are, I thought. Then the loneliness hit. For the loss of what once was.
“I just tell people they’re shark bites,” he said.
My first response, a testament to either my ridiculousness or literalness, was that my chest scars are too symmetrical to be shark bites. Or, maybe it was a testament to how ignorant (and I mean that in a mostly friendly way) I believe most people are about trans folk. But headed to Guatemala on a yoga retreat at the end of next week, I realized I may want to have a story or two in my back pocket, whether it’s about precancerous tissue removed from chest, or my passport.
Because I didn’t want to start the long arduous process of changing my name/gender, especially when I’m not sure I ever want to change my gender (mostly for health insurance fears but also because M and F as designations are beyond meaningless to me), I’ll be traveling under a passport with an “F” and the name “Nina.” My picture is pre-testosterone, but it looks enough like me now that I figure most people won’t notice my name or gender. However, I am having some awkward moment worst case scenarios like having to acknowledge that the F is a mistake and that Nina is a boy’s name in Russian–both almost as believable as the shark bite thing.
Then there’s the retreat itself, which I imagine will consist of a handful of people from San Francisco, as well as people who work there, and of course, all of the people who fall into the “unforseen” circumstances category. I am expecting/hoping I feel safe enough to be trans without any explanation for my scars, and walk around in just shorts, because, well, I’ve waited fifteen fucking years to be comfortable in a bathing suit.
As far as my testosterone, I’m on a ten-day shot cycle and my trip is about ten days. When I booked the trip, I looked at a calendar and realized that if, leading up to my departure, I pushed off a few of my shot cycles by one day, then I could line up my trip and a cycle perfectly. It wasn’t entirely necessary; I could bring my vial, a syringe and needles, but I’d prefer not to. I’d prefer not to deal with any of these things, I guess, but these things are my life as I know it.
There was a time, about a few years, when I spent most of my mental energy trying to reconcile what seemed to be a whole lot of no-win choices. Breasts or scars. My happiness or the happiness of others. Traveling as a woman or never traveling again as a trans person. I wondered how much I’d have to give up for what in the end felt less like decisions and more like instinctual mandates.
So, here I am, about to go on first trip abroad as a transboy. And the truth is, I haven’t been too worried about it. Sometimes I forget that for being so neurotic and anxious, traveling calms me down. I’m good at planning, managing situations. I fixed this trip as sort of a training wheels, a place to test how comfortable I feel with my “F” passport and how safe I feel alone for a couple days at the beginning and end of the retreat. Part of my decision to go on a destination specific trip as opposed to a backpacking trip, even stay someplace “resorty”–something I’ve never done before–was so that I could settle into being myself around the same people, build them into a comfort zone.
And I’d be an idiot to think traveling as a trans person is any more dangerous than half the shit I pulled traveling alone as a woman. I’m also crazy if I think being trans is going be the hardest part of my trip. Because it’s entirely clear to me that the yoga is what is going to kill me.
