Something I haven’t talked about on this blog is my ongoing transition. I wrote a post a few years ago about being genderqueer. While being genderqueer or non-binary are perfectly wonderful identities, I realized during the height of the pandemic in 2020 that I had merely used genderqueer as a means to hide my cowardice. It wasn’t entirely me.
In dreams, I tend to be either a man or an animal. Although I felt more masculine when I came out as genderqueer, I didn’t think transitioning to a man was possible. I was insecure about how I would look, how others would perceive me, and, most importantly, what my family would think.
And then 2020 roared in. I spent the first few weeks of the year in a mental hospital recovering from an intense depressive episode where I no longer felt like life was worth living. Then, just as I was getting back on my feet, the pandemic hit. Amid all of the chaos and all of the fear, I realized two things: one, that I absolutely wanted to live, and two, that I wanted to do it as a man—whatever that meant, whatever that looked like, whatever the fallout might be.
I’m at high-risk for hospitalization with Covid, so I waited until I’d had my first round of vaccinations to seek out a gender-affirming clinic in Austin. I started taking testosterone this time last year. I started on a gel form, initially, because I have essential tremor and my hands tremble. I’m not good with needles! There were some problems with the absorption, so I basically missed a few months. Since then, I’ve started on injections, and my husband is administering them!
He has been an absolute jewel during this whole process. He said he’s always known I was really a man. When I asked him if he would still be attracted to me if I transitioned, he told me he was attracted to me—not some shape, not a physical being. Just me.
I’m middle-aged and a couch potato. I’m never going to look like one of the beautiful young men I see in the waiting room at my gender-affirming clinic. I’m going to come out the other side of this as me—an older, heavy man. But I’ll be me. The real me. And my husband loves me. I don’t need the approval of anyone else.
Metaphor for a sweet protagonist? (He does remind me a little of Thomas.)
When I write, I’ve noticed I’m often sifting through my baggage. Writing is fun, it’s my vocation, and it’s also therapy. I usually don’t realize how a work symbolizes some part of my life, either something I’m working on or something I need to work on, until I’m already into it. This time, I’m about midway through my current story, Carillon’s Curse, and starting to tease out its theme. (I start out with some vague idea of a novel’s theme, then zero in on it as I write.)
I’m still piecing it together, but a component of it slapped me right upside the head.
I’ve always been a people pleaser. I gush over strangers, have few boundaries, and put the wants of others ahead of my own. I shrink in unfamiliar—and sometimes in familiar environments—trying to take up as little room as possible. A friend once said, “Do you realize how many times you say you’re sorry? Why are you so sorry?”
Basically, I’m sorry I’m alive. I’m sorry for the space I take up on this planet. I think this stems from growing up with a physically and emotionally abusive parent. I always thought if I was good—if I could be oh, so very, very good—I wouldn’t be hurt. I guess I also internalized her anger and resentment toward me.
Three months ago I started transitioning from female to male. After saying I was genderqueer for a long time, I finally realized that I had been saying that because I didn’t think transitioning was a real option. The pandemic hit, and my shell cracked wide open. To my surprise, my husband was fully supportive. We’re closer now than ever before. (And we were pretty obnoxiously close before.)
I don’t know if it’s the testosterone, the pandemic, or my age, but I free and alive and valid. I’m not putting up with crap anymore. I’m not going back to that person who has to smile even when I’m feeling shitty. I don’t need to go out of my way to make everyone comfortable. I’m not sorry for being here. For the first time, when I celebrated Pride Month, I felt truly proud. I actually, maybe for the first time ever, really like myself.
Okay, so what does this have to do with a gay Western paranormal romance? Both of the main characters, in different ways and for different reasons, feel flawed and unworthy of love. These two good men, tied to their pasts and unable to attain true happiness, are chasing a serial killer who thinks he’s freaking awesome. This guy believes he’s helping his victims and society. He’s a narcissistic creep who, in his arrogance, is sure he has all of the answers.
My job, as the writer of this story, is to send these two good guys down the paths they need to stop this killer and find the love of their lives. Sometimes writers feel like gods. So often, as with this book, I feel more like a shepherd, guiding my heroes to a happily ever after.
Who knew shepherds sometimes learned from their lambs?
(You can tell I’m between books, because here’s another blog post.)
This morning, I received an email from a friend asking me to blog about being genderqueer. First, let’s get some taxonomy out of the way. Genderqueer is a blanket term for having a gender identity that doesn’t fall neatly into either male or female. I believe the scientific term for this is non-binary. Other types of genderqueer are genderfluid, gender***, gender-neutral, third gender, and probably some others that I can’t remember at the moment, but I’ve only had one cup of tea today, so please forgive me. Genderqueer falls within the trans community. Basically, the trans community encompasses trans women, trans men, and non-binary people. Here’s a link to a wonderful diagram that explains the difference between gender identity, gender expression, biological identity, and sexuality.
Genderqueer is my preferred term to describe myself. Non-binary seems too sterile. Genderfluid, from what I understand, is where a person feels more masculine sometimes and more feminine at others. This doesn’t describe my experience. I’m pretty much blended all of the time. My perception of myself could probably best be defined as intersex. Intersex used to be called hermaphroditism, and describes a person born with both male and female sexual characteristics. Biologically, I’m female. In my head, I’m both male and female. I lack male sex organs. We’ll get back to that.
As a kid, I always felt different. I didn’t like dolls. I played with plastic or stuffed animals. Later, I liked boy’s action figures. I wasn’t really a tomboy. I wasn’t athletic or outdoorsy. My friends were usually soft, nerdy boys, and we meshed beautifully. Middle school and high school were absolute hell. I didn’t fit in anywhere. I wasn’t attracted to most men. Straight (the fun term now is cis sexual) men actually turned me off and sometimes angered me. The more alpha male a guy was, the more I wanted to punch his sack. I loved lesbians, but I wasn’t really sexually attracted to them. I loved gay men, but they weren’t sexually attracted to me. My teen and young adult years were confusing and lonely.
In my early twenties, before I met my husband, I worked as a stripper. I did all of the glitter and high heels and whatnot for work. During the day, however, I often dressed as a boy. When I went out with my guy friends, I sometimes passed as a boy. I don’t know that I was fluid then, because the stripper garb felt like playing dress up. It was a role, not something I was.
I met my husband when I was twenty-six. He looked like a perfectly normal straight guy, but I could smell the weird on him. I knew something was up. At this point, I had never heard of all of these terms. I didn’t know what I was. I knew what I wasn’t—a ‘normal’ heterosexual woman. So, here comes L., all six foot three of him, tall and broad and looking like a young Colin Firth. And he was deliciously strange. We clicked immediately and have been inseparable ever since. I always scoff when I hear people criticizing “insta love” in romances; it totally happens.
A snapshot of our relationship dynamic could be a time when we went to an antique mall. We stood in the checkout line, me with an armful of Incredible Hulk action figures, him with a Depression glass candy dish and a decidedly feminine Victorian desk set. We were getting things for our home offices.
These days, I basically look female. I dress female—more or less—sometimes I pack, but under skirts and dresses, so no one knows but me. I sound female. I use feminine pronouns. All of these things are mainly because I’m lazy, somewhat cowardly, and don’t want to upset the people who are used to seeing me as female. In the bedroom, however, I wear a strap-on. The first time I wore one, I felt whole for the first time ever. Finally, my body made sense. There’s a fetish called pegging where straight women wear strap-ons and have sex with straight guys. I don’t peg. I use a prosthetic. I make love. I’m not using a toy; I’m making my body look and function more the way I feel like it should. That is my preferred way to have sex and has been for about twenty years.
That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing m/m romances. Romantically, I have more in common with a gay man than with a straight woman. I’ve written one erotic romance with a straight couple and struggled with the erotic parts. I don’t think it’s a bad book, but I think my gay romances have a more natural feel.
In a perfect world, where surgery was free, painless, and carried no risks, I would get surgery to correct my body and make it fit my mental image of it. I’m okay with things not being perfect. I’ve found love and happiness, I more or less accept and like who I am. I didn’t hear the term ‘genderqueer’ until maybe ten years ago. I immediately loved it and embraced it. I didn’t realize that made me part of the trans community until a few years ago when I went to protest the bathroom bill in Texas and a trans male doctor explained the trans spectrum. The information moved me to tears. I wasn’t a complete weirdo. I was part of a community.
As I said, genderqueer is a blanket term. It’s rather nebulous. It means different things to different people. This is what it means to me. I guess I’m rather nebulous, so I like it.
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