beard

“Fuck yeah!” my chosen family member said. “I hope your beard grows so long you can braid it. I hope you can put flowers and bones in it. And teeth.”

I laughed.

“Wow!” I said, imagining my beard tinged with gray. Imagining the flowers, bones, and teeth woven in. “Whose teeth?”

“I don’t know!” my dear one said.

“Rabbit teeth?”

“Any teeth!”

“Thank you for helping me dream a new dream,” I told my dear one later.

Since then I see my possible self in a new way. Thrilled, I hope my beard gets long and thick to support inclusions.

beard

My dear one tracks my facial hair with love and gender support. They are trans also. They’ve encouraged me for a long time, to be who I am and let the full extent of myself unfurl. Like a beautiful green leaf so huge, with space and water and sunlight. They help me find so much strength to become the full extent of myself.

So far I haven’t tried hormones or surgery for gender. But allowing my mustache to grow (which I had shaved off since I was a teenager) was a start. I’ll always be grateful to my young housemates two years ago who looked at me, paused, and expressed appreciation.

The beard looks scruffy, so I kept shaving that. But experimenting with gender presentation, I’m allowing it to do its thing, and I’m impressed by the patches of fur that appear now, as peri-menopause continues to bless me with change.

dudes

Part of the beard motivation was this: once my head hair grew to a certain length, cis men started to look at me again. Yuck!

“What can I do so cis men stop looking at me?” I asked my chosen family member.

I considered shaving my head. We thought about facial tattoos, but couldn’t come up with anything.

Yesterday at the beach, a white guy made a disparaging sound as I walked by the bench where he was seated. It was an angry “tssssk” sound. I had reason to believe the white guy didn’t like my hair style plus dress. The combination of breasts and beard was offending him.

Yes, I’m guessing the breasts drew him in, and then he was upset by the rest of my gender presentation, like I had tricked him. Don’t ask me how the “tssssk” sounded tricked, but it did. Definitely there was disapproval.

I’d found a cool barrette at the library, and Ming washed it for me. So the hair on my head was swept to the side, with the fresh undercut showing. And maybe he saw my beard and mustache too.

asking for help

“I need you not to leave me alone in public right now,” I told Ming when I got back to the car.

Not that I can’t offend people. Just when I feel angry and reactive, I don’t want to attack anyone and end up with consequences.

Men aren’t nasty to me when Ming is around. Never do they make a disparaging sound or comment. I assume they assume Ming is a man and owns me, so they behave themselves so Ming doesn’t kick their ass…?

“Is it dangerous for me to say something back to a man?” I asked Ming. “What’s dangerous?”

We talked about physical confrontation vs words. I reminded Ming of something that happened at a gas station a couple months ago when a white cis man said something cruel to me, and I replied involving profanity, upsetting the gas station customers and workers with my ragey, “Fuck you,” which to the other people in the gas station was out of context.

cat crisis

Yes, that caused a whole lil crisis for me, of how to react to white men in public who give me grief. Friends had varying opinions. Mostly they weighed in that it was good that I said something. One friend advised me to stop trying to figure out how to prevent it from happening again, because it wasn’t my fault. We talked about what the white cis man will say to the next person.

I consider what could get me in jail. At what point the cops are called, and what can result in arrest.

My whole life I kept my head down until just recently. I was afraid of men and would defer. These days I have a different attitude, depending on my mood and circumstances.

If the gas station asshole had seemed houseless or otherwise poor, I would have said nothing. Part of my reactivity is about class. It’s the cis white men with money who flip me out. It doesn’t feel like a choice– it’s something fast in my body.

I give a vibe like, “I’m not afraid of you,” and the men don’t like it. Something about my posture, facial expression, the way I walk.

love based

I’m a love-based organism seeking experience of God through pleasure and prone to giggle fits. It takes a lot for me to get enraged. A lifetime of being shat on by cis white dudes with money has gotten to me. I mean personally but also logging, the pollution that harms the lungs of people I love, tainted waterways, nuclear testing on my relatives, EBT being cut, Palestine– you know, all that.

Like gender presentation, feeling the full extent of my feelings is a thing too. Is this rage energy part of my gender?

Gender is really confusing and I don’t understand, but maybe in a few years I’ll understand better. I’ll let you know.

and another thing

Thank you to Ming for listening endlessly. Thank you, reader, for listening too.

I thank the person who lost their barrette in the library, and thank Ming for washing it for me.

I thank the person who lost the golden hoop earring I’ve been wearing in my right ear for a couple months now, which I found in the gutter, my favorite jewelry store. Yes, it makes me seem like I’ve sailed across the equator which is false advertising. But I’m willing to take that risk.

Thank you to my chosen family member for supporting my gender like no one else. Youth mentoring the middle aged is cute af.

Thank you to my mama who taught me how to love and who would be so happy to see me occupy more of the body she formed for me. Well, I don’t know that she would like the beard, but she always wanted me to be happy.