Deep in thought since seeing the Teena Brandon documentary last night with Linda. It was moving, and will be one of those films that stays with me. I watched it feeling how easily it could have been my story. Slightly less watchful parents, a little less church influence... it wouldn't have taken much for me to transition to the boi side.
I grew up surrounded by boys, and often wishing there was no gender; no physical markers to insist on my difference. My strategy was to completely ignore those markers- not exactly pretending I was a boy, but refusing to acknowledge any material differences between us. I got into fist-fights, climbed trees, dominated most of those my age, and was full of bravado. I was the scruffy, dirty kid some moms wouldn't let their kids play with. And it makes me mad- it makes me wonder ... why the excruciating pressure to conform to femaleness, if not feminity? What about those who don't feel particularly male or female? There are those (and I count myself here) who look down, see the body we inhabit, and don't feel female or male, despite what others think they "know" about us.
There's a lot of appeal to the transitioning thing- you get to insist on a label, you get to move over on the physical side to where you feel most comfortable on the emotional side. But I have questions about aligning my emotions and responses to a gender- and I am no Tiresias. Is maleness just another unreal label?
Androgeny, transitioning... I can't countenance a definitive outside perhaps, because I'm still getting in touch with what's on the inside. Mostly, I've had the luxury of being a scruffy adult, still in between worlds, but getting ever more comfortable with that. It took 32 years and near death to necessitate my JTREE tattoo, and that as a reminder to the mind that looks down at my body -trapped in an office or racing through woods.
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
