a year after our seperation
ramblings and goodbyes
One year ago, my breasts and I made the mutual decision to split.
I got to keep the nipples in the divorce. This is exceedingly rare (most share custody, or simply put the poor guys up for adoption and never see them again), and I would be lying if I said this wasn’t a slight point of pride.
I say it was a mutual decision, but, really, I own the lease where we were both staying. I don’t actually know how my breasts feel about the whole thing, and I don’t really care. If they have any grievances, they haven’t come back to tell me. But please don’t confuse that apathy for outright hostility; I don’t hate my breasts. I never did, and I still don’t. In fact, out of all the various kinds of breasts I could’ve spent 21 years with, I think I lucked out with mine. They were very good and kind to me. We were amicable partners.
Just because I got rid of my breasts doesn’t mean that I hated them. I hate that ideology that transsexuality is predicated on trying to minimize the amount of self-hatred you’re living with— because that implies that self-hatred is a base kit requirement for your existence. Something you can never eliminate, only attempt to mitigate. I reject the idea that any of this was done with malice. I reject the idea that my transsexuality can only be painted in terms of loss.
But, like some relationships just are, it was never going to work out between us.
So. Breasts. I suppose I’m speaking to you directly, now. You’ve missed a lot in a year.
Since we split, I’ve kept busy. I finished that manuscript I started working on while you were still around, Old Wounds; it’s ~85,000 words now, and has the tentative eye of two literary agents. Revisions have just been sent out! Everything related to transgender horror is going well, actually. We’re up to 158 films!
I joined a cute little kickball league for gay people, where I am one of exactly two trans people in the whole league (though at one point, we did have a whole three). Even the other trans people didn’t clock me right away; I’m still not entirely confident all the cis people have put two and two together yet. It always felt like people clocked me easier with you around, and I don’t know if I should thank you for that. It certainly kept the pressure off my shoulders to ever have to come out on my own terms. But I cis-pass now.
I don’t think either of us ever thought we’d cis-pass. It’s a strange thing. I still remember how my deadname would continually out me at my first job; how my roommate in Reno told me she knew I was trans, even though I never actually told her. I remember trying to be active in dorm life, and literally being able to hear my peers shift from using she to he. Now I blend in seamlessly. I don’t even try. In fact, I try to out myself sometimes, just to see if it’ll work. And nobody’s the wiser. There have even been times where I have point-blank identified myself as a transsexual, and people think that I’m a male-to-female trans person.
If I may speak candidly to you, as an old friend, this terrifies me. I’m older now than Brandon Teena will ever be. I’ve watched the face of a man change as he realized that he spent a period of time unknowingly attracted to a tranny, and it has seared itself onto my eyelids. Although I blend seamlessly at the surface, I am also intimately aware of the membrane between me and them. I think you would be surprised at the things cis men are comfortable saying to my cis-passing face these days; or you might not be surprised at all.
The multiple, severe depressive episodes I had as the result of this cis-passing was technically very good for my creative process. It’s the driving force behind one of the next books I want to write. I’m thinking part slasher, part sex comedy. The To Do List meets The Hitcher (and a dash of Ravenous). After how many Grindr messages of ‘Not into trannys’ do you whip out the axe and go ballistic? I’ll have to let you know.
I’ve even started playing around with that screenplay again. The one that tied my fear of our separation to a werewolf narrative. Transsexual lycanthropy. Of course you remember it. It was while I was writing it that I decided upon our separation. I’m revisiting it now that I finally know what top surgery recovery is like. Revisions pending here, too.
MARCY
You’ve been eating more, but what else? Any bursts of anger? Hair loss? Hair growth?
HUNTER
Yeah, every day for the last six years. It’s called transitioning. It’d be weird if any of that wasn’t happening to me.
I’m also writing this because I realized that I never said goodbye. And that’s my bad. Between the I.V., the being alone, and the fact that I’d never been under anesthesia before, I wasn’t really thinking about it. One of the nurses asked me about my tattoos, and I started talking about Star Wars, and the next thing I knew, I woke up and you were gone.
If it means anything, it was a miserable recovery. I threw up once (into the provided barf bag!), and the rest of the first night was spent watching Rocky Horror Picture Show and drinking Smoothie King. Never get separated during Christmas-time. Having those drains in for three full weeks was torturous. So were the ace bandages. Not only did I have a million little panic attacks because I could never catch my breath and could rarely sleep through the night, but you don’t get away with wearing something 24/7 without it reeking. Yes, I did keep these bandages; I think that means I’m technically in possession of a biohazard.
I’d also never nearly-passed out before. But the first time I saw what I looked like without you, my mom was in the same room but suddenly it sounded like she was a mile away and underwater. My feet and hands evaporated into static fuzz. Thankfully, I was able to sit down before I could knock my head on the tile and kill myself. We blamed it later on my minimal appetite and intake of food, but I still think some of it was shock.
Since you’ve left, I’ve regained roughly 90% sensation. Though I’ve maintained the nipples as-they-were, they still hurt more than they do feel. If I scratch the outside of my right armpit, a weird, sharp tingling will shoot up my bicep. No idea what that means.
Despite the fact that I maintained custody, despite the fact that I own the lease on my chest and it is most definitely mine, I’ve found it a strange grounds to return to. Even now, I hesitate to touch it. I can’t exactly verbalize why. But I think I’m still expecting to find you there. You weren’t much (you and me both, we’re tiny guys), but you were always a definitive presence. For better and for worse, you were always with me. And it’s strange that you’re not anymore. One year is not enough to erase twenty-one others.
The only two kinds of top surgery posts I see are the horror stories and the overwhelmed elation; ‘this saved my life and it’s been perfect’ sort of jazz. I can’t really relate to either of them. My new chest and I didn’t just immediately click into place. And this disconnect is a recurring pattern, I’ve realized, in the way I understand my body and the way Trans Men Are Supposed To Be. I don’t feel the kinship I think I’m supposed to. Cis men are still otherworldly to me— I can punch and kick at that membrane, but I know I’m not getting through.
Though I pass as one, I’m not a man. I’m fine with that. My desire for binary assimilation lasted a year and a half, max. But that leaves me in an empty room. I don’t have any close friends who have medically transitioned; not in the way that I have. I’m not binary; I’m also not non binary in the way that most of my peers engage with the term and identity. I struggle to find a preexisting frame of reference for who or what I am. I suppose I’m seeking something premade because I’ve already spent most of my life carving out nooks and crannies for myself; just once, I want to find some preexisting thing and be able to settle there.
So I don’t know what I am. Not the happiest thought in the world, but it’s a truthful one.
Back to you, breasts. We were never going to work it out, but a part of me wishes we could somehow share joint custody of each other. I don’t mourn you, necessarily, but what you represented; the person or girl I could’ve been, under different circumstances. You were somebody’s perfect breasts.
So, this is goodbye. Officially. Delayed, but finally, formally done.
I will miss you. But I am thankful that I can take off my shirt and jump into a pool now. I’m thankful for the scars the surgeon left in your place, like a garden growing out of the dirt of a demolished house. Whatever was here before wasn’t working, but we’ve planted something new. It’s an adjustment, but it’s growing on me. Plant-themed paragraph unintended.
This will not shock you, but the tattoo I got today is partially in your honor. It comes from Bit— “we’re made to be monsters, so let’s be monsters”. I wouldn’t be who I am without horror, and I wouldn’t be who I am without my transsexuality, and those two things have become this giant, tangled ball of yarn. Trust me, none of that’s lessened since you left. You were there when I got that Re-Animator tattoo— “I will not be shackled by the failures of your God”. Failures is a little harsh (thanks, Herbert), but both tattoos ultimately echo the same sentiment. I am my own creation. I am not ashamed of what my body was just as I am not ashamed of what it is. It’s all me.
What I like the most about this tattoo is the detail of making the vampire fangs plastic. It implies a level of artifice. But it’s also a thing that, in the context of this movie, is real. A monster, pretending to be a monster. A monster, pretending to be normal, dressed as a monster. Layers of re-creation and reinvention deception so deep that there no longer exists an original. There no longer exists the need for an original.
Yeah, I’m still communicating through movies. Sue me.
While writing this, I started looking through my old pieces of writing. Most of it’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed by everything I write these days. But this one thing I wrote for Blossom prior to our separation is full of fun little insights.
‘…there is a sort of ease that comes with knowing that no matter what I do, my body will be monstrous. It will be monstrous because of my tits, or because of their absence. Either way, I am going to be defined by those few pounds of flesh for the rest of my life.’
No matter what I do, I’ll be monstrous. I maintain that. And there is a freedom to it.
It’s been a lonely year. I know that’s not the kind of declaration you want your mom to read, it’s not the kind of thing to put out publicly (very little of this whole thing is), but it’s the truth. It’s reality, and I want to remember how I’ve felt throughout this whole— thing. This whole life. I want to remember the women, old enough to be my mother, leering me up and down while asking me what surgeries have you had? I want to remember the queer men who’ve bonded with each other over how gross tits and cunts are, right before they put their hand on my waist. I want to remember every shitty, sleepless night of self-loathing and fear that has radicalized me into the perpetually pissed-off tranny who writes for you today.
Some trans people talk about a state known as “post-transition”, the period after you’ve gone through all the surgeries and jazz that you intend to undergo. By that definition, I think I’m post-transition. But I also think that term is bullshit. There’s no post- anything with this. I might be post-tits, but I’m not post-tits. I’ll never be post-tits. I still miss you some days. I’m not post-deadname. I’ll never be post-social terror.
I know I’ve thrown around a lot of abrasive terminology and phrases meant to make me seem self-assured and strong, but I still almost cried when a higher-up at my work attempted to out me to my manager by way of petty gossip. Every casual moment of intimacy I have with gay men is haunted by this would never be happening if they knew what I am. There’s no post-that.
I have no idea what this next year will bring. Because, even though I just ranted about why there is no post-transition, I am technically post-transition. At this moment, this is it. This poses a different kind of existential dread than I’m used to feeling. I’m used to the dread of needing to prove myself. Since I was a teen, the question was whether or not I could prove that this is what I am. Four years of that. That’s if we’re only counting after I did the whole Dramatic Public Coming Out thing.
The question’s finally different. Now, it’s— alright. This is you. Now what?
I don’t know if you’d have much input here. You were just tits. You shouldn’t follow your tits just like you shouldn’t follow your dick. But, far as I can tell, you’ll be my last major crossroads for a while. The road seems like it might finally be straightening out for the first time in a long time.
Shit, I should’ve gotten you flowers or something. A decent goodbye present. Or maybe that can be my next tattoo— I dislike the idea of ever covering up my scars, but if I can’t have the scars I want (giant, jagged, stretching across my pecs, undeniable), I’ll find other ways to put this into my skin.
Anyway. Thanks for a good run, breasts. I wish you two nothing but the best. I’ll remember you in Z-Man and Adrien.
And goodbye.
