Driving the Skidmonster // Coming out as a gay (trans) man

Back in the day, when I was in Driver’s Ed, our school had this car we all had to drive once around the parking lot before we would be allowed to pass the driver’s ed class. It was called the Skidmonster. The Skidmonster was an old sedan that had been altered so that once the car got above 20 miles per hour, the car would fishtail as if it was on a sheet of ice. We had to demonstrate to our driving teacher that we could handle a car in wintery road conditions in order to pass the class.

 

a photo of a kitted-out Skid Monster I found online

I put off driving the Skidmonster for as long as possible. When I finally had no choice, I got behind the wheel and started driving the car around the parking lot – at 12 miles per hour. “Let’s go!” Mr. B, my driving teacher, said from the passenger seat. “We are going,” I answered. “No,” he said. “You have to speed up so it will spin.” “But I don’t want it to spin! I don’t want it to get out of control!”

 

 

“But that’s what we’re here for,” he said.

*

I’ve been thinking about the Skidmonster lately because I’ve realized its a good metaphor for being alive. We’re all at the driver’s seat of our own lives – our own Skidmonsters. And I think it’s very easy to do what I did that day in the parking lot – to decide to drive in such a way that nothing ever leaves our control, to make sure nothing turns into a mess, to eliminate unpredictability, to do whatever we can to prevent our friends and other people (at driver’s ed, they were on the sidewalk, waiting for their turn) from pointing and laughing at us. But what made the Skidmonster the Skidmonster wasn’t that you could travel safely at 12 mph, like any other car.  What made it special was knowing, with absolute certainty, that the car was going to fishtail, that things were going to get a little crazy, and then, secure in that knowledge, intentionally hitting the accelerator.

*

When I was in college and was hanging around a lot of lesbians, we used to joke about the “phases” of coming out. You could always tell that a girl had just come out to her parents, or was about to, we used to say, because she would have just cut off her long hair, possibly in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors herself (or else at the hand of a friend), in some severe, unflattering, sometimes unintentionally funny hairstyle. Sure, it wasn’t true for everyone on the planet, but it seemed to hold true for all the women we seemed to know. It had been true for each of us. And every time we’d meet someone new, we would welcome them into our little circle while gently laughing at their terrible “newly out” haircut.

 

I first identified as a queer woman, and went through the sort of silly and extreme “steps” associated with coming out as a girl with a girlfriend, like cutting my hair. I listened to the Indigo Girls, got swoony over k.d. lang, and had every event in my house be a potluck.

 

Then I began to identify as trans and began to go through the “steps” involved in that coming out process. The predictable things, like correcting people’s pronouns, and the silly and ridiculous things, like sitting with my legs a mile apart to look more “manly,” wearing polo shirts every day even though I hated them because some website told me it was how “real men” dressed, and so on.

 

In the past few years, I’ve been wrestling with my sexual orientation, trying to come to peace with the fact that I’m really physically attracted only to men – that I really am a (trans) gay man. But, because I’m 30 years old and I’ve “come out” now multiple times (as a queer woman, as a trans man),  I was hoping I could move smoothly into this new identity quietly, sort of move in under the radar. Because I’ve already come out as so many other things. Because I want people to think I’m a credible adult person and not some teenager who doesn’t know how to act like I have it all together. Because other gay guys my age went through this shit years and years ago and by now I’m supposed to have all that sorted out and “be over” it by now.  Because, in short, I’m afraid of speeding up to 20 mph.

 

To learn to drive on ice, you have to let the car skid so you can know how it will slide. And to know yourself as whatever you are – bi, lesbian, gay, trans, whatever – and this is true for every single identity, separately, apparently (or at least I wasn’t offered a buy two, get one free discount)- there also comes a time when you have to accelerate, knowing that you are going to look ridiculous, knowing people are probably going to laugh at you, but doing it anyway.

 

Coming out for me as a gay man isn’t just about telling a few people I’m interested in men. I know, because I’ve tried it, and a funny thing happens – they forget. This has happened with multiple people, multiple times – I tell them I date men, and then weeks or months later, they tell me, “you just need to find yourself a nice girl to marry.” Not because they’re assholes, but because they have genuinely forgotten. Because telling people I date men is not the same as owning my identity as a gay man.

 

Within 24 hours of leaving my most current job (um, about four days ago), I got a more “gay” haircut for where I live (more of a drastic fade) and got one of my ears pierced. Yes, just one, and yes, the “gay ear.” I KNOW it’s not a “thing” anymore for men to get just one ear pierced -that stylish guys who have any kind of ear piercing (straight and gay) nowadays get both at the same time and that it’s the fashion now. I don’t care. I didn’t do it to look like someone who is fashionable who might be straight or might be gay.

 

I’m not fashionable, for one thing, in any manner of speaking, so there’s no need to mislead people there. And I’m not someone who might be straight or might be gay. There’s no “might be.” It’s not ambiguous. I’ve tried to play the ambiguous card, the casual card, and that’s when people start forgetting and I have to come out to them multiple times. It’s also when I start feeling guilty about who I am, feeling bad that I’m trans and that I’m someone attracted to men, like it’s some terrible crime. ….I’m done. I’ve had enough. I’m an unfashionable, male-looking person who likes to have sex with male-identified persons, preferably those who look like Tom Hanks in Castaway after he’s been on the island for all that time. Or Guillermo Reyes. Whatever – I’m flexible. The point is – I  know that maybe all this is a little silly.

 

But a strange thing happened yesterday. A devastatingly handsome man in his 50s made eye contact with me at a store and clearly, obviously checked me out. And, as if that wasn’t enough – or if I had any doubts – I ran into him a few minutes later and it happened again. I haven’t been checked out by a man outside of a gay bar in…. I don’t know how long. And sure, it’s narcissistic to dwell on whether or not you’re seen as attractive by someone else/anyone else at any kind of length, but his measurement of my attractiveness wasn’t what mattered to me. What mattered was that he saw me as someone safe to visibly and obviously check out in public: what mattered was that he read me as a non-straight man.  In the trans community, we talk a lot about “passing” – about how it feels to be “sirred” instead of “ma’amed” that first time, how validating it is when people start to interact with us as the people we believe or know ourselves to be. That’s what it’s like for me now, all over again, as I begin the process towards projecting myself as someone interested in men.

 

Yeah, to people in the wider world, I might look stupid. Hopefully not as stupid as I did that fateful day when four girls on the college rugby team snipped off my ponytail to welcome me to the lesbian club — but I really don’t know. And yeah, inevitably, people are probably going to laugh at me or make comments as my “car” swerves and slides , because just like everybody else, I have to learn as I go, and there are no shortcuts or free passes. But oh well. It’s time – let’s go.

Drum Story

I own an etched copper doumbek hand drum, an instrument traditionally used in belly dance. I bought it for myself as a graduation present when I finished my Bachelor’s degree eight years ago. I knew very little about hand drums at the time, and nothing about Middle Eastern percussion (and nothing about belly dance), but it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and when I held it, it felt like it was designed for my hands. Leaving the store, that felt like a very, very good decision.

 

About a year later, though, I decided that buying a drum had been a mistake. Everyone I knew that played hand drums were (white) hippie lesbians. Of course, they all played djembes, which are very different from doumbeks, and djembes are originally from West Africa anyway, and not white hippie lesbian-land, but at the time, none of that mattered to me. I was someone who had been born female, who people saw as a masculine woman (and who people assumed was a hippie lesbian), but who was actually a guy! And I was beginning a gender transition — asking people to change my name and to refer to me as “he” rather than “she” — and so I wanted to separate myself from hippie lesbians as much as possible. A hand drum, I thought, would not help with that. I needed an instrument that would affirm who I was.

 

So I sold it back to the music shop. And with the money, I bought a harmonica. But, it turned out, THAT was the real mistake. As soon as I sold it back, my heart ached for that doumbek drum. I was able to get enough money together to buy it back from the shop in just a few weeks, before someone else bought it, and it traveled with me to the three states I moved to after that, and I got to play it in several drum circles. Unfortunately, though, a few years back, because the drum counted as “luggage” on one of my flights somewhere, I decided it was a good idea to save on space and packed three shirts inside of it. This led to the head being stretched out, rendering it unplayable. I’ve taken it to several music shops since then. But I haven’t been able to find anyone who has ever worked on a doumbek, and no one has known how to replace the head (it is not pre-framed). So I’ve been lugging this broken drum around with me for four years.

 

I also managed to acquire a small hand-held steel drum from Trinidad. The drumsticks for this drum were recently stolen (they were in my backpack that a thief stole from my car), and it is very out of tune, and I have no idea how to play it.

 

So I got to thinking the other day that maybe I was a drum person at one time, but maybe that time has passed now, since I haven’t played either of these instruments in so long and obviously haven’t taken the care to get them fixed. In fact, I haven’t even really looked at them much at all.

 

I got to thinking about how I used to own a guitar and how, even though I only managed to learn two or three chords, how much I liked owning it. (I’m a big folk music enthusiast, and also a poet, two things guitars come in handy for. Plus, it’s good to have one around for camping trips with people, because someone’s bound to know how to play). So I thought – maybe it’s time to trade in these two drums – and to get another acoustic guitar.

 

I packed up my drums and went into a music shop this morning. My plan was to initially get an estimate for repair and tuning, and if the cost was more expensive than the drums themselves (which I assumed it would be), then to ask about trade-in possibilities and potentially walk out with a cheap acoustic guitar. But a weird thing happened. As I was standing there talking to the cashier guy, who had never seen a drum like my doumbek before in his life, and who was stalling for time for his manager to get back, I suddenly felt very defensive. He told me that if they would be able to repair it (it turned out they weren’t equipped to repair it – his manager let us know that just a few minutes later), it would take ten business days. I found myself saying, “ten business days?! that’s a long time!” not wanting to surrender my instrument for so long. It might become lost or something in that span of time.  Something might happen to it!   After the manager came, he told me that no, they would not be able to repair it, after all (they aren’t equipped to work on doumbeks there), and he sent me away with the name of a potential repair shop sixty miles away.

 

I walked out of the shop and realized I was tapping out an alternating rhythm on the rim, base, and broken head on my way to my car like I used to back before it was broken. But my drum was still broken. And I did not have a guitar in my hand. And yet, I felt — victorious. I felt — happy. Like I had successfully accomplished some narrow escape.  I would like a guitar, and I would like to learn how to play. And maybe I will get one. But now I know it will not happen if it means having to give up being a “doumbek person,” whatever that might mean.

Human, for a Moment

Definitely for the past year, and maybe for much longer, I’ve mostly felt uncomfortable with almost everyone I interact with. I thought it was because I was stealth about being trans/dating men and that the power of the fear of being “outed” that was causing it. And this is part of it, for sure. But it isn’t entirely it, because I’ve felt this way with people who know I’m trans, too, and with people who know I date men. With old friends and new friends, acquaintances and coworkers and everyone in between.

 

Just, for one reason or another — and there is always some reason – that we’re inconguous, or incompatible, like how you might feel about someone during a first date when you realize you absolutely do not want this person kissing you goodnight. I thought it was me — that I needed to change myself to fit in better with people, a strategy I’ve tried my whole life, since I’m clearly the one common denominator in all of these interactions. And I felt terrible about it, you know, sort of like a robot or android, that no one could get near emotionally, like my heart was just absent, like I had some kind of terrible heartless disorder. But my (current) therapist just laughed when I told him this, and he said, “you just haven’t found your people yet, that’s all.” Then he added, “but when you do, you might just feel surprised.”

*

The other night I was at a gender support meeting, and there were some folks there I hadn’t met before. A guy was there who was just starting out (clearly nervous, clearly excited), and two other guys were there who had started transition way back when (further back than me) who I hadn’t met before, as well, who had been friends with each other for a long time. I don’t know what it was about these two guys – we get so many different people in gender support, at all different stages of transition  – but there was something about them that made me instantly like them.

 

When the meeting was over and we went outside, the guy just starting out realized his car battery was dead. I carry jumper cables in my pickup and offered them even though I don’t really know how to use them, and these two other guys offered to direct operations. They guided me on how far to pull my truck up in the dark so that our vehicles would be close enough and then they connected the jumpers to both of our vehicles. In just a few minutes, the new-to-transition guy’s engine was purring to life.  And we were all heading out in our different directions.

 

It was a small thing. It really was, I know. But as I drove home, something I haven’t felt in a long time was gently coursing through me: I felt like a person. I didn’t feel like a robot. I felt like, even just for a brief moment, that I belonged somewhere, even though it was really just a random group of strangers, for a small moment, in a parking lot in the dark, and that maybe I do have the ability to be a part of something that actually helps somebody in this world, small as it may be.

 

It was only a few minutes. I don’t know that I’m that much closer to knowing exactly who “my people” are or any of that. But at least I know that in small doses, at least, I can actually feel like something besides far away.

Things I love about the TV show Scandal

….Besides the fact that it’s, well, scandalous (and always ends on a cliffhanger, which makes it very easy to binge watch)!

1. There are very few passive, or flat, characters on the show. In one way or another, every person on the show is a “power player.” They all have either a personal agenda or else some kind of ability that no one else has. Mellie is not just the president’s wife – she’s a major force. James is not just Cyrus’s husband; even when Cyrus thinks he is and brushes him off, James proves him wrong. People also don’t tend to put up with other people tarnishing their characters or reputations – they are always standing up for themselves and their needs/wants, whether it’s people in the White House, Olivia’s clients, or members of Olivia’s team (like when Quinn tells Abby off when Abby is being mean to her early in Season 2). Even how David ends up wriggling his way into the team. I like this much better than the standard TV show, where you have primary/dominant characters and then passive sort of sidekick characters that just fill up space (aka the wives, girlfriends, feminine men, “comic relief,” “backdrops”).

2. People of different races kissing.

3. Gay people on this show who feel genuine love for the United States as a country. This is the first time in a LONG time I have seen other LGBT people (either fictional or in real life) who feel this way. In our (LGBT) community, this attitude is usually scorned. “Loving the country” is for rednecks and conservative Christians, not well-educated queer people, whose job it is to be cynical and talk about moving to Canada — or something like that.

I grew up in the Girl Scouts and regularly served as the caller for the Color Guard in flag ceremonies for years. Watching a worn or torn ceremonial flag burning brings me to tears — and these days, I can say not many other things do. I feel strongly about following flag etiquette (no flags up in the dark, knowing why a flag is at half-staff), etc, and I know all the words to “This Land is Your Land.” As stupid as this may sound here in writing, it is nice to have this affirmation that it actually IS possible to be both queer and to be happy to be in this country ( even if it does have a problematic, oppressive history) — that, you know, this land can be our land, too, that it is worth it to fight for changes here, within our borders, rather than just leaving, etc.

4. Guillermo Diaz, but I already mentioned him earlier.

5. The switch up from the typical cops/criminals dichotomy shown in shows like Law & Order, Criminal Minds, etc. — and into this idea that morality is a gray space. There really are no absolute “good guys” or “bad guys,” and Olivia’s cases aren’t about right and wrong (black and white), just about “fixing” — damage control not being the same as justice under the law. I like this because real life really is like that. It is complex and difficult and “right” and “wrong” all depend on your perspective at any given point.

6. There are actually places where the viewer isn’t hit over the head with information and must figure it out for themselves. This is also refreshing to me.

….There are things I don’t like about the show, as well – mostly, how Olivia (so far, anyways, and I’m almost done with season 2) seems powerless in standing up for herself with men.  She’s basically a powerhouse in the world at large but seems to have no ability to stand up for herself in a romantic situation, whether it’s requiring a man to accept that no means no, or, you know, the part where guys seem to just kind of mow over her, letting themselves into her home after she tells them she doesn’t want to talk to them, etc. I hope this is explained in later episodes, because I would like to see some recognition at how messed up, and inconsistent, her passivity is in that particular department of life, rather than having that kind of behavior be portrayed as “normal” or “OK.” (because she’s a woman or whatever).

Still – I’ve never had this kind of obsession with a show before. I’ve watched over 30 episodes now in less than a week!