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.
Amorphous Amphibian 