FRAMEWORK: T

If terrific; then terminal.
If testified; then tricked.
If trepid; then torment.
If total; then total; if total; then —

What I know of totality or more so the opposite of totality is also what I know of my transness which is not a pursuit of any gendered end nor a shirking off nor an embrace nor a rejection. In itself I find no purpose which liberates my experience in that I can approach it from any angle and accept its many openings and closings. In that anything I love deeply teaches me both through its presence and its absence. In that time is frequently a knot that requires all ends to meet at least at one juncture.

If trepidation; then towardness. I kissed incompletion in the form of a half-packet of testosterone gel applied daily for six months between last August to this February: a ritual that transformed the shape of my nose, the breadth of my shoulders, the roundness of my belly, the coarseness of my hair. I refrigerated the gel — baby blue metallic packaging that I seal with a baby pink clip — so that when it touched my skin it was cold, sharp, distinct. Small circular movements brought it down from the back of my shoulder to the top of my arm. Immediately a kind of energy set into me that translated itself through my chronic fatigue into restlessness.

Futourisms: a little dip into what could be. A knot of time clenching, then loosening. A slotting-in of a new lens into the machine. It had taken me over six months to get cleared for HRT after a series of blood tests, a dreaded MRI, and a Gender Identity Disorder consultation with a clinical psychologist I’d never met before. My first prescription included a warning of testosterone’s potential exacerbations of my pre-existing health conditions, although what these might be was not explained to me. That isn’t to say that I didn’t know what I was doing, I just didn’t — and still don’t — know what it would lead to.

There are people for whom being on T leads to significant or even complete relief from their dysautonomia, fibromyalgia, IBS, MCAS, connective tissue disorders, and other health conditions. Some no longer menstruate. Some become stronger than they’ve ever been, surprised at how the same weights feel significantly lighter. Some develop powerful foot fetishes. There are people whose mood, personality, and anxiety disorders dissipate on T. People who sleep easier, feel hungrier, are happier. Unfortunately for me, I was none of them. Whether it was due to an inappropriate dosage or due to my body’s own rebellion, T might have made me feel hot but it didn’t make me feel good. In fact it made me feel bad. In fact it made me feel worse than bad, as much as I kept trying to push myself against it to end up on the other side of the wall.

All this while I sprouted little hair on my chin and neck, four or five at a time,
my scraggly face brushed up to the harsh cheek of testosterone. I grew wider, my frame spilling quickly into the reckless arms of testosterone. My ability to cry completely shut down, the slope of my anhedonia tipped into testosterone. I bled more than ever, cramped up in pain every twenty days, my body’s routine agitated by testosterone. I responded to any change in weather with swathes of sweet-smelling sweat, all antennae perked up to meet testosterone. Soft parts of me hardened and hard parts of me softened — the fixedness of my body spread into the song of testosterone.

All this while I tried to write but couldn’t reach far enough. I had thought I would find my body anew through testosterone and — somehow — it felt like I had lost something instead.

*

“I’m not taking testosterone to change myself into a man or as a physical strategy of transsexualism; I take it to foil what society wanted to make of me, so that I can write, fuck, feel a form of pleasure that is postpornographic, add a molecular prostheses to my low-tech transgender identity composed of dildos, texts, and moving images; I do it to avenge your death.”
— Paul B. Preciado, from Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

Despite my litany of disappointments, however, I do feel, on the whole, precisely positive about my brief entanglement with testosterone. Like Preciado, I was not attempting to change myself towards any particular goal; like Preciado, I only wanted to see what it would be like to add a molecular disruption to my already transgender identity. My personal approach to testosterone was not intended as a transition or in-between stage. Before I began I already knew that it could and most likely would be temporary. The pressure was off: I did not even have any specific deaths to avenge. Just a small freedom to claim, which is strengthened by how many times it is claimed, an infrastructure that stands a little firmer whenever it is touched, however momentarily.

And anyway — I am used to and enamored by the drama of dropping things mid-way. Cheering me on are characters I have dreamt up and then coddled and then left to grow on their own: Ban, my most recent, whose I is still unsettled; Boy, caught endlessly having a panic attack in the middle of a street at the end of the world; River, annoying as ever, my absolute companion; [_] who could call her husband back any moment now but hasn’t yet; M, whose position I never want to take again; Crazy Girl in the Kitchen Outside the Kitchen, sink overflowing with tiny teacups; Y, my long-gone friend, my forever hiccup.

And T, my ghazal messied, my body frenzied.
T, my futourism failed, my landscape beloved.
If total, then…

To add to my “low-tech transgender identity composed of dildos, texts, and moving images” (lol), I have, in recent weeks, bleached my eyebrows, taken up singing lessons, and gotten the words BAD BOY tattooed on my thighs. I’ve started braiding my hair, wearing dresses, and drawing on winged eyeliner again. I know I am different now: changed by testosterone, given a sense of comfort in my body and mind that I didn’t have before. Firmly but lovingly time today is just a straight line, drawn from point to point, slick as if drawn through wax.

My imagination is still limited but it has stretched. I am more than ever in love with anything that involves a needle and a thread. I don’t mind that this dulls my metaphors. I wouldn’t even mind if it is permanent.

I do have a poem to leave you with, but it’s a little long, so here’s the link: https://beestungmag.com/issue23/one-story-by-kit-mcguire

I love you! Thank you for being here with me!