LaCroix Boy on a Budget

By Aaron, Age 28

Interviewed and Edited By Angela Wicke

Date of Interview: July 2023

Introduction

Howdy! My name is Aaron, and I use he/him pronouns. I identify as a bisexual transmasculine person, but also as a friend, a gardener, and a wayward artist. I’m participating in the Permanence Project because there are so few opportunities for us to share our stories in our own voices, in a way intended solely to inspire others to live authentically. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that.

Discovering Gender Identity

CW: Transphobia, homophobia

I identify as transmasculine. To me, it's a form of expression and presentation, and I feel more connected to that wording than ‘trans man’. Or, God forbid, if we go back to the beginning of my transition, ‘female-to-male transgender’. Transmasculine is what fits me best. Growing up, I was really encouraged to explore whatever my interests were. I didn't really have rigid gender roles imposed on me. For example, I wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes regardless of gender. I don't think I became aware of gender really until I was in my second or third year of Girl Scouts and we never got to go canoeing or fishing or do anything fun because I always got voted down by the rest of the girls who wanted to do nails or a spa party or whatever. I thought it would be so much more fun to be outdoors, but that was just me.

I often tell people that I figured out who I loved before I figured out who I was. I am a pastor's kid, and it was very, very, very important that I live up to a certain set of standards and keep up a certain set of appearances. It wasn’t really imposed on me, but I felt that it was the right thing to do to support my mom, who was the pastor. A lot of people get mind blown by that. But I never grew up in a world where women couldn't be pastors, and so in my work now in religious advocacy, that's always a super fun conversation. Despite all that, I knew that I was primarily attracted to women. I had my first girlfriend, and I was so ostracized by that and seen as a tomboy. I was wearing plaid, jeans, converse—the whole nine yards. I knew that not every woman had to express themselves super femininely, so I thought this was just my way of being in the world.

I was very much steeped in lesbian culture growing up, but when I got to college, I actually met a trans man for the first time. Through conversation with him, it was a lot like King George in Hamilton: I wasn't aware that was something a person could do. Yet it made so much sense to me. It clicked almost right away like, “Oh, that's what's going on. That's why I’ve always been dissatisfied with the idea of being a tomboy. There it is.” When I first decided to start going by male pronouns, I felt so much more grounded than before. I had always felt detached from my body, and so in that moment I actually felt like a person for the first time, and I was like, “Okay.”

When I fell in with him and other trans men at the time, they all really bought into the idea that in order to be valid in your trans identity, you had to buy into toxic masculinity and push, push, push till you were at the point where you completely passed and nobody knew about it ever again, ever. That meant abandoning any feminine interests, abandoning friendships with women and girls to surround yourself with men only, and getting into things that I really didn't care about. I got a lot of flak for not doing that. I distinctly remember one of these trans men who had been a mentor to me telling my now ex-girlfriend, “Well, you realize you're basically dating a girl, right?” I was floored by that, especially coming from within my own community.

I transitioned socially in 2013. That’s when I cut my hair off and started going by different pronouns. I started my medical transition the next year in 2014. But even then, there wasn't a lot of nuance in trans conversations with respect to the gender binary. It was accepted that you have to go from one side all the way to the other, and it's not okay to do it any other way. Getting out into the world on my own, I faced a lot of discrimination really early on in trying to establish a professional career, and so I tried really hard to go stealth and to completely pass. I'd changed my name on legal documents at that point, but I hadn't been able to change my gender marker yet because of New York’s laws at the time, so I couldn't fly completely under the radar. It comes up anytime you have a job where they run a background check on you. There's still no real way to avoid that. That expectation of passing that came from toxic masculinity created all kinds of problems, and I ended up abandoning the idea of going stealth at that point because it was more stressful than it was worth.

I went back to Upstate New York, where I’m from, and things weren't perfect. We still didn't have gender expression nondiscrimination legal protections here, but I decided that I would roll with it because of the support I had here. I really found my footing when I began to work professionally in advocacy, and I realized if I'd been more familiar with non-binary identities when I was younger, I would have had a lot less turmoil and pain from trying to fit myself into a box. I would have been more freely exploring my transition for what I wanted it to be and not what I thought was expected of me. So, it's really in recent years that I’ve come to identify more with the transmasculine identity, and I look forward to seeing how the language continues to develop. That’s just what rings truest for me.

Coming Out

CW: Transphobia

I first came out to a small group of friends from college that are still my core chosen family to this day. After that, I came out to the larger pride organization on campus around the same time I was elected its president. That was supposed to be a safe space, so it happened there and then it became a race against time to choose to share what I wanted to share with professors and classmates and other people on campus. I didn't really worry about anything trickling back home because there wasn't connection there. But when I cut my hair off and started to get rid of my more feminine clothing over that summer break, it became very apparent to my parents that something was going on. My strategy was to slowly talk to the most important people in my personal circle while putting off talking to my family about it as long as I could.

The therapist that I was seeing in those early days told me that I needed to be ready for everyone in my life to walk out on me when I shared this, because that was most likely what was going to happen. I needed to be ready for it, and I tried as hard as one can to be ready for that. I couldn't reconcile being uncomfortable with who I was when I'd finally figured myself out. I had to have those conversations, and the chips would land where they land.

My best friend has been with me since the 1st grade. We were Girl Scouts together, she’d stood by my side in grade school when I was being bullied for being a lesbian, we’d been through everything together. When I told her, she was like, “Just give me a minute,” and I didn't hear from her for 24 hours. Then she came back to me and said, “I’m actually furious with you that you would ever think that something could make me not love you anymore. I'm upset that you went into this conversation thinking about me walking out on you. How dare you?” That was earth shaking. She was still my person. It was so unexpected despite everything; we grew up in a very rural area, so I really didn’t know how she would react. I should have known better. But once I had her support, I felt more courageous.

I started coming out to my family by talking to two of my three older sisters and they were immediately on board. My oldest sister I told a little bit later, but we weren't in as regular communication as I was with the other two. By then, my parents were asking a lot of questions; it was really evident that we weren’t going to be able to do this dance forever. When I finally decided to talk to my parents, it was the first time that they had ever heard the word transgender, and as with everything I talked to my mom before I talked to my dad. She did not react the way I would have liked her to. I don't fault her for that, because it was the first time she'd ever heard of this. She had nobody to turn to, and no way to get more information. But even though she was struggling to understand something that was completely new to her, she never made me feel that she wouldn't figure it out eventually. She was pretty adamant that I’m her kid. When we were young, she would tell us, “I may not always like the things you do, but I will always love you.” It wasn't even really that she didn't like what was going on, she just genuinely didn't understand it yet. She got there. She really got there, and today is a very involved and vocal ally. My college chaplain, who is still very near and dear to my heart, became an amazing resource for her, and there was the internet, right? So even though we were pretty far from any LGBTQ+ resource centers at the time, there were people to connect with. I give my parents a lot of credit and I certainly gave them a lot of grace, and because it was pretty earth shaking to hear, but they got on board.

My larger family, though, I didn't really have any big conversations with about it. It was just one day, “I’m Aaron now! Surprise!” Nobody really questioned it. If they had things to say, they didn't say them to my face.

Transitioning

CW: Self-harm, suicidal ideation, gender dysphoria, transphobia, healthcare insecurity, surgery

I have a dear friend who was a hairdresser when I was first figuring this out and she did my very first short haircut. She'd been cutting my hair since I was like 16, but this time I went to her and said that I really wanted to try something short. I didn't have the heart to explain more to her at that time; it ended up being a Justin Bieber situation, but I appreciated her spirit. That's where, when I think back on it, my transition began.

I went to a funeral for a friend's grandfather in that same time period, and it was the last time I ever wore a dress. I distinctly remember afterward me being like, “We're done.” There was a family wedding the next month, so I took my tiny little paycheck from my work study job and went to a thrift store and got a button-down shirt for it. A friend gave me a bow tie because Doctor Who was huge with the bow ties at the time. I wore them to this wedding, and I was worried about how the night would go, and how my grandmother and parents would react. I could tell my parents were really uncomfortable with how I was dressed. They didn't say anything to me, but I could feel it. All in all, though, it ended up being a really great night. It was a Buddhist wedding with a vegan menu, and in lieu of a first dance they played “Same Love”, the Macklemore song that was huge around then, and had their queer friends go to the dance floor and dance with their partners. Phew! Nightmare averted!

I didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do about medically transitioning. I didn’t have access to much information about it until returning to school that fall, when I found My Gender Workbook, a fantastically snarky book written by Kate Bornstein. It gave me the opportunity to explore different facets of gender and figure out what they meant for me. It also led me to understand what paths most trans men took. Top surgery was a huge topic of conversation, one I really wasn't sure that was something I wanted to pursue. But when it came to correcting “that” super dysphoric situation, I knew that a hysterectomy was something I would eventually want to explore.

I was tiptoeing into complete existential dread and terror over all of this. There were no good trans role models in my life, no one who was actually got what going on with me and was supportive of it, or who were modeling for me that a positive, healthy future was possible. I had allies galore, but I did not have anyone who looked like me that was happy. I started smoking—sorry, Mom, it's true. I was slipping into self-harm and getting more and more depressed. It culminated with me having a very clear plan to die by suicide. I talked to my RA about it, knowing that they were a mandated reporter. I just didn't know any other way to ask for help.

I went to the tiny local hospital to talk to a crisis counselor. I can still picture her with her puffy orange vest and clipboard, and she says to me, “Well, that's fine, but you need to move to New York City because you're not gonna have a life here. There are people like you in NYC, you should really just drop out of school and move.” As if I had the means to do so. When I left the hospital, they had me follow up with my primary care practitioner. The nurse practitioner who I saw was just amazing. We talked about everything and she started me on antidepressants, which made a huge difference. But she also was like, “Here are your options for hormone replacement therapy. They're not in house, but here are the two places that are in a drivable distance that I can send you.” One was a gender clinic up in the city that was super hard to get into. It was a really convoluted process to get on their really long wait list. But the other was Planned Parenthood; I'm a huge proponent of Planned Parenthood to this day because they truly saved my life. My friend who cut my hair would drive me the hour and a half to this Planned Parenthood that would provide my hormone replacement therapy. I went to the hospital in March and I had my first dose of testosterone in June. I was able to turn it around quickly once I actually had somebody in my corner who was advocating for me.

I knew right away when it started working. I was very involved in music in high school; I was a high soprano and had reached the point where I didn't want to talk anymore because it made me so dysphoric. That first summer on T, oh my God, I was documenting my voice every week as if it was magically gonna get deeper each time. It did eventually though, and I was thrilled.

I considered surgery unattainable. It wasn't really something that I was hugely interested in. Smoking combined with my chest binders led to a bout of pneumonia, which meant I couldn't wear chest binders anymore, so that was fun. But I adapted to it. The T caused a lot of the fat on my chest to dissipate; I was really fortunate that that was one of the side effects. I’m a little bit fat anyway, so it just kind of works with my body. I had been trying for years to get a gynecologist to see me for any general wellness check but kept getting told that they don't see people like me, they're not prepared to handle my case, I really need to find a specialist. Years went by as I moved around the country and came home again, all while experiencing a ton of pain and all of these really bad symptoms. Only after returning to New York did somebody finally agree to see me, and it turned out to be a cancer scare. They did a biopsy and found that they needed to operate immediately. What should have been a 30-minute hysterectomy was a three-hour surgery, followed by an absolutely brutal recovery in the hospital. After recovering from that, it was such a weight off my shoulders, but it took getting to that crisis point for my insurance to authorize it to happen. What was kind of the blessing in disguise was that I was back home when it all happened. I didn't have to worry about someone having to care for me because my parents were right on board. But that experience really made me not want to ever pursue any surgery, ever, for any reason in my life that wasn't 100% necessary. I am not someone who can handle a recovery well.

That's where my medical transition stabilized. In 2020, right at the very beginning of Covid, a certain pompous asshole made it possible for health providers to say that they didn't want to treat trans people anymore, and I got booted from care. In September of this year, I have an appointment to go back on T for the first time since that happened. It has taken me three years to get any kind of appointment to get back on hormones. But it's finally happening. There have been no symptoms of de-transitioning that I’m aware of; everything kind of just stalled out. I joked that I was the hormone-less wonder. I'm sure there have been effects that I am not even totally aware of. I’ve had issues with blood pressure and my depression worsening, which my primary care physician is adamant must be hormone related because my life is pretty good now and I have a good set of coping skills and a handle on things and whatnot, but as far as I can tell for sure everything just kind of froze.

My trans healthcare has gotten so much more accessible and yet so much less accessible in so many ways. A lot of it honestly has had to do with the fact that health insurance is a garbage fire in this country. I work in nonprofits, so I have been at the mercy of state-based healthcare, or whatever my wife's employer-provided healthcare is. It's because of her employer-provided healthcare that I’m actually able to go to this appointment to get back on hormones. Thank God for her. But it's crazy that that's the way it is.

But bottom line, if I had not transitioned, I 100% would not be here. I didn't even want to speak anymore; the dysphoria was so bad for me. I really have no regrets. I wish care had been more accessible, and that it were an easier process, but my life is 10,000 times better for having transitioned.

Interactions with the Transgender Community

CW: Transphobia, mention of violence

I didn't have the word ‘transgender’ for my first gleanings of anything gender diverse, like many other trans folx my age. My first exposure to these ideas were when transfeminine characters were used as the butt of jokes in so much of the seminal media of my youth. People don't seem to understand why I don't want to watch Mrs. Doubtfire, and I once had someone give me a hard time because I didn't want to go see Tootsie on Broadway. They fundamentally misunderstand how it makes me feel. But I remember growing up just not getting why it was a joke. It’s some serious misogyny at the root of all that. Disclosure is a fantastic documentary on this whole subject, I can't possibly sum it up better than that, but you just didn't see trans men being made the butt of jokes the way trans women were. I don't know if it happened and I just never saw those things.

I’m a lifelong Girl Scout, a proponent of women's rights, and I still consider myself a feminist. I use that word even though there are certainly feminists who I don't align with. But there is nothing wrong with being a girl. It's great to be a girl. I'm just not one. If being trans was a choice, why would I choose to be trans? I feel like my life is the evidence that it's not a choice. I really, I really do.

My first experience with trans people was that group I met in college that I had trouble trying to align myself with, but I eventually ended up joining a local trans support group. It was mostly older trans women, who were all just the warmest and most genuine people. I formed a lot of close relationships that I still maintain and ended up going on to facilitate that group later on. It stayed mostly a space for trans women, but they were my people. It was wonderful to be around them and see their joy.

I'm honestly trying to think of a time I met a trans man outside of college that I clicked with and I’m drawing up blanks. The only time I ever saw someone who looked like me in media was Boys Don’t Cry. It’s a terrible movie. Don’t watch it, if you haven’t seen it. It's a super graphic true story about the assault and murder of a trans man, played by a cis woman, and that was the only person I ever saw in a movie who looked like me. Woo. That has changed, there’s definitely more good representation these days, but it’s still not very common.

Ever since I stepped out of my local advocacy role, I haven't really had super close relationships with trans people that aren't in my chosen family or immediate circle. I don't participate in that support group anymore because as a former facilitator, I can't be in that space, and I super miss it. There are a few folx that I keep in touch with, but it's very isolating. I have a reluctance to engage with local organizations of trans men because of what I experienced earlier in my life with them. I am obsessed with the flower language from the Victorian era, I love to cook, and I’m a Disney princess at heart. I have these interests and mannerisms about me that people tell me all the time are very effeminate. But I can't change those things, you know? I’m just me. That makes me hesitant to engage with those spaces. There's a fantastic group of guys that have started an all transmasc football league here and they keep asking me to come play with them and I’m like, “You fundamentally misunderstand who I am as a person. I appreciate the invitation so much. Right on. I'm so happy you're doing this. But that is so not me.”

The Sanctity of Seltzer

I decided three years ago to stop drinking soda and started drinking seltzer instead. Everybody makes so much fun of me for it, but I don't care. I tell people that I’m a LaCroix boy on a budget.

Discrimination

CW: Transphobia, food insecurity

When I started socially transitioning, I was living in an all-female dorm at my college. My roommate was comfortable living with me and I hadn’t taken any medical or legal steps yet, so I stayed there through my sophomore year. I think the housing department person at the time was kind of like, “Oh, it's a nickname, right? Just some college experimentation. I don't actually have to do anything about this or make any accommodations.” The way the building was laid out, our room was across the hall from the women's bathroom and then the showers were down the hall. But if you went down the stairs to the basement, which were literally on the left of my door, there was a men's bathroom for visiting boyfriends and whatever. I would use that bathroom, but when I had to shower there was no way around it. I would go to friends who lived in other buildings and use their showers when I could, but especially in the dead of winter, showering and then running back to your building was not so good.

I started T at the end of my sophomore year. When I went back to school that fall, I informed them of my health situation. I didn't want to live in the all-girls dorm again. The housing department decided that trans students couldn't use bathrooms that were shared, they had to be in a situation where they had their own bathroom, so I applied to live in a leadership building where some of my trans men predecessors lived. All the rooms there were singles with their own bathrooms. At the time, I thought there were worse things than having a bathroom to yourself in a communal living situation. It honestly sounded pretty nice.

What was not nice was having to pay the housing cost of two people to live in a single that I was mandated to live in because they wouldn't let me have a roommate. My roommate from my old dorm was someone I was really close with, one of my best friends, and they wanted to keep living with me, but the school wouldn't let them because I was on hormones. The school didn’t have co-ed housing at the time, so they thought it would be an unsafe situation for them to live with me. It was completely gender segregated.

I ended up not getting into the leadership building. They put me in a suite on the ground floor of one of the other smaller dorms. There were two rooms and a tiny little bathroom that was across the hall from the laundry room. I had a ton of space, but I had to pay extra money to live in a situation that was mandated to me and I couldn't have my roommate, which is what really stunk about the whole thing. I got my mom involved after I legally changed my name, and we told the school that we couldn’t afford the payments and that what they were doing was discriminatory. They were just like, “Well. This is our policy. We've never had to deal with this before. You have to be patient with us,” the whole nine.

I was lucky that I didn't have issues in classes. There was one professor who, may his memory be a blessing, kicked someone out of a course who was refusing to call me by my name and pronouns. It was a morality course, and so he was like, “If you can't get this, then you're gonna fail my course anyway.” He just kicked him out, and I was so grateful. To the other departments at my school, it was a no brainer, and I had no problems. The housing thing was a tough situation, so I ended up helping another student take the lead on writing a gender-neutral housing policy that was implemented after we graduated, and the school did eventually reimburse my parents some of the money that they had charged me for the extra housing costs. Not all of it. And like, if we had wanted to take it to court and make it a whole thing, we probably would have won. But all in all, it was such a safe and affirming environment. It was just the one guy’s policies and them not knowing what to do and it's better now, so it's fine. But I stayed on call for any other trans students who were having issues with housing for years until somebody new came in who actually gets it.

My whole plan for my life disintegrated two weeks before graduation. My relationship ended, which meant I wasn't taking the job I had been offered, which meant I was moving out of my apartment. I ended up deciding to move somewhere completely different and get back on my feet there. I chose New Mexico because one of my best friends was living nearby in El Paso, TX, and New Mexico was one of three states at the time where you couldn't be fired or evicted for being transgender. New York wasn’t one of those yet and wouldn't be for a few more years. People are surprised to hear that New Mexico is so progressive on that, but I chalk it up to the Indigenous community there recognizing more than just the binary genders. With that in mind, it makes sense that it’s more accepted in their culture as a state. I moved to Albuquerque with a friend who is still there, still loving it, and got my first full time job out of school working in a photography studio.

I was then hired to work as a photographer in a theme park in Florida. It was the most exciting thing ever to happen to me in my whole life. I was an art and design major; photography happened to be what I was pursuing professionally at that time because as far as careers where artists can eat went, photography is one of the good ones where you can actually have steady employment. I had always wanted to work for this company, and I hoped that I could build my career there and work up through the ranks and do the whole thing.

My mistake was assuming that I would be okay in Florida.

I went in as part of a program and met some amazing people that are still some of my closest friends. Housing was provided for the people who came and worked as part of this program, and despite communicating with me ahead of time and understanding my situation, they had put me in an apartment with seven cisgender women. They didn't tell them and didn't tell me. I still remember walking in the door, and this one girl's father just turns around and looks at me. I walked back out and got back in my car and told them, “Hey, we can't do this.” It was the same situation as before. “We'll put you in a place by yourself, but you have to pay extra.” I did it because I really wanted to work there. I lost a ton of weight because I couldn't afford food while paying for two people to live by myself, plus I had to worry about a car payment, gas, and the terrible cost of living. This was 2017, and my heart goes out to my friends who stayed.

The program can do virtually whatever they want with you, and I was having some issues being out in full sun all day as a photographer in the park. Rather than working with me on accommodations, even just giving me the chance to stay in a position where there was shade, they couldn't do that because those positions were reserved for full time employees, and I was at the bottom of the scale. They reassigned me to work in food service. I wasn't super happy about it, but I was gonna do it. I was gonna make it work.

On either day four or five, I was told that I needed to use a different bathroom than everybody else because I was making the men uncomfortable. When I said something about that—because I said something about that, I wasn't going to just let that lie—I was told that it was easier to replace me than do anything about it. I said goodbye to my friends, handed in my identification, and left.

I had just enough money to crawl back to New York, and from there I started to work for a retail store that is upfront about being trans affirming. I had a really good experience working with them. I took an internship working in a museum in an area that I’m passionate about the history of and would have stayed there as an employee if not for a government policy at the time stating that trans people couldn't be employees there, so that that blew up in my face, too. That happened twice in the span of seven months. I kind of was just like, “Well, what am I supposed to do now?” I ended up just working retail, and that was around the time I had my surgery. Thank God I was only working part time and I could take the time I needed to recover from that debacle.

After that, I took a position with a local nonprofit that was part time, and from that found full time work as an advocate and educator. Even now that I am well established in my full-time career working in LGBTQ+ advocacy within faith spaces, what keeps me up at night is that God forbid something happened to my job. What else would I do, if I were to pursue work outside of LGBTQ+ advocacy again? If I was trying to get back into photography, to get back into design, anything like that? I would constantly be feeling like the sword of Damocles was over my head because that was my experience.

I also get heckled in public bathrooms regularly. Just last month, I was on a road trip for work, and I got stopped in the men's room in a travel plaza by this guy who asked me if I was in the right bathroom. He had this really long ponytail, so I was like, “Are you?” He just looked at me, so I bolted and got in my car and left. Like please just leave me alone!

Like most trans people I know, there are whole states that I will not go to. I hope it changes in the future, but I will not be going back to Florida despite my very strong friendships and family connections there. I will not be going back because even though I want to advocate for my friends that don't have the choice to leave and who are trying to fight the fight there, I don't want to put myself into the line of fire unnecessarily.

When I think about discrimination, what stands out to me are housing, employment, and bathrooms. I'm sure there have been other instances, but that's really what has had the most effect on me. I made a promise to myself that I will never work again for sub-minimum wage for someone who's going to tell me to use a different bathroom than everybody else. That's the line.

Romantic Life

CW: Religion, homophobia, mention of domestic abuse

I was a pastor's kid, and for much of my childhood I was the epitome of a young lesbian, heavily steeped in lesbian culture. It was made very clear to me by the tenants of the religion, youth group leaders, and everyone besides my mom that I was going to Hell. They had good intentions but weren't really thinking about the implications of what they were preaching to us. My damnation was a done deal, destined to be, so I just didn't care.

In high school, I was the only out lesbian and that led to a lot of bullying from my classmates, but also there was an undercurrent that I was some kind of exotic thing they could experiment with. I got approached a lot by girls in my class that would be mortified if it got out that they had ever approached me. They’re all married to men now, so score one for me, right? Maybe it could have worked out!

My first serious partner was someone I met and interacted with entirely online. Those were the days of unfettered internet access. We never ended up meeting in person, but we're both men now, which I think is very fun. The next person I dated after him is also a man now, which is also fun. A cute little pattern from those first couple years. I mostly did online dating because it was just easier to meet queer people that way, and queer people online were more willing to be out, too. That was important to me. I didn't want to be with someone who'd be ashamed of me, especially looking at the LGBTQ+ media that was available to me as a young person. I had to hunt for that shit. I had to take my little print out to Barnes and Noble and track down the one copy they had in the entire store, and then the queer character would inevitably die at the end. ‘Bury your gays’, you know? It was the same with movies. I definitely watched every horrible ending. I watched every doomed sapphic romance that you could find on early Netflix, and eventually developed the expectation that nothing was really gonna work out for me.

My friends will tell you that I did not choose the best partners in college. There’s one we still refer to in retrospect as ‘gas station sushi’, just because it was such a bad choice on my part. I was self-conscious about my body, constantly asking myself, “Am I worth loving? Is it possible for me to get in a good relationship?” As a result, if you treated me even a little bit as a human being who was worthy of love and attractive, I was all in. That mentality found me in a very abusive relationship, which I did not recognize as having been abusive until after I’d been out of it for two or three years, when I went into professional advocacy and learned for the first time what all the different types of abuse are. If I’d had that education as a young person, if queer sex education, queer relationship dynamics, or even just basic education about what is and isn't consensual had been made available to me, I probably would have made different relationship choices.

I share a not uncommon experience with many trans folx I know that after I transitioned, I started to identify as bisexual. I don't think I ever would have communicated that before the transition, mostly because of where I was in the world and the kind of men that I was exposed to. The men that I’m attracted to are not the men I went to high school with.

I had a lot of apprehension about getting into anything serious after that abusive relationship ended. My life led me in a big old loop-de-loop, and I ended up coming back to New York before making another serious attempt at romance. My coworkers at the time were like, “You should really put yourself out there! Online dating has gotten so much better for queer people! You should just see!” And so, I ended up connecting with somebody. We talked for three months before we went on a first date, and then I dragged her on seven more dates before I finally was like, “Okay, this can be a thing.” We're married now! Our paths had definitely crossed when we were young because we grew up only 30 minutes away from one another, but we certainly never would have met otherwise.

It's just so funny to me. As much as I shake my fist at God for all these things that I tried to do not panning out and me getting stuck coming home, I like to think that the reason for it is that I was supposed to get back here so I could meet her. I don't regret it at all. It's all okay because I have her, you know?

This is the healthiest relationship of my life. She is the kindest and most caring person I’ve ever met. When we were dating early on, we had a conversation where I said, “Look, I am not going to get into a relationship with someone whose family is not going to accept me. I can't do that dance, so if there are people in your family who are gonna make it really hard for you because you're dating somebody who's a little visibly queer on the surface, or if God forbid they find out I’m trans, I don't want to put myself through that.” She just kind of looked at me and said, “You know you're not the only queer one in this relationship, right?” I hadn't thought about that, but it was a good point. She was very firm: anybody who had a problem with me automatically had a problem with her. I didn’t need to worry, though. I won the in-law lottery. They are amazing, wonderful people, and I was accepted as family almost immediately. My first Christmas with her family was so overwhelming because it felt like I'd always been there. My family was super quick to accept her as well; my grandmother loves her, they’re such good friends. It's really sweet.

We ended up getting married during Covid for health insurance reasons. The whole world was on fire, we didn't know what was going to happen. We got engaged on March 5th, 2020, right before the shit hit the fan. We were like, “Let's just do this. Let's not put it off.” This September will be our third anniversary. Had there not been the need for shared health insurance in the pandemic, we might have taken more time, but it was definitely the right decision. As a survivor of an abusive relationship, it's such a learning curve to be in a healthy one and it certainly isn't comfortable at first when you have become so accustomed to being treated poorly. There are still moments where I need to have a hard conversation with her, and I’ll be sweating and on the verge of tears, but then she'll be like, “Okay, this is what we’ll do,” and I’m sitting there stunned like, “That's it?”

She and I had been dating for three months when I had my cancer scare and major surgery, and she came to my house the next day to hang out with me. She brought me a ‘Welcome Baby Boy’ balloon and some crafts to do and some cookies because she's a baker and that's what she does. I definitely have the most supportive partner I possibly could. She's wonderful.

On Faith and Being Transgender

CW: Religion, transphobia, homophobia, mention of death

There are many, many people who have more in-depth theological understanding than I do and are more confident in their faith than I am. I am in a position where God or the universe or however you want to look at it pulled me back into this conversation and pulled me back into these spaces. I’m still trying to figure out why. What is it that I’m supposed to do from here? What am I supposed to be learning?

I grew up as a very integrated part of the United Methodist community. I'm so Methodist that for my 18th birthday, my parents gave me a casserole dish. That's not even a joke, that's serious. I have quite a rapport of Jell-O salads as well. But that was what we did; we fed each other, we had conversations, and we did community service. All those things that were important to me as part of my faith are important to me still as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. What’s most meaningful to me is the idea of bringing people together for a community meal and having conversation. I’m also a huge believer in mutual aid; I try to contribute to mutual aid funds as much as I’m able, because there are certainly times in my life where I could have used that help had it been available to me.

I was asked to preach for the first time this past Pride month. It was for an online ecumenical Pride service, which meant it was inclusive of all different denominations of Christianity. The person who invited me played a significant role in helping my family come to understand the theology of acceptance of transgender identity, so I didn’t want to say no! The story that I ended up picking, I couldn’t help but think, “What the fuck is this? How is this supposed to be inspirational? This person’s clearly an asshole! Why is this something we should look up to?” I unfortunately feel that way about a lot of scripture, and have found in my adult exploration of faith a lot of help and understanding in my relationships with my Jewish friends. In the Jewish tradition, you're supposed to ask questions. You're supposed to look at stories like this and be like, “What the hell is going on here?” That is certainly not how Bible study went for me growing up. It’s been helpful for me to have that space to wrestle with it and not interpret everything as literal or concrete. I'm not one of those people who believes that God shoved his hand through a cloud with a lightning bolt for a pen and wrote the thing. No, it was written and heavily, heavily edited over the years by men in positions of power and privilege. It's not the be-all and end-all of faith for me. I’m sure a lot of people will not love that I said that.

So much of organized religion is this belief in doing good and loving one another, and we all do a really good job of forgetting that. I believe in doing the best I can to live that value every day, even in the face of people not wanting me to do that or be a part of these communities. Every conversation that I’ve had with a queer person who has felt that God doesn't hate them anymore after talking to me, or that there's space for people outside of the binary in scripture and in our understanding of Christianity, has meant the world to me. The Bible doesn't say male or female, it says male and female. Day and night. But there's dusk, there's twilight, there's sunrise. The language is there that acknowledges that things aren't so binary, literally in the very beginning of the damn thing, and I lean pretty heavily on that.

I spend most of my time with allies and people who would like to be allies but are still trying to reconcile in their minds the idea that you can be Christian and support LGBTQ+ people. I do it because those people becoming outspoken allies will have an effect on queer people in those communities, but I also make it very clear that your goal can't be to get queer people in pews. Your goal can't be trying to bring people in and increase membership or show off how great and progressive you are. Your goal needs to be actually learning and growing and going out beyond those four walls and being available. Not forcing yourself into queer spaces but being available to them. A lot of protests and movements have chaplaincy available, which is a faith-based provider of general listening and support and care and prayer if somebody wants it, but you don't see a lot of that in queer movements. And when a trans person gets murdered, who provides spiritual care? Nobody. Nobody's out there.

My wife and I were not able to be married in a church because it was considered a same-sex wedding. Our wedding was performed by a Jedi, and on our anniversary celebration two years ago, someone had to ask permission to be able to bless it, even though they weren’t performing a marriage and that sucks. I don't want any queer couple to ever go through that. When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a pastor like my mom. I don't really want to be a pastor anymore; I think if anything, I would be a chaplain. I would like to be able to officiate marriages. I would like to be able to be there for funerals, because I know too many trans people who have been buried under their deadnames and whose families go out of their way to be extremely awful in the end of their life, and worse after their death. I have experienced that before with people in my close circles and it's the worst feeling. Those are the two things that make me want to go into some kind of ministry because of what I’ve experienced myself. It remains to be seen if or how I do that because, like I mentioned earlier how I had to teach my college how to treat people like me, if I’m going to pay money to go to grad school, I’m not going to be spending my spare time teaching people why they should treat me as a human. I've yet to find a path that really makes sense, but I’m taking my time with it.

I think there's always a need for spiritual care in major life moments. I think that is more what calls to me than the idea of being in church every Sunday. When somebody gets really sick, who's visiting them in the hospital? I think about the AIDS crisis and how so many people weren't visited, weren't cared for, and were actively ostracized, and how that still happens today. There was a trans woman that I was really close with who had nobody to pick her up from the hospital after her surgery. I picked her up and took her home and looked after her because nobody else would step up to do it for her. In a roundabout way, that’s the kind of thing I was always taught that faith leaders were supposed to do. It's still relatively uncommon, but a lot of people are learning and doing more.

I think there is a difference, though, of having an ally versus having an actual member of the transgender community in those faith positions. As much as I love and appreciate allies, I really, really, really look up to the trans people I know who have jumped over all the hurdles before them and now are able to serve in ministry. I just don't know at this time in my life how much of that climbing uphill against the odds I really want to do. Which may be selfish, but I think it comes from self-preservation. Like yeah, I’ll keep climbing, but I want to do it in a way where I’m not going to plunge off the mountain, you know?

Message to the Reader

I have said before that I don't want my life to imitate art. I want my life to be art. Whether it's my gender expression, my super maximalist Disney-inspired house, or my garden that is certainly as exuberant and wild like me, the best advice I can give anyone reading this is to just live. Find what brings you joy and grab onto it and be the most authentic version of yourself that you can be. It's okay to try things on and not have them resonate. It's okay to go through different names or go through different hairstyles, you'll find what works for you and it may change over time, and that's totally valid and totally okay. Nothing stays the same forever.

Before all this, I never felt really grounded or like my life had meaning or that there was anything to look forward to. But there has been so much richness in my life ever since I decided to just lean into my authentic self, and there's more good things on the way. There are certainly uphill struggles to come, too; it's a terrifying time to be transgender. I certainly understand the need to be reserved and safe in some settings. But find a place and find a way where you can just be you. And if that place doesn't exist for you, like, call me up, you know? Let's see what I can do to make that space happen. But no matter what it looks like for you, just lean into it.

Don't let anyone steal your joy from you.