Here are some words that you can make into brain pictures!
1) Suppose, dear reader, that you are out and about in a store or restaurant or what have you, and you feel that a brief visit to the bathroom would increase your comfort at least ten fold. Easy solution, right? Walk over and enter the same old bathroom you always have forever. Done! No paranoia and no weird looks, after all, you’re just going to tinkle and had the common decency not to do it in the throw pillow aisle or on the table in a crowded diner. Yeah, I remember those days. Things are different now.
So, here I am with a very quickly failing stealth mode in a restaurant, without my baggy fleece to hide in (quaintly referred to as ‘armor’), and a need to lose a few hundred milliliters of processed liquids. What do? What would you do, dear reader? Keep in mind, that in this position, early in presenting in public without armor, you will be terrified that someone is going to stand up, point, and call you out. See, early like this, passing suddenly goes from ‘well, hopefully maybe someone will refer to me as female today’ to ‘oh god help me everyone knows every secret I’ve ever had at first glance.’ Because, you know, the trans individual cannot determine at this point if they are passable or not. Which makes sense, really, but is wildly inconvenient when the choice of ‘ladies’ vs. ‘gents’ comes up on two separate doors. Like guardians of a sacred secret, they loom in front of you and you can almost feel the wind move slightly as a literal question mark forms above your head, fueled solely by your own confusion and paranoia. Really, it’s 80% the same behind each door, but it’s worlds apart.
Basically, when is it ok to use the bathroom that you most closely identify with? Turns out, at least for me, it’s not really a choice. Given the fact that I have effectively non-concealable breasts and a million other smaller gender cues, my choice was made for me. Obviously, I can’t go into the boy’s room because that would raise more weird questions than going into the girl’s room. Doesn’t mean I’m not scared as heck, though. That first step is a heck of a step, but so vitally important for self admission and validation. It’s like one of a hundred individual hoops to jump through during the transition process. I’m not super comfortable going in by myself and hoping no one knows my secrets, but that I can go in is huge and liberating.
However, here’s a thought that probably never occurred to you, dear reader. Suddenly, I am remarkably paranoid that the sound of me peeing is going to reveal my secrets. Yep, these are the kind of thoughts transgirls have. Does having a penis sufficiently alter the acoustic feedback of urination to such an extent that questions will be raised? When I find the answer, I will surely share.
2) A new guy moved in over the weekend. Since it was the weekend, I had thrown off any pretense of my crappy stealth mode. So, in effective girl mode, we meet. From a distance, I (hopefully) present as female. Actually, that was fine and dandy until I had to say my name, at which point I used the wrong voice (not a big deal right now) and introduced myself as ‘<boy name> soon to be <girl name>.’ That wasn’t to be wibbly-wobbly on my transition, of course, but more of a reflection of the current social situation. The rest of the conversation was mostly verbal from my end and confusion and blank stares from his end. Of course, that is not an ideal method of telling folks about trans issues, but I wasn’t fibbing, no sir/ma’am. Besides, it’s good to confuse people sometimes. Keeps them on their toes.
3) I have been sort of bouncing around this subject for a while here, so, in the interest of appropriate documentation, I will now be talking about breasts. This is Day 88 on the hormone replacement therapy, and I find myself in a position to move up a bra size. I am aware that most transgirls at the three month mark may be just ready to start with an A, and in fact I understand that getting up to a B after many more months is a stroke of luck and can easily be considered good progress. So, me moving up to a C after three months is pretty amazing growth. This rapid growth also explains the growing pains and also why my stealth mode is about as sneaky as an ox in a grocery store.
So, I was pretty happy with a B, especially considering I had done in three months what it takes some transgirls years to achieve. I was cool and fine if they just stopped there. Of course, I do know better. I know that the most significant growth period is yet to come. I know that they don’t just stop after three months. I was ok with a B cup, but now I’m somehow weird and almost resistant to moving up to a C, though it is totally not up to me. For the life of me, I have no idea how to reconcile this strange feeling of being mildly resistant to what I wanted in the first place. I mean, I did sign up for this second puberty with all of its twists and turns and such. Part of it may be that I have been informed that should they get any bigger, a number of people will get jealous. Maybe it’s like a B could be considered an accident of fate, but suddenly a C is serious business. It’s also more reinforcement that my stealth mode is not going to work for much longer. Of course, we’ll see what happens. Like most things in puberty, it’s a crapshoot.
Usually good things come in threes, right? Instead, you get these three things. Sorry, no refunds, no exchanges. You don’t like it, take it up with the manager.
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