God’s important to me. He was the only one I could talk to about the way I felt though those long years, since the days I first felt different and I knew that it wasn’t safe to tell anyone else. I was angry at him for how I am, I cried to him for a way to fix things, and I loved him for the strength I found in myself when I didn’t think I had anything left.

I don’t expect everyone to get that, and I don’t expect every trans person to share the way I feel, but I do expect a response with respect (even if you disagree) when I explain the importance of my faith– because it’s not about you. It’s about me and God, and the way one person is finding a way to struggle through this life.

My faith isn’t fodder for a debate; it’s a part of who I am. I’m not in the habit of allying myself with people who spend time and energy judging my methods of coping with my burdens, just as I am not in the habit of petitioning cisgender folks for my right to exist. I don’t need tolerance; if you need to “put up” with my faith then let me know, and I’ll seek community elsewhere. I demand respect, and I will do everything I can to offer the same in return.

Sicko knows his stuff. I know this because I’ve heard him interviewed on the excellent and now-defunct Clinically Inclined show on WNUR (Evanston, IL). His book discusses some things that, amazingly, had never crossed my mind. (Plus 8 Records made serious missteps in their early days as a couple of white guys from Canada jumping into the mostly-black Detroit scene without building their rep. Race, nationality, music = an interesting, dramatic intersection!) But it jumps. It jumps a lot.

It’s best described like this: I had a best friend in second grade named Peter. Peter and I used to play with Legos. Eventually, Peter became pretty popular and dated pretty girls while I was an awkward teenager. He went to a good university and is now a respected astrophysicist. He’s written several important papers on the behavior of large planetary bodies as they interact with debris in their midst. Anyway, in second grade we really like the pizza that they served in the cafeteria. We’d eat it every day if we could have.

See what happened there? The substance worked but the structure was off. There’s this increasingly non-linear format to Sicko’s writing as the book progresses that makes me wonder, since I haven’t read the first unexpanded edition of Rebels, if the added stuff with regards to Hawtin’s current work, DEMF/Movement, and Ghostly International was shoehorned in late in the game.

If it isn’t the form of the story, then it’s the focus. I would have much rather read an examination of how Detroit shape(s)(d) techno and a discussion of the shift from the bored black teens of the 80s who wanted to make funk records to the mostly white roster of Ghostly who (rightly so by hard work and by talent) have shaped the latest wave. I want to hear a critical deconstruction of the idea of Detroit as a Techno Mecca that we worship and pay lip service to, but don’t acknowledge and include the community that made it possible. (I’m reminded of the ghost town tourism that I witnessed, and yes, took part in, while attending DEMF/Movement. )

Detroit said something to me when I was there, and I wanted to know and understand what it was saying. I tried hard to listen to the echoes of the Renegades’ Funk amidst the minimal bleep bloop that had become the popular sound of the early 2000s, but I still have questions. Maybe it’s up to me to write that book.

9 AM. A mid-sized university town the in the midwest.
(Phone rings)
Dylan: Hello?
Receptionist: Hi. The doctor is delivering a baby this afternoon. No drugs for you today.
Dylan: Ha ha um. Well, babies will happen, I suppose. So… reschedule then?
Receptionist: Yes. How about… a month and a half from now?
Dylan: …Er, that’s August, right?
Receptionist: Yep! Does that work?
Dylan: Sh- sure.
Receptionist: Super! See you then!

All that anxiety for nought. When Miriam and I processed it we ended up dubbing the experience “Anxiety Blue Balls”, borrowing a term based on a supposed painful result for men of not reaching orgasm during sex. No release, in other words.

On the better side of things, which is to say the side where I’m not at the whim of other peoples’ schedules, I began working on my voice this weekend. I’m using “Finding Your Female Voice” from Andrea James. It’s a bit amateur in the editing/production end of things, but that’s fine with me; the cat wandering through the room or the cheesy new age transition music are charming. The exercises and explanations are well crafted, and though the sounds scared the hell out of my cats I found it easy to follow and had good results from the hour or so I spent watching the video. So much so, in fact, that when I finished my lessons I found it very hard to come back down to a male voice. (“Oh shit,” I thought, “I really need to not be stuck like this… work will be interesting if I come in with a chatty femme voice.”) Anyway: highly recommended.

This is the threshold. Anything I’ve done until now has been superficial, from plucking my brows to zapping my face, trading in my clothing from the men’s department for essentially the equivalent from the women’s department, and allowing myself to interact with people in a more “feminine” (conversational, expressive, animated) way… all of these things can be stopped, reversed, or let go.

I’m about to play with my body chemistry. For me, that’s the point of no return. That’s not to say I can’t stop hormones if needed. Rather, the changes that will occur can’t be undone. They can be hidden, but not undone. I’m committed to my course.

I’m thinking of Baldwin: “To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” It doesn’t feel like danger, but I am worried. How will I turn out?

There was a moment as I laid in Miriam’s arms this morning, a flashback to an essay in “Balancing on the Mechitza” about the way part of the morning prayer (Men: “Blessed are you, Lord, who did not make me a woman.” Women: “Blessed are you, Lord, who made me according to your will.”) should be adjusted to reflect the transition between genders: “Blessed are you, Lord, who has changed me according to your will.”

“…according to your will.”

It’s not in my hands, the way I’ll turn out. Faith, trust, and ultimately acceptance of what good comes from this is what I need to draw towards now and return to over the coming years. I need to look in the mirror and find the changes and celebrate how much better they are than where I’ve been, not mourn how much better they should be. I can’t know the end result of playing with my body chemistry until I get there.

2. I put a finger on the feeling of anxiety I have surrounding blogging, using facebook, flickr, twitter, or any of the other Web 2.0 standard practices. I hate feeling guilty for not producing content. So I’m stopping as of now, because it’s OK to not participate in the grand sharing of every moment of my life with the world. I can have secrets.

3. I’m exploring DJing again, something I swore I was through with when I sold off the last pair of turntables. Thank goodness you can do it all on the computer now. I’m really looking forward to rocking my sister’s birthday party, and the release from needing to keep up with the latest and greatest that I used to practice as a techno DJ is exciting. I can play across multiple decades and genres guided not by egos to be stroked but by hips to be shaken.

So it hit me that I could probably get along just fine using my real name, Dylan. It’s not a common name for a woman, though it’s been recently popular (though I fear it’s mostly among the sort of people who name their daughters Madison, Dakota, or Ashlynn) and was used for girls before I was born (Dylan Lauren, daughter of designer Ralph, was born in ‘74).

Big light bulb. Moment of clarity. I don’t need to be a character with a different name. I’m already who I am. I am Dylan.

Helpfully, my middle name works as a woman’s name too. So what does this mean, if I decide to run with the idea of keeping with my given name?

–No confusion among friends and family, no getting used to a new name or “slipping” and calling me by my old name.
–No sense of detachment from my past and my “old self” that comes with a name change.
–No legal wrangling to change my name on documents, no break in my employment history where Dylan suddenly becomes Madeline.
–A name that sounds “comfortably queer” to me– Madeline felt a little more femme than I am, while Dylan says short hair but groomed brows,  just the right balance of the elements in me.

My dad. Gotta appreciate the effort.

He and I have been emailing and mailing letters over the past couple of months as he begins to try and understand what I’m going through. I’ve always appreciated my father’s clear desire to understand and sympathize. When I first broke the news about being trans back in the late 90s, he listened patiently as I nervously explained what I was feeling and never once flinched or stumbled. He missed the point (“Oh, so you’re gay!”  ”Er, not… really… at least, not in the way you’re thinking.”) but it was obvious that he wasn’t going anywhere and was willing to work at understanding.

It’s hard for me to think of gender in anything but postmodern, third-wave feminist terms, so I’m trying to build a bridge between the two understandings: mine and my dad’s. He has repeatedly mentioned that for him gender is an innate thing, no different than biological sex. To vary in presentation from that gender is either silly playing around or sexually charged homosexual expression. That someone would go beyond some makeup and a dress to do something so permanent is a cognitive roadblock for him.

He also worries that I’ll make a transition and then regret it. I appreciate the message behind this: he’s being protective as a parents. However, I’m 32. I’ve known the clinical term for my situation for over a decade. I’ve been expressing myself through appearance for at least seven years more than that. And, most importantly, I’ve felt identifiably Not Right since my earliest memories at the age of 3 or so. To wit: I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with what I am. I need to help illustrate all of this to him so that even if he can’t understand it he can accept it.

I have high hopes for where I’ll be able to get to with my dad. His responses are often guarded in their language– he worries about offending me, and I think he worries about just letting go with his feelings– but the intent is clear: he isn’t going anywhere and he’s willing to work at understanding.

Thanks dad; I love you.

I finally cleaned up my closet and dresser today. Both had been left with pieces of the outfits I changed in and out of on NYE strewn about. It was just too raw for me to deal with before I had a chance to process, and if I had addressed the piles before today I would have entered a purge mode and thrown it all in sacks without mercy or consideration to be given away.  With a calmer mindset I was able to divide it according to usefulness: some of it went to Miriam, some went into storage, some stayed in my closet. A lot of it is going to the thrift store. So there.

Here’s a thing about my closet: Miriam was shocked by how much clothing I had accumulated recently, and she pointed out that my body will change through this process in ways I can’t know for sure, so it’s a bit early to buy an entire wardrobe. I don’t have a large closet to begin with so it seems a bit silly to give so much of it to things I don’t regularly wear. This all makes sense, right? Intellectually, anyway. This is the lesson I’m trying to learn and share: don’t buy that $2,000 guitar before you start taking lessons. Or: don’t buy the entire Adobe creative suite before you play around with design a bit. Or: the time to buy a wardrobe specifically for yoga workouts is after several months of dedicated attendance at classes you enjoy.

Don’t focus on the ideal. Focus on the now, the real.

Save your time, your money, as much of your resources as you can so you have a reserve to draw from in your journey. There are so many resources out there for transfolk now and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have it all figured out, but it’s an itinerary that needs to adapt with you. Tastes change, bodies change, and situations change. While I want to know I have something to work with when those moments come, I also need the flexibility of uncertainty. I need to not know exactly where I’m going because if I say, “This is where I plan to end up,” then I’ve created an ideal I might not reach and that could break my heart and my spirit. The tailored fit is good in the present but the general cut is more forgiving in the longer term.

of the camera’s eye
Telling you everything you never wanted to know
Showing you everything you didn’t want shown.”
-Morrissey

Miriam and I hate NYE, or at least the going-out, drink-all-you-can festivities. That said, it’s a good excuse to get dressed up, so that’s what we did: dressed up and stayed in. It was an evening of two girls dressed to the nines chilling on a couch and watching season three of Angel.

I hadn’t dressed en femme around Miriam very much lately, and as a rule don’t except for those times something new has arrived from eBay (I have a bit of a problem, more on that later) and I’m checking the fit. For NYE I had picked out a dark green top and grey skirt that looked great, but the neckline obscured the necklace I had bought especially for the evening. Thus, I changed my outfit for the first of many times that evening, switching to a little black dress with a deeper neckline.

Miriam, as always, gave me compliments both affectionate and explicit, and I was feeling pretty good about it all when we set up the camera and tried to take a photo of the two of us. I thought it was a really sweet moment, and it wasn’t a stiff portrait but rather an affectionate scene with my chin turned inward toward her cheek and her arm around my waist. Flash, click. Let’s have a look.

I’ve taken enough photos of myself while dressed that I know what will look good and what won’t. Tight shots, chin cocked, doing my slightly smirking smile seems to work the best, and this shot of the two of us seemed to have the latter two going for it. The wide shot of me standing with Miriam, though, brought the condemning words to my lips before I could even process what I was feeling.

“Oh god, I look so mannish.”

A wave of anxiety struck me and I tried to leave the room, but Miriam (bless her) pulled me back to the couch and made me talk about it. I was struggling with what Jay Smooth calls “The Little Hater,” except that my Hater was the size of King Kong at the moment and spitting a constant stream of doubt.

Oh god look at my shoulders look at my hairline I look ridiculous what was I thinking I should give up.

I did what I usually do in these situations: shut it down, push it inside, force a smile. It’s not a healthy habit.

Miriam headed to the attic and set up the next episode of Angel while I flipped through my closet looking for something else to wear, something I remembered looking good on me, no questions about it. I threw on another dress, put a cardigan on over that, and made my way upstairs. The new look brought a puzzled look and then compliments from my wife.

Another episode, a break to fill wine glasses, and another change in outfits. A longer dress, and now the cardigan was mostly buttoned. Another puzzled look.

I made it about halfway through the new episode before I had to pause it and confess how sad I was feeling. When it became clear that I was emotionally collapsing after stuffing the earlier anxious reaction inside, Miriam made the call: let’s head to bed and snuggle and talk about it.

It was a strange feeling for me as I got to my closet. I was practically tearing the outfit off and couldn’t get into a boring pair of pyjamas quickly enough. We crawled under the covers and I rambled, sobbed, and released. Miriam listened and comforted.

I spoke of being exposed, of wanting to hide. I made connections about fantasies I had and how the related to idealized notions. To wit: my fascination with hijab and modest dress comes partially from a desire to hide myself. My love for the style of businesswomen of the 1980s has to do with the sense of armor and protection the bold suits and heavy makeup could provide. I don’t feel safe, and I need some sort of shell or covering to keep me hidden and protected. Despite comments by Miriam, friends, and moments of appreciation by myself after the webcam has snapped, I don’t believe I’ll ever look passable. Or more importantly, I don’t believe I’ll ever look Good Enough.

So there’s a New Year’s resolution, in the form of a question to answer: What is Good Enough, and how do I trust that there is a point where I’ll feel like I’ve reached it?