This post was submitted by Levi

“How do you rate my sex appeal from one to ten

Is my image just a bit confusing

Maybe I should get a facelift, start again

Maybe I should trade my pointed shoes in

‘Cause talent don’t count

For pretty boys”

-”Pretty Boys” by Joe Jackson

It really hit me more than usual during a dogpile of frisky gay men on a couch at a New Year’s Eve party. No, I wasn’t in the dogpile. I was to the side, watching with amusement and the sting of longing.  How I wished I could be a part of that easy intimacy, to be desired and accepted without question in the community of gay and queer men.  I sometimes feel as if I am just some token anomaly to be tolerated, not just “a guy” or even “the short, awkward lad with glasses”, but “the transgender dude.”  This feeling is made worse by the fact that I am not easily “read” or seen physically as male, so my status almost weighs like a huge billboard plastered on me saying “He’s an odd one, he’s not the same as us underneath those clothes! Shhh! Don’t point!”

In past times I have been hesitant to get romantically or sexually involved with guys.  Most of it stemmed from my then unknown, unnamed discomfort. I wasn’t keen on the idea of being a “girlfriend” and what that entailed: to be mis-gendered as female and have me and my body treated as such.   Plus, I didn’t want to end up dragging some sweet, decent teenage chap into the intensity of my “ocean of confusion.” (Yeah, I know I’m one of the few people who still listens to the Screaming Trees.)  But that formerly unknown and unnamed discomfort now has a face and a name–Dysphoria–and a host of still-ongoing personal realizations and revelations (but then again, life in general is full of such whether you are cis or trans, queer or not).

As a burgeoning young queer man, I look forward to being a part of queer men’s spaces… and making out with cute guys (*hint hint*, gentlemen). But I don’t want the fact that I’m trans or the fact that I have yet to be on T or have surgery to be held against me.  It can be hard for transfolks to be a part of gay and lesbian spaces and been seen and accepted; it can be really discouraging to get out there just to end being seen as some “other.”  One of my resolutions for 2010 is to be bolder, so I’m going to try to get in there more and damn the torpedoes that may come.

We’ll see what happens.  More on this at a later date.

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