I have been on the fence about coming to my college’s gay student group since the beginning of first semester.

…It is now the middle of second semester and I still haven’t made up my mind whether or not to really start attending. Personally, I don’t really like groups in general (people make me very nervous, a group of people I don’t know makes it worse), especially groups of my peers. However, it would be nice to maybe find some solidarity that is more readily available than having to go the way into the city, and possibly make friends on campus.

Most people my age may think about future things like what kind of cool car they want to own, what kind of horrific names to impose on their future children, or what kind of fancy job they think they are going to automatically get after graduating college. Yeah, I consider some of those things and things like that, everyone does at some point, but they are not what tends to drift through my head and its imaginary plans. Personally, I like to think about what kind of badass facial hair I would like to envision myself having one day.

Of course it happened that the “Snowpocalypse” of the Mid-Atlantic started on my birthday; I’m just kind of lucky like that (I also had a pop quiz that day). I would say this totally tops the time a few years ago when my birthday fell on Superbowl Sunday a few years back.

Information travels quickly, especially in a tight-knit area. I’d rather get through this period with as less difficulty as possible…Does this make me a bad trans and queer person for remaining mostly closeted?

 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.”

In all honesty, I was planning to write about something completely different today. What changed is that trying on my new binder I almost got trapped and feel like I almost dislocated my shoulders trying to get out of it. You know how you try to put on an old sweater to see if it still fits, but it gets stuck over your shoulders and your arms are immobile over your head in the sleeves? It was like that except 10 times worse.

I might have fucked up with this package of cheap boxers (Fruit of the Loom, oh yeah) that I bought yesterday from my local Target. They might size too big. Granted, I did pay $7 for the pack and am trying to shrink them a bit in the dryer, but still I feel kind of stupid. At least these weren’t meant to be sexy underwear by any means (unless you dig baggy knit boxers in colours like teal, gray, and navy).

It is easy to feel hopeless, unwanted, and despised when the world around you refuses to accept you and your true identity, or refuses to validate you as a human being. It hurts even more when this comes from those closest to you, like your family, partner, co-workers, and friends. Even things like going to the bathroom or telling people what you would like to be called can be extremely stressful. Knowing people think of you as “freak” and “it” and might even call you that to your face wreaks havoc on your self-esteem. The mental and emotional scars can weigh heavily, and then add that to the pre-existing discomfort of living in a body that doesn’t exactly match up with who you really are, and struggling physically and mentally to become the person who you truly are… It can become unbearable. And while these scars are not as apparent as the ones left by a punch in the face or a kick in the ribs, they still cause great harm and even death.

This edition of The Adventures of the Boi Wonder is brought to you in “talking moving-picture” format!  Remember how I previously wrote about needing to get my hair cut in “Can I Have a Free Haircut”?  Well, Saturday I got that free haircut, courtesy of my friend Julian.  Thanks to Zack for filming the event and special thanks to my friends Eli and Baker for letting us use their place to do it.  There will not be any song lyrics this time, but be fortunate that I did not decide to sing for the camera because my awkward talking is painful enough.

In a way it kind of sounds like a bad sitcom set-up: The guy who was raised as a girl can’t talk to girls!

Seriously, I’m an awkward, nervous little boy when it comes to women…And it shows. I say stupid and random things, get all fidgety and twitchy, and stumble over my words. Then afterwards (the conversations don’t usually last long, probably much to the relief of everyone involved in the grueling ordeal), I can’t help but think “What the fuck is wrong with me?!”