Reflections on Thirty-Two

On April 10 I turned thirty-two years old, entering the third year of a decade that has so far been defined by professional success, personal growth, and lengthening tendrils of discovery splaying around me like the petals of some miraculous flower. The contrast with my besieged twenties couldn't be starker, and as the distance from that time grows the narrative of my life has had to shift with it. When you met me I defined myself, understandably, in terms of opposition. I wouldn't be like my parents. Wouldn't be like my bullies. I wouldn't be like all those toxic actors who had power over me.

They don't have power anymore.

These days I'm calling my own shots, and as I've gotten more used to that--as I've come to realize that independence is not a parlor trick ready to vanish with the pulling of a curtain--I've begun to gradually shift from a mindset of survival to one of growth. Saying, "I'm so different from the people who hurt me" is not enough anymore. More and more, the question is, "Who am I?" Me on my own. Me not in juxtaposition to somebody else, but as a freestanding entity.

Thirty-two has been lovely, but the memory of turning thirty is something I'll savor for the rest of my life. When I was in my middle twenties, fresh off a suicide attempt, pudgy from my depression-induced binge-eating, ashamed and undermined by my depression-induced binge-drinking, living on other people's dime and at their whim, thirty was a mantra. By thirty, I'd have a career. By thirty I'd have money. By thirty I'd be on my own. By thirty I'd be, I swore, under 150 pounds again.

My thirtieth birthday dawned in sun-soaked Alaska springtime, a blazing-bright morning that greeted me with confetti and celebratory phone calls. On my front door was a colorful constellation of birthday cards made by students and staff, under the supervision of Wise Woman, a good friend who lived next door to my beautiful apartment. I was surrounded by love and validation. Right after I woke up, I stood on the scale on my living room and the number that flashed back at me read 149.4 pounds. I stood in my foyer that morning, surveying my life, and I wept tears of disbelief and joy.

"It all happened. It all actually happened." Somewhere deep down, I never really believed I'd get to have it. But I did. And I do.

In the two years since the bright sunrise of thirty, I've worked to discover the grown-up BB, and that effort has taken me to some surprising places. To several corners of Alaska. To Russia. To my first relationship (with Gavril, who was nothing short of saintly in the face of my unrelenting tide of craziness and damage). To the acknowledgement, at long last, that whatever I am, I am not quite a regular boy.

"You know, it doesn't need to be one thing or another," said Raven, a mother of one of my students and someone with whom I grew close enough to confide my struggles with identity. Raven is an Athabascan Native steeped in the culture of her people, and her conception of gender doesn't exactly align with the Western binary. "We have a word for people like you: two-spirit."

I considered that. That maybe all this wasn't quite as simple as a pink baby popping out in blue wrapping.

"Did you know at all?" I asked. "You don't seem surprised."

"Well..." she paused and gave me an apologetic smile. "Little things. Your body language. Not everyone would pick up on it, but if you're intuitive...there's subtle cues."

I don't have all the answers, which is fine provided I'm looking for them in an honest way. If there is any resolution I carry forward with me into the third year of my thirties, it is to walk and to think and to choose without fear. That has entailed some really uncomfortable moments, as when last week I spoke with my therapist about how my stepmother Marie treated me in childhood.

"She's been texting me," I told the doctor. "And I don't know how to respond. I haven't spoken with her in months, intentionally, and I know this is her way of trying but I have so much pain around her..."

"Why is that?"

The familiar red flags raised. That same old dread in my stomach, screaming at me to RUN AWAY FROM THIS THOUGHT. I fought through the fight-or-flight response and at last said what I've been dancing around with this therapist for literally months (and with myself for literally years): "Marie didn't have appropriate boundaries around us. She used to talk about our sexuality in these really explicit and degrading terms."

I still have a vivid memory of being eighteen and my stepmother counseling, in the cutting way she had, all the things I needed to do lest I "never get laid."

"It wasn't the only instance," I told Gender Therapist. "That particular time we had company over who heard the whole thing and...I was eighteen. To be sexualized at that age, by a parent no less, and then to be turned into a sexual object for appraisal. For strangers' amusement. It's like..." I started crying. "It was so dehumanizing. And it makes me really upset to remember."

The spectre of Marie has loomed like a boogeyman of shame in the back of my mind. Now I know she's there. Now I can work on banishing her. Confronting her presence, and the way it's tied up in my issues around intimacy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, is one of those things I found too frightening to do in my twenties. But fear-based decisions are wrong decisions.

The solutions are seldom easy, but they are sometimes funny.

"I think I need to be more of a ho," I mentioned.

"From a clinical perspective, I'd have to agree," confirmed Gender Therapist.

I've never really experienced male sexuality, you see; other than a few abortive and unpleasant encounters spread over about a decade, I'd never had a sexual partner until Gavril in 2018, and Gender Therapist and I both feel that I would be remiss to undertake something as huge as transition without knowing exactly what I'd be walking away from. There's always going to be a girl living in this head of mine. But is she splitting the rent with a boy? And might I be able to find happiness in gay manhood? I'm doing my level best to get to the bottom of it (giggity), trawling dating and kink sites and, again, casting fear (though not caution) aside.

"I love it," Black Dress Girl said. "Let the freak flag fly. This is exactly what you need."

This new online presence has resulted, to my surprise, in a consistent stream of messages from college-aged gay men who tell me I'm beautiful and generally express a desire to see me unclothed. This is something I feel I should be bothered by but I can't quite get myself across the line of caring.

"I felt really bad about it at first," I confided to Black Dress Girl by phone. "A lot of these guys are like ten years younger than me. I mean, it's not like I'm lying about my age; I have my photo online and people just make assumptions. I always correct them. But then I'm like, 'I can't do this. I'm too old. It's wrong.' And finally I just snapped. I was like, 'Why can't I do this? Why is my entire life me telling myself all the things I'm not allowed to do?' He wants it and I want it, too, but I'm in denial about wanting it because I feel like I shouldn't want it. And at some point it's like, 'For fuck's sake.' If he thinks I'm hot and I think he's hot and everyone is going in eyes wide open...I just want to get laid."

"Well, when you actually were that age you didn't get to have those carefree experiences," she reasoned. "Because you just had so much going on. And they're talking to you because they find you attractive. So as long as you're not leading them into thinking you're going to have a relationship or anything...like, everyone is a consenting adult. If they know it's just sex, what's the issue?"

All of which could wind up being hypothetical, by the way. But giving myself permission to bang a twenty-one-year-old for the sheer joy of a good shagging, and, what's more, being open to that joy absent the need for a relationship, is a step I never thought I'd take. The idea of sex as a fun and pleasurable experience? Something that isn't terrifying? Who knew?

First do no harm. Always. But I'm tired of apologizing and of self-denial. I want to live.

I'm leaving Point Goldlace next month and not coming back, because I know that I deserve better than the opportunities and the treatment I'm getting here. I'm interviewing, at some point when quarantine restrictions are lifted, for a job with an international organization that would require me to live on a semi-permanent basis outside of the U.S. And I'm moving in August to a different part of Alaska  where I'll once again be the new person in town. All of these are scary things and in each case it would have been easier and less anxiety-provoking to just maintain the status quo. But fear-based decisions are wrong decisions.

I'm making plans and backup plans, as I always do. This summer, if the service that provides it isn't shuttered due to contagion concerns, I'll be taking classical voice lessons through a university in Southern State. I've wanted to for years and...why not? Singing is pure joy. I've taken to posting audio in online voice forums where I've learned, among other things, that I am in fact considered not a baritone but a lyric tenor. Go figure.

At thirty-two I want to push further from fear and pull closer to my happy place, wherever that is. And whoever I am as I arrive there.