Spicy (they/them)
I have always loved my body and largely accepted the way it looked purely because I’ve always been good at logic, probability, reason, and reality.
God is in all of us.
Everything God is and created is beautiful.
Ergo, I am beautiful.
I have a bit of a bulging belly.
A lot of people have bellies.
They are all still beautiful.
Ergo, I am beautiful.
I have a lot of pimples.
Pimples are part of growing up.
Ergo, I won’t get too self-conscious about pimples because they are normal and will eventually go away.
These were all things I learned to tell myself, teach myself, and convince myself of because I didn’t have anybody else to do it for me. In fact, I have a distinct memory of asking my mother if she thought I was beautiful, and she said, “you’re average.” In my family praise can only lead to selfishness and self-obsession — all characteristics of the devil. She even made me delete a picture on FB once in which my best friend commented “sexy”.
Despite all of that, I know I was beautiful because I was made of and by God. If there’s anything good I got from Christianity, it’s that.
When I was in college, I saw for the first time someone who didn’t shave their legs.
Over the course of the next few weeks, a lot of my art became about body hair, and I also stopped shaving. Everything. I realized I do not need to get rid of something so natural. Fuck this society for making me think I do. Even my senior thesis two years later became about body hair. After interviewing four peers about their hair experience growing up for my sculpture series, they too made dramatic changes to how they presented their hair. This was also heavily influenced by my little cousin who got bullied for her body hair. Hers was way blacker and thicker than mine, and middle schoolers in NC are just not that kind.
It was a few years after realizing and accepting my queer and poly life that I allowed myself to think about transness. One step at a time for me. I had always loved a beard, and for the first time I wondered if it’s because I wanted one for myself. HmmmMmMMMmmmm….I started slowly imagining myself with one. I immediately started wearing facial hair in my burlesque and drag, and to my surprise I realized that I had sported a mustache at my very first burlesque performance in 2018, before I came out as non-binary and only a few weeks into my very first poly relationship. Wearing facial hair (intentionally this time) and researching more about what trans was, I realized I am non-binary AND trans. What does that mean to me?
A lot of the trans people that I know, their life purpose is to be seen. And in nightlife people are living their full, beautiful selves, in front of a crowd of loved ones, on stage being loved. And I think that act specifically of getting showered with love and validation and claps and cheers in that way and, however, you end up presenting, has definitely allowed me to accept my transness more and know not only that it's OK, but that I have a safe space to do that and to be that. And that it's possible. There’s that saying that if you want change to be possible, you have to imagine it or something like that. And in those spaces, seeing it, seeing those imaginations come to fruition in everyone is really comforting.
Someone else saw my transness before I did and invited me to perform in an all trans show. I wrote a long poem for it in which I try to describe my transness for the first time. That poem is my gradual and initial thoughts on what it meant to be trans.
But over a year later, I pretty much feel the same but more settled in my transness.
A few months ago I started on T, and the facial hair, the deepening of the voice, the penis-clit — all so much more validating than I ever thought. I felt more secure in my body. I didn’t realize I never allowed myself to feel too insecure before because it took me away from being present. But now that I’ve acknowledged those feelings AND am able to feel more myself in the process, I feel powerful. I feel strong. I feel MORE present.
Sometimes I wonder if the positive feelings will disappear whenever I leave NY, go home to my family. I haven’t told them yet about being trans. Although they noticed the voice and hair, but I was able to deflect. My mom, aunt, and cousin are coming in a month though, and I plan on telling them. The hiding and living is almost feeling childish. I’m almost 30. I want them to know who I am. They need to know me fully. Everyone does.
I haven’t even touched on family back home in India. I don’t think can be ready for the consequences, although I know my mother will be the worst…my parents are pretty staunch Catholics, combined with the intricacies of being immigrants and being in a different culture. And so the one time my mom came to visit (this was like very soon after I came out to them as queer), she came and stayed with us for like a week and I found her one early morning kneeling on rocks and praying. And I was like, what are you saying? And she looked like she was like a deer caught in headlights, she knew I would be upset. She was like, yeah. I need to pray for you. I need to sacrifice.
What I've told her again and again is that if she's gonna pray, then pray that I am following the path that I need to follow, not pray for what she wants. And I believe that that is what she's doing. Because I do believe in her power in prayer and my family's power in prayer, they are very powerful and they get things done through prayer alone in ways that I have never seen before. And I believe that their prayer is the thing that has kept me so safe for so long, and I do feel like I have angels around me at all times, looking out for me. And so I do believe that that is what she's praying for and that she's not praying for me to just not be queer. Of all things, it’s much better. She could be praying for worse things, she could have disowned me. She could have just been so cold, they all could have been. And they haven't been.
They do love and care about me a lot, even though they don't really know how to show it very well, and I am appreciative of that love and the care and I'm finding myself. I've always given them a lot of grace and I will continue to because that's just what I have to do., even if it's getting harder. But I'm also learning for myself, to give myself more grace and not just them. Give myself grace whenever I do take space from them. Whenever I do set my boundaries with them. They never respect these boundaries and always made me feel really guilty about them. But I'm trying not to take on that guilt that they put on me and not guilt myself and not gaslight myself into believing whatever it is they’re saying.
But consequences aside. Fall-back aside. Here, now, I feel elated to be able to find myself in this way. Blessed to live in a world where transness is possible even if vilified. Blessed to be surrounded by other trans deities who make it their life’s mission to be SEEN. I believe our transness is holy. I believe we are made of God. And if there is anything I’ve learned of society, it’s that they are always opposing God. The hypocrisy of society is bred from fear, which is what evil feeds on. And that’s how I know they are wrong. Logically, there is no way any trans existence is not holy. And in that way, I feel enlightened at having discovered this portal through which I can and have been able to embrace ALL that I am, in all my multitudes.
