"If you love men, wouldn't it have been easier for you to stay a woman?"
I hear you say this and my blood does not run cold. Instead it just kind of sits there, coagulating into some kind of gelatin, slowing my movements, making me confused.
I see now that you see the natural state of attraction as being between estrogen and testosterone that is made by internal organs, and not as the strange thing it really is.
There is no desire for sex in my mind, but still the idea of my masculine form being side by side with another is the only thing on planet earth that makes sense.
Only when the oil in my skin smells like a man, and only when he calls me man could any of this make sense.
Imagine me with softer skin, blood pooling in my underwear, trying to carry a child, being called wife. Long golden hair pulled back in a scarf. A man holding me gently from behind. That is someone else's reality. A beautiful reality. But it was never meant to be mine.
The smell of his hair only became more beautiful as I discovered a change in myself. As I understood what I could look like. Be like. Feel like. Smell like. Hair rough on my face, thick on my arms, short on my head. My soul gleefully filled with old spice, wood shavings, and yarn.
How could I ever explain to you the feeling of pure correctness that comes with being called him, them, boy, brother? Why don't you see the equal beauty of a man sitting quietly, leaning against another man, eyes falling victim to sleep?
I am not as blonde as a woman. I am as blonde as myself standing out under a streetlamp by the bar, watching a boy vape near the entrance. He looks at me. He is dressed in red, mystified in the dark by the cloud of his own vices.
I do not know if he looks at me in curiosity or disgust, but he is beautiful in a way that would be impossible to articulate if I were forced to live as a girl. But because I am myself I know that he looks like the entrance to heaven and purgatory all at once. The red devil wings on his hoodie turn him into the spirit of all my joy. I do not know him but he is perfect. Then he finishes and goes back inside.
Why can you not comprehend the depths I choose to fall for the sake of my own salvation? How simple is your mind that you do not see the complexities within your own soul? I crawled out of hell to see the angels and you tell me that because my hell was your heaven that I should have stayed.
His beard was dyed brown, to match the other shade of brown on his perfect head. Can you smell it? The rainbow sweat caked onto the edges of my soul? Staining it so hard that you're unsure whether it's a bug or a feature? It's a part of the upholstery. Look inside yourself again. There's something good in there. Something beautiful behind those shining brown eyes. Do me a favor and try to find it. Once you do, you'll see what I mean.
