In which I get my boobs removed

The title of this post comes from a hilarious exchange I had with one of my coworkers at Au Bon Pain. Someone I'd never spoken to before came up to me while I was standing at the cash register and, during a lull in customers, said, "So, maybe this is weird to ask, but I heard you got your boobs removed?"

She asked if it hurt (I guess, but I had lots of vicodin) and how I felt about it (really relieved) and then we had to go back to work. Afterwards, I realised that she had put together "buzz cut" plus "mastectomy" and come up with "breast cancer", but because she never asked why I had surgery, there wasn't a graceful way to correct her assumption. I've been having a lot of these kinds of conversations lately, where people ask the wrong questions so I don't know how to tell them the right answer. Mostly I'm just not that invested in other people's dumb assumptions, but the experience of being home again has really highlighted my favourite part of getting surgery: everybody I met already knew their shit.

I do mean everybody.The women at the front office of the plastic surgery institute: incredibly invested in a traditional presentation of femininity, to the point of getting plastic surgery themselves-- and yet, they were genuinely excited on behalf of the trans men getting the reverse surgery. The woman who took my money at the clinic: a professional bureaucrat-- and yet, she apologized for having to ask for my legal name and write down my sex as female. The parade of nurses who took my vitals and gave me my IV and administered my anesthesia: not in any way specialised in trans care-- and yet, a brief glance at my chart and they knew exactly which name and pronouns to use.

I'm not really a sensitive person, any more. Not when it comes to being trans, anyway. I understand that people aren't going to 'get it' right away, and I understand that they are going to be curious. When someone calls me "ma'am", they are probably just trying to be polite, and I have cultivated the habit of accepting their politeness in the spirit in which it is meant. When someone asks a personal question, they are probably just trying to learn, and I answer in good faith every question that is asked in good faith. At this point, these exchanges just don't have any sting to them.

And yet, when I got surgery, it was such a profound relief to be in a space where I wasn't constantly choosing between explaining myself or becoming invisible. It was like a fish suddenly discovering that it lived in water… by leaving the water… and breathing the air better than the water? Perhaps I am a lungfish. Perhaps this was a terrible analogy. It was like suddenly realising that I lived in a cisnormative world. Which isn't exactly a widely-shared experience, but probably more so than the lungfish thing.

To get this blog post back on track: I feel like I have a lot of friends who have the basics under control, but want to know how to be a better trans ally after all the 101 stuff. And I think the answer starts with combating cisnormativity-- which mostly means remembering, at all times, that you may not actually know the genders of the people you see around you. And you probably do not need to know. Today I actually asked for someone's number while having no clue whether they were cis male, trans male, or cis female; their gender would have eventually become relevant, but at that point I just wanted a way to contact them to talk about Doctor Who somewhere other than the crowded Amanda Palmer concert.

If you have to ask, think about what information you actually need and why you need it. If you're a doctor and you want to know if I need a pap smear, ask if I have a uterus. If you're putting together a form, think about whether you really need a legal name. (DMV: yes. Blackboard discussion forum: no.) If you're just making friends… ask my name, and where I'm from, and what kinds of books I like to read.

This, I realized, is what I most want from the people in my life: I want them to ask what they actually need to know, and then carry on with what they were doing. Or, in other words, know your shit.

In which I am not brave, I am a pathetic kitten

Okay, it's top surgery story time!

I've actually started to kind of dislike telling these stories because they tend to make people coo at me over how brave I was. This is mostly annoying for the same reason it's always annoying when people tell me I'm brave: transitioning is seriously the path of least resistance for me. But it is also annoying because these stories are meant to be funny; my woes are not pitiful, they are hilarious!

Therefore, please refrain from reading the following anecdotes unless you are prepared to find them amusing. Ready? Let's go.

I spent a week in Florida recovering from surgery. A good friend came with me, and then let me continue recuperating at her house in Georgia for an additional week. You are about to learn just how good a friend she was.

So, post-tits, I couldn't raise my arms. I thought I was prepared for the implications of this, but I was not. I could only drink through a straw (expected), from a glass lifted to my mouth (unexpected). I could brush my own teeth, but only if my friend handed me a prepared toothbrush-- and then took the toothbrush from my hand and cleaned it for me. I could sometimes get out of my chair by myself, but never out of bed-- so several times a night I would mewl my friend's name into the darkness until she woke up and lifted me upright, to let me toddle to the bathroom. Then she'd tuck me back into bed.

I couldn't get the bandage wet, so when I wanted to look presentable for an outing with a friend, she washed my hair by using all the cushions and pillows in the room to construct the perfect support for me to lie on the floor of the bathroom with my head over the tub. (Pictured: the deeply ridiculous ice cream which was my reward for flopping about on the tile.)

I repaid her by being truly terrible company. Mostly I slept and marathonned Mad Men while she… kept track of my medication schedules, I'm not really sure. (I told you I was terrible!) Never before has the phrase 'weak as a kitten' been more accurate. My first meal, I got tired halfway through and had to be spoon-fed the rest. My friend tied a piece of string around me so I wouldn't forget myself and reach too far, but it was a moot point.

I did get better, but the healing process was equally a process of adjusting expectations. It felt like genuine independence, the first day that I was able to finish putting on my own underwear after my friend had held them out for me and lifted them up to my knees. And once we'd returned to her house, I could even get out of bed all by myself! (Mostly by letting my lower body fall onto the floor, so I could get into a sitting position and then stand up from there, but it still counts.)

But for those first two weeks, I was so distracted by the unexpected absurdity of my situation-- and so removed from any of the social contexts which might reasonably have been affected by the change in my appearance-- that it was actually a bit difficult to remember that I wasn't just binding too hard. It didn't start to sink in until the day before I wanted to drive home to NC, when I grabbed a bra to put my tits on for a trip to the mechanic and… had no tits. I still get a little cheerful surprise every now and then, when I wake up and realize they're still gone. I'm not sure I'll ever stop being chuffed that I can leave the house without any ridiculous torso undergarments-- it's just so much easier!

And I guess that's the moral of the story: I am incredibly lazy, but I have folks looking out for me and that makes my life pretty good. Also: 'cosmetic' surgery, my ass.