I Am Trapped Inside of My Body

On Black Transmasculinity

I feel trapped inside of my body.

I am non-binary because I identify as neither man nor woman;

I am trans because I am moving away from what I was assigned at birth.

Kit Heyam said that transness is not about what we do (medically), but about who we are.

Transness is play and exploration and fluidity, and yes, sometimes, protection.

Depending on the context, I make myself meek and small and quiet and soft. Partly because it feels accurate to be this way, and partly because the large Black masc body that I am trapped within, necessitates that I appear “safe” (arbitrarily defined) as possible, in hopes of being safe myself.

Depending on the context, I pop my tongue and vogue and twirl and laugh from my belly and talk so loudly it reaches a scream, and drape myself in gold and shake my ass, and wear the buttons in my shirt too low. Partly because play feels accurate, and partly because I feel safe amongst Black girls (my “gworls” 🤭) and gays to do so. fleeting euphoria.

I once sent my queer bestie an Audre Lorde poem on “Eroticism” with a preemptive trigger warning regarding the title: “This is not about sex but about power, and agency, and the things that make us feel most alive.” We exchanged poems often. They thought I was making a pass at them, and I didn’t have the skills to hold them in their fear response. We are no longer friends. I am still trapped in this body. And it is possible that they are somewhere fearful of closeness to masc queer folk like me. I’ll never know.

I am left on the periphery of touch with my pals because the world tells us that masc bodies crave touch only as a precursor to sex. And navigating COVID has added a whole ‘nother layer of complexity that is impossible to navigate. I run to the forest often, where I am genderless and the trees exchange breaths with me, to be held in my sadness. To just be held.

But things aren’t all bad:

My oldest friend, and wife, Kelz, is like a canyon to my river, shaping and allowing herself to be shaped by my expansion. I don’t know what i would do without her, which fills me with gratitude and grief because that’s a lot to ask of one person.

My lil sister in love moved in with us after graduating college. We taught her what gender nonconformity was. And everytime she uses my pronouns my heart smiles.  She even corrected her parents and explained to them what nonbinary means presumably so I would not have to. A reminder that things are not all bad.

I’m a storyteller. and letting white supremacist patriarchy preemptively shape my story is not an option; I would rather not exist. So I brave defining myself for myself, even if this world cannot hold me. Even if I am trapped inside of this body of mine.