No Longer In Texas

So, I’ve been silent for a while, but it’s been with a fruitful cause: I’ve been moving. I have vacated my old home in Austin, TX and I’ve relocated to the Pacific Northwest. Two weeks in, and I have to say that things are really going pretty well, and I think it’s about time to kind of do a bit of a postmortem on my time there. I will discuss suicide, sexual assault, gender dysphoria, and similar topics in the below essay.

When I came to Austin, I was a 22 year old bisexual twink who did not really understand himself [I deliberately am using he/him pronouns to describe myself this deeply in the past — for me, pronouns live in the conscious mind, not the inner self]. In the intervening two decades, the following things have happened to me, in kind of chronological order, and presented as a bullet list to avoid having this post be a book:

• I lived alone for the first time
• I made community with my grad students
• I taught my first classes
• I went to a gay bar
• I had receptive anal sex for the first time
• I learned to code switch between the world of technical sciencey people and queers
• I used craigslist for anonymous sex
• I found a theoretical physics advisor
• I was raped
• I had what I know now as my second big gender crisis, panicking on my body hair as a response to the rape
• I cheated on a partner
• I lived alone again, while actively ideating
• I self-harmed
• I fell into abusive relationships. I say this directly, but I will also say that abuse was what I needed at time. My partners’ poor boundaries with me also included instructions to continue living, and while the entreaty to “go to therapy” came from a place of “I don’t want to deal with your bullshit”…
• I went to therapy
• I met my first trans person
• I went on a “first date” with who was going to be my sibling of choice
• I conducted a plan of theoretical physics research
• I had a research funding crisis, became a migratory adjunct for a year
• I became a phd
• I attended my first regional burn
• I taught myself how to program, got my first technical computer job
• I wore my first dress in ordinary public, not going to a drag show or a queer event
• I met my future wife
• I had a right true absurd polyamorous relationship explosion with full drama in it, simulcast with my metamor having a worse crisis
• I got married. We wore matching nyan cat rainbow dresses. My wife’s husband wore the all black “tac nyan” dress and officiated
• I had a crisis from drinking. I quit drinking for the last time
• I moved in with my partners
• I became an aerialist, to replace the bars at first
• I started dressing femme full time in my private life
• I planned large scale home projects together with a family
• I came out as an enby at work, and either got sexismed out of a job or transphobiaed out of it, pick which one
• I ate the first estrogen pill (actually, I sublingualed it, but you get it)
• I started more actively involving myself with trans activsm
• I was caught in multiple giant infrastructure and power failures in central texas
• I changed my name
• I bought a house with a polycule
• I left Texas forever. I loved the people I met there, and in balance, the wasted time aside, I think the two decades were well-spent. The middle finger below is intended for Greg Abbot, Ken Paxton, Dan Patrick, Dale Phelan, Stephanie Klick, and everyone else who made the state unsafe and unwelcoming for trans people, not for the lovely community I made along the way, and that I still talk to and think about daily. But the below is the moment where I left the state for the last time.

Ok, that list was longer than I expected, and I certainly still have processing left in me. It’s been interesting being caught in the whole “pandemic transitioners” and “2023 great trans migration” moments, which I feel will be chapters of queer history in 20 years or so. I am stronger, wiser, more aware, and more grown than the person who came here, and I am already starting to lay down new roots and to flower in my new home. My family of choice is stronger and closer than we have ever been here, and we did the whole thing together. That twink is now a self-aware, out and proud transexual woman, and there is no going back. Thank you for reading with me.