I had a haircut this morning with Sue, who has been cutting my hair for about ten years. Over that time we have developed a light chatty friendship. Sue is one of the first people I came out to after my trans-revelation...maybe the very first face to face. I did it because I badly wanted advice on hair and eyebrows and such, and also because I wanted to tell someone, and she felt safe because she doesn't know anyone else I know. She was maybe a little uncomfortable with the information at first, but since then seems really to have accepted me as a feminine person...at least, I have to assume that's why I now know so much about her love-life. :-)
The haircut went fine...a light trim to keep things neat as I continue to grow my hair out, and clippering off my neck hair...and she's always patient with questions and generous with advice (I learned a little about curling irons today). But that's not the main point. What was really interesting was how the talk went.
I did most of the talking at first, just venting some of my pent-up stuff, and while I talked there was a curious moment of self-awareness in which I heard the sound of my voice as if from outside, and didn't like the gravelly deepness of it. Just a moment. Then I sensed her impatience for her turn to talk, so I asked her for the latest from the romantic front, and she's seeing a new guy (yay) whom she met in real life, not on line (yay) who has been married three times (not so yay) but who overall sounds promising. And I talked a little about my non-existent romantic prospects, and about the sometime awkwardness of dating people who volunteer at my work.
By now the haircut was done and I was paying, and without thinking about it I asked if she had ever been asked out by a customer, and I realized as soon as I said it that it might sound like I was leading up to asking her out myself. I felt instantly awkward, and sensed maybe she did too as she explained somewhat haltingly that no, that had never happened...but it wasn't a major squirm moment, at least not for me, because while she was answering I was realizing again something which has been occurring to me more often recently, which is that it might be really nice to love and be loved by a man.
But that's not the main point either. The main point is that, when I spoke again, finding a way to gently alter the subject, I had a second moment of self-awareness, and I realized that the tone of my voice had gone up, and that I was letting it resonate in my nasal cavities the way I've practiced, and that my inflection had gotten softer...that in short I was talking as femme as I yet know how to talk, spontaneously. At the same time I also realized I was twisting and curling my body inward like a teenager who has gotten a lot of growth recently and who feels bashful about her new size...and in that moment I felt intensely girlish. In that moment I was a girl talking to another girl, a girlfriend, about boys.
So, thanks Sue for the girl-talk...and I now have a new perspective on all the self-conscious studying I have been doing of femininity. It really is just knowledge-gathering and practice for something which, in the end, is just going to happen. It is going to happen because I have given myself permission to let it. I am not deciding what to do next. I am just doing what I do. I am just becoming.
Tomorrow (unless I chicken out), a new first: femme mode at church.
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