Yesterday I had an appointment to get my tires balanced and rotated at a little garage in Portland. Of all the places I go regularly in my life, this is the one I would be most nervous about visiting in femme mode, because the place is so completely male. There are signed pictures of race-car drivers on the wall, a lamp made of an oil-funnel, and in the waiting area (don't as me why) a gas grill tricked up to look like a hotrod engine. The guys wear work blues, boots, and battery-company caps. They have old pre-trendy tattoos and grease-blackened hands, smoke as they work, and never seem to smile. Can you see me going into such a place looking the way I do in my picture?
Yeah, me neither.
If/when I start living full time as a woman, it'll be a challenge to get my car worked on...but in the meantime it's still easy to get most of the way back to MAN when I need to, or at least as far back as I have ever been - a professor-type in a Honda.
So, I butched up for the tire guys.
I was already not shaving because of an upcoming electrolysis appointment, so with what's left of my beard after the laser I was as scruffy as I am still capable of looking. I left my earrings and scarf behind, and went to the appointment right after a workout at the gym, so I was able to slick my hair back behind my ears. At the garage I kept my shoulders squared and my hands in my pockets, and used a deep strong voice. The only thing I couldn't change was my eyebrows, aggressively plucked a week ago for a party, and my hair color and length - but hey, one of the guys had longer hair than me.
I passed. :-)
Yesterday (coincidentally) was also the first day in weeks in which I felt at least somewhat masculine again, because on Thursday I have my first appointment with an endocrinologist, and I'm feeling cautious as I approach the possibility of starting hormones. It's the first step with real risks (heart attack, for instance) and real consequences if I change my mind...once you've grown the breasts, you can't ungrow them.
It is important to remind myself that until I actually do it I can always change my mind about transition...always find creative ways to settle in the middle and play indefinitely here. I'd prefer that, actually, if I can manage it...but oh, the drive is so strong. Even feeling ambiguous as I did yesterday, as soon as I got home from work I still put on my femme comfy clothes.
Well, what will happen will happen. So far it has worked to neither force any action nor suppress any healthy-seeming impulse. So, that's what I'm going to keep doing.
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