Subject to Revision

Some more trans thoughts.

I passed a quiet, important, and unsettling milestone last week. For almost two years now, I’ve been working steadily on my legal name and gender marker change. Last week, I acquired the final document that will make my name and gender marker consistent across all official records. And while I’m still working on my publication history and author presence — and I’ll definitely have a lot to say in a future update, but I need to gather more information first — my workplace and professional presence at my Other Job has been fully transitioned.

It’s the first thing in my 15-year transition that has been finished.

And yes, I had top surgery almost four years ago, but that process didn’t end; it didn’t go well, I got tired of feeling upset about what had happened, I decided to focus on something else, and I’m returning to PT to try to resolve the complications and avoid a revision.

The name change process is different, though. The boxes are checked. The to-do lists are complete. There is no other paperwork to fill out, no missing documents to drop off at courthouses, no more surprise processing fees to pay, no more calls to make, no more confused or annoyed or hostile CSRs to call me “ma’am” on the phone anymore. The cases are closed. The accounts have been updated. I’m legally male. I’m Scott.

It’s done. I’m done.

And I have other transition-related efforts underway, but for the first time, I can see a future where those will have concluded.

I almost don’t believe it. You mean there’s a future where the first 30-75 working minutes of every day isn’t trans-related project management? Where I change something, and it stays changed, and people accept it and move on, and I’m not pressured to explain or justify my gender, and I’m not stopped by the system freaking out because it can’t compartmentalize my gender? Where I don’t have to constantly work at claiming an identity space, I just show up and live in that space?

My ex-partner compared binary transition to a one-way flight between New York and Los Angeles, and nonbinary transition to fucking around in a van in the Southwest. The flight may be fun and exciting, but the point of a one-way flight between New York and Los Angeles is to be in New York or Los Angeles; the point of fucking around in a van in the Southwest is to fuck around in a van in the Southwest. A binary transition has a socially and legally defined end point, but a nonbinary transition is self-defined and iterative — because it has to be. Because there isn’t a destination, per se, and there’s almost never a rest stop with bathrooms you can use, and sometimes there isn’t even somewhere to park the van overnight, you get used to living in a state of transition and liminality. Always passing through somewhere. Always crossing over thresholds and back again. Always coming and going.

Part of me always lived in a social and legal in-between, with mismatched identity documents and a constellation of other people’s assumptions about my gender, and I never thought about how much weird stress that caused me, because it was my normal. I never felt glee or gender euphoria at confusing people; when people couldn’t figure out my gender and got flustered, I felt secondhand cringe, I felt small, I felt patronized, and exhausted, and potentially under threat. I felt hurt when I received my diploma for my MFA program, and it had the wrong name on it — I knew that I had done the work and the system was in the wrong, but I still felt like the accomplishment had been denied me. (In case you’re wondering: the university’s policy was to print the student’s legal name on the diploma, and I couldn’t have changed my legal name at the time because 1) I didn’t have a spare $500; and 2) the state I lived in didn’t offer an X marker at the time, and changing my name but leaving my gender marker as an F felt so wrong I couldn’t even consider it.)

I told myself this didn’t matter to me, but it really, really did.

In my experience, if you’re pursuing a nonbinary transition, or your transition doesn’t fit with the accepted narrative, you either argue with systems constantly, or you live your best life in an administratively broken chaos world — and from what I’ve seen, most nonbinary people do some combination of the two, informed by their access to resources and their patience for bullshit.

To be clear, I think that nonbinary people deserve to have a place to land, if desired, and binary people deserve the choice to make a lifelong, walk-the-earth transition on our own terms, too.

Because I’m kind of freaking out.

You mean the plane has landed?

Like, the flight is over?

It’s time to pick up my baggage and leave?

Where do I go? What do I do with my time in the after? Will I even like living in the destination city once the shine has worn off? Who am I, when I’m not up in the air?

The pain in the ass is over, but the adventure is over, too — the thrill of figuring something out, successfully navigating systems, finding the exceptions and the side doors, pushing back when disrespected. I had to threaten legal action one time, but I also got to use my “blow everything to smithereens” line (“Is this a recorded line? Great. Please explain why this corporation is refusing to comply with a court order.”) There won’t be any more thrills of walking into a courthouse with polished shoes and a few sprouted chin whiskers and the audacity — at least not for this.

There’s going to be a next thing, I know, but right now I’m feeling the unsettling bump of the wheels hitting the runway.

Hey, speaking of which, maybe my books will be complete one day, too. You never know.