Angry and Fat and Trans
I get some very kind messages, like almost all women do, on the Internet. Some of them include penises. Many do not. Many of mine aim to be helpful, and I appreciate it.
Those helpful tips include suggestions like, “Put down the Cake,” or “Stop eating cake,” or “Fuck your[sic] fatass. Cake isn’t that good.” And, honestly, I agree with that last one; I don’t particularly like cake.
But I can’t ignore the simple fact: I am fat. I blame Gabriel Iglesias for the cake jokes. Thanks, dude.
These messages inspire me. Not to lose weight, no. The evidence is quite clear that these people are giant fuckheads.
But I am inspired to write jokes. I started writing a joke about one of the deadly sins. And the joke was that my weight was not gluttony, but sloth.
Ha ha. Very funny. Quite right. I do not move very much. Anymore.
It’s not as if I lifted weights. It’s not as if I got a work related injury on my knee and cannot run more than a few minutes without having to stop. It’s not as if I had studied multiple martial arts. It’s also not as if I don’t do anything. I am relentlessly creative. I literally cannot stop. I don’t get writer’s block; if I did, I would take it as an invite to take a nap.
I got to think about the other deadly sins. I then realized what it was, what the source of my fatness was. It is wrath.
I am pissed off.
I am a transgender woman. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. I transitioned…*checks watch* about 2 years ago. I am almost 40. There is this thing that I realized that struck me so hard that I have to put it in the big type:
My body was always alien. It was always other. It was never my body. It was something else.
Other people always had designs on it. Designs on it I most assuredly did not want. This body was never mine. And it never was. Work. College. Work. Then a child incoming. So work work.
I remember walking through the streets of my college town crying because I wanted something. I wanted something and I had no idea what it was. Something was wrong. I was not smart enough to deduce it. I felt like I had to do things and I had no choice and no ability to be me.
I had to choose things to do that would be temporary; a piercing. A habit of drawing all over my body. But it all had to be able to fade away. It all disappeared because it was not mine. I had to maintain it for something else. For someone else. Those few things I did have: a bit of long hair, a piercing, I removed both to conform. To get a better job. To provide for my family. It locked in that my body was not mine. Because humans have no other purpose but to work on this endless machine.
Which is not just a problem for me, or trans people, I confess.
My body was not my own. I could no longer do even those things that brought me some sense of ownership before. Decorate it. Clothe it. Cover it. Use it. They were all for everyone else. It was another thing. Something I was not a part of. And so I hated it. I hated being attached to this thing.
I was angry that this body was not mine and so I became determined to destroy it.
Even now, I am angry all the time. I seem calm. I seem put together. But I am on the edge of fury. I am angry that my body is not how it should have been. “I should have been a mother; I should have been a wife,” as the song goes. But I am not. I am a father, even though I am a woman. I am a husband, though I am a woman.
By the time I learned what I really was, it was too late to be what I should have been. And I am fucking furious.
The Cliche of Regrets
I was told over and over again that I had to watch out for future me. I had to plan for the future but I was never taught what that future would be. I was told that I would do things that I would regret. But I was not told the biggest regret is not doing things. Because now I am almost 40 and I am fucking angry. I am angry that this body and at least 20 years of life were taken from me and how I should have been in the name of “regret.” Because I needed to plan for the future.
I am fucking angry.
I am fucking angry that I never got to do things I should have done in high school or college. I am fucking angry that this body was claimed over and over and over again by family, acquaintances, friends, the state, and other people in this society without an iota of consideration given to what I wanted. How I felt. What I needed as a human being then.
I am nearly apoplectic.
And, yes, I did re-watch Nanette yesterday; fuck you.
Reaching Peak Queer Rage
So now. Now my anger has reached the peak. There is no future and there was no future. There is only the continual now. That is all I can focus on.
The continual now doesn’t mean don’t plan it means live now. Do things. Do things. Do things. Because tomorrow…the hate I sowed in myself…the food I ate because I wanted to die…well, it might be harvest time. And it’s already too late for yesterday.
I wanted to die. Because I could not live the life I needed. I didn’t even know what that life was.
Damn right I am angry.
I have been failed by so many people, by society. Also, I have failed myself.
I regret my ignorance. I regret my walks around campus, crying. I regret not getting a tattoo. I regret not transitioning younger. I regret so many things.
But it is not too late. Because it’s not harvest time.
Next week I will get on stage again and stand in front of ten or a hundred people and make them laugh. I plan for that. Because that is something I will never regret doing. Even if I fail at it.
I am done with possibly regretting things. Of course I will not be reckless, because people do count on me. But, for for the first time in a long time, one of those people that counts on me is me.
I am not angry that I am trans. I am happy as hell and blessed to be so.
But I don’t know what to do with my anger. Maybe I should write a joke.
But, as Gadsby pointed out in her show, a certain kind of audience doesn’t like to see marginalized people tell jokes that are not self-deprecating. I suppose that will be what I have to teach them.
If they’re not ready for that, I don’t give a damn.
