kagablog

There is dirt on the bottom of my heels. The skin is cracked and when I wear sandals, like to pad around my apartment, more dirt slides in. I’ve always wanted to be tough, to have a body that reflects resilience and strength, but instead mine just shows off my flaws.

I am unable to deal with any pressure. I crack at the first sign of stress.

Being pregnant is nothing like I thought it would be. I expected it to be moving, life affirming. I knew that my hormones would go up and down, that it would be an emotional time. I read all those books, the classics, What to Expect When you’re Expecting, The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy, all that stuff.

We have friends, friends from all walks of life. I’d read it all, from the mainstream stuff to the Gay/Queer friendly stuff. I knew all about nausea and morning sickness and loss of appetite, and strange cravings and strange looks and unwanted attention.

I knew I’d get fat, that my body would change, that my ankles and wrists would swell.

I knew I’d sometimes look at myself in the mirror and not recognize myself.

I knew it all, but still. It was harder than I thought it would be.

I met her when I was twenty seven, which is old when you think about it. I think a lot of people meet the loves of their lives in their earlier twenties. I’d been out since I was in high school, at least to my friends and everyone at school knew. When I was sixteen I shaved my head and dyed it orange. I wore ripped jeans that were at least two sizes too big, which stood out at my school since all the girls were wearing skinny, fitted jeans. They used safety pins to make them more tapered and tight, and I just wanted to cover up. I guess I was about 14 or so when I first realized these things. It wasn’t overnight. Things dawned on me slowly, tiny realizations that finally lead to a conclusion that was so simple, it was painful. I was gay. Whatever, I thought. I was kind of glad to have it figured out. No denial, or dating guys or self delusion. That was that.

I was a tomboyish kid who always played sports and hated dresses, but lots of straight girls are like that too, it doesn’t mean anything. I liked guys, but as buddies, confidantes, players on a team. I just wasn’t attracted to them. I fantasized about girls when I was fifteen. I bought dirty girlie magazines and hid them under the bed. I had sticky finger tips from thinking about hot brunettes. When I saw a girl I found attractive in school, because she was smart, because she was hot, because she was kind, my legs would shake. When I eyed the guys in my school, when I scoped them out with other girls because I was trying to fit in, I couldn’t even fake it. I felt nothing, nothing in my heart, in my head, below my waist. After gym class, girls would gossip, walking around in their panties and bras, gossiping to me, treating me like one of them, and I was racked with guilt. If only they knew what I was thinking. If only they knew I was wishing I had a camera with me just then. If only they knew that I was taking them in angle by soft angle, part by part. If only they knew I’d be thinking about them all night. I didn’t find teenage boys disgusting or gross because I was one of them. I listened to them talk about wanting to bang girls with envy. I wanted to do that too, I wanted to do it and then talk and swagger like they did. I didn’t want to be a bad person, I didn’t want to lead anyone on, or use anyone, but I did want gratification in the same way. I wanted to get laid, and I wanted that to be ok.

I wanted to want things and get them and get the same shrug of the shoulders as they did.

When I was sixteen my parents moved and I got transferred to another school.

The summer before I discovered punk rock, I listened non stop to the Clash and the Ramones and Black Flag. I felt like less of an outsider. My favorite Clash song was Lost in the Supermarket. I went to a punk club downtown, and saw lots of chicks that looked the way I wanted to: dyed chop cuts, torn clothes, androgynous. I also saw lots of hot girls in short red kilts and baby tube tops and I knew it was my scene. The thing is, that finding other people made it easier. Just knowing they existed. I chopped my hair off with a razor I found in my parent’s bathroom that belonged to my dad. I got a friend, this girl Cleo to help me to dye it, first with Tie Dye then with Kool Aid, then finally with Manic Panic, which was expensive and had to keep being redone. I made out with Cleo two weeks after that and dated her on and off for a year. She was a high school drop out, but one of the smartest people I’d ever met. We’d skip class and walk around downtown and smoke weed and get into bars, and sit there in the middle of the day, nursing beers, trying to look adult. She’d always tell me how guy like I was, how I’d swagger like a guy, how I had a gut and no hips like a guy. She liked my broad shoulders. She always teased me, told me I’d be the football star in my school, if I’d just been born with a dick.

She always called me her quarterback. Whenever she talked like that, I’d laugh, but it would hurt, and I’d pretend it wouldn’t. I was angry all the time, like a teenage guy, I guess. I body slammed myself into walls, punched my locker in when I was having a bad day. It just seemed so unfair to me, like why the hell was I made a made a woman when I was clearly a man? I couldn’t figure it out. The thing is, even though I had a girlfriend, and parents who pretended or didn’t actually know or care what I was doing, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the stigmas attached to being gay. I knew how I’d be treated by teachers, the principal, the stupid close minded community I lived in if I actually came out with it.

And yet I was what I was. There was nothing I could do. I was attracted to and wanted to be with woman. But I felt like and wanted to be a man.

When I was in college I met a girl. Her name was Barbara and she was three years older than me. She was delicate and feminine and beautiful. When we made love, which we did, which I did for the first time, I was always scared she’d break. I controlled the urge to hold her like she was a piece of glass. Whenever she left my room she left a trail of perfume lingering, Gaultier, or sometimes Elizabeth Arden. I wrote her love letters.

She was an English Literature major, a well read, intelligent classy woman. I never understood what she was doing with me. When she left me after a year and a half, she told me what I’d always known, what I always knew. That I was a college experiment to her. She wanted to be with a man, she said, who was both as sensitive and as masculine as me. I hope she’s found him.

I didn’t date for a long time after that, aside from an occasional one night stand here or there, at a pub night or at a late night study session. I have never to this day, been with a guy. I’ve never wanted to. I’ve always known I wouldn’t be missing anything.

I met her a few years later, when I was twenty seven and she was twenty five. I met her at work, through one of my colleagues. It was pretty mundane and unromantic actually, a classic set up story. She has shoulder length brown hair and blue eyes. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. We moved in together after three months.

She supported me when I started taking hormone treatments. When I grew hair on my chest, she played with it, stroked it, said she loved it. When my breasts disappeared,

When I grew a mustache, then a beard, and went up two clothing sizes, she just said there was more of me to love, and I could tell she meant it. I always knew she was it for me, I just knew it, just like anybody straight. I just knew. When I changed my name from Antonia to Anthony, which basically meant that I was still Toni, just spelled with a Y now, she just laughed. I didn’t go all the way with my surgery though. I kept my vagina in fairness to her. She was grateful I could tell. But I felt like a man, and I still do.

We got married after a year, and I’d never been happier. We bought a dog and then our condo. My life felt perfect.

Then two years ago, she told me that she wanted to have a kid. We talked about donors, then ended up at a clinic, choosing from lists of men who sounded perfect.

We spent a fortune, giving it shot after shot at different clinics, trying different kinds of fertility treatments, until an expert told us it was no use. Aimee couldn’t have a baby.

We racked our brains thinking of what to do. The doctor suggested adoption, and we looked into seriously. Then Aimee explained to him about me. She explained to him that I was still technically a woman. That in theory, it might be possible for me to conceive.

We were elated and terrified. We didn’t sleep for weeks. We were up all night, talking or arguing or pacing. We took turns sleeping on the couch, crying to our friends, thinking about breaking up or going straight. I thought about getting a full blown sex change and making all of this impossible. We spent a lot of money. Thousands in retrospect. Tens of thousands even. I miscarried three times, went on and off my hormones.

In the end, I was able to get pregnant healthily. Sometimes I feel so grateful I want to cry, and other times I just feel like an ass. I have a hairy chest and back pain and stomach aches and nausea, and cravings for sour food. I look like a man, but I’m clearly pregnant. On the street I’m torn between wearing extra large clothes to cover up, acting like a couch potato chip eating oaf who just got fat, and being proud of the freak show I’ve become. Sometimes I’m so embarrassed I cry. Other times I feel overwhelmingly proud and compassionate towards all woman in general who have to go through this. It’s a minor miracle for us, but it’s a regular rite of passage in every country in the world. It’s nothing, just carrying a living being. Giving birth, giving life. Sometimes I can’t stand or believe the wave of emotions I feel. It’s too much for me sometimes. There are days when I can’t leave the house.

When we give birth to our miracle, we want to name her Mirari, which means miracle in Portuguese, which is Aimee’s background. She will be our miracle, and we will be her family, no matter what anyone thinks. After she’s born, I’ll get that sex change. I’ll finally be a man. And when she’s old enough to know, I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her that her dad, her old man, was the world’s first pregnant man. I hope she won’t think it’s a punch line. I hope she’ll be able to love me and accept me no matter what. I already know now without any doubt how much I’ll love her.