Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

Anonymous Narratives about starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

Some odd years ago, I was born and, then, immigrated to the United States with my family. I went to public grade schools. I grew up with a mom, a dad and a sibling. I lived in a house that had a tree in the front yard. I rode bikes. I took piano lessons. I went trick-or-treating for Halloween. On October 31, 2010, I went trick-or-treating for the last time. It wasn’t because I grew up and became too old. It was because I grew up and told my parents I am gay.

“It Gets Better” was a campaign that was running all over the internet back then. Neil Patrick Harris was the main face of that movement. He told young LGBTQ+ people that the struggles they were dealing with were only temporary—that “It Gets Better.” He in his fancy suit, on TV, telling me that in three, six, ten years: It gets better. I looked at him first with envy, thinking how lucky he was to be able to live his life without fear, without prejudice. He and his fancy suit, perfect haircut, white smile, and eyes that looked like they had never expressed sadness. I sat in my worn-down pajamas, with an awkward body that I was still growing into, just trying to think about what life would be like without prejudice.

“We would rather have a straight and homeless son, than a gay and successful one.” These 15 words were uttered to me on October 31, 2010, and are forever etched into my mind, physically branded into my skin as a reminder, and repeated on every day I go on.

I think maybe Neil forgot to include “sometimes never” in his commentary. Sometimes it might never get better. Sometimes it might take a lifetime. Sometimes. Never. Just never. Of course, time is relative, 2010 was ten years ago. But it seems like yesterday. I’m reminded of it every time I take my shirt off. I walked on eggshells for what seemed like forever. Unsure of what tomorrow will bring. Maybe suicide?

In the fall of 2013, I was ready to rebrand myself. I received a couple of college scholarships, but there was a gap that I had to fill. My family is notorious for being competitive, especially among family members. I could not be the one person—the eldest child out of all my immediate cousins—to not go to school, or culturally worse, go to a community college. I had to take out student loans. I had no choice. It was shame.

Then, I fell in love for the very first time. I was very happy. What is love? I am of the opinion that people in the LGBTQ+ community are five to ten years behind our heterosexual counterparts when it comes to love: simply because we did not have the same opportunities. Then I fell out of love—mostly due to struggling with figuring out who I am, what my identity is.

“We would rather have a straight and homeless son, than a gay and successful one.” Success is a finicky thing. It’s different for different people, what a cliché thing to write. Neil Patrick Harris was wrong. It doesn’t get better. Why me?

I had two choices: Either continue to feel down, or to keep my head up and pull myself up. Whatever happened to rebranding myself? I focused on my goals, my dreams, my hopes, my livelihood.

Ten years after coming out of the closet as gay, Neil Patrick Harris was right. It got better. Much better. As I am writing this, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I am sitting on a Zoom call with a slew of friends I've made throughout the years. I am still learning more about who I am. Originally I thought it got better in 2013 when I went to college. Then I thought it got better in 2016 when I fell in love. Now it’s even better in 2020. It will always get better, this isn’t the end: If it is, then I’ve lived a very sad life. My relationship with my parents has gotten better. I need to apologize to Neil Patrick Harris for hating him so many years ago. I’m sorry. My life isn’t perfect, but it’s loads better than before. It definitely got better. Why? Because of me.

Neil Patrick Harris' Message to Gay Youth: Video From Liqtimi

Love

Short Reads

Coming Out to My Parents Wasn’t Easy, but It Was Worth It

Being plus size in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, clothing choices were far from fashionable. Add in the pressure of being a teenager wearing baggy jeans, oversized sweaters or gauchos and bell sleeve floral shirts: It’s no surprise that when it came to the boys, I was a late bloomer. In my senior year of high school, my sister gave me a pair of lightly washed denim jeans that showed off my figure. It was the first time that I realized that I had hips for days, and fitted clothes made me look far less frumpy than anything else in my closet at the time.

The first day I wore those jeans to school, heads turned. I probably wore those things at least twice a week from that point forward. There was a newfound confidence that awoke in me. Suddenly, I cared more about what I looked like. I discovered that eyebrow waxing and acrylics weren’t just for special occasions anymore. Most of my Saturdays were spent in the hair salon. This confidence followed into my college years: While it was a bit of a culture shock to me, it didn’t take long to adjust. I was suddenly visible, and to be honest, I loved the compliments and the attention. 

I loved being the person who wasn’t seen as conventionally attractive and still left the party with the finest male there. I'm not sure if I chose the ho life or if it chose me. Either way, I loved the power that came along with it. I do know that my ho phase was a good-ass time. All of it (and them). I was a preacher’s kid, so my unburdening seems to be on-brand for a somewhat geeky person deeply submerged into Southern Christian culture. Most of my weeknights were filled with church-related events: dance rehearsal, choir practice, bible study, connection group, a conference of some sorts. Now some of the church kids were fresh as hell, but I respected the house of the Lord—for the most part.

There was something incredibly intoxicating to me in the power that came along with having a roster of men at my disposal. The rush of going out with multiple men on the same day was a high that sent my ego into orbit. I remember having a party one night and “scheduling” the three men I was seeing at the time to make an appearance because I wanted to spend some part of my birthday with all of them. 

The ho phase wasn’t strictly about ho’ing around: Although I was dating multiple men, all of them weren’t sexual partners. That’s nasty as hell. Occasionally there would be a loose commitment. No matter how much I tried, faithfulness was not my strong suit. The monotony of settling down paled in comparison to the rush felt when being in the thick of a ho phase.

I used a color-coded calendar to keep track of whom I went out with and with whom I slept. There were men just for date nights, some that were a guaranteed good time after a drunk night and, yeah, even some just for conversation. However, as much excitement as there was in dating multiple men at the same time, each relationship brought greater clarity. The biggest epiphany being: "Bitch, you’re getting too old for this."

Some of these men were also involved with other people. Some didn’t have any ambition or goals, some only wanted a beneficial arrangement and more than one left the indication that should I fall pregnant, I would be parenting on my own. On the surface these men were good-looking but what could they really offer beyond a few meals and admittedly (sometimes) lackluster sex? I think part of the reason I kept reverting back to this phase was that the more men I met—and took some time to learn who I was—the more I was able to see what I did not want from someone whom I would be seriously dating. It was easier to avoid vulnerability by erecting this wall over my heart and emotions. I continued to play the game because this way, I was in control.

On a whim, I found myself creating a profile on Plenty of Fish. Browsing the profiles, the right swipes were beyond generous because I wasn’t looking for commitment as much as I was looking for a distraction from life. Some fresh meat would be just what I needed. As the ho phase goes, a batch of gents gained enough of my attention and the selective weeding began. From this round of folks, I ended up meeting a few of them in person. In true ho fashion, I met them on the same day.

Over time, my communication with a lot of men began to dwindle. I ignored the infamous “you up?” text at 4 a.m. with one guy in particular. This one guy. His exuberant confidence made his mere presence command attention. The light that reflected from his eyes when he talked about things he was passionate about was blinding. And I could get lost in them forever. He had a smile that would calm the roughest seas. Everything about him felt new yet familiar at the same time. As time passed, we were hanging out quite often (not even having sex) and I never felt the need to be anyone other than myself.

Almost instinctively, I began to let my guard down. Of all the men I had previously dated, he was sui generis. While I didn’t know a lot of things relating to relationships or commitment, it was certain that anything I could possibly want in a partner could be found in him. He was intelligent and handsome but also patient, attentive and reassuring. His ambition and motivation were infectious. But, most of all, he was a provider; I felt safe with him. Even on the days that we were upset with each other, there was peace and comfort in his presence.

I remember the day that I genuinely wanted to lay all the cards on the table, quit the game and officially focus on this one person. Somehow, in the midst of ho’ing, I started falling for this man. We were at his house eating ice cream after dinner, watching the original Lion King and it felt so nostalgic. It was almost like one of those moments where a married couple would be reflecting on their relationship and asking each other, “Can you believe this is where we are now?”

He said, “I want you to listen to this.” He played a song that expressed his love toward me. It was a perfect moment. I knew, without a doubt, that every word in that song was about us. For once, there were visions of the future and a desire to grow old with someone. I didn’t want to see other people. I didn’t want to hurt him, only learn how to love him truly. What the hell was happening? Every broken piece of me was suddenly whole. “Redamancy” is defined as to love and be loved in return. That’s what this had become. Our relationship was the first time that I experienced what it felt like to be genuinely loved for who I was. And to genuinely love someone as well. It was pure. That feeling alone was greater than any power that I had felt previously. Even now, years later, nothing else compares.

I can’t say that we would have met had it not been for my mindless swiping that night. One could even say that the universe knew what (and whom) I needed, even when I didn’t. It seems weird to be grateful for a ho phase, but without a doubt, this relationship was the greatest blessing. As the old saying goes: You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. 

How I Fell in Love During My Ho Phase

Prison sometimes can feel like an affectionless desert. By the age of 20, I was in here dying of thirst. A lifer twice over with blood-stained hands from sins I had committed when I was 15, I carried the weight of despondency. What can bring a kid who has a life sentence back from the brink of despair? 

One day I found myself sitting in my maximum-security cell, drowning under the waterline of our criminal justice system—a stone of hopelessness fastened around my neck. On the winds of a sentence of 40 years to life-plus, I carried the curses of those I had harmed, winds that blew out the internal wick bearing my spirit’s light. My eyes were blurry with tears that flowed from a spring of contrition and regret. I needed air; I wanted out of my pain, but I sunk under, deeper and deeper. 

Within me, an echo chamber reverberated with the verbal stones heaved at my 16-year-old identity four years earlier during court proceedings: “Evil kid…murderer…a danger…you should suffer…you should rot in prison.” 

That day, this harmony of hate was stuck in my head on repeat, synchronized with Jay-Z rapping out of the radio on the locker. He sang, “This is the number one rule for your set; in order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets.” The results of my deeds were killing me; my regret was becoming too much to bear. 

I could no longer live knowing I had caused two mothers to suffer, both my own and the mother of the young man I had murdered. I could no longer live with the self-hatred that infected my being. How could I survive the rest of my life in a place that constantly reminded me that I was worthless and unwanted? The stabbings, the shootings, the racism, the correctional indifference, the deep loathing of human life around me was overwhelming and unrelenting. 

I sat in my cell that day resolved on suicide. I reasoned it was the most loving thing I could do—for me, my family and the family of my victim. I had stolen someone’s son, brother, love; a theft not repayable that left me spiritually broken. I even stole away the hopes and of my parents as they gazed and gushed over me in infancy. 

That day, I thought that my life wasn’t worth much, but it was all I had left to give. 

As death drew closer and closer, I became more and more convinced that what I was about to do was love. 

On that day, the prison was on lockdown. My cellmate was away at work; no one was out of their cells; the guards were in their office; the timing felt perfect. 

The cell walls absorbed the cold air that blew through the vent. If they thawed, it felt as if they would come down. The sobbing that escaped my heart and mouth muffled Jay-Z’s voice. I only heard his words in between breaths that had quickened to match the rate of my pulse. As I looked up at the light fixture to gauge if it would hold my weight, I soon felt I was running out of time. I wiped my tears with the sheet that I held in my hands.

A voice inside my body sounded like my own. It sang, “You won’t hurt anymore, just do it. Do everybody the favor. Just do it already, piece of shit!” I was overcome with sadness. The voice goaded me still. “I’m going to,” I thought. I just needed a moment. The voice sang on in the courtroom stones, the Jay-Z, my sobbing. The song within me had reached the climax of its crescendo. 

Suddenly another voice joined the chorus. “Jacobs, you straight? The fuck?! You good, bro?” The voice was my buddy, Preach. He was incarcerated a few cells down from me. Like me, he had been locked up since he was a child and also had 40 years to life. I looked up from the floor to see his face in the cell door window. 

He pounded his hand on the top of the metal door and shouted to the control tower, “Open 118, Perez!” The door hummed open. Preach came inside my cell. I hid my face in the sheet in my hands. I was ashamed to have been seen, caught, in such a low moment. 

All at once my thoughts raced. I was flooded with more voices inside asking questions: Does he know what I was about to do? Who will he tell? If people know, will they think I’m a bitch?! Weak? Will the guards find out? Will my family? Question after question and thought after thought.

Then he touched my shoulder. Suddenly, the questions and thoughts stopped. The perpetual anthem of hate ceased to play in my mind. There was something in his touch. Something soothing, healing, something God-like.

Preach squatted down beside me and said, “It’s gon’ be alright, Jake.” His song was better than mine. I lifted my face from the sheet and his eyes found mine. I sang, “I can’t do this shit anymore, Preach.” My despair was out of tune with the love hymn he sang with his touch. He stood up and demanded, “Get up!” and lifted me off the toilet. Without words he pulled me into his embrace. He hugged me gently but firmly. 

I wept into his shoulder and held on to him for dear life. His hug was everything my soul needed that day. The love I felt inside his arms cleared the fog that obscured my thoughts. When we pulled apart, he said, “Don’t you ever let them get you here.”

He held me for a brief moment only, but that moment has stuck with me ever since. He stood in my cell that day, never taking his hand away. He encouraged me. His words, his touch and presence told me I was worthy. In that moment, I was wanted, at least by him. I chose to stay alive for the sake of his love and friendship. 

There is no greater love than one that makes living worth it. Moreover, this one act of love allowed me to see that there were other loves for which I could live. During this darkest moment of my life, it was Preach’s love that lit my way out of despair.

Preach continued giving me that love until I was transferred to another prison. He’d check up on me every day. He enlisted his cellmate and my own to do the same. They all loved on me. We loved on each other to keep one another alive. 

Today no matter what institution I’m in, I make it a point to show this same love to other incarcerated people. And, if you look around any prison yard, you’ll find a “Preach” on each of them. They are the people who affirm the life and worthiness of other incarcerated people. It’s a tradition, a cultural custom in this world. 

For me, this love-custom saved my life and became my own way of life. I am forever grateful for Preach’s love, a love that pulled me out of despair.

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The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

In 2011, at the start of a boom, I started my own podcast. Plenty of people had already established themselves in this space, and many popular shows with celebrity hosts wouldn’t begin until much later. Eleven years ago, however, you didn’t need a theme for your podcast to set it apart—you just needed to be funny. 

I’d been doing comedy for years, recording just about everything I did, but I assumed that the world didn’t want to hear undeveloped comedy (I’ve since been proven wrong 10,000-fold). Still, I didn’t have to think for long to decide what my show would be about. Not only did my two best friends, Dan and Mike, grow up doing comedy as a group with me, but we listened to comedy records together, mostly on cassette tapes and many on vinyl. I decided that’s where I’d start (and likely end) my podcasting career: vinyl records.

I spent the first year or so becoming an increasingly voracious comedy album collector, building up the guts to speak with some of my heroes. I could end this here and tell you that I recently interviewed my white whale, the comedian at least partially responsible for my friendship with Dan, as the show’s final episode. The thing is, though this episode was massive for me, it didn’t change my life or why I podcast. It would take a genuine mystery to do that.

This mystery had many stops and starts. I first interviewed a comedy historian about a stand-up whose true story was almost entirely unknown. He was a white guy from Arkansas who did race-positive humor in the ’60s, and that was about all anyone knew about him. I soon became obsessed with finding out why he had disappeared, but within a couple of weeks of research during my day job, I threw up my hands. I didn’t know where to start. 

Over the next three years, I’d publish my second book, sell my first movie and make hundreds more podcasts. The latter was an absolute compulsion, the easiest and quickest way I’d felt like I’d created something. I was churning out discussions and rarely editing (I didn’t need to since my guest would discuss liking a specific record). Then, in early 2018, amidst the normal blur of back-and-forth emails with comedians’ agents, I got a message that had nothing to do with comedy records.

Mike had just been reported as missing. In fact, he’d been missing a few months after I’d first heard of this unknown comic. I spent the next few weeks in a fugue, searching not as someone with the fervent, distracted interest of a guy who didn’t care about his day job but with the passion of someone who didn’t want to believe the worst. I hunted down every lead I could online, doing the best near-forensic work I was capable of. I analyzed photos of this and that and checked out social media that might hold clues, desperately hoping to get in touch with Mike, to find out where he’d gone to and why he’d cut off contact with everyone.

I didn’t entirely process my guilt over our mutual lack of correspondence; instead, I turned it into dread. Mike was the reason I’d become a director. He taught me the joy of telling childish jokes well past childhood. He reminded me to find the absurd in everything; I think he would appreciate knowing that I accidentally walked a few miles out of my way to go grieve at a bowling alley the following week.

A few months later, we got the news that Mike’s remains had been found buried on his own property. I collapsed in on myself, unable to do much for my own good or those around me. There was no more searching to do to try and keep my soul afloat. My friend was no longer missing. He’d been found, just not at all in the way we’d hoped. It was no longer a mystery.

Shortly after, I started a miniseries on the podcast interviewing the family members of album creators who were no longer with us. This was my effort to start using the show to tell the stories behind these records. These were mini-mysteries that could be solved in the room. In the quest to make busy work for a trauma-addled brain, I was satisfying the need for something good to come from loss. No one else was going to tell these stories if I hadn’t called them up to talk.

Still, these were not much different than other podcasts. They were fun discussions about people who were almost lost to time. I wasn’t processing my need for them yet. Toward the end of the year, though, something suddenly clicked. I thought back to my hayseed in a needle stack, wondering if my skills in finding these other obscure names might help me find this country comedian.

The worst that could happen was finding zero leads on this comic. The best I could hope for was that he’d be alive, want to speak with me and tell me his whole life story. He became an even stronger obsession than the search for my lost friend; there was no way I could be in denial about whatever was at the end of this tunnel. As for podcasts, this time the journey would have to be the episode, regardless of the outcome.

I recorded what I did every step of the way, including my phone calls, and read newspaper clippings out loud. I kept writing physical letters to people who shared the comic’s stage name. I abused free trials to research websites (which only help you when the information you have is accurate to begin with) and kept coming up empty. I’d even found some information that told me this Arkansas comic was actually the son of a rabbi from New York City. But even then, no one knew his real name. 

One website said (in small print that I almost missed) that one potential name “may go by” the very stage name I had been searching for. It was too simple to be true, but I dug further. I found a brother, but I had to write another physical letter and wait for one back. It never came.

Fortunately, though, I did get a phone call. The comic had passed away, but his family remembered him fondly. When I said earlier that the journey would have to be the story, I meant it. Even if the journey had sucked, I still would have published it. This phone call led me to finalize a script, something I’d never needed to write for a podcast.

I included many interviews in this episode, but it primarily contained narration and royalty-free music to serve the story. I took years of album and film editing and used them to express my love for comedy and my passion for untold stories at the same time.

It wasn’t obvious then, but Mike was part of the reason I had even learned to edit. Now he’d become the reason I had to edit, even if the story wasn’t his. The comic’s family loved it, especially his niece, who shares a name with Mike’s mom. She recently found two unreleased records of his, from his early days, which an archivist friend of mine digitized and cleaned up. They brought tears to my eyes. Not from laughter—funny as they were—but from knowing his story hadn’t ended.

Archiving the lives and works of unknown comics is now my passion, even though I’ve ended the show. I’ve started searching for other comics to research, all in the name of preserving laughter, art and toil. As I write this, I’m helping to put together the Arkansas comic’s first vinyl release in over 50 years, working as his estate archivist and researching a book on his life, despite never having met the man. 

All this effort has made me realize I have more stories in me and more to find. I continue to search for the next comedy mystery to explore, in honor of the comic, my late friend and my own sanity.

Detective Therapy: How Podcasting About an Unknown Comedian Changed My Life

I had been living in Germany for over a year when my marriage fell apart.

My wife was German, and after the birth of our child, she wanted to be closer to her family, so we moved here from the United States. We already had issues as a couple, and our union didn’t survive the stresses of a transatlantic move.

As my marriage disintegrated, I found myself in a lonely place. The desire to be with someone else wasn’t there emotionally. The ability to extend myself emotionally in any way was a bit too much to ask. The need for sex and intimacy would typically only occur very late in the evening, when I was far too tired to go out to bars and clubs and such.

The only other women I was around were married and were either family friends or moms at my child’s school—which was not an option for me (to the chagrin of a few). And although maybe having another girlfriend might sound like a good idea, I felt like it would be too much, as my ex-wife, child and I still lived together. 

Prostitution is legal here. The 2002 Prostitution Act formally regulated sex work, allowing access to benefits such as healthcare and unemployment insurance. A large number of the population is accepting of sex workers, but of course, there are some wanting to enforce the Nordic model, which makes it illegal not to sell sex but illegal to purchase.

So I played with the idea of visiting a sex worker. I scrolled through websites of brothels, escorts and sex clubs, thinking, “What if?” and, “What about?” until I found myself at the front door of the Hasenhaus. 

I saw her as I first ascended the brothel stairs. I thought it was interesting that she was working there. Outside of there, she might be someone one could find attractive, in a cute, skinny, librarian way. The brothel had just opened its doors, and it was a bit chilly out. I expressed my interest in Millie, and she agreed in a rather chipper manner. I asked how much. She said €30. I asked how much for kissing. She said, “It should be €5, but I won’t charge you.” 

She brought the money downstairs, then returned with a cloth for me to clean myself and closed the door. We undressed. She told me not to rush, that she wasn’t concerned about time. She apologized for being so cold, and I said I understood, but it dawned on me how intimate admitting this was—or at least, that’s what it felt like. We cuddled as she warmed up and told me about who she was and the small German town she was from. She seemed not to want much out of life, just to go forward. 

We did it, then cuddled some more and talked before we begrudgingly left the bed. We washed. We dressed. I left for home, still looking to make sure no one saw me, but feeling exponentially lighter than I was when I went in.

One afternoon, maybe six or eight months later, I stopped by Martina’s, another brothel not too far from the middle of town. This time, I was greeted by another woman, who was a secretary type, and guided to a room where the door was closed behind me as I sat on the bed. A line of women formed outside the door and then came in one by one to greet me and introduce themselves. 

On this day of why nots, I chose Patricia. She told me her price and what I could do. I gave her the €30. She left and came back with a towel for me to wash myself, then left again and came back in with a bag, a sheet and a towel of her own. She placed her towel over the bed quite mechanically, then gestured for me to undress and lay on it. She undressed and nonchalantly grabbed my dick and began sucking it, projecting moans. I say projecting because this is precisely what it felt like: This was her work and I was a part of the assembly line. Once my dick was fully hard, she began to say, “Ooh! Ma-chi-ne!” in an accent that was part German, part East European. The way she did it was fascinating to me. I knew that I was only work for her, but I was also about to ejaculate incredibly fast. I told her to stop. She did, then looked at me and once more projected a moaning “ma-chi-ne” at me that felt like an attack. It worked. I came. 

I washed off. She left. I put on my clothes and snuck out, slowly meandering home, slightly perplexed and still processing all. “Well,” I said to myself, “that happened.”

It had been a night. My birthday had just passed, and I’d spent it working. Afterwards, I took myself for a drink or two with a couple of friends at a small bar. It was a chill time, just as I like it, nothing too much or too crazy. As I slowly made my way home, the thought of companionship or birthday sex seemed like a nice idea. It was six o’clock on a Monday morning, so playing the pickup game in a bar was a no-go. I made my way back to Martina’s, which is open 24/7.

I was greeted by the woman up front and guided to a room to wait. The women came and went according to protocol, and one really stood out to me: Ana. 

“Her,” I said. No one else had to come in. 

Ana took my €35 (€5 for kissing). She did all of the usual things, like bringing the towel and making sure that I was comfortable, but there was a warmth to her that I haven’t witnessed too many times in my life. After she came back and laid the towel on the bed, she spoke a bit but in an incredibly warmhearted manner. She made me lay on the bed, on my stomach, and she began to give me a massage as she talked to me and made sure that I was relaxed. The way she spoke reminded me of someone who one can come home to. She had a particular attentiveness that made me want to pay attention to her needs. The time passed and moments melted into each other, as did we. (Not to sound cheesy, but it was.) We paid attention to each other's movements, each other's bodies. I overstayed my time and she didn’t care. She didn’t charge me extra. 

After sex, we even held each other longer, until we simply had to go. Before I left, we hovered around each other's embrace and touch. We spoke of how great the time was. She wanted me to call back and leave a positive review. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be there long, but I knew I’d try to find her again.

While perusing the website of one particular brothel, I saw a picture of Sophie. She seemed really cute. By this time, I was a bit over brothels and such. I’m not sure if I had just healed enough from the split or if I just needed more emotional connection. Also, by this point, I had moved into my own place, and my ex-wife and I were evening out a solid schedule of who was with the child when. I had also explored a few real relationships. Needless to say, they hadn’t worked out, so I figured one day that I would appease my own curiosity for Sophie. 

I found the entry stairwell to the brothel wedged between a few shops. I have to say that it felt incredibly weird to be there. The lady who greeted me at the front hurried me in and wasn’t particularly welcoming, to be honest. Everything was hurried. 

“Here!” she said as I was made to sit in the room. Girl number one came and left. Girl number two came and left. Girl number three came and left. “What you want?” the hostess asked me impatiently. “What girl you want?” she belted out before I had a chance to even process what was happening. 

My knee-jerk reaction was to simply leave, but I thought that girl number three looked enough like Sophie. She took money, left and brought back a washcloth. She hurriedly sucked me off for 15 seconds and laid down. She placed my dick inside of her after inserting lubricant. I came. She left. Before I could finish washing, I was hurried out by the woman at the door. I left for home, completely weirded out by the experience. Ultimately, it felt wrong.

There are times where I find myself wondering what happened to these women. Well, Patricia still works at Martina’s, so I figure I could visit her if I wanted to find out. But some of the others I wonder about a bit more. 

I saw Millie maybe five or six months after I met her. She saw me walking up the stairs to the Hasenhaus and recognized me. It seemed like she wanted to say something but felt like it wasn’t her place. I didn’t stop. I had really enjoyed that time with her and was afraid of catching feelings of any sort. When I walked by, she was looking away but seemed a bit crestfallen that I had passed. I believe that she was in school in another city and just liked the idea of being in that profession. I also wondered how long she would stay with it. To be honest, I would have liked to know who she was and what she became. 

I only met Ana that one time, but I seriously had the feeling that she didn’t really belong there. She seemed like a little sister who’d gone to work with her big sister and wanted to participate, that prostitution was something that maybe she wanted to try out once and that even the people at the brothel felt like it wasn’t for her. I could easily be wrong, of course. Still, it felt more like a great one-night stand than anything else.

Sophie, on the other hand though, that experience frightens me. I could also be wrong, but my intuitive feeling is that there was sex trafficking or something foul involved. Our exchange reminded me of my time working in restaurants in the States and the way many undocumented workers are exploited there. I remember in some cases workers living four people to a room and even hearing that some might be only working those jobs because they were being blackmailed but weren’t able to prove it. Undocumented restaurant workers were also consistently moved from place to place and across state lines, which is a key element to how sex trafficking functions. I’m not saying that they are the same, but there are those similarities—both types are exploited workers. The brothel where Sophie worked is no longer in operation.

One thing I have realized in my life is that people are different, as far as sexuality, paths of life, career, everything. One of the worst things you could ever do to anyone is to try and make them someone they aren’t or to block them from living their life the way they see fit. For me, I probably wouldn’t do it again, as there are times where I simply can’t shake the feelings of the “what-if’s.” I deeply appreciate the times and situations where it didn’t feel that something darker was afoot, where all that is left is two humans being human in their own way. And I do have to acknowledge that it was something that honestly helped me through a rough time in my life. 

Collection

When My Marriage Fell Apart, Sex Workers Helped Me Pick Up the Pieces

Before I started working again, I was a stay-at-home parent, and it made me happier than I could have ever expected. But once my spouse's heart condition worsened, forcing them to quit working and focus on their health, I had to step up and take over the financial responsibility for our family. 

I started working but the job didn't pay enough and the hours weren't enough to support our family of three. Then, I found a high-paying job, but the hours were longer. I have to work overtime nearly every day, equating to a minimum of 50-plus hours a week. Needless to say, adjusting to my new life has been especially hard because I'd been with my daughter since she was born. She will be 4 in March. 

Don't get me wrong. I love knowing that our bills are paid and we have food in our stomachs. But I miss my family. Since I'm working such long hours now, I don't get to say goodnight to my child or my significant other (SO). By the time I get home—no later than midnight if I'm lucky—they're fast asleep. It's starting to take its toll on me emotionally. But thanks to our newfound financial stability, my SO and I were finally able to get married. We could finally afford it. 

It was a rough yet incredible holiday season (we got married on Thanksgiving weekend). The in-laws came and didn’t quite understand why we waited so long or why it had to be planned around my days off. The fact that we were shackled by our capitalist work requirements added an unbearable amount of stress.

I miss having free time, spending it with my family and doing the things that make me happy. I've had five surgeries on my feet and ankles, so after 10-plus-hour days, I'm in serious pain. The holidays are going to be especially hard for us. Management is predicting 60-plus-hour work weeks, with a chance of having only one day off per week. 

Knowing that I can give my family a good holiday is comforting, but my physical and mental health is paying the price.

Like many adults in my generation, I have anxiety and depression. Luckily, I don't have a lot of triggers to worry about while I'm working (hopefully it stays that way). Management knows about my surgeries, and they understand that I need to sit periodically to alleviate pain and pressure on my feet. Given how much I'm going to be working for the foreseeable future, I worry that I won't be able to take care of my own well-being. My SO is already noticing a change in my mental and physical health and wishes I didn't have to work so much.

Since I've rejoined the workforce, I realized something: I hate it. I hate the fact that we have to sacrifice over one-third of our lives in order to live in society. I miss spending time with my family. I don't feel like I'm actually working toward anything by working again. Sure, my bills are paid and we have food in our stomachs, but I no longer recognize myself in the mirror. My SO said they feel like I'm a completely different person now, as if the person I was died. I'm worried that I'll miss out on seeing my daughter growing up while I slave away for a paycheck.

I hate the fact that if I want to spend time with my family now, I have to sacrifice my own sleep. I'm down to about four hours a night now, and I have to consume multiple energy drinks in order to stay functional at work. I worry that I'll fall asleep on my drive home at night and I miss having the choice of taking a nap. Not to mention the fact that I've lost 30-plus pounds since I started. At this point, I feel like I live at work. There are 31 days in December, which equates to 744 hours. I will be working half of December, literally. I may as well buy a tent and sleep in the break room.

I'm sleep-deprived, starving and alone. I hate who I have become: a slave to my financial responsibilities. I hope my daughter never has to live like this when she is older. If I power through the holiday season, I can secure my job. Maybe I’ll get a break.

My 180: I Was a Stay-at-Home Dad and Now I'm an Overworked Postal Employee

The clear, sunny sky and unforgettable sounds of the waves crashing into the shore always had a way of humbling my existence. The city by the sea felt so peaceful as kids ran through the salty breeze and into the cool green water while innocently squirting each other with neon-colored water guns. Long Beach was never known for having the cleanest beaches, but that still didn't stop this from being home.	

Everything has ups and downs, and Long Beach was no exception. The city is known for being diverse and embracing other cultures—which politicians would proudly highlight—but this wasn’t the truth in the ’80s and ’90s. The murder rate was high, crime even higher, and the idea of unity between the Black and brown community was a far-fetched fantasy. Violence, rage and hate fogged up the city with the perspective of “that’s just how it is.” Kids roamed the streets as parents battled through their own struggles of making ends meet by working multiple jobs or fighting their addictions that the prettier side of the city just didn’t understand or simply didn’t seem to care to understand.

Eventually, I traded my hopes and dreams for the belief that life was just unfair and was constantly trying to murder me. I normalized the severity of my environment by telling myself, “That’s just the way it is.” With that belief came my strong need to survive and do anything necessary to achieve it. Instead of questioning or entertaining other options, I went on to what I knew. I joined a gang at the age of 13. Not because I wanted to be labeled a member of a disruptive group but because I wanted to feel fully appreciated, acknowledged and supported. No matter how violent the act, I was willing to do it for approval.

I was a teen when I was arrested for three counts of attempted murder. A law was passed that allowed the Long Beach court to charge a teen from the ages of 14 to 17 as an adult. That’s exactly what happened. I was sentenced to multiple life sentences and sent to some of the most violent adult prisons in California to serve my time.

I spent my first decade in prison blaming anyone and everyone but myself for what felt like the result of my life. The gorgeous city of Long Beach was at the top of my list of what I considered the reason for choosing to harm and traumatize human life. I couldn’t explain my “why” and I was lost in not being emotionally intelligent enough to put into words the emotions that I was taught to bury deep within myself.

Then, the Success Stories Program came into my life. It gave me the space to speak about what’s most important to me and taught me that vulnerability is not a weakness but a strength. Most importantly, I was finally empowered by being able to address my “why,” and the transformation began. I learned that my distorted definition of what a man was stopped me from me being my truest self. It’s this important knowledge that led me into a life of building a better community from within prison walls.

I served 18 and a half years in prison before Governor Jerry Brown commuted my life sentences. The first thing my fellow inmates asked me after receiving the call from the governor was, “Are you going back to Long Beach?” I responded, “No,” with firm confidence. At that point, I realized that I hadn't dealt with the resentment that Long Beach brought up for me. I felt that the city I grew up in had turned its back on me and threw me in a box to be forgotten.				

I’ll never forget the day my brother picked me up from the prison entrance that I never thought I would exit. It felt so unreal. Driving down Route 101 with no cuffs or shackles overwhelmed me with emotions. I traveled California throughout the majority of my life being escorted by prison guards and for the first time in a long time I was free. The highway seemed so familiar. No matter how far I was from home, it always felt close.					

The night was coming and my brother had set up a motel room. He asked if I would like to go to Long Beach. I declined. But he insisted, pointing out that times had changed. I didn’t have it in me to say no. The day felt dreamlike. Why wake up? I stood in front of the ocean that forever humbled me and tears ran down my face as I stared in awe at the Queen Mary ship. I made it back and couldn’t help but feel at home.

For so long I was blaming the city, along with the people in it, for the many choices that I decided to make. The truth is, there is goodness in this city that is bettering itself through the people that live in it. There was a point in time that I never wanted to see this Long Beach again because I was ashamed to face the communities that I once destroyed. But I’ve fallen in love in so many different ways with this city, and that has led me into dedicating my life to being a part of the solution, especially when others may be quick to label people “the problem.”

I once thought that life was about being a man, but thanks to the many lessons that I've learned in prison, I now know that life has nothing to do with being a man. It has everything to do with being a human and valuing others as such.

Nostalgia

Insiders

After 18 Years in Prison, I Rebuilt My Relationship With Home

It’s something I’d kept telling myself any time something didn’t feel right inside. People would give life and limb to celebrate their birthday jetting privately between three club gigs in three cities on two continents in one epic night spanning more than 36 hours with the reverse time zone travel factored in. They’d love to call it just another day at the office. But the impossible irony is that you only need it until you have it, at which point you need more of it. If you’re paying attention, you might catch yourself in this predicament, and only then do you have a chance to transcend it—to move on to the next level instead of just doing lap after lap around the same course trying to get a better score. 

This is a story about coming to know yourself outside the image reflected back to you in the window of a private jet, the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of a Las Vegas suite or the lens of a camera broadcasting that image to tens of thousands around the globe. This is a story about transcending what they told us we wanted in search of ourselves. 

This was supposed to be it. The dream. A chance to work with the hottest label in the best city in the world, the one I always wanted to live in. Money, power, respect. I had only ever set two goals for myself in my life: the first was a full scholarship to a university, and the second was a self-sustaining music career in my dream city by the age of 25. I achieved the latter with a few weeks to spare, shipping my car full of stuff on a truck and hopping on a flight to Las Vegas with a laptop and a backpack. I took the train to the label’s headquarters, which had exactly two people working there at the time. 

My philosophy during this time was to say “yes” to everything, which was a lot considering that I had just arrived in one of the busiest music capitals in the world. A random Tuesday night might bring in a budding new act playing a boiler room in a tiny unfinished warehouse just a 10-minute walk across the train tracks.

One afternoon, I came home to find a random gaggle of creepy photographers, who had stumbled in off the street, conducting a photoshoot with a half-naked and almost disturbingly young aspiring “starlet” in the living room—which I subsequently learned had been financed by the poor girl’s father. Did she like the way she looked reflected through the lens of those cameras, or later pinned up on their Instagram accounts like a trophy? I digress. 

I worked hard, partied about equally as hard and soon had a small squad of a dozen or so team members assisting me as the label continued to grow, blossoming our global fanbase from the thousands to the millions. I earned more and more money, accumulating savings quickly with little living expenses beyond the daily coffee, salad, tacos and weed. I also learned during this time that studies show any increase in happiness stemming from an increase in one’s earnings dissipates substantially with each increase over about $75,000 per year, the average median household income in America. 

The statistics tell us that money only makes you happy insofar as it can cover your basic needs—beyond that, statistically speaking, money has little bearing on happiness. As the label grew, so did my social influence and proximity to The Artist who owned it. An uneventful Monday afternoon at the office might bring an unexpected phone call imploring me to join Him in Rome for the week where He would be making a cameo in a certain sequel in a classic film series, filming during the night and sleeping during the day. I loved the way I looked in those dimly-lit mirrors at the posh Hotel De Russie overlooking the Piazza del Popolo in the heart of Rome, with its cavernous and carefully fragranced hallways emanating opulence. 

Life was good. So why the hell was I so depressed any second of the day I wasn’t distracted with work or women or weed? Why did it seem futile to get off the couch on a Saturday afternoon? Why was I seemingly unable to recognize myself outside of my own reflection? There had to be more. 

During one Coachella, my cleaning lady would confirm my suspicions. The festival fell on Easter that year, something none of us realized, insulated in our own industry bubble. I became aware of this when I phoned my cleaner, asking her to work at my place while I was away. She informed me that her family would be visiting from her native country for Easter, but despite my protestations, she insisted on cleaning my house anyway, even volunteering to bring her family to help. I was mortified at the idea of her visiting family cleaning my apartment on Easter Sunday and was embarrassed at the idea that it was even being discussed. But I was also aware she must need the money, or why would she insist? So I set off for Indio, or Palm Springs, or whatever, to hang out, have fun and support our performing label artists.

By that point, I had become so jaded by this sort of thing that I was no longer excited about the prospect of an all-inclusive weekend at Coachella. I saw it more as something I was obligated to do. People would kill for this, I tried to remind myself. But halfway through the weekend, I could no longer bear the blathering, vacuous boasting and posturing, the social jockeying and transactional relationships and the endless requests for guestlists.

You’re probably thinking “what a spoiled brat,” complaining about an experience so coveted as Coachella. It could have been much worse, indeed. Many families are without food, and there’s a never-ending war in the Middle East. But I beg of you to consider how depressed your faithful writer must have been in order to derive only misery from an experience like this. It had been years at this point, and I was no longer enamored by the glitz and glam of it all. I felt like a rudderless empty person surrounded by other similarly afflicted. I hated how I looked in the mirror of the green room at the Hilton Palm Springs, surrounded by unopened Grey Goose bottles and social climbers on the hunt for Sunday artist wristbands. 

So, on Easter Sunday, I bailed on Coachella early, gave my wristband to a random reveler at a pre-party a few doors down, and began the journey home. When I arrived, my cleaner, busy at work in my kitchen, greeted me joyfully with a big smile and an enthusiastic inquiry as to my time in Indio. I was caught off guard by this seemingly misplaced joy; after all, wasn’t I supposed to be the happy one? Wasn’t she, the person cleaning houses for cash on Easter Sunday, supposed to be the miserable one?

The dichotomy hit me like an oversized corporate energy drink canister on wheels barreling toward the Las Vegas Speedway, and something changed in me at that moment. I saw true happiness, embodied in a woman doing nothing more than earning her living with her family by her side and a smile on her face. I saw gratitude and humility, and something else I wouldn’t recognize for years to come—the exuberant inner glow of self-love, radiating outward to all those within range. This woman wasn’t looking in the mirror at all. Her joyful existence was being reflected back to her constantly through the people she helped, the family she supported and, in a way, the glass windows she made spotless. This woman had attained the mastery of life that had eluded me—the simple solace of service to others.

As the corporate energy drink of life barreled on into the fall of that year, I found myself on a plane to Japan for some leisure time before a string of performances in Asia. Little did I know I’d soon begin the final descent of my journey to find my real self, outside of the external constructs of any of the aforementioned accouterments. The penultimate act in this play commenced with me taking a crap in a crudely carved crater in the ground in an impossibly sweaty nightclub in Manila, just minutes before my own globally live-streamed performance on the world’s biggest event-streaming platform during the city’s busiest music weekend. 

Later that trip, we’d pass through Ibiza for an epic week of partying and performances, then to Mykonos to play for an extravagant birthday celebration for the son of Croatia’s wealthiest man. He’d flown 100 of his friends in on four private jets to take over the most opulent resort on the island, where everyone had their own butler. What could top that? I soon found myself so burned out and exhausted that I began to remember something a mentor had told me: “You must go to Kerala in India,” the birthplace of Ayurvedic medicine, he’d said. “It would be a great place for you to reconnect with yourself.” I started looking into traveling there and planning a much-needed vacation from this life that had, at one time, been a vacation in and of itself.

I arrived at the Ayurvedic resort in India and was disappointed by the bland food and modest accommodations. But I was blown away by the insight of the medical staff. With one look into my eye, a young doctor I’d just met recalled the sports concussion I had suffered 15 years prior, and with a gentle hand on my artery, he described with chilling accuracy the nature of my personality. How did he do it? We began discussing my lifestyle and physical and mental ailments. He knew I was a smoker because a certain spot on my forearm was tender when he gently pressed into it with his finger. 

Knowing my time with him would be short, I asked him to outline for me the most important pillars of a healthy lifestyle. What were the main things to focus on? He told me if I ate clean, exercised, drank water and slept adequately and in accordance with the phases of the moon, I wouldn’t have much to worry about. Oh, and there was one more thing: Meditation, he said, would bring me back to a state of inner peace and wholeness, grounding me in my own being, helping me weather the storm around me. Reflecting on his unparalleled body of knowledge, and the benefits of Eastern medicine and meditation, I resolved I would open myself to the possibilities of channeling this into the music industry, and towards artists specifically.

Shortly after arriving back home, I managed to get up the courage to take the ultimate leap of faith. I walked away from this dream job in this dream city with no plan other than to learn more about myself and the collective self, in pursuit of that pure inner joy my housecleaner had exhibited the year prior. I sold or gave away almost all of my possessions, bought a one-way ticket to another continent, and as I untethered myself from the social and career structures from which I had derived my self-image, I began to feel the wind whipping in my hair as I half-flew, half-free-fell off the proverbial cliff into the unknown. 

The next few years weren’t easy. They were undoubtedly the most difficult years of my life. Trying to find yourself with no mirrors around can be deeply, existentially unsettling. I traveled the world, spent all my savings in search of myself and ultimately wound up right back where I started. As I write this, I’m even involved with a new label—but instead of it defining me, it has provided me an outlet for creative self-expression and genuine connection to those who resonate with it. Today, while I might be living in the same city and doing the same work, my outlook and approach are completely new. The years of soul-searching, initially sparked by the apparent emptiness of a material lifestyle, taught me that everything I was looking for was within.

I don’t look in the mirror as often now, because I’ve learned the face staring back at me has nothing at all to do with who I am. Mirrors only show skin and bones. When I need to remember who I am, I just sit back, close my eyes and let the bliss of meditation return me to the source.

Adventure

I Got My Dream Job Globetrotting in the Music Industry and I Hated It

On my first solo adventure to the United States, I met an American boy on the Los Angeles pier. Many hours later, when a drink had turned to several, we were on a lifeguard station in the middle of the night and ready to fulfill my ultimate California fantasy. That’s when I learned my American dream boy was saving himself for marriage. 

We kept in touch after I flew back to Europe and I learned he’d also quit watching pornography. Thus came my epiphany: If a beautiful, red-blooded man could renounce porn, why the hell couldn’t I?

I had used porn since my late teens in an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’” gesture. Truth be told, I felt frustrated by how unrealistic it all was——the human form included. The women’s genitals were bare and smooth, not even a landing strip in sight, and as a result, I shaved religiously. Razor burn nor the agony of itchy regrowth were enough to stop me. No fresh razors around? No problem, a rusty one would do.

In my teens, when my mother caught me in the nude, laughing at how I looked like a plucked chicken down there, I insisted I liked this. No, it wasn’t uncomfortable. I was afraid of being rejected at my most vulnerable.

A decade later, I now understand that pornstars are hairless in order to give as clear a shot as possible of a penis thrusting in and out of a vagina. But at the time, I just thought hair equaled dirty. I asked my university boyfriend, who I loved with all my heart, whether he preferred bare or hairy girls. I’ll be honest: I expected him to say, “Whatever makes you most comfortable.” What he actually said was an unequivocal “shaven.”

“All men watch porn,” society tells us, but none of those men seemed to be renouncing porn in protest of its beauty standards. So I figured hairlessness was what all men were into, whether they confessed it or not. There were times I really wanted to be physically intimate but, remembering I hadn’t shaved, would scuttle away to the bathroom or even hold off entirely.

Fast-forward to my California comedown. I’ve been tempted to watch porn many times in the months following my trip, but the joy I feel without it always helps me resist. (I have reconnected with my imagination as well as experimenting with audio porn and just occasionally, when I really wanted that visual stimulation, browsed erotic artwork on Instagram.) Now, without anyone to compare myself to, I’ve also come to appreciate my pubic hair. 

I feel sad for that teenage girl who felt pressure to conform and am now in a place where I can question the merit of men who want me to look like a four-year-old child down below. Anyone who is worthy of me, surely, won’t prioritize their preferences over my pain and discomfort.

I don’t begrudge women who choose to go hairless. Feeling fresher or prettier without hair won’t make you less of a feminist in my book. But, I hope women will take more time to consider the motives behind their choices.

The way I regard my body has not been magically cured: I believe women still get an extremely raw deal on that front. I’m furious that I can’t read a magazine without being bombarded by size-zero models, fad diets and anti-aging creams. I’m furious about men who say, “Men age like wine while women age like milk.” I’m furious about my terror of turning 30. I’m furious that my body can’t expand, sag or wrinkle while mens’ are allowed to simply exist. 

The one thing I have been able to take from quitting pornography, though, is a newfound affection for my pubic hair. Without those pornified bodies to compare myself to, I can appreciate my hair—not as something unhygienic and ugly but as a symbol of femininity that should be celebrated. I now love to admire myself in the mirror and I love how soft it feels between my fingers; I pretend I’m a cute cave girl and remind myself that men were delighted to have sex long before the dawn of Bic razors. I won’t apologize for my choices and am all the sexier for it.

How Quitting Porn Helped Me Embrace My Pubic Hair

It took me until my Saturn return to figure out I was trans. I got along just fine as a gay boy for many years. Well, mostly fine. Looking back now, it’s easy to see early signs of my egghood. (“Egg” being the sometimes endearing, sometimes condescending term for a trans person who hasn’t figured out they’re trans yet.) There were lots of little examples, like raiding my mother’s closet when she wasn’t home or opting to sit with the girls in middle school once I was freed from the confines of my religious, single-sex grade school. 

In a diary entry from Halloween four years ago I wrote, “I feel so good in women’s clothing.” There were other entries about how thrilling it was to wear heels, how poised and powerful I felt in them. But I wasn’t trans. I just donned a slutty witch costume for one weekend a year all through my 20s. And painted my nails, and wanted long flowing shampoo commercial hair, and only felt truly safe and at home in the company of other girls growing up. 

My annual Halloween cross-dressing ritual carries a deeper significance to me now. I realize what I was feeling was my first experience of gender euphoria, the heady glee of engaging in high femme antics mixed with a deep feeling of relief.

If I had to point to one moment in my gender awakening—the thing that officially cracked my egg and made me admit my transness—it would be hearing a nonbinary trans femme talk about their hairline dysphoria, and the dread they felt about going bald. It wasn’t a matter of vanity, they said, it was a matter of being in the wrong body. 

For the previous couple of years, I’d been scrutinizing my hairline in the mirror every morning, willing my fivehead not to get any bigger. I wallowed in despair at my looming baldness. I’d kept my hair short for most of my 20s, hoping that would get me more attention from gay men. It felt like a cruel betrayal of my body, imagining I could see my hair thinning before my eyes just when I had decided to grow it out again. 

Hearing that enby speak, I had a surreal out-of-body moment. How they were speaking aloud my secret innermost thoughts. Me, a cis person! 

After that, I slowly acquired more and more trans friends. I insinuated myself in trans spaces as someone who was “questioning.” Feeling emboldened by my peers, I started going by they/them pronouns and calling myself nonbinary. 

I felt such a rush of relief that I didn’t have to be a man anymore. I could set aside all the expectations of masculinity that I never really lived up to. Even surrounded by cis gay men, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I felt despair that I couldn’t find comfort there, in the community I was supposed to feel at home in. I thought I was plagued by some debilitating anxiety disorder, but no. Just trans.

Then the pandemic happened. I lost my job. All my acquaintanceships evaporated as the Zoom happy hours quickly lost their appeal. I left the house as little as possible. Freed from the burden of other people’s expectations, I was able to imagine how I might like to live without fear getting in the way. 

My curiosity and explorations eventually led me to a Zoom call with a doctor I’d never met in person, who thankfully believed me when I told him I was trans and I wanted to try hormones. 

Once I had the prescriptions waiting for me, I hesitated. I was terrified of trying hormones and changing my mind later. It wasn’t that I was worried about what it might do to my body, or what society would think. I was more scared of letting my trans friends down, that if I started the process of transition only to stop later, I would somehow be damaging “the Cause” and alienating myself from the community I had found. It was grandiose to think the integrity of the entire trans movement would crumble at my hypothetical future detransition. 

One friend told me, when I called them, spiraling, that starting hormones wasn’t like jumping off a cliff—it was more like wading into water, and I could slow down or turn around at any point if it didn’t feel right. I would still be trans even if I decided hormones weren’t for me. No one could take that from me. 

I told myself I was only starting hormones in an effort to keep my hairline from receding, but I have been so grateful for all the other changes. It’s like I needed plausible deniability in my own feminization. After nearly a year on testosterone blockers and synthetic estrogen, I cry more easily. I laugh more easily. My backne went away. Once the antiandrogens got my testosterone low enough, I stopped making semen and instead now produce a small amount of clear nectar when I come. Pre-transition, for many messy years, I was an extremely heavy shooter, which I always found vulgar, a distasteful hassle and one I’m relieved to be done with.

The most pleasant surprise of transition is how much I’ve enjoyed growing tits. I’ll be honest, they’re not much. At my own appraisal, I’d put them at maybe a double-A cup. (The little thrill of pride I felt at being “double” anything evaporated when I learned that AA is actually a step down from a singular A cup.) I hide them in public, but won’t shut the fuck up about them with my close friends. I’ve basically made these little lumps my whole personality at this point, even though they’re too small and pointy and weird and, oh God, asymmetrical? No, wait. They’re fine. Endlessly scrutinizing my boobs and willing them to be bigger, rounder, different: a quintessential experience of early-30s teenage girlhood. 

I had no idea how much joy growing breasts would bring me until they started to grow, although I think it’s worth mentioning how much of a fiend for nipple play I was as a gay boy, too. It must be fate, to have my nipples waking up, growing and exponentially gaining in sensitivity in transition. They’ve always been erogenous on switches for me, so it feels like I was destined to have luscious tits. I just can’t believe how long it took me to figure that out. 

I’ve been able to undergo my first full year of medical transition in quarantine, only sharing the intimate details of my gender journey with my closest friends. I wouldn’t trade my itty bitty titties for anything (except maybe some bigger ones, God willing), but with the weather warming up and vaccination looming, I now face a dilemma: How do I cope with people’s reactions to the changes I’ve gone through? I’ve been able to start my transition in a bubble, and I’m dreading the moment it pops. Part of me is tempted to gaslight everyone in my life who doesn’t know I’ve started transitioning. “What? I’ve always had these. It’s so weird you don’t remember that.” As tempting as that is, I think I have no choice but to face the reality of Coming Out. Again. 

I feel blessed to have had this time and privacy, but I am tensing in anticipation of how frequently I’ll be misgendered. I have had massive internal shifts, but on the outside, not that much has changed. Early transition is so awkward. Being pubescent again in my early 30s feels like a cruel joke. I have no idea how to dress myself. I have constant identity crises of what kind of girl I want to be. Some days I’m a hormonal wreck and I almost miss the dead-inside stoicism I had as a boy. As much as I love being more in touch with my feelings, being brought to tears by the love between the nanny and Mister Sheffield makes me feel a little emotionally incontinent. 

Despite how delighted I have felt about transitioning, I rarely leave the house in full femme attire. I prefer invisibility on my little pandemic walks and trips to the store, wearing my nonbinary uniform of baggy track pants, a shapeless denim sack of a jacket and a surgical mask. I feel too fragile most days to go out into the world as a "clocky transsexual"—words I hate, but that my Reddit research of trans womanhood has seared into my brain. 

So mostly I hide, and my hiding makes me feel like a coward and a fraud. Feelings of fraudulence and inadequacy are essential parts of the trans experience, I’m told, so I think I’m right on track. I hope that soon I’ll be ready to take the plunge and be trans everywhere I go. I’m too old for the exhausting emotional acrobatics of leading a double life. 

A quarantine transition is what I needed, a chance to reach an understanding of my gender in private, safe from the scrutiny of coworkers or my family or any of the casual acquaintances I’d normally have to interact with. Even though I feel so thin-skinned and fragile, I know I’m moving in the right direction. Every step I’ve taken towards feminization has brought me joy and brought me closer to God (who is definitely trans).

Coronavirus

Quarantine Inspired Me to Finally Transition

For many of us, parental problems aren’t unusual. In fact, “daddy issues” has become a colloquialism, and it probably won’t be long until a similar term is coined for mothers. However, when you’re a brown child with brown parents growing up in South Asia, none of that applies to you. 

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