My youth quite relevant to my passing as male. The face I once had was often compared to a young Jake Gyllenhaal. Working as a disk jockey at a gay male bar in New Orleans, I stared into the eyes of older men, often bloodshot and stratified with layers of melancholy. These men looked at me like a lottery prize. Below the T-shirt with the logo of a male muscled arm, my body was compressed, strained.

I resembled the curvature of maleness, unambiguous and constant. Below the fabric, my chest flattened and secure; with nipple, tissue, muscle I was unsympathetic to. The feeling of obscurity and insignificance I could not shake. In wide-shot, I was luxury, a holiday, a cool guy who accommodated the fantasies of so many men. These men and I, we were staring out of our respective windows. I suppose we were yearning, in a place where either of us could jump or fall.

In these years, the tonic was french fries, alcohol and cocaine. It was obvious what a shitty DJ I was, but my boyish enthusiasm for the party life kept me an intoxicating part of the fantasy. The undulating force of a line of cocaine, the reshaping of reality, the sensation it was all a lie. Always mixed with a peculiar empowerment that came with the rush and push. The mind was linked in such a way to the body, no oars to push off from, no beams to tie and pull away. It was magical to be inside of foreign chemicals.

I’m now in the innocuous phase of my body. I waited 16 years to say this: there is very little to the geometry of my body that I abhor. And, to be honest, the veins and the scars are quite tender and sweet to me. With willful energy I walked the radius of my body, constrained and then unstrained. I looked, in good faith, then found my proximate position. What was unread but could be written. In good faith, I pursued life as a gender transgressor. I am one within the fluid-moving, limitless breed who disappear, reappear, innovate, and stay remarkably electric through years of contempt. Some of us become mystics, intellectuals, healers in the humble quest to change and, sensing that we are on the right track, build our convictions.

Some of us are such outsiders, in death comes the only celebration, to be remembered on a day in November. My passage came when, suited up with my burdens, my convictions and my map of original lies, I could be day-in-the-life ordinary and still achieve subjecthood. Disssectability of my body became a bore. I could self-preserve.

Then, I could radiate.