With or without Lipstick

My T journey continues...

What do you do when dear friends can’t let go of their own attachment to the way you have previously decorated your shell?

Do you hold space for them… keep a warm place at your table set for when they return…. mind their seat on the bus?

Or do you tell them good-bye?

It’s ok. I understand their grief. I feel it too. Part of me is dying so another part of me can live.


After only a short time on T, I am putting on muscle.
The bottom growth, the body hair, the deeper voice- I know all of these changes well… I make my own testosterone. That is how I knew I would like this so much. That is why I can just take testosterone fearlessly- because I have already done this. Including puberty, this will be the fourth gender transition I have experienced in my life. The only difference is that with this transition, I am in control. It is not a wild fluctuation that is happening because my body is responding to a hormonal crisis.

I push the pump and the gel comes out.
I smear it onto my bare arms.
It dries and I put on a shirt.
And even though every day I tell myself I have to stop…
because this is hurting people around me…
Every day I find myself in front of my mirror and I put on the gel again.
Because this is good for me.
I like this.
I love the way I feel.

It is a slightly different feeling to my own mix.
My own mix is in response to not having enough hormones, so my adrenals make testosterone so I can survive. It is called CAH- Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.
I also have the sternum of a cock dividing my uterus, a nearly non-existent cervix and a large clit… one that will get larger when on T.

I love the feeling of bottom growth. It is one of my fav parts of transitioning. It is one of the irreversible effects of masculinising hormones. Other permanent changes are the thickening of the vocal chords and male pattern baldness… or so I am told.

I look down at this body-

This body that has danced for tens of thousands of people.
This body has been abducted and raped.
This body has been hit by cars.
This body has loved dozens of lovers.
This body has carried a child.
This body has been cut open so that the child and I could live.
This body has breast fed.
This body has danced for sheiks.
This body has been bashed and starved.
This body has been abandoned by those I thought loved me.
This body has escaped serial killers.
This body has performed dangling from cranes over the super-rich.
This body has swung from the flying trapeze in circuses.
This body has been worshipped as A World Queen of Burlesque.
This body has been married.
This body has nursed heart ache and grief.
This body has survived cancer.
This body has had 4 major surgeries.
This body is here now. It is 54 and I love it more than ever.

I think I will make a handsome person when I transition further than my own hormones could ever take me.
But yes, there is grief.
Saying goodbye to the versions of myself that I have inhabited before now is hard.
The beautiful dresses and the red lipstick, the camaraderie of other women, kindness… softness… I wonder how much of myself will be leaving as I evolve into my new self?

I might not keep going with this 9am ritual… this ceremonial application of T gel… this engineered transformation…
but so far- I love this journey.

I love this feeling.

I feel strong.
I feel confident.
I feel vital and passionate.
I feel normal… because testosterone was my lead hormone as a child… and it just feels so right to come home to myself in this way.

I run my hands over my body in wonder, and say goodbye to myself.
I am not sure what I am feeling is grief.
It is something less tangible than that.
It feels like I’m going on a journey by standing still.
My body will still be here, like a tombstone of my former-self, like a cicada shell on an external wall- my husk.
I am metamorphosing.
I put on bright red lipstick despite myself… despite the world… like the punchline of a joke that people will think about for days, weeks and years until they get it…
much like the one about those two nuns and the soap…
I hope it makes them feel as warm as it does me.