“Here’s the obvious lesson that wasn’t so obvious to me: I was not above these men. The advice they offered was flawed and reductive, but it was what I needed to hear: I would be okay, I was learning, I was still alive,” writes abmcelroy1
Photo: Millennium Images / Gallery Stock It was January 2020, and in the past five months, I’d done nearly everything in my power to put my assigned gender behind me. I had come out as trans to my loved ones; I was getting divorced; I moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, which was once called a trans utopia on the Gender Reveal podcast . What I wasn’t, however, was out to my roommates, three cis men I’d met on Craigslist who all assumed I was a cis man like them.
When my roommates were at work, I stayed in the basement trying on tights and blouses and dresses and skirts I’d bought online to prevent anyone from seeing me buy them. I practiced applying makeup from supermarket brands that were never the right shade for my pale skin. In my room, I focused on two things: finding my style and completing my novel.
Since I committed to a writing career, a lot of my life has been spent doing things for the story. When I should be in the moment, I imagine how I will capture it later. I’m far from the first writer to feel this way. And in an era of social media, writers aren’t alone in catapulting themselves into futures sharing the moment. Where many writers differ, though, is that they believe themselves to be objective observers.
I arrived at the stone Episcopal church where the meeting was held feeling prematurely superior to the men who would be there. They gathered in a dimly lit rec room the color of Brut aftershave and were circled up in folding chairs. They had the nervous energy of the perpetually repressed. I believed I didn’t belong in the room, both for the obvious reason and the conceited reason — as an evolved millennial, I already knew how to get in touch with my feelings.
In my small group, I talked about my divorce and my regrets. In a larger group, I talked about the same subjects. And finally, when all the men came together to share, I volunteered first to tell my story — part of my story, that is. Looking back, perhaps I should have had reservations in a room full of cis men. Men’s groups like MKP have been criticized for placing men in counseling roles with little training.
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