how piercings saved my life (lol)
recorded on 05.29
prologue
being highly introspective about a transition that's just starting probably seems premature, but i can't help thinking that it's not that much different than watching a movie.. if you don't fucking pay attention at the beginning, when shit really starts to get going you won't have any fucking idea what's going on.
content warning for self-harm, suicidal ideation (sort of?)
i'm on a plane. writing to get the soup out of my brain. in the 3 months since i've announced my transition, i've been speed-running queer/trans literature. currently reading: trans girl suicide museum, tell me i'm worthless, whipping girl, and a safe girl to love. i think there's a reason i avoided queer lit in the past, and that is because maybe my meta-brain knew it would be too disruptive to equilibrium.
but depression was not equilibrium, it was a sad entropy. in it, i was dissolving. i know that using the word "suicide" is both weighted and weighty, but i like hannah baer's interpretation (or my interpretation of her interpretation) that it is a complete context shift, necessary to end or move forward. i don't know that i can try to end again, but the context shifts i've had that were "end, or.." have been many. this one started with my attempt to destroy my gender.
or so i thought.
in retrospect, it started in early high school. in those years, only faggots and women got their ears pierced. so i pierced mine. i wanted absolutely nothing to do with masculinity, but i didn't want to get beat up on daily basis either.. so while i wasn't brave enough to wear a dress to school, i could still negate some of my masculinity by piercing my ears and nostril - and since i wasn't allowed to wear the earrings or nose ring at home, i had to be tough enough to re-pierce them on a daily basis. which both my sister and i did as we walked down to the school bus stop together. we kept a stash of ripped up punk clothing and makeup stashed partway down the driveway so we could ditch our kmart or sears whatevers in favor of something cool, redo our piercings, wipe away the blood, swipe on some eyeliner because we were punk as fuck. but i also took some tiny, deeply secret amount of pleasure and satisfaction that every day i had to force the piercings through my skin. i suppose there's some freudian nonsense in there about penetration. lol
it wasn't long before i saw images of women with their nipples pierced. it was as tantalizing as it was exotic, and i bought a sterile piercing needle from a piercer i knew.
it was painful, in part because i had no idea what i was doing. the needle went through slowly, i paused to breathe through the pain on multiple occasions. but in the end, like my ears and my nose, i felt i had increased the beauty of my body by removing some masculine edges and replacing them with surgical steel loops.
for me, even back then, i always considered piercing as a sublimated form of cutting. piercing let me cut and keep cutting with no consequences. no one asked me if i was having trouble at home. no one sent me to see a shrink. no one ever tried to commit me for piercing my flesh. as a camouflage technique, it was flawless: it made normies angry, was attractive in the goth/industrial subculture - and i could infinitely misdirect any interpretation of their origin and purpose. i don't want to imply that this interpretation is valid for anyone else, but i knew that it was true for me - i'm sure that i'm an outlier here.
a year before my transition, at the deepest point of my depression, i decided that my penis - my least favorite body part - was not only useless but really at odds with the rest of my body. i didn't realize it at the time, but i was making the decision to destroy it. i carefully researched how to do a prince albert piercing, and smoothly executed that plan. at first the blood and pain of it made me happier, but i didn't feel any more beautiful because of it. because i wasn't adorning it, i just didn't realize that i was trying to get rid of it. a year and a half later, it's really the only piercing that i kind of regret: it hurts to tuck, i pee in 3 directions at any given time, i have a "barb" of hardened skin at the front of the fistula, m hates to see it.. and yet, i won't remove it.
there's a dissonance involved that i can't quite untangle yet.
this was the beginning of my context-suicide, the pre-decision leading to transition. even though i had been decades into this progression, it was the beginning of me irrevocably turning my back on being masculine. it's not where the decision came from, but i think it was a factor in my subconscious fucking telling me that time was up.
prologue
being highly introspective about a transition that's just starting probably seems premature, but i can't help thinking that it's not that much different than watching a movie.. if you don't fucking pay attention at the beginning, when shit really starts to get going you won't have any fucking idea what's going on.
content warning for self-harm, suicidal ideation (sort of?)
i'm on a plane. writing to get the soup out of my brain. in the 3 months since i've announced my transition, i've been speed-running queer/trans literature. currently reading: trans girl suicide museum, tell me i'm worthless, whipping girl, and a safe girl to love. i think there's a reason i avoided queer lit in the past, and that is because maybe my meta-brain knew it would be too disruptive to equilibrium.
but depression was not equilibrium, it was a sad entropy. in it, i was dissolving. i know that using the word "suicide" is both weighted and weighty, but i like hannah baer's interpretation (or my interpretation of her interpretation) that it is a complete context shift, necessary to end or move forward. i don't know that i can try to end again, but the context shifts i've had that were "end, or.." have been many. this one started with my attempt to destroy my gender.
or so i thought.
in retrospect, it started in early high school. in those years, only faggots and women got their ears pierced. so i pierced mine. i wanted absolutely nothing to do with masculinity, but i didn't want to get beat up on daily basis either.. so while i wasn't brave enough to wear a dress to school, i could still negate some of my masculinity by piercing my ears and nostril - and since i wasn't allowed to wear the earrings or nose ring at home, i had to be tough enough to re-pierce them on a daily basis. which both my sister and i did as we walked down to the school bus stop together. we kept a stash of ripped up punk clothing and makeup stashed partway down the driveway so we could ditch our kmart or sears whatevers in favor of something cool, redo our piercings, wipe away the blood, swipe on some eyeliner because we were punk as fuck. but i also took some tiny, deeply secret amount of pleasure and satisfaction that every day i had to force the piercings through my skin. i suppose there's some freudian nonsense in there about penetration. lol
it wasn't long before i saw images of women with their nipples pierced. it was as tantalizing as it was exotic, and i bought a sterile piercing needle from a piercer i knew.
it was painful, in part because i had no idea what i was doing. the needle went through slowly, i paused to breathe through the pain on multiple occasions. but in the end, like my ears and my nose, i felt i had increased the beauty of my body by removing some masculine edges and replacing them with surgical steel loops.
for me, even back then, i always considered piercing as a sublimated form of cutting. piercing let me cut and keep cutting with no consequences. no one asked me if i was having trouble at home. no one sent me to see a shrink. no one ever tried to commit me for piercing my flesh. as a camouflage technique, it was flawless: it made normies angry, was attractive in the goth/industrial subculture - and i could infinitely misdirect any interpretation of their origin and purpose. i don't want to imply that this interpretation is valid for anyone else, but i knew that it was true for me - i'm sure that i'm an outlier here.
a year before my transition, at the deepest point of my depression, i decided that my penis - my least favorite body part - was not only useless but really at odds with the rest of my body. i didn't realize it at the time, but i was making the decision to destroy it. i carefully researched how to do a prince albert piercing, and smoothly executed that plan. at first the blood and pain of it made me happier, but i didn't feel any more beautiful because of it. because i wasn't adorning it, i just didn't realize that i was trying to get rid of it. a year and a half later, it's really the only piercing that i kind of regret: it hurts to tuck, i pee in 3 directions at any given time, i have a "barb" of hardened skin at the front of the fistula, m hates to see it.. and yet, i won't remove it.
there's a dissonance involved that i can't quite untangle yet.
this was the beginning of my context-suicide, the pre-decision leading to transition. even though i had been decades into this progression, it was the beginning of me irrevocably turning my back on being masculine. it's not where the decision came from, but i think it was a factor in my subconscious fucking telling me that time was up.