Ziqr Peehu

I wake up and this is the third earthquake I have missed. I’ve spent the last week trying to kiss people and let myself be kissed beneath and over everything I can find. I don’t want to say that other than all the earthquakes, this feels like it could be a bigger disaster but mom’s been texting me again. She’s concerned and that’s never been a good sign.

I wake up and I try to count back the days since I’ve last eaten but before that I grope myself because I dreamt that I finally didn’t have boobs. I still do but more so is the fact that I’m bleeding. God. The outrageous way my body works. My periods are the most gruesome thing inside the food chain. They are ironic not just in the way that I’ve never wanted them but also in the way that I can never have kids anyway. What cruel mockery. Fuck this.

By definition, being trans means being born in the wrong body and it’s not fun. It makes you at odds with the realness of your own body. You start pulling at things to make the threads unravel so you can figure out what the fabric is supposed to be, so you can recreate something from the wool but none of it makes sense. You are unreal in all the ways that count.

For the last two weeks, the only three things I’ve done are things that I absolutely shouldn’t have been doing. I was supposed to be studying, eating and sleeping. Instead, I’ve kissed boys and let them call me a woman. I’ve let myself be pushed against a wall as procedural crime shows played on in the background and consciously ignored how close our circumstances sounded. I’ve walked to dingy back rooms in the outskirts of my town with men twice my age, sometimes thrice but most importantly. I’ve let myself be called a pretty girl more times in these past two weeks than I have in my entire life.

But hey. I’m boring you. I’m a trans man and everyone I love knows this. This is also the reason that I haven’t spoken to anyone I love for two weeks. My existence is happily cornered as it backs into the wall. My existence is the dead body on CSU that gets paid to be dead.

Two weeks ago, I decided to kiss the correct boy, for the first time in my life. The Nice Boy. He was my age, he was kind and he brought me flowers. The bar is literally in hell but I keep digging a hole to go further in. I make him risotto so I can taste it in his mouth when he kisses me. In between the dessert and the fifth time he kisses me, I manage to stutter out the fact that I’m trans and he continues to kiss me. It’s not until I’m cleaning up the table till he asks me to repeat myself because he hadn’t heard it correctly the first time around.

I’m trans. He stops cleaning the plates and he turns around to look at me but I’m not even scared of how he’s going to react. He’s a nice boy, he’s going to react the way nice boys do when their niceness is questioned. He’s going to prove it.

“But you’re like. Really pretty though. You’re a really pretty girl. Wouldn’t that be kind of wasting it?” Fuck. Nice boys have such a way of being nice in the worst ways possible. I nod shakedly and tell him that I was kidding and like a good nice boy, he finishes cleaning up the plates and kisses me goodbye. The next dinner is going to be on him, he says. “Also that was kind of a transphobic joke to do” he says as he’s calling for a cab and I’m nodding. I’m sorry. There’s no mirth here. I’m just sorry. The nice boy remains nice.

Two weeks later and I’m kissing all the wrong men that aren’t him but also call me pretty girl. I want to eat my heart and not in a Jennifer’s body, Megan Fox seduction kind of way. I literally want to eat my insides like a starving dog looking for a bone. On the filthy floor, lapping away at the blood but instead I start getting ready to kiss a man and be a pretty girl.

I haven’t eaten in four days because the last man that I kissed told me I would be easier to lift up if I was lighter and because I was the dog. I nodded and kissed him again. The story about the dog that drops its bone to bark at its reflection is true and I know because I was the reflection. Which is to say I did the entire thing because I wanted to starve. I know I’ve been looking for excuses to treat myself all wrong and I’ve finally found them. I kissed the good, nice boy and now I’m kissing all the wrong ones. What does it say about me that it’s very hard to tell the difference?

I’m looking through ugly pretty complete things and I’m looking for permission in ways that I shouldn’t have to. Please? Let me be myself. Please? Let me have this body. I’m begging for scraps to become what I detest. A papier mache of despise trying to become a man. A pinocchio that builds itself. I will build myself out of lies and grow completely, if not. I’ve always hated my nose anyway.

“You’re too pretty a girl to want to become a boy.” I swear you can commodify my beauty as a man if you try hard enough. I hear pretty boys are in these days.

I can’t remember what his name is but he has me backed against a table and I want to scream at him. He points out in my body, all the correct ways that I am a woman.

What if I don’t want to be? A correct woman? I ask him and he thinks between kissing my fingers. You’d have to climb over a fucking wall for that lovely, you’re too perfect right now to let this get away without a fight. Fuck the rights of my body. I want to climb over the fucking wall.

Last month I was in the psych ward because I tried to kill myself and because I kissed the wrong people and I sucked off worse and the only thing the doctor kept asking me was the why. You keep quiet in there if you want to get out so I was quiet. Quietness has been stitched into the borders of my skin like a sari made properly.

I wanted to scream at him though. Nothing about this body has ever been morally correct but fuck If I’m not going to try. Oh my god of course I tried to kill myself. I wake up every morning with boobs on. Do you understand? Do you get it?

The doctor questions my feminism, he told me I don’t respect myself. “Doesn’t your generation have that slogan about the patriarchy? Fuck the patriarchy or something. And you’re subjugating yourself to oppressions.”

“Fuck the patriarchy” It’s not like I haven’t been trying. Trying to change the system from the inside out. I am thawing out of an ice that I put myself in so I could preserve the beauty but I want the ugly. I want the ugly to kiss my face and let me be its. They’ve already taken so much. Can They at least let me own myself?

God I have chattering rage inside my chest like every organ has grown teeth and they are all seething. Fuck you man. God I want to be you so bad.

God. My transness is a monster. Fuck it. Let me eat it. Fuck the wall. Being trans may be divine but I’m done romanticising it. God. My transness is a fucking outrage and I’ve been ready to burn for it my entire life. My transness is the swamp monster finally coming to scare everyone into submission or maybe to tell everyone that just because it smells bad doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Fuck it. Let me own my destruction. Let me own the swamp monster finally stepping up and being the swamp monster. Fuck it. I want to be mine in the most disgusting ugly ways possible. I don’t want to be pure or holy. I want simply to be me in all my disgusting fucked up ways.

My transness is the beast looking into the mirror and realising it’s not such a bad thing to be. I want to be loved Because of my transness, not in spite of it. Fuck it. I want ownership. I want to kiss the palates of women and I like being choked. I want to be me in all the unafraid ways I’ve been refused. Yes, I want to be fucked under the moon and still be the monster. I want Belle to look at me and realise that loving me is not the most fucked up thing. Not loving me is. Fuck. My transness is the cliche thunderstorm at the beginning of a book. My trans is a living breathing thing. I just want it with me.

I leave the man in the middle of everything and I don’t say sorry. I do say you didn’t kiss the girl as I’m walking out but I make sure that he didn’t hear it. I take my phone out and tell my mom that I’ve been screwing things up again and I want her to help me out. My transness is a living breathing thing. No more nice boys. I’m going to rip the rulebook off me if it’s the last thing I do. The earth shakes under my feet. Fuck this. I’m not going to miss any more earthquakes.c