Page 90 - My FlipBook 1

I TOOK A SELFIE IN THE BACK OF THE KITCHEN a limited amount of personal protective equipment Mayor de Blasio had canceled all elec-
of the hotel where I worked during the first year and hospital beds, both of which would become tive surgeries in New York, and my
of my transition. My face bathed in fuchsia light, even more limited with each surgery. Canceling elec- surgery, which had been medically
I stared into the camera at 45 degrees, my pre- tive surgeries to keep people away from the hospi- necessary just days before, had
ferred angle, still, because it makes my jaw and tal made sense, I thought. Not that it would affect suddenly become “elective.” The pro-
my chin look smaller. I typed out, “Once I cut off me. My surgery wasn’t elective—it was medically cedure would still happen, the coor-
half my face it’s over for you bitches” in the cap- necessary. It said so right there in all three of the let- dinator on the phone assured me.
tion and hit post. ters I had to get from various health professionals She postponed my surgery to August,
I look very different from the girl in that selfie in order to argue my case for insurance coverage. along with whatever visions I had
now. I no longer wear turtlenecks, nor do I part my Like this one, from my psychiatrist: of that better next chapter.
hair to the side. Only rarely do I put on eyeliner or “Ms. Walker meets criteria for the medical neces- I told myself I’d handle it, but within
eye shadow these days. The forty or so milliliters sity of gender affirmation surgery (Coleman et al., an hour I was on the Williamsburg
of estrogen that I’ve injected into my thighs since 2011). In line with [the World Professional Associa- X Bridge with a half-empty handle of
posting it have softened some of the harder edges tion for Transgender Health’s] position statement vodka in my bag, the other half
of my now-thirty-one-year-old face. My jawline and on the medical necessity of surgical interventions poured into a Hal’s seltzer. I was upset
the shape of my chin, though, remain. for transgender persons, facial feminization surgery and out of it, desperately searching
They would have looked different if things had (FFS) is not an elective procedure for Ms. Walker for something—somewhere I could
gone according to plan. I was supposed to have insofar as the purpose is not solely to improve her walk to that would numb all the things
facial feminization surgery on March 20 (FFS, for physical appearance, but also to treat her persistent I was feeling. Getting blackout drunk
efficiency’s sake), a medically necessary procedure and well-documented gender incongruence.” at a bar was out of the question. I’d
that would have reshaped my jaw and chin, along I emailed the hospital just to confirm what I been avoiding them for almost a week
with other bones and soft tissue in my face. Want- thought to be true. “Your surgery is not elective,” at that point in an effort to sidestep
ing to “cut off half my face” is a flip way of leaning they wrote back. “It is medically necessary.” the virus. Besides, New York City’s
into the full extremity of my want, one that I try to I’d planned for this not just for months but for bars had all been ordered to shut
save for when I’m talking to other trans people years. After what seemed like ages of strategizing down by 8:00 p.m. that night. The saf-
about it. With them, I might joke that I can’t wait and job hopping, countless hours on the phone est and most available option would
for my jawless victory. Chopped and screwed. A with a seemingly endless array of gatekeepers, I be a liquor store and a vodka soda
wordless “Cut it out!” hand swipe thudding dully was finally there. I was nineteen days away from to-go, after I relieved myself at a
at my mandible. But when I’m talking about it with having facial feminization surgery. All I had to do nearby upscale pizzeria.
cis people, as perhaps I am right now, I like to was sit back and let it happen. “Hi, ma’am, how can I help you?” a
choose my words more carefully. I had a three-week aftercare schedule all filled man working at the deserted estab-
There’s a lot of loaded shorthand one might think out with more than three dozen friends and family lishment said.
to use when describing this procedure—or, rather, members penciled in to watch over me. HR had I asked if I could use the restroom,
this set of procedures performed simultaneously approved my time-off request of three and a half modulating my voice, as I often do
with the end goal of changing how one is perceived, weeks, cobbled together using all of my vacation with strangers, to sound more like
by both oneself and others. I would try, for exam- days and what remained of my sick days, plus a lit- what I thought he thought I’d sound
ple, to circumvent saying something about want- tle unpaid time to pad out the end. My insurance, like. He said it was okay and pointed
ing to look more feminine, much less wanting to which I got through the full-time writing job I now toward the back.
look like a woman, to avoid giving whomever I was worked, had confirmed that I was approved for cov- I felt stupid as I walked to the bath-
talking to license to think they know what a woman erage, lowering what would have been a mid-five- room. Why did I want to get this sur-
should look like. True, the surgery literally has the figure out-of-pocket cost to a significantly more gery anyway? The guy had already
phrase “facial feminization” in the name, but what manageable $1,500 deductible. ma’am’d me. Did I want to get extra
does that mean? What does a feminine woman look I had become fixated on my surgery date in the ma’am’d or something?
like? Whom do you picture when I ask you that ques- months leading up to it, cluttering a corkboard
tion? Is she fat? Is she white? Do you want to fuck beside my computer monitor with Post-it notes T H E WO R L D O F F E R S T R A N S
her? Do you want to be her? How do you feel about counting down the days from 95 to 78, 61, and so women many fantasies, my friend
your answers? Would you want to share them with on. I had Googled “how many days until march 31” Joan once said, but very few within
the rest of us? so often that it had become my phone’s top autofill. our reach. We might dream of roman-
These implied questions are why I prefer to say I’d hung so much of myself on that date and what xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx tic love or adequate health care
that I still want to look like me but just . . . a different my life might finally look like in the days and years without ever having the chance to
me. A me who lived another life. A me from another that followed. I imagined that this procedure would experience either. As a result, we
timeline, one where I might “get drinks with the have marked the end of a painful, tumultuous years- might risk believing that our value lies
ladies” or hear a coworker whine about “wedding long period in which everything felt in flux, includ- not within ourselves but within what-
season” and know what she meant. One where I ing my body itself. I would be done with the process ever good thing we happen to be
might think, It’s just a face-lift, or pity the poor girl of transitioning, give or take a few legal documents given, and should that good thing dis-
who had hers delayed. that I still wanted to change, and would at last be appear, so too would whatever value
able to live my life. It was a fantasy but one that I it had granted us by proxy. I wasn’t
NINETEEN DAYS BEFORE MY SCHEDULED clung to harder the closer it got to becoming real. mourning my womanhood but the
facial feminization surgery, I read reports that New Then, on March 13, my surgeon’s office called to woman I thought I would be four days PAGE 88: GETTY IMAGES
York’s governor might cancel elective surgeries on see if I would be interested in doing my surgery a later and forever after that. I was
account of the mounting COVID-19 pandemic. The week earlier, on March 20. I said yes. mourning the satisfaction that I’d no
logic made sense to me: Hospitals in the state had On March 16, my surgeon’s office called again. longer feel, now that all those years