Page 91 - My FlipBook 1

of work and preparation would no longer pay off. edented alienation, one that I hoped would not last
Like many other people, I thought I finally had my forever. The future would be different from this, the
life together. Then the pandemic happened, and it caption declared; not only would I get FFS some-
turned out I did not. day, but once I did, everything would be different.
I’m not the only trans woman with an affinity for I wasn’t sure how, but it would be.
Cassandra, that mythological Trojan princess found In this timeline, the one I’m actually living
in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Homer’s Iliad. through, I now worry about getting laid off before
Cursed with visions of the future that no one will my new surgery date and losing the health care I
believe, Cassandra is existentially gaslit and, thus, get through my employer. At least I could still apply
a figure ripe for all sorts of transsexual projection. for Medicaid, which covers FFS in New York, but I
I’ve felt cursed with visions of my own in the weeks worry about having to start the thirteen-month pro-
I IMAGINED since my surgery was delayed, only mine are of a cess over from square one.
THAT present that has failed to come to pass. In this other I worry that state-run insurance could disappear X
X
THIS timeline, I imagine that the worst of the swelling in the next five months. I watch my friends get laid
off and the relief funds and GoFundMes roll in. I
would have gone down by now, except for maybe
PROCEDURE my lip and my cheeks. That’s what my friend Macy wonder if I’m watching the last gasps of capitalism,
WOULD told me, that the fat grafts from her stomach took a as all of its contingent institutions crumble. Those
HAVE MARKED while to relax and settle into their new home. institutions, as much as I loathe them and wish their
THE END OF A I’d probably still be bruised at this point, some end, have made my FFS possible: the aforemen-
PAINFUL, three weeks out, with violet half moons floating tioned insurance plan, the advertising and venture
TUMULTUOUS underneath my eyes. My mom used to say that I capital that fund the newsroom I work in, the for-
YEARS-LONG bruise like a banana. That’s still the case, if the lit- profit hospital where my surgeon planned to oper-
ate, the American health-care system and all that it
tle purple circles dotting my legs are any indication,
PERIOD IN a baffling body of evidence I have no memory of col- demands to simply access care. If the United States
WHICH lecting, pointing to all of the countertops and bed falls, so too would this particular model of medical-
EVERYTHING frames I’ve bumped into over the past few days. ized transition that has shaped so many years of my
FELT IN FLUX, My penchant for bruising would have put me at life. So too would my transition as I’d planned it.
INCLUDING MY risk for developing a hematoma, possibly under my When I catch myself wallowing about that pros-
BODY ITSELF. I eyes, where all the blood displaced by my rhinoplasty, pect, of the end of trans medical care as we know
WOULD BE brow-bone reduction, forehead contouring, and it, I remind myself that this age has been anything
DONE WITH frontal sinus setback would have pooled. It’s a rare but golden. If the system we have in place has failed
to serve even me—a white, feminine trans woman
complication that’s easy enough to resolve, though
THE PROCESS unpleasant all the same. After a procedure last year, who’s extremely into men, the very individual these
OF TRANSITION- I developed a hematoma, and I feared that such a institutions were built for—then who is it even serv-
ING, GIVE OR complication might repeat itself on my face. I’d like ing? Why shouldn’t it be replaced with something
TAKE A FEW to imagine that it did not, though my visions of that new and better?
LEGAL other timeline also feature dozens of friends rotat- Should our current system of trans care collapse,
DOCUMENTS ing in and out of the small Brooklyn apartment I now I can know at least that I’ve prepared somewhat for
THAT I STILL find myself quarantined in, bringing me food and the possibility. One of the major reasons I got that
procedure last year was to destroy my body’s abil-
watching all the movies on my aftercare watch list.
WANTED TO My visions fail to account for social-distancing mea- ity to produce testosterone, as a safeguard against
CHANGE, AND sures, much less the greater pandemic, making them losing access to injectable estrogen someday. I
WOULD AT LAST as inaccurate as they are useless. Still, I hold them wanted to be ready for whatever crisis lay ahead. “I
BE ABLE TO close sometimes and torture myself with “What if?” will not live through the apocalypse like every day
LIVE MY LIFE. is the first year of transition,” I’ve told myself, insist-
IT WAS A FAN- I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE WHY I TOOK THAT ing on being ma’am’d even as the world burns.
Now, in quarantine, I find that I’m not in a hell so
TASY BUT ONE fuchsia-drenched selfie a few years ago, or why I felt much as a purgatory: a forced stasis throwing all of
the need to post it. My surroundings weren’t all that
THAT I CLUNG notable; I walked through that kitchen at least once our lives off track. In all my crisis planning, I never
TO HARDER per shift on the way to the hotel’s trash room. I also planned for a crisis like this. It doesn’t feel like the
THE CLOSER IT didn’t particularly like being there, thanks to an early end of anything, or the beginning of something new,
GOT TO BE- encounter with two of the guys who worked in the at least not yet. It just is, and it will continue to be
COMING REAL. kitchen. I waved hello as we passed in the hallway. until someday it’s not. I feel similarly matter-of-fact
They took one look at my baby trans heels and too about my surgery some three weeks into sheltering
much makeup, then burst out laughing. One of them in place; the hours I’ve spent on Zoom and Face-
asked the other, “What the fuck is that?” I’d like to Time have given me plenty of opportunities to con-
say I posted the selfie as a show of self-acceptance, sider this face I thought I’d never see again. I find
to overcome the hurt that the encounter had left me that my surgery now feels incidental rather than
with, but that’s not quite it. More likely, I just wanted auxiliary, something that will simply happen or not
to take a selfie under lighting so flattering that it happen rather than a catalyst unto itself. I haven’t
begged me to whip out the front-facing camera. It Googled the number of days. I trust that they’ll dwin-
was a time in my life of great insecurity and unprec- dle without my concern.

91 SUMMER 2020