If You're Nice About It, Call Me Allison

Some of them say that we're sick, or crazy, and some of them think that we're the most gorgeous special things on earth.   -Venus Xtravaganza Then saith Jesus to the disciple: Behold thy mother! -John 19:27 ​I found Venus Xtravaganza’s grave thanks to the Catholic Church. And like the Catholic Church, their help came in the most Catholic Church way possible: play-for-pain.  It was Good Friday. My service on one side of the Hudson had let out, but I had to get to Jersey to pick up my family from the airport. So I decided to make a stop on the way.  Jesus died at 3 o’clock. I was in my car by 3:10.  ——— I have a strong relationship to historical spaces and not just like a Civil War battlefield or Grant’s Tomb. If you tell me something amazing happened on an exact spot, I don’t care what’s there now, I have to see it. I don't care if, like the building where Chester Arthur got sworn in, it's now a grocery store.  My favorite memory from visiting London many moons a...

  June 22nd, 2025. The day before I turned 40. My wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said I wanted her to take the kids to the movies so I could eat and drink alone at my friend's bar. Wish granted, I housed a plate of wings, had a burger, multiple gin and tonics and decided I would transition.  No, it wasn't the alcohol talking. For weeks, I'd known that I was ready to do it after years of making excuses, a full year after blurting out loud to my therapist I want to love women as a woman  and allowing myself to wonder how nice that would be. I look forward to one day sharing a very dysphoric photo I took on 6/22/25 for the kind of before/after-HRT collage trans people are so fond of posting.  There was one problem with finally coming to terms with my gender: I wouldn't be able to do anything about it for two weeks. I had to accompany my family on a cruise, a summer routine that allows my wife and I some downtime from the kids. I figured being trapped on ...

  In my high school days, I hung out with a variety of social groups. For a closeted t girl with no fixed identity, the validation of my peers was of utmost importance. If I may paraphrase the apostle Paul: to the athletes, I became a linebacker. To the band geeks, a trombonist. I socialized with any one who would have me, save the cheerleaders, who were not stereotypically snobby but whose high femme-ness I was both intimidated by and secretly coveted. The best group to chill with by far was the alt-girls.  As someone who used conformity as a dysphoria coping mechanism, alt-girls fascinated me with their non-conformity. They  shopped at Hot Topic , did their hair in weird styles, and gave zero fucks, especially towards the people who sneered at them. They listened to punk and pop rock, wore bright clothes and always seemed to be smiling. Alt-girls were sartorially daring, culturally-adjacent to goths but without the black warpaint and performative sadness. And their...

Time For Lia and Girlalala… I want to buy time For the dolls who realize when they are young And are bullied And are litigated And are shoved into lockers and closets I want to buy time If the world wants to cannibalize their humanity At least let me buy them time For them to emerge from the shell of childhood And the rigors of youth For their brains to slow down And for them to realize that there is freedom There is joy You just need time Let me buy it for you! Buy it from the bullying parents! From our phobic government! From the Christian bigots! All the latter wants is money  All the former wants is a false promise to know they didn’t fail Let me buy time I want to pay God But I only see Her on the Cross Because I know She is with you in your suffering She will always embrace you But how will you know If you do not have time? The Part of My Body HRT Helped the Most The part of my body HRT helped the most Was not my breasts (regrettably) Or my butt (It shrunk!) Or my face (Still...

  I haven't had many awful days as a trans woman but Saturday was shaping up to be one. I woke up to the horrifying news out of Venezuela, another moment of political exhaustion and frustration. I try not to talk politics too much in this space; I have plenty of opinions but nothing of value that you can't get elsewhere. I lift this up because even by the standards of the last twelve months, what happened felt exceptionally odious.    On a mezzo level, there was another horror that, while not as devastating, was personal. A trans woman with a large social media following wrote a thread on BlueSky in which she was prepared to delete her account. Long story short: her photos on her socials had been co-opted by some creep on X and transformed into nudes by Grok. The woman shared her story of being a survivor, how hard the recovery was, how difficult it still felt to claim bodily autonomy after all this time and how his actions brought it all back.  Two incidents with on...

  I wear red on Christmas Eve For you and for me Why is red the big color on Christmas? (I digress)   We go to church And it takes me back to when I was 12.  The sights, the sounds, the smells Even for a trans woman Church feels safe   You’re with me And you’re looking so beautiful I try to outdo you In my red, my cashmere jacket, my boots I fail There is no outdoing you.   I wear red on Christmas Eve In hopes that we will kiss   And we’ll go to a party And they’ll say “Where were you?” “Church” “Church? Two lesbians?” And we’ll just laugh Because we know the joys God brings Are beyond the boundaries set by men   After all, God brought us together Did She not?   We sit by the fire (A fake one, please) And sip something Mulled wine Spiked egg nogg Your choice And we cuddle And we dream Of a better world Of being grateful for a beautiful night in this one I can hear your heart beating And I won’t let myself believe it’s for me No matter how many tim...