Becoming Or A Study in Interference by Luan A. Dannerbauer

Life gets in the way of a great many things, same as I feel I often get in the way of how life could play out, executive dysfunction be damned. I could be on hormones for over six months now, if I took them regularly enough, made time often enough to drive to the one pharmacy in town that sells them, if my days had not been scheduled through and through, no rest for the wicked. I could be on some top surgery waiting list by now, begrudgingly waiting and waiting, and waiting some more. I am currently waiting for surgery, and hating every piece of having to stall for that, having to do it at all. I am terrified, and thankful, and pissed off. Becoming trans, becoming disabled. Truly.

Becoming as a trans person is what the last decade of my life has been about, in many miniscule ways, having been an adult now for a number of years, having been able to go there, say that. Saying I want this. I do think, at times, about the scared child I used to be, clearly trans yet unable to enact my transness in any way whatsoever, and actively discouraged to articulate it at all. Stuffing it all in, spilling and blurring around the edges nonetheless. Rural, lonely childhood. Sometimes I feel it’s all I talk about nowadays, with great comfortability at that. Saying I am trans, and I do trans studies. Urban, tentative adulthood. In class, a professor talks about artists enacting transgender manifestations through painterly strategies, about Gerda Wegener’s portraits of her wife Lily Elbe, which are more than gender-affirming, are actualizing Lily’s gender in paint. I think about those drawings in the drawer of my desk many miles away back home, me with short hair, a flat chest, sad eyes. I think about how I’ve never thought about my own archive of gender-actualizing artworks. Painting someone I never thought I could be, but wanted to be able to see nonetheless, secretly at least. Like a mirror without glass.

I am scared, terrified, nauseated by the thought of never getting to see that person in the mirror. It’s what I’ve been working towards, haven’t I, although slowly, badly, sometimes secretly. When I got started on medication for what life decided to throw my way, something I had not heard of, had not been at risk for, could not have prevented in any way that is rational, I found I could suddenly not see myself in the mirror at all. My face had vanished from view, had escaped my own vision along with the faces of people in the streets. Blobs, all of them, including the doctors at the hospital, including me. No kind eyes in white coats, no glimpse of facial masculinization in the bathroom mirror, just blurs of colour. I had escaped my own perception, and to no little extent does it feel like the lack of visualization threatens the materiality of gendered actualization. I want to see myself through the growth of my body, built not born, and yet I might not get to, not fully, not forever.

I’ve always known myself to be an old man, not an old woman in my late life. I’ve been visualizing him through the power of my mind for a long time now, no effort at all. He wears those grandpa shirts, cotton, patterned but nothing crazy. He reads the paper in the park, legs crossed, extravagantly coloured glasses, for he is no straight old man. He crosses his arms behind his back while he walks. He’s an enjoyer of coffee and good novels give him the thrills, and he thrives in taking on the day slowly, moving carefully but joyfully through life. All of these things, I already do in my twenties, although save for the bout of white hair that has begun to spawn I don’t yet look the part. On the day I am told I urgently need surgery, that I will repeatedly be needing surgery over the course of life, the nurse calls on me in the waiting room: “Mr ––!” I am beaming as I emerge from the usual crowd of elderly men and women. Yes, I am right here! She finds me again later, to apologize sincerely. I say why, you made my day.

I’ve never had surgery, and maybe it was foolish to think top surgery would be my first, something I needed because I decided I wanted it. The old guy across the table at self-help group calls me a young lady, wanting to be especially nice to the newcomer. I had signed up as Mr –– in the online form. I don’t have the guts, the face, the chest to tell him off, to correct him so quickly. I feel I want them to view me as a peer, struck by the same ailment as we are, not some weird fucked up kid. Little do they know I’m just another old guy at heart, struck by old guy disease. –––– is usually more common in women, safe for my specific case which is more typical for men. Figures I get the gender-affirming kind of life-changing health issues. Become-trans, become-disabled.

Becoming as a disabled person is something that has only been of concern for me quite recently, if not quite as. When I finally understood myself as an autistic person, it felt like affects, relations, and livelihood started to make sense years into the distant past and onwards into the future. Because of course that weird, scared, isolated trans kid was not wired the same way as its classmates. The last year of high school, I sustained an injury, the parental neglect of which left me in chronic pain for many years. Disability was not familiar to me then, but not foreign either. The debility of being diagnosed with ––––, unassuming as I was, and the subsequent and ongoing experience of bodymind loss hit me like a train truck, and cannot be compared to anything that’s ever happened in my life, like ever. Which of course goes on. I am lonely all over again, in different ways. I meet people who understand one part of me but not the other. I am struggling to see them together, and to smile at either in the mirror.

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Luan Aurel @luantifa is a writer, illustrator, and researcher based in Vienna, Austria. They hold a BA in theatre, film and media studies and are pursuing graduate degrees in gender studies and critical studies, focusing on trans studies, crip strategies, and artistic interventions. For several years, Luan was a magazine editor, and now organizes lectures and workshops. Luan works at a bookstore and dislikes podcasts, but is trying to get into them.