"I thought you were a regular man"
Passing has never been my primary goal but man, it feels good.
I listened to “Galway Gal Bagpipes” by The Snake Charmer a lot in the winter of 2024-2025, which has the sound of a victorious army. It gives you that pound-your-chest feeling of “I did it, I got the girl, I won.” That was when things were starting to get bad. I knew they were starting to go downhill, but I was also fully healed and it was the grand finale of my transition, so I felt truly victorious, even as I stared down the next chapter.
I was at Five (local gay club) with Sebastian and an old man made conversation with me for quite a while before I mentioned having been born female, and he went “Wait, wait, wait - what do you mean?” When I explained, he was obviously shocked. This in turn, shocked me. I said, “Wait are you for real? You couldn’t tell?” He said no, absolutely not. He clearly wasn’t faking it, because now he was trying to take not-so-sneaky glances at my crotch to see if I had a dick. I said “How the hell did you not notice my scars?” and he said “I didn’t look,” lol. Cut to the long question-answering session -
> How do you fuck? Do you have a dick? When are you gonna get a dick? Why did you want to be a man? Wow, this trans stuff is just SO confusing! You never know who’s who!
> Haha yeah, it is! It even confuses me sometimes.
> I was so sure you were a regular man! I mean, that sounded bad. I’m sorry -
> No it’s okay, that’s a fine way to say it.
All your standard stuff. Finally after his main questions were answered, I pull Sebastian closer to me and I say “So what do you think he is?” The guy’s jaw just dropped - he took a little step back like I had told him the floor was about to fall out from under him, and said “I don’t know ANYTHING anymore!”
That was the first time I clearly passed while shirtless.
Then a few months later I took David on a field trip to Five, and essentially the same thing happened. I was talking to this other old guy for a long while, and I said a few things that revealed I was trans, but I think they went over his head until the third one, at which point he stopped dead in his tracks, mouth open. We proceeded to recreate the rigamarole from above. I said “How did you not notice my chest scars?” and he said “I actually noticed your chest because it’s really well-shaped. I just thought ‘That guy has a really nice chest.’” (Thank you, Dr. Bergqvist!) This guy was a big chaser, in the hot way. His shock was clearly authentic because his face LIT UP when he found out, and he immediately said “I’ve always wanted to try an ftm!” as if meeting a celebrity. Then turned to David and said “I see your game” as if congratulating him.
God it felt so fucking good to pass. I listened to that triumphant song frequently on the way to work that winter, and replayed the things those two guys said over and over. Held my hand on my chest, over the seatbelt I used to never wear, and thanked a nonexistent god for how good it felt, how male.
Passing has never been my primary goal but man, it feels good. It enhances that feeling of masculinity that I’ve always kinda had, or had the drive towards, in my bones. I have trouble describing the end goal sometimes, but I KNOW what it feels like. I say “the feeling of maleness in my body matters more than passing” and I’m not sure people understand the feeling I’m referencing. I don’t know how to tell you what it is, but it just IS. It was there when I was a kid, then it got chained down by estrogen puberty and atrophied by society, and I spent the next ~12 years trying to free it. And finally, I did free it, and I feel it now every time I put my hand on my chest - it feels like I’m a free healthy animal. It feels strong and virile and, just, male. And that feels RIGHT in my body.
People are always like “What does it even feel like to ‘be a man on the inside?’ I’m a cis man and I don’t even know what that means!” and sometimes trans people will respond “Well it doesn’t really feel like anything; that’s an oversimplification of a more complicated situation.”
I believe their self-reported experiences, and I agree that it’s complicated, but that’s not how it is for me. I do feel it. I know what it feels like to be a man on the inside. There is a distinct feeling of being a man and it’s just, it’s in your bones. It’s in your bones and your chest and your shoulders. It feels strong and red and calm and heavy, and like a horse. Like a big, fast, healthy horse that gets angry when you try to break it. And it feels like a stone on your chest, which sometimes crushes you, but usually calms you. It’s a sense that your bones are big, and strong enough to bear things, and the burden is actually calming. You feel like Steve McQueen on the motorcycle and you also feel like the motorcycle engine is in your own chest. I feel big. I feel so much bigger than 5’2’‘ and I have a cock, spiritually. Idk how to say it any clearer, man. I feel like a fucking man.
My brother described that feeling totally unprompted a little while ago. I didn’t initiate the topic, and I had never told him about it before - he just started telling me how he really enjoys being a man, and described the feeling similarly to the ways I’ve always described it. Loved that.
And when you don’t feel like a man, that feels bad. Right? I think a lot of guys easily understand that, even if they don’t understand the positive version. Maybe the positive version is hard for a lot of regular guys to parse because it’s usually the “water they swim in”. But of course it feels bad when you don’t feel like a man - your bones know you’re meant to be one. When you don’t feel like the man you’re meant to be, you’re instinctively driven to fix that.
Around the same time that those two old guys thought I was a regular man, I made a new friend - the first friend who never knew me with breasts. That alone was so healing, to have something untainted. When I told her Sebastian was also trans, she almost didn’t believe me at first. “But he is SO masculine! I never would have known. He is so manly.” It filled my heart almost to overflowing - that’s my man.
Years earlier, I wrote:
In this period of life, prior to medical transition, I feel an everyday closeness to the he/him lesbians of our history, and the transmen who never knew there were others like them, and the masculine biological females of all types who ended up lobotomized and locked in convents and married off and banned from owning property, and who died and were buried as women. The “women who lived as men” and the “women crossdressers” and the thousands of other people throughout the ages who fought to escape femaleness in their own unique ways, in ways often uncomfortable to our modern ears, in all of their nuanced and beautiful and horrific individual details. Across all of them a shared struggle, a shared unwillingness to stay small and silent and compliant. I wish they were here to see us win now. I will win. I will not die like this.
So last winter I played those sentences over in my head - those old men saying they thought I was a regular guy, my friend marveling about how masculine Sebastian is - so proud of him and so overjoyed for myself, and so awed and humbled by our shared success. Me, finally sometimes passing, and him, passing so well people barely even believe it when I tell them. The things we fought for so hard worked - the things I fought for, the things he fought for, and the things our ancestors fought for on our behalf. Just a few generations earlier, the two of us wouldn’t have been able to own bank accounts. A few generations before that, we would have been closed off from most jobs, unable to make a decent life without putting ourselves at the mercy of a natal male for support. And now we get to be entire men? Thank you, suffragists and other brave ancestors. There is no sweeter joy.