last month I took my son to his first ever pride event.
He came out to us as a trans boy recently (he had identified as nonbinary since he was 6 years old, so we've known he was trans already, but this was a new shift and he's excited and nervous about the change) and is finally old enough to not scamper into oblivion during large, public events, so I hiked up my chronic illness pants and agreed to take him to a small independent book fair event near our community. I didn't have the energy available to bring him to a whole-ass pride parade, so we compromised with this event on the condition that I take him to another, larger event in the fall.
It was delightful. It was also so clear how charmed all of the vendors were to see this kid--four and a half feet of incandescent queer enthusiasm, glitter makeup all over his face, wrapped in a nonbinary flag as a cape, with every pride accessory he has cobbled together clipped somewhere on his person like he himself was a flea market of rainbows. He skipped about to every stall, talking to anybody who would listen. It was incredibly precious.
I was following at a distance, weighing my own purchasing decisions and telling everybody how proud I was of my son. "You should be," one vendor replied, "he's incredible." I know. I know he is. And it felt like I was being told that not just because it's true, but because too many parents of LGBTQIA+ children have no idea what an incredible blessing they are holding in their hands. Too many see it as another weird kid thing to indulge instead of a celebration of the beautiful humans their kids are becoming. I wondered, in a selfish moment, what that vendor thought of me--a pudgy Midwestern person in a t-shirt and dinosaur leggings, passing as nothing so readily as a soccer mom, following quietly behind and buying books.
Having this self-consciousness is so stupid and funny to me. I was literally there with one of my three partners, my two sons, and my trans ex who is now a dear friend. I look every inch the gender I was assigned at birth walking next to two people who could easily pass as men, but am a genderfluid demisexual biromantic traversing these aisles with the man who calls me his boyfriend and the person who used to. I know who I am. It shouldn't matter to me what a gaggle of artists see--what matters is that they are living their own journeys, and that they also get these moments of joy sharing their art, just as my son gets these moments of joy existing in a place where he is seen and loved and safe.
I expressed these insecurities to a few people who know and love me. Each was incredibly kind and understanding while they gently explained to me that I'm one of the gayest human beings they've ever met in their lives and despite how I perceive myself, it would be frankly astonishing for someone to look at me and not see someone who is part of that community.
It did feel nice. If I'm honest with myself, I know they're probably right. But inner voices don't like to listen to things like truth and reason and logic, they listen to every person who sees my breasts and immediately calls me "ma'am", the dysphoria I feel every time I get a period, the internalized biphobia and transphobia that tell me that since I am woman-shaped and in a relationship with a man-shaped person, I am not trans enough or gay enough to 'count' and never will be. Inner voices listen to the chorus of childhood trauma and religious ignorance that set me in a box my entire life, praised me for being uniquely myself, and then told me "wait no, not like that" when I told the truth about who I actually was.
Getting top surgery would be cool. Maybe one day I'll have a job and insurance consistent enough to even consider making that a reality. Maybe by then I'll have circled back around and decided that my breasts are fine and I want to keep them. As soon as someone figures out how to make them velcro-compatible, sign me the fuck up for that. I don't really know whether I'd want to do anything else with my body on a medical level that would make me pass more as male, especially since I do still identify strongly with pieces of my womanhood. I also have no idea if other interventions would even be possible with my migraines and the way they have fucked up my body.
I wish I looked gayer. I wish that when people saw me, they saw a gay man with his boyfriend. I wish that at the same time that I delight every time my sons call me "mom". It's all swirly and complicated and weird. Maybe identity always is.
My kid is incredible, though. and my dinosaur leggings are fucking awesome.