Science fiction taught me that any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. In the kitchen, my girlfriend is a witch.

“Do you have something to tell us?” my mom joked. It was a joke, because of course I didn’t. “No,” I said with a laugh. And I thought I was telling the truth.

Something had to change, because I’d never be free, be myself, if I kept it up. I decided to take the biggest risk yet, and started transitioning again.

I exist in a fresh, new, virginal body now, and I’ve started to uncover what that means for me.

This is the story of the birth and death of my name, which means that it is a story about transition, which means that it is necessarily a story about the border between two places and the force with which one rends it.

Burlesque is my loving manifestation of what all my ancestors deserved—not simply tolerance, but unbridled celebration.

For this piece, I talked to some trans women about their names and their experiences changing them legally (or choosing not to), as well as a couple of the incredible organizations attempting the make the process more accessible to all of us.

My chest continued to breathe new life, even when I was no longer alone. Physical affinity suddenly cropped up in corners I never anticipated.

I will never again cultivate a romantic relationship with a cis person on purpose, not in this life. I have been hurt too badly, too often, by too many people. T4T only. Inscrutable genders from outer space to the front, those that can be best described as “smell of campfire” && “a great pink shape.” && those best described as “a single chandelier earring dragging across your chest while we fuck.”

Three weeks ago I began my Coronavirus self-quarantine. Faced with the reality that I wouldn’t see anyone, I started an experiment. I wasn’t going to shave, paint my nails, or put on makeup — until I wanted to, for myself.

“Towards the end of the night you fall and tear the skin on your knee. But you pop back up and keep skating. You’re relieved. Now that you’ve fallen once you know you’ll be okay.”

“Presenting as male every day hurts. When the ship is in port, it’s not as bad; I grow to hate coming in to work, but once the day ends I can go home and be myself. When we’re underway, it’s worse. I’m stuck being ‘him’ all day, every day. Sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks… once, for months.”

“Butch/Femme is important to me because butches and femmes writing and discussing what it meant to be who we are shaped my understanding of myself and how I can show up in the world.”

“There’s nothing more I want to remember than every moment and sensation we shared. Our grinding hips at Queer Cumbia, feeling your drunken sweat drip onto my freshly implanted tits. The way we sloppily made out and smeared our red and burgundy lips all over our mouths, noses, forehead, and neck.”

“My brain is lit like the map of a major metropolis at night. My body is, too. ‘I am at one with a sea of sensations, glitter, silk, skin, eyes, mouths, desire,’ Anaïs Nin wrote, and that’s pretty much it. Or, put another way: I have found an affirmation of selfhood, and I haven’t thought to immediately annul it.”

“Keeping abreast of the passersby, the evidence of our intimacy was in the way we carried our hands. They were strategically placed so when they touched, it could be disguised as a perpetual accident. In honor of our silent dance, those near us were careful to walk around us instead of in-between.”

“There’s an annoying song that’s only playing all the way through all day long on some days. Others, I can barely hear the chorus, and others I can’t hear it all. But every day, I know that that song will be there again one day, maybe even tomorrow, maybe even later that same day. And I hate this song.”

“I decide I’ll test the durability of a BB cream by Tarte at thousands of feet in the air, then feel ashamed at worrying so much about how I look, then feel the dread again, that all this might go completely wrong, not because I’ll fall to my death, but because I’ll be reduced to my past.”

It’s as if I had just discovered a new color and now had this entirely new dimension to my life. I was able to paint a holistic portrait of what I wanted the rest of my life to look like.

“Despite all the planning, and all the talking, and all the money we had spent, it was THAT moment that suddenly made the wedding feel very real. This was the dress I was going to get married in, that I would be wearing when I affirmed my desire to spend the rest of my life with my amazing partner. But, it also touched something deeper, more complex, more fundamental to my transition and my womanhood.”