When I came out to myself as trans two years ago, one of the first things I said was that while maybe I preferred men's clothing and haircuts, I (probably) wasn't "trans enough" to want surgeries or to change my pronouns. Two years later and I'm counting down the days until top surgery and telling people they can call me Marco, and that she/her doesn’t really refer to me anymore, if it ever did.
When my cousin invited me to her wedding, I couldn’t bring myself to repeat any of the auto-responses I’d stocked up over the years to get out of going home. Instead, I blurted out: “I’m super happy for you, but sick of pretending like I'm Single in the City -- like the love of my life doesn’t exist -- for the sake of other people’s feelings.” “So…” she said, “who is he?” “She,” I choked out. “Her…
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer” –Zora Neale Hurston 1. The three years I’ve lived out of the closet have all been question years. I’ve marked them with my own rituals: around March first, my “official” gayversary, I reread The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which wasn’t my first gay book, but rather the first gay book I read after I started to believe I could be gay. March first is an approximation,…
There are things that my family has agreed not to talk about. Not formally and certainly not out loud, but through a selective, half-conscious telepathy that seems bred into each of us, along with brown eyes, guilt, and a propensity towards gaining weight. Weight, in fact, is one of many things we don’t talk about, as well as autism and whether it runs in the family (it does), sex (no one admits to having it),…
Tyler McCabe's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Truth often finds its way to the mind close-muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. --Nathaniel Hawthorne Frankly, when I was ready, it only took a small measure of effort to declare myself queer to family and friends. I scheduled the coffee dates and…
Previously: Watching Bad Gay Movies With Autostraddle. Rohin Guha is currently executive editor at The Aerogram, an online magazine that provides a variety of South Asian perspectives on popular culture. He lives in Metro Detroit. He also has this really wonderful hairstyle that can perhaps best be described as a "casual pompadour," and he is my friend. Together we watched the inexplicable Touch of Pink. Some key facts: It is in fact named…
