God, Ingrid. You still do it to me.
“I’m telling you because I fucked up. I pissed off someone from our past. Someone who hunts down and harasses girls for kicks. Now Black Iris is on the run from him, and they don’t have my back anymore. It’s just a matter of time till he finds me. And hurts me. And the girls I love.” My thumb pressed hard, pulse to pulse. “Including you.”
THREE YEARS AGO
VLOG #104: MONSTER
REN: See this shit? [Touches his mouth.] It’s not makeup, you guys. This is real. Real red American blood. All it took was one fuckup to remind me how fragile it is, this fucking illusion of gender we’re all performing for each other.
Let me start at the beginning.
I got drunk tonight. Really, really drunk.
[Jump cut.]
Lately I’ve been feeling like garbage. Moody, insecure, self-loathing. Almost—I hate to say this, but it’s true—like a girl. The girl I used to be, anyway. And I know exactly the reason why: my T level is low. I’m not properly absorbing the gel, or something. My endo’s upping the dose. But until the prescription goes through, I’m self-medicating with everyone’s favorite fix-you-upper: alcohol.
T and booze have similar effects. Overconfidence. Lust.
And, crucially, not fucking recognizing danger.
Tonight I got drunk at the club. Made a total slut of myself. And because I was in a shit mood, I was a jerk to my friends. Can’t remember what I said, but now E won’t return my texts.
I deserved this.
I’m a monster.
My roomie thinks it’s because my T’s too high, that it’s making me aggressive, mean, but the bloodwork says the opposite. So what’s the fucking answer? I’ll tell you: I’m just an asshole. I’m a bad boy. Not in a sexy-leather-jacket, cigarette, pomade way—I mean I’m bad at being a boy. I overcompensate. Try too hard to be hard. It’s all an act, covering up how fucking weak and fake I am inside. My body’s so different now, so much stronger, but behind this [taps his chest] I’m a scared little kid who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. No one knows I skipped all the formative lessons. It’s like that nightmare where you show up for a big test at school, and you didn’t study. That’s every day of my fucking life. I’m not ready for this.
I’m a man who never had a boyhood.
[Jump cut.]
So I was drinking. And flirting my ass off with this girl. We danced, and touched, and for a minute I felt like everything could be okay. She wanted to hook up, and I wanted to be a normal guy who could give it to her.
I went to piss first, to check myself. Not myself, exactly—the equipment.
Trigger warning: anatomical talk.
One of the most common questions I get is: How do trans men fuck?
And like, okay. You could just google that. But it’s one thing to read a dry—pun intended—explanation of how this stuff works, and another to hear it straight from a real live trans boy. To have that information humanized. The whole point of this—of me getting on camera and sharing my life with you—is to humanize a transgender life. To show you that I’m flesh and blood, just like you. Well, except for my plastic cock.
Let’s learn together, kids.
One of the effects of being on T is growing a dick. It’s my clit, technically. Testosterone enlarges it. When we’re in the womb, we all start off with the same junk. Depending on which hormone we’re exposed to, that junk turns male or female—or ambiguous, as the case may be. You know the little notch that runs down the underside of a penis? That’s where the labia fused to form the scrotum. And when people with clits get aroused? Their clit gets stiff and erect. Literal lady boners.
Our junk has the same origin. And T blurs that line.
But a trans guy never gets to typical cis male size. We get a small dick that can’t penetrate, not satisfyingly. But it gets hard. I get morning wood—after I take my daily T dose. I jerk off like a guy, except with two fingers, not my fist.
So, I compensate. I wear this thing that gives me a bulge, called a packer. Mine is the deluxe kind: it also lets me piss standing up, and if I slide a stiff rod inside of it, it lets me fuck. It’s the all-in-one silicone wonder-cock.
I’m supposed to see this as an extension of my body. But to me, it’s a constant reminder that I’m not the same kind of man as the average cis guy on the street. Sure, some of them know how this feels—take a dude with testicular cancer who gets his junk surgically removed. We’re in the same boat. We were both supposed to have fully functioning original plumbing. We’re never, ever going to be satisfied with some prosthetic. It’s the most intimate part of your body, the most sensitive, the core physical component of your sexuality.
It’s the one part of being a guy that I will never truly know.