happy happy

Hey all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've been crazy busy. Between work, going to the gym, therapy, co-facilitating a weekly transfolks' support group, and all the little everyday piddly-shit of living, I've been a little off the radar.
December 16th was my birthday (I'm thirty-eight; bummed I'm no longer thirty-five, but grateful I'm not yet forty) and fortunately it fell on a Friday, my one day off a week. I took myself out to lunch and did a little shopping. Then I went to the gym for a few hours, and then to Jake's (local gay bar) where a bunch of my friends bought me drinks to celebrate. Mind you, when I say "bought me drinks", I mean that I ended up consuming three Mike's Hard Lemonades in about two hours, and getting quite buzzed. Of course, my friends, who comprise a rather hard-drinking crowd compared to what I'm used to, made much fun of me for being such a lightweight. But I had a delightful time.
The night before (Thursday) was our monthly Gender Smash, put on by the Gender Variant Healthcare Project. I read a poem I had written and thought of reading last month, but chickened out. But I got up on stage and read it this time, and it was encouragingly well-recieved.

The Seven Gates by Lucas Scott Miller

At the first gate, I give up my name.
My mother's first gift, surrendered
gladly, and gladly Death's gatekeeper
plucks it from my lips.
Papers signed and fees paid,
I enter the underworld, where a black-robed, black-winged judge
asks the question asked of all seekers:
"Are you doing this to escape debt or criminal prosecution?"
There are more fearsome fates to run from, I tell him:
a lifetime wasted in this husk,
being constantly called "ma'am", or by a name ill-fitting as my skin.
My answer pleases him, and I pass on.

At the second gate, I surrender my armor.
My shaman-guide must see who it is
she leads through the dark.
Patiently peeling, she drops my defenses one by one at the gatekeeper's feet.
As new light reveals what's old beneath,
soul-scars and memory's shades,
she muses into the night:
"I think we can start you on hormones after the new year."
With that promise clutched in my tattered heart,
I once again pass beyond.

At the third gate, I relinquish my blood.
Family stumble over pronouns
while my mother weeps for a daughter disappearing
from a scrapbook of illusions.
"It's still so hard to think of you as 'he'," she says
as through uncomprehending fingers sift the ashes
of a memory that was not.
I stretch those bonds to the breaking point,
not knowing if they will hold or snap,
but there is slack enough
in generous hearts,
and I walk on.

At the fourth gate, I hand over my past,
all that I acheived in someone else's name:
four decades now of accomplishment, advancement, adulation
all awarded to a glamoury, or ghost
in the machine of paper,numbers and the letter F;
the before photo
solid and established, while the blank-slate after
offers his potential and waits his day.
"Where did you get this woman's driver's license?" asks the man in blue,
but resilience triumphs, and I move along.

At the fifth gate, I bid farewell to face and form.
Each sting of an oil-filled needle pumps the juice
of manhood through my thickening muscles;
skin and bone grow coarse and broad.
New passions shift my continents within, tectonic, volcanic, changeable
as my morphing flesh.
A mountain rises at my base, burying the valley; a forest sprouts across my chest and legs-- no more a
smooth plain,
my voice, no longer rain but thunder.
The false cloak of my hair falls in a halo around me as the barber asks,
"Are you sure you want it this short?"
My jaw will learn the cold thrill of razors, and my very scent has changed.
The huntress's hounds may chase me down, but
before that,
I move on.

At the sixth gate, I offer up my terrors.
The leering jaws of poverty and violence, glinting in shadow,
catch at the edges of my despair.
My resolve comes near to shredding.
Nightmares lunge from sleepless hours, cawing "You sick freak!" and "Here's your resume back-- we don't
think you'd be...happy...here."
But he who hesitates feeds fear until it's fat
and here again's the gatekeeper with his black
sack yawning wide
to swallow doubt, digest it and spit back determination,
and I push on.

At the seventh gate, I sacrifice my flesh,
pounds of it, sliced and suctioned cleanly away
by the magus's knife: "We'll have to graft the nipples-- there won't be much sensation."
To a steel tray, and then to oblivion, these last barriers
between self and seen self vanish.
Deep in gaseous dreams, the scalpel's lick feels far from me,
but my offering is accepted.
Lightened, released, stripped of all history,
I come at last before Death's throne.

The Crone's cold kiss confers wisdom
even as it steals the breath
that might have uttered my new name.
I must hang here, meat upon a hook,
a while longer, while my stitched and livid flesh grows whole.
The gatekeeper visits me
in my hospital bed--
he renders back each talisman transformed;
all that I gave up returns to me as wisdom won and power purchased at the point of pain,

And I, clad in these new truths,
emerge, balanced and reflected
into a bright, bright day.

---Olympia, WA
17 November 2005

My pagan pals will doubtless recognize in the poem's symbolism echoes of the Descent Of Inanna ritual some of us participated in at Rites of Spring, May 2001. The DOI, based on the Sumerian text of the same name, is basically an underworld journey created by Mark Hall-Girard as a ritual for self-transformation. It was a deeply powerful experience, as I recall, and provided me with many tools and skills that apply beautifully to the process of transitioning. Thanks, Mark, wherever you are!
Anyway, today was the Xmas potluck at my job, and I ate way too much. Gonna have to do penance at the gym tomorrow...sigh.
Here's wishing everyone a joyful winter holiday, and as a new year's rez, I will try to post more regularly.