(not so) Average Middle Aged White Guy.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how people see me versus how I see myself.
Last month, I attended an invite-only customer appreciation event at my local tattoo parlor offering a social soiree with a professional photog on site to take photos for us that showcases our artwork collections. I was thrilled to be included as I am starved for new friends and local connection these days.
My beautiful and talented artist Lesley greeted me with an embrace and walked me through the offerings of the event. After she bounced off to welcome another client I was left with my single serve can of Squirt and gravitated back to her workstation where I had spent almost twenty four collective hours getting my sleeve done. It felt natural to hang there in a sea of strangers. Before I knew it, I struck up a conversation with a lovely younger person in big chunky knee high goth boots and a black dress. It didn’t take long to learn we both had work from the same artist as we did our tattoo collection show-and-tell and exchanged all the standard get-to-know-yas, where-ya-froms and whatta-ya-dos.
“I am a student right now, but soon I will need to put on my big boy pants and get a job.”
“Or big GIRL pants,” my feminist self blurted out without a second consideration to bread crumb that I am not a standard run of the mill middle aged cis white guy. It felt particularly urgent to differentiate at a tattoo shop, for some reason. Later, finding a way to weave in that I am a trans man that transitioned about thirty years ago into the conversation.
“Oh, I just started testosterone!” they said.
I immediately rewound back and apologized. I was mortified, suddenly shifting from concern about being read as cis het to acknowledging my grand-daddy-tranny binary assumptions and old school language.
“That’s okay, you didn’t know,” they said.
“Thank you for giving me grace.”
We moved on, exchanging coming out stories, generational differences like the fact that I transitioned before the internet of things. Finding mutual admiration, we kept each other company in between our personal photo shoots. Once my socialization cup had hit its limits, I bid my farewells and thank yous and headed home.
About a week later, I received an email from Leslie with a link to the professional photos. They were stunning. I paged through them over and over again. Picking myself apart in the ones I liked less.
“I knew my smile looked stupid when she took this one.”
“Jeeze, I wish I wasn’t so fluffy in that one.”
“Ugh. You can see my dad bod man boobs there.”
I cherry picked a couple and sent them to friends and family to get a read. Of course they were all kind, loving and complimentary which I still struggle to sit with, often. But always love the love as this old heart needs it more than ever these days.
Looking at one of my favorites in the bunch, I find myself endlessly trying to see what others see and reconcile the truths between the two.
Photo by Nicolette Lambright @ Rabble Rouser Tattoo Customer Appreciation Event - April ‘25
Last week, in my mentor’s writing class, we were offered a prompt based on a piece titled, WHAT I WANTED TO SAY WHEN YOU ASKED WHY I LIVE IN AN OLD FACTORY by Vicki Mayk.
The exercise seemed timely and perfect on the heels of the event, the photos and my search to understand the space between who I am and how I am perceived.
Here’s what came out.
What I wanted to say to let you know I am not an average middle aged white guy.
Because I was a little four year old girl who thought she was a boy. Because I would stand over the toilet and face the tank to pee while I was waiting for my penis to grow. Because I’d sleep on the floor next to my bed on my belly to make sure breasts didn’t grow. Because my mother forced me to get my ears pierced to let the world know I was a girl. Because I cried and locked myself in my bedroom when she presented me with a training bra and demanded I put it on and model it for her and my dad. Because I hung pictures of Kirk Cameron, Ralph Moccio and Michael J Fox from Teen Bop on my bedroom walls, not because they were heart throbs but because I wanted to be just like them. Because I hid my period from my mother for years until I need to get a note for swim class. Because I thought how I felt about girls was how all girls felt about each other. Because I learned that my feelings for my girl friends were inappropriate from teachers, police officers, juvenile courts and betrayed trust. Because I left home at sixteen and found community and chosen family in a group of generous older lesbians who raised me to be well versed in cooking, lesbian herstory and feminism. Because I didn’t go to college, I wasn’t in a fraternity and never experienced any sense of “brotherhood”. Because I was a young lesbian activist who did performance art at the Walker Art Center and Vulva Riot. Because I hung out with Lesbian Avengers. Because I rode in the front line with Dykes on Bikes in the first Dyke March in Minneapolis with my girlfriend on the back my lesbian “uncle and aunt” by my side. Because I was a founding youth member of a first of its kind LGBT Youth center. Because I sat on Oprah’s stage while strangers and my mother shamed me for being queer and looking “the way I do”. Because I realized I wasn’t a lesbian and transitioned to male. Because I started my career as a man in financial services. Because I hid double c cup breasts sweating endlessly under two sports bras and two undershirts two sizes too small a for a full decade before I had them and my uterus removed. Because I am not sure if I have ovaries. Because I was ashamed of being a transexual as I lived as a man among men in finance for twenty years. Because I hid my truth from friends and colleagues. Because I was the only man in a boardroom overlooking the New York Public Library with a vagina, so far as I know. Because I don’t and probably won’t ever have a wife and kids, certainly no kids that are biologically mine, and definitely no “accidents”. Because I became an orphaned adult before fifty. Because I decided I was unloveable and carried all these becauses as boulders of shame for decades. Because I lost myself to drowning in drink until I realized I didn’t really want to die after all. Because I have been obsessed with having a mustache for as long as I can remember but still can’t grow a decent one. Because as I heal the hurt from my childhood, my internalized transphobia, and find my way to being this middle aged white guy walking amongst the rest, I go unnoticed.
Since class, I have had three different people tell me that I need to finish writing my memoir. They have a sense of urgency I can’t seem to grasp. I struggle a lot these days with the project. Not just in doing the work as other priorities tug and pull and distract. But also as I think about it all. Everyone has a story, right?
Sure, I walk around as a seemingly average white guy. Behind the scenes an entirely unique experience, for sure. But I am constantly asking myself…
Who cares?
I care! And in 2 1/2 months you will have a new local friend, if you consider Silver Lake local to Santa Monica.
I agree you need to keep writing. This essay is powerful. You have valuable story to share and you tell it well.
People will care. They will be moved—and one of the mysteries of writing is that you can never predict who, or where or when. We need your story and your sensibility! ❤️