Looking back at summer

In recent years of course I haven’t done many of the things I’ve usually done in the past due to the ongoing pandemic. I’d been imagining that the situation would improve in time as measures to control the disaster would be taken. Yeah, that’s sure as hell not happening. It can easily get even worse though! There’s mask bans being passed, so far I’m able to protect myself with the respirators but that might not last. Plus other diseases are taking off. May be far more dangerous to go out in the near future. I got out some this summer because who knows if there will be more chances to go out anytime soon.

Also, I’m getting into a surprisingly comfortable phase of transition where I’m no longer the very memorable genderqueer person everyone remembers, as far as I can tell I’m pretty invisible. It feels more comfortable going random places as a woman. I’m so invisible I can use public toilets without it being an adventure, which also makes going places a great deal easier! I’ve gotten the formal name change things done, I have a driver’s license and passport with photos that look like me now and a name that doesn’t surprise people now. Who knows if I’ll still have documents in the future though, given what Florida and Texas are already doing. Again, maybe should travel while it’s only as dangerous as it is now.

So, while I still can, I did go to some fun places. I went to Illinois to my high school reunion plus a walk around my childhood neighborhood. First trip to Illinois since the very start of the pandemic.

I went to Bastille Days here in town, which I have done before these last few years. I went to Illinois again to the Illinois Railway Museum for Diesel Days, which I last did in 2019. I went to the Boernor Botanical Gardens at the south end of the city for the first time in many years. I went up to Baraboo for the Badger Steam and Gas Engine Show, which again I last went to in 2019. This time with a Flo Mask no problems from breathing the dust around the threshing machine demonstrations!

I went to the Make Art MKE event in Wauwatosa again, and this year for my first time up to the Holy Hill Arts and Crafts Fair, and saw the Basilica inside for the first time, plus the climb up the tower.

I have been getting out to some of the nearby state parks in recent years, but this year made it up to Harrington Beach twice to swim in Lake Michigan and hang out on the beach and walk around the trails. And to generally get to enjoy being a girl in a bikini at the beach. I did three trail runs up at Pike Lake plus swimming in the lake, as well as one more visit to swim and to just walk up to the tower. I went to my most local state park, Havenwoods, a number of times.

And also something I enjoyed a lot, my first camping at a state park in nine years. Pre-pandemic I’d camp at Oshkosh for the show, but that’s a very different style of camping. Taking a week off and hanging out in a very quiet park in the northern Kettle Moraine and going hiking and swimming every day was a wonderful time. As a very outdoors and mostly alone thing it feels pretty safe. It was also really nice to do this for the first time while living comfortably as a woman. Even though it was mostly a quiet alone time every social interaction I had was the easy comfortable sort they are now. I’ve been taking estrogen long enough and am close enough to the end of electrolysis that I’d crawl out of the sleeping bag at sunrise, put on a old fleece top I bought when I assumed I was a man that’s ugly and won’t be missed if damaged while camping, and then feel my smooth face and look down and see the shape of my breasts, and realize that I really do just look like this all the time now.

In early pandemic days when the advice switched to wearing any mask you could improvise, I went out with my face covered and discovered that people would actually just say “ma’am” and then…stick with it. Didn’t apologize and start saying “sir” a lot the moment they actually looked at me. I liked that a lot and it was a bit frustrating to experience it while mostly not being able to be out and around people much at all. I wondered how this would work out in the longer term.

Honestly it was a long process to get used to it really working reliably, even though it was reliable right from the start. And at the time I thought electrolysis would be primarily to make this “passing” work even if someday masks were no longer going to be necessary (imagining not needing masks was optimistic!) and at least to a degree hormone therapy as well. I really had to experience it to understand how much I like this, how happy it makes me when I’m all alone seeing my reflection or just looking down or just feeling my smooth face. There are some very very nice social interaction advantages to just looking like this now, but a big part of the joy really is just for me. I used to think I was just the usual amount of unhappy with my body, but that was actually dysphoria.

So a lot of this summer’s travel was some of these formerly familiar trips but now done as a woman. It just feels comfortable. It’s so much easier for me to talk with people now. And it feels much more predictable than my high-vis genderqueer days of the few years pre-COVID. But even thinking back to my “boy days,” as I call them, it’s just so nice now to feel like I know how to talk to people. It turns out I already knew how, I just needed to be seen as a girl for it to work right!

To be determined what the future holds, but honestly it was a nice summer this year.