The last few mornings in my shower, I’ve noted in the back of my mind that I’m running out of conditioner and I’ll need to pick up more. And then I review that note, remember what’s happening in four days, crumple it up and throw it in my mental wastepaper basket. Every time my hair snags on the hairbrush, or catches on my earrings, after the initial flash of annoyance, there’s a reminder that this annoyance is not long for this world, and will be replaced with… a whole different set of emotions.

When I’ve been telling people about the planned scene, most of them (especially the trans women in my life) ask me in a concerned tone why I’m choosing to do this, and like… I don’t know? There’s a lot of reasons. I’m gonna take a stab at articulating some of them, for your benefit and probably mine.

NUMBER ONE

I’m pretty susceptible to the desires of others. I don’t think I’m like, a people pleaser necessarily, as much as I am a kind of natural bully victim. The woman leading the charge on this scene has expressed a desire to shave my head and fuck me up for… basically the whole time we’ve known each other. And for whatever reason, when someone says “I think it would be hot to be cruel to you in such-and-such a way”, I will more often than not find myself agreeing. I’m addicted to bullying, to cruelty, to being degraded or laughed at or tortured or tormented. If I knew exactly why, maybe I could do something about it, but I’m not sure I really want to? I dunno, I like being kinky, and part of the way I do kink is letting people fuck me up when the mood strikes them. I like feeling coerced. I like to suffer, I love to hate what people do to me, and let them do it anyways. I let people put cigarettes out on me last summer, and was almost immediately overwhelmed by the pain and the amount of interest, but I stuck it out way longer because I wanted more scars.

NUMBER TWO

My emotional masochism is linked heavily to ‘ruining my appearance/presentation’. I talk about this a lot with regards to the wam kink stuff; the reason that’s so achingly horrible for me instead of the fun silly sensory play it is for other people is the loss of control over how I appear. And having someone hold me down while they buzz the hair I’ve spent the last few years growing out and styling is a very firm and distinct loss of control over how I look. It’s going to hurt in the same way someone ruining my makeup hurts, but more. I love getting beat to sobbing, and I treasure the bruises after. This is going to leave way darker ‘bruises’ than most of the other stuff I’ve done. This is going to leave ‘stains’ I won’t be able to remove for years. And I can’t pretend like I don’t find that hot. There’s something about the amount of raw suffering/constant reminder of having something taken from me by someone that makes this absurdly intriguing.

NUMBER THREE

Now of course I’ve had the wam kink before I really knew I was trans, but I think part of the appearance obsession I have is linked to the bizarre, intense, absurd, horrifying, unbearable weight of public scrutiny I am under every second of the day as a trans woman in a country that is hostile to me and actively becoming more hostile to me. Every time I obsess over makeup, a tiny part in the back of my mind is insisting that it look perfect, so no one can accuse me of not putting in the work, of faking it, of looking like a conservative pundit in smeary shitty drag ‘making a point’. I don’t use the women’s bathrooms in public. I think I should be able to, I think all trans women should be able to. But I don’t. Because I don’t want to end up in the fucking news. God forbid, but if I end up in a federal prison, I would be kept with the men, and anyone who thinks that’s the way it should be should look up V Coding. My trans friends are trying to apply for Canadian citizenship, are having their documents shredded when they apply for passports. I was laid off last summer a few months after filing an EEOC complaint to have my employee healthcare cover the bottom surgery I still haven’t made any progress on. I have yet to find another job. This is my first time trying to get hired since changing my name and profile picture on Linkedin, the first time I’ve made a resume with Felicity at the top of it. Transgender people are twice as likely to be unemployed than cis people, and that number has nearly doubled in the last ten years. I’m terrified that the country I live in will, day by day, ruling by ruling, one weird interaction or ghosted interview at a time, try its hardest to put me back in the closet, to deny me access to womanhood. I don’t think it can. But it’s exhausting knowing its trying. So maybe this is a way to innoculate myself against that. To take this hit on my own terms, in case it happens again later. I joke the one solution I have to basically every issue I face is “let’s try eroticizing it”. I think that’s part of what’s happening here. They can never take my slutty horniness away from me.

NUMBER FOUR

Honestly, I’ve been considering switching up hair styles for a while. I want something a little less pretty and a little more punk.
Part of that is that I’ve been going to a lot of fun local punk shows, and it feels like that’s helped my fashion coalesce into “girl in the 90s who moves to the city and comes out and makes LESBIAN her whole identity”, and I think short hair will let me do some fun things with that.
BUT part of that is also that I’m tired of feeling like I fail at ‘pretty’. When I’m at my most dysphoric/depressed about the way I look/am perceived, you’ll hear me use the phrase “play the hand I’m dealt” a lot. I don’t think I look… bad, per se. But I know I’m never gonna get close to passing (yes there’s an entire essay about the concept of passing that I’m sure every self obsessed trans woman has inside that I’m not unpacking right now). And I don’t need to pass. But most days I feel like I barely read as legibly a trans woman, even. I’ve been on HRT for three and a half years now, and I’m just now finally starting to get ‘they’ in public instead of ‘he’.
I’m sick of going for ‘pretty’ and ending up at ‘striking’.
Will chopping off my hair help with any of that desire? No. It’s going to make all those problems worse. When I mentioned idly to my mother that I was planning on cutting it all off, she asked "are you sure" and helpfully informed me that “a lot of femininity is attached to long hair” (truly she’s a gender scholar). But at least I’ll have a fucking excuse. At least I won’t keep hoping that people will look at me and think I’m beautiful and ending up disappointed when that doesn’t happen. I’ll have slightly more tempered expectations. I like looking like a freak, I love my pierced lips and bizarre fashion and makeup. I hate looking like a freak, I’m sick of people doubletaking when they go from looking at my tits to my face. This is one more way to intentionally look like a freak, for it to be on my terms. This is a punishment I’ve earned by not being pretty enough. "Take it off, try again but better." On my worst days I feel like I’m pretending to be a woman, and I get sick of looking like a man in a wig. I don’t know. I hope this helps. I hope it clarifies things, for me, for other people. I don't know.

I think it’s going to hurt, a lot. I think it’s going to kick me in the dysphoria. I think it will be fun and hot. I like kink that hurts. I like kink that leaves bruises, scars. I like that I have no idea how I'll feel at the end of it. I like that I'm scared.

I'll keep you all posted.