But as a treat here’s a list of reasons I’ve swiped left or right on tinder profiles this week.

Left means no, not into you. Right means yes, awooga.

Left

Bad photos

Not smiling

Ugly

Smoking

Holding a gun

Holding a dead animal

Far away from camera 🔭

All photos from same event

Photos from drastically different eras

Same pose different shirt multiple times

No bio

“Into food, things, and activities”

“Still figuring it out” (grow up)

Gay face

Loves far away

Lives in the South Bay (no tengo un carro)

Open relationship

Short and not cute

Too many abs

Has my dead name

Has my dad’s name

Stand-up photos

AI generated photos

“Bad texter” (grow up)

Founder

Beard too long

“Over 30+ countries” (sir, who are you running from???)

Egg

Twirly mustache

Photos too posed (looksmaxxer vibes)

30 miles away

Tantra practitioner

Go pro on helmet during skydiving pic

Private Jet pic 🤮

Ice in the beard

Dog (I’m not dating the pet, I’m dating you)

Right

Good teeth

Different poses

Clean skin

Clear interests

A bio

Good school (classist, I know)

Dark curly hair

Mediterranean

LGBT rights (into it)

Unusual opening statement

Grammar.

I won’t explain these. Thank you.

Xoxo

Alanna

One day I’m greeted by a teenage doll with her attractive Gen-X parents as I hustle to catch the train. The dad is tall, mixed race, with bicep length locks. The mom is a grown out root blonde with her hair claw clipped back. But they pale in comparison to the sweet youth. She’s a skinny lil thing wearing black DC skater shoes, hi-top black socks, skin tight t, a black school girl skirt hitting above the knee. Glued to her phone, her petite silver hoops dangle as she scrolls. They’ve been back to school shopping, I assume, the Walnut Creek outlets called to them from Berkeley no doubt. She’s holding an Urban Outfitters bag, the mom has a Vans bag, no doubt with a couple pairs of slip ons this cool teen will outgrow in a matter of months.

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I’ve found myself plopped into my own version of Nevada by Imogen Binnie, an early 20-teens foundational text to trans women about a Brooklyn doll who goes on a road trip and meets a Walmart employee questioning his gender. (Side bar, I’ve been shocked recently by how many educated people I’ve heard recently say “transgenderds.” Like, diva, don’t expect me to respect you when you don’t even do the tertiary google search that tells you that ain’t a word, bitch. Anyway, back to the teenage doll.) I don’t say this to be creepy. More that, like, wow, this doll coulda been me in a past life. Some cool trans kid with her accepting parents. I want to approach them and be like “y’all are so cool. My god, I hope you have a blessed day. If she needs puberty blockers I know a guy at UCSF who runs the trans children’s clinic there. I mean you can’t get them now because of Trump, but like, it’s the thought that counts".”

I hear what I assume is Spanish, maybe Portuguese, though they were speaking English before. Wow, this kid is even cooler than I thought, a bilingual trans baddie. Pwincess, you dropped this 👑.

I stop myself from approaching. Mainly because they clocked me, too. Our eyes darted at each other. It’s like seeing an ex at a party. “Like, I should say something… right?” I feel this way whenever I see someone with Down syndrome. My sibling guilt pangs at my heart, and I should let them know I’m an ally and get it. Then again, I hate whenever allies approach me when I’m just living my life, as if they should get a gold star for not “they/them-ing” me.

Maybe I’m reading too much into the situation. Maybe this kid’s not a doll at all, her perfect brows and hairless skin is just genetic lottery winnings. Look at her parents, the material speaks for itself. Or maybe it’s just jealousy. This feeling that I never had that. I had to settle for buying button downs and jeans I hated when I did back to school shopping with my mom.

Who knows?

This glorious family exit at MacArthur. My worries won, I didn’t approach. I wish I’d had a big sister like that, the way eggs on Grindr ask me for those services. Fucking cowards. This girl’s not a coward. She’s gonna change the world. Or become a wo-menace, like a menace but a woman. She’s gonna be a gorgeous adult. Good luck, and Godspeed diva.

The next day I board and an emo doll sits kitty corner to me, still wearing boy clothes and a face mask hoping no one notices her. Hair less oily from spironolactone, but hunched so no one notices her burgeoning breasts. Across the aisle sits a vacationing vaguely European family, somewhere Nordic. Late teenage twins who look like 90’s bullies with Jonathan Taylor Thomas haircuts, one blond and one brunette. Ryan Murphy would cast them in The Shards in a heartbeat. They look like Zara Larsen’s cousins. Maybe they don’t notice my growing out roots and contemplate adopting a trans thirty-something. Had I been born in Sweden I could have been them, on holiday in California as they scowl at the unhoused. Oh wait, that’s me. We all become NIMBY’s eventually.

Is this creepy? Writing about strangers on the train? Maybe. Perhaps people do this to me? I’ve been thinking about The Bad Art Friend, a New York Times Magazine piece I refuse to pay money to that transphobic op-ed publishing media giant. But tiktok showed me a take down of it so now I have opinions. It made me wonder: what do we owe to our loved ones when we write about them? I’m of two minds.

If people behaved better then artists wouldn’t write poorly about them. If they possessed the same empathy they expect from others then they wouldn’t care what people think. Back to that ouroboros metaphor, though. If the writer cared and the subject cared, then who’s flying the care plane heading straight to the second tower?????

Similar to Drew Aufualo’s chaotic week, full of trolls pulling up receipts from a video she posted a year ago being taken out of context, people are always going to be cruel in the comments. The court of public opinion is fickle as fuck. Dolls were in, then they were out. The huddled masses love to hate, mob mentality will always prevail. Doesn’t the wizard in Wicked say, “the way to bring people together is to give them a really good enemy”? Dana fox ate with that one.

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You gotta be okay with people talking shit about you if you wanna move ahead in life. You literally can’t win. Someone will always not like you. Another tiktok of a podcast with two women discussing the Ashley Tisdale mom group drama, exemplified this when they said Mandy Moore was mad because she’s cultivated a persona of being liked. She didn’t want people thinking she’s mean, and look what Miss Tisdale did.

Me, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t give a fuck. Some people will just never like me. I know who the fuck I am. I can think of a lot of gay guys who make far more money than me who are too afraid to stand up to assholes and therefore cower before them. It goes back to y’all’s childhoods and being afraid of being seen. Or y’all are just cowards in general. I dunno. Y’all have enough plays of gay guys crying and yelling at authority figures in The Normal Heart, Angels in America, and The Inheritance. Like some gay guys, I fear what will happen when my father dies and I don’t speak to my immediate family anymore. For example: my brother in law doesn’t speak to me at family events over a play I wrote during Covid. This man is fifty, with the emotional maturity of his son… who’s four. Ridiculous. But also, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. We all will, I just happen to be brave enough to walk that bridge alone, if need be.

Maybe that’s why I look at these fellow travelers on BART. Could I be them? Are they me in another life? Am I their future? Are we just caught in this continuous tumult of chaos we weave some form of meaning from called “life”? Is there a way for me to make a living from pontificating like this? Who fucking knows? No one’s been able to give me a leg up in any industry. Artists are constantly starting over.

It’s like dating. You can have the best relationship that people envy, but once it’s done, who cares? You gotta start over. Some people can move through life with cheat codes they didn’t even know they possessed. Others have handicaps that limit any form of growth they were unaware of until the world points them out.

So when I admire people on BART I acknowledge that empty space between us. Possibility. The great unknown.

During the commute home on Wednesday I’m greeted by a group of young kids, one sneaks behind me in the turnstile. Ugh, so trashy. Once up on the platform I see them split apart, looking down the escalator at something. The two guys, including the one who snuck behind me, hustle down to a bench, pretending not to know each other. . The girls weren’t so lucky. Two K-9 unit policemen show up and put one of the girls in handcuffs. I don’t know why. No one struggles. No one raises their voices. No scene is made. They know better. Part of my goody-two-shoes nature fights with me. I want to call across the tracks, “the guys are with them, don’t just take the girls in!” But I’ve been through enough EDI trainings to know not to fuck with the police, especially when you don’t know what’s going on.

I notice my nail is broken. Fuck. And I don’t have time to get her fixed for another few days.

A woman around my dad’s age approached me to ask what I was knitting. I found out her daughter is a former actor who now works for a venture capitalist. I should have used her bravery to approach that doll the other day. My cast mate Cody joked I should have given them a business card. “Here, trust me, you’ll need this in a bit.”

Isn’t it funny that we ask ourselves the same questions over and over until we change our path and turn left. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” type shit. Life feels like a business endeavor where we hope we get a good deal, but of course the house always wins. Forgive the mixed metaphor, like I said, I’ve been working two jobs. I look at the world and wonder what life will bring me.

We’re brought together on this great blue marble flying through space, and again on these hi-speed trains, mechanical marvels when you think about it. And somehow the everyday monotony filters down to wayward glances between dolls on the train. such is life.

I don’t know why but I ask myself: will the feather ever weigh more than the heart? Will I ever make the difficult choice and approach someone on the train? will I learn from these fellow travelers or remain at arm’s length? I dunno, diva, i’m just trying to get to rehearsal.

Once a theater kid, always a theater kid.

xoxo

Alanna

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In essence: our world is manufactured to make us empty our bank accounts so someone we don’t know can have a bigger yacht. The billionaires have made themselves into gods. Capitalism is our religion.

Fuck.

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This week I’ve been in rehearsal for The Glass Menagerie at Center Rep in Walnut Creek. The process has been wonderful so far, but stressful. Our first rehearsal days were eight hours long and with an hour and a half commute on either end, my weekend became centered around a play written in the forties by a gay man about a poverty stricken single parent household, through a modern trans lens. Friends, it was thrilling, but bleak.

I found myself without the energy to do much else but walk the .8 miles to and from BART once in the East Bay. Add my day job in the mornings and I’ve felt wiped.

But dearest reader, I found it wonderful. I was happy. I was exhausted, but grateful. I wasn’t oozing out my soul into this eight inch corner to corner screen we call our phones. I was present. I didn’t even miss swiping left on dating apps through uggo after uggo wondering if maybe, just maybe, someone hot would appear, maybe, if I just kept going.

It was then I remembered, it’s the damn phones, isn’t it? They’ve streamlined and destroyed our lives. In the millennia humans have existed we’re but a pixel in the digitized timeline Neil Degrasse Tyson loves to remind us of. And yet these tiny boxes have dictated our self worth, value, and peace. How many suicides have happened from cyber bullying? How many rehabs have been entered for porn or drug addiction made all the easier by the computers in our pockets? How many relationships have been shattered because cheating has become all the easier to conceal or the conglomeration of ethical non monogamy has gone mainstream due to social media?

Not saying anything new, but babes, we’re cooked.

My bestie Jeff went to see The Odyssey last week, and said his friend got his phone out during the movie to log it on his Letterboxd. During. The fucking. Movie. I’m sure cinephiles everywhere rejoiced at his review that no doubt was something akin to: “Matt Damon is zaddy. More Zendaya, plssssss Papa Nolan????” This guy didn’t have the attention span or critical thinking skills to remember his review until after the film. Three hours of peak cinematic entertainment and his attention span has been so fried from flicking the screen bean that he annoyed his friend and ruined his experience, too. You guys, this is embarrassing. Not for me. For you. Also, I’m sure Nolan himself was waiting with bated breath to check an app for critique from a guy who can’t even finish the movie for feedback. All auteurs take note from the masses, that’s how great art is made, right??? (Sarcasm font).

Read a book. Oh wait, you probably can’t.

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In rehearsal for the dinner scene of Glass Menagerie, one where my character has an abysmal showcase of her personality, I joked between passes, “imagine going to dinner and all this happens?” My costar Cody brilliantly said, “they must have been so bored back then, that this seems like nothing.” No phones. No tv. So a girl passing out and awkwardly leaving a room is par for the course.

Brilliance and intelligence is finding similarities between disparate topics. Connective tissue is where genius lives. Some people think it’s in diving deep on a topic, like Einstein and physics. That’s a single kind of intelligence. But a well rounded education breeds brilliance. Why else do you think private school kids get small classes with arts, math, science, and languages?

Think about drag performances that stay with you. Willow Pill did a strikingly odd performance piece where she threw a toaster into a bathtub she was in… and she won Drag Race. Or even, ugh, Hamilton. A true genius took hip hop and history and merged them. I know it’s nothing new but like, it bares repeating.

Of course some people get struck by brilliance. Joan Didion never went to school for writing as she mentions in The Year of Magical Thinking. Yet she is one of our nation’s greatest prose writers. To quote Shakespeare (ugh), “some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.” It’s from Twelfth Night, look it up.

Yet my friend who offered tens of thousands of dollars to his friend without batting an eye refuses to donated to charities or join a board because it would appear he wasn’t working hard enough. Like, what? Let’s all touch grass, shall we?

Lately I’ve been thinking about a break from dating. I’m simply too busy. In order to do art right, “you gotta live like a fucking nun,” as Elaine Stritch said.

Yet, “I want a boyfriend,” bangs around in my head, a pinball machine of human emotions, drives, disappointments, and desires. The thought of asking AI for an answer, after doing that in a moment of intense low self esteem and the “advice” I got back was “you’re doing great, sometimes things are hard, you gotta keep trying.” Blah blah blah.

Millions of years of human evolution and we never needed a machine to tell us what to do. Now I’m surrounded by people asking AI to teach, mentor, inspire, guide, help, and choose things for them. If you use AI for your whole job, eventually AI will perform your whole job without you. Who needs an engineer or even a CEO when you have a machine that can do it for you? Oh, you think you need a human to make those choices? That’s so funny, so do I.

A play is the absence of AI.

AI can’t act. If you think it can, you’re missing the core concept of what it is to be human. AI can mimic, and that can be a part of acting, but true human inspiration and emotion comes from an un-chartable and un-programable part of the human experience. The soul. That’s like trying to capture smoke or a cloud. Artist, Berndnaut Smilde, was able to do it for mere moments. It took engineering, artistry, patience, money, and luck to achieve.

That’s why we have stories of humans who could fly for millenia: angels and then super heroes. We need something incalculable to aim our faces towards. Why do you think societies across the world, from the Aztecs to Japan, worshipped the sun for so long?!?!

The bubble will burst, the limit will be reached, it does exist, Cady Heron.

And here I am, sounding like a tin foil hat mat, screaming that the phones are listening… and we’ve all just accepted that. my god. I never thought the end would be so boring. T.S. Elliot1 was right: the world ends with a whimper… not a bang.

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My friends are away on gay trips, performing lewd acts in the wilderness, I’m sure. Here I stroll, wondering where dragonflies, and hummingbirds, and sparrows fly to when the air turns chill? Hibernation? Hiding? Metamorphosis unseen to the rest of us?

Maybe I should remember that: the most intimate changes never occur in public. Monumental shifts are most often private adventures. Hence why we don’t often experience orgasms, the only organic form of euphoria our brains create, in front of throngs of people. These magical little creatures that remind us that there is power in the unknown, the hidden, I don’t need to tell everyone everything. I can have secrets, too.

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Another dragonfly greets me on a sunny afternoon in Dolo. An adorable abomination of a half pug/half chihuahua mix named Benya has decided I’m his surrogate human as he sits next to me, barking at the other dogs. His Slavic looking owner wears a polo, grey athleisure slacks and vintage Jordans. Probably mumbling to his wife on his AirPods, “yes, Svetlana, I took Benya to the park.” Just then a gay guy and a straight guy in the same outfit criss-cross my vision in the lower field. Another gay guy toe-heels by me with his chest frozen in place, what a strange gait. People have always told me my walk is signature, sounds like a nice way of saying scoliosis-like and pigeon toed. Or some version of the ’tism, who knows?

The night before I watched Obsession. Despite my allergy to hot topic movies, I loved it. I’m somehow both Bear and Nikki; both pro and antagonist—a sniveling incel who could get an equally wonderful woman to be his girlfriend if he just expanded his scope and a devastatingly beautiful five-foot nothing bombshell. The two genders: a pick me and the object of their unattainable desire.

I’ve been lucky enough to date and sleep with partners I never thought in a million years I’d have a chance with. What a blessing… and a curse. So many people hate their partners secretly, hell, some not so secretly. Call me crazy, but I think you should light up when you see your partner. Yet so many people sigh or groan. I’ve had the good fortune to feel important to someone who glowed a little when they thought of me and vice versa. My cast mate, Nancy Carlin, playing my mother in Glass Menagerie, smiled so big when her husband returned home during a cast lunch, it made me remember that true love is, in fact, possible.

Maybe falling in love and losing it caused me more harm than good. To know that I’m deserving of that kind of chemical firework display in my heart and mind when I see the object of my desire is intoxicating and dangerous. I then had to learn that there are plenty of objects in that metaphorical store full of antiques, new construction, and everything in between. Some people think they need to find that impossible blend of virginal woman who also completes their impossible fantasy of being a professional dicksucker in the sack. “No baby, I don’t need to cum, I just wanna get you off.” What a weird dichotomy men expect from us.

Musical theater is rife with this impossibility: Nancy in Oliver!, Charity in Sweet Charity, Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Sandy in Grease, you get it. For an art form frequented and perfected by gay men, is it really that surprising that men, whether they’re attracted to them or not, place women on impossible to reach pedestals. All the while the rest of us gals are crabs in a barrel trying to reach that peak.

On that dating front, I’ve wondered: Do guys in Pac Heights and the Marina even consider dating women in the Mission? Maybe my transness doesn’t turn anyone off any more than other attributes. I know Jews who only wanna date other Jews or Black people who want to date within their culture. Then again, finding reason where there is none is a fool’s errand.

Nevertheless my mind asks: if the world is pure chaos then why do some people have it easier? It can’t just be privilege. Must be luck. I think most c-suite employees would say it’s hard work and very, very few would actually acknowledge the amount of pure chance that’s gone into their success. Tenacity only makes up so much of it. You can keep at something forever, that’s how we get narratives like Shawshank Redemption. But how many walls can I carve into when there’s been no sign of any success?

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Where’s the narrative of the guy who gave up? Floyd Collins got lost and stuck in a Kentucky cave. Even in that, his death has made him legend, I doubt we would have cared if he’d survived. Or maybe we’d have gotten a 127 Hours movie out of it.

Maybe in terms of dating I need to “Ring them Bells” and go all around the world to find the guy who was right next door. Or like the short play in Almost, Maine, where the male half of our prologue couple says sitting next to someone is actually the furthest away from someone you can be… so his partner proceeds to circumnavigate the globe (✨magical realism✨) to get to his other side, to share a closeness with him.

By mid-week I had a doctor’s appointment with my surgeon. I held back tears with a closed throat, brushing off the good bedside manner of my doctor and her nurse, for reasons I shan’t name on the ‘Stack. Afterward I walked to the Fillmore, killing time before my brow appointment. My wax tech had olive skin like my mother’s, it felt like she was comforting me in that tender moment. I called my dad and let the tears flow, who cares if the Asian kids cutting school saw me as I passed by Japantown and stopped cackling for an awkward silence seeing an adult stranger cry?

I walk into Rag and Bone, where sales associates I can only assume were named Twink 1 and Twink 2, lowered their phones in a bit of millennial choreography moaning in unison, “hiiii, welcome iiiin.” As soon as I look at a price tag and see commas they grab their phones, no doubt texting “lol, this poor bitch.” I leave, passing by Lululemon where at least they make you feel fat and then poor.

I treat myself to a gf bagel from Boichik. While shoving the kosher goodness into my mouth a young mom walks by in coochie hugger shorts and kitten heels pushing a stroller. Her whole outfit probably rivals my rent in cost, and here I am smearing schmear off my chin. Maybe I shouldn’t feel jealous. This girl could be struggling with an eating disorder like the skinny girl of the moment, Mary Beth Barone; she has a trans sibling and used to be republican, and YOU can too 🫵🏻!

As the week wound down, I stood on my variable limbo of San Francisco: the BART platform. A papi with a furrowed brow, baggy basketball shorts, and a beach cruiser he treated like a low rider mingled with an unhoused man scooting a laundry cart full of empties. I suddenly remember it’s Outsidelands weekend when three zaftig festival-gear clad women with chemically straightened hair cling to the pole in the center of the train. Ass cheeks out at 11:30 am, good luck ladies. Why they’re heading downtown instead of west to Golden Gate Park tells me they're either lost or got an Airbnb far away.

Do these young women even want to listen to music or are they just going to say they went? Is it just patriarchy and peer pressure at the end of the day? These systems keep us all down, especially women. So when a man makes a wish in a movie and it goes wrong, are any of us surprised? Grass is always greener.

I’m reminded of a speech from Which Way to the Stage, written by the incredible Ana Noguiera (who recently wrote Super Girl):

This is me saying that to all men. I refuse to be your sidekick. I refuse to let the dragon flies disappear. Just because I don’t fight with you doesn’t mean you’re right (I say pointedly to someone I shan’t name), I’ve merely realized the cost of admission to our friendship is you believing you’re always correct. Sometimes explaining patriarchy is explaining snow to a polar bear, in the end they don’t care, it simply is what it is.

Change is hard. Trust me, I’ve been through more than my fair share. Try a handful of surgeries-worth. Don’t stay the same for the sake of the patriarchy. But sometimes you need to hide when the fog is out, like the dragon flies. Then come out in great numbers to show you belong and always belonged and just because a guy wished for something doesn’t mean it was the right thing to desire.

I’ll end with this. My friend, Matt, and I went to his favorite dive bar: 500 Club. Christmas declarations probably generations-old hang above us, a toupee of dust covering their tops. Gossip shared, tears shed, terrifying truths unearthed. “I want someone to love me for all of me, but I don’t think I’m lovable unless I get/experience/earn/defeat something,” I say. And Matt, in all his wisdom reminds me, “but like, you’re enough.” I cry. Amidst the cheers and laughs an overcast appears above us, and no dragonflies to be found. But maybe, just maybe, that’s because they’re in our hearts. Maybe the dragonflies are the friends we made along the way. They’re off in their hideaways performing those sacred acts we know nothing about. And you know what? That’s probably for the best.

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Maybe the girl across from me with a fresh set or the hot guy engrossed in his phone are ignoring the quietly sobbing transsexual down the train for their own sanity. Maybe I’m not interesting enough to warrant breaking their gazes from the small addicting machines in their/my hands.

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Maybe it’s just another day on BART in the mundane rituals of humiliation we endure.

Traveling is so embarrassing. There’s no way to look suave, sexy, or put together putting your suitcase into an overhead bin. Every automatic faucet makes me look like I’m signing something offensive in ASL whilst trying to wash the SFO germs off my hands in the bathroom. Or when splashback from said sink gets on my dress and makes me feel dysphoric. My nonverbal communication projects an air of, “please don’t assume I have a dick just because I’m tall. I promise I’m a good little tranny and adhere to strict gender roles.”

Or looking at a cool, probably college-aged athlete girl with Dutch braids at baggage claim. She’s giving mixed race Ilona Maher, whilst I’m giving aging millennial who wishes a strong guy would pick my bag up for me. Instead we witness boomer after boomer chasing down their bag, and struggling to lift it off the moving belt. It’s so embarrassing, second hand or first.

The next humiliating part of my week has been shopping.

I never used to worry about sizing pre-transish. I was a solid medium in all brands. That illusive male size that assures gay guys that they’re not a twink or a bear. “I just don’t fit those categories,” I used to chuckle as I sipped a margarita and admired my own cum gutters. Ah, those were the days.

But now, oh ho ho, now, dearest reader, I am forced to attempt to find a size to accommodate my 38C breasts, and a torso accustomed to giant deep breaths for singing, which make me want to get my ribs remodeled with surgery and an ass that sometimes looks good.

Sadly, now I don’t fit clothes… anywhere.

Dearest reader, I went to two different Rick Caruso properties, the Americana AND the Grove, scouring the Disneyland-esque capitalist hellscapes. After three hours between Nordstrom, Aritzia, Banana Republic, and H+M, I finally settled on a simple dress from the Gap. My bra peaking at the top, so I look like an overdeveloped middle school girl who doesn’t get offended by male attention. Great, so I look like a fresh bitch who doesn’t know how to dress herself.

At my friend’s 40th birthday a hot “straight” interior designer came up to me whilst on my seventh or eighth drink of the evening. Don’t judge me, it was open bar for three hours. “You guys are with Caitlyn, right?” He asked. I found out he and his brother were there together, he was trying to set Caitlyn up with him. It was cute. We exchanged pleasantries. Due to my excessive imbibed alcohol, I don’t remember what happened next. But somehow we got to talking about trans stuff.

I was cracking wise, as I’m want to do, and he took that as pretense to ask me, a total stranger, about my surgical history. He was charming, handsome, and laughed when I guffawed at being a straight interior designer. I was caught off guard and I disclosed some, but of course he wanted the gory details. “So guys say it feels the same?” I leaned in and said “yeah, they do.” And he believed it. Another doll might have made a scene and stormed out. Part of me wanted to, but the alcohol and the crowded bar full of wigged straight people and 20 something bleached blondes performing double pirouettes whilst line dancing overwhelmed me. I am proud I said “well, tell me about your genitals if you wanna hear so much about mine! Are you cut or uncut?” He guffawed. “Of course I’m cut. I’m American.”

The drinking memory gets a lil hazy. We parted ways.

I normally would brush this off. But the night before the party my gay friends asked me question after question about surgery, also. They had been sniffing their paychecks up their noses, and arguing about who could invite their friends over to the airbnb that had a strict no parties rule. The woke olympics came out to play as each person began with some version of the preamble: “if this is inappropriate feel free to tell me to fuck off,” or “can I ask you a personal question?”

In hindsight I wanted to scream: “No. You can’t ask that. Stop it. Do you realize your creepy interest in what’s in my pants is the exact same rhetoric that creepy politicians use to legislate women like me into obscurity? You’re no better than J-fucking-K Rowling. Next week UK trans people won’t be able to use the bathroom that matches their identity! You just think because you know one single trans person (moi) that makes you different? Listen, f*ggot, you’re all the same. You just want to fetishize us so that you feel the tiniest bit more normal, like your straight counterparts, so that you can assure your ashamed parents you aren’t like those ‘weird’ gays. What’s more, maybe you should work on yourself and stop spending money on drugs to try and become a better person, then maybe your life wouldn’t be so far from the one you fantasize about. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the problem. And maybe, just maybe, you should stop asking trans people to solve your shit for you. Ever heard of Plato’s Cave? You are the shadow looking cave dwellers. You aren’t woke. Read a fucking book, you idiot!”

But I haven’t said that to anyone. When I had an opportunity to with the straight interior designer and I fumbled. Thanks to the frozen blue margarita.

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Being brave is exhausting. Getting offended is exhausting. I don’t have the stamina to say the things that need to be said. But I hope in the future, as it will inevitably happen again, I’ll have the strength to say, “that’s a fucking crazy thing to ask a complete stranger.” Or more importantly, to my loved ones, “how dare you ask me that?”

Is life just one humiliation ritual after the next? When comes the day that I say, “no,” and just give up? I got another job rejection for a lateral title move, after two great interviews. I know they don’t mean to hurt me with “we were so impressed with you” followed by the inevitable ellipses. But when I keep hearing that, how can I not internalize it?

I ask my readers: how the fuck are you not supposed to internalize these disappointments besides focusing on what you can control? Sounds like the beginning of an eating disorder, autoimmune disease or OCD. I have the latter, maybe it’s time to try the former. Whilst at a lunch with my sister and I told her it was her fault I developed ulcerative colitis and celiac, as I wasn’t allowed to have problems because she and our other sister took up so much of the family’s emotional space, she shrugged.

The woman who ruined my life and continues to pretend nothing happened… shrugged.

I need a drink.

Jokes aside, my refrain in most of my substacks is “when’s it my turn”? At the risk of sounding like a Pick Me, I can’t keep taking classes or making my own work or kissing asses that keep leaving me with emotional Giardia. Screaming to the heavens has lost its luster. Hell, even writing these stupid little essays every week has made me feel impotent and useless.

When no one chooses you, and you’re expected to keep trying to get what you want, it is indeed one humiliation ritual after another.

So much of growing up is predicated on other people picking us. Why else do we interview for jobs? Or go on dates? Or apply to college? To prove our worthiness. Our parents and families are meant to build that foundation that we are indeed enough. My family always made me feel like something was wrong with me, yet just like my cis gay friends, will never admit that they were part of the problem. If you can point at someone else, you never have to deal with your own issues. If people are more intolerant than you, you never have to change your own tolerances. If you never meet Muslim people, of course you villainize them. Insert any other marginality there and you’ve got the problematic state of affairs we currently occupy on the right, but especially the left.

Yet the hypocritical lessons we teach those in need (or moreover acknowledging this unfortunate truth) is to get over it and focus on themselves. They just haven’t applied to the right job or enough jobs. They should delete dating apps and focus on their internal work. Or apply to more safety schools. Or find 🙄 community 🙄. But when years of applying come to pass, and ghost after ghost haunt our texts, and schools decline admission because “we’re not the right fit.” Or worst of all, you go to trans events and can’t seem to find your people… it fucking sucks. And no one knows what to do to help us.

It’s, say it with me: humiliating.

I’m tired of sitting in silence with well intentioned friends who have the jobs, lovers, and bank accounts I desire.

Maybe the last humiliation I experienced this week was scarfing down six gluten free chicken wings, at Square Pie Guys. Wings so hot they burnt my fingertips, giving me the idea to commit a crime without leaving forensic evidence or finger prints. The conservative Walnut Creek drivers slowing down to get a gander of me on the corner, I stood there, hoping my dress wouldn’t fly up and show them what they’re really after: a glance at the body part even the woke left want to see.

Then I pass by a memorial for someone killed on the side of the road I’m walking on. My mental anguish seems trivial and petty next to someone’s loss of life. My worries about cystic looking acne from oily wings or sunburnt legs from my forgetful mind sets me right. I’m two blocks from my measurements, where I’ll slap on a Margot Robbie in I, Tonya smile and get on with my day. A rock slides into the hole in my heel and clatters around. Sometimes the universe gives you little things to realize just how good you have it. Reminders that even in the humiliation, there is untapped strength I didn’t even know I possessed. And maybe, just maybe, that humiliation is a blessing in disguise. Who knows? Guess I’ll have to wait until the next embarrassment.

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Jk, ily.

Here are the notes from my trips to Guerneville and LA, and the lessons learned therein. Take something from them, won’t you?

After my Zeitgeist body dysmorphia party and my actual birthday commenced, my sand-papered vocal folds sounded like I’d bartered my voice with a sea witch. It sucks being sick on your birthday. I splurged on a $350 IV infusion which oddly enough did seem to help, later that day I felt my energy coming back, followed by a whammy of a Wednesday when I felt even worse.

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Despite it all, my besties and I went on our planned trip to Guerneville. We finally made it out of the group chat! Once in the mountain air, surrounded by river people, liberal country folk, and gays galore, my body caught up with my mind and I started to improve.

Story time: it was my first time doing 🍄. Gotta be honest: I loved it. I didn’t have visions, see double, or anything of the sort. If anything, I found myself feeling more alive. I kept waiting for them to kick in. Maybe I’d feel sick or cry or laugh until I was sore.

But no. If anything they made everything a little more pleasant. Perhaps it was the heat, the sun, the mix of NyQuil from the night before plus cheap champagne from Korbel and mixed drinks from smiley servers who weren’t angry about life as they are in the city. But I felt, I don’t know, free? I guess.

Clothes were shed mid hot tub dip with old friends, ancient trees watching over us, and giggling along as the sun dappled through their branches. “The hidden cameras are gonna love this,” we joked. I sat on the ledge, legs akimbo forcing two of my friends to stare into my most sacred orifice, as steam, bubbles, tree detritus, and psyliocybin induced sweat intermingled at our feet.

My cross-faded ass thought this video was aesthetic. And you know what? She was right.

Damn. Maybe the mushrooms did more than I let on. lol, I guess.

After brunch the next day, we drove the fifteen minutes down the hill past a barking white dog and lines of cars waiting in the crowded one lane road. The R3 resort awaited us.

Though we arrived around 1, the small poolside resort was already packed. Not just twinks in speedos either, though they were the main course. But tons of women, trans mascs, and all shapes of gay guy peppered the sun drenched lounge chairs. Each of us took another two of the 🍄 gummies having noticed we didn’t feel much with just one the day before. Again, I didn’t feel much, but the light sparkling through the streamers delighted me, like solar flares dancing above us - the Tantalus queers - below, just out of reach. As I walked past throngs of speedos, as sexually as one can wearing crocs, I went to the bathroom. In the hideous fluorescent light I looked at my over-sunscreened arms, and saw burns forming. I sighed, annoyed, but content. “That’s what aloe vera’s for,” I thought. But once outside I couldn’t find the burns. Had I glanced through my skin? “Maybe I should take another 🍄 to be safe.”

Don’t worry dearest reader, I stuck with weed edibles and frozen margaritas. Later, after one friend left, seemingly having a bad trip, we ordered lunch and saw two foreheads mere inches from each other above the stall doors in the bathroom. Gays we’d made friends with earlier, no doubt, moaning “that feels good” like a Jessie Ware ad lib.

One guy was from Texas, a scientist. There was an intern at Apple, there with his boyfriend who made out with one of my friends to make his boyfriend jealous. He later lolled his body side to side as his bf nursed him back to life. Another was a svelt mixed guy who told us of a 🍄 trip where he met his ancestors and an alien god whilst having sex… he got a tattoo to commemorate the experience. Good for him.

Or there was the zaftig Dutch girl who laughed along with her gay friends at just about anything. A fruit fly, if there ever was one. Then the twink who kept asking about my tattoos and kept forgetting my answers.

All in all, it was remarkably easy to chat with everyone there. A marked lack of pretense or guardedness from any of the nearly naked men. Some had suits tight enough to share their religion while others had smushed mounds of genital meat in their banana hammocks. Some were abbed, most were not. And no one gave a fuck.

That’s the thing about gay guys. You have the world at your finger tips, hell, you go to a resort full of hotties, and still it took a doll to start conversations with strangers. Get it together, gay guys!

Once back from our queer adventures, I laid in bed scrolling. Feeling pretty much better from my cold, and prepping for my LA trip the next day. And I felt empty.

The scrolling didn’t hit the same dopamine receptors. I’d gotten what I wanted: an adventure. A story. A journey. Surrounded by those I love. Strangers who annoyed me. Friends who adored me. And gay guys who were obsessed with me.

I remembered that screens don’t bring joy. You gotta get off it. Look around. There’s beauty everywhere!

Anyway. Then I was off to LA, hoping to see old friends and new. Maybe come home with a story or two. Who knows, I might fall in love if I get my head out of that damn phone.

Once at SFO, I wondered: Who really has status at the airport? Is it the first class bourgeoisie? Or the screaming youngest of five with the cursing mother in a bonnet and Juicy track suit? Maybe it’s not passengers at all and it’s the gate agents with wolf bangs and the power to ruin our days. Perhaps it’s the pilots, the unseen pair in the cockpit with sexual tension you could cut with a machete.

Or maybe it’s me, avoiding my dad’s college roommate seated in first class whose eyes I dart past, not wanting to stop the flow of traffic behind me… after all, I splurged for premium leg room seats. Those extra five inches mean everything, ask any man!

Once I landed at LAX, my eyes were greeted by an anorexic looking young woman with fried blonde hair and hot pink highlights, she smoked a cigarette with a curvy friend who both looked like they belonged on Hollywood Blvd (respectfully). They were a young, American version of Eddy and Patsy from AbFab. Stunning.

After an impromptu bagel date with a years-long Instagram crush, (*bites fist*, god he is so hot 🥵), followed by a general meeting with a queer filmmaker where I spotted another Tiktok crush, I got dinner with my friends Jen and Bekah.

Jen and I met doing a mostly trans-cast As You Like It four years ago. She’s a mentor, friend, and big sister to me.

After catching up about life, trials, tribulations, and acting, we discussed the industry. Reader… it’s bleak.

Jen is a force, she’s written on multiple tv shows, starred opposite Kathryn Hahn in Mrs. Fletcher, and made a name for herself in a notoriously difficult industry. Bekah, her wife, is an executive working at Trevor Noah’s company, rubbing elbows with all his podcast guests (Bernie Sanders and Katie Couric to name a few). Though I won’t spill the tea on all we spoke about, both of them regaled me with tales of artistic pipelines disappearing. Hollywood is no longer about story telling, but MBA grads climbing to the top so that entertainment money can shuffle to tech companies and vice versa, all the while artists are left to shuffle our heels waiting for scraps from the trickle-down economics Reagan promised us.

As a San Francisco based artist, the dream of moving back to LA or New York to thrive as a working actor has always taunted me. But this conversation reminded me that the dangling carrot of success has gotten smaller and higher, oh and by the way, the carrot is plastic and the props department actually needs it back for the next scene, so can you just, I dunno, imagine a carrot?

I suppose some solace arrives because I realize even the people I admire are scraping away at artistic careers. But damn, it’s so frustrating to want success and no one seems to be getting it anymore.

I dunno, dearest reader. I hope against hope that success finds all of us, and the education artists spend so much money on wasn’t a grand waste of money. But that’s a lesson for future Alanna.

Maybe, just like my Chiron lesson, I have to learn that life is hard. Duh. But you can find ways to be happy despite it. Who fucking knows?

In the meantime, might I suggest going to Temple of the Rising Phoenix and buying illicit substances in a gray market way? Then try seeing the world differently and have a grand time doing it? Maybe get out of the fog and cold and boring tech money of San Francisco, and seeing sunny Guerneville and LA, even if just for a few days. It might change your life.

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Phew.

These next two posts will chronicle the lessons I’ve learned and journeys I’ve taken the last month. Join me, won’t you?

After my birthday shenanigans where I debuted my highlighted hair, I got an unpleasant cold I blamed on the second hand smoke of Zeitgeist. Though I had fun, I had terrible body dysmorphia afterward, thinking I looked fat in every photo taken of me. Great for my mentew ewness 👉🏻👈🏻.

A few days before that I sat with my bestie, Matt, during Thursday Streets on Valencia. It was organized bedlam. A woman dressed as a cross between an &Juliet ensemble member and a Bay to Breakers hedonist strolled by me. Her compatriots were dressed as quotidian pedestrians so her garb must have been for something specific.

Amidst the throngs, I noticed a truth I try to avoid: when you wear makeup, as a doll, people treat you better. They look at you more kindly. They make you feel almost human… but still a piece of meet. As though, “she’s not like those other transgendereds. I’d fuck this one.” We’ve gone from the days of, “I like gay guys who aren’t so in-your-face about it” to “why are pronouns so important all of a sudden?” Homophobia has trans-formed via our cis counterparts. What was once a joke has become a subtle signal to the queerdoes out there of which cissies we can trust with our most authentic selves.

Maybe that &Juliet ensemble member was a member of the LGBT community. Maybe she just goes to Burning Man.

The sky finally cleared after three days of overcast. My mood was abysmal during that time. I had a FaceTime date with a Québécois YouTuber (girl, don’t start with me, I know 🙄) he told me Californians were weak because our mood was influenced by the weather. I was gonna give him shit for it but then he told me he was born in Crimea, Ukraine and my white-coastal elitism guilt took over.

The day before that my pelvic floor physical therapist asked me intrusive questions that left me crumbled on the floor. It’s a specific kind of torture for someone to have their fingers inside you, asking the most blunt questions about my past surgical choices/traumas. Sure, stranger, you can lube up your hand and tell me to relax followed by, “do you regret bottom surgery?”

Afterward, I watched a TikTok of a young woman being interviewed about her fertility journey. So many women I know have found sisterhood in this struggle. Motherhood is difficult, no matter how you arrive at it. I think of Lena Dunham getting a hysterectomy. I think of my friend who paid tens of thousands of dollars for IVF and her first daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder. Or my own mother having a daughter with Down syndrome before there was a pre-term test for it. Surprise, your dreams for your baby’s life have drastically shifted, here’s your “Baby on Board” bumper sticker.

These harrowing stories of strong, brave women creating their own happily ever afters in the face of tragedy after tragedy move me to tears even as I type this. What a blessing that they find each other in support spaces and friendship circles. It’s truly amazing.

Then there’s me.

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I generally keep my bottom surgery journey to myself on Substack, partly for privacy, since all people seem to wanna know what’s in trans women’s pants; but also, because it’s so heartbreaking, that even thinking about writing it will open a wound no one, not even I, can suture shut.

Hence when my pelvic floor PT asked about surgical regrets I responded,

“…sometimes.” Amidst a damp face and puffy eyes.

I’m reminded of my sole session with a professional matchmaker who claimed she had “experience with the trans community” who then bluntly asked if I’d had “the surgery.” All within ten minutes of meeting. What an idiot. She’d also never had a cis male client who wanted to get pegged, hence why she was reaching out to trans women. I guess her experience was limited to sapphic spaces and she just wanted to make money with the other letters of the alphabet mafia. Dr. Fr*nkie, I see you, and your bullshit.

But back to trauma.

I only know one other trans woman who told me in a passing insta story reply that she, too, couldn’t get the surgery she wanted. Sadly she and I do not mesh well as friends and I don’t feel comfortable reaching out to her. So here I am, alone, afraid to talk about my deepest trauma, for fear no one will be able to heal me, because no one has been able to so far.

Unlike the sorority of women above who find each other in support groups, Reddit threads, and fertility clinics, trans women who can’t get the surgery they want feel shunned, isolated even. We’re less than 1% of the population, and add further increments from there, as well. It sucks being 1% of the 1%. It’s lonely.

My roommate Jeff kindly reminded me that all people feel this way. My mother used to say “the doctors have never seen ones like us before.” I have a feeling it’s just that UCSF doctors prided themselves on being the best, while not actually doing the work for it. So when they’d never seen ones like us, they could claim they figured it out, god complexes satiated until the next unsolvable case came along. That’s for another Substack.

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So what am I to do? Scream into the void? I hoped NyQuil would knock that cold out before I left for the Russian River. But my voice remained raspy for days.

I wondered, would I end up the Chiron of the SF dolls? The wounded centaur healer featured in Madeline Miller’s ancient gay MLM romance, Song of Achilles, meant to teach the others that there is still happiness in that undiscovered country post shallow depth vaginoplasty. Like when I spoke on a Zoom panel for bottom surgery hopefuls. Or will I have to stand up to the gay guys who make jokes at my expense, claiming “a shallow pussy” is funny, but never being able to receive the same level of roasting when I bring up their darkest traumas like when their boyfriend broke up with them after finding ketamine in their dresser drawer or snooping their text history.

And then, dearest reader, at the unlikeliest of moments… it happened.

While waiting to leave for the Russian River and my birthday trip, Sudafed popped, hoping this cold would disappear, I got a call from a Kaiser social worker. She’d remembered me from that virtual panel. She said she had a patient who also had ulcerative colitis who couldn’t receive full depth vaginoplasty and was having a terrible time accepting it. She rambled the way cis people do when wanting to make sure they don’t offend a trans person, I finally spoke when she took a breath and said, “give her my Instagram, she and I have a lot to talk about.” My doorbell rang as my compatriots arrived. Pleasantries exchanged, apologies given for being on the phone.

I haven’t heard from this girl yet. But I’ve realized, indeed, I’ve become the person I needed those years ago when all hope was lost. I am Chiron.

It’s a twisted kind of justice. To cry to the heavens and receive nothing when you needed it most, picking yourself back up and climbing into bed. Beginning my journey of EMDR, TMS, DBT, ERP, and so many medications to heal that scarred mind. Only for two years later and I have the opportunity to help someone else scream, cry, and heal.

But I guess that’s a part of growing up. We all become who we needed most in the past. Oh, what a twisted web we weave.

Come back tomorrow for part deux where I tell you about the wisdom I received from a mushroom trip in the Redwoods.

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I sat in the dark Toni Rembe Theater, house right, amongst mourners, actors, alumni, teachers, colleagues, and even a celebrity or two; there to celebrate the life of the great Melissa Smith. Melissa was Director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Acting at American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). At its height, the MFA was one of the top ten acting programs in the country. She launched careers of stars like Elizabeth Banks, Anika Noni Rose, and more character actors than anyone could count. She was highly beloved. She received a terminal diagnosis during COVID as her cancer, which had been in remission, returned. She told the last two cohorts, of which I was one, the news she would be stepping down over Zoom. She died a few months later.

Back in the theater, montages of Melissa’s work played: her as a student at Yale, work at Berkeley Rep and abroad, capped with a clip of her in the Oscar-winning Nomadland. She played Frances McDormand’s sister, as they were roommates in graduate school and remained lifelong friends. She took two weeks off during my first year to film her coverage. Her work in the film is beautiful and her scene is, no joke, the most Oscar bait-y of the whole movie.

Sniffles permeated the soundscape along with choked sobs followed by video messages from the disgraced former Artistic Director of A.C.T., former faculty of the soon to be defunct MFA program, followed by friends and family of the deceased, all expressing their lamentation for the great loss of one of the best actors and teachers of our generation. It was a somber event. One filled with adoration, gratitude, and so much grief. There wasn’t a dry eye in the packed house.

Except mine.

I shed not one tear the entire event. In fact, I held my head high, comforting my compatriots, fellow students and recent alumni. “Why? Why Melissa?” They wept in silence. But I looked around and thought one thing I dared not share with anyone in that theatre for fear of retribution, a fear that I will inspect now. A fear I have only shared with my close friends, therapists, and journals once I graduated. That fear said to me: “This feels like a cult.”

This essay encompasses my attempt to rationalize and understand how I, an educated, talented, and empathetic woman could have the wool pulled over my eyes to join a cult. Half a decade since graduating and I still find more threads to pull on the tapestry that was woven for me of why this training would make me great. How being selected for this elite group would give me a leg up in a notoriously difficult industry. And how, even when the leaders of this cult showed me repeatedly they did not care about my wellbeing, I stayed, yearning for their encouragement, acceptance, and even validation. Something I hold much shame and confusion around.

While I feel trepidatious posting this, as Melissa cannot defend herself, I feel it is in my best interest to continue on this path of inquiry and see it to its conclusion. I even hope to find a bit of closure, as well.

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I’ll spare you the research I did on cults, as it’s a bit boring, but here’s the definition I came up with for the purposes of this Substack:

Cults are a group of people living in relative isolation, centered around one venerable leader who demands unquestioning loyalty by using various tactics, namely “us versus them” mentality, unique language, and control over thoughts, finances, and relationships all culminating in an intense dependency and obstacle towards leaving said group.

The selective nature of MFA programs begets us versus them thinking. “We chose you,” our cohort was often reminded. “This is the greatest training in the country.” “Do you know how many people auditioned and didn’t get in?” This last one was particularly insidious, as I had auditioned for graduate programs four years in a row. I used this line to my detriment every day, more times than I care to admit, all in an attempt to rationalize staying with a cohort where we felt far from copacetic most of the time. Within that cohort, the us versus them thinking persisted. Dissenting opinions were silenced. Members of my class claimed I was bullying them our second year, which to this day I denounce. I found myself in the HR office being told I was bullying the cisgender men of my program. The top of the patriarchal pyramid said I, a queer person, was bullying them. Even writing it feels absurd. I tried to defend myself but was outnumbered and I had to apologize for behavior I didn’t believe I was exhibiting. It was a deeply unsettling experience that made me question my reality and morality. Was I projecting my frustration with my own gender dysphoria onto my male classmates? Or was I acknowledging their lack of preparation in scene work with nonchalance? I don’t know and don’t think I ever will.

The elitism of the program was to my cohort’s detriment as well. We were forced to mingle with mucky-mucks who donated to our program, as our schedules were dictated for us. As in other cults, they controlled our time. This is also how all arts institutions work—give us money, meet the artists. More than once the young women of the program had to adjust the limbs of a handsy male board member. Sadly, again, the thinking was “you’re special,” “you’re worthy,” “these people are powerful.” Another instance was after a particularly grueling acting class where I couldn’t seem to understand a note Melissa offered me. I’ve since blocked out the actual moments of the scene that occurred, but distinctly remember the moment after. I returned to my seat, tears streaming down my face, upset that I couldn’t reach the validation of her telling me I had done a good job. I’m not proud of it, but this is what most actors chase in an acting class. She turned to me, stone-faced and said, “this is what you came here for.” Even typing it sends a chill down my spine.

We were pressured to be incredible, but in doing so a culture of comparison arose. We needed to project our voices to reach the back of the thousand-seat Geary theater we would perform in our third year of the curriculum. We also had to keep our instruments available for inspiration and flexible enough to repeat choices for on-camera work. Told to remember the legacy of alumni who came before us: Annette Benning, Denzel Washington, Benjamin Brat, Nicholas Cage, these A-list actors were our polestars. And in doing so we had to chase these incredibly singular talents. Chase their careers, their past roles, their raw God-given abilities. All the while told that our work was lacking. When we weren’t compared to major celebrities, we were compared to other cohorts or worse, each other. Teachers would imply our class was not as advanced as others, especially the ones above. Once during second year we were told the incoming auditionees were incredibly talented and we had to step up our game to match them. After a year and a half of training from those same teachers, we were told we weren’t good enough. Again, chasing this impossible goal of being incredible.

Aspects of our identities were often weaponized and hurled at each other. Marginality was paramount and used as a way to take up space and even excuse poor behavior. I don’t say this to discount racist patriarchal ideals that keep Black, brown, indigenous, queer, immigrant, and disabled bodies down. But I can say I sat in many meetings where Black students yelled at their teachers. Queer students yelled at their classmates. And women yelled at men. All because we didn’t feel seen, heard, or safe. In the end, it came full circle as the men then claimed they were the minorities and the oppressed ones. It was bleak. We couldn’t get outside perspectives because we had no time to even think about the outside world. Our schedules were packed for twelve hours a day six days a week. So we did our best to control the experiences we had inside our training. Training we were all going into massive amounts of debt over.

Within the acting work itself our identities were tools to control how we expressed ourselves. Men could be heroes, princes, warriors, villains and women were ingénues, mothers, manic pixies, or whores. As the only nonbinary student at the time I found myself in a uniquely difficult situation attempting to straddle these duel paths. Women in the program often complained that their feedback was to be more raw, emotional, and vulnerable, ending up in metaphorical puddles on the studio floor. Whereas men were encouraged to be large, sexy, masculine, or sly. After a grueling run-through of Romeo and Juliet, Melissa approached all the men of our class to ask them how they felt, and reassure them the work was good. The women sat to the side and received no commendation or care. Instances like this happened all the time. To be fair, our classwork featured exercises where we played other genders, as well. There’s a long theatrical tradition of women playing male roles. A guest director in the program told us once, “when a woman wears pants it’s political, but when a man wears a dress it’s comedy.” So it was quite radical when we did an exercise where the men shifted from masculinity to femininity, and vice versa for women. Regardless, the refrains remained similar across cohorts and years: women had to be fragile, and men could do whatever they wanted.

While MFA Training does not claim to be religion by any stretch of the imagination, the origins of theater are rooted in the same sense of ceremony. Ancient Greek theater was partially religion and politics. It was required viewing. Many teachers use ceremony demanding vulnerability of their students. Across institutions I’ve partaken in rituals of teachers asking students to bring sacred objects to share with classmates, things like a locket someone’s sister gave them, grandpa’s baseball mitt, or a picture of your dead dog. We are then encouraged to share with the group or make a piece of work about this endowed object. Exercises like this can lead to breakthroughs and connection between students, but the opportunity for bastardization and abuse is rife. Teachers can take control of this information or even fellow students. For example, during an exercise, a classmate crassly asked me about my actual dead mother, to which my classmates gasped and Melissa allowed the exercise to continue. I went along with it, as I wanted to do a good job, again chasing that feeling of validation. In hindsight I should have stopped. But alas, I was in too deep. Afterward I sobbed. My classmate apologized, but the harm was done. Sharing of secrets and internal sacrament was a part of the work. The practice almost felt like a confession with a priest, where we share parts of ourselves in an uneven power dynamic. Sometimes you’re the priest, other times the audience is. Actor training is not religious, but there is undeniably overlap from the very beginnings of both practices.

Another cult-like irony emerges in actor training: secrecy. The nature of our work is public, you can’t call what you do theater if you have no audience. The entire marketing industry is built upon the desire to get eyeballs on content or butts in seats. Yet actor training is notoriously secretive. Final classes typically culminate in invited rehearsals, or guest performances, rarely is student work shown to the masses and even rarer for profit. MFA students were not allowed to film each other’s work and only one time was an outside observer allowed to watch our class—a colleague of Melissa’s from Los Angeles. Just as with cults, with their uncanny rules and regulations, we were sequestered from the world in our studios working on our craft.

At some point in our final year during the COVID lockdown, each student in my twelve-person cohort disclosed they thought about leaving, thinking the training wasn’t worth it anymore. One of my classmates flat out told Melissa she would not be returning, and somehow, someway, Melissa convinced her to stay. I told our cohorts not to sign our contracts to return to school if we had to pay the same tuition for fewer opportunities and worse, online learning. My classmates disagreed with my tactics, calling them irrational and that we wouldn’t get what we wanted that way. I had been told by cohorts prior that the faculty gaslit them and disagreed. By the end I saw what they meant. For 2020-21 all twenty-four students paid full price for tuition. We did Lorca and Tennessee Williams… on Zoom, for $35,000 a year.

Cults take on many forms. In fact, I am not the first to say theater programs are cult-like. On the Sounds Like a Cult podcast hosted by Amanda Montell the hosts interview Tyler Joseph Ellis of TikTok fame. Ellis is also an alumnus of my other alma mater, USC. He mentions a cringe warm up ritual where violence and colonization are used as a hype exercise before performances. Ensembles begin as a whisper leading to a frenzied scream of the chant: “We’re gonna r*pe, kill, pillage and burn, we’re gonna r*pe, kill, pillage and burn - EAT THE BABIES!” In the interview they break down how intense rituals, cliques, and devotion in theatre programs often feel like cults to participants. On a different podcast, Good Hang, actress and comedian, Rachel Sennot, claimed similarly that she would witness actors in her undergraduate classes at NYU “locked in” and crying as chickens. She then suggests it felt like a cult as well. I wish she was exaggerating, but I, too, have witnessed people crying whilst playing animals in an acting class. These exercises, along with the demanded vulnerability, search for belonging, unique language, and the high-pressure environment of drama programs all lead the podcast participants to conclude that yes, theatre kids are a cult.

William Bainbridge, a cult expert, claims cults use compensators, or rewards in the distant future as currency in cults (Oxford University Press). Successful alumni become those compensators for MFA programs. Some people come out of drama school and are rewarded immediately, some are slow burns, and some change careers entirely. The actual statistics of success are difficult to measure because the metrics vary idiosyncratically. In other cults the compensator is the promise of bountiful virgins in heaven or the sacred leader will bestow blessings or favoritism upon you. In acting programs it’s the promise of a career, despite the fact that acting careers have zero guarantee of work. I think all people who become famous after drama school would think it was worth it. Of course they do, they got what they wanted, but what about the thousands of others who didn’t? Who do we measure success by? This question is a selling point of drama schools. Come here because so and so did, too. Join the lineage of greatness, as you have potential to be a star as well. These dreams become our compensators.

When you think about it, all education is sold as, “if you come here you will get better, and that will be better for you.” Learning makes you smarter, and smarts make you a more qualified worker, and under capitalism we all must be workers. But what about acting? How do you become a better actor? Go to school. The pillars of most actor training are preparation, instrumental flexibility, and professionalism. Training can help with all of these, but at the end of the day, if casting is looking for a role written for a five-foot six Black woman, they’re not going to give it to a white man. And sadly, there is only so much a person can learn in terms of acting until it comes down to just doing the damn thing. How much can training prepare you for those situations? Not a whole lot.

Two weeks before I moved to New York after graduation I went to visit Melissa. She and her family lived a mere six blocks from me my whole life, and yet we only found out once I got into A.C.T. I asked her if she’d like to go for a walk but sadly her energy had gone down so she invited me to drink tea with her instead. When I arrived, she looked frail. Her petite frame a shadow of who she once was. I brought her a hat I found at a thrift store that said “Lou-uh-vul,” a nod to her Kentucky roots. “Did you see what he brought me?” She mentioned to her husband, excited to show off her gift, too drugged up to notice she mis-gendered me. My distress over students and faculty messing up my pronouns had been a fraught conversation between her and I, but at this point I felt embodied in my gender expression and didn’t care what she said.

We chatted for a couple hours. She gazed out the window looking devastating as always. The morphine was hitting so she got lost in her own thoughts quite a bit. Giving her best Mary Tyrone from Long Day’s Journey into Night.Her eyes drifted in and out of focus. Despite it all she did her best to stay present with me. We talked about my imminent move to New York, the state of the American theater, and The Chair on Netflix—a single season Sandra Oh vehicle about a fraught leader of an English department. She said she felt seen by Sandra’s character. I felt a great sense of empathy for her.

I tried to help her shift on her couch, though even before starting estrogen my upper body strength wasn’t that great. “That’s fine,” she said. Even now I don’t know if she was just saying that or if she was actually more comfortable. Worse still, I worry that I could never quite tell what she was thinking. Some part of me wanted to heal the wounds she carved into me as an artist, student, and scholar. Or maybe I wanted to heal the parts of me wounded by my own mother’s death and never getting to show her my successes.

Her favorite student, Tika, returned home. Tika was taking care of Melissa, the only acolyte to do so. Buying groceries, making dinner, driving Melissa’s husband to and from work, picking up prescriptions. The devotion was obvious. Tika worshipped the ground Melissa walked on. They told each other “I love you,” before she left. I never quite understood their bond, but they saw something in each other that no one else did. It was beautiful, even though I didn’t understand it.

I left, glad I saw her. I think it’s rare anyone actually gets closure around those who’ve hurt them, but I got as close as I could with her. We had a meeting of the minds. She may never have seen me as an equal, maybe I never popped into her head, but I was proud I took the time to spend with her while she was around.

A week later I got a call from my best friend and classmate, Ash. I answered with my usual joviality, “hey babe, what’s up?” She took a breath and uttered, “Girl, Melissa died.” I wish I could say the usual things: the world started spinning, the waterworks began, my head felt on fire. But no, I gasped, said “what?” listened for five minutes, shared our “I love you’s” and said goodbye. For someone who cried so often in front of Melissa, my eyes were dry at the time of her passing. It was strange. Saddest of all, just like Morales in A Chorus Line, I felt nothing. Shocked, sad, but overall, nothing.

Three months later at her memorial that feeling persisted. At first, I thought it was numbness from the news. Maybe it was nerves seeing my colleagues as an out transgender woman. But with each passing day after the memorial, I saw the similarities to cults. She answered to the Artistic and Managing Directors of the theater, and the board, of course, so she wasn’t omnipotent nor pretended to be. But she checked many of the boxes: venerable, isolating, controlling, withholding of affection and care, selective with her favorites, and problematic to say the least. The most insidious part remained: even after all this introspection, research, dissection, tears, therapy, and healing, she still holds a tender place in my heart. One of intense hatred at times, and knowing she didn’t give a fuck about that hatred made me hate her even more. But also one of affection. There were definitely times when her attention and unwavering desire for great and truthful acting undoubtedly made me a better artist. When she shone her light on you the whole world seemed to shimmer. But when she didn’t, the frost damn near killed you.

I did learn a lot in my MFA and definitely became a better actor. I have a barometer for truthful performance, where the artist leaves it out on the line, where it costs them something. I also learned great acting shouldn’t always deprive the artist, and not to demand greatness from every performance I witness. If they’re all great, then none are. But alas, A.C.T. did not set me up for success financially. I had no job opportunities upon graduation, as I said, no acting program can promise that. In fact, I’ve emailed the company many times asking for teaching or administrative jobs or when there are roles in their mainstage season I’d be right for. Their response usually falls into, “don’t call us, we’ll call you” or crickets. After I booked a recurring guest arc on a Netflix show in 2025, I sent them a blurb about it. In the three alumni newsletters since then my face has been absent. They did repost my photo to the alumni Facebook group, though. So, tiny victories, I suppose.

I guess my paper is more of a warning than anything. Perhaps I’m a highly sensitive person and programs like A.C.T. don’t allow people like that to thrive. I worry publishing this will lead to backlash because Melissa was so beloved. But I couldn’t let this lingering resentment and voice in my head remain silent any longer. Melissa taught me to follow those impulses, so in a weird way this critique of her program is also honoring that legacy. I don’t think Melissa meant harm to her students. In fact, I know she thought she was helping them, as do most acting teachers. In a weird way she did. But it doesn’t change that harm was caused and will always be caused, regardless of intent. What I do know is this: A.C.T. created an environment where devotion was rewarded inconsistently, external validation was used as currency, suffering was framed as necessary for excellence, and harm coexisted with genuinely beautiful artistry. It’s a tricky thing this business of show and this education of art. Melissa told us once, “Acting is simple. But it’s not easy.” And just like that quote: acting programs are cultic, but not always evil. I’ll leave you with that.

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What a funny irony that two separate flags held by two separate trans people consistently (hell, down right deliberately) thwacked my cis friends in the face during the Trans March. Nicole Kidman voice: Reparations feel good in a place like this.

I’ll say this much, I give a lotta flack to the trans community, for being annoying, for using autism diagnoses as an excuse for bad behavior, and nonbinary people for smelling bad and claiming it’s their gender expression. But dammit, standing in a sea of short trans guys proud of their beards and tall dolls with petite bouncing titties as pro Palestinian protestors tore down traffic cameras covering their faces with kafiyas, and weird cis people looking on and applauding with their Protect Trans Kids t-shirts.

I dunno. I found it… moving.

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Did I find a new trans friend group and leave with stories of wild and crazy nights I could tell grandchildren one day? No. But I did walk by a ghost of trade past whose kink was to be walked in on while he was jerking off. Then avoided an annoying she/they I went on two dates on with who refused to come out as trans at work because it would be “too much hassle.” She was surrounded by her fellow trans girls as they headed into the Castro’s sole lesbian bar. My gay friends and I headed to tacos, instead.

Was I weirded out by toddlers mingling with t-boys showing off their scars and flogging a doll with a pink and blue whip? Not really. Maybe it’s my liberal upbringing and brainrot, but I saw weirder growing up. Was I annoyed that there didn’t seem to be a clear leader of the parade or a reason why we kept stopping and starting when the parade route was clearly blocked off from traffic? Most definitely. Best believe I made jokes about how trans folks can organize a mutual aid website or a meal train after surgery within an inch of its life, but walking as a group down a designated road turns out to be too difficult. The fuck.

The guy in the pink and blue furry head walking next to housing insecure youth and families with strollers harkens back to a time of my youth. When San Francisco was fucking weird. A place so nurturing it became unhelpful. A society so open I fled to Southern California to learn that conservatives weren’t bumpkins or evil (at least not all the time). Though the group of fratty cis men looking at the parade as we passed did make me nervous, like an allegation waiting to happen as their basketball shorts attempted to hide their burgeoning boners.

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I do wish I’d seen more glamazon dolls. Not just the ones who don’t know how to dress. I don’t think this is self-hatred. I think it’s criticism of my own community fueled by white guilt and former gay shame melding into a pastiche of deprecation to protect myself from being too vulnerable. Or maybe I’ve been to too much therapy.

Whilst we stood waiting for the masses of asses to move up Dolores Street, I realized I didn’t need to keep my shoulders up. I was nervous in the crowd, I always am with the thread of nuclear winter or a mass shooting always a few pages away on the menu. Despite my nerves, I was finally not the only doll in the group. I wasn’t the tallest, shortest, richest, or poorest amongst us. I was definitely the prettiest, but that’s another story 😌.

As we climbed the shallow incline we glanced back the half mile we’d come to see throngs of people almost as far as we could see. Drones dodged each other above us as they tried to encompass the thousands of people. How many had come from out of town? I definitely don’t see this many t-slurs when I go to the grocery store. And yet here we were, the majority for the first time.

Also the allies. I was reminded that most people want us to thrive. I need not be scared all the time.

Memories of pride’s past bloomed in my mind. When I was a teenager doing everything I could to not acknowledge the two men basically having sex on the sidewalk as my mom sighed, forgetting the festivities would grid lock our route home. This was before I’d told my mom I was gay, though she told me she knew. She’d seen the search history on the family computer, she knew the two men making out next to us were twinks.

Or in college when my best friend Alex, her ex-best friend Katie, and I snuck a bottle of Smirnoff into the festivities and got black out drunk before hearing gunshots twenty-feet away. We dodged cops who body-checked us to get to the shooters. We climbed the hills to the Harvey Milk Center calling my parents, telling her there was a shooting through slurred speech and she, being the saint she was, grabbed my dad and immediately drove to us to get us to safety. We had peed in the bushes for lack of a bathroom and smelled like liquor, but my mom asked us no questions until we dropped Alex and Katie off and got me home. “So what were you drinking tonight?” “What? We weren’t drinking.” She and my dad guffawed. I sighed. “Vodka.” She gagged, “blech, that’s what your grandfather used to drink.”

She worried I’d become her father, a closeted alcoholic academic who had four kids, went out to have sex with strangers, brought home an undisclosed venereal disease to my grandmother, his doting wife, before succumbing to complications from AIDS in the nineties. I was my mother’s golden child, after a difficult first daughter, another daughter with Down syndrome, a necessary abortion after that, followed by me: a swishy gay kid she did everything in her power to make sure didn’t catch HIV and become a statistic. But I was a goody two shoes. I didn’t even drink until college, and obviously became a woman… but that’s another story.

Then there was two days ago when my dad drove me home from dinner in the Richmond and I saw a hot shirtless tatted up gym bro jogging through the Panhandle and I muttered, “where u goin?” as I rubber necked. My dad chuckled, he says my mom would have done the same.

Or the morning of Pink Saturday, talking with my roommate about my former dick, and getting confirmation, that it was, in fact, big and pretty. I didn’t need that validation from a gay guy, but it was nice to receive. Meanwhile a twink named Mark or something walked down the hallway. I had no idea we had company over. Welcome to Pride in the City.

Pride is about more than drinking, drugs, and gay guys showing off their cum gutters to strangers but being too afraid to actually approach anyone. It’s about the death of shame. It’s about letting the parts of yourself you didn’t like free. It’s reminding you and everyone like you that you aren’t alone. Even when you take the train to work on Tuesday morning with the squares, the blands, and the heteros. Many of those husbands and wives and girlfriends are more like you than you realize. The ogling you get isn’t because you’re different, it’s because they see parts of themselves in you.

Pride is about letting that gay guy inside you out. (Not like that, you whore). And letting the doll out. And the lesbian, and the messy bisexual, and the asexual who doesn’t want to see people fucking in the gutter, and the one’s who want no kink at pride and especially the ones that do. Sometimes, pride is just about gay people being gay. And that’s okay.

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I’d just left therapy where tears had fallen, impossible questions asked, and a minor sense of calm had surfaced. Fuck Boy, let’s call him Dave, and I had rescheduled from earlier for after my session. I’m trying new things. Not always inviting guys back to mine where I can control the vibe. Maybe I can stomach disgusting boy apartments, and not get the ick. Maybe I can try new things and not need to determine the outcomes.

He was cute. Dark curly hair (my kryptonite), a mustache, biceps and a slight belly showing he worked out but never said no to second helpings of pasta. He messaged me yesterday after we chatted the month before and he ghosted me. I couldn’t find his profile on Grindr to save my life so I asked for a face pic again, and he was cute/serviceable. Sue me, I was thirsty. I didn’t think he was my next great love, but maybe a good lay to get my weekend started. Who hasn’t tried to be efficient in their sex life?

I wore flats in case he was short. No socks on in case my feet got sweaty, so I stood en pointe on the floor of the Uber hoping the gods of foot odor took pity on the doll just trying to get her back blown out on a Friday afternoon.

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Once in the elevator to his I asked, “you work in tech, I assume?” I’ve stopped inquiring what people do, no one in San Francisco is passionate about anything, least of all their jobs.

“I used to be, but now I’m an E.M.T.” Hmm, that’s new, I think. Never met one of those. He reveals he was a software engineer and switched careers mere months ago. Oh to have the audacity of a white man to switch careers on a dime and still be able to live in a building with an elevator.

The carpets of his floor are wet, they must have been cleaning them. Everything is shades of griege, again, opinionless and innocuous so that the building’s residents who no doubt have an aversion to color also, never feel taken aback by anything within the RBG scale.

He walks me to his apartment. It’s massive. I compliment, being polite, though it could be cleaner. If he’s gonna be inside me soon I at least wanna set the mood.

Then I see a bunch of shoes on the floor. Weird. Does he have roommates? Are they not here? Also, who invites a hook up over at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon?

“Do you live alone?”

“No, with my girlfriend.”

…

Dearest reader, he had never disclosed he was in a relationship.

I laugh, tell him my rule about never being the other woman… again. I don’t wanna be another Jolene. I sigh and say, “but hey, I’m here.” If nothing else, he wasn’t ugly and I could possibly turn my brain off for half an hour, maybe even fifteen minutes if it meant getting my nut.

He apologizes. I start going through my catalogue of our conversation since he’d texted me. He’d been a blank profile. So I couldn’t find him on Grindr. I don’t know if it’s the four weeks since our last conversation or the estrogen contributing to my brain fog and frustration that I can’t remember him telling me that small factoid.

He offers me sparkling water, I settle for still, I’m not gonna be burping around this mother fucker. He serves it in a mason jar, probably something his girlfriend saw on Pinterest in the early 20-teens.

I look around again with new eyes. The giant teddy bear on the floor next to the monstera probably a prize from Six Flags he won her on their anniversary.

We sit down, I get to know him a bit, he apologizes again. I purse my lips, and try not to glance at his dick print through his old sweats, again, ones his girlfriend probably bought him.

He tells me his family are all doctors, firefighters, and nurses. “You come from a line of healers,” I tell him. Maybe he can heal me with that dick. I think to myself. He nerds out about his job for a bit. Something he’s actually excited about. What is it about people discussing their passions that’s so hot???

“Yourself?” He asks. I tell him I’m an actress. My latest credit, which I’m getting tired of disclosing, and how I work in fundraising to pay rent. I let him know I’m doing a play in the fall where I’ll be playing an ingenue.

“What was that word, again?” “Ingenue, like the young female love interest.” “Like ‘on your knees’ in French?” My brow furrows. “I don’t know.” He Google translates “on knees” it does indeed sound the same. This has gone from flirtation to a conjugation lesson and my coochie is drying up by the second.

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I look at him. He looks away. I look at the monstera along with some other pathetic looking plants.

“Well listen, I’m sorry for not letting you know I have a girlfriend. And I have a rule that I only fuck people once.”

I sigh... Remembering I put in my profile very clearly that I’m looking for a long term relationship, acknowledging grindr is not the place to look for it. Hey, at least I was up front.

“Cool… guess I’ll go.”

He wasn’t that cute anyway.

I put my shoes on, he walks me down the hallway, I tell him, “you don’t need to take the elevator with me.”

“Again, sorry.” He mutters.

An old maintenance man greets me as the doors open. Even new builds have old supers, jeez.

I begin walking, wanting to get away from the building. Usually I feel gross having wiped a strangers ejaculate off of me commingling with sweat and shame. But today, I have my pride… and a healthy dose of humiliation to contend with. So this is what happens when I hook up at their place instead of mine.

I cross the street toward an Italian corner store, Cheese Plus, which I told him I’d seen on Tiktok. I debate buying a charcuterie box to eat while I take an uber home. Semi-soft cheese won’t let me down like men always do. I don’t even stop to look at the prices, knowing they’ll appall me.

Instead I begin walking toward Van Ness. Thinking I’ll call a car or simmer in anger on the crowded 49 bus dreaming of the post coital bliss that could have been. Then I remember the chat I just had in therapy about allowing myself to be the bitch. Better a bitch than an autoimmune disease, like I discussed last week.

I open our text thread and being typing.

“You mother fucker, thanks for wasting my tim—“ Delete delete delete

“Hope your girlfriend knows you fuck tran—“ Delete delete delete

…

“you could have at least paid for my uber home.” Sent.

I’m proud of myself. Because, yeah, he could have. The short king I hooked up with last week offered that like a gentleman. What is it about men that the second they get in a relationship they think they can throw all decorum and gentility out the window? Is it that they stop evolving, waiting for their amygdala to release some neuro-chemical that makes them want to fuck the dolls?

I realize I’m glad we didn’t fuck. Probably for the best. I wasn’t in the best headspace after therapy. I probably would have hated myself afterward and ended up feeling awful for the weekend.

“I’ll call you one right now!”

My eyes turn to slits as I side glance my phone, debating if I want this shitty relationshipped man to pity call me a car. Then I think, what the hell, he shoulda paid for mine there, too!

“Sure.” I type.

He has my address from when he almost came over the night before. It’s a seven minute wait. Cheap ass, not springing for the express option.

I debate reading him the riot act or finding his girlfriend on linkedIn and letting her know her man’s annoying. But then again, she probably knows because all those bitches are open. Blech, god, straight people really do take the worst things from queer people and leave the rest. Happy Pride, Divas!

When I’m two blocks from home he texts me, “Also I looked it up in case you’re curious too—it’s ingénue in French, ingenuous in English which I’ve never heard before, but means innocent or child-like.”

Does this motherfucker really think I was sitting in an Uber after he wasted my time contemplating the etymology of the word “ingenue”? God, sometimes autistic-coded men are the worst.

Dearest reader, do not pity me, I demand it. I will not beg. You may feel bad for me. You may even feel sorry. But I will never, ever settle for a guy living in a taste-free apartment with the latest gadgets and gizmos aplenty, who tells white-lies to get pussy. I may not have a boyfriend, job I love, or apartment I cherish. But I do have fucking dignity.

Dignity is a strange thing to have in moments like this. Dignity won’t make your life better. It may earn you respect, but no one wants to fuck the dignified. No, no, no. We want to fuck the basest, most vile, and indeed often the most hated parts of ourselves, hence why my friends enjoy getting spat on and fisted or others with assault fantasies and a penchant for rope play. We want a partner who can nurture these ugly parts of ourselves.

It feels like people don’t even think of me as capable of a relationship now. My gay guy friends contend with, “are you two together?” when they’re out with their cis girl besties. Despite the fact that internally they feel swishy and flamboyant and obviously queer. But with me, no one seems to think of me that way. What a curse, to feel undoubtedly romantic and not seen that way. Like when I’m they’d and them’d by service workers, despite my breasts, makeup, and flowing locks of (not quite) auburn hair. That’s the thing about Jolene, she’s the other woman, we all root for Dolly in the end.

I think I, like everyone else on Earth, am looking for a reflection of value. To know that I’m worthy; not simply a monkey wrench in the machine of the heteronormative industrial complex. How odd to crave to be a cog like everyone else but be reminded constantly that “I’m not like other girls.”

Most of all, I’m proud I didn’t cry. Too many tears from therapy a mere forty-two minutes earlier. I sat in the back of the sky blue Prius, sailing past titans of the arts like the Symphony and Opera house, City Hall stands monumental while thousands shuffle along.

Maybe I should have fucked him and turned that part of my brain off. Who cares if he probably hasn’t changed the sheets since he last fucked his girlfriend? Who cares if he probably got back on Grindr and tried finding some other doll to bang the second after I left? He didn’t even know if I had a dick or not. Wow. Maybe I should have just gotten eaten out and called it a day.

Or maybe I made the best decision I could with the choices I had. Moments are fleeting, choices abound. At least I know I didn’t lead anyone on. And who knows? Maybe he’ll start jerking off and get an intrusive thought right before he comes, and I’ll feel a little twinge of satisfaction as a slight disturbance in the force gives me the divine pleasure I deserve.

In the end, I hope Jolene, too, found a man who loved her and didn’t make her feel like a two timing hussy. Maybe she and Dolly even became friends. Who knows, dearest reader, who knows?

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I decided, after many years, to explore my own experience of love and loss. My “one who got away.” My Henry.

Names have been changed to protect anonymity, but if you ask nicely I’ll reveal them to you.

It feels odd to even refer to him as mine, as it was a three-month dalliance, but one which changed my brain chemistry and body for the rest of my life.

We met during our study abroad program in London. The year was 2010, I was young and unafraid. Pre Grindr, pre Instagram even. The year before, as a sophomore, I had hooked up with the hottest guy in my undergrad theater school, so hot that my friend literally didn’t believe me when I told her. After that hook up I’d gotten a minor sti, my first experience with the public health system and doctor who barely spoke English yelling my diagnosis at me; the sex worker in the waiting room was nice, though. I felt a shame on top of being gay. I felt dirty, especially when said hot guy stopped texting me back when I spoke with him after a cappella rehearsal (yes, we were in the same group), he said he had no symptoms. I felt even more shame. Welcome to being gay.

Anyway, back to Henry.

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We were in different groups of our study abroad acting program, the British American Drama Academy. I learned a ton about Shakespeare, London Theater, and acting as a whole. But more than that I learned about relationships.

My first thought when meeting a new crop of acting students was, of course, scoping out who was hot and who was gay. A few stood out for their queerness, but not many for looks to me. Ironically most of my cohort from back then are married now, and I’m still single. Hooray.

Our acting cohorts combined for one class a week, dramatic criticism, which terrified me as reading plays and having opinions on them often confused me. Decoding text was foreign, but I learned if you spoke with enough conviction and perlocutionary force people tend to agree with you. It also helped that I was a good-looking man our robust gay teacher had a crush on me.

Henry went to Brown, about as foreign to my USC theater-kid experience as can be. He was from Boston, spoke with a natural resonant baritone, thick curly hair, and the kicker: had a boyfriend back home.

I’d never met anyone that excited me like that, sure, there were cute guys back home, USC has no short supply of those. But Henry was articulate, mysterious, shy, and passionate about theatre. The BFA fuck-boys of USC were all straight with matinee idol good looks. Henry was dark and quiet. Where I was sun and fog and musical theater whimsy, he was brutalist stone, hour long subway rides, and a reserved confidence that intoxicated me. What’s more, he thought I was talented. Reflexive talent crushes are dangerous; any teenage showmance survivor can attest.

Despite this last frustrating fact, my crush and desire for conquest in a foreign land grew (no doubt a holdover from my colonizer bloodline). I cautiously invited him to parties, and inquired about other festivities, “who all’s there?” hoping to hear his name, declining invitations when I didn’t.

One of these parties was held by the rest of my USC friends. I had been placed in a group with a former friend who had disowned me sophomore year: Rebecca. Later in our study abroad semester she apologized for her cruelty to me, admitting she’d had an eating disorder the year before and wasn’t herself. Our other Trojan classmates held a kickback where ciders were poured and games of Hot Seat ensued. Where you have one minute to ask the Hot Seat person any intrusive questions or force them to drink when they declined. Being twenty-year-old actors we all chased the feeling of shocking our compatriots. One painfully shy girl (who literally shook from her caffeine intake each day) admitted drunkenly to masturbating every morning before school. Another told us her boyfriend’s dick was literally ten inches long as he had a gland disorder that made his testosterone spike.

I stepped out while Henry went, gossiping with a friend about when she lost her virginity. I was catching up to everyone’s level of drunkenness but played along.

“[Dead name], it’s your turn.” My friend Lily suggested. Inquiries ensued. “Are you cut or uncut?” “Would you sleep with our stage-combat teacher?” and then, “If you could sleep with one guy at BADA who would it be?”

I blushed. Henry was right there. I looked around, avoiding his gaze. “Come back to that one,” I pleaded.

“Sure. How many men have you slept with?” “What’s your dream role?”

We got to the end, and asked again, “So, [Dead name], which boy at BADA?”

I sighed. I might as well say it, he has a boyfriend. I thought.

“Well, honestly? I’d say you, Henry.”

A hush fell over the room. I was surprised, they knew I was gay. What, was that gauche to admit I found a taken man attractive? Why the weirdness?

“I said you, too.” He smiled, coyly. In front of everyone. Twenty people stretched their top lips down and bulged their eyes as they sipped beer and wine.

Dearest reader, I was done for. With that public admission, I knew I was due for a messy, messy study abroad.

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A few days later I invited Henry to my place for a small kickback as my roommates were out seeing a play. I subsequently got black-out drunk, mixing cheap Waitrose vodka with Kopparberg cider, hoping against hope I would find a way to get him alone in my bedroom. My roommate, Mark, told me he would give me £5 if I was able to use my scoliosis brace as a flirtation tactic. Never question my confidence, dearest reader, as I did, in fact, throw on my scoliosis brace and convince him to sidle up to me in my dark bed room… alone. Hey, I was £5 richer. We sat on my twin bed. I asked if Henry had anything he wanted to say. “Well… mainly that I want to kiss you.” He responded.

Which of course we did. For about five minutes, followed by one moment of me saying, “I don’t feel so good, I think I’m gonna— *blech*” and promptly threw up in the wicker trashcan our cheap flat provided. Our secretive moment ruined by the hubris of a college junior’s liver and stomach. Henry climbed off of me as my guests heard the sound and came rushing in. Luckily no one saw anything. Henry, being a gentleman emptied the trash can, placed a glass of water on my bed and made his way out. Giggles ensued outside as I drifted off into a drunk slumber, restless, but elated I’d made out with my crush.

The next day I nursed the worst hangover of my life to that point. I ate sourdough bread and reflected on my choices. I had kissed a hot guy, who cared that he had a boyfriend? He said he wanted to and I complied. It was mutual attraction. So what?

During a break from class on Monday, we crossed paths in the tiny cantina downstairs at BADA. I purse-lipped smiled at him, holding a butter knife like a serial killer as a joke I can only assume I thought was funny… he grimaced at me. Great. Sadly my flirting skills haven’t improved since.

The memories grow fuzzy here. I think I must have texted him, inviting him up to my place for dinner to make up for my embarrassing antics from the weekend. Somehow, again, we found our way to my bedroom. I remember we didn’t fuck for a few weeks, as I complained about my blue balls to my roommate whom I swore to secrecy.

It’s an odd feeling to be so attracted to someone and not allow yourself tell the world about it. A feeling I’ve tragically come to experience as a doll (and one reason I don’t hook up before a date. If they won’t kiss me in public I won’t kiss them in private). But Henry had classmates from Brown there with him who knew his boyfriend back home. And I didn’t want a reputation as a home wrecker. Slowly but surely the secret got out, you can only have so many “rehearsals” and “play discussions” in a closed bedroom that smelled of sweat afterward and featured moaning sounds seeping out from the bottom of the door.

Our attraction grew, sex was had, it was amazing. We had very little access to internet during our time there, a blessing in hindsight. My mind was free from the toxicity of porn for months on end. Henry ended up breaking up with his boyfriend back home, a fact I took to heart, rationalizing that I was no longer “the other guy” but someone he cared about. He claimed I seduced him. I say it was mutual. Leave it up to the gods to decide. Our connection was not only physical but mental as well. We said “I love you” and called each other our “London Boyfriends.” We went to see plays for student prices every week. To this day I think some of my best acting work took place during our time together. Katy Perry’s hit “Firework” came out that year. I cried on his chest to the music video, which he rightly roasted me for. What can I say, I’m a simp at heart. The whole thing was sugary sweet.

Every morning we strolled the forty-five-minute commute through gorgeous Regent’s Park to class. We even got cast in the same show for the end of the semester, King Lear (and also the one most of the program wanted to get in to). During this time,

There were some who didn’t know about us, I confessed to one of my USC cohort about our affair while in a hostel in Italy during our fall break, Henry had gone to Berlin with another classmate. The whole week I yearned for him after getting a terrible sinus infection in Florence. My classmate was genuinely gob smacked. Another odd feeling of pride that some people hadn’t caught on. But it was short lived.

Through all of this, Henry’s roommate in the program, Evan, had a huge, obvious, and often awkward crush on me. He would go out with his other roommate Paul, whom I adore to this day, to G-A-Y Heaven, a notorious London gay bar.

Because we were all American, BADA hosted a grand catered Thanksgiving feast for all us. The students dressed up, speeches were made, wine was poured, and thanks… oh, they were given, hunny. Through a wine-soaked haze, Evan somehow cornered me and confessed that Henry, the man that he and some of the program knew I had fallen deeply for, was Skyping with his boyfriend back home in Massachusetts every morning. Saying “I love you, see you soon” every morning and then saying the same thing to me at night. I felt betrayed, but so did Henry. He’d trusted Evan with this unsettling truth, that he had maintained his connection with his ex, whilst also sleeping with me at night.

Ultimately, I felt it a treachery to hide that from me. But I could have lived in ignorant bliss. Sadly, Evan was in trouble with both of us.

Henry and I had to talk, so we walked home that frigid November night. It had snowed before January that year for the first time in a decade. Through our drunkenness I told him I still loved him and wanted to be with him, even if he wasn’t mine. I think? I don’t know, it was sixteen years ago, I was drunk… and horny… and thirsty for love.

A week later Evan apologized and confessed his love for me. I think he hoped I’d reciprocate. I didn’t. It was weird. He asked that I not stay in their space without an invitation from the whole apartment. The rest of his roommates loved me, though. All these years later I see his side of it. It must have hurt to see the guy you liked fall in love with someone else. And what’s more, that someone else was cheating on the original crush. Oof, it’d be a great play or HBO miniseries.

Rebecca, my friend who disowned me the year before, continued to ask, “are you and Henry dating?” Which I vehemently denied. “Noooo, we’re just friends.” To which she furrowed her brow and slyly said, “okayyyyy.” Between call times for our King Lear rehearsal he and I ran into each other in Camden Town. We checked if the coast was clear from the busy street corner, and snuck a quick peck. As I continued down the street to a delightful tea room called Yum Cha, a voice cut through the Camden noise: “I saw that.” I gasped. I knew that voice. It was the undeniable sneakiness of Rebecca. We caught eyes, I sighed. “What’s going on?!?” She guffawed. We’d been caught. I told her everything. She swore she wouldn’t tell. But who knows? At that point it felt like a secret we couldn’t be kept and one with an end date.

To this day, Henry remains the only man I’ve introduced to my parents. I told them I was seeing someone. A group of friends met them at a pub down the street from us. They had just landed, undeniably jetlagged, but my mother clearly wanted to see the guy who had won my heart.

On our last night together I begged, more like threatened, my roommate Pete, to let us have the room for the night and insisted he sleep on the couch. I’m not proud of it. Then again, he ended up with a beautiful bride, family, and career. I stayed with him when I filmed Monster last year. He’s a mensch and a brother to me in so many ways.

The morning I left, I waited downstairs in the lobby, our hands linked, not caring who saw. My taxi arrived, this was pre Lyft/Uber. I kissed him one last time, keeping the tears at bay until we turned the corner and I sobbed alone in the back of a London Cab on the way to my parent’s AirBnb.

I climbed the stairs, angry, sad, wanting to hide my sorrow. My mom saw right through it. As I sat at the table, my sister yelling at the tv, my dad asking me where we should go for dinner, tears flowed again. She held me, as I couldn’t articulate why I was sad, but she knew.

I was angry the rest of our trip with them, something I still regret. Checking Facebook messenger to see if he’d written me another email. We corresponded a few times, paragraphs of prose letting each other know what we were up to. Never expressing our feelings for each other. All the while it pained me to remember he was heading back to his ex.

As the months toiled on, I decided to take a trip to New York to see my BADA friends that summer. I had no places to stay, but found couches to crash on. All the while I wanted to reconnect with Henry. And when we did… it was like no time had passed. Though we never even kissed. He took me to nice restaurants in Brooklyn. We saw Jerusalem with future Oscar winner Mark Rylance. We saw old friends and new. All the while I hoped against hope that he would say he wanted to take me back… like an idiot.

He didn’t.

Our last day, somewhere south of Central Park, we were about to part ways, and I stopped him on the side walk. I don’t remember what I said, and that’s probably for the best. My body only remembers the fear and hope that he would say I meant something to him. Which he didn’t. I know he liked me and found me attractive, but clearly didn’t want a relationship, which I was desperate for. I walked him to the subway and hugged him goodbye.

I bolted toward Central Park, looking for somewhere to release my feelings. My fear. My shame. My anguish that I wasn’t enough to be loved by the man I loved. Children, joggers, nannies with strollers, gays sunbathing, there were so many fucking people I couldn’t find a place to be alone to cry. Little did I know this was a lesson in New York.

You become a New Yorker when you live there for ten years, or you cry on the subway and don’t give a fuck.

After nearly an hour I found a piece of bedrock in a bit of the man-made forest where I could cry in peace. The tears fell, the cries wailed out. I sweat through my Uniqlo tank top and cargo shorts in the urban heat. The quiet only lasted a few minutes as some Puerto Rican guys climbed up a few yards away from me. One caught eyes with me, noticing my red face and damp cheeks. “You good?” he asked in the aggressive way New Yorkers do. “Yeah.” I replied, trying my best to blend in. A beat passed. “You wanna smoke?” “No thanks,” I chuckled. He sighed, not knowing the story but recognizing the feeling, “it’ll be all right.” He told me. My next lesson in New York: Nuyorican’s will seem like they’re yelling at you, but offer you kindness in return. A blessing I needed in the moment.

But Alanna, I hear you ask, this man broke your heart, did he really ruin your life? And oh, dearest, reader, I’m getting there.

The next day I had the first of my many symptoms of ulcerative colitis, a form of irritable bowel disease. This journey would make me lose weight, pass massive blood in my stool, and eventually end up in the hospital for two weeks dropping out of my senior year of college. It was terrifying and remains one of the worst things that ever happened to me.

What does this have to do with Henry ruining your life?

Well, I have no way of proving it, it’s a stretch, and more has been proven with less, but I think the feeling of anguish I felt with Henry lying to me, betraying me, and in turn I betraying myself, lead me to have irritable bowel symptoms. I don’t have the data to support this somatic theory but it makes sense to me. I’m proud to say I’ve been in remission for xnearly two decades. Sadly, that medical history stopped me from being able to receive a gender affirming surgery that would have gotten me closest to the body I wanted.

Hearing that news from my surgeons left me more devastated than my mother’s death.

I don’t blame Henry for my surgical outcomes, but the logical leap from Henry breaking my heart to developing irritable bowel to not being eligible for certain surgeries makes perfect sense to me. Which breaks my heart even more.

I haven’t been back to London since. I haven’t even travelled internationally, either. More heartbreaks. Part of me is scared it will bring back too many memories. Another admits it’s because I can’t afford it.

In the end, life is nothing but a bunch of lessons. I learned not to accept the love someone gives if it doesn’t feed you the way it should. I learned secrets cannot be kept. I learned Shakespeare will always have a quote for that. I learned gay men can be just as charming and cruel as straight men. And lastly, I learned men lie. It’s horrible.

But most of all, I learned I can survive. Tragedy after tragedy, apocalypse after apocalypse. I’ve learned I’m worthy of love. Even if a cute guy from Boston doesn’t believe I am. I have more love in me than most have in their whole lives. I am beautiful. I am talented. And I deserve someone who wants to kiss me in public.

I hope you all know that about yourselves, too.

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A story erupts in my head: MUNA’s “It Gets So Hot” as the overture. An opening montage to a devastating A24 movie they’ll never make because they don’t bargain on doll-centered cinema. I stretch in the mirror of Fitness SF when I catch eyes with a bearded otter wearing a Mayhem Ball t-shirt. I dive into a memory of him jerking off in the locker room as a daddy looked on and they asked me to join them. He ignores me. Two bald fags giggle as they exit said locker room, they lock eyes with me. I time travel again to their hirsute days when I gave them mutual hand jobs in the steam room. A devil may care grin across my manicured stubble that’s since been lasered off. The baldies don’t even pretend to look at me.

Crack! A male nurse with too-perfect skin pops me out of my reverie as he steps on a plastic cup, no doubt left over from some block party. A trans teen walks by, as the parent-ified feeling of my youth washes over me. I have to remind myself, “it’s not your job to take care of everyone. Certainly no one did that for you when you needed them most.”

Back at the farmer’s market fresh peaches and blueberries mingle with my new yarn and knitting needles in my symbol of broke nouveau riche millennials: the Trader Joe’s tote.

This is 2026.

I skipped my Substack last week as it was my father’s birthday. He wanted to go to the House of Prime Rib, a San Francisco steakhouse staple. Where men can feel confident that they won’t be judged for ordering red meat. I wore a nice dress and did my makeup, mainly so my sisters and family would know who the fuck they’re dealing with. Didn’t stop my eldest sister from bringing up J.K. Rowling and how fascinated she was by the Witch Trials podcast she did. It took three attempts but eventually she clarified that she disagrees with her views on trans people. We live in an age where you have to scream your opinions to know where you’ll land in the history books.

I found out my sister’s childhood best friend has a partner and three year old. We stopped talking during the pandemic because she felt attacked by my play about my coming out at my sister’s wedding. Another grief to add to my growing pile, an avalanche waiting in the wings.

Grief is different than sadness. It’s not just blue. It changes color. Purple, yellow, sometimes green or red, like a bruise. Therapists over the years have told me that there’s an inordinate amount of grief present in my sessions. I don’t want to be one of those people who make their diagnoses their whole “thing.” Starting podcasts and working groups and putting mental illnesses in their instagram bio like Pokémon, gotta catch ‘em all. I’ve never wanted to be defined by my limitations. I put the trans flag in my bio, but that’s mainly so other trans people can find me. I suppose grievers use the same principle, but grief comes for everyone at some point. And if it doesn’t, you probably aren’t feeling all you should.

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I went on a walk with some friends on Saturday and felt miscommunications arising between us. One voted for Scott Weiner, the much maligned democratic candidate for congress amongst millennial liberals. My roommates asked why I didn’t shame this friend or argue regarding their voting choice. To which I replied, “nothing really changes regardless of who’s in office unless you’re marginalized.” My two white, cis, male roommates, sighed and shrugged in agreement. I think men like to argue so they feel smarter. Conquest, even mentally/ politically can make people feel important and like they had an impact on their world. Though I’m sure political strategists will disagree with me, look at how campaign employees jump from job to job. They’re fine no matter the outcome, usually.

Democratic Politics is no longer voting for the right candidate, it’s picking the least evil billionaire. Conservatives just pick which red candidate they think their father would have picked, I assume. Meanwhile nothing really changes because the American experiment is based on arguing to the point of compromise, a tug of war that halts any progress unless it makes someone money.

Back to grief.

Sarah Bareilles said grief needs to be witnessed while promoting her next album named, you guessed it: Good Grief. Maybe that’s what my Substack is, since most people don’t have the capacity to actually witness it or haven’t offered to make the space.

I wonder if grief has held me back from moving forward in life. The tools I have for connection, social media and dating apps, often lead me toward more sorrow. Dating apps mainly facilitate relationships ending, rarely beginning. Think about it. You wouldn’t have connected if not for these apps. And then most relationships these days end because one party wanted to open the relationship, using what tool you may ask? Ding ding ding, dating apps. Straight, queer, whatever. Hence why Feeld went from a fun inclusive app to one where straight couples who can’t find baby sitters scroll endlessly for bisexual girls.

It’s weird to think about my gay friends who weren’t looking for boyfriends a year ago but they’re now six months deep into a thriving relationship. Then thinking about the friend who said they weren’t telling me about their dating life for fear of causing me distress. I hoped my clarifying that other people dating causes as much distress as a man blocking my path in Dolores Park. It’s annoying, but my life has taught me enough harsh lessons to get over things quickly. It’s when I don’t get over things that people should worry.

We ascribe meaning to our experiences, that’s what story telling is for. A man’s son dies and we get stories like Icarus and Hamlet. A woman has intrusive thoughts and Phaedra or ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore take shape. So I suppose it makes sense that I feel unloveable, as many of us do, when I can’t find my match in romance. It feels against the rules. “But what are these rules?” My therapist queries. Tears burst forth, the dam broken. Of course these are rules made up by no one for no one, but it creates some vague feeling of order. Those same stories or rules can be co opted and bastardized. A cis woman clears her throat as she passes me, I think it’s because she feels jealous she’ll never look as good as me. A hot dad ignores me as I stroll past and I think it’s because I’m the most hideous creature he’s ever seen. Tomes to these kinds of anxieties take on new names. We used to call them libraries, now we call them Reddit… or worse, Substacks.

Mid week, and in a surprising turn of events, my NOCD therapist told me the platform algorithm claimed I scored high enough to warrant limiting our sessions to every other week. Another weird grief. Will limiting our time together help or hinder me? Who knows?

“Many women would kill for your figure,” my surgeon says to me with his steady hands on my naked flanks, under the remarkably unflattering medical lighting as two assistants look on for plausible deniability. Did I really just pay a $30 copay for a man to tell me I don’t need surgery? Yes, yes I did. Then a $10 uber back to the office.

I spend a lot of time trying to prove to myself I am worthy of being prioritized, and being de-prioritized happens more often than a you would think. It hurts not being chosen, no matter what. So what am I to do? I’m learning to be a bitch. I’ve seen enough jokes online about people pleasers developing autoimmune diseases. I don’t need to be nice to everyone, in fact I don’t need to be nice to anyone, I do it because I like it.

Do we place our self worth into algorithms? Even when we pay for services rendered we don’t get the desired outcome, I say as a survivor of Tinder Plus and Hinge X, to name a couple. Literal models and actresses have the same experience, maybe I just don’t have the relationship gene. Some code in my double helixes that blocks me from that euphoria. Maybe it’s because of one event in my childhood, a sliding doors moment where had I turned left instead of right I would have the life experience of relationships. And to think of all the millions of ancestors I have leading to a girl who spends her days debating which Youtube video to watch while she massages data in Excel. Followed by crying before bed because her friend remembered he had concert tickets and can’t make her birthday trip.

By Thursday I stroll past Faye’s coffee on 18th Street, remembering the time a rogue colony of bees took up shop in the telephone wires above. The murmuration of insects looked like a glitch in reality, purple flowers from the tree next door shifting in and out of focus, a time rift, almost. Bystanders whipped out their phones, animal control had been called, but we all looked on in awe and with a dash of terror. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what humans look like to the gods. Minuscule creatures creating their own warmth blinking in and out of reality, alternate dimensions barely out of reach. Quantum mechanics are studied by our most brilliant minds but few can explain the majesty of a wild infestation of weaponized insects.

Late in the week I spy a hot straight guy with a shelf of an ass and a skinny bike an anorexic would probably be jealous of as he stands waiting for BART. Next to him, a homely looking straight couple, the kind that make uncannily attractive children shuffle onto the train. The guy sports beautiful blond curls ensnared in a hair tie, the girl’s hair is, unfortunately forgettable. They’re wearing black dress clothes, probably musicians or analysts. After work I dodge the gaze of daddies in Noe valley and shiver wondering about the horrors their search histories no doubt hide. I recently learned that I walk past Mark Zuckerberg’s former home anytime I take the J train home. It’s eerie. Like learning a playmate was murdered in your childhood neighborhood. Some find it fascinating, I find it creepy.

It’s like the wonder combined with the tragedy of discovering a dead bird on the sidewalk overtakes me next. An unexpected sadness. That same ick arises when I see unhoused neighbors fenty-folded over. Empathy reaches its limits. I find that ledge of care when a hooded and masked man blocks my path in Dolores Park with his hand in his pants. Disgust mixed with anger, not frustration but inconvenience. Fucking men, ugh.

In the end, grief is a part of life. You can’t control it, and can’t let it control you. What an awful paradox. When you feel it, it sucks. But that’s a part of life. Those of you who get scared when you read my Substack, I implore you to explore your sorrow. Learn to let it take the wheel. Dive in, let go. See how deep you can go and learn that the pool was only a puddle, the ocean a mere pond. Come on in, the water’s fine.

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Despite my critique, despite my anger at no trans women represented, and despite my own romantic woes… I can’t stop watching. Even though it hurts my soul.

It’s a deliciously popcorn show seemingly made by committee in a lab. Like if a Freeform program could show titty and booty cheek. I’m sure the suits at the top deemed it “second screen worthy.” Who needs prestige television when you only need to check in every five minutes to see a matinee idol’s abs or a size zero waste in lingerie a broke college student certainly couldn’t afford? Where Heated Rivalry leaned into yearning and soft core, plus the realism of gay bodily fluids and shame, Off Campus is made for romance-reading virgins who think cum is gross. Honestly, I’m somehow both.

God, I would do anything to be on a show like it. To be desired. The program delights and crushes me. Feeling like I might never experience romance again or my years of wayward glances and sneaky links are in the rear view. I can’t think of a show that presented trans women as desirable since… well, Monster. How bleak.

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I’m worried I have an invisible doomsday clock above my head. The constant anxiety of death at fifty-three, like my mother, looms large above me, counting down the feared remaining seventeen years of my life. Even though my father is in his seventies, I’ve always had health problems like my mom. I’m so scared I’ll end up like her.

My therapist mentioned in our session this week that the “devil box,” as I called my tv, lurked behind my Zoom screen ominously like said clock. This device that I need for my career, that also destroys me bit by bit in our attention economy. In said session, I regaled her with my bullshit of the week. Oh, to be a therapist whose job is to listen.

“Twice. That’s the number of times I’ve been stood up this month.”

I shan’t do a pithy countdown like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockavich or a read like Mother Elektra in Pose, but believe me, I wanted to. How cruel to waste someone’s time. The one thing we can’t get back.

The thing about being stood up is there’s no closure. It’s not a break-up where hopefully you get some good jabs in. Or a shitty interaction with a rude coworker where staircase-wit engenders gritted teeth and squinted eyes when you later realize the bitchy retort that would have stung best. No. Getting stood up is a quiet humiliation. If they block you or don’t respond you don’t experience anger and relief. It’s incomplete. A server looks at you, parsing out your story. I’ve stopped telling bartenders, “I’m waiting for someone,” instead offering, “I’m not ready yet,” just in case.

The first instance I was stood up I stepped inside the bar. The second, I waited outside, I was almost certain he wasn’t showing, so I saved myself the one spec of dignity I had left. Though the bartender did glance my way at my cute outfit whilst shaking cocktails. My anxiety whispered under the door to my fragile self-esteem, “queen1, maybe he was just clocking you.” Oh, joy. To be clocked for being trans instead of being stood up. Yay. Small victories.

I know some of you have never experienced this horror of realizing someone is standing you up. Moreover, I’m infuriated that I’m becoming numb to the sensation. The first time I cried after a cunt in an ice cream shop was rude to me that same night. The second time I got home, threw some dinner together and began a knitting project. Bring on spinsterhood, I guess.

In another episode of horror, I’ve begun to smell like my sister I don’t speak to. Thanks HRT. Specifically the smell of her teenage years when she was depressed and wouldn’t get out of bed until 2 pm. My brand of mental illness ensures I bathe at least once a day, and yet here I am, with an odor like my first bully and enemy. Great. Thanks universe, why don’t I run into my happily married college crush with spinach in my teeth, while we’re at it?

The most confusing thing about being stood up, is that I know it has nothing to do with me. Yet I can’t help but feel hurt. I’ve made it a rule not to message first on dating apps, so any guy whom I connect with has been the first to show interest. I don’t chat with blank profiles, and I only engage if they’re cute and use complete sentences. I have safeguards in place, you see. Yet here I am, being stood up by two avoidant assholes, or a creeps, or bots. It sucks. Monica Lewinsky said on her podcast that after her 1997 scandal died down she got stood up three times in three weeks. This was pre dating apps. How awful. Which carries an even sharper sting, even if these men don’t want to go on a date, they started the convo, they set the time and place. And then, what, you got shy? Grow up.

Laverne Cox has said she would choose bars and restaurants near her apartment so a guy would text her when he arrived and she would reply “running a little late.” Though it’s a bit of a stretch, I get it. She deserves love and security, as well. Dammit, I do, too.

I think about my father, who’s never been stood up. Or my slutty roommate, whom I doubt has ever had this sad experience. Ghosted, sure, we live in an age. But actually arriving somewhere to leave alone. It’s an experience reserved for a few.

I shan’t ask myself, “why me?” or “what could I do differently?” There’s no logic. I’ve tried many strategies, from metaphorically throwing spaghetti at the wall seeing what sticks to using a homing missile; I spread the net widely, and also targeted. Nothing has worked so far. The only logic or lesson I can deduce from these tragic experiences is that I’m not meant to have romantic love, at least right now. Which is heartbreaking. Sure, I want it and have had to get used to not getting it. Not like it’s a novel sensation, how many job and audition rejections can I get before I start to become numb?

People who’ve never used dating apps should be required to pay restitution to those of us who have, or at the very least community service. The trenches we’ve fought in have given us PTSD you people couldn’t even imagine. We wake up screaming, remembering the clouds of Santal 33 wafting through crowded microbreweries where polyamorous twenty-something’s regaled us with tales of their primary partner’s graduate program or Dungeon’s and Dragons campaigns. Photos of beloveds back home burnt to soot as soon as no man’s land goes silent when they whip out their vape. Mustard gas of Tinder ghosts and ectoplasm choking our lungs until we, too, succumb to the tradition of “hey, how’s your day going?” as the light slowly fades from our eyes.

I want to challenge my friends to set a timer for two minutes a day to try and think of a guy for me. No more of this “I don’t know any straight guys,” tomfoolery. If these Substacks worry you, diva, you know what to try. I’ve never been set up on a date. Except for a friend in college who talked me up to Scott Hoying of Pentatonix. He said my photos on facebook were too intense. Ah, what could have been.

In addition to Off Campus, I’ve bopped to Couples Therapy this week and wondered: maybe dating is just settling on the one you hate the least. Or two people who are wrong for each other but they desire companionship so much it blinds them to their incompatibility. Of the two trans women on the five seasons of the show, neither of them reflect my experience, desired or otherwise. One, a lesbian, got divorced from her wife after her season. The other dated an autistic man who later transitioned into a trans woman herself. Spoiler alert: they broke up, too. Maybe my radar for truth and knowing who I am and what I want has narrowed my field of options too much, now no one can occupy that segment of the dating pool.

My therapist offered, “you’re confident, self assured, and beautiful. That intimidates cowardly men.” My intrusive thoughts rebutted, “Or maybe I’m ugly and old.” Who knows? I can’t keep trying to find something and getting nowhere. It’s not healthy. Maybe I should splurge on that matchmaker friend of mine who charges a thousand dollars per match. Fucking Yenta-ass.

Maybe I’ll just join the sorority of women texting each other that “you are worthy, you are beautiful, there’s someone out there for you.” Until the end of time and I end up cremated and on a shelf on someone’s mantle, or worse, hoarded by a distant cousin and forgotten about until the rats take me back to the earth.

Or maybe I’ll find someone. Who fucking knows?

“My feelings feel appropriate and then I’m told by my doctors that I’m over reacting or have a chemical imbalance.” Oddly enough, I had this thought whilst passing 18 Reason’s Cooking School and saw my PCP waiting outside. He was chatting with a woman and a young child. Probably waiting for his husband and kids in a pasta making class or something equally saccharine and wholesome. I avoided his gaze, hoping he didn’t see me. This doctor refused to prescribe me a GLP-1, probably for the best but annoying me all the same. He’s seen me crying and asking health questions that make me cringe in hindsight, I don’t wanna talk to him now.

Devastating a cappella covers of pop songs “boots ‘n ‘cats” through my headphones. College kids with their lives ahead of them singing about heartbreak having never felt it. Then again, my greatest heartbreak happened during study abroad, and here I am nearly twenty years later with no more serious paramours to show for it.

A deranged man screams obscenities while the second Nature Conservancy canvasser of the day tries to stop me to sign something or give them money. What circle of hell is it where well meaning liberals ask other well meaning liberals for money they can’t spend to help a multinational non profit stay afloat? I think it’s gotta be six or lower.

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My throat palpates through staggered gasps as my eyes squeeze out tears like a citrus fruit full of sodium. Therapy is over. She, along with everyone else in my life tells me I’d be great as a therapist. Terrific, so I made another wrong turn on the road of my life.

I want to look back on my time on Earth and know I did at least one great right thing that helped the world. I tell myself that being a human is the great attempt to do that everyday. You don’t fail once and call it done. It’s a practice. I try to do that every morning through that over used term now: self-kindness. Those hollow words friends say when there’s nothing else to offer. Or a feeling of ease that at least their life isn’t like mine. The road before me is vast and varied. Hills, mountains, meadows, storms, slurries, and sunshine. Some medication makes those things tolerable. Some make them catastrophic. In the end I hope the choices I make alleviate the world for more people than I can count.

Whilst high before bed after watching three episodes of said Amazon horny pablum, I realize I feel incomplete. That’s what my singleness feels like now. I’m missing the other half of my puzzle. I’ve been putting it together for decades and realized I was actually looking at the picture upside down until I transitioned. Then I turned down flipped it and reversed it, only to realize there are still pieces missing.

Through it all, the greatest lesson of life I’m realizing this week, is that I can examine my sadness from every angle, and still, the only person to change/learn/accept that sadness is me. No one can do that for you. Parents may attempt to teach us it’s okay to be sad, or it may be our life’s work to understand that. But in the end, I know sadness is not good or bad. In fact, there’s no morality attached to sadness. It simply is.

I encourage you all to be with your sadness this week, and don’t stand anyone up. Maybe even take two minutes to consider someone I could date. Just two minutes. See what comes up. I’m asking as a favor.

xoxo

Alanna

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While politely head banging to the new MUNA album, a couple of T boys hop on that same 22 bus. Not to profile, but I bet they’ve heard it already. Undoubtedly boyfriends, I see one has opalescent nail polish on. Five years ago I would have felt a pang of fear to protect them, the kind I feel anytime I see someone with Down syndrome and my sibling guilt steps in for not spending more time with my sister. It’s probably a hold-over from when I questioned my gender and felt the need to offer pronouns no matter the context to feel woke. A divine need to offer protection or biological imperative to continue the species in whatever way I can.

After talking with my boogey-women last week, a.k.a. three beautiful petite cis women at a friend’s birthday, I have a new clarity regarding my dating plight. One froze her eggs all last year, she wants to find a Jewish guy, or at least one who won’t make her go to church. Another was avoiding men at the other end of the table, a few she’d been on dates with. A tragedy I have yet to endure, despite attempts at being set up by my friends who “just don’t know any straight men.” It sucks. For all of us, not just the dolls. Don’t get me wrong, we have it harder. But even the objects of my ultimate envy, beautiful cis girls, are having a hard time.

Men have too many excuses to be awful now. They’ve weaponized therapy speak for their own arch objectives like Jonah Hill’s infamous texts to his ex. And they don’t know they’re being arch. We need a system of teachers or judges who can look at us and decide who is in the wrong besides Dr. Drew or podcasters. Men don’t understand how to be vulnerable, so they fight with big words now to excuse poor behavior. Every gay couple is non monogamous and thinks they’re breaking new ground by sleeping with their husband and their three boyfriends. You can’t have it all, kids. You have to be vulnerable and realize vegetables are there for a reason. You shouldn’t vape all the time. Nicotine is bad for you. You wonder why your life is not how you want it? Maybe try not doing drugs all week.

Damn, I’m on one. Lemme catch my breath.

For the sake of justice and equality, I’ve examined my own addictions over the last few years. Instead of substances, my mental illnesses and my own self pity occupy my addiction space. It’s not easy given that many of the people I envy agree with my unfortunate experience. So now what? I don’t wanna ask the same rhetorical questions every week. I, unlike my ketamine-addicted friends, want to change for the better. And not just “for good” like those closeted lesbian witches.

The next day I’m on my way to Walnut Creek to read with two actors for my love interest in The Glass Menagerie. I wanted to insist on virtual, but I think the creative team wants to see how they react to a doll as their object of affection. Our character’s connection is a particular one, we need the audience to see how perfect they are for each other and also how they would never work. I’ve never seen a production with two trans protagonists, which adds another layer of complexity.

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We read with two gentlemen. Both handsome, both talented, both could play my love interest beautifully. The first one commanded the room and made me feel confident that I could play the fragile bird of Laura. The second made me feel I had to take care of him. But I was more attracted to him. What a funny world we live in.

This confusion about being desired perplexed me later in the week. I realized I’d never felt seen as a desirable being amongst my gay friends. In some ways this is obvious, most of them met me after I was neck deep in my transition. But after last week when they saw me making out with a first date outside of Hi Tops, the feeling of affirmation was intoxicating. “Okay, slut. Who was that?” “Miss Alanna kissing a boy outside the bar? I do declare.” I felt like the pretty girl the gay guys envy for getting the straight guy’s attention. A feeling I’ve been chasing but never really felt.

Maybe that’s why I’m sad about dating and being friends with gay guys. Because they’re living the life that was promised to women in my mind. And then when I don’t affirm their experience, by questioning a different part of their identity, they’re privileged maleness rather than their queerness, they get upset. It’s a tricky thing. We all want a therapist, we rarely want to be the therapist to our friends, especially when they don’t listen to us.

In high school when I made friends with the popular girls, forsaking my brilliant and shy girl friends who would go on to become my ride-or-dies after high school, I felt a proximity to being the thing I’d always desired: the hot girl. The one guys made fools of themselves for, or peacocked their burgeoning facial hair for. I could make them laugh, so it bought me some form of social capital or cachet. Then after going through all the trials and tribulations that transitioning unwaveringly inflicts upon you, I still feel as far away from that life as ever.

I think, that’s one of many reasons why I’m depressed. Just like the lied to middle class of America, I, too, was told if I worked hard enough to be a beautiful woman I would receive all the blessings afforded to them: a husband, a home, a family, maybe even a career if I had the time between all the beauty treatments women are expected to maintain.

Let’s not forget I “started over” at twenty-eight, beginning a puberty of trauma that would leave me irreparably shaken. Sans the protection of parents and adolescence where growing minds and bodies are expected and, indeed, encouraged to make mistakes, I had to build a life for myself whilst also attempting to nurture an acting career. Never mind the irony that people forgot who I was once I transitioned. But that’s for another Substack.

Trans women go from being highlighted, underlined, flagged, and tabbed in society when we first start hormones, “why is that man wearing a dress, mommy?” To, if we’re lucky, a kind of invisibility. To pass. To blend in. To become one of the girls. Like the boogey-women from last week, who called me she and her without hesitation, unlike many men who still “person” and “they” me to this day.

I wonder if that’s why I preferred one Gentleman Caller over the other, he made me feel feminine, and able to be fragile. The feeling I’ve desired from romance and sexuality. To be safe amongst the bull in the china shop, the horse that will buck until kingdom come, but calm down once that one pretty girl touches his forehead. Some call it Stockholm syndrome, I call it a man finally letting his guard down. Tomayto, tomahto.

Friday night I saw Florence and the Machine. I received a ticket from a bestie’s ex. I don’t know what I did to deserve such amazing concert karma the last few years, but I’m incredibly grateful. She was fantastic. A beautiful twenty-something stood next to me and my friend Max. A skinny and mere slip of a thing, she wore a gorgeous red dress, hitting above the knee. I asked her, “girl, I love your fit, where did you get it?” “Thank you! It’s vintage Victoria’s Secret, I got it at the Alameda Craft fair for ten dollars.” Pleasantries ensued, followed by a “have a great concert.” Sometimes I simply love girlhood. After that two fags in front of us kept staring at Max in his freshly bought Mannequin Pussy crop top. Then a thin haired-ponytailed man tried to twist his nipple whilst walking past, despite his unfortunate looking girlfriend trailing behind him. Or the other two fags muttering to each other about how Florence only wore one outfit the entire night and how they wouldn’t have done an arena tour that way. Men will always ruin a lovely moment.

Our diva regaled us with a story of a man who left her on read for three days. Even the Hekate-like goddess that is Florence Welch has been benched by an unworthy fuck boy. How on earth is the species supposed to continue?!?!? Our plight is not unique but timeless. I wonder, is our continuation a fluke of evolution? Or is this the end times? It always feels like the end times. We’ve never lived the current moment before, so it always feels like the end. It’s fucking odd.

In spite of those genuinely weird concert goers, the show was pretty spellbinding. Her chiffon dress flowed like an apparition when she skipped across the stage, cascading behind her as gorgeous Victorian schoolgirl back up dancers gaped their mouths, curtsying delicately followed by violent thrashing at Florence’s feet. The live band offered a welcome reprieve from the pretaped and mixed pop diva fodder that’s become all too usual in this day and age. The evening ended with a ritual where she insisted everyone put their phones away as she belted the last chorus of “Dog Days Are Over” and encouraged us to jump. It was incredibly cool.

And just like Florence said, I encourage us to turn off our phones. Get outside. Jump together. Shake ass. Make mistakes. Forgive. And move the fuck on.

I’m on my way towards doing that for myself. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t need a boyfriend. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to be the pretty girl who gets the guy, maybe I can be the pretty girl, with a wonderful life in addition to the tribulations she’s endured. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be fine.

Xoxo

Alanna

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Last week I skipped my Substack. I had nothing to write. A piece about a year since bottom surgery sat in my outbox, ready to publish but I quickly cancelled it. Feeling like I was writing what I should write, what cis people expect to hear about “the surgery,” and how happy I am afterwards. Trans-surgical intrigue will always get clicks, but what would it get me in the end?

This week I’ve questioned if I’m actually happy about my surgery results. And if I fall into that razor thin category of bottom surgery regretters. And if I do, why on Earth would I share that with the Internet who takes and takes and takes and doesn’t give a fuck about my actual feelings? It’s not like I can go back. But now the question remains whether the regret I feel from getting this gender affirming care outweighs the anxiety I felt beforehand. So I asked myself: what do you write about when you have nothing good to say?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to look back, but the amount of grief that sprung to my fingertips as I typed it out felt like too much to place on the tens of Substack subscribers I have. Indeed, I know my Substack is no stranger to sadness or grief for that matter, but lately I’ve felt… kind of blah.

Two guys lost interest in me despite initial infatuation, and one, after double checking the day-of that we had a date, stood me up. Followed by a first date this past Friday where the guy said a couple slurs (which I corrected him on) within an hour of meeting. Divas it’s bleak out there. The accumulation of these disappointments have made me want to jump off a cliff.

At my Pussy Party, as my friends tenderly called it, I played dutiful hostess, yet left feeling depressed. Tears fell down my flushed cheeks when I got home, my dutiful and loving roommate held me while I cried after I took a hit from his gravity bong. The thing most people talked about at my party was the break-up drama of a gay couple, their own catch ups, or queer flirtation, where gay guys later told me who they were crushing on. I felt like June Cleaver floating from table to table. My friends admired my hostess skills, making sure I got to every guest, ensuring a good time was had. Only later did I remember no one wants to fuck June cleaver, her domain is reserved for the domestic. My coupled friends left with a fun story, my gay friends left with a flirtation, I left with a semi-cringe story of my woke-boomer father tipsily telling a Jar Jar Binks joke. What am I to do next?

Maybe because I wasn’t born with the body I wanted, and spent years trying to accept my femininity as nonbinary, never quite feeling right, and still now have to reckon with never actually having the body I want, the relationship I want, or doctors who feel right. So what is going right for me?

I don’t know.

I spoke with a gender confirmation therapist this week, one I abhor, but who unfortunately holds the keys to surgical intervention at the hellscape of American healthcare that is Kaiser Permanente. He tells me they don’t cover rib remodeling, but referred me to the facial harmonization clinic, maybe I can get another FFS, at least. A new nose or new chin might make the fact that my bottom surgery was less than satisfactory hurt a bit less. Maybe I just miss the drugs they give after surgery and that sweet, sweet relief of letting go… or maybe I should just do drugs

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By Thursday my depression had spiked so high that I took myself out for a drink after a particularly grueling day, but the accumulation of disappointment made an avalanche of “meh.” Nothing feels worse than “meh.” Instead of blocking a balding man for saying something gross on Grindr, I said “no thanks, dolls don’t wanna hear that.” He responded a few hours later sending three paragraphs about how I was wrong and another doll offered him crystal meth and insinuated I was treating Grindr like Match.com. I began typing out “your hairline is too far back to be talking to anyone like that.” But decided to take the high road and reported him for bullying. Sometimes I wish I could do that with some second-tier friends who think being cruel is the way to show care, when really it’s unresolved issues from childhood (probably).

Dates pop up around me in the Mission bar, gay and straight alike. Gabbing and flirting ensues as I sip on a bourbon cocktail with notes of chocolate, strawberry, and lemon. Somehow it tastes good.

I pointedly decided not to call anyone after a new doll friend cancelled our plans that night because of her tummy issues. I’ve yet to hear anyone break my cycles of self-pity and torment. My depressed logical brain makes sense even to the neurotypicals. Maybe I was always a sad girl, and my transness just made it more visible for people outside my mind. The Inside Out of my brain run by Sadness, a frequent character in my Substack.

My therapist and I discussed how I try so hard to “fix” my depression. Everyone I know becomes uncomfortable when I discuss my true feelings. “What’s coming up for you?” She asks after a chunk of silence where hot tears and snot fall into my lap. I responded something to this effect:

It feels like no matter how hard I try, medication, therapy, exercise, diet, there’s always this insurmountable sea of tears before me. Vast and unending. This horizon of unhappiness I can’t swim past. I’m looking for an island to cling to, but rising oceans from global warming make the temporary relief of land not satisfying. The tide is constant, you can’t change it, the water is always there.

Instead of telling me to process or get past it or reframe my situation, she let me just be sad. It sucked, but at least it was different and she held space for it.

Back at the cocktail bar, a cool bartender with a page boy haircut, looking like nonbinary Will Byers turns the easy listening music up. (Note to self, don’t get a chin length bob, you’ll end up looking like a prepubescent boy). I tell myself she’s upping the music because she’s probably worried I’m gonna blow my brains out after this. She sees a solo doll drinking at the bar with a long notes app block of text on her phone. Death would be the perfect end to a perfect week. Again, don’t worry, this is just for comedy’s sake. I’ve been watching Hacks and remembered that episode from season 1 where a guy slept with Ava and then jumped off a building. What a life it must be to be Hannah Einbinder, her first job was the biggest hit in comedy since Veep. Must be nice.

I wonder what my readers look like while reading/listening to my Substack. In bed with their partners, scrolling their phones and stroking their hair. Or my single gentle readers making eggs in the morning, maybe playing video games. All of them wondering, “is Alanna okay? Should I call her?” Before getting distracted by their kid or cat or whatever horrible news reel competes for our attention like Hantavirus press or ads for Outsidelands.

I think my biggest fear is I would feel this sadness even if I had a partner or a job or the “perfect” life. In which case, maybe my psychiatrist is right and I need to be on lithium like Diana in Next to Normal. My old New York roommate was on it after a date left bruises on her forearms and hips, she walked around like a zombie for two weeks and ate nothing but sour patch kids as she went to virtual AA meetings she listened to without headphones and the door to her bedroom open. Hope she’s well, but also don’t really care.

I think we’re so scared to speak the truth now. The age of “everyone’s entitled to their opinion” and horrible men bastardizing therapy speak has made us all question whether our opinions are correct. But there are indisputable facts we cannot deny. Trans women have it harder than most. Men have it easier than most. And cis women love to victimize themselves. I hate it here.

Maybe I should catch up with my gay friends and begin an alcoholic phase. The cocktail has cleared my head and made me feel the tiniest bit less sad, which both angers and clarifies my mind. I lived with my father in my twenties and witnessed his descent into drinking after my mother died. It sucked. Because of that, and my mother’s aversion to alcohol from her own father’s addiction issues, I found myself wanting to honor her memory by not throwing my life away with substances. Instead I chose therapy. The drug we can feel good about because Gwenyth Paltrow sold us “wellness” via Goop.

But alas, I’m tired of crying into my pillow looking at celebrities on my phone dipping into cold plunges with amazing views while I wonder how I’ll buy groceries once my second temp gig ends next month. Fuck.

I can’t keep applying to jobs and get nowhere. Or fellowships or grant apps all to get nowhere. It feels hopeless. And where there’s no hope there’s no way. I just want growth and no one seems interested in growing with me. That saddens me, too.

In the end, I made it to the weekend. Blue skies taunt me from my bed as I wait to hear back from a friend if he wants to go on a walk. I assume he’s having sex or with his other friends. A birthday party lingers on my calendar, but I question if I’ll have any fun. Multiple of my gay friends felt left out that no one thought they were cute at my Pussy Party. I wanted to respond: now you know how I feel when I go to your birthday parties and no one flirts with me. But don’t wish to be an asshole when someone’s feeling down.

After all, I know what it’s like to live in that ocean of sadness. I can scream to the heavens wishing an underwater volcano would bless me with land, or I can learn to adapt and become a selkie swimming in the sea, accepting that sadness exists, and maybe, just maybe, that’s okay.

I wish you a week of acceptance.

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This is the future I fear most.

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I worry about AI, as anyone with a conscience does, what happens when a Black Mirror episode of holographic dead relatives come back but just say whatever the living need to hear in the sycophantic Chat GPT cadence we’ve grown accustomed to?

I often wonder what my mother and I would have disagreed upon in my later adulthood. I feel she would have accepted me as a woman, but definitely would have had trouble with they/them pronouns. Eventually reaching the level of familiarity her generation has now.

She would have insisted on taking me bra shopping. I would have become infuriated with her trying to make me her project. My sisters and I were her most prized possessions. That and her graduate degree. Probably why I’m so obnoxious with disclosing my higher education to strangers and friends, alike.

She no doubt would have insisted I connect with an autistic trans woman who I was friends with in pre-school but we grew apart come 6th grade.

But aside from these wonders, I hate the guilt the voiceless dead hoist onto us, the whispered voices that make me wonder if I’m really a good person when I oppose their spiritual guidance. Intrusive thoughts were once deemed the voice of the devil. Yet clergymen still committed atrocities and believed they were holy. Was Joan of Arc a saint, or was she schizophrenic?

We tell stories of idealized precolonial cultures where third gender people were respected and even worshipped. I want to believe in those places but the hatred of otherness runs so deep I truly can’t imagine a world where queerness isn’t villainized. Congrats patriarchy, you won.

Is there a world where I can stand up for myself and not take on someone else’s feelings? Is this a super power where I can project my feelings onto others? I was told in grad school I “took up too much emotional space” and could “change the feeling of a room” when I walked in. I was conditioned to think of this as a handicap, but really it’s a gift.

I question whether I really have depression. I watched a ten minute TikTok by a psych nurse about hygiene issues with clinical patients. Even when I was suicidal I always brushed my teeth and showered (probably thanks to my ocd) but still the contradiction remained. I didn’t want to be here, yet I knew I would feel better if I even attempted to take care of myself.

Watching Beef season 2, one of the main characters receives a devastating diagnosis. It made me wonder if there’s a way to make meaning out of my unfortunate medical news, the prognosis that flutters around my head invisibly, but I’ve come to accept. Introducing that news to other people is the difficult part. As I’ve said before, the pity, fuck, the pity. I yearn to find some form of reasoning behind this horrible truth I received. More than just “if I share it, it could help even one person,” type shit.

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If I’m living for other people to not let them down, then when am I living for myself? I don’t want to feel like my life isn’t worth living anymore. Yet I don’t quite see the point. Again, dearest reader, this is a logical/philosophical question, not a suicide note. I’m not going anywhere.

Oddly enough, the ghosts of my past speak more to me than the ghosts of my distant present. I always wonder what my mother would think of my current circumstances. I know she’d be proud, but what would she do to help me. She would stick her nose into my business because she cared especially when I told her not to.

Then again people always think they know what’s best for me. This week my work husband told me that I don’t eat enough, in front of all my coworkers. A notion of care to be sure, but it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to controlling women. We really only take away people’s agency when it becomes a problem, but do we ever let those people speak for themselves? Look at Britney Spears. I told my work husband, and the rest of my coworkers present that I eat plenty. If they want to pay me more so I can afford more food, then be my guest.

I wonder if I’ll ever fall in love. I remain open.

My mother probably would have sought out other mothers in my childhood friend group to see if any of those “nice boys” were still single. My anxiety screams that if they were it was for a bad reason, like school-shooter vibes or they hit their girlfriends. Maybe she’d reach out to the mother of the one other doll we knew, never mind that she and I are about as distant in our likes and dislikes as oil and water. Ions that never meet.

Do we give the dead too much wisdom? Do they become all knowing when they pass on? Or do they remain with the same ignorances all humans possess? A kind of false idol we leave candy out for on Dia de los Muertos.

Will all the pain, disappointments, challenges, and victories ever seem “worth it”? Is having a partner the kind of reflection of satisfaction I’m chasing after to know that at least in this current life, someone thought I was better than the rest? The one who will sing Tina Turner in public for me, making a fool of himself. Or is this simply another tragedy I must learn to incorporate and release?

Hold on tightly, let go lightly as Ann Bogart famously said and my movement teacher constantly quoted.

Heartbreak feels good in a place like this. Nicole, it sure as fuck does not.

Is it ever really “worth it”? I think those moments are fleeting. A Fleance in a sea of MacDuffs, MacBeths, and Banquos. There for a moment, then running away, all the while you never knew it was important. And all of a sudden everyone screams that Fleance is the most powerful thing you had and now it’s gone.

Welcome to womanhood.

But really, everyone’s just waiting for MacDuff to scream, “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped!” That’s how I feel. A caesarian of life because my mother is dead. And no amount of consolation can heal that wound. I must, as everyone who’s experienced this must, learn to live with a scar no one can see. Some talk about it until the cows come home, some bundle up their sadness like a cat with a ball of string, some rip it to shreds like a dog with a squeaky toy. And some do their best to find the balance of never forgetting but cut, print, moving on.

Maybe it’s a blessing I came out when I did and my mother died when she did. At least I never had to deal with the awkwardness of a digital apparition to entertain shitty girls at a slumber party. If I’d been born later and my mother lived longer, I can see it all too easily becoming a weapon of control over girls who had the unfortunate reality of losing a parent. Hurt can become a knife with almost no transfiguration needed. Or maybe I’m actually the parent in the the analogy, gently telling the girls to go to sleep, and I tenderly approach the girl who lost her mom, noticing tears welling up, I take her aside as her friends sleep. I get her some ice cream from the freezer, and ask her to tell me about her mother. My husband dozing down the hall, as I and this broken child talk into the wee hours about her lost North Star. That’s the healthy way to let the dead talk. When we reminisce, we keep them alive forever.

xoxo

Alanna

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By Thursday of this week I was worried I’d have nothing to talk about in my Substack. I’d been prepping a self tape for, drum roll please: ✨Broadway✨, with a capital B. An understudy track (womp womp) but one I would love to get, for the resumé, all the same. Something about the distraction of opportunity and getting to play on camera made the news of sixty-three million men visiting a website promoting r*pe seem further away. Reality feels too difficult to manage most of the time, there’s always something awful going on; no wonder people do drugs to dissociate.

My roommate helped me with the tape. He said he liked what I did. I filmed myself singing a pop song, refusing to torture myself by doing it more than three times. My best work? Probably not. But being hard on myself gets me nowhere… or so I thought. I sent the tape to my manager, made dinner, and plopped on my bed to watch the season finale of The Pitt.1

I felt good about my tape, though I yearn for feedback from a director so I can take a note and shift the performance. Technological advancements aggravate me so; our actor economy demands I play performer, rehearsal consultant, dialect coach, lighting designer, sound mixer, camera operator, talent coordinator, costumer, editor, and then have to act the damn thing. All to send a tape to the universe where there’s no guarantee it will be watched for more than a few seconds. Hours of work for what? An opportunity. Jesus, artistry is a terrible career path.

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Before I could even appreciate the fruits of my effort, a dangerous game in terms of auditioning: the crash came.

Even with the emotional olympics of Noah Wyle’s cis-het leading man, I felt on fire by the end of the episode, my usual hour long journey into the HBO-verse that leaves me ready for bed hadn't satiated my content appetite. I hadn’t had an audition in months. I get one (for an understudy, again, siiiiiiigh) and felt good this week. Even going so far in therapy to say, “yeah, not a lot going on. Do duh do 🎶 but, oh, how short it lasted. After The Pitt I followed up with a Netflix show with a nepo baby as the lead, I needed something to fill my nosediving dopamine. The thrill of an audition tanking faster than one of the trauma cases I’d just watched. I went past my self inflicted ten pm cut off time. All to end up scrolling TikTok, to instagram, to a quick glance of Grindr to see if anyone cute messaged me (spoiler alert: they did not; the shame from opening the app not even worth it). Until I chuckled at some video that made me feel like “finally, someone who gets my humor.” Even though the ✨algorithm✨ probably knew what video I would stop scrolling on and just kept showing me nonsense until then.

The high of having an audition, and a good day where I got multiple free meals at work made me feel… I dunno, if not happy, then close to content. All to crumble the second the feigned opportunity flew out of my hands and I was left with, gulp, myself.

The usual mental reruns of comparison demons merry-go-round in my head. A discordant Joe Hisaishi soundtrack on a broken record player seeps into my mind; a snapped-spine ballerina dancing on my self-worth. Watching tv feels like a chore and an addiction. Reading a book feels like work. Writing feels like a bandaid on a gaping cesarean scar I’ll never have because I lack a uterus.

Finally sleep came. Blessed be.

Later in the week I was confronted by my desire for male attention. Diva, what else is new? I hate that I still care about the opinions of handsome gay men. God, they don’t know how good they have it. I went to an LGBT networking event with a new friend, Chadwick (gay’s, he’s single, get at me). One of the two other dolls there flirted with me, despite my clear lack of interest. I don’t think she got the memo. Some female experiences are universal; being hounded by someone you don’t wanna fuck is one of them. The neurodivergent Venn diagram of trans people and networking events and uncomfortable interactions is far too close to a circle, for my comfort.

I inserted myself into conversation after conversation with tall, good looking gay guys, not trying to flirt, but wanting to connect to people I have more in common with than a probably autistic woman who wanted a new gal pal. If she finds this somehow with her internet sleuthing skills, I’m sorry, and also, I don’t care.

That desire for male attention is a dangerous drug, just ask any drag queen.

A friend and I still haven’t made up after a miscommunication over a month ago. I question whether I should try or if I should throw it on the pile of “things I have to get over,” more mountainous every year. I wonder if knowing myself, my boundaries, and my self-worth through years of therapy and hard work are actually keeping me from deeper friendships. Most relationships, both romantic and platonic, filter down to compromise and one settling for the other. It’s dark and overly simplistic, but pretty much true. But I refuse to settle. If I had done so I wouldn’t have irreparably changed my body through surgery and hormones. I’m overly aware of the bullshit people in poor relationships endure, and stand stalwart in my belief that I shouldn’t have to change myself for the worse as many of my loved ones have.

We’ll get back to the opinions of gay men in a moment after these brief messages.

I emcee’d the Theater Bay Area Spring Soiree this week. TBA is exactly what it sounds like: an organization connecting all the theaters in the Bay Area from San Jose to Marin to Vallejo. I was the hostess with the mostest. I wore my bridesmaid dress again, a sensible beat, hair curled, even took a Waymo to the event to feel the fantasy. It went well, we didn't raise as much money as we’d hoped, but the overflow of compliments afterward felt incredible. Most of the performers were queer or trans, the audience was pretty much all cis. A sea full of theater professionals and lovers praying that we can keep the art form alive despite devastating budget cuts and a financial system that cannot and will not sustain itself even with transformational gifts given every five years.

I forgot to thank the tech crew explicitly and felt like a fool afterwards. Holding an audience in the palm of your hand, guiding them through an evening, making them laugh, inspiring them to give, playing an auctioneer, it all felt a bit overwhelming.

But I loved it. My god. My father congratulated me feeling proud of my work.

Afterwards he said something I’ll never forget: “Alanna, do you know you’re beautiful?”

In the moment, my endorphins ran so high I could barely feel anything. I hugged him and thanked him. He always says he wishes my mom was at these events because she loved to schmooze and was good at it. I like to think I get it from her.

But now as I write this, the cathartic tears fall. What a blessing to be seen by your loved ones for who you truly are and to share your gifts with the world. To be witnessed. This is what I want from a partner, and my frustration lives at the intersection of getting what I want but not from whom I want. So what should I do? Practice gratitude, as unsatisfying as it may be.

I don’t take my father’s kindness lightly, we’ve come a long way. Also, how many stories have we heard of trans people never receiving such care from their parents?

I ass-kissed the room afterward and called it networking, giggling with directors and casting folks who conveniently forgot I was talented as soon as I grew tits and got a vagina. Poking fun at the audience as I’ve paid attention to people for years, knowing one honoree was in a Pixar movie, this one didn’t give me a job, that one has a show coming up. Sometimes it pays to have an encyclopedic memory of Bay Area theater. Or to just pay attention.

After the event as I stroll to the train, heels click clacking like the Raye song, I hold my dress like a flamenco dancer to avoid dirtying the train on the filthy ground. A guy rides slowly past me on a bicycle, making me nervous, my innate Karen-ism that flows through my blood-line prickling at the perceived threat that of course ended up being harmless.

I run into one of the gaggle of gays from the event. We joke that he’s heading to a sex party before running into my father who was still waiting for his train.

Then slowly but surely, every gay guy I tangentially knew popped up on the train. Four different men: a cutie from a party last week, a director colleague, his husband, and sex party attendee. Though less than a handful, it was uncanny that we all convened on one train. My septuagenarian father, was just happy to be there.

We say goodbye to my dad, a throng of queerness exploding into the Castro Station night. I walk past a parade of hot guys through the gayborhood. Fags all, the occasional doll, looking forlorn, probably because she’s not desired, either. Or maybe tired because her feet hurt in her heels. I could relate, a block from home I remembered I had my Crocs in my bag for that very purpose. Every girl wants to be Carrie Bradshaw at least once, sue me.

Once home, I race for bed before midnight. My OCD telling me I’ll get sick if I stay up late. Curse my illogical rules my broken brain makes up.

I nosh on cheese and peanut butter toast (not at the same time, don’t worry, I’m not a total rat person). The compliments, and thank you’s from all the kind attendees tonight replay in my head. Trying to live in the graciousness, gratitude, and pride.

But “One Less Bell to Answer” plays in my head.

The crumbs of my toast snowing down onto my roommate’s dishes forming a feng shui of neglect in the sink. Three days of sitting. A drafted text to the group chat waiting for me to press send about keeping up on household chores.

Constantly I wonder if I’ll ever share that late night toast with someone. If a boyfriend will join me at these galas. Or will I be the dancing doll forever, cradling my father as he ages because I can’t seem to find my match?

Most people stop changing after puberty. They just get more and more things. The house, the boyfriend, the car, the job, the second job, the third job, the second house, the parent dies, the cat dies, the house burns down, the boyfriend cheats, the parents get dementia. Trans people change ourselves. We transform. Many, many people do not transform. They stay where they are. They stay stuck. Instead moving their lives forward through progeny. I wish I could do that. There’s support in the world to do that. Through the exchange of money for goods and services. But it’s so difficult.

So I contemplate my future. Will my life continue to contain dopamine crashes followed by galas and gays sashaying into and out of my life? These legacy award winners I helped present that night holding tight to their theaters who live on the knife’s edge of financial collapse. Women with families and children despite never holding a steady job or pay check. Artists changing the world one audience member at a time. Gays getting a giggle in before they head to a sex party. Eighty-year old theater producers who just love the craft of live entertainment. And here I am wondering if I’ll ever change in a world that insists on my staying the same. Who knows?

All I know is getting male attention feels nice. It’s certainly not good for you, but it feels nice, regardless. Having my father see me and ask, “do you know you’re beautiful?” is a lovely experience I’ll cherish this week.

I hope a glimmer of hope like that happens for you, as well.

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Let’s call her Amy. Amy sits across from me, still clinging to the life she had and the comforts it affords. Short hair, thin brows, and a pink, white, and baby blue bracelet on her wrist. Brought together by a mutual gay friend, we talk, gossip, and get to know each other. The metaphorical stage picture would feature me glancing back through a compact at this woman lurking behind me. She has a long, craggy road ahead of her. She trauma dumps for three hours. Only a few questions asked of me in that time. I listen intently, as this has become my role since transitioning: therapist, sister, mother, guide… though often it feels like I’ve become a blank wall, a stand in, merely a safe body for hurt people to project their suffering onto. I realize, yet again, I’ve been here before. Gay men, trans women, cis men, all wanting to have an audience to their pain.

I believe some people will tell their deepest darkest secrets to anyone in the hope to find the salve they seek. It’s not that hard to get people to open up, you just need to listen and ask. Ironic, really, maybe if these sadness storytellers had taken performance classes they would have found a more productive way to get their issues out instead of drugs, sex, alcohol, toxic relationships, or holding a nice girl like me hostage while they unload their issues for the umpteenth time.

What I’ve found this week is that most people are not interested in my life, my story, my wounds. Whether it’s inconvenience or anxiety I’ve come to notice I ask far more questions of my friends than they ask of me. I have a feeling most people feel this way, but I’m an actress, I have an excruciating attention to detail and authenticity. So I ask: where is my audience?

This conversation with a fresh doll revealed the Transgender Timeline in excruciating detail. Past and future mirroring each other to infinity. The future smirking with devilish glee at what’s coming next. The past wide-eyed with horror at what’s to come. There’s a tv show idea here, don’t steal it, dearest reader… promise?

I had a feeling my chat with Amy would be a transgender Gift of the Magi. She has a husband, homes (year-round and vacation), and yet she hesitates to take the full dive into womanhood. I have self actualization, a body that makes sense (mostly), and affirmation good and bad for how it feels to be a woman in this world. To her I said, “Clinging to that dream won’t serve you, trust me I know.”

She wants someone to tell her she’s enough. I even did, blatantly. But it didn’t satisfy.

You need to walk through the brick house to get to the doll factory. I wish this quip had sprung from my lips over french fries, oysters, and cider. But hey, Substack is the home of staircase wit. From that witticism I question: are dolls just masochists? Do we hate ourselves so much that we choose the hardest option of life? The most difficult path forward, removing our shoes to tread on jagged rocks and hot coals to show devotion to some omnipotent and horrible god?

Or do the gods look at human development, migration patterns, or geography with the same awe we do at bird murmurations? Them in their fourth dimension where time is as flexible as space; seeing the past and future as clearly as we see the horizon. Do they pause to admire or do they care at all?

There’s a reason the planets were seen as gods in antiquity; heavenly bodies so vast that they simply had to be omnipotent. The Moon, Phoebe, Celine, or Artemis, now seen as our protector from NASA’s latest space mission. A female body guarding us from celestial debris. Once again, a thing, not a person. An object not a subject.

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The first pill pop of estrogen begins the journey from subject to object. The actor vs the acted upon. Helen of Troy (or Sparta depending) was not so much a woman but a prize to be won. A thing. That’s the journey from man to woman. To go from the hero of the story to the reason for doing it. Or worse, just a chapter of the damsel in the tower, not the entire book. It’s an odd thing to have chapters and whole novels dedicated to you as a man, then you become a woman and the pages thin. Perhaps it’s from the “rebirth” of transness where it feels like you’re starting over, so of course there’s less story. But I’ve also lived a vast and varied timeline. I don’t want to feel like a new character in the novel of my life.

There are of course exceptions to this. The Final Girl in the horror genre (though even that can be argued she endures adversity done to her, though). She is the subject and the object. Desired for virginity and power. The saint and the slut. Where is the trans saint? We all know they see us as sluts already. Are the dolls not allowed nuance? Do the dolls need to accept the horror genre because, gulp, we question if we’re afforded happy endings?

Dot in Sunday in the Park with George literally breaks free of her narrative, jumping from object to subject, leaving the canvas she’s confined to. She, god-like, leaps from second to third dimensions, defying George, her lover and in many ways creator. That’s what I strive for. To be seen as more than just a prop for queer folks to unload their trauma onto. Or someone to go out with to a bar. Or for the mentally unwell (as many of my friends are, teeheehee) to compare themselves to. I am a person with a fascinating and tumultuous life not to be pitied or envied, but lived.

It’s not lost on me that this is Masha’s (from my play Masha Masha Masha) central conflict also: being seen as a side character. Other people don’t understand her depth. Similarly, I’ve had many frustrating moments the last few years where my conditioning lead me to sit back and perform as dutiful audience/therapist/nice girl, because I thought if I gave that to people (the thing I want most) then they would reflect it back to me. I’m here to say, accompanied by my notes from the field: bitches don’t do that. They love to talk about themselves. Hell, I’m doing it right fucking now.

But I’m human. I make mistakes. I change. I grow. Which is more than I can say for many people. Take the risk, I’m tired of holding people’s hands as they walk to the ledge, just fucking dive in already.

I’m reading The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, a retelling of the Trojan War from the point of view of Briseis, queen of Lyrnessus in Troy. One thing I hate about being a woman is that we are not the ones doing the sacking, we are sacked. We are the things to be won. If no one wants to win us, then what value have we in a narrative? I’ve said this before, I know, but it bears repeating. Even in a reclaiming and retelling, Briseis is silent most of the book (probably where the title comes from, doi). She possesses a vast interior worldview but barely speaks, least of all to the man who continually rapes her, Achilles. I’m tired of these female protagonists who just sit there while the world spins around them. Bella Swan, Elizabeth Bennett, hell, even Arya-fucking-Stark, these women let the world change them even when they disagreed. I know they had fewer options but like, damn, is being a woman really that powerless?

“Men carve meaning into women’s faces,” Pat Barker writes. Truly they do. As a child, I got in trouble on a family camping trip for carving with a pocket knife into a tree. Men love to leave a mark, hence, graffitti. I’m grateful a woman did my FFS, but I learned she got a man who had bad reviews amongst Reddit users to help her. I hated not having a choice in the matter. Even my face was not mine to choose.

Beyond my conversation with Amy, I realize I’ve lived this role as blank wall or pair of ears to listen to other people’s stories with my roommates as well. One of them commiserated with me over our recent sexual exploits. He regaled me with tales of a trans twink letting him “hit it raw.” I shared about a guy who kept looking between my legs during a liaison and how I hated feeling objectified. “Must be a fetish thing, right?” He asked. “That’s so weird.” He doubled down and asked again. I said “I don’t wanna be called ‘weird,’” proud of standing up for myself, but saddened still. He didn’t get it. What hurts most: I thought he was correct.

Again, a fetish is an object, not a person.

Later in the week I felt sad. I’d eaten, worked out, direct deposit hit that day, gotten outside, showered, not looked at my phone… and was still depressed. I refuse to take more pills, antidepressants are a bandaid on a wound that only serves psychiatrists’ paychecks. They got me into this mess, they sure as hell aren’t getting me out of it.

My period tracking app showed me that I tend to feel indifferent on a regular schedule during my cycle. The quartered line popping with bursts of color signifying a lack of feeling. “Leapfrogged indifference,” I think to myself. How funny. My experience of womanhood is to feel indifferent at regular intervals… probably because there’s not much I can do about it.

The fact that there isn’t a reason drives me crazy. There’s no reason I’m sad. There’s no reason I’m single. There’s no reason I want partnership. It just is. It’s natural selection. The species that didn’t procreate ended their life cycles. Do you ever stop to wonder about the millions of life forms that died and disintegrated before they could become fossilized? Somehow the current kingdoms of flora and fauna found ways to continue.

So I ask: what am I doing here? Why am I here? Some people go to church for answers. Some join cults. Some write stupid little Substacks for tens of people to chuckle at their phones every week. But ultimately no one knows why we’re here.

The poets and the artists say it’s for one thing: love. A man went further than any human ever had, he and his companions named a crater after his dead wife on the Earth’s largest satellite. That is love.

I don’t feel that. So again, I ask: why am I here?

If no one wants you then what good are you? (Damn, diva, that’s dark). I know it’s not that simple, but what do you do if you want to be wanted? Change things about yourself? You can’t change likability.

Later in the week, I decided to challenge this narrative. If I’m not wanted, then I can do what I want. Another roommate was cooking in the kitchen, counters occupied by cutting boards and spices he keeps in one of his many cupboards. He was in a giggly mood, my chest tightened as I prepped to say what had been clinging to my heart chakra for months now. “Hey, babe, can we make a schedule for emptying the dish rack? I find myself doing it more often than I should.”

Sigh, I did it. Yay me.

“Well, I unload it often,” he responded.

Lies.

I had literally been keeping track. He puts the dishes in the dish rack, where they stay for days until our cleaning lady comes bi weekly and empties it. A cleaning lady I say we don’t need, but he insists.

He humors me and empties the dish rack, saying “it’s fine, it’s not a big deal.” As he unloads the rack… for perhaps the second time I’ve witnessed in the two years we’ve lived together.

Later that night as I wash my face I say aloud to myself: “I will not be gaslit.” These words get thrown around a lot, but this is a solid example of it. I won’t allow it.

I am not the object, the tranny roommate here to be silly and sassy for you. I am a person with thoughts, opinions (good and bad), anger, joy, kindness, and all the other colors of the fucking rainbow. Dont fuck with me fellas, I’m on one.

The problem with the timeline metaphor is the end point. A line will eventually end. When you keep walking toward the horizon you eventually get back to where you started from, the cycle never ending. So as I looked at Amy, both of us teary eyed, estrogen and trauma be damned, I realized this story will repeat itself. One of us will be the doll to help someone else in her life, performing a form of mutual aid. A different heroine’s journey, if you will. And if I want to change that, to be like Dot in Sunday in the Park with George, I need to break free of this timeline. Which means, logically, I’m not at the end of my story yet.

I encourage you all to break free of your stories this week. Eat the oysters. Critique the book. Cry at the moon. Who cares? Roommates will still offend us. Offend them back!

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I’m on my way to Dear San Francisco, a circus show with some friends who went to Berkeley, one of their college besties is an acrobat. The show is horny, subtle, and awe inspiring. My jaw was on the floor, I’m lucky one of the performers didn’t tumble into my open mouth. The women are strong and sexy, the men have shoulders of steel. I can smell their feet, we’re sitting so close. The dialectical dance in my head confuses and arouses me as I’m grossed out by the smells but turned on by the performer’s suggestive forehead-to-forehead touches. It’s like I’m a teenager again.

“We’ll probably read about this next week on your substack, huh?” One of my audience mates says. Never one to disappoint, I chuckle, “yeah, probably.”

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Some people fear they’ll run out of things to write about. A blonde woman who probably works for the New Yorker in a tiktok tells me the warts-and-all, vein-opening memoirs of the 2010’s are now replaced with bland and vague stories the culture welcomed after the public purging nature of the BLM movement.

I find myself toeing the line this week, wondering if I share too much or too little. The human nature of comparison has been difficult recently to make peace with. That, along with miscommunications galore with trusted confidants and abundant gossip in the queer community has made me question if I should even continue this Substack, for fear of judgement or saying the wrong thing. Above all else, I find myself questioning how I view myself, my world, and my desires in an exceedingly difficult world.

Later in the week, students have flocked to the commons area at work. My reflection greets me as I cross the quad to get to lunch with my bestie, Jeff. A weird feeling to witness my changes over time, between weight fluctuations and mental health topography. A young guy behind me tells a classmate about his upcoming nuptials, a small affair at a restaurant in town, nothing fancy. Jealousy arises, within me, I wonder if it’s simply from having taken doxy pep on Sunday so my gut biome is devoid any bacteria, good or bad. Our emotions come from our lower halves, yet we ignore them so often. Or maybe I’m just jealous because I’m single. I dunno, seeing twenty-something’s with their futures ahead of them makes me feel… past my prime. Le sigh.

What a horrible thought, I think to myself. A man would be throwing away his potential by dating or marrying me. The genetic material in his family tree severed. The continuation of his line abruptly halted. I suppose that’s not a definite, but it would take a massive amount of care from a man of all people. “Silver Spoon” by Erin Lecount comes to mind, a parable of the lower class girl who feels she can’t impress her boyfriend’s parents. When will that ever be my experience? No one knows.

I suppose if others were jealous of me it wouldn’t feel so bad. I would at least have things I know are worthy of others’ covetousness; there’s an odd feeling of contentedness in that, like when you get the newest iPhone before your friends do. I want that reciprocal jealousy for relationships and career. Is that just called admiration? Is admiration just jealousy with pronouns in its bio? Charli XCX basically said the same thing about jealousy in “Girl, So Confusing",” and yet she found shared ground. Make friends with the dark thoughts, I hear the readers say. Maybe, maybe not, I hear my therapist say.

I now know I wasn’t crazy when I was started on multiple medications months ago; antidepressants and SNRI’s waltzing through my endocrine system to a Doechii song, wanting to shake ass but the rhythms never quite match up. All the things I wanted then: a job I don’t hate, a partner, fulfillment… are things I still want. Honestly, I don’t feel much closer to getting. Yet my psychiatrist insisted I get on medication. I still don’t fully think it was worth it.

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The gay guy octave drop when men meet each other annoys me. The possibility of fucking always on the table for them, they must peacock their masculinity for each other, even though they both suck dick. I know, I used to lower my voice, too. But like, you boys were just giggling about Kim Petras and whatever HBO Sunday night water-cooler-talk we were discussing, why are you suddenly a baritone when your countertenor usually rings in my ears? Some of y’all are embroiled in drama I have nothing to do with, phew, who has time for bullshit? Y’all really need to blow up your lives in order to feel something, huh? You’ll never catch a doll blowing up her life for fun. Our transitions are already enough of a gamble.

I wish making once choice to go against the grain, my transness, didn’t dictate many of my other choices fall into that upstream battle, as well.

Speaking of trans girls. Drum roll please…

Ethel Cain, coochie out, zero fucks given!!!!

Brava, diva, brava. Call it a dick, call it a front hole, call it a princess wand, I don’t care. I’m obsessed that she put full nudity on Beyoncé’s internet and Instagram hasn’t taken it down a full 24 hours later. Iconic.

Some, though fewer and fewer in the age of Pornhub, have never seen a trans woman’s naked body. Ethel is no stranger to online criticism, you can read my piece about that here. And to anyone angry about it, I say: you have no trouble viewing children in Gaza dying or Kristi Noem’s husband in cross-dresser fetish-wear but a trans woman’s dick on the internet gives you pause? I’m sure many of you are zooming in, just like I did. Trans woman are called brave by the left and mentally ill by the right, and this photo is evidence of both. We will never win, and who gives a fuck, post pole on main! Moira Rose said it best:

I put my titties on main once and it got flagged so fast it was crazy. And Ethel’s nudes are still racking up likes and views. Good for her!

My therapist (the DBT one) hurt my feelings in the last three minutes of our session this week. She politely, and I could tell kindly, attempted to tell me to have more realistic expectations around my career and romantic goals. My drying cheeks redampened by my tears. I told her, “I know you’re trying to help, but that hurts to hear.” I’m not mad. I just… don’t know how to take that. How am I supposed to be happy with less than everyone else? How am I supposed to be realistic? Realistically trans women tend to find themselves at the bottoms of large bodies of water. There’s a ceiling to my dreams, that’s fucking heartbreaking.

Everyone wants a village, no one wants to be a villager. But not me. This I know to be true, I’m a great friend and a great villager. This isn’t narcissism, it’s practice. I get out there. Everyone wants an audience for their one woman show, but no one wants to see one woman shows.

I race home getting ready for a friend’s improv show, a fifteen minute walk away. My athleisure stripped off far from sexily. I have half an hour, I can— wooof. I catch a whiff of my bra. Not cute. If I shower quickly, not wash my hair, and, sigh, call a car, I can make it in time. Though it’s not expensive, I’m still contemplating the financial decision. Ugh.

In the lobby of my friend’s improv show, I glance at awkward comedy guys. I’d be down to fuck one. But no one approaches. I hate seeing the balding crowns of aging millennial men. They’re a reminder that no matter how hard I try to be beautiful and content, a mid-looking man losing his hair will undoubtedly be happier than I; male loneliness epidemic be damned. More men kill themselves than women, probably because of unchecked mental health issues. A comedian on TikTok said men don’t get celiac, they just have diarrhea once a week their whole lives. The same goes for mental health. Take the pills Mark. take. the. pills.

I walk home after being “they’d” at said improv show. Sure, my breasts, hoops, and long hair really give “non-binary.” I wish it didn’t sting, but it does. I offered the group a suggestion: “I’m doing mushrooms in Mendocino in a couple months.” They run with it. My friend Kat remains criminally under used in the scenes. Improv in LA feels much more queer than a bunch of neurodivergent tech workers slumming it out in the Mission on a Thursday night at 7 pm. I walk home contemplating a taco but not wanting to spend money. A taxidermied donkey winks at me from a shoe store. I dodge street people fenty-folded over like bent paper clips. I cross to Valencia, one block and an entire galaxy of privilege and tax brackets over. The unhoused suddenly in the single digits as opposed to the dozens. A blindingly lit barber shop featuring a toddler getting a haircut greets me around the corner from my house, my ovaries tap dance on my heart. I don’t think I’ll ever feel maternal love toward someone.

I feel like a stateless child, forgive the disgusting analogy surrounding the supreme courts birthright citizenship proceedings. I don’t fit in with straight people. I don’t fit in with gays. I don’t have enough trans friends here to develop community after multiple attempts. And my therapist tells me to “be more realistic.”

I put on my new obsession: Heartbreak High, Australia’s rebooted nineties teen soap and answer to Sex Education’s cancellation. The show is campy, horny, and sweet; beyond, that I love saying Harper in an Australian accent. Ayesha Madon, the show’s lead, is beautiful. In my head she’s zaftig because she’s funny, and funny women famously can’t be skinny because of patriarchy. But I was wrong, she’s rail thin. I watch one episode, eat a piece of peanut butter toast, and smush myself into a waist trainer when I remember it’s my second peanut butter toast of the day. The salted butter and chocolate chips added to it make my caloric intake skyrocket, and my shame hangs on to the tail of the comet.

Over all i’m reminded that I am in control of my power. If people think my Substack is cringe, let them. If my therapist thinks my desire for a boyfriend and a series regular is beyond my grasp, go off queen. If I feel jealous of someone, that’s okay, I’m sure they feel jealous of me, too. The straight guy wishes he could express his femininity without retribution from men and women. The cis woman wishes she could get her tits done. The rich friend wishes they could express themselves creatively like me. The poor friend wishes they had a job like mine. The gay guy who got fucked last night wishes he could actually be brave and ask that guy to dinner and not just sex. The lesbian wishes she knew what it felt like to be taken seriously. And the doll will always compare to the other dolls.

Jealousy is a part of life. Get over it, get under it, make friends with it, destroy it. Who cares? She’s not going anywhere.

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Through it all I think to myself: I’m tired of getting to know people. I want to be known. The getting to know you stage sucks ass.

Whether it’s with a partner or friends, I want comfortable silence. Peace. Anger. Reconciliation. Laughter, so much laughter. We, the traumatized masses, often try to skip to that part. But we can’t.

In terms of dating, I don’t want the rest of my life to be the difficult part; the insurmountable part. Some people just aren’t meant to find someone, because then we’re the foil to the happy couples. The Bobby’s to the ensemble in Company.

Flashing back to earlier in the week.

The seemingly gale winds that force their Ozian power over me as I descend the escalator at 24th street Bart should be studied. My pristine slick back made useless as the hurricane-like air laughs at my efforts to look put together. Whatever, I think to myself. There are no cuties on the platform, anyway. My eased anxiety climbs again once on the train, where a cute guy in scrubs stands near the doorway along with a hot Irish looking guy with a green plaid and fancy watch reading a Kindle. I clock an East Asian doll wearing a plastic hibiscus hair clip, the Hawaiian looking kind, tucked behind her ear. I sit behind her, a sorority of trans womanhood protecting each other, unspoken and unacknowledged. I glance in the black-mirror window to assess the damage the Bart-nado did to my hair do. Only a couple strands out of place, still, annoying. I go to change the song in my AirPods and see this gorgeous doll in front of me checking her appearance.

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So vain, I think before I can stop myself.

Wait, Alanna. You literally just did the same thing. Check yourself, diva.

I spend the next three minutes commuting mentally flagellating myself.

I glance up at the hot scrubs guy, he’s looking our way. Do trans women doing unspeakable things occupy his internet search history? Is he trying to win the woke Olympics by being en guard in case some asshole harasses us? Or worst of all: is he just spacing out, his gaze landing on us by happenstance, and my overprotective/ defensive mind decided to accuse a complete stranger of being a chaser?

“‘Least the dolls are beautiful, fuck me up Florida,” lulls in my ears. Thanks Taylor and Florence. They both know trans women so I wonder if they know what that word means. Or if they mean it in the vaguer definition of “all women".”

One of the community ambassadors near my job smiles at me, is it because I look nice? Who knows? Once inside, I don’t even notice the hot guy I share the elevator ride up with, as I stare at my phone. My work crush brought his Banana Republic blazer for an event today. Flirtation ensued. Don’t worry we keep it above board as he’s engaged and I’ve been a homewrecker before and hated it. Well, I guess a home saver is more appropriate since every couple has stayed together or found new partners since then. Sigh, where’s the Good Luck Chuck movie about the doll who saves marriages by fucking the husband?

Later that night a handful of thirty-something gay guys giggle behind me before a play I’m seeing begins. Gods and Monsters, fantastically directed by my former teacher and current collaborator M. Graham Smith. For a play about memory, racism, and homophobia, it was quite light and funny.

The day of the city hall event, I get my nails done. The power dynamic of a nail salon fascinates me. For some reason I feel clocky here, always have. Cis women and their daughters or girlfriends clog up the robot chairs. Though I sit trapped, my toes in the hands of an Asian woman of unknown provenance, I suppose I technically have the power. My technician scrapes, files, massages and lacquers my foot digits. Seemingly I’m the one in control, but diva, it’s not so. She controls the price, the pace, the vibe, and the ambiance. She giggles at my ticklish soles, my thighs jiggling. Probably some unresolved childhood trauma somatically kept in my feet, no doubt. I never felt self conscious of my body until estrogen. Genetics blessed me to be attractive to most gay men, yet I still never had a boyfriend longer than a few months before transitioning. Sigh, again, the desire to be known.

A small boy, probably second grade sits next to me as his slightly older sister and mom sit across from us. He giggles at the massage chair. My feet in paraffin wax tied up in plastic bags. Magazines taunt me from across the salon. Anne Hathaway on Vogue, Simone Biles on Vanity Fair, Cynthia Nixon on The Advocate, and of course The New Yorker. All covers faded by the sun revealing their age. How do we become those women? Those women feel “less than” other women I’m sure. Sigh, when is enough, enough?

I can be happy with the life I currently live, but I want more. Is that a crime? No, of course not. It’s human. Hence why people begin relationships, plan debt-causing weddings, and buy property they don’t need. We, as a species, are coded to compare. To want more. I want to be known. Some people don’t need to try, they get things with fewer obstacles, and they hate when I point that out to them. Especially trusted loved ones. The don’t like when I remind them of how much easier they have it than me. This isn’t a pointed attack, but a broad generalization. Don’t get mad, divas, it’s true.

My phone vibrates. A late twenties man with forehead wrinkles and another with a chin strap beard message me, calling me beautiful. Another with a handle bar mustache sends me four pictures in various Hawaiian shirts. Something about facial hair that curls into circles makes my skin crawl. Am I stopping myself from having a relationship with one of these guys all because I’m… gulp… simply not attracted to them? I know plenty of people who don’t seem attracted to their partners anymore. What’s keeping them there? The fear of becoming single like me? I dunno.

The paraffin wax has hardened, like a Narnian curse around my pedal digits, as my seat mate, who’s told our technician he’s six, gets a foot massage. His mother wearing a bright rainbow knit sweater, and pre-teen sister a natural blonde. A jealousy spouts in me. These children with a mother, compared to me, half orphaned. The sliding door thoughts of what my life would be like had my mother not died when I was twenty-three, or my brother in law not screamed at me when I was twenty eight, or the loudest thought I’ve learned to live with: what if I was cis? They linger. What sucks the most is I will never know these answers, and it’s my life’s work to be happy with not knowing.

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Most people spend their lives trying to find answers to life’s impossible questions, achieving things I probably never will. And I need to learn to be happy anyway. The very thought of that I’m sure brings relief to my friends and loved ones who don’t need to worry about the things I do.

People can’t seem to handle sad truths until they’ve lived them. We spend our lives trying to avoid the sadness until it envelops us in her watery grasp, a tidal wave dampening the sound and cooling the temperature until we can’t breathe.

My friends text me about Drag Race viewing plans while I contemplate the future of the planet and if I’ll ever be happy. You know, woman tingz.

I worry I’ll never book another tv job again. Trans roles have all but disappeared with this administration in power. It’s not directly connected to that, but it feels correlated, at least.

Or maybe I’m just a sad girl today, spending her life trying to make people comfortable around her.

Finally, we’re back at City Hall. Months of planning, lots of stress, coworkers afraid something will go wrong… and me, not giving a fuck. It’s a chance for mucky mucks to schmooze and lawyers to wag their metaphorical dicks around.

I subtly strut to the bar, feeling myself on my second glass of wine and hour-old sushi, trying not to make too much noise on the echoey marble.

“What kind of law do you practice?” The handsome bartender asks me. He’s probably late forties, olive skinned, some vitiligo on his hands and face. Nice guy, clearly not looking for tips as they don’t accept them at the event.

“Oh I’m an actress, I just work here.” I respond, expecting the conversation to end, so I can prance back to the crowd and pretend to care who made partner this year.

“Do you act out here?” He asks.

“Yeah, I went to grad school downtown.” Again, expecting the pleasantries to end. In my experience, unless I’m talking to theatre people, the chances of anyone knowing my grad program are slim to none.

“Where?” The bartender asks.

“A.C.T?”

“Me too!” He responds.

“What?!”

We trade war stories, I tell him how I’ve realized our training was cult-like. He politely agrees. I learn he graduated twenty years before me. He didn’t have the greatest time there, either. He’s no longer auditioning that much, though, he’s got one for Toyota coming up. He has a kid now.

I share my latest triumph of a Netflix gig, he congratulates me. We exchange names. An elderly alum queues behind me for a drink so I leave, smiling and laughing.

I walk away, avoiding my bosses as the booziness takes hold. I’m not making a fool of myself, but I am feeling a touch silly at a work event. Then it hits me: the weirdness.

I check in with my body. How do I feel that someone from A.C.T. is working this event?

Odd. Embarrassed for no reason. In this hall of dignitaries and Bar passers, I have more in common with the bartender than any alumni from California’s oldest law school. I also feel proud. Acting school survivors making it work in this increasingly harsh world. I told my boss and she guffawed, “are you fucking kidding me?” We laughed. I walked away, feeling weird still. It felt like that scene in Materialists when Chris Evans offers Dakota Johnson a drink before she asks for it. It was weird to be an actress in a group of lawyers. I liked my dress. I liked the vibe. But I dunno. Overall I felt weird that I had more in common with “the hired help” (I hate that I thought it, but I did) than any of the one hundred guests in the gorgeous city atrium.

And then I remembered, Alanna, you’re the help as well. You’re working the event, too, you uppity bitch.

I dunno. It just left me feeling… again, weird. Like a whore. Someone who has to schmooze with guests because it’s my job. Interrupting conversations and asking people about their lives. For the first time I felt like an escort.

But the twist of it all: I doubt the bartender thinks lowly of himself. He’s got a kid and a family and I’m sure makes good money working for a catering company we paid thousands of dollars to for the event. They didn’t accept tips for that very reason.

The event ends, I hustle to the train with my female co-workers trying to catch BART so they don’t have to keep their dogs and husbands waiting. My feet scream at me from my cheap shoes. My companions more sober than me. But I don’t care, I did my job and did it well.

Through it all, I want to be known, and the one person at the event who could know me better than anyone else… I ran away from for fear of feeling weird.

Irony.

Throughout these scenes in my mind, I decide to not wait to be known. The following is a love letter I decided to write to myself instead of waiting for someone else to do it:

I love your eyes. I love your soft skin. I love how you laugh when you stop caring about your voice. I love when you perform, I love you even more when you let it all fall away. I even love your farts. You are so kind to your friends, but you don’t suffer fools. Even your enemies have earned grace in your eyes. You love your father. And I love how you’ve found balance in your relationship. I love how you love Scrappy. I love you after your hot girl walks, when you’re sweaty and feel gross, but you smell amazing to me. I love when you need me to do a self tape with you, and I try to give you notes, and you don’t take them, but eventually do. And even when you don’t book you come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, I was right. I love how hard you try. I love your morning pages, and how even when you think your writing is bad it’s still brilliant. I love when you sing, your voice moves mountains and gathers flocks of birds to our window sills in my mind. I love how kind you are to yourself. Even on your worst days you know you’ll get better, brighter days will always come. I’m so fucking grateful to have you.

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Lessons from the week: Let your weird be seen, it’s the price to be known. Don’t worry what people think. Take care of your feet. Drink water at work events. And please, please remember that we’re all trying our best.