Use It, Nine

I alluded to it in a previous blog, but I have historically been a withdrawn and detached person. Call it anxiety, call it the effects of growing up with a heightened exposure to class signifiers (and, crucially, knowing that I did not have them); or whatever else the case might be. I’ve spent a lot of time with empty surroundings and my own thoughts. A lot of those thoughts become a sort of wasteful byproduct, the starchy water that clings to the bottom of the sieve.

A lot of those moments of withdrawal centered around my relationship to others. Reviewing or predicting conversations, preparing my exact intonation or phrasing, or trying to construct my understanding of someone I was afraid to say something to. These moments are not necessarily unusual, I wouldn’t think so anyway, but they are maddening. Any and everything is reduced to semantics after enough time spent with the Team A and Team B of your own mental Pentagon (mentagon? womentagon, more like).

You could imagine that a lot of this centered around gender. I spent the first years of my achingly slow coming out process doing this, to the point where I don’t really have a unified theory of myself. It used to feel important to understand every aspect of why and how and who and what I am, and those things cannot only be found by looking inward.

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend that led to this point. That I think too hard about the other to the point where I negate them. They cannot be who and what they are, rather they are only my projected anxieties and interpolations. I jokingly responded that this is just like Evangelion, because I cannot resist a riff or allusion to save my life.

The parallels between my experience and queer readings of media are obvious, and Evangelion is certainly a well-examined one. Signalis, a survival horror game by rose-studio, is another. My most referenced is probably Nevada, by Imogen Binnie. For those who haven’t read Nevada, and you really should, the story is largely meandering. Maria, an overthinking trans woman, experiences a crisis in her relationship brought on by withdrawal, gets broken up with, gets fired, and steals/borrows/steals her ex’s car to go on A Great Big Punk Rock Self Discovery Road Trip. It ends somewhere in the Nevada exurbs, where she happens upon someone she assumes to be a pre-realization trans woman, James, and then spends the remainder of the book trying to explain it all to James about How Gender Works.

James, for his part, is aimless and willing to go along to a point. He has a dead-end existence, a girlfriend who hates his detachment, a vague understanding of gender enough to realize something about him does not feel right, and some dresses shamefully buried in the back of his closet. I have been Maria (though I have never stolen a car or done heroin), I have been James (though I have never had a girlfriend). The synthesis of their dialectic is the most resonant of all, though: overthinking is paralyzing, and having someone try to live your life for you is alienating.

The book is intentionally unclear on James’ gender. There are enough breadcrumbs to suggest that he is closeted, but it is never confronted. I have described it before as a book about trans people that is not for the straight gaze. There are no triumphant moments or tear-stained platitudes, there are just the monologues of a woman in a stolen car with a sock full of heroin in the glovebox.

All of this to say, I know how that feels. I put away trying to figure out myself as Elise so that I could trudge along as (deadname). Not to say I never had a good time, but that I withheld myself from the world, and the world from myself. Once I knew that I had to, eventually, come out, I withdrew from things I loved so that I could separate cleanly.

One of those, the point of this piece, was sports. I grew up playing all kinds of sports, all of them badly. Hockey was really my first playing love, but the one I have come back to first is rugby.

I only came to the sport towards the end of high school, after I was done with the toxicity of rowing and my friend told me to come try out. It was a team with competitive spirit but a friendly atmosphere. My coach was a uranium salesman who later ran for local office. The rules confused me, but I had fun.

I found out about the COVID lockdown at the end of practice one day in mid-March There had been rumors and consternation for a week or two leading up to it, and then we were told: school’s going to be closed for a while, we don’t know how long, hopefully sometime in May. The early weeks of lockdown were a blur. I played a lot of Wolfenstein, barely did my homework, and went for long walks at night. We never went back. There was no prom, not that I had worked up the courage to even talk to the girl I wanted to ask to it. My graduation was a drive-through. Summer internship was cancelled. The airlines got bailed out, and I stayed home from my first semester of college. I grew out my hair for the first time, and even my facial hair. My high school graduation photo disgusted me to the point where I shaved the next morning.

Fast forward 5 years. I did go back for one semester of college rugby, but it was spring in the Midwest and we didn’t play any real games. I had done a lot of waffling about how and when and where and to whom I might come out, and I barely had. I always thought transitioning would mean losing sports forever. I had seen the proposed bills, internalized the fear of being the thin end of a political wedge. In one of my many discussions with friends online about trans sports, someone had shared a since-deleted Medium post by a trans player like me, who had gotten welcomed into the sport and thrived there, and decried the capitulation towards by USA Rugby about its adoption of the IOC’s transphobic standards. I used to share that piece around so that people could see what it meant for people like me to feel welcomed in sports, and hoping against hope I wanted to find a way back.

A few months ago, I reached out to my local women’s rugby club, telling them in my email about my gender. They accepted me without any issues. Nobody asks unless I mention it. I’m just part of the team, and treated like anyone else. We had our first games this past weekend, a one-day preseason tournament with shortened games and convivial atmosphere. I was in the first fifteen, at my favored position of scrum-half.

Leading up to it, I agonized about the dirty looks or words I might receive. They never came. Referees and opponents never looked at me askance. Teammates had no reservations. I was the number 9, and could I please get the ball out of the ruck quicker, thank you.

We lost all four games. Three of them were shutouts. I missed what would have been a winning penalty kick in the other. At the end of the fourth, after boiling in the sun all day and making what felt like yet another mistake leading to a try, I kicked the post and bit back tears for the final few minutes. I missed our postgame team talk to heave damp sobs into my undershirt, and tried to reflect. The team felt slow and disorganized with me at the breakdown. The ball was never out quick enough. My distribution was never good enough. I didn’t communicate enough. I didn’t use my kicking game enough.

Playing 9 can be lonely sometimes, everything good feels like it has nothing to do with you, and everything bad feels like it was only to do with you. My teammates tried to assure me otherwise and encouraged me for coming to play and be involved. I felt better after a few good words and a meal, prepared by a guy with a portable grill, handlebar mustache, and no further questions for my sweaty, clocky self.

I got a ride home to prepare for the postmatch bar crawl. I don’t know what came over me to dress how I did, I am not really yet up to dressing feminine in public, especially not a Saturday night downtown bar crawl. Nevertheless, I turned out in what I could muster, with a romper, stockings, and denim coat. I got a few compliments from teammates, other players, and a bizarre bout of hitting on from a man who I can only describe as trying to look like Christopher Moltisanti. He had nothing to do with us, which is good, because I wanted nothing to do with him.

I didn’t stay all that long, getting home sometime before midnight, but I realized the day felt like coming through the other side. There are no epiphanous movie moments in life. When I tried on a dress for the first time, there was no shining realization that this is who i was meant to be. I looked in the mirror and dissociated. When I told my friends, there was no big speech. We got drunk playing cards and I told them one at a time when the other went to the bathroom. My exact words were “I’m, maybe a girl, lol”. I didn’t have the ohmygod I must do your makeup you’re going to look so pretty!!! moment. It just kind of went unmentioned for a while, and we kept on being friends. Saturday might have been tough, but I get to look back and see how even getting my ass kicked is better than sitting alone, because I got to do it with people who see me as myself.

The ball will be at the next ruck, and the one after that, and the one after that. And when it is, I want to move it out a little better each time. But I want to be there. I want Elise to be there.

Stuff I Saw / Read / Did Since The Last One