I asked him about other changes he was going through; even though all women have small amounts of testosterone, adding the volume of testosterone that Chris was ingesting has significant effects.
First, Chris told me that he had started growing facial hair—not enough to have a goatee or sideburns, but enough to have to shave. He told me his muscles were thicker and that he was stronger now. Apparently his emotional responses to things and the way he processed things were different now. I asked him about his sex drive because most people say it greatly increases—he simply said it had gone up, but didn’t make him “want to jump on everything.” (Ladies, maybe the guys can’t help thinking about sex all the time—I’m much more of a social constructionist than a biological determinist, but my anecdotal evidence has supported that guys have sex on their minds through no choice of their own.)
The holy grail of the transition from one sex to another is Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), but it’s different for each sex. When guys transition into women, they have boobs added and they can actually create a vagina that’s so realistic, even gynecologists would take a second look. But it’s different for a woman transitioning to a man. As one doctor said, “It’s easier to dig a hole than to build a pole.” They haven’t figured out a way to construct a penis, and the lame version they have costs a significant amount of money. For most FTMs (female-to-males), the goal is called “top surgery,”—the woman’s breasts are removed and a masculine chest is constructed.
Chris was saving up for top surgery; which costs about ten grand. Over the months, he kept getting more and more masculine, but he was still an old friend and it was hard for me to see him as anyone but Amy. I had a hard time remembering to use the right pronouns and I kept calling him Amy. I can’t stand it when people change their names, period. It’s difficult for me to call someone Aria Wave when her name is Dianne. I have a friend that calls himself a number—that was very difficult. So, that part was pretty hard for me (most likely because I’m weird).
One night Chris and I met up at a bar in South of Market. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of months.
