Gifts that Affirm my Gender
- Forrest Lindsey
- Nov 13, 2025
- 3 min read
When pretty french lesbians play with my hair and call me their sweet boy although this has yet to happen
Shooting a gun (but why is it so loud?)
When my NA crush calls me faggotron
Being tits out at Riis
Ripping the condom open with my teeth and rolling it onto my silicon cock (do people really do that?)
Taking off my rings one by one to fuck Quincy in the House of Yes men’s restroom at Futch or at least I think her name was Quincy
Giving up my seat on the train to children and pregnant women although maybe this should give me dysphoria because American men don’t do that
Manspreading. I used to have to practice but now it’s like second nature to me
Passing in my pajamas or at least enough that my uber eats delivery driver calls me “boss”
Becoming just another performative bisexual man in the Chinatown Nicaraguan coffee spot (they used to scare me but then I remembered I am one of them)
That one time I was taking an ethereal redhead to see the trinket library across the street from Cubbyhole but the door had been ripped off and was lying hateabandoned on the pavement so I got sidetracked and didn’t kiss her because I was so focused on resetting the door on is hinges the way one resets their newly bearded face in a dream (with bare, precious hands)
When my transmasc crush calls me silly boy and I think of how easily silly could be traded for good
When straight men call me daddy
When anyone else calls me daddy because I am not allowed to fuck straight men anymore
My grotesqueness or in other words the mice in my messy room because only a man could live like this
When the somewhat gay looking guy at the gentrified Puerto Rican shop with the fourteen dollar horchata lattes near Tompkins says softly “that’s a lovely name” when he takes my order
When I overhear my recently relapsed roommate talking shit about me but at least she used the right name
When I come out to my father, he mishears me because his tender ears are going and he calls me Florist all day until he hears my mother’s careful repetition and says “I just didn’t know how I was going to say that’s my son, Florist.”
Building furniture shirtless
Being asked to carry heavy things
Asking the Taco Bell staff for my friend’s hot sauce because she is too shy to ask when I used to be the one who sat in silence
Helping single mothers carry strollers down the stairs near the A train with their babies still giggling in the seat
Letting that one ugly hair grow out beloved on my chin for months so that maybe people will think I’m on T only to cut myself shaving when I shed myself of this coarse costume
Putting logs onto a steadily burning bonfire
Fighting knights in armor at the renaissance faire (I don’t actually do this, I have too much head trauma)
Convincing my cousin, the phlebotomist, to draw my blood to pour into a vial for the angel I have not yet allowed myself to touch
When I call my younger brother to plan which days I will come help him recover from his top surgery and he says no, I don’t want boob cookies at my party says maybe mice don’t bother you because you used to sleep in the woods when you were on drugs says you are unbound says I wouldn’t want you to define your gender in language just for other people to understand says you are like a wild rose growing toward the sun
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