My gender envy has been rooted in music since before I knew what being trans was. Billie Joe Armstrong, Pete Wentz and Frank Iero simultaneously became the soundtrack to my youth and the blueprints for my masculinity. While that might be a common trope with trans men now, back then it was simply seen as adoration mixed with attraction. The low-waisted jeans, studded belts and guyliner of the early 2000’s were enough to have me hooked. YouTube rabbit holes of interviews and music videos filled my hours after school to the point where I can still see every frame of “I’m Not Okay” by My Chemical Romance when I close my eyes.The image of some black-clad tattooed guy leaning against a venue wall smoking a cigarette became holy to me. I yearned for it in a way I couldn’t properly articulate, finding it cruel that I’d always be confined to the role of the rockstar’s girlfriend. I didn’t understand that what I was feeling, the chasm in my chest that opened when I looked in the mirror, was more than just jealousy for a lifestyle.
It took me a while to put two and two together. The occasional euphoria from getting gendered correctly by accident, or celebrating when several layers of shirts and sweaters finally hid my chest should have led me to the conclusion that I was trans much sooner. Through several years of questioning, name changes and general gender anguish, the music is what stuck with me. These boys in bands were who I looked to when I was trying to learn what it was like to be a guy. How they walked, sat in chairs, or even laughed were carefully studied and committed to memory. It’s so burned in my mind that I still wave like Gerard Way several years later. Their affectations and vocabulary find their way out of my mouth on occasion, turning an otherwise high voice in something foreign sounding and boyish. It became a way of seeing myself as a guy, but not necessarily of passing. I figured that if I adopted enough mannerisms of cis men, then I would be unrecognizable as a girl. It was comforting, and a way of allowing myself to feel more at home in my skin even when it wasn’t always safe to be there.
These days, gender affirming care is picking beer over fruity drinks, holding open doors, and draping my leather jacket over people’s shoulders when they’re cold. I still feel most myself when I’m smudging eyeliner under my eyes like my forefathers, or lacing up the same battered pair of boots I’ve had for years now. While transitioning is still relatively nebulous to me, I think I’m closer than I ever have been. I am now one in the mass exodus of smokers drifting outside between sets at a metal gig, leaning against a wall like those I so admired. One studded belt and several low slung pairs of jeans later, I still owe the man I am today to a handful of guys in rock bands.
