Our first Pride month movie is Boy Meets Girl 2014. I'm glad I was finally able to get my wife to sit down and watch this movie which moved me so fundamentally.
I sat on a brown couch, a small puppy yapping and playing around me as I inexpertly painted my nails a bright red. My wife was out of town, at a conference and our daughter was at a friends house for the weekend. I was alone. With my currently unpainted hand I was going through the more limited streaming services of 2015, looking for something to watch. I had looked for two shows about trans people but they weren't available, I found a reality show called New Girls on the Block and I was about to binge it when I hit on this gem on Netflix. I figured, what the hell, I will watch the movie first and if it lets me down with the typical trans woman gets to live her life but at the cost of societal happiness trope then I can decompress on some reality tv about trans women trying to get through the day.
Well, the movie kicked my ass. I was crying so hard, harder than I really ever had before. I felt something in my throat crack but I also felt something else in me crack, my shell. It was a cry that I had put off for my entire life, something I only allowed brief moments of tears before, something that I lived in quiet deep depression over. It had finally clawed its way out of me, free but bruised and fragile.
So, naturally I watched the movie again, and I openly wept rather than the explosive expulsion of pent up emotions. It was more a cleansing rain of the soul. And then I started watching New Girls on the Block, determined to fill my few days with as much trans content as possible. I don't remember a lot about the show but I know that despite hating reality tv I was genuinely upset that they had not continued the series beyond 5 episodes or into a second season. I needed information, I needed to be surrounded by my community but I am an introvert and autistic so I avoid new situations and environments. Reality shows seemed like the answer but others seemed more contrived and aimed at the cis gaze, supermodel trans women or abject tragedy. So I got one good day of feeling seen. That night I spent my time soaking my fingernails in acetone cotton and aluminum foil wraps trying to get bright red lacquer off my nails. Putting the cute dress into the back of the closet, my prison, before I closed the door, returning myself to darkness. But something kindled within me, a fire that kept the darkness at bay. That fire would grow over time and the closet would not hold me for much longer, I was no longer chained inside my prison.
