Category Archives: personal history

Personal Musings on Transition and Futility

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Every now and then I’ll get a string of posts about butch lesbians and/or masculine women on my Tumblr dash and think to myself “I could do that”.  Because at this point I’ve been out for a fucking decade and still only get read properly half the time so it’s not like I’m getting any benefit from the needle I jab into my thigh once a week.

Then I remember that I tried doing that.  I tried doing that my entire life until I came out.  It never quite worked.  It wasn’t awful or anything, I’ve never been quite as dysphoric as some guys.  It was just…off.  I found the phrase “female to male transsexual” and knew that it fit.  I never had to think about it.

Even at my most feminine (which still would’ve fallen easily into the realm of “soft butch”), I never seemed to manage the whole “girl” thing well.  I found out after I came out that a number of my friends didn’t realise I wasn’t a cis guy.  Something about me is irrevocably male.  I don’t know how or why or even what it is, really, but “girl” and “woman” don’t fit.

Life would be so much easier if they did.  I was a badass girl.  I’m gay and rather swishy and these days resemble a young Tim Gunn more than anyone else, but I’ve also always wanted to be the best at everything.  Growing up that meant running faster, climbing higher, and fighting harder than any of the boys.  It meant working as hard as I could to ensure I had won the respect of anyone I associated with.  Until I came out I fully expected that I’d be the “first woman” something simply because I refused to accept anything else.  (First woman Marine Corps sniper was my ideal goal, but I’d have taken President.)

I never had trouble being taken seriously as a girl.  I never had trouble ensuring straight boys/men listened to me.  I was never considered bossy or bitchy or any of the other insults that are often hurled at strong women.  It’s only when people view me as the gay man I am that I encounter problems.  Then all of a sudden I’m vapid or silly or otherwise not worth listening to.

It’d be nice to be able to throw that away.  To be able to go back to being a masculine-neutral woman who was considered competent rather than frivolous.  Unfortunately, that’s not a real option.  It didn’t fit growing up and it doesn’t fit now.  Sometimes I wish it did.  If nothing else, I make a really cute soft butch.

The Secret World of Alex Mack (or how media made my childhood easier)

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When I was growing up there was this show called The Secret World of Alex Mack.  It was a tween-oriented series centred around a girl (Alex Mack) who was accidentally covered in this industrial goop and developed weird powers.  Like most shows of the time, the target audience was gender neutral and included an opposite-gender best friend.  Every time someone asks me how it is I had very few problems with gender growing up I point to this show because it’s such a perfect example of the slightly odd period of the mid-90s I grew up in.

Note that Alex wasn’t meant to be a tomboy, she’s an average girl in a suburban town.  Who happened to dress not that differently from me.

Alex got girlier as she got older, but particularly early on the girly girls were portrayed as slightly different from ‘normal’.

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It wasn’t just Alex Mack either, most of the media I grew up on featured boys and girls that weren’t that different from each other.  See: the abundance of flannel even on the very much teenage girls Angela Chase and Rayanne Graff from My So-Called Life, particularly when contrasted with Sharon Cherski, Angela’s childhood friend.

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Back to Sherwood and The Adventures of Shirley Holmes were also favourites of mine, but they weren’t nearly as popular and are therefore difficult to find images for.  Are You Afraid of the Dark? always featured at least one tween girl in a backwards ball cap and ripped jeans.

The thing I think a lot of people forget is that the late 90s US was still very much inspired by grunge.  Teen and tween clothes were largely baggy, shapeless, and hobo-like.  It’s not something I enjoy now, but as a child it meant that there was no pressure to dress like a Spice Girl because no girls dressed like that.  It wasn’t until I was in the latter half of high school that the fashion influences of pop music really started hitting California.  Before that girls may have wanted to look like Britney Spears, but no school and very few parents would have allowed it even assuming they could find the clothes.

In contrast, most of the kids I know now watch things like The Haunted Hathaways

Or Good Luck Charlie

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Or A.N.T. Farm

Even shows like Liv and Maddie feature a tomboy who would have been considered girly when I was growing up.

I can’t imagine being a little trans guy right now.  All of the girls on TV and in movies seem to be these perfectly coiffed, slender beauties who need some sort of frill or pastel to be fully dressed.  Yeah, I probably would’ve realised sooner if this is what I had to go off of, but I also would have been miserable for many years because there is no way I could have come out to my parents.

Guest Post: How I Figured Out I Was Trans, the short version

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When people ask me how I knew I was trans, I often don’t know where to start.  There were all sorts of signs that I was trans throughout my childhood, but being as this was before the internet, I had no idea that transitioning was a possibility.  Like many trans people, it wasn’t one thing that let me know I was trans, it was a thousand tiny things that piled up into a narrative.  Eight years after transitioning, I still have moments when I remember tidbits from my life that confirm my transness.  These tiny moments didn’t make sense at the time, but in hindsight I can see what they meant.

Some trans people talk about being in the wrong body and some talk about not liking their social role.  For me, it was a strange combination that led me to transition.  The biggest thing, the one that trans people don’t like to talk about, is sex.  Yes, sex – I figured out that I was trans through having sex.  It started in the summer of 2000.  I was a junior in college and had just started dating a older man (lol, he was only 26, but it felt like a huge difference at the time).  The sex was great in the beginning, as I had gone a long time without any sexual contact due to my extreme studiousness and shyness.  After a month though, the sex turned bad; I felt locked up, stoic and frigid.

Being the perfectionist that I was, I spent days poring over sex books to figure out what I was doing wrong.  Convinced that I just wasn’t doing it right, I made it my goal to explore sex like I never had before.  I watched porn, bought toys, went to the strip club, read erotica, subscribed to Abercrombie & Fitch’s catalogue (my first softcore gay porn!), but nothing helped consistently.  I started to think it was physical, so I went to the doctor’s – nothing wrong there.  I practiced kegels, read up on kama sutra and tantric sex, tried the positions with my boyfriend, all to no avail.  Slowly sex became a chore that I loathed doing – a fact that is depressing as hell when you’re horny.  The only thing that helped was having sex right after waking up.  Curious, I started a dream journal.

One afternoon, I was waking up from a short nap in which I hazily remember having sex with a man.  Normally, this would have just been considered a good use of daylight hours, but this time I had a penis and I was the one penetrating him.  The dream was so vivid, so electric, that I thought about it for months, totally confused as to why I would have a dream like this.  It didn’t make any sense.  I tried to put it out of my mind, but a big part of me liked it so much, I started to have this dream every night.

After a few months of this, I furiously started researching the internets.  I came across a picture of a masculine presenting female-assigned trans person.  Floored, intrigued, excited and scared, I slowly I came to accept that my dream was telling me something important and that the only way I would figure it out was to break up with my boyfriend and explore my sexuality with other people.  Three months later, I chopped my hair off, graduated from college and somehow became convinced that I should start my experiments with women.

When graduate school started in the fall, I started dating another grad student – a woman.  My goal was to somehow embody my dream, to somehow feel male, so dating a woman seemed like the natural thing to do and I went with it.  At first it was new and exciting, just like my last relationship, but after a month of sex in which I never took off my clothes, I got bored and anxious.   I also felt like a fraud cause she thought I was a lesbian, but making her come did absolutely nothing for me.  After five months of exploring sex (including BDSM lite) with her, I took to the internet once more.

This time, thankfully, I came across a message board full of queer and trans people.  I spent months reading the archives, searching for some truth that mirrored my own.  I stopped having sex again, started to obsessively study myself in the mirror and make myself as masculine-looking as possible.  I lifted weights every day, starved myself, started shopping in the men’s side of the store and, most importantly, I started having the special dreams again, except this time they were more explicit and longer.  Jolting energy spilt through my penis, like I’d imagine a cis guy would feel and it was very unlike the orgasms and feel of vaginal sex.  I had a masculine chest, fur, fuzz on my face and I found myself furiously sucking my imaginary partner’s cock like I never had in real life.

Up until this point, it had never occurred to me that gay trans men existed.  In my dreams, I was a man having sex with a man, but acknowledging this out loud to other people scared the shit out of me.  So I continued on my quest to look more masculine while entertaining the possibility of sex with lesbians who digged people like me.   Convinced that I was disgusting, not worth dating and certainly not sexy, the attention and ego boost were nice.   I had some odd encounters with lesbians, but the spark wasn’t there.  I felt mostly dead down there when it came to having sex with women.

Slowly my dreams became more elaborate and I started wondering what else was possible.  Just going to a gay porn website was enough to make me start shaking and sweating at this point.  It felt forbidden and wrong.  It took me a full year of thinking before I finally downloaded some gay porn.  At first, I was confused.  I mean, I had sex with plenty guys growing up and I’d seen plenty of penises, but seeing gay porn for the first time made me feel completely ignorant of male sexuality.  I watched the twinks giving each other blowjobs, examining their bodies and noticing how skinny and smooth they looked.  Then one of them starting topping the other and my mouth literally gaped open – I thought “that’s exactly what my dream was like!!!”.  A part of me didn’t want to watch anymore (they weren’t my type and they looked rather sickly), but I couldn’t look away – it was calling my name.   Scared to death that I was really a gay man, I told myself that it wasn’t my cup of tea and that perhaps I was into the type of sex that has never existed in real life.

Meanwhile, I took steps to start testosterone therapy for my physical transition and graduated from college.  I moved to a new town and met some gay men for the first time in my life at age 23.  This is when my life started – I’m not exaggerating.  My new role as a man was being accepted rather easily with the help of testosterone-induced masculinization, a very trans-friendly community and top surgery, but making that step into gayhood became some sort of looming monster.  The closer I became with one of my gay friends, the more apparent my sexuality became to others, the more I couldn’t ignore the truth.  I finally came out, which surprised no one (apparently I make a rather fey man).  In less than a week after coming out, I was making my privates hurt from the constant masturbation from just the release of finally accepting myself.  Soon, I went after the real thing and for the first time in my life, my sexuality felt easy, not forced.  I no longer had to get in the perfect position, think of England, or imagine I was somewhere else.  I could be in my body and feel the electricity and most importantly I could share it with someone else, like humans were meant to do.

This isn’t to say that my sex life is easy and that I have no issues.  When I’m with a cis guy, I immediately feel less than a man – how do you come to terms that someone ran off with your penis before you born and not feel inadequate?  A lot of times, men aren’t interested in having sex with me once they know I’m trans.  On the street, if you saw me you’d never know that my package was manufactured at some plant in China.  Naked, well, you’d be really dense not to notice that my penis is quite small, much like an overgrown clit (testosterone makes it grow, a lot) and that I can’t fuck you with it.   Some don’t care that I have a vagina and some really like it.  I try to tell myself that being trans is like being short – it’s much harder to find people that are into you, but it’s not impossible.  Sometimes, my lack of a penis keeps me from cruising for a date.

Those times I’ve had sex with men who didn’t care, who fucked me all night (yes, I’m a bottom), who either didn’t notice or didn’t care that they had the only penis in the room when there were usually two, have given me years of contentment.  I was a gay man with them, just like any other guy and we enjoyed each other’s bodies like gay men tend to do.  I’ll never forget those times when I could forget that I was born female.  Like the dreams that started it all, they are seared into my brain and they make me feel alive even when I’m alone for yet another saturday night.

I may not make sense to you.  That’s alright.  It took me years for me to make sense of myself.  But I do exist – I’m not weird, or disgusting…. I’m just gay and male and trans.  For a few years I lived my life as a straight women, but not since my first gay sexual experience have I felt any longing for my former life or like I could just turn back.

You’ll never know what it’s like to be trans (unless you are actually trans) and that you’ll never know what it’s like to be a gay trans man (unless you are one), but that doesn’t mean you can’t accept it.   This is me.  I am gay and I am a man.  Take my word for it, otherwise I’ll have to bore you with more details of my mostly uninteresting life and then you’ll be really sorry you asked because you couldn’t understand.

Kian currently lives in NH with his two cats. He would be wicked excited if he didn’t have to move to a ginormous city to the south in order to have a fulfulling sex life (he’ll miss the snow and the ice-skating too much.) He can be reached at kian217 at gmail dot com if you’re interested in conversation, an argument or in sending a nicely worded hate letter.

Requisite disclaimer: All opinions expressed in guest posts are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of NotAiden.

The dark times

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A comment SoF just left made me realise that if there’s one thing that doesn’t often get talked about in the GLBT community it’s our population of at-risk youth.  Part of it is basic human nature, confronting painful situations isn’t easy unless you’re in the middle of one.  However, another part has to do with how we define “at risk youth”.  Race and socio-economic class play into it, but there’s a third group of people we tend to miss: teens and young adults from across the spectrum who get cut off from their families after coming out.  More often than not we offer support only to those people from this group who meet our preconceived ideas of what they should look like.

How do I know?  I was one of those people.  I came out at 20 which is slightly above the usual definition of “at risk youth”, but was still well within range for services in the city I lived in at the time (most of San Francisco’s queer youth services go at least up to 21, if not 24/25).  I’m Latino and my parents are on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, but I pass for white and have upper middle to high income social training thanks to my father and the parents of a few friends.  I 100% do not look nor act the way people tend to think anyone in need of services and benefits should.

When I came out my parents tried to “fix” me and persisted until I was suddenly stolen away by a friend.  There was no warning, no time to pack any of my stuff, and certainly no chance of ever going back.  I don’t regret a second of it because if I hadn’t gotten out I’d have died, but it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world.  At that point in my life I was still struggling with uni because my ADHD hadn’t been diagnosed, had only a part time job that could never support me, and only two of my friends lived away from their parents — all out of state.  I had an amazing emotional support system and for that I am incredibly thankful, but my practical support was virtually non-existent.

That first year was more than a little unpleasant.  The first three or so really were difficult as I learned to move about independently, but there isn’t much more challenging than having to start your life entirely from scratch.  I had to drop out of school because my parents clearly weren’t going to help with the bills and in the US you’re not considered independent for the purposes of financial aid until you’re 25, have a kid, get married, both of your parents die (or you’re a ward of the state), or you can manage to convince your financial aid advisor to put in for an override.  In my case everyone told me that it was a temporary situation and my parents would reconcile with me shortly.  Let’s just say I’m still waiting for that.

Even if I had been able to wrangle an override, the financial aid available to me wouldn’t have covered living expenses even with my job.  I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried to live off of what little they give students while living in San Francisco, but let’s just say it’s not easy (if possible).  I wasn’t doing great in school anyway though so I decided to do whatever work I could for as many hours as I could and figure out going back to school when I at least had a roof over my head.  Then I lost my job, four of my friends died in a car accident that I just barely missed being in, and in the aftermath damned near everyone else decided to move away.

I had avoided any form of social services until that point.  I figured there were people far worse off than I was who needed the help more.  I didn’t have a whole lot of money, but I had friends who were willing to feed me and let me sleep on their couches so I was doing ok.  Plus I have a lot of pride.  Even now, I hate asking for help.  Back then the idea of considering any sort of outside assistance was enough to make me think I’d rather go hungry and sleep on the streets.

In case anyone is wondering, you can only sleep on the streets and starve for so long before you start to go a bit nuts.  I can handle a bit of dirt and a few hunger pangs, my father put me in military programmes when I was a little kid.  However, I had never been in a situation where I was hungry and dirty while everyone around me was clean and fed.  It was less than two weeks before I decided that the looks I got when trying to go into a store to use the bathroom and clean myself up a bit were worse than anything I could get at a shelter or welfare office.

Here is where my lack of ability to blend in with lower income people of colour started to become a problem.  I was raised in San Francisco, I know that city like nowhere else in the world.  I love it, if I’m not back every two or three months I start to feel physical pain.  Unfortunately, it has its problems and at that point in time one of its problems was that virtually no one believed that a well spoken, half-way educated kid who looked white could be in need of anything.  I got turned away from every government organisation and the majority of non-profits for failing to come up with enough “proof” that I was homeless and broke.  If anyone has any ideas of how precisely I was meant to prove my lack of home or cash I’d really be interested because at that point I couldn’t come up with anything.

Luckily, some people were willing to help.  When I was still on the streets I figured out that Quakers and Buddhists tend to have the most welcoming soup kitchens (and have the added benefit of not requiring a sermon before you can eat).  A rabbi found me one night and took me home, fed me, and arranged for me to live with a couple who to this day are like surrogate parents.  I was (and still am) atheist-agnostic and, at that point, incredibly wary of organised religion thanks to my parents, but not once in the year I was living with them did anyone even bring the topic up.  I started T at a local clinic for free and they also helped me figure out all the forms needed to apply for fee waivers to change my name.  Finding a job was harder, but I was able to volunteer with a few GLB organisations to help pad my resume a bit.  Eventually I managed a scholarship to study in the UK.  That ended up not working out, but they did at least finally diagnose my ADHD and I transitioned to a cosmetology apprenticeship in London fairly easily.

The one major thing about all of this is that I was lucky.  Other than the scholarship, very little of what happened was due to any innate characteristics that somehow make me more worthy than other homeless teens and young adults.  I managed to not get addicted to drugs or have to resort to prostitution not because I’m stronger or smarter, but because freaking Tylenol makes me hurl and the very idea of sex at that point caused me serious emotional trauma.  I am not special, I just happened to meet the right people at the right time.

The same can’t be said for other queer youth.  Hell, the same can’t be said about homeless people of any age or sexual orientation.  We tell kids “go ahead, come out, be brave,” but then we don’t help them when the consequences of that are more serious than a few days of the silent treatment from their parents and some odd looks from the kids at school.  I’m not a fan of closets, especially not right now when people are staying financially dependent on their parents for longer than ever, but we’re doing these kids a huge disservice by encouraging them to come out and then not giving them some sort of cushion.  Not everyone needs one, I’d even go so far as to say that most people don’t.  Some of us do though.  We’re continuing to lose our most vulnerable members because we’re too damned busy focusing on the happy ideal instead of the not so pretty reality.

10 Moments that really WEREN’T clues

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I already did a post on the times that I probably should’ve known something was up, but I feel like it’s important for people to realise that even those of us who did have a lot of “classic” trans traits also often had some moments that weren’t so “typical boy”.

When I decided that my name was Anastasia. Emphasis on the ‘STAH’, not ‘stay’. I was adamant that people pronounce it properly. I was in preschool and hated my name with a passion, but Anastasia sounded just different enough to work. I was also a pretentious little brat who probably needed to be brought down a peg or two.

Which is why no one was too horribly surprised when I sent in photos of myself to John Robert Powers without telling anyone when I was six. It never went anywhere because unsolicited headshots in envelopes addressed in crayon (pink with sparkles and unicorn stickers so that it stood out) don’t tend to be taken very seriously. Ended up being my parents’ favourite “awww, she’s so cute!” story for years though.

I also loved my dance lessons. Sure, I refused a tutu and danced all male roles, but you could not make me miss a class. I had to be drugged to keep me from sneaking out when I caught chicken pox, that’s how obsessed I was. (Funny part is, I’m not a natural dancer. I can do ballet, but get me in a club and I start looking like Mark Cohen.)

When I wasn’t dancing I could generally be found playing with pretty dresses and tiaras. I loved dress up. Sometimes I was a fireman, but often I was Belle or Aurora or Jasmine. I was the kid with no siblings close to my own age (the closest one is college aged now) so when I was at home I had to be able to entertain myself. That generally meant dress up and other imaginary games.

Even outside of dress up, I adored books with strong heroines like Nancy Drew and Jo from Little Women. I was always a reader and while I did like my high fantasy and old mythology (English and Irish folklore being favourites), I was still a sucker for anything where the girl kicked everyone’s ass. Heck, I still read American Girl books whenever they come out with a new character.

I didn’t change all that much after I started going to school as a boy either. I still wore pink and purple (more purple than pink) and painted my nails. This wasn’t considered a weird thing for boys at my school, I was actually one of the more tame ones because my light up high tops didn’t have pink laces, only white glitter.

Speaking of nail polish, I had an entire collection of fun colours. Other kids my age collected My Little Pony or action figures, I had a bathroom cabinet full of nail polish. Mostly various shades of blue, but also a lot of silver, gold, and clear with glitter. I’d change the colour every night when I decided what I was going to wear the next day so that it’d match.

I was also obsessive about my hair (and eventually skincare). When I was seven I made up a chart and staged an experiment to figure out which brand and type of hair product worked best for me. As I got older and puberty made my skin rebel I repeated that for different skincare routines. Cleanser, toner, exfoliating scrubs, masks, moisturisers…my medicine cabinet still looks like a diva exploded.

Actually, looking back I realise that quite a few of my “girly” habits revolved around being image obsessed. I would spend hours picking out the perfect outfit. Always something that a baby Kurt Hummel or (for those of you older than 15) Simon Doonan would wear, but I didn’t figure that out until I was older. One of the biggest reasons I couldn’t handle the classic passing tips was that I hated looking like a slob. Even in my tomboy days I insisted on making sure colours coordinated and patterns didn’t clash. I was wearing horribly oversized shirts and jeans, but damned if I was going to make things worse by pairing chartreuse with violet or some other nonsense.

Any or all of these in a little boy would’ve been clues to possible future sexuality (and very much scorned by my macho-man relatives). However, I was considered a little girl. This meant I was behaving much as expected. Yes, I socially transitioned myself. Yes, I refused to admit that I was considered a girl until freaking high school. My family didn’t know that though. To them I was a safe enough balance between tomboy and appropriately girly.

Which is one of the biggest problems with using childhood and past gender expression as a guideline for transition: most of us don’t fit one category or the other. Especially those of us who are effeminate guys, so much of what would be considered rather queen-y in a little boy is perfectly acceptable for a little girl. There are some minor differences in how it’s expressed, but rarely anything that can be quantified.

10 moments that really should have been clues

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I keep forgetting that I’m on the fairly young end of the coming out age range for trans guys. You hear all about these six and seven year old little children starting to transition socially with their parents’ approval and tend to forget that the average age for FtMs is closer to mid to late 20s. At the same time, I feel like there were times I should have known. If nothing else, I should have figured out that I was different from all of my budding gay boy friends. Moments like…

When I showed up to the first day of ballet in a danseur uniform instead of the pink leotard and white tights required of girls. I was four. Classes were entirely co-ed at that age and I flat out refused the leotard. After, honest to god, six days of fighting I ended up with a white t-shirt, black (boys) tights, and black ballet slippers. My mother was not pleased.

She was even less pleased when, for the next eight years, I only performed in male roles. I quit after that because all classes went to single sex and the studio refused to let me be with the boys. It probably would have been a bigger deal, but by that point we already knew I was never going to be tall enough to be a dancer.

This was also a year or so after the school found out that I’d been going to class as a boy since I’d transferred over. I had a gender neutral nickname and incredibly uncommon legal name so everyone just went with what I told them. Once again, my mother was not pleased.

I’d imagine she wouldn’t have approved of my continuing to let my friends think of me as a boy after I transferred districts (“for my own good”). Sucks for her. I had a hard enough time making friends as a kid (I was kind of weird), I wasn’t about to lose the ones I had.

Which is probably part of why I started going to groups for gay teens when most of them started coming out. A few of the groups were co-ed, but most were specific to young gay boys and for some reason it didn’t occur to me that having a vagina meant I was considered a straight girl.

To be fair, none of my friends seemed to notice either. At our first Pride I (and everyone else) went in full on glitter drag and no one thought to point out that if I was a girl it wasn’t drag. It was awesome, but Pride is really not an event you want to wear spike heels to.

This was during the years that all of my boyfriends were openly gay. Some from the youth groups I went to, but oddly enough, most from school where I was considered a tomboy. It never occurred to me to come out to the guys who didn’t know me as a girl (something I now realise was at least a little dangerous) because for some reason I hadn’t put that whole vagina = girl thing together yet. Actually, I can’t be sure the ones I’m still friends with now even know I’m trans.

I moved then, which sucked like you wouldn’t believe. I dated a few guys before going into my (very short lived) girly phase, but they all left me for guys. That was probably when I first realised most of the world thought I was a girl. I was in my late teens.

After that I had my girly phase because, well, I was a horny teenager and desperate to get laid. Unfortunately, I hated being considered a girlfriend. Dated, fooled around, had sex, hated every second of it. The sex didn’t suck, but the dynamics drove me insane. I don’t know if it’s because I’d dated only gay guys before or what, but everything from the communication styles to the sexual aspects made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

My depression was at its absolute worst during this time and the only thing that kept me distracted when I was suicidal was putting on a tight sports bra and stuffing a sock in my pants. Honestly, you’d think at this point I would’ve figured it out. I didn’t have words for what was going on though, trans guys were still a new concept to me and the only ones I’d ever heard of were straight. It wasn’t until I found a gay trans guy’s blog that I realised you could like guys and be trans.

Lucky for me, that revelation came before I got any more depressed. if it had been much longer I’m not sure I would have survived. Still, there are times when I wonder if things would have been different if I’d realised sooner. More likely than not my parents would have just sent me to someone like Zucker or tried to have me lobotomised. It’s kind of interesting to think about though.