Inanna’s Embrace

In my youth, sexuality was observed as often as Halley’s Comet–seen once in a lifetime and for too short a period to comprehend. Through ignorance, it became a terrible, mystifying thing to behold. An oft-cited ill omen that brought men to their knees and made good women into temptresses of the former. It was a flaming sword in the heavens, guarding men from the Garden of Earthly Delights. This backdrop illuminates the wisdom required to discover a sliver of my relationship with my own sword, and by pleasurable extension, one way I enjoy my work as a companion.

My thoughts on gender and sexuality—then as now—fit society’s expectations like a poorly constructed garment: too short in the sleeve, too wide in the waist, too narrow in the shoulders, and asymmetrical to the point that only the blind can enjoy the look. Always defying normalcy, I am the person wearing the polka dot dress to the seersucker suit convention—a response to the reality that made neither sense nor equity: that adults treated us children differently merely because they chose to call one ‘boy’ and the other ‘girl’ with no space, no understanding for what fell between.

This contrast rested on my heart as well as a man in his bed during the sweltering summer nights in the piney woods of the Piedmont. Girls led a more sequestered and submissive life than boys, and boys were preferred to girls. Moreover, men’s misbehavior was placed squarely—by men—at the feet of women and their tempting nature (not the former’s lack of self-control). It, like Paw-Paw’s dinner-time sermons, served another pale echo of the sin Eve shared with Adam—the Knowledge of Good and Evil—that demonstrated that men had the duty, right and privilege to rule over women, who would, without men’s control, lead all astray. This settled in my stomach as though it were milk left too long on the counter in the sun of a Georgia day.

Here Plessy v. Ferguson had been kept by action across gender lines, and society was thusly bifurcated by the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ of penis privilege. By implication and interpolation of word and deed of adults—the autocrats of my young life—I realized that wishing to cast off my privilege for a life that colored well outside the lines was not welcome. But a wild heart, such as mine, does not see boundaries as more than a mere challenge. It will have what it will have, in time.

With hindsight and the wisdom and knowledge acquired through education and experience, my understanding of the manly ‘blessing’ given to me is a comedy worth a thousand, sinful cackles. For, in my youth—until relatively recently truth be told—I had no idea of the incredible size that I had been given, nor of how to handle the feelings thereabouts that percolated in my adolescent mind as the first cups from the Mr. Coffee on our kitchen counter greeting the dew-strewn morn.

Early in my schooling I recall a time where I was mocked for my size. I took it to mean I was small. Ridicule, by nature, makes all victims feel such. I was an impression born of my abject refusal to look down at the waists of others, much less engage in comparative games of phallic size with the boys of my age. Fearing I would get caught, called, and labeled ‘gay’ or a ‘faggot’. Words I had no true meaning of, but which I understood, clear as an Easter Sunday sermon to mean ‘bad’ and ‘outcast’ in every conceivable meaning to family, friends, and society solely by the hostile tone in which they were spoken prevented my revelation of truth. Perhaps, had I tasted of the Fruit, I’d have known the truth then.

Oddly, the clues existed ever-present in my young life, but I did not piece the facts together. Exhibit A: my dad, in his perverted pride, did make me memorize the punchline ‘and deep too!’ when standing in front of a urinal to indicate to every other man in the public restroom that his child was born with a third leg. (Odd, now that I see clearly in the rearview mirror, he was content for it to be told to other men, but made zero effort to share this truth with the women or girls which he clearly preferred I hold my interest in.) Exhibit B, I have vague recollections of my mother’s friends commenting on how my mother will have to ‘keep the girls away from me when I grow older’ by her visiting friends in the early times I was allowed to walk about the home without a diaper (which quickly ended thereafter, further telling me what I had was not to be shared).

I now realize the ridicule I faced as a child from my peers about my size was born from jealousy, for I was beyond reckoning in size even then. So, irony of ironies, I found myself with the body I had, endowed to the point that boys were even awestruck while I wished I had been born differently.

My adolescent days were spent as many children were in the era, free-range they’d say of me now. Playing in the yards, both back and front. Exploring the creek across the street. Traipsing behind neighbors’ fences with the care and caution of a cartoon cat-burglar hiding from the floodlights of the authorities-–that being everyone above the age of twelve. Good-natured, Southern rearing where ‘it takes a tribe’ was taken to the literal, and every neighbor was part of that tribe.

Oft too busy and preoccupied with relaxing after their over-worked-and-under-paid jobs, domestic affairs, and determining which bill to pay with this week’s check and which to pay with next’s, my parents were content to engage us only over the supper table. Supper was always conducted on a small circular oaken table in the breakfast nook of the kitchen that overlooked the lower den of our cedar wood split level. There, with the vague promises of vitality, did they trap us youngings, their minds bent on interrogation. Along with the bread of sustenance did we receive the wine of their demands, which was decidedly of the domestic chores and homework performance varietals.

After the forms of various southern cooking were consumed, usually over-salted and over-cooked—my mom taught me that ‘ruined’ is still edible most times (an important lesson I’d relearn in the dining facilities of the US Army)---we’d retire to our various activities for the evening. Some times together, though as I grew into adolescence, more separated, especially as I discovered passion, fantasy and self-pleasure.

I won’t avail you of the details of performance, but I will share with you where my mind drifted in those muggy nights, moon low over the pine trees, air so thick the mosquitos swam—not flew—through the windows the upper floor ventilation fan sucked through open windows without screens. With room door closed, mind hazy from the heat, belly filled, and at the edge of bliss, my mind went to one thing time and again. As I flipped through the pages of the modern Kama Sutra I snuck out from under my parents’ bed, the incongruence of my body’s changes brought on by puberty from desire and passion, the truth that I felt deeper than my head and heart would allow pushed through, demanding attention like a dog who insists it hadn’t been fed. Soon, seeing the pictures, my mind drifted from thoughts of being the men, but also, being the women too. When I let my mind drift to completeness, I wanted to simultaneously be both.

So, one June afternoon, when my sister visited a friend and parents were at work, I found myself alone at home, curious to explore my inclination. I donned my mother’s bustier, stuffed it with rolled socks and shirts. My mind and body immediately responded, demanding more transformation, my nature growing and pining for attention. I was wearing a sweat shirt and sweat pants stuffed like a summer sausage, ready for my eyes to taste, making me into an overly-muscled warrior-goddess—equal parts divinely feminine yet occupying the spaces reserved by men. Every muscle huge, breasts enormous to the point of breaking Atlas’ back, overly curved hips, and a comically large phallus, I doused myself with every single perfume my mother collected–regardless of how long it had been on her vanity! To others, I must have looked ridiculous and smelled worse for it, but I was in bliss. It was a bliss my body eagerly responded to multiple times that day without cessation (a talent I have kept to this day when mind, body and soul are united within me).

This was me—the true representation of who I am, inward presented outward in the mirror. If it was a sin to have such thoughts, I was possessed by the most fiendish of demons. However, I felt an uneasy peace-–whole within, yet terrified of the implications society and family would have. Like the comet, this too was a flaming sword, fierce and bright upon my deepest self, and even if the illuminating sight of this omen would be brief, it was a herald of change—the morning star of a goddess so ancient and unlike our modern concepts that her complex grace, beauty and power are now derided as demonic.

Though sequestered behind the closed door of my bedroom, I called upon my make-shift prosthetics when time or desire allowed. Dressing this way for months, the pleasure of the alternate reality my mind created gave me a raccoon’s courage and curiosity, each time more risky, getting closer to getting caught. But, all light seeps out through cracks and around corners, catching especially the eyes that are used to only darkness. And this light shined not with hope, but consequence.

I’m unsure what prompted my mom to investigate. Perhaps it was incorrectly placed lingerie, the odd smell I or the clothes carried, or the slowly diminishing perfume that had slowly disappeared in volume but not presence without her use. Eventually, I became a lightning bug captured by a jar on a May evening—caught and observed. When she rebuked me, my mind learnt the lesson that self-expression is disallowed if it is not manly self-expression. (To be fair, wisdom has shown me differently, but it is how my young heart took it, having lost the ability to self-express.)

It took decades for this history to become relevant again as I pushed down my truth to present a sweet Georgia peach for others even as I tasted the bitterness of the stone. In time, I learnt to love my prison, a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, though I too was the captor (or all of society, depending on the perspective). Instead of blurring lines in my own way, I highlighted the sharp contrast that I was, in fact, as masculine as they come. Military service in combat theaters, roughneck living as a contractor. Beard-wearing. Mohawk-having. Whiskey-drinking. Fast car-driving. Whatever that I enjoyed tolerated that others saw as masculine, I performed the ragged edge, amplified to eleven. With so much success I did these things that my life seemed to take a sharp left turn in the view of those around me when that comet again appeared in my life, finally demanding recognition.

Formally, my transition began about two years before this writing, and it began much the same as I had when I was young-–prosthetics and borrowed under clothes (though with permission this time). Tragically, coming to terms with my gender brought the conclusion to a loving, decade-long relationship with someone whom I still count as a dear friend.

In the process of my transition, the dawn of awareness that my walk with gender brought into sharp relief my then partner’s own complicated walk with her womanhood. The light of my own comet streaking across my sky frightened her. Showing the things left unresolved and unseen in her own darkness—insecurity that she felt not feminine. Even as I rushed headlong—embracing bustiers, makeup, nail polish, and feminine clothing that accentuated my womanly mystique, she recoiled, now lacking a masculine contrast to prove herself woman. Now, in her mind, butchy in my true light-–in spite of her obviously feminine figure and demeanor—she became disinterested and disgusted in the trappings of ‘femininity.’ Claimed I had changed in behavior even while mutual friends disagreed.

Dealing with my own feelings and experiences in my newfound existence prevented me from showing as much compassion as she may have needed. How could I, dealing with my own discovery and the complex feelings that swirled and created resistance within me handle also her resistance to it without feeling selfish and cruel? A tragedy that only the Poet could write, my going where she not yet dared led us to part. It devastates me that my walk couldn’t help empower her own, that my comet did not help her show her her own beauty and strength-–that the feminine isn’t defined by convention and presentation, but by the courage to love and show compassion.

My journey colors my purpose as a paid companion with the warm pinks, violets, and cool blues pastels of dawn across the Cascades where, for now, I reside. As I sought to understand my place in this world better, I returned to some of the histories I read in college. One plucked the perfect note, as though from a fiddle indicating to the band and the audience that the dance will commence.

In ancient Babylon, there resided one of the best testaments that humanity has forever and always understood that gender is a dynamic thing. Now a devil in the good faiths sprouting from Abraham, she was a warrior goddess who was responsible for passion in all its forms, even onto death. With wit, power, and an indomitable will, she saw over her own corner of the Heavens. She was both boon and bane to Sumer’s greatest hero, Gilgamesh. So revered and powerful is she that, on occasion, she is depicted with a man’s beard, a symbol of power and dominion in that culture. Her priests came from all genders—even trans gendered folx—and performed honored acts in sexual practice, gender-bending, and feats of strength and valor. Some know her by the name Ishtar. Others called her Inanna.

So, now, with a hospitality lost to modernity, I make space for all my clients. My altar—my arms in embrace, upon my ample breasts to rest against, wrapped between my legs in passion, and on my heart in knowing understanding––hosts the necessary implements for a sacrament so ancient that it was found in a cradle of civilization in a time adjacent to the building of the pyramids. It is a space for you to be brave, to connect with that part of gender that calls for acceptance and exploration that has gone unattended.

Allow me to be present with you, to guide you. To help tend familiar, but neglected gardens and to embark upon adventures to undiscovered countries. To gain understanding of your sensual completeness is neither a sin nor a luxury, but a necessary part of who you are—the cool April rain that brings forth the flowers and fruits of summer.

Perhaps I am merely a comet—a herald and catalyst for change. Perhaps, I am a guide star by which you can set your course to. In either case, you deserve to know yourself deeply and love yourself truly.

Not all who read this will find this call touching them, nor will I enforce upon any who do not wish it. But for those who need it, you’ll find me a gentle and welcoming priestess of Inanna, allowing her power, mystic and grace to reach through me and touch you.To embrace you for your own inner beauty. To bring you back to life. Radiant and fierce as the sun over the dew-dropped bluegrass of a new dawn.