Title: Laser 1
Date: 2017-11-04 18:02
Category: other
-Tags: not-a-transition
+Tags: not-a-transition, lasers
I've decided to pull the trigger on laser beard removal. (It's less thorough than electrolysis, but cheaper and less painful, and my light skin and dark hair is supposed to be a good match for it.) My [earlier fear of](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) maybe needing beard shadow to avoid accidentally passing (and thereby incurring unwanted social costs, however much I would prefer my reflection) looks ridiculous in hindsight; I'm sure I've never read as anything other than a man with gynecomastia—and it's even more moot now that I've [quit HRT](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/). (On that subject, the return of my standard-issue hormone balance has been mostly uneventful, my main observation being that spontaneous erections are a disturbing nuisance after the peace of having had that system set to Do-Not-Disturb for a few months.)
I bought a copy of _Counterexamples in Topology_, and a short story collection with a 2017 copyright date, subtitled _The New Trans Erotic_ [_sic_]—research for the blog, I told myself; I should understand the competition, the bright young gender-dysphoric literary minds sworn into the service of the victimhood identity-politics mind-virus and accordingly shunted down the transition track, rather than the repression track or—whatever you want to call what I'm doing. (And if _they_ can write and produce a meatspace book, why can't I?)
-At the laser place, I had to fill out some administrative and consent forms on a tablet. The autocompletion for the "First name" field had apparently only been seeded with female names; when I typed in a _Z_—because of, um, reasons—the offered completions were _Zaina_, _Zhuoyun_, and _Zoe_.
+At the laser place, I had to fill out some administrative and consent forms on a tablet. The autocompletion for the "First name" field had apparently only been seeded with female names: when I typed in a _Z_—because of, um, reasons—the offered completions were _Zaina_, _Zhuoyun_, and _Zoe_.
After a brief video call with someone with the appropriate credentials to satisfy our friends in Washington and "Salem", the nurse-technician performed the treatment: her wand blew cold air over my face to mask the needlelike pain of the laser bursts. (The cold air being forced into my mouth while she did my upper lip was more memorably uncomfortable than the laser-pinpricks themselves.)
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff