Body Stories
I.
One night not long ago it occurred to me that it was time to start getting tattoos again. I don’t remember which tattoo was my first but I know it was my own teenage creation with a sewing needle, thread, & a bottle of Windsor & Newton ink. The last time I got tattooed was ten years ago. That time it was a memorial band on my right wrist for a friend from my sober years into whose mouth on hospice I’d slid drops of morphine. For the three of us women in recovery who were taking care of her there was a strange thrill despite the grave circumstance; we marveled at the dropper of clear liquid, which our friend choked on, as she’d lost the ability to swallow.
Now the first new tattoo I’d get would be a memorial to my mom. In Chronology of Water Lidia Yuknavitch writes, “My mother loved to swim more than anyone I know. Swan.” There’s probably little truer I could say of my own mom, who butterflied from one end of the pool to the other as though effortlessly before she got sick. I’d get the tattoo down my left calf.
I would get it down my naked left calf, but so far no one I’ve spoken to has been willing to tattoo me. I used to walk into a tattoo shop with barely a plan & walk out with something roughly kin to the impulse with which I’d walked in.
The issue is my skin. When I stand, my calves look more or less like any other calves. But if I bend my knees ninety degrees, the skin of my calf hangs from the bone. It crepes into wrinkles & sags against my thigh. The same goes around my elbows. Someone could tattoo my skin, move it around, stretch it taut to ink letters, but the possibilities for error are huge. What if the finished product is just too ugly? Am I human enough to tolerate a mess where the intention was what beauty is available to me?
A therapist I saw when I got thin once warned me how disfiguring it can be to gain weight after losing so much. But when I gained back weight I’d lost, my skin became supple again. It didn’t hang from my bones anymore & I could wear shorts that ended above my knees. I had breasts again where I’d gotten used to pancakes with enormous nipples. The therapist didn’t go on to tell me what happens when you lose then gain then lose then gain then lose the same hundred pounds. The skin of my right leg is bigger than the skin of my left leg. It hangs on my thigh almost as a hammock. I conceal this drape of skin with long shorts despite the heat of the desert. I wear long shorts to swim too, & all that cloth where my skin wants water is offensive & sad.
II.
Recently we threw my daughter a giant party for her fifth birthday which is as far from my style as I can get. I had to find a dress. The only one that spoke to me was covered in butterflies & draped low off the shoulders. I have never drawn attention to my shoulders, have had stretch marks there since elementary school. As my body has changed over the years, my upper arms have become far more interesting than the ancient, pale stretch marks. There is so much skin above my elbow that I can tuck it under when I want to pass as not so weirdly bodied, at least as long as no one looks too close.
When I think about passing I think about my daughter. At five she is too young to understand exactly that she is trans—to her she is just a girl we mistook for a boy until she was able to set us straight. I don’t want my daughter to keep who she is a secret. & I want her safe.
As my daughter’s mom, I want to show her that not passing is also an option. Not long ago my husband was given a pair of rhinestone-studded yellow plastic sunglasses that make anyone wearing them look like Elton John. I thought it would be funny to wear them to school pickup & asked my daughter if it would embarrass her if I did. To my surprise she said no & I still didn’t wear them. What if no one knew I was joking? My daughter didn’t see anything particularly funny about the idea. It would be so much easier if my skin were just a quirk.
I think sometimes about skin surgery. I don’t know if they do that for fat people who have extra skin, or if it’s just for the traditional after. I wonder if there is any correlation between the surgery that I think about for my skin & gender affirming care. Am I a traitor to my body if I want to remove some of it while a person who receives gender affirming care is befriending theirs? Is it so bad to want being in this body to be a little easier? Must I do everything the hard way? Where in the world did I get the idea that you have to either accept yourself or change? There are worlds beyond those two possibilities, & between them my skin speaks for itself.
III.
In the dark I move my hands across my abdomen & find the spot where my gallbladder was pulled out. My fingers are surprised at a softness like lips puffed around the horizontal line of scar. My skin is dry so I head into the light & rub coconut oil on all I can reach. The oil is no small miracle of ordinary care.
I find marks on my right arm where yesterday a blood pressure cuff took readings every two minutes to monitor for steep drops while I was strapped to a table upright. My face in the mirror pleases my sense of aesthetics, noting even the dense white hair on my upper lip. There’s a rainbow pimple patch under my chin where an ingrown hair has become inflamed & the skin of my chin rejoices that it isn’t the brutality of a bandaid.
When it’s quiet enough to hear my skin, there’s a quality to the experience of aloneness. There will never be another person in here with me. There was once, & once we were all carried in a mother’s body. How can it not make you think of dying? So long as I was barreling through, I didn’t have to get into that.
Not feeling that helps me pass. I can pass as just another mom at pick up the wildest thing about whom is the choice of sunglasses. I know my daughter is far too young to get that not passing is an option you can choose almost like anything else. Now she wants nothing more than the pink things I wanted at her age; the aesthetics of young girls can feel downright archetypal. Instead of giving my daughter the option of not passing I give it to myself; my skin begins to inhabit itself.
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