TRANSMISSION 15

APRIL 28, 2025

During the live stream this week, Imogen introduced me to her fans and cited Mistakes as her favorite song off my record. Last week I said it feels surreal to be here and that feeling still hasn't subsided.

The day after the stream, I accompanied Imogen to The V&A Museum for the event Friday Late: Is This For real? where she spoke on a panel about AI, creativity and ethics. Afterword, I met up with my friend Carlotta, her partner Sabrina and childhood best friend Sveva. We took the little bit of time I had before the last train to grab a bite to eat in China Town.

The next night I ventured back out to Brixton for an Afro dance night where I watch DJ Miami Lee with Sveva and her friends. Then we traveled over to Camden to dance at The Underworld where I learned it is possible for alternative fans to dance to the music we love as long as we have a space to do it. Outside the venue, I met Jim (@jimlwoodger), Juni (@possibly_junip3r), Caine (@vampto0f) and musician Dex (@decndrenosoul) who invited me to an industrial techno church rave in June.

+++ Becoming a Visible Man +++

Have you heard of Jamison Green? I just started reading his book Becoming a Visible Man. It's part autobiography, part informed analysis of the female to male transgender experience. He's written several books but this one I saw on the coffee table of my friend Mich Miller when I stayed on their couch my last full week in Los Angeles. (They along with Adam Bandrowski run @transdudesofla.) I was struck by the cavalier look on Green's face on the cover. Him leaning against a city bus stop advertisement with his own book superimposed onto the billboard. I picked up the book and saw that it was published by Vanderbilt University Press based in my hometown of Nashville, TN. I felt I had no choice but to order it for myself on the spot.

Maybe you haven't heard of Green, but I am sure you know his friend Lou Sullivan. Sullivan remains one of the most iconic American FTM figures and activists in the transgender movement of the late 80s. He was interviewed by Dr. Ira Pauly in 1988 about his experience as a homosexual transexual man (at the time something previously "unheard of" or understood publicly). He also founded FTM International, a publication and worldwide trans masculine organization that began in 1986. I did some digging and found an archive of all the old newsletters if you want to see them. Around 1991, Sullivan tasked Green with taking it over when he knew he was dying.

My favorite Sullivan quote comes from his diary around that time - soon after he received top surgery and was diagnosed with AIDs:

“It really hasn't hit me that I am about to die. I see the grief around me, but inside I feel serene and a certain kind of peace. My whole life I've wanted to be a gay man and it's kind of an honor to die from the gay men's disease.”

― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

+++ Look but You Won’t Touch +++

Sullivan was on my mind this week as I walked the dim lit streets of London and ducked into The Underworld. A sunken dance floor was filled with people in various styles of Iron Maiden t-shirts, feverishly dancing to the alternative hits of the early 2000s. A tall, handsome man stood at the railing above the dancers looking down drinking a beer from a glass bottle, alone. He looked at me when I arrived with more than a passing glance but I ignored it. After passionately singing along to The Arctic Monkeys with strangers I looked up and we locked eyes again but this time he held the gaze. He would do that routine with me several times more through the night inching closer to me at one point but unwilling to speak. He didn’t need to. The silence both of us were unwilling to break is all too familiar for me. Being an otherwise charismatic and outgoing person in public, my homosexual desire immobilizes and strangles me with invisible hands. If I can manage to overcome the denial of my desirability (thanks to years of internalized transphobia), I then either wait to be approached or muster up the courage to risk my life approaching a man who may see the expression of desire as threat. Making the first move for me involves judging whether a stranger is solid enough in his own masculinity to politely decline rather than take my life for expressing my interest.

I usually keep my thoughts to myself.

There’s a feeling I get of being stuck behind glass. A type of man only to be observed - like a relic in a museum display case. No one asks to touch me because they know I am too sacred to claim. Most observers pass by in silence. They stare with admiration and lust never outwardly expressed while I am trapped in a state of perpetual observation, longing for the day I will be held again by human hands willing to endure the rapture of my sexual sanctification.

-XO FREAK

P.S. In light of the loss of suicide prevention hotlines in the US, please take advantage of the community I started over on Discord. If you still need access, just text me. If you feel like you’re on the brink and can’t get a hold of anyone to talk to just shoot me a text. I am always happy to listen.

DARCHNERVE TEXT LINE: 323-657-3474

DARCHNERVE TEXT LINE: 323-657-3474