In come the lightning bugs.

The fireflies vs. lightning bugs question was a staple of my midwestern upbringing. The medley of deeply southern and baseline midwestern accents and dialects present where I grew up led to everyone I knew saying something different. But my brother-in-law put it best: fireflies are for romance. Lightning bugs are for excitement.

So my poem holds to his wisdom. Fireflies are for romance.

Tonight I watched two fireflies talk.

Two lonely souls murmuring and calling out

Across the vast expanse of a neighbor’s back yard

And I wonder if they love one another

Or if a lack of options will create tenderness from necessity.

I think when humans have died out

When the giants of our species have commited to the mass murder-suicide

The few of us who remain will break out the radio

And across vast distances

Find tenderness in the necessity of life

And the urge to keep loving will overpower the

Empty nest of mass extinction.

In the summers following my Kansan upbringing, I have seen fewer and fewer lightning bugs in the June-August nights. This is unsurprising. As a planet, we are in the midst of our third mass extinction event. 75% of insect biomass worldwide has fallen by the wayside in the past 50 years. My heart breaks for our tiniest friends, whom we could not live without. I want to hold the hand of every biologist and entomologist who has begged the world to care for the creatures going extinct around the world, no matter how small their purpose is.

I would not be the first to blame the greedy above us for the deaths of the smallest below us. My recent move to East Tennessee has placed me in the palm of American anti-overlord history. So, in the heart of independence and the most biodiverse region in North America, the importance of conservation feels tantamount to the conversation of resistance. In the aftermath of Helene, even more so. Entire habitats, swathes of homes, human and animal, have been wiped from the map, and nearly a year later, the lack of response from The Man rings a bell far too familiar for Appalachians. Once again, we must be our own saviors, this time choosing to abandon the hyper-individualism our government steepes us in. Never in history have we been alone. Only arm in arm, we shall overcome.

I can’t seem to break 500 words. Inspiration must strike more often and with more fervor.

But I can’t think about California or university without thinking about the reason I’m going. When we met at the intensive study program, Vi2 became my entire inspiration for returning. As my designated adult in charge for the summer, she reminded me so much of living with a big sister again, and her joy made her electric. I swear, you have never met someone who can make living at a monastery sound so appealing.

We called a few weeks after I returned home to the humid paradise of El Salvador and I lamented the fact that I hadn’t heard someone call me by my name since I was in California. The purpose of that call was to discuss my future. In social transition, at university, what comes after, etc, but with Vi, one always has to be prepared to discuss the Dharma. In all honesty, I have yet to wrap my head around what the Dharma is, but she makes it comforting. Not much stuck in terms of words, but the sort of light she radiated in discussing Karma and the Buddha’s lessons reminded me of my father at the pulpit or under the stove light. Lessons upon lessons. Content pales in comparison to character.

Vi asked me about the dreaded why behind my identity. I remember studying from Abhisamayālankāra 5.21, “Nothing is to be taken away from here / Nothing is to be added,” and pondering how that relates back to me, needle in my side, giving myself the hormones I don’t have. Is it vanity?3 But I didn’t tell her that. Better to ramble on verses I’m more familiar with, the scripture I was raised on.

nāpaneyam atah kiñcit

prakseptavyam na kiñcana |

drastavyam bhūtato bhūtam

bhūtadarśī vimcyate

—

Nothing is to be taken away from here

Nothing is to be added

What is/has been is to be seen as it is.

One who sees what is/has been is released/liberated/free.

- Abhisamayālankāra 5.21 | Translated by Prof. Lauren M. Bausch

The common Christian interpretation of Genesis/Bereshit 2:22 holds the belief that Chava was made second to Adan, out of his rib. Plenty of Jews believe that too, I’m sure, but my father taught me about tricky biblical translations early on. In Hebrew, the word צֵלָע (tzela) translates closest to “side.” While the ribcage [also occasionally described with tzela, meaning “compartment”] lends itself to the anatomical interpretation, my desire to chew on meanings causes me to look elsewhere. Instead, this use of tzela is sometimes attributed to interpreting Adan in his first form as being hermaphrodidic, but G-d separating the two for the sake of companionship4.

Quickly calling back to Christian scripture, I am reminded of Matthew 22:30, where Jesus said that man and women will not marry in heaven, because in their new heavenly bodies, they will be angels, and by extension, genderless. Though I’m not Christian, I see where he’s coming from. There’s plenty of Jewish text on abandoning the physical form when reaching the World to Come.

And for one final show of biblical transness, G-d G-dself is not referred to in the Hebrew Bible in the exclusive maleness we so often see in Western interpretation. Hebrew is a gendered language5, hence the Hes and Shes when referring to G-d. This holds up in modern Hebrew and Arabic, where if you meet someone who might use they/them pronouns in English, they instead alternate between the masculine and feminine forms of their language.

In Judaism, we try not to speak on [or even reflect too heavily on] the World to Come6. At least I don’t. But in our collective effort to make the Earth more G-dly, I call back to Man in her original form: one. I think that in the same way humans are calls to prophecy or priesthood or familial vocation by G-d, we can be called to transness. Biblical understanding of life as One. I was raised a woman and I’ve lived it well— we have all been Chava. But to know G-d is to know life in all its forms.

Poor Vi sat through my ramblings like a champ, and when I finally took a breath, we reflected. She told me that the Buddha said that some people act as the bridge between man and woman, not either or. Mending the differences between cultures is part of the internal transgender experience, and oftentimes means mending our [and our family/friends] relationships with how we perceive the opposite/our own gender assigned to us. For now, while I heal the graft in my side/rib/door/tzela, I’d rather change my biblical interpretation to “bridge.”

And G-d bridged the gap between man and woman.

Does my weird and complicated relationship with gender and religion answer any questions as to why I’m trans? Probably not. But there’s always something to it. I hate writing conclusions. Instead of anything proper here’s what I listened to while writing this:

• All I want— Joni Mitchell

• 12,000 Lines— Big Thief

• Pale Blue Eyes— The Velvet Underground

• Into the Mystic— Van Morrison

• Objects— Big Thief

• Everybody’s Talkin’— Harry Nilsson

• Tiny Haunted House | #134 — Story Break

• 4am city silence with interjections from my cat

• Bug Like an Angel— Mitski

• Lo and behold!! California— Joni Mitchell

• Silver Springs— Fleetwood Mac

• Vincent— Don McLean

More soon

Beni

I have identified as transgender in some form since I was 10 years old. For close to a decade, that descriptor has never faltered or failed me; I’m transgender, I’m glad for it.

I was also raised by my family of three older sisters and two parents, all ecstatic to have the perfect Little Women set. One can imagine the feelings of disappointment in being a man in those moments. “Who’s our Meg/Jo/Beth/Amy?” “How I love being a woman!” “Thank G-d we don’t have to deal with men when we’re at home.” “A few more girls and we’d have been All of a Kind Family!” So on and so on. Not exactly a conducive environment for positive masculinity when you’re reminded regularly how glad your father is he only had girls. I’m not bitter, I only have to prelude my modern problems for the audience in my mind.

Throughout my teens and recent adulthood, I’d always been open about my identity. Living in El Salvador doesn’t deter me, I only have to be smart about how noticeably transgender I look in public. Normally it’s minimal. What can I say, I’m a regular prettyboy. Upon most explanation of my gender I am met with “you’re too girly/pretty/feminine/etc. to be trans,” and in my conservative neighborhood I am understanding. But in my own room I start to question why I choose to live up to those claims. I wear makeup, occasionally shave my legs, and am incredibly vain about my hair. Though not inherently feminine, as nothing is, you can connect the dots.

My first suspicion was my “girlhood” upbringing. Of course makeup would make me feel at home, right? If I think hard enough I can smell my sisters getting ready for church. Burning hair on too-hot flatirons, expired foundation, B&BW body spray, home sweet home.

But maybe that’s just part of the story. I never got the privilege of a bathroom-getting-ready-ritual for myself, I was normally banished to the rim of the bathtub as the sister too young for makeup. I’m not complaining though, I was there to smile and quietly listen to high school gossip while Lorde and Paramore blasted as our pre-church hymns. Eight year-old me was happy to be included on the sidelines.

I never fully grasped the “female rage” trend, or the “girlhood” fad, for that matter. Though I’m not exactly the type of person to be proud of myself for reading Didion and de Bouvoir, I do understand the absolute plight of being a woman in patriarchal society. If I hadn’t been raised as a woman, I’m sure I wouldn’t grasp the subject so clearly. Maybe the culprit is my pretension, maybe that’s what makes me cling to being visibly “woman enough” to survive as cool and not insufferably philosophical. Women make that kind of thing cool, right? TikTokable, aesthetically pleasing, Pinterest worthy philosophy for the masses of women tired of being “just a girl” levels of dumbed-down.

But despite my animosity towards the feminine trend cycle, I know why the toxic femininity gish gallop continues. Men are oftentimes purely insufferable. This we know well. Another insecurity about being a man: I know how smart women talk about men. Frankly it’s deserved, I know more bad men than good men by a 10:1 ratio. Being a woman requires isolationism, and I drag that isolation with me like a body bag. One more thing making me Woman, I am lonely and constantly aware of my dead weight [bad stereotype to joke about?].

When I think about how my sisters taught me to be wary of/fear/despise men, it’s hard not to turn it back on myself. Especially when my sisters and friends guzzle GirlTok down like they made drinking water an aesthetic. However, if Ada Limón can love how men love, can’t I? Can’t we all?

When the plane went down in San Francisco,
I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes.

He memorizes the wrecked metal details,
____the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke.

Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes:
The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa.

How people go on, and how people don’t.

It was almost a year before I learned
that his brother was a pilot.

I can’t help it,
I love the way men love.

“Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds,” Ada Limón, 20151

What I’m about to tell you might contradict that last bit. Try to remember how two things can be true at once.

I firmly believe that kindness politeness from men is gained somewhere in the middle of a nasty spectrum. The razor thin line between “so hot men sexually harass you on the daily” and “so unattractive men can’t hear your voice when you scream in their face” is a tough one to walk. I know what’s going to happen when I go on testosterone. Men do not respect those they perceive as women being fat, or hairy, or pock-marked, or any number of the lovely effects of the Big T. Don’t get me wrong, I am overjoyed to be starting HRT, but let me write it down before I forget: the only thing keeping me from medical transition is how much I want people to love me.

Today, my transness is not publicly stated. It is my second date fun fact. I can ease you into it like a cold pool, but eventually you have to dunk, because if not we’ll both be uncomfortable. In romantic life, I find myself being men’s “starter boyfriend,” a boyfriend okay with being a girl around guy friends, a boyfriend who fulfills all the fantasies you have about short women, a boyfriend okay with meeting the family and pretending Beni is short for “bendición,” solo un apodo de mi mami, gracias por preguntar.2

Despite my best efforts, my predisposition to both man and self hatred often gets the better of me. I criticize myself for holding on to the last months of stability, of knowing what my voice sounds like, of recognizing my face, even if I don’t like it. I’m clinging to the semblance of respect, to the pride my family has in its girls. The toxic life force I gleam from men finding me pretty is keeping me in my mental version of saṃsāra3 , and I think I’ll meet the beginning of the end next week.

Next week, I’ll start my medical transition by meeting with doctors who can help me start HRT. Next week I can drop the performance, just for an hour, while I plan my next move.

More to come.

Beni