Year Zero - 1. Transitions

Alter: Kadence

Local Network World: 0008

Dates: 13/08/2024 - 22/02/2025 - 23/02/2025

Kieran

The scowl was etched across Kieran’s lower face like a twisted scar. It aged him. It was ugly and thin and pale pink, folding into a shallow dimple on the left side, framed by brown-black stubble covering the entirety of the bottom half of his face. The scowl deepened as Kadence looked at it. Her eyes panned up to meet his: the only part of his face she liked. Shades of blue swimming around his pupils, she saw the scowl soften in her peripheral vision.

She watched as he sighed, chest rising and falling with a barely perceptible shudder. Something in his eyes retreated as he raised his hands, smearing shaving gel into the mess of stubble coating his lower face. They both knew that when he was done - no matter how hard he pressed the razor into his skin; no matter how careful, or thorough, or at which angles he did it - a shadow would remain. Like a nest of parasitic worms just beneath the surface, the hair would remain. Smooth skin barely hiding a permanent infestation. Tomorrow it would be stubble again and they’d have to repeat the process. A pathetic half-measure. And every day it felt worse.

“You could do something about it.” He murmured as he lifted the razor, leaving his mouth slightly open to pull the skin of his cheeks taut. She chose to ignore that, watching him glide the blade along flesh, leaving a patch of clean, smooth, but discoloured skin. “It’s on you.” He reiterated.

“Shut the fuck up.” She hissed. He continued shaving: with and then against the grain; cheek, then chin, then up and around the corners of his mouth. The hardest bit was the indent just above his chin and before the skin angled outward towards his lower lip. He had to pull a strange lipless face to get the razor in deep enough for that part. She winced as he slowly, carefully, dragged the razor upwards against the coarse hair on his upper lip, trying to get as close to perfectly smooth as he could manage but painfully - predictably - tearing the skin in multiple places. “Careful,” She warned.

“I just want…” He trailed off. They both knew how the sentence ended.

“I know.” She murmured. “I do too.”

“Ugh.” He rolled his eyes, noting multiple spots of blood welling up on his upper lip and chin. He was always too rough - too desperate. Turning away from the mirror, she grabbed for a towel, gently patting away the last traces of shaving gel. Turning back to him, she watched him grab for their cleanser, lather a small amount under warm water, and begin to rub it into his face. His skin reddened a little. The bleeding on his upper lip had already mostly stopped. “Hypothetically…” He started. She washed the excess cleanser off their hands, dried them, and gripped the vanity. She leaned forward a little so they were very much eye-to-eye in the mirror.

“Hypothetically…?”

“If you were going to do something about it, what would you do?” She’d thought about that question a lot. Obsessively, even.

“Would you like an itemised list of reasons why it would be a terrible idea?” She raised an eyebrow. He knew she had one. They both knew every bullet point by heart. They also both knew that the list was slowly becoming irrelevant. Every day was worse. For a long time, now, it had felt like the colour was draining from the world. Bland monochrome surrounded them. These days, colour was rare.

“We’re not us.” He whispered. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

“What if we do it and it’s not better?” She countered.

“What if it is?” There was a note of pleading in his voice. “How could it not be?” She considered this. Fundamentally, the problem was a combination of two things: a lack of data about how transitioning would feel contrasted with an overabundance of data about how transition was externally perceived in the world.

“We’d lose everything.” She stated with finality, and not for the first time. “It would be the end of everything.” She paused, staring deeply into his eyes, willing him not to say it. In her peripheral vision, she could see the scowl deepening again beneath the razor rash and flecks of dried blood.

“If we don’t, it’s going to be the end of everything anyway.”

Kadence

Kadence sat awkwardly in the doctor’s office. It was extremely unexceptional as doctors offices went: sterile white walls, a pseudo-hospital bed with a starchy, fitted sheet that she could tell without touching would crinkle like newspaper under her fingers…a couple of degrees hanging on the walls. One was slightly askew. She fought the urge to get up and correct its angle. She clasped her hands between her knees, hunched slightly forward in the uncomfortable, plastic-cushioned chair, staring down at her whitening knuckles and sighing quietly to herself.

Today wasn’t her first consultation for Hormone Replacement Therapy. That had been with the same doctor a couple of years prior. She hadn’t been back since. She could remember the brief suite of questions she’d been asked about her history and feelings on gender. They hadn’t been intrusive or aggressive, but she had still needed to fight the urge to sanitise her answers to fit a certain kind of ‘script’ that she felt like the responses of a ‘real’ trans woman should fit. She idly wondered how many other trans women had imposter syndrome about their transness. She doubted she was alone in it. She remembered the conversation about ‘Informed Consent’, and about what she could realistically expect hormones to do and not to do; about the risks and side-effects and potential issues. She flushed slightly, remembering that she had been assuming they would change her voice (they wouldn’t).

In retrospect, the naïveté seemed embarrassing. She reminded herself that it only seemed so because of the hundreds of hours she had sunk into research - or google-assisted maladaptive daydreaming, more accurately - since that initial meeting. She suspected her understanding of HRT, at this point, was probably nearing that of her doctor. She even knew the specific regimen she was wanting, and what she was aiming for in terms of hormone levels over time. For testosterone blockers, she was wanting cyproterone over spironolactone due to some issues with kidney function after a recent surgery - nothing major, but why not go with the option that had less linkage to kidney issues? - and transdermal estradiol over pills because she didn’t want to stop vaping, and there were, from what she’d read, less contraindications there. But maybe, eventually, she’d graduate to implants or injections. She had thoughts about progesterone, but that could definitely wait. For multiple reasons. She shook her head with a private smirk.

If you’re such an expert, why are you so fucking nervous?

“It’s great to see you again.” The Doctor greeted her with a glowing smile. “I’m guessing we’re ready to move forward?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” Kade replied with a reflexive determination, forcing her eyes up to meet the doctors’, despite her nerves. She imagined it as a form of punctuation, like inserting a nice, solid ‘period’ at the end of her response. A signifier of certainty. She quickly followed up by detailing what she was looking for, and the doctor asked a few questions about the specifics of her reasoning before agreeing that starting on gels and cypro would be fine. A low dose to begin with, to both give her time to make sure it was what she actually wanted and to screen for potential - if rare - side-effects

“Perfect. And I think we briefly talked about freezing sperm last time you were here? Did we cover that?”

“Yes. And no, I won’t be doing that.” The doctor’s brow furrowed. Kade could tell she didn’t want to ask, and, taking a deep breath, saved her the trouble: “The idea of using…mine to…make a…” Her confidence faltered. Her breath caught. She forced herself to continue along a slightly less triggering trajectory. “If I do ever want to have a kid, I’ll just…do it like all the other lesbians do it.” She shrugged, averting her eyes and hoping that was clear enough. Of all the sharp edges of her dysphoria, none had the ability to cut her quite so deeply as the idea of being a biological ‘father’.

“Okay, as long as you’re sure?”

“Absolutely and utterly certain, yes.” Kade nodded definitively.

“It sounds like you’ve really thought about it, so…perfect. Let’s get the paperwork printed back off.” A couple of clicks and a couple of keystrokes and, rapidly, the printer whirred to life and started spitting out pages. Kade fiddled absent-mindedly with a candy bracelet, pulling the elastic taut and letting the beads snap back against her skin, nervously counting each double-sided page as it emerged. Ten in total. The doctor neatly pulled them together, bumped the edges against her table to straighten out the thin stack of A4, then stapled them together. She handed the document over, observing patiently as Kade leafed through the freshly printed sheets delicately and with an occasional nod. Kade’s attention to detail was mostly a pantomime for the doctors’ benefit. At this point, she wasn’t reading anything she hadn’t read a thousand times, worded a thousand slightly different ways. As she got to the middle and latter sections of the paperwork - after the basic details of expected changes and into the increased risk of breast cancer and blood clots and the like - the doctor meticulously walked her through, point by point, to ensure she understood.

“So the risks are…pretty much the same levels as for…”

“Cis women. Exactly.” The doctor nodded.

“Because obviously you’re gonna have a higher risk of breast cancer - “

“ - If you have more breast. Mmhmm.”

“Yeah.” Kade sighed, nodding.

“So I’m guessing you’ve spent a little bit of time thinking about all of this - “ Kade resisted the urge to chuckle at the understatement “ - But were there any other questions you wanted to ask about side effects?” Kade shrugged politely.

“It’s all pretty clear.” Still, she felt compelled to find something to ask. It seemed to her a bit like that moment in a job interview when they ask ‘did you have any questions for us?’. After a few moments she came up with “I’m assuming the timeframes for changes are…variable?”

“Yes, very much so. Going back to breast growth for example: both the amount of time it takes to start happening and the eventual results can be very…well, as you said, variable. And there are dietary and genetic factors to consider, of course.”

“Of course.” Kade nodded sagely, reading between the lines: If all the women in your family resemble two-by-fours, you probably will too. Don’t get your expectations too high. And if you want boobs, you need to eat. Kade was very aware of a certain prevalence in the community of very skinny trans women who complained about hip-to-waist ratios and small breasts while eating basically nothing. But in fairness, she had very little practical experience of these sorts of things. Women in the community, that is. In her entire life, she was still yet to meet more than two other trans women (that she knew of). The vast majority of her exposure to ‘the community’ was from Reddit, Youtube and TikTok. So simply: to the sorts of women that felt confident and outgoing enough to publicly talk about their transness. Women she felt jealous of; drawn to in a parasocial kind of way, but with whom there was a fundamental gap in relateability. Kade reached for a pen, quickly scribble-signing on the relevant line of the last page of the ‘Informed Consent’ paperwork before cringing a little at the ‘Kieran’ in her signature. That would need to change. A lot of things were going to need to change.

“Oh, also,” the doctor said, rapidly clacking the keys of her mechanical keyboard while staring intently at the forms on the monitor: “I’ll do the scripts for you now, but I would like you to get a blood test before you start so that we can establish a baseline for your testosterone and estrogen levels. And if you can book an appointment for three months from now and get another blood test a few days before you come back, that would be ideal. Once we have those, we might look at upping your dosage, okay?”

“I can do that, no problem,” Kade assured her. “So that’s…it?”

“That’s it.” The Doctor nodded. She spun in her chair, grabbing another stack of paperwork from the printer: “So here are your scripts - five refills for each - here are your pathology referrals for bloodwork, and you can just make the follow-up appointment at the front desk with reception. Just in case you forget, for both the estradiol and the cyproterone, the dosage is on the script.” Another brilliant smile. Kade felt glued to the seat. It was as if her brain was processing that the interaction was over, but her body was waiting for some unexpected complication to derail the proceedings.

She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d known she was transgender since she was about twenty: It should have been easy. That was almost two decades of lived experience - of knowing her dysphoria was dysphoria, of considering her options and dreaming of this moment - but still. In her mind - ever anxious, neurotic, and predisposed to considering worst-case-scenarios - she’d expected a longer, crueller, and more patronising process. All that time spent not transitioning she had spent gaslighting herself, critiquing the possibility of ‘good’ outcomes, trying to convince herself that her dysphoria was ‘manageable’…and just generally talking herself out of transition as chronic discomfort had slowly, inevitably progressed into a kind of all-encompassing existential desperation. She had internalised all kinds of hostile rhetoric around historical pathologisation of transness - around requirements to ‘prove it’ before gaining access to hormones, and needing to push back against debunked but well-known concepts like ‘Autogynephilia’ and ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ - as barriers she would have to navigate. But no. She’d done her research. She was at the right clinic, seeing the right GP. The doctor just needed to know that she understood what she was asking for, and that she actually wanted this.

In something of a daze, Kade made the follow up appointment with reception before walking - zombie-like - out into the afternoon sun. It was abnormally cold outside, but she barely felt it for the adrenaline coursing through her system. She had finally done it. She had a script in her hand for estradiol. She didn’t know whether to scream or cry or dance around; all she knew was that her body was vibrating with nervous energy.

The clinic was on a leafy, tree-lined avenue off a main road - close to the heart of Edenglassie City - leading down to some cafes and boutique clothing stores. A couple of hole-in-the-wall coffee shops punctuated the gentle downhill incline of the thoroughfare. Despite the proximity to traffic, it was quiet and peaceful. People in business attire meandered around on late lunches, sipping coffee and chatting absently. To Kade, her part in the tableau felt subversive in a way. It reminded her of several times she’d taken acid with friends and gone to wander around a park. There had always been this sense that maybe ‘they’ could ‘tell’; that maybe you’d catch someone’s eye and they’d know what was going on. Which was, of course, ridiculous…but in those situations, it had always wedged itself into her mind in a way she couldn’t dislodge, teetering between funny and existentially horrifying. Standing there, looking every bit the boy she didn’t feel in her mens’ boot-cut jeans, ratty navy blue Converse sneakers and oversized hoodie, she’d never been more hyper-aware of herself as visible or vulnerable in a strange and potentially hostile world. She nervously tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, rolling her eyes at her own bullshit.

Kade felt a twinge of something unknown as she took a few moments to decompress before booking an Uber. Some species of mild ennui. Her ex, Sara, had made a big deal of wanting to be there for her – to help her getting to and from things like this, both for moral support and for logistical reasons – but she’d been busy that day. Which was fine, Kade supposed. The useful thing about her trauma, she felt, was that it had ended up turning self-reliance into a pathology. So for all the feelings of isolation, loneliness, anxiety and lack of support, she had always been relatively good at handling most things alone. Everything, really. No matter how much she wished she didn’t have to.

Kade spent the rest of the day running around Edenglassie, finding a pathology clinic for blood tests and then getting her estradiol and testosterone blockers. When she finally arrived home a little after five in the afternoon, she wanted nothing more than to drink, watch TV, and make up for lost time: she was finally going to start taking hormones.

But she ended up sitting there, slumped on the couch, for the better part of half an hour in a silent lounge room with a vodka tonic, half a pill of cyproterone, and a sachet of estradiol gel sitting in front of her. The ice in her drink slowly melted as she contemplated the situation. The vodka tonic was so obnoxiously strong she could smell the alcohol from a good metre away. She wondered if estrogen would eventually lower her alcohol tolerance: she’d heard that could happen. Something about water retention, possibly? She hoped so. She was - and had been for some time - a very expensive drunk. Using alcohol as a coping mechanism had several downsides. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples a little: she didn’t know what she was meant to feel, but she suspected it wasn’t what she did.

The thing of it was, Kade didn’t know if it would be ‘worth it’. She never had. That was the crux of her almost two-decade long delay: an extreme proficiency for convincing herself to remain on the path of least resistance. For twisting every thought about a possible future as her actual self into a cost-benefit analysis that ended with a single, simple, and deeply bleak take-away: that being yourself had consequences; that it wasn’t inherently the best option and should be approached with caution. That if you weren’t completely sure of the risks and stakes, you should hedge your bets and be who the world would prefer you to be. And yet…after all that time, she’d still ended up here. So all the doubt and pseudo-logic and prevarication: ultimately it had all just been a waste of time. With a beleaguered sigh, she glanced over at the black mirror of the TV.

“This is so fucking stupid.” She observed. Kieran said nothing. “We’re about to turn thirty-eight and are just starting estrogen...and for...what, exactly? What the fuck are we doing?”

“Finally growing a backbone, maybe?” He finally contributed. She just sniffed irritably in response.

“Stupid and brave aren’t mutually exclusive categories. The whole ‘it gets better’ thing kind of seems like it only really applies to women much younger than us, who have much better likelihoods of good outcomes than we could ever hope for, and who start at ages where they have a whole life to look forward to in post.”

“You say it like there aren’t plenty of trans women much older than us who’ve transitioned and are very happy with their decision.”

“Yeah, I know…I just…”

“You want to pass.”

“Yes.”

“Passing is…”

“I know, I know. It shouldn’t be the goal. But fuck that, frankly. It’s easy to say passing doesn’t matter or isn’t the goal when you do - with ease - or when you have the confidence and fortitude to wear your clockability like a badge of honour. Which we don’t. Y’know, the only thing I ever actually liked about cosplaying as a boy is that it let me be, in most situations, fairly invisible? The last thing I want is attention or focus, and I’m about to attract a fucking lot of it.” Kade sighed. “I think I’m just a coward, in the end. It’s why I didn’t do this sooner. Why I’m hedging around doing it now.”

“We’re gonna do it so just do it.” Kieran said. Kade slumped back into the couch with her palms pressed firmly over her eyes. She made a few little sounds of aggravation.

“Fuck. Fine.” She exhaled, raising herself up a little to pull her pants down around her knees. She grabbed the silver foil of the estradiol sachet and carefully tore along the top, before squeezing it out onto her upper thigh. It looked like a single-serving of clear, chemically-sweet-smelling toothpaste. She spread it around with a single finger while trying not to rub it in, as the instructions on the box had directed. The distinction seemed contradictory and irritated her brain. She shivered slightly at the slickness of it against her recently shaved skin, before reaching for her drink, her eyelids fluttering shut as she downed about half of the glass.

’Pink Haze’

Kade woke up crying. The levee had broken. She had moved from mixed drinks on to straight vodka, putting down the majority of a 700 millilitre bottle over the space of about…she couldn’t recall. All she knew was that it was as rapid a turnaround as she could physically manage, shot by shot. She had hoped that was enough as she’d staggered into her bedroom, holding the walls for support before dumping herself into her bed and positioning herself face up; head nestled securely in place in the middle of the pillow. It was a weak attempt, threaded through with a desire for plausible deniability. In the midst of spiralling to a point where she wanted - needed - it all to stop and couldn’t psychologically handle the idea of it continuing, she’d thought of the people she’d been trying to pretend didn’t care one way or the other. She wanted - needed - for them to be able to look at the situation and have some doubt that it was what it looked like. Her mother, her sister, her best friend, her ex-partner…if she was gone, she needed there to be some doubt that it had been purposeful.

See? Fucking coward…

Kade had always viewed suicide as inherently selfish. It was the kind of viewpoint one ended up internalising as a prevention strategy for one’s own bullshit if they were a certain kind of person with certain kinds of impulses. Slowly coming to full awareness - foetal, rolled onto her side…the acrid smell of bile flooding her sinuses - she was devastated that she had tried. That she got so desperate for it all to stop that she tried to make it do so. Equally so, she was devastated that the attempt had failed. She wasn’t sure which she felt worse about.

“God…” She groaned to herself: “Can’t even fucking kill myself right.” She aggressively swiped at her tears, squeezing her eyes shut and ignoring the smell of vomit as best as she could.

Outside of a couple of isolated incidents - post-surgery delirium and a movie that affected her in a bizarrely specific way - she hadn’t cried since she was a teenager. Every time she almost had, it was as if her body choked it out of her leaving nothing but a sore throat and dry eyes. This morning it was quiet and slow, the tears hot on her cheeks at first; cooling as they navigated their way down towards her chin…latching on already-regrown stubble. Turning into the pillow, she started to cry harder. Sobs disgorged in big, heaving spasms, and she forced her face deeper into the soiled pillow until the air got thin and she was struggling for breath. She thought about trying properly; going to the bathroom for her razor, or walking up the street to the main road and jumping out in front of a truck. The train station wasn’t too far away either. But no. She still felt the urge but the urgency was gone; the conviction and resolution had fled, leaving in place…mostly shame, but also a pit of generic hopelessness in her gut.

Bleary eyed and sniffling, her muscles screamed at her as she forced herself up into a sitting position and pulled at her sheets, reluctantly starting the process of stripping down the bed. It occurred to her that she would need to get some things to clean up the mattress and the carpet properly later on. She’d have to look up what to use: really burrow into the sterile logistics of the humiliation of it all.