Burning Words

Tonight - completely unexpectedly - turned out to be a milestone that I feared I’d never reach.

There’s two things that I found so difficult about being a transwoman. One was the fact that I’d never be able to have children. The other was losing my singing voice. I’d spent much of my childhood taking singing lessons; I loved it, and more than anything, I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. I knew my singing voice was doomed the instant I hit puberty, and I thought thereafter it was one thing I’d never regain in any reasonable fashion.

Voices are a difficult thing for us transwomen. In many ways, I am one of the lucky ones. I regained a perfectly decent spoken voice after I transitioned, and relatively quickly too - one that I’ve realised will probably never out me as a transwoman. I’ve grown to realise just how many people can’t take that for granted - indeed, at least three of the people on my blogroll have written about problems with that. I also discovered, last night, an example that hit much closer to home. Much of my not having problems with my own voice was because of a few hints I’d been given by another transgirl who I practically grew up with though my teens. I hadn’t seen her in the flesh in years, as we’d always lived in different states, and she’d fallen apart some a couple of years back and cut herself off from the world. Last night, I was talking to an old mutual friend of hers, who was telling me - to my surprise - that her voice had remained this girl’s biggest problem, and had been one of the reasons she’d cut herself off. It made the whole mess a lot clearer, but it shocked me in a way: this girl’s advice had saved my life, but she still hadn’t been able to save herself.

Anyway, to go back to my own story - it had really meant something when a dear friend of mine drunkenly talked me into singing karaoke again a few months ago. Even if my singing voice sounded like a cross between a Cockney, a New York Jew, and a cat being strangled, at least I was singing. I never thought it’d get any better than that, though. A chance meeting with an old friend who was performing at the National Folk Festival a few weeks ago made me reconsider that some, as she urged me to at least try, but I wasn’t the least bit hopeful.

Tonight, Ryan dragged me out clubbing, and after drinking some hideous combination of canned moonshine and energy drink that was on sale at a pack for five bucks, we did our usual thing and sang karaoke at our local queer club. Except this time, to my utter shock, as we sang some ABBA song, I hit the notes. I was fine. I was singing in my spoken voice. I got up later, singing Fuel’s “Shimmer” and Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” with some random gay boy, and for the first time since I was about eleven, I knew I was sounding alright, nay, decent. Apart from when Ryan and I got up to sing a drunken version of “Barbie Girl” (a transwoman and a transman trying to sing that song really is an exercise in genderfuck), I couldn’t have been happier - and hey, there’s no way in hell I’ll ever be able to sing that hideous part.

It’s hard to explain to any cisperson just how much this means. It’s hardly the greatest singing voice, but it’s something I can work from. I can sing and not make people either laugh or wince. Many things for me have been clicking into place for me in the last few months - hell, I’ve come to the realisation that I’ll probably never be misgendered ever again, and my life is stable in a way that hasn’t really been so for a long time, which probably warrants a post all of its own. But in terms of milestones, this is the most significant step forward I’ve felt for some time.

Tags: affirmation, personal, trans