Realizing the man inside
David Lim, For Your Brant Connection
Monday, March 26, 2012 6:25:14 EDT PM
http://www.parisstaronline.com/2012/03/26/realizing-the-man-insideI'm sitting in a coffee shop with tomato soup and a turkey sandwich, waiting for Keegan. What does he look like? I wonder. In his e-mail, he had described himself as "young and really short," but what does a 25-year-old, transitioning, female-to-male transgendered person, actually look like? Does he look like a mannish woman or a womanish man, or androgynous like a strange Tilda Swinton? Or maybe, I think to myself, he looks like a man.
At noon, a five-foot figure steps into the café and orders a veggie wrap. Keegan looks male. If you didn't know that he once looked like a woman, you would never notice the faint remnants of a woman's face slowly morphing into a man's. He says 99% of the people he meets recognize him as male now, and I believe him. He's portly in the middle. As he takes a bite of his veggie wrap, I flick my digital audio recorder on, and begin the interrogation.
David: Tell me about growing up.
