I look like an egg now

a sexy egg, but still an egg

I sat on a yoga block, on a broken-down cardboard box, on our kitchen floor. My partner kneeled behind me. And I was grateful for the comfort of the yoga block, but (forgive me, father, for I have sinned) I would’ve happily been on my knees the whole time.

They were shaving my head.

It feels like a rite of passage, having your head shaved as a trans man. Maybe it doesn’t feel like—maybe it just is.

Even before I came out, I’d toyed with the idea of buzzing off my hair. My parents always told me I’d look like an egg; my brother did, too. I grew up on a string of military bases, even did a stint in San Antonio: the Gateway to the Air Force. So, I knew exactly what they meant. The BMTs all looked like eggs, shiny bits of scalp poking through like a slime-slick baby bird trying to hatch.

The first person I had sex with planned to join the military; he had the egghead to prove it. We would hook up in my car (did I like the power of that, of us being in my car?), and I ran my hands over his hair. The sex wasn’t very good, just a lot of fumbling and a rug-burn sensation, but that didn’t matter. We were together, and I could press my palms to his prickly scalp, and there was risk involved. I loved taking risks.

Perhaps I still love risk—perhaps that’s why I let my partner shave my head.

I told that boy I was in love with him—another risk—and he was decisively uninterested in having a relationship. Still, he held my hand at the airport before I left the country. Does that count for something? Do I want it to?

He doesn’t matter now, although I wish we’d stayed speaking long enough for me to come out to him. That’s a private desire of mine, one I feel badly about in a vague, ill-formed way: to come out to people I had sex with prior to coming out. But he doesn’t matter; he crosses my mind mostly because my head is now shaved like his was—like his probably still is to this day. I am luckier than him, though, because my head was shaved by a lover.

Z stopped by Target after work, came home with clippers and a razor (in case I found something euphoric in the act of shaving my face).

Did it feel like crucifixion when they took my wrists in their hands? Did it feel like baptism when they buzzed my hair? Am I—could I be—born again?

They moved around me, gliding the clippers across my scalp. I felt the air growing cooler against my scalp as I was bared to the room. Hair was everywhere. I tried not to scratch at the back of my neck, behind my ears, even under my chin. I tried, as a matter of fact, to stay as still as possible.

Z and I have many rituals together, several of which relate to my transition. Every week, we administer my testosterone shot together. I prepare the injection, drawing the dose up into the syringe while they rub an alcohol pad on my thigh. Then, because I am afraid of needles, they guide it through skin, fat, muscle.

I have asked them to try to forget it’s me; their love makes them just a bit too tender, a bit too gentle—a bit too slow. But the request is an impossible one, and the pain is that of rebirth, so who am I to ask for anything less?

Shaving my head was another ritual. Not just the clippers and the clumps of hair falling away, but the way Z blew on my face to get the hair out of my eyes, the way they took a wet washcloth to the back of my neck afterward to remove the fuzz of follicles. The way they ran their palms over my head that night in bed.

So, I look like an egg. But I like how I look. Z does, too. We love it, actually. Every day, I am becoming more myself. Maybe it makes sense to become egglike—maybe I’m preparing to hatch.