There is a freedom in walking in the rain that must be felt to be understood.
It’s a thing I only discovered the day I first acquired rain boots. I’d dithered on buying them for years; all the while secluding myself indoors, dreading going out in the cold, enduring unending discomfort to my feet the few times I transpired to try.
Those boots were rubber magic! Suddenly, I could walk anywhere comfortably: I didn’t have to spend each moment worrying where puddles lay, estimating which ones were deepest, calculating the best route around them. I could peel my eyes and heels away from the angry pavement and into earth and water and grass, and revel in the bright and beautiful world surrounding me. I could just be, and be well.
I found that with the right accompaniment, to walk in the rain is a joy; it is a natural pleasure.
For me, to be born trans was like arriving into a world where I alone was not provided rain boots.
…This is not a story about rain boots, actually.
It’s a story about accessibility and sex.
Tales of the raptures of wearing water-wicking wellies turned aside, to be able to prosper in one’s own body pleasurably is a freedom taken for granted by those who’ve never been without – especially where the liberty to engage with sexuality is concerned. For my past self, sexual intimacy felt like a happiness I could see from afar but never touch. A world of joy the likes of which I was shut out of by way of my trans body; and a world that I drew away from – even as I yearned for intimacy! – because functionally, I couldn’t participate in that world in a way that was comfortable or meaningful to me.
For those who have never been without, access to one’s own sexuality may seem intuitive. At a certain age one arrives into their grown body and is granted, alongside the responsibilities of adulthood, the sensual animal indulgences of it, as well.
But for myself, this was instead a time of suffering. Instead of growing into my promised body, it was a time of experiencing loss. Of it dawning on me what it meant to occupy a physical form that would not comply to my desires for intimacy.
For a long time, I was so lost in that grief I couldn’t even see myself as someone who deserved to pursue those desires.
I had a vital lesson to learn, a lesson no one would say plainly due to dual taboos around talking about sex and talking about gender identity. A lesson that can be nigh impossible to see past the dysphoria and past the painting of cis bodies as ideal. Because I don’t doubt others are struggling as I did, I want to share what I have learned. And that lesson is this:
Trans pleasure is important. Trans sexuality is important. A trans body deserves to feel good as much as any body does, and as trans people we deserve to happily, playfully indulge in pleasure with others, with our bodies exactly as they are.
Trans bodies are already good enough.
However:
Trans bodies also demand and deserve support.
If one’s body does not grant access to what one’s nerves beg it to do – what one’s most profound, most primal self-knowledge screams that that body is meant to do! – that call of desire, the deep-seated drive to experience connection with others and pleasure, must be treated with the same gravity of any other fundamental bodily wanting.
Everyone is due a body that allows for earthly pleasures. There are options, now; and good ones. One such apparatus I recommend is the Joystick by Transthetics: a prosthetic designed for trans men specifically, providing an organ that not only looks the part but feels and functions how it ought to as well, boasting a unique lubrication/ejaculation reservoir, and stimulation for the user, and requiring no fussy harness or special cleaning methods; all aspects enhancing the feeling of the prosthetic being a natural, easily enjoyed extension of oneself. Features that enable the bearer to finally exist with the wondrous ease of a creature that, at its most intimate, knows it possesses the bodily means to pursue its desires, at its leisure.
Such relief settles deep. Despite the dressings of modern life, we are all wild animals at heart, with the selfsame desires of any warm and tender living thing still inspiriting us, to have and use our bodies with ease. It is good. It is good to want and to respond to that want. It is unfathomably good, the freedom to share in intimacy as naturally as breathing, and everyone deserves it.
I started out this story by telling a tale about galoshes; at its core, though, that story was never truly about the boots. It was about discovering the virtue of one’s own happiness and prioritizing it. It was about the freedom to go out in the world, with the profound comfort of engaging with that world genuinely and completely. It was about these precious things this trans man only learned after years and years of struggle:
Your joy is important.
Your pleasure is important.
Your body – and access to its desires – is important!
…Now, if I could go back… If I could share some wisdom with my younger, struggling self, here’s the one thing I’d tell that bottled-up and dithering person, many, many years ago:
Don’t wait a minute more.
Get the damn boots.
– Harold
I am very much interested in your Joystick but am somewhat doubtful because of one client judging it too big (the girth ? – I am French speaking…). I would like something not too big…
Merci, France D.
I would definitely opt for the 6″ over the 7″ in that case. You may also want to consider the Hot Rod, which is a bit more compact still and attaches directly to your anatomy for pleasure sensation as opposed to vibration which is how the Joystick stimulates the wearer. However, for the Hot Rod to work, you do need to have had some growth from testosterone, so it has something to attach to. I hope that’s helpful!