the way that white travel & food writers write about ‘aswaq is so eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-your-head stupid
My host takes me into the narrow, winding, crowded corridors of the supermarket, holding my hand tightly to ensure that I’m not lost among the sounds, the smells, and the vibrant, rich, exotic colors of the brightly lit aisles. A necessary precaution, it turns out, as things demand my attention from all sides: the white, tiled, slightly dirty floors, the narrow passageways occasionally made narrower by boxes of produce yet to be shelved, and the wrenching and shoving from people pushing through to their various inscrutable destinations. People in jeans, hoodies, and light jackets inspect produce and reject or accept it for mysterious reasons. The occasional employee pulls boxes out of a damp, dark, dank storage room and then pushes them about on a palette cart that has been painted a lush blue.
At the butcher station, a young man with a sharp knife actually carves into animal carcasses before buyers’ eyes as they shout their desired cuts at him: such unusual, surprising choices as“deli sliced” or “hank.” The aroma of raw flesh combines with the waftings of the bakery nearby to produce a confusing, enticing, almost erotic sensory jumble.
This is where the European goes to buy his food, to socialize, to argue, and, when a sample counter appears somewhere among the well-trodden paths, even to eat.
[id: graffiti on the base of a concrete overpass where previous grafiti has been covered over with gray paint multiple times. In black all-caps handwriting, it reads: “What kind of paint are you using to paint over this? Because if it is latex, its probably way too cold for it, you want good adhesion, you need like at least 40°-45°. Maybe wait till it warms up a little, I mean what’s the big rush? Like, I’m in a rush now but our situations are different” /end id]
No more waiting, no more debating, go get your hrt. “I don’t know if I’m really trans.” You are. Now go. “I’m scared.” We all were. Now go. “There’s a long wait to be seen.” Go get your name on that list then. Self medicate if you need. “What if my friends don’t accept me?” They weren’t your friends then, go. “What if my spouse doesn’t accept me?” Get divorced. Now go. You do not need to continue to live in agony and depression to pretend to be someone else. Go get your hrt.
I want to say how important it is to just tell each other to go do shit sometimes. The original version of this post that I made on my last blog had hundreds of people saying the post pushed them to finally get their hrt. Since having made this post I’ve had four people DM me to say theyve made appointments to go get hrt.
If there’s one thing I want to accomplish with my life, it’s to make all trans people know they can be happy. So please, before saying “this post isn’t for me” or whatever, consider what’s holding you back, and might there be a bit more joy in just getting your hrt anyways.
If you click my header and regret it just click it again. Or you can click the individual pieces to make just one or two of them disappear.You can't get rid of my buddy Holden here though, ↓ he stays.
bABOUT me
