The name change was a no-brainer but scary as hell. Sarain is the name I would have had if I was born biologically male. He was also a man who wrote some inspirational stuff in Indian Country and basically lead a legendary life. What we know of him is that he was the son of an aboriginal man stationed in Italy, Sarain was actually his last name. He came over to the Americas and started a wave of intensely influential aboriginal artists while teaching art at a tiny Aboriginal college here in Saskatchewan. He drowned in 1975 in the gulf of Mexico while swimming. He was about 30 years old. Now here I am at 29 becoming a man, becoming Sarain, and some of the parallels with our lives shake me up a bit. I started an international video career the same year my dad was in Venice with a show about Sarain Stump, The Man. The Legend. The one who freaks me out because he painted a Kundalini awakening with Quetzalcoatl. I mean, there are other things I can’t tell you because they are too intense.
I think seeing those lights out at Cranberry Flats is tied into this fear I have around becoming Sarain, because I recently found out through an old high school friend that someone who goes to the nude beach has seen them out there too. I’m starting to think that maybe they were spirits or deities of some sort. And the fact that I’m two-spirited and that there were two of them makes me think it was about the impending fight in my own body between staying female or becoming male.
I am now virtually gender changing on Facebook and here on Blogger. To Sarain Cuthand. I already gathered 115 friends under my old name and I hope the name change on facebook, and the gender, is enough of a huge announcement to everyone about who I am now. Of course whether I am the reincarnation of the late Sarain Stump is an unanswerable question unless I start remembering things about that life. I did have a brief fascination with Venice once, but I think it was more like memory. And I have some memories of Mexico too, even though I have never been there.
You might laugh to find out that my biggest concern about transitioning is my nipples, but I’ve been cruising around Transster, a site for surgery photos for transmen, and I have to say, owie-ya!!!! I want the least amount of damage done to my chest as possible. I was hoping for the liposuction option, but apparently I have too large a chest to be able to do it. I’m getting excited about having a male chest, but the things they would have to do in order to reshape it concern me. I have seen some photos where they don’t have to do nipple grafts, but other than that they just cut them off and slap them on somewhere else, and the sensation is pretty minimal from what I hear. I don’t want to lose nipple sensation. Unfortunately a lot of people do, as with many trans surgeries for mtf’s in the bottom department.
I doubt I will get bottom surgery though, because I like the idea of all my bits just, ya know, growing on their own. I know some of my FTM friends turn into secret dicklet size queens. Maybe I’ll be one too!
Still, it’s the nipples that worry me. I’m excited about how my new body will feel, but just worried about my chest. I like my nipples, if not so much my breasts.