Boy, You’re a Runner Now
It was the first time I’d ever pointed at myself and claimed “boy,” even jokingly.
This is Formation Jukebox, a column by Lio Min on being in transition and the music that helps them make sense of it all.
American Boyfriend
American BoyfriendCross my heart / Let me be / Tripped in the dark / You found me
American Boyfriend
And boy, I’ll be back when you’re lonely / If you want me to
When you wanna let go / When you wanna let go / When you wanna move onWhy you gotta let go? / Why you gotta let go? / Why you gotta move on?you
Now, on the days I don’t work the closing shift at my “paying the rent” job, I come home, say hi to my partner and my cats and my dog, change, and run. My regular run is a two-, sometimes three-mile box around my neighborhood. My nose always starts to run and I’ll often start tearing up, leaving my face glistening with a luscious combination of bodily fluids. When I cross the threshold of my apartment, I sometimes feel as though my lungs are ripping apart at the seams, and I never feel more honored and lucky to have my body, and I never feel more alive.
More by this author
A Chinese American Fairy Tale
I love my parents because they are in me, but I wonder if, when they look at me, they see those parts or instead a shapeshifter who’s slowly taken over the person they thought they’d raised.
My Chemical Hormone Therapy Romance
Transition begins by insisting that you can want more. It’s a dream in the sense that it reveals the version of you that wants, above all, to be here.
My Years of Summertime Sadness
She’s loved and lost and lost and lost and yet still loves, and I root for this assertion to take root. Every sweetheart deserves their summers.
More in this series
Breaking Up with Your Best American Girl
Since voicing my intention to transition, I’ve been revisiting my favorite love-as-a-woman songs and reorienting myself within them.
Love in the Time of Panic
I could live inauthentically if it meant I could live with him. But my body kept betraying me with panic, and of course he noticed.
Becoming an “It Girl” in the Las Vegas Body-con Dress
The back was nothing but a web of elastic straps, and the front wasn’t low-cut as much as it was nonexistent.