One day, I looked at my small penis and doughy middle with a feeling that I’d never be taken seriously as a man. Did I become a woman because I felt it would be more “convincing”? I don’t know; it’s not that deep. In the self-portrait accompanying this text, you will see me standing next to a framed image of myself by Cruz Valdez. In it, I’m floating in black and white before a blank space: on my knees, long hair down my back, topless. It was taken in January 2020, printed for a pandemic fundraiser later that summer, and hung up by author Fiona Duncan, whose apartment you see here. During the time of Cruz’s shoot, I’d…