I recently moved, and with that comes a litany of logistics. As someone who has moved coast-to-coast many times in the past decade, I have an unfortunate amount of experience setting up new healthcare providers. With that comes the reality check of just how many times you have moved, and just how little you retain about your growing list of medical procedures and where in the world they took place. This time, I moved from a rural area to a city and have just been in awe of hwo accessible healthcare is. How much quicker it is to get an appointment, and how there are fallbacks if I don’t like the service I receive. Regardless, that’s not what this essay is about. This essay is about how many hands have been in my mouth as of late.

Hyper-intimate Healthcare

Just in the past two months, I have had four dentist appointments, a medical procedure under anesthesia, numerous therapy appointments, optometrist, electrolysis weekly, and had so many fluids taken for labs. For many of the practitioners I met throughout these months, they know my insides better than my outsides. I have sat through the malaise of nurses on their unnumbered run through whichever procedure I had that day. Where their attempts at small talk ask and answer the questions before I have the time to even speak. Attendants elongating the time before having to talk to me, only to give me the wrong information, so I have to come back to their sterile bathroom to do it all over again. These odd liminal spaces of at-scale healthcare that pair our most strange and intimate into 30-minute parcels of interaction.

Yet, there are a few moments where the hyper-intimate act of healthcare does cross over with a genuine interaction.

Which of course isn’t the fault of these mostly well-meaning practitioners. I just find there is something to be learned when the veil is lifted, and we can see what emerges from something real. At my dentist, one of the assistants was present for all of my appointments. She wore the same shoes and hairstyle each time. Very cute with an endearing timid nature. Each time I would see her, we would talk about where she got her lashes done or what lip product she used. All the while, she was numbing my gums or rinsing my mouth out. On my third appointment, she said “Oh you’re back again? You’ve been around a lot lately, right?” It didn’t come from a judgemental space, but one of familiarity. Even some level of comfort from the rapport.

In these moments, because I am me, I can’t help but ask what would happen if I started dating her?

How do you ask out someone who has already stared down into your mouth. Who has witnessed not only your vulnerability, but your shame. The recurrent visits, the consequences of years of not coming in. Who has witnessed the ugly of your swollen mouth, and the slur of numbed speech. How can you simultaneously sit with hyper-intimate knowledge as a starting point, and crawl back into the mundane. For anyone who has dealt with dating apps, we all feel the fragility of every conversation. That the smallest misstep can lead to an unmatch or leaving on read. They make us hyper-conservative or manic, either play it safe until you can meet or overwhelm them, so that the more mild version of you is guaranteed to be accepted.

How can we perform who we want to be, if we are subject to being who we are?

I like to imagine myself like a repaired Japanese vase. Brought to life beautifully, with purpose, but shattered a time or two. In those periods of recovery, I was adorned with gold covering the sutures, stitches, and casts that lie underneath. However, it is all too easy to feel instead like damaged goods. Gilded instead of golden. Your clothes, your makeup, and your affect no longer speak. You are, more than anything, a proxy for your procedure.

All of which is compounded by the one-sidedness of the affair.

While you are slowly becoming undone, the people work on you can stay safely hidden behind surgical masks. Or, secure simply in the work of it all, and the fact that the next six appointments will surely erase you from their minds. There is no time or space to cultivate a health outside of physical urgency of the medication or incision, though some do try.

And, here you are, contemplating this question under another sterile light - stripped bare.

The Point

Throughout my life, I have never contended with the vulnerability of these interactions. As a private and proud person, under normal circumstances no one would hear any of these stories. I don’t need anyone to know that I let slip parts of my health when I am still young. I don’t want them to worry, to be angry, or to pity. Certainly none of this would ever come up in dating or friendship, or even in a partnership.

As a tr@ns person, every facet of these exchanges feels heightened. At the dentist, staring down my mouth, neck exposed, and makeup being steadily disfigured by water and hands. Medical procedures where you aren’t allowed to wear makeup. Every medical interaction where I have to list my sex, gender, and medications I am taking. Usually, it’s fine. Usually, I don’t stick around long enough. I will move. Usually, I am healthy enough and I can fade from their memory in due time. Now that I pass in public, it adds onto the interactions, an unfortunate gender reveal or outing that I have no control over.

And, herein lies the learning. There is no escape. There is no perfect passing. There is no unmarred health record. There will always be the moment of disclosure - we don’t always have agency over that moment. There is a harsh beauty in this realization. Some can grab ahold and be liberated. Others, like myself, still push it out as far as we can. What I need so desperately is what I fear the most - to be loved with all of my flaws. To be allowed imperfection, and be worthy of help. To begin a relationship as a person. To begin outside of my control. To begin with a vulnerability that, while discomforting in the moment, sets the stage for something much healthier in the long run.

So, to answer my own question, what would it mean to ask out your dental hygienist? I’m not sure, but I do know it will have been the most minty make-out I can imagine.

Photo credit: Matin Baron