I’m deeply grateful to my agent, Kate McKean, for helping me write a book unlike anything I’ve written before, as well as editor Rakesh Satyal for bearing with me during a number of identity crises that this collection was merely “memoir-adjacent” and not a full-bore autobiography. I’m also grateful to my longtime business soulmate, Nicole Cliffe, for thinking carefully and speaking lovingly about our changing relationship to sisterhood, which has been a source of great joy and affirmation to me.
I’d like to thank Flan Joel, Peyton Thomas, Isaac Fellman, Calvin Kasulke, Colette Arrand, and Frances Hocutt for helping to sharpen and refine my ideas about trans narratives. Additional thanks are due to the following men, mostly fictional, for inspiring my transition: William Shatner’s roles on both Star Trek and Columbo, André 3000’s wardrobe, Rufus Wainwright (particularly the Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall album), Johnny Weir at the 2010 Winter Olympics, Brendan Fraser in the late 1990s, and the entire cast of The Outsiders. Thank you all for being so attractive that it changed the trajectory of my life.
I thank the good Lord, who made me trans, and who is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial will also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it, 1 Cor. 10:13.
To Grace Elisabeth Lavery, whose own transition has served as a model for rigorous thinking, personal vitality, the ruthless pursuit of joy and acceptance, I am truly and immeasurably grateful. There is no reader whose judgment I prize more. I am at my best when I push myself to keep up with you; it is a delight, an honor, and a meaningful challenge to be married to you. Thank you for being so attractive that it changed the trajectory of my life.