The community lives online, mostly, with Tumblr blogs dedicated to idolizing bigger guts and monstrous testicles. Though the trend has appeared to decline recently - at least among trans women in New York, according to Radix - as quality care for trans-identifying people continues to grow, it’s now become more visible among the body modifying subculture of gainers. “You’re desperate to change your body, people will go through great lengths. “When people come in and say silicone, they don’t really know what they mean because it could be anything,” says Asa Radix, senior director of research and education for Callen-Lorde in New York City, an LGBTQ-focused health center, adding that some of his patients even had quick cement or peanut butter injected in them. It makes health experts reticent to even call the mixture “silicone,” at all. In one Florida woman’s case, tire sealant and cement were both injected into her face. But over the past five years, there have been a number of news reports exposing “pumping parties,” where groups of trans women pool their money to get injected with silicone, and the practice has now become more underground and more risky.Īnd much of that has to do with what’s being put in the mixture, which many times is unknown by those who receive the injections. He was the first real friend I'd ever had, and I'll always be grateful for him.RS Recommends: 5 Devices You Need to Set Up Your Smart HomeĪmong trans women, silicone injections are a well known way to achieve the ultimate body: curvy butt, thick thighs or larger breasts. Now, I'm lucky to have a circle of amazing queer friends, but the friendship I had with Dean, I'll never get with anyone else. We knew each other for about five years and he had a huge impact on my life. I'd go to text him, get halfway through the text, then remember. I remember there was a whole double rainbow across the bay, which felt perfect.ĭean died last December and it's taken a while to sink in. He wasn't supposed to go outside, but he insisted we take him down to the sea in his wheelchair. The last time was two days before he died. In the last month or so, he declined really quickly.Īt the end he was in a hospital close to his parents, so me and his boyfriend Josh would take the train to see him whenever we could.
Dean would trial a treatment, it would look like it was working, then they'd realize it wasn't. I'd never known anyone with cancer before, so I didn't know much about the process. I was scared, but thought, It's going to be fine. I can still remember when Dean told me they'd found a lump on his side. We'd just spend time doing all the normal teenage friend stuff we'd missed out on. We hadn't had those typical teenage conversations about boys or girls that everyone else had, so we hit it off instantly.
Dean came from a similar town and I think we both felt delayed in a way. Dean was the first one who lived relatively close to me, so we started hanging out on the weekend. I grew up in a small conservative town and didn't know anyone gay at school, so I met my first gay friends through social media. Here, in their own words, are three men's stories of their first queer friendships. Oftentimes, these people become de facto family, in place of those who can't or won't support properly. LGBTQ friendship comes in many forms, each one as real and urgent as the others. Whenever our paths cross now-most recently, on a dating app, because of course-I feel a pang of nostalgia for my awkward teenage self, as well as enormous gratitude that he was there.
But I still remember clumsily coming out to him after a Le Tigre concert and him saying, "I think I'm gay, too." In the months that followed, we weren't always as kind to one another as we should have been, but we absolutely helped each other to accept our sexuality. I'm no longer close with my first gay friend, James, because we're very different people now. One's first LGBTQ friendship is often super-intense in fact, that person can become just as important as a first romantic partner. So when a gay man first bonds with someone else who identifies as gay or queer, it's inevitably a total lightning bolt moment. At times, many gay men feel as though they're the only ones experiencing certain thoughts and feelings, ones that society still often deems abnormal. It's no secret that growing up gay can be a lonely experience.