Two Transmasculine Anthems, Dependent On Mood

A hymn for early in the morning, before breakfast. Before testosterone, if possible.

Only the Goulet version captures the proper transmasculine vim: Accept no substitutes, and listen to no version sung by anyone born after 1950. What! Why such pulled and downcast faces? Have men disappointed you? Faint hearts! God permitted these failures only to serve as a more remarkable background for my success! Watch me, Mom, watch me – Both the voice and the spirit should crack over “Had I been made the partner of Eve we’d be in Eden still.” Thundering suavity! Untrammeled vision! Perfect, God-given clarity! Instant brand recognition! The masculine ingenue! Plucked out of summer stock and straight into God’s hands! A signature song and twelve percent on the back end! Someday, when you are old — if you choose to experience old age — Clive Barnes will write of your penultimate performance that your still radiant grin is in better shape than your joints: But when you sing or even speak, the years fall away, your voice untouched by time, filling the stage, revitalizing your co-stars and bringing them into contact with a passion and sentiment that previously eluded them!

Had I been made –

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In the afternoon, but before nightfall. For the beleaguered:

A bit on the nose, having a group of suited executives plot your downfall in a men’s bathroom? Today has been perhaps a bit on the nose. Go get ‘em, baby…Lots of luck. What on earth are you doing in a men’s bathroom, anyhow? No one gave you sides for this number, and everyone else is already off-book. What’s left but style, the greatest of the second-best strategies? Meditate on pugnaciousness, refashion that weighty, doubtful female vanity into cheeky male self-adoration, trade a hairbrush-microphone for a mirror-audience, and you’re back in business – turning things around – learning to shave and flossing regularly – washing your hands thoroughly for twenty-five to thirty seconds, as all employees are required to do before returning to work – pour out the syrupy, show-boating self-regard before they turn the tap off — funnel that expansive world-conquering spirit into something more a little more focused, a bit more manageable — oh, I believe in you!