"Yes, But Is It T4T?"
Previously: I respectfully now, as ever, decline to define T4T energy; my job is merely to identify and tag it when spotted in the wild. I’m not a scientist. Elizabeth Taylor was born with two sets of eyelashes and fished a tooth out of Montgomery Clift’s throat so he didn’t choke on his own bones after a car accident; that’s T4T. Having a terrible movie made about your most famous marriage called “Liz and Dick,” that’s T4T. When the stars make you drool just like pasta fazool, you know what it is.
My wife Grace and I recently and non-consecutively watched the 2001 horror movie Thir13een Ghosts and an old episode of Look Around You, after which I asked her the question: Yes, well and good…but is it T4T?
A self-satisfied jockey and a horse named Championess who has invented a betting machine from materials found in her stable: Yes, but is it T4T?
GRACE: graceful, elongated, fetlock-strapper and smirking rural oath-keeper: baby, it’s us! T4T
DANNY: A woman who is a horse winning a big prize, and a man whose job it is to live on the horse, that’s T4T; jockeys and trans men think a lot about aerodynamicizing the flesh – the period one may inhabit between top and bottom surgery is known idiomatically as The Streamlining, and significantly cuts down on wind resistance in the transmasculine community, who are always traveling at sea.
Jack “The Lad” Jeffries and Partaria Flynn, each a sports legend in their own right: T4T?
GRACE: Not in the least, rapscallion! He’s a little boy and she’s a hearty lesbian! not T4T
DANNY: I am inclined to agree here – you can’t just slap a T4T sticker every time a short or young guy gets near a woman in athletic shorts. Sloppy. Untoward. T4T isn’t one of those Can You Spot The Difference segments in Highlights Magazine. It’s Goofus and Gallant, falling forever, fighting or kissing, simultaneously two old women, two young women, two rabbits, two ducks, or a vase.
Marathonist Roz Lamb, who shrinks by half every time she runs from London to Aberdeen, and Peter Serafinowicz: T4T?
GRACE: Well now, it’s interesting. I do think that Serafinowicz has an egg energy, as it goes, but I don’t wish to exacerbate the troubles in the Serafinowicz-Linehan clan. Let’s say this: I’m watching, and we’ll see how things shape up. T4T?
DANNY: She’s small. She’s determined. She’s getting smaller by the second. She’s getting faster as she’s getting smaller. She’s running to Scotland. His suit is a little roomy, his hair is a little big, he’s the midpoint of the Animorphs cover where Stephen Fry turns into Stephen Fry from 1998’s Wilde, and Jude Law was so attractively sulky in that movie. T4T, but only hanging on by the fingernails.
The same jockey and the same Championess, but this time emerging from, I think, a safe. Does this change anything for you? Still T4T?
GRACE: I’m minded to say rather less so. The quality of the leaf before it falls.
DANNY: It’s a very low-energy James Bond movie opener. James Bond after being drained of his virility by Pussy Galore’s Gal-O-Ray, which is somehow extremely T4T and not at all T4T simultaneously.
Does the addition of Olivia Colman do anything for you?
GRACE: In a terf’s posture? I should say not. Though no offense intended to the remarkably talented Olivia Colman, who (if The Favourite is anything to go by) is one swingin’ adult human female.
DANNY: This T4T4T configuration is real, but it’s very difficult to pull off, and you can easily sprain an ankle if you don’t warm up first.
Switching rather abruptly: A wraith from Thir13een Ghosts and an actress who I am fairly sure is not Maggie Grace. T4T?
GRACE: It’s a little more before and after, no? In either direction, if I’m being perfectly honest.
DANNY: I know this couple, I love this couple, I follow this couple on Instagram, their life together seems perfectly exhausting but just because I’m tired a lot doesn’t mean everyone else has to wear pajamas all day.
The great child and the dire mother: T4T?
GRACE: So now I suppose it is time for me to take a position on Adult Human Babies? Of course, what floats one’s boat, of course, of course; and yet, for me, it is difficult for me to chart Adult Human Babies on the terrain of eros. Especially since Yubaba is a dykeon in her own regard. Not T4T.
DANNY: No Babies For Old Men.
Again from Thir13een Ghosts: Cyrus, who is not actually dead, and Kamira?
GRACE: I’m disturbed by this observation, but I can hardly contest it. Panting, bloodied F. Murray Abraham wearing a tie in an eccentric manner? Techie witch with a bob? Does the devil wear Prada? T4T.
DANNY: A woman who dresses like Milo Thatch from Atlantis: The Lost Empire is either going to start going by Hephaestion in six months, or transitioned twelve years ago. I have nothing to say about Cyrus.
Sometimes T4T is two boys: Yes?
GRACE: Once again I am loth to step into the Serafinowicz-Linehan troubles, and wish merely to raise the question of whether “boy” is the best word to describe this leftmost lunk. The wee fella, of course—and let’s say, so they don’t call me a coward, that there’s something here. T4T.
DANNY: When one boy is tall, and one boy is not tall, and I’m thinking about it, for happiness, that’s good, and that’s T4T, and and when their hair is beautiful but also a joke, that’s just two boys, and the other thing about it is, yes.
i’m trans and i’m 5’3” and my trans boyfriend is 5’7” (as tall as David to me, a man of the soil), and we both have hair like the space between “two crashing zeppelins” and “my god, is that a particularly robust firework show or two crashing zeppelins??” so i’m going to have to agree with you on this one Daniel. also my ideal transition trajectory is “the Animorphs cover where Stephen Fry turns into Stephen Fry from 1998’s Wilde“ so i’m hoping that’s where 3 on T takes me
i am obsessed with THIR13EN GHOSTS