Cyrus Nine | Issue 11, Summer 2026

One of the experiences I think of when I think of my Transness is always met with laughter when recounted, but wasn’t initially. When walking with a group of my friends, one of them joked that I should “be a real man” in reference to doing something that he was too scared to do, to which I responded “I’m trying, medically.” Then, it seemed as if everyone held back laughter until I told them that it was fine to laugh; after all, I was the one cracking the joke, I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t want to be met with laughter. They laughed, but only after their initial hesitancy. They didn’t want to offend, but they did find my joke funny. Unwilling to rectify the discrepancy in their humor and their good sense (as we all are), they had patiently waited for my permission to chuckle.

A lot of my friendships are with other Queer people, maybe as a sort of side effect of my own Transness. Maybe because I crave a community that understands, or maybe because those are the people who are okay with being friends with Trans folks. At the end of the day, one thing remains: each relationship I have has been touched by my identity as a Trans man. More than others, though, my relationships with the other Trans folks around me have been deeply impacted by this information.

Sometimes it’s in the sense that we are both Trans, and as such, we are closer than we feel that we can be with cis people. We find a sort of mutuality in the knowing that we have both been through similar things, felt an inherent discomfort in our bodies and made a point to change that. A friend texted me that someone in their building had been tearing down and vandalizing the posters I had given him, my own designs. She asked for the file so she could print more of them. I sent them the file, plus another 4 posters I had designed in the past. I told him to be safe, to tell their building manager, to keep an eye out. She assured me that they are safe, but I worry. Another of my friends texted me to cut his hair, not because I am better than any barber he could pay, but because I would never cut his hair to a more feminine style that he has asked for based on my own interpretation of their gender. I took scissors to his head and gave him the mullet they asked for. I smoked with another friend by the local pond. She is a Trans woman who carries a lighter that reads Party Animal. We lit blunts on the stool and watched as all the groups of cisgendered students do the same and we talked about how we’re different, but how we’re the same.

What is it about these Trans friendships that makes them intrinsically Trans? It is not the identities of the folks taking part in them—I’ve had these friendships with people who were still coming to terms with their gender and identified as cis at the time—but rather, it is the relation we feel to each other. More than a label, it is the connection we feel, how we look at each other and actually understand the fear and the hope coursing through our bones. We are united by our oppression, but also by our resistance, by our fight and our courage and our cowardice all at once.

When someone connects with you on such a level, it Trans*es the boundaries of what friendship is. Instead, you are more akin to how others typically view a variety of relationships: friendship, yes, but also siblinghood and dating and even marriage, a connection so intimate it feels sexual or romantic but also completely platonic. We are both a part of the family, as one may say, but also both understand each other on a plane that can only be seen as that more than friendship area where most romantic relationships start off.

I can only hope that all others—especially other Trans folks—can experience these relationships as I do. I often find myself reclining across the laps of my other Trans friends, holding them close, holding their hands, running my fingers through their hair. I have found myself kissing their cheeks and leaning into them and on them, a sense of reliability in the people who stand by me speared forth by our common experience of Transhood. I also have found that, no matter who else comes into my life, the Trans folks around me stick by my side far longer and with greater commitment to me (as a growing and evolving person first, and then as a man they can rely on second) than a majority of the cis folks I have surrounded myself with over the years.