(trans)prose

I’m writing this to give a point of reference, since–compared to most pre-testosterone guys–I already have a good bit of facial and body hair.

If I shave my face in the morning, by evening I have scratchy stubble; by the next evening, I am visibly scruffy. On my chin, I have two patches of hair with a gap in the middle with one or two short dark hairs.  I develop a sparse, patchy neck beard if I don’t shave at least every two days. My sideburns will grow to about a half an inch in a little over a week–my right sideburn is fairly even, while my left is patchy. I have one or two hairs on each cheek and no mustache to speak of, save a few downy hairs above the corners of my lips.

I have a patch of hair in the center of my chest that forks off into two sparse, patchy strips which reach almost to my collar bones–again, the right side is much fuller than the left.  My areolas are thinly outlined in short black hairs.

My happy trail begins a few inches above my navel and thickens and fills out below it. The rest of my belly is smooth.

My legs and ass are covered in a thick, soft, brown carpet of hair. I feel like testosterone may change the texture or the color of the hair here, but there just isn’t any room for new growth.

I already have some back hair, a fact I find ominous and disturbing.  There’s a patch of about 10 hairs below my neck, and my partner has reported similar colonies in at least two other locations on my middle back.

The hair on my arms is short and light brown, except for one weird dark hair that appears on both of my upper arms.

Before now, I would bind my chest only occasionally using various DIY methods or with an ACE bandage.  I could never do it for long; I am so large that the material severely restricted my breathing (and yet my chest was still quite visible).

Recently, though, I was given a binder from the Big Brother Used Binder Program.  It’s a Double Front Compression Shirt (Underworks Style #997).  After some experimentation, I’ve found that the most effective and comfortable way to wear the binder is to put it on, and then to fold the binder up over itself.  This gives me twice the compression and keeps the hot, confining material off of my stomach.

While it’s much more comfortable than ACE bandages and back braces, it still hurts my back after a while, and still restricts my breathing somewhat.  Since I’m perceived as female pretty much all the time at this point, I still don’t bind very often.  I figure I’ll be comfortable now while I still can; eventually, I’ll have to bind every day.