just a guy

It makes me very happy to meet guys that I genuinely like.

Not that I genuinely dislike most guys, but it's just not all that often that I meet guys in whom I can see similarities to myself and therefore (duh, because I'm an enormous narcissist) interest me in getting to know them.

I think that may be part of a problem. I've never had many boys or men in my life that I've been close to, or whom I've admired or respected or been fond of. I think that translates into me being scared of no one admiring or respecting or being fond of me.

One of the factors that was holding me back for a while, contributing to my nervousness about transition and inhibiting my decision making, is the fact that I've never had a lot of guys in my life. I don't have a lot of close male relatives, I've never had many (or hardly any) close guy friends, and I've never dated a guy. I was worried about what that says about me, and it gave me a lot of self-doubt. Who am I to declare that I'm a guy, when I don't even know that many guys?

Because I didn't know that many guys, I didn't really understand what it meant for me to feel so strongly that I am one. Which raises that question that I'm still grappling with, about what does it even mean to be a guy, anyway?
Clearly, I'm working on figuring out some answers to that, but in the mean time, it's good for me to meet guys that I like, or whom I admire, or just seem like the same kind of guy I am. It's nice to know (and this relates to things I've been mentioning in previous posts) that there are all kinds of guys who go through the world in a similar fashion, and some of them are trans and some of them aren't.

I used to spend a lot of my time studying guys, and I still do it. Manhood seems to me occasionally like an exam in a class that I never went to, I just did all the reading and am now trying to copy other people's notes. (Not that girls ever made any more sense, I'd like to point out, despite the fact that I was ostensibly in the know!)
I'm less diligent about it now, because I'm more comfortable coming up with my own answers to the questions, but oh this summer did I ever stare at all the guys on the subway cars. How do guys hold their newspapers? How do they hang on to the subway poles? Who do they look at, and whose eyes do they refuse to meet? How loudly do they talk into their cell phones? Where do they put their coats and bags?

These days, all the other guys in the world are starting to seem less like intriguing aliens and more like ordinary people. I'm somewhat less concerned about figuring out how to be a guy, and somewhat more concerned with figuring out how to be Eli.