Chemically Enhanced Butch

Katrina and Wally are coming to South Dakota with me. I probably couldn’t have told you Pierre (pronounced “peer”) was the capital of South Dakota before deciding to go to Pride there. Fort Pierre, where Pride was held, is a “suburb” of Pierre, just across the Missouri River and in a different time zone. The entire area has a population just over 15,000, making it the second-least populated…

It’s been twenty-five years. When I told my friends I was going to a Pride in Laramie, Wyoming, their initial reaction was unanimous: Queer horror. I doubt any of us would have ever heard of Laramie had the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard never taken place there. Queer people are murdered every year, but there is something about the historical position and brutality of Matthew’s murder that…

Iowa has fancy rest areas. August came to the upper Midwest in early June this year. It was already eighty degrees when I loaded into Cookie, my van, at six AM. She doesn’t have AC anymore. The vent fan’s effectiveness fluctuates with road speed and elevation. I was channeling a seventies road trip movie trope with my windows open, driving into the morning sun. I got to Ottumwa around noon. It…

Ty Bo Yule13 min read·Jun 172 I think I have everything. I hit the road at 7AM on a Friday morning, only an hour later than I had planned. Set up for Ozark Pride in Hardy, Arkansas, was to begin the next morning at 11AM. My destination for that night was Springfield, Missouri, the last big town on the way to Hardy. Google maps told me it was an eight and a half hour drive. I thought I could…

driving toward queer resistance in deep red america. Ty Bo Yule 7 min read · Just now Me and Cookie I am a fifty-three-year-old, white, married, educated and happy Trans man living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year I bought this sweet 1988 Chevy G20 conversion van. I named her Cookie Monster because of her royal blue velour upholstery and wall-to-wall shag carpet. My wife and I took her…

driving toward queer resistance in deep red america. Ty Bo Yule 7 min read · Just now Me and Cookie I am a fifty-three-year-old, white, married, educated and happy Trans man living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year I bought this sweet 1988 Chevy G20 conversion van. I named her Cookie Monster because of her royal blue velour upholstery and wall-to-wall shag carpet. My wife and I took her…

Let’s talk about being trans. chemicallyenhancedbutch.com

First date with my dyke bar:

“As I walked through the building for the first time, I felt its hope. The invisible interactions of past and present revealed their machinations to the corner of my eye. I was negotiating a promise as I sifted through remaining artifacts and made note of smooth, shiny irregularities of wear. I projected my desires onto the remains of another clan’s ceremonial hall. The wreckage granted me permission and gave me a caved-in mirrored disco ball as a housewarming gift.

It was the only building in Minneapolis that met my obscure geographical criteria, and it was within our shaky financial reach. The building needed to feel like an underdog too. We found each other.” 

Ty Bo Yule - Chemically Enhanced Butch 

I don’t know where I was going with this preface, but my mom figured it out. I was about to remind her she’d always suggested a tunic as a unisex option for formal wear, but I thought I looked terrible in tunics, when she stopped me.

“You want to do what Benny did?” Benny, my best friend back in Minneapolis, had started taking testosterone to become a man a couple of years before this.

“Yes” was all I could get out. I couldn’t look at her. She sighed. “Oh, thank god. I thought you were going to tell me something important.”

I stopped crying and stared at her. In the silence that followed, my eyebrows affected befuddlement, then anger, and then I started laughing. So did my mom. We both laughed that laugh of venting lifelong, mutual anxiety that only the two of us share. It went on for quite some time.

“Well, you always did suck at being a girl,” she offered in lieu of some time-consuming, gratuitous gesture of sentimentality. “Should we go do your laundry now?”

- Ty Bo Yule Chemically Enhanced Butch