Personal symbols

In 2005 I was running a small fashion label and had my own creative studio in the city. I often felt tired around 11am and started taking small naps on this big green armchair that I had in the workshop for when I need to chill out. At first my naps would last about thirty minutes to an hour and by 2009 I was napping at 11am and often waking up at 5, 6 or 7pm in the evening wondering what the hell was happening. I felt so guilty about sleeping all day that I would take any stimulants I could get my hands on to try and stay awake and keep working at night.

My then wife and I decided it was time to make a family and this added another lay of stress to my life. We tried diligently for over six months but nothing was working so by the beginning of 2010 we decided to to get checked out at the doctors, my wife was adamant that it was her, that she had had some issues in the past and therefore it was her. Blood was taken and tests performed and she come up trumps every time. It wasn’t until the day that I went in to give a sperm sample that I considered for the first time that the issue might rest with me.

I remember quite clearly the day they called me on the phone, at five minutes to 5pm on a Thursday afternoon, the nurse told me that they had looked at my sample and there was no sperm present, I was sterile and as a result they took a look at my blood sample and discovered I have an extra chromosome, 47 XXY and that I have a condition called Klinefelter’s Syndrome. Then they told me I might want to get some help with it and hung up the phone. It was the end of the day and my life had changed forever.

When I saw the specialist he knelt down in front of me on a small pillow like he was at prayer, in one hand held a set of beads that ranged in size between a large walnut and a tiny pea and in the other hand he gently held my testicles. He ran my testes between his fingers and then flicked the beads over one by one, fingers jangling testes, beads falling away…fingers…beads…fingers…beads. He went all the way down to the smallest bead, paused, checked, paused, checked again and then flicked up one size from the smallest pea. I was diagnosed with hypogonadism and sent off to have my testosterone levels checked. I came in at 3.2 units and found out that someone at my age should have a testosterone level between 12.5 and 32 units, I started on testosterone injections immediately.

When I was 13 years old and should have been going through puberty, I started feeling like something was missing in my brain. I struggled to really describe this feeling to people, I would often say that it was similar to when someone is standing behind you, the way you can “feel” their presence, except for me it was the absence, I could feel the absence behind me, on my back, this thing that was missing, in my head. I often described this to people, I felt it all through high school and into my early adult hood, through 20’s and into my early thirties.

I could feel this absence when I went to get my first shot of testosterone. 1000mg of testosterone suspended in 4ml of caster oil was injected into my buttock with a large needle. It goes into the muscle and it goes in slow, afterwards it was difficult to sit down for awhile. I rode the bus home, every bump in the road drove into this fresh pain in my arse as I shuffled in the seat.

I had a home-based studio then and went back to work at the sewing machine, I was sitting there, running cloth through the needles, just 2 hours after that first shot and I realised that feeling had gone, that absence had been filled and I have never felt it since. Amazing, how my brain knew all that, since the age of 13 when I was meant be going through puberty, but wasn’t.

That first shot of testosterone, at age 32, forced me into adult puberty. What I didn’t know then was that this was the beginning of a personal transition that would change every aspect of my life and continue with disruptions and transformations that would span the next 10 years.

My adult puberty had all the hallmarks of a teenage puberty except that I went through this transition with the pragmatism of a full grown adult. Coupled with a great sadness and depression that grew in me as a result of coming to terms with the fact that I would never father children, I also experienced drastic mood swings particularly around being quick to anger and frustration, hot flushes, wet dreams, an 8mm growth spurt, growing pains, muscle growth and muscle pains, increased libido, unexpected arousal and extended erections for no apparent reason, lack of focus and a tendency to behave like a teenager with a “I don’t give a crap” kind of nihilistic and cavalier attitude towards life that sponsored a lot of self-destructive behaviour including alcohol abuse and drug use.

In 2011 while studying haute couture in Paris I needed to have an injection and despite the best intentions of my English speaking translator, the doctor still managed to stuff up my injection, she used the wrong size needle, positioned it too hight up on my hip and pushed it in too quickly. As a result I had real trouble sitting down comfortably for a couple of days! I thought then that it would be so much easier, given it looked like I would be having injections for the rest of my life, if I had a couple of rings tattooed on my buttocks that demarcated the perfect zones for injections.

On returning home from Paris, in the spring of 2011, I remember sitting in the car one day waiting for my wife to come with the shopping. It was a sunny afternoon and I was watching the dust dance in the air as it caught rays of light streaming through the trees outside and I was thinking about what I would do if I never had children. I realised then that it is through having children that most people find their purpose in life, that they raise their children and imbed all of their own hopes and dreams into them so they may grow up and have a positive effect on the world and that if I was to have a similar purpose in my life, to have a positive impact on the world, I would have to do it by my own hands and in my own lifetime.

In 2012 I established a not-for-profit social enterprise with the purpose to help solve environmental and urban social problems by growing jobs for long-term unemployed people using urban, suburban and peri-urban horticulture, I had found my purpose in life.

In 2017, leading up to my 40th birthday I became increasingly interested in the process and purpose of having a rite of passage and how these often physical rituals signified the movement of a person through significant transitions at key moments in a persons life. My research lead me to understand the function of the rite of passage, particularly with regards to physical body modification and how this serves to be a marking on a person’s body that informs their community that they have passed through a life changing transition. In the case of scarification, in some traditional cultures, as boys move through puberty and transition to become men, these permanent markings enable their community to see the change that the boy has gone through and they are forever viewed as the adults they have become.

My initial idea was to pierce my penis, which I did. This proved to be possibly the most painful thing I have ever felt. Unfortunately, I followed the lead of my body piecer for the placement and my body did not agree with this action, the piercing was pushed out within a couple of months. Then I recalled my idea from Paris about having a couple of rings tattooed around my injection sites and found a friend who did tattoos and offered to do these for me. With the aid of my doctor, who did my injections I worked out the placement and mocked the two circles up on my body. In the lead up to having the work inked, I thought a lot about what these two tattoos would mean for me and started to see them as personal symbols for the fact that I am in control of my own body and by extension, in control of my own life.

I liked the dichotomy of concepts between having symbols representing self control, personal power and autonomy in contrast to the fact they demarcated the testosterone injection site, which I actually had no control of needing this hormone replacement. All my tattoos are made of this same solid black line that makes these two first circles. When I had this ink done the endorphins hit me pretty quickly and I was euphorically out of it during the whole process, I knew quite quickly that this was going to be the beginning of an ongoing personal process of body art as my own personal, self directed rite of passage.

These two tattoos were inked on the same day, in one session and are placed as symmetrically and equal distance to my spine that we could make them. As a result of this placement, during the healing process when fresh tattoos become quite itchy, around the 7-10 day mark, the itching was excruciating. However, not on the tattoos as you would expect, I couldn’t feel anything on the ink at all. All the pain and itching was in the centre of my spine at my coccyx which was a fascinating experience.

Six months later I developed two more identical, symbolic tattoos that I positioned on my upper biceps at the shoulder/arm joint. These symbols represent strength on my right arm and movement on my left and a few months later I extended the strength tattoo into a full symbol I have designed with two arm bands, one connected to the circle and one floating below to represent people I have lost and become disconnected from in my life.

My relationship to my tattoos has grown day-by-day as I have used them to guide and inform the type of person I want to be in the world. My personal symbol for strength helps me to be more than physically strong, it guides me to upholder personal fortitude, to be true to myself, to express myself with strength and conviction and to do everything in my power to help and enable others to reach their potentials.

In 2018 I became aware of the fact that 47 XXY is an Intersex variation and while attending my local Pride Parade later that year I spotted a beautiful bold yellow flag with a huge purple ring emblazoned on it. The flag was flying high above peoples heads so I couldn’t see who was carrying it forward. I remember turning to my friends and saying “…look, look at that flag, that’s just like my tattoos…”. The flag came closer until a split it the crowds revealed the people carrying it, they were all proudly holding signs exclaiming “Intersex” in purple writing on yellow. The purple ring on yellow turned out to be the the international symbol for intersex people, I came out as Intersex later that year and continued to work on my body art project with the further development of my movement symbol running down my left arm. My personal symbol for movement keeps me dancing every day, though again its more than physical, it reminds me that life is fluid, that things are always changing, always moving and that nothing stays the same.

In 2019, I was struggling with my second marriage, I knew that I wanted to leave the relationship, however I also needed the strength to do so in a way that was kind and true to myself and to my partner. We had a long history together and had known each other for over 20 years and I felt the situation was very delicate and complicated. I loved her a lot and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her and yet I knew to be true to myself, to uphold self-love, I would have to leave the marriage. I decided to use my personal symbols and design a tattoo that would give me the strength and the compassion I needed to move through this difficult time in my life.

I inked a large circle ring on my chest at the centre of my being, this work is like the Intersex flag, it is about being balanced, being a whole person, loving myself, trusting myself and not needing others to fill any parts of me, as perhaps I did when I was younger. I did not tell my wife about this tattoo or the process that I embarked on with getting this ink. Initially I thought that I would get the tattoo and let it heal. Then, once healed I would use the strength of the tattoo to have the heavy conversation that I knew I needed to be having. The ink had other ideas for me, the same day that I committed to having the ink done, my wife and I started having deeply honest conversations about our relationship and we were separated before the itching stopped and before the ink had fully healed. This has been one of the most powerful personal symbols that I have created.

I have had three major addictions in my life and have gone cold turkey on each of them. I quit smoking cigarettes in 2014, I stopped drinking alcohol in 2017 and last year, in 2019, I stopped smoking weed after a lifetime of use since I was 14 years old. This last one proved to be the most challenging. Withdrawal symptoms hit me like a bus around the two-week mark. I was suffering from insomnia at night, sleeping during the day, even after drinking a couple of coffees. I had become completely dis-motivated for work, for life, for creativity, for everything. I felt that I was existing outside of my body, that when I got up in the morning, my body would get up and then I would get up about two seconds behind. I would go down stairs, my body would go first then I would follow two or 3 steps behind, this was one of the most bizarre experiences I have ever felt.

Around the three-week mark I reached out to my mother and we went for coffee, over the course of a few hours I told her everything, how much I had been using, the depth of my addiction, the issues I was facing and these feelings of being out of my body. She asked me what I was going to do, what was my strategy? And I told her that I would go to the herb shop and see what they had that could help me, I was thinking maybe Passionflower tea, St. Johns Wart or even a CBD product could help. I drank three coffees with my mum that day and then went home and promptly fell asleep on my couch. When I woke up a few hours later I was covered in sweat but clear of mind, I didn’t need herbs to help get through this, I had a strategy that I use to get through things, I had a personally powerful process to enact. I knew in that moment that I needed a tattoo, a mourning band on my forearm, a symbol that I can see and use every day.

I called my tattoo shop and thirty minutes later I was in the chair having the band laid out, it took an hour to do the placement and then the needle was ready and dipped in black ink. From the moment it hit my skin I was instantly reunited with my body. This tattoo is a powerful reminder for me of where I have been in my life, what I have done and what I no longer need to do. My addictions are ever present in this ink, though I know I will never partake in them again, I carry them with me, though I don’t need them in me.

In 2020, during lock down I had a friend finish my movement symbol with another circle and another line transversing through my elbow joint. Now the tattoo really moves as well and changes and transforms as I move. I can see patterns in all the tattoos, how they dance and play on my body in relation to each other. I document my tattoo process and share images on my Instagram @circleslinesmovement. I see all my pieces as one work of living art, my body as art, as a self expression that is unique to me.

Last month I came out as gender non-binary, this was a cathartically liberating experience, I cried my eyes out for two days. I had no Idea who much emotion was invested in this for me. For the first time in my life my biological sex was aligned with my gender identity. This really does mark the beginning of the end of my transition into becoming my true self.

I will be 43 in a couple of weeks time and it’s now 30 years since I first felt like something was missing in me, like something was missing in my brain, remember how I could feel the absence on my back, feel the thing that wasn’t there? Now I know what that thing was, that I was born intersex and that I don’t make my own testosterone. For my birthday I will be getting some new ink, a graphic I have designed based on my XXY karyotype chromosome code, black ink, on my back, a personal symbol about who I truly am.