Nevada is Relatably Perverted

On days when I’m at home, bored, and feeling introspective I sometimes read my old diaries---I started journaling fairly consistently back in 2022, and have pretty much kept it up until today. It can be a remarkably illuminating pastime, though I often find it hard to read my own thoughts during some of the hardest years of my life. Drowning in dysphoria, loneliness, and self-loathing, the too-familiar rantings of my former brain cut deep---am I still on the right path if I feel the same way now? My most intense fear is a fear of never having changed, yet that can seem to be the case during these perusals. To have your feelings recognized can be an intimate and refreshing experience, but not always when it’s from an antiquated (or so you hope) version of yourself.

Nevada, at times, felt like reading my old diaries. Imogen Binnie’s panicky, quotation-mark-free writing style paid homage to my frantic, less-than-grammatically-correct jabber. Maria Griffiths, one of the two protagonists, spoke as if she could read my mind, emphasizing the perverted, stomach-sinking parts of being transgender I would write about for hours in my journals. James H., the other protagonist, transported me back to high school, enmeshed in a weighty repression, making futile excuses, and feeling existentially wrong for the thoughts in my own head. As opposed to reading my own diary, however, Binnie’s novel recognized my feelings and validated them---I’m not the only one feeling these things. While reading, I kept finding myself sharing unuttered moments of connection with not just the characters, but Binnie herself. I would think, “Wow, someone else has actually had this thought, someone else has actually gone through this,” nearly every other chapter.

I knew I’d be forever joined at the hip to this book after reading the way Binnie discussed the more “taboo” parts of being transgender. I mean, I don’t really think they’re taboo, but topics like kinks, pre-transition porn choice, and just the general jacking-off discussing was stuff I’d never read in a book before. And, most importantly, stuff I never felt comfortable enough to share about myself. I think there’s a tendency with trans women, specifically the more nervous and anxiety-ridden ones (so nearly all), to feel like we’re alone in certain aspects of our transgender journeys. As dumb as it sounds, it was refreshing and infinitely validating to hear Maria and James talk about shitty internet TG porn, especially the real sleazy, fictionmania-esque stuff I’d read back in high school. Those dumb TG stories, Maria’s tirade toward James about how jacking off to wanting to be a girl doesn’t make you a pervert, all that stuff makes you feel less like a freak when you’ve experienced it all your life.

I don’t want to spoil too much of this book, so I’ll keep this review relatively short. I do, however, want to share the passage I found to be the most visceral. Maria says about herself, “She didn’t know she was trans, she couldn’t put into words that she was a little girl, but she did know that something was horribly wrong and she blamed herself for it” (137). I swear to you, this is nearly verbatim from a late-night Notes App rant I went on during a muffled anxiety-attack my freshman year of college. I don’t have a piece of advice, or a golden maxim for tgirls feeling the same way. The only thing I can suggest is to read Nevada, and feel a bit less isolated from your community. After reading, I’ve literally recommended the book to every tgirl I know, so please read it!!