Thinning hair can be especially disconcerting when one is trying to wear 'locs, also known as dreadlocks, which I'd first begun in late 2001. […] I finally fetched the shears and, cringing, cut off each 'loc at the point where new growth was coming in.

A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.

And ultimately: I think my readers are mature enough that knowing eir assigned gender is not going to give them an “excuse” to misgender em.

“I'm getting my guiche pierced,” she'd say. “lt's that little ridge of skin running between your asshole and the bottom of your vagina.”