So it’s a stock question to ask what one thing you would change about your body if you would. Notable candidates include

• Skin - when people say they “have bad skin” they usually mean acne. That was never a big problem for me, but I have to deal with keratosis pilaris (into adulthood); dyshidrosis; susceptibility to scarring, plantar warts, and stretch marks; phantom itching attacks; random patches of dry crackly skin, hives, *and* wet, chemical burn-like skin reactions. This is never critical but regularly annoying.

• Fat - yeah, I was a fat kid since at least second grade, but since I started going to the dojo in LA and again since I started paying attention and lifting weights this year, I probably look better naked than anytime since it’s been creepy to think about how good I look naked.

• Ankles - I sprained them a few times and it just makes them easier to sprain each time. At least twice a year they collapse and I fall over walking on flat ground for no goddamn reason.

• Teeth - I clench them, that’s my stress/habit thing. It makes my cheek muscles too prominent, wears down my permanent teeth (and thus changes my bite/face in an old coot prospector direction) and I’m pretty sure it contributed to two of them breaking below the gum (titanium implants though, thanks NASA/parents’ class status).

• Genitals - pretty decent actually, but in like second/third grade I identified as female. Eventually I was like “well, I have boy junk, let’s run with that”, and later concluded that there was no reason that my desire to be treated as a pretty, graceful, delicate thing; my Lilith Fair taste in music; or my appreciation for being held down and sexually penetrated should be incompatible with my straight masculinity. Among other things, this means that I appreciate the radfem critique of transsexuality at a visceral level.