Just the Tip

Trypanophobia, a fear of needles, can be detrimental if it causes the body to avoid medical care. The faulty instinct prevents blood draws, vaccinations, access to vital information found in the body. The body must be poked and probed to tell the doctor its needs.

The point: you need needles.

The needle isn’t the enemy. It won’t kill you. It will barely hurt you. Blood is minimal, the bandage for shots and draws small. You fear pain, fear pressure, fear how something being extracted from you or pushed into you will hurt. There’s something wrong in the body that can’t be fixed without the thing you fear.

💉

Before I started testosterone injections, I attended an event at the Sioux Falls Heartland kink scene hosted at Club David, the only gay club within a few towns’ radius. At the time, I was seeing a voyeur who was fascinated with my identity but who could never get my pronouns right. (Two years later, they come out as trans—it explains their fetish, not their misgendering.) I was a few months post quitting gel T and six months dry from quitting drinking. 

We had gone to a few similar events before, where we saw strangers take floggings and paddle beatings. She enjoyed watching the Shibari and wax play, but that night she was especially excited to see a demonstration using needles, a new feature for the club. An empty massage table and closed chest were in a corner waiting to be used, only after midnight, in accordance with some city ordinance.

We met up with my friends, a transmasc couple. Asher had been on T for years and had facial hair to prove it. Quinn, nonbinary, had just started T, seeking to exist in a middle, between masculine and feminine, in a place that matched the way they felt about their gender. The voyeur and I mingled with them as midnight crept closer, the anticipation for needle play growing palpable. My date, the voyeur, asked if either of them had any trouble with needles. They looked at each other, then back at her, before saying in unison: “We’re both on T.” 

With “T” came the understanding of injection medication, the affordable and stable method, the method that insurance almost always covered with a doctor’s note. The default T. My friends didn’t fear their weekly shots and didn’t seem bothered at the possibility of watching someone else get stabbed by needles. They handled themselves, were nonchalant, throughout the night. It was an attitude I couldn’t muster, as much as I wanted to be cool. Their statement assumed that the taking of injectable HRT meant an absence or rejection of fear of the method of administration. They were unphased by the needles. And I envied that, always feeling like I could never have the hormone level I craved without gel.

At midnight, an older woman, the needle dom, who was only about five feet tall dressed in black pleather, opened up the mystery chest and revealed multiple types of needle tips with various colored caps. Each color was a different gauge, made to puncture a different sized hole, into whatever subject they were inserted into. The dom was accompanied by a tall, lanky male sub who got onto the massage table face down so she could give us all a demonstration on needle play. He didn’t seem bothered, self-conscious, or even excited. He felt blank to me, like he had embraced the idea that he would be the canvas for the dom’s art. He would get all the sensations that came with needle play, but his experience was not the one at the center of the room. For us onlookers, it was the simple possibility of participating in needle play that made the scene titillating. I could see behind the eyes of everyone around me—the thought, “Could I do that to my partner?” Or, “Could my partner do that to me?” I’d never had anyone ritually stab me before. I never thought I’d find someone besides myself to stab me. But I forced myself to watch, the whole time thinking about how I needed to conquer my squeamishness if I ever wanted to medically transition.

The dom started by sticking two different colored needles into the man’s back one at a time, talking the crowd through the feel and use of her tools. She was educational and informative. Calm, as though she was talking through options for house paint. I watched as much as I could, but I squeezed my eyes shut whenever she threaded a needle through the back that was becoming less and less bare. Asher and Quinn didn’t even flinch. They said nothing made them squeamish since they injected themselves with their medication weekly. 

The dom talked about the possibilities of the art while adding more needles to her pattern. “You can make designs of any shape and any color you want. Spirals, words, anything. You can even use ribbon and make your sub a nice corset.”

I wished I was badass enough to do needle play. I wished to find the blasé attitude around needles that everyone else at the kink party seemed to have. 

The point: I wish I wasn’t afraid.

💉

I never considered myself to have trypanophobia. I only hid from doctors with needles when I was under the age of 6. I got better as I got older. I would count ceiling tiles or talk to my mom while a doctor or nurse would tend to my body. I was even brave at seventeen when my left breast was punctured by a biopsy needle to check an ever-growing lump for cancer. I cried, but I told myself that my tears were because of the mass and fear of the unknown, not the needle or needing to have an icepack in my bra for the rest of the day. As I became an adult, I interacted less and less with medical needles. All I had to do was get seasonal shots, which I readily agreed to without any convincing or coaxing on the doctor’s part. I would confidently ask for my vaccines, but waiting for a nurse to come in with the syringe gave fear the time it needed to liquify in my veins. I’d think about running, leaving the hospital before anyone could notice I was gone. But I always stayed, always counted ceiling tiles, always clenched my jaw until it was over. Very bravely, of course.

I started getting tattoos at 19. For my first handful of professional tattoos, the artists would ask me if it was my first time getting inked because I acted so nervous. My whole body would sweat in the chair, leaving embarrassing moisture behind. I’d flinch and grimace at the needle, but whenever I was asked if I needed to take a break, I’d decline. And all of my tattoos were small, so I wouldn’t have to take a break or face a second session of work on the same spot. I never fainted or cried while getting a tattoo. I considered that a win despite feeling like a chickenshit after (and before) every appointment. 

I got myself stick and poke supplies to occupy my time when I first tried to get sober. Apparently, rehabs don’t allow pens because it’s pretty common. The guy who got me sober said people would try and tattoo themselves with pens and coffee from the dregs of the pot while they were drying up. Two weeks sober, I sat on the floor of my living room with a small capsule of ink, alcohol wipes, a red pen, and individually wrapped round liner needles, all ceremoniously laid out on a dentist bib. I sketched on my skin with the red pen, disinfected the area, carefully trying not to smudge my guidelines, and got to stabbing. I went slowly, feeling and watching the tiny cluster of needles puncture the first layer of skin before pressing it in further, wiggling it around a bit, making sure to deposit the ink far enough into my skin for it to stick. I performed the ritual seven times over the next year.

💉

When I decided to start medically transitioning, I went to Planned Parenthood so I didn’t have to use my parent’s health insurance and so I could evade being outed. At my appointment time, I was taken back to a small room with a chair, a stool on wheels, and a computer. It was tiny, cramped. The lady in scrubs started by asking me about my coming out, the depths of my feelings on gender, the “why” behind the appointment. I wished I didn’t feel like I had to bare my soul to a stranger to get what I needed. Why couldn’t I just say, “Hey, I’m a trans guy, and I want to look like it.” I had to justify myself, defend my identity, and even though I had only started socially transitioning six months prior, I was already exhausted of doing it. 

After she was convinced of my identity and deemed me a good candidate for the drug I was seeking, she handed me a small stack of pamphlets containing all the side effects of testosterone on a female body. 

“You might lose your hair, get male patterned baldness.”

She looked at me like this would dissuade me, like this was the information that would prove if I was trans or not. It would weed out the fakers for sure. I kept my resolve.

So, the provider told me patches would be more costly than gel, but injections would be the most affordable. They sent my new script to my regular pharmacy, who dutifully ran it through my insurance on file. After that, the insurance company would send an explanation of their (lack of) coverage to the mailing address of the primary holder of the insurance card. And my parents would find out about the drug in two weeks, discovering my identity.

The provider gave me thirty days of gel packets that cost roughly $13 per packet. I only got a one-month supply and never went back to the clinic.