I had such a joyous collaborative experience with Holly, from preparing for the date in the calendar, tide checking, setting a salty seadog scene, dressing, undressing and going for it! With trust in you in the moment of shooting, and in the discussed process of your edits and my review of consent.
I loved our venture to the Rock-a-Nore rocks undercliff, a local queer history nudist beach, we shared musings that perhaps Derek Jarman or Lee/Alexander McQueen and many a visiting queer boy may have clambered and posed in jocks on these same rocks.
I wanted you to show in this series how I bear, and bare my testosterone shot enhanced, scarred, marked and surgically transplanted trans flesh. My shipwrecked body, dashed on the rocks, homoerotic, disgraced, thrown overboard in the flotsam and jetsam. My tattoo ink another story. My trans battle-scars all of them, on show. I trusted you to intimately capture my life scar marks. In this marking of and celebration of me 22 years on T, at age 64. Not a wreck at all…
The experience was an ecstatic high! I found myself in an altered heightened euphoric state, laying my body weight on cold rocks, bare chested or bare arsed in the sun- enjoying your encouragement, and the recognition of our shared queerotic/homoerotic references. Happy that Holly absolutely got it- that I was inviting in a gaze - but a queer trans affirmative gaze.