Before we can begin the Saga of the Boner, there are a couple of useful terms for the uninitiated.

1. To Pack (verb): Stuffing something into your pants/underwear/jockstrap/special-packing-apparatus in order to appear like you have a larger dick.
2. Packer (noun): The "something" you uses to pack (verb). There are many types of packers. Some are fancy as fuck (Hand painted! Realistic Veins!). Others are literally just socks. You do you, boo.
3. STP (noun): This is short for Stand To Pee. These are like packers in that they are used to make one appear as if they have a dick. Unlike Packers, their primary job is to allow people to pee while standing up when they do not have the natural equipment. These also can range from pretty cheap to a lot of money and very fancy. Many trans men want these to work for them for obvious reasons. My number one interest was that it's much harder to notice that you're not a cis man when you can pee like a cis man.

My official, current opinion on all of this? Packers can be pretty gender affirming, but STPs aren't something I'm interested in figuring out. I almost never pack anymore either, and not once has it ever been "a thing". No one has noticed that I don't have a natural penis (except my sexual partners, obviously). So for me, not really worth the hassle unless I'm experiencing intense dysphoria.

When this story happened, however, things were different. Very different.

It was 2021. Definitely Fall. Sometime before mid October. I was living in Arizona with my then gf, Em.

I did not pass. (Oh, that might also be useful to explain. Passing means that I look Cis even though I'm trans). I very, very much looked like a woman. I still had the boobs. I was a bit overweight, which always ends up on my hips. I had a short haircut and wore men's clothes, but the best I could hope for in natural gendering was: Probably A Lesbian.

Em really, really wanted to support me in my transition. She knew how much I was struggling with dysphoria and the fact that I had to go by CJ at work instead of Simon, which added to the misgendering. Oh, I also was working at a "We Are Fancy Enough To Call Ourselves a Spa, but Our Quality Still Isn't That Great" Massage Chain. I hated it. I hated it for a lot of reasons, but the worst was really an industry problem.

Gendering your massage therapist is normal at American Spas.

I legally was a woman and the chain's "progressive" policy was that my gender listed with clients must match my legal identity. (It was considered progressive because if I legally changed my gender, I could update my gender with them. There's so much wrong with this. I don't have the spoons to explain it here).

So, at work, I was a "female massage therapist" with the name "CJ". I had to wear a uniform that was all black. While it wasn't form fitting per-se, it also had to be tight enough that it wouldn't drag on clients during the massage, which meant that even with binding, which wasn't smart to do while being a massage therapist to begin with, my breasts were still visibly breasts. I came home every single day so dysphoric that it was a bit of a nightmare.

I was actively looking for a place to rent space to do massage on my own because I had done this before, knew I could do it, and I knew it would allow me better control of my work-mandated dysphoria.

Em, in her wisdom, bought me an STP. We started with a cheaper one because we wanted to know if I liked it before she spent that kind of money on one. Em's theory was that it would be Euphoric to have one thing that made me feel like just a normal dude. And largely, she was right. Or she would have been, if not for the boner.

So. Here's the thing you should know: STPs, particularly cheaper ones like mine, don't really don't stay in place well during movement. And I wasn't wearing "proper" equipment downstairs. (What I had was a Special Packing Apparatus, but it wasn't a Designed For STPs Packing Apparatus. This, unfortunately for me, matters.)

On this sunny (because it was always sunny in Phoenix) early fall day, I went to work, excited to try out wearing my STP. I started working and it felt great. It was like when I was a kid and my mom was weird about colored bras, knowing I had a bright red bra on that she couldn't see made me giddy. It was that on steroids. No one knew I was packing. No one cared. Except me. (I want to be explicitly clear that there were no sexual connotations or feelings about this for me. For me, the idea of having a dick has not, until very recently, been about sex).

All was well through most of the day, until the final massage. Here I am, massaging my client, and my STP slips out of its restraints. I just felt it "pop". (For those who don't understand, this was outside of the restraints but under my pants, so it looked very much like a classic boner a cis man has when he's turned on.)

There were two saving graces in that moment.

1. It's a massage. People are about crotch level, but unlike all the marketing photos, they are usually either face up with their eyes closed or face down with their head in a hole.
2. The room was very dim. That's also pretty typical for American massages.

The result was that the client could not see my boner. The boner was less of a fear in that moment than the shifting it into place.

The boner was so incongruent with the person's perception of me that they likely would have been convinced by a lie. At the same time, shifting it back into place did require some movements that could look very sexual. Adding that to a massage was Bad News.

However, if I walked out of the massage with a boner, even a fake one, my boss would at a minimum have written me up, but much more likely, immediately fired me. At reputable massage therapy places in the US, mixing massage with anything perceived sexual, whether the intent is sexual or not, is taken that seriously.

Unlike actual boners, STPs are designed to stand straight out until you tuck them back in. So this was either going to be resolved in the Massage Room before the client opened their eyes, or I was probably getting fired.

If firing was on the table either way, I was going to take the path that I was less likely to be caught, so I timing my breathing, steps, and strokes just right so that the client never noticed that one hand left their body long enough for me to fix my boner just enough that while it wasn't secure, it wasn't a boner anymore. Success!

I was super relieved when the massage ended. I left that room so fast. I immediately went into the bathroom and "fixed" the boner, tucking it as securely as possible into it's space. I then put on my Serene Massage Therapist Mask and took my client through checkout. They had no idea. I kept my job.

Oh, I wish the story had ended there.

Less than 10 minutes away from my job, there was a chiropractor's office that had listed a room for rent. Given how I hated my job, I was really hopeful that this would work out. I had scheduled a meeting 30 minutes after my shift ended so I'd have time to get in the right headspace after work.

The moment I walked into the place, I knew the vibes were wrong for the type of massage I like to do, but I was desperate for a way out of my job. I decided to try it anyway. I met the chiropractor, a man, and shook his hand. We started talking and he showed me around and everything was going great as far as Business Networking was concerned.

Except, I knew without knowing how exactly I knew, that the man was Probably Mormon.

There are some physical things you can look for (I won't go into them here). That wasn't what I was picking up on though. It was his whole demeanor. The way he talked, the words he chose, how he referred to his wife, all screamed "MORMON!" at me. There is also a way a lot of Mormon men kinda carry themselves? I don't really know how to define it, but it's a thing. And then the Focus on Perfection that was also very clear in everything from his photos to the decoration to even the words on the wall.

Any one piece, I might have ignored it. All together, he was Mormon (or had at least been raised in that environment).

And then in walked his Very Mormon Wife.

Look. I actually have a knack for finding Mormon Women. Someone at my Community College didn't believe me when I told them this. (I was Very Mormon myself at the time, so this wasn't a judgement about the Mormon women on my part). Anyway, I told them, I could predict with about 80% accuracy whether a woman was Mormon or not just based on her photo. I got almost 90%. I spent my life observing Mormon Women to try and Belong. I'm good at knowing when they are Mormon or Not.

She was giving me very Mormon vibes. (It is theoretically possible that she just knew a lot of Mormons and emulated them? I did only get it right 90% of the time. But that was where my brain was).

Here I am, the secretly trans, very definitely ex-Mormon, spiritually agnostic, and So Incredibly Queer "CJ". I start to sweat. And in that moment, for no apparent reason that makes any logical sense, my STP just popped.

Instant boner.

I really, really want to know what the chiropractor and his wife were thinking through this. I genuinely wish I could know.

I looked like a woman. A little gender neutral-ish, but not enough to put me in any box other than "woman".

I sounded like a woman. My voice still is very, very femme.

I gave a name that is at best, gender neutral, but very much not uncommon for women.

And the moment a pretty woman walks into the room, I have Very Visible Boner.

One of the reasons I truly believe that they are (or at least were) Mormon is because they did the Utah Nice thing where they Ignored The Elephant. Unlike the Massage Room, there was no hiding this boner. It was so apparent. I knew it was there. They knew it was there. I knew they knew and they knew I knew. And we all just pretended it never happened. We wrapped up the conversation like it was the most natural thing in the world. I swear, I even ended up shaking the dude's hand before I walked away. What else was I supposed to do?

I never, ever followed up.

Neither did they.

I also have not tried to wear an STP since.

**I will be launching a blog titled "Ask a Trans Man" sometime shortly. If you want to submit a question, use this link: https://forms.gle/toXV81A4obaBYTDU8

***Want to help me and my family escape a state trying to ban our rights? Donate to my paypal now! https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/XGGBW2YFYKQGU