The Fifth Column: Man Voice
You know the feeling you get on the first day you acquire a virus of some kind? That, “oh shit, I’m getting sick” kind of closed up uncomfortable feeling in your throat that makes the spit you swallow take a longer-than-normal period of time to descend into your esophagus? I have that feeling always. Apparently this is because my vocal cords are thickening. While I am enjoying my deepening voice, I am a little annoyed at the icky throat feeling. This is mostly because every morning, after my first spit swallow, I have a momentary panic where I think, “Oh jeez, I can’t be getting sick! Not now!” that seems to be typical for most people when they begin feeling an illness creeping up on them.
Garrett Hoffman is blogging his transition at transformgarrett.blogspot.com. You can read the rest of his posts here.
I looked like a boy before starting Testosterone. I got sir-ed about 50% of the time. That number dropped to 5% if the interaction required me to speak. I opened my mouth and my high pitch was a dead give away. Clearly, I was born female. Singing was worse. In high school I pretended to be an alto but let’s be honest, my range was that of a first soprano. It never really made me feel self-conscious but I did often get laughed at for how much my singing voice “made me sound like a girl”. God forbid, right? That problem (if you can call it a problem) is fixed now.
While I could notice my voice deepening in my chest, others didn’t. Until yesterday. One day, nobody commented on my voice and the next day I was bombarded with a slew of, “wow, you sound like a man.” I am thoroughly enjoying the man voice for the most part. It does make singing difficult though. In my youth decided it would be a great idea to get chicks by playing guitar and singing to them. This idea developed into a full-blown hobby in college and is currently something I use to relieve stress and, to be honest, impress people. I’m not great at it, but it’s one of those party tricks I occasionally pull out of the bag to spice things up a bit. Anyway, my chick impressing days are over, at least for now. I would venture to guess that nobody finds a squeaky 13-year-old boy voice sexy.
My voice will someday (hopefully) find it’s happy man range and I will (hopefully) be able to sing again. For now, I am listening to more male vocalists in an attempt to find karaoke songs to fit my range. All of my old “go tos” will soon be much too high for me to sing. I am wondering about resurrecting some old boy band favorites. I think I have the face to pull it off, wouldn’t you say??
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