Around the time you’re reading this Editorial, I’ll be turning three.

You may well be thinking “Three? Evan, arent’ you 6’4? Isn’t that a little large for even an overgrown toddler?” 

Well, yes, but if you’ll permit me I will gladly explain.

On October 31st, 2020, I started taking Spironolactone as part of a feminizing regimen of Hormone Replacement Therapy. To that end, I consider Halloween a second birthday of sorts. 

It was celebrating my first second birthday at the Only Café on October 31st, 2021 that my co-editor Sebastian and I actually first passed, like ships in the night. Neither of us would know this until years later, though it remains a funny story to tell.

This year then, marks my third second birthday. That number strikes me as significant enough to write about.

Back in 2020, however, I was still fresh out of the proverbial womb. I’d come out as transgender to a select number of close friends in August of that year, but that moment—swallowing the first 25mg of anti-androgens—to me marked the veritable beginning of my nascent womanhood.

Two things would go on to happen that day: 

First, I had to trip-sit a shroom circle in my next door neighbours’ apartment.

Two, a mysterious white substance began leaking from my nipples.

Well, no one said going through puberty again in your twenties was going to be easy!

What precipitated was half a year of meteoric ups and downs in my mood, the particularly novel and excruciating pain of growing C-cup boobs in six months, and hundreds of dollars spent on Kawartha Dairy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup ice cream to ease the pain of being a recently-single and yet-to-admit-to-being-gay-to-herself trans woman in the middle of a global pandemic.

In the time being I devised new and novel ways of coping with this anguish. I caught up on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I played 90hrs of Hades, and 100%’d Celeste. On Friday, November 13th I attempted to marathon the Friday the 13th series, falling asleep somewhere halfway through Part VI: Jason Lives. 

I threw myself into schoolwork with reckless abandon. For the final project of CUST-1510H: Introduction to the Integrated Arts, I produced a fully-realized, 36-page zine complete with original writing, images, and in-text citations. If nothing else, I imagine this speaks volumes about the predilictions of my present writing. 

In late April of that year, having just turned 19 and finished the first year of my undergrad with a 95%+ average, I saw a job posting for Arthur. As a matter of fact, my mom actually forwarded it to me.

Faced with the prospect of having to find a summer job, seeing as I was both taking summer classes and needed to pay for groceries, the opportunity seemed—if not as good as any—considerably more tolerable than working for Loblaws.

I submitted my resume and cover letter with low expectations, attaching along with them an essay about eco-fascism I’d contributed to Knightwatch, my high school’s student newspaper.

You know, just cheerful, low-key stuff. 

By some miracle, then-co-editors Nicky and Brazil gave my application the time of day, and I found myself on the writing team for the Summer Serial of Volume 55. It was the first time I felt like I’d really found any sort of professional direction; I loved my co-workers, I loved the work itself, I loved everything Arthur represented—both to myself and the community at large.

It was an eventful summer for me: My co-workers and I convinced the Editors to let us flood the Sports section with articles about video games, I wrote what remains my most-read article (for some reason, which remains beyond me), and I did an interview which not only gained unprecedented traction, it also made me a friend who I cherish to this day.

That piece also got me reposted by Arca, but who’s really keeping track?

For almost as long as I’ve been a woman, I have lived and breathed Arthur. I started way back when as a CSJ Staff Writer on an 8-week contract, and worked my way to where I find myself now, as co-editor of my beloved rag. Truly my sigma female #grindset is beyond reproach. 

When I started, I was the sole trans woman on staff. Arthur provided me not only community through my many (very) queer co-workers, but equally through the trans women I met—both in person and online—in the course of my newfound occupation. 

Three years later, I am happy to say we have finally hired another trans woman, and we’re still working hard on Sebastian to round it out to three. 

Arthur has been a steadfast presence in my life over this time, from my tenure on the Board, to my attending a big girl journalism conference for the first time, and so on and so forth. Arthur as an outlet and a community has been imperative in shaping me into the person I am today, and for that, words fail to express the depths of my gratitude.

As I fast approach my fourth year as a woman on this Earth, no doubt change is on the horizon. Just as becoming Editor this Volume has been quite an instructive experience at times, my future herstory assuredly holds more surprises.

While I still have a (mostly) working penis, and no plans to change that, I am pleased to announce that I’m in the market for a new mug.

Yours truly is going faceshopping, and is lucky enough to be supported by my good friend Garbageface in this endeavour. karol has kindly elected to kick some of the proceeds from his October 31st show towards my crowdfunding a new visage, so drop by if you’d like to toss a few coins to your favourite editor.

Time may change me, but not so much as paying $10,000 for a designer canthal tilt. To that I say: Happy Birthday, Evangeline Robins.