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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 (there goes the neighborhood) 10:41am Did thirty one of one and thirty of the other last night. Finished Hats & Eyeglasses and started on Joseph Epstein's In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary and Savage, which was nowhere near as entertaining as one might expect from a book that kifes its title from The Producers. Raphaela was there with a client, and much to my surprise she came up to me afterward while I was on the crosstrainer, telling me how proud she is of me and how she brags about me. Which I naturally don't buy for a minute, even though it's probably true. She was also there this morning while I was working out this morning (thirty one of one, thirty of the other), and since she was in the middle of session with another client, she settled for slapping my ass as she walked by. Well, it was right there. I think the mochas are my big vice these days. I'm not doing a whole hell of a lot else, really. The occasional chips and salsa with fat-free sour cream and my beloved La Costena hot sauce are about as close I get. I stopped at Safeway on the way home last night and got a two cans of peas, a two boxes of granola bars, two cans of corn, a can of olives, a jar of pickles (kosher dill, fresh pack), a tin of anchovies (I blame Rimma), five cans of tuna, eight of their little-bitty things of plain nonfat yogurt, two gallons of orange juice, some imitation crabmeat, red leaf lettuce, mushrooms, broccoli, red cabbage, a couple tomatoes, some sugar snap peas, and tofu. Had myself quite the decadent salad when I got home. I prefer to get my produce from the independent markets in my neighborhood, but at half past nine in the evening, my options were limited. The other big vice right now is vanity. Potential vanity, anyway. It's motivating everything else. 3:29pm One of the publishers I queried last month replied that they aren't considering anything new in the foreseeable future. Moving on. | ||
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Tuesday, 19 August 2008 (what you take with you) 2:01pm Last night's session with Raphaela went better than Friday's, since it was later in the day and my energy level was up to the task. The same can't be said for my sense of right and left, however. (Or my sense of right and wrong, but that goes without saying.) There's this one exercise where I'm pretty much flat on my stomach, my hands behind my head, and I alternate raising diagonal limbs. Which is to say, first I lift my right elbow and left leg at the same time (with an exhale, always exhale on exertion), then I put them down and lift my left elbow and right leg, then put those back down and lift my right elbow and left leg, and so on and so forth. Except that I couldn't get it right to save my frackin' life. Usually I'd lift both my right elbow and leg, or one leg and both elbows, and other similarly spazzy things. Even with the cue of her touching the limbs that I was supposed to lift, I got it wrong most of the time. And yet I have no problem with a similar move which is done while on the hands and knees called the quadruped. Maybe it's because it's more of an animal kinda move, and that I can do. (Even though I haven't done it for some time, sad to say.) By now she's figured out how to talk to me, the words that I'll respond to more readily. Like, "engage your core" is a bit mysterious to me when I'm in the middle of something, but I know exactly what "suck in your gut" means. By the same token, after I referred to it as such a few times because of useless it is, she now calls my left arm my flipper. As in: watch out, your flipper's drifting! My flipper drifts a lot when we're doing weights, especially the ones where I have to stand and look at myself in the mirror. It's one of my least favorite things to do, ever. Looking at my myself like that, I mean. Even if I hadn't admitted to it, I'm pretty sure Raphaela would have figured out that I have a bit of a crush on one of the other trainers. She looks to be in her late thirties, olive complexion, femme with long dark hai. (As has been observed, I have a type.) Raphaela teases me about it, as well she probably should, and when the trainer's nearby I don't doubt that my body language gives me away, both in spite and because of the thin veneer of nonchalance I try to display. That my emotional defenses are lowered doesn't really help, combined with the fact that if I have a best, she's not seeing me in it. Alas. Raphaela said she'd find out the basics—if she's seeing anyone, if she likes girls and/or trannies at all—and I am not holding my breath in the slightest. Except unintentionally. By my math, Raphaela and I have five pre-paid sessions left. She says we have six. I'm going with her numbers. Afterward, I went over to Rimma's for dinner. It was a spur of the moment invitation, and though my immediate inclination was to just go home and make a salad and crash as usual, I figured it would be a good to get into the habit of doing stuff in the evenings after exercise. I don't have much of a nightlife these days, but I don't want what there is to go away entirely. It was me, Ilene, Rimma and her friend Ruth. Rimma made wheat spaghetti with shrimp scampi, caesar salad with optional anchovies, and there was also bread with some fancy-pants cheeses whose names I don't recall. It was all delicious, and I ate plenty. I have no truck with guilt. Today was not my smartest morning at the gym. I forgot my towel at home (note to self: dry off the towel in the car, not over the shower door at home), and after changing into my workout clothes in the locker room I had to go back out to Phoebe to retrieve my mp3 player. So many little details. It's okay, though, because as I was on the crosstrainer finishing up Hats & Eyeglasses, I had an epiphany about the book. Like in the spin class a couple weeks back, there's something about physical exertion and overall endorphination which helps my creative process. Of course, it also means that my attention tends to wander from what I'm doing, hence flipper drift. But it was a very good thing in his case, as I realized the solution to a problem I was having with the final couple of chapters, how certain threads and themes were falling out of focus. It won't require much fixing, either, just a few lines here and there, and maybe a new paragraph or two. But it changes the emotional relevance of the entire climax and, hopefully, gives it a much stronger connection to the throughline of the story. The phrase that comes to mind is resolving the harmony, a concept I first read about in Galactica composer Bear McCreary's blog entry about his score for the seventh episode of the current season, what Alessandro Juliani's voice does at the very end. There's a lot of reasons why the metaphor doesn't quite scan, but frack semantic accuracy. I've resolved the harmony. | ||
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Monday, 18 August 2008 (it's a fire) 10:29am Except for breaks for lunch and/or a mocha, I spent most all of yesterday here at the office, working. On my stuff, though, so being here on the weekends is okay. Edited and submitted my story "Tchotchke" to the next issue of Instant City, then worked on my official Writer's CV. The first time I heard the term CV in early '98, I had just found out that Organic was letting me go after a few months' of hard work as an underpaid intern. Though I was upset that they weren't keeping me around, I was grateful for the experience and to Barefoot for getting me the job in the first place, and it gave me the experience I needed to get a contractor position at Autodesk a few months later, which lead to me getting a job at CNET in January '99, which lead to my life as I know it now. I was responding to job listings, desperately dreading another stretch of unemployment and the strain it would put on my already highly strained relationship with The Ex. (Let's just say it didn't help.) A fellow at one tech company or another asked to see my CV. I had a résumé, sure, but I'd never heard the term curriculum vitae before. When I asked him what that was, he laughed and snarked that he couldn't wait to see mine. Yeah, right. Needless to say, I didn't even get in for an interview. Anyway, as part of their submission process, Seal Press requires a CV, among many other things. The process is the most complicated and thorough I've yet encountered, and I'm kinda glad. I'm finally making a CV, after all, which is allegedly one of those things real writers do. And these are good hoops for me to jump through. For the last couple of hours I edited the manuscript, working from suggestions by my pal David West, who was kind enough to actually look at the damned thing. Some of the suggestions I'm implementing, some I'm not, but they've all made me think in new ways about the book, which is a good thing. (Thinking in a new way is a good thing. The book, I'm not so sure about yet.) Bad Movie Night was a lot of fun. The feature was the Bill Cosby movie Leonard Part 6, which I was a little uncertain about because nobody outside of film geeks remembers that it even exists, and the target audience for the show is not my fellow film geeks. It wouldn't have lasted this long if it had. (Tim just came over as I was writing this, on my laptop pointing away from my main work computer. I fumbled for a moment, taking off my headphones and the earplugs, and he said: i just want to thank you for everything you've done this past week. He then corrected himself: well, not just this past week, but i mean the clients are really happy with you and the work you've been doing and how smooth the transition's gone. so, thank you for that. I was conscious of the fact that I had a deer-in-the-headlights look, probably both out of surprise of him talking to me directly and the fact I was peaking on my mocha from Caffe Roma. But, yay. We like it when the boss it happy, because it means that our—which is to say, my—job is secure.) Anyway, my guiding principle for scheduling Bad Movie Night has been have people heard of it? The newer a movie the better, of course, which is why a few months out of the year tend to be composed of the previous year's movies, but video store and USA Network favorites from the eighties and nineties work, too. The audience is primarily Gen-X'ers like myself, and for better or worse, we have fond memories of movies like Children of the Corn from when were teenagers. Doesn't always work, of course, some nights are better than others, and I'm often surprised (who knew Reign of Fire had such a devoted following?), but my baby's been humming along nicely lately. We had quite a few newbies last night, in spite of the fact that Leonard Part 6 is easily the most obscure movie this month. (When it's listed along with Waterworld and Howard the Duck, though, people get the idea.) Plus, hopefully, the show is considered fun in its own right. One of the newbies was flirting with me after the show, even going so far as to compliment me on my boots. She asked me what happened after the show, what I do during the week, what I like, that sort of thing. She'd also made reference to liking that The Dark Room is so close to the Beauty Bar down the street, and I was hoping/expecting that she'd ask me out for a drink, but that didn't happen. Maybe next time, or not at all. Did the hour at the gym this morning, half on the treadmill and the other half on the crosstrainer thingy, and this evening I see Raphaela. | ||
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Sunday, 17 August 2008 (sleeping in the ground) 10:56am Only did an hour this morning, thirty minutes on the treadmill and thirty on the crosstrainer. Decided to go easy on myself, especially consider how my legs felt last night. Not hurting, they haven't hurt except for a few moves with Raphaela which she are supposed to hurt. Otherwise, it's just them adjusting to what I'm doing to them, and not damage. Pretty sure of that. At the office now. It's where I go now to do my work. | ||
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Saturday, 16 August 2008 (losing a friend) 6:45am Getting up at half past six feels like sleeping in. That's the old me, all right. I'm also feeling my calves and my hamstrings (that is to say, the back of my legs) like I've never felt them before. They don't hurt, exactly. They're just making their presence known. Growing pains, perhaps. The Black Light District is a mess. I tidied it up some before Johanna came over last month, but the last real cleaning it got was three months ago in anticipation of Bunny meeting Perdita. Which she never did, of course. She never got closer to my part of town than the Haight, because some things don't happen. 10:57am My home is clean now. The kitchen, living room and bathroom, anyway, and that's not bad for four hours. From here it's to the gym, then somewhere to write. 5:19pm There's nothing on Spaceweather about the Earth entering the tail of a rogue comet, but I'll be damned if the treadmill didn't try to pull a Maximum Overdrive on me. Twice, it started speeding up by itself, and I had to hit the stop button so it didn't fling me off. Though I was using the magazine rack The Ex got me for xmas in 1998 (said it before, said it again: one of the most thoughtful and useful gifts ever, especially now that magazine racks and magazines themselves have vanished entirely from gyms) and it'll brush up against the buttons and the touchscreen if I'm not careful, that wasn't the case this time. Odder still, the screen itself went blank. Health: it'll kill ya. In spite of the hazards, I did an hour on the treadmill and an hour of the crosstrainer, and got through a hundred and fifty pages of Canadian film writer David Gilmour's The Film Club: A Memoir. A couple days ago I finished Judith Levine's Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping, and I'd been distracted in the middle of that by Craig Highberger's Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis. Though I liked it, my favorite bits were about Candy Darling. Of course. Prior to Not Buying It, I read Beth Lisick's Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, and tomorrow I expect to finish The Film Club and start the next book in the queue, Martha Frankel's Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair with Gambling. Aside from the fact it'll make things happen that need to happen, it's obvious that a big carrot for me in terms of working out is getting to read, especially hardcover memoirs from the library with sufficiently large text and whose binding works well with the magazine rack, and occasionally without it. In my bag for not-at-the-gym reading is Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I like it, but it's in paperback and the font is bit too small for gym usage, since I keep my glasses off and I can't have the book close enough to compensate. So, much of my reading material lately is selected on criteria similar to buying a painting because it matches the rug, but it's the sort of thing I'd read anyway. Oh, and my reading at home is Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis. I'm going to say this once: Marjane Satrapi is a serious fox, in a Diva Zappa kinda way. Moving on. After the gym I swung by The Dark Room to pick up Jim and take him erranding, and now I'm at my office because it's where my laptop is. There's all sort of things happening in the City tonight, including the monthly Fetish Ball at The Power Exchange (haven't been to one in a loing time), but I'm inclined to go home and do the dinner/movie/early-to-bed thing again. Part of it is listening to my body, and that's what my body wants to do, especially given the way my legs are feeling. I'm also feeling kinda hermitty, and it's not like I haven't gotten stuff done today. Right? Right. And while I don't consider this time to be lost, exactly, I intend to make up for it. | ||
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Friday, 15 August 2008 (super extra gravity) 9:21am For as much as I like to think that I'm stealthy, people notice me and my habits. This morning, both the office's landlord and one of the maintenance guys commented on the fact that I'm always the first one here, yesterday afternoon someone at the gym observed that I'd been there in the morning as well (wow, back for more? good for you!), and later in the evening of the roommates at The Dark Room mentioned that I'm not at the front desk as much as I used to be. I went by The Dark Room to get Jim. I wasn't feeling especially hungry, in spite of the fact that I'd just done the cardio thing for about eighty minutes at the gym, not to mention the fifty minutes that morning (a sort of regimen which must have played a small part in Sheryl Crow's figure in the "My Favorite Mistake" video, which is only a realistic goal if I accept that I'll never actually make it), but we went to Cancun anyway, and my body was very happy when it got substantial sustenance. Without cheese or sour cream, because almost everything needs to change now, though keeping the guacamole and getting refried beans rather than black beans for inner cohesion. A burrito comprised of rice and non-refried beans is essentially a high-protein confetti bomb. From there went literally around the corner to Shotwell Studios for Kirk Read's show. We got there early and snagged space on the comfy couches in the front row. About ten minutes before it began, I glanced over at the door on the other side of the room and saw Vash. I still had my sunglasses on because it hadn't occurred to me to take them off, the room was already a bit on the dim side and the lights were reddish, so she looked somewhat vague, almost like she was in soft-focus. Indeed, it took me a moment, a classic doubletake, to realize that it truly was her. But it couldn't be anyone else. I know her presence too well. She said: hi, sherilyn. I said something in response, probably: hi, vash, and that was the extent of our contact. I didn't see her again, because we were in the front row and I made a point of not looking behind me, not even when Kirk went to the back row during a piece. If I turned around I'd see her, and that couldn't happen. Worse, I might see who was there with her, and except for a distinctive laugh, I had no idea, and didn't want to know. Though I was fine when the show began, until then I mostly had a sinking feeling, a fluttering my chest and stomach that I've only ever gotten in recent memory when thinking about Vash. The pain and heartbreak came floating back up to the surface. Too soon to see her, too soon. I knew it would happen eventually, and I've been making a point of avoiding events she was likely to be at, in the hopes that if I could make it through this year without seeing her I'd have enough time to heal. I tweeted and texted Sadie and Rhiannon, both of whom asked if there was any way I could leave— I couldn't, I wouldn't—and after the show both invited me for to their respective homes to decompress. I would up at Sadie's, and she put things in perspective and helped me out a lot. She went through something similar the night before, in fact. I got to bed around midnight, was up again at five, and at the gym by six-thirty. Did an hour, and I have an appointment with Raphaela at noon. And on it goes. 2:48pm There are limits, and as usual, it didn't take very long to reach mine. The session (fourth of ten) with Raphaela was a little rougher than usual, and my energy level felt lower. Part of it is that she is making things increasingly more difficult and intense, which is the whole goddamned point. The other part is that I'd already done an hour of cardio earlier in the morning, and I supect I probably didn't have enough to eat in the meantime: a bagel with peanut butter from Susie's Cafe just down the street from the office, and a few granola bars later in the morning. Which is all fine and good for the strict burn-more-than-you-consume method, the one that worked for me ten years ago when I was doing primarily cardio and lost over a hundred pounds. (And what I always told people, from Maggie to Maddy's mom's friends, when they asked me how I lost so much weight: eat less, exercise more. Nobody ever liked the answer.) But it's not quite so simple with working with Raphaela, which, again, is the whole goddamned point. A few days ago I sent her the same picture I always dredge up when I'm talking about the body I want to get back to, specifically Chupa and I at the St. James Infirmary Benefit in June of 2003, five years and a million miles ago. She replied: wow!! great pic! we're are gonna get you even more toned and hot! Which, of course, sounds great to me. She mentioned today that her one problem with the picture is how thin I look in it, especially my arms. I don't want to be that thin, do I? I was a bit taken aback by the question—I mean, why wouldn't I want to be? I stumbled and said that no, I suppose I didn't, exactly. It wasn't until later in the session, after a number of rather difficult moves (lots of moments of my body shaking as I held it up, the sweat leaving my skin like thousands of spigots) and just plain endorphin goofiness that I told her that, well, actually, truth be told, I did want to get back to that point, to have my arms being that thin, that I really don't want to be muscley, even in the context of being toned. Because, I explained, the thing is this: I've destroyed the sleeves of several jackets over the years because they invariably don't fit me properly because I'm much bigger than the average genetic female. I simply can't afford to have the circumference of my limbs expand. Raphaela pointed out that she herself is not exactly a small person (she refers to herself as "chubby" now and again), and while it's true that she's not skinny by any conventional definition, she's of average height and build for a genetic female and I'm still twice as big as her by virtue of my DNA—and to go back to the arm thing for a moment, a factor which contributes to trannies getting clocked is their arms, which invariably look male if they have visible muscles. (It involves drag queens rather than transsexuals, and those aren't the same thing, but the scene in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert set in the mining town of Coober Pedy which exemplifies it nicely.) (Gods, I miss Ali.) So, it's kinda important to me that I don't bulk up, particluarly not in my arms. As I was telling her this, I was aware that way, way in the back of emotions, there was the potential for tearing up. Not an imminent threat—crying is like vomiting, you know when it's gonna happen and there's not a damned thing you can do to stop it—but if I kept talking about this, it would dredge up other things that I didn't want dredged up, and between the in-progress workout and my slightly frayed emotional state from the night, yeah, there was a distinct possibility that I might get wet around the edges. Raphaela may or may not have picked up on the potential waterworks, but she definitely understood what I was saying and took it to heart, though she admitted that it wasn't something that would have occured to her otherwise, since she hadn't realized I was a tranny. I was a bit gobsmacked by that. I thought she'd figured it out right away, because, y'know, she's not blind, and she's gotten a pretty good look at my ginormous body in various positions (not an intentional Leonard Cohen reference, honest), and my gym clothes don't leave a hell of a lot to the imagination—though as I mentioned before, there's no immediate evidence of from looking at my crotch in the bicycle shorts and...I mean, enough people clock me and call me "he" (ouch) when I'm actually trying, let alone in this context where I'm so exposed and vulnerable and everything that's wrong with my body is on display, and...but she insisted that she hadn't known until I told her. I didn't believe her at first because my first reaction to that sort of thing, or anything which qualifies as a compliment, as a certain disbelief. It's not a good habit and I've been trying to work through it for many years, but there it remains. In any event, Raphaela said she'd adjust her plans accordingly, less with the toning (though bulking me up was never her intention, she assured me) and more with the leaning, with a heavier emphasis on Pilates. She says she thinks I'll especially like that, and I suspect she's right. 5:44pm I haven't worked much on the book this week, something I intend to remedy tomorrow. However, the chapter "Across the Borderline" is now called "So Fast, So Numb." Considering the events depicted it's a bit less trite (not by much, but a bit), and I was identifying with the song a lot in those days, so it fits. It also means that there are now three R.E.M. references and only two of Willie Nelson, not that I'm counting. Still at the office. Gonna go home, make a salad, watch a movie, and crash before midnight. Another wild Friday. 10:18pm Because I'm not over her, you see. Not by a long shot. I've never stopped loving her. sometime after midnight The wrong people keep showing up in my dreams. | ||
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Thursday, 14 August 2008 (knives out) 9:54am Just got a nonfat mocha one of the more hidden coffee places in the neighborhood. I've been trying to move towards lattes as rule, but godsdamnit, I worked out for an hour (well, fifty minutes, but who's counting?) this morning, so I've earned a mocha with nonfat milk and no whipped cream. Got there by half past six. I'd like to try to bump that back to getting there by half past five. It's tricky, but I used to do it, and Vash's classes started earlier than that and she never missed one just because she was with me (getting together around seven or eight in the evening, asleep by then, up again at four-thirty, drops me off at work or the surrounding environs and that's that), so it can be done and I wanna do it so I will, that's how it'll work, the only way anything works. I saw Raphaela there this morning, but I kept my distance and didn't talk to her. She was working with someone else, and it would have been terribly rude. I view our dynamic as similar to a sex worker and her client, and though I've never been on either side of that equation, some of my best friends are whores (and I've dated enough of them, even just dropped Jarboe a line) to understand the etiquette. We have our alotted time together, and aside from the extra-curricular texting, that's that. Beyond that, she's with other people, which is how the girl pays her rent. Aside from the long-term benefits—and my clothes have started to feel looser—some of the immediate satisfaction of working with her is in the physical contact, chaste as it is. Mostly it's things like her pulling on my legs to stretch them after certain gnarly Pilates moves, but that's my favorite part, the reward cookie. It's safe to say that I'm comfortable in the locker room, and if anyone's uncomfortable with me, it doesn't show. I keep to myself, I don't look at anyone (even if I'm pointing in their direction, I don't look at them) and my presence hasn't keep anyone from taking their clothes off. I only do that in the shower, of course, my preferred being the first one on the immediate left. I'm not sure if there are any other trannies there, though my radar did get a pretty massive ping off of one woman whose extreme muscularity implies to me that she's a bodybuilder. But that doesn't mean she isn't a genetic girl. At least if there are any other trannies, that means we'll have each other's back. Er, well... Actually, that's not true in the least. At all. Not only counting the negative reaction I have to others my ilk, especially those in close proximity—I'm currently researching Jung's shadow-self theory to explain my powerful distaste—but I can't help think of one of the last chats I had with Maggie. We've never really kept in touch since I broke up with The Ex in 1999, what with her way of "supporting" The Ex being pointedly ignoring me in my own home. (Nine and a half years, and that still bugs me. Yay for maturity!) Our paths occasionally crossed, usually at sex parties at The Citadel, and always asking me about The Ex. Maggie sounded increasingly annoyed that I had more contact with The Ex than she did, which was clearly not how things should be. And then there was this, from her reply to my abortive attempt to re-establish a friendship with her in 1999: Ah, yes. "Honorary girl." My, but she was proud of that one. It had been in '96 or early '97, long before I came out, and she just wanted me to know that she thought I was a good person in spite of being a boy. She was very surprised and apprehensive when I did finally come out, and pretended that she didn't know how to behave around trannies (hence using my birth name even though she knew better), so it can't be rationalized as simply her being perceptive. Sometimes I get a tranny vibe when I'm talking to or just looking at a boy, the sense that they're going to come out of the closet and start transitioning at any time. I could be wrong, but I suspect Maggie never had that level of sensitivity. A pre-op transsexual (as Maggie had been at the time) has no business "bestowing the title of honorary girl" on anyone. It's the worst kind of arrogance, the kind of thing which it seems to easy for us to slip into. When we first met in 1994, when she'd only been transitioning for a little while and still had a boy name on her license, she used to wear a button that said Biology is not destiny. I didn't know much about anything in those days, and she explained that it meant that who you are is not determined by your body. Just because you may have been born with a male body, than doesn't mean you're a boy. Your destiny is determined by who you feel yourself to be, regardless of what biology suggests. I found this a profound concept, and took it to heart. I believe it more than ever today, as I explain in graphic detail in "vestri pen0r quod vos" (94KB pdf). Sure, my current fitness phase has a lot to do with feeling more female, but that's not biology as such, and I would never suggest that Annie Danger or the late Kitty Kastro aren't women because of their size. It's my trip, not theirs, and gods bless them for being comfortable with that aspect of their physiology. Anyway, Maggie pinged me last year, and we chatted a few times. It never went very well. The final time, I pointed her towards the diary entry regarding the chode at Writers With Drinks who wrote that I'm "definitely a guy, despite the fashionable fem dress, 44DD's and an inch of Max factor." I thought she might find it amusing. Instead, she focused on throwaway reference I made to the then-current Chasing Amy brouhaha. And all hell broke loose. her: Is Chasing Amy anti-preop or anti-T*?I can quite clearly picture her rolling her eyes. The truth is that the "penis equals potential rapist" theories are alive and well in certain circles, and I suspect Maggie's never entirely disagreed with it, since being born with a dick has always been on the of the great shames of her life. I wish I was ambidextrous, but that's just me. her: oh, jebus.Remember: wangs are evil. Period. It doesn't matter who they're attached to, what they're like as a person, if their hormonal content is primarily estrogen or testosterone. (I speak in this case of natural-born penii. The artificial kind are a different matter entirely, but are generally considered acceptable.) me: Historically, there's always been justification for discrimination. Humies are good at exclusion.Message: It you're a woman with a penis, you're not really a woman. Why? Because biology is destiny. Especially if, like Maggie, you've had sexual reassignment surgery and have an artifically constructed vagina. That's arguably physiology rather than biology, but it still shifted things for her, giving the privilege and empirical legitimacy she always craved. I was born male and still have what's consider the primary male sexual characteristic, though between electrolysis and estrogen have eradicated all the stuff that shows. I'm also fortunate that I have small hands, a subtle Adam's Apple and a face which was never all that masculine, and thanks to the aforementioned electroylsis and estrogen is actually rather pretty. All the same, I am of a different flock, not truly woman. Which I've never really denied—I'm a tranny girl, since coming out a decade ago I have always said it without shame or reservation—but I also reject the notion that it makes me a risk, or that my penis (which doesn't even create a noticeable bulge when I'm in my nylon/spandex bicycle shorts at the gym) determines who I am as a person. Knowing that the irony would go over head regardless, I decided not to use smileys for my reply. me: Yes. That's precisely what I'm saying, down to the exact avian metaphor.By this point, I knew the discussion was over. Arguing online is always waste of time, especially when there's an inpenetrable philosophical difference involved. But, by gum, she pulled out the big guns, the coop-de-gracey: her: And, for the record, Osento is quite delightful.The Osento which she can get into because she paid five figures for the operation which isn't all that big a deal to me and which most of us can't afford anyway, the operation which suddenly gets her into the exclusive flock. And an allegedly delightful one at that. (Though the opinion of most genetic girls I've talked to about Osento has been "meh.") Money and social status are destiny, and with it one can transcend one's original minority status. And those who aren't so lucky? Well, that's tough for them. Go flock somewhere else. It reminded me of something Marc Maron's old Morning Sedition co-host Mark Riley once referred to it in a discussion of social advancement amongst members of minorities: climbing to the top of a ladder, then burning it so nobody else can climb up behind you. Once you do that, biology is destiny. her: OK, this bugs me..."Anders wants Larson to change the policy and post it on the club's Web site. "[If] she would just add a sentence saying the club is open to everyone who self-identifies as a woman," Anders would be satisfied."At this point, I just threw in a few noncommital affirmatives and let her tire herself out. She was more upset about people like me being included than people I was upset about people like me being excluded, and she made good use of the rope. her: the genderqueer and "identity politics" crowd really chaps my hide with this crap.I was briefly tempted to mention that all of us had been there, at one point even Maggie herself had once been a non-hormone-taking, non-transitioning bio-boy who identified as female. And I wouldn't have used the scare quotes around the phrase "IDs as female," either, because I'm not so disrespectful of the transitioning process. Then again, I don't believe biology is destiny. me: Huh.I had a pretty good explanation for the phenomenon she described, and have written about it at some length, but figured she wouldn't like it if I told her. me: No idea.Rhetorical question: is it possible to be truly happy that something exists if you still put scare quotes around it? Those who aren't down with it don't need to learn to coexist, though. It's all on those other flock, the ones who don't understand their destiny. | ||
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Wednesday, 13 August 2008 (projection psychology) 6:00pm I was told this morning that "Sherilyn" sounds like a Middle Earth name. Or did they say Middle Ages? One of those two. Either way, it's because it's the true name of the beast, kids. The observation was made this morning while I was making a reservation for this evening's spin class. It's with the guy I dug last week, the gay Tyrol. I also rather enjoyed the class last night, taught by a Castro fag as well. I did an hour of basic cardio yesterday morning, did again this morning, and plan to tomorrow morning as well. Getting up on time isn't really a problem, since I'm not sleeping much. At least, I keep waking up, moreso than I usually do. I don't know if it's because of my body reacting strangely to all the increased activity, let alone so much of it being relatively late in the evening, like spin classes at seven. Won't be doing any late gym stuff tomorrow, as I'm going to the revival of Kirk Read's This is the Thing and Friday night (though I'm meeting with Raphaela at noon) I'm probably going to end up at at the comedy show at The Dark Room, where I don't end up nearly as much as I used to. But, yeah, that's how things change, and right now I'm in a different place. I still love it there, but the way things balance out these days I just don't make it there as often, and this current balance is one I intend to keep at for as long as I can. Meanwhile, I have a lot more direct contact with my clients at work—being now both the customer liasion and the webmonkey rather than just webmonkey—and today was particularly fast-paced, as I was juggling all three of them. All seem happy with me, though, and Officer Dave observed that one in particular has never seemed so happy. (i'm already enjoying working with you. thank you for making the transition easy and especially fun.) He told me keep on doing whatever it is I'm doing. I intend to. 8:34pm thanks for singing along! So said Tyrol as I left the class today. He was referring to the fact that as we were doing our end-of-class cooldown stretches he was playing Radiohead's "Karma Police," and when he said to sing if we knew the words, I was already way ahead of him. By the time we got to the end, I was pretty much belting it out. There's something about doing that one stretch where your leg is parallel to the floor and perpendicular to your body and singing the final line of that song over and over which bordered on profound, at least by my standards. for a minute there, i lost myselfIt reminded me of a time shortly in the first few weeks after The Ex and I broke up, sometime in the latter half of January 1999. We were in the car, the semi-new Neon, and Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" was on the radio. She was singing along, something I always encouraged (I think, I seem to recall always encouraging to sing and thinking she had a beautiful voice, as far back as one of those long late-night phone calls when we just started dating in 1990 and she sang KISS's "Beth" to me, a song which at seventeen I'd never heard and which she adored unironically), and and she was really investing herself in this song, because it nailed where she was perfectly. i want to get awayI especially remember her voice soaring on the otherwise doggerel-ish yeah yeah yeah, like she needed to broadcast it to the heavens in order for the entire invocation of deliverance to be heard. I had no small amount of guilt about breaking up with her and thus breaking her heart, and that amped it up to a whole new level. I think what I'm doing right now, to some extent, is purging. Not just in the sense that losing weight will allow me to fit into my old shiny pants or capris or even (heaven forfend) the plaid skirt of yore, but I feel like I'm cleaning my slate, cleansing the palette, one of those cliches. I have a lot of emotional toxins still in my system, and this is how I get them out, how I prepare to make a fresh start, inasmuch as such a thing is possible. This doesn't mean I'm completely ridding myself of my past—I know such a thing isn't possible, and I wouldn't want it to be, since my only muse is time—but I need to feel different in order for things to truly be different. As I've been saying for as long as I've been saying anything (all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again), if I can't save my soul, I'll save my body. And, of course, there's the secks issue. Getting into shape increases my bangability. Doesn't guarantee that it'll happen anytime soon, or ever, but if I do get laid again, I'll be ready for it, what with having more energy and feeling sexier overall. And I say this now, but I'm rather content being single at the moment. It feels like where I'm meant to be. Considering that it's the first time since 1999 that I've been functionally single for any length of time, maybe it's overdue. I don't know. If a girl I found cute started flirting with me tomorrow I'd almost certainly go for it—epsecially if she just wanted to come back to the Black Light District to meet Perdita and wasn't necessarily looking for a full-on relationship—but if that doesn't happen tomorrow, that's okay, too. Maybe even better. I still have a ways to go. The recent weekend in Fresno was the first family gathering since 1989 that I didn't have a girlfriend with me, the first time in nineteen fracking years that I've gone solo, and it didn't feel weird to me at all. It's where I am. | ||
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 (mutual entanglements) 10:08am Had a session with Raphaela last night, third of ten. It's going well, and we're getting more intense. We told each other about our weekends, my druggy excursion on Saturday with Ilene and Raphaela's sexual escapades. We're pretty open with each other about these things, and I'd like to think it's exclusive to our interaction, but she's probably like that with all of her clients, at least those who feel comfortable being so frank. And that's cool, too. I was in bed by ten, and awoke at half past two. Nearly five hours, what my body considers to be enough sleep, but I went back to bed for a few hours, awaking from the first genuinely sexual dream I've had in a very long time. Got to the gym by seven and did the standard hourish of cardio. May or may not go back tonight after work. Probably will, since I can. I picked up the flyers for Working for the Weakened yesterday from the printing place in Oakland. It's an update of the old design, and came out pretty nice, I think. Still, as graphic designers go, I'm a pretty good writer. | ||
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Monday, 11 August 2008 (under zodiacal light) 9:31am Excellent Bad Movie Night yesterday. I was a little off my game, not getting as many laughs I care for, but that's okay. When you do a weekly show, some nights are going to be better than others. But we got a big, enthusiastic crowd composed of many newbies who seemed to have a great time. It was the sort of night that makes me proud of the show and my (if I may be so bold) scheduling acumen, and damned grateful that I get to do it at all. Which is how I feel about my life overall. | ||
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