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Friday, 10 March 2000 (cris d'aveugle (1873) (blind man's cry)) 7:25am The latest in a long line of "I'll believe it when it happen" clubbing plans: we're going to Assimilate 2000 tonight. 8:15am The door did not slam, except perhaps metaphorically. 12:38pm when we think back to all this 12:46pm Change of plans. (My, what a shock.) Looks like Assimilate isn't happening tonight after all. Rather, another Shrine spinoff, Cypher, this time at the Death Guild venue. That's what I get for missing staff meetings, I guess. In a lot of ways, this is just as well, since it's a nicer location and much more muni accessible. Wow. Haven't taken public transportation to a club in a long, long time....how retro...I was never a babybat per se, but if I had been, I'd be flashing back to those days... 8:54pm Ah, full battle gear. Even when I used to do this on a regular basis, it didn't feel like often enough. And now that it's become relatively rare, it really doesn't feel like often enough. (Damn, I'm profound tonight.) One Hansen's Energy drink thing, one XTC and probably before the evening's over more Penguin Mints than I can count. Right about now, I actually wish I drank coffee. I want to be amped. I want to be in a different state of mind than the one in which I exist 99% of the time. Reading Drawing Blood isn't helping much—it makes me realize how long it's been since I've smoked grass. Last September, I guess? Something like that. I miss it. I have no intention of reaching stoner levels of usage, but at the same time, I miss lighting up and watching Star Trek: Voyager, a very pleasant ritual which has long since passed into memory. An indulgence? Certainly. A sin? Most likely. Am I perfect? Not the last time I checked.i'm not the kind of girl you take home
For tonight, though, I'll just have to settle for dancing, caffeine and epinephrine. A visit to that other place
will wait for another time.
After having watched me for the first time tonight, Maddy tells me I'm sexy when I dance. (Or is it sexxy? I forgot to ask.) She's entirely too generous.
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Thursday, 9 March 2000 (artémis (1854)) 7:05am Last year, during the thick of the breakup with The Ex, it was suggested that I was being too nice. Not standing up for myself enough.
I guess, like Lou said, those were different times.
Which means I'll start going to gym now, right? Yeah, sure it does.
Gotta do something, though. (Oooh, how's that for post-diet resolve?)
Hadn't planned to go out for lunch at all, but Summer came by to score some vicodin for her latest migraine, and she had some time to kill. So we walked around for a bit, and my stomach led the way. We stopped at an ATM, and as she was using it I found myself angling around so I could see myself in the little convex mirror. I'll admit that my narcissism sometimes even astonishes me, but it made sense. I wasn't admiring my reflection so much as I was...I'm not sure what the proper verb is. Whatever it is, I've been doing a lot of it lately. Neither "accepting" and/or "coming to terms" quite works, either. I think my endoc's comment about the estrogen feminizing the shape of my face has resulted in me actively looking for evidence, so to speak. Just looking at myself in a regular mirror doesn't quite work (thankfully, because I do have my limits); stolen glances in car windows and other such distorted views give a more accurate impression, I believe. What is it I see in that moment? If first impressions are the most impression, what does the glimpse tell me?
In this case, I found I didn't
feel nearly as inadequate beside (the blissfully unaware) Summer as I used to. Which I think is a
good sign, though I should definitely go easy on the burritos.
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Wednesday, 8 March 2000 (l'heautontimioroumenos (1857) (self-tormentor)) 9:48am I think I've figured it out: The Fidget Queen's sense of self is based on how much noise he makes. The more noise he makes, the more other people are aware of him. The more other people are aware of him, the more he actually exists. It's a tree-falling-in-the-forest kinda thing. What brings this to mind right now are his pants. His pants are not my favorite subject by any means, and if I could go the rest of my life without ever thinking about his pants I'd die content, but unfortunately they're loud. They make mucho noise when he walks. It's very unnerving. schwip schwip schwip schwip, something like that. I have no idea what the fabric is, but it's kinda shiny, and the pants are oversized with big pockets. Summer was looking at a pair very similar to them at The Gap yesterday (clothes TFQ would like at The Gap? surprise factor: nil), commenting that she could never wear them because they'd make so much noise. I shuddered my assent. Now, I realize the potential hypocrisy in this: after all, what is a web journal if not a plea for attention, and a more blatant one at that? Fair enough. However, I may be a exhibitionist, but I ain't a flasher. Nobody has to read my rattle-banging if they don't want to. Anyone not hard of hearing has to deal with the sound of the material rubbing against his thighs whether they want to or not. Certainly nobody can deny he exists. Something Pike said a few weeks back just really struck me. I was getting snarky about the teletubbies and furbies on TFQ's desk, and Pike replied: OK, the teletubbies I can understand. Not forgive, but understand. "Brightly colored for a low IQ audience?" Isn't that Rave 'culture'?
Yes, of course. He's a raver, or at least wants to be.
Suddenly, it all makes a lot more sense.
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Tuesday, 7 March 2000 (la trezième revient (the thirteenth returns)) 9:25am My apparent desire to lose weight without breaking a sweat seems to be greater than my hatred of beets, for it is Day One again. 10:38am ...then again, maybe not. I'm going to lunch with Summer, and sounds like we both have some sorrows to drown...and, worse, she used those evil words "retail therapy"—then again, she also mentioned it in conjunction with the equally evil words "The Gap," so I'm guessing I'll behave myself... 1:17pm Yuck. If I never set foot in The Gap again for the rest of my life, it'll be too soon. 3:21pm Despite seemingly endless delays, I'll be getting DSL at the end of the month. I had strongly considered just cancelling my order altogether, but I guess my patience held out longer than I expected it to. Maddy seems quite enthusiastic about it, which is good a sign as I could hope for... 10:19pm When did your parents first ask you if you were on drugs? If you're a gen-X'er, the question almost certainly came up at least once. We grew up during the heavy anti-drug paranoia of the "Just Say No" years, and drugs were usually automatically suspected to explain away any strange behavior. Since drugs are the source of all evil in the world, you know. In my case, it was from waking up on the couch. I have no idea how I ended up there; I went to sleep on my bed, and I woke up on the couch in the living room, blanket and all. Standing over me was my mother, a look of extreme consternation on her face, asking me if I was on drugs. I assured her I wasn't (utterly true; I'd done absolutely no controlled substances at that point, legal or otherwise), and she didn't seem entirely convinced. After all, what else could explain how I ended up on the couch but DRUGS? I can only assume she was unaware of my tendency to essentially sleepwalk, to get out of bed and do things without being entirely awake. And even if she had been aware of it, that still doesn't rule out the possibility of DRUGS. Meanwhile, here in the once-great state of California, the reprehensible Proposition 22 has passed, effectively banning gay marriage. Which wasn't entirely legal to begin with and as such the measure was meaningless, but it passed by a substantial margin anyway. In order to, no doubt, "send a message." The voters of California have never disgusted me quite as much as they do right now.
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Monday, 6 March 2000 (sono l'antichristo) 7:31am because she lets me cling, mom. because i can. why won't you understand? why can't you let me have this? i need it so much... 10:19am The hippie was busking in Embarcadero station this morning, this time playing Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow." Although I once again walked by, I was tempted to point out that he was profiting from the song written by a man who has since become a fundamentalist Muslim and supported the fatwa, or religious verdict very similar to a death sentence, against Salman Rushdie. Not exactly "peace and love" by any standard I'm familiar with. Which is fine, anyone is free to follow any faith they care to; I just hope the hippie was aware of the slight moral paradox. It's not my job to teach him, though. 1:46pm As I was walking up the stairs to my endocrinologist's office on Thursday, a wave of fatigue hit me. Not from the walk, but just from the entire process. Gads, not these hoops again...I'm so tired of jumping... The doctor's scale said 186. At least, that's right about where it was hovering when the nurse, a new girl who was clearly having difficulty reconciling the person standing on the scale with the appellation "Miss Connelly" (and believe me when I tell you I feel for her), declared it official. Considering that my scale at home said 190, I wasn't about to argue. My endoc seemed very pleased with it, certainly. 3 lbs since September! I declined to mention that I've been to at least 200 and back since then. It's all about the broad strokes with her. I made the mistake of mentioning that I'd been dieting, and she objected strongly to the term. I suppose that with many of her patients, diet is a verboten word amongst her patients. She's not a shrink, not by a long shot, but I don't doubt that on the whole her clientele is even more screwed up than I am. Attention to broad strokes isn't to say she doesn't care about the little details. She was pleased as punch to see the red chunk in my hair, which I had to explain wasn't a ribbon, but not my own hair, either, as well as the fishnet on my arm—she asked if it was the current style, and I managed to avoid saying "Um, not outside of goth clubs, no." Physically speaking, she says I'm coming along nicely. More or less. She observed that the fat on my face is redistributing itself into a more feminine shape. I'm taking her word for it. (Whether such a thing is even possible, that hormones could affect the shape of a face,is something The Ex and I disagreed strongly.) Then again, my breasts seem to be underacheivers. This comes from the clinical method of me lifting up my shirt and her slightly squeezing my breasts. From this, she gathers that my "receptors" aren't quite kicking in as much as they should be. Not much more can be done hormonally, though; they're going to grow as much as they're genetically predisposed to grow, and not much can be done about it. The only female of blood relation I can compare myself to is my mother, whose own mammaries are modest at best. I take that to be a good sign, since I don't want big breasts. I've never found them attractive, either on someone else or as a possibility for myself. (If you've seen Fight Club, you have some idea of my worst-case scenario.) Since I knew she was going to say it anyway, I cut her off at the proverbial pass and told her that yes, I know, even for being relatively small my breasts still require support, but it ain't easy to find. In the peculiar world that is bra sizing, those that would be big enough to go around such a considerable rib cage also presumes that the breasts are proportionally as big. Not in my case, it would seem. The obvious answer, of course, is a sports bra. Thank you, Target. I also asked who she might recommend me to for an orchiectomy. I'm also going to be contacting my old shrink, since there's a distinct possibility I'll be needing paperwork from her. "Orchiectomy" is castration with a very silly name. It's part of the sex reassignment surgery, which I still haven't decided for certain about, but not limited to it. It's not uncommon in cases of testicular cancer (again I refer to Fight Club), although most people are probably most familiar with the concept in recent years in connection with the Heaven's Gate cult. Yep. Swell. As if being a tranny wasn't enough of a cultural punchline to begin with... It's actual a fairly simple procedure, and not quite as brutal as most people tend to think. (No garden shears are necessary.) The penis, for example, goes untouched. An incision is made in the scrotum, the testes are removed, and that's pretty much that. Yeah, I know, even I squirm a little bit at the thought. Can't help it. I have no great love for those testosterone-producing machines and don't doubt that I'll be better off without them, but it's still an awfully damn sensitive area. Just because one doesn't care for one's nuts doesn't mean that one wants to be kicked in them, y'know what I mean? Whether your manhood is an essential part of your identity or something that can cause an unsightly bulge in a smooth skirt, it is a very very very physically delicate part of the body. One of the primary benefits would be that I wouldn't have to take as much in terms of hormones; since my body's testosterone production would be effectively zilch, one premarin a day would be plenty, which is both less annoying and doesn't put as much of a strain on my liver. The testosterone production is significantly lower than it once was, my body's still having to deal with two sets of hormones going through it. Not good, although an excellent excuse not to drink or smoke cigarettes. The dodgy part is, the scrotum is used in the actual SRS, and every bit counts. In fact, the incision in the scrotum is crucial to the creation of the so-called neovagina, so it's quite important that if an orchie is performed in advance of the primary surgery, the surgeon in question is aware of how it was done. Beginning to get a sense of what a logistical headache this can be?
In any event, I'll be writing my old shrink for the second of what will probably be many
opinions...
i will give my best today 8:43pm Laurel's going to Death Guild tonight. I'm officially jealous. sometime after midnight QED.
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Sunday, 5 March 2000 (lamentations) 2:51pm Again with the fucking Sundays. Can't we just make it two Saturdays or something? Does this day really need to exist? I do remember the dream from this morning, and frankly, I'm rather embarrassed: it involved Y2K. Huh? This is what my mind dredges up for me, an overhyped non-event that's already come and gone with a whimper? What the fuck? And it wasn't even like it actually happened, a very enjoyable night at Dana's, but more like my standard anxiety dreams. I've said it before and I've said it again: my subconscious hates me. It was the perfect end to a perfect day, though. Much random pain as Phil accidentally jabbed me with the needle on a few occasions, plus he was experimenting with a new topical anesthetic (not informing me of this until after he put it on) which didn't really work very well at all. On the plus side, he did manage to clear my entire face in four hours, including the space directly below the chin which typically gets ignored. I don't know how much vicodin I took. More than usual. It still wasn't enough. Sometimes I wonder if it really can be, or if it's just a placebo. The Vicodin Crash is real enough, and I was feeling it later in the day, but that could still be a placebo effect. By the time we hit the road, the Bay Bridge already was backed up, so we headed into Berkeley and killed time there. If only retail therapy had a sliding scale, then I wouldn't have spent so much money. But I was having a hard time telling myself "no," and still spent less than others might have in a similar mood. Got a very cool Lenore doll from Hot Topic, at least. (Oh, not that I'd shop at Hot Topic. Heaven forbid I would do such a thing as that.)
It was raining. Hard. We didn't actually attempt to drive back into SF
until 8pm, and not only was it getting worse, the accidents were piling
up. We made a fairly long detour to the El Cerrito Target (hey, they
do still carry Street Wear! oh well, one out of three ain't bad) and hid out there for an hour or so. It's
a truly sorry state of affairs when the a Target sign becomes an oasis.
But inside it wasn't raining and we didn't have to deal with the traffic,
and that's what matters. Next time, we're probably going to wise up and
just take BART...
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Saturday, 4 March 2000 (psalm 88) 4:25am I don't remember the dream which drove me away from bed. I don't suppose it matters. But Madeline is still there, and so I'll return.
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Friday, 3 March 2000 (psalm 22) 7:34am i guess all this history 9:41am There was a guy playing the accordion in the Microsoft-branded Embarcadero station this morning. I gave him a quarter; accordion and banjo players, as a rule, are the only people I'll give money to. Otherwise, my desensitization is pretty well established, although I still get annoyed by the panhandlers on Haight or Telegraph. Yeah, I know I'm a bad person.
As buskers go, the worst is the sanctimonious old hippie (is there any other kind?) occasionally in Embarcadero with
his acoustic guitar playing a wretched and apparently very limited repertoire of Peter, Paul & Mary songs. I swear,
sometimes I just want to grab his guitar during one of his
frequent heartfelt renditions of "Leaving on a Jet Plane," smash it against the
wall and scream, "Bob Dylan died for your sins, you dumb fuck! He saved us from this wimpy shit, don't you realize that?"
One of these days...
I understand, my dear friend. I wish you well, and you know where to find us.
If nothing else, to get the password to the net.goth journals ring. He offered me admin privileges back in August (my nostalgia for that
time period is growing by leaps and bounds),
but nothing ever came of it. The tree is in serious need of pruning, so to speak.
I was at a loss for words. I really had no idea what to say; it simply wasn't something I thought much about. Except for working and a then-obsessive exercise regimen, I didn't do much of anything. Since I was still a few hours away from my first club visit, that wasn't exactly an option. The best I could come up with was watching a really good movie. I admit it sounds rather lame, and Summer got that somewhat confused look that I've come to know so well, but there it is. For me, quite often the greatest pleasure comes from a watching the right kind of movie, one that reaffirms my faith in film as potentially the greatest art. And, more importantly, rivets me from beginning to end. Too often, film snobs will heap praise upon fundamentally boring movies just because of a perceived "importance." Fuck that. It's gotta be beautiful, moving and entertaining. Such as Bringing Out the Dead, which I took Maddy to see at The Red Vic tonight. It's the kind of story I've always wanted to tell: a struggle for spiritual redemption while slipping into insanity. Redemption and insanity have always been my favorite themes. Saving those who may not want to be saved, in hopes that you may find your own salvation along the way. (ifican'tsavemysoul) Brings Fearless to mind, which I haven't watched in a long time... I believe I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Martin Scorsese is god. It's the only logical explanation. Roger Ebert described Scorsese's films as lacking in irony, meaning that nothing in the film is presented as a nod-wink oh aren't we all so clever and above this in the manner of something like, say, Fight Club. (Don't get me wrong, I loved Fight Club. Unlike most of the aforementioned film snobs—having spent much of the last decade working in video stores and earning a Cinema degree at SFSU, I've had to put up with my fair share of them—I'm capable of liking more than one kind of movie, and willing to admit it in public. I will never deny having seen Cabin Boy more than once in the theater. On the other hand, all the wild horses in the world couldn't drag me near Baby Geniuses or Stuart Little. I do have my limits. But I digress.) This may be part of why his movies speak to me so much. They're honest. They're about what the characters are feeling, and what they're feeling is right up there on the screen. Visually, they tend to have a wondefully hallucinatory quality about them to begin with—the man's not afraid to get creative with the medium of film, and like with Casino, he's using Oliver Stone's genius cinematographer Robert Richardson—though this may be the first time he's actually made a drug-induced hallucination scene per se. About damned time. Made me realize how long it's been since I've done anything like that (although the scene in the film was darker and more intense than anything I've ever experiened), even something like smoking grass, a notion driven home by a head shop we browsed through on the way back to the car. Look, we were in the Haight, okay? It's nearly impossible to go from Point A to Point B without passing by at least one place selling pipes. Saturday night, Taxi Driver is playing at the Castro...
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Thursday, 2 March 2000 (yiati o ozoe) 8:36am Seeing my endocrinologist today for the first time since (November?). I am not expecting great things, although I do plan to ask who she recommends for an orchie. Not that I'm definitely getting one, but it's an option which bears exploration. Otherwise, I'm treading water, so to speak. I also need to talk to Brian about the potential job offer. He deserves as much warning as possible. When introducing me to his girlfriend a while back, he referred to me as "the main reason I come here every day." While I realize that's an exaggeration, I do believe that one of the things that keeps him going in what can be an exceedingly frustrating job is working with someone of a like mind, and there's no question that him and I click in a big way. Leaving would almost feel like a betrayal...unless I would be able to bring him along... Then there's the question of comfort. I suppose it could also be called a "rut," but there's no question that I've got a pretty good rut going here. Yeah, I bitch and moan about my surroundings, but it's mostly about TFQ and not a compelling reason to leaving entirely. The kind of comfort I have here is a rare and wonderful thing for a tranny, and I know how lucky I am. It's not uncommon, even in this day and age, to be fired upon coming out. Instead, I have HR's promise of support, and Trevor's pretty much blazed that trail for me anyway. (He's much braver than I.) Against all odds, I have job security. I'd need a damn good reason to leave this.
That reason, of course, would be money.
This is me indulging myself. Beets be damned.
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Wednesday, 1 March 2000 (deliver me) 10:59am A much better ride this morning, even if we did have to switch trains at West Portal. hang on. just hang on. you knew it would be rough at times. you can make it. 12:42pm Beeg plans are being made this weekend for Zaleska's visit. It's looking less and less likely that Maddy and I will be taking part. 2:11pm My old friend Dwight, who is essentially reponsible for me getting the job I have now (we worked together at Autodesk, then he moved on to Snap.com, one thing led to another, etc), just wrote from his new job. He says, "There are some great opportunities here at the moment, just wondering if you wanted to talk." Uh-oh.
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