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Friday, 31 October 2008 (world without tears) 7:17pm Dinner with The First was really nice last night. She revealed that she's a big fan of my writing, and even asked me to sign her copy of More Five Minute Erotica, which I found touching beyond words. We also talked some about my villainy and my bad reputation (about which, to coin a phrase, I don't give a damn, but I still find it facinating to analyze. Seems that at least one of her friends, someone whom I knew fairly well way back when, was surprised to discover that The First is hanging out with me. Really, people. It's about two and half months shy of ten years since we broke up, and she's happily married with a child, so even someone as fundamentally loathesome as myself should get a little slack by now. It went well with Raphaela's substitute at the gym this morning. He'd seen Raphaela and I working together many times before, so he had a pretty good idea of what we do. When we were done, he said that he'd really liked working with me, since I have good stability and pacing and breathing and I don't complain and don't swear at him, like other clients do. Go me! Afterward, I went to the ophthalmologist. Made my way through the negative abyss of the visual field test, sometimes imagining that I was a looking at an antimatter universe with the yellow light in the middle as God and the occasional blips of white light being the creation of life. (Hey, whatever gets me through it.) After seeing the results, the doctor then did the yellow-glue-and-blue-pokey-thing pressure test, which confirmed what the visual field test implied: my eyes are fine. I mean, I'm still myopic and need glasses to drive, but the pressure in my eyes is back down to normal levels—it's not uncommon for pressure to rise and lower over the course of a few days—and there are no signs of glaucoma. I'm still at risk because of my father's wonderful genes, and I'll be given the full battery of tests again next April, but for now, I'm good. And, yeah. Missed the company Halloween festivities. Pity, that. Sadie and I are planning on going party-hopping later this evening, and eventually I want to make it to The Power Exchange. Rumor has it that it's closing for good after tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that rumor is wrong this time. | ||
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Thursday, 30 October 2008 (fruits of my labor) 2:52pm The rain began today. I'll take it. Sadie and I had considered going to Bondage a Go Go last night, but decided against it, what with the encroaching coldness and the fact that I didn't really have the energy after going to Tyrol's spin class, and I didn't consider not going to Tyrol's spin class to be an option. Meanwhile, I'd completely forgotten about the big seventieth anniversary shindig for War of the Worlds at the Castro: a recreation of the original broadcast, followed by the 1953 George Pal film, which has been one of my favorite movies since I was a kid. Alas. I'm sure I would have had fun, but I'm not especially bothered that I missed it, either. There's always other stuff. After I finished re-reading Falling Into Manholes, I picked up where I left off on Passing for Thin. After that, I read Neal Pollock's Alternadad: The True Story of One Family's Struggle to Raise a Cool Kid in America. Seven-eighths of it, anyway. I enjoyed it, but there was a paragraph towards the end which completely threw me off track, to the extent that I had to set the book aside and move on to something else. That something else was Twilight: Losing Sight, Gaining Insight by Henry Grunwald, which I couldn't get into. I don't suppose it helped that it was a book about going blind from a degenerative eye disease, and I'd just found out that my indictators for glaucoma were creeping upward. (I'd also been reading Jose Saramago's Blindness, not at the gym but whenever I had time elsewhere, and decided it was for the best that I had to return it to the library before I was done.) So I switched to lee Israel's Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger, which took approximately no time whatsoever to read, and now I'm reading Suzanne Finnamore's Split: A Memoir of Divorce. It's much more familiar ground. Going to Oakland to have dinner with The First tonight. Tomorrow night, I can't speak for. | ||
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Wednesday, 29 October 2008 (another ungrasped thread) 3:42pm Matthue Roth wrote a glowing review of my story "Impurim" over at the My Jewish Learning blog, and said some very nice things about me. I wouldn't put myself in the top echelon of local writers, not by a long shot, but Matthue's always been one of my biggest fans. | ||
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Tuesday, 28 October 2008 (explaining it away) 3:13pm I weighed myself this morning, as I tend to do on Tuesday mornings. I'm at 190, the same as last week. Which is perfectly reasonable. Made an appointment at Lyon-Martin for next Monday. Unless they offer to do it, which I'm not expecting, I suppose I'll probably have to call my soon-to-be-former doctor's office to get my medical records from the last couple years. At the very least, I'll have to call them to tell them to fuck themselves. That's definitely my responsibility. Raphaela's out of town this upcoming Friday and Monday. One of the other trainers at the indie gym is going to be subbing for her on Friday, and since I have the Lyon-Martin appointment on Monday, it's probably just as well that i won't be seeing her. Though it's gonna feel weird. I doubled up on appointments yesterday, though. Before working out with Raphaela, I went to my ophthalmologist. I'd been lead to believe that it was for a visual field test, but the nurse told me it wasn't necessary since I had one earlier this year. Instead, she tested the pressure in my eyes. It involves putting yellow goo on my eyes, then poking them with a blue light. Much fun. A little while later, the actual ophthalmologist came in and said there'd been a miscommunication and I was in fact supposed to be given the visual field test—and, what's more, he didn't quite trust the numbers the nurse gave him from the pressure test, so he did it again. More yellow goo, more blue pokiness. Egads, my eyes are twitching just thinking about it. In any event, the second test confirmed what the first one said: that the pressure in my eyes has raised since April, more than would otherwise be expected in six months. And, since that's an early warning sign of glaucoma, it's a cause of some concern. I'll be going back in on Friday for the damned visual field test, after working out with Raphalea's sub. The net result of all this is that I'll be missing my office's Halloween festivities. Can't say I'm sad about that in the slightest. 5:22pm There's oxygen and heat, but nothing left to burn, so the fire dies. sometime after midnight oh, please. i couldn't tell you how many edens i've been cast out of. seriously, i stopped counting after the first dozen. | ||
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Monday, 27 October 2008 (bring me alive) 10:08am Something is found, something is lost: my application for a group show in next year's National Queer Arts Festival has been rejected. So it goes, and that's okay. It just means I won't have to curate a group show and develop a solo show at the same time, which is for the best. And I got the news in the midst of an otherwise excellent weekend, so I have no complaints. | ||
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Sunday, 26 October 2008 (out of the tunnel) 7:12pm Wow. Rock Band 2 is an incredibly addictive game. Who knew? | ||
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Saturday, 25 October 2008 (she turned the light off) sometime after midnight Just got home at half past five in the morning, around the time that I'm usually get up during the week. It's been a while since I've seen the morning from this side. Best of all, I did it without any stimulants, not an drop of caffeine or anything else. | ||
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Friday, 24 October 2008 (searching its still refrain) 5:12pm This has been the cycle over the past few years: in October 2004, it was Collette. Granted, all we did was make out, and after Halloween we didn't hook up again the following April after Maddy and I broke up, but it started in October. In September 2005, there was Vash. November 2006 was Jezebel, and October 2007 brought Ripley. None of those were the most successful of relationships, but all the same, that's when they started. It's a personal autumnal phenomenon. Maybe that's I'm falling so damn hard for Laura: my heart is expecting it, that annual influx of emotion and passion. Something tells me it's going to have to go without requitement this time. And, what the hell, this year has been about change and breaking of old patterns, so maybe it's for the best that I dodge the bullet. I don't want to dodge it, I want it to hit me full on between the ribs like it always does—and who knows? maybe it wouldn't end badly for a change—but it's not up to me. Either way, I've been putting "This Magic Stuff" by Nina Hynes on repeat quite a lot. | ||
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Thursday, 23 October 2008 (sweet old world) 2:56pm A mere twenty months after I began working on it, "In the Shadow of the Valley" has been accepted into the femme visibilty anthology. Seems the publisher has decided to do it as two volumes, meaning there's room for my essay. It was a narrow margin, to be sure, but I'm in. In addition to being my fifth anthology, this is the first time I've been published by an editor who doesn't know me personally, where I got in solely on the strength of the writing. That's a milestone, by gods. The expected publishing date is March of next year. We'll see. Bunny's going to come to Sadie's show this Saturday, and I've also invited Leni and Ilene. I want friends there. I originally invited Laura, who said she'd love to go, but is going to be out of town this weekend. I'm counting that as a positive response. My original plans for this evening involved going to Oakland to have dinner with The First, but she had to postpone. (Which is more than fair, since I did the same thing last month.) So, I went to the gym, second time today. Went yesterday morning, and then Tyrol's spin class in the evening. And twice on Tuesday, morning and afternoon. Tomorrow I'll be going once, to work with Raphaela, and Saturday will be once, for Tyrol's class in the evening. Sunday's my day off. This is the only way it works. | ||
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Wednesday, 22 October 2008 (same bullet, different trajectory) 4:08pm So I wrote the guy who has a video of last Thursday's open mic, asking if I can get copies of mine and Laura's readings. This was his response: SherilynYay! The Sauaslito hippies like me! Never can tell. It's (ahem) funny, I hadn't thought of the piece I read as being especially humorous. I think of it mostly as erotica, or at least my equivalent of erotica, which doesn't much resemble anyone else's. But there's some jokes and laugh lines in there too, and I that's what people respond to, especially when there isn't much else levity in the show. In retrospect, I think Laura and I were the only ones who intentionally went for laughs, though neither of our pieces were straight-ahead comedy. And, yeah, there was a bit of an Obama theme running through much of the show. It's what they're into. | ||
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Tuesday, 21 October 2008 (my half of the ransom) 4:11pm I called it. I totally called it. I hate my doctor so much. Lessee. Didn't notice that his problem patient has lost fifteen pounds and who knows how many inches in circumferences of various limbs. Said you're thirty-four, right? when I turned thirty-five before the last time he saw me. When he asked about my sex life and I said I wasn't dating, he asked if that was on purpose. I said the opportunity hadn't arisen, which is true, and there was no way I was going to about the party a couple weeks back or that there's a girl I really want to date but I have no reason to believe she's into me as anything but a friend (and she doesn't know yet that I like her because I'm going to wait to tell in her person, and I can only hope that the notion of me being crushed out on her doesn't squick her out too much, and who could blame her if it did? but all I know is that for now, my heart's open and aflame in a way it hasn't been since the early days of Vash), because fuck him, he doesn't get know about my personal life, it's not his godsdamned business and certainly not his right or privilege, he ain't my shrink or my rabbi or my trainer and I don't have a shrink or a rabbi, so to reiterate, Fuck. Him. He asks how I'm doing on the current dosage, I say it's fine and I'd like to keep it where it is. He asks why I'd object to lowering it, and gods, we've been over this so many times, but I tell him again: I know from experience, specifying that I've been on estrogen for ten years, that when my hormone levels go down it throws off everything else, and I'm happy with them the way they are right now, not mentioning that my exercise and dietary changes are what I'm afraid of messing with, but, again, fuck him. I want to say blow me, but he'd probably just use that as another example of Why I'm Not Really A Transsexual, because by his reckoning a real transsexual is too neurotic about their birth genitals to say something like that, even in the context of a vulgar insult. He tells me that the lower the dose of estrogen, the lower the risk of side effects...the side effects that I've never experienced before, even at much higher levels. Then there was this: we've feminized you as much as we can. Okay, first: don't you dare take credit for it. You haven't earned the right to use the first person plural in regards to my transitioning. Secondly, feminization as an incremental process is not the issue. I'm willing to accept that my body is as femmed as hormones can make it, which is why I know it's up to me to get in shape and be healthy now, so that all the hard work of the hormones isn't hidden under so many layers of fat and disused muscles. Rather, it's about what my hormone levels do to my emotional state at any given time, and I know from having been estrogen on them since 1998. That was a point which I emphasized over and over, that I've been on hormones for a decade plus a month, considering that during an appointment earlier this year, he actually asked me if I'd ever been hormones before seeing him. So it's a given that he doesn't care about my medical history and just considers me some boy off the street who's pulling a scam on him. In any event, he finally referenced that during his litany of Scary Things To Convince Me To Let Him Lower My Dosage: the levels that had an effect on you ten years ago won't necessarily have the same effect now. There was a certain snark in his voice when he said "ten years," a tone which said yeah, right, you've been doing this for ten years and have a pretty good idea of how your body works. Afterward, I had an appointment with Raphaela, who took my monthly measurements. These are my numbers:
I can't speak for why my left thigh has gotten bigger expect maybe building muscle in the Tyrol's class has something to do with it, or maybe I'm an imperfect, asymmetrical being. In any event, considering that the first set of measurements was taken two weeks after my last appointment with him, but before Raphaela and I started actually doing stuff, one would think that the change would be noticeable, especially to someone tasked with monitoring my health. My weight has also dropped a good fifteen pounds since then, too, though he hasn't put me on a scale in several months, and I guess he can't be expected to eyeball something like that. Because, again, he's only my doctor. No, scratch that. He's a fucking hormone dispenser, a cranky and discouraging one at that, and one I'm completely fracking sick of. I tried calling Lyon-Martin Health Services this morning to see if they take my insurance, but my cell phone decided to not work. Ah, technology: he only thing less reliable than humanity. I'll be giving it another shot tomorrow, and I've also emailed them. Part of me feels a little guilty about going to what's essentially a free clinic with my big fancy corporate insurance, but, the thing of it is, they have what i need: Founded in 1979 by a group of medical providers and health activists, Lyon-Martin bridges the gap in sensitive health services available to low-income, uninsured women (primarily lesbians and bisexual women) and transgender people, who have often tended to go longer without routine care because of the difficulty in finding culturally sensitive health providers.Yes. The smug, balding little fuck I've been seeing is a lot of things, but culturally sensitive ain't one of them. Isn't so good with the "providing health" thing, either. So. And here's the thing: if I do start going to the clinic and they tell me I need to lower my dose? I will, especially if they live up to their hype and are actually respectful, if whatever doctor I end up with actually seems to give a half a shit about me and believes me when I say I'm transsexual and bothers to look at my decade's worth of medical history. As it is, I wouldn't believe my current doctor if he told me my blood was red. Probably because his own is black and oily. 7:25pm At Gold's, Raphaela's having me use a new (to me) machine: the Stairmaster PT 7000 Gauntlet Stepper. It's quite evil. She's going to be out of town Friday of next week, as well as during a big chunk of November. One of the other trainers at the indie gym will be subbing for her with me while she's gone, but she's made me promise—several times—that I won't defect. I really won't. In addition to the fact that I don't want to and I want us to keep doing what we're doing for as long as we can, it would probably break her heart. (Her separation anxieties are almost as strong as mine.) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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