looking

2009-09-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

When I do this, when I am defensive about our situation, our compromises, when I shoulder a weight and determine to bear it, Rachel fades. In my session, tonight, I felt very fragmented, very inauthentic. My male self was at a session, and Rachel was hiding inside. It seems as if my ability to bear, my ability to shrug-off the unpalatable, is deeply intertwined with my male identity.

It does, in fact, bring to mind the episode of my withdrawal from school. My family repeatedly and persistently urged me to _muddle through_, to complete the appointed curriculum. It was a deeply personal victory, that I still feel today, for me to reject that, to say "No! This is wrong! I should not ignore my difficulties!" It may be no coincidence that it was during that summer that I began to experiment and question my gender.

2009-08-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a while. I have a job. I've been at it a week. The baby crawls everywhere, climbs stairs, cruises along things with abandon, and looks like a tiny version of my wife. My daughter has started preschool. She speaks to them in Mandarin and English, they speak back in English and Japanese and Mandarin. The end result is confused parents but a very happy 4 year old. My wife's volunteer/career projects continue to take-off like nothing I've ever seen before. As for myself, well, I will receive a paycheck tomorrow, and will soon be able to resume depilation. I don't really know when hormones will begin. Once my wife and I cross that bridge, I suppose.

I find, sometimes, that all I really need to be happy is to be able to spend time with my family, knowing that they love me as I am. More frequently, though, if I didn't have a surety of transition ahead, I'd go mad. Or close-up and lock myself away again -- which is much the same thing, really.

In all honesty, I'm brimming over with reflections and emotions, but most of them are private and don't concern the public world. Unfortunately, my journal site was a casualty of a catastrophic hard drive failure, sometime in the last couple of weeks. This leaves me ... frustrated, mostly, as the last thing I want to do when trying to articulate myself in text is to tinker with databases. Meh.

Still jobless, Baby sleeping better

2009-05-19T11:12:00.001-07:00

Well, I sure am rotten at this regular-posting thing, don't I?

I'm kicking this job search thing into a much higher gear than I thought I was capable of. It's not the "50 to 100 a week" that the somewhat arrogantly entrepreneurial founder of Rapleaf endorses, but it's much better than I was doing. And no, despite initial attraction, this passionate language-design, open-source-contributing, distributed-IR veteran developer will not be applying for work there; Mr. Hoffman's selection techniques are really quite effective. Meh.

The downside, of course, to all this company-surfing and cover letter writing is the occasional brush with, as my spouse likes to say, SRSLY SKEEVY recruiter types -- the sort that latches-onto your résumé and won't stop representing you to companies until you issue a cease-and-desist letter. I understand that the world at large does not universally share my conception of professionalism, nor should I expect it to. This doesn't mean I have to like it, though. Why can't these people understand that I have good reasons for selecting specific companies -- benefits and HRC Corporate Equality Index scores being big ones -- that I do not intend either to justify or even to share? Seriously, people. "Skeevy" is right.

The good news is that I'm starting to get over some of my fear and loathing of interviews. Well, not really. I still hate them. But I'm dealing. I seem to be better at writing cover letters than I had expected, too, which is heartening. And now, back to the grueling self-promotion.

me = very very very tired

2009-05-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

So. Time to chatter to my diary about how I'm doing.

AGH.

Baby is not sleeping.

Correction: baby is sleeping. Baby is sleeping quite a lot, in fact. However, baby is not sleeping when I need him to be sleeping, namely between 2am and 6am. Well, okay; more accurately, he's not allowing me to sleep during those hours. He gets plenty of sleep.

General stress kept me from unwinding until, oh, 2:30 this morning. At which point, like clockwork, the little angel woke up, hungry. Long story short, we were up, we were down, we were up again, we tried the bassinet (he was having none of that), we tried co-sleeping (he loved it, but I couldn't fall asleep -- I haven't co-slept with an infant enough to really relax, much as I otherwise enjoyed it), and hey, look, it was 6am, time to remedicate and start another day. For the record, "we" refers to me and my baby; my dear wife was fortunate enough, this time, to remain asleep for nearly all of the drama.

So. I am physically incapable of staying angry at this child. He is an angel boy. He is beyond sweet-tempered -- he's just in a near-permanent good mood. And no, that's not just his parent's perspective; all who encounter him remark (generally in tones of disbelief) at his unshakably happy disposition. I shouted at him deliriously a couple of times around 6am when he refused to stop squealing happily and thumping the walls of his bassinet, but then picked him up and laid him down next to me, and when next I opened my eyes there was his tiny cherubic face beaming awe and delight into mine, clearly transfixed with wonder at being in mama's bed. What was I supposed to do in the face of that? I melted. And so I laughed it all off as best I could, remedicated, and went about waking-up [the rest of] my family.

Dear Diary

2009-05-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

In the interest of capturing some of the fog of reflection that's settled over me during my lengthy hiatus from employment, I'm now going to attempt to commit to at least one entry a day until such time as I either thoroughly exhaust my supply of novel insights or am once again gainfully employed. This ought to prove interesting.

To what end?

2009-05-10T01:00:00.000-07:00

Why is it that I write these posts, these public journal entries? It's not that they have an audience, or that I'm trying to reach anyone. I don't promote myself anywhere; this really can only be described as a diary with neither cover nor lock.

Something in Jenny Boylan's She's Not There helps me to an answer. Like the putative misguided participant in a creative writing workshop, my stories and remarks swell with angst and banal detail where they lack in charm and intrigue. Unlike the aspiring author, though, charm and intrigue -- the amusement and enlightenment of a reading audience -- are not my aims. I may someday feel like writing a memoir -- heaven knows, my family has given me enough lunatic excitement over the years to make a good read -- and at that juncture I shall commence the process of editing and selection. Until such time, however, I use this page as a means to clarity.

As so much of this course I've set is clouded and hidden, the more memory I maintain of whence I've come the better. I am, therefore, aiming to capture for myself moments of insight and of emotion. As a diarist, I'm documenting me whenever and wherever I become momentarily lucid. As a reader, I am hoping to come to a deeper and broader understanding of myself. For the present, any other uses really must remain secondary.

Aaand this still needs editing. Oh well. In due course.

visiting the old home

2009-04-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

Standing in the hallway for hours, looking at pictures in old photo albums, I notice things. I am so unhappy-looking, so serious, in these pictures. They date from eight to eighteen years of age.

There are a few exceptions. A few images from the end of my senior year of high school have smiles — what I remember of the time is that my future was an open book, full of the promise of adventure. I’d been accepted to a marvelous school, I had shaved my beard and begun to think more honestly about my gender. I had reason to be optimistic.

The other systematic exception is in pictures from my teens in which I am interacting with children. I am happy, there. I don’t look calculating. I don’t look reserved. I look like I feel genuine.

The only other time I have seen that genuine look is as a little child, in even earlier pictures, and only when I’m expressing excitement or distaste. When I’m calm … I look thoughtful. I look wistful. I don’t look present. I’m not there.

And then … then I see a picture of myself in a swimming pool, and there’s a stab of pain. I should have been in a one-piece, with narrower shoulders, a small but defined chest, a too-high forehead and longer limbs than I knew what to do with, spending a mid-teens summer vacation trying to come to terms with young womanhood in America in the early nineties. Instead, I’m in swim trunks, baffled and uncertain about developing chest and facial hair, completely failing to come to terms with an even more oppressed and confusing status.

I cry. All those years of isolation in rich company, imprisonment in privilege. I never stopped trying to understand — not once — who and what I was, but I only rarely paused in my desperate flight from the answer. Transsexual. Transgender.

I cry because I remember the moment so well. I remember feeling, clearly, what I just wrote, above: every—single—thought. I don’t remember what I was thinking — the words, the meanings I attached to them, the boxes in my head into which I finally shoved them, at a loss for options. I could probably reconstruct them, now, if I tried, but I have no desire to do so. I have options, now. I have words for these feelings. Loneliness, isolation, and fear. Heartache. Regret; longing. Grief. Deep wells of grief. Such sorrow, over what I was afraid to do, what I was afraid to claim, to demand. Womanhood. My body. My name. Me.

It’s funny how in times of emotion, it’s words — “womanhood”, “transsexual”, “name” — that I fall back upon. It’s simple, powerful words — the right words, hard-won over many years — that are the foundation-stones of my redoubt, my keep. They are my spell, my name, my Polaris. I don’t so much write about these feelings, articulate them, as — and here, here’s an analogy whose awkwardness leaves me embarrassed, but which I can’t seem to quash my fondness for — as toss words onto a Pollock canvas and mutely ponder the wreckage. It paints a map, in adolescent, stuttering cadences, to authenticity.

booooring / good news / whinyriffic

2009-04-15T14:35:00.001-07:00

So. Attractive Job Prospect apparently wants me to go and visit them to interview some more, and is still interested. I appear to be unable to read these things. *sigh*.

Well, anyhow, thank goodness. The mechanics are charging us two paychecks. Feh. At least the baby had a wonderful time at daycare.

Looking at pretty much all of my posts tagged "interviewing" or "grumbling", I am forced to conclude that it is impossible, at this point, even to pretend to an air of stoic grace. Honestly, I didn't know I could be this whiny at this age and stage. It's a little disheartening. And hey, there I go again.

Hey, wait, isn't this supposed to be a transition blog?

Images, Bodies, Memories

2009-04-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

A comment, elsewhere, got me started thinking at length about self-image. I suppose you could say that this is what this blog is named after -- the fact that I rarely, if ever, see myself when I look in a mirror; I see a familiar person, someone who "plays me on TV", actually. Except the "TV" is the waking world, and the casting really sucked.

Anyhow, I've been reflecting [hah; at my punniest when not even trying] on my feelings of detachment from the images of myself which I see in photographs. Something struck me -- the pictures from my earliest childhood, after my memories began to crystallize, but only barely, don't suffer from this. The little boygirl I see in them is me. I remember the tableaux, I remember watching the camera, I remember the feel of my body, I was there. And I remember looking as I do in the photographs. That's not somebody else, standing where I stood.

What was it that took this from me? Yes, I'm trans. Yes, my brain has structures conditioned prenatally to be part of a female body. Never mind any of that. What I want to know is "what can I remember of this loss? What did it feel like?"

There are some curious sides to this. So, the pictures I've been contemplating most are a pair of me at two-and-a-half years, snuggling with my favorite blanket. I've another picture taken at approximately the same time, showing me in our garden wearing a straw hat borrowed from my mother. I remember the blanket pictures being taken, and I do not remember the hat picture being taken. But I do remember the hat. And what I remember most strongly about the hat is this: it was gendered.

Certainly I didn't have that term for it, but the idea is quite precisely that. The hat was my mother's. It was a woman's hat. I liked it: it felt comfortable, in a way most clothing did not. But I knew, somehow, that getting to wear it out in the yard, there, was a special treat, not something to take for granted, because it was girl clothing, and I wore boy clothing. I regretted this, I remember that much, but there's no pain. And this is the same me I can recall being, there in the blanket pictures. I may have understood gendering of identities, but I'm still authentic, then; I'm still just me, and haven't yet been carved-up.

When did my face stop being mine?

I can remember, in kindergarten, I was terrified by a fairy tale story assigned to us for reading homework. In the tale, a savage dragon was terrorizing a kingdom, and a pair of knights and a squire of sorts had been tasked with eliminating the threat. The knights sought-out a powerful wizard for aid against the magical beast, and the wizard helpfully provided them with a potion that would transform them into dragons -- operating, I suppose, on the theory that anything less would be unable to best the beast in combat. Unfortunately, the enchantment made dragons of them in mind, as well, and they joined the first dragon in harassing the populace. And that's all I can tell you of the story, as I could not bring myself to read any more. Something terrified me about the thought of losing oneself -- losing one's sense of self -- inside an unfamiliar body.

It was early in the school year, so I cannot have been much past my fifth birthday. This is the first memory I have of being insecure about my own identity. I know I puzzled over earlier photographs of myself, that year and the next few, and watched my face in the mirror as I changed expressions, trying to figure out just what this person -- whom I seemed to be -- looked like. I recall wondering what, and where, I was -- where was my self? I wondered if there was a point somewhere inside my head, a tiny spot in my brain, that was "me", that looked-out through the eyes in my face, that controlled my limbs and fingers and mouth. I think the only given was that "I" was not this body which housed me. I was something different from it, somehow. I don't know if that's a normal perspective for a five-year-old. I sort of doubt it.

I'm presently stymied by lack of images. I have an album from birth to three years of age, but nothing else until nine -- by which point there's only an awkward boy in the photographs, my erstwhile stand-in. My parents are moving, this month, but when they've settled and unpacked, I need to dig further and collect more images to consider.

Somewhere between two and five, perhaps later, something fell apart. Something in my head drew away from my form, rejecting it. I want to know what it felt like. I want to know what happened to Rachel. What did it feel like to be broken apart? Did it hurt? Did I even notice, at the time? Was there a trauma that shook me and forced me to examine things that were too delicate to withstand scrutiny? Did I just notice, one day, that something didn't feel right?

I want to know.

more than 140 chars of banal

2009-04-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Today's accomplishments:

I shipped the baby off to daycare for his first time EVAR
I surrendered our car to the mechanics (who will undoubtedly charge us about a paycheck)
I will shortly begin prostituting myself to recruiters. Yay me.

It might be fair to clarify #3: I don't have any official feedback from the Potential Employer of Great Desirability, but things look highly doubtful. This is demoralizing, but hey, might as well get used to it. So I'm not spending the days with the baby anymore, at least until I've secured employment (and then, well, not then either). I miss him. I'm sure he's having a marvelous time, and I know his sister is having the best day at daycare ever. Moreover, I've got complete freedom from his amazing powers of distraction for the entire afternoon.

It's still crummy. I miss my sweet baby. God, I'm such a mother hen.

Meanwhile, in what appears to be an attempt to procrastinate and avoid contacting recruiters, I'm getting all literate and stuff, tweeting, catching-up on blogs, all that nonsense. In an IM exchange with my wife, I came up with this:

[me] am drinking San Benedetto "Naturale" water.
[me] they were out of San Pellegrino "What I Normally Drink For Sparkly Waterz" water.
[me] and it turns-out that "Naturale" is San Benedettese not for "is an acceptably overpriced, attractively-bottled, Italian sparkling water beverage product for consumption when our local beverage purveyor's San Pellegrino supply has been terminally depleted," as I had originally surmised, but rather for "totally flat, non-sparkling water thing without bubbles or fizz. or carbonation. of any sort."
[me] boooo.

From the above, of course, you can deduce primarily that, when unemployed, I become much more whiny and infatuated with my own [attempts at] wit. I need a job.

2009-04-06T10:18:00.001-07:00

So. I'm interviewing for a senior engineering position with a major multinational, one that has super-dreamy benefits, trans-friendliness, cool co-workers, interesting work, great location: in short, a whole can o' aw3sum. I'm also a basket case over this. There's a lot of panic, there's a lot of "what if I blow it all?" ... there's a lot of second-guessing, a lot of internal drama, and a lot of time to kill as I move from stage to stage in the process. I guess this is all normal. That doesn't really help, though.

AUUUUUUUGHH

2009-04-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

I hate interviewing.

Here's an interesting observation: The baby just lunged at my chest and barfed all over the pajamas I happen to still be wearing at 6:30pm. And you know what first springs to mind?

I think I like wearing sour baby barf more than I like interviewing.

Pop Finds Pop Nutritious? Orly? Yarly.

2009-03-31T00:58:00.001-07:00

Okay, I have to admit, there's a little part of me that is probably just wondering where youth went and how long I can cling. Of course, as I've always said, I turned 30 at age 12, and will probably remain 30 for the next 20 years at least (I'm 31). My personal perception of time has always been a little wonky, and I suspect that things are only going to get worse in transition.

But, so help me, I'm weirdly enraptured by the dance clubbing scene. The DJs (Tiesto, Oakenfield), the new performer-starlets (Katy Perry, Lady GaGa, and the like), and the veteran acts who against the odds keep hurtling themselves forward while being hungrily devoured by the others (Madonna, Tori Amos, and Peter Gabriel all come to mind), there's so much performance and production art -- some of it absurdly rich and noteworthy, some of it gallingly puerile -- being generated. I can't help but want in. It's peculiar, really, as it's so completely not the sort of thing I've ever participated in; my personal practice of "performance art" has pretty much always been extremely cerebral and traditional.

Actually, that does provoke a few suppositions. I have always been self-effacing in performance. I think authenticity has been exceptionally difficult for me, as Rachel has been crushed-away and silent for the last two decades. To perform authentically, to be present and genuine, has been crazy hard. I'd compare it to trying to walk on a half-thawed river: the first couple of steps seem steady, but then the "ground" wobbles and shivers, and as arms windmill everything shatters and I'm gone -- swept away downstream. And even if I manage to dance across through some sudden, superhuman dexterity, I'm shaken and unnerved, chilled, and the space I've crossed is a broken, slushy mess. That's what comes of pretending so hard to be what we aren't that we forget we aren't; burned bridges and scorched earth.

tweetish

2009-03-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

I think -- at least until I'm once again gainfully employed and no longer filling weekday afternoons with baby urp, naps, clicking on things and cursing iTunes (SO. MUCH. H8.) (I still love my iPhone, though) -- that perhaps Rachel should get a twitter account. Because, you see, pretty much everything I think of to post, during the daytime, is one-liner tidbits of context-setting banality. nice-ish, and necessary, but kinda tedious to build an interesting blog out of.

Of course, that's even sillier, really, when one considers that I'd have, oh, zero followers. Oh well.

Getting things done?

2009-03-30T12:52:00.001-07:00

Well, let's see. I just finished securing a developer key for my XO, and am about to set-up an Xubuntu image for it. I also just replied to a nice lady from A Very Large And Attractive Company about securing employment therein. Technically, following-up on that lead was "the one thing I wanted to accomplish" yesterday. Better late than never, I suppose.

I'm not entirely certain why, but modern electro-pop-trance-dance music has been quite intricately bound-up in my memory of this past year of transition preparation (pre-transition? transition preamble? I wish I had a more precise and descriptive phrase ...). Nothing much more to say, there, right now, but it bears saying.

Now what?

2009-03-29T18:33:00.001-07:00

My wife and daughter are sweeping leaves in the side yard, after scraping-out the silted-up drainage grooves in our lean-to of a garage. A cold, sunny San Francisco spring day is drawing to a close, and the beautiful, sleeping 4-month old boy on my lap has prevented me from effecting the merest hint of dinner preparations. When the yard workers come in from their labors demanding a meal, boy am I ever gonna catch it.

Oh well. They'll just wake-up my excuse :)

I had this tiny (well, 16lbs.; not so tiny, really, any more) marvel with me at a therapy session a couple of days ago, and I found myself saying to him, as I gazed with wonder into his eyes, "can you believe that when I learned you'd be coming, I almost lost my mind?" Then I teared-up and held him for a good long while, as he grumbled sleepily. It was such a shock, how unimaginably distant that person seems.

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about what I would like to accomplish with this blog. To date, I don't think I have much of anything in the way of readership, beyond one kind comment, and I'll admit that's something I would like to change. I have a private journal for when I simply must articulate something in text that's not for public consumption, and I do make use of it. Even still, I want to share this: I want to share the experiences I'm having with people who can appreciate them.

I don't think I'm at a point where it's feasible, in the next year or so, to get to an IFGE event or Southern Comfort, which would allow for some networking and friendship-founding. This is frustrating.

Also frustrating is the sudden re-entrance of the four-year-old onto the scene, screaming bloody murder about a previously confiscated Hello Kitty charm (US$1 out of a capsule machine). When it's being used to forcibly enlarge the infant's nostrils in the back seat, the toy goes away. The sense of this, sadly, is lost on her. Argh.

... and now, with the two laborers respectively cajoled and released off to the bathroom for a much-needed shower, I've entirely forgotten what on earth I was saying. Oh, yes, what I want to accomplish here, and not being able to network in person. Hm. Well, the short, short version is "I don't really know what I'm trying to accomplish, just yet -- can you tell? I seem to just be writing whenever talking is desired but unavailable." Anyhow. I suppose it's time to rejoin this blissful tide of banality (and continue to beat my head against the brick wall of a determined, overtired preschooler's ire). Perhaps I'll edit this post into something more coherent, later.

Whistling in the dark!

2009-03-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

On the whole, I'm struck by how sweepingly gnostic the process of transition is. Dreadfully little seems to be intellectually communicatable - we seem to reinvent wheels with excruciating regularity.

Perhaps we would be better-off with a collection of koans. Something similar to the AI Koans is what first comes to mind, although they're perhaps a little too narrow and strictly humorous. Still, really, who doesn't need a little more humor injected into this process, hmm?

Feeling a bit chatty

2009-03-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

Things my daughter and I did this weekend:

I introduced her to TMBG. Win.
She found a pair of shears and shortened her [own] bangs.
She continued, and took several of her bangs clean off.
She continued, and took off most of her side locks.
She came out to see us, engendering shock and mildly hysterical laughter.
I took her to get the rest of her hair cut. She is now me at age 4. Different plumbing, of course, and wearing considerably more pink. It’s moderately disturbing.

Kinda cute, though. I really need to get my parents' old photo albums from the 80s scanned so that I can do some comparative photo spreads.

Not yet time to buy the 4-year-old headphones, no.

2009-03-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

I introduced both children to They Might Be Giants, this weekend. Oh, dear lord, it's all over. I have never - ever - seen my children dance like that. Oh, fine, okay, the boy's only four months old, and I made him dance, but he LOVED it. And little girl of inexhaustible energy sang herself to sleep tonight with "Mammal" from Apollo 18. And couldn't stop busting-out with "SPAAIIIDAHHH ... He's our HERO ... AWWWWWwwwwww ...". Which, okay, was actually seriously disturbing a couple of times, especially in public.

I do sorta want to try to get her into some Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, or maybe just Paul Simon, but it may be a lost cause. I'll settle for these Johns Most Eclectic, for now; it's a perfectly good start.

And, in closing, I have rediscovered tonight how much I really really enjoy Tears for Fears, even the annoying stuff. [brief rant deleted because hey, pointless negativity isn't really relevant, now, is it?] Ayup.

That is all.

No, really. It's great to be back writing to the disinterested Googlebots, and all, but it's Monday already. Oh, wait, I don't have a job to go to. Huh. Kingdom of Loathing time? Hmm.

BlogHer

2009-03-22T23:17:00.000-07:00

I really, really have to wonder: what sort of representation do trans women have at BlogHer? Anyone? Beuller? I mean -- and I'm not being dismissive here -- MommyBloggers have carved-out a niche, there, and are a similarly genre-fied subgroup of "obligate" bloggers. Why should transition blogs be necessarily so much different? The lifecycle is rather similar, and I'm hardly the first to observe how transition is an awful lot like giving birth to oneself, right down to the hormonal confusion, betrayal by one's body, and periods of excruciating physical pain in a medicalized setting. Why shouldn't we trans women fill-out a similar niche?

And hey, those of us with small children can do double duty! I can already see the session title: TransMommyBlogging As A Radical Act ...

Okay, so I can dream, can't I? But really, I do wonder. Maybe I should just go this year and see. Hrm.

Socks

2009-03-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

It’s been a very long time since I’ve written. I’ve had my hands full with living. A newborn in the household is probably all the excuse I really need, but there’s also been the experience of, after nearly nine years with a company, being laid-off. Whee. Why didn’t I do that last one three years ago and get it over with? Oh well.

Many things have come together and begun to make sense. Many more questions have opened-up. A few things have fallen-apart entirely. I suppose this is all normal, really, for any such suite of colossal life changes, but that fails to lessen the impact. There has been no time, no energy, and too little sleep. There have been no mute crises to voice, no burning questions to articulate, so there have been no words. And so there has been no writing. Only living, getting through each day alive and awake, and talking. So much talking!

It’s marvelous to be able to speak freely to my wife, now. Challenging, too, but no less of a marvel. Closing the yawning breach from six months of silently growing apart is hard, and I had begun to wonder if for us it might be impossible. I’m glad it’s not.

But now … now I’m beginning to feel the need to capture thoughts, again. I’m beginning to unfold, and I’m finding all manner of interesting details lost within the creases.

It’s dreadfully tempting to draw-out the paper metaphor a little: I’ve always had a peculiar philological love for the word ‘palimpsest’, and so it delights me to find it so apt. Certainly in most aspects transition (for me) is a process of completing the last chapters of Part I, then beginning Part II. Yet there are numerous ways in which it feels rather as if I am rubbing-out the older, irrelevant text in order to reinscribe this dirty, worn — yet irreplaceable and thus priceless — vellum with these sacred verses, newly translated from their cryptic forms of antiquity.

Hah. I wonder how many transitioning transsexuals have come upon that particular analogy, before, and thought themselves ever so clever. Ah, well. I’ve given up striving for novelty (or so I like to claim); to comport myself with grace is my remaining hope. And if I really mean that, perhaps I should get a little less enraptured of my own florid prose, hmm? As if.

But really, wasn’t I posting to capture a few thoughts that might otherwise float off and be forgotten? Wasn’t there some fragment of an idea that needed articulation, maybe a little exposition? Oh, yes, that’s it:

I wonder if, some years hence, I’ll note the birth of my son — and the coincidental internal transformations, as I began to pare and revise my wardrobe and care so much more about my deportment — as the point at which I ceased to lose socks.

Seriously. I haven’t lost a sock in the laundry since then. It’s a little bit creepy. Do the mad, vestokleptic demons that inhabit our washing machine also suffer from severe transphobia? Have I somehow miraculously exorcised them? I don’t think so. I’m still losing my son’s socks, left and right, so there must be some other mechanism at work. Go figure.

Living

2009-01-29T00:06:00.000-08:00

A fair amount of time has passed since last I wrote -- either here or elsewhere. A fair amount of life has occurred.

My son. My son is here.

He was born, beautiful, marvelous, late in November, and began changing lives.

Amazing tiny marvel in my arms, I often find that I can do little more than to NOM NOMMY NOM NOM in true Amalah-esque nursing-mommyblogger fashion and struggle to salvage enough scraps of my eroded literacy to satisfactorily describe the delight and awe that keep flooding through me.

I am beginning and planning a transition; I am dicing with a vindictive fire, and playing in deadly earnest with my world in the ante; I am sleep deprived and impatient and fearful and resolute.

But each time I hear him draw a sweet little breath, each glimpse I catch of his tiny feet, I wonder what fear is. I kiss his downy hair and everything is happening as it should and must. As I cradle him and he stares at me, I table the dice and let the ****** burn.

For it's a drug, and I'm hopelessly addicted. I love this child. I, Rachel love this child. There is no burden of years of earnest, striving fatherhood to reconcile, no nomenclature to set aside. I accept myself from the beginning as both his father and his [other] mother, and I know myself as his mother. Whereas precisely six months ago, the idea of being father to my son terrified me, today in my heart I am his mother, and his Daddy, and I know he knows who I am, and I am at peace.

Sure, it's a thorny peace, with a high-energy 4-year-old, a loving-yet-exhausted-and-confused spouse, a frustrating day job, and precious few full nights of sleep. But those are my beloved family who love me, and that is my life, and I cannot and would not change things.

Okay, maybe my daughter could be a little less bouncy after 8pm.

...

In separate news, while doing some financial planning worksheets the other day, and tackling the difficult issues of how the expenses of transition would impact our already overtaxed budget, my spouse gave me a quiet, perhaps even unintentional gift of confidence and commitment. We were touchy from discussing finances, and skittish from discussing transition; I posited a rough, large sum as what we'd need to save to complete the medical and legal necessities of transition. She thought briefly, then, with a concerned tone, asked if that figure included money for fertility treatments.

At the time, I was just startled, and confirmed that yes, that was in there, I'd kept it in mind, which seemed to satisfy her. Every time I recall the exchange, though, I am more and more moved.

Some transitioning spouses may be blessed with self-actualized, openly bisexual partners, for whom transition in no way equates to the potential extinguishing of romance and attraction. Not so, I. Instead, we have other gifts.

This post was going to be a voice for the turmoil that's been engulfing my inner world, of late, as transition becomes ever more real -- as hair removal progresses and I begin voice work and as my name and internal image begin to recenter. But, somehow, I couldn't begin without acknowledging that I am no longer the woman I was before that marvelous birth at the end of November, and, as I have already observed, such acknowledgments have a way of warming and softening the sternest demeanor.

Perhaps tomorrow I can avoid reflecting on my therapeutic infant long enough to experience and vent some frustrations ... but it's true, I'm addicted: I can't go long without my fix.

And, honestly, I can't presently imagine anyone faulting me.

Time and Perspective

2008-11-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Good lord, it's amazing what chocolate can do.

Hey, look, the margin keeps narrowing. You never know: the as-yet-uncounted absentees may be incredibly enlightened individuals (and particularly numerous).

And oh, look at that: the high-speed [potential] boondoggle may just pass! Despite the risks involved, I'm excited. Yay rail!

*sigh*. I should have known better than to get invested in an election. they always leave me all torn-up with angst (for the chasm between me and my society) no matter how well they end.

Sad and ashamed. Anger later.

2008-11-05T01:35:00.000-08:00

Right now, as the last quarter of results trickle in, and the gap fails to narrow on the constitutional amendment that says my wife and I cannot be who and what we are, I feel a sick, stiff knot grow in my gut. Tonight I am sad and ashamed to be a Californian, born and raised. Tomorrow we will take our daughter to daycare, then have our full-term unborn son measured for a probable induction this weekend. I do not know when or how the anger will find a place, but it will, as I am Californian; I love this state, and I love its potential.

I know that the hate fomented across these great valleys was heavily funded out of pockets thousands of miles away (though certainly not entirely so). I know that this travesty of discriminatory doublespeak was made possible by a profoundly broken popular-initiative system. I know that I am not alone, and that this will be fought, tooth & claw, in whatever way possible. In fact, I do keep reminding myself that the remaining 20% could close that 2-point margin. All the same, there's a fury at the potential passage of proposition 8, a rage. How dare they do this to my family?

But, for now, exhausted and apalled and impotent, all I can do is write. And eat some chocolate chips and drink some milk and hopefully get some sleep.

And yay for our 44th president! It's not all gloom and doom. Goodnight.

a whimper in the dark

2008-10-28T00:44:00.000-07:00

My little girl took a glow stick to bed, tonight. It's not the first time -- she thinks they're just the most fun thing in the world, sometimes, and she's recently discovered Star Wars, and can't get enough of telling me how they look like light sabers. However, it will be the last time for at least a year or so. She got a little bit overzealous with the twisting and cracking to evenly free the catalyst from its little rigid compartments, and cracked the tube. I woke to a confused sort of whimpering (my wife being doped-up on codeine cough syrup and solidly out for the night) (okay, let's face it, I'd be the one doing the wake-up-and-check-on-the-kids routine even were she sober and awake, that's just who we are).

It was an interesting sight -- thank goodness it had been a green stick; had it been blue I'd probably have been distracted by weird memories of American Zombie (great film, except I can't even handle horror spoofs) and much too creeped-out to empathize. The poor dear had managed to spatter her blanket and bedsheets and pajamas with luminescent fluid, and had (in the dark, probably on the verge of falling asleep) rubbed her left eye, causing sudden, lasting stinging and burning. O Pathos! Sleepy, hurty, whimpery 3-year-old!

One exciting, howling- and struggling-filled trip to the bathtub (what, you don't want your painful head held upside-down beneath a faucet running full blast? really?) later, I was helping her out of her [faintly glowing] jammies and talking about how scary it must have been to suddenly start hurting and not know why. She was even extra-brave for me and blinked her eye open numerous times as I flushed it more gently from a cup. It's funny, the odd situations where we find these moments of sympathy, of connection and understanding. I was so proud of her: I knew just how upset she was to be pouring more things into her eye, and I knew she trusted me if I said it was necessary and that it would help her feel better.

Since this is, nominally, a "trans blog", there's an odd sense of incompleteness if I don't tie my convoluted sense of gender identity into this, draw some tangent of meaning, but I can't. There's nothing "T" about this. It's a facet of my life that I want to tie to the person I'm slowly describing, here, but only in that it's part of the foundational self from which that person springs.

Love is always hard to describe, isn't it?

Naming and Necessity (with apologies to Kripke)

2008-10-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

I have a name: "Rachel".

I've pondered it for years, really, and never found another. It's odd how I came to know it. I remember being a junior in high school, and visiting a bunch of relatives in Los Angeles. An American melting-pot family, ours; Irish and Czech and Italian and various bits of Central Europe, and everyone goes and marries around the globe. The cousins we were visiting that night had four of the most beautiful children imaginable. Their youngest daughter, at the time, was five, perhaps six: a sprightly little almost-Levantine waif, all dark curls and flailing limbs as she ran and bounced about. Her name was Rachel. And it suited her.

I don't know why I thought that. I didn't understand a lot of things. I have no sisters; of my close friends with sisters, their ages were mostly very close to mine. So I was unprepared for the well in my heart that she uncapped, with her energetic gymnastics (around the dinner table, to her mother's consternation), her mercurial shyness, and her bright, thoughtful eyes. This was a little girl in the heyday of early girlhood. I saw myself in her. I don't know if who and what I saw were really there, or if something deep inside was projecting, desperately, earnestly, upon my unsuspecting young cousin, but the effect was and is the same. Here was childhood, a childhood I didn't recognize, yet knew, instinctively.

Bear in mind that I had no real concept of my own transness at the time. I had begun to look in those directions to explain my inauthentic personalities, my sense of hollowness, but the clear connections had yet to be made. So I had no framework in which to place this recognition, with which to explain it. So it was an amorphous sort of understanding -- I knew that I recognized and understood something, but I couldn't articulate it. Not at all. That sort of gnosis seems to live in me as experiential memory: a sheaf of visual percepts, uninterpreted, but instead edited to discard everything unimportant to the meaning contained, all then bound together with the faint memory of feelings, intangible impressions, acting as glue and as a shell that carries the memory down through the years, until I can pare it apart and begin to read it anew. I see her curious, shy face, mahogany curls setting off dark, watching eyes. I feel startled. I hear the name "Rachel". Did I know I was being named? Did she know, then, somehow, that I would take her name, and wonder "who is this strange young man, this boy, this stranger, to take my name?"

I met her again, briefly, when my daughter was tiny, at a family wedding. She had grown into a stunning teen, and I suppose I should have noted myriad other details ... but all I can recall is that her face, while it more strongly echoed her father's and mother's adult faces, having lost the baby fat I remembered, was the same: the shy curiosity, the reticence, the alert life behind her eyes. And the name still fit; it fit admirably.

And no other name fits me. I don't really know why not. I think I named myself so many years ago, when I saw the child I might have been (and who, unsurprisingly, my daughter is swiftly growing to be), and perhaps it's simply that, once forged, the name will not be broken.

Certainly, my boy name will never cease to be me. That might have happened, once. He might have half-died, given-up his presence so that I might "truly live", had I transitioned in my early twenties, before I learned to love again, before I found my crafts, before I began to build a home. But there's something ineffable and powerful about giving life and welcoming life. He -- I -- fathered my children. I may be their mother, if their other mother will accede to that, but I will always be their father. I can no more erase his existence and presence -- my existence -- than I can cease to be their parent, cease to love and cherish them.

I have managed to be a strong, feminine man for a sizable fraction of my life. I have accomplished things, as such, of which I am deeply proud, things with which I define myself, which will persist in my identity as I shed the male shells and windows and screens and grow me around my heart in their place. Things that will continue to matter, even as I grow curves, rebuild my wardrobe, and strive to recenter all the friendships I've knocked askew. I cannot disavow that man, because his heart is my heart, stripped of the rest of me so as to fit in this awkward male form. His name is my name. Even when I do not want it.

So perhaps when I saw that little girl whisk around the dining room table and peek-out from behind her brother's chair, I saw, suddenly, the child I had half-been for so many years: unaccepted and confusing and eventually exiled. Perhaps I saw that little girl and learned that her name was "Rachel". And so that is her name. My name.

Or maybe it's 3am and I just like to ramble.

Lyrics

2008-10-24T01:28:00.000-07:00

My private journal site is down, as I'm relocating servers. So thoughts and found objects may begin to collect here, for a time. I should probably mark that particular batch of posts as private, but -- so help me -- I have this mean exhibitionist streak that surfaces periodically. And since I've gone and separated my transitioning online presence from the rest of my footprint, hey, what's to stop me? Goodness, but I get cynical after 2am.

Just as "Poison" (off of Bright Red/Tightrope) suddenly appeared in my life as an anthem after my first love broke off our engagement, all those years ago, and left me adrift to complete a thesis and a degree thousands of miles away, so "Tightrope" itself has now imprinted its lyrics, cadence, and Eno-produced background acoustic dreaminess onto my consciousness. I would love for someone to explain to me what Anderson herself thought of the piece, what its inspirations were, whether it was a response to, or perhaps an allegory for, some life experience.

I want to talk about it, I want to take it apart and stare at the insides, but it's all so raw, still, freshly-bound to my experiences. I can't bring myself to stop watching the scenes; analysis won't come. Not yet. Not until it's cold. So instead, all I can do is transcribe it from memory. I forgot three words and added a superfluous "and". See, then of course I had to listen to it over and over, watching the text. I corrected the errors, of course. I'm such a tool ;) .

Make it stop

2008-10-24T00:56:00.001-07:00

Sleep won't come with any reliability. Work is draining, my three-year-old is feeling ignored and rebelliously independent, and in 2-3 weeks she will have a baby brother. 3-6 months after that, he'll be weaned, my wife will be able to take her meds again and think clearly, and I can start asking her to learn, learn about the details of being trans, learn about the parts of my life she's never looked too closely at, learn why being a feminine man will not stop the gradual spiral of self-destructive impulses, the attrition of self-neglect. I am terrified of discovering what happens, then, when she looks and learns, just as I am terrified of the prospect of waiting so long alone and unheard.

I want off, I want everything to stop ... but I don't really. I've come crashing through the hidden walls in my world, and from without it's clear they've insufficient value in themselves to merit rebuilding.

I'm full of resentment over her conflicted, angsty wafflings over breastfeeding. Bitterness, such deep, deep bitterness at the way she threw-up walls when I offered. But simultaneously, I cannot possibly fault her. It's jarring.

Hahn's setting of Paul Verlaine's D'Une Prison, keeps echoing in my head:

Qu'a tu fait, O toi, qui voila
pleurant sans cesse?
Dit! Qu'a tu fait, toi la,
de ta jeunesse?

... I suppose the question some part of my psyche is struggling to ask, with that, is "how did this happen?" It would be "how did it come to this?" if not for the rich, battered love we still share. Oh, desperation, you are cruel. Poor Verlaine, he broke and ran when his world shifted, and madness ate at him to the sad end of his days, the madness of being unhomed, robbed of his beginnings. Poor sweet, fiery, brilliant, mad, pious, queer Verlaine; and yet ... and yet I find only bitterness that a trans woman today can often hope for little better than the savage uprooting disjunction he suffered for his homosexuality a century ago.

I have so much anger that bubbles to the surface when fatigue thins and loosens my reserve, my blankets of hope and optimism. Why am I unable to remember this in therapy? What do I hope to gain by cooking it inside? I feel ill.

Insomnia

2008-09-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

Normally, after sleeping 4 hours the night before, I'd ... oh, what's that inane phrase? "Practice better sleep hygiene?" Feh. Obviously not.

Also, normally, if I'm going to drop blogospheric breadcrumbs at 3:45 a.m., I'd do it on Twitter so that work would be tipped-off to my probable total lack of functionality, later today. Well, again, obviously not, although I can't say for certain why. I think there's a little bit of guilt that I'm not lavishing this little "online journal" (how badly, really, do I date myself, admitting that that's what we called it, back when I signed-up for a LiveJournal account in '01?) with as much attention and compositional effort as, oh, say, THE THERAPY DIARY THAT KEEPS ME SANE. Sheesh, I'm a thickwit about some things. But, regardless of how silly the notion may be, I feel obliged to keep writing, here.

Of course, it can't possibly hurt that I'm up this late after reading a bazillion (okay, okay; two) moving blogs by other transfolk. Well, to be fair, I wrapped-up another KoL ascension, first, but that only took a couple of hours, and is totally beside the point; stop changing the subject. I suppose I have difficulty these days being content with the sole role of consumer. So, here I go, spraying excess adverbiture all over this poor text field. Oh yes, not to mention my confused channeling of both James and Thurber, alternatingly, in my strophic comma-insertion habits. Bah.

It's funny; I only seem to use interjective sentence fragments (and this compulsively neological compositional autocritical style) (actually, I think I prefer "neologotic") between 2am and 5am, and on my lunch break. They're not states of consciousness I would normally flag as similar; it's odd.

Oh well.

Hey, look; 94% signal-free noise!

Daily Life

2008-09-08T10:09:00.001-07:00

O H M Y G O D

I cooked a three-course (two, actually, unless you count filling -- then later opening -- the rice cooker) meal for my family, Saturday, and THEY ALL SAT DOWN AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE AND ATE. TOGETHER. AS IN, SIMULTANEOUSLY. LIKE, CONVERSING AND STUFF.

It's still sinking-in. It's still a little hard to believe.

You see, that's a FIRST. It's never happened before, not in three and a half years of parenthood. Weirder still, it's happening while my wife is 7 months pregnant. I checked, the sky still looks securely attached. I dunno.

Oh, and better yet? WE DID IT AGAIN ON SUNDAY.

My world is a little shaky. Go figure.

In other news (news? it really is something of a conceit to pretend this is any more than a diary: isinterested googlebots, yep, that's my traffic in a nutshell ...), I'm seeing a dermatologist for a hair removal consultation, Thursday. WOO. I'm practically counting the hours. Once Epic comes along (mid-to-late November, depending on how fast he grows), endocrinology here I come! That'll be such a relief.

Sunday afternoon, my wife and I hit-up Macy's for maternity bras. Well, she got the bras; I sat and read Reviving Ophelia. I kept finding myself wondering (for what must be the umpteenth time) if maybe this time Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child might not be too impenetrable. Really, I have got to read the blasted thing from cover to cover one of these years. *sigh*.

The nice thing about the outing, though, is that we were able to joke casually about how I wasn't really "joining" her in her quest for bras, this time. She also observed that chances are, I won't have quite the same fitting problems she has (ribcage size -- she's 41" around). I disagreed, but couldn't quote numbers (I checked this morning: 40". Ha!). It was ... comfortable. There was something profoundly relieving about the whole experience.

Speaking of outings, I get to come-out to my voice coach on Friday. I don't think there'll be any problem -- we've already sort of discussed this -- and it's really the only thing I can rationally do. Adjusting my speaking voice may wreak havoc upon my blossoming bel canto production, and to continue to study (stopping is not an option; I need this venue) without sharing with her what I'm up to, vocally, would be a waste of time, effort, and tuition. None of this reasoning, however, makes the anticipation any easier. Feh.

Fatigue

2008-09-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

Planning a transition is exhausting, exhilarating, and terrifying. And yet I persist. Why? Because the end result -- disoriented spouse, [moderately] confused child, and shattered social ties notwithstanding -- has got to be better than the mental and emotional sargasso of pain and distraction I presently inhabit.

But yeah, it's exhausting. So, thank you Deep Stealth Productions for providing me with the means to prevent even a day passing without advancing my plans or understanding in some fashion. I just watched Andrea James' "Breaking the Silence" speech. Interesting, somewhat galvanizing, and well-constructed. I find myself wanting to read some works by Thomas Szasz, although they may rub me rather as did my readings from John Rawls or Michel Foucault (or, heaven forbid, T. Adorno -- ick!).

However, with that done, all I can bring myself to do is go play a hundred or so adventures in the Kingdom of Loathing.

Honestly, it's better than going loopy.

the male woman

2008-09-01T02:42:00.000-07:00

I am that great, polarizing chimera, the male woman.

I'm happily married to a beautiful [overworked], brilliant [exhausted], inspiring [god, I love her so much] female woman. We have an amazing daughter -- the other light of my life -- and a son on the way. We have good jobs, loving families, sensitive friends, and maybe even a few plans for the future. Oh, wait, did I say "happy" just now? Well, yes, true, in the context of all of the above. But I wouldn't say I'm happy.

Actually, I'd say I've been pretty miserable. Because, with the possible exception of my keenly perceptive daughter, they all think I'm a man.

Hell, I've thought that now and again. It's a confusing issue.

Nonetheless, a preponderance of evidence stands to the contrary. I say "preponderance" for its semi-homophony with "ponderous", which describes something large, awkward, ungainly, and remarkably painful to have dropped on one's toe. A couple of months ago, it hit me squarely in the face. No part of my life has been the same, since.

Our marriage, for one. Nothing calms and soothes a hard-working, professional, very pregnant woman like being told her spouse is considering transitioning to her sex. To her credit and my immense joy and relief, I believe she will stay by my side. To my shame, I can clearly see the fear and anxiety that haunts her, now. It creases her brow as she sleeps, stiffens her smile during the day, and eats-away at her already overcommitted energy reserves.

Really, there are too many facets to itemize. My mother grieves for the son she will lose. Some of my friends wonder if I'm still taking my medications properly. Others simply wonder what the big deal is all about. My daughter is excited to learn that Daddy too will grow-up to be a woman (though she's not so sure about her little brother). Me, I dream of someday seeing myself in the mirror, and find nostalgia in the seemingly long-distant past when this didn't eat-away at each and every relationship in my life.

Fortunately, this is the year 2008, and there are blogs for people like me.

Otherwise, well, I would probably go mad. If I didn't have built-in overactive mood stabilizers (a neurological quirk of mine), I'd probably off myself. Even without major depression and suicidal ideations, I risk emotionally brutalizing myself and my family, which could very well end my family.

And that concludes the immediate basics of Me. There's the abbreviated version of the stage on which these silly little dramas play. There's some of the Me you can see in photographs.

out of nowhere in particular

2008-09-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

So. I have a public blog. I don't say squat about me, there. I don't say much of anything, there, these days, in fact.

I have a private journal. I say plenty about me, there. I say plenty about other actual people who touch my life and might not want mentioning and who might be best left unassociated with me, there.

I do / see / consume day-to-day, stuff-I've-always-done stuff, and it goes on the public blog.

I think about anything trans and it goes into the journal. Gotta keep the records, y'know.

I want to publish anything about living through the first tremors of a transition, reading things that move me in any t fashion, or my exploding [that is, expanding] conception of t, itself, and there's nowhere for it to go.

Except, well, now there is. How nice.

Blanchard, Bailey, and Me (journal entry)

2008-08-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

An entry from my personal journal

It’s funny, really, to find now, after coming to terms with some of the internal distinctions I’ve fought for so long, that there has been a debate raging for nearly as long as I’ve been questioning and exploring. To think if I had encountered Blanchard’s work — or J. Michael Bailey’s book, which I almost dread reading, given the preamble it’s so far received (plus, I’m always shy of consuming large works I expect myself to ultimately reject; that is, at least, without preparation) — before achieving any resolution of my entanglement: I might have been profoundly “pathologized” in my own head for many, many more years of silent unhappiness.

I would like to think that at least Bailey’s (apparently) trollish and polarizing interpretation would have met with a degree of fundamental resistance. However, while I would also hope that my first impressions, now, of Blanchard’s seminal paper¹ would be similar to M. Wyndzen’s in the referenced foreword¹, I can’t know that for certain. In a rational state, I would have noticed many of the underlying weaknesses, especially the confused interpretive strategy applied to autogynephilia test scores. I am not, however, reliably in a fully rational state when exploring a subject so intensely personal to me. I can’t understand how one can be, even in isolated contexts, so barren of compassion as to present such dismissive, damaging, and poorly supported arguments to a population already suffering from a dearth of acceptance or understanding.

I’m not going to talk about myself further, here; I’d rather write into a blank slate than place my heart on the same page as such a painful, external shock.

¹ Blanchard, R. (1989). The Concept of Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male Gender Dysphoria. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177(10), 616-623. Retrieved Feb. 2, 2008 from http://www.genderpsychology.org/autogynephilia/male_gender_dysphoria/

adolescence II (journal entry)

2008-07-27T23:42:00.001-07:00

An entry from my personal journal

High School came along, and life continued to complicate. I recall one evening, at the end of the summer before High School, I took what I judged to be my most delicate and feminine blouse (it was a warm coral color, a loose-necked polo shirt in a very lightweight, thin stretch-knit cotton) and padded it (after shutting my door and being sure nobody might be stopping-by). I didn’t have anything like a bra; it didn’t even occur to me to borrow my mother’s — they’d have been dreadfully large, anyhow. I used kleenex, wadded-up and shaped, held against my chest by tucking-in the blouse into my pants as tightly as possible.
In retrospect, with a little coaching and better materials to work with, I would have made a quite convincing girl: my hair was already lengthening, I had relatively delicate features, and my shoulders and jaw had yet to broaden and square-out. At the time, however, the effect was devastating. I had no idea how to feminize my haircut, but that wasn’t the real issue — all I could see were wrinkles of kleenex poking at the inside of the shirt. Then one form slipped down a ways. I was horrified; it was awful. I felt SO DEVASTATINGLY FAKE, a feeling that I’m not entirely certain has ever quite left me. I tore out and threw-away the little pastel-apricot kleenex forms and struggled to put the whole episode as far out of my mind as possible (which wasn’t very far; this scene haunted me for years).
Interestingly, I think that this was when I really started actively fighting masculinity. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t think I could be masculine, but that I didn’t want to be in the milieu of “boys” and “girls” — I saw the ultimate end of masculine presentation as being seen a certain way by girls and women, and that was a way I simply didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to be accepted among them, I wanted to interact without the wretched fence of gender roles. I wanted to ask for help caring for my hair, which I’d begun to let grow (and honestly didn’t know what to do with). I wanted to ask what their adolescence had been like, so far — a deep, taboo subject, to me. I wanted to know what it was I was missing. I already felt I had a pretty clear handle on what the boys were experiencing, and it was unpleasant, dull, and tedious. Muscle development, facial hair, some bone growth, infatuations, and voice changes. Ech.
Socially, I still had the small cadre of somewhat intellectual, nerdy boys that I’d been friendly with in middle school, but I tried to encourage and develop friendships with girls who seemed open to it¹. Until my junior year, though, I didn’t really grow close to anyone at school (in the sense of having anything like a confidante) except for my three friends from early childhood (all male, one [we would later learn] bisexual), only one of whom attended the same high school as I did.
Role-wise, I continued to avoid athletics, pursued music and academic extracurriculars, joined a service club, and began singing. Vocally, it was an issue of significant, perverse pride for me that, while I sang tenor, I had a rich, strong falsetto with a coloratura range that could outdo any alto in the choir, and several of the sopranos.
Still, I think the weirdest thing now, looking back, is how I related to clothing. In some quirky sort of pseudo-logic, I latched-onto white cotton pants as the uniform of choice. I think part of it was that there seemed to be nothing the least bit masculine about them. They were about as emasculating as I could get and still be reasonably age- and gender-appropriate (albeit hardly tasteful). I wore literally nothing else. I owned no jeans — no denim of any sort — no khakis, no more cargo pants, no nothing. Just white cotton uncreased slacks, or white linen.
Some days, I’d couple them with intensely white sailing shirts. When the clothes were new, before the UV-reradiating pigments left the fabric over successive machine washings, I would seriously resemble a lighthouse beacon walking down the hallways of the high school. I suppose I might have been slightly embarrassed by what I could clearly see was a bit of an obsession, but I think any such feeling was eclipsed by a sense of how embarrassed and humiliated I would have been had I dressed conventionally, had I looked like any other boy. It’s even hard to write that phrase, now: “like any other boy”. It makes me shudder.
I was building a fragile little fantasy overlay for my world, wherein I could avoid the unpalatable fact of my assigned sex (or at least avoid considering it).²
¹ Ironically, the one young woman out of these upon whom I developed a crush (and, at one point, to whom I confessed the infatuation) turned-out to be lesbian — I still haven’t quite figured-out how to interpret that.
² Incidentally, I threw away all my white pants about a month into college and bought a new wardrobe of blue jeans and cargo pants. On the one hand, I’d begun a romantic relationship (with a young woman) and was trying to see if there was any way I could fit the gender role; on the other, I think I was trying to deal with the fact that the little fantasy of denial-of-masculinity wasn’t working. Plus, they really did look horrid.

adolescence I (journal entry)

2008-07-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

An entry from my personal journal …

This has been percolating for some time.

My adolescent sexuality was … strange.

I think it was shortly after having sex ed. classes in 6^th-grade and deciding to experiment with my developing genitalia (I mean, they said it was supposed to be pleasurable …) that I discovered that transformation was an erotic idea for me. I can’t recall which came first — the idea of changing sex being erotic or the idea of changing form being erotic. Actually, no, that’s not right: I’m pretty sure it was the idea of transformation itself, independent from sexuality or gender being involved in the transformation; transforming into a woman was simply doubly erotic, I supposed at the time because the female body itself was a turn-on (I’ve always been pretty solidly gynephilic).

Meanwhile, as adolescence progressed, I became progressively more difficult to dress. I’d expended little effort developing a wardrobe to that point, save for a preference against T-shirts, and against anything with a designer’s name or slogan on it¹. When middle school struck, the first thing to change was pants: slacks were out. That much I could tell, and I didn’t care to cross that line. Actually, I’d almost come to that conclusion on my own, a priori, but a couple standard middle school jibes were all it took to ensure that nothing with a crease made it into my standard wardrobe for some long number of years — it's still mostly the case today.

So, my standard article of clothing below the waist became cargo pants. I believe it was around this time that I ceased wearing shorts … I think it had a lot to do with the feeling that I wanted my legs to be athletic and attractive, and they were manifestly not (to me). I was not particularly athletic, period — I was pretty wretched in endurance sports, and not much better at team sports — it was solo or bust, and I didn’t derive enough pleasure from solo sports to make them a priority. Anyhow, I had this notion that my legs were pasty and flabby and hairy — which in retrospect I very much doubt they were, but nonetheless — and I resolved not to wear shorts any longer.

I think I was also very sensitive about “exposing” my body, physically, to the environment. Years of outdoor activity in scouting had inculcated a certain paranoia when it came to underbrush, grasses, trees one might climb, pretty much anything not artificial/manufactured and regularly cleaned that might come into contact with bare skin in such a way that I might not notice. Since I didn’t make a habit of a regular VSE, nor did I care to keep my attention steadily on my legs and feet while walking about outside, it became SOP for me to always wear pants, and wherever others might go barefoot, to retain my socks on my feet. I put a great deal of wear into my socks, this way.

So, throughout my 2 years of middle school, I wore cargo pants or loose, uncreased linen slacks, and a poorly-coordinated selection of polo shirts and turtlenecks. The polo shirts … I think that sort of just fell-out of some things my mother picked for me, and the volume of polo shirts I’d received as hand-me-downs throughout elementary school. The turtlenecks …

I think that might be one of the earlier appearances of body dysmorphia. To me there was an undeniable rightness to something in how they made me feel I appeared; I think it must have been the snug-fitting aspect, the de-emphasis of shoulders, and the smoothness of the arms. I loved the colder months because I didn’t have to bare my arms, which were starting to develop a bit of disturbing hairiness.

It was also during middle school that I began to notice that there were clothing options that I wished to have that weren’t available to boys. I couldn’t wear fluffy, delicate, open-necked sweaters (this was the end of the ’80s). I couldn’t wear cashmere (not without guaranteeing it was the darkest, dullest, most neutral, boring, and masculine style possible, with a minimum of decoration). I loved cashmere. I felt rather cheated that stockings and long gloves were too effeminate to avoid ridicule (at least, to my perception).

I also happened to strike-up a number of friendships with other girls at this time, which I enjoyed primarily for the sense of being taken as an equal — just someone like them. It so happens, I note with some bitterness, that three out of four, it turned-out, had in fact developed crushes on me; two confessed this by mail a year or so later, after moving away; one I learned-about near the end of high school.

This is not to say that I wasn’t myself developing crushes on various girls. Of course, they generally didn’t give me the time of day, but I just figured that was normal, and stuffed it away. Great sense of self-esteem, there. To some degree, I’ll note, the existence of these crushes tended to conflict with — and to obscure — any developing sense of gender-role confusion; I hadn’t really encountered the idea of homosexuality yet, so my attraction to girls was sort of a tangible barrier to thinking about being one.

It would have been so much more helpful if 6^th-grade sex ed. had actually discussed the social and communicative aspects of sexuality and sexual relationships, and had explained that sexual interaction is conceptually possible between any two individuals, regardless of sex, and that — barring actual reproduction — all the same issues of consensuality, hygiene, potential for abuse and exploitation, and emotional involvement apply, regardless. Yaright. Ha. Ha ha.

Oh well. Maybe someday. If it doesn’t gross them out too much (and probably even if it does), I’m pretty sure that’s the talk I’ll be giving to my children.

Anyway, that was middle school. I also began to grow some peach fuzz on my face, which I didn’t much care for, but didn’t really mind since it wasn’t pigmented.

¹ I was not a fan of commercials as a child, and was convinced that marketing was a quintessentially hostile and aggressive act, competing for the belief and attention of consumers with dissimulation, misdirection, deception, and misinformation. And no, I’ve never voted for Nader.