Cyndi

Last night, Cyndi arrived in town! Cyndi and I had one night together, last September. Now she was back in town for some classes and of course we had plans to see each other again. She called when she got in town, I called her back, we talked and, we couldn’t wait. She came over and I helped her relieve some tension that had been pent up since we were last together, like nine months ago.So much to think about… I didn’t tell Cyndi, but I’m planning to read about her at the next Gender Crash, which is coming up the week after this. Oh, background for that is that for a few months now I’ve been going to Gender Crash thinking, “oh, that looks fun, but I’m no performer, and anyway, I don’t write” when it hit me that I *do* write…here in my journal. It’s public anyway, I decided to read from it. I first picked the account of the first time I dressed at home, but it was over the three minute limit. Right now I’m thinking I’ll read the passage CD Tears, which in fact, I wrote about Cyndi.

Coming out to Arizona

Interesting stuff happened Tuesday when I came back to work after the Memorial day weekend.

An email was waiting for me from a fellow astronomer in Arizona calling my attention to a discussion on one of the Internet astronomy forums. He knew that I had a computer program that addressed the problem being discussed and suggested I tell people about it. His suggestion was absolutely right.

There was just one little problem. None of these people knew about Sonia. We know each other primarily through the Internet, and even at that, some of us correspond only infrequently. It wasn’t that I’d kept any secret from these people, there just hadn’t been any occasion to tell them yet. Here was the occasion. It was appropriate for me to post to this forum, but I wanted to post as Sonia, and so I kind of needed to introduce myself…as myself. All along I’ve kind of been following the principle of not entering any closet that I don’t have to, so here it was time to come out as Sonia to the greater international group of scientists that I work with.

The online message board is no place for gender discussion, but it seemed reasonable to me to just make a quick announcement and get on with the technical discussion. So that’s what I did. I wrote one of my usual terse posts, this time with two announcements: One, I’m a girl now, and two, here’s the URL with the technical stuff.

Knowing that scientists are the curious sort that would go look at my online profile, I also updated my profile pic, and made sure that I was presenting a consistent message. None of my crazy clubbing pics seemed appropriate for this, so I poked my head in Tim’s office and asked him to take a snapshot with my cellphone camera. We stepped outside where the light was better and the summer trees made a nice background. I like this picture.

The post to the message board worked pretty well! I got almost the same response I got when I came out here at the office two months ago. That is, I got a couple of congratulations but otherwise people were interested in my work and couldn’t care less what clothes I wear.

But notice I said “almost.” There was an exception this time. One astronomer in another state didn’t take the news well. He ended up calling on the phone, talking to my coworkers, ranting about my transgender status, and threatening violence against my supervisor. I didn’t talk to this person, and I don’t know exactly what he said or what kind of violence was threatened. But after mulling things over, my supervisor, the one that was threatened, came the conclusion that this sort of thing shouldn’t be shrugged off or ignored. He called the police.

Police came, took statements, and well, not a lot has happened since then. My supervisor has talked to them on the phone a couple of times since, they say the case is open and they have an investigator assigned to it and that he will be contacting us in the near future. I just keep thinking how crazy it is that my experience was so flawlessly positive for my first ten months, and then all within a week I get discrimination, hatred, and threats.

Brisk

Monday morning I walked Steffenie to her car, said goodbye, and then–had flashbacks of my promiscuous days in the sex club in Kansas–as I called Daphne and made plans for her to come right over. We tossed around ideas of things to do after she arrived and made a rather poor choice. She agreed to go sailing with me. How many times must I learn: Sailing makes a BAD activity for a date! The weather was beautiful but the wind was brisk enough that the water was covered with whitecaps. Me being a bit out of practice sailing in these things, I failed to avoid many waves and poor Daphne got soaked with spray. Back at my place after sailing, what was there to do but get her out of her wet clothes, hm? I really really liked having her over, we were so comfortable and relaxed together. She was no only relaxed, but short on sleep, and soon was sound asleep in my bed. My roommate Al later complained about Steffenie staying for two nights. Omg, I am such a slut, Al never even saw Daphne, didn’t know that I had swapped one girl out for another. And…the weekend wasn’t even over.

Paradise

Sunday evening was the infamous discrimination incident that I have written about elsewhere. In short, I was denied entry to a certain gay bar in Cambridge because I was cross dressed. Now I understand that this sort of discrimination happens. The problem is that this sort of discrimination is explicitly ILLEGAL in the the city of Cambridge Massachusetts. Cambridge is one of three cities in the state of Massachusetts with gender protections against this. Since that night, I’ve been working with people at the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) to determine the appropriate response for this. It’s not over. I’ll post updates as there’s news.

I had my new friend Steffenie visiting that day. After striking out at one place, we went to another. We got in ok there, but the place turned out to be dead and we left in a matter of minutes. Home at my place, we drank margaritas, got drunk, and went in the bedroom. The next day, Steffenie had been having such a good time staying with me that she was showing no signs of leaving. I hated to be so blunt, but I kind of had to tell her to leave. I’d had fun too, but, you know? We’d just met. It was our first time together. It was time for her to go home.

Hello Daphne

Saturday evening I ended up at RCC again with Ashley. She somehow knew that Daphne would be there. Knowing that Ashley dresses like a showgirl and Daphne always looks elegant, I decided to contrast with them and go for a look that was a little bit “punk.” The urban camo miniskirt, the black tank with steel grommets, platform sandals, black hair in a pony tail, bangs over one eye. What fun. Fun to dress, fun friends, fun alcohol. Uncharacteristically for me though, I didn’t dance a bit that night! I ended up talking a lot with Daphne, and, as with Donna the week before, she and I ended up making out in the middle of the room. Am I going to hell or what? Mmm, I do like Daphne a lot… Um…anyway… Ashley, Stacey and I went to I-HOP after the bar closed, Ashley drove me home, and that was day one of the three day weekend.

Twin City

Memorial Day was coming up, and I had made a silly post to Sisters of Boston threatening to wear patriotic bunting wrapped around me to form a toga, as my outfit for our Sisters meeting on Friday. Exploring the possibility, I went fabric shopping to see if such a thing was practical. Now, I’m not a regular fabric shopper, so first I googled for fabric stores, and found one in the Twin City Plaza. This was a perfect excuse to go visit this little strip mall. Crazy as it is, I had never been there! Oh, what a mistake to overlook this place. It’s a great little strip mall for a girl, with stores like Marshalls, Dots, Sally Beauty Supply, Dunkin Donuts, and this fabric store. The fabric store was busy, I just browsed around and found a bolt of printed flags. Perfect! Instructions on the internet said four yards should be enough for a toga. That was four flags of this stuff that makes 3×5′ flags.

Friday came and I was slow getting ready as usual. There wouldn’t be time to experiment much with the fabric so I thought it would be fine to just fold it up and take it along, and later at the hotel, make a silly activity of trying to figure out how to wear it. See, I had bugged Ashley to declare a theme for Sisters this holiday weekend and she picked “red, white, and blue” as a theme. To go with the Ashley’s theme, I not only had the flag fabric along, I’d painted my nails red, white, and blue. Fingernails all red, one thumbnail white, the other one blue. For something practical wear, I’d worn my denim mini, a string tank, and my new wedge sandals. This was a fun “summer” look, so to complete it, I took a wicker basket as an accessory. This was the basket I got for a prop with my Dorothy Halloween costume. It looks substantially like a picnic basket, even if it’s really a gift basket from Frances Cardullo’s gourmet shop, so here it is again a perfect prop for the Memorial Day theme. Also very convenient for carrying the flag fabric, my purse, a makeup bag, an extra pair of shoes, and so on.

All was good until I was walking out the door of my apartment, recomputing train and bus travel times in my head, and I realized I was going to miss one of my connections. Rats, what to do? I called Ashley, I called Wendy, I called Deedee. Deedee said she’d pick me up half way and give me a ride the rest of the way. Well, that worked. It was far from ideal though. It put me in a car, and I’m hating riding in cars more and more these days, and it got us to the hotel parking lot around 10 pm. We ran into a car load of Sisters as we stepped out of the car. They were just leaving the hotel! Only five girls had come that night, and they had hung around the hotel for a while and were ready to go into Boston. Deedee and I were done driving and decided to just stay at the hotel bar by ourselves. So, Sisters this week was a little different. Deedee and I had a nice little chat at the hotel, a couple of drinks, and…I think maybe I ate dinner too. I can’t remember. She drove me home afterwards, I dropped off my basket, changed the mini for jeans, and went back out to…Charlie’s, I think…for another drink. Yes, I should have stayed home. I didn’t. So there. At Charlie’s, there was a Sox game on, a crowd at one end of the bar was all wrapped up in the game. Next to them were some guys just drinking alone. There was one empty stool among them. I sat down and ordered a drink. The guy on my left got up and walked over to join the crowd watching the game. The guy on my right struck up a conversation after a while. We talked about different things as we drank. At some point I jokingly called something or other “gay”, so the conversation wandered in that direction for a sentence or two, when I said, “Hey, I’m tickled to see that I’m not the only tranny in here.” His jaw dropped. “What?” he said with a blank look on his face. “Over there, by the front door” I gestured. “The guy in the red dress.” He looked, he looked back at me, he looked at the guy in the dress, he looked back at me. “Yeah…but…he…she’s…not very good” he stammered. “You…you…ah, I thought you were a woman!”

*sigh* When will I learn?

Anyway, he was cool. We talked more, I finished my drink and went home.

Fear

Hmm…last I wrote was May 22, when I was crushing on Donna, and I’ve hardly had any contact with her since. How is this possible? I think I’ve simply been too scatterbrained to support a crush. How sad is that? I know she’s out there, she writes in her blog, she left me a message or two even, and I haven’t written her. Well, I admit, I was kind of spooked to feel that kind of emotional inexplicable attraction. I haven’t felt a crush on anyone like that since…Jessica, last year. So what do I do? I just kind of avoid thinking about it, about her, and go on with life.

*deep breath*

Donna

Monday morning I felt like such a guy because I was ready to leave for work except I couldn’t find my cell phone. After work I came home and tore my room apart looking for it. It wasn’t there. Where could it be? I had it on the bicycle ride yesterday. It was in my pants pocket. I had since washed the pants. It wasn’t in the washer, wasn’t on the floor anywhere, wasn’t in the bedroom anywhere, wasn’t in the basement with the bicycle. I remembered emptying my pants pockets anyway…although…I didn’t exactly remember seeing the phone… Could they have fallen out on the bicycle ride? It just seemed impossible. I was wearing my Tahari cords that fit so nicely. Oh, forget the long story… I found it in the sink, where I had since washed dishes and hand washed some clothes. The phone had drowned. Today after work I went and got a new one. Yes, it’s expensive and I signed a contract, but, it’s so much nicer than my old phone. It’s a phone fit for a girl whereas my old phone was a worn ugly thing that only a nerdy guy would carry. This phone is sleek and has a color screen and ring tones and takes pictures and I’m sure you’re all bored with this because you had a phone like this for a year or more but it’s new and really exciting to me.

After getting the phone, there was still plenty of time to go sailing. It was a beautiful sunny day which meant lots of people at the dock. As I was standing around people watching and finishing my coolata they pleaded on the PA system for instructors, saying there was a long list of people waiting for instruction. Still giving the dock staff room to handle me delicately, I stepped up to the dock house and said that I could take people out after I went to my locker. Christian didn’t raise an eyebrow. “Come back when you’re ready” he said. I did, and ended up going out with a girl who had sailed a little bit on small boats elsewhere but had just joined here and had never sailed one of our boats. She was fun! We had lively conversation, she was interested in learning stuff, and, needed to learn. It seemed her sailing skills were a bit weak for having sailed other boats before.

Home after sailing, cooked dinner, went to visit Jessica to get her phone number (and her picture!) in my new phone, back home again, playing on the computer… stalling really…

because…

I have such a crush on Donna.