Dungeons are boring

Tuesday, October 30. [Just bemoaning not being able to write because of the neck pain.]

Do you wax?

Sunday, October 28. [Complaining about my worsening health, then this:]

Fingernails still in good shape. I’m regretting a conversation from a few minutes ago, though. A guy was complaining about his face itching after a few days without shaving. [We hadn’t been given any razors up to this point.] A couple of us agreed. I said it had been five days for me. He looked at me and said “what, you don’t got no facial hair?” I think I smiled a guilty smile and shook my head no. “Do you wax?” I answered yes, thinking that waxing would probably produce results pretty close to the tweezing that I had really been doing. But then I regretted immediately the little lie and even more, the brush off. I wished I had said “Not waxing, laser. I’m a tranny…”

Stacy

Ok, happy thoughts while my neck is happy–my night with Stacy. We’d waited so long for this and it turned out great. She called when she was free after work. I’d started the night without her at Charlie’s Kitchen with dinner and a beer. I was worried I wouldn’t recognize her because she was coming male mode and I’d never seen her male mode! It was easy though when she rolled in all smiles and gave me a hug. She ordered me another beer so we could have a few minutes to hang out at the bar before leaving. It was wonderful for me to be there with a guy who was obviously my date. Um, not to slight any of the other men who have taken me out or gone out with me in the past, but, Charlie’s is my Cheers, where everybody knows my name, and Stacy is, mm, yummy. He was getting up to use the restroom before we left and kissed me on the cheek and I guess my eyes were wide or my mouth was hanging open or something because he asked if that was all right. “Are you kidding?” I asked. “It’s every tranny’s dream to be kissed in public by a handsome man!” He took me to his hotel room, in his rental Crown Vic, and we made sweet, long awaited, love. I apologized afterward for erratically switching back and forth over the night between seeing him as a man and seeing her as a woman. It was Stacy the the girl I knew when we talked, when I looked at her face, when I kissed her deliciously soft girl lips. And then, I would look down and see this broad sexy man’s back under me on the couch and I would get such a thrill at being this man’s girl–er, except I was on top–and then my head would spin at the craziness of it all and I loved it. She took me home before midnight, I went in and dropped off a bag or something, I don’t remember what, and then, I was bad: I went back to Charlie’s on my own. It was bad because I really didn’t need to drink any more and I really didn’t need my ego stroked. But it felt so good! I fielded questions about my date, and ended up sitting next to these three gay cuties. One of them wanted to talk to me, explain that he had seem me all around Harvard Square. He, and everyone else saw this as a compliment, but it made me feel a little strange. It shouldn’t, I know. I know I’m visible, and I’ve long since given up on going to a lot of trouble to always wear makeup and stuff, yet to have my visibility pointed out makes me worry that some of the people I’m visible to might not exactly be fans. As I explained to this guy (Jason? Was that his name?) it only takes one hater to ruin my day. Anyway, I was basking in tranniness that night. Chris complained, “How did you become a celebrity? I’ve been coming to this bar for years and no pays attention to me!” Poor Chris, we love him though. Ok, I’ve been sitting in front of an open window this whole time I’ve been writing and I’m frozen now. Bedtime.

Happy Sad

Saturday, October 27. Bad muscle spasms sent me to bed early yesterday and have been a problem all day today. [Boring stuff: reminiscing about camming that recent night, more about my health.]

Then this on my sad state in life: My happy pill is nice but it’s also good for me to listen to some of these guys tell stories about losing everything in life and then getting started again. It gives me inspiration. From where will I start? Will I still have an apartment? A job? Will I have any clothes? Any possessions? Quite sure I won’t have any cash. Will my credit card work? Answers could be all no. Suppose I do still have a job, will it be enough to satisfy the court?

Bohemia

Friday, October 26. [A page and a half of nothing: A visit from the nurse, guys amused at me being cheerful and ditzy, sketching with colored pencils.]

Inside

I journalled a bit from jail. Much of what I wrote is aimless. Here I’m just transcribing parts of interest. My writing starts with me still in a daze:

Wednesday, October 24. Nice to have paper and pen after just one day here. I suppose also nice to have a year or so of writing practice. No idea what to write about. First the fact: I’m in jail. And I’m alive. Concerns of others that I might be suicidal have been proven unfounded. My concern, that I would be incapacitated without ibuprofen, has also passed. My neck has been spasming some, but not as badly as I’d feared. Rest helps, massage helps, Dr. Deb’s acupressure technique helps. Just changing positions, standing for a while, helps. Quite likely the biggest help of all is relief from the stress of this day finally passing. The uncertainty of it and the self-brought stress of not doing anything to prepare for it or avoid it. The obvious question is why. I dread that question because I don’t have an answer. I don’t know why I’ve done this. I really don’t.

[I ramble here about detoxing, being bored with people telling each other tales of violence, the world series, buying cosmetics rather than snacks from the jail canteen, my chaotic sleep patterns, and how the late night trashy dating shows on TV are so het.]

I’m enjoying little expressions of femininity. When I first got a bunk here Tuesday, Kirin was the first, really the only, person to say hi and ask me my name. “Sonia” I answered He blinked in disbelief and said “No, really.” “Kyle” I tried again. He recovered his composure and said, “Oh, you’re funny….” Later in the day after he’d had time to think, he came back for more detail. “So you’re gay?” “I was living as a woman” I came right out and said. He wanted to caution me not to throw that in people’s faces there because they don’t care and don’t want to know–at best. So I haven’t been, but I’ve been quiet in general, minding my own business, but trying to at least be aware of what’s going on. Most everyone else seems pretty good at this and so my feminine quirks don’t seem to bother anyone. My nails are delightfully long right now and still nicely covered with clear polish. My eyebrows still have their severely plucked shape, my face still not showing much of any beard shadow. And I’ve been flaunting as few mannerisms here there. I’ll sit in feminine ways and try to follow my usual practice for elbows, arms, hands, fingers, posture, shoulders, and walk. My arms still look nicely enough shaved and it’s been nice to wash them and then use this nice smelling lotion [that I bought from canteen.]

[More rambling about my sore neck, my diet (documented in absurd detail,) dealing with soft contact lenses, dealing with the jail medical staff.]

One thing I didn’t report was my transgenderism. Medical might like to know, but this is, yet anyway, an undiagnosed medical condition. I’m not even sure I want that diagnosis. I do miss being Sonia, but I’m ok with putting her away for a month and that’s all that seems to make sense. Physical modifications to my body aren’t so dramatic that anyone here seems bothered, I’m not on any hormone prescriptions, and I’ve always said how fortunate are the TS’s that can put the girl in the closet for a limited time in order to achieve longer range goals. Time to take my own medicine.

Random Sonia thought: Kissy face lip pose. I think I just learned this last week! The trick to making the lips pucker is to pull the corners of the mouth toward the middle. So simple, but I didn’t get it until last week! This was a problem at Natick one night about a year ago when Danielle had done my lip makeup and we were posing for Tiffany’s camera. Someone had the idea of us doing a photo with pouty lips and I didn’t know how to do it. I tried to push my lips out and succeeded in only making a face like I had put something with a bad taste in my mouth. A clue that it was possible came from Jessica, the esthetician at Beauty and Main. She said I had good lips. “Really?” I questioned her. I thought my lips were impossibly thin male lips but she argued that they were plenty full. Frustrating evidence came with a picture Rachel posted of herself with super pouty kissy lips. Rachel’s lips are as thin as mine! How did she do that? (Also frustrating, how does she know that and I don’t? It’s frustrating that some girls are seemingly so much more naturally feminine than me! (( The final key came when I watched an episode of “America’s Next Top Model.” With serendipity, the gimmick they had picked to this episode was to have the contestants (women) crossdress as men for a photo shoot with professional drag queens. At one point, one of the judges, a man, was criticizing one of the contestants for failing to make her lips look masculine. He pointed to one of the photos saying “See? You’re doing this…” and he made the pouty face, “instead of this” and he let his lips return to their natural thin-lip male shape. Wow! So there it was demonstrated right in front of me! I tried a few times in front of the mirror and I saw the light. So… just one day later I’m getting my mug shot for jail and I try practicing. I don’t exactly want a kissy face, but I try making my lips look fuller by pulling the corners in a little. It worked! It’s not an attractive photo by any means. I look totally beat, like, scary stressed, weary and defeated, which of course, I was. And, another lesson I still haven’t learned is not to let my head tilt to the right for straight-on pictures because my mouth is already tilted to the right a bit and tilting it more makes for photos where my mouth just jumps out as looking disturbingly crooked. My mugshot is like this. But at least the lips are full! I was pleased. One last posing tip from the show: They were saying that a clenched jaw masculinizes the face. Haven’t practiced that in the mirror yet but it makes sense.

[More rambling about food, getting medicine, playing Monopoly.]

[Ha, there’s a funny story I didn’t write up about my Monopoly partner relating a nightmare where lots of crazy things happened. One of the scary things he dreamed was that I was scratching him with my long fingernails.]

Crash

The weekend after the aborted telescope run was spent in bed, in pain, stressing over this upcoming court date on Tuesday, and ignoring all calls and messages. In particular I’d been ignoring Daphne and Deedee for over a week now. I had confessed my legal problems to them and they were anxious for me to do something to deal with the problems. I had done nothing. I had nothing to tell them and I didn’t want to listen to them ask why and lecture me about doing something.

Tuesday morning came after yet another sleepless night. This would be my second court appearance since going full time last spring. The other court appearance had been my only day to dress male mode since. Since this case predates Sonia, since I’m still legally male, and since appearing en femme before a judge seemed an unnecessary distraction, I wanted to go male mode again. I really wanted to leave the house that way, but Al was piddling in the kitchen and there was no way around him. So, women’s ankle boots, women’s jeans, men’s button shirt, men’s sport coat, wig, and purse over my shoulder, and I popped out of my bedroom door, breezed by Al, tossing a “good morning” over my shoulder, and whisking out the front door without giving him a chance to answer. Somewhere along the way to the courthouse, I don’t remember where, I pulled off the wig, stowed it in a plastic bag in the purse, and transferred the purse from my shoulder to my hand.

The story of court is featureless and not worth telling. It ends with the judge saying “35 days.” I was going to jail.

Nose Dive

I was excited about those tickets I won at Gender Crash because they were to a Big Moves show and I just love those girls. Very sadly, I didn’t go to the show. I had kind of told Daphne about the tickets and I was hoping she would come with me, but I was in this “nose dive” of declining physical and mental health. I was stressing over an upcoming court date, over not going to see my therapist in a long time, and over avoiding making an appointment with an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. Dr. Breshel had referred me to this ENT because of breathing problems. For some reason, I’d been finding excuses to not make this appointment. A more disabling health problem I’d been having was muscles spasms in my neck and shoulders. These were getting worse, and as the night came up for the Big Moves show, I didn’t feel like doing anything but taking Ibuprofen and whimpering in bed.

About the same time, I also had three nights of telescope time scheduled. I worked the first night, then writhed in pain on the floor of my office for a few hours before going home. I made Tim finish the run for me. So, I’d been missing days of work because of this neck pain, I’d been using the excuse that I was observing for not showing up some of these days. At the same time my breathing problem was getting worse and worse. I’d all but lost my voice, and when the muscle spasms were at their worst, I would pant in pain and aggravate the breathing problem to the point where I would start to panic that I couldn’t get enough breath. Nothing I do makes sense, I know. I’m an idiot.