Bravery–and the Yankees–rule

Tuesday was:  work, picking up my bike, going by the grocery store because I knew we had little at home, fixing dinner, and watching voting returns on the internet.  Maine lost, Kalamazoo won.

Food yesterday:

Lunch:  left over chili

Dinner:  toasted soybean appetizer, bluefish, rice, salad

Weight Wednesday morning: 164.

Food Wednesday:  Bagel, meatloaf, baked potato, salad, movie popcorn, alcohol.

In the evening we saw the Coen brothers’ latest, “A Serious Man.”  I commented when we left that I didn’t get it.  I understand from reading on the internet that the movie was close to home for them, and that you understand more if you are Jewish.  I think much, much, went over my head, which is why I made that comment.  One thing I noticed though was that religion didn’t do the characters in the movie any good–it didn’t help them figure anything out, it didn’t explain anything for them.  (The Bible didn’t explain anything for us as the audience either, except to provide foreshadowing.)  So after the movie, in the car ride home, it kind of came together for me when Alex said that much out loud–that religion (or god) didn’t help anyone in the movie–and said that he saw that as kind of the point of the whole movie.  Ha!  In that sense, the movie might be seen as in the vein of another movie Alyson and I saw recently, “The Invention of Lying,” Serious Man with this dark view of religion, and Invention with its message, as I paraphrased after seeing it, that religion is the mother of all lies.

(I know I haven’t mentioned Invention in a recent post.  Sorry, I’m trying to add some backdated posts, but I may or may not work in mention of that movie.)

Anyway, Jen and Alex picked us up for the movie tonight.  They were confused about the time and were actually running an hour early so after I pointed that out, we had a drink at Flat Top Johnny’s first.  We met a few of their friends at the theater:  Sean, Matt, and someone else, I forget who.  After the movie, my brain having been teased with alcohol, I went to close Joe Sent Me on my own.  The fearless radical there was not me, but a woman there by herself wearing a Yankees jersey.  Guys commented on that when she left.  I added some comment about bravery, internally being quite amused at how often I’ve been called brave for being transgender…

Stacy love

Thursday, November 29. Grumpy in the morning and feeling ugly, I stayed in my office with the door closed all morning, only poking my head out once to retrieve last night’s doggy bag from the hall fridge. Some time after noon, I walked back to Stacy’s and buzzed again. She greeted me at the door with a smile and handed me a key. I was instantly in a better mood, and we talked and had nice conversation while I tweezed more hairs from my face. I was really being away from work for too long but it was so nice to talk. She gave me a tub of yogurt to take with me for an afternoon snack. Wanting a few more calories and a little more pleasure, I bought a cherry Coke at Darwins, went and filled my Prozac prescription, and returned to work

In a happier mood, I wasn’t feeling so ugly any more but it was true that Sunday evening was actually my last shower. See, Stacy and Jessica’s place is pretty dilapidated, and without going into detail about their shower, let me just say that I wanted another option. I called Lisa. “Where exactly is the shower you were saying is somewhere in the building?” “Meet me. I’ll show you.” Fascinating, it was. After the tour of a couple of little known corners of the building, we swung by my office and I gave her that suit jacket that used to be Tina’s. Daphne called around the end of the day to remind me about a presentation on HIV research at the Boston Living Center. She thought of me when she saw that it was free and that they were serving food. Hey, I’m not below that. I went.

At the BLC there were indeed nice hors d’oeuvres and soft drinks, but I ended up not eating so much because the presentation and the conversation among the attendees was just fascinating. The presentation was about the recent vaccine trial that was halted in failure and how to understand the reports of this that were appearing in the media. Audience looked to be mostly gay men. I didn’t notice any other obviously trans women there. I did see Alex…I feel so bad that I never sent him my comments on the supper club. Maybe he’ll forgive me if I tell him I was in jail?

On the way home, who did I run into at random, but Kuan-Chung! We started talking and wanted to talk longer than just the train ride back, so he got off with me at Harvard to tag along for a bit. I knew I would need more food that I ate at the BLC so my first stop was the 7-11 where I got a sandwich and lemonade. The two of us walked back to my office. “Oh, it looks just like where I work!” he exclaimed as we wound our way through the hallways. “Just the posters are different.” That is, it’s a pretty generic science lab. He works in bioscience, I work in astronomy–only the posters are different. He shared a cookie with me before I walked him down the stairs to the bus stop to send him home. He’s so pleasant, so nice, he must have been so bored to want to hang out with me! I checked a few things on the computer, before returning to Stacy’s. Thursday happens to be one of her nights off. She was home and happy to see me–in bed.

Fenway T Supper Club

Saturday home doing housework. Sunday evening with Stacy and Jessica. Monday Daphne.

Tuesday was something kind of new, my first night of the T Supper Club at Fenway Community Health. Now, I kind of have to mind my p’s and q’s here, because Fenway is really big on confidentiality, but I think I can talk in generalities. My goal in coming to this was to branch out and explore more of the trans community. I’ve been mostly raised by cross dressers over this last year. My social circle has mostly been GNO and then Sisters. Similar are FoRCC, FoFL, FoTriangles, TCNE, First Event. I’ve explored a number of other groups and events, at least to some extent, in search of diversity: Jacque’s, Imperial Court, Boston Pride, Gender Crash, MTPC, Boston FTMSOFFA, Mad Fem Pride. I’ve found some diversity in some of the online groups I’ve participated in: TSonHormones, TSVoice, Mikes’s TG Planet. What else is there? Surely I’ve only touched the tail and the ear of the TG elephant. What is the rest like? So anyway, the T Supper Club certainly proved to be a different part of the elephant than any part I already knew. With only ten or so of us there, it’s far from representative of the whole elephant, but I think the people there are going to prove a fascinating mix. A few of them I knew already. Pretty sure I’m going to be really glad I signed up for this.

One thing I found frustrating to the point where I acted a bit childish. Alex had us talk for the first hour, and then eat. The problem was, some of us were hungry! See, though we may act like little girls, we’ve got big boy appetites. It was maddening to have the food sitting there and not be able to dig in. We did introductions and those were allowed to drag on and fill up the entire hour! I kept thinking that if people would just stop talking, we would be allowed to eat. But no, they would drone on with their stories, then ask each other questions, and inside I would groan, “nooo, don’t encourage her to talk more!” *sigh* So, ok, my head was totally in the wrong place. I should have been listening intently to these stories to get to know my new dinner friends for the next six Tuesday nights. Instead, I’m afraid I was a very poor listener. Worst of all was when a straggler showed up after this hour of introductions, just when it was time to eat. “oh, no way, I thought, should she be allowed to eat without suffering through these introductions like the rest of us.” *sigh* But no, Alex was gracious and the latecomer stayed. My bad attitude carried over to the feedback sheet. I’m afraid my answers were snippy and sarcastic. Oh well, have to make up for it next week

Shoes, chocolate, and Alex

Wednesday was my second time to go to the FTM SOFFA group. I went last month (it seems that went undocumented!) and liked it ok. And yes, I’m going to this thinking about Alex. I headed to the meeting straight from work, thinking that I would be able to make it there by 6:30 easily. On the train though, it hit me that the meeting wasn’t until 7:30. I had time to shop for shoes! I went back to DSW thinking it was absurd that I didn’t see anything there yesterday that I liked. Sure enough, this time was better. I hadn’t gone through but part of the sandals when I found some wedges that I just fell in love with. So there, between the two pair I’d spent my alcohol money. The meeting was nice, I showed off my shoes of course, we ate chocolate, and told stories about stuff, including FTM stuff. Wish I had more to talk about….

Gender Genie

I need to document a couple of changes occurring simultaneously here. First, as mentioned, I’m full time now, and second, I’m suddenly poor. This is a result of court last week. Alex was one of the people I had told about my court date so he wanted to hear the outcome. “They ordered me to be female–poor, that is” I texted him. So I’m going to have to adjust to going out clubbing much less, drinking much less, going out for expensive dinners much less, and spending less on clothes and such. The drinking thing will be good. I haven’t had a drink in a week or so now, and I’m not missing it at all. Maybe I’m not an alcoholic after all? Really it’ll all be good for me. I’ll like cooking more rather than going out, and my roommate Al will like me better for living closer to his austere lifestyle.

Part of being full time is that in a sense, I’ve arrived. “Dressing” for me is now what it is for most of the population–getting up in the morning and putting on clothes for the day. Going out in public is being normal and boring. So one question is what am I writing about here? I heard one TS recently say that it would be absurd for her to journal everything she does every day because it’s all the boring stuff of life like going to the grocery store and stuff. I’m kind of there myself now. Do I keep documenting all this boring stuff? I think I will to some extent. I think much of what I’ve been documenting here has been boring all along, just mixed in with the far more interesting chronicles of my insane social life over the last few months. My purpose in writing wasn’t initially for the entertainment of URNA readers, it was for me, to document changes in my life. I think I’ll stick to that if nothing else.

I’ll write here from some notes I made on Monday. I was in the middle of an observing run then, sleeping during the day and being awake at the telescope at night. This the day that Tom from the boat house had said I should go watch rigging class, so I’d set my alarm for 4:30 pm. I woke up on my own an hour before that and made myself lie there and doze to try and be as rested as possible for the night. The alarm went off, I got up, dressed quickly, and got to the boat house on time for the class. Tom was right, the instructor was good. It was Keith, whom I remember sitting with at lunch on the work day just before opening day this year. (See? I should remember him from three years of sailing before, but I don’t. I was such a basket case as a guy.) After class, I decided to splurge on pizza at Uno. While waiting for the pizza, I went outside to return a phone call to Erica. She was calling to just catch up on stuff with me, give me her new phone number, and find out what I’d been up to. I’m afraid she’s still suffering some jealousy. She was dying to ask me who I’d been seeing and who I had plans with in the near future, but at the same time she was catching herself, repeating “you know, I don’t need to know.” Poor thing. It’ll take time. I think she’ll be at RCC this weekend. That should be a really fun night. I think lots of fun people will be there and that it’s going to be a great party. While I was on the phone with her, I was surprised to see Craig Mitchell walking toward me on the sidewalk! We recognized each other and I held out my arms to give him a big hug. I was on the phone, he was going somewhere, so we just said hi and that it was fun to run into each other like this and, that was all. He walked on, and I went back to talking to Erica. But really, just how cool is Harvard Square? That a tranny, hanging out on the sidewalk outside a pizza joint, talking on her cell phone, could see one of the area’s best house music DJs, exchange hugs, and just, go on with life. Pizza was good. Yes, I drank diet coke instead of alcohol, and walked through Cambridge Common on my way to work as the sun was setting. Just out of being in a great mood, I called Deedee. We talked for a few minutes before she told me that she was with a client. Oops! At the office, I emailed Wendy with some plans for Saturday. I told her that I had a bottle of champagne (the one mentioned in my last journal entry) to contribute to the hotel room party. Also, reading emails there was a post from someone leading to a fun toy on the web (http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php) that characterizes your writing as male-like or female-like. It’s fun, try it! I tried it on my URNA journal here, and, no surprise, it says I’m a girl. Later in the evening, Deedee called me back. Her client was gone, but I was busy with the telescope, so she had to put up with me setting the phone down every now and then to move the telescope. Mm, otherwise, I did post a reply to Kim. I’d met Kim at first event and just in the last day or two she had joined Sisters and made an introductory post. I don’t know, is this life boring? It’s still the life of a very new t-girl, all caught up in socializing with other t-girls.

A post I haven’t responded to yet is Sharon’s. Sharon asked on one of the mailing lists, “How come I don’t see more t-girls out in public?” She quickly got the obvious answers from others on the list. All the transitioned girls said “we’re there standing right next to you, but we pass and you don’t notice us.” All the closet dressers said “we choose not to go out in public and be ridiculed and humiliated” So that left me thinking about myself. I don’t pass completely, but I’m out there anyway. I guess that makes me pretty rare. I got me thinking that I am the public face of transgenders. What does the public see? Not the passable TSs, not the closet dressers. If they go to a drag show they see drag queens, if they’re on certain streets at night they’ll see prostitutes. But in the grocery store or in the office at work? It’s me. Coincident with Sharon’s post was an excellent thread debating the merits of gender therapy, the standards of care, and the real life test. Now, I have my therapist, but she’s not a gender therapist. I haven’t read the standards of care, I’m not doing any formal real life test in order to qualify for hormones or surgery, and yet, here I am going full time. How crazy is that? One of the arguments against the real life test is that it’s hazing. Forcing a person to go out in public in a non-passable state as a prerequisite for medical treatments to become passable is just wrong. But then my experience hasn’t been that bad. If fact, the reason I’m going full time is that I felt so well accepted while I was part time. This chain of thought led me to appreciate again the environment of Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston. Others have prepared the way for me and made these places accepting and welcoming. Cambridge and Boston have gender expression explicitly protected in their municipal codes. I heard recently that the reason Somerville doesn’t is that it was one of the pioneers in getting sexual orientation protected by municipal code, and that gender expression wasn’t even on the radar back then. Now we have new legislation introduced, 1722 at the state level and ENDA at federal level. The future is looking even brighter.

So I’m writing this up at work, and Gareth pokes his head in my office and says “I read your blog…” Oh-my-god. My face was beet red. I suppose I should get back to work…

I’m full time!

Yes, I’m still way behind on writing, but this news couldn’t wait. I’m full time now! I’m breaking all kinds of rules by updating my journal at work, but not by being dressed at work. Everything’s been discussed with everone, everyone’s been notified, so, here I am! I got hugs and kisses and congratulations from people, and when I got back from lunch there was a bouquet of roses for me. It’s a *really* happy day.

And, I hate doing this, but since I’m so far behind, here are my notes on what I should have written about:

More on Sunday: , Sheila, Terri from Fla, bubble bath, Jessica, phone, no trash.
Monday — MTPC, Flash’s, Ashley phone,
Tuesday — Uno male mode, Alex sleepover.
Wednesday — Eva, CBI, Miracle of Science, Middlesex, La Spina
Thursday — hesitant to go to Gender Crash, then went, Yuri’s night
Friday – Sisters, Xmortis
Saturday – sailing, new wig, Rise
Sunday – sleep, laundry, sleep
Monday – home at lunch time, Sharon
Tuesday – Court, Sharon, Alex, Johanna, Jessica, Dave, Work

Why are Sabrina and I the only ones who bothered to dress for Xmortis?

Great sex

Monday evening I wound up back at Uno for karaoke. I texted Alex and surprise, after a while he showed up! We drank, came back to my place, drank more, had great sex, slept.

Three pounds this week

I’m always late. Last night I could have gone home after work, changed, and got to the boat house on time. Instead, got home and wasted time poking at my face in the mirror, and got to the boat house about 10 minutes late. Why? Why do I have to be like that? Anyway, Alex texted me about the time I got home, said he was at La Spina. So sweet. Last night the last text I sent him ended “…but, hey, you know? I miss ya. We should go out again some time soon” so poof, here he was. So he waited a couple of hours at the bar while I did my thing, and I caught up to him about 8:30. We have fun together, but I’m not sure we’re good for each other. Each of us had excuses for why we didn’t want to drink too much but then what did we do, but drink all night and get totally wasted. At La Spina, Steve and Holly were frazzled running the restaurant and bar by themselves when all of the floor staff failed to show up for work. Special, hm? Holly wasn’t even scheduled to work but was there with a college friend, Marsha, and Marsha’s friend Nothan. We ate and drank there, then the six of us moved to Gargoyles, and then to Noir. Alex paid at La Spina, Steve at Gargoyles, and me at Noir. Wow, really great cocktails at all three places.

I’m still nervous about the boat house. You know, so far I haven’t had to do much coming out because I tried to be out as much as possible right from the start. The boat house is different because here is a large group of people that knew me before, and now I’m appearing as someone completely different. Let me back up here and document last Saturday. It was a work day at the boat house, we assembled and launched all of the boats to prepare for opening day this Saturday. It was a little strange for me, not just because I’m Sonia now, but because as Kyle, I was so inept at social interaction. I interacted with people so weakly that I didn’t even learn that many people’s names. Now, a year and a half later, I had forgotten most of the few names that I once knew. I was pretty much forced to trade introductions with everyone, just so I could know their names. I introduced myself as Sonia, people would tell me their names, and then we would work. Sitting in La Spina, telling Alex how I spent Saturday working on boats, he asked me if I came out to the people there, and with eyes wide, I answered no. He asked something then about being afraid to tell them about Sonia and I corrected him, saying “no, I haven’t told them that I used to be Kyle!” I worked on boats with them all day long, and not a single person called me on it. Am I being strangely deceptive? I don’t really think so. I did tell most people that I used to sail here, that I didn’t sail last summer but I sailed there for three years before that. Anyone who wanted could have used that as free information to talk more about my past, but no one did. You know, I’ll happily come out to people if it seems relevant, at the time though, it just seemed like it would have been more strange to come out than to just introduce myself as Sonia and leave things at that. Like, what would I have said, “Hi you might remember me from two years ago, but sorry, I really don’t remember you even though we sailed together for three years because I was such a strange introverted guy back then, but now I’m on Prozac and I’m a bubbly tranny!” They would have thought to themselves, “Yeah, I remember you well, always living in your own little world and oblivious to everything around you. So, we’re here to work on boats and you’re your telling me about your mental problems and gender identity issues. Um, you’re different how?” It seemed much easier to start over from scratch, then talk about such personal things as Prozac and panties once I’ve established some friendships. Nn, so, last night was training for volunteer instructors. I went because I always should have done that when I was sailing before and so with the Prozac, I should be able to do it now. Being a tranny is relevant in the situation of dealing with the public and representing the boating organization, so I’m going to approach it pretty cautiously. I want to talk to the training director and put everything on the table and see how he feels about me teaching. You know, I’ll assert my right to sail there, but I’m not sure I have the right to force the organization to let me represent them to the public. If the director says he doesn’t want me, then fine, I’m just sailing and not teaching. I’m hoping though, that I get to teach.

What else. Work today went well. My first programming task is a simple one that I know how to do. It should be a good start.

Tonight is Sisters. I’m leaving now to change, call Eva, and try to talk her into coming.

Weight today 157.