Quelle Blogue!

Makeup, Sweat, and Blood

2006-02-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. I've been out of things for a while. Much stress etc. coupled with the trauma of losing my gig in November. Things are better now, though there was a rough patch in January...but, as I'm trying to make a return to blogging, first a happy story.

It was my birthday this past Friday, and I went out and had a great time with several of my friends. On Saturday, as I did last year, I went out and had a makeover done at the Makeup Center on 55th Street. They did a nice job, and so I changed into my new jeans, emerald top, and crocheted shrug and headed out with folkmusicienne E. to have lunch before we got our nails done.

The French place we ate at set the tone for the afternoon: sweaty. We were downstairs and the heat was pretty bad. It didn't help that we shared a bowl of onion soup.

We walked over to Bloomie Nails next door, and had a very nice time getting pampered--they even did my fingernails while I was sitting in the pedicure chair, very princessy. This was the second time I had gotten my nails done en femme, and it was really nice. (One of the people at Bloomie Nails even recognized me.)

After we were done, I still had some time to kill before I met one of our fellow MHBers for drinks, so E. and I walked up to Broadway and 62nd Street. I had decided I wanted to see "Transamerica" (review to come), and we had enough time to hoof it. Not enough sense on my part to change shoes, though.

I had brought two pairs of shoes with me: emerald high-heeled Orsay pumps, and patent black sandals with a low heel. But because of the rainy mist on Saturday, both E. and my makeup artist convinced me not to wear the pumps (probably for the best, the heels are high enough that I can probably only go about 150 feet in them.) After the pedicure, I didn't want to ruin my nails, so I put on the sandals, instead of wearing my boy sneakers again. This was a mistake, as my feet were completely chewed up by the walk.

It also didn't help that I didn't realize which theater I had to go to. The theater I thought was the right one (Lincoln Cinemas on 62nd and Broadway) wasn't showing it, so we walked up to 67th and Broadway, the big Sony multiplex. There E. left me--she was on her way to meet some friends. I went to a ticket machine, only to find the movie wasn't playing there, either. (Meantime, I was a lone trannie amidst a huge crowd of date-going New Yorkers.) I pulled out my cell, called Moviephone, and got the address of the theater again. So out I went, into the rain and wind, feet shrieking in agony. Finally I saw that the theater I was looking for was across Broadway from my original destination. I arrived late but the movie hadn't started yet.

I mostly enjoyed the film, but the theater was hot as hell, so by now between the rain and sweat, I'm not sure how much makeup I still had on. I hustled home, changed into my evening dress, and had a good time hanging out at a bar in the W hotel and the Swan.

So all in all I had a good time. Somewhat to my surprise, I found that I really liked wearing jeans--I need to get some more pairs.

Is this thing on?

2005-12-09T10:54:00.000-05:00

Hello...hello...is anybody out there?

I've been away for a while, but I'm back now. Not much posted today, true, but I'll try to be more regular in adding things here.

It seems I will have more time: as long-anticipated, I got laid off on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving.

I'm mostly positive about this turn of events; I have some checks owed to me, and now I have the chance to really give writing for a living a try. So I will.

Either that, or work at the local Blockbusters. But I don't think it will come to that.

The Latest From the Home Office in...the Kitchen

2005-12-09T10:48:00.000-05:00

So as part of our never-ending apartment reorganization, I have moved my desk into the kitchen.

We have a galley-style kitchen--basically, a long hallway with the sink, refridgerator, and counter-space on your left as you walk to the bathroom. But because we live in a "dumbell" tenement--the buildings are shaped kind of like an I-Beam, so that there's an air shaft between them--there's a little nook in the back of the kitchen. That's where I moved to. This required cramming the cats' automatic litter box into the bathroom--it's roughly the size and shape of a Normandy landing craft--but I managed to accomplish that after liberating an extension cord from the phone and caller ID box.

So far I like it. I have a window on the air shaft, which gives a little light if not much of a view, and there's a radiator next to me, so I should keep warm. There's a picture of the Empire State Building over my desk. I have plenty of light, and a lot fewer distractions, which is nice, and now Darling Wife can study and I can work without bugging each other.

After all, I'm going to be at this desk for a long time, I think, so I had best get comfortable.

St. Nicholas Day

2005-12-09T10:43:00.000-05:00

December 6 is St. Nicholas Day. To be honest, I don't know why this holiday hasn't caught on more--it involves chocolate and shoes.

My family has always followed the German tradition of putting our shoes out the night of December 5, and the next day they were filled with candy and little presents. The Dutch take the holiday far more seriously--for them, it's the main gift-giving day, and Christmas is for church.

There's a good Wiki article on the subject if you're totally confused.

Also, I went down to the MHB couples' meeting. For the first time in three meetings, I crossdressed, but very simply: little black dress, a pink shrug, tights, and cute heels with a silver bow on them.

We had a good meeting and actually got a lot of partner dialog going this time. Thank goodness.

That may have closed my cd'ing for the year, though; I'm trying to grow a holiday beard for our Christmas party.

Happy Halloween

2005-10-31T08:16:00.000-05:00

Well, happy Halloween! The Crossdresser's High Holy Day.

Mine wasn't so good. I was all set to go to a party on Friday when a trans friend of mine who was also going called to say that the fire marshal had shut the place down.

I was too busy the rest of the weekend to go to anything else. So tonight I'll just go to aikido and spend some time at home with DW.

I'll miss wearing my Little Red Riding Hood costume--I looked pretty good in it--but like DW says, "It's Halloween every other week around here."

Symbolic Illogic

2005-10-31T08:15:00.000-05:00

The other day we (mostly me--Darling Wife has a lot of studying to do on the weekend) were cleaning the apartment. It gets pretty shabby during the week, so it takes a lot of work to clean it up.

I was in the bedroom straightening things up. So I made the bed.

You must know something about me: I can spend hours counting the heads of angels on a pin, and tend to see a world fraught with symbolism. These are the hazards of being brought up by people trained by Jesuits and of an education in literary criticism.

To get to my point: I made the bed, and turned down the top of the bedspread to try and make it look nice. I was about to move on to another task, when I was struck by something.

I looked at how I had folded the bedspread. The line was really ragged. It didn't look neat, and it didn't look nice.

Then I realized: I hadn't folded the bedspread. I had symbolically folded the bedspread.

Which leads me to trans stuff. (You knew this wouldn't just be about how bad a housekeeper I am.)

There's a lot of things I do in my femme presentation that are, well, symbolically done. I have a hard time with my eyeliner. When I do my nails, they tend to come out pretty badly--badly enough that I probably should have just not bothered, or just done clear polish (like most of the women I know do.)

Some of this is lack of experience, and lack of the finer muscle control women generally have. But I wonder how much is that I'm content to just make a gesture at femininity, to put up a (badly executed) gender marker as a sign that hey, I'm really a girl.

And I see this a lot in the trans community when I go out. People who have gaps in their presentation that no self-respecting woman (at least, no self-respecting woman who would wear makeup and feminine dresses) out in public.

I mean, my wife agonizes about the details of her outfits: what shoes go with her pants, whether they in turn go with her coat, whether her makeup works with her outfit, etc.

But I don't see this a lot in trannie land. Sure, much of this is because people just haven't practice. If you dress up at most one time a week, you have a lot of catching up to do.

However I don't think that's the only reason. I've often noticed--in myself and other transfolk--an attitude of "if I do x, and y, then I will be z" where z is Catherine Zeta-Jones.

And I don't know if this is a trans thing, a male thing, or just a coping method for a very painful and bewildering existence.

But I wonder if this is also a part of the common observation about the "sluttiness" or ultra-femininity of many tfolks' presentation. Because they are using markers--symbols--to stand for their internal feelings. Whatever those are.

I don't know. This is a lot for a bedspread to carry. But I'm trying to learn mindulness, and one of the consequences of that is paying attention to details.

Anyway, I fixed the bedspread. There was still a lot left to clean.

Update on Kitty

2005-10-31T08:14:00.000-05:00

Wondercat is doing much better. We've been giving her lots of medicine--antibiotics and liver pills--and her recent test results showed improvement.

She's also been getting the tuna she likes (special cat-safe tuna, that is) and has started gaining weight.

She's also much perkier and getting back to her old self.

Thanks to everyone for their kind thoughts for my little fuzzball.

One Little Word

2005-10-11T14:03:00.000-04:00

Why is it so hard for me to tell my wife without reservation that I won't transition?

I mean, I've stated here many times that I think transition would be a disaster for me. When I look at my life and compare it to people that have transitioned, I just don't see it.

After all, I actually like a lot of things about my male body. When I look in the mirror, I'm happy with what I see. I don't ache with the sense of lost possibilty, don't have a horror of disassociation from my reflection.

And in general I'm very happy with my, uh, anatomy.

In fact, there isn't a lot of similarity between my mild but chronic gender dysphoria and the persistent, agonizing sense of being in the wrong body that transsexuals suffer through.

Except, of course, that I wear the clothing of the opposite gender.

Except, of course, that when I was a little boy I used to wish that I would wake up a little girl.

But the point is, of course, that I'm not a little boy anymore. I've grown up into a person who is trying to acheive harmony between his conflicting gender states. Who is generally pretty happy with looking like a man--except that occassionally I want to look like a woman.

That's all. I don't want to live my life as a woman.

So why is it so hard to say that categorically?

Is it because I struggled for a long time with it, and I don't want to feel like that was in vain?

Is it because people just don't get crossdressers like they do transsexuals? That they can't see any inbetween space?

Is it because I can't, either?

Is it because I'll feel like I'm betraying a deep part of who I am--and is that because on some level I don't think that my feelings are "real" or important unless they lead to transistion? Is it fear of feeling like a pervert, or a shallow person because I just want to wear a skirt?

Why is one simple little word so hard?

Why isn't it simple?

Update on Kitty

2005-10-07T15:38:00.000-04:00

FIV and FLV came back negative. I think corona virus did as well.

The veterinarian wants to put her on antibiotics and liver medicine.

So the prognosis is better but it's frustrating not knowing the cause of the problem.

United We Stand

2005-10-07T09:05:00.000-04:00

I've had an up and down week here in the Trans Community (pat. pend.)

On Tuesday, Darling Wife and I went to the second MHB Couples' Meeting (formerly the Couples' Dinner....though actually a bunch of us met for dinner first.) It was a good meeting and I had fun.

I didn't crossdress for the meeting. I wore my floral shirt and pinstriped slacks. It was fairly weird to not crossdress around so many people who were crossdressed. I'll have more to say on this subject later, when I've sorted out my feelings.

This week on the MHB boards helen tried to raise a serious thread about her feelings about having Betty present as male for a few days, and her feelings about not having the "wow, what a catch" sentiment she got from other women with Betty-as-boy when she's with Betty-as-girl.

It was a heartfelt post and could have led to an interesting discussion...but for the defensiveness of my trans "sisters."

Look, I get being defensive about being trans. It's a huge burden, a constant drain on your energy and well-being, and you just get sick of having to constantly defend yourself.

But at the same time, why is it that so often in my "community" the only thing that can unite the majority of transpeople is the belief that their partners' don't know what the fuck they're talking about?

I know, I'm painting with a broad brush. I'm not leveling any accusations at anyone specifically. It's more a matter of tone.

And I'll freely cop that my "wear the tranny hairshirt" pose that I seem to fall into a lot on the boards ain't necessarily a better way to handle transness.

But I still was pretty disheartened over how things turned out. helen ultimately locked the thread, as it was getting too contentious.

Being trans is painful. Being the partner of a transperson is also painful. Trying to play games over who hurts more doesn't do anything to relieve either person's pain.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

United, in States of Fear

2005-10-07T08:58:00.000-04:00

So last night we get the word of a credible terror threat against the subway system. We get those every now and again, but this one was much more serious; they made arrests, they had evidence.

I got on the subway with more trepidation than usual this morning...but a train was pulling up as I got in the station, so I jumped on the first car.

Did a quick pan up and down the car before sitting down.

There was a kid near the front with an empty--I think--backpack on his lap. He was clutching something in his hand and looked pretty nervous, especially after I gave him a look.

So I rode a few stations. Glanced over from time to time. Kid's still twitchy, still clutching something. A closer look reveals it to be a watch.

What the fuck, I think.

I don't want to be a jerk and jump off the train just because I'm afraid of some kid. But I don't want to end up a victim, either.

Does it make me sound more or less paranoid to mention the kid was dark-skinned? Probably latino, but I couldn't really tell.

I got off on 28th street and waited for another train.

Nothing happened. I made it to Brooklyn in one piece.

Welcome, welcome. To the state of fear.

I grew up being afraid of being blown up without warning. So this is nothing new.

But I'm going to ride my bike in next week.

Bad Kitty News

2005-10-07T08:55:00.000-04:00

I had to bring Wondercat to the vet yesterday. She had been having some discharge around her eyes. We thought it was just a head cold...though she's also lost some weight, as the other cat hijacks her food a lot.

The vet, though, noticed that the whites of her eyes were yellow. In short, she has jaundice.

That means liver disease of some kind. We don't know what, yet.

Of course I'm sick with worry. I'll know more later today when the lab results come back.

Wondercat is the sweetest, most gentle little animal you'll ever meet. I hope she's going to be all right.

I'm not dead

2005-09-30T16:09:00.000-04:00

Though it feels that way sometimes...

No excuses for the long delay. Been busy, yes, also have some paying writing gigs. But still.

My arm is much better and I went back to aikido on Wednesday. The arm still hurts a little, but not much.

It turns out I did break a bone spur on my ulna. And sprain a ligament. Luckily, I don't need surgery.

Oh, I also got hit with pay cut at work. Hip hip hooray. Yuck.

And my new laptop is driving me nuts. The cheap-ass company I bought it from didn't provide a restore disk. Now, I had to be Ms. Computer Professional and do a clean (i.e., erase the hard drive) install of XP Pro; since then, I can't get it to boot properly. Sheesh.

As I type this I'm doing the third clean install of Windows since I bought it.

If this doesn't work, I can send it in to the company and they'll restore it to factory settings. For $50.

What a racket.

I'll be back soon with more gender issues, just wanted everyone to know I'm still alive and well and feeling ok.

Shielded in my Armor

2005-09-08T09:47:00.000-04:00

I went down to the first MHB group meeting at the Gay Center on Tuesday. Had a great time, the conversation was typically wonderful.

But while I was putting on my makeup I found myself thinking about my relation to cosmetics, and what they mean to me. And what I'm trying to say.

Truth be told, I hate wearing as much makeup as I do. But since I still have my beard, I have to wear foundation (and pretty heavy foundation at that.) Once you do that, you have to do other things. At a mininum you need to wear blush to put some color back on your cheeks.

I usually wear eyeshadow. Sometimes I use just a little, but usually I have a lid color and a contrast color, which helps bring my deep-set eyes out a little. I usually wear mascara and most of the time put on a little eyeliner, not that you'd notice.

Had I my druthers, though, I'd probably just put on a little lipstick and go. But my beard and bone structure get in the way.

I really hate how greasy I get after an hour or so. Yuck.

On the other hand, makeup makes me look feminine, which is really gratifying to me. It's something that really only women do (at least, the way I wear makeup) and so that helps my gender dysphoria somewhat.

And wearing that much makeup is a clear feminine marker.

My Darling Wife usually wears makeup, at least when she goes to class. For her, makeup gives her confidence.

But the truth is, she really hates the fact that she doesn't feel confident without it. That the only way she can trust in herself is by hiding herself.

I hardly think she's the only woman to feel that way.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with presenting a professional appearance. In my experience, it goes a long way in indicating your seriousness.

For example, I'd be disinclined to hire any man who didn't bother to wear a suit to an interview with me. Call it prejudice--it is. But a respect for tradition and a willingness to sacrifice comfort mean a lot in a first impression.

For women, though, the problem is that for most people the image of a professional woman is also the image of a sexualized woman. In other words, she has to wear makeup and a skirt. And usually high heels.

Talk about your Catch-22: to be taken seriously you have to wear clothes that ensure that you won't be.

Some women manage to do it without buying into that trap. I'm really glad they do, so that their daughters won't have to. But I can't even imagine how tough it must be.

Meanwhile, Darling Wife has been wearing less makeup this week, and leaving her hair in a ponytail.

But she still corrects her professors. God bless her.

Material Girl...uh, Guy...uh...

2005-09-07T09:55:00.000-04:00

Tax free week reappeared in New York so Darling Wife and I went out clothes shopping. For the second time this year I bought more boy clothes than girl clothes.

This is a trend, though I can't decide if it's disturbing or not.

In any case, I'll address the male fashion statements first:

Since, IMHO, Stripey (the striped shirt that is de rigeur for Yuppie types at clubs) is dead, I got some '70s-style, floral (and florid) patterned shirts: a white shirt with purple flower patterns, and a brown shirt with butterflies(!) and vines in orange and yellow.

VERY cool.

I had a moment of quiet triumph that made me feel a bit like Darling Wife. Last year when I went thrift-store diving at the late, lamented Alice's Underground, I bought a camel-colored courderoy blazer and a military jacket.

And what did I see on sale at H&M: courderoy blazers and military jackets.

Score!

I also ended up getting some dark, boot-cut jeans, chocolate-brown (that's a great color for fall!) courderoy slacks, pin-striped grey casual slacks, and some cool leather Skechers.

Actually, the only female clothing I bought all weekend was a deep bronzy plum silk camisole with lace trim, which I wore last night to the MHB couples group.

Though I plan to go shoe shopping this weekend if I can.

In truth, I went through Lucky over the weekend and I just couldn't make heads or tails of this fall's fashion. So I think I'll just get a few basics and hold out until spring.

I did also pick up a leather journal, which I had wanted to get for a while. Mostly I've been writing ideas for the blog in it, which I will try to publish here...but I've been quite busy of late.

Oh yeah, and a new laptop, but more on that another time.

...And We're Back

2005-08-25T09:33:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long lacuna in posts. Work has gotten busy, I've been somewhat burned out on gender issues, and life and other things have gotten in the way.

We have some new content today, please take a look.

Oh, and mad props to Betty, of My Husband Betty fame, for linking to this blog and praising it on the Boards. I've linked to her blog down below.

The Art of Compromise

2005-08-25T08:50:00.000-04:00

The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the suggestions it is compromising.

--Arthur Bloch

It is sometimes said that marriage is the art of compromise. But committed relationships with transpeople often involve compromises from each partner that cut to the bone.

As usual, I will speak from my own experience as a MtF crossdresser in a relationship with a natal woman. But I think the paradigm holds for any type of trans relationship.

For the trans person, the compromise often involves denying at some level or some time her trans nature. If a crossdresser, it usually means staying in the closet, or at very least managing carefully her crossdressing. For more transgendered people, it often means putting off transition or crossliving.

Which I understand. Crossliving or transition completely changes the dynamic of the relationship; Darling Wife and I understand that in the unlikely event I ever went that route, the marriage would be over. But it still puts the transperson with a more transsexual bent in an impossible situation: accept a daily dose of the pain of gender dysphoria, or lose the one person you love more than anyone else.

For the partner, of course, having a trans person can cut to the heart of her gender identity. A heterosexual woman, after all, isn't looking for another woman as a partner, after all; the situation is not helped by the fact that many trans people (your humble correspondent included) can achieve at best a crude facsimile, a pale reflection of womanhood. And of course even for the most liberated of women, the loss of a "man" in public can be threatening; many times I've been only a few feet away from Darling Wife, but some poor excuse for a man and a human being has taken her apparent unattachedness as an opportunity to make some vile comment or another. (But of course I know a little bit about this firsthand.)

And really, there is nothing wrong about wanting to find a partner that complements you. To remove the usual division of gender roles from the relationship can be very destabilizing for most heterosexual people. And just as I must accept and acknowledge that my life is profoundly influenced and shaped by my trans gender identity, my feeling of not being comfortable in my birth sex, so I must accept that for most people the opposite is true, that their life is influenced and shaped by their surety of gender, their feeling of being comfortable in their birth gender.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I am living proof that I believe that it's not. But the compromises are far harder to make and take than those of most relationships.

Take This Broken Wing...

2005-08-25T08:41:00.000-04:00

So while I love the fact that I'm back doing aikido and it has made me really happy, I kinda forgot about an important consequence of practicing regularly again:

The injuries. Or as I used to say, I'm in the best shape of my life but I'm always banged up.

About two weeks ago I was practicing breakfall during a technique. I guess I got a little too entusiastic, because instead of slapping out with my left arm and taking the energy on my forearm (the idea is to slap hard as you hit the mat on your back, to protect your ribs), I hit flat on my elbow. It stiffened up immediately and was a little sore afterwards, but I didn't think too much of it at the time; I was sure it would feel better soon.

Two weeks later, and it hurts more than ever. I have to go and get x-rays taken today to make sure it's not broken. (Probably not, but we have to rule out bone chips.) Meanwhile, I'm wearing an elbow brace constantly, and I can't extend my left arm.

I took last night off from aikido and I'm not going to train on the weekend, either, so maybe it will get a chance to heal up a little. But I hate not being able to use it normally. It's driving me nuts.

Masculine/Feminine

2005-08-03T10:02:00.000-04:00

I've been struggling with the idea of this post for a long time now. I've wanted to write about masculinity in relation to being trans, but I've never quite found the words. But, as the Taoists say, when in deep water become a diver: therefore, let's begin.

As I've written here, the great subject of this summer has been to strip away my conventional ideas of what femininity means, and what it means to me. That's forced me to abandon a great many ideas that I had formed, and take on new ones. I won't say that there wasn't something selfish, or triumphal about this process--that, by learning about how real women live and the concerns they have in their lives, I could somehow become more like them, more "real." That undoubtedly was a motive. But the thing is, there is a part of me whose gender identity will always be out of alignment with my anatomy, a part, that despite all the evidence, insists that I am on some level a woman. This is not my only identity. Nor do I want it to be. My struggles this year have been to learn how to compromise with and integrate these feelings into my general life.

And one of the surprising things has been that I am rediscovering masculinity and how positive it can be. I think for a lot of trans people the repression of their trans nature--and the discomfort they have with conventional masculinity--has led to an attitude of "ewww, boys!" around any positive expression of masculinity.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Certainly women find parts of masculinity attractive. And so do I--not because I am a woman, but because I am a man.

One of the odd things I have discovered in my thinking about masculinity, however, is that all the positive stereotypes can rapidly become negative depending on the degree they are expressed. So yes, the idea of physical courage and ignoring pain can be good--until it turns into desiring pain and ignoring it in others. So it goes.

The other thing I've noticed is that feminity isn't defined the same way, and often it's negative stereotypes don't share this same nature of being positive traits expressed to an unhealthy degree. But that perhaps shouldn't surprise me; because masculinity is often expressed positively: "Men are this," while feminity is described negatively: "Women don't do this." I leave the consequences of this construction to my able readers; but I'll note in passing that one of the most inclusive definition of woman is "not a man." But the reverse isn't true; a man isn't simply "not a woman."

So on to what I find positive about masculinity. I should note that I will be using stereotypes here, and they may possibly give offense. As I said above, I struggled with this fact, but in the end I couldn't find any other way to approach the question. In many ways, being a man is a far more symbolic act than being a woman; a woman can just be--for good or ill--while a man has to constantly define himself as a man.

Perhaps it is only because I've been doing aikido again lately, but what I've found most attractive about masculinity have been the aspects of what I'll call a Warrior Code. Now, let me hasten to say that I don't think war is good, or that everybody should be a warrior. Nor do I like conflict, physical or otherwise. But, and this is a key point, warrior codes do not emerge to control violence but to constrain it. It is no accident that the two most influential and detailed warrior codes, European chivalry and Japanese budo, emerged out of the most violent and divided periods in those region's histories--because with so many armed and violent men at loose ends, a societal pressure to keep them from killing each other and innocents had to be developed.

I don't also want to imply that women can't be either warriors or soldiers and don't fight. Far from it. But historically war has been an almost exclusively male occupation, and so it should not be a surprise that often warriors are held up as the best examples of masculinity in a given culture. And often this has resulted in a brutal version of masculinity being promulgated, one that celebrates pain and death and violence as the solution to all problems. But at its highest, most idealized states, warrior codes have attempted to evolve philosophies that somehow incorporate the idea of violence in the service of a community with the vision of a peaceful and ultimately nonviolent world; thus European knights swore vows that made them all but monks in their devotion to Christian precepts, and Japanese samurai held a philosophy heavily laden with concepts from Zen Buddhism.

These are some of the aspects of the warrior code that I find positive and I try to adopt for myself.

Physical Courage: Overcoming the fear of death is important to live a fulfilled life; even harder, perhaps, is to overcome the fear of pain. Pain is an important part of life--it is the great teacher, it protects us from hurting ourselves, the experience of pain gives us empathy with the suffering of others. But the fear of pain can stunt us. If we fear to be hurt--physically or emotionally--we run the risk of never taking risks at all. And also by pushing through our pain we can discover where our limits lie, or even push them back.

Protection of the Weak and Innocent: Part of having courage is the willingness to put one's body--even life--on the line to protect the innocent, or those not able to defend themselves. It's easy to walk away from other people's conflicts. Nor is it advisable to force yourself into other people's problems. But at the same time a society needs its members to protect it.

This aspect may be seen as stemming from physical courage and representing a kind of moral courage.

Physical Strength: When I go out crossdressed, I usually dislike my broad shoulders and cover them up. But in my normal male presentation I actually like them; they're a sign of my strength, and truth be told I like being strong.

Let's be honest: being strong is a good thing. This doesn't mean you have to bulk up like a bodybuilder; I have no desire or need to have huge muscles. But strength is important; not only does it make you more fit and help extend your life, but it gives you freedom of action, and freedom from the fear of other people's strength.

Of course, like all the sterotypes I discuss here, this can be taken too far. And strength in the service of violence or hurting people is abhorrent. But at the same time, I think it is good, especially if you are a man, to develop strength in some way, by jogging or taking a martial art or even just keeping yourself fit. That said, remember that strength fades with age and ultimately the other aspects I'm touching on will be more important to living a full life.

Decisiveness: I'm not a decisive person, particularly. I dither often about even minor issues.

But testosterone is an amazing chemical, and one of its effects is to ultimately make you able to decide on a course of action quickly under stress. Even me.

Personally, I think this is because testosterone makes you territorial, including about intellectual territory--which is why men can argue about stupid things like baseball. (And our common understanding of this aspect of masculinity is why we can walk away from arguments easily with no emotional attachment, I think.)

Obviously, when in a physical conflict, the ability to make a rapid decision--often, no matter what it is--can be the difference between winning and losing, life and death.

What I find most positive about these things is that there is no reason a female can't have any of them. (And indeed, in every aikido dojo I've ever trained in, at least 20% of the students were women, and often more than that.) The ridicule that women who did so (trying to be "men") often endured is fading away.

And that gives me hope, because just as I can try to be "feminine" while being true to being a man, if I can adopt positive aspects of femininity into my life, then it should be just as possible for women to be "masculine" while still being true to themselves as women.

A Coney Island of the Mind

2005-07-28T15:18:00.000-04:00

One of my preoccupations is the differences between transsexuals and crossdressers. Since I claim to be the latter, it's important to me to understand why I'm not the former. So my posts for the last several weeks have been an exploration of not only my femininity, but my masculinity as well, since I find it an important part of my own happiness.

Transition is an agonizing experience to go through according to every account of it I've read (even Jennifer Finney Boylan's) and I won't try to compare my experience of transness with that road.That said, for me the hard part about being "only" a crossdresser is that my transness will never be "finished" in a binary sense. I can never be a non-trans man, but, it seems, I won't be a woman (not that I necessarily aspire to be one) in any publicly acceptable sense. As a soi-disant writer, I know very well the pressure for narratives to have a conclusion. Transition provides what many people outside of transness find to be a satisfactory conclusion--the fairy tale ending of "and then she lived happily ever after."

Now of course I know that the reality of the situation is completely different than the public perception. Even so, knowing that I won't avail myself of this step, which, for better or worse, certainly ends one aspect of my own internal conflict (i.e., not having a gender conflict by living fulltime as one gender) is painful and depressing.

That, and the fact that my transness will always be subordinate to other people's experience of either womanhood or transhood. Women can look down at me because I'm a "part-time" woman, who dresses in costume and "doesn't know what a real woman's life is like"; transwomen can throw the same criticism at me, with the added vector that my transness can't be serious because it doesn't manifest itself constantly or as urgently as it does for a transsexual.

But it isn't true; I'm trans all the time, and there are a lot of times that I feel trapped in an endless cycle of oscillation between femininity and masculinity with no way to end the cycle.

Sure, compared to transitioning, my problems are the difference between jumping off of a cliff and riding the kiddie roller coaster. But who the hell wants to ride on the kiddie coaster for the rest of their lives?

Ultimately it means that I have to stake out my own ground between the poles of masculinity and femininity and forsake the comfort of the herd on both sides. And there's nothing wrong with it--it's a good thing, a valuable experience, and coming to terms with what I have to do for myself has greatly enriched my life. But blazing trails into the unknown is tiring work.

New Look

2005-07-26T23:44:00.000-04:00

I finally changed the blog template. I had been getting sick of the old template for quite a while now--it was just too girly, and I've moved in a different direction.

I'm not in love with this template, but it will do for a while until I can find something better.

Pet Peeves of the Trannie Warrior

2005-07-26T22:34:00.000-04:00

...or how to be a crossdressing boor.

Ah, my sister crossdressers. I love them all. But like any family, sometimes they get on my nerves.

One of the dirty little secrets of the crossdressing community is the high level of misogyny you find in it. Unbelievable, right? But you'd be surprised. Or maybe you wouldn't; I think about the only people left in the world who buy pantyhose after Memorial Day are crossdressers. (And women who work in offices with neanderthal dress codes, of course.)

Here are five of my pet peeves that I've encountered in my travels through the wonderful trannie demimonde. (Please note that I'm being specific to crossdressers, not people who are crossliving fulltime or have transitioned--especially in the context of peeve 2.):

1. "You pass really well!" when said to a woman.

Arggh, this one. When I'm fortunate enough to go out with female friends or Darling Wife, I usually hear a comment like this at least once a night.

People, think about what you've just said. You've just called this woman a man. How would you feel if somebody called you a man when you were out crossdressed? (I've noticed that the people who make this comment are usually the ones who are least comfortable being reminded of their masculinity.)

2. "I'm a lesbian" as an expression of being sexually attracted to women, not men.

Uh, no. Unless you've made some bodily modifications, I doubt sincerely that you have any equipment a lesbian would be interested.

Come to think of it, you probably wouldn't be interested in providing what a lesbian would be interested in anyway.

3. "Real women don't..." anything.

And how would you be qualified to judge? Most crossdressers, your humble correspondent included, tend to present a very stereotyped manner of femininity. Even if you're the head of a women's studies department (in which case, you're probably not saying this), don't correct women--or other crossdressers, for that matter--for not living up to whatever stereotype you hold dear. Don't tell me I can't drink a beer when I'm in a skirt, and don't tell my wife that she should wear heels when she goes out with me.

Caveat: real women don't have to take crap. Real women get the short end of the stick entirely too often. Real women are changing the world. All those sound a lot better out of your pretty little mouth.

4. Nobody loves Mr. Blackwell

When I go out, the last thing I want is to have a Joan Rivers-wannabe offer unsolicited advice on my clothes, wig, or makeup. Look, I do the best I can with what I have. Sometimes I'm genuinely interested in getting an opinion on something. But I'm a big girlish man; I can ask all by myself. Of course, if you feel like sharing a tip with me, that's fine and good. But don't grab my bangs to give me an impromptu lecture on how I can better frame my face.

I'm slightly more tolerant of this behavior from women, because usually if they comment, I've really gone off the rails somewhere. That kind of advice is part of learning how to dress yourself.

It's true there is a kind of woman who can wield words like a rapier, who can make the perfect cutting remark to slash the self-esteem of any woman she meets. Don't aspire to be that woman. Not only is she going to always be better at it than you--she's been that way since junior high or earlier--nobody likes her. Don't feed into the cycle of recrimination, self- and otherwise, that women live with every day.

5. For god's sake, never let the phrase "Are you on the rag?" escape your lips.

To be fair, the only person who ever said this to me was a chaser. But I've heard similar comments from crossdressers on occassion. Sometimes about other trannies, which is bad. Occassionally about women, which is abominable.

Tis the Season, After All

2005-07-26T22:15:00.000-04:00

Time for another pointless baseball post!

I went to wash the dishes tonight while the Mets game was on. So I decided to use our wireless headphones to listen to the game while I was in the kitchen.

Darling Wife, however, has hooked the headphones up to the television. Reflexively, I wanted to move them back to the stereo, so I could listen to the radio broadcast. Then I realized that was being stupid, so I just listened to the television announcers.

Boy, they're terrible. How the hell does Fran Healy keep his job?

But it was interesting to realize how much dead air there is in a baseball game on TV. You can watch the action, after all. So there are plenty of pauses.

I should have used the radio. Gary Cohen is much better than these clowns.

Sign of the Times

2005-07-25T12:55:00.000-04:00

So at work this morning a loud announcement came on over the PA as I was getting ready to go do a service call. We were told to evacuate the building.

I wasn't sure if it was a drill. But they were telling us to get our posessions, so I grabbed my briefcase, my notebook, and trusty iPod.

Of course by now all the elevators were packed. Finally the other people on my floor and I caught an up elevator and eventually rode it down to the lobby.

Outside the cops had blocked off the street. They ferried us down to the corner.

I work near the main post office in Brooklyn Heights, as well as the Supreme Court building.

I wasn't sure what was going on. People around me were saying there was a bomb threat.

Around 10:30 there was a loud bang, like a couple of M-80 fireworks going off. Everyone backed up in a hurry. Some people screamed.

I gave Darling Wife a call and asked her if anything was on the news. She started crying when I said "explosion."

Eventually, they let us back in. There had been a bomb threat, but not in my building.

As far as I know, this hasn't made any of the news services.

Edit: it is now appearing on the local news websites. Apparently there was an attache case chained to a hydrant. Police won't confirm that they blew it up, but I know better.

Thanks, I'll Pass

2005-07-24T22:29:00.000-04:00

I rarely think that I pass, that is, get people to think that I'm a woman. Oh sure, people are usually quite polite, and use the correct pronouns with me; I had two nice saleswomen at the Gap help me buy a skirt one night when I was in desperate need (the zipper on the skirt I was wearing had broken), and they called me "she" and "ma'am." But I don't think I fooled them or anything; I think it was just that I was in Chelsea.

In general, the best I hope to do is at least make a pretty man. I think I do a decent job at that, although usually the pictures of me disagree. Sigh.

But in any case, passing isn't that high on my list of things I hope to accomplish when I go out. If it happens, great, I'm elated of course, but I'm not expecting it.

To be honest, I don't think most crossdressers pass. You have to do really well in the genetic lottery to have features that look feminine. And of course many of my fellow CDs don't spend enough time crossdressed to really have developed feminine mannerisms, body language, etcetera.

Transsexuals are different, of course. The Real Life Experience part of tranisitioning demands that they spend fulltime living as their target gender. And of course the use of hormones can have great effects on your body, making it much easier to pass.

But passing is often felt to be something, well, mystical for a transperson, whether a crossdresser or a transsexual. There's an element of wish-fulfillment, of course, but also that sense that someone has recognized a deeply-held inner part of you, and seen it clearly despite all the interference in the way. Even if you don't want to transition to the opposite sex you still value those moments.

Often, of course, people go overboard with celebrating this experience, especially, I must report, my fellow CDs. It also maybe that many people confuse acceptance with passing. "I went to McDonald's and the girl behind the counter didn't bat an eye. I totally passed!" Well, probably not; probably you were in a safe area to begin with, or even more likely, she just didn't give a rat's ass what you were wearing so long as quitting time was thirty seconds closer. But all too often, even when the passing experience is genuine--when you really have passed--it's supposed to be an occasion of unfettered joy, with choirs of androgynous cherubim singing choruses of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" to the heavens.

Again, for transsexuals it's different. Passing isn't something they aspire to for kicks or for some moment of inner peace; it's a necessary part of their lives. As Lynne Whitehorn-Umphries said on the Betty Boards, for her and other transsexuals it often comes down to: pass or die.

I'll get back to that in a moment.

Passing is deception, of course. I've convinced you I'm something I'm not, or at least something other than what you thought I am. (The transsexuals I know are women, I think; in their case, passing means convincing you that they were born with a greater congruence of gender and genitals.) Passing, in other words, is lying. I've been a little dishonest with you--maybe to bring out a greater truth, of course. But the problem of that initial deception is a large part of the danger involved in passing; because you can never pass so fully that you lose the fear of being discovered.

On Saturday I went out with a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a long time. We keep in touch, but both of us have busy schedules, so when we do go out crossdressed it's often at times when the other person isn't available. Saturday was one of those fortunate occasions when we were able to get together.

I'm going to tell you what I wore that night. I know that I've been trying to get away from that, because frankly I get bored now when I read about what people wear when they go out, as if that was the most important part of the experience. (Okay, obviously it's a big part--a huge part--of it for crossdressers, but still: if I'm bored, and I'm a crossdresser, what will the two or three straight people who read this blog think?)

I'm going to tell you what I wore because it's actually germane to what happened. In planning out my outfit, I wanted to wear my favorite summer dress. It's an orange halter dress with brown asymnetrical stripes cut on the bias and a little gathering at one side of the waist, about three-quaters length and quite slinky. I really like the dress, because I look absolutely terrific in it, but I wasn't sure if I had lost enough weight to not look fat in it. (It really is quite clingy.) In fact, by Friday I had decided to just wear my reliable white skirt instead; I even went out shopping for a top to go with it. But I tried on the dress yesterday and found that I liked the way I looked in it; so I wore it along with the redoubtable gold heels and a crocheted scarf to cover my shoulders.

Well, I did look good, to judge by the compliments my friend and her girlfriend gave me, as well as a nice gay man who was at the bar when we came in. Several people during the evening asked me to give them a twirl. I was feeling pretty happy with myself, and, well, pretty.

My friends offered to give me a lift at least part of the way home, and I accepted gladly. (I am a cheap bastard, you know.) Now they were headed to the East Side, so they asked if they could just drop me off about two avenue blocks from where I live.

It is a measure of the success of the last two (cough) Republican administrations that I thought nothing of walking two and a half avenue blocks through my neighborhood alone at 1:30 in the morning. I've walked home alone plenty of times before with no problem. So I said sure, they dropped me off, and I began to totter home.

The first block was fine; that was the one I was worried about, as it's closer to Midtown. But on the corner of the next avenue a guy tried to catch my attention, calling out "Baby, hey, baby" to me. I've dealt with this situation before, so I just fixed my eyes forward and kept walking, crossing the avenue and threading my way between the smokers outside the local Irish bar. Again, no problem, nothing to worry about; I live in a gay friendly area anyway, only two blocks to go, everything's fine. Some women were out alone on the streets, walking dogs or heading to the local delis for late-night supplies.

About halfway down the block I realized I had company. I guess it was the guy from the corner. He was following me, still trying to get my attention. By now I found out (thanks to his running monologue) that his name was Ramon, and he thought I was good-looking. And that he was drunk and horny.

Now I have a little bit of a dilemma. I'm only about a block from home; just cross the next avenue, and the apartment is just a little more than halfway down the block. But what am I going to do about Ramon? He actually thinks I'm a woman! But if I tell him to shove off, my voice (or face) might give me away. And there's a very serious possibility that he might not be pleased by that revelation. And in fact might make his displeasure visible, by, you know, trying to beat me up.

Or stab me.

Or shoot me.

Of course, he probably wasn't armed, just a kid--maybe 18 or 20--at loose ends and trying to get some. But still, I wasn't about to take that chance.

So what could I do? I just kept my eyes forward, sometimes stealing a glance downward to see how close his shadow was, and kept walking as fast as I could. Maybe he'd give up at the next intersection. Fortunately, the light was in my favor, so he didn't have a chance to catch up with me at the curb. (Holy cow--I just realized that! There's a pretty rough crowd that hangs in front of the bodega on the corner. I don't think I'd have wanted to be there if anybody had figured out my secret identity.)

But Ramon is pretty determined. He accompanies me across the avenue, babbling on about things. I only caught snatches. He said something about it being fine for me to tell him to go fuck himself and he'd go away. He loudly cried out to fuck Bush (or was it to fuck my bush?) He let me know that he'd love to come to my place and--well, I won't dignify it by calling it make love to me.

Now, the thing is, I wasn't terrified. Obviously I was worried, and apprehensive. Maybe it's because, after all, I am a man; but I was really concentrating on making sure that if he did try to grab me, I would have some idea of what technique to try and use. Yes, I'm afraid I was hoping my miniscule training would get me out of this.

However, I also made sure that I was further from the street than he was, that is, closer to the buildings. As we got closer to my place I surreptitiously dug my keys out of my bag and held them out of sight in my right hand.

We reached my place. Our apartment building has one of those gates in front of the stairs leading up to the first floor. Useless, really--you can just reach through the bars and unlatch it from the inside--but I hoped it might slow him down if he tried something. So I sprinted up the the stairs, slamming the gate behind me. Out came my keys--I opened the front door--burst into the vestibule--and slammed the door shut behind me.

Safe. The door locks automatically. Outside, Ramon began shouting. "Baby! BABY! NO! BABY!" like a cut-rate hispanic Stanley Kowalski. I opened the inner door quickly and headed up the stairs.

Again, I was never terrified, although, let's be honest, I should have been. Had the light been better--had Ramon been a little less drunk, the better to realize what I was, or a little more drunk, the better to try something--I would have been in a mess. A bad mess. Nobody on my street would be particularly interested in helping me. Much more likely they would have enjoyed a round of tranny street pinata.

So hooray. I was out, excercising that "freedom" that I hear so many crossdressers envy in women--the freedom to wear whatever they want--so I had to be punished for it.

I could quite easily make this all add up to one of my feminist lectures, about how women are oppressed--they are--by men in our society, how this is what my wife puts up with every day--it is--but right now that's not exactly what interests me. I mean, yes, of course this was an eye-opening moment for me; you can be sensitive all you like, you can even have a lot of experience, as I do, of being treated like a sex object by men, but it's quite another thing to meet male lust face-to-face in the street and realize that deadly violence is just under the surface.

Actually, I've been more interested in my reactions. Like I said, I wasn't terrified. That was probably foolish on my part. Yes, I have a very minor aptitude in self-defense; but I hardly think I could have kept my balance in a dress and heels. And in any case, even just using my strength would have made discovery pretty inevitable, escalating the conflict unpredictably.

So I should have been scared. But I also think that maybe on some level I knew he wasn't likely to do anything, provided he didn't read me. He was talking too much.

Had he meant to do something, he would have tried long before.

I'm also angry. Not in a seething way; but my normal feelings of frustrated anger that I struggle to control (lack of sleep has a lot to do with it) are closer to the surface today. Maybe it's because I stayed up til 4 am finishing the new Harry Potter book; but probably not.

I guess I also need to face facts that I can't go around unaccompanied at night in my neighborhood. That makes me mad.

It also makes me closer to being a woman than any makeup or clothes I've ever worn.

And that really makes me mad. That's life. Being a target.

And I'm the double-target. First they'll want to rape me. Then, after they figure things out, they'll want to kill me.

And you know, if he had read me from the first, probably nothing would have happened. Oh, he might have given me an earful as I went by, maybe shouted a lot, but I'm used to that. It would have been no big deal.

Last night I passed as a woman. I know, because a man made me feel terrible.

...And We're Back

2005-07-24T22:27:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the drought of posting this week. I've been fighting off my Annual Summer Cold. Like all sequels released in July it's annoying, goes on for too long, and ultimately just makes you sleepy.

I even missed aikido on Wednesday.

But I feel moderately better, went to class yesterday and went out dressed up as well. But more on that above.

And the Mets are winning again. Woo hoo!

Unreal City XI

2005-07-18T09:47:00.000-04:00

I think very often I'm the most surreal thing in my Unreal City moments.

I mean, this is New York. My threshold for weirdness is really high nowadays.

I only rode my bike to work twice last week. There's too much threatened rain lately. I guess I could have ridden in this morning--the sun is breaking through the clouds behind me as I write this--but there's rain promised for the evening.

Besides, I have aikido tonight.

But I do see some things from the back of my bike. On Friday I was pedalling up the ramp on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. I happened to glance over at one of the buildings alongside the ramp. And I saw a guy standing there in his blue shirt and casual Friday khakis, drinking coffee and talking on the phone, while I pedalled by.

I don't know, the juxtaposition seemed weird to me.

On Tuesday night as I was coming home, I had an odd moment.

It was hot and I was really tired. So I wasn't really pushing myself too much.

But then I thought to myself, as I passed Chelsea piers, that it really wasn't that much farther to home. So why not push myself a little? What was a few minutes of pain in exchange for knowing where my limits were? And how far I could push them?

So I upshifted back to 24th gear and started to pedal hard again. On good ol' iPod I heard "Material Girl" and "Piece of My Heart" back to back, and I shouted out the chorus as I sped up the bike trail.

I'm guessing that a well-built guy pedalling like mad and singing, "We are li-ving in a mat-er-ial world, and I am just a material girl" on the west side bike path was pretty surreal for other people.

We are other people's New York Moments, after all.

Vive le Revolution!

2005-07-14T15:25:00.000-04:00

How can I let this go by? Today is Bastille Day!

Like any right-thinking bourgeois German I am a francophile. Hell, Frederick the Great of Prussia so preferred French that he refused to speak German at court.

And the French Revolution remains one of the turning points in human history, a monumental shaking of the foundations of Western thought. It descended into bloodshed and tyranny, but it also lit the flame of liberty that eventually transformed Europe.

So vive la France!

For a day, at least.

My Apology

2005-07-14T13:18:00.000-04:00

Over on the My Husband Betty Boards we've been having a Very Serious Thread that started out with the question "should Reasonably Straight Women have relationships with transpeople" and has morphed into a question of life with and without transition. As you might expect, I've contributed mightily to the seriousness quotient.

Including today, when I wrote yet another Serious Post. But while walking to the subway this morning, I was thinking about how I've basically engaged myself in a constant Socratic inquiry into my own life, constantly going around and around about what my basic assumptions about gender were.

I haven't read the Dialogs of Plato in a long time, but I remember the basic form--Socrates playing rope-a-dope with some intellectual lightweights, picking apart their points one by one by making them reveal their incorrect assumptions.

I also remembered a very funny piece written years ago by Woody Allen, called "My Apology," where he casts himself in the role of Socrates awaiting news of his sentence from the Athenian Assembly.

So, here's my own version of a Socratic inquiry into gender...my apologies to Socrates, philosophers, Western Culture, and, basically, the entire world.

Socrates: And so now we turn to the subject of women--
Glaucon: All Right!
Apollodorus: About bloody time...
Plato: Booooring...
Socr.: First, let us ask ourselves: what makes one a woman. Anyone? Uh...Glaucon?
Apol.: (Rolls eyes) Oy, here we go again...
Glauc.: Well, I suppose there are physical characteristics...
Socr.: Such as?
Glauc.: Well, women give birth to children.
Apol.: And have breasts!
Plato: Booooring...
Socr.: Let us address the first point first. So you assert that women have children?
Glauc.: Assuredly.
Socr.: And this is a function that they perform only, and cannot be done by men?
Glauc.: As you say.
Socr.: And yet some women are incapable, by age, injury, or act of the gods, to have children.
Glauc.: True.
Socr.: Are they therefore no longer women?
Glauc.: That seems not to be the case.
Socr.: So then the ability to have children cannot be seen as determining whether or not one is a woman.
Glauc.: Yes, that seems to follow.
Socr.: Good. As to the second point...some women are larger in the bust than others, correct?
Glauc.: Obviously.
Socr.: And some women are smaller...like your wife, Apollodorus.
Apol.: Hey!
Glauc.: No, that's right. She is small.
Plato: Oh, yes. She looks like a boy!
Socr.: Now, does the size of Apollodorus' wife's breasts make her any less of a woman?
Apol.: Listen, mate, I'll thank you to stop talking about my wife...
Glauc.: I guess not. I mean, she's still a woman. Even if she looks like a boy.
Apol.: I swear to Ares, Glaucon, you are really pushing it.
Socr.: So therefore we see that neither the ability to bear children nor the presence or absence of breasts can deterimine if one is a woman.
Glauc.: Well, when you put it that way...I'm a little confused...
Apol.: What a surprise.
Glauc.: I mean, to be honest, I don't know where you're going with all this.
Socr.: Let us reason thus: there are some things, that people become, such as their profession, like soldier, cook, or, well, philosopher.
Glauc.: Assuredly so.
Socr.: And other things that they are by the nature of their being, their own particular daimon. And among these things are being a woman or being a man.
Glauc.: As you say, so it seems to me.
Socr.: Now, let us suppose it is possible for one who looks like a man in every aspect to yet have the daimon of a woman. Is that person a man or a woman?
Glauc.: Uh...
Apol.: Just what exactly are you saying?
Plato: Oh, I think he's trying to tell us something...
Socr.: I am saying that I have a woman's daimon. In fact, I'd like you to start calling me Sokratina.
Glauc.: Oh, Zeus...
Apol.: You have to be kidding me.
Socr.: You can just call me Tina for short.
Apol.: Paaall-aas Athene!
Glauc.: I thought you were a real man.
Plato: So did I!
Apol.: Look, you're just confused. You need a good shag, with a real woman--
Plato: --or boy--
Apol.: (Glares at Plato) --and that will straighten you out.

The students start to leave

Socr.: Look, you don't understand. This is a medical condition! Hippocrates diagnosed me! Wait! Don't go! I can't keep up with you in this skirt!

Just Like a Woman

2005-07-14T13:08:00.000-04:00

Darling Wife has another story from the frontiers of feminism...

She was riding her bike to class the other day. Now, as I may have mentioned, Darling Wife loves skirts as much or more than me. Unlike me, she wears them almost every day, even when she rides her bike.

So here she is, tooling down the bike trail. She has a 21-speed bike and so she can pass people pretty easily.

There was a guy going slow ahead of her. Other people were passing him. So DW flew around him and went along her way.

Not too long after he came tearing by her, pushing himself to get past her and cut her off.

And, as she put it to me, at first she wondered why he was being so mean, why he didn't like her. Then she realized the answer: it had nothing to do with her or how he felt about her.

But it had everything to do with the fact that a woman--a woman in a skirt--had passed her. That she had somehow emasculated her.

And she realized that everything she does in the future is going to be treated the same way by a lot of men. You can't let that girl be better than you.

As I noted a while back, once when I told DW that I wanted to be treated "like a woman" she got upset.

Because the thing she struggles to overcome everyday is being treated like a woman.

I suppose, really, that what I want is to feel feminine. But figuring out what exactly "feminine" means has proven to be incredibly difficult.

She's Now Here

2005-07-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Been busy on the MHB boards, trying to get work done, and generally pretty tired. It seems that under conditions of exhaustion and programming, I have only a certain number of words I can write per day, and I used most of them on email and posts at MHB. I'm trying to keep using this place to contain my deeper thoughts on gender and expand upon my posts on the boards, but it doesn't always work out that way, especially when I get caught up in a thread.

I've just finished reading Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There, the autobiographical story of her transition at age 40. I have a lot to say about it, but need to get my notes in order first.

But I have more stuff for you, to make up for the long gap in posting.

Burnout

2005-07-11T15:45:00.000-04:00

Lately I'm burned out on gender again.

Why? The recent reminder that our lives are in constant peril? Too much posting & reading of the Betty Boards? The All-Star Break?

I dunno.

I go through these cycles. One week I'm posting up a storm, here and on the boards, another week I can't think of a damn thing to say.

Today, I posted a little bit to the Boards. But it was Very Serious Stuff.

You get this way, after a while, I think. You get to the point where you get sick of constantly asking How? and start slipping back into Why?

Why me? Why crossdressing? Why punish Darling Wife like that?

And also, why all the time? Why can't I just go a day without worrying, speculating, talking, thinking about it?

I dunno.

I'm glad I've started to move into a different way of thinking lately. It's been very interesting to try and take some pleasure out of being a man. Key to that, of course, is trying to redefine just what being a man means to me.

It's pretty clear it isn't what most people would think it would be. I mean, there's the shoes. And I'm not even talking high heels.

It's no fun to have to do this now, in my thirties: to have to build my own template of masculinity, try it on, file off the rough edges, constantly tweak it. A lot of the time you end up throwing away everything you've done because it doesn't make any sense anymore. It doesn't fit at all, now.

And Lord, how guilty I feel about having dragged Darling Wife into all of this. I've put her in the closet to her own family. How awful is that? How many times a week does my transness rear its ugly head, make some stupid little everyday detail of her life harder than it should be?

How much can a secret burden you? How long can someone be expected to carry it?

But still.

Woe is me never solved anything for anyone. All I can do is keep trying to force my way forward. But yeah, I wish that my transness didn't keep taking over everything. That it didn't keep sucking the life out of every room.

If that's what my "Middle Way" can lead to--if that's what I mean by making crossdressing "ordinary," then it's worth it.

Has anyone ever managed to pull that off? I fear not. I don't know anyone like that.

Woe is me. But I'm used to that.

Oh No, Not Again

2005-07-07T13:09:00.000-04:00

I'm having a hard time concentrating on either work or my silly gender issues today in face of the tragedy in London.

Not again.

My longtime reader(s) may remember my screed from last Patriot's Day (as we are told 9/11 should be called) about the war against terrorism and in Iraq. I won't rehash it here; it's in the archives.

But I do know we were supposed to have engaged in this war to lessen the likelihood of attacks like this. And that doesn't seem to have happened.

Before the presidential election I read Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris, which is about the United States' engagement in the Middle East against the Islamist terrorists. It's a remarkably depressing book; I had been expecting a squishy liberal critique of the administration--instead, it's a hawkish demolition of Bush's policies by a man who reveres the memory of Ronald Reagan.

But Sheuer makes many important points about our so-called "War on Terror." The "terrorists"--actually, Islamic insurgents--have a program and they are methodically going about trying to fulfill it--and succeeding far more often than we admit. Nothing is being done to combat the root causes of terrorism--corrupt governments, economic exploitation by the West, the presence of non-Muslim troops in land sacred to Islam.

In the end, he concludes, we must either change our relations with the rest of the world, or face a drastically escalated conflict.

I fear we will do neither. London and Madrid are preludes to an inevitable attack in the United States.

Not again is not likely.

Catching Up...

2005-07-06T09:49:00.000-04:00

Back from my recent foray into the woods of Vermont, ending up even grumpier than when I left. I'm definitely not getting enough sleep lately.

I finished Backlash. I am now also a member of NOW. The two phenomena are not unrelated.

I reread H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds over the weekend and saw the new movie. Wells' book was a damning indictment of British imperialism in the guise of visiting its devastation on the British; Spielberg's movie keeps the sense of pervasive terror of the novel, but rips out the social commentary. On the other hand, he makes plenty of references to 9/11, especially the little flyers posted by the families of people missing in the alien attack. I lived with the real thing for months in 2001, and wasn't amused; or as the Village Voice put it in their review, "At least, the presumption is that we have, after a four-year rest cure, regained our entertainment-consumer's appetite for destruction. You may have."

I bought some summer reading while in Vermont at a used book store: Wittgensteing in 90 Minutes, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Right now I'm reading Nietzsche on the subway and Atwood as my bedtime reading. The Atwood novel is quite good, and I'm sorry I didn't read it earlier.

Our Wardrobes, Our Selves

2005-06-30T15:31:00.000-04:00

Sorry about missing yesterday...was not in a good place to write much.

The text for today's sermon comes from the Wisdom of Darling Wife, who wrote this in her notebook during an exceedingly boring chemistry lecture:

I decide if I like the way I look--not you. Why do they think
they can judge us? Once we back down and allow it, we say "yes,
you decide what I should put on my body, what I should do to my
body, with my body

Some context...

Darling Wife got new contacts for the first time in many months this week, so she wore them to class on Tuesday. Her friends didn't like her without her glasses and told her so. (Including one lovely young lady who had said to her "You have the same problem as me, fat calves" the night before.

And to top it off she got catcalls from the local losers on the corner. I hate those bastards.

Interestingly enough, we've been discussing this very subject over on the Betty Boards. It even spun off into a discussion of feminism and gender identity, and one of our transitioning members, Alexandra, contributed this post about unwanted advice from her "sisters."

What do they have in common? Women, or people becoming women, or people just presenting as women, being told what to wear, how to act, and what role they should play.

I suppose I'm as much to blame for this as anyone, as I too posted advice about how to "fit in" when crossdressed. Why should it matter to me? I don't ever count on passing; so who cares how much I fit in, how "appropriate" my outfit is? Isn't that just ceding power back to other people (ultimately, of course, male people) about how a woman "should look"?

And of course, not to get needlessly Foucauldean on you, these "rules" are ultimately about maintaining power structures and status in hierarchies. Even Alexandra's post comes from a perspective of someone who already "knows" the rules and doesn't need to be lectured by people who don't do them as well as she does. (This isn't a knock on Alexandra--I've been fortunate enough to meet her, and if there was ever a case of a woman who unfortunately was born male, it's her.)

Darling Wife's musings are very profound, I think. Ultimately they strike to the heart of the problem of human society: what right does the group have to control the behavior of its members?

And she's absolutely right when she points out that conceding control over what you wear can inevitably lead to conceding control over your body and your place in the world.

Of course, we both are fashionable people. We obey the rules society posits as making up good taste. I've not been above trashing women, men, and trannies for not having good taste in public.

But why? Do I really have the right to criticize the six foot tall bloke in five-inch heels and an evening gown, simply because I'm wearing sensible shoes and a stylish frock?

I don't know. Of course I feel better when I dress closer to the current fashion. But is that because I think that since I play by the rules, I've somehow become a member of the "the club"? One of the most common ways people try and ingratiate themselves with a group is to attack people who aren't part of the group. Is that what I do when I'm posting snarky advice about What Not To Wear?

On the other hand, isn't it a sign of the sincerity of my desire to display my femininity when I show women that I play by their rules, that I'm not trying to be a caricature of femaleness?

I don't know. I do know that I've been looked down on by transsexuals for only being a crossdresser, and I've looked down on crossdressers who only go out in fetish clothing for not being "real" enough. And that's typical, an human and all that. But maybe a little sad.

Or is it? Do we really want a world where anyone can express themselves however they feel? What is "appropriateness" anyway?

Why do I not take people seriously in business if they don't wear a suit?

Maybe it does come back to sincerity, to obeying the stupid conventions of a group, even when they don't make any sense. But then the danger is that the conventions become old, stale, restricting--and worse, exclusive.

Maybe I just need to take a couple days off and rest my head. So I think I will--I'm going up to visit my folks this weekend...always nice to get out of the city when it's hot like it's been lately.

As for Darling Wife, she always looks beautiful. And she doesn't need anyone to tell her that.

Happy Anniversary To Me!

2005-06-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

Somehow this blog's anniversary got lost in the shuffle...but it was this week a year ago that I wrote my first post.

It was about how boring it was to go out crossdressed.

Boy, the more things change...

What a Dream I Had...

2005-06-28T09:25:00.000-04:00

Over on the Betty Boards we have a thread going about what our lives would have been like had we been born in the gender we wish we had been...here's my response, with some further annotation:

Years ago, back between college and grad school, when I was really beginning to understand how deep-seated my gender confusion was, I had--a vision? A dream? I don't think I was asleep. Call it a daydream.

In it, I was the girl I had wanted to be.

Or rather, I had been born a girl, like I wanted to be. I don't think I was the girl I would like to be.

In my daydream, I was in the kitchen at my parents' place in Vermont, helping my mom make dinner while my brother and my father were outside.

I was a redhead (a real readhead--at least that much was wish-fulfillment), with hard-to-manage hair, bad skin, and a bit of a weight problem.

In other words, the same person I was then except with that coveted extra X-chromosome.

And I knew in my daydream that I was having the same problems finding someone to go out with that I was having in my real life. But somehow they were even scarier to have as a girl; I felt, dimly, the awfulness of having been a permanent wallflower, never asked out, never popular with either boys or girls. Somehow I knew I was also too smart for my own good (at least as a girl) and that it was part of my despair. (Just as I felt I was too smart as a boy; I was--am--pretty insecure.)

And I knew that my mom was trying to help, just like she helped me as a boy when I couldn't find a date. But it was worse as a girl.

It was a truly strange experience, and I've never had anything like it since. And I don't really remember all the details; I've probably embellished the heck out of the original daydream. But it's never left me, and in those times when I really despaired about my gender issues and not having been born differently, I remember my daydream. And remember that no matter who I am, how I was born, or how I choose to resolve my gender issues I'll still be me with a lot of the same problems.

What rings true to me about this vision is that it showed me a version of my life just as constricted by feminine gender roles as I felt my real life was constricted by masculine gender roles. I don't think it was an accident that I was in the kitchen while the men of the family were outside.

The fact that I wasn't attractive in the fantasy is also important to me. Most crossdressers, in my experience, fantasize about a femme self that is sexy, attractive, and ultrafeminine. But this one time I had a vision of myself as myself, just female. I wasn't particularly attractive or self-confident in those days, and neither was my female analog in the vision.

Of course, maybe I'm clinging to an illusion because this vision reinforces my conviction that I'm not a transsexual, that it wouldn't be worth it to me to transition. Maybe; but then, we often choose our delusions, after all. (For example, I am irrationally convinced the world would be a better place if the Mets won the National League East.) But I really think that the key to the vision and why it's been so important to me is that it is a reminder that even could I cast a magic spell and reverse my life so that I had been born female instead of male, all I really would have done is trade one set of problems for another. Easier problems to handle? Ones I'm more tempermentally suited for? Perhaps--we'll never know. Right now I'm happy, more or less with who I am. Right now, I'm doing all right with my own problems.

Right now, I wouldn't change who I am. If this daydream helps me feel like that, then I'm all for daydreams.

Aikido Part II

2005-06-28T09:19:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to my second lesson at my new dojo.

I was late again. When I went to get gi (martial arts uniform) out of the closet I was suddenly confronted with the memory that we had put them in storage in the fall.

So I had to run down to our storage company, find the locker, and pull out my old gis.

So it goes.

The class was a lot of fun, though still very basic. Sensei Rafael began to teach us forward rolls. I'm out of practice--I had trouble keeping my rolls in a straight line.

I also have much to unlearn. I remain very tense when I practice, not relaxed. But relaxation is the key to doing aikido properly; when you are truly relaxed, you can do all the techniques with no effort.

I wonder if it would help to try and put myself into, for lack of a better word for it, a more feminine mindset before I practice. Maybe; I guess if it works, I'm not going to worry about essentialisms. It's very easy when practicing a martial art, even one as defense-oriented as aikido, to get caught in patterns of being macho and strong. But that's not aikido.

I actually feel better today. My shoulders are still sore, but somehow less sore than yesterday, even though I chewed them up pretty good--it takes a while to get used to wearing a gi again.

Unreal City Xa

2005-06-28T09:18:00.000-04:00

I knew I forgot something....

On Sunday DW and I went out to Better Burger for dinner. On the way we passed...a genuine Delorean! The real deal--all it needed was Doc Brown and Marty.

On the way home the owner came by and opened the door. We stayed to watch that--it was cool.

Shameless Plug Division

2005-06-27T16:06:00.000-04:00

I know Bob Harris. I've been fortunate enough to meet him a few times, and we correspond occasionally.

He is one of the funniest people I know.

Go. Read his blog. His last post had me laughing hysterically, tears rolling down my cheeks.

Read his blog for the politics, too. He's a progressive's progressive. If that scares you, you should read him anyway. Hey, I read Krauthammer's column, even when it makes me want to punch something.

And his travel stories are beautiful, funny, angry, and heartbreaking all at once.

Go on, check it out. I'll be here when you get back.

The Way of Peace and the Middle Way

2005-06-27T12:43:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I did an aikido class for the first time in over a year.

Back in 1996 I started to take aikido. I had been looking for a martial art to take, and aikido always interested me because it has no attacks at all--it's purely defensive. This was right after my nervous breakdown, when I was first taking antidepressants and generally feeling good about myself.

I found a dojo near my neighborhood, and stayed there until the end of 1998. During the summer of 1997 I was training very regularly, eight or nine hours a week. I really enjoyed it; I was in the best shape of my life, even if I was banged up all the time.

Eventually I quit, though. The excuse was to have more time and money to write--I had decided to make one more go at trying to write fiction and signed up for a class in the winter of 1999.

But in truth, I think a lot of things were going on when I started taking aikido. For one thing, my grad school career ended abruptly in the spring of 1997; I think a big reason I was such a dojo rat that summer was that I was fleeing the overintellectualized life I had been living while going to school. (It didn't help that I was working fulltime while going through school and really stressed out.)

Also in those days I was crossdressing very infrequently. I spent the weekends with my ex, so I didn't have many opportunities to go out into the trannie ghetto, and doing anything else was out of the question for me in those days.

So I think I ultimately rebelled against aikido because it had become associated emotionally for me with both repressing my intellect and repressing my femininity. (It didn't help that my teacher, while brilliant, was definitely on the Dark Side of the Force. He taught a very hard form of aikido that is not at all similar to other dojos.)

Which leads me back to Saturday's class. I found a teacher who is starting his school from scratch; he doesn't even have his own place yet. Everyone in the class is a beginner except for me. His style is extremely relaxed, which is precisely what I want to explore. Even the class times work for me.

I've always enjoyed the positive things aikido gave me--the ability to defend myself, inner calmness, improved agility and strength. I don't always enjoy the falling on my ass part--I am one huge bruise today--but it won't take long to get back in shape. (I hope; I am older now.) And aikido can be a beautiful form of moving meditation. It really can be the Way of Peace.

And so, as I try to explore the middle ground between mindless masculinity and false femininity that I am forced to walk in, I'm glad I found aikido again. How better to explore the positive side of masculinity than to study an art that rejects conflict and mindless machismo? How better to learn about my own peculiar brand of femininity than by exploring an art that emphasizes blending, being centered, turning conflict back upon the aggressor?

At least, how perfect for me. But after all, I'm an exceptional case.

Unreal City X

2005-06-27T12:41:00.000-04:00

Rode the subway this morning--too achy, and have aikido tonight. But while out taking the laundry to the laundromat on Sunday, I saw at least six or seven women marching their strollers up the sidwalk towards me, almost in formation.

Plus I had a healthy dose of iPod Zen: it was playing Leonard Cohen's "Sisters of Mercy."

Subway Oh-So-Serious

2005-06-27T12:36:00.000-04:00

Two out of three ain't bad, I guess...

Did indeed order takeout and watch the Mutts beat the Yanks behind Pedro on Friday. What a wonderful pleasure it is to watch this guy; even without his best fastball, he was able to shut down the $200 Million Dollar Men.

Then Saturday, blowing out the rookie and cruising along. It was painful watching Bernie Williams on Friday and Saturday, though. Whatever you feel about the Yankees, this guy was always a class act, a closet intellectual (he spends his time in the locker room reading Wine Spectator magazine and playing Classical guitar.) Yeah, he never had a center fielder's arm and his defensive abilities were overplayed for the last ten years; still, he's always been a standup guy and a great clutch hitter. It was gut-wrenching to watch him flounder in center field.

As for Sunday's game, it was a lot of fun to watch. I haven't been on the edge of my seat like that for a while. But the bullpen should be shot. Last year I thought getting Looper was a great move; the Mets weren't going to have a chance to win more than 75 games, so why get a prime closer? But now they're competitive again, and I can't see Looper as being the closer on a real winning team.

Hitzefrei!

2005-06-24T13:16:00.000-04:00

Back when I was in junior high I took German. (It's the ancestral language, and about as useful in New York City as a third leg.)

One of the interesting facts we learned was that German kids spend most of the summer in school (bad--at least we thought so) but got to get out of class when the temperature got above 80°. Hitzefrei, it was called--literally, "heat-free."

Ah, our German cousins! (Another interesting thing I learned about German is that the vast majority of German words are composed from two or more smaller German words.)

Anyway, it's hot today so I'm calling Hitzefrei about gender for the day. I'll probably be doing my peculiar combination of navel-gazing and wool-gathering (now we know where belly-button lint comes from) over on the My Husband Betty discussion boards.

I may go out (ominous music!) with a friend of mine for dinner tomorrow, so never fear, I'm still wicked pretty inside. No matter what Pedro does tonight (see below.)

It's that time of year again...

2005-06-24T13:11:00.000-04:00

Yup, Mets-Yankees II. No desire to go out and buy shoes this time. Why tamper with perfection...

I'll probably watch most of the game tonight, at least until Darling Wife wants us to go see Bewitched. (She saw that it has a tortoiseshell cat in it, just like Wondercat. By the way, have I mentioned that we took in another cat, Clint the Mad?)

In fact, tonight's game is the one that really interests me. Pedro at the Stadium! All we need is a clip of Steinbrenner as Darth Vader telling Martinez, "No, Pedro, I am your father!"

You know, "The Yankees are my daddy."

DW said she'd go get me some beer. I'm going to order some delivery & watch on the new flatscreen TV while she's out studying with her friends. Yes, I am that lame.

Unreal City IX

2005-06-24T13:08:00.000-04:00

Recent notes from all over. Didn't ride the bike on Wednesday or Thursday--rain was forecast on Wednesday, was too tired on Thursday. Still too tired, actually...

Weather: Hazy and getting hotter today, though with a nice breeze.

Zen of iPod: Listened to Rhapsody in Blue on the way into Lower Manhattan. The slow part (you know, the theme they used in those airline commercials) came on as I was rushing down Chambers street--a little bit of a juxtaposition.

Have I mentioned that the bike must come equipped with a cloaking device? I certainly seem to be invisible to most people.

Surreality: You know, I sometimes have to reach for this one--how can you top the fact that my daily ride takes me past a trapeeze school?

Welcome, Technorati!

2005-06-24T13:05:00.000-04:00

It seems that the metafilter Technorati has linked to Quelle Blogue because of the article in Salon on thimserol that I referenced a while back.

So, welcome guys!

No, no, you can stay! I'm in the IT business, it's ok!

Why am I wearing a what?

Oh, that old thing, it's just something I threw on...

Wait! Come back! Wanna talk baseball?

Oh well...

Pronouns and Their Discontents

2005-06-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Pronouns are hell in my world.

In some cases, they're obvious. A fully transitioned or fulltime crossliving person obviously gets the pronoun of their presentation.

But what about your vanilla crossdresser? Like me, for example?

In tranny circles it's nomal courtesy to use the pronoun of presentation. So when I'm out crossdressed I'm a she and her.

I'm a little conflicted about that. (Isn't that obvious by now?)

On the one hand, it's immensely gratifying to my ego to get that extra "s" or "r". It's a wish fulfillment, maybe the closest I'll ever get to making the fantasy I had as a six-year old boy (to wake up and have magically been transformed into a girl) come true.

On another level, I feel strange being referred to as she.

I mean, I'm not a woman, you know. (Right, you knew that.) So it's a little disingenuous to refer to me as one.

And also I doubt my right to have that little s. What have I done to earn it? Read Lucky? Worn a bra when it's hot? Read The Beauty Myth? What right does any of that give me to be called a woman even out of politeness?

I sometimes feel the same way about my name. There are many people who know me only as Michelle. I still sometimes feel strange answering to that name. It's not, you know, my name.

But on another level it is. It's the name I've chosen for a very deep, very central part of myself.

I think I knew I had really accepted the name when I started to get sick of it. I don't always like my male name either. (Though had I known how common a tranny name Michelle is I might have chosen another. Oh well.)

Lately, since I've been writing so much here and posting so much to the Betty Boards, I sometimes find myself about to sign emails from my male account with my femme name. And vice versa. These are some more of the Lessons Your Drag Mother Never Told You.

Still, I vastly prefer being she and Michelle to having other trannies call me he and--ha, thought you had me there, didn't you?

In the trannie world being called "a man" is about the worst insult you can do. On Usenet newsgroups (back when I read them--I don't bother anymore), plenty of posters used to get their licks in by calling another poster him. It's both cruel and ironic--cruel because it violates the unspoken conventions of the group, and ironic because in most cases, of course, it's absolutely correct (and in Texas, apparentally, always correct no matter what your transition status--but more on that another time.) One of the conventions that were unspoken were to not violate each other's private delusions.

Or maybe that's too strong a word. Is self-image better? What is self-image, after all, but the delusions that you choose to believe in to get you through the day? In terms of evolution, we're a very modestly successful organism. In terms of cosmic perspective, we're individually as insignificant to the universe as a quark is to us.

Still, I do get a little thrill when strangers call me ma'am. I'm one of the few thirtysomethings in the world that consider that a compliment.

Vanity, Self-Delusion, and Public Spectacle

2005-06-22T12:53:00.000-04:00

I wrote those words on the My Husband Betty boards in the condensed version of the infamous Mahler post of a few weeks ago. The question I posed was, if you don't transition or crosslive, what is left of crossdressing except vanity, self-delusion, and public spectacle?

I still don't know. Yet I'm far more positive about my transgenderedness today than I was when I wrote the post.

Why?

I could give you the usual spiel about how I'm accepting myself and who I am and trying to find my joy and blah blah blah. But I won't.

In Hesse's Siddhartha the hero only begins to reach true self-knowledge when he literally vomits up his old life at the bank of a river. So is it with me; I had to finally give in to the vast potential for my crossdressing to be a shallow, empty experience to start finding a way out of it.

But what have I done so far?

I did finally go out crossdressed over the weekend for the first time since I wrote the Mahler post. (I won't mention the outfit. All right, I will, it was the same outfit I wore that Saturday. Look it up yourself if you're interested.) And where did I go? The Silver Swan.

Sigh.

But it was to meet a couple, a crossdresser and his girlfriend, who were visiting New York from Florida. And Helen and Betty came as well. So it was really about the people, not the place.

In fact, it's almost always about the people when I go out now. I don't like to go out alone without any plans.

More importantly, I'm starting to explore all sides of the trans experience. And since I'm not going to transition, that means my masculine side.

I really liked the clothes I bought on Saturday. I liked them because they were masculine--in a metrosexual way--not androgynous. I found that affirming, while at the same time giving me a freedom of expression that I idealize in the way women can dress.

I say idealize because my women's outfits are usually as straitjacketed and stereotypically feminine as my masculine clothes are usually stereotypically masculine. What's the point of that? Aren't I challenging gender assumptions here?

Another thing that is happening to me is that my feminist convictions are being hardened. I read The Beauty Myth over the winter and that was an eye-opener; Backlash is a white-hot blast of revelation. This has to be part of learning about who I am. How can I talk with a straight face about "feeling like a woman" when I know nothing about how women really feel?

But it also means coming to terms about what I wear when I do crossdress. When I go out, on some level I'm celebrating, so I'm not going to feel guilty about dressing up a little, about trying to look pretty. In fact, there's not one damn thing wrong with liking to feel pretty.

It's only wrong when you think that's all there is in being a woman, or being feminine.

So is there anything more?

Maybe. What if I said there was glamour, self-expression, and, well, public spectacle. There's no getting around that. But so what? Every woman has been a public spectacle in her life. Just for being a woman.

There's nothing wrong about being a public spectacle, either. It's all in the spectacle you create.

I don't pretend to understand why I'm trans, why I feel the need to do the things I do. And just because I don't want to feel guilt about doing them doesn't mean I have a blanket license to do anything I want. I guess what this really boils down to is that you have to be aware. Of yourself and others.

I like to think I've taken the first steps towards that goal.

Both Sides Now

2005-06-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

As part of my Darling Wife's birthday weekend we went out to purchase expensive home electronics and to buy me some new boy clothes.

Many transfolk who don't transition still don't particularly care about their male presentation. I know that described me for a long time. And as I wear a suit most of the time at work it would be very easy for me to continue on that way.

But at the same time, I do get a charge out of looking sharply dressed. I bought a nice suit last year that I should fit into again if I keep riding my bike every day and not eating candy at the movies, like I did yesterday.

The recent heat wave (which, according to the weather reports, is due to make a reapperance tomorrow) reminded me that for summer I wanted to wear looser and more flowing clothes. And DW has long wanted me to dress more, ah, flamboyantly as a man. Not effeminate, but a step up from jeans and a tee shirt.

So out we went to our old haunts--H&M in Herald Square.

I found a lot of nice things there--I was snatching slacks and shirts off the hangers the way I usually grab dresses. But there were some odd results...

I got two pairs of linen slacks: a champagne colored drawstring pair, and a white pair with black pinstripes. Both of them were very long--for the first time in my life I worried about the heel height I would need to wear men's pants. I wasn't sure I could wear sandals with them. Fortunately DW showed me how to cuff them. (The drawstring pair also has strings in the cuffs to allow you to roll them up under your pants leg and hold them in place.)

We got several shirts--a slate grey tee shirt, a black tee shirt (I didn't have one of these most utilitarian of wardrobe items), a black short-sleeved button up shirt, and two incredible button up shirts--a linen lime and pink striped shirt and a wonderful collared rainbow striped shirt.

That shirt was displayed on a hanger with a black tee shirt over it and a denim jacket on top of everything. "Come on," I said to DW, "tell me that isn't a girl's outfit."

It was all very strange. I bought some new sandals but they hurt too much to walk far in; I'm going to have to use an old drag queen trick Betty told me about (stuff a bag of water in the shoe and stick it in the freezer--the water expands as it freezes and stretches the leather.)

I bought another pair of leather flip flops but they're too loose on my feet and it's hard to walk in them. I actually asked my wife a question she's asked me often in the past: are we going to have to walk far?

So in essence I was getting all the negative features of crossdressing while wearing men's clothes. But I can't say I didn't like wearing the new outfits. I felt a lot better about myself, less confined, and certainly less boring.

On the way home from the movie on Sunday I sniffed that one of DW's friends hadn't complimented me on my new outfit.

"Now you're thinking like a woman," she said.

Happy Birthday, Darling Wife

2005-06-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

Sunday was Father's Day and my Darling Wife's birthday!

We went out to Better Burger (the excellent organic burger franchise that just opened in our neighborhood) and then to Batman Begins at the IMAX theater near Lincoln Center.

DW had a good day. I love her so much and am so proud of her! Happy Birthday, my darling!

Unreal City VIII

2005-06-20T09:48:00.000-04:00

Recent sights from around NYC, including the bike commute to Brooklyn this morning...

Weather: Cool and pleasant. I actually wore jeans instead of shorts this morning.

Surreality: Saw two parrots perched on a garbage can on 46th street yesterday (they're pets of a neighborhood resident who takes them with him to lunch.)

Zen of iPod: Good. Finally heard "Born to Run" as the first track on my bike ride this morning. Also the third movement of Bach's 2nd Violin Concerto as I sped down the Hudson.

One Woman's Backlash

2005-06-16T12:34:00.000-04:00

Darling Wife was riding her bike home last afternoon...

As she came down our block some lowlife made kissy noises at her. Disgusting.

So she stopped the bike. "Is there something you want to say to my face?"

"Uh, no..."

"Women aren't animals, you know!"

"I know women aren't animals..."

"Then why are you making animal noises at me? Forget it, I don't want to talk to you anymore or ever again."

Gotta love my Darling Wife :)

Last night I was reading about how the media made a big deal in the 80s about professional women giving up their careers and returning home to care for their children. It was quite the trend, we were breathlessly told.

Except it wasn't true. There were no statistics to support the assertions that there was a trend--if anything, more women were joining the workforce.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Today on Salon there was a story about how a dangerous mercury-based preservative was authorized for use in childhood vaccinations. And that it seems to have directly caused a huge increase in autism among children. And the response of the industry was to cover this information up.

Despite the fact that the preservative had been criticized as dangerous.

For sixty years.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Unreal City VII

2005-06-16T12:27:00.000-04:00

Two recent commutes, Brooklyn-Manhattan last night, and Manhattan-Brooklyn this morning.

Weather: Cool & Pleasant. Though it may rain this afternoon. I'll have to try and cover up the bike if it does; I left it chained to a street sign near my gym.

Surreality: This morning they were disassembling the Nomadic Museum I talked about in a prior Unreal City post.

Also, me, last night, chanting the chorus to the Clash's "Death or Glory" as I raced past Chelsea Piers.

Chambers Street (I cut across it to the Bridge) was unusually clear yesterday morning, which was nice. Today I got green lights all the way across, which was also nice but left me huffing for breath by the time I got to the bridge.

This morning there was a mass bike ride up the Brooklyn Bridge to protest all the people who have died riding their bikes around the city. That's a good cause and one I obviously support. Of course, they were riding four abreast so I had to duck out into the pedestrian lane to get down the bridge.

Zen of iPod: Crappy this morning. Why am I getting the same damn B-sides all the time? I dumped Darling Wife's Bruce Springteen's Greatest Hits on the iPod yesterday, and I've gotten "Hard Land" twice but no "Born to Run" or even "Born in the USA."

Backlash: More Reactions

2005-06-15T16:44:00.000-04:00

I'm not going to bore you with every single fact I uncover in Backlash. Instead, I'll give you a general template of how I feel so far reading it:

[FACT THAT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS ONLY YOU NEVER HEAR ABOUT IT]

Groan...

[FACT THAT COMPLETELY AND DEVASTATINGLY REVERSES THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM]

AARrrghh.....

[EYE POPPING FACT THAT MAKES YOUR HEAD EXPLODE JUST THINKING ABOUT IT]

(eyes pop) AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

This is the first book I've ever felt like throwing across the room because I AGREED with it.

I like it but I'm not sure my blood pressure can take it.

However, this morning I was reading something very interesting about men's identity in American society. Faludi quotes a study that said (I'm paraphrasing) that a man's identity is fragile, in constant need of reinforcing; and that in America, the most important aspect of a man's sense of manhood is his ability to provide for his family. Thus in the 1980s, when many blue-collar families were unable to survive on a single paycheck, many men felt their very masculinity threatened.

So despite the fact that the reforms that feminism seeks in the workplace would also benefit many men, there was a backlash against women that divided two economically disadvantaged groups against each other.

Caesar would be proud. Now all we need is the bread and circuses.

Ah, wait. That's Fox News.

Unreal City VI

2005-06-15T16:41:00.000-04:00

Rode my bike for the first time since last Thursday...

Weather: Surprisingly nice. I think it was cooler by noon than it was this morning. Can't be sure; the Jehovah's Witnesses seem to have turned off their clock.

Your Moment of Surreality: A guy with a unicycle on the bike trail near Hudson River Park.

Zen of iPod: "Summertime" as sung by Janis Joplin was the first song out of the chute; as I came to the Bridge, I got Neil Young's "Down By the River."

The Middle Way

2005-06-14T09:10:00.000-04:00

Since my first Mahler post I've done a lot of navel-gazing. And I feel a lot better about myself, who I am, and the path I'm on.

I should give some thanks to Dr. Blackwell (introduced below) who, in a series of marvelous emails to me, helped me feel a lot better about things.

As I've written, one thing that has bothered me about the way I choose to express my transness--essentially, by dressing in a very stereotypically "feminine" manner: makeup, skirts, high heels--is "cherry-picking," taking things I like about women while turning my back on the problems of actually being a woman.

The other thing that bothers me about my flavor of transness is that I'm forever going to be in between masculine and feminine. I'm not going to transition, but I can't live as a "man" as our society normally allows that.

I'm going to share something the good Doctor wrote me:

"The fact that you worry that your possible 'cherry-picking' (what a choice of words) may be patriarchal means that it's not.

"Male privilege is an assumed right--you doubt your rights to take on anything feminine, in a sense.

"In a sense, I, like so many 'strong' women (isn't everybody who survives this world strong? why is it notable when women do, and it's taken for granted that men will?), sort of pick the best of the "male" traits and incorporate them into our own psyches. I tend to be a very rational (rather than emotional) decision maker, I'm not a fan of shopping as a hobby (go into a store, get what you need, get out--otherwise, what a colossal waste of time). Plus I'm a huge sports fan, and don't understand folks (of any gender) who can look down on sport. The intrigue, the intelligence, the pushing the body to the max, the incredible teamwork...but you know what I mean. I know I'm mondo-generalizing here, but if the choices that you face boil down to: 1) surgically reassign your gender and live as a woman, with the momentous consequences, and STILL feel like you're somehow not 'real', or 2) respecting that part of yourself that doesn't follow the contrivances and traditions of your chromosomal gender by assimilating the best of the other gender into your own persona...I'd go with (2) every time. Cherry-picking be damned. I mean, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! But flippance aside, what person doesn't see admirable qualities in others and strive to take them on? We all could use a little personality improvement. Who better to learn from than those around you who you respect and admire, and want to be like? "

There's a lot of wisdom in there. I should hasten to add that this advice was specific to me, and your mileage may, as they say, vary. I certainly don't think that somebody who has the driving need to transition won't feel "real" or--much more important--not fake. Dana Johnson on the MHB Boards has talked a lot recently about how her male personality was a construct designed to hid and protect her true identity, which only has emerged during her transition process.

But I don't think that's true of me. While I certainly have a mask that I can use to hide my trans nature, at the same time I'm quite comfortable as a man and slowly trying to find a way to be a man who is transgendered. And I don't think the good Doctor's reassurance that I am not engaging in wholesale male privilege by taking on some feminine characteristics gives me a license to stop questioning what I am doing. It is very easy for trans people to get lost in the symbology of feminine expression, reducing women and women's lives to simple placeholders for Feminine. That is a failure--the failure to treat women as human beings--that is the whole reason that feminism is necessary.

Still, I am beginning to realize that there is a Middle Way, and I may finally be on it. That a false dichotomy of gender roles can be used to oppress me as surely as it does women. (And men, but not as seriously.) Lately I am feeling good about myself, and even happy that I am neither fish nor fowl. I'm still not sure exactly how I'm going to find a way to express myself as a real human being, but I am beginning to suspect that the way isn't as hard as I thought.

Summer Reading I

2005-06-14T08:56:00.000-04:00

I don't do beach novels.

Sure, when I'm travelling I'll often read something a little light, to pass the time. But in general I try and read challenging fiction or history. (Although I remain a fan of sceince fiction, junky and literary.)

So for my first real book of the summer I'm reading Backlash, by Susan Faludi. A good friend of ours, whom I'll call Dr. Blackwell (hey! the tradition of the alias is alive and well here at Quelle Blogue!) loaned a copy to me in return for my copies of Ford's The Sportswriter and Independence Day. She told me that if The Beauty Myth made me angry, Backlash would make me need Prozac. (She offered to write me a prescription. I told her I'd just share Oscar the cat's pills.)

So, one and a half chapters in (minor quibble to the folks at Crown: the introduction of a book is never chapter one! Chapters have pages with arabic numbers, not Roman numerals.) and I'm already upset.

The introduction (sigh, Chapter One) does a good job at laying out the argument of the book: there is a cultural backlash against the gains of women since the 1970s, an attempt to create the perception that women's liberation has been at best a mixed blessing, while in the meantime "declaring victory and going home" by claiming that women's equality has already been largely established. As you might guess (or maybe not--if so, you should do some research!) it doesn't take too many statistics to demolish the myth that women have acheived anything close to equality in American society.

Chapter two starts with a similar demolishment of the famous study that showed women had essentially no chance of getting married after the age of 35. Since most college-educated women wait until their thirties to get married, the not-to-subtle spin on this study was that getting an education meant dooming yourself to a lifetime of being single. Faludi deftly dissects the terrible data modeling that lay behind the original study, and shows how, when members of the U.S. Census bureau exposed the problems with the study, the Reagan administration essentially forbade them from discussing their results at the annual Demographers' Conference.

Well, I'm pissed off.

I'll continue to post more cogent responses to the book as I get deeper in. But I feel a little like Luke Skywalker: I've taken my first step into a larger world.

Unreal City V

2005-06-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

Rode the subway this morning. Had stomach flu from Thursday to Sunday. (Yuck.) Now you know why I wasn't posting...

Weather: Abyssmal. In the literal meaning--it's hot as Hell.

Surreality: Stepped out the door this morning, glad it wasn't that hot yet. Then I noticed not one but two dead pidgeons across the street. I think they dropped dead from the heat.

Zen of iPod: The first song on my shuffle this morning was Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong doing "Summertime." I also heard "For Emily, Wherever I may Find Her" by Simon and Garfunkel, which reminded me I had to write an email to my friend Emily.

Batter Up

2005-06-09T13:31:00.000-04:00

Over on the My Husband Betty boards we had a goofy thread about baseball. Well, nominally about baseball. It got pretty silly after a while.

And that's okay. Well, not so okay, because we're wasting Helen and Betty's bandwidth. But okay because sometimes we need to blow off a little steam and take a break from our whole gender obsession.

But I did get to think about baseball and being transgendered. Or rather, being a sports fan and being transgendered.

I didn't grow up being a sports fan. I hated gym as a kid, I wasn't athletic at all, and to this day I'm miserable at almost every athletic activity. (I did well enough at aikido when I trained regularly.)

It was the 1986 Mets that got me interested in sports. I didn't watch any of their games during the regular season, but did watch them in the playoffs and World Series. And before I knew it, I was hooked.

From there I started to follow football and basketball as well. I tried to follow hockey, but just never could get into it. (The same goes for soccer; I can watch the occasional game, but I don't follow the sport at all.)

I've never regretted becoming a sports fan. It has given me a marvelous way to interact with other men that I completely lacked before. I can go into a bar almost anywhere and have a conversation with strangers based purely on my appreciation of sports.

At the same time, as I began to explore my transgendered nature more, I stopped watching sports as much. I pretty much stopped watching football for several years (the Giants' abyssmal record helped that decision) although I watch it now. I catch part of the Mets' games each week. Usually I'm doing stuff with Darling Wife, though, so I don't watch the game from start to finish.

Many MtF trans people tend to be very caught up in acting "feminine." Clothes choices are limited to dresses or skirts; makeup is heavy (well, without electrolysis there's not much helping that); heels are high.

(Which leads one to a strange quandry: if acting "feminine" means acting like a woman, how can it involve things that most women don't do, or at least do only very rarely?)

More to the point, MtFs sometimes try and move away from things that are considered "unfeminine." Watching sports is one of those things.

Even I have felt some conflict over these issues--and I dedicated this blog to the Mets. I've had conversations about baseball while crossdressed, but there have been times when I didn't want to do that--if I wanted to talk baseball I wouldn't have done my makeup.

But it's a false dichotomy. I know women who follow sports; a good female friend of mine can't understand how anyone wouldn't be interested in sports--the conflict, the athleticism, the unscripted nature of the game.

So I'm not going to be embarrassed about liking shopping and liking the Mets. The whole point of this crazy trip I'm on is to find a balance, after all. None of us is all one thing or another.

Unreal City IV

2005-06-09T13:22:00.000-04:00

Recent notes from my bicycle commutes:

Weather: Awful. Just awful. Today on the Brooklyn Bridge I could see the thermometer/clock billboard the Jehovah's Witnesses installed over their headquarters on the Brooklyn side. It was 88° at 8:45 AM.

Surreality: Self-manufactured. We screened the original Star Wars trilogy over the weekend, so the genetic programming Lucasfilm implanted in my DNA was activated. Trusty blue iPod became, of course, Artoo; my bicycle, which is red, prompted me to shout "This is Red Five, I'm going in," as I hit the Hudson River Bicycle Trail; and when I shot into the detour on the trail near Chelsea Piers I muttered that it was "Just like Beggar's Canyon back home."

Zen of iPod: Variable. Yesterday I heard no Cohen songs on the way out, which is statistically unlikely. I heard my favorite song by folkmusicienne E. while going over the Bridge. On the way home, Sinatra singing "Come Fly With Me" accompanied me down the long ramp to the Manhattan side. This morning I listened to the beautiful andante from Mahler 6, and another one of E.'s songs came on as I crossed the bridge.

Like a Cat's Claw...

2005-06-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

...I retract.

My "easy female friendship" tossaway line in the first Mahler post was one of the dumbest things I've ever written.

Women can be just as closed off emotionally, just as guarded, and just as competitive in their friendships as men. There's a difference--the areas of competition aren't congruent--but there's no qualitative difference, no "mystical bonds of feminity" that many trans folk seem to assume exist.

If there is a difference, it might be that women tend to talk about people, and men talk about things.

On Sunday Darling Wife and I met one of her old college friends. He and I engaged in some amiable Star Wars geek-talk. (I can ramble on geek subjects until the cows come home.)

Afterwards, DW asked if that was how boys talk. I told yes, it was, and it never really gets any deeper than that. Things, sports, money. And there's a constant undercurrent of competition--I know more Star Wars trivia than you, know more about sports than you, make more money than you.

But I've observed the same kind of competition with women as well. The subtle putdowns and disapprovals. The implicit comparisons that work their way into conversations--my life/home/marriage is so much better put together than your pathetic mess of a life. And the dissemblings--the whole school of your-hair-looks-great (if you like a poodle glued to your skull) comments.

It sometimes seems to me that men tend to be more honest with each other, if only because they avoid any subject (like emotions) that would cause them to have to be dishonest with each other. I doubt I will ever understand women until I can wrap my head around the idea of the three-way-call. (You may have seen it in Mean Girls: you call up one of your girlfriends and encourage her to say mean things about a third friend, while all the time the third friend is on the line with you.) Guys could never do that and remain friends--hell, guys simply couldn't even conceive of it, I think; they'd rather just fight. (Not me; I'm terrible in a fight, my years of aikido aside.)

But this isn't to say either that women are catty little gossips always sniping at each other. That's a male sterotype that needs to get shot down. And there are arguments to be made that the perpetuation of that stereotype is a societal mechanism to keep women divided and prevent them from making common cause together.

In any case, I apologize for romanticizing female friendships.

And for implying that strength=masculinity in my post about riding my bike on Memorial Day. That's not true, of course. I think I was imprecise; what I was trying to get at was that as a man I am stronger than the average woman, or stronger than I would be if I was a woman. Or something like that. But it's a false association in any case. And there are all kinds of strength.

And while I'm at it, no, the 1986 Mets were not "almost as good" as the 1998 Yankees. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

It is in the header, after all...

2005-06-07T10:32:00.000-04:00

Hey! Didn't I promise to write about the Mets somewhere back in my navel-gazing?

Ok. Well. I like them...

Randolph has turned out to be be better than I expected. He makes them fun to watch. Reyes and Wright are joys to behold. And Pedro....well....

But really, I'm not expecting anything except being close to .500 this year. That's a start.

Actually, I'm much happier at the fall of the Yankees. I picked up the paper this morning, flipped to the back, saw that Johnson had lost again and the Yanks were below .500, and laughed my patented Evil Laugh.

Male Privilege With a Cherry On Top

2005-06-06T10:32:00.000-04:00

One of the things I try hard not to do as I come to terms with being transgendered is "cherry-pick," that is, take only the best or most fun parts of being a woman and ignoring the hard and difficult things that make so many women frustrated with their lives.

I see this a lot in the trannie community. There are a lot of us who "feel like a woman" because they wear a miniskirt and four inch heels. Who feel that it's fine to leave their wives and SOs at home caring for the children and the house while they go out and get drunk at the trannie bar.

Heck, some of the most misogynistic things I've ever heard have come from the mouths of trannies.

Some of this is unavoidable. As long as I do not live my life as a woman, I will always have the option of retreating into my fortress of masculinity. I can duck the problem of trying to walk down the street without being a target. I can not worry that having children will destroy my career. I can make 100 cents on the dollar, instead of the 69 cents that women earn.

At the same time, being publicly transgendered does make me vulnerable and force me outside the safety of masculinity. I have walked out of the house and felt like a target. I know what it's like to be afraid of strange men on the streets. I know what it's like to have people ignore what I say because I'm not wearing pants.

But I'm not trying to brag. Until that's a part of your life for every waking hour you cannot understand how frustrating that can be.

At the same time, I'm glad that in some way--superficial as it may be--I have some access to a more, for lack of a better word, feminine inner life. Masculinity can be just as confining as feminity, although sadly it tends to be better compensated.

Maybe there's nothing wrong with incorporating the things you like and admire about other people, provided your understanding of them doesn't end there. Maybe the best way is to try and blend and transcend all the limitations of society's expectations.

I know "strong" women who incorporate personality traits (dedication to career, public displays of intelligence, interest in sports) that were considered masculine (or worse, unfeminine) twenty years ago. And they do so in a way that doesn't challenge their "feminity" (whatever that may be.) I think my goal is to be like that, to incorporate my feminine interests in a way that doesn't change and challenge my masculinity. To be, in short, not a man or a woman first, but a human being.

Because these are human issues we need to worry about, not "women's issues." We should all be concerned with raising and nurturing children. In the richest and most powerful society in human history, shouldn't we be working less and caring for our families more? Be trying to be just and kind, compassionate and caring? Trying to ensure that every person has the chance to really be the best person they can?

But what do I know. I'm just a man.

Unreal City III

2005-06-06T10:29:00.000-04:00

Grand Central Station, Saturday Afternoon...

Surrealism Factor: High. The German Tourism board was occupying the main foyer. I got a rail map of Germany, some gummi fruit for DW, and attempted to use my creaky Deutsch on an elderly New Yorker.

Zen of iPod: Low. Good Sinatra as a cruised the streets around Grand Central, remembering why I liked this city.

Zen of Reading: High. Nestled in my satchel as I walked through Grand Central Germany was my new library book, The Origins of Modern Germany.

Unreal City II

2005-06-03T11:26:00.000-04:00

This morning: R Train to Brooklyn (too much liklihood of rain to bike in today.)

Surreal Moment: As we sat waiting in Whitehall street to get into the tunnel to Brooklyn, a woman came in with a cat in a cat carrier and a blue finch in a huge birdcage. She was one of those New York characters, talking loudly to both her pets. I took a risk and asked her what kind of a bird it was--knowing she would be likely to try and talk to me for another fifteen minutes if I did. Fortunately I was able to pop the iPod earphones back in.

Fortunately? Damn.

Zen of iPod: I let my Blue Buddy play Gershwin's "An American in Paris," which I wouldn't normally do because it's so long. It then proceeded to serve up Sinatra singing "I Love Paris" and Louis Armstrong's "La Vie en Rose." (Not all in a row. But still weird.)

The Clash (Over My Soul?)

2005-06-03T11:22:00.000-04:00

Interesting Zen of iPod moment last night.

As I was coming home on the bike, "London Calling" came up on the iPod, jacking itself neatly into my male hindbrain with its pure, adrenaline-soaked howl of pain, anger, and exuberance.

Then as I tried to wrestle my bike into the apartment building, Janis Joplin came on. Singing "Trust Me."

My male and female sides are duking it out over my soul. Or my iPod; actually, that seems more likely.

All of this is totally in jest, of course.

Let a thousand schools of thought bloom

2005-06-02T10:42:00.000-04:00

The administration at Quelle Blogue has enabled anonymous comments.

You may discuss things, now.

We thank you for your support. Some chocolate would also be nice.

Unreal City I

2005-06-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

This morning's trip log, Hell's Kitchen to Brooklyn via bicycle...

Weather: Grey and too damn cold to wear shorts.

Surrealism: A white grand piano observed in some one's apartment in SoHo
The Nomadic Museum on Pier 54, constructed out of cargo ship containers.

iPod Zen Factor: Moderate. "I feel Pretty" came on while I raced past the Intrepid. "Susanne" came on as I started over the Brooklyn Bridge; she took my by the hand and led me to the river indeed, but there was no sun to pour down like honey on our lady of the harbor.

Bicycle Seat Discomfort Factor: High. I may need a new saddle.

Late Night Conversation About Michelle's Mahler Post

2005-06-02T10:06:00.000-04:00

"You're not missing anyting."

That was Darling Wife's reaction to the end of my Mahler post yesterday when she read it. She told me about how guarded her own relationships are with other women, how she competes with them in terms of looks and clothes, how she feels that any confidence she makes in her female family members will immediately be shared all around.

She's right, of course. I'm completely guilty of romanticizing female relationships.

Of course, she doesn't understand male relationships, either. About how competitive they are; about how there's a constant jockeying in most of them to see who the alpha male is, about how men are always comparing posessions, salary, wealth.

Or that out of all my male friends, there's only one with whom I could share anything like an intimate personal feeling. I can't even do that regularly with my own brother.

Last night Darling Wife and I stayed up late talking about things, including my recent post. I told her that I wanted to start exploring my trans nature more again, but unlike my previous attempts, when I only tried to explore my feminine feelings, this time I want to see what I like about being a man. So I proposed that I would set aside one night a week for her, where I would be just her husband & do more traditionally masculine things--like taking dancing lessons. I like to lead.

And I also want to set aside a night a week to do girl things as well. I told her I wanted to make things more "ordinary" and she didn't know what I meant; that made two of us. I don't want to do my makeup just to go to the Food Emporium. But I don't want to be stuck just going to tranny bars.

I guess one way to look at it would be that there are things I could do crossdressed or not, and I'd like to do some of them crossdressed. Go to folkmusicienne E.'s gigs, for example (hey, I've already done that.) Meet friends who know about my two sides. Maybe do the odd cultural thing, like go to a concert.

Heck, there's always shopping as well.

The truth is I don't know exactly what it is that I want. But I want to start finding out.

Darling Wife asked a very good question. She wanted to know what it is I wanted to get out of this. What I wanted people to do when I was out crossdressed.

Knowing it to be not quite the right answer, I said that I wanted to be treated like a woman when I was out crossdressed.

That made her upset, and deservedly so. Did I want to be treated like an object? To have my thoughts and opinions discounted automatically? To have to suspect everyone's motives? (Is that guy being nice to me because he's nice, or because he's creepy?)

I understand that. Being a woman in this society sucks. That it sucks less than a lot of places doesn't make it any less painful.

Truth is, I'm not sure what it is that I want when I say I want to feel like a woman. There is the possibility--the very distinct and overwhelmingly likely possibility--that all this is coming out of some warped sexual desire, that I create Michelle as a substitute woman that I'm attracted to, that all this is some huge vanity and bent self-love.

And yet. And yet, when I grew up I hated being around the boys. I hated playing rough. I cried a lot. And I desperately, desperately wanted to feel pretty.

So? Isn't that still just a superficial understanding of women's lives?

Yes. Of course it is. But I can't help it that as long as I've been conscious, some part of me has always felt "girl" even when all the evidence--biological and social--said "boy."

I like who I am. I need to explore my masculinity and integrate it into my life. I've spent a lot of time in the last ten years learning about my feminity. It's time to stop running from my biology and embrace it.

But I still need to understand why I need to feel feminine--to think of myself as feminine, rather, since I'll never really know what it feels like to be feminine.

Is it wrong to just want to feel pretty? Am I betraying women by wanting that? Am I still just a joke? Is it wrong to embrace parts of the beauty myth that oppresses the wonderful women in my life?

I wish I knew. I suspect I never will.

My life in Pink (Floyd)

2005-06-01T22:43:00.000-04:00

Hello.....is there anybody in there
Just smile if you can hear me....
is there anybody home?

The first speeding ticket I ever got came late one night as I was rushing back to my college on Long Island from my parents' place. Got nailed in my trusty not-quite-ungreen Buick Regal. Blasting on the radio was Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," a song I confess a weakness for to this day.

I've been posting on and off here for over a year. I've always assumed I have no readers except Darling Wife and occassionaly folkmusicienne E. Recently I know some folks from the My Husband Betty boards have dropped by.

Still, as much as I understand that this is the price of anonymity, it's odd to be writing and not know if anybody is out there at all. Is all this work--some of which I poured my heart into--just vanishing into the ether?

I installed Site Meter on the blog. Let's see if anybody is out there.

I'm writing, or am I?

2005-06-01T22:26:00.000-04:00

So I'm writing in my blog again tonight, rather than doing real writing.

That sounds pretentious.

I don't know why it's so hard for me to get going on a writing project. I finished one back in January, but a big part of its appeal to me was that it was pointless--written primarily for another email list I'm on, with no intent of trying to publish it. I'm afraid it's not very good. Bits of it were funny, though.

You don't see it that often here on my angst-ridden whine pages (hmm, that would have been a better name for this blog than an obscure French pun), but a lot of my writing can be very funny. On one of my message boards I'm regarded as actually humorous. Imagine that.

But I don't quite know how to translate that into real writing (stop that!) Am I a funny novelist? A writer of picante little amusing pieces?

Right now I'm a blogger. Yes, and a professional writer (note to self: mail in latest contract.) But I've never sold anything, just done work on commission. And yes, that does make me feel inadequete as a writer.

But just now I don't know what to write.

I spoke with an aquaintance of mine a few weeks ago. I met him seven years ago for a few days, and then completely forgot about him. In the mean time, he's become an award-winning novelist.

I told him he made me feel like I was wasting my life because I wasn't writing my novels.

"Why aren't you writing your novels?" he asked.

Good question. Anybody got any answers?

Being. Becoming. Am.

2005-06-01T09:35:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying to figure out some of the implications of how I felt on Sunday, but making incremental progress.

Darling Wife pointed out to me when I was complaining about having to be permanently in between states, neither fully masculine nor fully feminine, that Buddhists believe the middle way is best.

I've always been attracted to Buddhism as a philosophy (especially Zen) and I think that, as usual, DW is right. There's a lot I could take from Buddhism to help me understand and deal with my gender issues.

I've been upset that now I seem to be doomed to stay on the gender treadmill, never actually getting anywhere but unable to step off. But a Buddhist would tell me that as long as I continue to long for something--something I don't have and can't possess--then I'll always be unhappy.

If I look at my transgenderism as a process, an act of becoming something, then I can't help but be disappointed. Nothing, not even reassignment surgery and transition, can make me a biological woman. In that sense, nothing can "cure" me of the root cause of my transness.

But maybe it's not a process. Maybe I can just worry about being transgendered, accepting it, making my peace with my own discomfort, and dealing with the issues that raises.

I'm ready to try that, to try and just be. The challenge is to turn that "be" into an am, to figure out just who I am and what accepting and integrating my transness into my ordinary life will look like.

In the meantime, we're getting our actual treadmill delivered today, which will also help. Mens sana in corpore sano, after all; maybe it works in reverse too.

On the Move

2005-06-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

Last night I reinstated my gym membership, which means I am once again paying through the nose to rent a shower in Brooklyn. I don't have any plans to really use the gym except to change after riding my bike to work.

But the positive thing is that I'm riding my bike to Brooklyn again. That makes me happy, and may make me thinner, which is a Good Thing, or at least Not a Bad Thing.

I do really like riding my bicycle. It's about the only way I get any air and sunshine during the day. It's good excercise and that helps to loosen up the brain, I think.

Plus this time I'm going to stop getting my monthly Metrocard, so it should pretty much pay for itself.

I can't see why this would be ineresting to anybody, but that's never stopped me before.

Dali/Sade

2005-06-01T09:24:00.000-04:00

Your daily moment of New York surrealism...

I was walking down 47th street this morning, listening to Fiona Apple on trusty iPod. A sixt-foot tall, yellow inflatable chicken was standing on the corner of Eighth Avenue. I'd love to say it was handing out coupons for the Texas barbecue, but in fact the chicken had an assistant.

Later as I stood next to the Morgan Stanley building a woman in a long skirt glided past on her little scooter.

Times like that I love New York City.

Then I got to the train station. I take one of the subway lines that goes to Ground Zero. As was usual for that time of the day, there was a huge crowd of tourists on the platform waiting to go see the hole in the ground that is the open grave of 2700 of my fellow New Yorkers.

I hate Ground Zero. I hate that it's there. I hate the tourists for going there. I hate what happened to my city and my country.

New York: it makes you laugh even as it hits you in the stomach.

Ray of Light

2005-05-31T10:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I rode my new bike into Brooklyn. I had to work, but I didn't get much done.

I only got the bike on Sunday but I already love it. It's a Mongoose with click-lever shifting and front and rear shocks. And it has 24 speeds; I may have cut five minutes out the trip for that reason alone. I had it up in 23rd and 24th gear all yesterday and it hardly felt like I was pedalling at all.

Which leads me back to the subject of Sunday's post...

I'm feeling a little better. It was good to get out in the sunshine and the air. It was wonderful to soar again over the East River, to feel the wind in my hair and the tears in my eyes as I sped back into Manhattan last night.

It also felt good to be strong and swift. To enjoy my muscles, to let my aggressiveness out a little bit. To embrace for a while my masculinity.

So how do I feel about what I wrote the other day?

I'm still a little confused and frustrated about just how I'm supposed to be what I am--a reasonably out crossdressing man who does enjoy being out in public while dressed as a woman. To find ways to interact with people while crossdressed without limiting myself to the ghetto of the tranny bar.

For me, it's not so much a question of self-acceptance--I know who and what I am--as tactics of self-expression. Of trying to integrate all aspects of myself into my life.

It helps to also embrace my more masculine feelings. Not only did I ride my bike yesterday, Darling Wife and I took our Mexican takeout onto the roof of our building, and danced slowly to Ella Fitzgerald against the backdrop of Midtown and the sun plunging behind the Pallisades. And that felt wonderful.

I started a thread on this subject over at the My Husband Betty boards. There has been some very good advice there, I think.

Also, many people have said nice things about my writing. Thank you! Of course, that starts the new depression--I'm not writing enough--but we'll leave that for another time.

Late Evening Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's First Symphony

2005-05-29T22:22:00.000-04:00

Well, it was a hell of a week.

I was sleep deprived through most of it, and deprived of darling wife at the end of it.

I'm also a little burnt out on gender right now.

I went out twice in two days. That's plenty enough to trigger the sensation euphemistically called "gender euphoria" by trannies, "self-absorbtion" by others and "really, really scary" by our spouses.

You see, you cross-dress a little, you start wanting to cross-dress a lot. And that's got me kinda down.

I am convinced I am not on a transition track. I've met transsexuals and I've read their heart-rending stories. I don't have that level of discomfort with myself. I don't want to change myself that way. I am convinced that transition would be a personal disaster for me. I really want to remain who I am.

Unfortunately, who I am is a man who when he was a little boy, wanted to be a little girl.

I think a lot of crossdressers have a great reluctance to rule out transition authoritatively, even when they know they won't ever do it. Part of that is because there have been a lot of "late-transistioners," people who undergo reassignment surgery in their 40s and 50s. I think we will see less of that phenomenon as years pass, however. My generation has been able to be out in a way that was simply unthinkable to many of the previous generations. I've been publicly crossdressing for ten years now. I've had a chance to do a lot of experimentation and I've hardly repressed myself during that span.

I think for crossdressers of my generation, refusing to completely rule out transition stems from two things: first, doing so feels like denying a part of yourself. If you don't feel "like a woman" on the inside--at least not enough to live your life permanently as a woman--then what's left? The clothes, the vanity, the public spectacle of a man in drag?

The other reason is that like all human beings we desire resolution. And it seems like there are only two possible resolutions: to stop crossdressing, or to transition. Either one finally ends the ambiguity. Otherwise you're left trapped in the middle again. And the middle is a really painful place to be.

So I'm choosing to stay in the middle. I choose to moderate my crossdressing, because I want to have a professional life unencumbered by my transgenderism, and more importantly because I love my wife and want to give her some of the life she expected. This isn't necessarily such a big sacrifice. I'm not sure I like myself when I dress up too much.

You would think that crossdressing would relieve my transgendered feelings and allow me to cool off and handle things until the next time I crossdressed. But it doesn't work that way at all. Instead it can feed them and make my confusion even more acute.

Like this weekend. I got to dress up twice and spend some time in public. People were very nice to me. If they didn't treat me like a woman, they at least treated me with respect. The hostess at the restaurant Lucy and I ate at complimented us on our outfits. I felt pretty, even if I wasn't. All in all, it was very nice.

So why did I want more? Why, when I was out doing the laundry this afternoon, did I look around, into the early evening that is my favorite time in New York City, the late spring evening with its cooling warmth and gusty breezes that is my favorite season in New York City--why did I look around at all that and think that it would be vastly improved by smearing grease on my face, cramming my feet into shoes that would make me a cripple in a few hours, and exposing myself to public ridicule?

Some people say that they crossdress because women's clothing feels more comfortable to them. This is of course absurd. The underwear binds, the architecture needed to simulate cleavage and breast projection is as about as ridiculous as you would suspect, and wigs are uncomfortable to wear. Obviously, it's a psychological comfort we're talking about; a way of publicly showing the world "this is how I think of myself, in some way" and demanding to be treated that way, ludicrous as it sounds.

And of course it is ludicrous. I don't become a woman by wearing a skirt (or even high heels). I don't gain a deeper understanding of women's lives and women's souls. As much as I try to be sensitive to the many wonderful women in my life, to help them and to help myself know what they need and want, when I crossdress I remain a fellow in a frock.

And so that's all. That's all I am. And what the hell kind of a life is that?

Sometimes it really gets me down. Yes, sure, I like the pretty outfits and the cool shoes. I like to wear makeup (sometimes). I like all these things; I'm sad when I don't get to do them, and happy when I do. But how is this a life? Am I doomed to toddle from bar to bar in my fancy shoes, a drink glued to one hand?

But what else can I do? Join a book club? Why would I go to the trouble of wearing a skirt to go to a book club? Would anybody really treat me differently? Would it make me "more of a woman" or less of a man? Wouldn't I just be a kind of joke? Why would anyone go to all that trouble if they're not living that way?

And I don't want to live that way. But at times I think it would be nice. Because some part of me is always going to be attracted to the feminine, and not in a creepy way. Or maybe it is creepy. I dunno.

And I know I view all this through the warped mirror of my transness, that intersection of my vanity and my sexuality. I know that for me being pretty is fun, not necessary; if I sometimes feel restricted by the gender conformance required of me as a man, I have no real understanding of the vastly more oppressive and difficult demands society makes on women.

Still, when I see two women casually but prettily dressed, out just walking with each other and sharing that intimate-yet-casual friendship that is so hard for men to attain, my heart breaks because I'm forever on the other side of the world from that. And I don't know why it should break. But it does. And it makes me feel a bit of a joke.

Weekend (Fashion) Update

2005-05-29T21:30:00.000-04:00

This is the part of the blog where the resident self-obsessed trannie tells everyone what (s)he wore over the weekend. As if anyone cares, including me. OK, I guess I did a the time, so here goes.

The first thing I realized I needed after getting the white skirt last week was a denim jacket. On Thursday I had some time between work and seeing my LA friends for the last time, so I went to 34th street and shopped around. After some hard looking, I swallowed my bargain hunter instincts and bought a jacket from the Gap. This was actually a good decision, I think, as their stuff does not fall apart immediately, and this is a piece you want to keep until it wears out. Also, it fit better & was in a darker shade of blue than a similar jacket at Old Navy.

I couldn't find anyone to hang out with on Friday, but decided to just head out anyway. I went down to East of Eight wearing the white skirt, a black tank, and the denim jacket. Plus the lavender heels. I really liked the way the outfit came together.

There's a certain confidence you get from knowing that you look, if not good, then well-put together. I never think I pass when I go out, but if I do at all it's when I feel a little better because of my outfit. Plus, ever since my makeover in February, I've been doing a little better job with my makeup, and that helps.

Come to think of it, I think the cabbie called me miss on my way back from dinner.

After dinner I went up to Don't Tell Mama's for drinks at the piano bar. I had a good time talking to the waitresses, listening to the songs, and discussing how bad The Light in the Piazza turned out to be with a guy sitting next to me. George, the singing waiter, performed "Sweet Transvestite" from Rocky Horror in a bustier and microminiskirt.

I had a good time but drank way too much. The margaritas there are powerful.

At some point the next day my component atoms reassembled themselves and I went out with my friend Lucy to dinner (it was her birthday this week) and then to Contempt, a goth night at the Remote lounge down on Bowery. It was supposed to be Vegas night, so I didn't dress goth (I never do, actually) but I should have worn black instead of emerald green (and the new gold sandals.) Lucy's wife eventually showed up as well, and we had a good time. I made sure to drink beer this time; I've been hungover enough times this week, thank you very much. Ladylikeness be damned.

The Remains of the Day

2005-05-27T09:17:00.000-04:00

Sorry for breaking my promise to post every day this week. How about I make it up by averaging one post a day?

Some friends of mine from Los Angeles have been in town this week and we have stayed out later and later each night. Right now I am wired together with coffee and inertia.

I'd have something interesting to say at this point if my brain was on. When that happens I'll write more.

A Post About Nothing At All

2005-05-24T09:30:00.000-04:00

We interrupt our gender-obsessed navel-gazing...

As I said earlier, I bought an iPod recently, a blue 6-GB iPod mini. It's changed my life.

I bought DW a pink iPod last year for her birthday, but resisted making the change myself. I listen to a lot of Classical music and was leery of the quality of MP3s.

But since I got my little friend, I can't understand how I lived without it. I've put over 5 gigs of my music on it, and after the Brian Lehrer show ends I plug it into my computer speakers at work and listen to music.

I'm getting addicted to the Zen of iPod shuffle. The first day I wore my iPod to work, it played, in order (and I kid you not), Janis Joplin singing "Down on Me" and Leonard Cohen singing "Chelsea Hotel #2." If you know the second song then you understand the delicious irony.

Which brings me back to Leonard Cohen. Somewhere down below I mention in passing that I'm a Cohen-phile. I have been ever since I saw Altman's film McCabe & Mrs. Miller back in 1991 or 1992, which used songs from the Songs album as its soundtrack. Later, when I was in grad school, a professor of mine played "Chelsea Hotel" in class which inspired me to finally go out and buy the Songs album.

I guess I can't avoid a crossdressing reference after all. I used to listen to Songs when I would take my bath before going out. So for me "Suzanne" will always recall the smell of bubble bath.

(There must be something with folk music and crossdressing for me. When I lived in Vermont I used to listen to an Arlo Guthrie greatest hits album while doing my makeup.)

This morning on the subway I listened to "Famous Blue Raincoat," which is perfect for a rainy day. There's something about that song--I don't know how, but there is a sense of absolute dread that comes across you while listening to it. It's not the banal lyrics or the simple chords (D-Minor, at least according to the arrangement I've so far not managed to learn how to play on the piano.) But somehow the whole exceeds the parts and the song has haunted me since I first heard it.

Folkmusicienne E., who is also a big Cohen fan, actually owns a blue raincoat. I have to stea--er, borrow it from her one day.

Monday Mutterings

2005-05-23T09:12:00.000-04:00

The revival of Quelle Blogue continues full-throttle as I experiment with a solid week of posting everyday. A writing excerise for me, slow torture for you, no doubt, but I figured I should make the attempt.

Of course, now I just have to figure out something to write about.

Part of the problem is my ground rules. Obviously this is a blog about my gender variance. The ground rules I initially set up allow me to also discuss the New York Mets. But how about the rest of my life? Does the deliberate curtain of separation I've created to obfuscate my trail & prevent people from figuring out my secret identity (well, actually you know my secret identity; you just don't know which superhero I am) mean that I can't tell you about my ordinary, alternately frustrating and enlightening life? Or to put it another way, can I post about anything but my transgenderedness and the Mets?

A larger question is just how much else there is beyond my transgenderedness.

They say that men think about sex every six seconds. For trannies, you could replace gender for sex and be correct. (Of course, transpeople are among the few that insist on the separation of gender and sex. My people are big on semantics.)

But what does it mean to think about gender? It can take many forms. The essence of being tg is thinking that you were born as the wrong sex. So yes, not a day goes by that I don't wonder/wish/feel bad about thinking about being a woman.

That doesn't mean I'm going to do anything about it. For the most part, I'm really happy with my life, and my life as a man. I don't hate my biology and I'm not sure I'd survive living as a woman. I like my life and I like my wife and I look forward to being a father one day.

But that doesn't mean I don't also like to look and feel feminine, that I don't wonder what it would have been like to have not had to hide my feminity (such as it is) when I was growing up, what it would be like to bear children.

And sure I know that the trannie mirror of feminity is a warped one. I know that most women spend their entire life hating their body and desperately trapped in a culture that punshes them for being pretty and not being pretty enough, for being smart and for not being smart enough. I understand a little of that (I know what it's like to look at yourself in the mirror and realize your clothes make you look fat, to hate parts of your body because they make you look ugly, to hate your features and feel like you'll never be beautiful.) But I don't really know what it's like to be a woman.

And all that is part of my daily merry-go-round of thinking. Sometimes it's maddening and poisons my life, like when I feel guilty about wanting--needing--to crossdress. Sometimes it's good, because thinking about my life and my gender has alowed me to find gentleness and compassion that most men don't access. But I'll never be free of thinking about it. I'll never fill in the hole in my soul. The best I can do is find routes around it.

Darkness Visible

2005-05-22T20:01:00.000-04:00

So we went out and caught Revenge of the Sith with our friend K and her fiance.

After the disappointments of the first two prequels, this was almost a revelation because it didn't...suck.

That doesn't mean it was as good as the original trilogy. But it was the first prequel that was worthy of being included with them.

There are problems. The narrative is too telescoped; Anakin's swift turn to the dark side happens quite literally overnight. Given how drawn out the first two films were, that's bad decision-making by Lucas. But he's done that before.

He also is miserable with actors. Nobody distinguishes themselves again. Hayden Christianson and Natalie Portman have zero chemistry, and are forced to recite the lamest lines in history to each other. Ewan MacGregor holds his own, and Ian MacDiarmind chews the scenery with gusto.

However, the actions sequences are strong and thrilling without seeming pointless, as they often did in Attack of the Clones. And there are tantalizing glimpses of the cosmic tale of darkness and shadow drowning a confused young man's soul. But they remain only glimpses.

Still it was a strong effort. Even Lucas can't live up to his own expectations, but this was a satisfying final chapter to the Star Wars saga. And I can finally have some peace again, without worrying he'll make another movie. I think he reprogrammed my DNA back in 1977 to go see all of his movies; that would explain why Carrie Fisher had that double-helix on her head.

La Fashion, Toujours, Tourjours La Fashion

2005-05-21T23:32:00.000-04:00

I finally went out today to settle my recent windfall by doing what any reasonably baseball-obsessed heterosexual male New Yorker would: I bought a couple of killer pairs of high heels.

'Tis true, I blew off Benson's domination of the Forces of Darkness today to go shoe-shopping. But I'm glad I did.

Like many NYC trannies I've haunted Tall Step Shoes on 35th Street just west of Fifth Avenue. I've been down on them in recent years; too dowdy, I've thought, not enough interesting shoes.

Not necessarily. It all depends how you look.

Last fall, you may remember, I picked up a pair of burgundy and grey t-straps that didn't get more use because a) they hurt to wear b) I have no fashion sense & didn't get more outfits to go with them and c) once the leaves fall from the trees it takes a lot for me to not wear my Enzo boots.

But those results encouraged me to drop in on Tall Step when I decided to buy some real shoes, shoes that wouldn't make me scream in pain, shoes that would last more than a few wearings. In short, not Payless shoes.

Have I discussed before the tragedy of being a woman's size 12W? How can I put it...it's like being addicted to chocolate and allergic to it at the same time. It's like having an cruel itch and being surrounded by backscratchers that just...won't...reach.

In short, it's a pretty good metaphor for being a trannie.

In any case, this time we struck gold. Literally. Darling wife helped me pick out two gorgeous pairs of shoes: gold two-band sandals with an ankle strap and gold buttons on the straps; and moc-croc lavender strappy sandals (also with ankle straps.) I love them already. Not having all your shoes be black changes everything. Last summer I was going to buy a pair of sandals and couldn't decide to get them in silver or black. DW told me to get them in silver--you'll never regret it, she said. I eventually got them in both (:)), but the silver sandals are the pair I wear the most; after my boots, I probably wore them the most often this year.

Metallic shoes are really wonderful if, like most New York...women...you wear all black, or mostly black, or something everyday with black in it. But they also go well with colors...which reminds me...

So now I had the shoes; of course I needed an outfit to go with them. I told DW that I must really be indoctrinated--that no longer seemed like a strange idea. Nonsense, she told me; you buy the most difficult part of the outfit first, and in your case, that's always going to be shoes.

After a brief stop at Rainbow, we hit our old haunt--H & M. After much searching (and two separate trips to the fitting room, with a total of 19 items), I got the following:

--A white tiered skirt (yes!)
--A pink tank & a white lace cardigan to go with the skirt
--A black dress with an elastic scrunched bodice and flower details picked out in colored thread on the hem
--DW picked out the above. I found the empire waist emerald v-neck mock wrap dress with elastic scrunching around the waist all by my lonesome.

I wore the dress (and the gold heels....ah...) to dinner with Penny and her wife Jayme, two fellow My Husband Betty board members in town from Boston. We went to a nice little Italian restaurant in the Village that I had scouted with some other boardies last month for the next Couples' dinner.

We had fun but called it a night early. It rained cats on dogs on the way over (why does it always rain when I'm wearing new shoes?) and it was freezing when we got out of the restaurant. But we had a good time and I felt extra pretty, although I'm not sure an independent commission would confirm those findings.

My Body, My Nightmare

2005-05-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

One of the fun parts about being transgendered is having a terrible body image. At the risk of making an idiot out of myself (not that it ever stopped me before), I think that body image problems are one of the few places tg people approach an understanding of what it's like to be female.

Sure, my body didn't radically change when I turned 13, nor am I constantly caught in a trap of never living up to society's expectation of what the ideal body for me should be. I haven't lived that, and I don't know what that's like.

But I do know from feeling uncomfortable in my own flesh. I do know what it's like to look at myself and not see what I think should be there. I know what it's like to always feel like I'm ugly. Trust me, when you're a boy who dresses up like a girl you know all about not living up to your own expectations.

Right now, I know what it's like to feel fat, because I am. I was trying on some outfits for tomorrow's expedition. The long winter, and my two business trips to California, have not been kind to me. I knew I was in trouble when I couldn't wear my best suit after the beginning of February because I was too large around the waist. But this is ridiculous. I look terrible in all my clothes.

I desperately need to drop some weight. I'm neither healthy nor happy right now.

I wish I still had my gym membership so I could ride my bike to Brooklyn in the mornings. I may have to look into reviving it so I can start commuting that way again. We're buying a treadmill, and that will help.

Most trannies have active fantasy lives, and an ability to look in the mirror and see what they want to see. Spend some time in any tranny bar and you'll know what I mean. But I just saw things pretty clearly. It's time to take control of things again.

Good Heavens, How the Time Does Fly!

2005-05-20T17:12:00.000-04:00

Five months since my last post? To the day? I am really sorry, Loyal...Reader. Let's be honest here.

Well, a lot of life got in my way, and I haven't written much for the blog. To be honest, I was thinking of just letting it drop. But I went through some of my old posts yesterday, and there is enough here that I think is actually not embarrassing (from a writing point of view) that I'll keep my little patch of the web alive.

So what's going on, Michelle? Tell us of this life you supposedly have!

Many, many things, good and bad. I started out believing that this would be my year: I'm 33 (three, my lucky number twice), this is the third year of my marriage, and my tenth year in New York City. And so far, things have gone my way; I got some very good fortune (not as good as could be, but much better than I had any right to hope for), my job remains reasonably stable for another few months, I wrote a long piece for my personal amusement in December and January, and we have another cat.

E., our loyal folkmusicienne suffered an intense personal tragedy at the start of the year, though, and we are still mourning with her.

I had the birthday of my life this year, which I will relate in another post. Suffice to say that if you pay enough money, even a square-jawed, butch-shouldered tranny like yours truly can look almost glamourous.

And I bought an iPod. This is serious, folks--it has changed my life.

I'll probably be out and about with DW tomorrow. Some folks from the My Husband Betty boards are coming to town, and I may try to link up with a friend of mine as well.

And Sunday is Sithday.

More later, including lots on the Mets (groan) and about shoes (yea!)

I'm Back

2004-12-19T21:21:00.000-05:00

Well, chickadees, I'm back after long abscence. I have much to tell you about, but for now the brand-spanking new content below will have to do. I weigh in briefly about the Mets recent activity, give you an opportunity to Name that Tranny, and republish two recent posts to the Betty Boards.

A word about the last two: the juxtaposition is intentional, as I went from high to low in the span of a weekend. I'm feeling better now, had a wonderful meet-up with some very lovely people from the community last night, and even got to see Betty in a play. So read and digest, my darlings, and I'll be back with more just after the holidaze.

Name that Tranny!

2004-12-19T20:57:00.000-05:00

Our good friend E. the folkmusicienne asked me a good question recently:

"What's Michelle's middle name?"

I don't have an answer for her. I suppose I could feminize my own middle name, but that seems too...pat. I didn't feminize my first name, after all, so why do the same for my middle name? Anyway, the name would be fairly pedestrian in it's common version (Christine) although it could be spiced up a little (Christiana is closer to my actual name.)

Anyway, I'm opening the discussion to those of you who know me and love me, or least don't say bad things to my face. Do you have any ideas for a middle name for me? I'll sort through the submissions and pick a winner.

Those Meshugganah Mets...

2004-12-19T20:50:00.000-05:00

It's time once again to add some baseball content to this site!

So, Leyland fizzled and they went with Minaya's choice, Willie Randolph. We have to hope for the best. He has no managerial experience, and is inheriting a broken-down team of aging hasbeens, with only Wright and Reyes offering a glimpse of hope. We'll have to see if being around Torre all those years helped, though it should be noticed that Torre wasn't any damn good as a manager until he got a team of young superstars which included at least two potential Hall-of-Famers.

And now Pedro is in town. It's hard on one level to criticize the move: the Mets, for the first time in ten years, have a pitcher that can win any game they play no matter who is on the mound for the other team. That's a really big deal. But the downside is that Martinez is on his downside; how much longer his shoulder can hold together is anyone's guess.

Just please don't bring Sosa in. For goodness sake.

Folks, it breaks down like this: until they get younger and start building players from within, they will never get any better. I think Minaya understands this--but can he put this plan into action given the need to win now and retake the spotlight from the Yankees? Probably not, so it will be another decade of ineptitude at Shea.

But hey, December is the month of baseball cynicism. Catch me at the end of February--I'll have some false hope then.

It's a Little Like Having Your Heart Broken, Every Day

2004-12-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

(Below is an edited version of a post from the My Husband Betty boards.)

Last Saturday we had the first Transgendered Sewing Circle meeting. I had a great time, was really pleased to get together with such great people, and not a little bit proud to have been the motivating factor behind getting everyone together.

So now it's Sunday, and I have nothing much planned beyond doing the laundry, reading the paper, and watching a little football. (Yes, I do. Only when it's not baseball season.)

My Darling Wife had to work that morning, and that afternoon she had to play a gig for a friend of hers, who was doing a one-man cabaret show on Restaurant Row. So I gave up on doing the laundry and watching football to head out to the show.

My wife had invited one of her friends--let's call her G.--from the college she's attending to come to the show, and I watched it with her. After the show we headed out to get some drinks.

G., who is from South America, was talking about the new Pedro Almodovar movie, which she was planning to see that night with her boyfriend. She invited us to come, but my wife put her off initially, saying that we were going to see it with some crossdressers.

Lately my wife has been outing me to her friends, and discovering, much as we do when we come out, that nobody really cares too much. So later, after a glass of wine, she tells G. that I am one of the crossdressers in question.

G. not only has no problem with that, she invites us to come to the movie with me as Michelle. I was surprised and a little pleased, and after checking that it would be okay with Darling Wife, we agreed. So we went home, had a bite to eat, then I did the quick-change and we headed out to the movie.

People accuse me of not being spontaneous, and it's true--I'll let you decide if it's the German-ness or the Catholic upbringing. In any case, I like to plan a little bit ahead, especially since being spontaneous has so often blown up in my face.

So we get to the theater and find out that the early show is sold out and we need to buy tickets for the 10:40 show, which not only means that I won't get any sleep but that we have to kill two hours.

So, okay, we're all New Yorkers here and capable of rolling with the punches. Off we head to G.'s boyfriend's apartment.

The boyfriend--let's call him B.--works in the music industry and has a terrific apartment on Central Park South. He's slightly drunk from watching football all day, but offers us some great Pinot Noir while we sit down to while away the time.

But now some things are becoming apparent. It seems that G. is not just G., she's PG--Party Girl. You may remember Party Girl/Guy, from college or high school. (Heck, you may be Party Girl.) Party Girl has a great time wherever she goes. She has an incredible tolerance for alcohol, and she gets her second wind around two o'clock in the morning.

B., as it turns out, is Middle-Aged Libertine Guy--either Party Guy trying to hold onto his youth, or Sober Young Guy who now realizes that he has this last chance to be Party Guy for a while.

Everyone needs a little bit of party girl in their life. But if, like me, you are Sober Guy, the kind that is a social drinker but hates to get drunk, who keeps his wits even with a buzz, who, at bottom, just isn't spontaneous but needs to plot everything out in advance, then you're going to have diminishing returns the longer you spend with Party People.

There's another problem developing.

G. and B. are canoodling, as one might reasonably expect. But my wife, who doesn't find me attractive as a girl--a position I understand and respect--is getting a little put off by all the couple stuff happening around us that we can't participate in. Plus B. has put on the new Leonard Cohen album, which is a little hard for even a Cohen-phile like me to get into; for DW, listening to Lenny's sepulchral growl is a downer pure and simple.

Finally, we get to head over to the theater. By now I am tired, my face is greasy and covered with the molten remains of my makeup, and I feel fat and confined in my clothing. (Welcome to the Wonderful World of Womanhood, Michelle.) We get to the theater without any problems, and watch the movie, which is really terrific but has a little more gay sex than I was expecting.

It's past one in the morning when we get home, and I'm rushing to strip out of my clothes. DW is downloading her email and having a problem as usual because of our crappy antivirus program, which is stopping the download.

Her: I thought you were going to fix that.
Me: I haven't had time. (Knowing, as I did, that it was at least a two-hour job and probably required changing programs.)
Her: Well, you've had plenty of time to go out. (Cut #1.)

Later, as we get to bed, DW tells me how upset she is. How she hadn't had a good time. How she wanted me back. How not being able to be a couple together almost made her wish that I wasn't like I am. Then Cut #2: "All we do is go out dressed up or shop for skirts."

So, hung over and chewing on shame and guilt, I try to drop off to sleep.

The next day I am in a terrible state of mind. First, of course, I feel threatened; is DW going to reject me? Is she going to tell me to try and stop crossdressing? I know that she won't, but of course the scared kid inside of me who spent his whole youth terrified that some one was going to find out his secret is scared again.

Also, I feel guilty. I honestly try to give my wife space away from dealing with my transgender issues. I know that this isn't what she necessarily wanted out of life, and while she willingly accepted me--all of me--that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve some time to not have to worry/think about/have to deal with it.

But at the same time it hurts to have to engage in that kind of self-censorship. I have to spend so much time being what other people expect from me, hiding how I feel. Of course, maybe I don't have to; maybe the problem is me and my own cowardrice and shame. On the other hand, we went through a very bad time when we had no money coming in, so it hardly seems fair for me to complain that I have to wear a suit every day and pretend to be a normal guy so that we can have a nice life and start saving for a family.

Still, there's anger: anger at her for criticizing me; anger at the world that makes what I feel seem so wrong; and, worst of all, anger at myself for being me.

A little medical history. I had chronic, low-grade depression for most of my adolescence, but I never got treated for it. It wasn't until I had a mild breakdown in 1996 that I finally was treated for depression, including taking antidepressents. That literally changed my life and I really began to finally blossom. I had a relapse after 9/11, but haven't been on antidepressents since 2002.

But now here I am again, vis á vis á rien. For the first time in a long time, I didn't see the point in going on. I felt like I was living in a circle of pain, and all I'd really done is drag my wife inside it with me. I felt tired, and trapped.

I talked to my wife that night. She said that she was tired and cranky when she said those things to me, which I knew, understood, and accepted. And I told her how it felt, I think, to be transgendered.

It's a little bit, I said, like having your heart broken every day. There's something wrong with you that nothing will ever fix.

And I believe that. I don't think that we're automatically condemned to lives of pain and suffering, but I am prepared to accept that there is a yearning in me that will never be satisfied.

So things are better now. I'm still struggling to find a way for us both to be happy. I hardly think our marriage is in trouble, but I know that this is a question that we will be dealing with for the rest of our lives--so I want to try and solve the ground rules now, before we have children. Of course, it will be hard. Tuesday night, while we were packing to go to my parents' place, I mentioned that it was easy for me to pack when I was "like this"--which my wife took to mean wearing a suit until I added a crack about a Y chromosome being good for something after all. Which made her a little upset, and me a little upset as well, since sometimes I just have to make light of my situation, to laugh a little at the bitter joke of transgenderedness that was played on me.

The Inaugural Transgender Sewing Circle Meeting

2004-12-19T20:44:00.000-05:00

(Below is an edited version of a post from the My Husband Betty boards.)

Below is my take on our first meeting. I present these observations strictly from my own perspective, and welcome everyone else to chime in, as my defects of perception are many and varied and I make no claim of objectivity, accuracy, or completeness.

I'm Late, I'm Late
More haste and less speed; I arrive Late, but not so Late; The First Crisis

I was out shopping with my Darling Wife and her girlfriend (whom she had recently outed me to) all day Saturday, breaking off around five o'clock to come home and get ready. Updside: I now had something to wear. Downside: it took me a lot longer to get ready than I anticipated.

Somehow time kept slipping by (accompanied with the normal wardrobe malfunctions) and I didn't actually leave until seven o'clock--and ran right into a massive traffic jam on Ninth Avenue. I didn't actually get to East of Eighth until 7:12.

However, only Andrea was there, and she had only just beat me to the restaurant. Mary and Lucy and my friend Rachel showed up soon after, and we went upstairs to dinner.

Then, tragedy struck. Just kidding. As I was getting ready to sit down at the table, Andrea said to me: "I'm not sure if you can do anything about it, but your zipper is broken."

I took that as a challenge.

Fashion Emergency
I keep cool under pressure; The Friendly Clerks of Chelsea; I miss Darling Wife

I was wearing a pencil skirt with a three-inch long zipper that was completely open. A quick stop in the restroom showed that the zipper was unfixable. What to do? Ask for a safety pin? Tie my wrap around my waist as a sash? Cry?

When the tough gets going, I go shopping.

It turns out that there's a Gap just across 23rd street from EoE. I dashed out through the raindrops (without an umbrella, natch) and hit the sales racks. Of course, nothing in the clearance rack was my size, and I was beginning to despair.

Luckily, the Gap of Chelsea has a professional and very friendly sales staff. A nice young lady offered to help me pick out a skirt, listened sympathetically to my sob story, and even opened up the closet where they keep the remainder of the clearance items to find a size 12 skirt for me. So I got a black flared skirt for only $10, ran in to the changing room, and after showing it off to the salesgirls ran back to dinner.

I doubt I passed at any point in this encounter, so all kudos to the folks at the Gap--this experience almost gives me a soft spot in my heart for them.

While I was disposing of my fashion emergency, Darling Wife showed up with her girlfriend to drop of the Christmas presents she had bought for my brother's family (they live in New England near my parents, so we're going to drop off the presents for his kids when we come up for Thanksgiving.)

Star Power
Four ladies, five skirts; Darling Wife arrives at last; Helen and Betty are not late
I returned to the table and quickly ordered a margarita. Conversation turned to Andrea's observation that only the transfolk at the table were wearing skirts. Of course, now we had actually worn more skirts than there were people to wear them, a triumph of transgenderism or something.

(Later my DW and Mary pointed out that the weather pretty much precluded skirts as a choice for most female people--as if you normally have a choice, rainy, cold weather doesn't make you think of wearing a skirt. Unless, of course, you're a crossdresser.)

My darling wife showed up soon afterward, somewhat surprised that we hadn't eaten yet (mea culpa). She had nice words for my outfit (a lace tee over a bustier, the Gap skirt, and my burgundy and grey t-straps. Old Navy, KMart, the Gap--and the original skirt was from H&M. Like I said, I am a discount store whore.)

And not long after that Helen and Betty, the stars of the evening (as usual) arrived, not all that late (as we hadn't finished dinner yet), leaving our table quite cozy.

I think I can speak for all of us at the table that meeting H&B post-"Hobson's Choice" was an extremely touching moment, and we were honored to spend time with them.

It's not the Algonquin, but it Will Do
Catching up with the Rocketqueen; I pontificate on Tolkien; Whose Music is Cool?

I have been horribly remiss thus far in my narrative by not writing about Mary and Lucy, a terrific couple, and couple of people.

Mary is a spritely woman with an infectious smile. Lucy was demure, delightful, and delighted to be with us. They were wonderful dinner companions and I am glad to have met them. Betty hit it right off with Mary--but who wouldn't love our own Rocketqueen?

Talk turned to geekisms of various types. I preached a sermon about my analysis of The Lord of the Rings. (Basically, it's a romance that Tolkien forces into epic form--but as Mikhail Bakhtin demonstrated...oh, forget it.) I made my points in my usual booming voice, earning a slight reproach from my wife ("why are you wearing a skirt?")

We wrapped up with a discussion about music. Betty and my DW listen the coolest uncool bands; me, a loyal Leonard Cohen/Neil Young listener, had the uncoolest uncool bands.

Ugly Ducklings, Away!
We get ready to go to the Silver Swan; I have another crisis; One good change deserves another

We got ready to head over to Ina's, at the Silver Swan, NYC's only real tranny bar that is not an absolute sink of iniquity. My Darling Wife had to work the next morning, so she took off for home.

As we were about to depart (actually, while I was fixing my face), I got a call from my wife, who had forgotten to take her keys with her.

Temporarily saying goodbye to the rest of the Circle, I headed off to home to let my DW into the apartment. While I was there I took the opportunity to ditch the uncomfortable t-straps for my reliable Enzo boots; they give me real confidence when I'm walking the streets of NYC in the rain.

I arrived back at the Swan with a mininum of difficulty and had a good time solving the problems of life, the universe, and everything with Helen, Betty, Rachel, Mary, and Lucy.

The Future of the Circle

My original idea in proposing the Circle was twofold: first, to liberate us from the "tranny ghetto" of dismal bars and dives; second, to interact with non-tg people in "ordinary" activities.

OK, it's still a noble idea.

We all had a really terrific time on Saturday and continued the vital task of bringing together NYC-area board members; these boards are great, but nothing beats actually spending time together. Likewise, I really want us all to meet Dana if and when she comes to New York.

Still, I would love to continue to develop the idea of the Sewing Circle along the lines I originally suggested. This means inviting cool non-t* folk to our get-togethers, and expanding the scope of getting together beyond just dinner at a friendly restaurant.

It's pretty venal to say so, but I did get a kick out of my impromptu shopping trip. I've only been out shopping once before in drag, and had fun that time too. So perhaps we might consider a shopping trip for some of us at some not-too-distant future point.

This being New York there are also various cultural things to do--plays, movies, the opera--that we might consider.

I ended up seeing Bad Education this weekend (long story), but wouldn't mind seeing it again--or any other Almodovar film for that matter.

We could also actually, you know, sew. I crochet a little.

These are just suggestions for the further growth of the Sewing Circle concept, and I'd like to hear any suggestions from the rest of you.

I had such a fabulous time, and can't wait to do it again! Thank you all so much.

--Michelle

The Demoralization of Michelle

2004-11-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

Been a beat-down last couple of days for me.

The file that transfers the closed loans from the underwriting system my firm created to the servicing company got completely f***ed up last week after we did a few minor updates to the QC system. I didn't find out until Wednesday of last week, and didn't get the file to go through correctly until yesterday. Needless to say, this drove my boss around the moon.

He came up yesterday and has spent the last 48 hours or so yelling at me. Not in a real bad way--believe it or not, it's mostly constructive--but still.

It doesn't help that I get less than six hours of sleep a night. I had great fun on Saturday, but was up very late and haven't made up the sleep.

Plus there's the stress our bank client puts us under. The phone rings constantly, and I have to run back and forth between our office and their headquarters across the street. And balance the politics of the situation--we're a third-party vendor that is despised by the internal IT department because we're not under their control. That we're a small firm that is collecting a million dollar fee doesn't help either.

And I'm constantly being pulled in multiple directions by my boss, who on the one hand wants me to help him build up our own business, and on the other goes ballistic if that causes bank work to get neglected.

Tonight I got lectured at 6 pm because a service request got overlooked by me and the user in question bounced an email to the IT department (she's not supposed to do that, but anyway...) This set my boss off again.

Plus I got a lecture about how I'm not providing enough leadership. Again, it was mostly constructive.

I know that I tend to be too submissive and deferential. I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence and say that's because I'm TG. I know plenty of transpeople who are "in your face." Heck, a lot of the problems and stress that being TG causes for me relate to my own fear of rejection and inability to just be myself without fear of criticism.

So I have to learn to be a little more assertive every day, which is a positive thing to want to do. It's not just an economic necessity, but an emotional one as well, especially when we do have children.

Hell, maybe it will make it easier for me to follow DW's suggestion and be sexier when I crossdress.

Cross...posting

2004-11-09T22:48:00.000-05:00

Let's face it, I'm a busy...girl? So, I'm going to start sharing relevant posts between here and the My Husband Betty boards as I'm too busy to do original content in both places. I'll still put up my own thoughts here, but as I now have at least one other reader, it makes sense to put my better thoughts in one place.

I'll let you know whenever I crosspost, though.

Sexy Beast

2004-11-09T22:46:00.000-05:00

The following is a slightly-edited version of a post I put up on the My Husband Betty boards:

When one is a heterosexual crossdresser (moi) and one's wife (mine) tells you that she thinks you should dress more sexily when you crossdress (as mine did), you would expect that this would be almost cause for celebration.

Unless one is one of those whiny, introspective trannies (well, I do post here, don't I?)

Some background: as my loyal readers (ha!) may remember, I started a thread that among other things stated my desire to "dress down" in clothes that were not the over the top, bead, sequins and boas you sometimes see in the local tranny bar.

Some further background: my darling wife doesn't mind my dressing up and does come out with me on occasion, but doesn't find me attractive when crossdressed.

So, I was a little confused by her opinion. I don't look at crossdressing as drag, in the performance sense, but as an expression of who I am. On further introspection, I wondered if the following things were actually going on:

1. I wasn't fitting in with other t* folks, who were dressed prettier that I. (Also, I might not have been looking as pretty as I could, which is something to think about.)
2. It's less off-putting to "straight" people if it looks like I'm "doing drag" rather than just wearing women's clothing.
3. It's less threatening to my wife if I'm more draggy, because then it doesn't seem that I'm trying to become a woman full-time.

That of course is the mostly negative spin. The more positive spin is that she wanted me to look nice and feel more comfortable. (In fact, when she called me on Sunday morning--she spent the weekend with her parents--she asked me if I had worn something sexy.)

Now, as I've noted before, when it comes to fashion, I listen to what my wife has to say. So when I went out on Saturday, I did make a conscious effort to "tart myself up a bit." So although I wore basically the same outfit as I wore back when I started the "Sewing Circle" thread--black skirt, lace-trimmed gold camisole--this time, instead of a cardigan, I wore a crocheted shawl; instead of square-toed slingbacks and bare legs, I wore my Italian boots and fishnets; and instead of earth tones and no eyeliner, I spent some time working on my eyes with lots of green eyeshadow.

And I got a lot of compliments. More, I felt really good. I liked how I looked, and how it made me feel to look good.

So where does that leave your average conflicted, introspective trannie?

I don't think it's totally incompatible with my program of looking like an "average" woman to also try make my outfits more attractive.

I think that I'm also being forced to confront the real heart of the heterosexual crossdresser's dilemma: that the clothes he is attracted to are the clothes a woman chooses to make herself more attractive to men. Thus sometimes, I think, you see crossdressers who go too far the other way, wear clothes that are respectible, appropriate, and boring (not that there's anything wrong with that), because it removes the threat of sexual attractiveness.

It's also brought home to me again a little bit of the "tyranny of beauty" that women have to deal with in their daily lives; that is, there's a pressure on them to always look attractive, which gets internalized (as part of that darned "socialization as a girl") until you end up (especially here in New York City) with women who will wear high heels and makeup to do their laundry. (Whereas I wear my baggiest jeans, stubble, and the most messed up tee shirt I own. But I can get away with it, since, by accident of birth, I'm a "guy.")

I guess what I wouldn't mind is not so much to be "sexy" with all it's inherent contradictions (if it's not sexy to my wife, than who is it sexy for? Or can I posit a priori that our culture has "beauty assumptions" so that any "uniform" that falls within certain lengths of skirt and exposure of flesh is "sexy"?), but "glamourous," which gives me far more options.

Glamour can allow me to be demure, to be bold, to be beautiful in ways that go beyond just sexual appeal. Glamour can mean just being "well-put together" when I'm dressing down a bit; it means being attractive, and yes, powerful, without automatically meaning sex.

I'm not quite sure how this old German boy with the big chin and linebacker shoulders can acheive glamour, but we'll try. On first approximation analysis, it seems that hair, shoes, and makeup are key. The first I can't do much about, although this year's birthday present to myself will be a new wig; the second is hit or miss, as I wear a 12W; but the third might be in my grasp--Kevin Auconin, here I come!

This is London Calling

2004-11-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night I headed out to Ina's once again and for once had a really pleasant time.

Darling Wife had recommended that I try to look more "sexy" when I go out, so I wore a gold lace-trimmed camisole, an above-the-knee skirt, and a crocheted shawl.

Oh, yeah, my boots. And fishnet stockings.

DW is, as usual, right about things; I got a lot of compliments about my outfit.

While hanging around, I met a nice British tgirl named Jade, who had a very nice updo. She told me she had had it specially done by a wigdresser and delivered to her hotel room.

I really love New York sometimes.

Later I befriended Di, an expat Britisher living with her new husband here in NYC, and we had a marvellous time chatting about pets, fashion, and the differences between American English and, er, English.

(Di, if you're reading this, it was simply wizardmeeting you!)

I'm not sure which was the less likely event: meeting three Londoners in one night at the Silver Swan, or having a fun time at the Silver Swan.

Black Tuesday

2004-11-07T22:08:00.000-05:00

The fun I had at the Halloween parade on Sunday couldn't help me get over Election Day.

Deep in my heart, I guess I never really believed it would happen. But I spent the last six weeks in the liberal echo-chamber and let my heart get ahead of my head.

I was going to put up a long, rambling post about how things are awful and the Democrats need to move to the right on some social issues to preserve a progressive agenda, but who really cares.

The truth is, we don't know what will happen in the next four years. Iraq could get so bad that it derails the Bush presidency. The Supremes could cling to life for four more years. The 2006 election could go the Democrats' way. Who, in the darkness of 1988, would have predicted the rise of Clinton? Hell, in 1991 it looked like G.H.W. Bush would get another four years easy.

Keep up the fight. The grass-roots activism of this election was encouraging. We in the blue states have to keep pushing equal rights--and that's the term, not protected or special rights--for everyone.

Tuesday I woke up a citizen, and went to bed just another pervert in George Bush's America. Keep the faith, cause it can happen to you too.

Halloween 2004

2004-10-31T16:15:00.000-05:00

Halloween--aka the Closeted Crossdresser's High Holy Day--is upon us, and DW and I have plans, indeed!

Last night I went out with good friend Lorna to Avalon, aka the non-Gatien Limelight. DW was absolutely adorable as a rag doll, complete with striped stockings; I was rather less successful as Hermione, combining the robe from my Harry Potter costume with a black-and-white plaid skirt and a white shirt. Next year, I promise to have something more elaborate (and sexy!)

Tonight, we're going to try and MARCH in the Village Halloween Parade, with me as Harry Potter and DW as an Evil Doll.

October Delerium

2004-10-31T15:28:00.000-05:00

What a bizarre, maddening, and exhausting baseball postseason we just went through!

As a National League fan, and he-man (she-girl?) Yankee hater, of course I was delighted with how things turned out, in the end.

In the meantime, I'm only now recovering from two weeks of sleep deprivation.

Some random thoughts below...

The Fall of the Yankee Empire?

It finally all went wrong for the Yankees.

After years of being propelled by a heady mix of brilliant pitching, clutch hitting, character, and highly compensated mega-stars, this year's version of the Yanks only had that last component in abundance.

Their starting pitching was deep but ultimately mediocre. Mussina is no longer a number one starter. Vasquez, who should be, melted down in the second half. No one else on the staff is better than a number three starter.

The bullpen, very reliable in the regular season, was overworked and unable to hang on in a short series--especially as they were forced into service so much that the Red Sox's lethal lineup got a chance to see them enough to get a read on them. And Rivera may be the greatest short reliever ever--he is--but we're finally reaching the autumn of a career based on his excellence in that season.

Most importantly, the character of the team has changed. Malcontents such as Sheffield and Lofton were brought in to plug the holes once filled by O'Neill, Leyritz, Boggs and Brosius. The old crew that propelled them to four titles and six World Series in seven years is thin on the ground, with only Jeter, Williams and Rivera remaining.

I'm not sure that the Yanks are doomed to fall out of contention; $200 million buys a lot of baseball team. But power is shifting away from them, and the dismal state of the farm system promises that they will lack the resources to aquire anyone who isn't a free agent for a while; look at how they were unable to trade for Randy Johnson, the sorely-needed ace who could have prevented the worst collapse in baseball history.

The Evil Empire may not have fallen yet, but this rebel Met fan sees some hope in the struggle.

Speaking of the Mets

I've been resolutely silent about the Muttsies since the dismal end of what had hoped to be a season of promise. What can I say? They're old, bad, and cranky.

David Wright is their only real ray of hope. The rotation is dismal, although Benson and Zambrano should help, provided they are respectively re-signed and healthy. Piazza's situation is destroying the team. Glavine should be traded to some place where he could win his 300th--how about the Bronx (or Boston)?

Jim Leyland should be grabbed if he is at all available. He is perfect--strong enough to help a young team grow into contention, confident enough to let veterans play, and bold strategically to boot. Failing that, Randolph might work, although his lack of experience could be a major problem.

But for God's sake, let's not get Sosa. Subtraction by addition, indeed...

On the Importance of Strategy in Managing Games

I'm not big on Terry Francona as a strategist. Those who have heard me expound at lenghth on the subject know that think Bobby Cox is the worst strategic manager in playoff history. Yet Francona is hailed as the man who broke the Curse of the Bambino, and Cox has won thirteen division titles. What gives?

Managerial strategy is generally overrated. The real stratgy of a baseball game is in the tactics of the hitter and pitcher, the baserunner and pitcher, the defensive positioning of the fielders--and only in the last area does the manager have a lot of in-game input.

Far more important is managing the various egos of twenty-five players, which explains Cox' success, and Joe Torre's for that matter. Both managers excel at giving their player room to play. Torre's greatest usefulness to the Yankees is running interference with the Boss, a situation he created by winning in his first year and becoming indispensible.

Francona, frankly (no pun intended), is a terrible strategic manager. But who cares? These idiots wouldn't listen to Bobby Valentine anyway; they just wanted to win and have a good time. But they need some one to make the pitching changes, and Francona handled that job (with the exception of Game 7 against the Yankees) to perfection. He also apparentally was instrumental in bringing ironman Curt Schilling to Boston, which was the decisive factor in their victory this year.

Now, don't get me wrong; a great strategic manager can certainly help a team, especially a team of otherwise mediocre talent--case in point the 1999-2001 New York Mets, led superbly, if divisively, by Valentine. And you need to either have a mininum competence, or excel (as Francona does in keeping a team with no discipline motivated to win) in some other way; witness Art Howe's dismal failure this year with the Mets, who were simply not good enough to win in spite of him.

True Grit

It's hard to really call a baseball player tough; almost nothing on the diamond compares with going over the middle with Lawrence Taylor patrolling the backfield, or trying to dunk on Shaquille O'Neal. But Curt Schilling proved just how tough a baseball player can be. Knowing that every pitch he threw was going to cause him extreme pain, he held on to pitch fourteen brillant innings under the greatest pressure imaginable, holding two powerful lineups to just one run.

Schilling is a throw-back, the kind of guy who would have gladly pitched in a four-man rotation and come in on two days rest in relief if he had to. Guys like him make the game watchable even in this dissolute age.

Bridging the Electronic Divide

2004-10-17T22:07:00.000-04:00

Saturday was a busy day for the Guest Relations Division at Quelle Blogue!

I managed to meet with friends from my two internet groups in the same day.

First up was D., a fellow TMLer from San Francisco.

If I haven't already done so, allow me to explain. I am many things--computer programmer, loving husband, caretaker of cats, professional writer--but above all, I'm a geek.

Sadly enough, I'm also a role-playing game geek.

I started out on Dungeons and Dragons when just a wee slip of a....lad. But I soon progressed on to Traveller, the first and greatest of the science-fiction role-playing games. I spent many summers whiling away the afternoons with Jeff, my best friend, and his brother Ian.

Nowadays I don't play much, but I do read the Traveller Mailing List, an email discussion list where we conduct Thomist inquiries into the various impossible physics, economics, and sociologies of our game. Most of the folks there are really smart and funny, and the few I've met in real life are an excellent crew of guys.

Incidentally, while nobody's openly trans there, there are at least three including me who are TG or more, and one former TMLer who's currently transitioning and on the My Husband Betty boards.

My best bloke from the TML, whom I have become famous on the list as one-half of a comedy duo, unfortunately couldn't make it. But D. (author of a Traveller sourcebook for GURPS--if any of that made sense to you, you're a geek too) and Z., who runs a very good Traveller website, both showed up. We headed up to the Museum of Natural History, where we caught the space show (Harrison Ford version), then met my wife up by the dinosaurs.

We had a late lunch at Patsy's (so that D. could taste what real pizza tastes like) and then DW, who wasn't feeling well, went home and I went to the Compleat Strategist with the rest of the guys.

The Stategist (33rd Street between 5th and Park) is the best gaming store left in the city. When I was in college I used to come into New York every couple of months just to shop there. I bought a copy of D.'s book--the last one they had; it's out of print--and he signed it for me.

Then I had to rush home to get ready for the Couples' Dinner.

The Couples' Dinner was an idea Helen Boyd had, which she told me when I first met her and Betty. The plan was to bring TG people and their partners together in a non-sexually threatening place (i.e., not the local trannie bar) so that partners could meet each other and have a space for themselves. I've helped push the idea into being, and last night we had our third meeting.

I had invited some of my former crew from my old Girlfriends' Dinners (similar idea, but not partner-centered) but they had to cancel. Instead we brought DW's good friend S., who was our token boy. (Despite being gay, S. was only told recently by DW about my peculiarity.)

We had a great time as usual. I wore a brown cowl-necked top, my brown pleated floral skirt, and the brown cardigan that I've started to use all the time. I also got to use my new round-toe burgundy and gray t-straps for the first time, along with my "fishscale" (like fishnets, but with stocking material in the holes) stockings.

We had a great time but had to leave at eleven, as DW was still feeling sick (and also had to work the next day!)

In fact, she's still sick. I'm going to go in now and give her a hug and bring her some water.

Good night, all.

The Debates: The Final Chapter

2004-10-17T22:01:00.000-04:00

Well, expecting a Senator to hit a home run is probably asking too much. It's all inside baseball to these guys; rather than risk a gaffe, Kerry seemed content to run out the clock (to mix sports metaphors) and let audiences remember how badly Bush lost the first debate.

Kerry's overall performance in the debates was strong. He successfully managed to create the impression that he looked the "more Presidential" of the two--an odd oxymoron, when you think about it. He did tend to talk more about the fact that he had a plan than the details of the plan, but still he did sound like he had something to offer, unlike the Prez, who only could try and rev up his base--which he should do; did anyone else catch his constant use of Christian Right code phrases?

That said, the undecideds continue to break for the Senator. Thank goodness. Though in general, at least two-thirds of undecideds traditionally break to the challenger; it may be even greater in presidential elections.

So now we come down to the brass tacks, and it's still up to Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. I dunno, I have a weird feeling about this--almost that JFK could pull off the trifecta. I don't trust the polling in Florida, and the Democratic voter registration in Ohio has been impressive.

Whether they'll let him be President--who knows?

Higher Knowledge

2004-10-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

The National Development and Research Institute is doing a massive study of New York area TG people. Not only will it have a huge baseline--over three hundred people--but it will do a three-year followup study to see how the members' lives change over time.

Yours truly is going to try and participate. I met the head of the study, Dr. Larry Nuttbrock, on Wednesday at the CDI Open House, and he impressed me with the seriousness of the study. He can be contacted at nuttbrock@ndri.org.