monarch of the ocean
i would swim in you
i would be your zenfish
fleeting lambent silver
through your lights and shadows
your storms do not daunt me
your tide - my breath
your surge - my cradle
i would know
how a fish loves the sea
Happy Valentine's Day to me. I love me. Thanks me, I'm truly touched. :-)
I
feel giddy. The party was really fun, and I did in fact do some
flirting and also some networking...social and professional. I feel so
young and new, still, when I am inhabiting my femininity, I tend to
forget that I'm a smart competent grownup with a lot of good life
experience, and that people will respect that. I have little sense of
my own worth, I think...a "what, little 'ol me?" kind of thing. Which
is stupid. Why should I not be accepted and liked and respected by
people? I'm an interesting person, to say the least.
Fun
crowd...a mix of academics, neighbors, and parenting-friends. Not
quite the high-powered literary gathering I was expecting, but that's
probably just as well. Nobody batted an eye at me, even though my shapewear and dress pushed me well past "normal woman" into tranny-caricature. I was by far the most voluptuous individual there... :-)
It was valuable to be able to look at other women playing dress-up and
to see how close I actually already am without enhancements of any
kind, just in my own skin, to being shaped like a woman.
The poem-reading didn't
end up happening...I gather our hosts thought it would interrupt the
energy of the party, which seemed right. We all just taped our poems
up on a door. Mine was a little damp...I had been carrying it, folded
up, in my decolletage... ;>
Early in the evening I danced a
little in a loose group of dancers, enjoying feeling slinky and sexy,
but still really dancing alone. Then, later, I really felt like I
wanted to dance with someone, a man, and a self-confident handsome
middle-aged gent with whom I had had a short conversation earlier in
the evening was standing there, so without thinking about it I stepped
up to him and said "Are you secure enough in your masculinity to dance
with me?" "It would be my pleasure," he said, and we danced. Not
touching...the kind of face-each-other-and-wiggle I remember from
college. He made small talk.
A little later, in the standing
around saying goodbye but actually having more conversations phase, I
do believe he chatted me up. He was solicitous, bordering on
gallant...he told me if I ever needed an ally, to call on him...and he
said he wanted to give me a hug, so we hugged. And I liked it. Oh, I
did. This was a social interaction I grasped intuitively (or at least
so it felt): the beginning of a negotiation. And behold, I become
aroused as I type. I really really might be a heterosexual woman. I
want to flirt with men, excite men's interest, toy and play with and
tease men, and in the end succumb to their strength...oh, my, it's
getting warm in here...
I did some emerging from the cocoon last
night, is what I did. Not all the way. Big parts poking out now,
though...legs and feelers... hints of wings. I pause now and respirate, extremities
trembling a bit...soon I will be all the way out, drying my wings in
the sun...then that first tentative spread and flex, and a launch into whimsical serendipitous flight... :-)
My first party! I'm so excited!!!
Actually, not three
exclamation points' worth...I just wanted to see what that would look
like...but I am looking forward to it. :-)
The invitation is
from a person I hardly know, to a Valentine's Day Ball, and it
specifies "creative formal romantic" dress. I e-mailed back to ask if
that description would include full-on cross-dressing, and the reply
was "Absolutely!", so that's how I'm going.
I plan to wear a
dress which Ardis gave me. It's a stretchy black form-fitting number
with delicate white butterflies on it, a flippy hem below the knee, and
a matching bolero-jacket with long sleeves which slim my arms nicely.
I will be wearing shapewear
but not a wig...I'm getting good results with my own hair these days.
Plus a nice careful makeup job and all my favorite jewelry, black
stockings, and the low black open-toed pumps...the invitation says to
bring your dancing shoes. To finish it off with a dash of color, I'll
also add my flamboyant over-sized purple scarf with the exotic vaguely
Turkish-looking pattern in the weave, worn loosely like a shawl, or
perhaps draped between my elbows behind my back...and I think I'll wear
perfume too.
I am surprised at how calm I'm feeling. If there's
anything I'm anxious about, it's that we're supposed to bring a love
poem to read. The audience is likely to be full of the cream of Maine
literati (our hosts are big in that world), and I'm not feeling
confident about my voice right now, so that will be a squirmy moment.
I'm also not sure what poem to read. It's down to two choices from the
"Sonnets From The Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. One would
be cheeky in the context of the party, because it's written from the
point of view of a humble unknown poet addressing a famous big-shot
poet, and the other is just a pretty "love me for love's sake" poem
which nicely expresses the emotional vulnerability of the trans heart.
I'm leaning toward the latter.
One more thing...I've given myself permission, should the occasion arise, to flirt. With whom? With whomever...
Tune back in tomorrow for a full report!!! :-)
One unforced breath rises
From toes to roots.
Birds on water,
Birds in air,
An implausibly gaudy periwinkle and lavender cloud-sky
Reiterated by the sea,
And the pewter-abalone twinkling
Of one broad stepping-stone
To incipient glory -
Oh, how very fine it is
To feel
At long last
Safe and worthy and free.
...is it becomes cozy;
The enwalled heart
comes to cherish
Each speck of grit,
And the tiny melodramas among them
Make world enough
For quite a spell.
Is it any wonder then
That when the crooked turnkey
Cracks at last the lock
The sear of out
Contracts one's self
Into a shell?
Is is is becoming
And it transpires
That scale proves a fallacy...
Out in the free air,
Given time,
One finds room to,
Ecstatic three, swell.
