GenderBendy

How to make love to a trans person

I am waaaay overdue for an update here...it has been a complicated stretch of time. I'll post soon. In the meantime, I simply *had* to instantly reblog this amazing poetry performance.

 

Melanie, and femme resurgent

Blogging in the wee hours again. Why fight it? The ongoing post-operative discomforts aside, I'm feeling energized. It is, however, a little late to get clever with structure - I am already shifting on my knees even know, trying to ease the kink in my back - so straight chronological reportage and a hastily tweaked first draft is what you get, Bub.

I posted (relatively) early Friday evening but then still couldn't sleep, and ended up back downstairs again at about 3am Saturday morning (about 24 hours ago). The only other person up was Melanie, the night nurse. She was lying on one of the couches in the living room wrapped in a blanket, trying to catch a nap, but she sat up and talked with me, and we ended up having an intense hour-long conversation (both of us switching back and forth between French and English, which was cool.)

I learned that Melanie is in her thirties, has a teenage son and a 16-month-old daughter named for two different strong women in her family's history, that she just bought a house where she now lives with her boyfriend, and that in addition to working here at Asclépiade she is also back in school for further studies in nursing. If I had seen her once and you asked me to describe her ethnicity, I would have said she was black, but in fact she has a white Canadian mother and a black Haitian father, and thinks of herself (she says) as white. She believes she got the job here because she talked in her interview about the feeling she knows from her heritage and upbringing of being stuck between two worlds.

Melanie and I discussed the similaries of the false binaries and mixed-up and complicated in-betweens of race and gender in North American culture. We talked about different peoples' definitions of happiness and success. She recited a poem for me in French; I did my voice-work practice poem, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" for her in English. I have met and connected with a lot of nice people here, but I think of Melanie as a new friend. Interesting that the one person I bond most closely with is not trans.

I was back in bed about 4:30a and slept until breakast, and the rest of Saturday was boring. Kept myself busy with French reading, walking, a DVD. Achieved the very important first bowel movement after surgery just in time to avert nursing intervention - I was starting to hear my name mentioned behind closed doors. A period of intestinal discomfort has followed; overdid it with the prune juice which is available at every meal...and that's enough mundane detail.

I went to bed early this past evening in hopes of actually sleeping when it was dark, but it was not to be; so up again to stand outside for a bit in the soft warm air of a Montréal summer night - and that's when the emotional dam burst. I started sobbing. Back inside, and thank goodness for Melanie, there with tissues and a long embrace. She also fetched me my ultimate comfort food of raisin cereal with soy milk, which I have been missing. Back to bed again for more crying. Not new reasons, just the real ones from all along, showing new facets at this phase of my transition. I really really really really really don't have to be a man any more. And I finally get to be loved for who I really am. 

When I was talking with Melanie over comfort-cereal we compared emotional landscapes. I taught her the English word "rollercoaster." "I don't cry very often," she said, "but when I do..." she groped for a phrase in English. "C'est comme un orage," I said - It's like a storm. She nodded. And I thought again of Eve Ensler's marvelous monologue about what it is to be a girl.

I wrote two posts ago about the possibility of turning back toward masculinity now that I am safely on this side of the surgery, and that might still happen, but right now I feel the resurgence of my femme truth. I am an emotional creature, and this is happening. It's really happening. I get to live.

Exegesis 2011

Happy New Year in Paris! (Midnight is a relative concept.)
What is it to be a woman?
To feel the being of others.
Such a simple thing.
And when a woman is alone?
Then gender doesn’t matter.
New year, new life, same as the old...
Or no, not quite.
Change has direction, darling.
I love you.
It doesn’t matter who you are;
I love you.
It doesn’t matter who I am;
I love you.
It doesn’t matter what happens next;
I love you.
Now is now is now is now now now now now now now now now..........

Walking to the Bridge

I just got back from the Portland Maine observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It was cold and windy in the square, but dozens and dozens of people showed up, and after the speeches we made a respectable crowd as we marched up Congress Street with our candles to the art gallery where the second half of the evening's ceremony took place. The most moving part for me was the reading of the names, and placing a flower in a vase for each name read.

I was slated to be one of the speakers. With these terrible tragic suicides in the news recently, I wanted to try to say something to the question, how could a person be driven to take her own life or his own life by the prejudice and hate of others? I ended up writing and reciting a poem, and a few people kindly said they would like to see it in print, so here it is:

Walking to the Bridge

How can I say I know I am OK
When I don't even know who I am?
Everything is wrong.
My body is wrong, my face is wrong, my voice is wrong.
I don't fit together,
And I don't belong!
The words they throw at me...
Their hate is so strong,
Their hate is so sure.
I guess they must be right?
...and I have no more strength to fight;
My heart has taken all the hurt it can endure.
So, I am walking to the bridge now.
I am walking to the bridge...
But if just one person I pass
Looks into my eyes,
And their eyes smile at mine,
So I can see that they see me...
I will turn around.

Out of Town Jasper, Farewell

We both said it: we are just too different.

But I will always remember you,

tenderly,

as, for a little while,

when I needed one,

my Champion.

You saw the woman I am before anyone else

and you dared to love me

even as the dry husk of me burned away.

Two conflagrations is one too many, I guess.

I am glad at least I was able to give you

paisley comfort, licorice, a 3 a.m. poem.

I grieve.

zenfish

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

The chocolate-covered mandarin orange segments were divine

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... :-)

First party tonight!

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!!!  :-)

At Long Last

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.

The thing about a cell

...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.