GenderBendy

Four years and counting

No post in ten weeks. Bad blogger! Bad bad blogger!

Yes, I know, I'm so sorry. There can be no excuse, so I won't mention how NaNoWriMo ate my November. Nor will I note that after a point there is so much to tell that one starts feeling overwhelmed. Nor will I bring in my still-evolving ideas about where the fact of being trans fits into my life. No, I won't say any of those things.

I've had an anniversary since my last post. It was just this time of year four years ago that I finally figured out that, my whole life long, I had been getting my gender wrong. I have often quoted a line from the life-changing journal entry I wrote back in November of '08: "I just want to be a girl." It was one of the most curious moments of my life, writing that, because I realized it was true even as the pen moved over the paper. But, it is not actually the first gender-laden sentence on that journal page. A couple of paragraphs before, I wrote this:

What about the writing part? Does that come out of a feminine place in me? Is my inner child a dreamy girl? Could be.

Looking back I see now that my desire to write, which I've had since I learned to read, contributed to my gender self-repression. I remember early on feeling captivated both by the floaty self-sufficient internality of making up stories, and by the idea of being a purely detached observing eye. No wonder I was able to just hang out inside myself for so long.

Speaking of writing, in November I participated in National Novel Writing Month. Along with hundreds of thousands of other people all over the world, I wrote a 50k-word rough draft of a novel in 30 days.

All my life I have had this idea that writing had to be a solitary act, and I failed and failed as a writer. NaNoWriMo was a revelation of communal creativity. I joined a facebook group of other participants in Maine, and we encouraged and challenged each other. We had writing sprints every evening. It was glorious. I finished, and I think I have the beginning of a good saleable book which I will try to sell when I have finished rewriting. I could not have done it without my total stranger writing buddies. Yay for teamwork and community!

On a writing-related note, I'm also planning to do standup again. I had an initial good experience back in summer of 2011 performing in the Femme Show for a boisterous audience of young queers, and then got to experience what it's like to bomb at an open mic for straight people. Bombing was no fun, so I withdrew and regrouped. Now I've worked up an all new routine and am looking around for the right room to try it out in.

I think I might be good at comedy. I had an insight: it's like classical music. You carefully craft your set, practice long hours, tweak and adjust and refine...and then you step up into the light and have one chance to make it seem like you just spontaneously thought of all these jokes. I grasp this intuitively. It feels comfortable and safe to me. So, this could be fun.

BTW, if you're thinking, she just said she's getting all teamworky and communal and now she's talking about being a solo performer...what's up with that? Well, I'll tell you: the big payoff of comedy for me, I project, will not be laughs and applause, but the feeling, when it goes well, of synergy and collaboration with the audience. Comedy (like radio, my life's work) is a conversation, not a performance. Communal, social. So there.

Yes, yes, of course I want to get laughs too. :-p

What else? Oh, yeah, surgery-recovery. Not much to report, which I know must be disappointing to those among my acquaintance who seem so fascinated by the topic. It's going fine. I'm still not orgasmic, but haven't given up hope...though I'm also reconciled to the possibility of never getting that back. And I'm still a revirgin, and may remain so for quite a while, the way dating has been going, which is, it hasn't. A lot of my new comedy routine, actually, is about how uncomfortable I still seem to make most men. "Look," I'm going to say to them, "This is really simple. There's nothing to worry about. Just look at it this way: now that you know I'm trans, if you laugh at any more of my jokes, it *does* mean you're gay." 

Four years gone by, and if I had to sum up I would say, I made the right choices, and it's going well. What then will the fifth year bring? Continued transformation. These days I feel this physically as still more previously undreamed-of unclenching. For example, I have discovered that I can move my legs apart from each other right where the big femur-balls lock into the pelvis-sockets, opening up down there in a way I never have before. I have been clenched so hard my whole life I've been clenching my bones.

Same thing emotionally too. That still feels more perilous, though. Another reason besides being a writer that I repressed for so long was that I got the message early on that nobody wanted who I really was, nor the love I had to offer from within who I really was. I have a lifetime of rejection to overcome. Most days I do feel confident and strong, but deep down the insecurity still throbs, and I still feel tentative and vulnerable as I turn toward the possibility of intimacy. Tra la, here we go - life.

Oh, and the novel? It's a fantasy story for young adults about Felix Yz, a 15-year old boy who, at the age of four, because of a science experiment gone horribly wrong, was fused at the atomic level with a hyper-intelligent fourth dimensional being. The alien, whom they call Zyx, communicates with Felix by using his fingers to type. The novel takes the form of Felix's journal entries in the last few weeks before a risky (and amusingly high-tech) procedure which will either separate them again, or kill them both. It has a couple of trans characters in it, but the fact that they are trans is incidental to the story.

Which matches where I am now in my life. If I'm going to keep writing this blog, which I do want to do, I think I'm going to have to think of it not so much as a blog about being trans, but as a blog by a fascinating exciting creative sexy intensely alive woman who incidentally happens to be trans. 

I can do that. Works for me...aaand, that's my set. I'm Lisa, and you've been a fabulous audience. Good night!

Fame!

Six weeks post-surgery now. Healing is going fine, I guess. No complications. I can tell that the new parts and I are going to get along all right, but they’re still no fun. The sutures over the clitoral area and the labia minora are taking forever to dissolve, the long incisions itch, I’m still too swollen to sit without a donut, my back hurts from all the awkward sitting, and the aftercare is still a lot of work: three dilations a day until the end of September, when I will be permitted to drop to two. At least in a couple weeks I get to stop douching and taking sitz baths.

I still tire easily. I returned to work full time this past week and had to take a couple of short days, as well as going next door from time to time to the Women’s and Gender Studies house ('MPG has no unencumbered horizontal space) to lie on the couch. Healing is long hard work. I hope my energy will improve soon.

Also, I still have no sexual feeling. The nerves work, but even when it's not just annoying, stimulation fails to build to anything. I may never have an orgasm again. It's funny though: when you have no desire, you don't desire desire. I *have* experienced a couple of moments of tender yearning with both male- and female-bodied acquaintances - emotional instead of physical arousal. God, I am such a girl. And sexy may still come back. I haven’t given up hope yet.

But anyway, on to the really important question: how do I *FEEL*?!

Uh. Befuddled.

Surgery has changed me. I find myself more than ever before floating serendipitously through life. Specifically, my sense of ambition has gone missing. All my life I have wanted to be famous. I have wanted to have my new book at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, or to sell out my one-woman show on a big city tour, or both. Furthermore, this wanting has had a resentful muttering tone...I'll show you, world...I may be invisible now, but someday you'll see just how fabulous I am, just you wait...gn mbl fbl ntl mbl.... I had a book proposal all ready to send out before I left for Montreal, figuring during six weeks at home I would have plenty of time to start pushing it. I haven't looked at it once. I just don't feel it.

I have two theories why:

1. With my testosterone down to almost nil, I am no longer motivated by the classic male logic that  you should strive for the big time, because if you make it you can fuck whoever you want. Even when I was in its grip this idea always felt a little icky - remember, I was always a girl underneath - but it had force in my life. Needless to say, I'm *so* glad it's gone.

2. I didn't ever actually want to be famous; I just wanted to be alive, as myself, in the world. I wanted, desperately, to be *seen*, but I was self-repressing so hard that this could only come through the filters as a muddled desire for fame. And now, hey, look, I'm Lisa, all the time, for the rest of my life. I did it. I'm here. Everyone can see me.

Sooo, what about that whole GOTTA BE A STAR thing? Um...I dunno. Maybe not so much. Sounds like a lot of work and not much fun. One thing I am clear about: from now on I want to have as much fun as possible. Fun is extremely important. There must be fun.

Of course, I could possibly have fun writing a book and/or putting together a show, and maybe I could approach the work both in a more joyous and free way, and in a more mature and detached way, because my need to express my basic being in the world would no longer be tangled up in it. And, people have hit the big time with stuff they did just for fun. Richard Adams' Watership Down started out as a story he made up for his kids. Tolkien cared so little about the bestseller list that he almost wrote The Lord of the Rings in Elvish, in which case it would still be an incomprehensible manuscript lying on a shelf in the deepest dungeon of the Bodlean, waiting for some grad student to stumble across it.

Hm, what would be fun to write? This blog is fun to write, but so far it has escaped the notice of the editors over at The New Yorker. Oh well, there are other things too...but, I don’t talk about what I’m writing, or even whether I am; it sets up pernicious structures of feeling like I’ve promised something and now have to please someone.

Please yourself, is the (for me) radical, revolutionary new concept with which I have been tentatively experimenting, after a lifetime of utter self-effacement. At the tender age of fifty I am finally trying to learn how to answer the question, "What do I want?" 

 

Naked ambition!

The symptoms are clear: I’m preparing once again to ask the world to love me. Danger danger *sirens* whoop whoop whoop...

To wit:

• Yesterday I stopped at Starbird Music and tried out some of their pianos by playing on them various of the pieces I have been working up for the past couple of years. A normal thing for some people to do, no doubt, but for me, a rare and perilous foray into public performance.
• I’ve thought again in the past few days about sending out the book proposal. Except for a few tweaks it has been ready for months, and I have been sitting on it, inventing excuses, but really just avoiding the next step out of terror of the inevitable rejections.
• Last night I Noticed Someone, and I think perhaps vo noticed me too, and today I’ve been thinking of actually doing something about it...you know, like asking ven out...with trepidatious pulse, breath caught in throat, etc. 

I roll my eyes at myself.

So what the fuck? Why does any act which involves the least risk of rejection feel so life-and-death? Hyperdeveloped ego? Or just sen-si-tive?

No doubt both. But there is also this: back in the old days, gender was my safety buffer. When I got rejected it still hurt, but I could always think in my secret heart, “I’m still OK, because they rejected Male Self, not me.”

Another thing happened last night: a person I had never met before said “How’s your book?” I gaped at ven. “Didn’t you write a book?” Ves face was intent.

“Um...I’ve written two books, but neither is published.”

“Oh. Well, I’m psychic. You’re going to be very famous.”

“I won’t let it ruin me,” I said with fervor.

Do I want to be famous? Really? Well...yeah, actually, I do. I want to write a bestseller. I feel like I should be ashamed about that, or that it’s delusional or weak or doomed to failure, but you know what? Fuck all that. Ambition? Check.

And really truly, if I do hit the big time, I won’t let it ruin me. That’s important to say, because, as impossible as it seems at the moment in my absurdly vulnerable squirming, I might actually succeed.

One other symptom of resurgent ambition: a higher than usual rate of blog posting. Can’t you see I’m on my knees, begging you with all my heart, read me, please? Love me, please? Please please pleeeeeeeze?

More soon, no doubt. I’m insatiable!

Oh, and, I love you too. :-)

 

The wheel dips low again

My name is Lisa. How many times do I have to say it before I can end the feeling of being pulled back? When do I get to permanently emerge? This is taking so long, and I’m so tired of having to insist on my femaleness every day. I can’t feel it sometimes. Or I need to redefine what I mean by feeling it, or something.

Home sick, unshaven, in schlumpy unisex sweats, I know right now I still look like a man. Since I stopped the Spironolactone - it was dehydrating me, fucking up my intestines - and dropped back to just the estrogen, my testosterone has come back some, and I feel sexually more male again, and my chest hair is more noticeable again. Oh, I have to be patient. In four months and a bit the testicles will be gone gone gone forever. It is so fucking hard to wait.

This is unfair.

But everyone has challenges. That kid who called me at the station yesterday - 12 years old, name of Hunter - “I’m a blindo,” he says, all matter-of-fact. “I’m blind.” Then natter natter flighty brain random bunch of questions - a typical annoying kid.

So, I’m a trans woman. Sometimes I can be matter-of-fact about that. Other times I want to break down the walls, destroy something, kill someone, I don’t know...such rage. Such hurt. Such loss. It’s no fucking fair. A typical angsty middle-aged woman? I doubt it.

And then, love. I may never find it. I may never find someone who can love me as I am and accept the love I have to give. I have said all these things before, so I hesitate to write them again, but they are still true, and they still hurt. Watching movies today, crying every time a female character showed love to a male character. I’ve never gotten to do that, never in my whole life.

Just went looking for pictures on line of the boy I hung with in high school, and I found a shot of him with his family - wife and two kids. They all look happy except maybe him - he’s kinda slouchy behind dark glasses, unreadable - but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to contact him. What am I going to say: “Guess what, I was a girl all along, and I was in love with you?” If he was single, maybe, though it would still be so hard to click “send.” As it is, out of the question.

And writing is just as hard as it ever was. I thought it would be easier now that I’m more me. Why can’t I just write? I’ve publicly announced this memoir project to pressure myself to do it, and I’m procrastinating, avoiding like crazy. Why is it so hard?

Maybe because a writer is what I am, so I feel the rejection all the way down. When you reject my writing, you reject me. And it’s a tough tough world out there - 199 noes for every yes. “Feel firm in yourself - separate yourself from the work...” Yeah, right, easy to say that.

Maybe the old male feeling is back because I’m writing about that life. I really think I gotta write this book though. I feel the writing sickness in me, along with the cold viruses. No rest, no peace, until it’s done. The interminable slow squirm. Fuck.

I hate that I’m repeating myself, but here it is again:

I! WANT! A! DO-OVER!  

I! WANT! MY! LIFE! BACK!

Fuck.

Reporting from home sick, wallowing in self-pity, and avoiding memoir-writing, this is Lisa. Yeah, Lisa. Lisa. I’m Lisa. Lisa. God fucking dammit, Lisa!

Biography of a former self

It has been a month since my last post, because I’ve been waiting for The Letter. Suzanne at the Montreal clinic told me to expect my official surgery letter early in the new year, at which time my first down payment would be due. That down payment is non-refundable should I chicken out about the surgery, so I see sending the check as the final proof that I’m going to go through with this. (I am, but still.) The Letter hasn’t arrived, and as a result transition has been on pause while I crouch, braced for its impact.

Well, fuck that. Some domino has fallen on its own. Today or tomorrow I will e-mail Suzanne (in French - I’m enjoying conducting as much of my SRS business as I can in French) and ask quand est-ce que la lettre va arriver. And today I am going to work on a project I have long procrastinated about: a book proposal for a memoir. I am going to try to sell my story.

Since the transition story has already been told many times, and since what is most unusual about my own story is that I was not self-aware until recently, my emphasis will be on the biography of my former self. From early childhood on a female person born by accident into a male body feels so pressured by society to be male that she never consciously thinks “I am female.” What sort of maleness does she project into the world? How does her gender truth still peek out through the mask? How does it at last emerge? I hope these are questions provocative enough to interest an agent, then a publisher, in a book.

Which is not to say that the story of transition won't be in there too. After some false starts I have found a narrative approach I like, alternating between third-person narration of vignettes from my old life as a boy and man with excerpts from the written record of my revelation and transition - journal entries, e-mails to early confidants, blog entries. I’m now well along in my second, accelerated life...why not tell both stories in parallel? Offer the reader the opportunity to compare and contrast?

Speaking of books, one of my final procrastination moves, back in January, was to impulsively join with an old friend in a documentary project. She was going to make photographic portraits, and I was going to conduct and transcribe interviews, with enough trans Mainers to fill a book. We were going to fundraise (grants, Kickstarter) and pay ourselves for doing this work.

This seemed like a really good idea for a couple of weeks, but then I began to have misgivings. It began to feel icky to seek to profit from telling other trans peoples’ stories. Also, for many trans folks being trans is of so little importance, it seemed rude to ask to tell their stories because of it - as if to say that it were the only interesting thing about them. And, I realized I had a problem with proposing to “explain” trans experience through this project. Trans stories do need to be told again and again, so that the world can learn, but my (still evolving) sense, for now at least, is that this telling needs to be done by the trans folk themselves - if not by writing or performance or activism or whatever, then simply by living. 

So I bowed out of the project and am back to staring at a blank computer screen and ordering myself to write.

There was another, more personal reason I left the documentary project, which is that I am beginning to think that I don’t want to be professionally trans. It’s a workable shtick, and I’ve been playing with the idea - trans comedy, the trans doc project. And, yes, the trans memoir - but the plan is to write it and then write a second book about something completely different. I have desired and sought success as a writer my whole life. I don’t mind if I finally achieve it because it turns out I have an unusual story to tell; but I would want to sustain it simply by being a good writer.

The curious thing about that is, for the first time in my life I wonder if I really do want to write for a living. Perhaps the hot kernel of that desire arose out of my self-repression. I couldn't truly live, but at least I could write. Now I can truly live. Hm. Tell stories, or live them...or both. We'll see. 

I'll do it if I have to, is what it comes down to. Just like transition.

Three years and a day and counting

I recorded the following audio file on my hand-held flash recorder during my commute the morning after posting the last post. It's a rebuttal of sorts, or a next step which, in retrospect, I was still working on when I wrote that last post. 

3 years and a day

 Since I made this recording it has further occurred to me that "please yourself" can mean both "strive to reach your own standards," and simply "try to get what you really want," and I have been experiencing a curious new sense of freedom from worry about what other people think and expect of me. Perhaps a major step...the changing of a lifelong mental habit of existing in a perpetual state of anxiety to please others...hmm, we'll see.

 

Monsieur A & Monsieur B

Earlier this week I came up with a new dream. Inspired by my planned visit to Montreal next summer I have once again taken up the study of French, and my new dream is, maybe someday I could move to France for a while and teach English. My teacher says there are jobs for Americans because of French businessmen wanting to learn to speak with an American accent.

I like this dream for two reasons. First of all, I just like it. Sounds like the new adventure I crave, and I’d become fluently bilingual, which I’d love to be. But, also, I like it because it has nothing to do with gender. Honestly, I’m bored of gender, of thinking and talking and writing about it all the time. The gender work I’m doing still matters to me just as much as ever, but I have it well in hand, and these days it feels at best routine and at worst tiresome. Several other things in my life interest me more right now, e.g.:

• Parenting: Goes without saying, really - just always need to be there for each kid as each kid needs.
• Writing: I got an article published by the Phoenix (in their Out In Maine LGBT supplement) and the editor wants more of my work. I’m writing professionally! Yay!
• Money: I still need to figure out a way to make more of it.
• The smell  in my house of some small animal decaying: Where is it coming from and how can I get rid of it?

Et cetera.

Oh, and one more big one: I’d really like to date a male-bodied, masculine person now. Doesn’t mean I’m done with female-bodied people, but I’ve tried that. Nope, for now I’m feeling hungry for masculine attention and ready to reciprocate with feminine attention. Which brings us to Messieurs A and B.

Monsieur A was my best friend through junior high and high school. He was a quiet, introverted boy with a sweet smile and the strength of character to hang out with that weird kid with the long hair who looked like a girl. We shared common geeky interests, private humor, and even for a while a private alphabet, in which we would write each other messages on the chalkboards of classrooms. From time to time he would pat me on the head. With A I felt cared about, safe, and (not clearly, but in a way which still mattered), seen. In retrospect it is clear that, in a hopeless never-to-speak-its-name way, I was in love with him.

Just one time I felt an intense moment of attraction toward A. It was during a rest stop on a hike. We were sitting on rocks, sipping water and talking of nothing in particular, and all at once I felt conscious of his closeness in a way I’ve only experienced a few other times in my life, always with men. It was more than just sexual, though it was that. I yearned to merge with him...two selves becoming one new whole. All I could make of this at the time was that it meant I was gay, and in those days I had not even begun to deconstruct the homophobia I had learned from my father, so the moment upset me. I thrust it away and expressed nothing, then or later.

A and I lost contact after college. Just once, about ten years ago, I sought him out during a business trip in his city. We had dinner at a restaurant and walked around a little, talking. Same quiet somewhat elusive man, married to a woman I have never met, with children. I felt a faint echo of the same tingle. And, recently, I’ve been thinking about him. The other day I found myself fantasizing about meeting him again...about him taking me (now him, now me) in his arms and kissing me...and I burst into tears.

I had been thinking I had come out to everyone, but I haven’t to A. Should I write him an e-mail? Hm...that’s good for butterflies.

Monsieur B is one of those few men of my present acquaintance who have started to talk to me in an unguarded way, new to my experience, which I take to mean that they see me simply as a woman. Most of the men I know are wonderfully accepting and supportive of my transition...and subtly cagey. Their eyes jitter as they compute moment by moment how to talk to me. With all the power I have lost, I have gained the power to make men squirm.

But B just talks to me. His face is open and candid, and if I meet his eyes he meets mine right back. He’s willing to confide in a minor way - everyday thoughts and feelings about work and such - and he also listens with apparent interest when I confide. He has a quick mind, which I find attractive, and he’s passionate about what he does, which ditto. So, sometimes when we talk, I find myself having to make an extra effort to pay attention to what he’s saying because I’m becoming mesmerized by his moving lips and tingling a little all over.

This is neither complicated nor deep. I’m enjoying feeling attraction toward specific present men, making a few shy attempts at flirting, and hoping that something might happen. I realize this is a passive stance, but at least for now that feels right. I can always get brazen later on if I want. In the meantime, if Monsieur B asked me out to dinner, with heart a-flutter I would say yes.

Might *you* in fact be Monsieur B? That would be telling. ;->

Worry less, write more

I am alive! And significantly altered on left-over wine on a Monday night. But what the fuck. I’m 49 and working in an absurdly easy job until my youngest graduates from high school. In the river of life this is a long back-eddy, Mercury in retrograde, whatever. Moving backwards to move forwards. Backwards! (Onwards.)

Being interviewed at L.L. Bean was a surreal experience. The dead faces, the exquisite cheerfulness. Do you realize I have never in my life worked for a corporation? Except that one summer between sophomore and junior year, when I worked for the Curry Company, renting rafts to tourists and making their camp beds in the back-country of Yosemite. It is so fucking odd to go into a place where a whole bunch of people are making good money subscribing to the imperative of a commercial myth. World Class Customer Service. Figuring out how to feel good about riding the cash cow, I call it. And if anyone from Bean reads this blog, my job chances will be fucked. So be it. No one is paying attention.

And hey, I’m provisionally second-job employed. Money does turn out to matter, when you don’t have enough of it. Beyond that, I read somewhere recently, once you’ve got enough to live on more doesn’t make you any happier. So how did dollars become the ultimate measure of success? Nothing else turns people into such craven grasping wretches...not sex, not love, not alcohol, not drugs, not the hope of fame, not the fear of death. From time to time I think, I never learned to care about money, I fucked up my life. And the rest of the time I think...what an incredible moment! What a fucking rush! Once safe housed fed, the greatest pleasure is just to be alive; the rest is meaningless quanta of difference. You drive a fancier car than me. So the fuck what. I got to work safely today, and home again too. That’s all that matters.

Oh, and connecting with another. That matters too. What were the most important parts of my day today? Talking to friends. Jessica. Jenny. Feeling those moments of sympatico, empathy, non-exclusive non-familial non-sexual love. You spoke to me, I heard you; I spoke, you heard. Thank you. I love you.

Except for me mentioning it in this sentence, nothing in this entry is particularly about being trans. Being trans doesn’t define me. If anything defines me, it is that I write. Go ahead, I dare you...read me. It’s like fucking, only more intimate.

In between the previous two paragraphs I checked my e-mail and read a post in the Facial Feminization Surgery Yahoo group, in which one trans woman advised another to go to Dr. Z if she wants to be made artifically stunning, and to go to Dr. D in Argentina if she wants a natural feminine version of her old face. If you weren’t beautiful before, she says, you won’t be after, just female you. And just like that, I long-term plan to get a  Dr. D face. So, something trans after all.

Speaking of which, a friend taped my performance at the Femme Show for me and I put it on YouTube as a link you have to know to access. It so doesn’t suck, and I’m eager to share it with people, but I’ve kept it private out of concern that the wrong person at my son’s school might get ahold of it, and he would be embarrassed. but if you’d like to see it (and you don't go to Wells High School), let me know, and I’ll send you the link.

As part of an ongoing experiment the nub of which is to edit myself less the older I get, I’m posting this now.

Up side update

A friend e-mailed me the other day to ask if I was OK. She was feeling motherly concern based on a couple of my recent blog posts (this one and this one), which, reading  back, I can understand. I was doing hard emotional work when I wrote both of them, and they are dark. I don’t want to minimize those posts; but on the other hand, I’m doing fine overall, and it occurs to me that if I want this blog to reflect my total transition experience, then I’m overdue for an up side update. As a matter of fact, many parts of transition are going well.

Parenting: Transition is a narcissistic process, and from time to time I have become so engrossed in myself that my parenting has faltered. Most recently this took the form of pointing both my emotional neediness and my stress about money at my children in ways which were unfair to them. In effect I was asking them for the kind of support one might expect from an adult friend or partner rather than from one’s teenagers. Sensible and empowered as they are (I do have amazing offspring) they called me on it. At their request we went together to a short course of family therapy, and talked a bunch of stuff out. End results: I’m feeling better and stronger about my parenting than I have for a long time (and, I trust, doing a better job at it); I also got to say some things I think they needed to hear; and in our little household the tension-level has gone way down and the fun-level has gone way up. Yay for all three of us! :-)

Hormones: It has been about a year now since I got up to full doses in my hormone regimen, and I am totally digging the physical changes. I’m already happy with my new breasts; even if they don’t grow any more than the modest amount they have so far, I have indefinitely tabled the idea of surgical enhancement. My face also looks much more feminine, mostly perhaps because I’ve lost about twenty pounds, but there could be skin changes and fat-distribution changes too. (Likewise with my neck, shoulders, arms, legs.) Some days at least I think maybe I’ll never have to get facial surgery, and considering how desperate the need for that has sometimes felt, that’s big. I can’t quite say I’ve tabled it indefinitely, but at least for a couple of years I have, and that eases the money worry. And, one other hormone plus: back hair completely gone. That makes me smile every time I think of it. :-)

Surgery plans: I have pretty much settled on a surgeon and a date for Sexual Reassignment Surgery (Dr. Brassard in Montreal, summer of 2012), and have a working plan for how to pay for it (retirement savings, which I recently discovered I have more of than I thought). The Montreal SRS experience sounds about as wonderful as it could be: Dr. B is by all accounts as good as any other SRS surgeon working, and for a day before and several days after your procedure you stay in a residence with other patients, nursing care, full meals...and all for the same price as other surgeons who send you off on your own after a couple days in the hospital. One of the things I was dreading most about SRS was a week spent recovering in some anonymous hotel room, which seems to be the dominant model here in the States. A week of pampering and peer support for no extra dollars? Yes please!

Performance/writing: As noted in previous posts, I recently realized a lifelong ambition and performed a piece in a show. (Gushy post here.)  I want to see what it’s like to perform for a straight audience next, rather than a room full of twenty-something lesbians, so I’m going to check out the comedy open mic at the Slainte winebar here in Portland. One visit to get the vibe, and then work up a routine and step up to the mic. Oooh, butterflies. I’ve got the bug bad...performing is *such* a rush, and I turn out not to suck at it, so, onward.

Meanwhile, after several false starts, I have figured out a way to write long-form about my trans experience. Success as a writer is my earliest, most intense, and most enduring ambition in life, so when a project is going well I feel a deep sense of fulfilment and happiness which nothing else can give me. It’s going slowly, but it’s going...joy!

Feminine life: the daily experience of living as woman in the world has lost the gee-whiz factor which leads to blog posts, but it continues to be deeply satisfying. I’m not sure how, but I’ve managed to reduce my anxiety about presentation (dress, carriage, mannerisms, and especially voice) almost to zero and just focus on enjoying every moment. I still get such pleasure from such simple things; a nice new pair of earrings, walking down Congress Street in a skirt, an unforced and natural “ma’am” at the grocery store.

So, in sum, yeah, I have money troubles, and sometimes my self-esteem plummets, and sometimes I feel desperately lonely, and I have no idea at this point even what sort of partner I want, let alone might ever find...but overall things are going well. The curious burden of being trans is also the source of most of the pleasure and sense of forward motion in my life, and it is *never* boring.

Next time the rollercoaster dips down into one of those low tunnels, remind me to come back and re-read this post.

A five-star rush

The Femme Show performance went great! Doing my piece was both intensely exciting and deeply self-affirming. The house was full and the crowd enthusiastic; I got laughs and cheers and applause...not always on the lines I thought I would, which was interesting, but I was able to roll with that. I achieved my main ambition going in which was to relax into the performance and take the time I needed to feel the sexy symbiotic give-and-take with the audience. And I got lots of compliments after, which was of course gratifying; especially meaningful were those from my fellow performers, whose work I admired, and the one from a trans man who had been in the audience who thanked me sincerely for speaking for us T's of the LGBT. My fellow performers were kind and accepting and supportive, and I learned an enormous amount about theater, writing, and performance from them in a very short time - soaking up that thespian lore like a sponge. From the bottom of my heart, Femme Show darlings, thank you for including me! :-)

So I am already mulling next steps...I definitely want to do this again...new material, new venue...I need more experience...maybe a one-woman show someday...hmmm...happy mulling...

And, since I don't have to try to entice you to the show any more, here is my script from last night, if you're curious:

Enter all trannied up - breast forms, hip pads, tranny-mane wig, high heels, etc.

Hi, my name is Lisa, and I am a tranny - which I get to say because I am one. I’m so happy to be here tonight, being seen by you!

As you can see, I have put on for you this evening the best patiche I can manage of the hyper-sexualized stereotype of femininity foisted upon us by our hetero-normative, cis-gender dominant, masculinity-privileging culture.  I hope you like it.

Actually, let me say that again: I hope *you* like it, because honestly, I don’t. This is fun to put on every once in a while, but it’s not me. Literally, this is not me.

Pull out a breast form:  *This* is not me...
The other:  And this is not me...
Take off hips: And this is not me...
Wig off:  And this is not me...
And the shoes...I do love the shoes, but I’m already too fucking tall without them. Take off shoes.

That was four layers of gender right there: a trans woman born in a male body, double re-crossdressed as a man in drag!

Now that I am less complicated and more comfortable, I’m here this evening for two reasons. The first reason is, whenever there’s an LGBT event going on, I do like to do whatever I can to make sure that the T is not just hinted at, but, you know, really *firmly* tacked on the end there.

And, the second reason is, I have something to say about the subject of the evening, femininity.

And you might be saying to yourself, yeah, right, who made you Ms. fabulous queen expert on the subject? Well, think about it: a trans-woman has to study and theorize and practice and then dare to assert every single aspect of her femininity in the world...so, we tend to have very clear and detailed ideas of what we mean by that word. In fact, I myself, through my gender work, have discovered the elusive golden secret of femininity....and I am here to share it with you...maybe, if I feel like it.

While you’re waiting to find out if I am in the mood, I *can* mention right off a couple of things that we are definitely *not* talking about this evening.

Scenario one: my grandmother’s generation:

Yes dear. Whatever you say, dear. (My goodness, you are so stupid sometimes.) Whatever you say, dear. (I cannot believe you just said that.) Whatever you say, dear. Whatever you say.

Debunked forty years ago, thank goodness...and good riddance!

Scenario two: my mother’s generation:

I am as good as any man, and I am going to prove it by being as much like a man as I can be. I can and will out-masculinize my husband and all those other macho male-type manly men out there. So there. I mean, huh!

Which admittedly had some good ideas in it, and lead to some beneficial social changes, but I don’t think we’re there quite yet.

Which brings us to this generation, the present day...and I guess I’ve tantalized you enough, so I’ll tell. The elusive golden secret of femininity. Here’s how it goes. Hold my hand...and I’ll just tease you some more.

Sorry, I can’t seem to help it. But I’m running out of time...so here it is for real. Hold my hand (and take me to dinner and buy me flowers and tell me I’m beautiful), and I’ll just tease you. But: take me in your arms and kiss me with tenderness and passion...and then I’ll whisper a hint in your ear. Just a hint. Would you like that? I know I would.

I am aware that I am still teasing. I do so enjoy it. But on the other hand, I am extremely empathetic, (Oh, darlings, I *do* feel your pain), so I will always give you satisfaction in the end....probably.

OK, all teasing aside...I am really, REALLY, going to tell you now...the elusive golden secret.  Hold my hand (and take me to dinner and buy me flowers and tell me I’m beautiful), and I will just tease you some more. Kiss me with tenderness and passion...and I’ll whisper a hint in your ear. But if you want the Truth with a capital T, the Answer with a capital A (hey, T and A, how about that); if you want me to share the elusive golden secret with you; then...well, then, you must promise to love me and treasure me and cherish me for always and always...and then...well, then I’ll *show* you.

Ta-ta, darlings! It’s been fun. Catch me if you can!

Exit.