i am i

i am i
and the eye can see the broad span of the edge
as it comes up
to meet the party.
And who will clean up the dishes? The rags?
The sad clown make-up that lies in cluttered stacks
on the outside table.

And we pour our opposites out
and empty our vessels

what is left but a body, a body,
a bodice,
a cutting, a lace blouse, and bangles, bangles, bangles.

Sometimes being trans is dream-like

Once when caught up in the revelry of after midnight femme sessions, my skirt still flowing around my knees, my heels clicking on the hard wooden floors, and when my eyes passed the mirrors, briefly, so briefly, I was not myself in the mirror.

Once, during class, I glanced at my hands as they pulled up a powerpoint. But they weren't my hands, they were smaller, and my skin shined, and my nails appeared out of thin air.

I did like a million double takes, it felt, before they vanished and the din of the classroom echoed and echoed and echoes until I opened my mouth to speak.

In Latin my name is light and easy to carry.

I am a feminine foot

that extra syllable hanging like a she-male's cock at the end of line

Oh, did i go there

When it comes down to it, that's what I really am, not in some porn star beauty sexy impossible way, but in a working class, honest, earnest voice. A woman with a little extra baggage.

Field of Dreams, World Series and Crossdressing

In 2004 I spent the entire post-season in a tense, drunken, stoned, and crossdressed frenzy, trying to spark some fan magic to will my beloved Red Sox to the World Series.

What's a Southerner, a Southern Woman, well trans-woman, doing liking a new England Team? Don't you folks like the Braves? Or the Rays?

Well I grew up loving baseball cards. I loved the information, the portraits, the action shots, how owning a baseball card made you notice people, races, beards, mustaches, hair cuts. If you owned the card that player was special. That's how I defined special, plus the media always provided heroes. Carlton Fisk, Eddie Murray, Steve Garvey, Fernando Valenzuela, Jim Rice, and my favorite, George Brett. So by default the Royals were my favorite team, the Red Sox, because of Rice and Fisk, were my second favorite team, and I liked the Braves, the Cubs, and Orioles, just because we had a primitive cable TV plan and all three were regularly broadcast. The game was on in my father's office, his one vice, pipe smoking, making my head fuzzy and warm. He didn't like to be bothered, and we weren't allowed to listen or bother, and the game took on a magical quality. Something adult. Something in the air. And of course, there was the games on the weekends, or summer afternoons, and I'd half pay attention.

When we moved my father's office got more remote, and bigger, and so did my father, and so did sports.

There were brief intense affairs with baseball, the wild Boston Years where I palled around with madmen, drag queens, freaks and literary geeks. And those years saw, not only, media frenzy over the team, but many games in the stands via my wife's job in PR.

I followed, but from a distance.

My femme side exploded and receded in similar fashion. It's a phase, it's nothing, it's no big deal.

It's
a
big
deal.
Your self image.

For me the yearnings and intensity increase with age.

FF

Shortly after I found out I was going to be a father we went over to a friend's house and I played catch with my friend's son, because no one else wanted the chore, which n I would find out...that playing with any three year old child is, a chore. Because you have to run a lot to pick up the stray short armed balls that fly from the kid's arm. You have to do it for the kid. But that was okay. I was in high Daddy euphoria.

I even thought, I remember the thought, that I was finally normal, in other words...non-trans.

Playing catch was fun. My beautiful wife teared up at the sight of us....
And suddenly after that baseball came alive to me again.

Then I was deeply in the closet about my trans issues, so I stood, in 2004, in a comeback against the Yankees, in my wife's mules, in her hose, in her short skirt, and wearing gobs of her eye shadow, in secret, my post pregnant wife passed out upstairs, and I in shaky drag, listening to the radio, the Sox fighting back, absolutely sure my intense desire to dress as a woman, to wake up one day as a woman, were passing phases.

That it was a kind of magic.

And crossdressing is, if anything, a kind of magic.

And so is a good game. And as of this post my son is sleeping, and the Giants are on the verge of their 1st title, and my pearls are hanging from my ears, and I have my bracelets and rings, and right now everything, just about everything seems possible.

Gender bending in Inception....Like many, I saw Inception...

and what I loved was that one of the cooler characters (the forger) transformed into a hot blonde to distract the mark. Later the character "hit on" another, humor ensued and the movie went on. Gender bending in dream-land, and subtly so. The actor made the choice (or the writer) to say "darling" to rile his rival, Joseph Gorden Levitt (the point man).

There was no political or gender pointed metaphor or meaning in the said narrative constructs, the character simply can exist in any form. It just is.

Imagine a world where one's public gender could shine?

Imagine we could switch our looks at any time and act out any identity we wish?

In a way, it's kind of scary.

Tumblr Addict, nutso in boy mode

So, I've become a Tumblr addict. So easy, so fun, so simple. You think Facebook is addicting....Tumblr is pic oriented. Very Trans friendly, I've found, as well as GLBT friendly. Do try it for a diversion. I spend time reblogging pretty items. Think of it as a way to save pictures, links, etc that you gush over, without the hassle of other social networking sites.

Do you any of you other gurls out there find that your gender dysphoria vacillates between 0 and 100? I find I can go from 0 to 100 in seconds. Other days I hover at 70, sometimes at 55. Whew! Makes a girl's head spin.

Have I mentioned I haven't dressed in two weeks and that an adored family member is divorcing? Well...I have been cleaning house in Upstate New York for the last fifteen days with my spouse, who rocketh, and sat front seat for divorce drama craziness.

For a long time, I felt like I wasn't the craziest bitch in the house. Mind you, denied of any transgender expression for such a time...I began to impose my own non binary gender zest to life and cooked, cleaned, repaired the house, the car, helped with the laundry and encouraged the women of the family to live! Yes it was a fucking Lifetime movie...in my own mind...though I must say the women around me loved my help and support and my attention to their clothing, jewelry, interests....(geez sometimes I wonder is transgenderism is extreme heterosexuality on steroids....)only if I had been dressed as a housewife, or hippie girl, but alas, I wasn't. Otherwise it was an above average week with the fam....

My wife and I did go shopping at her fav place to shop and I came away with two dresses, three tops, two camisoles, one Victorian wanna be blouse, and accessories. Unlike past shopping experiences she showed distaste for my trans identity, though it wasn't discussed. I could tell by her eye rolls and smirks....like she was thinking "Won't this go away?"

Transgender Identity Pt 2

Late, late, late. Sorry all, meant to report on this earlier. The second half of the TG ID program concerned a Eunuch detective in the mystery, The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin and a literary character named Mars, created by Kelley Eskridge, whose gender is purposefully concealed from the reader and appeals to all, depending on the situation Mars appears equally Femme and equally Masculine, or somewhere in-between. The stories, the excerpts lyrical and insightful, and dripping with sensuality. The Eunuch discussion was rather interesting and Goodwin explained that...paraphrased: human culture has been creating Eunuchs as long as there has been civilization. We seem to need the perspective, the mirror, of the third sex, or acknowledge it somehow. Unfortunately Eunuchs are outsiders, in the same regard as crossdressers and tg folk are in some cultures.

I agree, for there are many cultures who adopt and cherish tg folk, just as many as there are those who spit and hate.

To the Eunuchs!

To the best of our knowledge: Transgender identity

While working out this afternoon, I listened to a new audiobook download, To the best of our knowledge: Transgendered Identity... more like a download of a radio show from Public Radio International. You can read about it here.

One of the featured interviews was with Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV front (wo)man and pangender artist Genesis P-Orridge who is basically turning his body into a rebellion against DNA. He prefers the pronoun (s)he, had his breasts implanted and modeled after his wife's breasts (they had breast augmentation surgery on the same day (sigh...how romantic) and each underwent cosmetic surgery to appear alike)and argues that our bodies are machines and should be fitted in any way shape or form we feel is appropriate.

How would scales and experiments in skin types be adaptable to space travel, living in harsh conditions, etc. Utterly fascinating.

So when I got home I looked Genesis up and found many images that chronicle her stages of androgyny/hermaphroditic transition, as you can see above. Absolutely inspired.

Segment one was excellent, as well, a ftm and his feminist critic/professor mother about his sex change. Wonderful to hear from a feminist perspective.

Will report on segment three tomorrow.

Tranny Madness

Tranny madness

I'm never sure how you other sisters process/exist in your trans consciousness. Sometimes I am all woman. Sometimes I am reaffirming myself as a girl, woman, transsexual. Rarely is it far from my mind.

This leads to lots of transflections, all of the many years and hours and days and hearts I have been entangled in a dual state.

Recently I discussed my issues with an old friend who covers the drag scene and is a GLBT activist.

Since I hadn't seen him since college, old memory lane became a happening and suddenly I was back in college hanging out at the gay bars and seedy streets where all the tg/ts hookers hung out. I used to pretend I was a reporter from the college covering sex changes and interviewed/flirted with etc. I was excited by them and excited by the idea of a sex change. I did this about four times. Perhaps five, some of the evenings blur together. I didn't hook up with these women, only hung out with them. Just trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. Am I gay? Am I a tranny chaser? Am I a transsexual?

I already crossdressed, but it was a shameful coal I kept burning. Sometimes I managed to pre-exist it, that is to live with a heart that has never tap danced with gender bending. With femininity, with my secret self.

My old friend had figured himself out early. I know because he was my first experience. Period. And for a while I wanted him to be my boyfriend, and then predictably denied it till the experience was someone else's life.

Crazy. But not so much. The memory when compartmentalized can be a powerful consciousness.

These things are true

These things are true

there are aspects of femininity that stick to my guts.

I love purple glitter glam fluttery flirty clothing.

Most of my self loathing has been directed to my body image.

I buy cheap glam sham slam trinkets at Wal Mart and Thrift stores.

Love is something I believe in.

My lungs are weak.

At times I have looked at my hands and they have transformed into a woman's hand, the gauzy white light about the fingers, the nails dark red stain upon the glow.

In anger my wife told me I had “woman's hands”
When I was younger and dressing in my mother's clothes, her perfume trailing behind me as I posed in the window for the college boys who drove down my street.

At one time I wanted a boyfriend more than anything in the world.

At one time I detested my bisexual urges, so much I punished myself through starvation and denial.

Orange is my favorite color.

There are times when I want to peel the skin off my bones because it's so sensitive. Like cold teeth. Like a sprained back. That hot itching pain that pulses in yr bones, in yr sinuses, in yr heart.

I want to pass.

I feel like I was born too tall.

I hope I have the courage to change.
My heart rate increased and I warmed all over, but did not show my pleasure.

All I have ever wanted is to be a housewife, a hearth, the large pot of soup, the fresh laundry and homemade cheese. Dandelion wine. The walrus teeth bravery of wild onion soup.

For National Poetry Month

Last year I was such a yapper in April. This year I've been laying low. I wrote this one for those gals who don't get to dress as much as they want/should do. Also to those who delayed transition for whatever reason.

Ciao.



Days when I'm too Spent to Pretend

It's holding
yr breath
for
a week,

the restriction keeping your frame in line
with what frames should look like:
boxy, perfect, regulated, plumb.

It's what the bitch
in the carpool mutters,
what the teens say in the halls,
the sun discoballing off glittered flower pots.

Why can't people love?

It's holding yr breath

for a week
before you can relax
into yr skin,
before you can calibrate your voice,
adjust gears

that move yr winged feet
through the halls of town.
It's new skin,

itching and itching
under Thursday's blistering noon.

And the body rejects,
the body
rejects,
the body reacts.
So tired,

so long,
so far away.
It's a day
you can ride with the top down,
in the snow,
without jacket,
all that muscle holding tension so still you smoke
with heat, even in the cold,
even with the ice packing into yr sockets
like glitter lashes.

Tension of other shape,
new mind.

Sleep cures not,
stress is too much,
transition, transmission, transgriot,
transtouch.

Cigarettes, Diet Coke,
bubble pop magazines and crush.

These are spells against death,
are spells
against sleep,
are spells,
hell's bells.

It is like holding yr breath for six days
without so much of a squeak
of breath,

this boxed heart, this boxed life.

Saying hello

Been slammed busy last few weeks. Kids, Lectures, visits to the pub. All is well in Tranny Married land. Though we are striking arguments about the length of my nails, my sometimes "feminine gestures" other than that life on the married TG plein is a-ok.

I'm lonely, though. No one to really let my hair down with, so to speak. It's odd, like my brain is a rubric cube

Transgender scholarship for TG students in Washington State

Pretty cool. These scholarships are popping up all over the place. Will post more info as I stumble across them. I don't know any TG students in Washington, but maybe you do!

Have a fab day!

Class discussion: hats and gender

In a discussion on gender today, one of my classes classified caps as masculine, hats as feminine. Interestingly enough they noted that visors were in the middle (TG) and fedoras and cowboy hats were masculine. Lady Gaga inventions were labelled "supernatural"

TRANSform Me was good, saw my first ep on Monday. I wanted more TRANS back stories and perspective (which was doled out in small manageable doses for the middle class). The Glambulance needs a make-over.

TRANSform Me

Ah, yes, TG women of fashion and beauty take over VHI.

No, ladies, it's not RuPaul, but three smashing TG women who travel the US in the Glambulance to do make-overs on deserving women who have been wronged, abused, or just need a break.

Fun.

On tonight. At 10:30

Happy St. Paddy's ...shrink session was good today

Or to steal from one of the great TG authors of her time "Erin go braless" (snare drum, high hat). Things are well in the gender blended south of my home. Well, except boring domestic stuff like touch up painting and the like that must be done soon.

Had an interesting session with the old shrink today. She seems to think my gender dysphoria is becoming more intense, and suggests that I spend a weekend in Provincetown or San Fran to explore how I would feel living as a woman, or rather a trans woman full time.

I tend to accommodate my partner so much I often neglect myself. She's all for me trying a low dose of hormones again, but I'm cautious now. Though my body would probably react better to a corrected dosage, I still pause. But why?

Afraid of secrets, I think, or afraid of my truth. My own naked self that is struggling to get out of my head and skin and into the world.

Anyways. Cheers. Have a beer, I'm having several. Erin go bragh

Notes to my body

I am not my body
but an ideal beyond body
I am flesh and not flesh and clay to be molded
by chemicals beyond my reach.
I am I am I

100th post...news and notes

The misses purchased a new spring Target (we say Tar-jay...as if it were French) dress. I'm a sucker for Target fashions, though my own personal voice is more of a hippie-girl mash-up with preppy Laura Ashleyesque Victorian girlyness. Go figure. I like the goth punk look too.

Also...to brag about her awesomeness...the kids have been sick-crazy-mad-genius-suckers-of-our-time this week, so she offered to give me more time to let the woman inside out!

Yes! Always fun. Tis true I want to let the woman out 24/7...(for you new followers...this is Basil Exposition... thank you, BTW...for following this humble Trans blog) but to maintain the fam I limit my time to weekly excursions into my real world.

Not sure how it will play out, but right now I am enjoying the split time. When the children get older, who knows how I will feel...


My male alter ego will be reading tomorrow at a poetry festival in my small town. Since I will be reading in drab, my trans poems will be metaphorical in nature, versus straight up. Since I live in the aforementioned small town....um...you got the idea.

Just to hammer home how small of a community this is...we are two hours away from a Wal-Mart.

Still the overall transformation message will be first and foremost in my selections. Have a great weekend all!

Valentine's Day extra note for married genderqueer couples

the missus and I went shopping and she purchased a cute purple dress from Target. She picked the purple over the other colors, and I always defer to her taste when shopping, because to share one's clothes is as intimate as any other human expression. Also, we've devoted ourselves to having more sex.

Can anyone say: Best wife ever!

Asking for thoughts...for a dark question

K...here's the deal.

Working on post-apocalyptic story where protagonist is a post-op MTF. Somehow this figures in her fate, being thrown out of a...for lack of a better word...village..because she is infertile.

This is the kicker...

part of the underlying violence must be the underlying prejudice mainstream america has against the glbT (the T is capitalized to emphasize the audience to which the fiction is written for...so don't take offense). So why do you think trans people are reviled? Any ideas?

You'd get a credit/shout-out in the Acknowledgments (assuming someone would publish it.

Winter fun

My weekend conference was a tedious success (however, the my wife and I had a great, productive, fight in our hotel room) and now I'm in DC for less glamorous conference on composition in undergraduate studies. Yawn. However, I'm on the company dime and enjoying the snow. Alas, no gender bending fun save for my hotel room. And am bored without the missus. Currently on a Fringe season one marathon. Good show. BTW...I'm discussing writing about gender in Shakespeare's plays...(he's the original modern trans personality).

productive fight

The missus and I had it out. Cabin Fever and all. Of course my gender identity was at the heart of it. But this fight felt different. We aired some frustrations and gre closer. Whew. Glad it's over.

She doesn't want me to live the lifestyle every day every night. I don't know if I want to either. We reached another compromise in a long chain of compromises. She's the best!

Breadcrumb and Scabs published this...in their fall 2009 issue

SELF PORTRAIT, ELEVEN

Slipped between two genders
like a boy's slender foot
into his mother's shoe

those few shards of afternoons
skin blending
into the glassy light of a long mirror

was to bridge a divide
and guard against death
and offer a voice to both sides.

snow musings: Gender Conference at Murfeesburo Community College, sexual orientation questioning, and latex fetish wear, oh my!

Sounds sexier than it is. The Murfeesburo Community College Conference on Gender is merely a weekend party of second tier professors expounding bullshit about gender, gender roles, and gender equality. Blah. As far as I know I'm the only crossdressing trans person in attendance. There's not even a gay club for me to go bar hopping en femme to.

What's a girl to do? Sorry I haven't been active lately, just too many strings pulling on this old guitar.

I'm a bit out of tune.

However, currently rocking fashion tights and Massimo wine sweater dress (perfect for the damp cold) and plenty of cute fashion accessories. Follow me on tumblr for fashion fun pics and trans talk, when it comes up for reblogging.

Tumblr if you don't know, is the easiest way to blog. For me it's more a repository for interesting images.

Personally, since I am off hormones (wasn't on them for long, dammit) I have been exploring a variety of feelings. I found myself quite close (as in spatially) to a close male friend, and I could not help but to fantasize about kissing him. It turned my heart on, no pun intended, rather than my loins. Quite strange, and since has spurred me to force myself to look at men. Just to see.

What harm could that do, right?

And so far I keep finding myself looking at the women. Still, a blip on the consciousness radar that one should pay attention to.

But the wife and are great. I'm not looking to hook up, just see how attracted I am to men...if truly at all.

Side note: anyone tried latex? On tumblr I follow a crossdresser who designs latex and I must admit it looks like a fun way to dress your smooth skin. Dish the details, ladies

mind is restless

I'm still awakening my female voice. For what ever reason it is still repressed and I'm taking measures to break out of my shell so to speak.

In my creative life I'm writing almost exclusively about transgendered characters, although I maintain the stories are mostly about characters who happen to be transgendered, etc, et all

Currently sketching a novella/novel about a post apocalyptic world where one the survivors is post-op (perhaps I'll change it to pre-op) transsexual trying to survive in a The Road type/road warrior/zombie apocalypse etc. world.

One of the angles I'm taking is that the other survivors don't value the MTF's worth as a person because she is sterile. This makes her an outcast. Obviously she is awesome and overcomes this kind of prejudice, but I think it gets to the heart of transphobia....we are hated because we are not one but two, and if we follow the transition to its natural medical conclusion, we are sterile.

Anyhoo...what I'm up to.

I'm reading you all. even if I don't post.

Crossdressing resolutions for 2010

Buy more clothes.

So simple an air-head like me can manage. Seriously, like I forgot about me wee blog for like ages...cue hippie music and sounds of sitars...and damn if it's been ages since I've like written anything, which is scary for a someone who has mild graphomania (must produce writing. now.) My wife and I have become comfortable with my girly self. She doesn't like seeing me in girl garb, but tolerates my interest in her fashion magazines, clothing sales, etc. For her sake I try not to be overly fab. My sweetie is slow to boil, so I know everything will be kosher the longer she is comfortable with me being...well...a woman.

One thing I've noticed is my language for describing how I view myself has evolved. Years ago I was just a crossdresser, a weekend drag queen. Now I'm trans, or even transsexual.

My shrink recommended I try low estrogen to see how I reacted to it. And as expected my family's history of hypertension limited the experiment. Now I have to decide do I transition?

My love does not wish for me to transition, btw. Which is a big bummer.

Other than this dilemma of luxury our family is healthy, happy, and had a wonderful holiday season. For the most part our gifts came from second hand stores and artisan tables. My love gave me a pair of sterling silver screwback clip ons. Airy and wonderful. I like sparkle.

So back to my resolutions:

Be happy with my bad self.
Continue to foster the hearth. The family.
Nurture my heart.
Read more.
Learn to channel my girly energy into boy mode.
Decide whether to transition or not