Thanks to the wonderful ladies at My Naughty Secret Fantasies for the Crossdressing Poem

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Boy in high heels removed from class

Boy in high heels removed from class

Really? Aren't we trivial

Gender Dysphoria and Gender Bending in Infinite Jest

The Pale King, David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel, or fragmented novel, or faux-memoir, is worth the read for the simple taut, beautiful writing, but on this Easter, this day of re-birth, I speak for us pagans, agnostics, non-Christian folks: that Easter is a symbol of re-birth, making new choices, etc, I choose to reflect on the ways the late DFW wrote about “gender dysphorics” (his term) in his masterpiece Infinite Jest.

IJ is not about trans folks, though many of the minor characters play with gender. The novel is really a a galaxy of subplots that criss cross each other, or nearly criss cross each other, and like Lost, or BSG, if the characters all sat down and a had a pow-wow, many questions would be answered, (as well as raised, of course, in a maddeningly Lost-like kind of way.). I have read the novel three times, the first time barely paying attention to the gender tropes, the second time noticing it more, and the third time, with me out of the proverbial closet, personally and maritally speaking (but not in the larger, hello world, I want a sex change kind of way...which by the way is where I lean and repress, etc.) the gender tropes were up front, and varied.

Poor Tony Krause—a Jewish junkie gender dysphoric. A true gender dysphoric, transvestite prostitute, however we mostly look at the word through Poor Tony's addiction issues. The novel spends a fair amount of time describing Poor Tony's addictions to contrast with the stories and POVs of the recovery drug addicts and alcoholics. Poor Tony is in no way a knock on Tony's gender issues. The poor referring to his addictions and hapless fuckery, rather than his gender identity.

Helen/Hugh Steeply—an agent from the Office of Unspecified Services who assumes the identity of a woman. Hugh is never depicted as Hugh, only as Helen, and the brother of the main character falls in love with Helen. Helen, for me, is more of the accidental crossdresser. A straight, less beatific contrast to Poor Tony Krause, who has seen prettier days.

USS Millicent Kent's father—unnamed, fascinated with ballet tutus. A creepier trans person, albeit we see her through his daughter's perspective, whose tutus he develops a fetish for.

Barry Loach's brother—trainer at ETA who moved away from a Catholic family and became a woman who held billboard's up at Atlantic City entertainments.

Unnamed transvestite thugs—when Don Gately remembers Fax's death, a trio of sirenish large women show up, and Don eventually recognizes them as “fags” (sic)...DG's term.

Though at first these short descriptions may not seem flattering, and DFW wasn't trying to push a TG agenda, but each character represents a large swath of the TG continuum. There are other trans references, and all in all positive, though some characters do not like/or see through/or ambivalent too the characters.

It's actually kind of nice to see a myriad of POVs. Helen gives us the idea of the hassles of really living like a woman. It's funny because he's straight, but a dedicated agent, and really tries (and somehow) miraculously passes. PTK is there for sheer depravity (not because of his gender) but because PTK has a gross and bottom of the well addiction problem. The other peripheral characters are more or less cardboard cut-outs, yet visible and not at all made fun of, but rather accepted with little to no judgement by characters who range from upper crust to junkies.

I'm shutting up. Go be fab. Be reborn. Happy Easter

To the Crossdresser at 20

Thank god for Prozac. Went cold for the better part of two weeks and kinda had an anxiety, well...shit...I guess... a gigantic expunging of neurotransmitters that had been pent up for so long....whew...anyhoo...back to normal operating levels...Happy National Poetry Month...the woman at the party is me...or us...or the speaker's female self.


To the Crossdresser at Twenty


The sunlight on the left side of your face
makes you look so pretty,
your hair a golden aura,
your skinny legs in ragged jeans.

The guitar will come late
to the party,
as will children,
and the kind of sanity
one only thinks one has a handle on.

Relax,
you're prone to clenching
your muscles so tight
your teeth grind at night.
You have been given the gift to rebirth yourself.
I have minor regrets.
Make your parties wild,
and large, and include yourself
in your own plots
to help others.
A little self mending never hurts.

You will attend meetings.
You will keep scratching
to make more of a life
out of beer cans
and note pads
and the hidden cache of clothes
and so many stacks of books.

Don't neglect the girl
at the party,
she will carry you when you cannot carry anything
other than syllables and apologies,
they are like paper lanterns in your hands,
the light flickering through your fingers,
the shadows, like jailed men
lean and swing in the thick summer air.

April is National Poetry Month

Thanks for the response on the last poem. This one is a little darker. I'm trying to quit drinking and live healthier and that includes being more emotionally honest with myself and my wife.

I am currently reflecting on my sexual history and dysfunction and trying to just figure out me. Sometimes I find it so awful that I can't choose. Isn't gender supposed to be natural? Isn't our sexuality?

I don't know anything...



NEWS FROM THE FRONT:
A Crossdresser Contemplates GID & Guilt


My secret hands and my secret desires can fill a theater
and entertain all the young whores
dressed for a fuck.

My heels make a click,
click.


Oh, comely nights.

There's a holy war in my head
about how to walk,
talk
and I don't mean
there's many causalities

I mean there's no end to the causalities.

Like Batman and the Joker,
the tedious madness
of two minds
that inhabit the same body,

the city,

fat as my psychiatric file.

There is no winner, and no
bomb, nor
truce,
a countless counting
of coups,

a shredded nightgown,
a worn dress,
scrubbed skin
of those who hands mark secret work.


Let's be honest:
I'd love to burn down
like the skirt on the floosie
in the back of the club,

how it turns to ash as she dances
to the music.
By the end of her night

the whore
will wear nothing but a slur and a smile,
her high heels snapped
from all the broken hearts she's tramping.

draft: working title "A Few Notes About CrossDressing"

What binds me to the earth,
which is to say,
what binds me to my body,
are the tight straps
of the camisole and the bright flash of satin
against freshly shaved skin.

It feels not like a cheap thrill,
or the sexed up joy one affords the mad,
but rather
it is the feeling of newness,

like how a new car's steering wheel rides the palm
or how a new pair of shoes
and a crisp new haircut feel
in the rush of spring
and the bright A/C of summer.

This awareness
is the spirit enlarging and enlarging
and reaching beyond its airy walls,
a conjoining of elements.

I just found it pertinent you know,
just in case there were questions
if I am found in the rubble.

What I like:the spiritual imagery, though as a rule I avoid those tropes, very overused. I like some of the lazy meandering rhythm. Will get back to you on the ending

How's your April springin'

Down South, the flowers are peeking, and the days are bright but raw and wet from the swales of cold Atlantic weather that are making the fields as green and slick as the shell of a grasshopper.
And Spring brings new clothes and new ideas and newness and newness.

Like a new haircut, or even a new pair of shoes.

Here's to you, and I'll be posting some verse for National Poetry Month, drafts, and perhaps mock up notes and sketches.

And speaking of the picture, can you guess which box would apply to me?