URNotAlone

Step One of Twelve

December 19th, 2007 7:35 pm MST

Hi, my name Sonia, and I'm a fuck up.

I was thinking about twelve step programs after browsing one Stacy's books titled "12 Steps to Raw Foods." I'm not quite converted to raw foodism yet, but the time was right for me to get the message that step one of recovery is admitting that you have a problem. My legal problems have impacted my life severely enough lately that I've finally felt compelled to start talking about them to a few people. Last month when I knew my chances of staying out of jail were dwindling, I started confessing parts of my story to a few people. I told my immediate supervisor that I had a court date that I might not be coming back from. I confessed to my girlfriend that I was afraid I was headed for problems and I might not be the person she thought I was. (Of course she promptly had our best mutual friend sit me down for a serious talk...) Hmm, and then I talked to my mother recently and told her I had been in jail and stuff. One thing I had heard from a couple people is, "Sonia, when you talk to a lawyer, you have to tell them EVERYTHING." Why would people say this to me? Do they get the sense that I'm not telling them everything? Well...there's probably something to their suspicions. It's easy for me to rationalize my eliptical stories, thinking, telling myself, and telling others out loud that, "It's complicated. It would take months to tell the whole ugly story. This is all that you need to understand."

That's denial, huh. If step one is admitting that I have a problem, I have to admit the whole problem. I have to admit it to myself before I can hope to understand it. Yeah, there is a whole ugly story, and yeah, it will probably take months to unravel it. Still though, I have to start. This is exactly what I hoped to start when I started this journal.

But, um, that was June, 2006. Eighteen months ago. That's a lot of months and, yeah, next to no progress. One might even argue that I've slid quite a few steps back for every step forwards. Maybe I just haven't admitted my problem yet.

So what is the problem? What do I have to admit? Let's say, just hypothetically, that I wanted to talk about my problems to someone--like a lawyer. Can I express my problems coherrently enough to even start a conversation? Below is the email I sent today to a legal group that helps transgendered people with limited resources. I think it's the first time I've expressed my problems this completely.

Dear [organization],

I am a transwoman currently in need of legal assistance. I am trans in the sense that I live full time as a woman while still legally and biologically male. My current legal problems are not obviously related to me being trans, but I am in desperate need of help and hope you will consider my situation and offer whatever guidance you can, even if it is only to refer me to someone else you think might be able to help.

My legal problems are related to alimony, paternity, and child support. I have failed to defend myself against claims against me, and further, have been negligent in responding to various court orders related to these claims. I have no good excuse or explanation for my inaction. Depression, anxiety, or gender dysphoria might all be proposed but I do not expect to be able to use any of these as a legal defense. I just need some way out of my problems and I currently don't have any workable plan. My friends refer me to lawyers but so far the responses I have had from lawyers have been to stare at me blankly and ask me how I expect to pay for legal services, to laugh in my face and say, "you're going to jail, my friend", and to tell me to get a second job. These responses have not been helpful.

My cases originate in Kansas. Massachusetts is taking action against me now to attempt to enforce these support orders from Kansas. These actions have included confiscating 100% of my paycheck, all of my bank accounts, my driver's license, jailing me for 35 days; and now I am currently under house arrest on electronic monitoring for 120 days.  As a result of being jailed and having bank accounts disabled, I lost my my apartment and my landlord confiscated all of my possessions, including all documentation I have related to this case. My credit cards and cell phone are suspended.

I am basically living out of a tote bag, sleeping in a friend's bed, relying on various friends to feed me, showering at my office, making do with a few changes of clothes and one very leaky pair of shoes.

I am employed. I have worked as an astronomer at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics here in Cambridge for the last five years. My annual salary is $50K. As I mentioned, currently the court is currently taking all of that. I get zero. I currently have no money except pocket change amount handouts pushed into my palm by close friends. My job, my friends, and my spirit are my precious assets.

I would be happy to come to your office if you would be willing to spend some time discussing this further. My electronic monitoring schedule will not allow me make one of your evening legal clinics, but can take off work for an appointment with you most any time during regular work day business hours.

Sincerely,
Sonia Keys

 

[1 comment]

Last Dance

December 11th, 2007 7:40 pm MST

Tuesday, December 4.  Lisa bought me lunch today but was horrified when I told her that I had been recording all of these little gifts that people had been giving me.  Hmm.  I shouldn't confess such things.  I should just do them and have people think that I am amazingly thoughtful and gracious of gifts.  Dinner tonight came from a reception here at work.  I had ignored the invitation but then Muazzez came by as she was leaving for the day and said I should go downstairs because the food was really good.  It was.  Hors d'oeuvres, little plates, filled up three times, a glass of Merlot.  My tummy is happy.

(Writing a week later, December 11, I'm grumpy.  I'll get around to explaining.  First, I'll write up some stuff from the last week.

Last Tuesday, there was no time to rest after the nice dinner--Rachel was coming over, as planned, and we were going to Natick.  Part of the plan was that she needed a place to dress.  I had her come to my office and we got ready together in the nice bathroom here where I've been showering.  It was really fun getting ready with her, because we worked side by side, putting our faces on, and just talking the whole time.  Then, here I was for the second week in a row at Natick!  I'm sure everyone was relieved to see me in makeup once again.  Deedee showed up and was happy to see me after so long.  Lucy, my ride home,  was there.  Michelle was there!  I like her, and I hadn't seen her in ages.  The five of us ended up taking some pictures, which was nice since Natick pictures are rare, and especially nice because Sonia pictures have gotten rare lately.

Wednesday, December 5.  I was searching Craigs List for last ditch possibilities for a new place to live, when I ran across an ad that stood out.  Rather than just advertising a room in an apartment, this was room in a housing co-op.  I don't know anything about co-ops, but the ad made it clear that this was a more  interactive social environment than the average shared apartment.  I answered, and got a most interesting response.  Describing to friends later, I called it an essay test.  Here is the "test", with my answers:

> Describe your commitment to Social Justice. Please
> tell us about justice work you have done: your PAST
> experiences, your PRESENT work, and your FUTURE plans…

I'm afraid much of my past experience with Social Justice is weak.
Only recently have I started to pay attention to issues like this.
(It shows maybe that I'm growing and learning?)  Early last year, I
discovered the Brights and registered as a Bright myself.  We Brights
adhere to a "naturalistic worldview," that is, as opposed to any
*super*naturalistic worldview such as is essential to most religions
and beliefs in gods or other supernatural agents.  This is a Social
Justice stand because we believe that Social Justice is meaningful and
can be discussed rationally without resort to direction from God.  I
know of organized Brights initiatives to promote these ideas and think
they are exciting, although I am not actively working with them.  I
guess my commitment, as you asked, has been just to register with the
Brights as a Bright myself, and explain my beliefs to people when
subjects like this come up in conversation.

More tangible Social Justice work has been my efforts to promote
rights of transgendered people.  Again, this has been just over the
last year, but I have accomplished a number things I am proud of.  In
one case, following a discrimination incident, I explored various
avenues of recourse until I discovered a group exists that provides
training to all people involved in this type work across the city of
Cambridge.  When I pointed out to them the part of their training that
was discriminatory, the response was, "Oh, you're right!  We'll change
the training."  I have also become an active member of the
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, participating in
various activities to lobby for and promote our current project, the
bill HR 1722 which will provide state-wide protections for
transgendered people.

My specific future plans include testifying in support of this bill
before the Judiciary Committee when the bill comes before them.  (We
had hoped this would be this year, but the end of the year is
approaching...)  My general plans include continuing to work with the
MTPC, and just, as I said, growing and learning as a person.

> How do you find Joy? (Some examples from house
> members: their social justice work, soccer, church
> involvement, kung-fu b movie making, bread baking,
> quilting, etc.)

I find joy in group social activities with friends.  Whether we go out
somewhere and have crazy fun dancing, meet new people and bring them
into our social circles, or just consume a whole evening sharing
stories, I so often come home feeling the thrill of joy.

I find joy in a bonding event with a friend.  We do something
together, discover our commonalities, or perhaps our differences, and
we are then closer.  That feels good.

I find joy in sailing.  Sometimes that means treating a friend to a
fun afternoon in the sun, once in a while it means winning a race, but
my favorite activity at Community Boating is teaching people how to
sail.  I take people out in a boat, magic happens, and when we return
to the dock, they almost always have the wide eyes of someone who has
learned.  They almost always thank me. Usually I feel their thanks are
genuine.  Wow, that makes my day.  Sometimes I get to see them later
in the day all victorious after passing their sailing test.  A few
times I've had apparent strangers call out to me some random place
around town, "Sonia?  Hey, hi!  Remember me?  You taught me how to
sail...."

I find joy in creating things.  Whether it's a cake or a fortran
program; to have a concept, work on it, bring the concept--my
concept--into existence, and see that some new and good thing exists
in the world; that makes me happy.

I find joy in learning--almost anything.

> Why are you interested in living in community?

Because I've seen the alternative and it's tragic.  A person who
isolates themselves (like a recent roommate of mine) not only makes no
contribution, they get no benefits.  They actually deprive themselves
of a significant part of their life.  A community is a living thing
itself.  It consists not just of physical things like homo sapiens,
but more importantly of the complex rules and relationships of
society.  These non-physical things are continuously growing and
evolving.  I am interested in living as a primate, I am interested in
living as an individual with a conscious mind, but I also recognize
that I am a live part of greater living entities, like communities.

> What do you want to get out of your co-op experience?

I will certainly learn from everyone around me.  We'll learn from each
other and be part of a living social unit and all, and certainly some
aspects of this will be new to me and I will integrate all of this.
This coop experience really has my interest now because it sounds so
much more stimulating and rewarding than the more common roommate
situation.  It shows just through your questions in this email.  What
else?...  I am looking forward to learning new cooking skills.  Oh,
and then there's the roof over my head thing.

> What can you bring to a community?

Forty six years of experience on the planet, an active mind and
relatively healthy body.  Probably a number of odd little skills,
like, I'm pretty good at tying knots, and, in a pinch, I could
probably get a nuclear power plant up and running.

> In your experience, what is conflict and why does
> conflict happen? When conflict has happened in your
> experience, what has been your role in it? Have you
> played several roles in conflicts before?  Please be
> specific and tell us about your experiences with
> conflict.

I assume we're talking about personal conflicts?  Conflict is when one
person disagrees with another and feels compelled to act on it.  The
action can be verbal, physical, or some change of behavior or refusal
to change behavior to protect their own interest (passive aggression.)
 I'm generally passive, and have often been passive to a fault,
avoiding conflicts that really need to be resolved.  My roommate that
I mentioned before would disapprove of something I was doing or not
doing--say, using a fabric softener that he found intolerably
aromatic--and try this passive aggressive thing on me.  I would ignore
him, telling myself, "hey, if he has a problem, he can tell me about
it in words instead storming around in a bad mood without telling me
why" and go on using the fabric softener when of course I knew exactly
what the problem was.  There's conflict being handled badly by both
parties.

I don't know, I think I'm pretty easy to live with.

> Do you have and concerns or questions about living at
> Cambridge Coop?

I'm guessing that most people attracted to living in a coop are pretty
easy to live with and I'm not worried about that.  I promise to not to
use Gain fabric softener.  I have a little question about the phone.
I use my cell phone for almost everything, but I do have one need for
a conventional land line.

> Please give a personal reference:

Name _______ Lynn ...
Relationship __ Former roommate (NOT the fabric softener intolerant one)
Contact info __ email:  ...

> Please feel free to bring us any additional info about
> you if you want—your poetry? A news clipping? Resume?

Oh no, I'm way too modest.

I've enjoyed this application, though.  And spent way too much time on
it (...but it's interesting enough that it's definitely getting posted
to my blog.  There, that gets more value out of the time.)

Still excited about this opportunity, and hoping I pass round two and
hear from you soon,

Sonia Keys

Not the average apartment rental questions, hm?  Having just submitted Lynn as a reference, I turned right around and emailed her so she would know it was coming.  We hadn't talked in ages and and so were suddenly making plans to meet the next day after work just to catch up on things.  Cool!  But then the next day I get email back from the co-op.  My contact there asked if we could talk on the phone the next day at 6:30.  Excellent!  ...Except I was meeting Lynn.  I thought surely we could just do it a little later and I emailed back asking if 8:00 would be ok.  I hadn't heard back from the co-op contact but I met Lynn anyway at Macy's Downtown Crossing at 5:15.  She was there with Rhonda!  Our mission was supposedly purse shopping but we were all so busy talking that we only half paid attention to the purses.  The adolescent t-girl in me was drawn to the glittery designs of Kathy Van Zeeland.  The girly girl in me loved the designs from Coach decorated with matching side bows.  Maybe the bows were a seasonal accent?  I don't see them on the website now!  They were so cute.  Lynn seemed to be looking for something with classic lines in a smooth red leather.  Nothing there, nothing affordable, anyway.  Rhonda left for home then.  Lynn and I had pizza and diet coke in the food court while we talked some more.  She told me about wedding plans, I told her about jail.  Back at work around 7:30 and hoping for a phone call about this housing co-op, I found an email saying she was busy herself and suggesting rescheduling on Sunday.  Ugh, two days lost.

For the rest of the evening, I decided to spend some precious dollars going to Jacque's.  Jessica had said she would be there with Debra, and I rationalized it further telling myself I might involve some people in conversation about my ideas for a new social group.  Jessica was there already when I arrived.  She introduced me to Debra.  Both Debra and I thought each other looked familiar but otherwise didn't remember meeting before.  I spotted Deanna and waved hello to her.  A number of other people there are familiar faces, but sadly, I haven't been social enough to get to know them.  (Hm, some chance I have of engaging anyone in conversation.)  Debra and I were reading a posted flier about next week's bands downstairs.  I said I had never gone downstairs to listen to the bands.  She said "don't.  the music is awful."  Well I can't pass up a challenge like that!  I went right down to find out for myself.  It was a cool punk band making an incredible amount of noise.  Drums, guitar, guitar, bass, vocals.  The vocalist wore her Manic Panic hair up in tight little pig tails, was young, cute, fat, dressed in black PVC, and was just shredding her throat into the mic.  I liked watching the bass player.  The band had a good fan club there to support them.  I'm not sure, of course, but I may have been the only trans person there.  No one else was very obviously trans anyway.  Back upstairs after that band's set, I chatted and mingled a little bit more.  One guy interested in talking to me was rather younger than most of the other guys, and very good looking.  He was interested enough to buy me a drink.  He was interested enough to invite me to go to another club for dancing!  I was defenseless at this point.  I told him I knew where we could go, said goodbye to Jessica, and we were out the door.

I led us one block over to Rumor where, at midnight now, the line was wrapped around the block.  My date took one look at the line and asked where else we could go, but of course I thought there might still be a chance.  I walked right up to the ropes at the door and sure enough, there was Maria.  "Sonia!!!!" she shouted, stretching out her arms to me.  "Long time, no see, blah, blah, blah...can you get me in?" I pleaded.  With one motion she unhooked the red velvet rope and waved us in.  Inside, I got the same reception from Mandy when she saw me.  It was so cool to be known.  The place was the same, the music was good.  I loved being back at that place.  I loved being there with this lovely little snack cake of a man.  House music obviously wasn't his thing, but he didn't care.  He was just there entertaining me for a bit.  I had to explain Rise to him a few times before it finally sank in that at 1:30 then, there were five more hours of dancing left.  Ha.  He, of course, wasn't up for it.  That's ok.  He bought me drink a Jacque's, paid our admission to Rumor, paid for the coat check, paid for another drink inside, paid for a cab to his place in Cambridge.  Omg, and he was so cute.  He was very shy about admitting it, but he was a doctorate student at MIT.  At his place, we used each other well and then I took a cab home.  Omg, did I really just do that?  Omg, how awful am I?  Omg, and how delicious was that?

Actually, before "home"--Stacy's place--I went to my office to shower.  Crawled in bed with Jessica *very* late, slept, and it was time to start getting ready to go to Randolph Country Club.  Incorrigible, aren't I?  A message on the answering machine from Daphne asked me to call.  I know she had hoped to take me home with her after she got off work Saturday.  I had promised to call and let her know and I hadn't called.  It was about 6pm when I called her back.  I was done and ready to walk out the door.  She was explaining that she had to fix some dinner, then get ready.  Her second preference was that I ride with Stephanie, so I promised to call Stephanie.  I got her on the phone grocery shopping, saying that she would be home in half an hour to fix dinner and get ready to go out.  I thanked her, but made it clear that I was headed straight to the club on my own.

Getting there was relatively uneventful, but I did get some negative attention on the train ride toward Ashmont.  A group of teenagers was delirious with laughter.  I got the idea that they generally found something funny to laugh about on their way home, and today it was simply my presence that was providing a good part of their amusement.  A couple of guys felt the need to look tough in the face of this outing of a tranny and one of them threw a punch in the air as walked by me to get off of the train, saying "fucking dude!"  That was the end of that, but it left me thinking of the nonsense in his exclamation.  I imagined a little scene where he said that without running away and I came back with "dude?  are you fucking blind?"  "You see this guy here?" as I gesture to the tough looking guy next to me, "This is a dude.  Now, you see the difference?"  "Dude," pointing to him.  "Tranny," gesturing to myself.  Now you wanna tell this guy to his face that you think he's the same as me?  Let me step aside first."  *sigh*  Imagination is fun.  With the cowardly hater off the train, attention turned to a guy rapping at the far end of the car.  He was up for a battle but with no one on the train stepping up to contest him, he was just targeting riders at random.  I was watching him of course.  He hadn't seen me.  The big guy next to me offered me reassurance, "He's harmless, he's just an artist."  "Yeah, and he's got no competition here" I added, paying respect to the rapper.

Around 8:30, I was, in fact, the first t-girl to arrive at RCC.  Yeah, for once I was there early and would have lots of time to visit.  I sat at the bar with the crowd of regulars for not long at all before the first girls showed up, the "New York" girls, (although they're not all from New York) Paige, Katie, Katie, and Brit.  After wandering around a bit, we settled at table.  I had forgotten Brit, but she remembered me.  Paige had forgotten me, but I remembered her.  That kind of thing is all fine and understandable when you just meet briefly at these things.  These four are young and pretty and have dazzling wit.  I, *sigh*, don't quite fit in with them, but they were happy to adopt me for a bit.  And a bit is all it was before girls I knew better started streaming in the door.  One surprise was Terri.  I thought she was in Florida.  Another very nice surprise was Jean.  I kept up then, for most of the night, noticing each girl that came in and making some time to talk with her.  One, Gina, turned out to be at RCC for the first time.  I called Vonnie over to meet her and the two of them had a nice long conversation.  Vonnie also told me all about the RCC Halloween party and I confessed to her where I was over Halloween.  I think Stephanie got there 10ish, and Daphne 11ish.  One girl I was very glad to meet and talk to for a bit was Lace.  I explained to her amusement my theory of how she was my great aunt because she had been dressing and coming to parties like this so much longer than me.  I also found her later on the dance floor by herself and I dance for a few minutes with her.  Mm, experience shows.  Her movement is beautifully fluid.  I so wish I could do that.  The night before at Rumor, one of the girls was even trying to coach me at one point, modeling movements and grabbing my hips to show me how I should be moving.  *sigh*  Now see?  That's the way to learn.  No inhibition, just practice, practice, practice.  I bought one drink for myself.  Jean bought me one, and, was that all?  Someone else might have bought me one but I can't remember.  I think Wendy offered but then didn't.  I did ask Wendy for a ride home though, and she obliged.  My head was clear enough that I was remembering that I needed to be back at my office by noon in case the girl from the co-op was going to call me back.  We kind of took the long way back before dropping me off at Alewife.  At Wendy's place, she offered...Champagne!  She popped the cork, we drank and talked and finished the bottle and slept very well.  At the train station finally, she pushed some money into my hand.  I sincerely tried to decline, but she insisted.  I love my friends.  They're keeping me alive right now.

At my office around 11:30, there was no word about a phone call.  I waited.  I sat around all afternoon and went home in the evening all sad and depressed.

Monday morning, I got around to cleaning up after myself a bit by bundling up some laundry and dropping it off on my way to work.  Stacy and Jessica had both told me stories about how hostile the laundry employees were toward transgenders.  I walked in without expectations.  "Good morning, I'd like to drop this off?"  I asked with a cheerful smile, placing my bundle on the counter.  "Wash, dry, fold?  Of course!"  She smiled back, setting the bundle on the scale.  "Oh, we have a minimum charge for under ten pounds," she couched.  The scale showed a little under ten pounds.  "That's fine.  Next time I'll know to bring more!"  I laughed.  "Can I pay now?"  "Sure...you can pick it up after 5:00 today."  "After 5.  Ok, thank you.  Goodbye!"  "Have a nice day!"  Hmph, yeah, evil transgender haters.

I piddled at the end of the day until I had to dash home from work to the the laundry before it closed.  They had locked the door already, but as I approached I saw the woman inside say something to the man and he went right to the door and let me in.  "Sonia?" she confirmed with a smile.  "Yes!" I said with great relief.  "Thank you!"  I popped inside the house, dropped off the laundry, then ran right back out to get to the MTPC meeting.  Got there at 6:50, exactly when the room was supposed to be available to us.  MTPC is starting to feel more comfortable to me.  At first I was really lost.  Now most of what they are doing is starting to make sense.  I got assigned a couple of tasks and was happy with that.  After MTPC I was back at the house just long enough to visit with Stacy for a bit, eat a salad, and visit with Jessica for a bit, before going back to the office yet again.  I wanted to check for word about the co-op, shower, and get ready to go back to court the next day.  Really I was in no mood to sleep.  I stayed up very late, staring at the computer screen, tweezing my face, and just wasting time.  Finally curled up on the floor for a few hours of sleep before morning.

Tuesday, today, is a bad day.  I don't even want to talk about it.  The deal is that two weeks ago the court's attorney cited a bunch of speculation they held about me that I was not being honest with them, told they judge they thought I was a flight risk and wanted me on electronic monitoring.  The judge agreed.  Well it turns out that "electronic monitoring" consists of monitoring that you stay under house arrest.  I am allowed to go to work at 8:00, be home by 6:00, and that's it.  House arrest for four months.  Starts tomorrow.

 

[2 comments]

Damage Control

December 8th, 2007 1:18 pm MST

Tuesday, November 27.  Stacy fixed me a nice breakfast of cereal.  I took my pile of mail that had arrived at the apartment over the last month to work with me, set it aside while I read emails at a leisurely pace, then went to coffee.  Today at coffee I felt much more comfortable with my appearance, after having had a chance to tweeze the most obvious whiskers from my face, and to dress more completely as Sonia with hip pads, breast forms, and that nice cowl neck sweater from Dina.  After coffee, I started opening envelopes and going through mail, setting aside the most important looking pieces.  One had come from the court with a copy of the sentence and saying that I would be scheduled to appear in court again on the first Tuesday following release.  Now, there was no other mail with the specific date and time I was to appear, but I had just been released yesterday.  I was guessing that it would be mailed out today, and that I would get something by the end of the week telling me the specific date and time.  I had heard people say that it was typically the week following release.  Still.....the only piece of paper I had in my hand actually said "the Tuesday following release" which strictly speaking was, today.  Crap.  I guess I should make sure.

 

It was lunch time so I decided to just run over to the courthouse and ask in person.  It was finally time to buy a 7 day T pass to get me over there in a hurry.  At the courthouse, I showed my paper, and explained that I just wanted to make sure I wasn't supposed to appear today.  "Let me check" the court worker said, and disappeared.  Back in a minute, he handed me a stack of forms.  "Fill these out."  Oh shit.  I knew what that meant.  I was supposed to be there that day, and, the usual time to appear is 8:30 in the morning.

 

Well, it wasn't exactly planned this way, but Sonia was finally going to appear before the judge.  The court's attorney stifled a giggle as we approached the bench, but that was the only reaction I got from anyone.  So there, now that I've appeared before the judge as Sonia, I'm done!--I have absolutely no occasions left where I would ever want to dress as a male.  It's a milestone.  It feels really good.

 

Results of court were unpleasant.  They are going to make me wear an electronic tracking anklet for four months.  Unfortunately for them, they need me to have a home address where the anklet can ensure that I stay.  The problem of course being that after a month in jail, I'm homeless.  They told me I had two weeks to find an apartment and they turned me out on the street again.  What insanity.  On the train, back to my office, checked emails again, returned a message to Wendy.  She wanted to pick me up in an hour to go out for dinner.  "You're buying?"  I asked immediately.  "Ah, I guess so!"  A few minutes later she was calling back again.  "Dinner is off.  7:30?"  Rats.  A real dinner sure would have been nice.  I settled for a Dunkin bagel from the Alewife station while I waited for Wendy to pick me up.

 

Natick.  Wow, how long had it been?  It was really nice to be back.  That place is cool, so relaxed.  I was happy with myself that I remembered most everyone's name.  And of course everyone remembers me (and actually seems to like me!)  I had a few offers to buy me a drink but I declined them all.  Inside I was really driven by humbleness, but the explanation that came out of my mouth was that I was staying away from alcohol.  Sheesh.  That's something you can't go back on.  I was stuck staying dry for the night anyway.  Wendy, understanding that I had no money, did later offer to buy me a bowl of chowder when she was having some herself.  She's really a nice person.  Thoughtful and considerate.  At the end of the night she insisted on giving me $30 cash.  I had her drop me back at Alewife, took the train back to Harvard, crashed again at Stacy's.

Wednesday, November 28.  As I hurried off to work in the morning, Stacy offered me a few orange sections and sent along with me a breakfast bar and big salad that she had made for me the night before.  I was hurrying because this was technically my first day back at work.  First day on the clock, that is.  A grueling day it was too.  I straightened desk.  I'm not sure I did much else work related.

Non-work related, I caught up on a lot of Sonia Kiss stuff, sending "here I am" emails to a number of friends, and checking messages and stuff on various social networking services.  For the evening, I knew Stacy was going to a dance, and Jessica had talked about Meredith coming down and wanting to see me.  Around 5pm I emailed Jessica and also left a message on her answering machine saying "hey, let me know if I can come over."  A little after 7, I think, the phone rang.  It wasn't Jessica, but Kuan-Chung!  He asked if I had had dinner and if I wanted to go to Chinatown with him.  Frustrated with Jessica, I agreed immediately.

 

We ended up going to a Vietnamese place and having a nice time.  He bought me dinner, had me take the doggy bag, and gave me some left over apple pie when we got back to his place.  I had wanted to go back there to get another bag of clothes.  I filled my tote bag with some warm and long sleeve tops, a few other little things, and left for my temporary home, Stacy and Jessica's place.  (Oh, one thing I grabbed was a suit jacket I had been holding onto since early spring.  This belonged to Tina, who lost track of it one night with Sisters when her drinking was out of control.  I took it home with me that night, and emailed her a couple of times telling her that I had it, but apparently it wasn't important enough to her to make plans to get it back.  I'd kept it in my closet until now, but...I currently don't even have a closet.  I thought it might fit Lisa, and that she would give it a new home.)

 

I got there a little before 11pm, I think, and was glad to see all of the lights on.  I did kind of expect Stacy at least to be there.  I was glad to see that Kate was still up so I wouldn't have to worry about waking her.  I tried the back door in case someone had left it open for me but it was locked.  I rang the doorbell in front, got buzzed in, walked up to the apartment door, tapped on it quietly and waited.  And waited.  No one ever came.  What could it mean?  Somebody was home and buzzed me in.  If it were Jessica or Stacy, shouldn't they let me in?  If it were Kate, she might wait and let Jessica or Stacy come.  Problem is, Jessica wages war against Kate and so the two of them avoid communicating with the enemy at all costs.  So it's possible that Jessica, avoiding contact with Kate, just assumed that Kate would let me in, but that Kate, knowing it was not her guest at the door, felt it was not her job to open it.  It's also possible that Kate just assumed that Jessica or Stacy heard the door when in fact they didn't and while she buzzed me in the outer door, she didn't feel it was her job to take any further action.  What bullshit.  At any rate, I was a victim of Jessica's senseless war against Kate.  I was pissed.  I left and headed back to my office to sleep on the floor.

 

On the bench outside Darwin's was an opened but mostly full bag of cashews.  Here's what I've come to.  I picked them up.  The bag looked clean, perhaps just forgotten.  Perhaps someone reconsidered and decided to stick to their diet after all.  I slipped the bag in my purse and walked on.  In my office, the cashews were a welcome midnight snack.  My phone did ring about midnight, but I was still pissed and wasn't about to answer it.  Sat in front of the computer in a sour mood doing nothing until late.  Finally lied down on the floor, rested my head on my tote bag, draped my coat over me for a blanket, and closed my eyes for a few hours.

Thursday, November 29.  Grumpy in the morning and feeling ugly, I stayed in my office with the door closed all morning, only poking my head out once to retrieve last night's doggy bag from the hall fridge.  Some time after noon, I walked back to Stacy's and buzzed again.  She greeted me at the door with a smile and handed me a key.  I was instantly in a better mood, and we talked and had nice conversation while I tweezed more hairs from my face.  I was really being away from work for too long but it was so nice to talk.  She gave me a tub of yogurt to take with me for an afternoon snack.  Wanting a few more calories and a little more pleasure, I bought a cherry Coke at Darwins, went and filled my Prozac prescription, and returned to work.

 

In a happier mood, I wasn't feeling so ugly any more but it was true that Sunday evening was actually my last shower.  See, Stacy and Jessica's place is pretty dilapidated, and without going into detail about their shower, let me just say that I wanted another option.  I called Lisa.  "Where exactly is the shower you were saying is somewhere in the building?"  "Meet me.  I'll show you."  Fascinating, it was.  After the tour of a couple of little known corners of the building, we swung by my office and I gave her that suit jacket that used to be Tina's.  Daphne called around the end of the day to remind me about a presentation on HIV research at the Boston Living Center.  She thought of me when she saw that it was free and that they were serving food.  Hey, I'm not below that.  I went.

At the BLC there were indeed nice hors d'oeuvres and soft drinks, but I ended up not eating so much because the presentation and the conversation among the attendees was just fascinating.  The presentation was about the recent vaccine trial that was halted in failure and how to understand the reports of this that were appearing in the media.  Audience looked to be mostly gay men.  I didn't notice any other obviously trans women there.  I did see Alex...I feel so bad that I never sent him my comments on the supper club.  Maybe he'll forgive me if I tell him I was in jail?

 

On the way home, who did I run into at random, but Kuan-Chung!  We started talking and wanted to talk longer than just the train ride back, so he got off with me at Harvard to tag along for a bit.  I knew I would need more food that I ate at the BLC so my first stop was the 7-11 where I got a sandwich and lemonade.  The two of us walked back to my office.  "Oh, it looks just like where I work!" he exclaimed as we wound our way through the hallways.  "Just the posters are different."  That is, it's a pretty generic science lab.  He works in bioscience, I work in astronomy--only the posters are different.  He shared a cookie with me before I walked him down the stairs to the bus stop to send him home.  He's so pleasant, so nice, he must have been so bored to want to hang out with me!  I checked a few things on the computer, before returning to Stacy's.  Thursday happens to be one of her nights off.  She was home and happy to see me--in bed.

Friday, November 30.  After a couple hours of sleep, I was up for work and Stacy gave me a salad for lunch again.  It was nice to have that salad ready for lunch time, but I needed breakfast.  Four ginger snaps and coffee would have to do.  The salad was good, but I wanted just a few more calories.  Gareth had mentioned earlier that Jimmy, the guy that drives the lunch truck, had been asking about me.  How sweet.  How could I not go buy something from him.  I got a coffee milk and dropped it in my purse on the way down to the bus stop to run a mid-day errand.  I had visited the community boating web site and seen that this was the last day to claim locker contents before it was all given to charity.  I was very happy to find all of my stuff there in the lost and found bin.  I also couldn't resist taking a couple of items that weren't mine:  An unopened can of soda, and a women's winter scarf.  I needed a scarf after leaving my nice one on a commuter rail last year.  All I had now were boy scarves, and I wanted a girl scarf.  With my stuff in a plastic bag, I made a quick trip upstairs to tell the director that I had happily found my stuff and that I was leaving now.  I couldn't resist asking him though...  "If you have a moment, I have kind of a strange question" I began.  I know, I've regretted asking this question every time I've asked it, and I've sworn off ever asking it again, but this was a special opportunity.  I was alone with the director of the whole organization, at the end of the whole season.  It seemed ok to ask his perspective from this point.  "Was I, ok this year?  I mean, you know, I sailed here for a few years, then skipped a year, then came back, as a woman..."  He was nodding, understanding. and waiting for me to finish.  "...and I wondered if you had heard anything...negative."  He was still nodding.  "No, he said.  No one has said a thing."  I was smiling tentatively now.  "Oh good.  I guess, no reaction from people is the best possible reaction."  Wanting to just express some general appreciation for his organization, I elaborated.  "Always before, the most rewarding thing for me was to take new people out for instruction and teach them sailing.  I, didn't know how that would go this year, but I tried it and it turned out to be every bit as successful and rewarding.  I really enjoyed this year."  "That's great" he said smiling and nodding.  "Hey, you know, over this winter, we have a few dates for work parties.  I could get you those dates..."  "Oh, they're on the web site" I acknowledged.  I'll watch for them there..."  I thanked him again and left, for once actually glad I had asked this  question of, "am I allowed to exist?"  I was happy enough I couldn't resist buying a Dunkin muffin on the way back to work.  The muffin held me until dinner time, when Stacy fed me chili on rice.  Jessica happened to be out so I used the opportunity to on her computer to update my journal here.  Omg, it had been so long.  Jessica came home before too long though, and for some reason had money burning a hole in her pocket.  She wanted to take me to Charlie's.  How could I refuse?!  Two beers, hello's to all the regulars there, home to sleep with Jessica.

Saturday, December 1.  I had agreed to meet Daphne and spend some time with her over the weekend.  She had left a phone message on Stacy's machine that she was working Saturday and should be free shortly after 2pm.  I woke at 9am, again at 10:30, and was up at 11:00.  Stacy fed me a pear and cooked rice cereal with banana.  Dressed and went into the office, which is complimenting Stacy's place nicely as part of my temporary home.  I checked emails and stuff, then showered and put on clean clothes, and packed the last several days worth of dirty clothes to take to Daphne's.  I had some time for people watching while I waited for Daphne to get off work.  South Station was crazy with special holiday attractions so it was entertaining.  Daphne finally appeared.  Home in Attleboro, she fixed a wonderful dinner of stir fry chicken and vegetables on rice, and cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving.  Coffee, computer, TV, bed.  Nice to get away.  Nice to see Daphne after so long.

Sunday, December 2.  I couldn't stay in bed in the morning.  I was up starting laundry, washing my wig, playing on the computer more.  Daphne fixed us a nice breakfast of eggs, bacon, and hash browns.  I did a bunch more cleaning during the day.  Toward evening, I fixed myself a little snack of salad and bread, not wanting to go too long between lunch and dinner.  Daphne was hungry before long herself, and whipped up another great meal:  steak, potatoes, onion soup, salad, and cranberries on ice cream.  We watched more TV and then I used the tub for a long and luxurious bubble bath.

 

Monday December 3.  Coming into the city with Daphne means I'm at work early.  I should really do this more often.  No plans for lunch, so I went to Stacy's to forage.  I decided to make pea soup.  It turned out really good but took way too long to prepare.  No worries.  I didn't have anything pressing at work, so I stayed at my desk late into the evening.  At one point I got an email from Rachel inviting me to Natick tomorrow, as she was going to be there with Lucy.  In a flurry of emails we planned the transportation and dressing issues for the three of us.  Home to Jessica's late at night, I stayed up even later to paint my nails for the first time in six weeks.  I don't know why it struck me so, but I really got a kick out of doing the whole girl thing.  Jessica and her computer were sprawled over half of her bed, I lied on my tummy on the other side and painted my nails.  Jessica said "I could never lie like that" meaning, I presume, that her back wouldn't arch like mine.  I took it as a challenge.  On my tummy, up on two elbows, back arched, base coat, two coats of color, top coat, one hour of drying time while I read one of her forced feminization pulps.  Hmph.  I did it.  Um...is that ok? ...that I would take a casual comment like that as a challenge?  Is it a guy thing?  I hope not.  I loved so much the moment of us just being two girls, lounging around in a girls room, doing girl things.  Hm, ok, maybe my thinking was a bit off.  I guess "girl" isn't very accurate.  I guess it's "tranny."  Whatever, I loved the feeling.

 

[2 comments]

Crash

December 6th, 2007 10:28 pm MST

The weekend after the aborted telescope run was spent in bed, in pain, stressing over this upcoming court date on Tuesday, and ignoring all calls and messages.  In particular I'd been ignoring Daphne and Deedee for over a week now.  I had confessed my legal problems to them and they were anxious for me to do something to deal with the problems.  I had done nothing.  I had nothing to tell them and I didn't want to listen to them ask why and lecture me about doing something.

Tuesday morning came after yet another sleepless night.  This would be my second court appearance since going full time last spring.  The other court appearance had been my only day to dress male mode since.  Since this case predates Sonia, since I'm still legally male, and since appearing en femme before a judge seemed an unnecessary distraction, I wanted to go male mode again.  I really wanted to leave the house that way, but Al was piddling in the kitchen and there was no way around him.  So, women's ankle boots, women's jeans, men's button shirt, men's sport coat, wig, and purse over my shoulder, and I popped out of my bedroom door, breezed by Al, tossing a "good morning" over my shoulder, and whisking out the front door without giving him a chance to answer.  Somewhere along the way to the courthouse, I don't remember where, I pulled off the wig, stowed it in a plastic bag in the purse, and transferred the purse from my shoulder to my hand.

The story of court is featureless and not worth telling.  It ends with the judge saying "35 days."  I was going to jail.

I journalled a bit from jail. Much of what I wrote is aimless.  Here I'm just transcribing parts of interest.  My writing starts with me still in a daze:

Wednesday, October 24.  Nice to have paper and pen after just one day here.  I suppose also nice to have a year or so of writing practice.  No idea what to write about.  First the fact:  I'm in jail.  And I'm alive.  Concerns of others that I might be suicidal have been proven unfounded.  My concern, that I would be incapacitated without ibuprofen, has also passed.  My neck has been spasming some, but not as badly as I'd feared.  Rest helps, massage helps, Dr. Deb's acupressure technique helps.  Just changing positions, standing for a while, helps.  Quite likely the biggest help of all is relief from the stress of this day finally passing.  The uncertainty of it and the self-brought stress of not doing anything to prepare for it or avoid it.  The obvious question is why.  I dread that question because I don't have an answer.  I don't know why I've done this.  I really don't.

[I ramble here about detoxing, being bored with people telling each other tales of violence,  the world series, buying cosmetics rather than snacks from the jail canteen, my chaotic sleep patterns, and how the late night trashy dating shows on TV are so het.]

I'm enjoying little expressions of femininity.  When I first got a bunk here Tuesday, Kirin was the first, really the only, person to say hi and ask me my name.  "Sonia" I answered  He blinked in disbelief and said "No, really."  "Kyle" I tried again.  He recovered his composure and said, "Oh, you're funny...."  Later in the day after he'd had time to think, he came back for more detail.  "So you're gay?"  "I was living as a woman" I came right out and said.  He wanted to caution me not to throw that in people's faces there because they don't care and don't want to know--at best.  So I haven't been, but I've been quiet in general, minding my own business, but trying to at least be aware of what's going on.  Most everyone else seems pretty good at this and so my feminine quirks don't seem to bother anyone.  My nails are delightfully long right now and still nicely covered with clear polish.  My eyebrows still have their severely plucked shape, my face still not showing much of any beard shadow.  And I've been flaunting as few mannerisms here there.  I'll sit in feminine ways and try to follow my usual practice for elbows, arms, hands, fingers, posture, shoulders, and walk.  My arms still look nicely enough shaved and it's been nice to wash them and then use this nice smelling lotion [that I bought from canteen.]

[More rambling about my sore neck, my diet (documented in absurd detail,) dealing with soft contact lenses, dealing with the jail medical staff.]

One thing I didn't report was my transgenderism.  Medical might like to know, but this is, yet anyway, an undiagnosed medical condition.  I'm not even sure I want that diagnosis.  I do miss being Sonia, but I'm ok with putting her away for a month and that's all that seems to make sense.  Physical modifications to my body aren't so dramatic that anyone here seems bothered, I'm not on any hormone prescriptions, and I've always said how fortunate are the TS's that can put the girl in the closet for a limited time in order to achieve longer range goals.  Time to take my own medicine.

Random Sonia thought:  Kissy face lip pose.  I think I just learned this last week!  The trick to making the lips pucker is to pull the corners of the mouth toward the middle.  So simple, but I didn't get it until last week!  This was a problem at Natick one night about a year ago when Danielle had done my lip makeup and we were posing for Tiffany's camera.  Someone had the idea of us doing a photo with pouty lips and I didn't know how to do it.  I tried to push my lips out and succeeded in only making a face like I had put something with a bad taste in my mouth.  A clue that it was possible came from Jessica, the esthetician at Beauty and Main.  She said I had good lips.  "Really?" I questioned her.  I thought my lips were impossibly thin male lips but she argued that they were plenty full.  Frustrating evidence came with a picture Rachel posted of herself with super pouty kissy lips.  Rachel's lips are as thin as mine!  How did she do that?  (Also frustrating, how does she know that and I don't?  It's frustrating that some girls are seemingly so much more naturally feminine than me! :(((  The final key cam when I watched an episode of "America's Next Top Model."  With serendipity, the gimmick they had picked to this episode was to have the contestants (women) crossdress as men for a photo shoot with professional drag queens.  At one point, one of the judges, a man, was criticizing one of the contestants for failing to make her lips look masculine.  He pointed to one of the photos saying "See?  You're doing this..." and he made the pouty face, "instead of this" and he let his lips return to their natural thin-lip male shape.  Wow!  So there it was demonstrated right in front of me!  I tried a few times in front of the mirror and I saw the light.  So... just one day later I'm getting my mug shot for jail and I try practicing.  I don't exactly want a kissy face, but I try making my lips look fuller by pulling the corners in a little.  It worked!  It's not an attractive photo by any means.  I look totally beat, like, scary stressed, weary and defeated, which of course, I was.  And, another lesson I still haven't learned is not to let my head tilt to the right for straight-on pictures because my mouth is already tilted to the right a bit and tilting it more makes for photos where my mouth just jumps out as looking disturbingly crooked.  My mugshot is like this.  But at least the lips are full!  I was pleased.  One last posing tip from the show:  They were saying that a clenched jaw masculinizes the face.  Haven't practiced that in the mirror yet but it makes sense.

[More rambling about food, getting medicine, playing Monopoly.]

[Ha, there's a funny story I didn't write up about my Monopoly partner relating a nightmare where lots of crazy things happened.  One of the scary things he dreamed was that I was scratching him with my long fingernails.]

Friday, October 26.  [A page and a half of nothing:  A visit from the nurse, guys amused at me being cheerful and ditzy, sketching with colored pencils.]

Saturday, October 27.  Bad muscle spasms sent me to bed early yesterday and have been a problem all day today.  [Boring stuff: reminiscing about camming that recent night, more about my health.]

Then this on my sad state in life:  My happy pill is nice but it's also good for me to listen to some of these guys tell stories about losing everything in life and then getting started again.  It gives me inspiration.  From where will I start?  Will I still have an apartment?  A job?  Will I have any clothes?  Any possessions?  Quite sure I won't have any cash.  Will my credit card work?  Answers could be all no.  Suppose I do still have a job, will it be enough to satisfy the court?

Ok, happy thoughts while my neck is happy--my night with Stacy.  We'd waited so long for this and it turned out great.  She called when she was free after work.  I'd started the night without her at Charlie's Kitchen with dinner and a beer.  I was worried I wouldn't recognize her because she was coming male mode and I'd never seen her male mode!  It was easy though when she rolled in all smiles and gave me a hug.  She ordered me another beer so we could have a few minutes to hang out at the bar before leaving.  It was wonderful for me to be there with a guy who was obviously my date.  Um, not to slight any of the other men who have taken me out or gone out with me in the past, but, Charlie's is my Cheers, where everybody knows my name, and Stacy is, mm, yummy.  He was getting up to use the restroom before we left and kissed me on the cheek and I guess my eyes were wide or my mouth was hanging open or something because he asked if that was all right.  "Are you kidding?" I asked.  "It's every tranny's dream to be kissed in public by a handsome man!"  He took me to his hotel room, in his rental Crown Vic, and we made sweet, long awaited, love.  I apologized afterward for erratically switching back and forth over the night between seeing him as a man and seeing her as a woman.  It was Stacy the the girl I knew when we talked, when I looked at her face, when I kissed her deliciously soft girl lips.  And then, I would look down and see this broad sexy man's back under me on the couch and I would get such a thrill at being this man's girl--er, except I was on top--and then my head would spin at the craziness of it all and I loved it.  She took me home before midnight, I went in and dropped off a bag or something, I don't remember what, and then, I was bad:  I went back to Charlie's on my own.  It was bad because I really didn't need to drink any more and I really didn't need my ego stroked.  But it felt so good!  I fielded questions about my date, and ended up sitting next to these three gay cuties.  One of them wanted to talk to me, explain that he had seem me all around Harvard Square.  He, and everyone else saw this as a compliment, but it made me feel a little strange.  It shouldn't, I know.  I know I'm visible, and I've long since given up on going to a lot of trouble to always wear makeup and stuff, yet to have my visibility pointed out makes me worry that some of the people I'm visible to might not exactly be fans.  As I explained to this guy (Jason?  Was that his name?) it only takes one hater to ruin my day.  Anyway, I was basking in tranniness that night.  Chris complained, "How did you become a celebrity?  I've been coming to this bar for years and no pays attention to me!"  Poor Chris, we love him though.  Ok, I've been sitting in front of an open window this whole time I've been writing and I'm frozen now.  Bedtime.

Sunday, October 28.  [Complaining about my worsening health, then this:]

Fingernails still in good shape.  I'm regretting a conversation from a few minutes ago, though.  A guy was complaining about his face itching after a few days without shaving.  [We hadn't been given any razors up to this point.]  A couple of us agreed.  I said it had been five days for me.  He looked at me and said "what, you don't got no facial hair?"  I think I smiled a guilty smile and shook my head no.  "Do you wax?"  I answered yes, thinking that waxing would probably produce results pretty close to the tweezing that I had really been doing.  But then I regretted immediately the little lie and even more, the brush off.  I wished I had said "Not waxing, laser.  I'm a tranny..."

Tuesday, October 30.  [Just bemoaning not being able to write because of the neck pain.]

Tuesday, November 6.  [A week had passed in pain.  Continued explanation of the neck pain, and a note that this was the first day the pain had lessened enough to let me sleep.]

Excitement for the last week was Jessica and Stacy visiting, getting a card from Al and Kuan-Chung, getting to shave, and finding out that I might get out next week, at 23 days rather than at 35.  They told the story of tracking me down in jail.  The whole sequence of events wasn't completely clear to me, but they mentioned talking to Al, Deedee, and Daphne.  They promised to return on Thursday eventing, which would be really nice.

I learned from Stacy that the captain on duty had strongly advised them against visiting dressed as women for future visits.  I think his justification was to avoid embarrassing me.  Then after they left, the captain gave me a similar warning.  He fumbled for words, kind of searching for diplomatic way of expressing things, finally saying that he didn't want there to be "problems" for me.  Ugh, wish I could write more now but my neck is cramping again.

Here's what I wrote in a letter to Stacy:

About coming to visit male mode, I feel pretty strongly that you shouldn't.  Coming male mode would be marginalizing yourselves.  It wouldn't be just a concession to any individuals here at the jail, but would be a concession to the heteronormative memeplex that would deny us first class citizenship.  I'd be disappointed to see you male mode.  And you know, I told you that I went to court male mode, but absolutely the only reason was to not complicate matters by forcing the judge to wonder if it was a bizarre stunt intended to manipulate or distract from the legal issues.  As soon as it was over, I really wished I was en femme just so everyone would have seen the person I really am, and so I could have seen how they would deal with me at the jail.  Also, while I dressed male mode to face the judge, I've come to the courthouse on other days as Sonia and had no problems whatsoever working with any of the court workers.  I showed them my drab ID and they didn't even raise an eyebrow.

It's not surprising though, that the officer you talked to tried to discourage you from coming as yourselves.  My perception, after observing a number of the correction officers over ten days now, is that as a group, they are far more homophobic than the general population.  Jokes about gays are told they way fifth grade school boys would tell them, with giggles about the taboo.  Jokes, really almost all comments, about women are viciously misogynistic.  I don't get this same feeling from the inmates.  Their attitudes about women and gays seem to to be pretty close to those of the general population--the population you as a transwoman deal with every day.

Friday, November 9.  [News that I was indeed there for 35 days.  Then sadness:]  My nails are short again.  A nurse warned me that I could get in trouble for having long nails.  She just made a statement and didn't pose any question to me so I didn't respond.  I wanted to protest that no one had told me that rule and that anyway, I had tried to order nail clippers from canteen but that they didn't come.  The job of a jail nurse is not to show concern though, so I didn't bother.  The clippers came the second week when I reordered them and I sadly trimmed all ten long beautiful nails.  At least there's a little clear polish left on them.

I've found other simple pleasures recently.  We finally got to shave one day.  We were given 15 minutes so several of us were madly scrambling to share the running water in one sink.  After I had made only a couple of swipes on my face, one guy looked at me and said "damn, that's a really good shave!"  This experience has really made me appreciate how much of my beard shadow the laser removed, even if it seems that lots of whiskers are still left.  A couple of minutes later my face was smooth to my standards so I pulled off my shirt and did my arms and armpits.  Eyebrows went up, but no one said a word.  [In fact, I later saw another guy shaving his armpits.]  Cocoa butter lotion to make the skin soft and I was a happy girl.  Happy to show off my arms in the cafeteria the next day too.  Since day one here, I've been wearing my sleeves turned up to form a cuff and show a little more skin,, making my arms look just a little more long and slender.  I've seen the CO's call a couple of guys on creative ways of wearing the jail uniforms, but so far no one has told me to turn my cuffs down.  Anyway, it's just one little turn, so the effect is subtle.  More obvious, I think, is the way I've been rolling up my pant legs.  Everyone has to roll up their pant legs because the jumpsuits they give us are absurdly oversized.  My little variant is that I fold the pant legs tightly against my angles before rolling them, so instead of a baggy pants look, I get a neat taper to my legs and then show off my ankles.  Just silliness, but I like it.

Sunday, November 11.  The things you learn in jail!  A guy just demonstrated how to make a blow up doll (well, the important body part anyway) out of a latex glove.  You take a glove and blow it up to about the size of a basket ball.  He said making it even larger is better.  The size of a beach ball?  Tie off the wrist as you would a balloon, then pull the index and ring fingers around the outside in opposite directions, tying them together over the knotted wrist.  This pulls the originally rounded shape into a shape like two buns.  Push the middle finger to the interior to form the orifice.  Lubricate as desired.

My girl moment was this morning at meds.  I was happy to get them as always and as I returned to my bunk, a group of guys erupted in laughter and one said "go get 'em Smalley."  [Er, that's my legal last name.]  "What?" I said with puzzlement and a smile.  "You did a little dance there."  I realized I was smiling at happiness at getting the meds and must have been acting very Sonia.  It was good natured fun from them and nothing cruel.

[Some stuff about some book I was reading to pass the time.]

Monday, November 12.  I had hints of this yesterday but today it's been very clear--my muscle problem has lessened.  I can still feel it when the medicine wears off, but it's pain I can tolerate and still function.  Maybe this problem will be gone by the time I leave here?

Saturday, November 17.  Muscle problem being completely controlled by medicine now.  Haven't been writing much here because I've been writing to Stacy instead!

In a 14 page letter started Wednesday the 14th, I told her all about a hospital visit one day.  "...at least a change of scenery, a car ride, a look up at the open sky on certain one of the nicest days in November."  I talked about food and bragged about my weight, telling how one officer was baffled at how to put a waist chain on me at one point because I was so skinny.  I told how a side effect of the hospital trip was that I got bumped into a different part of the jail when I got back.  I wrote:

The different areas of this place have very different "personalities."  The area I was in before was kind of like nursery school and this place is more like high school.  In area #1, (let's call it) lots of us laid around and napped all day.  I'll see for sure tomorrow, but there seems to be a busy social scene here and I'm pretty sure that napping during the day just won't happen.  In area #1, the teacher sat in the room with us and nobody thought of misbehaving.  In area #2, the teachers stay in the teachers' lounge as much as possible and we kind of self-rule by gangs.  In nursery school, class size was 12.  Here in high school, there are 72 of us packed into study hall.  And, maybe most interestingly, in area #1, Kirin was right, that no one cared about my story.  He ended up being the only one there that knew my name is Sonia.  With the little micro society here in area #2, inquiring minds want to know.  I was quickly interrogated about a few of my obvious quirks--like my shaved arms--and I was ready to just out myself as trans and it's looking now (Thursday, 5:15pm) like I'll be known as Sonia here!

I wrote back to her about lots of stuff that she had written me about.  I jabbered more about my diet.  She had asked me in a letter if I would go back to male mode if I had to look for a new job when I got out.  My reply was a little vague:

Job hunting male mode would sure be a last resort.  I get so many mixed signals on this I don't know what to think.  I'll do whatever I have to do, but there are so many encouraging signs that I will be accepted as Sonia at future jobs.

The letter went on to talk about various lousy jail policies, my hospital trip, my now improving health, and...shaving:

Oh, another nice thing about this area is that we have more razor time.  In the other place I barely had time to shave my arms.  Last night I had time to do my legs as well!  That creeped out a couple of guys but it felt so nice to have smooth legs again.  A couple of guys nervously asked who I was shaving my legs for and seemed somewhat relieved when I said "just for me.  No one else."  Seriously, guys shaving their faces got just as much flak.  A few people sneered at them asking if they had hot dates for the night or asking them why they bothered to shave in jail.  Fair enough, hm?

Later in the letter, this:

Hey, you'll like knowing that you were wildly popular today.  I'm not sure how so many of them saw you, since we were in that little alcove instead of the bigger room but lots of the guys saw you today and were all full of questions afterwards.  [It turned out that many of their visitors had had the chance to talk with Stacy while waiting, and that stories were then passed on from the visitors to the inmates.]  You can also share my happiness that there was not a single negative comment.  It probably helped that just yesterday about ten of us sat around and I was prompted to tell all about me as Sonia and they all shared what knew from other transsexuals that they had known.  The short of it is that out of 70 or so guys, we have a few that are totally out as gay, and it's nothing much different for me to be out as trans, and everyone is ok with that.

---

Monday, November 26.  I'm released after 35 days in jail.  On the way out the door they gave me a check for the money in my canteen account, $53.98, which was what was left of the $75 I came in with plus $30 that Kuan-Chung deposited for me as a gift.  Across the street at the court house, I recovered my purse, containing an additional $1.31.  Making me much happier though, my purse contained my wig and the gold necklace from Trina.  I went in the men's room, straightened up as best I could, donned wig and necklace, and walked out looking (at least somewhat) like Sonia for the first time in a month.

I was wearing a man's button shirt and sport coat, no hip pads, no breast forms or bra, no makeup to cover my beard shadow, but I held my head up and walked out on the street.  The ticket machine at the train station confirmed that none of my bank cards worked.  As I expected, they had all been shut off.  $1.31 isn't enough to by a bus fare these days, but weather was nice enough for the 40 minute walk to my office.  I arrived just in time for morning coffee, where people were happy to see me, and all acted oblivious to my rough appearance.  After checking in with various people and checking emails, I walked "home", to my old apartment in hopes of talking to Al.

Sure enough, he was there and filled me in on part of the story of my disappearance.  True to form, some of the story he omitted, and some of it I had to dig out of him. He explained to me that all of my belongings were locked up in the basement, but couldn't tell me why or under what conditions I could have them back.  I asked him who got stuck with the manual labor of moving all of my stuff to the basement and he was mute.  "You?" I asked.  "Surely not the landlady.  Did she pay someone?"  He was speechless, looking at the floor like a child shamed to death for, say, breaking a vase, and trembling in fear of punishment.  "I was persistent and refused to move on to a different topic of conversation until he gave me an answer.  He startled at this realization that he was going to be forced to answer.  He startled and his whole body shook like a marionette.  Finally in a hushed voice, he said that Kuan-Chung moved everything, after the landlady boxed everything up.  It absolutely boggles my mind how he could be fearful of divulging this information, how he could be ashamed, what backlash or retribution he imagined could come from it.  In my mind, I had asked a simple question because I wanted to know who deserved my apologetic feelings for them being troubled with lugging my belongings to the basement.  In his mind...what?  What?  In his mind I must have been accusing him of something terrible?  I haven't come right out and said this about Al yet, but seriously, he has some profound mental disabilities.  It's really tragic.  Regardless, knowing I had no money, he insisted on giving me $20 as I left.

No more could be done there, so I went back to my office where I could read more emails.  I had over 2000 emails in various places to skim through, tens of thousands of others that had been delivered to me, but that I would just archive without looking at.  A few hours later, I was done, I knew Al would have left for his work by then, and that Kuan-Chung should be home.  Back to the apartment, Kuan-Chung was very happy to see me and fill me in on much of the story that I didn't get from Al.  He also fed me a dinner of dumplings in tomato sauce, and let me into the basement to recover what I wanted of my belongings.  I found my tote bag and filled it with the essentials for spending the night at Stacy and Jessica's.  I rummaged through boxes just enough to find a change of clothes to wear the next day and happened to find a very nice cowl neck sweater that Dina must have given me but that I didn't even recognize and so I'm sure I hadn't even worn yet.  I also used the house phone to call Daphne and Jessica, leaving voice messages for both of them.  Finally, saying goodnight to Kuan-Chung, I walked to Stacy and Jessica's place, found them home, filled in yet more blanks in the story of what everyone had done to deal with my disappearance, and eventually slept, between the two of them, in a real bed.

 

[1 comment]

Nose Dive

November 30th, 2007 9:21 pm MST

No journal entries for a while because I was headed for, um, challenges ...in a handbasket.  Here are a few scraps of journalling I found.  They're representative of what I was up to during this period. 

September, 22, Saturday:  Met Daphne at South Station.  Home with her.  Piddled Sunday and failed to get to Benefit at Machine.  Frustrated with Daphne because she was so late, because then she was afraid to go places in public, because she had no money to spend, because I had to pee.  Home, invited her in while I peed, then kicked her out.  She didn't leave for 20 minutes after I told her to leave.  Went to Charlies for food and drink.  Drank five, I think, then came home and started playing on web cam for some people.  Got out tequila, made margarita, drank two, went in the bathroom and threw up.  Monday, was feeling a little ill.  By Tuesday, was coughing up plum-sized globs of green stuff from my lungs.  Same on Wednesday.  Better Thursday and Friday.

September 28, Friday evening, was sitting at home bored and started playing with makeup.  Al came home about the time I was finished and was acting astonished at the result.  I was pleased, but never believe him.  I knew I'd get more honest reactions from people at the bar.  I'd already decided I was going to Charlie's, just to get out of the house.  I told Al I was going out "to walk in the dark."  He said, "Ok, but you're going to get propositioned!"  I didn't think my makeup was going to get any special attention because I'd done a very soft and natural look, with very little color or drama.  I walked in Charlie's though, and every one of the regulars did double takes and stared.  Wow, I guess I had done something good.  Of course, they were most used to seeing me with no makeup or 60 second makeup, but still, I know they'd all seen me in full makeup before, and I'd never gotten that reaction.  Fascinating.

This weekend:  Friday, October 5, drinking with Jessica.  Saturday, MFA with Deedee, TCNE, home with Daphne.  Monday morning, home on early train with Daphne.  Monday afternoon, nap.  Evening, Diesel with Al and Kwan Chin, movie, work at office.

---

Ok, actually writing on November 30 here, I'll fill in a few more days.  Thursday, October  11, I went to Gender Crash and posted this to Sisters of Boston:

Hi Lisa :)

I was there last night.  Gender crash happens once a month and I've
been going to most of them.  It is fun, there's lots going on there.
Some of the performances last night were moving, some were hilarious.
All of them were thought provoking.  I saw people I knew, I met new
people, I ate cookies, and best of all, I won free tickets to a show
next week!  Write me if you want to know more. :)

Sonia Kiss,
Socialata mothius

(The nick name was given to me by Rachel, after I called myself a "social moth" once.)  Lisa did encourage me to tell a little more.  Here are exerpts from my next  post:

...  Last night there were three trans girls sitting
together.  One I have met a few times and I know her name, one I
recognized from other events but hadn't learned her name yet, and one
I didn't recognize.  They were all about the same age (at least a
decade younger than me) and sat together.  I assumed they all new each
other and were friends.  At intermission, I had other people I needed
to talk to and didn't find time to do more than smile at them.  On the
subway ride home though, the one of the three that I hadn't recognized
was sitting across from me.  I was sitting next to a chatty gay guy
but after a while I excused myself to go meet this girl.  In talking
to her, I found out that she had just arrived in Boston, didn't know
anyone, didn't know those other girls she sat with, and didn't talk to
them or anyone else.  I was the only person that talked to her, and
here, not until the train ride home!  [...]  I gave her a card with my name, phone number, and email.  I hope I hear from her.

I was excited about those  tickets because they were to a Big Moves show and I just love those girls.  Very sadly, I didn't go to the show.  I had kind of told Daphne about the tickets and I was hoping she would come with me, but I was in this "nose dive" of declining physical and mental health.  I was stressing over an upcoming court date, over not going to see my therapist in a long time, and over avoiding making an appointment with an Ear Nose and Throat specialist.  Dr. Breshel had refered me to this ENT because of breathing problems.  For some reason, I'd been finding excuses to not make this appointment.  A more disabling health problem I'd been having was muscles spasms in my neck and shoulders.  These were getting worse, and as the night came up for the Big Moves show, I didn't feel like doing anything but taking Ibuprophen and wimpering in bed.

About the same time, I also had three nights of telescope time scheduled.  I worked the first night, then writhed in pain on the floor of my office for a few hours before going home.  I made Tim finish the run for me.  So, I'd been missing days of work because of this neck pain, I'd been using the excuse that I was observing for not showing up some of these days.  At the same time my breathing problem was getting worse and worse.  I'd all but lost my voice, and when the muscle spasms were at their worst, I would pant in pain and agrivate the breathing problem to the point where I would start to panic that I couldn't get enough breath.  Nothing I do makes sense, I know.  I'm an idiot.

[2 comments]

Oh, just go buy a black skirt

September 17th, 2007 11:14 pm MDT

Saturday was Steffi's. The main event for the day was a blues festival in the evening, but this was also the day for me to make up for the day I sent Steffi home early when she had wanted to go sailing with me. This turned out to be a perfect day for sailing. Red flag, strong enough wind to keep most people off the water, but still not too wet or scary. So, sailing was fast, the temperature was perfect, the day was just beautiful. Steffi said it was her best day of the entire summer. Really! I think she was just kind of caught up in the moment but she was completely sincere as she said this. We were short on time for dinner between sailing and the blues festival so I took her to Anna's Taqueria for dinner. We had college student on the run burritos and Steffi loved that too. The festival itself was so cool. Steffi had complimentary tickets from her radio show in New Hamphire. She was boy mode, by the way, because people in her blues circle of friends only know her as Steve. And know her, they did. So many people, both performers and attendees, recognized her and wanted to talk to her. I don't know my blues, but apparently these were some very accomplished performers, and so I felt like the eye candy on the arm of a celebrity. The music was awesome. We had seats in the balcony, but we could see there was a lively dance party going on downstairs in front of the stage. A New Orleans style brass band played in the lobby as we exited. Fun, fun, night. Thank you Steffi. Sunday I slept late and had a lazy day in general. Stacy called in the evening and I went to visit her. It turned out that Jessica wasn't there, but Kate was, and the three of us had nice conversation. Stacy went to work then, and I went...to Charlie's. Bad Sonia. Monday no notes, Tuesday Natick, Wednesday Daphne. Thursday: Stacy called again in the afternoon but I had plans already. Steffi was coming down again because one of the blues singers from last Saturday, Nicole Nelson, was at Johnny D's, right there in Davis Square again. She got us in on her guest list and we got seated at "table #1", right in front of the stage. Music was great, of course, and she was was appreciative of us being there. I don't remember her exact words, but she was happy that we were obviously engaged in the music and displaying a little animation there in the front of the crowd. We both ordered a little food. I had one drink, an Old Fashioned. Johnny D's rendition was pretty clean. Bourbon, sweet, a smashed maraschino cherry in the bottom, and that was it. Friday I tried to reproduce my record quick route to Sisters but failed miserably. The bus arrived at the orange line station just as the train was leaving, and the orange line runs so infrequently, that by the time the next train came, I had missed the bus for the third leg of the journey. I skipped Sisters and just went home. Saturday home all day, Sunday at Daphne's. Monday it was nice after work and I went sailing. Didn't have anything special planned and so asked at the dock house as usual if anyone was waiting for instruction. There was a blue card there, but the dock staff said no. I was curious, of course, but didn't say anything, just checked out my boat and started rigging it. I was half done when a guy walked up and asked if I was sail number (whatever) and if I was still willing to take someone out for instruction. Of course I was! We went, had a great time, I think he learned a lot. He was comfortable and friendly with me. So, this is the instruction experience I am used to, but still....I wonder about the little scene at the dock house. At the beginning of this season, when I wasn't sure how well I would be accepted, the first few times I offered instruction I approached it a little bit cautiously. I would offer, but at the same time say that I needed to get something out of my locker first or make up some other little excuse to be away from the dock house for a few minutes. I was thinking this would get the dock staff a chance to collect their thoughts about assigning someone to a tranny, maybe getting a second opinion, or maybe calling someone for instruction and asking them how they would feel about going out with a tranny. My caution seemed unwarranted though, as the dock staff never blinked, just assigned me people as usual. I'd had good experiences all summer so I'd long since abandoned that little game of disappearing for a few minutes. But...it's possible that it kind of played out that way this day. Makes me wonder. Was the blue card I saw unrelated, and did my guy just walk up and ask for instruction after I checked out the boat? Was the dock staff just momentarily disorganized? Or did they send me off to rig a boat so they would have a chance to give the guy waiting for instruction the heads up and give him the option to keep waiting? Look at me, paranoid after a year. :( Tuesday I was wanting that Cajun shrimp and crawfish salad from Border Cafe. Ate there, had a margarita, then went to Charlie's for more margaritas. Wednesday was dinner and drinking at Grendal's Den. Thursday was dinner and drinking at Charlie's. Three days of being bad with alcohol. I could have a problem... Friday at Sisters, Ashley was full of excitement over the First Event Fashion Show. That was a bit tedious, then finally I had the chance to chat with new girls Lilli and Josie. Lilli was particularly appreciative of having someone to talk to. When Ashley was asking who wanted to go dancing, I said my only excuse was that I had no money in my pocket. At that point Lilli handed me a twenty and insisted that I go. We went to Pure again and again it was a cool scene. Josie drove, and it was just three of us at first, Josie, Ashley, and myself, although Ashley was talking to people on the phone who were planning on joining us there. The three of us set up camp at the corner of the bar, ordered drinks, Ashley ran off to dance when the DJ played her favorite song. I hung out with Josie, although conversation was all but impossible with the noise there. I went outside at one point to check phone messages, and there walking up the sidewalk was an easily readable t-girl, dressed in pretty ordinary jeans and top, and walking with a rather masculine gait. I watched her thinking I could catch her eye, but she passed the club without looking at me or anyone standing around outside. She paused and looked back over her shoulder, and around the corner came a guy in a suit. They made eye contact, and continued on up the street in formation. Hmm, sex work, I suppose. Back inside, I ran into (f)Emily near the front door and she ran to me and threw her arms around me. Startled, I stepped backwards, banging my head against a door frame or something. Then she was gone. Sheesh. Plopped back down next to Josie, I spotted Sarah, the girl I had danced with last time I was here! She came over and said hi and introduced me to the friend she was with and talked for a bit. I was starting to feel like I belonged. A little later I was on the dance floor and a girl came and said hello and that she knew me from Gender Crash. Crap, I walk around in such a daze. I didn't recognize her at all. Anyway, her name was Lindsey. We danced a little bit, I think, and then another came and wanted to dance. Very cute, very young. Omg, how does this happen to me? I asked her name. Cindy. And I tried to be polite and let her drift away to dance with others. Nope, she liked me. We danced a bunch more. She liked pretty suggestive dancing too, so we were grinding a bit, touching a bit. I was being all self-conscious about what I might feel like to her. I'm a guy dancing with a girl in a lesbian club. Lump in pants? Nope, not there, even with the grinding. Sorry, just doesn't happen with me on the dance floor at age 46. But my hands and fingers though, surely were unmistakably masculine. Testosterone and dancing had to have my muscles feeling very firm. I was trying to have a soft touch, but not sure how well I was doing at it. I was holding her hips, her waist, her hands, touching her collar bone. I'm really afraid my touch felt like a guy's touch. While dancing, I also spotted Lisa, TS Lisa that I first met at Laura's party. We exchanged waves and smiles but that was all. I was a little busy dancing with Cindy, but also Lisa looked like she was looking for dance partners, and I imagined she wasn't looking for someone like me. Am I too humble? She's young, pretty, a TS on hormones, and at a lesbian dance club, apparently by herself. I really doubt her first pick of dance partners would be someone like me. I was kind of afraid of approaching her, for a few reasons, I guess. Sure, I didn't want to interfere with her plans for the evening, but I especially didn't want to out her, or make her easier to read just by standing next to her. Well, those were my excuses. Truth is, I've always been shy to the point of intimidation by young pretty girls. I was when I was young and growing up as a boy, I still was when I was a middle aged man, and I'm afraid I still kind of have that reaction. Two of the four people that Ashley talked to on the phone showed up. They were a Stephanie from out of town, and FAB Natasha, who had just done Stephanie's makeover. Stephanie looked a bit familiar but I was assured that was impossible. Natasha looked a bit familiar and I learned I had most likely seen her at First Event. I was shocked the next day to look at the photobucket pictures of Stephanie from the night before. Her makeup looked absolutely awful in photographs. It looked hideously too light, and full of plain-as-day application streaks. I'm just positive that it didn't look anything like that in real life. In real life, I thought the makeup looked beautiful, exactly what you would want from a professional makeover. Somehow the camera flash must have been particularly cruel to her. Gosh, if I were Natasha I would have been horrified. Saturday home doing housework. Sunday evening with Stacy and Jessica. Monday Daphne. Tuesday was something kind of new, my first night of the T Supper Club at Fenway Community Health. Now, I kind of have to mind my p's and q's here, because Fenway is really big on confidentiality, but I think I can talk in generalities. My goal in coming to this was to branch out and explore more of the trans community. I've been mostly raised by cross dressers over this last year. My social circle has mostly been GNO and then Sisters. Similar are FoRCC, FoFL, FoTriangles, TCNE, First Event. I've explored a number of other groups and events, at least to some extent, in search of diversity: Jacque's, Imperial Court, Boston Pride, Gender Crash, MTPC, Boston FTMSOFFA, Mad Fem Pride. I've found some diversity in some of the online groups I've participated in: TSonHormones, TSVoice, Mikes's TG Planet. What else is there? Surely I've only touched the tail and the ear of the TG elephant. What is the rest like? So anyway, the T Supper Club certainly proved to be a different part of the elephant than any part I already knew. With only ten or so of us there, it's far from representative of the whole elephant, but I think the people there are going to prove a fascinating mix. A few of them I knew already. Pretty sure I'm going to be really glad I signed up for this. One thing I found frustrating to the point where I acted a bit childish. Alex had us talk for the first hour, and then eat. The problem was, some of us were hungry! See, though we may act like little girls, we've got big boy appetities. It was maddening to have the food sitting there and not be able to dig in. We did introductions and those were allowed to drag on and fill up the entire hour! I kept thinking that if people would just stop talking, we would be allowed to eat. But no, they would drone on with their stories, then ask each other questions, and inside I would groan, "nooo, don't encourage her to talk more!" *sigh* So, ok, my head was totally in the wrong place. I should have been listening intently to these stories to get to know my new dinner friends for the next six Tuesday nights. Instead, I'm afraid I was a very poor listener. Worst of all was when a straggler showed up after this hour of introductions, just when it was time to eat. "oh, no way, I thought, should she be allowed to eat without suffering through these introductions like the rest of us." *sigh* But no, Alex was gracious and the latecomer stayed. My bad attitude carried over to the feedback sheet. I'm afraid my answers were snippy and sarcastic. Oh well, have to make up for it next week :) Wednesday and Thursday I remember I moped around wanting Daphne to invite me to spend the night. It didn't happen. Friday was a milestone night. Trina from Arizona was coming to see me, go to Sisters with me, and spend the night. I can't resist retelling the story of Trina here. It was the last week in July last year. Two weeks earlier I had been to GNO for the first time. I went with Jessica, and while we arrived just about the time the party was breaking up to go into Boston, I had seen the cross dressers from across the bar, talked with Krys Ann, and was now crazy curious about cross dressing. I was at GNO this night on my own, early this time, to have time to actually talk with the cross dressers and figure out if they were crazy or like normal people or what. This night when my mission was to meet some real live cross dressers, Trina was in Boston on business and looking for fellow CDs to hang out with and perhaps show her how they have fun in Boston. Trina and I then, being both eager and unfamiliar with the GNO routine, were at the hotel bar long before anyone else. I um...(sorry Trina!)...read her pretty easily and sat down next to her to strike up a conversation. This alone time gave us a chance to trade stories and get to know each other a little bit. This had to be a huge help for me to have the ice already be broken by the time others began arriving. I'd love to know what her initial take on me was. I really think that she read me as TS at first glance. Anyway, over the course of the night, she put one of her bracelets on me, used female pronouns on me, and basically gave me my first rush of gender euphoria. By the end of the night, my fate was sealed. I was going to be a girl. Over the next *week*, I did everything: bought my first makeup, wig, purse, heels, outfit, jewelry, and picked a name. Trina was instrumental not only in transforming me that Friday night in July, but also in providing emotional support during this frenzied week. After my first attempt at shopping for an outfit ended in total failure, with me unable to imagine myself in anything, and therefore paralyzed from even trying anything on, Trina's advice (by email from Arizona now) was "Oh, just go buy a black skirt!" "Right, right" I thought, my panic dissipating, "just go buy a black skirt." And I did. I went back out the next night, tried shopping again, and with the panic gone, was able try on a number of things, and pick out a complete outfit--yes, that included a black skirt. The rest is history, mostly preserved in my journal here on the internet. Here, over a year later, Trina was finally getting to meet me as Sonia for the first time. The night was wonderful and magical, just perfect. I was most happy that Trina got a rich sample of my world. She called on the cell phone when she was a few blocks away and I ran to the end of the street to meet her. I recognized the car from her description and held out my arms in "come hug me" position to get her to stop. She said later her first thought was, "what is that pretty girl doing on the side of the street doing?" just before realizing, "oh that's Sonia!" We drove two block to the metered parking lot, walked back to my place to change, walked to the Square for dinner. I loved going out in public with Trina because she was right with me on choices of places to go. Of course she wanted to go to places that weren't hostile toward TGs, but she trusted me when I said we could go anywhere in Davis Square, and was happy to go to ordinary places. We ate at Antonnio's, the very nice Italian place that's right there in the square. I'd have to go back and read my journal, but I think I ate there once by myself as Sonia when I was very new. It would have been one of my early experiments in acceptance. I vaguely remembered that it went well so I thought that the place was a good choice. Another choice I offered was (La Spina) where, I explained, the manager knew me and would be happy to see me. Trina didn't come right out and say it, but I think she was thinking it would be more interesting to go to a place without such a crutch of predetermined acceptance. Of course we were accepted, and dinner was wonderful. At Sisters, Trina was amazing with her instant rapport with girls. She talked at length with Danielle (satin blouse Danielle) and came away with amazing stories. She talked with Steffi and came away with very personal information that I don't think Steffi had even told me. Everybody loved her. I was so happy and proud to be there with her. Ah, it's unrelated to this story of Trina, but while I'm at Sisters, I have to note that Deedee looked really really good that night. Great colors in her clothes, good makeup, a happy smile. Ah, but she's in love... Anyway, Trina and I opted out of dancing with the girls and we headed back toward my place. Actually to the Alewife garage and then on the subway one stop to Davis Square. Trina has wanted the experience of riding the subway, so this was cool to give her just a little taste of it. Nothing scary, as it was the last train and I think we had the car to ourselves, but still, part of the experience of Sonia's world. Trina also wanted one more drink before going home. She first had in mind a bar with a pool table, but I didn't know how to deliver that off of the top of my head, and I don't play pool much anyway, so we settled on a Davis Square Bar. Again following the principle of going to places without guaranteed acceptance, we went to Orleans. I explained that I had been there just a few times but was no regular, that it was a fairly classy place with a fairly young crowd. Well it turned out to be not quite the unknown I promised. I think the bouncer recognized me and waved us right in, as he was checking IDs for other people. The bartender recognized me for sure, welcoming me with a big smile, and a "hey! how are you?" Oops, I guess people remember me. Anyway, Trina needed to pee. I reassured her that she was welcome to use the ladies room, sent her off in that direction, and got us drinks from the bar. We sat and sipped and people watched the crowd of college kids and again, it was another perfect little slice of Sonia's world. Home finally, we made good on promises we had been making each other for over a year, and then slept really really well. The next morning I wanted breakfast before sending Trina off. We walked out the door before choosing a destination and I started enumerating choices. "Just up the street is a quaint, almost girly, little breakfast cafe..." "Perfect" Trina said, "I don't need to hear the other choices." And perfect it was. She was struck by how "New England" Renee's was. A little independent mom and pop type place, with local art on the walls, a worn wooden floor and so on. She had gone in the place saying that she really wasn't a breakfast person, and ended up ordering a big wonderful breakfast and then carrying on about how good each little part of it was. I escorted her on the T back to the Alewife lot, we picked up her car and she dropped me off at my house, and we kissed good bye. Omg, what a great visit. Saturday the plan was going to the FoRCC roll call party with Daphne. I met her at South Station when she got off work at 3:00, we went back to her place. We got to RCC at 11:15. I was pretty frustrated, but couldn't complain because I hadn't communicated my wishes to her plainly enough. What I should have said is that I really hoped to get there *early* so as to have lots of time to seek out and get to know better some of my CD "aunts and grandparents"--girls that are like a generation or two ahead of me in CD time. You know what I mean? You start going out as a new CD and you're like a teenager. Wild and exuberant and daring and exploring and testing limits. You do that for a period--a year or two, I think, and then you move out of adolescence into your CD "young adulthood" you've got some social skills now, you've mastered your look and your personality, you might even have a reputation(!), but you probably haven't quite found your place in the world. You might drift away from your first social circles, find new ones, you might go back to your roots. Then, if you're lucky, you settle down in whatever part of the TG landscape feels best to you. Some of these girls were at RCC, and most of them I don't know very well yet. Me, I'm kind of graduating from my teenage phase, I think, and looking for new horizons. I'd love to listen to wisdom of some of my elders at this point. *sigh* So, 11:15 didn't leave enough time for that. Vonnie was wonderful to me, as she has been. I had a nice time talking with Paula. She was so happy to realize that it was Daphne and I that were dating. Diana, I stood and listened to her tell one story, and I gave her a hug goodnight when she left. That's all :( I really wanted to hang around her more. Junie, I embarrassed myself in front of. It's only been like four times that I've met her now, so I was pretty sure I knew who she was, but it was late, I'd had a couple of drinks, and I blurted out, "who are you?" "I'm June Casad", she said in a very sincere voice and looking into my blurry eyes. *sigh* I think she knew I was struggling. Lace? I still don't know who that is. I hear she was there. *sigh* Still just a name to me. Crap, crap, I'm still so bad at meeting people and getting to know them. Oh, one girl I really liked meeting was Denise, but I just met her at the end of the night and was drunk and just got an introduction and a picture with her. I wish I knew how to contact her now. She looked so advanced in transition. Really, I can't imagine her passing as a guy. I liked seeing Amy Avalon there. I'd been thinking about her just recently. And then I didn't get to talk to her except to say hello goodbye. I love her because so far, while I've been in my "teens" I've thought of her as being in the generation just ahead of me and I've looked up to her. She's past her teens, and into that more sober phase of finding her place in the world. How do I know? Well, people tell stories of how she was just like me, going out every week, going dancing, and then she started appearing at fewer CD events. That when she did, she would show up with unshaved legs sometimes. I know I've seen her lots of different ways, from looking very finished and perfect, to...male mode! I've heard her talk about how she's considered FFS, and thought hard about where she was and where she wanted to go next. Very cool stuff, and always, I've thought, facing just the sorts of issues that I'll be facing myself before long. How did she look Saturday? In a very short and very flirty black skirt that was tiered and lacy. Like, how fun for a Saturday night with the girls? Hmm, what else? Wendy and Natasha both bought me drinks. I talked with Terri for a bit. There was a Diane there that was a good friend of Terri's. I said hello to Dahlia, Janelle, Winnie, Mellisa, Nadia. Talked with Wendy, Erica, Danielle. Saw Dina leave looking very drunk. Ashley didn't show up. Omg, not fair...I know there were lots of other girls I talked to but forgot to mention here. Sunday with Daphne was about as lazy as a day gets. We napped, ate, napped, ate, and basically did nothing. It was nice. The weekend with Daphne was nice, but sadly with too much tension. Daphne and I both have money problems, roommate problems, and health problems. Both of us are kind of sick with worry about problems that we're not dealing with well. Both of us are kind of wondering about our relationship together. With all that though, it was nice. It was a weekend together.

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Oooh, muscles

September 1st, 2007 10:24 pm MDT

Saturday August 4, the fun wild and crazy event was going to watch Tony wrestle. That's right, he was wrestling at a live event at a sports bar. The bar was Good Times Emporium, in Somerville, which is kind of a combination giant sports bar, arcade, and dance club. They had converted the dance floor to a wrestling ring for this, and the wrestling is the fun sort of wrestling, a la WWF (or All Star Wrestling, if anyone remembers that.... Ok, so I googled it. I guess it's WWE these days?) Anyway, Ashley had posted that she was going with Jacinda but that because of the environment, this would be a "male-mode event"--her words. Well, Ashley, you just excluded full time girls like me. Independent Sonia doesn't mind a bit though. Tony had personally invited me, so I was going. I didn't tell Ashley or anyone else that I was going, I just went. I had told Tony back when he invited me that I would go, but hadn't talked to him since, and so he was actually surprised when I showed up. Of his entourage, One of his lady friends had arrived before me and was inside taking pictures. He was expecting four others, not counting me! I talked to Tony while we waited for others to arrive and when two lady friends he was expecting arrived, we went in and found four chairs together. Ashley and Jacinda arrived a little later, as Rob and Johnny of course, and poor things, by then there were no more seats around us. They went and found seats on the other side of the ring, so it ended up that there was a boy's side and a girl's side. I loved being one of the girls. And I loved the wrestling! This was my first time ever to see live wrestling and so it was exciting and fun. Not knowing the wrestlers, I would pick who I wanted to win based on the silliest little things, like the color of their shorts or something, and then cheer for them and boo for the opponent. The girls around me got a kick out of how I was getting into it. "Are you sure this is your first time?" they teased. Detail gets spotty here. This is what happens when I just make a few quick notes and then let too much time pass before writing. Sunday was shopping with Rachel, then a sleepover with Daphne. Monday was dinner with Sheila, then drinking at Charlie's Kitchen. The guy on the stool next to me was highly entertaining. We sat and drank for five hours and I'm pretty sure that I passed for him the whole time. The more we drank, the more beautiful I became and I'm sure it was comical by the end of the night. He loved my hair, and wanted to know if the streaks were natural. "Honey, streaks like this are never natural" This fascinated and intrigued him. "Oh, which is your natural color?" he wanted to know. "The darkest color you see there" I answered honestly. Oh, my. lol. Tuesday was one more coming out step, and one I didn't handle so well, actually. At work we had a teleconference with people, from around the world really. And I didn't think about the fact that these people hadn't seen me as Sonia yet. I should have made a point to be there at the start of the teleconference to be present for introductions and so have an appropriate time to introduce myself as Sonia to these people who have known me for years as a guy. Instead, I wandered in late and it wasn't until the end of the meeting when the guy running the meeting (from Hawaii) asked my supervisor, "who is that sitting next to you?" After work, my bar was Cantab, on the recommendation of the guy I flirted with last night in Charlie's. He said he was more of a regular at Cantab so I thought it would be fun to just show up there and see if I ran into him. Food, drink, and music were good, but no Jeffery. Wednesday I went to Sisters of Worcester. Ashley had said earlier that she might go, so I thought it would be fun if we got a whole group of Sisters of Boston to go to Worcester. I made a silly post recruiting people for an "invasion" but in the end, Ashley couldn't go and I ended up not getting much support. I did get Stacy and Jessica to come with me, so I had a small invasion force, but it wasn't what I'd hoped. Of course it was lots of fun anyway. There was a good crowd there and in just a few months time, Sisters of Worcester has matured to become very much like Sisters of Boston. Thursday I was back drinking at Charlie's, this time with a little sadness as I was planning to curtail my drinking after this. I was seeing the doctor the next day for a routine physical and I was planning on pledging to stop drinking. Friday morning was the doctor's visit. I was seeing the now famous Deborah Breshel for the first time. Deb had actually come to Sisters of Boston a few months back and I had met her then, learned that she was in Somerville, right by my house, and accepting new patients. Since then I had run into her at MTPC meetings, and also a couple of times just around Davis Square, so she knew me--she just didn't know that she had an appointment with me this morning. Health insurance is of course still in my male name, so that's what I had used to make my appointment. The morning of the appointment, I filled out the new patient forms, hoping that there would be a place for a "preferred name" in addition to a billing, insurance, or legal name. But no, the surprise had to wait until Deb walked into the exam room and found me instead a male new patient. After the fun little surprise we had a good visit. At the end of the visit she asked if knew there would be a story about her this weekend in the Boston Globe. I didn't. Wow, what a surprise for me! I couldn't believe my fortunate timing that I got my initial visit in just before she was to become famous. Friday evening was Sisters and after the usual nice time at the hotel, things got wild crazy fun. Ashley asked people where they wanted to go after the hotel, and then declared that we were going to...someplace, I don't remember where, but it was a straight club. Steffanie threw a little tantrum at this. She wasn't comfortable at any straight club and said that she was going home instead. Ashley reconsidered and the next choice was Pure, a lesbian club. This turned out to be a perfect choice that made everyone happy. The club was lots of fun, there was dancing, girls, and queerness. One fun surprise was seeing some of the MFP girls there that I had met at the picnic. Coincidentally, I had worn my big floral print dress this night. It was popular at Sisters because apparently not many of them had seen that dress, but then it was wildly popular at Pure. Some girls had to compliment me on it, saying it was "brilliant" asking where I got it. Here, I messed up, I'm afraid. It actually came from the Goodwill Store, but I was too embarrassed to admit it. After repeatedly refusing to say where I got it, I finally said it was vintage, and they were happy with that. My gosh, I know there's no shame in shopping at the Goodwill Store. I just, don't know what came over me. I wish now that I had not only freely told them where it came from, but that I asked them exactly what they meant by "brilliant." Maybe they liked it just because it was so feminine? Because it had so much motion on the dance floor? Because it covered my silicone assets so well? I dunno. After the dance club closed, I did something a little different and went with the girls to Bickfords. I hadn't done this since my first time out last August. I got to see how Ashley's group was a regular there, and also got to see a group of guys get thrown out of the restaurant for making rude remarks about us. The waitress was wonderfully protective of us! Dina had promised to give me a ride home after Bickfords, but it was so late and she was getting so tired that she invited me to just come to her place. I went, and wow was it nice. Dina's beautiful, and has wonderful style and makeup skills, and one of my favorite parts of her is her soft girl skin. She uses a rotary epilator and I think maybe it does the trick. The next day, I processed asteroid data from Dina's bedroom computer and we took our time getting cleaned up and ready to go back out in the evening. We met Danielle and went to Lauren for dinner. It was really nice to spend time with just the two of them, trade stories, and get to know each other better. They were wanting to come up with some activity that we do next, they suggested Jacque's, and I couldn't resist. It was Saturday night and Jacque's would be fun. It turned out not be fun getting through the door. When we arrived we were told that the place was at capacity and we couldn't go in. Dina snuck in through the smoking door after a while, but when Danielle and I tried, we got caught and sent back outside. We were standing around talking when Jon came out. He discovered that we weren't allowed in an threw a nice little fit for the bouncer, deploring that the girls that the place exists for are kept out while the bachelorette parties fill the place. Who knows if the protest did the trick or not, but after a few minutes, we were allowed in. Inside it was fun to hang out, it was fun to see Jon and Vicky again, since I've met them a couple of times but still hardly know them. And it was fun to see the other Sonia again. I heard someone say "Sonia" behind my back, and my first thought was, "that's right! I remember meeting another Sonia here on a Saturday night." Funniest line of the night was from Vivian (? I think that was her name) who was listening as Jon and Vicky were explaining that it was her who introduced them eighteen years ago. There was a little pause and Vivian shyly said "I was ten years old"--A funny way of saying either "I'm embarrassed at the lower bound that was just placed on my true age" or "I'm 28 now" which is of course a funny reference to the way that through makeup, clothes, and starry eyes, we all typically look much younger than we really are. Just before midnight I dashed out the door to catch the subway before it turned into a pumpkin. Home after a long Friday, I slept hard. In fact, all of Sunday went to sleep and rest, with the cell phone turned off. Monday was the MTPC general meeting. After coming for several months now, some of this is finally starting to make sense to me. I sat and took notes this time, making a list of stuff I wanted to work on. After the meeting I met Deedee in Kendal Square for a little dinner. We talked about my legal situation. It's not pretty. Tuesday, Daphne wanted to go to Natick. I jumped at the occasion. I hadn't been to Natick in a while and going with Daphne would be fun. I went by train and by foot as usual. Daphne showed up later, and it was so cool when she did. She seems to be well known and well loved everywhere we go. The Natick regulars all knew her and were happy to see her. It made me feel so good to be there with her. Wednesday evening, Stacy invited me over. Jessica was there as well and we all had salad and chips and conversation. Thursday evening, author Julia Serano was reading from her new book "Whipping Girl" at Simmons College. This was a great stroke of luck because we had just picked this book for our October book in the online trans reading group. I met Stacy and Jessica there, also there found several other people I knew, and it was really good. Serano was engaging and interesting. I loved her perspectives--up until the very last question from the audience. She was saying something about "male privilege" but then as an example mentioned something about appearance that I suddenly saw as "masculinity privilege" as very distinct from "male privilege." Bleh...I wrote a little rant here, but I think I'll save it until after I've read her book... Friday I wasn't feeing like rushing after work. I took my time at home, and of course didn't have time to get to the hotel for Sisters. Wanting to get out though, I went straight to the club they were going to after the hotel. This was Pure again, the same as last week. I got there at 10:30 and I think I was the first customer through the door. I was worried at first that maybe there was only a crowd last week because it was a special event and that this week the place would be dead. Worries were unfounded though, and by midnight the place was packed. Shortly after that my Sisters arrived and we had yet another fun evening of dancing. Saturday afternoon I had birthday party to go to! Clara's friend Hillary (who's name I had trouble remembering before) was celebrating her birthday and the party was also an end of the summer back to school party for Clara, Hillary, and Ivy, who were all returning to Oberlin. I didn't think it was fair that only Hillary had got her birthday celebrated so I bought all three of them birthday cards. I gave Ivy her card first, setting up the surprise. "Happy birthday, Ivy!" "Oh, but it's not my birthday" she said with eyes wide at the horror of my apparent mistake. "I know, but I didn't know when your birthday was and since you're leaving to go back to school, this is my only chance to give you a birthday card." Ivy breathed a sigh of relief. "No one knows when my birthday is" she said a little bit shyly. This made me a little bit extra happy to think that I celebrated her birthday when maybe it usually passes unnoticed. I think I caught her smiling too. Then Clara happily accepted her card, and finally Hillary, the birthday girl proper. After the birthday party, there was no rest for me. I was off to catch the train and then the bus to Stephanie's, and then to ride with her over to RCC for a non- roll call Saturday evening. This means there weren't many people there, but there was a small contingent of "Triangles girls" visiting. There were, I think, ten of us all together. Katie, Katie, Brit, and Nicole, Annette, Me, Stephanie, Daphne, Dahlia, Oh, and that other girl I can't remember her name! Grr. Home with Daphne at the end of the night, sleep, and a lazy day the next day. I found coffee and an english muffin for breakfast. A little later Daphne cooked us a very nice breakfast of eggs and stuff. Then in the afternoon we went to visit Daphne's good friend Lisa, who lives in a very cozy house on a pond in Carver, Mass. For me, it was a chance to actually swim in my swimsuit, as opposed to just lounging around a pool deck. While Daphne and Lisa sat on the beach and talked, I swam out in the middle of the pond. Totally enjoying myself, I found myself getting out of breath before long. No problem, I'll stop and tread water for a minute and catch my breath. I stopped, but wasn't catching my breath. Crap. I'm an idiot. I floated on my back. That worked and after a few minutes I could swim again and slowly make my way back in. "You OK?" they called to me. "I'm fine." "We heard you wheezing out there." Yes, yes, I know, I'm an idiot. Daphne and Lisa wanted to see how I would look in some different hair. Lisa has like a million wigs and I was trying on a few of them. There was one that everyone liked. "Why don't you just wear that one to dinner?" Lisa asked. Dinner was at Crane Brook, a wonderfully peaceful restaurant and piano bar that is one of Lisa's favorites. Lisa plays piano herself, and so as is common, when the pianist took a break to have dinner, he invited Lisa to play. Wow, wow, wow, it was like magic. Just a perfect evening. To end the evening, we had just barely enough time to drop Lisa off at her house before dropping me at the train station to come home. I tried to give the wig back to Lisa, but she refused. "No, keep it." It's turned out to be the new Sonia. I've worn it ever since. Monday, notes say that I saw Stacy, went to the grocery store, came home and watched The Crying Game on TV. Tuesday was low key as well. I stayed home, listened to deb's interview on radio, and watched the second half of "A Girl Like Me." Wednesday was way cool. A girl named Heather had posted to Sisters of Boston saying that she was in town on business and was looking for some fun evening activities. Surprise, surprise, I turned out to be the one to help her. After trading a couple of emails, I picked a club called Les Zygomates for our destination. It turned out perfect for both of us. I'd walked by this place on South Street lots of times and knew from the crowds that it was popular, but just hadn't had the excuse to go there yet. Heather said she'd like live jazz, and by googling around a bit, this looked like a good pick. No expensive tickets or cover charge, but still some of Boston's top talent. The treated us perfectly there. I told the hostess that it was our first time there and that we were there for the music, and she seated us against the front window and right in front of stage. It was beautiful. Heather and I shared a bottle of Vidal Blanc, listened to great music, and talked the night away. Thursday I was home eating dinner when Lisa (from work) called. She and her daughter were wandering around Davis Square and wondered if I could come and meet them. Of course! I shovelled the rest of my dinner and dashed out the door. We hade a nice little visit in the plaza, but Lisa wasn't feeling well and I couldn't talk her into staying for the movie. See, on Thursdays they've been showing a free movie in the little park behind the train station. I was trying to talk her into sitting on a blanket and watching the movie with me, but no, they left. I had not quite enough time then to run home and get a blanket for myself, stop in Store 24 and get a soda, before Ferris Beuhler's Day Off started. Fun movie, you know, and I had a new thought while watching it. I thought, "I am Ferris Beuhler." In the movie he has an incredible string of experiences, just by taking the initiative to get off his ass and go do stuff. That's been me, Sonia, for like the last year. After the movie, I wanted to check in with Heather and see how her evening had gone. Not well, was the answer. Her plans had all fallen through, she'd been alone in the hotel room, and was just headed out the door to go to a random bar. I couldn't resist joining her. I met her at the Tam, her choice. It turns out that she had tried the Tam just at random the night before after saying goodbye to me. Adventurous little thing, isn't she? The Tam, for being in the middle of the theater district and surely a popular way station for theater goers, is pretty much a local dive bar, and not exactly trans-friendly. Heather had stories of how she had been carded, told that she must use the men's room, and had her male name read out loud in a loud voice. Pretty harassing, I'd say. When I found her already at the bar with a rum and coke, there was an empty stool next to her, but an unattended half-full glass of beer there. Pretty sure that someone would be back for the beer, I stood rather than sit. The bartender saw me and told me that the person there was outside smoking and would be back. Hmm, not harassing, but not exactly friendly either. Just kind of neutral. I ordered a diet coke, still not winning any points with him, but tipped him a dollar and he finally relaxed and smiled and said thank you. The guy came back from smoking and offered his seat, happy to go wander elsewhere in the bar. Later, a girl came and chatted with us, talked purses and stuff. So, overall, I was happy with the experience. Some people might be upset at the treatment we got, but really, we went, asserted our right to be there, diffused any confrontational scene, bought drinks, had friendly interactions with the other patrons, and left. I thought it would be good to leave while we were ahead and go to a different bar. I took Heather down to Flash's next. The bartender there (Patty, is that her name?) remembered me and was happy to see me. Heather got a wonderful chocolate cocktail, I had a raspberry lemonade and a chicken salad wrap, and we closed the bar. I was showing Heather how gay-friendly Flash's is, but she wasn't impressed. She likes to be out and blending with mainstream society and resists "hiding" in gay clubs. I walked her back to her hotel, we started to say goodbye, and then...we didn't. Omg, we're both bad. And omg, we're both good. Sisters on Friday was a good one. I left home at 7:30, caught the 90 bus, the orange line, the 137 bus, in quick succession and was making record time. Not wanting to walk the last leg, I started calling people at random to see who could pick me up. Dina. She was just leaving her house to pick up Danielle. Negotiated in a flurry of phone conversations, Wendy ended up picking up Danielle, Dina scooped up me, and we all arrived at the hotel by 9:00. The crowd turned out to be the biggest one since our opening night in January. One special attraction was that Wendy had invited people to come and share her birthday cake. The cake was fun, and furthering the reverse giving, Wendy also brought little presents for everybody. I got a little bottle of red nail polish. Girls kind of went in different directions at the end of the night and six of us stayed to close down the hotel bar. 11:30 they were kind of shooing us out, and Daphne and I drove home.

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July 27 through August 3

August 18th, 2007 3:23 pm MDT

Friday, July 27, it was good to return to Sisters after skipping last week. The weather was hot and humid, and so, as much as I hated to, I asked for a ride. I had Deedee pick me up at the Jordan's Furniture shopping plaza and that seemed to work well. It's right on the highway, so it's easy for her, and it's right on the 137 bus line, so it's easy for me. Most fun of the night was new girl Caroline. She had been out of the house for the first time just days before and this was her second time out. She was so giddy with happiness and excitement! I kept thinking that that's exactly how I felt on my first night out, almost exactly one year ago. I had fun talking with her, getting her story, telling her things about what we typically do on Fridays and so on, but it's not like we clung to each other all night. She would wander around and talk to other people, and sometimes just sit alone, and the whole time soak up this new experience of being Caroline, out in public. I also loved the way she seemed so naturally feminine in all of her movement and mannerisms. Gosh, more so than *any* of the rest of us, I thought. Maybe it was just the exhilaration of being new, but she was so bouncy and animated, and doing everything so girly. I told a couple of people later that, while she claims to be a CD, I don't think I've ever met someone so obviously TS, and that she was certainly on her way beginning a wild journey of discovery. Claiming that she was TS and didn't know it was fun conversation at the time, but I thought more about it later and reconsidered. Just because someone is good with femininity, does that necessarily mean that she's "female inside"? Who am I to say how she's most comfortable identifying herself? It's a binary mindset on my part. My mind is still aways trying to sort people into a binary system of gender. Maybe someone likes living as a guy, maybe they have a number of effeminate things about them, maybe he's ok with that and likes himself just the way he is, and likes his life. Maybe he likes to cross dress now and then, and maybe when he does, he has some natural girl skilz that shine and he pulls it off very well. I think this describes a number of gay men who do drag. The thing is, Caroline is straight. I asked her what she thought of Tony at one point Friday night and she shrugged and had no opinion. She's not attracted to men. Mm, so I guess that's it. My little concept of the TG landscape didn't have known territory for Caroline so I tried to force her into TS land. Fascinating stuff to think about! Anyway, our group left the hotel to go club hopping downtown. We parked in the expensive parking lot and walked first past Lauren. I wanted to peek inside and look for Wendy and Paula, but Lauren was closed already. Next we found Club 33, a place we had never been. It was at the end of kind of dark and scary street and most of us were getting a little spooked. When we saw maybe 200 people on the street waiting to get in, we knew we had no chance and were ready to go. Not Ashley though, bless her heart! She forged right through the crowd to find the bouncers and chat them up. After a few minutes out of sight, Ashley resurfaced and returned to us as we breathed a collective sigh of relief. The story from the bouncers, of course, was that the place was so popular you pretty much had to call ahead and get on the guest list to get in. Ashley was already plotting to do that next week. We were at Club 33 at all because I was one of a few people, I think, who had expressed getting a little tired of Jurys and wanting to go someplace different. To accommodate me, Ashley agreed to go to Club Cafe next. It's no problem getting in there of course, and I was liking it just fine. I showed Caroline around the place, slurped down a drink, and kind of led the group up by the stage where people dance and where a DJ was set up tonight. I did like dancing. I liked having some activity besides just drinking and talking, I liked less of a "meat market" atmosphere, and, I think I have to confess, I felt more comfortable in the gay crowd at Club Cafe than the straight crowd at Jurys. The problem with Club Cafe that night though, was the heat. Their air conditioning wasn't quite keeping up with the crowd and it was pretty stuffy in there. Finally the girls couldn't take it any more and kind of said to me, "drink up Sonia, we're leaving for Jurys now." It was a little bit funny and was fine with me of course. I was happy that Ashley and all the girls had been so willing to try something new, and that they had considered me, and I had gotten my dance fix, and now was happy to go chill at Jurys for a bit. Another drink there, nice conversation, and I walked home. Yes it's a long walk, but you know, I heard reports from some of the other girls about how late they got home, and I don't think I got to bed much later than they did. By the time they gather everyone together, let every one go to the restroom, plan who is riding with whom, walk to the parking lot, get their cars, drive to hotel, drop people off, change cars, drive home...they get home really late. I walk right out of the bar, and straight home. Much of Saturday (July 28) went to baking my birtday cake. Daphne had taken the initiative a couple of weeks earlier to announce on the FoRCC list that it was my birthday and that we would be celebrating this Saturday at the party at Randolph Country Club, and she went on to ask what I wanted for my birthday. I suppose I could have answered with humor, but I really didn't want anyone to feel compelled to bring a gift or even a card, so I said that all I wanted was lemon cake. A few days ago then, I was thinking how no one was going to get me a cake, so I decided it would be fun and silly to bring my own cake. The cake itself turned out ok. I made two 11x17 layers, made a lemon creme filling, iced it with a lemon icing. The icing was from a can but everything else was from scratch. Tony conveniently called in the afternoon and I was quick to ask him for a ride, so the problem of getting the cake there was solved. At RCC fairly early, it was nice to have time to start the evening with a drink and then see everyone as they arrived. Vonnie arrived fairly earlly as well and I had a really nice time talking with her. There was a little time then when I walked away from the crowd and sat alone for a bit, but not for too long. There really were lots of people I wanted to socialize with and, unlike the last RCC party, this time I got to most of them. I did miss a few: I waved hello to Terri Francis, but then never went back to talk with her. Also, Junie is one that I've barely traded introductions with, but who I think I would like to get to know better. We seem to have lots of common friends and they all speak so fondly of her. Once again, I spent all my time talking and didn't dance a bit. A little surprisingly, my cake ended up not being eaten well. I speculated that maybe people were there to drink and socialize and it was just weird to have a cake there. Also, you know, if was seriously trying to commandeer a party that wasn't mine for the purpose of getting attention or something, that would be pretty weird too. I'm afraid Ashley kind of played into that a little when I gave her time to get the microphone and go up on stage and announce that we were celebrating my birthday, and then drag me up on stage as well. It would have been better to just cut the cake and leave a sign on the table that everyone was welcome to have a piece. And in retrospect, I could have handled it all better when I was given the microphone. I could have explained that for me, the birthday was all about the excuse to bake and eat a cake, but that I needed *lots* of help eating it, so please feel free to have a piece. Worst of all, in retrospect, was discovering a couple of days later that it was Vonnie's birthday as well. Oops. Big oops. *sigh* Call me an air head. Best of all, was going home with Daphne at the end of the night. Sunday, do I have to say we slept really late? :) We had cake for breakfast sometime in the middle of the afternoon, and then it was already time to start getting ready to go out again for the evening. Daphne and I were headed back to RCC, this time for a drag king show that was a benefit for Network La Red. While Daphne dressed, I looked through her photo albums of past drag performances. Such a different world. Such amazing clothes and makeup. Someday I'll learn all of that. It seems so far off now. It's a magic that I don't know. At the show, it was fun again to see some of the Imperial Court friends that I'm slowly getting to know. The show was fun and very entertaining, if a little long. At the end of the night, poor Daphne was exhausted. The car ride back to her place was pretty scary as it was a struggle to keep her awake. I, at least, was alert, and did my best to stimulate her with conversation, and occasional tickles on the leg to keep her eyes open. We lived, we got home, we slept in each other's arms for the second night in a row. Monday I was on the morning commuter train to work in shorts and t-shirt. There were delays and I ended up just going straight to work like that. After work, went to Uno for pizza and beer. Home, I finally sat down and answered Diana's post on FoRCC where, in response to a couple of people snipping at each other, she asked, "Write a little something on what it feels like to YOU to be a women." I"ll post my reply here because I want to preserve this little snapshot of my current thinking. Hi Diana, I like your request, and a week later here, I'm still thinking over how to answer. First, I'll note that your request includes the assumption that I am a woman. For that, I'm flattered, and I say thank you. Next, your request assumes that my experience of being a woman is something real that can meaningfully be described. There's a whole philosophical tangent on which "qualia" such as this are debated. The debates typically dwell on how we can only know our own experiences and not the experiences of others. But this question posed to any of us who have actually made some sort of transition (whether permanent or just for an evening) is fascinating because we *do* know the experience of another person--we know ourselves in two different ways. (Two, at least!) So, let my try to respond here, by comparing what I feel now, as a woman, to what I've felt in the past, as a man. The difference I have appreciated most is the way I am treated by people. It's obvious things like having doors opened and seats offered and it's less obvious things like the amount of personal space people give me. I still consider myself shy, and yet I'm happy to feel so much more visible as a woman. I sense men and women both evaluating how attractive I am, and I sense women especially evaluating my clothes, hair, makeup, and accessories. I sense it because they comment on it! As a woman, I'm in a world where we give each other spontaneous compliments fairly often. It's so rare in a man's world: "Dude, I love the way your hair has this sandy, weathered look. It works so well with the whole boots and work shirt look. So mm, rugged..." I love talking girl-talk with other women. And, I hadn't thought about it before now, but I also like people not assuming that I know anything about sports and trucks and so on. I love being welcome in women's spaces and included in women's conversations. I remember telling this to my therapist and her challenging me on that, smiling and saying "most men do prefer talking to women." But come on, *you* girls know what I'm saying, right? There's such a difference. As a woman in a group of women, you can just stand there and do nothing, and nobody thinks anything of it. Try that as a guy and you're a wolf standing in the middle of a flock of sheep. You can comment on things you would never say in mixed company. Other women say things you never would have heard as a guy. Topics of conversation and patterns of interaction are just plain different. And yes, my experience is that women move into deeper, more personal conversations with each other much more quickly than men do. I love the freedom to dress in different ways. I've had lots of fun trying out different looks in front of my Sisters of Boston over the last year, but I love even more the freedom to walk down the street in lots of different looks. As a guy, if I would wear something a little bit loud, I would get stares from people and questions from friends and coworkers. As a girl, wow, I can't get over the range of what I can wear and not get a single strange look. I feel a new freedom to play with style that I never felt before. Edging a little bit in the direction of physical differences, I love being able to sit and stand and walk with more typically feminine posture and movement. Some of it comes natural to me, some of it takes concentration and practice, but I still love doing it. I like walking with my girl walk. I'm happy to be held to different standards of diet, weight, health, and hygiene. I love the feel of wearing less clothing, the sensation of bare legs exposed under a dress or skirt. (Isn't this like, really, really common amongst us? Don't we love this? Shouldn't most of us be writing, "wearing a new dress on a spring day is what it feels like for me to be a woman.") One of the sensations that gave me the biggest rush when I started dressing as a woman was the feel of the wind against my shorter sleeves, or even bare shoulders. Another intense sensation was the *visual* sensation I got from seeing my arms shaved for the first time. I don't know, there are a few differences anyway. It sounds like for me, the feeling of being a woman is mostly about playing the part and enjoying it. It's about appearances, being accepted, the social interaction. A bunch of other stuff I'm tempted to write about, I won't. Either because I haven't had separate experiences, or else I don't feel they are strictly related expression or identification of sex or gender. Thank you for asking, Diana! Sonia Tuesday, I knew that Stacy had the night off and thought it would be nice to spend some time with her. I called at 4:30 in the afternoon, unsure if she would still be sleeping or already out shopping. She called back 6:30, she had been shopping. We left her place at 10:30 for Grendel's Den, and then to close Redline, and then back to her place. Wednesday I was at work in same clothes as Tuesday. I ran home at lunchtime to shower and change. Gareth noticed in the afternoon and, looking surprised, said "you changed?" I answered yes, but then bit my tongue rather than elaborate. Girls change clothes a lot, no?. Also while home, I packed yet another set of clothes to wear to the MadFemmePride picnic in the evening. This picnic was a really crazy thing for me to do. The announcement on the Gender Crash website caught my eye, and I thought it sounded fun. I was thinking picnic=a few people. I was astonished then, when I RSVPed and saw that over 200 were signed up to go! I had never even heard of MFP before and didn't know what I was getting myself into. The organizer, Emily, was a wonderful hostess. She had seen me sign up online, and recognized me as soon as I arrived at the picnic. She greeted me, introduced herself, showed me where to find nametags and stuff, and made me feel welcome. I very soon spotted Clara and...um...what is her friend's name? :( I should know. I'm so bad. Anyway, there. I knew at least one person there. I said hello to them briefly, and then wanting to mingle just a little, saw the Big Moves blanket and walked over to say hello and that I had seen a couple of their performances. *sigh* I wish I could remember names. Anyway, they were nice to talk to and since it was now 8ish, I sat and ate the dinner of chicken salad and watermelon that I had brought. Emily wandered by handing out cupcakes just as I finished, like a carefully observant waitress bringing dessert at just the right moment. Another girl, Alana, said hello to me just to be friendly. I followed her over to her blanket and met her friends, Francine and Penny. I was trying to talk to Francine but then there was someone interrupting our conversation and I ran off to talk to another girl I had been introduced to earlier. Her name was Lisa, but was pretty passable as a guy, I thought. I heard her mention earlier that she had done drag, so I wanted to talk to her about drag king performance. And I met her girlfriend...grr, don't remember her name either...her girlfriend was femme and was making a point to say that she was the top, even though lots of people would assume that the butch would be the top. It was cute. I spotted Eliza Shapiro and since people I actually knew were too precious to pass up, went to say hello to her. I also told her that I had seen the picnic announced in her newsletter. In fact, that was the only announcement that actually ended up in my email inbox. Mm, who else? I talked a bit more with Clara and also another friend of hers named Vivian. Vivian was a math person too, and it was fun to listen to the two of them talk math over my head, when I supposedly have a math degree. Ok, two more stories from the picnic. One, a horrible display of my male side at one point. I was wearing a name tag that said "Ask me about ______" and I had written in, "anything! I'm Sonia :)" As I was wandering around at one point, a girl standing in a group of about six noticed my name tag and playfully accepted the challenge. "Anything?" she said "Ok then, how do you make gluten free bread rise?" Challenged to display technical knowledge, I tragically lapsed into male mode. I knew a few things about bread and used that knowledge to rattle on like I knew what I was talking about when in fact, I really didn't and was just reacting instinctively with a show of superiority. Omg, wrong, wrong, wrong. Another thing I felt, although it was subtle and I could have just been imagining it all, was that the few transwomen there seemed to be maintaining a little more distance from each other than I was used to seeing. My interpretation of this was that they were there because they were interested in the genetic women, and thus were somewhat in competition with each other. Real or imagined, it was a theory that made me smile. Thursday, incredibly, I stayed home all night. I did laundry. I took a long bath and shaved everywhere. The late movie on TV was Desperately Seeking Susan. I stayed up and watched. Friday was Sisters of Boston. Thunderstorms were in the forecast, so I accepted an offer from Danielle Rose to give me a ride. The plan was to meet her at TGI Fridays, have dinner, and then go to the hotel. Amazingly, I ended up being on time. She was stuck in traffic and was half an hour late, so there I was in suburbia, sitting at a corporate sort of bar, with the after work crowd...wearing a skirt. Heh. You know me, it was fun. Sisters was fun as well. The plan for clubbing was to try something new, this time Gypsy bar. A few people had heard of it. I think Ashley liked the print advertisements. I had the impression from what I had heard it was a trendy sort of place. I liked the idea was approved of the plan. We drove there, parked, there was a line, but it was moving very quickly. We got up to the ropes and there was a delay. A pretty long delay. Then the shit came. The bouncer came and gave us the same business Steffi and I had got at Paradise last month. The short of the story though, is that we argued with the bouncer and won. That's right, we got in. How often does that happen? I have to say, I've *never* heard of anyone arguing with a bouncer and winning! I have to credit this victory though, to education I got from the Paradise incident. This time I knew all the right things to say. Never mind that I had three margaritas in me already, I had the counter arguments to shoot down anything he could come up with. Finally in total exasperation, he said "I'm not talking to you anymore" and walked away. After another delay the manager came. "Ok, I need to see your IDs" he said. We presented them. "Pay inside" he said. Woohoo!!!!! We won. Gypsy was lots of fun. I went right up to the bar and got a drink, the other girls followed me. While they waited for their drinks, I ran and explored the place. The place was very cool, very loungey. In front, there was a long bar with a few people sitting, but mostly there was a huge crowd of people standing and mingling and practically blocking the way to the back of the club. Also in front were a number of cozy booths, all filled, of course. Snaking my through the crowd, I emerged in the back of the club where there was a packed dance floor, DJ, and a little open area in front of two other bars, really just drink stations with no places to sit. I hurried back to report to the girls and get them back to the dance floor, where I knew we'd be less conspicuous. Dancing was great and everybody danced. I danced with with my sisters, with some boys and some girls. We all had fun but we didn't stay until closing or anything. I watched and when a couple of the girls were done, I suggested to everyone else that we leave and we got out of there while everybody was still happy. I was happy to have Danielle give me a ride home afterwards because there was rain in the forecast. In retrospect (writing a couple of weeks later here) these problems getting into the clubs aren't pure discrimination, but a crazy collision of prejudice, local laws, and the clubs' desire to focus on a certain type of crowd. The fact is that in both the Paradise and the Gypsy incidents, we didn't look like we belonged. Paradise is a bar for men's men. It's a masculinity place and there I was dressed not just as a woman, but in a pink polka dot dress that beamed femininity. Gypsy targets a young hip and stylish crowd. Stylish means conforming to style in certain ways, and most of our group on Friday was non-conforming. I certainly was, dressed in a tan skirt and peach top, my clothes were boring office clothes, far from club wear, and I was lugging a huge tote bag in addition to my purse. So I imagine bouncers taking advantage of their position to screen out people that don't fit, if they can. It's well within their charge to rigorously ID these people and reject them on on any technicality they find. In addition, I imagine that some--not all--bouncers might have some prejudice against cross dressers. I now know that they are trained to check that "appearance matches ID" and so it probably seems like a quick and easy call to them to say to a cross dresser, "sorry, I can't let you in because your appearance doesn't match your ID." Problem is, in these two cases, the cities have laws against transgender discrimination! In Boston and Cambridge anyway, that's a really bad choice of technicality for a bouncer to try to cite. I can see what the bouncers are trying to do, but they need to look for other technicalities. Actually, I think it would have been easy at Gypsy. One of our group was in jeans and a t-shirt and I'm pretty sure they had a sign that said "proper dress required." Maybe they could have told me I couldn't bring my giant tote bag inside. If nothing else, bouncers need to trust that these things take care of themselves. People that don't fit in with the crowd will generally figure it out on their own and sooner or later move on. And in fact, that's exactly what happened. We all had fun at Gypsy, but the next Friday we moved on to a different venue.

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Changing the World

July 27th, 2007 2:32 pm MDT

I was so happy yesterday to hear that I was getting some positive action in response to my discrimination incident last Memorial Day.  The action is that the group that provides training for bouncers in Cambridge listened to my story and said they would start including awareness of cross dressers in their trainings.

The whole story so far goes like this.  I was denied entry to the Paradise Bar on Mass. Ave., the bouncer stating that my appearance must match my photo ID.  I whined about this on a few mailing lists and felt even more justified in my claim of discrimination when a few people came forward with similar stories.  One group I complained to was my friends at the Mass Trans Political Coalition.  They listened sympathetically, but of course their interest is politics and the most help they could provide was to suggest that I contact the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.  GLAD also listened sympathetically, but their main interest is taking real legal action and my incident really didn't provide enough of a case for that.  Then, just by chance, I ran into a friend of mine that bartends in Cambridge, and told him my story.  He was  sympathetic like everyone else until I quoted the bouncer saying "appearance must match ID" and then I suddenly lost his sympathy!  He now said the bouncer was right.  My friend's reaction to this phrase tipped me off that this might something that all bouncers are taught.  A letter to the Cambridge Licensee Advisory Board confirmed this.  In a very nice letter, a representative of CLAB explained to me that they do indeed conduct these trainings and that they advise on how to make allowances for things like hair style and even eye color.  He wrote to me, "I will include the potential for cross dressers in future trainings as I assume that reasonable people should be able to see beyond your cloths and make up."

It's a constructive result.  I'm proud of myself!

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Male Mode

July 27th, 2007 2:30 pm MDT

Tuesday, for the first time in three months, I was out in public male mode.  I was going to court for some issues that predate Sonia and for which I felt my appearance en femme would have been an undesirable distraction.  I expected it to be interesting, and it was.  I concentrated hard on male posture, mannerisms, and voice, and for the most part I pulled it off.  I would slip though, especially early in the day, if something distracted me or if I reacted to something quickly.  Sometimes someone would ask me a question, and without thinking, I would answer with my Sonia voice.  I know my Sonia voice isn't great as a female voice, but to a person expecting to hear a male voice it's a bit startling.  It ended up being a long tiring day and I was glad when it was over.  Making my way home, I gradually let myself return to "normal."  I stopped in a sandwich shop to get something to eat, started to order with my male voice, then as I was talking I remembered how just before I went full time, sometimes I would practice my female voice even when dressed male.  I let my voice change back, right then as I was talking, and it made me a little happier.  I sat and ate like I do as Sonia, and by the time I left I was ready to walk with my Sonia walk.  At the bus stop, a woman was sitting on the bench in a small pool of shade.  It was a long bench but there was only a little bit of room beside her that was still in the shade.  I know the normal behavior for a guy would be to maintain a little more distance, not make eye contact, not think anything of sitting in the sun, or even of standing, for that matter.  Sorry, I was done with that and I wanted the shade.  I walked up with my Sonia walk, Sonia posture, greeted the woman with eye contact and a smile, the way women do, and she returned the same eye contact and smile telling me without words that I was welcome to sit next to her.  I sat next to her in the shade and she almost immediately was chatty, the way women sometimes are with each other.  She asked where I was going.  "Somerville" I answered, and she frowned slightly.  Oops.  Guy answer.  She was going to bingo.  See the difference?  That was my last mistake though and we happily talked while waiting for the bus.  She asked about my accent.  I laughed and said I was from Kansas.  She said she was thinking I might be Dutch, because I was so fair skinned.  Well, yah, in my shaved head that hadn't seen sunlight in three months, and my SPF 55 protected face, clear of hair but for thin little arcs over the eyes.  She told me I was pretty.  Yes, that was the word she used.  Wow.  And, it made me so happy.  I never told her I was trans, never offered any explanation for my voice, posture, walk, mannerisms, appearance, why I sat with her, or talked with her.  She just accepted me as I was.  It was such a clear illustration that if you do your best to present yourself as a woman, you will be accepted as one.  Here I was dressed as a man, and you know, all that stuff I just listed, voice and stuff, I'm still pretty rough with most of that.  My female presentation is far from polished.  But here I was dressed as a man, but doing what I could to present myself as a woman, and I was accepted as a woman.  I do love being a woman.

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Daphne's girlfriend

July 22nd, 2007 10:15 pm MDT

Saturday I was sitting around being lazy until Al came home and reminded me that today was Art Beat, an annual street fair here in Davis Square. I remembered going last year with Jessica and thought it would be fun to go again. At least I think the fair was called Art Beat last year. This year, it seemed to be named Art Beast. Maybe I got it wrong last year? Maybe it got renamed? I kind of had in mind that I might buy a little something, and was going from booth to booth making mental notes of possibilities, when I found a necklace. I touched it and just couldn't take my finger off of it. I had to buy it. It was nice and only $14 when I thought similar necklaces were running around $50. I also kind of had in mind running into someone I knew. It's become so common that I run into people I know that I just expected to be surprised. I'd wandered through most of the fair and hadn't seen anyone I knew when finally I ran into Laurie that I knew from MTPC. I showed her my necklace and modeled it. She said it was nice but the one I was already wearing looked better with my outfit.

Home, I started getting ready to go to Tiffany Club in the evening. I got cleaned up a little, put on a different top, decided it worked better with the new necklace, if the necklace were only longer. A silver chain did the trick, and I was out for the evening. Tiffany Club was nice. I talked a lot with Jessica, a little bit with some others. It was a quiet, easy evening. Took the bus back to Cambridge and walked into Charlie's Kitchen a little after midnight. Drank, read some of “Trumpet”, drank more, talked with some of the regulars, drank more, walked home.

Woke up around 11 on Sunday, but it wasn't until after 2 that the hangover started to fade. I made some really good chicken salad and started getting cleaned up to go out tonight to Jacques. The special event tonight was an Imperial Court fund raiser where Daphne was going to perform. Daphne looked fabulous of course, the show was good, but it was especially fun to be there as “Daphne's girlfriend.” The Court crowd seems really warm, friendly, close.

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Don't read this

July 21st, 2007 1:35 am MDT

Thursday during the day, a friend came to an afternoon astronomy colloquium with me. This was Clara, introduced to me by Richard because she is majoring in astrophysics and Richard knows me as an astrophysics person. (Of course really I know nothing of astrophysics, I just happen to work at a place with the word astrophysics in the title.) Anyway, I promised her I could introduce her to some people if she came to visit. It turned out ok. We listened to the lecture, I introduced her to the one person there that I knew and they had a nice conversation. It shouldn't matter, blah blah blah, but since this is kind of a transgender journal, I'll mention that Richard and Clara are both trans. Of some sort, anyway. Richard is pretty passable as a guy, likes male pronouns, but I'm pretty sure I heard him say that he doesn't identify as male? I'll have to get him to clarify that sometime. Maybe he's like me—I still don't feel quite right saying that I identify as female. I feel ok saying that I identify my gender role as female, I even feel ok identifying as TS these days. But I'm not sure I feel as completely female as do all the TS girls that have felt trapped in the wrong body since early childhood. I can't say “I am female” without reservation the way so many of them do. Clara and I haven't talked about how she identifies or how she feels inside, but she seems pretty trans to me. Total “tomboy” look, is happy with male pronouns, although he acknowledges that they sound a little funny with his name.

After work I ended up in Central Square for some reason and ended up eating at Miracle of Science, having a couple of beers, and getting chatted up by the guy next to me. Some friends of his came in after a while and claimed all of his attention, the Red Sox game was delayed, so I went out walking on the street again. Depressed over various things though, what was there to do but keep drinking. I found my way to Charlie's Kitchen, ordered a PBR and resolved not to count. I'm sure I had quite a few, although my tab at the end of the night was only for three. You gotta love being a regular. The bartender was amused by me and the woman on the stool next to me. Although the bartender knew us both, somehow we had managed not to run into each other before tonight, so we were just meeting. We went through the whole routine—of respecting the other person's solitude for a bit, then making a simple comment, then engaging in small talk, then talking about safe topics—all very quickly, and then were deeply involved in serious conversation. The bartender came and asked me later, with this amused smile, “so you two really didn't know each other before tonight? Now you're chatting like old friends, just like girls.” It was fun. We traded phone numbers and promised to call sometime. The Sox lost though, and I walked home.

Friday after work, I was hungry, still depressed over stuff, didn't have a plan for the evening, and didn't really want to make a plan. I walked down to Harvard Square to find dinner. When I got there I found it had morphed into Hogwart's. Tonight was the release of the last book in the Harry Potter series, and Harvard Square was apparently one of the more popular places on the planet to celebrate. The book was to be released at midnight, and at 5:30pm when I got to the square, the line to wait for books stretched two blocks long. Police were out in force, directing traffic, pedestrians, and yelling at the cab drivers. Barricades were piled on the street corners so that the streets could be completely closed later in the evening. There were four TV trucks set up with their antenna masts high in the air. The street people pleaded at the top of their lungs for spare change. Masses of bored people traipsed through the retail shops just killing time. 5:30 was early enough for me to get into Uno Pizza and get a seat at the bar, but within 30 minutes the place was packed. Uno itself was decorated for the Potter party and all the employees were in costume. By the time I left a couple of hours later, maybe half of the people in the street were in costume. Anyway, I was better behaved tonight. Pizza and two drinks and I headed home.

So obviously I had passed on going to Sisters. The activity at home was the ts voice chat. After months of people telling me about the tsvoice yahoo group, I finally joined last week and this was the first voice chat since I had joined. It was very cool, and, don't read this Ashley, but I was glad I did that instead of Sisters. I met Laura, introduced myself, and she worked with me first, giving me some advice and some exercises. She seemed really nice, volunteering three hours of her time here tonight to basically give free voice coaching. When I joined voicets last week, I made a baseline voice recording and uploaded it to the group. It should be fun (maybe embarrassing!) to go back and listen to that after I've made some progress.

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June

July 19th, 2007 7:15 am MDT

Nearly two months since my last post. I don't know why. I do have a lot of notes from June. I'll add them later and just write a couple of little things for now.

In my last post I wrote about seeing Daphne at RCC on May 26th. I guess that's our day. Cuz...we've kind of been together since that day. Is it love? I don't know... Sometimes we use the l-word. Not very often though. I think it's a little bit new and different for both of us. Maybe because of that we're both being a bit cautious. I just counted though and it's been 7 1/2 weeks. Something's there for sure.

It wouldn't be a Sonia post without documentation of a night of drinking though, so here was last night at least. I'd decided not to go to the FTMSOFFA gathering, I'd decided not to go to Sisters of Worcester, and I was just sitting in my room picking at my face when Stacy called and invited me over. I told her I'd be over after I ate. I fixed a nice dinner of a chicken sandwich, some cauliflower and some soybeans, went over to Stacy and Jessicas, and (um, with the way they were dressed) suggested that we go to Jacques. We went and had nice time. It was nice to see Deanna still working there as cocktail waitress and talk to her for a bit. It was *very* nice to talk with an admirer there named Steve. Otherwise had a simple evening of hanging out with my girls and drinking beer. 

---

June Update:  It's been a couple of days since I posted the paragraphs above, this post is off of the "last ten posts" page, so here are the notes promised in the first paragraph above.

My last journal entry covered Memorial Day.  Interesting stuff happened the next day when I came back to work.  An email was waiting for me from a fellow astronomer in Arizona calling my attention to a discussion on one of the Internet astronomy forums.  He knew that I had a computer program that addressed the problem being discussed and suggested I tell people about it.  His suggestion was absolutely right.  There was just one little problem.  None of these people knew about Sonia.  We know each other primarily through the Internet, and even at that, some of us correspond only infrequently.  It wasn't that I'd kept any secret from these people, there just hadn't been any occasion to tell them yet.  Here was the occasion.  It was appropriate for me to post to this forum, but I wanted to post as Sonia, and so I kind of needed to introduce myself...as myself.  All along I've kind of been following the principle of not entering any closet that I don't have to, so here it was time to come out as Sonia to the greater international group of scientists that I work with.  The online message board is no place for gender discussion, but it seemed reasonable to me to just make a quick announcement and get on with the technical discussion.  So that's what I did.  I wrote one of my usual terse posts, this time with two announcements:  One, I'm a girl now, and two, here's the URL with the technical stuff.  It worked pretty well!  I got almost the same response I got when I came out here at the office two months ago.  That is, I got a couple of congratulations but otherwise people were interested in my work and couldn't care less what clothes I wear.  But notice I said "almost."  There was an exception this time.  One astronomer in another state didn't take the news well.  He ended up calling on the phone, talking to my coworkers, ranting about my transgender status, and threatening violence against my supervisor.  I didn't talk to this person, and I don't know exactly what he said or what kind of violence was threatened.  But after mulling things over, my supervisor, the one that was threatened, came the conclusion that this sort of thing shouldn't be shrugged off or ignored.  He called the police.  Police came, took statements, and well, not a lot has happened since then.  My supervisor has talked to them on the phone a couple of times since, they say the case is open and they have an investigator assigned to it and that he will be contacting us in the near future.

I just keep thinking how crazy it is that my experience was so flawlessly positive for my first ten months, and then all within a week I get discrimination, hatred, and threats.

A few days went undocumented here.  Friday Sisters for sure.  Saturday RCC?  Who knows.

Tuesday the next week, June 5, that is, I returned to Natick after a long absence.  Cyndi was still in town and while I suggest we go to Pride Lights, she wanted to experience Natick.  How could I argue?  It was great to see Jennifer give Cyndi special attention because she was a first time visitor.  I remember Jennifer did the same for me my first time and how welcomed I felt.

Wednesday was Bondage Club with Meredith.  Bondage Club is kind of fun but I'm afraid I'm about done with it for a while.  It's a little bit slow for me and is kind of a long night.  Maybe I just need to make more of it.  Find out the topic ahead of time, study up on it, come prepared with ideas of stuff to talk about and practice.  I've been going just expecting to be entertained and, kind of getting what I paid for.

Thursday was Jessica's birthday party at Club Choices.  It was fun to see this new club, nice to see that there's a group of people interested in BDSM and interested in coming out to a club like this to socialize.  I ran into Todd whom I had first met at Crypt at Toast.  He recognized me and came to talk to me.  It was very cool to be recognized and approached like that.  I told him how I had followed his tips and gone to Ceremony and a couple of other Goth events, so hopefully he saw that I appreciated his company that night at Toast.  As far as the night being a birthday party, it was pretty low key.  The party consisted of Jessica, Stacy, and me.  I think Jessica liked it though because she got to dress up, go out, socialize with BDSM people, have drinks bought for her, get cards and presents.  I bought her an ankle bracelet and got her a cute birthday card.   She loved the card, and I think she liked the ankle bracelet too.  I had shopped around a bit for it.  I wanted the longest one I could find, to go around a male ankle, I wanted one that looked sturdy, but still feminine, one that looked comfortable and not prickly, one that was real silver and so would stay nice and not discolor the skin.  Basically, one that I would like to wear myself.  Stacy and I had a nice time together while Jessica went and played with friends.  We talked and danced and just kind of did the girl's night out thing.

Friday was Sisters, of course, and I was expecting that we were going to XMortis again, so for the third evening in a row, I was dressed like a young radical.   Somehow though, no one else seemed to get that memo, and my black leather, fishnets, and white-out makeup ended up contrasting dramatically with everyone else's happy spring pastels and cheery summer primaries.  Needless to say, we didn't go to XMortis.  We returned to Jury instead, where I was wasn't even sure they would let me in dressed like I was.  One way to find out!  I strutted in on my 5" heels like I was defining the dress code, and I got nothing but positive attention.
 
Saturday was Pride, and omg, what an experience.  It was special to me because it was my first time to march in a Pride Parade, and only my second time to even see one.  Last year at this time I was kind of just exploring queer...space.  I had been living with Al and Paul for a few months, I had been trying on a bisexual identity, I had been to Jacque's a couple of times, I had seen my first drag kings.  Pretty sure I didn't know the difference between the word meanings of "sex" and "gender."  Pretty sure I didn't know the word "transwoman."  I went to the parade and watched in awe of the diversity of it all, and was vaguely aware that part of the diversity was trans- something or other.  I'd head that the trans people were having a thing at some church, and I felt strangely intrigued, but...I put it out of my mind as not me, not my culture.  Heck, I didn't even know any trans people, didn't know anything about them.  I had no business crashing their picnic or whatever it was.
 
Here, one year later, I was two months into cross living and was marching with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coallition.  I found our group lining up before the start of the parade and Gunner was handing out signs and banners for people to carry.  "Um, did you have leaflets to hand out?"  I asked?  He looked down at my 5 1/2" heels and smiled and asked if I was sure.  I was.  Omg...it was great.  Not only was I wearing Meredith's vintage platform heels, I was wearing Steffenie's pink polka dot dress.  I looked spectacular, if I do say so myself, which was perfect for the spectacle of me running--yes, running like a maniac--non-stop over the course of the whole parade.  I believe I handed out over 500 leaflets.  After the parade, Sally and I walked around the Pride festival a bit.  We sat down in front of the stage just in time to see Lisa Jackson performing.  We got snacks from one of the vendors.  I bought a t-shirt.  Both of us ran into people we knew.  It was all so cool, so nice.  I said goodbye to Sally then because I had signed up to work at the MTPC booth in the afternoon.  Our mission was to collect names and addresses to support HR1722 and wow, I couldn't believe how fast we collected names.  The final count was over 2000.  So, Pride was fun, I was right in the middle of it, and...doing something useful even!

That evening I did make it RCC eventually.  My only regret is that I didn't get there sooner.  Too many people to meet, too little time.

Sunday brought a couple of surprises.  I did laundry, including the pink polka dot dress, but out of the washing machine came just shreds of pink fabric.  I'd washed it before; that wasn't the problem.  The problem was that I had worn the poor thing as athletic wear and it wasn't designed for it.  It separated at pretty much every seam, starting at the hip and bust where there had been the most stress.  It was a gift, Steffenie had only paid a dollar for it, which was understandable because it came with a stain on the front and, in retrospect, the beginnings of these seam failures.  And so with it being no big financial loss, it was just plain funny to have worn out a dress in one day like that.

The second surprise was an email from Michelle in Kansas.  She had seen my coming out post on the Astronomy list.  Uh oh....

Monday was the monthly MTPC meeting.  Afterwards I went with Deborah to Hub Pub for dinner and a beer.  It was nice to have a little more time to talk with her and get to know each other better.  I like her.

Tuesday I was still being lazy about cooking and went to Spirit after work for dinner and a beer.  Guilt was welling up though, so I went grocery shopping on the way home.

Wednesday, I'm pretty sure it was that night that I had Daphne over.  I fixed dinner for her, and then we went to see "Blades of Glory."  Hilarious, of course.  We both liked it.

Thursday, Gendercrash, read "CD Tears", Deedee, News.

Friday I broke a little bit from the usual Sisters routine.  As I'd explained to Ashley recently, It's a huge pain for me to get to the Sheraton.  Most convenient would be taking a cab.  The fare is over $50.  Next most convenient is the commuter rail.  Of course that still involves two subway rides to get to the commuter rail, the train ride, and then a cab from the train station to the hotel.  Transportation cost, about $20.  Time, about 2 hours.  Then come various combinations of buses and walking to reduce transportation costs more, but travel time ends up stretching well over 2 hours.  Why have I done this every Friday for the last ten months?  Mm, Sisters is lots of fun, but also I feel I made a bit of a commitment when I signed up as moderator.  Also, tedious transportation is part of the trade off I make for not having a car.  I do hate cars.  So anyway, this Friday after work, instead of hurrying straight to Sisters, I went sailing instead.  Weather was just as beautiful as it could be.  It was Friday after work, and an absolutely perfect day for sailing.  I had the best time taking a couple out for instruction, they loved me, and then I was on the street in Boston at 8:30 in jeans and a t-shirt.  I looked through my phone list to see who I might call to confess that I wasn't going to make the Sheraton.  I called Dina, then went home to fix dinner and get cleaned up to meet the girls back downtown at Lauren and Jurys.  It worked out great for me.  I got to sail, I saved the headaches of getting to the Sheraton, and I still got to see all my Sisters.  At 2am when Jurys closed, Stacy and I were busy talking and decided to wander through downtown looking for a bite to eat.  We looked at News and South Street Diner and decided against both.  We ended up in Chinatown, we ate, we walked back to Stacy's car.  I asked her about the smashed up fender and she told how she had fallen asleep at the wheel last week on the way home from RCC and hit a guard rail.  Ah, that kind of settled it--she was sleeping at my place.

Saturday morning was just a little bit lazy.  It couldn't be completely lazy because I had work to do.  One weekend a month or so, I have to process asteroid data on a Saturday.  It's not so bad since I can do it from home, but still, it meant I couldn't be the best company for Stacy.  It also made be a little late in the evening, going down to meet Daphne for Providence Pride.  We managed to get there just in time to see, well, most of the parade, I think, and then of course to hit a couple of bars.  Providence does their Pride in a little different order.  They have their festival during the day, and then the parade at dusk.  This adds a dimension of light to the parade that's lots of fun.  Lots of floats were lighted, lots of people were carrying or wearing lighted things.  Daphne of course, is a near celebrity at this sort of thing.  She knows so many people.  I knew just a few.  I saw Frank, Al's old bf.  And I found Deja, whom I'd met at First Event and then who came to Sisters the week after.  Later a guy recognized me from my URNA profile.  It was just a touch creepy.  He said that he was a big fan of mine and that for a while I was his home page or wallpaper or some such thing.  I drank, Daphne took me home, we slept.  She fixed me a nice breakfast in the morning and sent me home on the train.

Sunday when I got home, Al surprised me by asking if I wanted to shopping with him at  Garment District.  Of course I did!  He bought a couple of pairs of jeans and I bought a couple of tops.  I could have spent so much time there though.  Home, I took my time getting ready to go out to Jacque's.  The special attraction was that Daphne was going to perform on stage as part of an Imperial Court fund raiser.  Now, the advertised start time for shows at Jacque's is usually 10pm, and for drag queens, that means about 10:30.  I walked in just a few minutes after 10 and expected to be just in time to find a seat and order a drink before the show started.  Wrong.  The fundraiser was just ending.  I had missed Daphne!  I felt awful!  Apparently when Daphne had told me that the fundraiser would be *before* the regular show, it went in one ear and out the other.  I'm such an idiot.  So, I got to see her for just a few minutes.  Got to see her pout, got to apologize for being an idiot, and that was all.  She had to be up early for work and couldn't stay out late.  I stayed and watched the regular show, Mizery and Crystal were amazing as always, even performing for an almost totally empty house on this Sunday night.

Monday brought more psycho astronomer drama.  Psyco astronomer, the one I told about threatening violence against my supervisor, had over the weekend submitted some data that he expected me to publish.  Um, hello?  You phone in hatred and threats and then expect me to congratulate you?  Wrong.  Supervisor had since gone on vacation so this is my call.  I decide to set his data aside until supervisor returns.  Sound reasonable?  Not to psyco ex-director of my office.  He comes to my office to interrogate me and call me unprofessional.  I told him to go F himself.  Well, not really, but basically I said I didn't care and he was done talking to me then.  Hmm...somehow that night I ended up at Charlie's Kitchen for food and drink.  I walk in and who is sitting at the bar but Holly and Steve!  Holly was full of compliments as usual.  Steve was more interested in his dinner.  Both were fun to talk to.  It was fun to catch up a little bit and trade a couple of stories.

Tuesday and Wednesday were just work--observing.

Thursday I get a phone call from Deedee asking if I can meet her at Shine for a house music night that Maria is promoting.  I went, but could only stay until about 9 pm because I had the telescope that night and had to get to work.

Friday, sisters, train, bus, walk, barely made connections.  Wendy tried to help me.  Jurys, Rise.

Saturday, train to lowell, dressed in hotel in nashua, dior counter in manchester, breezeway dinner, 313, monique's b'day, dominic, dancing, failed breezeway, hotel

Sunday, ride to Ogunquit, Inside Out, Amanda, Corvette, Danny, rise guys, commedian, Aboyda, Juanna, back porch, Maine St.  Ride home, no snack for Corvette.

Monday?  No notes.  Crap...did I do anything interesting?  I think I worked late.  Can't remember now.  Is that the night I plucked my face?

Tuesday, Jessica, Grendels, house, tranny porn, walk up mass ave, closed liquor store, Ce Bon, wine, chips, dip, house, stacey, more wine, play, light sleep

Wednesday, at work looking like a tramp, home to clean up, federica said i looked "elegant", cfa party, two beers, missed train, two more upstairs at Charlies, rum runner at LaSpina

Thursday, Maria party.  Burger king, lost umbrella, maria, beer, dressed, RCC, tour of the house, drinks, patrick gave us watermelon shots, photos, cambridge, pee, charlies, home at 2:30.

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Memorial Day Weekend

June 3rd, 2007 6:12 pm MDT

Hmm...last I wrote was May 22, when I was crushing on Donna, and I've hardly had any contact with her since. How is this possible? I think I've simply been too scatterbrained to support a crush. How sad is that? I know she's out there, she writes in her blog, she left me a message or two even, and I haven't written her. Well, I admit, I was kind of spooked to feel that kind of emotional inexplicable attraction. I haven't felt a crush on anyone like that since...Jessica, last year. So what do I do? I just kind of avoid thinking about it, about her, and go on with life.

*deep breath*

So, Memorial Day was coming up, and I had made a silly post to Sisters of Boston threatening to wear patriotic bunting wrapped around me to form a toga, as my outfit for our Sisters meeting on Friday. Exploring the possibility, I went fabric shopping to see if such a thing was practical. Now, I'm not a regular fabric shopper, so first I googled for fabric stores, and found one in the Twin City Plaza. This was a perfect excuse to go visit this little strip mall. Crazy as it is, I had never been there! Oh, what a mistake to overlook this place. It's a great little strip mall for a girl, with stores like Marshalls, Dots, Sally Beauty Supply, Dunkin Donuts, and this fabric store. The fabric store was busy, I just browsed around and found a bolt of printed flags. Perfect! Instructions on the internet said four yards should be enough for a toga. That was four flags of this stuff that makes 3x5' flags.

Friday came and I was slow getting ready as usual. There wouldn't be time to experiment much with the fabric so I thought it would be fine to just fold it up and take it along, and later at the hotel, make a silly activity of trying to figure out how to wear it. See, I had bugged Ashley to declare a theme for Sisters this holiday weekend and she picked "red, white, and blue" as a theme. To go with the Ashley's theme, I not only had the flag fabric along, I'd painted my nails red, white, and blue. Fingernails all red, one thumbnail white, the other one blue. For something practical wear, I'd worn my denim mini, a string tank, and my new wedge sandals. This was a fun "summer" look, so to complete it, I took a wicker basket as an accessory. This was the basket I got for a prop with my Dorothy Halloween costume. It looks substantially like a picnic basket, even if it's really a gift basket from Frances Cardullo's gourmet shop, so here it is again a perfect prop for the Memorial Day theme. Also very convenient for carrying the flag fabric, my purse, a makeup bag, an extra pair of shoes, and so on.

All was good until I was walking out the door of my apartment, recomputing train and bus travel times in my head, and I realized I was going to miss one of my connections. Rats, what to do? I called Ashley, I called Wendy, I called Deedee. Deedee said she'd pick me up half way and give me a ride the rest of the way. Well, that worked. It was far from ideal though. It put me in a car, and I'm hating riding in cars more and more these days, and it got us to the hotel parking lot around 10 pm. We ran into a car load of Sisters as we stepped out of the car. They were just leaving the hotel! Only five girls had come that night, and they had hung around the hotel for a while and were ready to go into Boston. Deedee and I were done driving and decided to just stay at the hotel bar by ourselves. So, Sisters this week was a little different. Deedee and I had a nice little chat at the hotel, a couple of drinks, and...I think maybe I ate dinner too. I can't remember. She drove me home afterwards, I dropped off my basket, changed the mini for jeans, and went back out to...Charlie's, I think...for another drink. Yes, I should have stayed home. I didn't. So there. At Charlie's, there was a Sox game on, a crowd at one end of the bar was all wrapped up in the game. Next to them were some guys just drinking alone. There was one empty stool among them. I sat down and ordered a drink. The guy on my left got up and walked over to join the crowd watching the game. The guy on my right struck up a conversation after a while. We talked about different things as we drank. At some point I jokingly called something or other "gay", so the conversation wandered in that direction for a sentence or two, when I said, "Hey, I'm tickled to see that I'm not the only tranny in here." His jaw dropped. "What?" he said with a blank look on his face. "Over there, by the front door" I gestured. "The guy in the red dress." He looked, he looked back at me, he looked at the guy in the dress, he looked back at me. "Yeah...but...he...she's...not very good" he stammered. "You...you...ah, I thought you were a woman!"

*sigh* When will I learn?

Anyway, he was cool. We talked more, I finished my drink and went home. Saturday evening I ended up at RCC again with Ashley. She somehow knew that Daphne would be there. Knowing that Ashley dresses like a showgirl and Daphne always looks elegant, I decided to contrast with them and go for a look that was a little bit "punk." The urban camo miniskirt, the black tank with steel grommets, platform sandals, black hair in a pony tail, bangs over one eye. What fun. Fun to dress, fun friends, fun alcohol. Uncharacteristically for me though, I didn't dance a bit that night! I ended up talking a lot with Daphne, and, as with Donna the week before, she and I ended up making out in the middle of the room. Am I going to hell or what? Mmm, I do like Daphne a lot... Um...anyway... Ashley, Stacey and I went to I-HOP after the bar closed, Ashley drove me home, and that was day one of the three day weekend.

Sunday evening was the infamous discrimination incident that I have written about elsewhere. In short, I was denied entry to a certain gay bar in Cambridge because I was cross dressed. Now I understand that this sort of discrimination happens. The problem is that this sort of discrimination is explicitly ILLEGAL in the the city of Cambridge Massachusetts. Cambridge is one of three cities in the state of Massachusetts with gender protections against this. Since that night, I've been working with people at the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MPTC) and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) to determine the appropriate response for this. It's not over. I'll post updates as there's news.

I had my new friend Steffenie visiting that day. After striking out at one place, we went to another. We got in ok there, but the place turned out to be dead and we left in a matter of minutes. Home at my place, we drank margaritas, got drunk, and went in the bedroom. The next day, Steffenie had been having such a good time staying with me that she was showing no signs of leaving. I hated to be so blunt, but I kind of had to tell her to leave. I'd had fun too, but, you know? We'd just met. It was our first time together. It was time for her to go home.

I walked Steffenie to her car, said goodbye, and then--had flashbacks of my promiscuous days in the sex club in Kansas--as I called Daphne and made plans for her to come right over. We tossed around ideas of things to do after she arrived and made a rather poor choice. She agreed to go sailing with me. How many times must I learn: Sailing makes a BAD activity for a date! The weather was beautiful but the wind was brisk enough that the water was covered with whitecaps. Me being a bit out of practice sailing in these things, I failed to avoid many waves and poor Daphne got soaked with spray. Back at my place after sailing, what was there to do but get her out of her wet clothes, hm? I really really liked having her over, we were so comfortable and relaxed together. She was no only relaxed, but short on sleep, and soon was sound asleep in my bed. My roommate Al later complained about Steffenie staying for two nights. Omg, I am such a slut, Al never even saw Daphne, didn't know that I had swapped one girl out for another. And...the weekend wasn't even over.

Monday, Cyndi arrived in town! Cyndi and I had one night together, last September. Now she was back in town for some classes and of course we had plans to see each other again. She called when she got in town, I called her back, we talked and, we couldn't wait. She came over and I helped her relieve some tension that had been pent up since we were last together, like nine months ago.

So much to think about... I didn't tell Cyndi, but I'm planning to read about her at the next Gender Crash, which is coming up the week after this. Oh, background for that is that for a few months now I've been going to Gender Crash thinking, "oh, that looks fun, but I'm no performer, and anyway, I don't write" when it hit me that I *do* write...here in my journal. It's public anyway, I decided to read from it. I first picked the account of the first time I dressed at home, but it was over the three minute limit. Right now I'm thinking I'll read the passage CD Tears, which in fact, I wrote about Cyndi.

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Donna

May 22nd, 2007 10:30 pm MDT

Monday morning I felt like such a guy because I was ready to leave for work except I couldn't find my cell phone. After work I came home and tore my room apart looking for it. It wasn't there. Where could it be? I had it on the bicycle ride yesterday. It was in my pants pocket. I had since washed the pants. It wasn't in the washer, wasn't on the floor anywhere, wasn't in the bedroom anywhere, wasn't in the basement with the bicycle. I remembered emptying my pants pockets anyway...although...I didn't exactly remember seeing the phone... Could they have fallen out on the bicycle ride? It just seemed impossible. I was wearing my Tahari cords that fit so nicely. Oh, forget the long story... I found it in the sink, where I had since washed dishes and hand washed some clothes. The phone had drowned. Today after work I went and got a new one. Yes, it's expensive and I signed a contract, but, it's so much nicer than my old phone. It's a phone fit for a girl whereas my old phone was a worn ugly thing that only a nerdy guy would carry. This phone is sleek and has a color screen and ring tones and takes pictures and I'm sure you're all bored with this because you had a phone like this for a year or more but it's new and really exciting to me.

After getting the phone, there was still plenty of time to go sailing. It was a beautiful sunny day which meant lots of people at the dock. As I was standing around people watching and finishing my coolata they pleaded on the PA system for instructors, saying there was a long list of people waiting for instruction. Still giving the dock staff room to handle me delicately, I stepped up to the dock house and said that I could take people out after I went to my locker. Christian didn't raise an eyebrow. “Come back when you're ready” he said. I did, and ended up going out with a girl who had sailed a little bit on small boats elsewhere but had just joined here and had never sailed one of our boats. She was fun! We had lively conversation, she was interested in learning stuff, and, needed to learn. It seemed her sailing skills were a bit weak for having sailed other boats before.

Home after sailing, cooked dinner, went to visit Jessica to get her phone number (and her picture!) in my new phone, back home again, playing on the computer... stalling really...

because...

I have such a crush on Donna.

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Ten days

May 20th, 2007 10:57 pm MDT

Ten days

I have to start Friday before last. Sisters went just fine even though I was feeling o unmotivated for some reason during the day. Trusting that I would pull out my funk later, I went home at lunch time and packed a bag for the evening so I could just take off straight from work. That makes it easier to catch the 136 bus which goes a little closer to the hotel than the 137 bus. I knew we might end up at Xmortis, so I just threw...some black stuff in the bag for the evening. At the hotel, changed from work clothes into black capris with animal print cuffs, a black string tank, Meredith's 5 1/2” heels, and some black and red accessories. I kept my blonde hair. Honestly, I wasn't in a very gothic mood and just didn't want to wear the black hair. The night was fairly warm, but to go to Xmortis at TT the Bear's, I had a black mesh top I put over the tank which had a nice effect. Really I just have fun changing my look during the night when I'm out with the girls. I decided to leave the mesh top in the car for dancing, so it was just on for a while and then off, but I replaced Meredith's 70's vintage shoes with my fetish-looking black pumps, and also remembered this time to bring along the lace up sleeve that I got at the last Xmortis. It worked just great. The look went from a little bit edgy, but ok for the hotel, to a little bit over the the top for the hotel, but blending just fine at Xmortis. The girls noticed. I was happy.

Poor Jessica had tried to make it to the hotel but didn't catch up with us until we were at TT's. Stacy--Jessica's Stacy—on the other hand, had made her Sisters debut at the hotel and rode with us. I was dancing with Stacy when Jessica arrived. Also right there dancing with us (If I remember correctly) was Ashley and Danielle—new Danielle, who was dancing with us for the first time. Jessica came up and kissed Stacy. I couldn't resist playing a little bit, knowing that Danielle didn't know Jessica and Stacy. I addressed Jessica sternly saying something like, “excuse me, but I was dancing with this woman!” And then I kissed Stacy. And then I smiled and kissed Jessica. Dancing was fun of course. I drank. People went their separate ways at the end of the night. I was headed home alone, then I thought, why don't I just crash at Jessica's? Good plan, but of course a sleep over at Jessica's is never as simple as just crashing. Dave was sleeping over as well, and the four of us...well, it turned out we didn't really sleep much.

Saturday, I was up and back in Meredith's 5 1/2” heels to go to Youth Pride. Gunner had put out a call for supporters for Youth Pride, explaining that they had each other, a few parents, and possibly otherwise just protesters. It would be nice if there were some supporters to balance out any protesters. I was impressed with the size of the rally. Lots of people, lots of vendors, a big march through the streets of Boston, escorted by police. I saw a few people I knew from the community, but not many. Gunner, Aliza, and there was a small contingent of drag queens. I don't know them well, but I recognized Becca and went and said hi to her. She was pleased although a bit surprised because she didn't recognize me. I didn't really expect her to though, I'd never talked to her before more than complimenting her after a performance at Jacque's.

Home, changed out of the queer look and into a blending look, and went right back toward downtown to go sailing. Went out by myself for just a few minutes then was back to get gloves out of my locker to protect my delicate little hands, then went out for a nice long sail by myself. I was putting my sails away when they called over the PA system for any member to take someone out for instruction. The day was beautiful still, I had no important plans for the evening, so...it was time for my next big acceptance test. I went up to the dock house and said I could take someone out for instruction. The guys at the dock house looked a little flustered and started to make excuses that they didn't know where this person was. I thought I'd give them an out if they wanted it. “I have to go to the restroom real quick” I said. “I'll be right back if she shows up.” That would give them a chance to talk amongst themselves, maybe ask this person if they would go out on a boat with a tranny, maybe make up some lie. Do I give myself too little credit? I don't know. This is all new to me. I went to the restroom as they paged the person that wanted instruction. I came back and she was waiting for me. I introduced myself and she blinked, just slightly startled at the realization that her instructor was a tranny. Obviously the guys at the dock house had decided to just play it straight, and watch what happened. Turns out we had a good sail. It was her first time in a sailboat. She did great. It was my first time to take anyone out for instruction since summer before last. It felt like old times.

For Sunday, all I have in my notes here is the film fest. This was the night they were showing the transgender short films at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts. Nicely, the second film of the night had a couple of transgender characters in it, so it was kind of trans night at the film fest. I saw both films, and that was it for me for the festival this year. Last year I bought a half festival pass and really enjoyed watching lots of the gay films, and even a couple of the lesbian films. This year I was poor, but also this year I had an MFA membership, so I thought I could spring for a couple of MFA discounted tickets at least. Also again, although I was out in the GLBT community, I was pretty much on my own not recognizing anyone from my little CD/TS community. Except for the drag queens that is! I think maybe it was about the same group I saw the day before at Youth Pride.

Monday was the MTPC monthly meeting, and I'm sure an important one because it was the day before the big lobby day at the state house, but I decided to to skip this meeting. More important for me, I thought, was to go to an alcohol focus group that Fenway Community Health was doing. As I told in my email requesting to come, I'm trans, I've gone through periods of heaving drinking, and I've seen others with drinking problems. In the end, I was really glad I went. I felt like I contributed a unique perspective. And, best of all, they paid fifty bucks for participation. I knew I'd done the right thing because leaving there, I had the strongest urge to go spend the money on drinking right then. I resisted though, and earmarked the money for shoes, what I had been missing most recently.

I took Tuesday off of work for the lobby day. We lobbied legislators at the state house to support Massachusetts House Bill 1722 which would provide legal protections statewide for transgenders. It was a fascinating day. I'm really very ignorant about all things political, I barely know the language, I hadn't really done my homework for lobbying. Yet, supposedly it was most important for ordinary people like me to just show up and tell in our own words why the bill was important to us. Here, unlike Youth Pride and the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I found my family. There were of course people I knew from MTPC, but also a number of CDs and Tss that I knew from various circles. Most fun was finding Sally and Michelle. The three of us ended up sticking together for the day. We combined our lists of legislators and just ran from office to office as a group of three, all of us seeing everyone on our combined lists. And...it felt good! We didn't always know what to say, but we did tell our stories over and over, and we did show our faces in a dozen different offices. Everyone else there seemed to be doing about the same! Gunner's estimate for attendance that got published in the media was 120. I would have guessed quite a bit more than that. I told a few people that I thought there closer to 300 in the auditorium when we started, but hey, I didn't try to count, that was just my wild guess.

Lobbying was over by 12:30, Sally and I had taken the day off of work, so we spent the afternoon just being girls. We walked down to Charles street and had a nice lunch at the Paramount, then spent quite a bit of time browsing boutiques along Charles street. We were about to say good bye when I decided I would shop for shoes (with my alcohol money!) in Downtown Crossing next. Sally was a trooper and wanted to come. I did find shoes, but, crazy as it sounds, all I bought were some very inexpensive canvas slip ons. Somehow nothing was grabbing me. Only the slip ons were easy to buy because they were cheap and functional, and I thought a little bit cute.  Just as we were finishing up shopping, I got a phone message.  It was Dorothy's Boutique.  My wig was in!  Sally was nice enough to drop me off at Dorothy's.  I picked up the wig.  What a great day!

Wednesday was my second time to go to the FtM SOFFA group. I went last month (it seems that went undocumented!) and liked it ok. And yes, I'm going to this thinking about Alex. I headed to the meeting straight from work, thinking that I would be able to make it there by 6:30 easily. On the train though, it hit me that the meeting wasn't until 7:30. I had time to shop for shoes! I went back to DSW thinking it was absurd that I didn't see anything there yesterday that I liked. Sure enough, this time was better. I hadn't gone through part of the sandals when I found some wedges that I just fell in love with. So there, between the two pair I'd spent my alcohol money. The meeting was nice, I showed off my shoes of course, we ate chocolate, and told stories about stuff, including FtM stuff. Wish I had more to talk about....

Thursday I'd planned a girls night out with Meredith but she had to cancel on me. Those plans were replaced when Deedee messaged me during the day and asked me out to Underbar that night. On Deedee's arm, I get in for free, so of course I'm there. I've been in dance withdrawal lately. I met her at the hotel next door where she was interviewing the DJ and the promoter. She wrapped up the interview at the billed showtime and we went over to the bar, but still had to wait a while before they were letting people in. It turned out to be a really fun party. Deedee bought me an $11 cosmopolitan, Maria handed us complimentary Pinas, I sucked them both down and was feeling happy. Lots of people were coming up to Deedee to talk music biz with her. Deedee and danced for a little while, then she got invited up to the VIP lounge. I could have followed her, but decided to stay on the dance floor. It wasn't long before I had a dance partner very interested in me. We had lots of fun dancing. After a while I excused myself to go to the restroom. When I came back he was on his cell phone. I scratched his back as I walked by but kept walking to go find Deedee. I found her still in the VIP lounge and had to fill her in on my dance partner. “See? That's him right over there!” I was pointing, as he was looking around the dance floor. I began dancing with Deedee again. We were grinding away when my friend from downstairs appeared. I threw my arms around him and the three of us danced together for a bit. And, well, that's a summary of the whole evening. I said good bye to him, we kissed. We kissed a really long kiss. And Deedee drove me home.

The week flew by! Another Friday, another Sisters. This Friday I was done with rushing and decided to come home, fix my self a nice dinner, take my time getting ready, and just get there whenever I got there. Dinner was nice, it was nice to paint my nails, they turned out really well, but then I was doing the math and I really needed to get out the door. Once again, threw stuff in a bag to change at the hotel. Actually I did some of my makeup on the ride there. Got to the hotel around 9:00, sat down at a table in the bar area and got out stuff to do my eyes and lips. Dina coached me a little on my eyes, and I paid attention because she does such a good job on hers. I could tell she was dismayed with my crude work, but I was ok with the way they turned out. Into the changing room to trade my jeans for a dress, and the butterfly emerged from her cocoon. The overall look turned out surprisingly good. I didn't realize how good it looked until I saw some of Ashley's pictures the next day. They were good enough I asked her for a copy to use as my URNA profile. Posted, I got an immediate compliment from Jamie. Isn't she the sweetest to notice and say something?

For clubbing after the hotel, something very rare happened. Ashley agreed to go to Toast, and...we all got right in! See, it was pouring rain this night, and I guess that kept lots of people away. This was my time at “Dyke Night” Friday at Toast. Girls—oh, I have to say “gurls”in this context—were complaining that the place was dead, but I thought it was just fine. Had fun with my gurls, had fun chatting with the lesbians, had fun dancing, got fairly drunk. I really don't know how that happened even. I had three drinks and had barely started on a fourth. That was all it took to get me pretty messed up. I was weaving all over the sidewalk on the walk home with Jessica. Slept over at her place again. Dave was there again, so, um, yeah. I woke up at 11:00 the next morning. Woke up with a nasty hangover, and an even nastier bloodshot eye. I guess it had gotten infected somehow. Really both eyes looked pretty bad. There was no way the contacts were going back in. There was no way I was going to negotiate the crowds on the train without being able to see expressions on peoples faces, so I walked home up a very blurry Mass Ave. Home about 2:00 (It took me a long time to put myself back together at Jessica's) I got cleaned up, put in one contact, made coffee, sat down at the computer. Next thing I know, Meredith is asking me when I'm leaving for Tiffany Club. It was 5:00 and my hangover was just starting to clear and I was feeling almost ready to start my day.

Got to Tiffany Club around 8:45, I think. This was Tiffany Club's first “open” Saturday night, where non-members are invited. It was nice! See, this was also my first time there, so I was eager to see the place, see who was there, and maybe meet someone new. I remember hearing about Tiffany Club when I first started last August. Girls would start to explain a little bit about it, then realize they were talking to a girl who had just ridden the subway and the bus to get to the hotel, then danced the night away at one of the clubs on Landsdowne Street, and they would finish their sentence with “but you don't need Tiffany Club, you're already way past that.” Well, maybe, but I'd already heard Natasha's slogan, “just when you think you don't need Tiffany Club, Tiffany Club needs you.” And, well, I was listening anyway. So...lots to think about, but the evening there was nice. Oh, one fun thing I did was to bring along Toto, the dog I got for Halloween at Triangles, dressed in a Tiffany club t-shirt! The shirt came from the Tiffany Club bear that I got as a prize in the pool party beauty pageant last year. It fit Toto perfectly and made him so cute! I thought it was a fun “TS” sort of thing to do to bring a stuffed animal, Toto was kind of special, and mostly it was fun to show off the Tiffany Club t-shirt at my first time there.

From Tiffany Club, four of us went to Randolph Country Club, Ashley, Lucy (from England!) me, and Denise a friend that Ashley had brought out of the closet for the first time. Denise wanted to drive, I offered to ride with her for company. We shared our t-life stories on the drive down, and had fun hanging out together after we got there. Denise was so happy and excited. I had a great time with all the girls there, and with Manny too! But the highlight for evening was dancing at the end of the night with Donna, and then coming upstairs to talk, and...ending up...making time stand still. Oh, my.

Today was a nice rest day. Did lots of laundry, went on a nice bicycle ride, and, caught up on the Journal!

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Mystery of the Melted Wig

May 11th, 2007 2:21 pm MDT

A short entry here just to keep on top of writing. I didn't do much this week that was trans-specific. I volunteered to bring snacks for morning coffee this week so I spend a lot of time baking. All of the snacks turned out pretty well. Lemon bread on Monday was a little bit burned, but people polished it off anyway. I decided the test that it wasn't burned too badly was that they even ate the crumbs. You know? If the burned part really tasted burned, they would have left it, but no, they ate it all. Lets see, I also made some fabulous almond bars that had a texture much like shortbread, peanut butter cookies, scones, and blondies. Several people said that the scones were their favorite. I was happy. I think it's about the best job I've done at coffee snacks.

I'd been wanting a nice spring dress and finally bought one this week. Not the springiest of spring dresses, it was still very nice and I loved wearing it to work. Nice fabric, floral print, big princess-style skirt, pleats, pockets, a zipper, a hook, buttons up the back, shoulder pads, a matching belt. $6 at Goodwill.

The big trans news of the week is that I solved a wig mystery. The mystery starts with the destruction of my very first wig, the long straight brown one, (which is shown in the selected avatar pic there.) I pulled it out of my bag one day and found the top of it melted into a solid block of plastic. All I could figure out at the time was that I must have set my bag next to the baseboard heater on the commuter rail. This was sad, but wasn't a huge loss because the wig was looking worn and frizzy. I had asked at the wig store what could be done about it and the answer was "not much." One suggestion was to try an oil sheen to make it hang a little bit straighter. I picked out a product and began using it, but really the wig was looking bad.

Losing the brown wig also wasn't a huge crisis because by then, Erica had already given me another wig. I began wearing this one every day and it became the "Sonia" look. Now, it was used, of course, and I started putting wear on it like crazy, especially from all my dancing. I used the sheen product, and it added a beautiful glossy appearance, never seemed to do much for the frizzies. (Yes this is all part of the mystery.)

Before going full time last month, I wanted a better look. I went to see Bob at Profiles Salon, as documented previously. On his recommendation, I shopped Dorothy's on Mass Ave and picked out a new wig. Everyone loved it, especially when I wore it to rise. Of course I wore it home sweaty and tangled that night, then carefully detangled it, washed it, let it dry, sprayed on the sheen, and brushed it out smooth.

Except...it wasn't so smooth anymore. I was crushed. How was this possible? Bob had told me that the body heat and sweat from dancing is what ruined the last wig, but, that was over a period of months! How could this wig be so frizzy within one week and after only one night of dancing?

The answer came to me in a dream this week. It came to me that it might not have been the dancing so much as the sheen spray! I looked at the ingredients. It wasn't so much oil as it was solvents and very long chemical names. This was almost certainly it. It made me feel sick to think about it. Later, I remembered the melted brown wig, and another (repressed?) memory returned... One of the sheen spray spilling inside of my bag. So it seems likely now that the wig didn't melt from heat, but from the spray. I had to confirm this with Bob. He works on Thursdays. I came to see him in the afternoon. And yes, of course, he confirmed it. If I had any estrogen in me I think I would have cried.

Later in the afternoon I was back at Dorothy's trying to buy a replacement. No, they didn't have another one in stock. Yes, they took my name and they'll call me when it comes in. You live and learn. You live as a girl and learn new things.

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Practice, practice

May 6th, 2007 10:07 pm MDT

I have a little rant here about detractors of admirers. Some girls have a hard time believing that admirers are for real. They've had bad experiences, they've had experiences of admirers turning TG, or they've just heard of others' bad experiences, or they fancy themselves “straight” and they want nothing to do with admirers. Am I right? Don't you hear a lot of this? So here's the problem. I glossed over just what an admirer is. We both know, right? It's a guy that claims to like TGs. Well, maybe... Never mind my little gloss of implying that the TGs I'm talking about are MtFs, the really big problem is that maybe some women like MtFs too. The problem with that? It's that no one questions their sincerity. Why is it that we have no problem believing that a woman might like a MtF, but we're so suspect of a man liking an MtF? Oh, maybe it's that we like women, so we like the idea of them liking us. Maybe we trust women more? Maybe we're not worried because it's impossible for a woman to date us for a while and then realize that she is a transwoman too? It's all crap. Accept two things: People can like us, and people can change. Accept good things that come to you. Do everything in your power to hold on to good things. But, accept that good things sometimes end. That's all there is to it.

Unrelated to the above, Laura was just one of a number of people asking me recently if I am starting hormones (the answer is no) and why not. It's an understandable question. I've gone full time (two weeks now, yeah!) so that looks like “transitioning” to most people and hormones are, usually anyway, part of transitioning. Here was my email answer to Laura:

Hi Laura,

The short answer about hormones is that I don't feel ready yet. I'll admit that I do have a little bit of general apprehension, but I have a few good reasons/excuses/rationalizations. First of all is that I still feel so new, still less than a year from discovering myself trans. I'm not sure it's sensible to dive into hormones so soon. Part of my long experience in troubleshooting and debugging tells me to change only one thing at a time. Honestly, I'm still a bit nervous about breaking that rule when I started. I started on antidepressants and within a couple of months was a girl. It felt so good to be a person, when I never really was one before. Maybe I should have given the boy a chance? This is the little doubt I harbor that I'm doing the right thing. Against that though, I look back over my life no and see *all* the classic signs of a transgender. Mostly I think, how could I have been so blind as to have never seen this before? And of course, I do love *everything* about being a girl, and I'm so totally comfortable with it, and it seems to come naturally enough to me. So, what's not to love? I do love myself as Sonia. The chance that I decide at some point that it was all a mistake seems vanishingly small.

For my transition schedule, I'm thinking that I'll stay where I am for a few months. Candidate next steps are things like gender therapist, legal name change, and hormones, but I'll decide when the time is closer. This sort of DIY real life test seems crazy to most people but it feels ok to me. This is partly a consequence of the small world I've been living in. Having no car, living in Somerville, working in Cambridge, going out for entertainment in Boston, my world has been very accepting of me in this not quite passable form.

I do envy nearly all the effects of hormones. I even look forward to some that might be considered negative. A TS friend new to hormones was writing to me recently complaining of various life issues and it was so obvious to me that she was struggling with unfamiliar emotions. A wife of a new CD was posting to newsgroup recently and her post was so emotionally driven. Sympathizing with these women isn't enough for me. I want to *share* in their emotion, let mine get yanked or even tangled up by theirs. I'm just sure that there's a special bond between women there that I won't appreciate until I arrive.

Loss of strength? I hardly think it will matter. I don't use my muscles for any sort of competition or survival skills as it is. Nn, the metabolism though...I *loved* how easy it was for me to drop 60 pounds when I started this journey. Ok, so if it's harder to lose and maintain weight, there there's one thing I won't like about hormones. If that's the worst of it though, I'll happily take the whole package!

All the best,

Sonia

And finally, journaling of some events of today:

Today I met Sheila to wander through the Harvard May Fair street fair that was today. It was good to see Sheila, the weather was great, and the fair was nice. It was huge, filling the several blocks that make up the Square, and the crowd was just the right size for the number of vendors. Oh, I wish I had lots of money to spend! I would have spent so much on girl stuff this year. I went with Sheila to the fair last fall and I had just started dressing, and bought just a couple of things. Omg, I would have bought so much this year if I had money. As it was, I bought just two things, a purse and a tote bag, and, for shame, those even weren't made by local craftsmen, they were just commercial crap that was being sold for cheap because it was a street fair. Anyway, ten bucks each. The purse will be a nice replacement for my Nine West purse that I've about destroyed by overstuffing it and carrying it every day. The tote bag will be a nice replacement for my beach bag that is similarly worn out. To play with standing out from the crowd, I wore platform heels that Meredith loaned me last Wednesday. 2” platforms, 5 1/2” heels. Omg, they made me a whole head taller than the crowd. It was fun to be that tall! (Maybe if I were 6'3” I would like being a guy? No, no, scratch that thought.) What shocked me though, was that I didn't seem to get many stares or looks. Do I pass that well? Or do people think, “omg, look how tall that gir...oh never mind, it's just a tranny” and turn their attention back to their funnel cakes or whatever. Don't know, don't care. :) To go to the grocery store later, I changed to boots and thus came down two inches. That felt normal and familiar again. Twice on the walk back, a woman spontaneously complimented my skirt. What's with that? It's a ten dollar peasant skirt. Again, no idea. I just smile and say thank you with a little bit of an embarrassed giggle.

Just finished baking lemon bread to take to coffee tomorrow. It's a little burned. :(

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TGIF

May 4th, 2007 12:42 pm MDT

Two more days of fun. Wednesday I was home from work at 5:30 and had 30 minutes to get ready before Meredith would pick me up at 6:00 to take me to a party. I managed to fix dinner, fix a snack to share at the party, do dishes, and pick out and pack an interesting outfit for the evening. There wasn't time to actually change. Then we were off to our little monthly bondage gathering. Curiously, we have lots of TGs that come to these things. Like, 20 to 25% of us, I think! This Wednesday we had me, three other transitioned TS girls, a couple other dressed CDs, and at least one other non-dressed CD. Nn, was that all? Not sure. That's a rough count. The gathering, as usual, was fascinating.

Thursday after work there was a little Cinco de Mayo party at another site of our organization. I never have any reason to go to this building, so this was my chance to make an appearance and let people see the new tranny. "Letting people see the tranny" was, no surprise, a non-event. I hardly know any of these people, I'm still not good at making friends with strangers for no reason at all, so I mostly hung out with the couple of people I knew. Anyway, sangria, chips, and sunshine were nice.

Lisa the secretary gave me a ride from the party around 6:00 and I decided I still had time to go sailing. At the dock, the notable event was spying Kate, a friend from when I sailed two years ago. We had made friends, and started hanging out together just a little bit too much, she began to take a little bit of a romantic interest in me, and I handled it poorly. She wanted to know if I had a romantic interest in her, and I guess I was too vague with my response. I said that I liked her, and that I *might* if things were different, but that I was kind in a strange place in life and wasn't looking for a relationship at that time. That wasn't enough of a no for her, so she kept bugging me. After a bit, I stopped returning her phone calls, but she persisted. She persisted like crazy and kept calling me almost daily for months! Is that stalking? I dunno. That's what it felt like. Anyway, I had no idea I was trans at the time. So...I need to talk to her. I didn't make a special effort to chase her down yesterday, so I have yet to talk to her. *sigh* Not looking forward to this.

Anyway, gotta run to see the therapist now, then I'm off to Sisters this evening.

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Girl Talk

May 2nd, 2007 1:42 pm MDT

Last Night was Natick of course. Someone asked me as I was leaving if I had had a good time. My answer was an emphatic, "I *always* have a good time here." Which is really remarkable given that the main activity is simply talking girl talk. Oh sure, sometimes conversation isn't girly, and we do other things like eat and drink and show off our presentation, but for me, it's the rich, non-stop girl talk that I love. We talk wigs, clothes, jewelry, makeup, makeup, makeup, hygine, boys, girls, friends, family, and lots of gossip. Sometimes sewing, cooking, flowers, just anything.

As an example, on conversation from last night was about hair. Someone repeated the common observation that TGs' hair is often "too perfect," with every hair in place, in contrast to GGs that go around with messed up hair. I chimed in with a story about watching Bob, the hairdresser at Profiles, style the hair of the customer in front of me. I told how he cut and styled it meticulously with a fine toothed comb, getting every hair precisely aligned, getting the shape and volume just perfect, sprayed it with hairspray, then...messed it all up with his fingers and...was then done! He charged her a bunch of money and she left on cloud nine.

A deeper conversation was on the subject of beauty, and how it has different importance for different people. Someone made the observation that the group at Natick is "prettier" than, um, another group that meets regularly somewhere else. Well, now, if we're talking intrinsic beauty of individuals, that's certainly nonsense, but since we *are* Natick, of course we all agree. The implied intent of the statement, I believe, however, was that a greater fraction of Natick girls find beauty highly important, and put extra effort into making themselves as beautiful as possible. Well who wouldn't, you ask? Most of us! It *is* extra work, it takes extra study, extra time, patience, and money. I commented that I wasn't there yet. That I don't know how to do beauty well, and that I don't put that much time into it. Someone else commented that that's they way they started, but then over time, they learned to enjoy more and more the process and the result of making themselves beautiful. I told about Daphne, and how I respected her special interest and wonderful skill at making herself beautiful.

After Natick, Johanna brought me home and I invited her in. She, um, stayed a little bit. I'm sure we both slept with smiles on our faces that night, and slept well.

And yes, I know, I skipped the last four days. Friday was Sisters. A great time at the Sheraton as usuual, then we danced at Avalon, then I, um, left with a guy. Saturday was RCC. A fantastic party, and then eight(!) of us had a fun little pajama party back at the hotel room. Ok, so we didn't really change into pjs, no one even took off any clothes, we just sat around and drank wine and champagne told funny stories and laughed our asses off. Sunday, Monday, I don't remember. I think I mostly stayed home and was bored.

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