URNotAlone

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.