message from tina

Hey everyone,

I know you know who Tina and Jess are, and if you follow our blogs at all you know that we’re good friends.  Tina has asked that we repost this announcement about Jess(e)’s top surgery fundraiser, which M. and I will, of course, be attending this Saturday.  Please consider coming, and if you can’t, please consider donating.  

*****

Party Info Here:

Facebook event:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130452248563

MySpace Event:  http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vbG5rLm1zLzJReVQ0

Tina’s blog entry about it:  http://www.tina-cious.com/2009/10/whatre-you-doing-october-24th.html

Here’s the latest UPDATE:

This party is now costume optional! Prize for best costume! Come get your Halloween on!

As you may or may not know, Jess is transgender and is in the process of transitioning.

Who knew giving away something could be so costly? But costly it is! So, we’re turning to you, our friends and family, in the hopes that you can contribute as much as you can to aid in Jess getting his top surgery.

I know times are tough and all, so I figured a little help from a lot of people would go a long way!

Oh and did I mention that Jess’ birthday is in September too? It’s a two-fer! 

Come have a drink and a snack with us and dance the night away as DJ Alex spins — and give what you can to a very worthy cause: Jess’ happiness!

But wait! There’s more! $1 shots, a costume contest, a 50/50 raffle and a Rent-A-Queer Auction are on tap!

We can’t wait to see you there!

Can’t make it that day? You can still donate! You can send a donation directly to Jess via paypal with a check or credit card via paypal (send payment to webmasterjess@gmail.com).

Or you can mail a check.  Email Tina at tinacious.com@gmail.com for details on where to send that.  

Thanks so much!

*****

“i lay myself down”

my head is still all over the place.  you’ve been warned.

a friend posted this link, and i was really moved by the photos.  many of them are taken in manchester, a place that is very dear to my heart.  click through the pictures, they’re beautiful.  and they give a sense of how much crap we all have to put up with and worry about, even in one of britain’s gayest cities.  for reference, canal street is like the south end of boston, or san francisco’s castro, or new york’s chelsea.  

it’s interesting how much i come back to that time and place in my head.  i miss it a lot, which of course you all know.  my awesome blog buddy sends me boxes of british treats, which simultaneously eases the pain of missing things you can’t get here, and breaks my heart all over again because of the reminder of all the other things i’m missing.  the amazing walks in the hills.  tea like a brown tide washing over every moment of life.  the soft wet air and sparkly sunlight on yellow leaves in the fall.  amazing green grass.  hedgerows and the most beautiful round oak trees you’ve ever seen.  swift, comprehensive train service.  potatoes and carrots you can’t imagine if you haven’t tasted them — even fresh out of the ground in my mom’s organic garden they are not as good as you get over there.  

but of course, this project reminds me that it’s not all a bed of roses.  we didn’t get verbally or physically harassed when we were there, though for the bulk of the time we were very invisible.  toward the end, when M. got more butch, we started getting noticed by people.  as of course we do now.  i just stare back most of the time these days.  i’ve considered making a t-shirt that says, “hey straight people — i’m right here — i can see you staring at me!”  maybe one of these days…

but i wasn’t going to blog about england.  or homophobia.  well i’m not sure what i was going to blog about.

i’m desperate for more hours in the day — especially for my schoolwork — but i can’t seem to cut down on my social events.  seeing people feels like a lifeline, and if it feels like that it seems like a bad idea to say no.  i got three hours of sleep last night, which hasn’t really impacted my day as yet if you don’t count the purple shadows under my eyes.  i kind of like that, though.  it makes me look more dramatic.

well i suppose it’s relevant to say that i found myself a therapist.  you will all probably say “oh thank god, as if she hasn’t desperately needed one this whole time!”  well you’re right, and i did it.  so there.  and i’ve gone three times.  and she is helping me so far.

and of course now i am doing even more thinking about my own life, about the choices i’ve made (even when that choice is to do nothing).  i think i have often been a follower in certain respects, although many people who interact with me in professional contexts wouldn’t think so.  in my personal life, having a voice, being heard and acknowledged, having a space that is my own — all of these things have been virtually nonexistent for me.  a few days ago, i pulled a chair out of the center of the living room and put it so it faces the window, with the back to the rest of the house.  and as i was sitting in it, doing work, i realized that i had physically cut myself off from the rest of my household.  sometimes the cats come by and sit with me, sometimes M. comes in and talks to me, but i’ve finally figured out a way to be less interruptable.  and it’s awesome.  saying no to things has also been an infrequent option for me, but it’s something i’m working on very intensely.  it’s silly of course to pin things only on this new chair arrangement, but i think it symbolizes a new way of looking at things that i haven’t had access to before.  

i’ve written here before about not knowing who i really am underneath the characteristics i’ve acquired from or for other people.  my music all comes from my partner.  i don’t always like what she chooses, but i have purchased or chosen almost nothing for myself for several years.  that seems really weird to say, yet it’s true.  people have given me things, but aside from that the only music i’ve purchased is an album from my childhood that has more sentimental value than anything else.

as time progresses, and M. dives deeper into her trauma recovery, i am left on the top of a hill looking over the receding waters.  under my feet is ground that i don’t know how to walk on.  i didn’t know how to swim either.  i just held on as the waters flowed around me, unable to do anything but cling to that one spot.  i suppose i was waiting to be rescued.  but obviously, no one was going to rescue me.  M. in a way is the receding water, and its going is helping even as it makes things much, much more difficult.  i feel like my new mission is twofold:  learn myself, inside and out, so i know which direction to go forward; and learn how to walk and swim, so that i am never left so helpless and optionless again.

it has been oddly comforting to be forced to acknowledge the very real trauma that happened in my own childhood.  M. and i are both sort of broken beings, abused and neglected.  it’s no wonder we got together so young — we are perfect complements in some ways.  my mother once said to me, “your father and i were so damaged, we couldn’t have successfully been with anyone but each other.”  my aunt, upon hearing this quoted to her, said that she thought that was flawed reasoning.  that each of my parents might have had more fulfilling relationships with people who had more resources to give, who had more grounding and wisdom, who were less broken.

i wonder, of course, about me and M.  i wonder if the person who she could love and fit with when she was in denial about her trauma is someone who she will want to be with when she has recovered.  i suppose i could ask the same question a different way — is the person who i loved going to change into someone else once this lead weight is lifted from her?  these questions are really unsettling.  though the current situation is incredibly difficult, it’s still very familiar.  just an intensification of a reality that has always been present in our relationship.  at the same time, we are both for the first time really trying to handle it differently.  this kind of sustained crisis is impossible to ignore.  there need to be structured responses so that we (i) are not totally overwhelmed, all of the time.  but what if what is on the other side of this crisis is something completely unfamiliar?  what will that look like?  i try not to borrow trouble, but it does start to make me feel nervous and upset sometimes.  after all this, to have this much uncertainty is really scary, even while i know it could mean really positive things in the future.  of course that’s why people don’t like uncertainty — it could also mean vast losses in the future.  we DON’T KNOW.  duh.

i spoke briefly with my advisor on tuesday, and i expressed frustration with all of this exploding all over the place, and how i had so many other plans for this fall, and how they aren’t happening right now.  she said you can’t control life.  it happens, and you adjust.  maybe it delays some things, maybe it helps others.  you don’t know, and you can’t know, and you can’t worry about it.  just be here now, is basically what she said, and we’re here to help you deal with it as best we can.

did i mention that she rocks?  i don’t know how i’d be dealing with school without her.

i need to go and look at my work.  thanks for listening.  i’ll leave you with the song that gave the title to this post.  it has incredible resonance with me right now, and it’s by one of my secret favorite bands (secret because i worry about having too much in common with screaming teenage girls…):

my deadly sins, just for fun

Greed:	Very Low
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Low
Lust:	High
Pride:	Low

Well this is no surprise at all.  If I had to describe myself, this is probably what I would have come up with.  I might have ranked gluttony higher, but I appreciate this quiz’s generosity.  Courtesy of a new reader.
Discover Your Sins – Click Here

more honest bullets

just can’t seem to pull together a coherent narrative, so here’s some more randomness.

• i just had a meeting with my academic advisor, who was so supportive and generous and kind with me that she made me cry.  she basically said that i should do whatever i need to do to take care of myself, and the school stuff can be sorted out.  which makes me feel so much better about the impending midterms.  frankly, she’s amazing.  i feel incredibly lucky to have her in my life right now.
• my little sister and i have often mused on the fact that people being mean to us has never made us cry — it’s always the nice things that start the waterworks.  is that true for other people?  the offer of genuine help & support is just devastating to my sense of self-control.
• i am realizing that there is a difference between talking to someone who has had personal experience with the stuff we’re going through right now, and talking to someone who is generally supportive and thoughtful but hasn’t been through this stuff.  people who know are incredibly comforting to talk to, and somehow they know exactly what to say.
• it’s freaking cold in our house, people.  it hasn’t topped 60 in a couple days.  and the cat yakked on the blanket.  i appreciate that he’s switched his focus from the rug (which can’t be put in the washing machine) to the blanket (which can) but now that the blanket is in the wash, he BETTER NOT get the down comforter, because then how am i going to stay warm???

some more honesty

that honest meme has been going around, and i’ve been tagged more than once, so i’m just going to let loose a little more:

• i just barely rescued yet another pot of oatmeal from burning to a crisp on the stovetop.  i often try to burn the house down via unattended pots of oatmeal when i’m stressed.  to reward myself for not burning it, i grated an apple into it, added a dash of cinnamon, and am now eating it.  it kind of tastes like apple crisp.  good crisp, not bad crisp.  get it?
• had a little tiny panic attack while driving home from school today.  remember:  must be very very careful driving when stressed.  big impairment folks.  like sleep deprivation or drinking.
• you know you’ve had a bad week when most of the dirty dishes are either teacups or dishes used to feed the cats.
• speaking of cats, they are very sensitive to us being stressed.  i can see the changes in their behavior.  i feel bad that they have to live with us.  but i’m trying very hard to be extra good to them.
• my teeth ache from clenching them so much
• i appreciate a lot (so so so much) the supportive emails & comments coming my way.  thanks all.
• i was talking with a very dear & trusted friend last night  and said something like, ‘as hard as this is, i think maybe this is the missing link — finally we can figure out the root problem that has been so difficult this whole time’ and ze laughed out loud.  and said ‘no, there is never a final piece.  maybe a crucial piece — maybe a really big part of it — but not final.  you can’t expect that.’  and as true as i recognize that statement to be, part of me desperately wants to cling to the thinking no it’s really this and once it’s sorted we’ll be just fine forever and ever.  i don’t see myself as one who usually clings to fantasies — brutally honest is one way i’ve been known to characterize myself — but this time it’s so big and difficult that i’m struggling.
• i feel bad about my last post.  once again i feel like i was reacting to a very real thing in my life, but one that has just become totally irrelevant due to the revelation of yet more (& worse) trauma on M.’s part.  what i want to know is:  where the hell are the support groups for partners?  of just about anyone?  i feel a need to explore this — partners suffer a lot.  as much as anyone except maybe the original sufferer (of whatever trauma, not important what exactly).
• i feel bad when i say things like ‘i’m struggling’ and ‘i’m stressed’ because i think it will make M feel even worse, or guilty for making me feel bad.  i battle against this because i understand that denying my own feelings will not ultimately help.  i guess that’s where you all come in.  please keep reminding me that it’s okay to feel bad, that i am not overreacting.
• thanks again for being out there.

left behind

this post has been writing itself in my head for a while now.  i feel as though it’s a hard topic to get into, one that doesn’t get much air time.  perhaps i’m overly sensitive, self-indulgent, or just weak.  i’m spraying vulnerability all over the place these days.

M. had a really big thing happen back in february/march of 2008:  she admitted that she’s always been more male than female.  or more masculine than feminine.  along with that, she acknowledged that the intense homophobia and sexual shame that she was brought up with had shaped her relationship not only with the world and herself but also with me.

this event had a profound effect on our relationship.  everything got a lot easier.  she went from barely functional to someone who could interact with other people successfully.  from someone whose relationship with the world was something that fell to me to manage to someone who could go out shopping on their own.  someone who could leave the house without spending half an hour working up the nerve to go.  M needed me less, and I loved it.  she also had more confidence, more charisma, more strength.  it was like she awoke from a long, drug-induced semi-coma.

all of this is good news.  though along with this came a cascade of realizations of the trauma of her past, the messages she received about how to be a good person, the extent of the emotional abuse that her family visited on her.  this all took an amazing amount of time to process, work through, deal with, get over.  of course one doesn’t really get over this kind of thing at all, but one eventually tries to make peace with it, accept it as part of your story.

now i’ve written almost 300 words, and am i talking about myself?  no.  look back over the archives of this blog.  how much do i really say about myself, compared with how much i talk about M. and/or our relationship?  well, you say, it’s not bad.  you describe a lot about yourself (maybe too much), we feel like we know you.

yes.

i started this blog to talk about myself, perhaps to help me find myself.  to put things out there and get feedback.  to process perhaps.

but as much as i talk about myself here, it is almost a constant struggle not to talk about M.  it often feels like the most significant, defining characteristics of my life are M.’s trauma, and the effect that it has had on her, and beyond that, the effect it has had on me and our relationship.

so what?

i want to say that i wonder if this is a common phenomenon.  what happens to you when your partner transitions?  or semi-transitions, as in my case?  who pays attention to you?  who processes your trauma, after you’re done mopping up the mess that your partner sprayed all over you?  when you deal with things over and over that surely would be better dealt with in therapy?  at least a therapist would give you a second opinion sometimes?

i certainly don’t think this problem is unique to partners of trans and mostly-trans people.  this is surely difficult for partners of people who survive sexual abuse or other serious trauma.  partners of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.  partners of people with genuine mental illness, such as chronic depression or schizophrenia.  i have some experience living with someone who is ‘clinically depressed’, as those of you who read this post might remember.

the damage done to the people who share lives and households with these problems is not insignificant.  we need help and support too, perhaps more than you might think.  more than a year after this revelation event, i’m still a mess.  my life was on hold for many years.  i made decisions that were meant to compensate for the very real problems suffered by my spouse, not that were meant to fulfil my own needs.  i have compromised many of my own desires and dreams to be there for her.  i don’t doubt that she can say the same thing, and a certain amount of this is necessary in any relationship.  but i think that i’ve maybe done more than my share, when all is said and done.

and now?  we look great.  everything is fine.  M. is very good-looking, as it turns out.  smart, charming, and very successful.  girls flirt with her.  she has the glamour of heroism – tough, trauma-suffering butch, but with a heart of gold.  helpful and considerate with a healthy dose of ‘don’t mess with me’ toppy energy.  no wonder she’s popular, i certainly think she’s hot stuff.

but i find myself bitten by a certain jealous bug sometimes.  here we have someone who not long ago couldn’t really function, who was so miserable and isolated it would really, really surprise people who have only just met her.  i’m sure i seem very nice too, a faithful old-school femme spouse who clearly stands by her man and cooks an excellent dinner.

but where is my drama?  when is my heroism going to be recognized?  sometimes i feel like M. gets this kind of respect, this ‘oh i see you’ve been in the trenches’ kind of attitude.  no one looks at me like that.  my accomplishments for years centered around making things possible for M.  no one now even recognizes that it was necessary – now she’s fine.  the people who would recognize/remember that i did this superhuman feat are the same people who are vaguely disgusted by M. now, hence the end of our so-called ‘friendships’ with them.  not exactly the place i want to go looking for support.

and then there’s the issue of my interpretation, and issues of guilt:  all this that i did, one could argue, only perpetuated the conditions where M. could lose herself, give up on herself, slip into this semi-coma.  after all, i was there taking care of things.  if i had let go, or done it less well, maybe this whole event could have happened years sooner.  how do i deal with that potential guilt?  and how do i figure out whether or not i have a leg to stand on when feeling this bitterness?  should i get over it?  because it makes me feel like a selfish beast.

i would surely like to get over it.  the governing principle of my life, that i return to over and over, is that of fairness.  i want justice.  this causes great conflict for me on this particular topic, for one interpretation says that i deserve justice and recognition for my immense sacrifice, and the other interpretation says that i should apologize for enabling this disfunctionality, and celebrate this emergence as semi-trans wholeheartedly.  which of course i do.  but sometimes i feel overwhelmed by the drama.  sometimes i want to have my own drama.  just as i sometimes wish i were more visible, and can’t seem to do anything about it.  

when i look back over this year and a half, i see a few things.  many, many successes.  but with them, a constant underlying theme, is one of personal isolation for myself.  i realized recently that i chickened out of calling an old friend this summer because i didn’t want to deal with explaining M. to her.  i have gained 15 pounds.  i still hear myself repeating old complaints, some from after M.’s revelation, some from before.  what on the surface seemed like liberation at the beginning seems like only partial liberation now.

and i struggle with the tendency to embrace the reality that is my life and make it work, instead of insisting on my own transformation.  i made that mistake over and over and over in my twenties, and am horrified to see myself trying to slip back into that pattern.  i’m not entirely happy with how my life is going.  i want to be free on a fundamental soul level.  i want to be free of the old habits of self-constraint that i learned in order to be a good partner to someone who was deeply in denial of her homophobia and on some level deeply afraid of sex. 

and i struggle constantly with the feeling that if i complain about any of this, if i even tell it to someone else (much less the internet, my god) i am being disloyal, ungrateful, spiteful even.  i bet M. would say if i asked her now, ‘you can write about anything you want.  it’s your blog, it’s your life.’  and i recognize that, and appreciate it, and that’s why i’m writing this and letting you all read it.  but it still feels like a betrayal.

the betrayal is not, i suppose, letting you all read it.  the betrayal is thinking/feeling it at all.

so really, i have no conclusions.  this started out as a more general post, about what happens to the partners of people who go through transition, about how we get lost in the drama and sidelined or left behind.  pushed always to the background, even as we would die to protect our loved one.  but it turned into a personal catalogue of frustration and paralysis, a picture of my inability to move forward.

go to town, people, until i get scared and take this post down.

laboring

I’m having a hard-ish time, folks.  M. and I have been having what I have been calling ‘a rough summer’.  I’m not really sure what exactly that means, and it means different things at different times.  Anyone who’s read back in the archives knows that this relationship is really old, and really old relationships have a lot of history.  A lot of our history is really hard to take.  We have had so many misunderstandings, decisions made on the basis of wrong impressions.  Where one person said something and the other took it as some sort of larger truth, where really it was just where they were that day.  And sometimes the impression that one person gets really is where the other person is, but either or both of us conveniently forget because it’s too difficult to deal with.

And then there’s progress.  We’ve made a lot of progress over this year+ after M. came out as trans.  We communicate better.  We have better sex.  We have friends and a social life.  

But that can also be a source of stress. One thing that used to be really hard was M.’s social anxiety.  There basically was no situation where there would be anyone but me where M. could be comfortable, hence she didn’t ever want to be in those situations, hence we didn’t have friends.  I stayed home because if I didn’t she worried obsessively the whole time I was gone.  Those days are over, thank god, but there’s still a fairly high level of social anxiety, that mostly stems from the reality that people are not so welcoming to the butch who is male/masculine in everything but body and pronouns.  They just aren’t.  And having spent a lot of time analysing what went wrong with our past ‘friendships’ (that were really not friendships, but were the closest thing we had), we are good at recognizing the sliding-eyes-past-you-thing that straight and gay people do when they just don’t want to interact with this trans person problem.

When we came back from the UK, we looked to everyone here like a really nice butch/femme couple who liked to go out and see shows, who knew a lot about gender theory and queer issues.  We integrated really nicely into the queer scene here in Boston.  But the reality is that we are still really struggling with our history of social isolation.  Both with each other and with social interaction.  We realized recently that our former ‘friendships’ were a bit abusive, with people who didn’t actually like us, but liked what we represented for them in their lives, and liked to hang out with us because it made them feel bigger/cooler/better.  That sucks, and it led to a lot of fights where M. would say she didn’t want to go to things and I would insist because I was so desperate for friends, even while admitting (to myself but not really to her) that they weren’t that much fun.  Although in my defense at that point I had given up on things ever being fun again, and was trying to maintain a functionality that I thought was necessary to living life at all.  Which I realize isn’t really a defense at all, just sad.

But I think a lot of our new friends have no idea that they are dealing with social slow learners.  Our profound isolation means that other people have shared experience, culturally, socially — that we don’t have.  As an example, by our age, if you’re going to be involved in the queer kink scene, you’ve probably already done it.  And since we came on the social scene already equipped with the language to talk about it, it’s automatically assumed that we know everything we need to know.

It sort of reminds me of when I was a junior in high school:  one of my classmates, the really cool surfer dude who did drugs and partied hard, looked at me in class one day and said, “I want to know where [myname] parties.  I bet you party in Boston.”  He had assumed that I had some rocking social life that was outside of his experience.  How else to explain my air of superiority, my knowledge of culture and coolness, and my apparent lack of ever talking to anyone?  I got really good at reading things and eavesdropping on other people’s conversations, filing cultural references away, so I would know what people were talking about.  Except that I never actually did the drugs, or listened to the bands, or watched the tv shows, or shopped at the stores.  I am constantly caught out now, where someone will be talking about a band and I’ll know all about them but not be able to recognize a single song that they play.

Long tangent, meant to illustrate that this is not new to me, but I have no idea how to get over it.  There are people I’d like to be better friends with.  I don’t know how to make that happen.  Especially in the context of the relationship I’m in, and the very real difficulty that M. has in these situations.  I deal well with crowds and messy noise, and enjoy meeting people in that kind of situation.  I like the sensation of losing myself.  M. doesn’t.  For very understandable reasons.  But I don’t know how to deal with this difference, because it makes me feel guilty, like if I bring her to an event like that and have a good time while she’s not, I am being insensitive and selfish.  

And I don’t know how to balance my desire to be out there meeting new people and pushing my boundaries with M.’s very different experience in these social situations.  I feel guilty for suggesting that I go without her, because it seems mean to say “I’m going out, see you at 2am!”.  At the same time, these situations can sometimes make M. even more stressed because she knows I’m enjoying myself, so her lack of enjoyment seems that much worse to her, and she knows that I want to be out there and pushing my boundaries but she’s unable to facilitate or support that.  So it’s a bit of a vicious cycle.  

We have talked a lot about what we want our lives to look like in 10 years.  We agree that stepping off the career ladder/upwardly mobile rat race is deeply appealing and important to both of us.  I see people’s pictures on f@cebook (which is the devil) and they spend their summers at the beach, cuddling with a pile of hot tattooed queers, and they all look really comfortable.  That’s what I want my life to look like.  Not the American Dream corporate job + white picket fence + environmentally aware car life that I was heading towards two years ago.  But how to make it happen?  It’s hard to jump the tracks once you’re on them, and I haven’t found the right signal to switch yet.  

I guess like everything it is a work in progress.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

honest scrap since i was tagged

and since it was my esteemed spouse, i feel obliged…there were rules but i can’t be bothered.  not feeling the rules thing right now.

here’s 10 honest things about me.   i’ll try to make it things none of you know about me.  i generally don’t tag people, so feel free to do this if you like.  i don’t care.

1.  when i was a kid, my mom called me ‘t-da-rex’ which has a similar sound to my real name, and reflects her opinion that i am a cruel heartless beast with ruthless killing power.  i was always kind of hurt that she thought that, but also secretly pleased that i had such an effect on people.  i sort of like being scary.  however, i’d like to second greg by saying that jurassic park was the SCARIEST movie i ever, ever saw.  it was made worse by the fact that the little girl looked a lot like i did as a kid.  wicked.

2.  i’ve physically been in 35 states and 11 countries.

3.  i am commuting by car for the first time in five years.  not since 2004, when i worked at a weird fabric store in RI for two months.  where i was paid in cash, $7/hour.  and you think you’ve had bad jobs.  one of my co-workers was fired (after i quit) for stealing polar fleece.  you can’t make this stuff up.

4.  while we’re on the subject of cars, my last commute (that to the fabric store) never required me to shift higher than third gear.  my current commute gets me up to fourth.  i’m living high now!  yay 35 mph!

5.  i’m going to cut my hair off again, but this time i’m going to a salon.  this decision seems to be widely supported but deep down i feel a little cowardly.  i feel like i should just cut it off myself.

6.  i recently proved my survival skill prowess in a class exercise the other day, where i largely agreed with a panel of experts about which tools are vital for survival in sub-arctic conditions.  i’ve always maintained that growing up with a closet survivalist (my mom, different post) means that you really want to be my friend when the apocalypse arrives.  i bet i get all sorts of new spam from this post…

7.  i had no vacation this summer.  none at all.  i’m trying to incorporate vacation-esque activities into the fall.

8.  i’m really happy right now for no reason at all.  maybe it’s because i’m on the internet.  hi everyone!  look!  i’m on the internet!  okay i’ll stop now.

9.  i spent some of my (scarce) free time this summer learning how to fix my bike.  it’s all ready to ride now, just in time for fall!  anyone want to ride with me?

10.  the fall is my favorite time of year.  okay i think you all knew that already (like those of you who read my blog last year) but i’m running out of things to say.  if every day were like a crisp, new england fall day, i would maybe die of happiness.  so maybe it’s just as well.  but at least i’d die happy…in spite of all this talk of death #8 is really true, i swear.

okay, did i miss anything?

gendered spaces: the birthday shopping edition

I hope you all know that M. is now 30.  I think this is awesome, as I no longer have to date someone in their twenties…  This birthday gave me an opportunity to go shopping for items for M., which ended up being quite an experience for this woman, shopping for items coded ‘boy’ for someone not herself.

In the past, birthday shopping for M. was a process very closely approximating excruciating torture.  M. at one point had no interests but work, sleep, and going for long walks.  None of these activities are very conducive to suggesting exciting birthday gifts.  But over the last year, M. has developed not only interests, but hobbies, making shopping so much easier!

So my list this year looked like this:

1.  Fuente 0pus X (a high-end cigar with somewhere near the flavour profile that M. likes)

2.  Chrome Z!ppo, engraved with her initial.

3.  Pocket knife

4.  New white dress shirt with french cuffs (this so that M. can wear the awesome cufflinks that I gave her on the occasion of our wedding.  She didn’t wear them when we got married, but that’s a different story, perhaps one M. will tell).

Let me tell you about my experience shopping for these items.  The lighter, I bought online, in a brilliant stroke of genius, while sitting in my underwear in the living room.  Shopping online is amazing.  However, I am not a good advance planner when it comes to gifts.  Often inspiration strikes late, and I have to trudge all over half the city the day before the event, desperately trying to do it the old-fashioned way.

So, I shopped for a shirt.  I walked into an all-men’s store and looked around me.  I don’t shop in this kind of environment very much,if ever.  Department stores are easier to manage, as all the sections sort of bleed into each other a little bit.  I feel very, very conspicuous when I walk in, but I play it cool and walk right over to the shirts.  I gaze at the wall in dismay:  the shirts start at a 15” neck.  Well, M.’s neck is smaller than that.  A 14.5, to be precise.  At this moment, an enthusiastic and dapper grey-haired gentleman with a measuring tape around his neck comes up to me and asks me if I need assistance.  I ask him if he has any shirts with a 14.5” neck.  He looks at me and says they are hard to find.  I say no kidding.  He looks through every display and comes up short, offers to order one.  I say not yet, I’m holding out.  I find the one (ONE) shirt that is M’s size in the whole store, and pick it up.  Then, I survey the ties.  

Up pops the salesman again, who has kept an eagle eye on me the whole time I’ve been in the store:  ”does he prefer skinny ties?”  Christ.  Yes.  ”He” does.  Obviously, being ’skinny’, M. does indeed prefer skinny ties.  So I say yes.  But I feel really weird about it.  The first time it was assumed that I was shopping for a man, I came home and told M. that she had been mis-pronouned, and that it made me feel weird.  But M. told me that there is no wrong pronoun.  So I don’t correct people anymore, because it seems like not what M. would prefer.  So the salesman used ‘he’, and I didn’t correct him or explain.  

Then, a young saleswoman walked by me as I was sorting through the belt rack and said blithely, “it’s so much easier to shop for ourselves, isn’t it, than to shop for men!”  I nodded sickly, though I don’t agree in the slightest.  I find it nearly impossible to shop for myself.  But I badly need to get out of this place, and feel like agreeing with anything they say to me.  I put the tie I’ve been considering back on the rack and dive for the checkout.  I am grilled again about ordering a shirt and end up with the salesman’s name written on a card.  He is so eager to sell me a shirt.  I pay and leave.

Oh you thought I was done with this didn’t you.  Next stop:  tobacconist.  The tobacconist and I have a little history.

In Boston, there is a very well-known store that carries a large selection of high-end tobacco products of all types — pipes, cigars, lighters, humidors, accessories of every variety.  It was here, a month or so ago, where I had my first run-in with the blatant assumption that a feminine woman in a store gendered ‘male’ is shopping for some man.  Only this time, it’s not just any man.  I ask for a cigar that would be appropriate as a gift.  No pronoun, no gender attached to my statement.  I am offered several, and asked about ‘his’ taste.  I hedge, because I don’t know, and end up with something a bit mellow but not too mild.  A popular celebratory cigar.  The salesman proposes that if ‘he’ liked a bolder cigar, I could go with their top-of-the-line…he snickers a little.  ”Something to remember you by at any rate”.  I paid and bolted, somewhat mortified.  From the look on his face it looked like he thought I was the intern, a la Monica Lewinsky, buying a gift for my boss/liaison.  Ouch. 

So with that track record, I venture back into the tobacconist for the birthday cigar better prepared.  I did a lot of research so I could ask for it, by name, and they sold it to me without quarrel.  I’m getting better at the tobacconist’s.  But I find it ironic that I now know much better than M. all the different types of cigar simply out of a desire not to be humiliated in the cigar store.

Luckily, the pocket knife was easier.  I know a lot about knives, and other than having the devil’s own time figuring out where the heck to buy one (the army/navy store did the trick), I had very little gender trouble, aside from feeling a general reluctance to serve me at all.  The guy behind the counter first flatly ignored me, and then after I had been standing waiting for service for several minutes, helped this other random guy who had been there for 30 seconds before me.  Eventually a younger guy rescued me from the twilight zone and we had a very pleasant conversation about quality pocketknives and how a swiss army knife is really only great when you’re 12.

So happy birthday, sweetheart.  I hope you like your presents!

life in the straight world

This summer I have had the novel (for me) opportunity to work closely with a straight cis-gendered man.  He is polite, respectful, and probably identifies as a progressive, leftist feminist.  But I’ve noticed him looking at my breasts.  A lot.

I often wear bust-hugging, low-cut tops.  I wear them because they are comfortable and sexy.  I have no problem with my breasts — I like them a lot.  They feel good in a push-up bra, packaged up and displayed in a low-cut shirt.  (I also tend to overheat, so having my chest & neck free of fabric is also practical for me.  But this isn’t a post about my practical clothes — this is a post about how I wear deliberately sexy/revealing clothes and the responses I get.)

Generally in my life I have very few interactions with straight cis-men.  I actively avoid them in social contexts, and have always worked in a heavily female-dominated field.  Even my school is very female-centric — only 11.5% of my classmates are straight cis-men.  So working closely with one every day is a new experience.  And working with one who blatantly stares at my breasts hasn’t really happened since I was in college.

I’m torn about what to think about this.  My first reaction is a sort of surprise — am I so attractive to warrant that kind of attention?  I don’t feel that beautiful or sexy; his reaction in my mind is an over-reaction to what is really a very ordinary set of breasts on an ordinary slightly-pudgy woman.  Then my second reaction was to sort of shrug it off.  The blame-the-victim mentality is very deeply rooted — if I am going to display them so appealingly, then he can’t really be blamed for looking.  After all, there they are, cleavage visible.

But he really does it a lot.  Like, every time we talk.  So last night I did an experiment with M.’s help.  She sat at a height that approximated his and mimicked his eye-wandering, with narration:

“OK, now I’m looking at your necklace.  Now your breasts.  Now your collarbone.  Now your lips.  Now your face.”

And what I gathered from this research is that I’m not crazy, he really looks at my breasts.  

M. thinks that maybe I should say something to him.  Something along the lines of, “I know you are a good person, and that you work really hard for things that I also believe in and care about, and I don’t doubt your commitment to doing good in the world.  But I have noticed that you look at my breasts quite a bit, and the overall impression that gives is that you are a jerk.  I don’t want other women to have to weigh that about you — just don’t look at women’s breasts when you’re talking to them.  Once is forgivable — multiple times per conversation is not.”

I’m honestly not sure I have the courage to do that.  I considered leaving him an anonymous note, to be found on his desk sometime.  But that seems sneaky and not credible.  M. also says that just because I dress them up appealingly doesn’t give a person the right to look at them whenever they want.  Which is true, and in other contexts I can understand that.  But this one has so much cultural baggage!  We are bombarded with images of women’s breasts that are designed to make us look and look again and to want her and want them and want what she/they are selling.  In some ways the way I present my breasts to the world is a political statement — here they are, they are beautiful and sexy and they are not for men.  I am not for men.  But then the other half of my brain says hey — you put them out there, you’re asking for that kind of attention.  If they’re not for men, don’t show them to men.

Sigh.  The worst thing is, if it were a hot butch I wouldn’t mind at all.  I would smile and flirt and wear even more outrageous things to work to try to get them to blush.  So am I also hypocritical?  What do you all think?