(no subject)
So I've been trying to cram in as much dental work as my store will cover before I leave for uncertain employment (and therefore insurance, because America is weird) circumstances in a couple months. As you no doubt recall, my teeth are all fucked up. I just didn't really see dentists when I lived in New York, and I think it was even kind of rare as far back as college, which means when the dentist was like "When was the last time you saw a dentist," I had to be like "Uh, the nineties?"
So I had some cleanings done, and the first one was awesome. My gums were like, 'holy shit, buddy, this is the best! It's like scratching an itch or rubbing a sore muscle, we've needed this kind of love for so long that we'd forgotten we needed it.' I was like, 'I know, guys, just hang in there! The dental hygienist said there's so much black slime below the gumline that it's going to take two visits just to get our teeth scraped clean.'
Well, the second time was basically horrific pain the whole way through. I was like, "Now I remember why singing the Beck song "Nightmare Hippy Girl" as loud as my internal monologue could go is the only thing I remember about the last time I went to the dentist: my memory does me a solid and blocks the whole situation out." Ouch.
I've got half a wisdom tooth that needs to come out, but I keep moving the appointment back. Turns out this has been a good thing; I thought that my $1,000 allowance for dental work turned over at the beginning of April, but I found out yesterday it actually turns over at the end of April, which means if I hadn't punked out so many times, I'd've been stuck with a goddam bill for hundreds of dollars that I certainly wouldn't have been able to pay. But now my appointment is for the first Tuesday in May! Good times, good times.
Anyway, the reason I bring this story up is that my tooth- not one that's going to be pulled out, actually, but one that got a filling a month or two ago- has been throbbing and itching and hurting all day, and it kind of was yesterday, too. Which means I got to take a vicodin! So now I'm all, like, doing the laundry feeling indestructible, having trouble paying attention to the Iron Chef competition (milk) Alex and I had playing on the computer, and feeling the blood pump through my fucked up tooth. Isn't that weird? Teeth are more like rocks than hearts, but I can still feel the blood in that fucker going whup... whup... whup...
Also, unrelated to that, did I ever tell you the story of how I used to write for fictionmania? I think I must have, or else you are an internet friend I made from all the way back then (around the last time I had my teeth professionally cleaned), or else... uh, I guess or else I just haven't told you about it, but yeah. When I first got onto the internet, when I was in college in 1999, I was like, "I have some kind of gender thing, so I am going to use the internet to figure out what it is." Except I did kind of a bad job figuring out what it was; I interpreted my gender thing as "heterosexual transvestite boy" instead of "trans girl," which meant that instead of figuring out how to start working through all the blocks I had in place so I could transition, I just read a lot of terrible porn where women made men dress like women. (And, occasionally, someone was tied into a sack, kicked down some stairs, and beaten with a stick.) I read all these porn stories, and then I started writing my own porn stories that fit into the "gender transformation" genre of that site, except my stories almost immediately didn't work like stories there were supposed to: protagonists were always very sad about their genders, and had trouble communicating with their peers, and didn't understand how anyone could possibly love someone like them, and stuff like that. Basically, I figured out that I have a complicated, somewhat desperate relationship to loss, that I have a chip on my shoulder (and a lot of suspicion) about dominant narratives, that it's pretty understandable for a straight girl not to want to date a transsexual woman, and a lot of other stuff, by writing transvestite porn. Which is hilarious.
So, long story short, a couple days ago on a whim I re-read the last story I published there- in like 2003. It's about this high school boy who's a Total Artist who finds out that only girls can do reality-shaping magic, so he begs to be turned into a girl. Which happens. And then he can't be with his girlfriend any more, which is sad. And I thought, Oh, story, you are the sweetest, cutest fucking thing. It made my heart throw up with affection for poor, scared little baby me, trying so hard to make sense of my own gender, and so scared of actually having to do all the work of really transitioning in the real world, and all this insecurity and confusion. I was like, oh, muffin, come here, I want to hug you. (I also had this response to reading that old blog I linked to a month or so ago: "Oh, kid, you are so sweet, but I wish I could tell you that you're going to be okay.")
So I decided I'm going to edit out the worst of the I'm-a-22-year-old-Serious-Artist-isms and re-publish it as The Fact That It's Funny Doesn't Make It A Joke #6. Y'know, give it a totally sweet, long introduction, where I can point out how hilarious and cute it was that I'd internalized a bunch of 1970s second wave "menstruation is magic" womyn-supremicist stuff, for example, and then let it out into the world for real. Reconcile my life now with the scared and confused little baby I used to be! I think it is a pretty nice idea. I've definitely integrated myself at 15 into my life now; practically all I do now is listen to Ministry and Hum. But me at 22? We still don't really talk.
"But Imogen," you say, "Where's FTIF #5?"
It's coming! I had Micah draw me some bathtubs to put on the cover, and I just need to scan them, print them, and have Alex letterpress the titles onto them. It's kind of hectic times in Bad Idea House right now, though, so it might be another week before I can make that happen. Then you can have one for three bucks or trade. Make a shitty zine- I want your zine more than I want three bucks.
So I had some cleanings done, and the first one was awesome. My gums were like, 'holy shit, buddy, this is the best! It's like scratching an itch or rubbing a sore muscle, we've needed this kind of love for so long that we'd forgotten we needed it.' I was like, 'I know, guys, just hang in there! The dental hygienist said there's so much black slime below the gumline that it's going to take two visits just to get our teeth scraped clean.'
Well, the second time was basically horrific pain the whole way through. I was like, "Now I remember why singing the Beck song "Nightmare Hippy Girl" as loud as my internal monologue could go is the only thing I remember about the last time I went to the dentist: my memory does me a solid and blocks the whole situation out." Ouch.
I've got half a wisdom tooth that needs to come out, but I keep moving the appointment back. Turns out this has been a good thing; I thought that my $1,000 allowance for dental work turned over at the beginning of April, but I found out yesterday it actually turns over at the end of April, which means if I hadn't punked out so many times, I'd've been stuck with a goddam bill for hundreds of dollars that I certainly wouldn't have been able to pay. But now my appointment is for the first Tuesday in May! Good times, good times.
Anyway, the reason I bring this story up is that my tooth- not one that's going to be pulled out, actually, but one that got a filling a month or two ago- has been throbbing and itching and hurting all day, and it kind of was yesterday, too. Which means I got to take a vicodin! So now I'm all, like, doing the laundry feeling indestructible, having trouble paying attention to the Iron Chef competition (milk) Alex and I had playing on the computer, and feeling the blood pump through my fucked up tooth. Isn't that weird? Teeth are more like rocks than hearts, but I can still feel the blood in that fucker going whup... whup... whup...
Also, unrelated to that, did I ever tell you the story of how I used to write for fictionmania? I think I must have, or else you are an internet friend I made from all the way back then (around the last time I had my teeth professionally cleaned), or else... uh, I guess or else I just haven't told you about it, but yeah. When I first got onto the internet, when I was in college in 1999, I was like, "I have some kind of gender thing, so I am going to use the internet to figure out what it is." Except I did kind of a bad job figuring out what it was; I interpreted my gender thing as "heterosexual transvestite boy" instead of "trans girl," which meant that instead of figuring out how to start working through all the blocks I had in place so I could transition, I just read a lot of terrible porn where women made men dress like women. (And, occasionally, someone was tied into a sack, kicked down some stairs, and beaten with a stick.) I read all these porn stories, and then I started writing my own porn stories that fit into the "gender transformation" genre of that site, except my stories almost immediately didn't work like stories there were supposed to: protagonists were always very sad about their genders, and had trouble communicating with their peers, and didn't understand how anyone could possibly love someone like them, and stuff like that. Basically, I figured out that I have a complicated, somewhat desperate relationship to loss, that I have a chip on my shoulder (and a lot of suspicion) about dominant narratives, that it's pretty understandable for a straight girl not to want to date a transsexual woman, and a lot of other stuff, by writing transvestite porn. Which is hilarious.
So, long story short, a couple days ago on a whim I re-read the last story I published there- in like 2003. It's about this high school boy who's a Total Artist who finds out that only girls can do reality-shaping magic, so he begs to be turned into a girl. Which happens. And then he can't be with his girlfriend any more, which is sad. And I thought, Oh, story, you are the sweetest, cutest fucking thing. It made my heart throw up with affection for poor, scared little baby me, trying so hard to make sense of my own gender, and so scared of actually having to do all the work of really transitioning in the real world, and all this insecurity and confusion. I was like, oh, muffin, come here, I want to hug you. (I also had this response to reading that old blog I linked to a month or so ago: "Oh, kid, you are so sweet, but I wish I could tell you that you're going to be okay.")
So I decided I'm going to edit out the worst of the I'm-a-22-year-old-Serious-Artist-isms and re-publish it as The Fact That It's Funny Doesn't Make It A Joke #6. Y'know, give it a totally sweet, long introduction, where I can point out how hilarious and cute it was that I'd internalized a bunch of 1970s second wave "menstruation is magic" womyn-supremicist stuff, for example, and then let it out into the world for real. Reconcile my life now with the scared and confused little baby I used to be! I think it is a pretty nice idea. I've definitely integrated myself at 15 into my life now; practically all I do now is listen to Ministry and Hum. But me at 22? We still don't really talk.
"But Imogen," you say, "Where's FTIF #5?"
It's coming! I had Micah draw me some bathtubs to put on the cover, and I just need to scan them, print them, and have Alex letterpress the titles onto them. It's kind of hectic times in Bad Idea House right now, though, so it might be another week before I can make that happen. Then you can have one for three bucks or trade. Make a shitty zine- I want your zine more than I want three bucks.