me n my clit (public post)

Dec 08, 2007 10:55

its kinda wierd, this transitional thing.
virtually no one gets it.
not even other transgender/transsexual folk. not that they don't *get it*, but its as different as anything else that is fundamentally personal.
yesterday, while i was on a break, the two guys i was working with, apparently had an encounter with (gasp!) a "shemale."
they couldnt wait to tell me about it. after all, i'm almost trendy, in that particular way. i have insights. right?
"How could you tell?" was my only question.
one of the guys was my French gentleman, Michel. The other is Jessie, a 19 year old bicycle punk who aspire to do that cage fighting thing, U something.
"I couldnt tell," Jessie said. But then i looked down to slice a pizza for her, and i could see her pipe in her skirt."
at least he got the pronouns right.
Michel berated him in a teasing manner. that might seem wrong to a lot of you, but if you work in food, berating, teasing, testing, humuliating each other... thats what we do. its not only okay and allowed, its encouraged, and if you arent willing to play, you're not gonna make friends in this industry.
apparently she was hot. my only comment was, "best of both worlds, kiddo."
cuz thats what you do. it steels you against the random bullshit that some customer might toss your way.

still, it sorta hurt me. not bad, and not bitterly. Michel is great with pronouns, perhaps because he's French, not American. Americans seem to have a dumbfuck gene where pronoun usage is concerned. he calls me Mademoiselle. at the end of the shifts we work together, he says, "alors Mademoiselle", and i say "alors Monsieur."
i like to use as much french with him as possible. just as i like to use as much Spanish with my latin american coworkers as possible.
i am a master of English, and i write, and apparently i'm pretty good at it, but to be honest, the more i write, the more i try to twist and fuck with this language i was raised in, the more i find it flawed. So i am seeking out, in my own way, as much as i can regarding knowing how to speak other languages.
my next language will be Sign. because i think that in Sign Language lies perhaps the most graceful aspect of human poetry imaginable.
my french is mediorcre, because really i dont get a lot of chances to use it, except for 16 hours spread across thursdays and fridays. my spanish has grown by leaps and bounds since i moved to Texas, which actually is the most gratifying thing i've been able to latch onto regarding my move here.
i hate it here, as you know. trust me, plans to get the fuck out are being pursued quietly with a passion akin perhaps only to that of a jailhouse lawyer.
and part of it was the disconnect of that conversation regarding the "shemale." the disconnect of, Tay is tranz, but we can still joke about pipes in skirts. i wont let it outwardly hurt me. and i wont get all bitchy and militant about it. i think thats just wrong.
you cant change time from nine to noon by being militant, no matter how hard our society thinks you can.
its much more one day at a time. a little here, a little there. when i first mentioned in this journal my coworker, my Frenchman, Michel, it was because he made a comment about hating fags. Now not only has he learned to not say that.. he's learned that some fags are cool. and he thinks that i have more balls than most people, in such a way that he honors me by calling me Mademoiselle.
should i trash that cuz he had some deeply ingrained socialized fun at the expense of a gal who's clit probably shouldnt be wrapped in a tight mini skirt?
i dont think so.

but back to my original statement...
Transition is deeply individual. i know some people are simply gritting their teeth at the slowness of my transition. do the voice, get the laser. well, i am. i'm getting the laser, and i'm working towards being in a position where doing the voice work can actually happen because i dont have to fall back into social modes of communication that expect what i sound like to match what i look like on a moment to moment basis, 40 hours a week. it fucking sucks, i'm the first to admit.
i've been at this more than 6 years now. i feel like a failure sometimes, a lot of the time, and i think that reflects hugely upon why i cant figure out why anyone would like a loser like i often feel i am.
and saying that, even here, is progress.
but, you see, saying that, being that.... being ME, Taylor Lisolette Thorne, is nothing like being you. i'd hate it if it were, and thats not self pity, thats selfishness.
i admire people who can transition quickly. i admire the support systems these fast trackers have. i have a support system too, and i love all of those in it. they are my family, far and wide.
i admire their patience regarding me. one week, i'm all girl, the next week, i'm not.
stuck in the middle again? no. just stuck a lot of the time, but fighting like a hellcat to get out of the quicksand.
i admire a friend of mine who was born a woman, and is now gonna be called Man of the Year in an organization that he's busted his fucking ass to keep not only afloat, but successful.
i admire a friend near home, who bends and breaks gender definition at every opportunity.

i find myself somewhere in between these two people.
yes, i have a direction, like the first person, a destination, a goal.
and at the same time, i fucking utterly refuse, after denying myself the chance to be myself for so many years, to deny the in the middle, genderfuck genderqueer gender bent fucking process.
my phone has a banner option. it says "Gender Bent."
Bent on living, on being, on experiencing.
one thing that happened at my last doctors visit, the doctor who is now fired, and is a mysongenistic prick, was his insistence that i transition more quickly. fuck you, Terry Watson. You dont know me at all. why the hell should i bend to your time table? he actually threatened to not fill my scripts in one breath, while talking about dangerous dosages in the next.
fuck you, i said not aloud. you think i'm scared of danger? you think i'm doing this for a thrill?
fuck you.

recently i was asked, are you female, or are you genderfuck.
the answer actually, however unacceptible to western logic, i'm both.
how can this be, you might ask.
how can you be both? isnt that whats holding you back? isnt that whats keeping you from your goals?
the answer to that is a very simple NO.

let me respond to this in two ways, the realistic way and the philosphic way.
realisticially, i'm years... at least five years away from being able to afford SRS.
many people on my f-list here are post op. again, i admire them for their decision, their fortitude, their successes. and what i'm about to say is not meant to offend them, or question their decisions.
my penis doesnt work very well. its funny really. often there are jokes of men with penises that have minds of their own. of the little brain dick-tating, so to speak, what the larger brain does.
thanks to several years now of HRT, my penis has a mind completely of its own. i can be talking to a fucking produce purveyor, and get a hard on. i can be with a person in an intimate way, nand not come close to erect. the drives of my penis are utterly individualized to its own accord. i really have no say whatsoever. every clue or cue is meaningless regarding how my penis functions in a sexual way.
and i dont need it to orgasm. in fact, comparing the orgasms i've had in the past in which my penis was focal, to the orgasms i've had where my penis was left out of the equation, its no contest. i choose the latter. fuckin A hell yes i do.
if and when i decide to get it turned inside out, i'll do it. but i'm not going to worry my sorry ass over it until its even a viable financial possibility. it always cracks me up to no end how much emphasis others put on the state of my penis, compared to how little power i myself give it.
you wanna suck my dick? get ready for a sore jaw, a lot of work, and very little in terms of pay off.
how's that for a reality check?

philosophical dimensions to this perspective of mine stem from this. am i going to hate it? no.
is it a clitoris of an external form, and not a penis? yes. but try explaining that to a couple of coworkers who giggle over clocking a "shemale."
do i find the word "shemale" offensive? actually, i do not. i believe that the word, crude as it might be considered to be, to also be viable. what i find offensive is the way its used by people, as a crutch, as a slight, as a way to feel better about themselves in describing someone they just don't understand. if, say, a year from now, still non-op, i go to the beach wearing a bikini, and am perceived by others as a shemale, thats fine. i understand the ignorance behind the usage of the word. but that shouldnt invalidate the word itself. because even if that word is a "bad word" to censor it would be censorship. and that is, in this day and age, something much more important to rally against.
does this make me not a female? i dont see why.
if i say i'm not a female, thats because even that word has failed to properly define the vast array of gender profiles currently in trackable existence.
what then, am i?
a gurl? a grrl?
i like both of these. i'm preferential, actually towards the latter of the two. i like the way you wont find it in most dictionaries. because you wont find me in a dictionary either. i believe its enunciation is close enough to go unnoticed, or, pass, if you will, in every day speech, but there's something confidently wrong about it, its a rock in the cogs, it confirms part of an identity while undermining the slip shod confidence we all feel in using our comfortable language.
can i be a girl with a penis? an external and fortunately not too elongated clit? i'm not sure i comfortably can.
i can be, and am, one hell of a grrl, though.
[insert "here she comes justa walkin down the street singing..."]

i guess the problem i have with all of this is that people nowadays are cool with accepting trans people, at least in more urban and allegedly open-minded places, but they really dont care too much to be bothered with the process of it all.
here in Dallas, i've encountered a phrase that, frankly, disturbs me. as more and more of the people i work with (around 120 people at my store) learn i am transsexual, transgender, transitioning... whatever.... they say something along the lines of "oh, hey. can i ask you a question? i hear you're going through 'the Change'."
my immediate lock-jawed smiling response is... um... i'm not going through menopause.
in fact, to bring this all back around, i'm entering my second puberty. my voice is fucked up, some days all light and feminine, some days gruff as a sailor's, some days a garble mostly resembling rocks being rubbed together in a combine. my sexual needs are flat on the back all over the place. some days or even weeks, i dont want anyone even to touch me. other days or weeks, i'd be willing to visit the lesbian version of a glory hole, just for the thrill. do i masturbate?
no baby, i Mistressbate. and you have no idea how i do it, and that suits me just fine.
i'm not a smoking gun. i'm a ticking bomb. i'm not a land mine, i'm ready to find someone to be in their face, all over them, ectoplasmic orgasmic fucking animal humping post-coital goo.
i'm a hot comodity, actually.
which is a nice thing to actually realize.
transition will be the new black in a few years. i'm poised and ready to jump that band wagon, and then jump all y'all jumpin on.
i aint skeered anymore.
but i'm also not going to rush things just so everyone external can feel better about themselves. i'll take the pronoun confusion, i'll take the for now lonely nights, i'll take the not quite met eyes, i'll take the oblique turns of convo... i'll take it all for a little while longer, even if only to make you stew in your uncomforting juices.
sorry, that's how a grrl like me is wired.
and if you don't understand that, then i salute you. (and, no... not with my middle finger either.)
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