Positive Thinking

Well now someone close to me can make earthquakes happen, crap! I told him, think of nice things. He didn’t think it would work, so I asked him to think of nice things for other people, because he has a hard time thinking of them for himself. He says it doesn’t work if he asks for nice things for himself. I told him to get a guitar, but he’s so sad. Fucking hell. I hope he wakes up soon, he’s starting to because he’s remembering things. And they are happy things.

Did you ever see that film Saturday the 14th? It was so bizarre, and there was this great part in the middle of the night where the teenage boy would come downstairs and his whole family would be patting a lump of chocolate pudding and talking weird shit. And a portal to hell opened in the basement. It was a musical. Such weird movies! Anyway, yeah, think of something opposite to what I just said, shit!

For Luke and Steven

My Gender Now

You’ve probably watched me switch genders and sexualities a few times in this blog, which is fine because that’s what happens. Right now, I am still a guy, because for some reason that’s just a form I fit into really well. I can’t pass as a girl. But I still find girls so cool. They know the fine art of being covert, in a way that guys have still never comprehended. I mean, “gossip?” Do you really think they just talk about shoes?

Sometimes they do start talking only about shoes and that’s when I get nervous, because they’re not saying what’s really bothering them, they switch into the happy land and for some reason that comes out all “Shoes. Let’s get shoes.” And you know what I am hearing, from what I know of girls, is “I am so buying some boots right now to fuck you over with.” I mean, most of the time they won’t, most of the time they really do get nice shoes. But there’s always that subtextual thing going on that you have to look out for, because girls talk in codes! They talk in slang and in jokes to get their point across, and it becomes legendary. I’ve seen Bowman in jokes make it to the world. I mean, it can start anywhere. And then people who pick it up have other ideas they attach to it. The internet is a computerized version of real things that happen.

Negotiating a Boy Hero

Luke and Steven spent ages trying to assemble the ultimate superhero for themselves, and of course I was in on all the negotiations. We liked Star Wars, but there’s that Luke Leia thing and they turn out to be brother and sister. But the Force was a good idea. Later on they brought out Star Trek, which was interesting as a future world. They really loved Terminator, and of course I was supposed to be Linda Hamilton. Fucking hell, fine. They were trying to put in what they knew about gender to their superhero you see. And then they loved Aliens, we watched that whole series over and over. And again, I was Sigourney Weaver. Which is hard to live up to!! But the Aliens thing, yeah, totally got it, it was a show down between women where all these guys died, but the guys were kind of stupid, which is why they died, and even in her underwear Sigourney could still shove a huge alien out a space lock and swear all at once!

When they brought over Robocop I was like, WTF? You boys are fucking intense! Now I have to be a cyborg, oh man! And they really were arming me with fucking heavy conflict movies. I wasn’t really originally going to go in that direction of being boy, but it was of the utmost importance. And sometimes they would give me this wild look like “Do you get it yet?” And I did disintegrate with them at the same time, but I was doing it in a different way, because I didn’t want to follow either of their leads because I knew neither was really working. But I did spend time in the psych system, and I did spent time drinking, and both times I was like “Fuck, you guys! Why do you keep doing this? What does this do for you that you keep doing this to yourselves?” I mean, I did know, by then, but I had no way of talking to them about feelings, because they would always start drinking or popping pills. And I started realizing I was going to have to tell them a wild boy story to start getting them out of it. Because that’s the way I talk to people.

When the City of Love was all out of Love

I made the worst mistake and went to Paris with a broken heart once.

It was terrible. I almost asked for french fries I was so distracted. I never got lost, which was the interesting thing, somehow I always knew where I was as long as I was in the old part of Paris. I never got lost in Berlin either. I could always find my way around the two cities. I ended up in weird neighborhoods though, since things change. Especially Berlin, Berlin didn’t make too much sense, but I kind of understood it. But old Paris, yes, I totally was fine wandering around with two suitcases and a broken heart. But the broken heart overwhelmed everything. Not even staring at Le Origin Sur Le Monde for half an hour made up for it. And when I did find a trans statue in the Louvre, some guy came up to me and complained all about trans people, IN FRENCH! And I knew he was bitching out trans bodies, and that pissed me off. At the Louvre, honestly! He was like the French version of the ugly American tourist! Anyway, I spent my whole time in Paris absorbing as much art as I could before I had to leave. I lived off of vendor baguettes. I was such a poor boy!

And every store I went into, the same song played! The same song, always! And it was “All By Myself.” Fucking hell, everywhere I went, even just to look at candy or something equally silly, this maudlin pop song would haunt me! I don’t even know why Europe likes that music. Preston noticed it too when he was there. It makes North America seem so bubblegum.

I stayed on Rue Des Comediens, where the first cup of coffee was served in Europe, actually. And I didn’t get to drink any absinthe, which is what I always try to do every time I travel. I honestly can’t say why, except I think it’s a shame it got corrupted and went off market. Real Absinthe is actually pretty safe, but it got all fucked up by the corporations. Anyway, yes, no absinthe for me. Someone has back engineered the original by the way. But I did always like this kind of bohemian Parisien lifestyle that used to exist. Because it was so decadent and artistic and free. And I think that was really the origin of the French resistance, was in the salons of Paris. Because men and women got together and talked about art, and feelings, and politics, and all their debate happened in a creative way.

I hope I can go to Paris without a broken heart some day, because I’m sure it would be different without that song playing all the time.

Gay Men

Gay boys drive me crazy, because they get so paranoid about gender. SO paranoid. And I think I know why.

I didn’t really think about butch and femme until I started meeting other two spirited people in female bodies who were FEMME! That was so shocking for me. I didn’t notice it unless I dated someone with the same gender as me, but they could do the girl thing SO well. I was like, fuck, you are such a boy, but you can be a really good girl! You do that really well, how do you do that? I can’t do that! It was such a puzzle. I mean, I had never seen a two spirited person when they were in a gender presentation they could actually work with. And that was always why I ran away, because I couldn’t understand how that kind of femininity worked. That always blew my mind, my brains would end up on the floor. A girl who knew how to play like the boys AND still keep her make up on, fucking hell! Fucking hell! That’s insane! And there was always this frustrated moment between us where I’d be like, fuck, you be the top, I don’t know how to beat that! You look like a girl! How do you make such an excellent girl?

But I don’t know if they ever felt like such excellent girls, because no one ever wanted to see their boy side. And they totally have one and it makes everyone crazy. I mean, they make really good girls! But they can be so dangerous, because really no one acknowledges that they have a boy gender that’s happy being femme. And I’ve watched them do insane things to try to prove that they are girls, and they don’t have to prove anything. They’re just too intense for most people. And they are girls, in this so super intense way. But I know one of them, if not more, would bitchslap me if I didn’t mention upfront that they also have some intense boy stuff going on.

I remember when I got my psychic reading, she kept using a gender neutral term for someone I liked. And I was like “girl” and she kept saying “person.” Fuck that was a good psychic. But it’s true, I’ve watched all kinds of people show up. To be perfectly frank, most people nowadays are trans in some way or another. Just because if you want to use your whole brain, you have to access the other gender too. That’s the way a whole brain works together. But I think butch and femme is still relevant, because that’s how people have fun with gender. And it doesn’t always look like butch-femme, sometimes it’s butch-butch and femme-femme, because then you get fun variations. And I have seen boy girl couples that are femme femme, totally, that so exists.

See, now it’s getting confusing again, which is good, because gender and sexuality are confusing.

The Social Position of Tomboys

I don’t know that every tomboy ends up deciding to be a guy, I think it always varies. Some do get all girly, but not all of them. I think there’s an idea that if you feminize a tomboy you can neutralize what that person learned when playing with the boys, but it’s not true, because then they just go on and teach the girls how to play like the boys. It is so tricky, you can’t ever contain that. And some tomboys I grew up with are women now, so you never know. I think the key is tomboys will choose a position of power based on what they learn from their lives. Not always though, some totally choose a non-powerful role, but even then it has a reason.

The two boys I grew up with treated me like two spirited children would have been treated in the old days. As in, they told stories to me about their lives. And we did rituals. And they basically played charades waiting to see if I could guess what happened to them, because they could not say it. I played all kinds of weird boy games trying to figure out what the hell they were on about. I walked around and around in a circle with a broom and a tea towel for four hours repeatedly trying to learn Luke’s story. And it was an interesting story, in the symbolic form. I totally got it. And the funny thing is they were sure I was a girl, because no one ever taught them about two spirited kids. So I was unfortunately their model for ALL women. And I was bad! If they punched me I punched them right back, I didn’t take their shit. But it was so hard for them to clue in to the fact that they were just playing with another boy. I think if they were playing with another boy they wouldn’t have tried to explain so much in so many bizarre ways. On the other hand, if they knew I was a boy maybe they wouldn’t have been such bad boyfriends! But you know, a lot of men base their future relationships on the tomboys they played with as kids, which is why they are so weird. Because women get two spirited friends too and they abandon them later on in life, which means they miss out on part of what they are supposed to know. It’s a bad tactical error, because transwomen know some intense stuff!

But the fail safe device is ALWAYS tomboys, because tomboys can insinuate themselves in male society from day one, practically. And tomboys with other tomboys confuse the heck out of each other because that’s when the other genders start showing up that don’t equate. That’s when gender starts falling apart. I mean, crap, Heather takes 911 calls for a living! That takes balls man, I just sold leftist memberships on the phone.

I like talking to guys actually, the ones who don’t have that gender barrier up, because they can talk intelligently to women too, if they learn how.

Anyway, when Luke went to the bin I finally found out what they were trying to tell me. And that was intense. Basically there was no more gender differences as soon as they showed up, but that kind of gender indifference was so horrifying that they didn’t know how to relate to the girly feelings guys usually have. They had split brains, one side to deal with this horrible thing that happened to them and the other side that was all nice happy things. And I’m finally realizing that a lot of those guys I grew up with, they don’t remember ANY of the happy things we did. Some of the things we did weren’t happy, if you look at it in a girl way, but in a boy way they did have the total guy childhood in a decent way. They just don’t remember the good boyhood they had because they don’t know where to place me in it. Because I would put on lipstick to freak them out! I went all contrary, because I had to, I had to figure out if girls were having just as much horrible shit happen. And they were! And girls didn’t know how to talk to guys either because suddenly they got all the hate and angry feelings, and they didn’t know that guys were putting their girl feelings in stasis until someone could mediate.

I can’t believe I’m mediating, I feel kind of silly. But I watched Luke go crazy and Steven turn into an alcoholic and I was like “Fuck, what happens to guys when they grow up? How come they turn into instant asshole? I don’t want to do that!” And I didn’t, so I became the tranny Peter Pan and put off transitioning until I could figure out what happens to these girls that guys are mean too.

Boy Story

Sometimes Steven and Luke used to MAKE me watch boy movies because they were trying to explain something they couldn’t otherwise. And all these movies were highly bizarre, but entertaining so I could kind of see the point. And the good ones had love stories in them.

The last good boy story that they ever showed me was Red Dwarf. I remember it was just before Steven got hardcore into drinking, and just after Luke ended up a chronic mental patient.

It was Red Dwarf. Steven knew how it began and he kind of knew how it ended but he made me watch the pilot episode with him because he knew he finally picked a boy story that could explain his life properly. And it did. Red Dwarf is a sci-fi series about a man of colour who spends his mining ship tour of duty in stasis, on purpose. Because he’s bored, so he gets a cat which breaks regulations and stasis is the punishment. And meanwhile a nuclear accident happens on the ship which kills the crew and allows a super race of cat people to exist. And the cat people worship Lister, because he went into stasis, and told them all about a vending cart he was going to have on Fiji. It becomes Cat lore, and a schism happens over the colour of the outfits. It’s been running for ages now, years and years.

Everybody’s Dead Dave

Desk Graffiti

I used to be a graffiti artist in school, but only on school desks. And I would have conversations with people, and usually I knew who it was but I’d have all kinds of people notice this weird little writings. And some of them were injokes, and people started catching on to that, which was weird. And sometimes I just drew symbols and other completely unrelated things. Just because I wanted to see what would show up. And some other weird graffiti showed up, you can tell who people are by their graffiti really. Which is why I hate bathrooms, because it’s gender specific graffiti and really mean. But desk graffiti, that was fun. And Britta did catch me at it one day, when she was in my desk at a different class. That was really embarrassing because she wrote “Thirza? Is this you?” And I was like, nope, that was not me.

But desk graffiti is an interesting way to teach subversively. That was before the internet. Because it has no position of authority, you have to question it. But you might agree sometimes.

I remember in school we all had to constantly thank Joni Mitchell, because she had no band, no theatre, no art class, barely anything when she went to Bowman, and she still did all this stuff. So ever since then Aden Bowman has been a weird school that has tried to rectify the fact that they didn’t have enough resources when someone like Joni Mitchell attended. It made it an interesting school, because there’d be a little photo of Joni Mitchell, surrounded by all these jock trophies. And that was all, one mega star and a bunch of high school football players. It was such a weird dichotomy. They’ve always been trying to make up for that.

Last I heard a bunch of neo nazis were there.

Life

I think for four years I had trouble accessing both memories of my life, one life that was doing the girl thing, and the other that was doing a boy thing. But even though I am a guy there is still the whole girl thing going on, which is nice. I like being kind of a marshmallow. Sometimes. But then other times I wish people wouldn’t try to tell me I can’t do stuff, because that drives me crazy. Because usually I just want to do nice things, really, because I know when stuff gets mean. But sometimes your gender gets used against you! Because people don’t honestly believe anymore that someone could understand what it means to be masculine and feminine and still choose the place they like best. Or even what gifted people are like, which is intense, because their brains just spin these amazing things. You so can’t tell what they are up to unless you know they’re being cared for properly. And gifted people are still so unknown.

I mean, raising a gifted child is a bizarre job, because they want to know the meaning of life as soon as they show up. And they have such intense emotions, it’s bizarre, to see so much passion in someone who can move on later. And it makes everything really intense, so high school politics between gifted individuals gets equally intense. But since high school is a model for society, everyone could kind of figure out from their own standpoint where things went wrong. It was chaos theory at it’s finest. And it was brutal, high school was so brutal, just because everyone kept raising the bar to see how high it could go. And I think that was hard on the regular students, who also went to school with us, because we were doing weird shit! And they never knew what.