Mary!

A friend of mine started her awakening in like, an extreme amount of time. She called me one day and said “My vulva looks like the Virgin Mary. Nobody else’s does.” And I was like, “Actually, they all look like that.” “No, this is weird, nobody has a vulva like mine! Now I have to disclose something else up front.” And I was like “I’ve been looking at vulvas for ages, honestly, the are all built on the same principle, with variations. Yes, it looks like the Virgin Mary. Haven’t you ever wondered why I like the Virgin of Guadalupe so much?” “I could do like, a puppet show with it!” “Yeah, that would be funny.” It’s true, and male genitals are pretty similar to the principle that female genitals are based on, although you might not know that.

Plastic Puppet Motive

When i came out and went to my first youth group meeting, some schism had just happened and the two people left were a butchy dyke and a gay man. And GLHS was deader than a doornail that night, so they took me out for coffee.

And Mike, the gay guy, was so much fun. He keep calling the butch dyke Mary. In fact, EVERYBODY was Mary. The waiter was Mary. His parents were Mary. I was Mary.

He was running a small club in the Rumley Building with his partner. It was called PPM and it was a rave club in the old school of PLUR philosophy. If you don’t know old school raves, PLUR was a code of conduct and it stood for Peace love Unity Respect. And it was a fun club, because everyone could go there. I think straight people had issues with that because it was a fully inclusive space and two boys or two girls could be making out anywhere. Two girls weren’t an issue, but two hot gay men macking on each other instead of beating this shit out of each other, that was incomprehensible.

It was like an ode to the binary code. One wall was painted to look like a wall of fire and the other one like a wall of water. They had half of it as a chill out space, and played trip videos and stuff like Barbarella. And Mike, AKA DJ Deko-ze, knew how to spin. He took people on a journey, he brought you up, he took you down, he made you hate, he made you love, he made every cynic feel SOMETHING.

They did weird s/m-y performance art every few hours and the bathrooms were covered in porn, naked boys in the girls room and naked girls in the boys room, but eventually it didn’t matter. Opposite the bathrooms was a wall painted with sperm in day glo pain, and one sperm was HIV +, it really kept you aware.

The bouncer, or one of them, was an imperious bisexual named Candie who didn’t take any shit from anyone. We used to flirt a lot. Actually, a bunch of girls there started wanting to leave their boyfriends for me, and I had no idea why. I was the hot topic on the local BBS and men kept coming up to me being like “Fine, you can have my girlfriend, she only ever talks about you anyway.” And I would be so confused. “I don’t know what to do with your girlfriend!” Because I didn’t, I was still trying to understand women, and I couldn’t. Or didn’t realize it wasn’t any different from me. And I was also learning about masculinity through the gay men I was hanging out with, because they were getting crushed out on me and being cuddly and that was totally new for me. I couldn’t be cuddly with girls, I didn’t know how. I knew how to punch them and run away and that was it. No, but you understand that male idiocy of relating to girls. I never wanted to see my friends when they were drunk though, only on drugs. And only certain drugs.

Everyone at that club knew I was underage, so I still obeyed the law as well as I could, because it was an honour to be allowed in, not every underage person got that treatment, they so turned people away who weren’t ready for it. I drank there one New Years, but aside from that no substances at all. I was totally aware. And I picked up a contact high which was good enough for me. I remember I used to fret about the age thing and my friends would tell me “They know you’re a little Thirza.”

And they did. They even knew when raids were going to happen so they could start telling all the people under age to leave. And they would, someone would come up to me and say “Cops are coming, get out.” So we’d leave until it was safe again. And that’s such an old school gay bar thing.

PPM ended up shutting down because they couldn’t figure out how to make money on the concept. I mean, people didn’t buy liquor. That wasn’t the particular mind altering substance they wanted. So it shut down, became a boxing club. And I think rave culture is still trying to get back to PLUR, but it’s hard because it means diversity and that threatens people.

I was talking with a female friend of mine about nuns once and I was like “Why are they always Sister Mary something? Why can’t they just be like Sister betty?”

And she said “Surely a Buddhist Jew doesn’t need to tell you about the Mother of our Lord!”

And she didn’t, because Mike already talked all about Mary.

Hair

I came out to my friend Laurel and her mum Lorraine, who have known me since I was two. They were kind of shocked, and resistant, but we actually had a good conversation about it, especially after I assured them I wasn’t going to become a bad man. And I hope I don’t. I don’t think I will. Anyway, Laurel was asking me all the questions about what female to male transition looks like. She wanted to know about the surgeries but they squeam me out so we didn’t talk about that, and besides, I still don’t know about surgery. So we talked about what testosterone does. They were really worried about side effects, which was interesting because no one questioned the side effects of my anticonvulsants. So I told them honestly what I knew about testosterone and how it works on your body, and that some of the suspension liquid it is in gives people allergies. In it’s most basic it’s steroids really. I told them it would be like I was going through menopause, and that freaked them out because of course everyone knows how intense menopause is. But I feel like I already did menopause.

Oh yeah, so we started talking about body hair, and Laurel asked me if I was very hairy now and of course I’m not, I’m really bare. And so I told her that and she said maybe I’d be like every other Indian man and have like, three chest hairs.

And it’s true, Native masculinity is SO different from other masculinities. I mean, they have girl skin. And very little hair. And they often have a sort of androgynous side. I think it makes transitioning hard because you never reach the gruff rough furry end of masculinity that we assume is the epitome. And I think even bio Native men have a hard time with their masculinity, because it DOES look so different. So probably the feminine parts of me I like will hang around.

Lorraine and Laurel were cool in the end. I think they felt better when I said they could still tease me, but eventually I was going to be totally indistinguishable from any other guy.

Laurel is having some intense dreams, woah, I can’t believe how terrified of men women are. I mean, I can believe it, which is the sad thing.

Britney Spears: A Case Study

Sorry Britney, one more analyst.

My cousin Cheli Nighttraveller was working at Claires when Britney had a show in Saskatoon. She was the one who pierced her ears. And apparently a whole wave of girls was following her, she had no privacy. Anyway, it looked like she had a really hard time with her piercing but because people were all watching she put on this smile. And I remember Cheli told us, “She’s going to crack one of these days.”

And then of course she’s been in all the papers.

There was this interesting thing when she shaved her head, people got really upset about that, because it was this total symbol of ultimate womanhood, to have long hair, and she just basically went fuck it and shaved it all off. And I remember that impulse too, because when I was halfway through my transformation I shaved my head. And I was a girl so it was decided that I was mutilating myself. Which I so wasn’t, I just needed to liberate myself with a symbolic death. And so shaving my head was it.

Now if I had been a bio boy and shaved my head like that, people might think I was becoming a skinhead. Which wasn’t it at all either.

What I was doing was taking my gender back to zero so I could learn who I was. And that’s a common thing, Buddhist monks and nuns all have shaved heads, because it’s a moment of being free of gender. It’s neutral. It doesn’t mean you have to stay neutral, it’s just a necessary spot to be in for a moment, to truly think about life in the middle.

And I think she is learning what it means to be a woman. I mean, she did the virgin thing for so long, that’s what she built her career on. And then she discovered sex. And I’m sure she was having fun but suddenly all these people started calling her a slut, because to be powerful, female, and sexual is a scary thing in this world.

I finally figured out what was so amazing about that girl in high school. She didn’t fit a single archetype. And it was so bizarre, because she was SUCH a girl, so girly, oh my god. And yet she wasn’t anything I had ever know about women, she contradicted everything I had understood to mean female. That fucked me over, I was like, woah, I don’t know who you are at all. That is so cool! And she was high femme, and nothing like anything I had been told femme was. And so I think I went out to try and understand femmes, because they baffled me. And I think I baffled her too because I remember one day in the library I asked if she thought I was butch or femme and she said “I don’t know.” And I was like, well fuck, I must be SOMETHING. What the hell am I? And I already knew I was a boy, but I wasn’t sure because I didn’t fit with boy.

Anyway, I think Britney is trying to reconcile being a gifted sexual woman in the society we have today. I think she’s been buried under a concept of good female behaviour that she doesn’t even know if she’s okay anymore. And that’s something I see a lot of femmes go through, and it’s the same thing I go through.

Equestrian Philosophy

Horses teach mindfulness really well too. Actually, I was surprised to find out how difficult some people find horseback riding. I think the key is to be comfortable in your body, because some of those maneuvers, I mean, they are kind of sensual. Like doing a pelvic thrust to get your horse to start walking. And then you have to kick it to change speeds, but you can’t be mean about it, it’s more like an insistent nudge. Maybe the best part of horseback riding is that they tell you to fuck off if you’re making mistakes. I’ve never been bucked off a horse, not when I was a kid anyway. I have had to calm a galloping horse down though, which was intense because no one had trained me how to do that. Her companion horse got angry and took off after bucking off the other rider, and so she went full tilt after him, and I was stuck on the back. We let him run it out, he came back for oats, it was fine.

I was sent to horse camp when I was a preteen. I got short changed though, I was stuck in a little kid class and we only rode horses a couple times. Aside from that they drove us around in a big buick. I remember one time I was getting my horse ready and this little girl came up and asked “Is your horse’s name Satin or Satan?” And I was like, oh honestly, where the hell did you come from? My horse’s name is Satin of course!

A horse named Satan indeed!

The best part of riding horses is that you have to dote on them, you can’t just push them around. It takes at least half an hour to get a horse ready. And you have to feed them and give them treats. And you have to calm them down after or they get all foamy sweaty, and horse sweat is gross. And you have to look after their feet, because sometimes you have to clean the frog or there’s a pebble in there or something. And you have to be gentle about that too or you will get such a kick. But you can also have boundaries with your horse, if they know you won’t let them get away with something then they are pretty docile. But again, you have to be careful with them because they are honestly huge and powerful.

I’d like to ride horses again.

So that’s why you guys feel like God!

Since I’ve begun embodying my gender more fully, the world reacts differently to me. Guys actually move off the sidewalk out of the way, it’s intense. And I can look people in the eye and it’s cool, no one hassles me. And I walk the way I normally walk too. And cars actually stop for me now, which is intense. I’m kind of glad I put this off so I could see the differences. Male privilege is no joke man. I’m so astounded, it’s bizarre, this is so weird!

But I’m trying to remember how to do my part. I’m cleaning more, which is intense, because it’s just this nice non violent activity. It sounds silly, but it is like a spiritual practice, to clean your own space. And to make your own food. God, I sound like my mother! Crap, but it’s true, but if you’re still stuck to a binary it’s hard to be mindful of those things.

I didn’t realize how different other people’s lives are. I was listening to music and reading a book, and my mom said “You can’t do those two things at once, your brain shuts off half of it.” And I was like, what the hell do you mean? Of course I can do both these things at once. I can do a bunch of things at once. I was listening to LA Woman and reading Gender Outlaw. Now I’m listening to Moby’s Everything Is Wrong and playing Katamari and cleaning. Laurel is coming over tonight and we’re going out to goof off, I don’t know what kind of transformation she’s undergone, but she says I won’t recognize her.

Mindfulness for the Video generation

I think what I love about Katamari is that it trains mindfulness really well, and it’s fun. It’s funny to think that the tv could be used to create mindfulness, but video games do it really well. All video games really. But they are just video games. Still, overcoming duality is intense, so I’m playing We Love Katamari, and it’s pretty fun. Pretty silly. The King of the Cosmos hasn’t yelled at me yet, and he used to do that all the time before Christmas. Crap! It’s like getting organized anyway, it’s very healing. A mandala for the MTV generation.

Put Down That Weapon

By Midnight Oil

grandcanyon
Originally uploaded by fit of pique.

This is my cousin Steven and I when we were at the Grand Canyon. My mom is holding a sign in the parking lot while taking this picture. It actually wasn’t a stupid thing, there was a really wide ledge about three feet below. It just looked really dumb. I think I am twelve here.

Actel and Video Games

I remember in Actel we had this one assignment where we read a fictional story about raising a genderless child. And the kid wore overalls and had a gender neutral name and a private place and basically the last time any one knew that persons gender was when they were born. And it was an experiment, so that person’s gender became a state secret. I thought it was such a fascinating concept, because this child baffled everyone and was able to just be who they really were. I always remembered that story, that was far better than the one about the girl locked in a closet on Venus. I don’t even remember who wrote it, or what it was called, but it always blew my mind.

I always wore overalls and boy clothes as a kid, I looked silly in girl clothes. Even my mom had to buy new baby clothes because the hand me downs from my sister made me look so ridiculous. One night I drew 33 super man cartoons. And my cousins made me watch Temple of Doom over and over and over. Well, it was exciting. I had an Indiana Jones computer game but I kept falling in the crocodile pit over and over. And that stupid ET game from Atari, crap! He just falls in a hole and you can’t ever get him out! That was such a depressing video game. I remember one game I liked was called Caveman Olympics but it had these weird neanderthals with heavily secure gender archetypes in place. And I didn’t like that much, so that was frustrating. But the concept was funny, I just didn’t like the sexism. And Duck Hunt got boring, too easy. Super Mario Brothers was fun though, I played all four of those. I wanted to be a baseball player, but I didn’t trust anyone so I decided not to. Getting hit in the face with a baseball, no way. I hated baseball practice. Kickball was fun though.

And then I switched to Katamari because no one dies, you just roll people up and make the universe. That’s fun. I’m going to go back to playing that for a while, because it makes me laugh. It’s even funnier than Ms Pac Man!