If it’s not one thing, it’s another

I trotted off to the post office and picked up my new phone, spent the next hour changing some phone numbers so they were stored to my sim card. Replaced the sim, and fiddled around with all the new things on my new phone. It has polyphonic ringtones. Get this: when my phone rings, it sounds like an actual old phone! It is so cute! I was terribly excited and thought oh yay, my life is turning around.

But then I went on friendster and got an admonishment from a friend for mentioning accidentally touching his cock, AND found out someone I like is currently taken, which they never bothered to let me know. I mean, it’s not like I demanded that she keep me up to date or anything, so I can’t really complain, and besides that she does live VERY far away. As for the cock thing, I dunno, maybe I have really bad boundaries. Growing up native, people just routinely made lewd crude jokes all over the place. I mean, some of my elders have thoroughly embarrassed me by teasing me about my sexuality, not in a mean way mind you, just, I dunno, that’s what they do. It’s an Indian thing. If you’ve never experienced it, you wouldn’t understand it.

Anyway, I felt cruddy for a while, and didn’t even have the chance to call mum to vent because she’s up in Northern Saskatchewan at a cabin on a lake, lucky woman. Then the worst thing happened: Internet Explorer decided to be fucked up. I click on it at the little icon bounces up and down like it’s yelling “I’m ready, I’m ready!” and then it just stops, and doesn’t open. All “Fuck you!” Sigh.

It’s overcast and I am still on the job hunt. Bleh.

But at least I have my phone again, an even better phone, a cuter, lighter, smaller phone.

The T isn’t doing anything to me besides giving me the occassional hot flash. Not a Menopausal Woman hot flash (those look way way more intense), but hot flashes nonetheless.

I’m grumpy. I’m going for a walk before it rains.

Boy – Pain in the Ass (Part 2)

We were prepped, we were ready. The needle was fearsome. My friend let me hold it for a while before he wielded against my bare bum. 50mg of depo-testosterone, all that kaffufle and it just came down to this ridiculously benign looking amber fluid.

We went to his bedroom, where I bared my butt and got into position.

Deep breaths. He had a very nice bedside manner.

“Aaaah! I”m nervous!” It reminded me of my trips to the piercer, that nervous energy that crawls into the palms of your hands and tickles like you gotta pee right now.

“Have you ever done play piercing?”

“Yeah, just surface stuff on my arms.”

“Well this won’t even hurt as much as that because it’s only breaking the skin once and it’s coming out the same way.”

We did some more deep breathing.

Then I was ready.

It was a sharp pinch, and then it was over. I thought an intramuscular injection would hurt a lot more, but it didn’t really. I’m sure if I had to do it every two weeks I would think it stinks though. I felt a bit giddy, general euphoria. I had done it, there it was, it was in my system. Who knew what the next two weeks would hold for me?

One of the first effects I noticed was a tingling in my crotch, not a I have To Pee tingle, more, I dunno, a This Turns Me On tingle. Not quite, but that’s the closest I can describe it. And I felt my body temperature rise. My hands seemed warmer.

And yet, the sky didn’t fall. Later on when my friend’s boyfriend kept wanting to watch boxing on tv, I didn’t connect with it because of boy-hormones. I mean, essentially I feel pretty much the same as I did before.

Another friend got a shot, she called me up today and asked if my clit was throbbing, which it isn’t really, but I have only been awake for a short amount of time.

I’m excited to see how this works for the next couple of weeks it’s in my system.

********I have a phone again! A friend is lending me her ancient cell phone so now the temp agency can get in touch with me, and people can ask me out on dates. Ask me out on a date while the T makes me horny!********

Boy – Part 1

I think I went through the biggest part of my gender confusion when I was about nineteen years old. I remember this one time I was telling an older butch friend about a dream I had where I was a boy, and how it really made me wonder where my gender stood. There was this other woman hanging around, non-butch, totally didn’t get it, while my friend just kind of nodded and agreed that any masculine woman these days has a moment where ya wonder, am I male or female?

There is this opening story in Stone Butch Blues about how the protagonist, Jess, is constantly asked if she is a boy or a girl. This was the constant question of my childhood too. Are you a boy or a girl? To think that even adults think they have the right to interrogate a child on their gender, that is sick.

At this point in my life, eight years of really doing major soul searching on whether or not I wanted to transition into a man, I have accepted that my gender is a question more than any answer. More than any allegiance to a binary, I have come to terms with living on the border of boy and girl. I know I wouldn’t be happier with a more masculine body. Hair, deep voice, no, that’s not really me. I don’t feel completely comfortable inside a girl body either, but it’s something I can work with until the day I shed this body and go to the other side, where something tells me I won’t be a boy or a girl.

At the same time, ever since I was nineteen, hearing the fabulous stories of what a shot of testosterone can do, I knew I wanted to have that experience. Only once, a needle sinking into my butt, a couple of weeks of male hormones, possibly one or two minor physical changes. My dalliance inside maleness. And eight years after making the decision to temporarily modify my hormones, to possibly put a couple of gendered questions to rest, some trans friends of mine are giving me a shot.

It’s the most exciting thing to happen to me all summer so far, and so of course with summer night drinks with friends I’ve excitedly told them about this new development in my life.

Okay, so I’ve had trans friends for ages, I mean, ever since I was in youth groups. I knew shit came at you for being trans, transphobia, yes, I thought I was really prepared for it. I also somehow thought that because I have educated and informed myself about transgender politics, I dunno, everyone else would have done the same thing.

Anyway, people have really freaked out about me getting this shot. They’ve challenged me on my gender, some people even said I wasn’t butch. They’ve tried to talk me out of it. Some people have said they don’t want to hear about how it goes. They’ve demanded to know what my body is going to look like after having one shot (this is a strange one, because my body is my own business). I’m just being an open honest dude about it and realizing that my openly transgendered butch status is turning me into an Other on a daily basis, with weird taunts about why in the world a nice girl like me would have a shot of T.

We decided we would do it this weekend, and I’m seeing them tonight. I’m a little intimidated by the needle, more so than what’s going to take place in my body. The last time I got a needle in the butt was just before they strapped me down in four point restraints for three and a half hours. Soooo, being a leathergirl, of course I have to re-enact the scene to reclaim that moment in my life. My friends aren’t tying me up, but we’ll probably have a nice chat about boy hormones and ladies and things of that nature. It’s an inch and a half long intramuscular injection, and apparently it can really hurt. I can take it, but that doesn’t make me like it any.

This is an experience I just have to have in my life, a chance to see what difference, if any, having testosterone in my body makes. It comes from a deep desire to understand and know the human condition. And even though people have been really vocal about not wanting me to do it, it is my own journey that I’m on, and this is just one of those destinations I have been planning for a long time.

I doubt I will decide to continue taking hormones, but then again, no one can say with certainty what the future holds.

Filthy Lady

I was plodding to the bath to wash away the day. My landlord was making the Canada Day rent rounds. I gave him rent money, then he said “The Fire and Health Inspectors came to the building last month.”
“Oh,” I say very innocently. Shit shit shit, that was just before the Big Clean of 2005. That was when I could barely make it from my bed to the door. It was awful, and the mice were having some kind of carnival in my boxes.
“Your apartment was filthy.”
“I know, I’ve cleaned since then.”
“I have to inspect it again next month.”
Sigh. What I hate is that these “inspections” so far haven’t come with any warning. I know bc tenants rights have changed with the Campbell government, but I don’t know if the old rule that you had to give 24 hours notice still stands. For all I know he could drop in any time he feels like it. Like a Santa Claus with no presents.
But I’m embarrassed that he saw my apartment when it was at it’s all-time worst.
At the same time, I am glad a lot of other tenants in the building have mental illnesses, so he doesn’t turf you out right away or scream or anything. He’s pretty decent overall.

Result Report

Candidate Name: Cuthand, Thirza
Candidate ID: cuthandt
Candidate Email: f——-@excite.com
 
Evaluation Name: Administrative Support Skills
Evaluation Date: 6/26/2005 7:30:25 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Questions Completed: 43 of 43      
Elapsed Time: 14 Minutes 34 Seconds
Questions Correct: 35
 
Overall Score 81%
   
Scores by Level
Basic 88%
   
Intermediate 94%
   
Advanced 55%
   
Scores by Category
Administration 73%
   
Filing 100%
 
Math 70%
   
Spelling 83%
   
End of Report

(Thirza can change the world through proper filing!)

In Search of Femmes

Sometimes straight people are exceedingly stupid.

My last girlfriend and I were making out in front of a Scotiabank security camera, my eyes were peeking at what we looked like, tongues slipping and sliding inside girl mouths, when I heard a surprised man’s voice say “Thirza?”

It was some guy from school.

“She’s not gay,” he said of my sweetie, the woman I had just been macking on, the lady with dildos and harnesses and whips and lesbian porn in her bedroom.

“Well, no, she’s bisexual,” I said.

“No, she’s straight.” He was convinced. No way a girl could be that feminine and enjoy the company of other women, much less a rather masculine woman.

Some would argue that queer people are just as stupid. I think I have mentioned before the prevalance of dykes who shun uber-femme women in the community. I can’t tell you how many of my lovers told me their pissed off stories about being given dirty looks or ignored outright by card carrying homos.

It does make for some awkward moments, being a butch who likes femmes, who especially likes bisexuals, to carefully choose who is safe to make the moves on. And it’s true, in my life there have been many gorgeous femmes who turned out to be straight girls. But that doesn’t mean every well coiffed lady is straight as an arrow.

My left Foot

My left foot is in a terrible state of affairs. First I got three itchy red bumps on my sole, then I smashed my second to baby toe into a wheely chair and badly sprained and bruised it. It hurts to walk, which I do anyway, because it’s one of those pains in life that is bearable.

But highly annoying.

Neurogastroenterology

It is the study of neurons in your gut. We each have two brains, the big one in our head that gets all the attention, and the little one in your guts. Yes, there are seratonin receptors in the gut, along with numerous other neurotransmitters.

I have often wondered about the effects of bipolar on my body. I know how it affects my thinking and mood, but what about other things? Like when I was a kid, I used to get awful stomach pains before gym class, my all time most hated class. Later on someone told me that stomach pain in children is sometimes a type of migraine, which I ended up getting throughout most of my adolescence. Which I later found out is part of being bipolar.

There are other funny things about neurogastroenterology. Like this thing I have discovered recently where I feel physically ill around women I find attractive. I live in sheer terror of the day I meet someone so cute I puke all over them.

Born Nerdly. Since 1978.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I was a bit shy of technology. I was so anxious, I was sure if I touched it I would break it.

But geekness overcomes all.

I’m pretty comfortable learning tech stuff now, which is maybe why I had so much fun learning PowerPoint for the last three hours. I haven’t learned a new program in such a long time. I love learning them, it’s like doing a puzzle. It uses my brain in this completely fulfilling way. Anyway, I still have to learn Excel, which won’t be as much fun I’m sure. I mean, slotting things in boxes, eh. At least PowerPoint is kind of a narrative medium.

I learned it by going back and forth between my PowerPoint program and an online text tutorial. I’ve never done online tutorials before, except for website programming. Damn, I should do some refresher courses in websites, I haven’t made one in ages.

I’ve heard a rumour in the arts community that Arts Councils are going to start asking artists to submit their grant applications in an electronic form, ie PowerPoint. Soooo, anyone writing grants may as well learn the silly program now. It’s really simple, and you can do some pretty funny things with it.

Excel. Le sigh. I wish I was learning something more fun. Oh well, it’s an employable skill to have, may as well learn it too.

Wrecked @ Wreck Beach

In order to get this temping job, I have to do some online evaluations of my skills of an office worker. There’s about eight tests in all, including tests on Excell and Powerpoint, which I have never used although I’m sure I can learn quick. So I was going to drink some coffee and spend some time doing the tutorials for these programs, then taking the test and voila, ultimate temp.

It was Saturday night and I figured I would probably just learn it Sunday afternoon and do the online tests that evening. So when my friends invited me to hang out with them, of course I said yes.

We went to Wreck Beach, but it was the evening so people were clothed. There were herons and two seals. The herons had a nest way up in a tree above our section of the beach. The seals would swim up to us, looking at us, and then went away. They hung around for a very long time. They would swim by and stare at us, and they chased away the seagulls. I’d never seen seals in Vancouver before.

I have seen the killer whales though, on the ferry to Victoria, a number of times. I have dreams of killer whales. They’re huge.

It was really late when we were finally talked out and shivery and tired. We climbed back up the stairs. There are 390 stairs going from the road to the beach, really windy stairs. We took three breaks on our journey upwards. Huffing and puffing, I wondered what I would be like if I was still a smoker. Ugh.

We reach the top and the car is gone. Then we see the tow truck driving away with my friend’s car. Goodbye car.

My friend sits down and puts his head in his hands.

We walked and walked and walked and found an isolated deserted bus loop at two in the morning and caught the second last bus of the night. By the time we got home it was three in the morning.

I feel wrecked, but I still have to learn Powerpoint and Excell, take my evaluations, and go to my screening, all in the next twelve hours.

Crumbs.