As you can see, this emotional identity experience began as a low pressure system off the coast. While a close observer can note the swirling patterns of confusion and building frustration, most people would simply see a windy day.

As the system moves closer to land, its effects begin to become apparent. Heavy rainfall and high winds, coupled with personal doubt and suicidal tendencies, plague the area for months or years. Because these violent weather systems have no where to go as they beat themselves on the shore, it’s possible for them to last indefinitely.

Will and action shouldn’t be disconnected. The existence of the latter should – in the case of will – lead to the former or – in the case of action – imply the latter. But it’s a curious system where will and action don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other to the outside observer.

To say I didn’t take action to transition until 22 means my will wasn’t strong enough prior to that, which is something I can’t accept. My desire and emotion and need pressed at my limbs and my chest and my throat and between my legs until I ached to take knife to flesh and let blood rain down like water. To look back from the outside is to say “it was too hard, you were too young, you didn’t know any better, to remove the agency I feel now. But I can only see myself as a child from my perspective as an adult. I don’t know how to be an outside observer. I can say the words: It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my responsibility to take control of my development at the age of eight, or fourteen, or eighteen. Give yourself a break. Give myself a break. It was your parents, your therapist, your friends, your family, it was literally anyone but you. But if I am where I am today because of who I am and the choices I’ve made aren’t I not somewhere else for the same reasons?

And I can’t summon the emotional energy to blame my parents, to blame my mom. I hold grudges, I feel things deeply, and I worry that one slip into “it wasn’t my fault” will quickly burry me in “it was their fault, her fault.” And I don’t know how to go there and come out the other side.

I will my will, I willed my will, I will my will and it wouldn’t, didn’t, couldn’t, left me crying in bed under the covers at night and alone, with stuffed animals for comfort.

The weather report for today looks superficially sunny with dark patches of clouds if you know where to look for them. The weather report for today looks back and back and back into time before time into time before will into will before time and attempts to extract some narrative, some purpose, some reason why and whyn’t. The weather report for today looks cloudy with gusts of wind reaching into forever and a night time blacker than when you close your eyes and see flashes of light behind the lids. The weather report for today is the same as yesterday is the same as tomorrow is the same as it always was and always shall be. The weather report for today is an effort in rewriting the past. The weather report for today is an effort in uncovering the truth of the past. The weather report for today can’t get out of bed out of the weight of its body. The weather report today wishes it could find understand in itself. The weather report today will be communicated through gusts of wind and moments of sunshine rather than through words, because the only way to understand a thing is to be the thing itself.

Spring causes my roots begin to flex and contract. I sprout flowers from the tips of my fingers. The grass that is my skin begins comes to life once again. I am alight with budding leaves and the constant sound of birdsong. The cute waitress flirting with me causes my hair to stand on end and cool ice-melt streams to run down the crevasses of my body. A friend’s laughter causes burrowing animals to stick their heads above ground. Every fibre of my being grows toward the rising sun.

Summer is flush with life, my blood pumping and lungs full of air. My body is made of chlorophyl, converting every moment into pure joy. The wind plays through my hair, and my toes dig into the living earth. My face is a flower, turning toward love and happiness as if following the sun. The days of my body are long in summer, insatiably hungary for sensation, to touch and to feel. I ache for sex, for skin on skin. I cum like lightening cracking in a summer storm, and the rain pours down.

Fall finds me melancholy, my body slowing down and turning into itself. My leaves begin to color, rich reds and yellows, before falling to carpet the floor. I pace a lot during the fall, unsure what to do or where to go, unable to direct my energy. Projects are begun and abandoned, ideas had and left by the wayside. There are moments of frost at night, when I seem to stop altogether. A part of me migrates south, searching for warmer climes.

Winter is stillness, an absence of some I-don’t-know-what. There is life, but it is below the surface. Winter finds me crying without knowing why, or knowing why, or not knowing one minute and knowing the next and suddenly laughing only to fall silent. Winds blow across my skin leaving ice crystals in their wake. My heart aches in winter, unable to find the momentum to take another beat. Winter is knives of cold, cutting through me so that blades don’t have to.

Across all seasons I am filed with energy: electrical energy, heat energy, potential energy waiting to be released. In the height of summer, the energy bursts forth like a raging river, careening against canyon walls. In the depths of winter, the energy lays in wait, pausing to collect itself. At times, lightening plays across my muscles, flickering as they expand and contract. Rain collects in my eye sockets and spills down my cheeks. Wind blows, first hot and then cold across my breasts. Vines crawl up one leg, circle around my waist, and travel back down the other. I dip my toes into the waters of myself and watch as my ripples spread out. Then the water breaks with waves and I am tossed beneath the surface, only to come up again far away.

There are rivers in my veins.

There are vast prairies on the souls of my feet.

There are storms beneath my skin.

Well don’t you sound very interesting! I’d really love a new transgender friend! I’d love to get a drink or maybe smoke a joint with you sometime, and see how well we click! . (Emphasis added)

There was more, about his open relationship and how he’s looking for friends and not necessarily hookups, but that’s the part that stuck with me.

My response was pretty simple:

Heya. I figured I’d shoot you a message because your profile seemed interesting, but being told “I need a new trans friend” sort of feels (right or wrong) like “I need a new black friend.” =/

As was his:

What’s wrong about wanting a diverse group of friends? I can see how and why you might be offended a tad. But that was obviously not my intent.

I haven’t written him back since, and I’m not sure whether I want to. On the one hand, I appreciate his honesty. And, I’ve been wondering, is there anything wrong with desiring a more diverse group of friends and seeking that out? I’ve commented about wanting more geeky or board-game-playing friends. How is this different?

Well,because it is. ‘Geek’ may be an identity component, but in a fundamentally different way than race or gender or cis/trans-ness. And the way he put it – as politely and positively as he did so – feels reductionist and ultimately sort of dismissive. Likewise, his response was decidedly not an apology, even of the weak “I’m sorry you feel that way” variety. He acknowledged my feelings, which deserves a minimal amount of credit, but “I didn’t intend to offend you” is not an appropriate response to “You just offended me.” It may be part of the response, but not response in its entirety.

For all that, what is wrong with wanting a diverse group of friends? Is the desire in and of itself the problem, or simply that he expressed it? The latter doesn’t sit well with me – if a feeling is OK, shouldn’t expressing it be OK, too?

It makes me think of the affirmative action discussion in the news these days. To some extent, affirmative action always struck me as a “the ends justify the means” kind of argument: Yes we’re giving preference to this race/ethnicity/gender/etc, but in the interest of leveling a larger playing field and encouraging diversity. Which isn’t to say I’m against affirmative action, but I understand why it frustrates those who don’t benefit from it; namely, straight, white, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical, Christian (I could go on) men. I think there’s a compelling argument that race-based affirmative action could be replaced by class- or wealth-based affirmative action and achieve many of the same goals with fewer objections.

But that’s kind of beside the point in this situation. Should I give this guy credit for attempting to expand his circle of friends, or should that be outweighed by the potential ‘ick’ factor of “Hey! You’re trans, and also cool. We should be friends.”?

(As a PS, yes, I know the final question mark should probably be inside the quote. But I’m a fan of the programming theory of punctuation: Close your brackets, then modify their contents.)

No fair! My feet didn't come with a flower!

Below the waist. My feet, like my hands, are slightly bigger than I’d like, hairier than I’d like, but I can’t really complain. They’re not huge, it’s occasionally obnoxious to find shoes in my size but never impossible, and hair removal has thinned much of the worst growth. I still have some patches around my ankles that I need to shave when I shave my legs, but no body is perfect. My legs rival my chest and face for the most dramatic success of hair removal. I shave my legs, much more in warm months, but don’t grow the same thick brambly forest that I used to. As of today, I haven’t shaved my legs in at least a month, and while they’re hairy compared to my shaved-this-morning face, they’re night and day compared to when I was in high school, pre hormones and hair removal. My legs are, like my arms, places of strength. I don’t run – it hurts my knees – but I bike and walk and swim and climb ropes and trees and lovers. I’ve been working on strengthening my hips, something a physical therapist said would help my knees, but don’t have much to complain about.

At the same time, my legs and arms have shrunk the most over the course of my transition. I joke that, since going on hormones, I’ve gone up two cup sizes without gaining any weight. All that mass, my previously mentioned boobs, had to come from somewhere – lots of it came from now-departed muscle mass in my arms and legs. I’m still stronger than lots of my girl friends, who knows whether as a result of testosterone or simply genetics, but decidedly less strong than I was before hormones. I’m not complaining, however, other than the occasional struggle at circus or the gym. But no pain, no gain. Or something.

Stretch marks line my thighs where they connect to my hips. I remember in middle school, shortly after the onset of puberty, asking my mom what these strange lines on my thighs were. She laughed and explained how growth impacts the body and the skin. My calves have the occasional scar or mark: Where I backed into a hot camp stove on a family camping trip, the spot on my knee I hit over and over and over the summer I was learning to ride my bike, marks of time and of growth and of pain. (I forgot, in Part One of this map, that my left hand (with the broken fingers) has a small companion scar on my shoulder where I hit the ground when flipped off my bike.)

My hips and my butt have grown over the course of my transition, shifting and changing like so many parts of my body. But, again, like so many parts of my body, not in exactly the way I’d want. But, again, no body is perfect. I’d love for my hips to be a little wider, my butt a little more rounded, my boobs a bit bigger. But I love the curves of my hips and my butt that are there. The way the right dress or tights or shorts hugs my body on the way down. The exact way the suits and pants and clothing I used to wear before transitioning didn’t.

This is exactly what I was hoping to find when I searched for 'cartoon cock.'

Curving around to the front of my body brings me to a part of my anatomy that has absorbed a lot of my mental energy lately. My dick. My cock. My penis. Whatever you want to call it. (Or, if you prefer (as one partner did), whatever you want to call her.) Searching this blog for penis brings up lots of posts. (I want to make a joke about “raising the issue” but can’t figure it out. Someone make an innuendo in the comments.)

Unlike some trans women, I’ve never felt like my penis was a totally foreign part of my anatomy. (Yet another parenthetical: I don’t think that makes me a ‘better’ or ‘worse’ trans woman. There is no hierarchy of transness! This is an observation I’m making about my experience, not a judgement about myself or anyone else.) I never felt like I wanted the dangly bits between my legs, but – starting around the end of middle school – I was able to identify that doing certain things felt good. Occasionally, it felt great. I, like many teens, became a regular and proficient masturbator.

I wasn’t always sure how to fit that within my burgeoning trans identity, though. Lots of the stuff I read online talked about people wanting to “cut off” their penis. I hid it between my legs sometimes, enjoyed the smooth and tucked look much more than the bulge, but not to the point of seriously contemplating taking a scissors down there for a trim.

But my penis and I didn’t have a great relationship. I remember the first time I masturbated, stopping at one point and thinking “OK, I’ll try this again tomorrow.” Then reaching down and finding all this stickiness - I’d cum without realizing it – and thinking, “That’s what all the fuss is about? That was fun, but not great…” Over time I learned how to elicit better sensations, and I certainly enjoyed masturbating and such, but I feel like going on hormones really opened my eyes to my body. (That’s a shitty metaphor, but you know what I mean.)

My first (and really only) girlfriend in high school and I fooled around a lot. There was a lot of dry humping, under-the-shirt play, general teenage fumbling around. We even attempted ‘real’ sex once, although I don’t think either of us particularly enjoyed it. I know I didn’t get a ton out of it, and I’m pretty confident she didn’t either. (And I just broke all social conventions and sent her a Facebook message asking her about it, so maybe I’ll be able to know for sure! Craziness of the Internet!) She was the only person I was really sexual with until my college girlfriend, the one who continued to date me through much of my transition.

And I’ve never really enjoyed being the penetrator in penetrative sex. I’ll do it if a partner wants to, but am not really equipped – physically or emotionally – to do it particularly well. I think doing it with a strap-on might be more fun, but haven’t had the opportunity to try.

But sex of most any kind, during high school and college, seemed unfathomably confusing. I’m sure that’s true for most (all?) people, but I have a suspicion it’s doubly true for trans and queer folks. I didn’t like my body, didn’t want it, and yet it was still able to provide such please. I’d feel some guilt after masturbating, as it if was encouraging this body I didn’t want, this interaction with myself I would never have selected.

Going on hormons hasn’t changed the physicality of my cock – I can still get hard, for example – but it’s sure as hell changed how it works. I’ve discussed this before, so I don’t know that I need to totally delve into it. But my penis is so much more sensitive now. Stroking must be done with some amount of lubricant, or it’s unpleasant. Vibrators, previously uninteresting, have become a regular and important part of my sex life. And orgasms are much longer, more sustained, more difficult to obtain but so much more delicious when they’re achieved.

The way I think about my body has also changed the way I think about other people’s bodies. I’ve had sex with other trans women and interacted with their cocks (read: sucked and been fucked by) in ways I would never have imagined as a ‘lil baby teen. One of the things I’ve been realizing (and discussed in this post about online dating) isn’t that bodies are unimportant - I’m not ready to renounce my lesbian identity – but that they’re less important than I previously thought.

It’s interesting how quickly thinking about my penis turns to thinking about sex and sexuality. Not shocking, but interesting.  Because, to shift topics slightly, that’s not the only reason I’m considering surgery. It’s about body integrity, a sense of self and personal authenticity, feeling comfortable, all the bullshit cliches I’ve talked about before. But yeah, it’s also about sex.

I remember fantasizing that pure and unsullied desire could transform my penis into a vagina. That tucking it between my legs and wanting it enough would create the change. This was also about the time when I started reading trans fiction (something I haven’t posted about in a while…don’t worry, it’s on my to-do list) which meant I was exposed to tons of stories about magical transformations, medical and scientific transformations, totally and completely unexplained transformations. But, reading these stories, one thing was clear: the universe was full of genders transforming.

Ta da!

I didn’t honestly believe any of this was happening, mind you. I wasn’t really expecting to wake up one day with a vagina. To have my parents say “Whoops, there’s been a mixup. This is yours,” and hand me a box with a cunt. But I hoped like help. I even prayed, although I’m not totally sure to whom: Gods and goddesses and life-forces and universal energies and anyone who I thought might be listening and sympathetic.

This drifted away from a body map quite a few paragraphs ago. Maybe that’s OK. My psychic energy seems to be swirling around my crotch these days anyway. My continual (and occasionally successful) attempts to find dates or get laid. My constant ogling of the women around me. For example, the women coming in and out of this coffee shop as I type this. Women walking down the street. Especially women at the gym. I’m not at the point where I was a few months ago, when I thought (correctly, as it turned out) that my hormones were out of whack. But I’m a sexual person. More broadly, I’m a physical person. I like hugging and cuddling and touching, even if it’s non-sexual and simply sharing energy between friends. So yeah, a lot of my mental energy goes into thinking about sex, sexuality, body issues, gender issues, all that jazz.

Right now, my penis and I have an uneasy truce. We like each other, well enough. Being sexual is lots of fun, and I’m still (12 or 15 years later) masturbating regularly, even if the way I do it has changed a bit. But as I research surgeons and go on consults, it becomes more and more clear that our days are numbered. The relationship may not be drawing to a close – all the flesh and blood supplies and nerves will be reused in constructing a vagina, not simply tossed out with the trash – but we’re preparing for the biggest shift since I went on hormones, and probably the biggest change we’ll ever have.

I wonder how my penis feels about all of this. Is it exhausting, this exploration and discovery and potential (lets be honest: probable) surgery? Or is it exhilarating? Maybe I’m thinking about this whole thing the wrong way.

Maybe my cock is just as read to be a cunt as I am ready to have one.

A moment of my visit to my brother’s graduation sticks out in memory, and still occasionally gets me ribbed by family members. We were at a restaurant in town, my family and I, celebrating my brother’s impending  graduation. People were ordering drinks, and someone (probably my dad) made it clear I could have an alcoholic drink, too, should I so desire. So while everyone around me ordered beer or wine, I ordered a rum and coke.

Looking back, the reason I did it (and the reason my family finds it funny) is because I didn’t understand that there was a difference between beer or wine and mixed drinks. So while I probably could have ordered beer or wine without incident, ordering a rum and coke was cause for conversation.

Remembering all this still makes me a little embarrassed, because I hate not knowing how to behave. A big part of my transition has involved figuring out how to behave, how to present, how to interact, how to identify. And a big part of my hesitation around transitioning stemmed from not wanting to feel like I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know how to do something, not wanting to feel like I didn’t understand.

Part of growing up – and part of transitioning – is learning how to do things you don’t know how to do. And no one likes being embarrassed or feeling foolish; I don’t exactly have a monopoly on that experience. Another time, in high school, the pride youth group I attended had been listening to Melissa Etheridge, and in particular to Scarecrow, a song about Matthew Shepard. I was out to my parents at that point, but not to my brother. On a family shopping trip, I bought Breakdown (the album with Scarecrow) at a Best Buy. On the ride home, I asked if I could play it in my dad’s fancy new in-car CD player. We drove in awkward silence as Etheridge sang out the pain and anguish of being alone and different. And, in the back seat, I felt alone and different than these strangers, my family.

I want to write something in defense of awkwardness. In defense of putting yourself in a situation where there’s the potential for embarrassment or discomfort. I wouldn’t have been able to transition had I never stuck my neck out, been willing to be uncomfortable, been willing to be unsure. No one could ever grow up at all if they stayed perfectly safe and sequestered. And one of my big life lessons over the last few years has been, “People care less than you think they will.” To put it another way, everyone is tied up in their own shit and doesn’t have time for yours.

It feels somewhat silly for me to say that awkwardness still holds such fear for me. I’ve performed in front of large audiences, taught classes with kids and adults, spoken at great length about very personal issues. I’ve been topless on stage in front of both of my parents, and their significant others. It seems like I should be pretty awkward-proof.

And maybe faking awkward-proof-ness is really all it takes. How should confidence be defined? Is real confidence believing that you’re confident, or being perceived as confident? There’s a parallel with gender, there… And I know I can fake confidence, but I don’t like to that I’m  ’faking’ gender, whatever that would mean.

Maybe I need to embrace the awkward. The not-knowing. The willingness to say “I’m not sure how this will work out.”

But it sure is fucking scary.

Hopefully won't end up in police custody like she did, tho.

I talked with my therapist recently about ‘the rest’ of transitioning. I don’t mean The Surgery, although that’s something which is still on my mind, I mean moving from actively transitioning – changing my name, going on hormones, fretting about levels, watching my boobs grow, constant hair removal – to simply living as a woman. (As if living were ever simple, for anyone.)

More specifically, I said I’d been having trouble getting motivated lately. Sure, I could spend extra time doing my makeup, extra energy wearing a skirt, extra effort walking in heels. But I’m never going to look like Mexico’s beauty queen over on the right (using her as an example simply because she came up when I did a Google Image Search for ‘beauty’) so why not just throw on jeans and a t-shirt?

Laura, my therapist, smiled and said that’s part of what being a woman is all about.

Except I’ve become very used to the idea of transition as moving toward something: getting hair removed, growing breasts, buying a new wardrobe. The idea that I’ve arrived (or am close to arriving) at status quo, at whatever ‘normal’ is going to be for me for the foreseeable future, is battling it out with internalized transphobia and, more simply, internalized desire for the unobtainable female ideal.

On good days, I’m able to remind myself that I’m not only attractive “for a trans woman” (whatever that loaded statement means) but simply attractive as a woman. Touring this summer demonstrated that; it may not be that all the girls wanted me, but enough did to be a boost to my confidence.

On bad days, however, I feel stuck. As if I’ve reached my asymptotic height. And while convincing myself that transitioning was possible has helped keep me sane for so many years, I now need to put the breaks on that line of thinking: there is a limit to how I’ll look, determined by genetics and biology. I’m never going to be 5’6″ and 120 lbs, or have a 36-26-36 figure.

But that’s OK. I’m working on it being OK.

The rest of the trip was as enjoyable as the first chunk. I got to see more shows (some good, some less so, but all fun) handed out a shit ton of postcards (probably around 2,000), and was the highest selling show in my venue, Loft 122, meaning I won the coveted Kansas City Fringe Festival Hangover Award and received a bonus performance on the final Sunday of the festival. Woo! Being in Kansas City reminded me how much I like performing and how much I particularly enjoy the festival atmosphere: lots of friendly people, tons of things always going on, built-in socialization opportunities, and a very finite list of tasks to accomplish.

I’ve been thinking about that since I got back to Chicago and my stress level went back up. Being in Kansas City meant I didn’t need to worry about everything, just a very specific thing: getting people to see the show. And I really only had one tool to do that: going out and talking to people while handing out postcards. So I didn’t need to think about contacting colleges to perform, festivals to perform, researching grants, thinking about my next show, thinking about Kickstarter fundraising, and on and on and on.

I’m trying to recapture that while back home, to give myself a finite list of tasks. Say, contact ten colleges by the end of the week, three festivals, find one grant, and so on. Make things I can reasonably check off my list, instead of just feeling like I need to do everything all at once.

Being in Kansas City (and DC back in March) has also awakened some wanderlust in me. And I’ve begun researching grad school. Eeek!

Right now I’m thinking about perusing a masters in gender studies. I think a masters, because that seems more do-able than a PhD, and in gender studies because I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Let me explain. I’m really enjoying performing, but I could see myself wanting to move to activism or teaching or (dear lord protect me) law. On the other hand, I can pretty confidently say I want to continue to work with issues surrounding gender and sexuality. So gender studies seems like a good way to feed what I’m doing now while also allowing my future possibilities to remain open.

A part of the grad school draw, though, is definitely the excitement about getting out of Chicago. I love Chicago, I really do. Literally everything except the winters: the architecture, the theater scene, the culture, the vibe, the lakefront, the bike-ability, everything. But I’ve also really liked the ability to newly define myself when going to DC or KC (and presumably next week when I go do Indy). I feel like I get a new stab at saying who I am, one that isn’t muddied by 26 years of living in the same city. Likewise, I think an academic environment would have some structure for meeting people that I don’t feel in Chicago.

That isn’t the only reason I’m looking at grad school, but I think it’s a good one to consider along with all the others.

More to come!

My mom’s logic is hard to refute: even though the gas millage isn’t quite as good on the Forester, it can hold more, is newer, has less millage, and rides more smoothly. At the same time, I like my Corolla. I want to drive my car to Kansas City and back (and then to Indy and back). Not her car.

If it were just that, I’d probably take my car. But I’m every-so-slightly worried about my car being covered in COEXIST bumper stickers, in Civil Marriage is a Civil Right, in Howard Brown (hearts) Lesbians, in labor rights and equal rights and gay rights stickers all across the back bumper, the trunk, and curving around the sides of the car. (I like bumper stickers. So sue me.)

I’ve never been to Kansas City, and don’t know the neighborhood in which I’ll be performing or staying. And I’m slightly nervous about leaving my car out on the street, with out of state plates and covered in ‘look at me!’ stickers.

I emailed the woman I’m staying with:

Concerning my car, it’s kiinnnnndaa covered in bumper stickers about union rights, gay marriage, all that jazz. Do you think that’d be cool in your neighborhood, or should I borrow a friend’s car?

And her reply:

Well, shoot, if you have your own car, you’ll be totally safe. We are inner city, but we are in a pretty safe area as long as you’re not wandering around on foot by yourself at night. I walk around my hood by myself regularly (during the day) and unless you have a phoebia of black people, then you’ll be fine.

That definitely reassures me some, but not 100%.

My current plan is to, first and foremost, see what my mechanic says when I take the car in later this week for an oil change. If he says “Um, driving 1,000+ miles round trip in a few weeks, and then another 500+ round trip in August, is a bad idea,” then I’ll probably just take my mom’s. If he says “Go for it,” I think I want to do some more research on the KC neighborhood in which I’ll be staying, and maybe some Google Street View stalking of the area.

But it is moments like this when I question exactly how far on my sleeve I’ve chosen to wear my heart. And I really don’t like that feeling of doubt or second guessing.

PS – Sorry for the very uncreative post title… Can’t have ‘em all be winners.

Friday night I went to Backlot Bash, a mini music fest in my neighborhood behind a local gym. (Hence the ‘backlot’ part.) My neighborhood, Andersonville, is pretty lesbian-y, and Backlot Bash is specifically women-focused. A friend of mine was very excited about the Friday musicians, as they were all acoustic, so we had dinner together and went over. She made yummy vegan pad thai, which was a new culinary experience for me, but much fun.

Backlot Bash was pretty perfect for a Friday night. Saturday and Sunday are usually pretty crazy, but Friday was lots of folks in lawn chairs, good lesbian acoustic rock and folk, and really excellent people watching. It also ended around 10, which was good since I wanted to get as much sleep as possible to prep for Pride. But I definitely want to look up the musicians who played – Katie Quick, Katie Todd, Edie Carey, and Catie Curtis – as they were all excellent.

On Saturday I had brunch with a friend who is going out of town for the next month to work at a sleep-away camp. It was nice to see her before she left, and a good little ‘goodbye.’

Then some friends and I trooped down to South Shore for Dyke March.

A little history. The first Pride Parades were held in 1970 to memorialize the Stonewall Riots and highlight both the actual existence of gay folks and gay rights issues. There were names like Chicago Gay Liberation, the Gay Activists Alliance, and Gay Freedom Marchers. But as time went on the events became more and more gay focused (as opposed to lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer/intersex/etc) and more celebratory, and less activism-y.

And so, in May of 1981, the first Dyke March, with the goal of being more activism-y and more inclusive. (And less of a straight-up party.) In cities like Chicago this is particularly great, as  the Pride Parade is only minimally about activism and much more about beads, stickers, LOUD music, and scantily glad dancers. And those are all great, but there should also be a venue for activism.

A nifty thing about the Chicago Dyke March is that it moves every two years. It used to be in my neighborhood, Andersonville (although before I lived there) but community members and organizers realized that maybe the march should go somewhere that didn’t already have a strong queer community. So it’s been in Pilsen (predominantly Latino neighborhood) and this was the second of two years for it to be in South Shore, a South Side black neighborhood. I totally agree with this organizational choice, even though I selfishly hope they chose somewhere closer next year.

So I went to Dyke March with a few friends. We parked and got some water from a local Walgreens, and marched along with maybe 500 people along a main thorough-fair and to a nearby park. I have pics which I’ll post later, but it was a fun event. Great to see cars slow down in support (mostly in support, anyway) and to be with so many queers and allies who were there for activism as opposed to being there for a giant party.

The march ended at a nearby park for a rally, which was a very nice and emotionally satisfying picnic-y end. There were BBQs set up with for-donation food, folks handing out flyers for events and organizations (including me pushing Early to Bed with stickers saying ‘Some like it twat’) and difficult-to-hear speakers on a too-small sound system.

I also got in trouble for being topless, and then un-in-trouble. I’ll post about that soon, but no worries – someone overstepped their bounds reprimanding me, and organizers made a point of checking in with me to ensure I felt safe. (Which I did!)

Saturday night I went to the pride show of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, an amazing Chicago theatrical institution. (That I’ve auditioned for, was called back for, and didn’t get into, but still love.) It was a really fun time, with lots of nudity, Pride ridiculousness, and a good mix of celebration, silliness, and solemnity. Huzzah!

Because I’d been called back to the Neos auditions, I was invited to march with them at Pride, which was exceptionally sweet of them. I took ‘em up on the offer, so Sunday morning filled my Camelback with water, slathered on lots of sunscreen, and hopped on the bus to Boystown.

The adventure started on the bus, as it was rerouted due tot he parade. The reroute actually helped me, but left lots of people to walk a long distance on foot. I finally made it to the staging site for the parade, and wandered until some Neo folks saw my Too Much Light t-shirt and called me over. To wait for the jeep (our ‘parade float,’ which was running late.) We chilled, chatted, and watched the sights as people began to filter in.

One of the things I love about Pride, which I was reminded of over and over throughout the day, was the range of gender expressions on display. It was really wonderful to see people of all physicalities expressing themselves from extremely masculine or butch to extremely feminine, and everything in between.

The jeep showed up with supplies, and we got to work decorating. “Supplies’ including a sound system, lots of blow-up dolls, tons of streamers, and decorations for the hubcaps and such. We also made a classic Too Much Light style clothesline with numbers 1-30. (Really, you need to see this show. I’d be happy to go with you!) Likewise, we filled out tons of name tags (another Too Much Light staple) with sexually suggestive and silly names.

It was during decorations that I went from t-shirt to bra, and from bra to name tag stickers over my boobs. Ahh, pride! Incredibly, I was successful in sun-blocking myself, so only got a tiny bit red on my shoulders. Go me!

The parade was supposed to start at noon, but since we were far back we all knew we wouldn’t get going until around 1. And then 1:30. Then 2. Then 2:30. We got started around three. But we were cruising down Halsted, waving and handing out buttons and stickers, having a blast. Someone in our group was in a Big Bird costume, another was biking in a princess outfit, and a few (including me) were scantily clad. Then we hit Clark, and were turned onto an ‘alternate route.’

Apparently due to crowds, the police redirected about 40 floats down Clark and off the official parade route. Instead of about 3 miles, up Belmont and back down Broadway, we walked maybe a mile in total. Boo! This was a particular pisser since, marching with a non-profit, I totally think we were much more deserving than Office Depot or the half-dozen moving companies that marched much earlier in the parade than we did. I’ve talked to about a half-dozen friends who were watching the parade but – whoops! – didn’t get to see me marching because we missed most of the fucking parade.

I sympathize with the problem that 750,000 people can bring. I really do. But it’s pride. They knew how crowded it was going to be. (They didn’t, admittedly, know a bunch of floats’ tires would get slashed. That was bogus, and not the City’s fault.) Chatting with other queer folks at and after the parade, we discussed how it was particularly frustrating since so many people were clearly not LGBTQ, or even really allies, and had simply come to gawk. Pride is absolutely supposed to be a celebration, but – having not been in a few years – I forgot how it’s not really ‘our’ celebration.

I don’t know what the city can do, though. I wish there were a way to be, like, “Are you going to Pride because you really care, or just cuz you want to get free stickers and maybe see some boobs?”

I’m still glad I went, even though it was exhausting and somewhat frustrating. I got to meet (and become closer with) a bunch of awesome people. I went to the 7PM Too Much Light show after Pride and then to grab a bite to eat with folks, and was kind of in queer artist heaven. (This statement will be doubly embarrassing  if any of the people I hung out with read this blog.) And then, while walking along Clark, someone came up to me and said “Oh my god, I saw you perform at Fringe! You’re amazing!”

A nice confidence booster, and an awesome way to end Pride weekend.

One of the things I’ve said, which I’ve discussed here before, was my frustration at still feeling lousy. That is, I’m doing what I want to be doing: transition(ing/ed), performing, writing, freelancing, dating. In another way, I’m doing all the right adult things: getting my teeth cleaned, paying my bills, shopping for groceries, and so on. So if I’m doing everything ‘right,’ why do I still feel like shit? Why do I still want to hurt myself?

In response, my doc talked a lot about how we ingrain our behaviors and – ultimately – write certain paths in our brain. When I was younger, wanting to hurt myself as an escape was entirely legit. (Wow, it was awesome to have a medical professional validate that.) I couldn’t transition, felt like I couldn’t come out, was developing in ways that were absolutely wrong for me, and felt very trapped in many ways. In that situation, the escape of self-harm (which I fortunately did avoid) is a release valve when everything else is stuck.

But now, everything else isn’t stuck. But my brain is still trained to go straight for that release valve.

Dr. Cook talked a lot about What The (Bleep) Do We Know?, a movie which apparently discusses this idea a lot. That, in our behaviors, we not only develop habits but actually strengthen certain connections and physiological paths in the brain. That makes sense to me as a performer and as a pianist, because I know how doing something a certain way over and over absolutely – and seemingly magically – causes connections to strengthen. And, suddenly, you know your lines. Or the fingering for a specific song.

But what Dr. Cook argued (and, apparently, the movie argues as well) is that these paths aren’t only created for lines from a script or notes from a song. That every behavior builds up or breaks down these mental and neurological paths. Until you reach the point where, even though there’s no longer an external need to be so anxious or depressed or inflict self-harm, the internal path still exists: slight amount of stress equals MASSIVELY DISPROPORTIONATE negative mental response.

And so, I keep  walking over the same well-worn dirt path, reinforcing the very real neurological consequences.

The question, then, is how the hell to get off the dirt path. Dr. Cook said the What the (Bleep) Do We Know? has some good visualizations, but also just to think about going back to those assignments. To internally use positive ‘I’ statements following praise, or even just when feeling down. To acknowledge successes before failures. Dr. Cook admitted this all sounds a little touchy-feely, and that upping my antidepressants is still a backup option. But he said, and I agree, that it’s much better to retrain the brain to do the work itself than simply give it the chemicals that’ll do the work for you.

So here we go!

(And in that vein, I’m proud I wrote this blog post today, instead of procrastinating.)