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Archive for the ‘aging’ Category

A couple of random notes:

I accompanied Delia to get her first Botox injections today. I was kind of jealous and can totally understand how some people get addicted to those kinds of procedures. I thought for sure the doctor would try to sell me on something as long as I was just standing there, but the only notice he took of me was after his juvederm speech to look over at me and remark, “your cheeks are awesome. You will never need fillers.”

I’m not sure how to handle some compliments (like this sweet one comparing me to Kate Moss), but compliments on my cheeks or cheekbones always make me happy. I think because it’s a remark on something that seems very objective and sounds like a structural analysis. It seems very specific and rational, almost impersonal, so I can accept that kind of flattery. Plus I think it’s accurate. I believe that I *do* have awesome cheeks! Note: I can also graciously accept compliments on specific ways I am “weird”.

*****

Do you wish I would now talk about how I feel about cosmetic surgery and enhancements and stuff? Maybe another time. Or do you wish I’d sputter about how Kate Moss is a bad role model for young women? Oh gosh . . . don’t even get me started. It makes me really fucking irritated when people jump all over her skinny ass like she’s personally responsible for all of the eating disorders in the world. I don’t think we’re healing women of insecurity by rabidly insisting that skinny women aren’t “real”, which goes back to how I feel about cosmetic stuff; no matter how much silicone you put in your body and how your skin is moved around and your fat excised, YOU ARE STILL A REAL PERSON and should be treated as such. Yeah, I think it’s all very problematic and stuff, but whatever. It’s all too fascinating to blog about in depth right now (no, I’m not being sarcastic: this stuff FASCINATES me though it does sometimes bore the fuck out of me, too . . . I’ve even felt a kind of spiritual awakening reading about people who are extremely addicted to cosmetic body mods). Personal request: PLEASE don’t make any assumptions about me or my beliefs based on this paragraph; I just don’t have time to go into the complexities and nuances right now.

*****

The second thing I wanted to mention is that Charmin Ultra Strong toilet paper is THE BEST!!! It’s advertised as being applicable in situations where you want “a Dependable Clean” but it’s also marvelous in settings where you merely want a soft and delicious dry. I highly recommend this toilet paper to anybody looking for a thick luxury wipe or cheapskates who limit TP rations to two squares per job.

One of the things I dislike about shaving between my legs is that the stubble shreds lesser toilet papers (MD) and I’m left with little wads of white all over my vulva. CUS has solved this problem for me. Honestly, the quality of my life has been significantly improved by giving Charmin Ultra Strong a spin. This is my personal testimonial . . . I’m not receiving any kickbacks from Charmin for it. It’s just a very important consideration for someone like myself who takes great pleasure in pooping, etc.

I know there are more important things in the world to concern myself with, but toilet paper is the only product that interacts with me in an intimate way multiple times each day.

Yes, I know this post is BEGGING for your PUNNY comments!

Nico is getting senile. We think her vision and hearing have both become impaired. The good part is she seems in good spirits most of the time. I guess it’s both fortunate and unfortunate that she wants to go in and out of the house about fifty times a day and has taken to WHINING and barking madly if we don’t comply with these requests. You think fifty is an exaggeration? Okay, at least twenty-five times a day. AT LEAST. It’s insane.

Sometimes I do lose my patience with her and feel so frustrated not knowing if it’s our fault for giving in to her or if she has genuine need (or perceived need) to go outside so often. This morning after she woke Delia up WAY too early to let her out and back in she then ate and pooped on the floor. She never does that (poops inside). I think she’s just totally confused and can’t get comfortable so she paces around. Then when she goes outside her rope gets hung up on rocks or stiff tufts of grass and for some reason she can’t pull free of those tiny hangups anymore and just starts going apeshit for  us to come out and rescue her.

Lately she can’t find the doors she wants and we’ll see her in the bedroom waiting at the closet door or the bathroom door (this makes no sense). Last night she was stumbling around in the dark doing god only knows what. This makes me wonder if it’s not really a vision problem, but something else; if it were her vision, wouldn’t she still have the layout of the house memorized?

So I asked Delia, “do dogs get Alzheimer’s?”

Delia’s response: “no, but they do get Barkinson’s.”

*****

In other mundane, un-sexy news of real life, we had to take one of our beater cars to the shop today. It is going to cost over $900 to fix it. We can’t afford it, but the main reason I felt compelled to go ahead with the repairs is that we’ve been really lucky with our vehicles for the past couple of years (aside from getting pulled over for having a stolen car, but that’s a totally different story) so I felt like it was time to pay tribute to the gods of car or whatever. We got this car for free and it should continue running reliably after this so . . . yeah. Goodbye, thousand dollars. Or rather, “hello, maxed out credit card that I was trying to clear room on to pay taxes”.

I also found out my mom went to the hospital last night. She’s (relatively) fine — it was an anxiety attack. One of those things we know is a serious problem for her but that she is in denial about. The only treatment she’s ever had for it was years ago when her way of describing the problem was that she had trouble sleeping. So our pill-happy family doc/gp prescribed her Xanax. Which she became addicted to.

Fortunately she kicked that addiction all on her own. Unfortunately, she has never talked much about that and never did anything else that I know of to deal with her problems that she doesn’t really acknowledge. It’s not that my mom is reluctant to talk, or to talk about problems, but getting to the root of matters and deciding to make really important changes that start with herself? Not so much. Instead she’ll be like, “if I could just catch my breath for a couple of days and get that goddamned garage cleaned out it would help so much!”

How do you get a woman to realize that her problems go ever so much deeper than A FUCKING GARAGE? You can try, but it’s extremely ineffective.

So last night at the hospital she was prescribed Ativan. An anti-anxiety med that’s even MORE addictive than Xanax! And the doctor flat-out lied to her about what it was. He said it was a muscle relaxer she should take when she’s feeling dizzy.

Someone tell me again why pot and prostitution are illegal. I think someone misfiled RATIONAL THOUGHT in this country.

Anyway, I have a billion related and unrelated thoughts on this stuff and life in general and my direction in life and wants and desires and loves and blessings, small and large, and ways I’ve been ministered to online and off in beautiful ways and inspirations and insecurities and religion and porn and coming out and staying in and spycam projects and activism and writing and music and dancing BUT there are so many awesome books and six feet of girlfriend to go to bed with that I’ll leave it at that.

Last night I couldn’t steer my mind away from crazy people so I decided to do the only thing that could compete for my brain’s attention: googling the shit out of my ex-husband.

We’ve been divorced for a long time (ten years? I can’t remember exactly) and haven’t spoken in almost as long so it worried me to get a couple of phone calls for him this month from anonymous business entities. I can only guess that our credit reports are somehow still linked so I worried (even though it’s not my place to, unless it’s going to fuck up my OWN credit) that he’s in some kind of financial trouble.

I found a picture of him skydiving and his wife doing something similarly adventurous. Pictures of them on a cruise. Memberships to outdoorsy clubs. Evidently he has a Really Good Job (phew!) and so does she. I felt relieved and happy for them, and sort of relieved for myself that I don’t need to feel guilty for wasting part of his life; it all seems to have worked out for the best.

As I kept digging I even started feeling like an incompetent lazy-ass. Here I make money on taking pictures, but it’s my ex-husband who seems to know everything technical about cameras, including machining his own fancy-ass lens and accessories. They have all kinds of detailed, finely-crafted hobbies requiring expertise and ambition, things I do not possess. The only thing I remember him making while *we* were together was chicken with rice.

Okay, I’m exaggerating slightly, but it was a good reminder of my own weaknesses and flaws and how my own personality negatively impacted our relationship. There are so many things that I blamed on incompatibility and HIS personality and problems that were really ME BEING AN ASSHOLE. If he was depressed and lazy, maybe it was partly because *I* was depressing and lazy. I’m not saying I regret our marriage ending because I do NOT, just that I’m glad to be able to learn something from it even now. Glad that we are both, I hope, better people now because of mistakes we made together. We are both first-borns which is a recipe for a shitty relationship; we probably just brought out the worst in each other.

Still, I wish I didn’t find out one of their hobbies brings them to our town sometimes. Dude, you LIVE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY NOW! Why do you need to come to *OUR* small town to recreate?!? This is *MY* territory!! Not one you ever had any designs on before! Not a place you have any claim on!

It’s hard to believe that he’s almost fifty now. Wacky. Fingers crossed that the phone calls stop and were just marketing fuckers or something like that. I hope it is smooth sailing and skydiving and whatever else they like to do for the rest of their lives.

I wish I’d have appreciated my 18-year old body and taken care of it when it was close to perfectible.

That’s what I was ABOUT to tweet, until I realized it’s a lie. I *did* appreciate my eighteen year old body. I’d been appreciating my maturing body for years in front of the mirror, naked. Or in this one awesome pair of yellow string bikini panties, very eighties style, with the tiny triangle and the extreme V sitting up high on the hips. I remember the brand was “Eve” and I got them at Lamont’s. I danced around in those and fondled myself . . . admired myself from all angles.

When I finally got my own room at eighteen I took it to a whole other level. With privacy, I could light candles and make a whole elaborate masturbation ritual out of it. I’d put music on the stereo I bought myself, one component at a time from Crutchfield, and stand in front of my white mirrored dresser (an antique handed down to me from my mom) rifling through my panty drawer and meager selection of “sexy” stuff.

I almost always wound up pulling on a hot little ivory Christian Dior thong: lace in the back and satin in front with, again, a sweet dip down in the front punctuated with a tiny circle of faux-pearls. Then I’d have to choose between my two pairs of elbow-length gloves: white satin or white lace. You have no idea how much gloves turn me on. It’s not so much the wearing them (though I do like that, too), but looking at them on someone else.

So I would look at myself in the mirror but from a vast distance. I so wanted my gloved hands to be like other teenaged girls’ gloved hands: hot, with the satin stretched TIGHT and their soft, fleshy girl hands emanating sweaty uncomfortable heat. The other girls didn’t like to wear gloves, but FUCK I *loved* them and I wanted to be able to squeeze their hands and never let them go and stroke up and down their arms with my own satin gloves, or bare-handed, and have them squeeze me ALL OVER. Hot, fat, filled-out shiny satin arms and fingers over rustling dresses.

Anyway, my hands never looked that sexy in gloves — they looked thin and insubstantial like flat playing cards. But my arms looked delicious with the satin pushed down just enough to make wrinkles. In addition to being extremely turned on by gloves, I’m also extremely turned on by tight, wrinkled fabrics on long, slender girl arms or legs. Or fat girl arms or legs. WHATEVER. Point is, I still got very, very excited putting on my gloves and admiring myself in the candlelight.

I often switched back and forth between the two pairs of gloves. The lace ones reminded me of the Billy Idol White Wedding video and THAT brought to mind long-festering taboo fantasies of someone who looked (to me) just like him, but better . . . and worse. Rebel Yell, Eyes Without a Face, Sweet Sixteen, White Wedding, Dancing with Myself . . . yeah. Billy Idol fetish planted when I was way too little and he was way too recognizable for me to think it was silly or to resist it or analyze it.

Not that I thought about him when I masturbated. Not very much anyway. I mean, it would only have taken a few seconds of thought allowed to stray in that direction. What I would do, though, in the buildup, is I would arrange the candles in such a way that my shadow was projected on the wall. I’d inflate my chest to highlight a profile of my breast, then I’d have my hand come at it from an unnatural direction, like my boob belonged to someone else. I’d reach in and trace the silhouette of my breast. I’d pull away and reach back to touch and fondle it, over and over again, spying on this other person’s boob being teased and stroked. It’s always been WATCHING my breasts being touched that really initially arouses me. Without watching the hands on my boobs, the sensation of having my breasts touched is actually pretty boring a lot of the time.

I’d mount the corner of my mattress then, again with the candles arranged so I could spy on my shadow, and hump the edge of my bed until I came, over and over again. Sometimes I could just drag myself against the flat of my mattress and that would work, too. I’d watch the shadow of my boob hovering there, and dip myself down to make my nipple touch the mattress. It wasn’t part of the position that made me come, but the sight of that woman’s body touching and being touched made me very excited.

At that age I did feel lonely and wish I could do some of these things with a guy (which kind of doesn’t even make sense when I think about it). More than that, though, I felt a sense of loss that I was young and the only person who was admiring my body. I did feel very strongly that it should be worshipped and felt like the time to do that, the ripe teenaged time, would be over before anyone did.

Many times I felt like someone was standing outside spying on me. I even felt like I could hear them. But I tried to tell myself I was being paranoid and not to worry about it, because every time I tried to catch them, there was no one there.

As it turned out, of course there WAS someone there. Many different people at different times. Everyone from the guy I lost my virginity to, to the village idiot, to the felon who supplied the highest cop with pot (at least, that’s what we figured when we did eventually catch him outside my window and the cop said it was no big deal — he was just standing on cinder blocks he’d stacked up to peer through my blinds “to get high”). It was horribly embarrassing to think about, so I tried not to because there was nothing I could do about it. They’d already seen everything (even more than the masturbating) and knew all of my secrets. Except for the Billy Idol guy that was only in my head. I mean, they knew him too, but not that I thought about him that way.

*****

If I could go back I would nail up a billion blankets over those crappy fucking blinds. I would find a way to make it fair, to make myself paid and worshiped. For me to be the one in control. I know that because of the other things they saw me do, I was like a weird freak show to them, but they were total fucking freaks too and somehow that means I have a weird bond with them for the rest of my life.

I can still remember one of them, the one I had sex with, laughing at me when I was humping his leg without me knowing why he was laughing except that I guessed I was doing everything wrong, even though that was what was going to make me come. It wasn’t until later that I realized he was one of them and all the things he saw. It makes no sense how humiliated I still feel remembering him mocking me when I know now what a dangerously fucked-up individual he was/is. He had such an unfair advantage over me, but he probably thought the same thing of me just by default since he couldn’t last more than twelve pumps. Which of course I actually enjoyed, or WOULD HAVE enjoyed if he’d have gone again. But he never did. Of course, he DID go down on me, but I totally didn’t get that — it was such a foreign sensation that I’d never planned for even though I’d masturbated so often to images of other women’s pussies being licked. I don’t think I understood that I was more interested in going down on chicks than having anyone go down on me.

When I was young, the only true pleasure I experienced on my own terms was by myself. I guess I wish I would have accepted that, made myself more powerful (both physically and . . . spiritually?), and found the confidence and the people to negotiate those terms for myself. I know it’s shallow, but now that I’m older and I can see my body starting to disintegrate and loosen into loose flesh and little balls of fat and poison, I wish I would have ran as fast as I could for miles and taken dance classes and learned how to stretch and spent many many MORE hours in front of not just one mirror, but a fucking roomful of mirrors.

I wish I’d have known about getting paid to stomp on men. I wish I’d have had sex with women sooner. Like that hot Belgian pharmacist with the leather skirt I worked with.

SO MANY MISSED OPPORTUNITIES.

Today marks one of those milestone birthdays for Delia and I wish I could smother her with everything and more than she could possibly ever want:

To the cutest girl in the world: happy birthday, honey!

At the top of her list of desires? BOOBS!

Delia has hormone titties but wants bigger boobies!

After shooting this set of pictures I had one of those moments I *often* have after taking pictures of her of being completely BOGGLED as to her site hasn’t become world famous and made her rich. Seriously — how can you look at her and not think she should be sitting in piles of cash?!? Not that she even wants that — she’s not really into material stuff, but it torments me that all the money she makes on her site and all but a few of our other checks are made out to me to the point where when we filed our taxes she made so little that I was able to claim her as my dependent (we’re not married, but as we discovered this year, I could claim I’m head of household and she’s my live-in sugar baby or whatever “as long as the relationship is not illegal”).

All of that would be fine if we had any spending money, but no — everything of significance goes to running our sites, paying credit cards, trying to pay taxes, and the usual rent and utilities.

I have no diamond ring for Delia, no trip to Disneyland, no little red Corvette in the driveway with a bow . . . and no new boobs. And this all makes me very sad because I am a sugar daddy at heart and totally want to spoil her.

Normally I love fall, but it took so long for winter to go away this year that I’ve actually been apprehensive about letting go of the summer. Fortunately, we’ve had an extended Indian summer. Last week I *thought* it was over one night when I found myself craving heat, but this week it’s back. Sunny yesterday, sunny today . . . and clear for viewing the full moon last night and crone moon tonight.

It’s also been spider season with one lady in residence in our line of vision from bed in the corner of our sliding glass door:

Spider Lady & Half Moon

She’s been there every day and I know we should get rid of her big egg sac or we’ll have shitloads of spiders in our bedroom, but I haven’t been able to do that to her. I love seeing her there at least once a day and/or night. It doesn’t seem like the best place to have a web with us sliding the door open and closed and some of her anchors being attached to it. But I guess there’s no spot to weave a web that is completely invulnerable.

Lamp-lit spider on web.

Our dog’s much better after her trip to the vet’s. The x-rays didn’t show any arthritis but part of her spine had some degeneration, probably from aging in an area of past trauma which Delia thinks must have been from a time when she was a young dog and made a quick break out of the door of their house straight into the side of a moving car on a busy road, bounced off said car, then ran back inside never appearing any worse for the wear.

There have been times in the past nine months where Nico has seemed so old and uncomfortable and tired — and she IS old. Fourteen, I think. Everyone thinks she’s a puppy because she’s a runt of a husky and looks so young, up until recently when you see her walk, especially watching her from behind and her whole hind end just takes so much awkward effort to move. SOMETIMES. But if she’s excited? She’ll still bound and bounce and run around the house like crazy, even though, to me, her yips of excitement sound tinged with pain. I don’t think anything but the most debilitating pain can stop a husky from doing her husky things, so when we started noticing her having real problems has been at night when she can barely lie down and whimpers/cries like a squeaky wheel, circling around and around before painfully lowering herself down.

Anyway, the vet put her on prednisone, a steroid, which seems to be helping quite a bit. We took her on walks in the woods the past couple of days, which she loved even if she’s slowed down a lot since I met her and Delia seven years ago. Now her pace is really pleasant and companionable. She still runs ahead a little bit, but there are times when she actually walks right beside us, or takes breaks so she’s always close by.

Watching her yesterday on the trail looking so much better than she has in a couple of months I thought about how long it took for my dad to die and how unprepared I was for that. How there were so many times where I was impatient for it to happen already, for all of us to be put out of our misery of waiting, and then having days where he was present and I was so happy he was still around and it didn’t seem possible he was anywhere NEAR ready. At least, not nearly as ready as I recently had been. I feel that way a lot with Nico where I can’t help contemplating the convenience of her death one day when she seems uncomfortable, lethargic, and droopy-faced, then feeling overjoyed the next with how well she’s doing — how alert and happy she is, how it’s so not time yet — how YOUNG (for her age) she looks.

My ninth grade (and seventh grade) English teacher did something pretty fucking progressive and unheard-of for kids as young as we were in a public school: she taught us a section on Death and Dying. Practical planning stuff about funerals and wills, the Kubler Ross stages of grief, and of course literature like some story about a brave young man  with a brain tumor (title escapes me, but not the memory of how much I disliked that book) and one I’m forever grateful for being exposed to and having TAUGHT to me (not just read on my own), The Plague.

I remember all of us talking about what we wanted to happen to our bodies after we died and everyone laughing when I said I wanted to be dressed up like the Chiquita Banana Lady and thrown into the woods to rot and be scavenged by animals. Since then I’ve changed my mind, partly because I loved my dad’s funeral including seeing him all dressed up in his coffin that we picked out with special things tucked in to go with him, including stuffed animals that were ours, but that he kept after we outgrew them. I was shocked by how much I did not want his eyes to be plucked out for harvesting; I’d assumed he was ineligible for donating because of his glaucoma (which he was, but they weren’t aware of it so the question was posed to me anyway) and I was just totally unprepared by the topic even coming up even though of course we are all listed as organ donors, but MORE unprepared by how viscerally opposed I was to having his body — especially his eyes — taken out of him when I’d been looking into them MINUTES before that.

So. Aside from it being illegal to throw costumed dead women into the woods, I realize people have emotional, albeit irrational, attachments to the bodies of loved ones and I’ve even become attached the IDEA of my own dead body and perhaps want a more traditional type of ritual to accompany me to my final resting spot. Plus I’m extremely fond of coffins.

I asked Delia if she knows if people can come to our house to put Nico to sleep when the time comes so she can be at home and we can bury her. Delia said she’d prefer to take her to the vet’s. When I heard that I experienced another one of those irrational, emotional reactions (especially since Nico is really DELIA’S dog, not mine) of not being able to bear the thought of taking her to a place she’s afraid of and have to die there. I know it’s over fast, but having done that (thankfully only once and with a kitten we’d hardly had for any time at all) the drive there is just too fucking sad and crying your heart out in a clinic standing around in that sterile setting is just not the ideal to me. I am so glad my dad died in hospice where we got to hang out with his dead body for a few hours afterward (I probably wouldn’t have understood it before, but that is incredibly comforting and helpful, not to have to be seperated physically from each other right away), but obviously a seventy year old parent is pretty different from a fourteen year old pet.

We’re all smart enough to know that television and movies are inaccurate and unrealistic, but I personally never realized how much until my dad took years to die, and then again especially during the days and hours surrounding his actual death. I felt and still feel very unprepared for the process of death by aging and protracted illness. My mind is still boggled by the concept that all of us, if we are lucky, have to watch our parents die. I don’t feel like I was taught to expect that or how to process that even though I’ve probably been given more tools and experiences to deal with that than most post-baby-boom American kids have. I’d had friends who lost parents way too young and I knew it was devastating to them and in some cases they even talked about it a little, but not nearly enough to ever intimate exactly how huge that loss was. I and my dad were not too young, it wasn’t a tragedy, and it’s still hard and has taken SO LONG. I mean, it’s still not over for me. I’m still shocked by the revelation that death is never over or never not coming and that it’s VISIBLE and active for So. Many. Years. I’m trying to accept that with Nico . . . even to use her as practice and I am flummoxed at how ill-prepared I still am . . . how disbelieving, impatient, sad, and scared I am in spite of feeling that’s not really in my nature. I feel like I’m the kind of person who should be able to embrace aging-towards-death gracefully, with serenity instead of blubbering.

I don’t even know how my mom has handled the past thirteen years, seeing her own dad’s decline and death, living with and taking care of my dad/her ex-husband (they continued to have a fond and extremely helpful dysfunctional relationship even after his death), packing up the house she grew up in and moving her mom out of it and into first one home, then another, and now a third offering an even higher level of care. I really do not fucking know. I don’t think she really knows either, but I know it’s a lot harder for her than she’s gotten help for, and my distance from her doesn’t help. What I still idiotically fail to GRASP is how this is THIS LARGE a part of life. Because tv never taught me that and even though my family has always talked openly about these things and plans for when we die, I still can’t remember exactly what I’m supposed to do with my mom’s ashes and I still can’t believe that IF I AM *LUCKY*, I will live through many more loved ones’ deaths. I read so many young adult books about death — GOOD books about a girl whose dad was shot about a kid with Lou Gehrig’s disease about drug addicted kids . . . about pretty much every kind of unanticipated death you or someone you know could have but not so much about the deaths we all aspire to without any proper planning.

What is the life span of a spider? I have no clue. I am still trying to brace myself for the day this season when I look out the window and in the cracks around the sides and she’s not there and doesn’t come back.

I’m struggling under the weight of a lot of things right now. Nothing that should be debilitating, but the end result is that I’ve been acting almost completely disabled. Money problems, health problems, overwhelming-to-do-list problems, incompetency problems . . . you know, life.

The struggle on my mind right now is trying to figure out how much energy to expend on conservative friends and family who have issues with my work and/or with my partner being a transwoman. Not that they know that word. And I should be patient because how many people DO? It’s not THEIR fault, right? And with me being in the kind of relationship where I even USE the term “my partner”. My girlfriend. My not-a-man not-a-husband not-a-boyfriend.

My mom has been struggling with how to tell HER mom (my grandma) and her born-again-Christian-asshole brother (my uncle) so I haven’t even seen my grandma in way over a year.

God, it makes me tired even trying to blog about this bullshit.

Now one of my step-brothers, the one I WANT to be in touch with a little, is coming out with his family for a visit next month. My mom visited them in Pennsylvania last year before the election and came back so disturbed by his wacko right-wingerism that she doesn’t really even want to see them again (AND didn’t even want to get into the basics of telling him anything about my controversial-to-them “lifestyle”).

Delia’s family in the Midwest still doesn’t know about her transition. We had a plan for telling them that we cooked up with her therapist who said that ideally you shouldn’t break the news in a letter, but face to face. We tried to get them to come out here last year so Delia would meet them at the airport presenting as a male (a concept that now seems totally ludicrous, uncomfortable and weird to me), she’d sit down with them and tell them all about it, the next day she’d present as a woman, and we’d all go see the therapist so they could learn about transgender. A nice idea, but there’s no way to lure them out here when the REST of Delia’s family is in the Midwest and her dad can’t take time off work; it just makes more sense for us to visit them there.

So Delia’s parents offered to buy us tickets to come out for a visit, like, RIGHT NOW. It would work out perfectly for the whole coming-out-face-to-face (except we wouldn’t be able to take them to our counselor) BUT Delia already changed her name so in order for them to buy a ticket she could actually get on a plane with, she’d need them to know ahead of time her real femme name (or we’d have to buy the tickets ourselves which we can’t afford to do right now). So after some soul-searching and discussion she decided to write a letter which she’s still working on.

As the word “transition” implies, it’s a process. And part of that process is . . . all of this bullshit of informing, educating, explaining, confronting, and dealing with loved ones and not-so-loved ones.

It made me feel sad when my mom said she doesn’t know if she wants to see my brother / can’t handle his fucked-up views. And I know it makes HER sad, too, but I feel like it will only be a few hours and it would be wrong to shut him out completely. I wouldn’t say this about my other stepbrothers or about my ex-stepdad, but this brother? I would. So I wrote him and his wife an email about “my lifestyle” so they wouldn’t be hit with surprises and wouldn’t ask about my job in person if they aren’t comfortable hearing me talk about what it really is (and told them, in short form, that I make adult websites). And the wheels are turning and they’re paying lip service to not judging other people, but copping to being “REALLY conservative”. And expressing concern over their seven year old daughter. He doesn’t want her to have to “learn too much about life” at this tender age. Like, what aspect of life does he feel he needs to shelter her from or that I’m going to so-inappropriately expose her to?

As usual I can’t help comparing my apparently depraved lifestyle with other people in our family and in Delia’s family. In both of our families there are those who have HUGE problems with my job, yet think nothing of letting the children be around people in the family who’ve actually sexually molested other family members. Nobody objects to the lifestyle of the family members who worked for the chemical company that made Napalm and Agent Orange and other killers and cancer-causers. When I had a husband who worked for Boeing, it never bothered anybody in the slightest (including me) that a family member worked for a company that makes machines of war. Their job is something to be proud of, but MY job is a big, scary, society-eating disease. Excuse me, but as much as you try to fallaciously connect porn depicting consensual sex and non, I DIDN’T DO THIS TO KIDS. Not even close. My brother doesn’t have a problem with his kids being around one of his other brothers who has stolen cars and served in Iraq and laughs with glee at videos of US soldiers beating and kicking the shit out of Iraqis. But oh, GOD!! WHAT will we tell the children about Trixie and her tranny girlfriend or that she has a job making grown-ups feel pleasure?

I know it’s hard, but it’s not THAT hard. Especially given the truly fucked up things that people are perfectly willing to ignore, live with and even brag about. He’s a soldier! He’s a chemical engineer! He works for the military industrial complex!! So easy to boast about. And even those other people who have actually HURT people — kids — get the benefit of the doubt: He deserves a second chance. But how many people boast about “my daughter, the pornographer!”? Actually, my mom does and my dad did. In small amounts, but still. They are extra ballsy and good. And I guess if all these little things are hard, I still have that to be extra specially grateful for and don’t know what I’d do without it.

*****

It would be easier in the short run to just say we’re going to be busy. Too busy to see my step-brother and his family. Too busy to fly out to the Midwest. Too busy to communicate on any deeper level with old friends than filling out those email quizzes about what our favorite colors and drinks are and coming up with a different reason than the real one for the last thing that made us cry.

I could do that (and have and still will to some extent), but sometimes you have to TRY. Because they’re family or because you really need a better reason than fear and exhaustion to sever ties with them. No, you have to try your hardest to be patient with their ignorance and fears and confusion (thankfully people have been patient with MINE). You have an obligation to make yourself fucking vulnerable to being told that what you do — whether it’s selling pictures of your beaver on the internet or it’s defying the status quo of letting your genitals define your gender or it’s being in a non-straight relationship — that you’re destroying the moral fibre of the country, tearing families apart, degrading humanity, and damaging our sensitive youngsters and oldsters who shouldn’t be EXPOSED to our depravity and perversion in their fragile mental and physical states!

You have to be gentle with them while they insult you and beg for your protection. Oh but mom is just too old to understand . . . oh god, I just don’t want to upset Grandma Seriously? These women have televisions and they’ve all HAD SEX. When I’m in my eighties I hope people don’t think I’m too stupid to understand new shit or that I can’t handle knowing that some women charge men money to get their dicks hard. I think they can handle it, and if they can’t? OH WELL. I wish someone would protect OUR feelings for a change. Like maybe not insulting the girl on the television for having “too masculine of a jaw” right when you’re sitting next to my trans girlfriend
who might feel self-conscious enough as it is about her OWN masculine jaw. Like maybe not saying that I’m going to warp your seven year old when YOU are the one warping her with your stupid, bigoted views.

I know I’m being a baby to complain about it because so many people have had it so much worse, but I’m *sick* of coming out to people and trying to hold their hands through the process when I just want to scream at them. It feels like such a gigantic waste of time and energy for me, personally, when I don’t even LIKE socializing with people. But I know it’s not healthy to take the easy way out and be isolated. I know that talking to people makes a difference, not just to us, but in teaching tolerance and understanding on a broader level.

*****

Basically I just feel bogged down. Getting together with family is expensive enough, emotionally & financially, and communicating with old friends that you aren’t sure you have anything in common with anymore takes enough of a toll, that having to pay all these extra costs is really draining. It’s like walking through a field of land mines every time you connect with someone who doesn’t know who you are and what you’re doing lately. Are they going to freak out or pat me on the back and laugh? Should I brace myself for them to say something inadvertently hurtful or let myself trust them to be wiser than that?

Once I started writing this blog entry I realized that the most important thing we can do when it comes to friends and family right now is to cultivate our relationships with people who FUCKING GET IT. Our porn friends, our trans friends, our not-so-straight friends. I’m not very socially energetic but there’s no way I can cope with some people’s bullshit without having the comfort of other people’s understanding and similarities. And I can’t help sort of resenting the amount of energy I’m putting into the one camp when I could be pouring it into the other. OR WORK.

Jesus, I can’t afford this bullshit. Including my own — all I want to do is sleep and read and eat and listen to music. I feel sort of guilty and wretched and oh-so fucking tired.