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Archive for the ‘fears’ Category

Bug necklace dangling near Trixie's ample cleavage

Delia knows exactly what kind of thoughtful presents to give me; she brought home the most awesome present for me:

Scorpion gift box

Nevermind what’s inside . . . the box is super cool!

Opening my little bug box

Look at the shiny, iridescent beetle necklace my girlfriend got me!!

A symbol of true love!

There is a special reason why this pendant made Delia think of me; once upon a time I was a beetle breeder.

In elementary school I was always interested but totally lost and intimidated when teachers sprang special projects on us like building rockets, making volcanoes or constructing cameras out of milk cartons. It’s like I was always absent on the days that the secret instructions were handed out telling us to bring money for those brown motors or maybe it was always the OTHER class that got to do those things. I think the mealworm project studying beetle life cycles was one of those things the OTHER class got to do that I was totally jealous of.

So I did the mealworm project at home. Purely for fun.

My mom would never let me have a pet snake so I guess bugs were the next best thing. Not that I was ever totally unafraid of spiders and such, and I *hated* moths, but I was also fascinated by insects and all the little dark nooks and crannies and tunnels they could explore.

I consulted with my friend Ruth (she was in the OTHER class) to determine what supplies I needed: jars with airholes, oatmeal, apple chunks. I captured my own beetles from the base of our old apple tree in the backyard. It grossed my out a little, the way they skittered around so quickly, but I viewed overcoming this fear as a healthy challenge and soon grew to enjoy the tiny tickles of their little black legs scurrying up my arm.

I thought my ability to unflinchingly let bugs crawl on me was an enviable trait to cultivate that would impress people, like when nobody else in my class wanted to hold and stroke a small, velvety black slug during a field trip to the zoo. I don’t remember why the fuck this zookeeper was teaching us about slugs, but I do remember feeling that I’d found a niche where I could jump straight to the top. So what if I failed at rockets and wanted to cry on field day? I could save face by being an imperturbable slug and bug handler! Plus I kind of liked making girls scream and giggle.

In no time I was observing beetle life in all of its stages. The alien-looking pupae were the most disturbingly mesmerizing. I had to increase my containers to hold all of my grubs, pupae and mature beetles. I didn’t have enough covered jars so I just used different bowls from our kitchen and loosely covered them with plastic. Pretty soon the bedroom I shared with my sister started to smell like dusty oatmeal and decomposing apples, but in my role as omnipotent overlord of the beetles I could watch the beetles’ frenzied mating. They were exposed and vulnerable, driven by instinct to procreate in the open on beds of Quaker Oats.

They were also developing genetic defects because of inbreeding. This was a lesson the limited research of the OTHER class never got around to learning! I tried introducing new beetles to the population, but the rate of abnormalities increased. Soon there were albino beetles, pupae with black lesions, slow-moving beetles that failed to thrive and aggressive, kamikaze beetles hell-bent on escaping the bowls of oatmeal.

One day I looked at the bowls full of beetles spread all over my desk so close to our beds and was suddenly horrified by them. I could learn no more from them and they were on the verge of mutiny.

I had to get rid of them FAST before they overran the bowls and poured out in black waves (dotted with albino white) all over our bedroom. I pushed open a window and started flinging beetles and oatmeal outside. I couldn’t dump them quickly enough . . . they were trying to climb back up the wall outside to get in and seek revenge! I kept throwing bowl after bowl of beetles in various stages of life out of the window, shrieking when they clung to the bowl and started climbing up my arm. I cruelly flicked them off with my fingernails, trying to launch them as far away from the window as possible.

It would have been perfect if I could’ve graduated to snakes or lizards because then I could have fed my beetles to them instead of wasting them all like that. Once, when I was a little older, my mom got mad at me when I screamed after reaching into a bag of potatoes in our dark pantry and pulling out a few maggots on a damp spud. I wish I’d have had the presence of mind to point out her hypocrisy, having the balls to chastise me for reacting to a handful of maggots on our food when she had a snake phobia precluding me from having the best pet of all: a beautiful legless reptile to hang around my neck while reading.

Busty buglover still wants a snake!!

Believe it or not, this is not my only story about bug-keeping. I’ll try to tell you about my other bug endeavors one of these days. . .

Last night my wanker played a major part in one of my dreams. We met in real life in a waterfront hotel room with furniture around the edges and a large amount of space in the middle. He was chuckling and delighted when I made him put on women’s clothes: shiny low-heeled patent pumps, almost-frumpy suiting (loose pencil skirts, blouses and polyester jackets) and wigs that all came from my own (imaginary) collection.

Crossdressing is not his thing, but he looked very cute, donning one outfit after another, handing money over to me with each costume change, and not at all as silly as I expected. I was surprised and excited both by how coyly he looked at me in his lady garb through the strands of fake hair hanging over his glasses AND by the stack of twenties growing fatter and fatter in my hand.

I walked across the room — quite a distance — to count the money with my back to him, looking over my shoulder to shoot smiles of encouragement at him. Just as I noticed with pleasure that he’d made a handwritten notation on each $20 bill — his name, the date, and a charming code indicating his humiliated status in relation to my status of financial and sexual dominance — the dangerous wharf gang boys were about to bust in to disrupt me taking control of two new modem/router combos I desperately needed for my networks. They intended to sell them on the black market. If they would rough me up for this pedestrian technology I knew they would rest this thick, hard wad of personalized cash from me in a second and I just couldn’t bear to part with it.

The hotel was located in the same building as a weird FedX/UPS warehouse. Before I knew it I was running through the warehouse between forklifts trying to sign shipping receipts and get my modem/router combos before the wharf gang boys did. I don’t know what happened to my money, but I think I saw my wanker walking away from me down a shady dirt road in a red skirt.

I’m guessing it was about $5,000 but I’m not sure since I’ve never held that many twenties in my hand before in my life and I couldn’t concentrate to finish counting them in my dream.

I’m getting better at recording ideas as they come to me, developing a system.

We know a guy in town who nearly wrapped up writing his novel and also had a system for compiling all of his stacks of inspiration-containing idea-notes weekly. His novel and many years’-worth of weekly compilations were stored on his computer at the offices of the non-profit he ran saving seeds of native and/or rare plants.

One night the building burned down. He had no back ups of his his novel or his notes.

He and his wife sold his car to someone we know, who then gave the car to us for free. I wonder if it’s bad luck to drive it. I feel like I need to compile years of stacks of notes-on-envelopes now, back them all up and store them in three different places.

Until I get a fireproof system in place there’s no point in even STARTING to write a novel. But maybe since I would never say “novel”, only “I’m writing a book” (and would never even say that to anyone even if I WERE writing one), maybe that would protect me.

I’m not sure, but I think a lot of the seeds were duplicated elsewhere so all was not lost in that department. I can’t remember what he called his note-compilation ritual, but I think I have it written down somewhere on the back of an envelope. Lately I’ve had to stop myself from searching for that because I don’t really need to know what he called it. I could email him or even call, but I don’t know him that well so to my mind searching through shitloads of scribbled-on papers seems the more sensible thing to do, but obviously not sensible enough that I’ll allow myself to do it.

His wife collects the jokers from decks of playing cards. That’s almost everything I know about them.

Note: I really am not writing a book, and most of my ideas aren’t FOR books. This post isn’t a hint of any kind, it’s more of a confession  about my idea-hoarding compulsion.

I’ve got a new thing on our spycam and chat schedule: playing piano for half an hour on our spycams the last Sunday night of the month (tonight!) and chatting afterward.

It’s not a “concert” or a “show” and as with everything on our cams that’s not pay-by-the-minute, I won’t be taking requests. I probably won’t expose my genitals or fondle myself in an erotic manner, however it will be intimate. To me.

Members click here and head to SpyOnYou to watch/listen/chat. Stardust Piano Hour starts at 7 pm Pacific.

If you aren’t a member, but want to become one, JOIN HERE.

Note: the audio is via spycam broadcast, so not high fidelity / stereo/cd quality.

*****

We went to a Christmas party last month, new attendants in the middle of an old crowd where it’s traditional to sing The Twelve Days of Christmas and other songs and carols. Our friend was getting fed up with trying to accompany on the hosts’ keyboard, so I stepped in,  sat down and enjoyed it. It’s been SO LONG since I played piano in a room full of people.

I’m no virtuoso at playing piano and am really not good by pianist standards but I realized something at that party: I  am good ENOUGH that I shouldn’t avoid playing just because I know that I could be better or because people are better than I am or because there are so many beautiful and amazing things I *can’t* do or haven’t learned or practiced.

I have focused so much energy on cringing with shame over the things I can’t do that I *should* be able to do; I should be able to play by ear better, I should be able to sit down with a band and jam, I should have a whole repertoire of songs that I know by heart (actually, I should be embarrassed that I actually have never learned one. SINGLE. song by heart), all of my fingers should be equally strong and skilled, I should stop using the pedal so much to compensate for having small hands,  I make mistakes that hurt my ears, blah blah fucking blah. Oh god I would suck as a piano duelist!!

Here’s the thing, though. I was still the best piano player at that party. And unless every party I went to was a party for musicians only, that would frequently be the case.

How many people really know how to play piano? How many people in the world can actually play *better* than I can? What percentage of humans do I actually play *better* than? Why do I focus on the wrong things?

I don’t think the problem is that I really that I want to be the best at anything (I believe in the healing power of crystals and that Jesus Christ rose from the dead more than I believe it’s possible for me to come within sight of being the best at anything), but when I compare myself to people who do things excellently, what I can do with mediocrity seems useless. If there are lots of people doing something better than I do it, what’s the point of me wasting time on it? What can I contribute with my half-assedness? I guess the answer has always felt obvious to me: NOTHING. All that can be accomplished is embarrassment and time wasted on me that would’ve been better spent listening to someone do it better.

What a crock of negative shit!

I’m practicing to undo that crappy mindset of mine that’s plagued me with pretty much everything I do, that feeling that if I can’t excel at something and be in the top 5% at it, that I’m only be humiliating myself to spend time on it. As I get older I realize it’s asinine to think that *ANYthing* a person does can be more than mediocre. The only thing most of us can excel at is being ourselves, which is really only unique in a small very random sample so even “being myself” is a field with competition because we really are not so individually special. Except to ourselves. And our loved ones. And our communities that need our work and for us to try and to be where we’re at so maybe someone else can be the best in your own small circle.  So yeah. I’m going to let myself be special to myself. I want to tell my stories and use my voice and play songs and dance and stuff. And not throw away what I already know which is more than a whole lot of other people, even if it’s less than others. I want to stop thinking about who is better and who is worse. Instead I want to care about what I want, what makes me happy, what resources I have in the form of skills and interest and love. I want to care about what I what I want to get lost in and what is important. Music is one of those things.

So I’m going to play piano more, and even dare to let people hear me do it.

I need to stop thinking I should pick up the theremin so I don’t have to worry about the millions of people who are better at theramin playing than I am. I already know a lot about how to play the piano! If I want to play the theremin it should be because it’s totally fucking cool (and I want to make people fall in love with my hands), not because I’m afraid what I can already do (play piano) isn’t good enough.

How long can I feel this super groovy? I hope a looooong time! The memory/deja vu/hopeful-excited-magic feelings I mentioned last week are still here and I feel GREAT. So great that I’m almost worried that I’m losing my marbles and trying to figure out what to attribute these good feelings to.

Is it the B vitamins? The D’s? The pressure being lifted from IRS after being forced to resign myself to accepting and even embracing whatever bad things might happen? Our deliciously mild winter (that could fuck up the winter olympics in Vancouver if the Pacific Northwest doesn’t get more snow)? Getting rid of DirecTV and reading more and enjoying each other more? Our new sound therapy machine with the delta wave inducing sounds (I usually dream so much that I don’t get deep dreamless sleep: a symptom of low serotonin levels/depression)? Is it that I’ve lost some weight? Is it going to twelve-step meetings? Is it just that I’m reading more and I FUCKING LOVE TO READ?!?

I don’t know, but IT IS GOOD! So I’m going to try to enjoy it and not worry that there’s something wrong with me. Goes to show how unhealthy I’ve been for so long that when I feel terrific for more than three hours I think maybe the sky is falling.

*****

I picked up my new weighted hula hoop today for more high jinks on the spycams! I also have a bollycardio dvd that we rented which I’ve only gone through once and am looking forward to doing more of. It’s jolly/silly camwatching goodness.

Speaking of camwatching goodness, we enjoyed some fucking yesterday and I hope our voyeurs did, too.

*****

On Friday and Saturday we had a great visit with my sister, brother-in-law and nephews which contributed to my heightened sense of awareness and positivity. Hanging around a three year old and an easily-delighted baby with a huge grin and dimples is like bathing in a clarifying happiness. Music sounds better, everything looks newer and more interesting and mysterious, and I have an excuse to read books aloud that were read to ME when I was little.

And hey, on top of that there is all of this boundless LOVE. On top of just loving those little guys to pieces, the amount of unconditional love I get from them is totally amazing. I’m forced to love myself more just being around them, in part because they do not see flaws but also because I want to always model un-self-conscious confidence to them; they make me love  myself more.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with me lately . . . better brain chemistry. Getting better sleep. Getting rid of the television — maybe having more oxytocin like from being around my nephews and my sister, but also from cuddling Delia and really being TOGETHER in bed instead of just staring at the tube all of the time. Maybe I’m just being flooded with a lot of girl juice: the loving, bonding chemicals, not necessarily the sexy ones.

Cuddling never used to help me fall asleep — it was more something I liked to do for a few minutes BEFORE unsticking bodies and going to sleep on my own side of the bed. Bizarrely enough, I’m actually finally starting to understand how great if feels to fall asleep nestled up to Delia. If I get in her armpit with her arm around me and my nose on her upper tit, I now get an instant jolt of SOMETHING I’ve never had with anybody else. Seriously, it’s some kind of a drug injection that I do think has something to do with oxytocin. Whatever it is, it’s BLISS. Tranquilizing and emotionally/sensually stimulating all at the same time.

It’s still sort of weird and foreign to me so I mostly continue my years-entrenched habit of nestling into my own don’t-touch-me space to sleep, but I think I’m going to try to get more of that business more often. I might need to work on my initiation technique though which consists of awkwardly trying to lift her arm up and demanding she “let me in”.

Back in 2001 there were more teasey story-porn pictorials around; I loved them for the buildup and wish we had time to make all (or a lot) of our porn like that.

Here are a couple of 2009 examples from a couple of my favorite web chicks:

Sequoia Redd with Brandi Belle in the Penis Pump Challenge

Poor Cinderella

*****

I’d *love* to do a brain dump here of all the blog-drafts in my head, but I’m starving and trying hard to stop feeling guilty and worried about mistake(s) I/we made. I feel like we don’t have enough time or money to do anything RIGHT, but the truth is we do a lot of things right and fucking up every so often and doing some things half-assed a lot shouldn’t erase all of that. Plus I need to stop kidding myself that perfection is attainable with time and money. It’s not. It never will be. We could have all the time and hired help and money in the world and we’d STILL make mistakes. In fact, we’d probably have the resources to make even more of them with more embarrassing consequences.

Reminding myself: progress, not perfection. Promptly admit when I am wrong. Make amends. Use my own mistakes as a reminder not to judge other people so harshly.

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.