To all the "Nice Guys"

When a woman says "I just want to meet a nice guy."
She's saying something incredibly vague
and, it seems, she's saying something you don't want to listen to.
When I say "I want to meet a nice guy."
I'm not saying I want to meet someone who will buy me things.
I'm not saying I want someone to silently listen to me talk.
The last thing in the world I want is chivalry.
I can hold my own damn door.
I can carry my own shit
and I can pay my own tab.
I don't need to be treated like a child.

Chivalry's only use is to hide the fact that you have no idea how to treat someone you want to fuck.
Someone you don't know how to see as anything but a hole.
And maybe that's why you're so offended to be these people's friends.
Maybe that's why every time you get put in the "Friend-zone"
you see it as an insult instead of a compliment.
A person who you want to be in a relationship with so badly
but a relationship you have no interest in without fucking?

And god forbid I do anything to get my physical needs met.
If I go out, take home some guy with an average mind but a great body.
If I fuck him, practice safe sex, and then don't call him back,
You say "why not me, fuck me?" you whine like a baby whose first word was "want."
Why not?
Maybe I didn't want to involve anyone I knew.
Maybe I'm too busy with my career, my art, my education, and my life to have a relationship.
Maybe you're ugly,
Maybe I've heard from other people you suck in bed,
But maybe I actually value our friendship and I don't view it as some obstacle blocking you from getting into my bed.  Maybe our friendship is meaningful to me.
More likely, you're just not the "Nice Guy" you're so sure you are.

One last thing,
you know after I broke up, we hung out and I told you how much of an asshole my ex was?
That's just a thing people do!
He could have been the nicest fucking person in the world, it doesn't matter.
Amicable break-ups are rare.  Nobody is perfect.
It's easy and almost necessary to bitch after ending a relationship.
Bloody Fucking Hell, girls do this, guys do this, everyone does this.
I can talk for hours about the flaws of Shakespeare but he's still my favorite playwright.
It's pretty simple and I fear for the poor women who have male friends that think about nothing but fucking them if only they could just get rid of that pesky friendship.
Considering yourself a victim of a great injustice just because a friend of yours won't fuck you?
Pathetic,
the last thing you are is a nice guy.

Maturation

I can always tell when I'm moving forward in my life
because the way I experience things changes.
Often, I become more grounded and confident.
Sometimes, more uncertain and understanding.
Always, a complexity is added
a depth and a current previously unfelt.

I have been taking hormones for a bit over two years.
When I first began I was so terrified of needles that it might take me an hour to complete the shot.
I would sit terrified of disease, accidents, and pain.
Did I disinfect everything properly?
Would I get it in far enough or would it all just seep out?
Would I remember to check and make sure I hadn't hit a blood vessel?
As many fears would rush in and fill my mind
I would start a little chant,
"Boobs, Hips,
and Pretty Lips."

I also noticed at the beginning, that after every injection
a cautious calm crept over my body.
A certain familiar pain left my muscles.
When I first began the treatment
this would last for a week.

As time passed I became less afraid of needles,
I am still afraid but I now know
I can do it without mistakes.
I am still cautious
but I have shed much of the anxiety and I can do the injection in minutes.

The calming in my body has grown.
It has reached outwards in time and now lasts the entire interval between shots.
It has reached out into my mind and calmed my thoughts.
It has quelled a manic energy that used to live in my mind and body.
A manic force that used to pull me away from my studies
and push me away from my friends.

Injecting myself with hormones is no longer the a wall of fear followed by a rush of elation.
It has become a ritual, a moment of remembrance.
I acknowledge the old manic energy,
the terrifying instability that kept me from so many things
and I embrace the new calm.
I remember how hard it was to sleep
and I feel how much easier it is to get up.
I look back at the past,
I look at the present,
and, for a moment, I wonder what the future will bring.

Faith

I know what it's like to have your faith tested.
I know how it feels.
I am told by my family that I could regain their affections
if only I would just
go back in the closet.
If only I would just go back to pretending to be a man.
They would help me economically, when I needed it.
They tell me a job is only a white male away.
If only I would go back in the closet,
they would love to see me then.
Talking to me would not make my mother cry.
I could come home for Christmas in celebration instead of rejection.
If I only went back into the closet, they would wish me a happy birthday
instead of not.
I know what it's like to have my faith tested.

I know how it feels
and I am reminded of The Temptation of St. Anthony by Salvador Dali.

I look at all the promise of going back on who I am
and I remember.
I remember driving my car through a telephone pole, thinking "this time, it's all over."
I remember being thrown off a porch with my pants down by people my father considers my friends.
and I know how empty and fragile the promise of returning to the closet is.
I still feel very small.
I feel ragged.
I feel strung out
and I my right hand extended forward protecting me from everything that comes.
If this was all I had though, I'd be destroyed.

But I feel my left hand
steadfast upon the rock.
I remember how much my partner loves me.
how firm and unwavering her acceptance of me has been.
I remember my friends, not the ones who hurt me or made me embrace hate
but my current friends, the ones who go out of their way to help me.
When I remember these things
I know what it's like to have faith tested
and I know what it is to believe.

Hairy Birthday to Me!

Sometimes I find being gender queer terrifying but even when it's scary it always awesome so it's always worth it.  I personally feel that I lean slightly to the side of female, I don't know say 65/35?  Maybe a little closer to 75/25.  And because I was born in a male body I hate being referred to as a man, where as I don't mind so much being referred to as a woman.  In my pursuit to effectively and honestly manifest my gender I felt I needed to be able to "pass" as a woman before I could move back towards the center in a way that is comfortable.  The epitome of this conflict has been my haircut.  I grew my hair out to pass more effectively but I never really felt comfortable with long hair, I don't like how it feels, it gets in my face, and when I'm pinning someone to the ground (oooh, Sexy) it's always in the way.  The other day I finally worked up the courage and cut it short! Yay!  I know I said I was going to do it but I wasn't really certain I would.  I'm not perfectly happy with the haircut, even so I feel a million times better.
So here's three cheers to self actualization as opposed to pandering to the lowest common denominator!

(No offense to people who have long hair.  Long hair is plenty sexy.)

Birthday

My birthday is almost here...
ah, birthdays...
the past-
birthdays-
unpleasant...

remembering my youth makes me feel
like I'm right back there.
I feel so surprised every year
at how visceral and physical the experience is.
I just crumple inwards and
choke drown
trip fall.

Invariably I try to stay positive.
Inevitably I want to tell the people I looked up to them
I want to call them up and tell them how much happier a person I am now because of them
I want to sit down, have a beer, and ask them how they've been.
I can't.
I'm certain many of them have no idea that I looked up to them.
I wasn't friends with these people then.
I've even tried to reach out to some and they've all seemed displeased that I looked up to them.
and I'm back to
choke drown
trip fall.

I think of teachers I'd like to tell,
"Without you or someone like you, I'd have killed myself in the trial that is High School/Middle School."
but I'm nowhere near close enough to say that without seeming like a lunatic.
I wasn't ever close enough to anyone back then.
Of course, that's not entirely true I did have one decent friend from 10th Grade on
and that friendship did mean the world to me.
But of course, what I really want to do is rewrite my childhood into a positive one.
I want to reach out to the people who I liked and by connecting to them now
rewrite my childhood and clear the suffocating experiences from my throat.
By removing the pain, I'd be able to take back all those times I was too emotional to do anything
and rewrite all the mistakes I made.
I want to reach through the people who I looked up to
and hold and hug the younger me.
All to erase the experiences of my youth from my memory.

Most of the year I am OK with my past.
I understand what happened and why.
I see that I've grown to become much more than the person I want to be.
I can look at my current life and smile while acknowledging the sadness I experienced.
But every year my birthday comes around and
I feel so flooded and overwhelmed by memories that I go crazy.
Every year I do different things to cope
and every year the success of this coping varies.

This year I am going to take a step forward in my life that makes me quite nervous.
I am going to cut my hair short.
I have always dreamt, since elementary school, of being a woman with short hair.
As I went through my transition I grew my hair out as a way of strengthening the fortifications of my gender appearance.  I believe that one of the saddest aspects of transitioning is using gender norms to achieve the appearance your gender.  As much as I have desired to self actualize rather than just pass, I have not been able to bring myself to cut my hair short.  So this year I will expel emotions along with unwanted hair.
I will take one more step towards myself and instead of rewriting my past, I will write a better future.

Also, I'm writing this blog post,
so yeah.
My condolences to whomever is having a birthday.

Appearances

Time can be deceiving.
Even tricky.
Sometimes trickery.
Sometimes, honesty.
Tomorrow, which is, of course, actually,,, today.
I will see people I need to impress.
I will impress upon my face
Powdered dye, to make myself beautiful and competent.
They will see my impression.
If I'm lucky they will be impressed

Tonight, which
is inevitably tomorrow
already,
has exhausted me.
Has pulled from me
liquid energy
and replaced it with sand, or is it ice?

I want to feel cold silent ice.
but I just feel grainy scratch sand.
to tired to win
to scared to sleep

I'd have  a panic attack
but sand only slips slowly through its hole
until it's tossed over

I asked a beach what it thought of winter.
The ice forms
The ice grows and expands
The beach is pushed up
the sands shift.
A three or four foot drop forms between the ice and the beach,
as if the sand needed to hold itself away from the lake,
leaping down from the edge of the earth
to the frozen danger.
Climbing up, winter boots filling with sand.
Heading into a warm home
and here is why I asked it
what the beach thought of winter
because every summer the beach stretches into the lake
and holds it carefully
in a perfect unique basin
and every winter
Cliffs, estrangement, and cracked ice.