(Passing) Thoughts On Blogging

I have no idea why I keep this blog. I'm terrible at it. People hardly read it, mostly because I post once a year or so. I can not concentrate long enough for expository writing any more. My brain can not hold on to ideas over a period of weeks or even days. I've tried, I've practiced. I am just not wired that way any more.

I work in fits and starts -- short poems that seem to come out of thin air. I sit and think and game and read and finally something trickles out. Sometimes it pours out. But I'm not a "professional" writer anymore, if I ever was one.

See, I'm about 7 minutes into writing and I drifted off, my eyes rolling about the room, my mind wondering about what to eat for supper and why I'm so dizzy all the time...

When I Hate Myself, I Think About You

Islam taught me that hate breeds hate. Sure, the "if I hate my neighbor, he may hate me back" kind of lesson is obvious. But I'm talking about the hate we rarely speak. Hate like bricks through my ribcage, eating my tongue.

When I hate myself, I think about everything you ever told me.

When I don't shave my face I look like a pedophile on work release.
When I don't shave my head I look like a pedophile who hasn't yet been caught.
When I eat I look disgusting.
When I'm naked I smell disgusting. Sometimes clothing doesn't help.
When I look at you I want to [strike that]

Some things I can not repeat. Some times I can not remember.

Sometimes I think I must have made it up.

(hopefully more soon)

crip+math

Sometimes when I am awake at night, unable to sleep because of pain, I think about my body. I feel the hum and thrum of muscles straining to heal from this phantom illness. I feel the ache of joints working hard to keep this straining body together. I feel the sweat on my neck, the numbness in my back. I feel my left toe twitch and dance from sciatica.

One plus one equals pain.

The sqaure root of pain is me.

Sometimes when I lay down to sleep my spine cries out, too weak or exausted to bend properly. Sometimes cigarette smoke slips through my door. Sometimes the construction creates more sawdust than I can take. Sometimes the paint buckets aren't closed tightly. Sometimes I forget about a pan and mold starts to form in the damp corners.

When my head throbs and thrums I think about my corners. Dark, rusty, damp, I wriggle into crippled fetus and grab at my hand with shaking thighs. (I can feel the tears already. I need this I even need the tears but please whichever god is real please don't let anyone hear?) My hand is a fist reluctant to do any other job, but I coax a finger to stroke promising angels and sunlight.

Four plus two equals fucked.

Finger plus clitoris equals pain.

I search in vain for porn that reflects me. I end up doing algebra with skinny girls who sound enough like me for lying. Wasting cramping hips thrust forward. Thighs quivering with fatigue clamp and cry and the tears build up the tears creep up the tears well up in my cunt, gut, scarred chest.

Nine times three equals bulldagger.

I am reduced to machinery, loud and embarassing and there's no latch or lock on my door I can't hide this but it's late I am alone while family sleeps shrouded by night. Low buzz transfers electricity through my thumb up my arm as low goes to high and back again in a morse-code-rythm.

Building and welling this bullcunt swollen with pride and rage, moving now in starts, this pussy dagger stabs at bliss and hope not to miss every time. I feel sweat form where my arthritic knees bend, come form where only my lover's hand caresses, tears form from my heart to my forehead and all at once an explosion of shame and defiance and delight and a despair I only feel in this solitary moment, this isolated pleasure.

Unplugged, uncurled, I am undone: an infant crying while being taken from her mother's arms.

Passing Thoughts #3

I still miss my breasts.

People told me it would pass. That feeling the phantom sway of bosom would ebb and eventually trail off into my new freedom. People told me I could wear v-necks, play pool, stand on the bus without an all-consuming awareness of the size of my breasts. I should be freem from the shackles of femininity.

I never felt shackled by my own femininity – I never felt I had enough to fetter me, honestly. I felt bound by society’s response to my breasts. The confusion, fascination, or fury people inevitably felt in reply to my shaved head butch frame with tits that no longer fit into an affordable bra. Some would shout out excitement or confusion at what they saw, and then as my stance or words made it clear my breasts weren’t available to them the anger would grow. By the time I walked past people on the street, some tried to beat me up. Some succeeded. People followed me home, determined to prove I was just as available to them as any other person with huge tits. It never failed. The shirts that never fit right, the pool cue chalk dust on the pockets of my button downs, the strangers on public transit accidentally rubbing up against me never bothered me that much. It was the anger that I wasn’t what I seemed.

And still, I miss my breasts.

Passing Thoughts #2

First off, you might notice that the title has changed. I think it better communicates what I want to do with this blog. I want to write about my thoughts on passing, but I don't anticipate anything too academic. "Passing Zone" implies that this is a space for the enjoyment of passing, and that's not what I want to write about either.

Passing, for me, is about every day life and the compromises I make to get along in a world that is actively hostile to me as a queer, fat, disabled, butch lesbian. It's about being mistaken for something or someone I'm not. It's about armor and when I choose to take it off. Putting my armor on is never a choice -- passing is not fun for me, though it does sometimes make my life easier or safer.

I hope to really dig into how I pass. All the different ways people misinterpret me and how those misinterpretations can make my life easier at a given moment. Passing isn't just a trans* thing where someone finally gets to be seen as they wish to be seen. In fact, I submit that "passing" in this context is a misnomer. Passing is about seeming what or who we are not.

I also hope to invite friends and acquaintances to guest-post eventually. But for now, I'm going to work up to a regular blog here. Weekly is the ultimate goal.

First up: my day-to-day life, a snapshot of a late-30s passing butch in Winooski, Vermont.

Welcome

Welcome to "passing zone" -- my blog about life as a passing butch post-ftm and all that jazz.

I just got into school, returning to Goddard College after a couple years off. I'll be writing and reading and I'm deleriously excited, honestly. But to go to school where I've been Serena and she and then Shahn and he and now Shahn and she -- it's a little nervous-making. Even a progressive school like Goddard where trannies are accepted a lot... I'm nervous. I'll need to come out constantly, at least for the first couple days. I hated it the first time around. I'm sure I'll hate it again. But my family will be there with me, so I'll be okay.

I want to get my lit-zine up and running, as well as fleshing out Shahn Dot Net, as well as maybe making a little paperzine. And reading, reading, reading!

Anyway, I hope people read this.