luxemburger

Oh my god, why am I the most awkward, awkward person on the entire face of the planet?

So that girl Chelsea gave me her number last night and told me to call her today so we could work out plans to hang out, because she's going to be in the vicinity of my place tonight, and so I called her earlier, blah blah blah. Anyway, she just called me to say she'll be free in about an hour, and what do I say?

I thanked her for calling me back.

(And then immediately followed up with, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I'm making things unnecessarily awkward. Wow," because I am just that smooth. Augh.)

Why. Why why why. Oh my god I don't know why I open my mouth sometimes. Watch, she'll leave tonight and I'll probably frigging thank her for making out with me, too.

1. I finally ran out of pot the other day, as I don't have anyone to buy from since Loyda left town, oh god, back in February. Now I understand what people mean when they say pot isn't addictive. Because, yeah, when I have access to it, I like to smoke fairly often, but when I don't have access to it? Whatever. I'm kind of surprised, honestly.

2. I have noticed, however, that my threshold for boredom is much lower since I ran out. This is both good and bad, but one good thing is that I hate being bored so fucking passionately that I keep just leaving the apartment and going out for long walks just because I can and because it's something to do. I've walked something like 11 miles between last night and this afternoon.

3. On that note, oof. My body is so sore from all the walking. But it's kind of awesome.

4. This post in cup_o_jo's journal = the truth x a million. Also, Lora and I are kind of ridiculous.

5. Because I like round numbers in my lists, have a video:

So I mentioned in this post that I'd been feeling fluid & drawn to femininity [in myself] toward the end of last week and that I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I've been craving more maternal figures in my life.

Apparently I was also pre-menstrual. I wonder if that also has something to do with it. Or if it has more to do with it, even.

I sort of hope that I'll never figure this out any more clearly. Chances are on my side that I won't, so that's cool. I think the process of exploration is far more fascinating than any "conclusion" ever would be.

Things I love this morning:

the way this mango I've been eating has exactly the same firmness as really wet pussy & is completely delicious.

(Yep. How to predict if I will like something: does it taste good? Does it remind me of pussy? Then I certainly will!)

Also, I feel like it's worth mentioning that there are funny things happening on Facebook lately and you should friend me there, if so inclined!:

S Marshall Loftus | Create Your Badge


(Also also, the same applies in reverse. Not all of my entries here are public, so if you're reading along but not friending me, you may want to do so. Particularly if you're following along with all the gender business. Blah blah blah. :)

I am covering someone else's shift at work today. Lora had to drop me an hour and a half early, because she volunteers on Saturdays and my friend's shift starts right in the middle of Lora's volunteer hours.

I am okay with that though. It's a beautiul day and I came into the office, took my headphones and went right back out. Walked over to the smoking shelter and then changed my mind and crossed the grass to the picnic tables. Laid myself on top of one of them and soaked up the heat from both sides, as the table was as hot against my back as the sun was on my face.

(You know how some people have really tanned left arms because of the way they drive? I've got a really tanned left side of my face, haha, and I think the tan line from my glasses is super noticible, although it's probably not. So I tried to get more color for the right side of my body, and laid there listening to the mix Alex made me last week and letting the sun and the breeze wash over me.)

For almost an hour, the entire world came down to the grass and the sky and the slow pulse of heat sinking into my bones, the red tint of the sun through my eyelids, and the solidity of the table beneath me. I was thinking it's strange that when I need other people the least, it's when I wish they were there the most. But now that I write it out it's not that strange at all. I wish I felt that kind of peace more often.

Interesting:

Femininity crashes over me this week, as I find myself heartsore over lack of maternal figures.

Is that what this is, then? Do I craft myself in the shape of unbearable voids?

(Follow-up: Is my subconscious really that generous a place?)

Ughhhhhh.

The one thing that's sucked about all of this gender exploration is that it's led me out of denial about how uncomfortable I am in my body. And not all, or even most, of the discomfort has to do with its "femininity". It's actually just a lot of... general discomfort. Like to the point where I wonder if I'd still be questioning my gender if I hadn't put on as much weight in the last year as I have.

So, like, I haven't really wanted to be touched in a few weeks. In a way that goes beyond just not being in the mood. I've been actively turned off/repulsed by the idea of being touched. And by the idea of doing the touching, too, though not as strongly or consistently.

But the thing that sucks most about it is that there are nights like tonight where I still want beyond belief, and I'm laying here in front of my laptop reading those fucking epic Effy/Emily and Effy/Katie fics that have eaten my brain for the past, like, two months and having the skin of my hands (my entire body) ache to pull someone into me and kiss them, wet and intense like the rain coming down outside the open window, until they were shaky and shaking in my lap. Kiss them until they couldn't sit up, until they had to lay down. Completely lose myself in somebody else's mouth, in the knit of their fingers in the cloth of my shirt.

I can't stop thinking about it, thinking to the point of wanting to cry because it's almost enough to get me there, just thinking about it, but it's far enough away to feel like I'll never get so there again, as silly as it sounds.

I always forget what an intense process coming out to myself as gay way back when was. Because it's true that I never really struggled with it, and yeah, I had "known but not known" for as long as I could remember, but. It was still fucking intense. Man.

That's pretty much where I'm at right now with the trans stuff, too. Like, okay, cool, awesome. Good to know. But there's the heady rush of emotion from that, and then on top of it all there's all the other issues it's bringing up in my head.

( I pretty much spend 95% of my time lately feeling like I'm just spinning around in circles. )

- Also, this song makes me want to cry! I don't think it's entirely in a good way, either, but ugh. So fucking beautiful.

I have been making playlists and uploading music for people all afternoon, and I've also been trying to torrent things I would like to have in my own collection while doing so. Torrenting, however, is not going so well.

So! If anybody has any music from the following bands/artists and would like to upload it for me, that would be fantastic.

The Cocteau Twins
CocoRosie
Lightning Dust
Calm Down It's Monday
TV on the Radio
Chad VanGaalen
Shudder to Think

Thank you in advance! And obviously, I will be happy to return the favor if there's anything I can upload for anybody too.

I think I will always prefer to be the person who is dumped rather than the person doing the dumping, but despite the ugly taste it left in my mouth, I feel good about what just happened.

It was the right thing to do... for me, if not for her, but right now that means it would be the right thing to do for anyone I was dating.

After my response to my cousin's initial message the other day, she simply wrote back: "Please do tell me more. Why do you want to be known as Marshall?"

And I thought about it all day, thought about it all the way through work and therapy and the marathon jerk off session I had for a few hours this afternoon. (Haha, just being honest on that last one. I often do some of my best thinking while jerking off.)

And the thing is, I can't really answer why it is that I'm trans - all I can do is acknowledge that I am and then answer why it is that I choose to honor that understanding of myself. So. I think I did all right. But I am kind of embarrassed, because I generally try not to get too dogmatic about my approach to life, but I really do feel quite strongly about certain things, and I'm afraid I came across as really, really dogmatic in my second response.

( But whatever, she started it! )

...huh.

That is the only sound I have left to make, because sometimes it seems like these words come out of my bones more than my brains. Which is to say, I'm not really sure where that shit comes from, but it's some place pretty fucking deep.

Bones! I am like an especially articulate caveman or something, you guys. (Especially articulate by caveman standards, I mean.)

...and other things I find interesting.

(Most of these things relate to beginning to identify as trans.)

(Also, I really ask a lot of rhetorical questions.)

( In something of a list-like form. )

Thing #1: After a lot of thought, I've decided that I'd like to try going by male pronouns, for a while at least. If I just absolutely don't take to them, I'll switch back, but now that I've adjusted to the new name, I'd like to see how I feel about pronouns too.

So. If for some reason you're talking about me instead of to me, please use things like "he" "him" and "his", unless I change my mind and say otherwise.

Thing #2: I bought some manclothes yesterday, and oh my god. Clothes aren't everything, but I have to say, they sure help.

(What also helps? you ask. Well, surprisingly, the chance to show off all the leg hair I've been accumulating over the last year and a half or however long it's been since the last time I shaved. I still have a couple of weird "bald" spots on the backs of my calves, but I suppose I'm hairy enough for the time being.)

( Also, my fashion sense is just as terrible as ever, but I kind of like that. )

Alex said I look nerdy in the best way possible! And Lora called me a gay boy! (And then she grabbed the clothes out of my hands and put them on herself. It's weird how much it looked like cross-dressing on her and how much it doesn't look like cross-dressing on me. I mean, not weird, because that's what it should look like, but still. I haven't stopped finding it odd when I see myself looking closer and closer to the way I picture myself in my head. One of these days I won't find it so surprising.)

Guess who has two thumbs and just woke up from a 14 hour sleep?

Yeah, yeah. I'm too tired to even think of a decent punchline. I think Liz Lemon came up with the best one for that kind of joke, anyway.

So I saw that my cousin Julie had messaged me on Facebook early this morning, when I woke up to move from the couch to the bed, but I only saw the subject and first part of the first line of the message, which were "Confusion" and "What's your inspiration for..." respectively.

Now the thing about my cousin Julie is I don't know her very well. She's like 13 years older than I am and we never lived anywhere near each other, so I'm pretty sure I've only met her a handful of times, and none of those meetings have happened in at least 15 years.

I still feel like I know a fair amount about her, because I've spent a ton of time with her dad, my uncle John, my dad's oldest brother, and the rest of our aunts and uncles, of course, but I just haven't spent a lot of time with her. Things that I do know about her (in chronological order) include that she went vegetarian at a young age, that she's bipolar, that she converted to being a devout Mormon when she got married, that she's had four children in six years, and that she had me and my cousin Tim friended on FB for months before she realized that neither of us are straight and then made a status asking when "all of her cousins turned gay [...] and what does she tell her kids?!"

(That last one made for some awkward times.)

In any case, she seems very nice. I don't want to say that she's not... but she's also weird in the sense that I don't know how we could ever really get to know each other, even though we're first cousins, because of our differences and the amount of time and space between us.

Anyway. I was assuming the message had to do with my name change, and I spent a few hours thinking about how I would respond. I have a few cousins on my dad's side friended on FB, so I haven't been expecting them to be totally clueless, but the only family person I've really discussed any of this gender business with other than my mom is my aforementioned cousin Tim.

So I was like, okay, this is a test run, sort of. How to tell the straight, non-queer contingent of the family. This is a good thing.

( But then I actually read the message. And, ugh. )


Ugh. I don't agree with what she wrote, but I can't deny that it had its intended effect on me. I don't even know how to respond. Despite the religious tone (which creeps me out, in general, whenever I see that sort of thing), I think she's coming from a decent place, so I would like to respond. I just have no idea how. And in the mean time, I will just be over here, wondering what the hell I think I'm doing.

[ETA: Okay, so. I stewed for a few hours and then I went and exercised for a good, solid hour, and now I am feeling much more centered.

( I sent this as a response: )

Crossing my fingers she takes it the way it was intended, which is to say "well"!]

Ugh. I didn't bind for work today because my back's been hurting a lot, and I felt so gross and self-conscious all day, as a result. This... is weird for me. I mean, I knew that I felt more comfortable with my body once I started binding regularly, but I didn't realize how that would affect the degree of discomfort I feel outside of the binder, particularly while in a public space.

Heh. That's kind of a problem.

Also, I just wrote an e-mail to a fellow butch-leaning coworker in which I described (my current assessment of) myself as a "bigendered, often effeminate butch" and then said to go ahead and laugh because I couldn't type something that ridiculous without laughing myself.

...I am amused, but also groaning at myself, because seriously? Seriously? There is no chance in hell my grandma will ever understand that one, brain! Come on.

Additionally, I just walked into the bedroom and held my fists out in front of me and asked Lora what I should get tattooed on my knuckles, were it not to look like the trashiest thing ever. And this is what she said (and then wrote):



_{BRB. LOL-ING FOREVER.}

Apparently the Pride pictures are ready sooner than I thought they'd be!

( So, what's up, guys? )

...hehe, we're cute. :D

So! I want to thank anyone who responded to my last post. I'm not really sure what to say to most of you, but thank you... very much. It's hard to express my appreciation, but please know that it's there. All of you, regardless of what was said. ♥

I had a great weekend - Alex took me to RI Pride and we spent the day in Providence and then slept in later than we meant to this morning and went out for an amazing breakfast before she had to get back to her family for Father's Day - but am feeling a bit down again tonight. I left messages for both my dad and John #2 to wish them a good day, obviously, but couldn't bring myself to say "daughter" on either message - or my name, for that matter.

I know I am going to need to tell them something, at some point, but I don't know what that something is yet. And while it is easy enough to give my mom a day-to-day (or week-to-week) update on what's going on, it's not that simple with my dad. Or John. Or my grandma, whom I also called (but actually spoke with).

Ack, so. Just. Feeling kind of anxious and guilty and weirdly embarrassed. Also, inappropriately resentful (but at whom?) for feeling any of those things in the first place. It is just hard because I know I still don't know anything, really, but I keep thinking about how supportive my family's always been to me emotionally, how they've always backed me up when I've needed them to, no matter what it was or how they felt, and I can't help but feel incredibly guilty that sometime soon I'm going to be throwing them for yet another curve.

Also, I don't know that I've ever explicitly said this, but there are not words to describe my guilt sometimes when I think about how much I'm missing by not being in Illinois. My grandma's actually starting to get kind of old, you guys. Older than she's ever seemed, anyway. And my dad's oldest brother just had quadruple bypass surgery, and my dad lost his job, and my sister just turned 16 and is driving already and she's having a hard time with school and her parents and especially with our mom, and my mom's also had surgery recently and she's going through stuff with her health and Jose's health and she's so angry and hurt over my sister, which I can't say much about because it's hard to blame Ali when I've been there too, and it's just. So much that I feel I've abandoned them for, though I know that I'm better off for being here than I would be if I were still there.

I cannot say "ugh" emphatically enough. So. There's that.

( On the bright side, my girlfriend bought me rainbow suspenders this weekend. )

So here I am, laying on my couch in the dark, half-dressed, listening to the mixes I made for Alex and the sound of the rain outside, and - I'm feeling better than I was earlier, but I'm still feeling kind of weird, and -

And the thing I've been thinking about for most of the night is that I don't feel as if I have any right to feel weird, or vulnerable and/or overexposed, about the way I put myself out there emotionally and the degree to which that I do. It's very much deliberate of me, and I wouldn't choose to be any other way, because I feel like that kind of honesty is something important, but - the thing is. It's draining. To be that way. And sometimes it leaves me feeling like all the clothes in the world wouldn't be enough to make me like there's skin left on my bones.

So, my question for you, friends, is this. What do you get out of all my brutally honest introspection? (I mean, when I'm not taking stupid pictures of myself or posting about just silly shit.) Do you get anything out of it? Does it make a difference in your life?

(And I guess what I was really getting at is that I'm feeling a bit blue and wondering if it's worth it for me to be the way I am, when it leaves me feeling this tired sometimes, and I'm wanting to know if it's worth it to anybody else, because if it is... well, then I have to think it's worth it for me too.)

_{Comments are screened. So, say whatever, you know.}

( this is how I entertain myself. )

Dammit. I think I have a problem. Is it wrong to enjoy looking like a total dick? What do I do, you guys? How does one go about solving a problem such as this?

My life! So hard!

[ETA: No, seriously, she really is knocked up. MAGIC FINGERS STRIKE AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.

A quotation from Skype from about three seconds ago: "Oh my god, I want to get fucked so bad. And I want a grilled cheese." <-- My girlfriend, ladies and gentlemen.]

1. New e-mail address: smarshist @ gmail . com ! I'll be forwarding mail there from my previous account, so don't worry too much about remembering. I just thought I'd make a general PSA, just in case.

(Relatedly, for anyone who cares, I've realized that as silly as it sounds, Smarsh is pretty much my preferred nickname for this whole new name thing. A couple of friends from work took it upon themselves to start calling me that and I really, really like it. Because it just sounds like me, if that makes any sense.)

2. I just mailed Alex a package that included two - two! - mixes and oh my god, I am such a nerd because I can't wait until she gets them and hears all these songs. I keep wanting to babble at her about them on Skype, but am trying to resist so that she can just enjoy them (or not, whatever) when she gets the package. I mean, she should have it by tomorrow, so I don't have to wait long, but oh my goddddd. Why do I get like this about meaningful shit?

3. I can't make any promises, because I am nothing if not great at being lazy, but I kind of feel like sending more packages. What if I said the first three people to comment would get a mail surprise from me sometime in the next week and a half or so? Any takers?