luxemburger

( Also: another list. Things I forgot last night. )

ETA: AHH. I love my sister's on-again off-again so. much. A text from her from this morning (via Google Voice, thanks again celeria!):

"So Shaquille went on my fb last night to look and he was just mesmerized. He says the look works and that youre a hot guy"

Hahaha. He is always my favorite. Also, having this Voice account is so insanely helpful, particularly with talking to my sister, as texting is the only consistent way of being able to communicate with her. We've been talking all morning, and it's helping a lot with feeling like I'm missing out on festivities back home.

Also, holy fuck.

Speaking of a certain most recent ex-girlfriend, look at the video she posted to my FB this afternoon:



GJagkjdflgkjdfklgjdfgklj. So hot.

(Also hot? The insinuations made in subsequent comments on the video! Mmmmph. Is it Thanksgiving yet?)

(Also? And this is amusing, not hot, but it is hilarious to me that the conversation that led to Lora and I dating began with mutual lusting over attractive FTMs - and Lucas Silveira in particular. Ahaha, irony.)

1. One of the girls at work didn't recognize me when I was there on Saturday.

...she called one of my supervisors and asked who "the new dude" was.

2. Today my direct supervisor told me that even my laugh has changed, which he said like it was pretty awesome (which... it is). And that it freaks him out because now it reminds him of a guy he went to school with, hahaha.

(He said this while we were on our way outside for a break with Laura and Jill, and I just grinned and looked down, because I was walking in front of everyone.

When I looked back up, Laura was to my right, beaming like she'd been waiting for me to look in her direction. There are so many ways for me to interpret that sort of moment, and I have to say... I like them all.)

3. I am still on loan to that other department. Helped a woman move a filing cabinet today. We should have asked the maintenance guy to bring us a dolly or something, but she's one of those people who get really anxious about certain things until they're done, and I didn't think she'd be able to focus on anything else until the cabinet was moved, so when she asked for my help I just said I'd do it.

A third person joined us to open doors and things while we moved it into its new home and she made some sort of comment about how great it was that we got it moved so quickly.

The first woman said something like, "Yeah, I asked Marshall if he would do it because I knew [Other Guy #1] and [Other Guy #2] would cry about it. Plus he's so strong," and there was this note of pride in her voice like I'd really done something that meant a lot to her - things that mean a lot to people in corporate office world are really bizarre, but whatever - and I just grinned to myself again, like I always do.

(...but I did find myself thinking that if a certain most recent ex-girlfriend of mine were here, the retelling of that story would totally have led to really hot sex.)

4. Um, I cut my hair again. Having the sides cropped so short means that I have to buzz it like every week, and then I'm just standing there with scissors nearby and I end up taking a little off the top or whatever.

So, anyway. I mention that because the woman who has the cubicle next to my temporary one (in the other department) gave me the most strangely delivered compliment on it this morning.

( It was really bizarre. )

I made a very quizzical face once she walked away. (Did I mention corporate office world does awfully strange things to people sometimes?)

5. ( This series of pictures amuses me. )

...hee. ♥

( Unf, Mary Timony. )

Um, but also, I was at the diner earlier, and I had a sense memory flashback to this day out of nowhere, and unf. That made me feel dirty in a bad way, but happy to be so too. It's rather complicated in my brain when I think about her, but I haven't slept with anyone else since, and to be perfectly honest there's a reason for that. Ugh. Brains.

( I don't think I ever mentioned this, but the first time I ever told Alex I loved her... )

And. I don't know. I've still got a fairly long entry buried in me somewhere about everything that didn't work in that relationship for me, but there were a lot of moments, like that one, that were just sort of breathless and perfect, that I don't see how I'll ever be able to forget.

( Thoughts on my relationship with women as I transition. )

There's some overlapping content between the two, and I'd like to flesh these ideas out more, but I'm having a hard time putting words to what I'm feeling now. So. I just want the already-written words to sit for a while, while I figure this out.

Also, Alex called me the other night right after I finished writing out the comment that the second excerpt is from, and I tried explaining to her what I meant about being able to have more intimate relationships with women now, and she just kept saying, "But you were friends with girls before!" and I couldn't get her to understand the difference. I'm not sure which one of us that says more about. Bleh.

On the other hand, when I explained it to my friend Jill at work yesterday, she got it right away. (Although when I elaborated on how I'm not sure how that affects my sexuality, she was less clear on what I was trying to say, so it still wasn't perfect. But. I still didn't feel as hopelessly misunderstood as I had on the phone the night before, which was nice.)

One of these days I am going to have to make a list.

It will be called "Things Alex ______ Knows About How To Get Me Off That Nobody Else Knows".

It will be a long list.

Thank fuck I don't have a hangover today.

Because I am 150% into making stupid decisions lately, with full awareness of how stupid they are before I make them, last night I decided to cope with my epic boredom (home alone, broke, still too sore to go out on any more walks for the time being, moodier than I know what to do with) by taking a few shots and then attempting to cut my own hair.

See, I've been thinking a lot about mohawks lately, and how I kind of want one, except I'm not sure how it would look on me and I really do like my hair the way it is right now, so there was no way I was going to manage doing it sober. So I was like, all right, I'll knock back some shots, and then I'll be just recklessly brave enough to just do it.

Except not, apparently. I just ended up staring the mirror for a few minutes with my hands knotted in my hair, and then I flopped onto the couch and watched Gia until I fell asleep sometime around 11.

Ugh. Sore this morning. But all in all it could be a lot worse. And not that I expected anything else, but Elizabeth Mitchell's character is still my dream girlfriend. I think it's safe to say I'll never be as off-kilter as Gia herself, or as crazy as my mother (let's cross our fingers), but I'd still be lucky to have someone love me that way, to look at me with that look in her eyes even after how many years of not seeing each other?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's probably bad for me to identify with the tragic, psychotic characters, isn't it?

But speaking of people loving each other through unfortunate circumstances, I need to go shower, because Alex is coming to see me today. I haven't seen her since I ended things, obviously, and I'm ridiculously fucking excited that I'm about to.

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.

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. )

( 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?

So it came out this weekend that neither Alex nor I think our relationship is working very well from a distance, even one as short as from here to Worcester. Which obviously means one from here to North Carolina is only going to work that much less well.


The thing is, when I'm actually with her, like I was this weekend, it's still the mystical, near transformative thing that had me so worked over to begin with. So I don't know what to do with this. I've come so close to ending it so many times already just in the few weeks that she's been gone, but then she gives me a certain look on Skype, or says something a certain way, and whatever it is inspires a ghost of that feeling I have whenever our bodies are near each other and suddenly my skin feels like it's being raked over a bed of coals in the best, most exquisite way - and then the only thought in my mind is how anxious and desperate I am to see her again to be close to her, just so I can feel the full effect of what she does to me, what she's always done to me, the way it feels like she's mining the ore from my very bones when I'm near her.

( Desperate. I've been thinking of that word a lot over the last day and a half. )

A single-item list covering multiple subtopics in a semi-subsequent order of relation

1.) I e-mailed Alex a copy of Shoulders by Kickball with the following file description:

"tell me the lyrics from 1:20 to 2:20 and the subsequent explosing(?!) of noise doesn't make your heart BURST open in joy, because it really really really makes mine."

1a.) And then I ended up going into this weird tangent about how all of Kickball's songs have this weird, queer aesthetic to me. And I don't mean that they sound like a band made of queer musicians, or that they play music that queers stereotypically like, it's not that at all.

I don't even know if I can really put it into the words I'd like, but this is what I said :

"I'm not sure what it is... they're not queer, as far as I know, but a) I feel like the singer uses his voice in really typically feminine ways b) the bass is really loose but you can also tell the bassist knows what he's doing, so there's this like deliberate kind of presentation about it and then c) the drummer is a girl, which is unusual... especially for the girl drummer to be the only girl in an otherwise male band."

So basically I feel like there are these odd, queer sort of details about the band and the way they perform their roles that is very similar to the way queer people, myself included, shape/perform our identities in our daily lives.

...does that make sense to anyone but me?


1b.) The first line in that section from 1:20 to 2:20 that I originally mentioned says, "Tattoo the great bear on my arm; lead me to danger, but not to harm" and I've always loved that so much. I made it my Facebook status half an hour ago and cup_o_jo commented about how badass a bear tattoo would be, which made me think about how I always imagine there's an armored bear on my right forearm, as a companion to The Cowgirl on the left. (Which made me realize how I take it for granted that other people a) know I'm picturing a tattoo on that side and b) know what tattoo I'm picturing.) Which made me want to go looking for pictures of Iorek Byrnison, which led to this amazing find:



(omg so fucking cute. tell me that's not the cutest thing you've ever seen.)


1c.) Heading back to the original topic, which was the fact that the song makes me feel so. fucking. alive. every time I hear that one section I keep mentioning... what are things that make all of you feel that way?

No posts this week, because I've been intentionally busy and non-thinky.

But this weekend I've had the time/energy/privacy I needed to sort out a few things, and I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about my own ability to make the things I want the things that I have. Let's see if I have the discipline and/or attention span not to fall into old patterns.

( Things I Want )

I made myself several post-it notes to the effect of the above. I haven't figured out yet what I'm going to do with the post-it notes, or where I'm going to put them, but it was useful just to write it down. And since I finished that I've just been doing stuff around the apartment, like putting away clothes I'd left all over and cleaning up the kitchen, bathroom, and taking out the trash.

...I feel like it's been a productive night.

Also, I've been trying to listen to Thich Nhat Hanh's Teachings on Love for two weeks now, but his beautiful speaking voice puts me to sleep every single time I try. This makes me sad, as he has lovely, wise things to say on the matter, and I feel like I could use some guidance right about now.

( Things are happening too fast for me to document as thoughtfully as I would like. )

I feel all of these conflicting, intense emotions right now. It feels like things are moving very quickly, but I am being as deliberate as I can in my steps and keeping my mental windows open as my feelings continue to unravel on the matter. I know that I am scared at the moment, but also very, very touched by what I have found, and I know I am hitting on something very deep within myself right now. I am sorry that I am largely not responding to anybody's comments right now, but I am in a monologue-ing space right now and am not nearly ready to move into dialogue-ing space. I do appreciate & welcome & want to hear what you have to say and encourage anyone inspired to comment on my entries about this - about anything about this - if you'd like to, I mean, but I am not ready to respond at the moment.

Thank you for understanding, because I feel pretty safe assuming that you do.

Also, I hope Jack doesn't mind that I'm posting this, but I feel like another perspective on my current exploration would be valuable to hear, and Alex, Jack and Rosie touch briefly on me (and what's happening with me) in this video. So, it might be pretty neat if you wanted to watch it.

♥

Alex used my (soon to be?) adopted name for the first time last night.

It is weird, but I can't believe how good it felt.

I have things other than pictures to post, I really do - I mean, things to post that are relevant to the pictures, except you know, like, I talk about what I'm thinking and feeling in regards to the things I'm posting pictures of as opposed to just posting them and letting you guys sort of piece together what my thoughts might be. I have those things, but I am feeling really visual at the moment. So. No thoughts and feelings for you.

Maybe you can figure it out anyway.

( From 'regular' bras to binding: a journey. )

( Onto the pictures... )


And, finally, one last picture...



...hi. It's nice to see you.

( Binding. )

Also, Alex is on her way over, and I haven't seen her since early Thursday morning. We have less than a week until she moves out of her room. Hopefully tonight will involve the mutual fulfillment of a few long-held fantasies, as I've been reading/studying a lot over at the Sugarbutch Chronicles the last few days. I'm feeling some top doubt, but I've never wanted to do something for another person so much in my entire life.

P.S. For some reason I really, really love this picture, but it doesn't really fit in with the others.

So I have been 95% housebound for the last 3 and a half days, and I am getting a bit stir-crazy.

I am also realizing, not for the first time, how helpless I feel without access to a car that I can drive.

...It is especially frustrating to realize how much that helplessness comes from old feelings left over from childhood. Augh. Why won't our parents ever leave us alone?

( Gazing of the navel. )

I don't know. I hate that time management and urgency are such deal-breakers for me. It seems equally impossible that I'd a) find someone with an attitude toward them that would satisfy me or that I'd b) be able to successfully change my own attitude. But at least when I have my own transportation, I have some degree of control over scheduling the hows and whens of social activity. I just feel sort of lost when I'm entirely dependent on other people's plans, and then I start wondering how much I matter to that person because ~*~waiting~*~ always makes me feel like I'm such an afterthought.

Anyway. I'm going to try not to be so stuck on this by the time Alex gets here. Does anybody relate to what I've said?