things that must happen today

Work
Work work
Work work work
Laundry
Packing
Pick-up drycleaning
Buy pommade (because the 3.5oz jar will cause airport security drama)
Print tons of stuff (plane tickets, presentation notes, Descensus, etc.)
Sew buttons for braces into another pair of trousers.
Accept reality that I will not be able to avoid checking luggage.
Beta a fic.
Finish edits on latest Jack/Ianto.

(no subject)

First sentece of the Free Will Astrology today:

This is your best chance in a long time to meet people you've always wanted to meet.

Is it totally weird that that feels ominous to me? (I think maybe this will almost make sense to the people who knew me during the Australia thing, but since it doesn't actually entirely make sense to me, I don't know. I no longer even know who I've always wanted to meet. Just that I live in terror of such things being heartbreaking.)

grrrr

http://community.livejournal.com/celiac/860462.html?view=7861294#t7861294

Sadly, it's been deleted now, but someone suggested that our genetic illness might be caused by demons of illness and perhaps prayer is the answer for a cure.

To which I replied that I had a genetic disease, not a moral stain.

To which others replied that there was nothing accusatory about his comments (infested by demons? pray for deliverance? WHAT?).

for all the boys and girls I never was

Because my hearing is weird, speech can sometimes be a bit muddy for me, especially if I'm tired or distracted. I can hear you, but I can't tell what you're saying, and while I can and often do rely on reading lips, I can't do it with everyone or all accents. Which means sometimes, I just have no goddamn idea what you're saying, and because I'm an idiot, in a lot of cases, I'll just smile and nod.

Back in late 2000 when I had first started working at the dungeon, I got a client in who was interested in a cross dressing session. I was making small-talk, trying to close the sale as it were (pick me! pick me!) and he asked me something, and I had no idea what he said. So I smiled. And I nodded. And he picked me.

It turns out he had asked me if I was trans. Specifically if I were male-to-female. And I, in my sloppiness had said yes. And now he had paid $180 for a hour of my time where all I was going to do was put lipstick and a wig on him and he was going to talk to me about the life he was sure he'd never have, so what on earth was I going to do? Tell him I hadn't heard him correctly? Tell him I had lied?

Hell no.

He told me I had nice breasts. Asked about hormones. About my family. I lied about my parents, my age, a brother, a life on the West coast, talked about how it's not really running way when you're seventeen and it's all nice and civil and agreed upon and cold. Told him about jobs I'd worked. About struggling in university. About being a writer. Told him I had a boyfriend. Told him I was lucky to be slight, to be frail. Told him I was happy.

Watched him, at least into his 50s, hope.

And after he was gone put $70 of his fee into my own pocket for engaging in the lie.

I'll tell you this, I felt proud. My first session, and I walked back into that dressing room fanning myself with the tip and told the other girls. Because while I wanted to weep, wasn't I just the best little con-artist ever?

Their response was that I was ugly.

I have a lot of odd privilege in my life. Not the obvious stuff that comes with being pale or skinny, but the stranger stuff. The privileges of being born female. And I don't mean lifeboats and free drinks either, folks. I mean, rather, that by popular conception female sexuality is passive enough (and let me tell you, that _outrages_ me) that I can dress up like a man and be reasonably sure I won't get the snot beaten out of me. Or worse.

Of course, that's not always true. Coming back from the last Dances of Vice we road the train, and one of our group, a girl, had gone to talk with a bunch of guys who were flirting with her pretty outrageously. She was pretty drunk, and, without going into details, we were concerned for her as well as over the amount of attention the men we're hollering in our general direction too.

I can't tell you how much I wanted to just walk over there and grab her and bring her back to us. And if I'd been dressed like a woman, I'd have done it in a heartbeat. But I wasn't. I was in drag, and it was good drag too, but subway lights are bright and there was no way on earth I was going to walk over to these men, dressed as a man, and take a woman away from them. The layers of likely perceived emasculation involved in the gesture were too vast for me, who can defend herself very well, thank you, to feel remotely safe doing that. Which was a goddamn shame.

Because I am a woman, I have the (mis)fortune of being able to write off so much of what I do as play, as the bad habits of a single-sex education, or a life in the theater, or the once seemingly necessary skill of titillating men. I'm not, at the end of the day, trans because nothing in my life has much to do with from there to here and everything to do with being all these strange places at once.

But I have to tell you, stories like this, you can't convince me they aren't relevant to me, that they aren't somehow also a death in my tribe: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/30/arrest-made-greeley-transgender-slaying/

ginmar writes about it eloquently here. To which I must add, deliver me from this world where we can be, are expect to be, defiled by desire.

Melissa McEwan also speaks powerfully here.