blue trick

today is Trans Day of Remembrance.
Transmission is hosting a vigil at 7 tonight in confederation park across from city hall.

I am not looking forward to spend this day of mourning in a truck with my hateful xenophobic coworker.

leading up to TDoR last year, I got drunk and started fights with men on the street about trans violence. it's kind of an emotionally messy time of year for me. and others, I'm sure.

I went on facebook this morning, and read an article posted by this trans guy I know. it's an article about a 19 year old gay man who was picked up for sex, taken back to the killer's apartment, then upon the discovery that Jorge Lopez was male, he was beheaded, dismembered and burned, before having his body dumped in a woods.
apparently, the confessed murderer, upon realizing that Jorge was male, went into a murderous rage triggered by 'gay panic'. and that's his legal defense.

:(

hi lj.
I think about you sometimes.
there's a only a handful of people who might be reading this, but I feel like I should update.

november 13th was my 2 year chest surgery anniversary. and I totally forgot.
it's hard to imagine forgetting something like that. especially when my monthly medical loan bills are more than my rent.
it's funny, cause I just read through all those old entries, and it didn't even cross my mind. I only remembered cause someone asked me about it.

I also forgot my last 2 shots, and did them both a few days late. after nearing 2 years. and more than half of that doing it myself.

interesting how these things can become so normal that I could forget about them.

the loss of a daughter without gaining a son
and the ‘like, wouldn’t it just, like, be easier if you just, sort of like, picked one?’
well for you
probably
for me it’s all speculatory
for my famly YES.
See yesterday I cut off the last parts of me
Recognizable in my mothers silhouette
A pound and a half of flesh
And tomorrow – yesterday’s trash
And I’m a little bit regret
And a little bit happiness
Witness self-hate
Witness mutation
Witness my father’s even breast
Breaking into hysteria at negotiation
Witness awakening
See I went to sleep proud
And I woke up feeling like a sell out
Like I’m fucking the binary
Like I’m putting out for the system that
Couldn’t put up with me
Like now I’m part of this silent hierarchy
That we’ve set up for those who transition medically
When really, well, that’s not how I feel at all
So I’m calling on my community
To commute
To move past passing judgement
Cause it was 26 years before I saw anything beautiful in me
26 years
Each with three hundred sixty five days in between
Nearly ten thousand dawns of dysphoria
Of waking under waterfalls
Waiting to be washed clean
Or carried off
And we are eighty percent water
Fluidity seems only natural
To change state?
A birthright.

boo to confusion and twisted butterfly stomach.
I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm feeling too reckless to care.
I could get through this easier if I knew how it would all end.

is this just the placebo affect?
or are these things really related?
it happens fast.

I'm bored.
I wish I had peeps to call up.
or somewhere quiet and comfortable to go.

Battle Scars

by Michael Alexander

I want scars.
I want to give someone who spent too long at school
Seven thousand dollars to cut me open,
Take out the tissue I don't want,
Sculp my chest into something I can bear to look at,
And lay train tracks of sutures
From armpit to breastbone,
Hopefully symmetrical.
And when the drains are gone
And the stitches dissolved or removed.
And I go swimming for the first time in nearly ten
years
And go out to get the paper in the morning without a
shirt on and not give a damn who sees,
I want those lines on my chest.
I want everyone to see
That I am NOT like the others
I am NOT just another guy
I am a Transboy
I am genderqueer
And I did NOT have this chest reconstructed
So I could fit in.
I want chest reconstruction
So I can fit into myself.
If that means male priviledge that I never asked for,
Then so be it,
And I will use that male priviledge to the best of my
ability
To undermine itself and its source
And make people listen for once.
And when I wear short sleeves
You can see a patch on my arm that ain't nicotine.
Patch over gel over injection, because it is visible.
Look at me, my body don't produce testosterone,
I wear it on my arm.
I will not be invisible,
I will not compromise my identity
My complexity
So that you can call me a man and think you get it
When really you don't have a clue
I am Transgender
And when I am post-op
And I remove my shirt
I will show my scars proudly.
They are the scars of everyone
Who has felt invisible or misunderstood,
Everyone who has fought and is fighting,
With their hairstyles and clothes, mascara that
thickens eyelashes or turns peach fuzz into a goatee,
Everyone who has a million scars that lie unseen.
I share those scars beneath the surface
And when I scrape together seven thousand dollars
Just to give it away,
I will bear my people's scars
And I will NOT forget
And I will NOT take for granted
And my scars will remind the world that we are NOT all
the same.
---
Michael Alexander lives in Boston , MA in the US . He
came out as FTM in 1997 and has been active in the
Trans community ever since. When he started to pass
100% as male, he came to realise that he was not
male-identified as he had previously thought, although
he does not regret his decision to take hormones and
have top surgery. He now proudly identifies as a
queer/pansexual genderqueer Transboy. Michael loves
getting E-mail and can be reached at
ftmichael@gmail.com.

I got an email first thing this morning from dellamora recommending that I drop sex and text. I've missed a lot of class and there's just too much to catch up on.
it's the only class that I'm actually enjoying this year.
so. I'm going to drop out.
and for real this time.
last week I applied for the Construction Skills Certificate program at Fleming.
hope to hell I get in.
if I can get away with not having to pay back all my osap from this year right away, I'm going to do it.
maybe I'll become a carpenter or a mason (ha)..

today I met with the human rights advisor at trent, and she's just as interested in gender neutral washrooms as I am.
she's even taking the next steps for me.
fantastic.

I have a dr appt in toronto tomorrow. this is the appt that I could walk away from with a prescription for T. I don't know what to do. I mean, I don't think I'm going to do it right away. I'm not sure where I'm at, and I'm just gonna take my time before I go ahead with it.

then I have a cat scan wednesday night. checking my sinuses. they decided that if I've had sinus problems for 10 years, I can probably skip another x-ray and go straight to the good stuff.

then there's the dirty art show with my naked picture in it. it should be a fun time, as long as no jerks show up.

I'm working tonight on the thing that I'm making for kate. and watching an interesting looking movie called trembling before g-d.. and drinking strawberry flavoured "wine beverage".

I just went on the best walk with LiLy.
we went over to east city and looked all around the quaker factory.
I drank a giant coffee, LiLy and I shared a doughnut.
it lasted an hour and I took lots of cool industrial pictures on my phone of the plant and the train yard and everything.
that place is so much bigger than I had ever thought.
I guess I've never looked at it.
LiLy is so good and so cute.
I'm happy, it's warm here.

what is with procrastinating anyway?
the toilet is fixed, finally.
I'd been holding my need to pee, cause the toilet was being fixed and I couldn't leave cause of the toilet man.
finally, I got to pee.
tragedy strikes.
no toilet paper.
damn damn.
of course!

I heard through the rumour mill that I had my heart broken a year ago.

I just think its funny, the way our memories are distorted so that we can tell our histories the way we want to, to elicit the response we need to feel good/bad(whichever most serves our purpose) about ourselves.

ps. narcissistic tragedy is so boring and played out.

.the good news.

I'm at a computer in the Gerstein library at U of T and this place is so quiet it's impossible to get distracted. I find that I am most often distracted by the sound of my own voice, and in a room where angry faces turn to the lightest whisper, I'm not likely to get a word out.

.the great news.

I went to my last check-up with mclean. he said that my chest looks so good that I can stop wearing the bandages 2 weeks early.
this means that I stand here, this very moment, at this internet station, wearing nothing but a t-shirt.
I feel naked. I feel free.

.the not so good news.

my head hurts like a bitch from lack of sleep.
oh, and I'm not supposed to be using this computer for recreational internet searching.

so I'm off.

tomorrow I go and get my chest looked at for the last time and then I go and spill my life's story onto some poor dr. that part should be fun. I get to explore my gender from childhood until now, something I don't think I've actually ever done. I'm going to write out a timeline tonight of all the things that I can remember relating to my gender as a kid.

that is, what I can remember.

I think I'm losing my working memory, bit by bit.

I can hardly remember anything these days. when I'm not on pills, I can't even remember well enough to read.

oh well. here's hoping for a good evening of getting some reading in, cause I've only got a week left to get these 3 essays done.

off to nata's!


oh, and thanks for the nice words about my chest! :)
I'm feeling mighty proud.

I can't believe I just put my photos up on transster. that's a big deal step for me!

LiLy has fleas again. or at least, there have been flea sightings in the house. I haven't seen any, and after a close examination, I can't find a single sign of fleas on my itchy, itchy dog.
so I'm vacuuming the entire house. which involves doing a lot of cleaning. as in, cleaning my room and getting rid of half my shit.
I'm tired as fuck but it's gotta get done asap.
buh.

today I tried to run across the street cause I was walking lily and a car was coming.
holy hell, there's some serious pain that comes with the affect of gravity on a body recovering from a recent trauma.
it's like my whole swollen chest lifted up into the air and then fell down again, and the feeling that came with the landing thud was sickening. I instantly felt like I had been kicked in the face and stomach and chest, lost my breath, teared up and nearly vomited.
so, I'd say it's safe to rule running out of my near future.
Quite luckily, and contrary to the sensation that I'm still experiencing, close to an hour later, my chest doesn't appear to be damaged.
In fact, it looks wonderful. Seems that it's getting better every day.

I wanna write a love poem
so I can write a bitter break up poem
so I can write me a frantic sex up against the wall poem
so I can write me a love poem again
and I wanna write a poem
about how this time, friends and family
this time it's love
a poem about how I can't just date or fall in
fuck that I don't want to fall in love
I want to rise in love

I wanna write a poem about how today
me and my lover
see we had this picnic
and I found this place inside me I never knew existed
just hanging out inside me all this time
isn't that wild, and

I wanna write me a comic book
superhero love poem
where we leave our feet to meet
and we join hands in the sky
with those accordion heart eyes
and though the villain my try
no laser beam could pry apart that seam between our palms
and we knew all along
that love would conquer
cause you see, comic book love
well hell, comic book love is fucking good like that, and

I wanna write me a love poem
with words so thick you could hold em
fold em into paper cranes that would bring good luck to anyone they touch
well, good luck or whatever the fuck
two bodies contorted into origami water fowl means, and

and I wanna write me a cowboy love poem
where we go to bed early
and we count days like sunrises
and we pop each others zits
and we pick hay out of each others asses
cause we're not just kick ass gay cowboys
we're best friends too

I wanna write me a love poem that's not past tense
that lasts and evolves
where to be continued is tomorrow dissolved
into the next great american novel, and

I wanna write me a love poem
so I can write me a bitter break up poem
so I can write me a frantic sex up against the wall poem
so I can write me a love poem again

I don't like having hiccups. it hurts.
I also don't like having nothing to do on a friday night.
not that I want to go out, seeing as I am tired from exerting myself all day, but still. being home alone in a cold house isn't exactly my idea of a great time.
I'm tired of video games and movies and tv.
maybe I'll go read in my damp room. I'll probably fall asleep, which feels ridiculous at 9pm on a friday night.
ah well. could be fun.

Today in class we talked about the language around cosmetic vs plastic surgery for transsexual bodies and the different experiences that transsexuals have with their skin. For most people, the idea of body image comes from the sense of sight, from what they see in the mirror and how it compares to the way that they 'see' other people that they find, or are told to find, attractive. For transsexuals, the experience of body image is one of the sense of touch, a sensate experience, it is about how that individual feels their own skin.

We talked about how the 'true' inner self of the pre-operative transsexual is just waiting to burst out of the prison that is the exterior skin. These wrong body parts feel dead, not like a part of the person, and once freed from this alien (alienating) skin, the individual feels alive.

It's kind of like a process re-birth. The prof even compared it to a certain Christian resurrection story.

I took 3 pages of notes and figured it was likely an appropriate topic for my last lecture before surgery (5 days 13 hours, btw).

This all comes from the book Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality, by Jay Prosser.

12 days.
huh.
I'm feeling good.
It's scary as hell, but when I imagine the end result, I'm happy.
I spent $50 on pills and vitamins for before and after surgery.
Vitamin C, Iron, Multi Vitamin, Adavan, T3s..
and more.
this surgery is so so expensive.
but so fucking exciting.

I'm going to need to learn how to post photos on this thing..