Fake!

On Friday... I think it was Friday. Yeah. It was Friday. Anyway, on Friday, I was killing time before a bar date with some non-trans friends. I started thinking about my smaller corset. I have one that's a size 40, and the other is a 36. (Frederick's cheapies.) Well, I know I can't fit in the 40 anymore, since I've lost some weight. The question was, was it enough to fit into the 36.

Well, I got it on. It wasn't easy, but I managed. I was so happy with it, I decided to try on a dress I got recently, with the idea that it would look good once I was skinnier. I just wanted to see how it would look. Understandable.

Well, once it was on, I was pretty happy with the results, and thought I'd take a couple of pics with my new camera, just to try it out, and to make sure the mirror wasn't lying.

And again, I was happy with the result. Unfortunately, I had no makeup or hair on. So, I jerry-rigged this.

And while the corset helps, I mustn't slack off in the exercise and dieting. I was really skinny once, and I think I can be so again.

Stream of consciousness

In order to attract regular readers to one's blog, one must produce quality shit; something worth reading. In order to produce said shit, once must practice. One must write and write and write until one is good at it.

This is one of those non-quality, shit entries. (More practiced, but reprinted entries are earlier. I've gotten out of the habit, and as a jump start, reposted some crap from other places.)
***

I took a nap when I got home from work today. My last day off was last Friday, November 21st. My next day off isn't until Wednesday, gods willing. So, I'm a little tired.

I lay down for the nap, and almost instantly, I'm swooning into REM-land. And my lovely feline decides he's on the wrong side of me, so he walks across my stomach.

So, I turn over on my side, and drift off. About half an hour later, by the clock, and 3 days later by my head, I wake up. And my arm is asleep. And even better, I wake up just in time to see the cat throwing up at the foot of the bed.

What makes this scenario worse is the dream I awoke from. (I hate reading/hearing about other people's dreams, but since this is just a writing exercise, it's excusable.)

I was in my childhood home, only I was an adult. My parents were...who knows where. My sisters, now grown, were visiting. My little brother was still a child. And the house was a mess. There was a lawn mower in the kitchen for some reason. As I'm trying to clean up, a woman I knew and lusted after from college shows up.

She's blonde, blue eyed, and 6'2". A strikingly beautiful woman. She's also married now with an adopted daughter who has undergone numerous surgeries for a cleft palate.

Anyway, she's trying to flirt with me as I'm trying to clean house. And I'm getting angrier and angrier. I mean, she's married! And she's flirting with me? And the house is in serious disarray. As I hand my little brother, who is apparently perpetually stuck at age 5 in my mind, a broom and tell him to start pulling his weight, she starts kissing my ear.

And that's when I woke up, to watch the cat yodel groceries.

I hate naps.

Happy Black Friday!

As you're out shopping today, consider what you're going to get that person who's hard to shop for. How about a fragrance:

Available at finer liquor stores everywhere.

Nothing good comes from naps.

Let's define the term first. A nap is an sleep period during the day, or outside your regular sleep schedule.

It's a time that could be better used being productive.

I don't nap often. For one thing, the phone typically rings about 2 minutes after I doze off. Knowing it's going to ring makes it difficult to relax. And even if I turn the phone off, something else happens: a car alarm goes off, the cat howls, or an ambulance headed to an emergency crashes at 70mph into a school bus filled with orphans, and the additional firefighters and rescuers can't seem to turn the smashed ambulance's siren off. Beneath my window.

But sometimes, I have to ignore the cacophany and get a bit of shut-eye.

Like today. You'll recall I didn't get a lot of sleep on Thanksgiving morning, thanks to the "whoooo-people". I tried taking a nap after work, but it didn't take.

This morning, I got up early and went to work, and was home by 9, exhausted. So, I lay down for a nap. The sun was streaming through the window, so I was nice and warm. The cat curled up next to me. I didn't even care if the phone rang, because I was so tired, the nap was inevitable.

And I fell asleep. Only to have dreams that I wasn't asleep, only paralyzed. And they got weirder from there. I'll spare you the recap, but they were the kind of dreams that leave you cranky, discombobulated and out-of-sorts.

And that's where I am now. Especially because I have to tidy up the apartment; something I could have been doing earlier, except I was napping.

Goin' Charles Whitman

I live on the 8th floor of an apartment building downtown. Not much of a view actually, because there's a building right next door blocking pretty much everything.

Generally, I like living downtown. Except on nights before I work early the next day. For you see, those nights are loud. Any other night of the week, downtown is nice and quiet. I can leave my windows open because all I'm going to hear is the passing traffic.

But if I have to get up early the next morning, the bar below me erupts. Pretty young people somehow know I'm trying to sleep, and stand outside yelling "whooooooooooo!!!!"

I work early Sunday morning, so I try to get to bed by midnight. The bar is quiet until then. Matter of fact, it's pretty quiet on Thursday and Friday night. But Saturday night, about bedtime, the hotchicks and the douchebags come outside to smoke, and to yell "whooooooooooo!!!!"

The bar hires an off-duty cop to stand outside, to deter fighting and whatnot. I can watch that cop pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, calculating how much they're making for the night at $30 an hour. I know the cop is doing this, because he/she isn't doing anything else. There's no "hey, kids, keep it down." whenever the kids come out of the bar to yell "whooooooooooo!!!!"

At least once a month, and only on Saturdays, there's a special DJ brought in for a special party night. This performer is hired to set up his speakers so they're pointed out the doors. And up towards my apartment. In one sense I guess it's good, because when the DJ is there, I can't always hear the "whoooooooooooo!!!"s over his "It's Britney's birthdaaaaaaay! Happy birthday, Britneeeeeeeeeey!"

I swear, one day, I'm going to get a 30-06 and just start picking them off as they stand outside, yelling. "Whooooo-BLAM!" "Whoooo-BLAM BLAM!"

When you read the headlines "Young, Pretty People Mowed Down" "When the Whooo-ing Stopped" "P&G Now Hiring to Replace Victims of Sidewalk Massacre", you'll know it was me.

From Crystal Cheats, via Christianne...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2ifyi8-lxo
Happy Thanksgiving from Cincinnati.

So yeah, I'm here.

Once Yahoo360 started to die, and everyone went their own ways, I settled in at MySpace. But, despite my best efforts, no-one on MySpace apparently reads.

So, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, (has that become cliche yet?) and joining e-blogger.

The other posts on here are from MySpace. I'll have some original thoughts soon. Seriously.

Reposted from a speech...jeez, don't I do anything original?

They put out a call for speakers for the local Transgender Day of Remembrance, and I volunteered. Here's what I said:

I've never been attacked, harassed, bullied, or even threatened. That's because most of my life has been lived from the safety of the closet. That, and I'm the size of a bull moose.

But in 1993, I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska. It's not far from where Brandon Teena was living. We never met, and as far as I can tell, our paths never crossed. And like most people, I'd never heard his name until it was too late.
I was devastated to hear about the murder, and wondered if there was something I could have done. Brandon associated with some bad people. But what if he didn't have to? What if others, like myself, had found Brandon, and taken him under our wings? Would he have turned away from that crowd? Would he be alive today?
It's too late for Brandon. For Brian McGlothin, for Angie Zapata, for Duanna Johnson, and for too many others.
But, it's not too late for everyone. For there are those among us who need help. Many put themselves in danger because they have nowhere else to go. We need to save the ones we can.
We need to find the transman contemplating suicide, because he's tired of the bullying. We need to find the transsexual who's streetwalking to earn money for surgery. We need to find the crossdresser who's hanging out at rest areas and parks, because she doesn't know where else to go.
We need to show them that it doesn't have to be like that. Look around you. We're all here tonight...we may not know each other, but in our own ways, we're family. We've saved ourselves, in some cases, we've saved others. We can be that beacon of hope for those still in the darkness.
I've been very fortunate along the way to find friends who were also positive role models. Smart, caring people who demonstrated that we weren't freaks or oddballs just by living proudly.
I've tried to thank them by paying it forward, by welcoming newcombers to the community, and talking with those still in the closet. I haven't always done a great job, but I've tried. And I hope you try too.
I hope you invite that person, trans or not, alone at the bar to join you. I hope you have something on the Internet that indicates you're willing to talk, and to listen.
We should remember the dead, but we would best serve their memories by saving their brothers and sisters.

The second post, reposted also...

Well, I checked on all the local media websites, and watched the news last night, and my face didn't appear anywhere. So, that's good. On the other hand, I'm kind of disappointed. All those cameras, and no pictures of me.
But the real fallout may not come until tomorrow.
See, I bumped into a guy at the rally. And it didn't strike me until this morning. He looked really, really familiar. I just assumed I'd seen him at one of the clubs or something.
Nope.
He's a coworker.
We don't know each other all that well, for sure, but we do know each other. Did he recognize me? Hard to say. My memory of the bumping-into seems to say he had a spark of possible recognition in his eyes, but I may be imaging things.
The odds are in my favor. I wasn't in a place where we'd normally cross paths. And if you're like me, if you meet someone out of context, it can be a bitch to remember who they are. And while my makeup wasn't all that good yesterday, I do have a tendency to affect different facial expressions when I'm dressed.
My eyebrows are almost always up, my eyes are wide, and I smile. I don't smile a lot in guy mode. So, while en femme, my face doesn't droop as much as it does when I'm not.
We'll see if we bump into each other tomorrow, or if coworkers start looking at me differently.
Of course, why worry, anyway? He was at a GLBT rally, so it's not like he's a rabid homophobe. But, will he have the discretion to keep things on the hush-hush, or will he assume I'm out and proud?
***
Oh, and if you think this is going to keep me from going to the National Transgender Day of Remembrance observances this week? You're wrong.

The first post, reposted from MySpace

Surprise! I went to protest Prop 8
The protest was scheduled to begin at 1:30. At 12:50, I said to myself, "I need to do this."
I was dismayed when I heard that Prop 8 passed. What is probably the most liberal state in the country banned same sex marriages, at the same time they voted in Democrat Barack Obama to the White House. What's up with that?
Anyway. I'm for gay marriage. I'm for gay rights. Gay rights are human rights. I'm a human. It seems only logical.
Margaret Cho was there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo8wPJ5AnWs
I made my own video at the protest too. And I ramble a bit at the end, but let me try to clarify my thoughts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uMs58xhaNM
There are only a handful in the T-community who are activists. Only a few who go to the protests, lobby lawmakers, attend Pride festivals, and whatnot. That really, really, really needs to change. We need to start actively advocating our rights.
"Oh, but I'm in the closet, and I have so much to lose. And no-one likes us anyway."
Yeah, well, if we weren't in the closet, people would like us more, and losing things wouldn't be an issue.
Like him or not, there will soon be a President in office who has spoken the word transgendered. To my knowledge, no other Chief Executive has uttered the word publicly. Doesn't that say something to you? Doesn't that say things have changed and are going to change?
But, they'll only change if someone is willing to make a bit of an effort.
I dunno. Words are failing me. I'm frustrated by being in the closet myself, and by the majority of other t-girls there as well. We've made the closet very comfy, but it's time we at least crack the door open a bit more.
Diane Schroer, Isis on ANTM, Candace Cayne. They're all out there. They seem to be making it work.
I'll admit, I'm not going to be marching on Washington in heels any time soon myself. But, I've got to start doing something. And I hope I won't be alone.