two vignettes

So much to talk about, but first let me refer two funny things that happened to me today. This post is going to be hurried, so sorry for the lack of detail.


My boss and I were having lunch at a salad place we go frequently. I got up to get some dessert after having some salad and was picking up a piece of gingerbread when I heard two people talking behind me. First they said something briefly about the blueberry pie which I didn't catch and then they went, kind of quietly but not too much:

Her: "I thought she was a woman"
Him: "Yeah. Me too."

I was in my work uniform, shadow showing, hair pulled back, chest compressed. Nothing too revealing. My sort-of-boy mode. Ahh.. Cool

After that we returned from lunch and my boss called me to his office. The big boss and him wanted to talk about something work related (which we didafterwards). With them was a lady that used to work with us and her 7 year old daughter. They were visiting.
I hugged her mom, asked how she was blah blah blah and then her mother said to the little girl:

"Maddy, say hi to Mr. [boy name]"

Maddy looked at her, looked at me and came running to hold me by the legs and press her head against them. She wouldn't let go either, she just stayed there while I caressed her little blonde head and hugged her for a while.
The other adults were puzzled at her reaction, apparently she was quite shy. My big boss said:

big boss: "It must be the long hair..." (which I had tied back by the way)

What a revealing comment... Was he suggesting she may have thought I was a girl?
Beyond all appearance considerations, I think that finally my charm with children is coming back. Up until about mid-adolescence children would always seek me, after that, they would feel the opposite and avoid me. Whew! It feels so good to regain my best qualities and the original me... the long sleep is finally over.

23rd in the morning

Rainy morning with wet golden leaves lying around sporadically here and there. There's a wind blowing which is pleasant and breezy but just a little bit too cold for my own comfort. 42 degrees... Did I tell you I'm cold-natured? :) I want to spend the next New Year's in New York city (Times Square, 3,2,1, *fireworks*) but there's no way I'm walking in snow at night without lots of furry stuff on :)

The end of the year is coming fast and I still need to buy a new dress and go to the hairstylist's... argh. If only this facial shadow would just disappear! Have you ever felt like you don't want by any means to be a freak? That's how I feel now. The feminine physical cues are more apparent but I still have that devil of a shade present. Laser though is doing a great job, I know most of the dark I see now is the charred heads which haven't yet been shed. Still...
I inhabit a physical land of gender indefinition, boy or girl mode....I'm terrified to go try a dress or to the hairdresser's because I'll get read and whatnot. I know it's kind of stupid, I'm starting to look more and more like a big girl than anything else and passing in everyday life mostly works. People don't stare, kids mostly pass me by (though I get some that look puzzled and wary sometimes, little girls of course). Those that do read me or who sense something wrong visibly can't decide one way or the other. Out of this world. Me?
Yet...


So, regarding going out into the world, the most sensible thing would be to wait until the face looks better in a few days... or until my paranoia has quieted down :P


From the "unrelated" bin... I've been considering switching to Linux on my old trusty(crusty) IBM Thinkpad 600x (PIII y'all :D) but I'm a bit wary. I've lost hard drives full of stuff thanks to windows/hardware malfunctions more than once in the past and I'm a little reluctant to disturb the somewhat slow but otherwise working little world of my Windows 2000AS.

English and Spanish

My friend H. says I'm a good friend (knowing him, this means I'm a *very* good friend) and I feel that way about him too, we go back almost fifteen years. We met when he was a teenage computer whiz working with my stepfather developing custom made real estate and financial programs for local companies and I was just a kid of about 9.

We always understood each other like only great friends can.

For the last 2 years our communication has been a little sporadic though, with me going through "something very important for me" as I told him one night. It was the difficult first era of my transition of which he of course has no idea.
He understood, made no further questions: "write again when it's ok for you". In the end it was him who emailed me wanting to know where the heck I was. He asked if things were better (he hadn't forgotten) but nothing else. No prying, respectful. Very gentlemanly. We just went on talking like nothing had happened. In spanish mostly of course.

Spanish is the basic language we chat in and it's definitely not a T-friendly venue of expression. In spanish all things are gendered: the speakers are male, the rug is female, the glasses are male, the stars are female... What's worse, adjectives are also gendered. It's impossible to refer to oneself in a non-gendered way like english allows so whenever you need to talk about yourself, you have to gender adjectives male or female in accordance with your own gender.

In spanish, I would say, gendering myself female:
Siempre me senti sola y abandonada (I always felt lonely and abandoned) [excuse the melodrama, it's for didactic purposes :)]

But since I can't do that, instead of changing the last letter of the adjectives, I go:
Siempre estuve en soledad y sentia como que me habian abandonado (I was always in loneliness and feeling as if I had been abandoned)
In the perfect mode adjectives always default to a male ending which is really (and feels like) a neutral.


Well I haven't self-gendered male in a long time in Spanish, retreating into a tokyo mixture of english and spanish when needed or making those linguistic roundabouts. Chatting with people back in the old country (or spanish speakers here who don't "know") is a hassle... good thing there aren't that many. I always wonder, has anyone noticed my verbal gymnastics?
So far, no one has said anything directly, but strangely it's created an aura of non-gender about me (obvious for those who meet me in R/L due to my appearance). People use the roundabout ways more when referring to me, or more interestingly, feel obviously a little awkward when they *have* to gender me male.
Not that they don't of course, but there's a little unease in the air between us.

My friend H.
He says now he might come by San Francisco to attend an Open Source conference and will take a plane to Georgia to pay me a visit and "have a beer together". After all, we haven't seen each other in more than 3 years.


Gulp.


Vivi

out and about (what a lame name for a post)

Interesting: we are our worst judges.


As I said earlier, I went for the andro look today going out. The laser casualties were showing so the only thing I could do was to soften the look with some makeup.
I wore some boy jeans (but let them hang from my hips), a bra that wouldn't make my breasts prominent and a fitted girl shirt in which I've always looked pretty androgynous. Funny thing is I hadn't worn it for a while and now it looked 10x better than it used to. Now I'm making use for the first time of the "extra room" under the armpits all girl shirts have Very Happy
So my roommate (a GG) and I went to Applebee's for lunch. I was really flustered about the face thing and wanted to hide under my bed. I even skipped going for the dress today since I wouldn't be able to go into the girl's fitting room without suspicious looks. Before I started passing, I'd boldly go where no T had gone before, I wouldn't care about people's looks or whatever. Now if I'm not going to pass I'd rather not. I guess one gets used to the good stuff Smile
So we went to Applebee's and the server didn't address us in any particular way at the beginning (which made me more paranoid, you can guess). However when she came back with the food she was "ladies" this, "ladies" that. "Is everything ok ladies?", "Do you need anything ladies". Needless to say, that dispeled most of my doubts (you always wonder, "isn't she JUST being nice?".

Move on to a couple of hours later and we had to cancel the shopping trip because a friend of my roommate's mom had been taken to the hospital (hope she's ok by now). I had to send some christmas cards overseas so I headed for the post office at the mall. My spirits were up but when I saw the mall brimming with people I felt like turning back but since I also wanted to buy my roommate a christmas present I pressed on.
Surprisingly, no one looked at me weird, no one stared. I was either passing as me or passing as a guy (I don't think so). So I went into this store to buy a couple of pearl studs for her and the lady showing them to me is "ma'am" this "ma'am" that. *smiles* And this with those white floodlights everywhere!

So yeah, we are our worst critics. I guess there's a moment in your transition when the combination of voice, demeanor and general appearance due to hrt make things like some visible shadow not a guy trying to pass as a girl, but a girl with a skin condition (which in the end all of us are). When that changeover moment happens I really don't know, but I have been pining for and expecting it for soooo long. I know I will get sir'd in the future sometimes (though that hasn't happened much lately and I make a big fuss in my mind when it does Razz), but somehow it's not life-defining as it used to be.

And that, friends and neighbours, concludes this post and the first stage of my transition Smile

Sleep, dresses, lasers and pills

7:30 in the morning. Saturday. What am I doing up so early? I should be sleeping in!
Well yesterday after I got home from work all I felt like doing was sleeping. And I slept for a couple hours, woke up, still felt like sleeping, went back to sleep. One hour later, around 7, my roommate got home from work, I said hi from the bed... went back to sleep.
Then later she left for a dance club and I could barely keep my eyes open. I said bye, went back to sleep. Hours later I woke up when she came back with the air of the outside world about her. I said hi, went potty, got my Spiro and my Estrofem and back to bed. Only this time sleep wouldn't come, apparently I'd slept enough. So I lay there thinking about stuff and drifted in and out once or twice before going deep again and waking up at 7:20. To tell you the truth, I could sleep again if I
I had some long-long dream which had me "as me" (funny how now I either dream of myself in the androgynous me that I dreamt all my life or me as a girl) but I don't remember how it went.
Am I sleeping too much? I had a time back when I was going to college when I slept for like 2 days. I couldn't stay up. Weird.

In other news, I'm going shopping for a New Year's dress today. I don't know what I'm going to get but I'm shooting for an LBD or cocktail dress. I love those! They are so classy and cool at the same time.
I own an LBD and it's the most versatile thing there is. Put a cute denim jacket on and it's cool casual, take it off and you can step into a dress party. Mine in particular: hang it from the shoulders (cute), hang it from the upper arms and top of the breasts (sexy).
And of course the accesorizing options are endless, they are such great backdrops for anything you might add to them.

Still, I know I'm going to have a hard time out shopping today.
I had my third laser session on tuesday (bless concentrated light) and the girl operating it told me I had had a great response. This however means that a lot of black charred heads are lurking just beneath my epidermis where no razor can get. Dissappointingly, no makeup can cover that either without making me look like an escapee from Madame Tussaud's so I've opted to go more androgynous.
(On a side note, my laser session went well. It seems like it hurts a bit more every time, but that's ok. She's been kicking up the power a bit more too every time and it's working. Often she will ask as the laser zaps and zaps on my face "Do you want to take a breather" and I just close my eyes, clench my hands to the chair and say no. The sooner it's done the better. The only part where I have to stop between shots is my upper lip... that hurts SO much.)

Androgynous and no makeup is my choice lately for presentation. Back a couple of months ago I was having some passing issues and decided in the end to expect little to no passing. I'm not FT yet so I have that "luxury".
I was surprised however how *girl* I look in any outfit, most of all my old guy's stuff, I definitely don't belong in there anymore. This was nice to see and reminded me how with transition one looks different every single day and how the changes the hormones bring are like a stalactite's growth: slowly but surely.

Ok, enough for now... Cya! :)








HRT (hormones) count: 8 months, 20 days

gotta have it

And on with the adventures of Vivi, the slightly glammy rock girl...

I'm pouring ketchup over my barbbecue beans,
Is that sinful? It tastes good.

You don't want to to talk to me today... or maybe yes. Really? I'm so freaking bored!

I hate eating alone. And I hate the fuming stuff in my life I can't change. Change, dammit!

Hmmmm... no pineapple... I had it all yesterday. Fat freak. Fact freak. Yeah both. Whatever it tasted great.
I'd love to find a recipe to pickle the stem, it'd be so yummy. I'd cut them like french fries and have them.
I can have one of those ice cream fudge bars though. Low-cal, 80 cal. Fudge, what a funny word. Fudge-sludge.

Do you hate your mom? Not really

Jeez that alarm beeping again. Will it be vibrations from the electric tower nearby? Maybe a dead zone in my brain.


Gosh, whatever.


Remember. Must cook meat for V.

:~)

I found a couple of clips of "Hello Sandybell" on the web... It used to be my favorite cartoon and I haven't watched it in over 15 years.


God I'm crying. I'm 7 all over again... :)

Star Wars, still so grand

I am amazed at how good the old star wars movies are in comparison to the new. Can you believe that watching the "original trilogy" made me feel like (gulp!) watching Phantom Menace and the Clones again?
Maybe that's the power of great movies with disturbingly bad sequels or spin-offs (think Batman & Robin), the sense of wonder and enchantment they ellicit makes you do the unthinkable and give the proven bad another chance. That is also the power of good people as I recall.

I must have watched all three Star Wars movies back in '86-'88 on TV. They were shown in the course of two-three days. I was thrilled, elder people had told me the movies were nice, but I was blown away. I have this memory in my mind of staying up late at night after my mother and stepfather had gone to sleep, mesmerized with the climax sequence of The Empire Strikes Back. The stark contrast of twisting shadows and ambient red light of Luke's first confrontation with Darth Vader totally got me and every time the lightsabers clashed, I shuddered. They had frozen poor Han Solo for god's sake! They wanted to do it to poor Luke too! I think my heart gave a little skip when he fell into the freezing chamber and Vader went, as he flipped the switch with his mind powers, "All too easy" with disappointment. After that, when they are still fighting on top of the catwalk over the central shaft of Bespin, heading for the momentuous revelation, I was truly concerned for Luke's destiny; Darth Vader was so obviously *better*, so much more powerful and experienced than young Luke. You truly felt the Tattooine farmboy had gotten way over his head with thinking he could be a hero.
They became my all-time favorite movies for a long time, and they are still in that list.
As I watched that night, curled up in a chair and barely blinking, I felt my parents (who had left halfway through the show) could never understand the deep connection the movie and I were sharing. Over the years I'd have *definite* confirmation that my parents/stepfather were born in a different universe than mine. Art appreciation (and at times, creation) was taking its place as my most prominent "additional sense" and life vocation.

When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999 I was literally reaching the end of the tether of my "old-life" phase. Leaving the place I'd desperately kicked about for 21 years was fast becoming an actual plan and my gender issues were starting to move on their own. Queen Amidala did it, bland as her character is. I felt a yearning for her femininity and cuteness which had nothing to do with *posessing* but with *being*. Much like the slightly ambivalent way I'd always felt about girls and women all through my life, but in a rare emotional outburst for my testosterone-riddled, fresh-out-of-my-teens self. I always saw having girlfriends as some sort of experience to have someday (much like riding a nice roller coaster or some experience I'd never had) and definite proof that I was not *weird*. Participating of femininity, what I always wanted, I had to learn was barred to me by birth forever (I know that's not the case now :) ).
In the subsequent days of watching the movie I was the only one among my friends commenting on the awesome outfits of the Queen. Of course, it was all in a stylistic vein, wasn't it? :) Watching on TV the fans getting mad at the premieres, dressed up like the characters and having jedi fights at the multiplex lobbies, a girl in Amidala makeup filled me with the feeling that there was really *no* other costume I'd do more. Sure, the Jedis and their flowing capes were awesome, but they were not *me*. While my friend was going crazy over how cool it'd be to wear jedi outfits I nodded and smiled, trying unsuccessfully to like their customes and not Amidala's beautiful dresses.
It's hard to convey these pre GID revelation moments, how strong the dysphoria felt and at the same time how much of an aunknown forbidden country it was for me. In those moments I beheld the huge obscured parts move by themselves in unison, making perfect sense in their message.

I've got to go now, I'll come back to this in another post.

8

8 months on hormones last week.

Wow