Wrong, I was: even though the machines I'm going to mostly use aren't directly below the speakers this time, the canned music (mostly millennial alt-rock, and I have to admit, hearing "Praise You" was nice) is still loud enough to bleed through earbuds. Feh. And it borders on deafening in the locker room, where my nerves are jangly enough as it is, thank you very much.

I felt a little more comfortable today, if only because I'd done it once before, and had a better sense of what to expect, and was slowly developing a system. I also went with the five-second rule from Lost: I allowed myself be scared for the count of five, then went on about my business. It almost worked.

There are four shower stalls, not three. My miscount was probably due entirely to tunnelvision. When I'd entered the shower room yesterday, I saw an open stall and made an antline for it, afraid that if I looked down, I'd fall. Today, I was no less purposeful, but also a little more confident. Armed with my ziploc o' undies, I decided to go for broke, actually showering, hair and face in warm water and all, not just washing the stink off my body.

Fuck it, I figured. I'm in, I'm here, I did this once before, I'm paying my fracking membership fees (though I won't be billed until next month), so I might as well start acting like I belong. It was something of a tightrope walk, because like anyone else after showering, I look about as raw and basic as I get. It's how I look at my physical essence. If there was any time that it would be glaringly obvious that I didn't belong, at least as far as my face goes, that would be it. Of the looks I got, I don't know which were real and which were imagined.

9:06pm

Went by the gym after work to ask (again) about getting a locker. I'd made the mistake of calling ahead, getting another betawave-deficient clerk. He told me that there weren't any more lockers available, and when I asked to confirm that he was referring to women's lockers, there was a definite pause, then he put me on hold. Should have expected that would confuse him. Actually going in, I finally found someone who knew what the hell I was talking about—the rep who signed me up in the first place. The only available locker was deep in a corner, not in a prime space if the place is busy, but it'll do. It's close to the shower room, which is not necessarily a bad thing. And, as I say, it'll do.

I don't think the stress is going to chase me away, but it was sure with me this morning. thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa went my heart as I entered the locker room, especially after my hour on the crosstrainer. Could I get away with not showering? Sure, I wasn't all that sweaty. But I'd feel gross all day long, and it would be like cheating. A second towel. A second towel would definitely be necessary. I went to the front desk and grabbed another from the stack, noting that the kid behind the counter (who was actually off talking to someone) never took his eyes off me. Perhaps something, perhaps nothing. He pointed me in the right direction when I arrived and asked about the locker room (which is to say, towards the women's rather than the men), so that's got to account for something.

Nobody in the locker room seemed to talk much or make unnecessary eye contact. It was around half past eight, by which point most normal people have to be at work, so I'm guessing it wasn't as crowded as it gets at other times. Noodlety, as I'd suspected, is a given. I tried not to think about how some might react if they realized a non-tangowning person was in their midst (of all the guys who dress like girls, you do it the best) (oh my god! that's a guy!) (and in the role of the studmuffin butler—), the furor that might be caused. All it would take is one (real) woman to raise the alarm, and it would be all over.

Not enough room in locker for jacket. (No dedicated locker yet.) Hang with rest of coats near the entrance. Boots? Put them there as well, and pray. No need for Princess Leia headphones; earbuds should do just fine given ambient sound, but goddamn the music in the locker room is way too loud. Coil today, probably _{i must not be afraid of failure} for a while yet. Seem to have entered into a phase. Cindy also recently joined this gym chain, though a different location. Couldn't be with me, though.

Three showers, each with a curtain, in what also doubles as the steam room. Except for a rather anemic towelhook, the closest place to put stuff is a bench about ten feet away. Fuck. But I cannot enter or exit shower naked. Can. Not. Period. Stealth, deception, dishonesty. Solution, to be implemented tomorrow: clean panties in ziploc bag to be taken into shower. Opaque black cotton, duh. Didn't think that one through very well.

Never got as far as warm water. Cold stream, squirt of soap (aka "Body Wash"—Clean What'cha Mamma Gave Ya, instructs the bottle), rinse, no wash, no repeat. I was so worked up and convinced I was going to be caught, that the curtain was going to be ripped aside and my infiltration was going to be revealed, that my shower lasted for maybe ten seconds, tops. I just wanted to be done with the whole ordeal. Three, four, maybe even five days a week of this? Is that really what I'm thinking?

Yes, it's what I'm thinking.

3:09pm

When I get my hair cut and reblondified on Monday, I'm going to bring in that particular picture of Candy Darling, point at it, and grunt. It'll probably be one of the more realistic requests they've recieved lately. Any number of pictures of Courtney Love before plastic surgery would do as well. Of course, they'll probably tell me it requires blowdrying. Anything I want to do with my hair seems to involve blowdrying.

6:08pm

Goddamn stupid fracking persistent rain, driving goddamn stupid fracking persistent ants inside, making a beeline (antline?) for Perdita's food and water. I thought I'd figured out where they were coming from last night, wiped up them and the trail, and nuked their entry point with Raid, then covered it with enough paper towels (wet ones at the bottom) that Perdita wouldn't lick or inhale any of it. And that is what I did last night. It didn't work, evidently; they're going on about their business, not letting the towel (or presumably, the Raid) get in their merry way. Looks like they brought reinforcements this time.

Poor Perdita. She was all "mom! mom!" from the second I got home, and when I moved her food away from the ants, she descended upon it as if she hadn't eaten all day. Which, I'm guessing, she hadn't.

Tomorrow morning, it begins. I'll go in like it's no big thing, forget all the things which have been said and done of late. I don't actually have a locker yet, since the person who does that sort of thing was nowhere to be found, so I'll have to take care of that first. That's for the best, maybe, I don't know. It is what it is. I'll use the women's locker room, shower, keep my groinatological area tastefully out of view (I'm sure any of a number of genetic females do the same thing), and there won't be a problem.

Part of signing up, even if you don't pay the fee, is a session with a personal trainer. The rep asked me what my goals are. Abs, abs, abs.

I got Indian food on the way home, as a celebration of sorts. Hey, what says whee! i joined a gym! better than Saag Paneer? The girl behind the counter said she liked my voice. I need to remember what I sounded like.

I'm done with the rain, so completely and utterly over it. It's driving ants inside, and has been partially contributing towards many nights spent at home recently. Not that it's the only cause (and I had a very busy weekend), but the rain and the cold combine to keep me within the walls of the Black Light District. Going out tonight sounds kinda nice, but the only thing I can think of is Trannyshack, but that just doesn't hold any appeal. Pity The Power Exchange isn't open on Tuesdays.

Anyway, it's for the best that I stay home tonight and maybe even get to bed before midnight. I'm hoping to get up early tomorrow, the first of many early mornings, so I can go to the gym. Gonna be tricky. That used to be my thing, up and out of bed by five whether I had someplace to be or not. These days, not so much. Worse, I'm feeling tired more often. My theory is that it's because I'm out of shape, and that if i can have the will and discipline to start getting into shape, I'll have more energy, be less tired all the time. It's happened before, but not without great effort. Damn my slow metabolism.

Bad Movie Night's anniversary show was a blast. Big, rowdy crowd, and you can't go wrong with Red Dawn.

I'd had an appointment to get my hair reblondified this evening, but I pushed it back a week so to accomodate the expense of joining the gym. Just as well, since it'll give me a bit more time to decide what I want to do with my hair. The bangs are probably going to make a return. As unscientific as this is, I've noticed that the recent spate of confusion and stupidity regarding whether I is a boy or is a girl began after I grew my bangs out. Possibly a coincidence, but if having some degree of bangage gives people more to work with when doing that all-important gender evaluation, fine. I don't think I'll be returning to the straight-across Betty Page thing (some people do it better than others), but more of a softer Emmylou Harris thing.

I've also begun to seriously consider breast implants. This is something of a sea change for me, but it's making more and more sense. I've been on hormones for seven and a half years now. In spite of what I consider to be a two-year false start, I don't think I'm going to develop any more than this. And I don't think it's enough. The thing is, I've never been much into breasts. Don't see what the big deal is, and I've always tended to find smaller breasts more attractive.

But my body...my body is still very male. Yeah, it's changed a lot, my face isn't bad and I'm even willing to admit that I have a pretty nice ass, but the total seems to be less than the sum of the parts. One of the first things people look for when determining gender is shape of the body (which is why I'm forever obsessing on my stomach and not my genitals), and I can't help feeling that my body is disproportionate. I have breasts, but they're just barely there, hardly what one would associate with someone my height. Even if a genetic girl my height had breasts as small as mine, they'd still have working to their advantage the fact that they're a genetic girl. It's not a luxury I have. And I don't want big breasts, knockers, bazooms, anything like that. Just a little bigger, plausible for my size and not much more.

If I wasn't so damn tall, their current size would probably be just fine. One of the new fish around the office is this little Tank Girl-esque punker, small and lithe. Every time I see her it hurts a little, because she looks so damn much like I feel that I should. (I try not to look at her, but do my best not to be too obvious about it.) But I'm six feet tall and genetically disposed to be a linebacker, resulting in people who've worked with me for almost a year and who have never heard me called anything other than Sherilyn to still reduce me to "a guy who dresses like a girl." So I feel like I'm needing to go that extra mile to compensate, that my transition has stalled. For a long while there, I thought I was done with it. Seems not.

I still shudder at the thought. For the same reason that I don't have piercings, the thought of sticking a foreign object in my body and leaving it there indefinitely squicks me out. It sounds far more unpleasant than the much more invasive and irreversible orchiectomy, i.e. castration (which has just dropped down a notch on my priorities list, even though it's arguably more important). Yet my brain keeps coming back around to it. Won't be a miracle cure, but nothing is. I realize that. It's more like a missing piece to the puzzle, and every bit helps. Hopefully.

After the show, Vash and I went to The Power Exchange. A number of her friends were at The Sex Diaries, though only one joined us for the excursion, a mutual friend of mine as well. She didn't seem to enjoy herself very much, which didn't surprise me. The last time she'd gone had been for the ill-fated women's night, and she was made highly uncomfortable by the presence of so many straight men.

Well, sure. Can't blame her for that one. I'm not generally fond of being surrounded by them either, as I seem to be at work these days. The thing is, I don't feel unsafe there at all, even with men wandering around with their dicks in their hands, or the fact that every time we explored one of the rooms, within a few seconds there was a guy in the doorway, watching. It's what I expected, it's what the place is about, and if I had a problem with it, I wouldn't go at all. (As it is, I seem to average every six months.) I like the seediness, the open filth, the fact that most everyone I know turns up their nose at the mere mention. I love how disreputable it is.

And I know the security is tight. If anyone does anything they aren't supposed to, touches when consent isn't granted, then whoosh, they're gone. As I say, not unsafe.

Thing about the women's party was, during its brief lifespan, I wasn't allowed in since I wasn't born female. So, how much nicer it was is really neither here nor there. Sometimes you gotta take what's available, or nothing at all, and I do nothing at all entirely too much. Not that we did much of anything last night, mind you, both because of our friend's presence, and because Vash hadn't been there for a while herself and needed to get her bearings. We'll be returning, though.

sometime after midnight

wolverines!

Afterwards, Vash and I caught up with the bar-hopping group from my office. As soon as we arrived, one of my straight coworkers said: You Know, Of All The Guys Who Dress Like Girls, You Do It The Best.

Okay, Universe. That's enough. I'm not real. I get it. You can stop now.

At least my gloves could be replaced. Collette kindly dropped me a line to the effect that Hot Topic has again started carrying my preferred model of fingerless skeleton gloves, as she knows that half of my old pair disappeared and the other is disintegrating. After putting on some lipstick to hopefully reduce the chances of someone parsing me as male, I ventured into the Stonestown Mall last night to get a new pair. I could probably get a more basic pair for less, but I wanted these, because everything has to be just so with me.

Since I was at the mall, I figured I might as well walk around a little bit, try to get a sense of what modern culture is up to these days. I can't claim to be completely disconnected from it, since I live in a city and spent a lot of time online, but I'm not fully engaged, either. I retain a fascination with reading about movies I have no intention of ever seeing—a lot of the aforementioned time online is spent reading film and DVD review sites—as well as video games, even though I almost never play modern ones. If somebody wanted to give me their old machine I wouldn't say no, like the hand-me-down original PlayStation we got from Ritt a few years back, but it's not something on which I'm going to spend money.

Occasionally I'm tempted by something for the PC, like Tron 2.0, and if Battlestar Galactica was available for the original PlayStation I probably would have tracked down a used copy now. Otherwise, though, I'm far too busy using my computer to pirate copyrighted material to play games. (Arrr!) Except that I recently got around to wrangling a couple emulators into shape, so I can play occasional soul-refreshing round of Asteroids Deluxe or Yar's Revenge. Because I'm very, very old and enjoy that sort of thing. Just wait a few decades and watch the as yet unborn generation of gamers shake their head at the aging Millennials who keep playing Grand Theft Auto.

Anyway, while poking around EB Games, I happened upon a used DVD of The Replacement Killers. I didn't buy the DVD (I didn't much care for it, and I seldom buy movies whether I like them or not), but I was struck by the sheer hotness of Mira Sorvino's tattoo. Since I've been in such a monkey-see monkey-do mode lately, I found myself wanting one like it. This is a first. I don't believe I've ever seriously considered getting a tattoo before. And I'm not even sure I seriously considering it right now, but I don't believe I've ever given it this much thought before, either. Maybe not those particular symbols, nor your basic flash, like the somewhat generic chain from Bound. (Don't get me wrong, it looks damn good on her.) Perhaps something more obscure, like a piece of AM's code from Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream."

Hardly matters. The idea will probably pass, like so many others.

10:24pm

Vash has no tattoos and only one more piercing than I do, though we've talked about buying henna and going to town on each other.

Busy weekend coming up. The Queer Open Mic is tomorrow, followed by a show at The Dark Room called The Sex Diaries. After that, Vash and I may or may not be catching up with a cadre of boozing coworkers. Also on the "may or may not" list is a Tim and Roma! shoot on Saturday morning. If it does happen, it'll be my first as a new producer. Meep! Saturday night is my second night in The Sex Diaries, possibly followed by a Power Exchange excursion, depending on how all parties involved feel. Sunday night is the one-year anniversary of Bad Movie Night. (It's also the eve of the one-year anniversary of me breaking up with Maddy, but who's counting?)

Much to my surprise, the rep called back. He wasn't so much the glad-handing dandy this time around, sounding much less interested in getting my money, and my card-playing didn't work. (Doesn't always.) Anyway, the deal he quoted me is good through the end of the month, so I have a week to decide. Or, more accurately, to get the courage. I stopped by this morning to actually check the place out. Fair number of machines, and though I didn't see magazine holders for the machines, they did have a magazine rack, and the presence of one implies the other. If not, I'll bring my in the one given to me by The Ex many moons ago. So that's not too big of an issue.

I briefly stepped into the women's locker room, and felt immediately uncomfortable. Nobody gave me a second glance, but it's still scary. Between regular pronoun mistakes and being cast as butlers and kids shouting out their conclusions about my gender (hatehatehate), my confidence in my ability to present and be accepted as female is at its lowest ebb since I started transitioning. At least this morning I had the advantage of being made up and wearing a slipdress with fishnets. I'll be closer to au naturel when working out, and especially when changing clothes or showering. I didn't go in far enough to see whether there are individual showers or a communal one; if the latter, then I won't be able to shower. Period dot end of line thank you drive through. If I can't shower, there's not much point in even joining. I suppose I can ask when actually signing up, and if I'm told communal, claim extreme shyness and walk away. Probably wouldn't be the first.

4:20pm

Maddy was kind enough to call the gym to ask about the showers. (I'd considered doing it msyelf, but figured they might not cotton to what they'd parse as a man asking about the women's showers.) The male employee who answered asked a woman exiting the women's locker room, who informed him that the showers have curtains. That helps, a lot.

Some very pretty pictures, brought to my attention by Vash. Pity there isn't a blonde involved, though.