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Just in time for kittypr0n #10, which will feature Michelle and Rocco's cat Petunia, Negativland will be releasing a new album called Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak. (Peter Conheim had actually told me about it at the People Like Us show in April; when he asked me if I curious about Negativland's current project, I had a major "I'm not worthy" moment.) Accompanying a book of photos of wrecked cars and objects found inside, the music is described "a meticulously-layered, ever-shifting electro-acoustic soundscape" with "no bass lines, no melody, no dialogue, no singing, no beat—the sound of Negativland's recording studio destroyed in a car crash." A sample track can be found here, and it sounds like it'll perfect for the show. Thanks, guys. I knew you'd come through.
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I did a lot of research in my early teens into just what this tranny stuff was all about, reading everything I could find, trying to make sense of what was in my head. There was a lot less material on the subject available then than there is now, and of course in the eighties there was no internet to speak of. (Granted, I was heavy into the BBS thing, but that wasn't much help.) In retrospect, I suspect the signal-to-noise ratio was even worse then, and it's a good thing I knew at an early age not to believe everything I read, or else I would have been even more confused. The truth was in it all somewhere, within and between and in the sum totals of all the contradictions. Much of it was done at the library, and I used up more than a little change at the xerox machine, but sadly those copies have long since gone to the great recycler in the sky. We had a few books at home, however, and one relic I still possess is Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy. Originally published in 1968 (and this particular copy was printed in 1972, a year before I was born), my parents had surely bought it for my older brothers. The author worked at The Kinsey Institute, which is cool, and the book has been frequently banned, which is even cooler. Still, as all things must be, it's a product of its time, and I was aware of that fact when I read the following passage—one of the only parts of the book I read—almost two decades after it was written. It's in a chapter called "Homosexuality" (where else could it possible be?) and follows a slighly longer discussion of transvestism. It felt way off the mark, and still does, but it is an interesting take nonetheless: Some boys not only want to dress up like girls; they want to be girls. These are called "transsexualists." They want to dress like girls because they believe they are girls, in effect. This form of behavior also starts very early in life, even earlier than transvestism. As these boys begin to grow up, they think of all the worthwhile things about a girl's life, like not being roughed up, wearing pretty clothes, not having to earn a living (in the male sense). They do not think of the relative advantages of being a boy—that is, the relative freedom and independence boys have, the opportunities open only to them (a somewhat decreasing advantage these days, it's true), the lack of pressure to be married, and so on. Transsexualists are also homosexual, but because they think of themselves as females, they think of themselves as heterosexual. A few of these people have operations which, as far as it is possible, changes them from males to females. Some even legally marry males, as the newspapers inform us from time to time. Remember, this was 1968. Looking back from 2002, there's a lot wrong with that first paragraph, but there's no point in deconstructing it. (Although I'll admit the notion that girls don't get roughed up is exceedingly quaint. I know many women who have personal experiences to the contrary.) Still, though, it's all pretty progressive, especially the next paragraph:
The reason I am taking the time to talk about all these variations from what we think of as "normal" sexuality is that I hope the boys who read this will, by understanding what the variations are and how they happen, develop tolerance for people who may not be like themselves. A mature boy is one who can accept these differences as a fact of life and not be upset by them, who will not bully a sissy or sneer at homosexuals and try to put them down in one way or another. Damn, that almost borders on...that's right...condoning abnormal sexuality! Is it any wonder the book was banned? Actually, according to Family Friendly Libraries, there's a "written section encouraging kids to secretly consider sex with their pets as a normal activity." Uh-huh. I wonder if it's the chapter called "Petting." 4:59pm I'm going to a reading of Matthue's tonight (preceded by an open mic, but I haven't made up my mind about that), then I'm going to go home and introduce myself to the new neighbors. I'm sufficiently over the cold so there's not much danger of me spraying phlegm (aren't I considerate?), but I didn't shave this morning and I feel like the facial hair is visible. All the same, they've been closing a door we need kept open, and I need to settle the potential conflict as soon as possible. It'll probably go just fine, but my stomach's knotty just the same. 6:05pm I'm alone in the back patio of a coffeehouse in the Mission, and I'm feeling anxious. The reading was supposed to start at six, but the girl at the register says it won't be until half past, and that it never starts on time anyway. To think I was hoping to gone by seven; guess that ain't gonna happen. As a result, I'm having to fight the urge to leave right now. I hate this. And for what? Am I that much of a hurry to meet/confront my neighbors? What's with me, exactly? I've rediscovered the joy of early rising. I've been averaging 5:20am, although I first awake at two and nap the rest of the way. And, remarkably, I've been laying off the Penguin Mints during the day. I suppose being asleep by eleven at night helps. I hope I'll be able to continue this pattern next month after the job ends (if it does), especially since I've been telling myself I'll start going to the gym again. Sure.
i see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I feel like something in me is dying. 8:03pm I read after all, with Matthue's encouragement. Even though it was going to be something he'd heard before (the piece I'd read at Poetry Mission last time, about the cops calling while I was stoned—the new one still isn't ready to go) he seemed to genuinely want me to read, and that was enough. I guess I'm easily flattered. (Guess? Guess?) (Afterwards, when I was buying someone's chapbook, he asked me when I'd be doing one of my own. Boy, that hit me where I live. I told him that Maddy and I have in fact talked about doing a chapbook together, half me and half her.) And, really, why not read? I can certainly use the practice, not to mention I didn't feel like I was in any condition to do so, which made it seem all the more appropriate. So now I'm on the long train ride home, having taken BART to Embarcadero and gotten on an outbound L. According to my original plan I would have been home by now, since the coffehouse was only a few blocks away from the 21st Street garage; I'd park there and BART to work. The thing is, there's a good reason my part of town is called the Sunset, and the Mission is due east from it. (Those of you with globes, please assist those without.) I drove for about five minutes directly into the sun this morning before I decided it wasn't worth it. Better to add an hour or so onto my travel time home in the evening than run the risk of getting into an accident because of being blinded. 10:08pm But sometimes things time out just right; I'd been worried that by the time I got home it would be too late to go upstairs and knock on their door, but as it happens the husband was in the entryway when I arrived. He seems pleasant enough, certainly not as tightly wound as the previous tenants (but even loose people can be bad neighbors, sometimes moreso), and didn't object at all when I asked that the door leading to our front door be kept open. It's little things like that which have lead to major battles in the past, but I get the feeling it'll be avoided this time. And, best of all, that particular inevitability is over with. I've yet to meet his wife, and Maddy won't be back until a week from Sunday, but the ice has been broken. I hope.
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On September 18, 2001, Maddy and I left work early, ate a lot of sushi and went to see Ghost World. This was our emotional reaction to me getting laid off. On September 18, 1998, I started on hormones. I was working at Autodesk at the time, and it was an otherwise normal day. 10:31am Which isn't to suggest I've been on the same dosage of 'mones for four years. Far from it. Not that one is supposed to start out at full blast, mind you; it generally starts light, is monitored, and gradually ramped up to the appropriate levels. That's how it works if it's done safely and/or with an endocrinologist who gives a shit. (Some of you know where this one's going, and, yes, it's more of the same.) My first one, however, did not give nearly that much, and as a result after two years my levels were out of whack, the testosterone not having significantly reduced. Hell, "significantly?" They didn't budge. This is because she didn't bother to have any blood tests done; she did nothing more than feeling my breasts and checking my blood pressure. (If my blood pressure was too high, she'd give me a magazine, leave the room, and come back after five or ten minutes and check again. I'm not making this up.) That was not enough. That was not remotely close enough. That was not what a doctor who was concerned with their patient would have done. But she did not care. And it took two years for me to realize this (it'sallmyfault) and go to a different endoc, one who immediately had my blood tested and discovered what was wrong. She fixed it as best as she could. But the damage had been done. Even though the estrogen levels were adequate, it was going up against the naturally-produced testosterone, and, quite frankly, the testosterone was winning. (Disclaimer: this is not an anti-testosterone rant, beyond that which was being produced by my own body. I wouldn't blame an F2M in a similar situation for feeling the same way regarding estrogen.) And time really is of the essence in these things. The older you get, the more the body is affected by it, shaped by it, permanently etched by it. The younger you start, the better. At 25, as I was in 1998, I already felt like I was getting a late start. (Could I have started any earlier? Questionable; in addition to financial issues, autonomy was important. I can only imagine how my mom would have reacted if I'd had the courage to approach her about it when I was 16 and just self-aware enough to be in heavy denial about it.) Little did I know at the time it was going to be, for all intents and purposes, a false start. Oh, even two years on the low levels of estrogen and premarin (didja know it's from the urine of pregnant mares? I'm very much aware of that) was better than nothing, but goddamnit, I needed more than "better than nothing," and who knows how much farther along I would have been now? After just a few months of being at the correct levels I felt it, in intangible but very real ways, and I should have been there much sooner. My first endoc screwed me, pure and simple. I know I should just let it go, and normally I'm pretty zen about these things. Sometimes I'm even able to forgive her for her negligence. Mostly I just hate her. It hurts a little less than hating myself. 2:55pm New Wave Hookers is at Sacrifice tonight, but I'm not sure if I'm going. Chupa and Anastasia will both be busy with their respective bartending and DJing duties and probably wouldn't register my absence, and the way I'm feeling I'm afraid I'd just be there for twenty minutes before getting lonely and wanting to go home. The problem is, I can't think of anything else to do. The impulse is to stay home, especially since I have the excuse of getting up for work tomorrow but when I'm home I nibble, and my waistband is getting tighter and tightert. Still, I've borrowed the DVD of Antonioni's L'Avventura from the library, and maybe an angsty b&w Italian film about existential alienation is just what I need right now. Or maybe it isn't. Either way, the one thing I'm not going to do is watch the season premiere of Enterprise. I made it through the first season and have reached the conclusion that, like so much else on teevee these days, it's not for me. I'm glad everyone else seems to be enjoying it so much, but I find it painful to watch. Then again, I liked Voyager, so I have no taste. 7:46pm As soon as I got home I started the rice steamer (to keep myself from giving into the sushi temptation), went to Safeway to do some shopping I'm not going to have wanted to do in the next few days, and most importantly, trimmed my bangs. They're a little uneven, but they're bangs3they're supposed to be uneven. Besides, even when they look like this I still get people telling me how straight they are, so I guess I'm getting them close enough. I also called and made an appointment to get zapped on Saturday afternoon. That should make me feel a little better; seeing the darkness on my upper lip, however subtle it may be, doesn't do my mental state any favors, and the inevitable hair visible by the end of the day doesn't much help. For as much as it matters, I should be healed up by Poetry Mission the following Thursday. Maddy just called. It was nice to hear her voice.
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Working the lobby was simple, even in my state; the hardest part involved handing people flyers as they walked into the theater (although it didn't occur to me until halfway through to tell them to enjoy the show). I was also there for the intermission and after the show in case anyone wanted to buy anything, but nobody did. Except me, anyway. (I bought $15 in books, but Jennifer only charged me $10, citing my "commission." I was willing to pay full price, but if I've learned anything from (e), it's that if a writer wants to give you a price break on their books, don't argue.) Before the show and during the second act, a somewhat long-winded solo piece, I hung out in the dressing room backstage with Jennifer and the others. That was the best part, really; it's always neat to be allowed behind the scenes, literally or otherwise. It was interesting to see the way the show has evolved since the dress rehearsal a few weeks ago. Mostly minor details, but things which I picked up on and made a difference. A bigger detail was the recasting of the actress playing Jennifer as a teenager (a role for which Phred had auditioned, coincidenatally). The original actress had left the show, claiming a concussion—the less said about that, the better—and was replaced by someone much more suited to the role, and by all accounts much less of a prima donna. Happily, the show itself has been getting good reviews and is being held over for an extra week. Two things were different about last night's show in particular: I was there (no big deal), and it was being videotaped (considerably bigger deal). If it had just been one or the other everything probably would have gone smoothly, but combining the two resulted in some massive technical difficulties early on, resulting in the show having to stop and start over five minutes into the first act. Then, during the second act, a prop Statue of David got knocked over and broken in two. I don't know if either of those were the play's unifying accident or not, but the net result is the cameraman will be returning next week to shoot what will hopefully be a less disaster-prone show. So long as I'm not there, it probably will be. For me, the shallow pity of that evening's tape not being used is that Jennifer namechecked me during her introduction to the play, saying that "the lovely Sherilyn" would be in the lobby at intermission selling merchandise. (She asked my permission first, though I'm not sure why.) Alas. Afterwards, she introduced me to some friends as "a writer who reads at Poetry Mission," which while not precisely a fib—I do write, and I have read at Poetry Mission—still felt like she was giving me too much credit. I was glad to be there, but more than ready to leave when it was over. The cold medicine had worn off; I hadn't taken more before I left the apartment for fear of being too dopey, but all the same I drove to Daly CIty and took BART into the Mission rather than driving across town and trying to find parking, which sounded like entirely too much work. Besides, I'd had some bad experiences driving to the theater early in the day, and decided the extra time on BART would be worth it. At least I could relax and read. After the show one of the actors walked me back to the station (for which I was grateful), and by the time I was actually driving home I was aware of my head battling back the invading organisms. I stopped at Walgreens to stock up on Green Death, went home, and slept. Tonight will hopefully be a little less eventful.
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It's no XXX (or even Swimfan), but I'm excited: opening today is I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, a documentary about the making of and subsequent furor surrounding the release of Wilco's super-brilliant album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. (Nutshell: band records album, record label rejects album and drops band from roster, band buys back album from record company, band makes album available for free on the internet while looking for new company, band gets signed to new record label—ironically owned by the same parent company as the label which dropped them—and releases the album, and album becomes their best seller yet in spite of already being available for free. A lot of other stuff happened, too.) Yay. It's funny how, for as much as I detest so-called "reality" television, I absolutely love documentaries. There's a world of difference between The Osbournes and Visions of Light.
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Hey, folks, it's the big day! You haven't forgotten, have you? You're remembering, right? (If you don't spend every moment thinking about what the terrorists did, then they've won!) And your neighbors are watching, so make it good. The official announcment from Barefoot's office:
In remembrance of the tragedy of September 11, 2001 that impacted the lives of Americans across the nation, including many of our co-workers, IndyMac Bank will observe a Day of Remembrance for all employees this Wednesday. This is our opportunity as Americans to remember what befell our nation and honor those who lost their lives. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate that although our nation was injured, we stand strong. A personal email address from the CEO? *sniff* That's beautiful, man. The question still remains, however: what of the people who died that day who weren't American citizens? Is the wearing of America's colors supposed to honor them, too? Or an "All American Fare Lunch?" Which, Barefoot tells me, will consist of those staples of the American diet, meat, fat and sugar: hot dogs (not "frankfurters," damn it, hot dogs!) and apple pie. I guess if there were any foreign diabetic vegetarians, they aren't being honored. 10:44am Willard Scott as the first Ronald McDonald. What else is there to say? 7:19pm
From my mother: I received an e-mail from a fellow employee yesterday exhorting everybody to wear red, white and blue today. I am so proud to be that woman's daughter. sometime after midnight We closed out our Day o' Not Forgetting by having dinner at Herbivore with The Ex (who's killing time while her boyfriend attends a class in the city), and then going to Sacrifice for New Wave Hookers, Chupa and Anastasia's new club. I was wearing buetz for the first time since I started working again, and by the time we left at half past eleven my left ankle was killing me. Previously the pain had been in the bottom of my right foot. Bode good, this does not.
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