I woke up at an ungodly early hour to phone the doctor’s office to ask for an appointment. And they had one, to which I arrived about 5 minutes late. Mornings are not a good time of day for me. I felt sheepish for being late and also pissed off from the day before. But if the desk clerk recognized me, she gave no indication of it. It’s amazing something could give me so much angst, but be not even worthy of recognition the next day.
The doctor started everything off by asking me about a note on my gender in my file. So I guess the clerk the day before had tried to be accommodating or whatever. The hardest part about culture shock is that things can really seem like fights or conflicts when they’re not.
And it quickly became apparent that I actually am the only ftm going there. The doctor was looking through the NHS prescription database and a little book trying to figure out what prescription to give me. I kind of want my doctors to know more than I do about this stuff, not less.
In the end, she gave me a prescription that I’m going to double check, since she wasn’t certain it was equivalent. It’s a private prescription. The UK has a really bullshit system where some things are private and some are public. So the NHS paid for my visit this morning. They’ll pay for the needles. She wasn’t sure if they would cover the T. It turns out to be pretty expensive. 33£ / per shot. So I’ll be paying about £100 for my next 3 shots. Yikes.
What’s fucked up about this is that a NHS doctor is totally empowered to prescribe it and I’m totally empowered to go get it. But they don’t want to pay for it. Or might not. I don’t have a shrink letter saying I should transition, which is required documentation. But I arrived in the midst of my transition, so they might be willing to pay because I followed the rules in my home country.
I didn’t ask if I could start jumping through hoops here in order to get coverage. Because the doctor let slip that they require two years of therapy. Two fucking years!
I don’t know what the writers of these rules imagine, but in my admittedly limited experience, people realize they’re trans on their own. Then they try to ignore / resist it, usually, because it’s kind of a pain in the ass and has the tiniest bit of a stigma attached. I’m under the impression that most people wait until they’re at their wits end before they even think of broaching the subject with a doctor.
So they take people, adults, who are at their wits ends, who have held off as long as they can, who probably have really terrible anxiety, and they spend two years trying to talk them out of it? What could some fucking doctor say that I hadn’t thought of myself? Have you considered that maybe you’re just a butch lesbian? Gee, what a crazy idea. And all the while scrutinizing you, trying to figure out if you’re trans enough. You better double check that your shirts button on the correct side before you go in. Maybe it’s not like this. I don’t know. I’ve never done it. But two fucking years, what could they possibly doing during all that time? Do the writers of said rules imagine that people impulsively transition? Do they think everybody would do it? Are they struggling to hold themselves in abeyance? Do they have conversations about “thank god for the rules or who knows what genitals I might have woken up to after that last office party!”
But if I can get it privately, it means they’re not protecting themselves from transitioning in a haphazard manner. They’re protecting poor people. In the US, the unemployment rate among transgender people is alarmingly high. 50% of mtfs lose their jobs – regardless of class or job. I imagine the situation here is similar. So if you want to skip your two years, you better have inherited wealth and a tolerant family who won’t cut you off. The National Health isn’t a privilege, it’s a right. If some MP is trying to entice trans people to go outside the system and forgo their rights, well, there’s a word for that: “Discrimination.”
Again, they must imagine we’re out on a lark.
So maybe it would be worth it to go and talk to a shrink, as long as I don’t have to put things off while doing it. If I get a letter for my last few months here, then that’s a few months of not having to pay so damn much out of pocket. Also, note that the shots are the cheap way of doing things and I really want to find a less stabby delivery method. England is taking a lot of my money. I’m not asking for more than I’m paying in.
Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins
Supercolliding since 2003
I arrived 8 or 9 minutes late
Ok, I wasn’t exactly on top of things. So I waited until I was about to run out of T to call. What do I do if they say no? And then I waited to come in with my passport. How long am I willing to go off of T? And I arrived a few minutes late for my appointment. How many months am I willing to wait again?
I showed up before the cutoff time, but I wasn’t fully registered with the office for some reason because they needed to see my passport. Which I had with me when I came to register initially, but which they hadn’t asked to see then. The front desk woman scolded me. I’ll have to make another appointment. She was the same person who took my registration originally. Who acted uncomfortable when I asked if the doctor could refill my T prescription or if I would be referred out of office. What is the process in this country? “I don’t know. You need to talk to the doctor.” This is the closest office to the school. Could I really be the only transitioning student in my entire university?
She took my passport and disappeared into the back room for several minutes. I chatted a bit with the other, friendlier woman behind the counter. “Maybe you should try to make afternoon appointments,” she wisely suggested. Finally, her more dour colleague returned and handed me my passport. “I’ve had to register you as a female.” she said, as if I had been trying to pull something. I shrugged. I know I still require pelvic exams and whatnot. “Fair enough.” I said. She was annoyed. “You tried to put down both.” What I put down was “ftm.” Can somebody in a doctors office really not know what ftm means? There are thousands of students at my uni. Percentage wise, trans people are only a few per thousand, but there should be a half a dozen of us at the very least. “Ftm” is not both, it’s a specific designation relating to what health services that I require and the identity I need respected. No, I did not just put on my paperwork “I am a freaky person trying to make your life difficult” but thanks for treating me that way.
She went on, still dour. “You’ll have to re-book. We have nothing for the next week. Call up every morning at 8:45 to see if we have anything for that day.” Oh shit. “Ok” I said. What the hell else am I going to say? The other, friendlier desk person finished her phone call and suddenly noticed I was leaving. “Wait, do you want to schedule a new appointment?” she called after me. I looked back questioningly. Her dour colleague answered, “No, I’ve just told her to call in the mornings.”
“her”
Is the doctor going to be like this too? Is it the whole office? Is it just this one person? Can I find another office? When I run out of T on thursday, when will I be able to get more? Am I going to be able to get an appointment in the next two weeks? Are they going to make me go get a therapist letter? Will I have to wait to get on the calendar of an endocrinologist? Is there a way to scam more T without going through the proper legal channels?
But, I have to be fair. I’m prepared to concede that it’s my fault that I was turned away from the doctor’s office this morning. They phoned me a week ago to say that they needed to see my passport and I didn’t bring it until I arrived a few minutes late this morning. (I did try to bring it on Good Friday, but they were closed until this morning.)
I have no love for the medical profession. I can recall every single time that a doctor treated me like a full person. It works out to about five of them. Maybe 6. I want to go on to make a claim about how I’m in a special class in this regard and how the very job description of a doctor is a promotion of normativity in bodies – to force them to conform to a state we call “health,” (which is a system that can work well for the promotion of well-being in already normative bodies and uses of said bodies). I want to say that doctors abhor queers because queerness – a non-normative use of the body – is uncomfortably close to ill health. It’s something to be diagnosed, treated and stamped out. But, alas, I don’t think I’m in a special class. The perfect patient is one who is already well, already normal. If you can’t or won’t have the ideal weight, if you won’t conform in that regard, then you’ve already spurred part of what the doctor is offering you. If you don’t want this part of the normativity, why should ze offer you any of it? I’ve seen how doctors treated my mom while she was dying. I overheard them, years earlier, driving her towards an eating disorder while they obsessed about her weight. I’ve heard the stories of people with disabilities. I’m not special. If your doctor treats you like a full person, then you are the one in the special class. Everybody else here is just somehow refusing doctor’s orders. Not skinny. Not physically able. Not young. Not physically male. Abnormal and untreatably so.
Forced by circumstance, they’re willing to concede very specific circumstances in which one may escape portions of normativity, in exchange for more fully conforming to other ones. There’s a set drama that is required to unfold in the treatment of transsexuality. It usually starts with a GP and then is referred on from there. Sometimes, like in the US, GPs will prescribe hormones. If their office allows it. If they feel like it. They might just say it’s against policy when it’s not and then act really uncomfortable and shoo you out. If your GP won’t do it, if you are less fortunate that I was, you get sent through a set of people who are supposed to talk you out of it. It’s a really lovely system. I hope to see it more widely introduced. “Oh, um, well, what makes you so certain you need eyeglasses? Have you always had trouble seeing? How do you know this isn’t just a phase? Sorry, if you were serious about needing glasses, you wouldn’t have arrived dressed that way.”
I’ve had enough doctors act visibly repulsed by my sexual orientation and gender non-conformity that I’m still surprised when they treat me like a person. It’s not what I expect. If I need to come in to get a hormone prescription refill in a new country, of course they’re going to look for a reason to say no. And what then? What do I do then?
Tiny Movie
All the cool kids are into video. This is my first try at this. I feel good about it. However, this is going to look best when you watch it on your cell phone, since that’s what I used to film the source material. I wish I could tell youTube I wanted lowerfi.
Cooking and Eating for Postgrads: Oatmeal (aka Porridge)
Breakfast: the most expensive important meal of the day. Oatmeal is an economical and hearty way to eat in the morning.
Oatmeal
Hardware
- small pan
- measuring cup
- spoon
- knife (optional)
Food Items
- Oats
- Raisins (optional)
- Apple or Pear (optional)
- Banana (optional)
- Cinnamon (optional)
- Soy Milk (optional)
Preparation
Put 0.1 L of oats in a pan with 0.3 L of water. Put it on low heat. Add in a small handful of raisins. Stir some. Cut up an apple or pear into small pieces and add them. Stir some. Cut a banana into slices and add them. Stir some. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top. Stir occasionally. When it looks done, it is. Serve with soy milk
You’ve just gotten
The oats are a warm and filling way to start the cold day! And full of fibre. The three fruits have given you three of your five a day (and it’s not even lunch time yet!). The banana has potassium. The soy milk has protein. And if you’ve been wise in your soy purchase, it also has calcium and b12.
Fortified
Breakfast cereals are expensive because they’re fortified. Because most people have a crap diet and don’t take any vitamins, all of the stuff they’re presumed to be missing is added to cereal. This means that you’re not only paying for the food in it, the colorful packaging, the catchy marketing campaign, the secret toy inside and the artificial flavors, you’re also paying for it to be your daily multi. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the price per gram of cold breakfast cereal is not good.
However, there are some vitamins that are difficult or impossible to get from plant sources only. Including B12, which is necessary for survival. It’s found in spirulina and marmite, but if you’re vegetarian or vegan, you’re going to need to get more than you can from those sources (it’s in milk, but not in eggs). This means you can either take supplements or drink fortified soy milk. Check the label of the soy milk before you buy it. Mine gives me my daily allowance of B12 in about the same amount I use on coffee and oatmeal. It also is fortified with calcium, which you need and which, despite what you make have heard, is hard to get from milk.
Ok, there’s a lot of stuff going around about how soy is secretly poison or whatever. Firstly, we’re not talking about living off of nothing but soy, we’re talking about one serving of soy milk. Second, I’m not familiar with all the claims against soy, but I do know the ones people say about estrogen: soy will make you girly!!. Oh my god, vegetarians really are effeminate!!
I know, estrogen is so alarming! Can you believe it, your own body even makes it! What a traitor! Ok, small amounts of plant based estrogen aren’t bad for you. It’s in a lot of foods. Unless you go crazy with the soy, this isn’t going to be a problem. Second, you actually need some estrogen in your body in order for your brain to function properly. No estrogen = no brains. Make of that what you will.
Anyway, we’re talking about one serving of soy milk here, so this is not really an issue, but I want to add that I think the hysteria behind soy estrogens has a lot to do with homophobia, sexism, and gender normativity more than it has anything to do with a valid health concern. Soy beans do not make you gay. Sheesh.
Carbon Footprint
I made some claims earlier about only eating local produce. No, they don’t grow bananas in England. I’ve started making an exception for bananas because I really like them and they’re a really good source of potassium, which prevents things like foot cramps. I get the fair trade bananas. I was listening to the Democracy Now podcast a few weeks ago and heard an advocate of banana growers talking about fair trade. Banana growers need to survive , and if I buy fair trade, then that helps them do so.
Hopefully that doesn’t make me a hypocrite to go on to say that many breakfast cereals have a terrible carbon footprint. Ingredients from all over the world come together at one factory very far away from where you live and then are shipped back to you. Dried fruit from Turkey goes to North America, goes back to England. However, the main reason I eat oatmeal is because it’s cheap and warming and makes my mornings brighter.
Costs
There’s a line of retailers in Selly Oak, on Bristol Road, across from the Sainbury’s. And they’re apparently all victims of a terrible melancholy. Perhaps it’s the environment. Their shops look dodgy and dangerous, but they’re not. They just need a new paint job. And just a bit behind them, is an abandoned industrial site, complete with a smokestack, which somehow has managed to be the only part of it not decommissioned or torn town. It emits a blackish grunge which settles onto the wrecked piles of bricks below.
Birmingham is not a cheery looking place. It must have been much worse in the past. But even now, it’s gray and damp and rainy. The city buses get so covered with soot and worn looking that they don’t seem to belong in the first world. For all of America’s infrastructure problems, we seem to have nicer buses than the British midlands.
The shopkeepers sit inside their dirty, unpainted, dodgy looking shops, watching the flithy buses going by and the mad car drivers, who sometimes go at high speeds on the sidewalk. And as they sit, the soot gradually creeps in to their persons.
So when I go to ask the pet shop about boarding or ID tags, I get stories of stolen pets held for ransom. When I go to ask the bike shop about getting a tune up for my bike, after a sidewalk-driving car nearly ran down the proprietor, I also got doom and gloom. Nobody in this country can possibly work on my bike, because it’s Dutch. Why, he had a customer once who broke a gear. The gears on those bikes are enclosed in the back tire. He had to order the part from Germany. It was going to cost £300 for the part. She ended up deciding to scrap the bike.
$600 for a new gear? Yeah, I would decide to scrap the bike too, since that’s the price for a brand, spanking new mid-level Dutch bike. Maybe his problem is that he was ordering Dutch parts from Germany. I know Brits have some confusion about countries on the continent. (As an American, I’m hardly able to point fingers here.) But, trust me on this, the Netherlands and Germany are separate countries. For £300, I will personally take your bike to Holland, and get it fixed for you. For that much, I ought to be able to pay transit costs, stay in a fairly nice hotel and get the repair done. Well, actually, transit might be a bit more pricey. Stupid British Rail.
But what price conformity? That bike is foreign, in every sense of the term, and thus it’s right and appropriate that you pay a penalty for trying to ride it and get it repaired. “Why did you buy a bike like that?” The shopkeeper asked. Because I lived in Holland. Because it’s a great bike. He warned me that many bike shops would say they’d done work on the enclosed parts, but not actually do it. For X’s sake, I just wanted it greased and the brakes adjusted, but I have a tool shortage. So I bought some grease and I hope my pocket knife has enough tools to fix the front brakes.
So I went to the park to walk Xena. I go around the same time every day and have a nice walk and chat with the senior citizens of my area, which I quite enjoy. Yesterday, they were looking for the new bird houses. 
They had been on a campaign to get the city to hang houses for song birds, owls and bats and other native species, to provide them with extra habitat. The bird houses had just been hung the day before. It took 8 months to get the grants to do it, but finally all the work had paid off.
The houses were not custom built or anything, why had they needed to apply for so much money? Well, they needed to pay the person who hung them up and also insurance! A bat house could fall on somebody! It had to be properly insured! What if somebody got injured?!
From now on, I’m going to be more forceful about disagreeing when Brits start telling anecdotes about how Americans are lawsuit-happy or insular. First of all, the McDonalds coffee burn woman was given coffee that was 80° C, in a paper cup. She needed skin grafts, in a country with no national health, where half of people can’t even buy insurance, and her original goal was just to get McDonalds to sell non-scalding coffee and they refused – after she’d learned that several people were badly burned every year. But you – you have to get insurance on bird houses and can’t possibly fix a bike from a country less than an hour away by plane.
Drunk Blogging
Whee, I’ve reached my magic limit of three units of alcohol, but I have not groped any women. I have achieved this by mostly avoiding them. I am pissed though, sicne I hadn’t had dinner and a packet of crisps didn’t do much to sober me up.
Things I love: riding a giant dutch bike through the British midlands in the middle fo the night. I rode home along the old industrial canal. IT’s bleak. Nex tto the train lines. Smokestacks along side. Victorian bricks. They’ve tried to make it sort of recreational by carving out a narrow path, but it’s still got a bleak quality. There’s no lights along it. When I went out to the CBSO center for the concert, I had only my little headlight to show me the way. Drunk, on the way back, I had the 3/4s moon.
Apparently, a student fell into the canal within recent memory. On his bike. I found this news to be something of a relief. The path is narrow and a bit treacherous in parts and the wind blows and I worry about falling into the canal. But more, I worry about the shame of falling into the canal. It’s much better to know I wouldn’t be the first.
A nice thing about Brits is that when you’re drunk, you’re drunk. They don’t seem to imagine that your sober behavior and your drunk behavior are overly correlated. As in, you can be stupid and they’ll say, “oh, he’s a stupid drunk” vs America, where they seem to say, “oh he’s a stupid person.”
The concert: I went to see the Birmingham University New Music Ensemble play at CBSO, which is in central Brum. The ensemble seems to have been misnamed. It shoudl ahve been called the Birmingham Bombastic Post War Ensemble. One one of the compoers played is still alive and he’s in his mid 70’s. The rest are dead. And many of the players were from the conservatory and not from the university.
I was feeling very charitable about the whole thing. University students aren’t conservatory students. They also have to take language classes, maths, general ed, etc. So you can’t expect them to play overly complicated bombastic pieces on the same level as professionals or conservatory students. . . but some fo the groupings were more than 50% conservatory. So, um. Everything ended very strongly. Everything started weakly. They played a Varese piece twice. At the start of the first half and the start of the second half. I was afriad to shout “encore” or they might play it a third time. I look forward to a concert of nothing but that piece over and over again.
It’s a nice piece. They were a lot more confident the second time and it wa much improved. The siren could have been louder. But, where the first time was overly nervous, the second time was a little too relaxed or sloppy or something. Some of the players weren’t trying as hard the second time. I want people to have fun when they play, I mean it is called “playing”, but being serious is also good.
Anyway, it was very student-y, but a good ude of my time. A big otivator for going was to figure out what I could write for the kids and expect them to be able to play without fucking up too much. If they can convisincingly muddle through Varese, then I can throw a lot at them and expect them to get it right. So this was encouraging in that respect.
Another motivator is the post-concert socializing. I like Brum more when I get out more. But my poor liver. Tomorrow is compass forum (our weird name for colloquium), which involves a pint afterwards. Thursday is SBLUG, the Linux group, which involves a pint.
Then comes easter weekend, which is a 4 day weekend and a real holiday here. Which makes me a little sad, because easter was my mom’s favorite holiday.
Monday, there’s a big anti-war protest and some nuke thing, which I’ll be going to. N o nukes! I love demonstrations. Tuesday, I finally got a doctor’s appointment, so hopefully, I can get more T without having to miss a shot, although my plan to do the next shot early isn;t going to happen. I’ll just be on low T levels for this cycle. It’s fucking weird getting a major hormone this way. Like, wouldn;’t it be great if I had some sort of self-regulating system that produced it in high enough levels? Balls. I wish I had balls. I never thought I would wish such a thing.
And speaking of my odd desire to be sporting testicles, a women’s glossy mag is interviewing me about being trans. I don’t think the magazine is in the US. Of course, I’m doing this for the chance to educate people. Not everybody who transitions knows at age 5. It’s ok to not be sure. It’s ok to not be 100% binary. Yeah. No, I’m doing it for the photo shoot. they’re going to dress me in designer clothes and take my picture in London. No. actually, I’m doing it for the money. I’m getting paid for this. I don’t think this will be like a daytime talk show or something. Vanity: a “fab photo shoot” and coins.
I hate coming out to people. It’s very stressful. This way, I won’t have to. Those old ladies in the dog park are bound to read women’s glossies.
Speaking of coming out. Being around hot women and passing . . .. New experience. Of course, I have a lovely gf who is far away and I miss. But, it’s an issue that might one day might come out. Hi, I think you’re hot and would like to kiss you. Now I would like to inform you, before we have sex, that I don’t have a penis and I used to be a lesbian. That’s what coming out is now. Hi! No penis!
I mean, fuck.
Oh, and the other reason I’m doing this magazine thing is really mature of me. I got in a dumbass flame war with some transdude on the internet about the article in last sunday’s nyt. I thought it was ok. I have low expetations for the times. They used the right pronouns throughout. They didn’t feel like they had to disclose everybody’s former name. They referenced Judith Halberstam. That’s not terrible. I’ve seen worse. It’s something I can forward to my dad without upsetting or confusing him too much. But the main guy in the article was kind of a drama king. I mean, he was 18 or 19. College kids are full of drama. That’s life. But a bunch o internet trans dudes, were talking about how non-binary guys need to stfu. So, yeah, I’m going to be in a glossy magazine because I’m annoyed at a stranger on the internet.
Meh. You know what I hate about articles about ftms? The part where they talk about how it might be dangerous. There’s no fucking evidence to suggest that it is dangerous. Yeah, the long term consequences are kind of unknown, we’ve only been doing this for about the same amount of time that het cis women have been taking the pill. Could you imagine that everytime you read an article on the pill they talked about how it carried unknown health risks? You’d think this statement had nothing to do with the pill’s risks. You’d think it would have to do with wanting to discourage people from taking it. This is the same thing, but on a more unconscious level. It’s so transgressive, it OBVOIUSLY must be dangerous. It couldn;t possibly be harmless and easy to change your sex. It MUST be risky and intense and hard.
I also hate the idea that I’m supposed to like suffer a lot before anybody wants to help me out. Like, if you possibly can get through life without transition, then you should. Yeah, and if you can sort of see where you’re going, you dfon’t need glasses. Glasses are only for the REALLY blind. Not you. You don’t deserve them. We only do LASIK for people who’ve had 32 hours of therapy and have tried every other option. We don’t give meds to depressed people, because we don’t want to medicalize, um, mental illness. No, medical intervention is only the LAST RESORT on every other aspect of life, so it makes sense that thre’s an idea that trans folks shouldn’t have access. Oh, no, wait.
Let’s see, what other stupid ranting do I have left in me? Last night I dreamt tht I awoke this mornig to find a dark, full, curly beard on my face. Everybody around me was amazed that it had come in so suddenly. It looked fake, though. The 5 or 6 hairs I’m sprouting on my chin now, irl, are all kind of reddish. yay.
I’ve been having a series of dream about a recumbant, tandem trike that can be reconfigured into an inflatible canoe with a sail and pedal power. I’m goin to get it built in real life somehow. I don’t know how. It will be carbon fiber for weight. At the back, there’s a platform for holding the inflatible parts, other cargo and the dog. Maybe a sort of a ball joint, so it can turn tighter? I will find a way to make it happen!
Lately, I kind of suck at saving money. Everything here is really fucking expensive. I do the math and am horrified by the prices. but as the dollar goes into freefall, the prices are actually higher here every day. I feel like I should spend my money quickly while it still has any value at all. Quick buy Tv dinner while you still can!
Managing Extremes
Puberty . . . wow. I won’t say that being 20 years older than last time isn’t making it easier, because it is. But getting used to a really different hormonal situation still takes some time to get used to it, like probably several months. In the mean time, I’m kind of feeling at extremes. I’m not neutral about much of anything. Things are either amazingly great or the worst fucking thing ever. Sometimes my mind can change on whether something’s fantastic or awful within a a very few moments. It’s emotionally exciting and as such is completely awesome! It totally fucking sucks!
I try to moderate my responses when I’m around people, and this actually helps keep them moderated. So I’m trying to get out more. Also, music helps. My appetite for loud, angry punk rock has recently re-emerged. And, again similar to my youth, making music helps a lot. Even esoteric, algorithm driven, computer pieces that sort of play themselves. They almost help more because of the emotional detachment necessary to get them working, but the need for emotionality in evaluating the results. It’s like slowly releasing pressure from a canister.
Although, it doesn’t sound like slowly releasing pressure from a canister. It sounds like the canister has just fucking exploded and killed three people. Or something. Yesterday morning, I was actually shaking the music building. I feel a little guilty about that, because the studios are supposed to be soundproofed, but I kind of forgot about how low frequencies will travel through soundproofing and through walls and apparently disturb a class next door. Oops. My supervisor came by afterwards to see what was going on, mentioning only once his class was over that it had been hard for them to hear. Oops. He left, telling me to “rock on.” So maybe it’s ok in moderation, as long as I don’t disturb all his classes?
I could get night hours and not disturb other people, but then I would lose all the value of interacting with other people. Valuable interactions like, “what are you doing??” and “I feel sorry for your ears.”
A couple of years ago, Brum got a gigantic grant of something like £500000 to buy speakers and fix up the studios. And they did a great job. We can gig with well over a hundred discrete audio channels and speakers. It boggles the mind. When I was a wild and crazy youth, I really wanted to have a million dollars worth of speakers and A/D converters. Think of all the things you could do! But my laptop only has stereo outs, and it turns out that if you have 8 or 16 or N number of speakers, you have to carry them and all the cables and everything, so I learned to love stereo. I don’t think that I had a real idea of what to do with 60 speakers then, and I really don’t now. I mean 60 speakers! You can do it just to show off your vast speaker wealth (and thus how incredibly sexy you must be), but I think it’s better to justify it somehow. The piece you do with 60 speakers should really need that many of them. My colleagues all succeed at this, but I want to work within my pre-existing vocabulary of very artificial sounds. If you’re using recordings of water drops, you can just send a bunch to the upper left side and then that part of the audience feels like you’re going to drip on them. But what do you with sine tones?
Well, obviously what you do with sine tones is to come up with something that will hurt the audience! You assault them with sine tones! Out of tune, slowly phasing low frequencies shaking you from every direction! Muahahahaha.
I think I want to do an installation. There’s a lot of hierarchy and social control inherent in the concert hall paradigm. People come in before everything starts, sit quietly and appreciate your music, clap at the end and the shuffle back out when everything is finished. But 60 or 100 speakers really creates a physical space. There’s no one sweet spot in the middle where everything sounds best. There’s sounds coming from every direction. If you’re close to one particular speaker, that’s entirely different than being in the center or at another edge. I don’t want to dictate to people how long they should listen or where they should listen or how they should listen (or if they should bother at all). I’d like to give them something that slowly evolves over several minutes and gradually returns to it’s starting state and then re-evolves. That kind of music requires a patience that I don’t want to enforce. I don’t want to make people wait it out if they’re not drawn in on their own. I don’t want to tell them them what to do. Of course, anything presented has some hierarchy, it’s inescapable. I’ve got control of the speakers and they don’t. But it does have a slightly more anarchist edge to it when they don’t have to just sit and suffer through if they don’t want to.
So I want to hurt people, but in a non-heirachical, listener-empowering fashion. I can’t decide if that’s the most fucking stupid contradiction ever, or the most fascinating idea to ever emerge from the academy.
Cue Whining
It’s time for my biweekly whine about trying to self-inject. Expect to see this series continue every other week for the rest of my goddamn life.
So I go through a certain amount of psychological drama every damn time and I thought two things about this: 1. visually, there might be something interesting in there with art applications. 2. I’d have a lot of motivation to “be a man” and suck it up and just do it if the camera was running.
(Yes, I am indeed aware of how completely problematic “be a man” is. I have to emotionally abuse myself in order to force myself to stab myself. It’s problematic all the way around.)
In case you’re wondering, this actually turns out to be quite a poor plan. Not only are my hands kind of shaking, but I’m self conscious about it. Finally, despite knowing it’s usually a poor idea, I pushed the needle slowly into my leg. Because if you can’t force a blade quickly though your skin, doing it slowly is such a great idea. But I’ve done this all of 7 times before. Clearly, I know what I’m doing. I can tell, for example, that I seem to be deep enough because as I push down the plunger, nothing is leaking up around the needle.
No, that leaking will wait until I’ve pushed the plunger all the way down. Because if a little leaks while I’m injecting, it means the last day before my next shot, I’ll feel like shit, but on the other hand, I can just push down further and the rest goes where it belongs. Contrast this with everything looking fine until I remove the needle and all the T comes running out after it. It’s soaked through the bandaid I put on. It’s soaked through my trousers. Of course, it’s really hard to eyeball a greasy puddle of Cholesterol and guess how much less than 1 mL it is. Did any get in the right place at all? I’d guess about half came back out, but what do I know?
I’ve been procrastinating on calling a local doctor. I know I need to, because I run out of T in two weeks. But now I have extra motivation. Like, wtf now? Wait two weeks and hope not feel overly unhappily numb? Do it again right away and hope I don’t get way too much?
I hate needles. I hate doctors. I hate puberty. I hate acne. I hate psyching myself up to a shot. I hate psyching myself up to use a public loo. I hate not knowing any other trans folks where I live.
I mean, there are good things about transitioning. Many, many good things. I’m just not in that space right now.
And below . . . the final 4:20 of me trying to get myself to inject and finally doing it wrong. Hooray for the internet.
Cooking and Eating for Postgrads: Winter Soup
You’re poor. You’re stressed for time. You need to be mentally alert and able to produce quality output. You need to be as healthy as possible. You food fuels all of that and actually makes up your physical matter. So to be at the top of your game, you need to eat right. This is the first of series gives you pointers for what to eat and how to cook it.
Because I never measure anything and I’m too lazy to start now, I’m going to give very approximate directions. But you’ve gotten this far in your education, so you’re used to dealing with incomplete cues.
Winter Soup
Hardware
- Knife
- Cutting Board
- Pan
- Spoon
Food Items
- Uncooked Rice
- Dried, split lentils
- Olive Oil
- Salt
- Herbs (Italian, Herbes de Provence, whatever)
- Onion, or leek or other member of this family
- Some root vegetable: like half a Swede, a couple of parsnips, half a celery root or some combination thereof.
- 5 brussels sprouts or some broccoli
- Vinegar (optional (I prefer apple cider vinegar because it’s tasty and versatile))
- Garlic clove (optional)
- Half a dried pepper (optional)
Preparation
Put 0.1 or 0.2 liters (0.5 – .075 cups) each of rice and lentils in the bottom of a pan. Or use more. Fill up the pan with cold water. Add a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil (around a tablespoon (2 mL)). Put the pan on the stove on the lowest possible heat setting. Go away and do some work. You can do this for just 20 minutes, or much, much longer. It doesn’t matter. When you think of it, come back to the kitchen.
Add a couple of teaspoons of your herbs. If you’re going to add some dried pepper, cut it in half and shake the seeds out and throw away the seed. Drop it in. Cut up an onion or leek into small pieces that you would want to get in a bowl of soup. Add them to the pot. If you’re adding garlic, do that now too.
Wash and peel your root vegetables. Cut them into little pieces and throw them in.
Wash your sprouts and and cut them into quarters. throw them into the pot.
If you want to add a splash of vinegar, do it.
When the brussel sprouts sort of start to look like they’re blooming: the leaves are starting to separate a bit, your soup is probably done. Test a swede (or whatever root) to be certain. Also, add salt if you need it.
Hopefully, you’ve made more than you need to eat in a single night. After you eat as much as you want, stick the rest in the fridge and reheat it tomorrow. You can add more brussels sprouts the next day to keep the vegetable count high.
You’ve just gotten
You’ve got fibre and protein from the beans and rice. Omega 3 and 6 from the olive oil. A large portion of your 5-a-day from the veggies. The brussels sprouts, in particular, have a bunch of vitamins and prevent some cancers. I’m too lazy to calculate the cost for this meal, but it’s really economical: you get what you need for a good price. All of the vegetables are in season right now.
Basic Staples
What are non-perishable items that you’ll be using a lot of? Olive oil, salt (sea salt if you can afford it), herbs as used above, curry powder, dried rice, dried lentils.
You can almost live off nothing but those staples mixed with vegetables. Beans and rice together form a complete protein, which means that it’s just as good as the protein you get from meat or dairy, but much, much cheaper. I’m fond of lentils because they cook very quickly. Other beans also have protein.
Try This
Twice in the last week, I’ve had Brits complaining to me about how immigrants don’t even try to integrate and get too many social services. They don’t mean me, of course, they mean other immigrants. I think they might be missing some crucial data points when they make these allegations, so therefore, I encourage everyone who thinks this (regardless of their country) to try the following:
Apply for a visa to move abroad. You’ll need a mountain of paperwork. Also time and money. Start well ahead of time. If your target country speaks another language, try to also squeeze in language lessons.
Try to find a place to live in your country of destination. Write to any friends or friends of friends or friends of friends of friends to ask for advice on this. They might invite you to stay with them while you look. This is good, depending on visa requirements. Otherwise, look on the internet. Expect to pay 10-20% above market rent to anybody who is willing to rent to a foreigner via the internet.
Pack up things that you can afford to move. Sell, give away or store those that you can’t. Don’t know when or if you’ll have those things or things like them again.
Say goodbye to all your friends, coworkers, family, drinking buddies, fellow choir members, congregation and everybody that you interact with on a day to day basis. Promise to write and visit when you can. Don’t actually know when or if you’re moving home.
Arrive in the foreign country and have interactions with the police and foreign bureaucracy immediately while trying to register as an immigrant.
Immediately contact any person with whom you have any kind of connection in your new country. Hope they introduce you to all their friends.
Try to have conversations with new people around you who speak too quickly and use a lot of slang that you’ve never encountered. Hope they are willing to try to understand your odd accent.
Get used to being the alien other all the time. Best case: harmless and quirky. Worst case: dangerous. Many people will feel they already know everything they need to know about you based on your nationality. Any changes you make regarding their perceptions will be applied to your entire nationality, not just yourself – unless they know a lot of people of your nationality.
Try to integrate: feign enthusiasm for terrible food and nonsensical customs. If you try to retain your own customs or spend too much time around other expats, you may be failing to integrate fully and thus be responsible for discrimination against your nationality as group! Remember, everything you do reflects on your entire group! (Get rid of the idea of being an individual.)
Apply whatever funds you can to getting a whole new wardrobe in the style of your new country. Otherwise, you may be failing to integrate. However, be careful not to buy clothes of the wrong social group. How to determine which clothes go with which social group? Try really hard.
If you’re seen as quirky, play it up. Your failure to conform (accidental or not) will become charming. If you’re dangerous, well, try really hard to conform, but in a non-threatening manner.
Do you have a job? If not, start collecting all the mountain of paperwork you need to get one. Did you know immigrants are taking all their jobs? Since that’s true (hahahaha), it should be really easy for you to find something despite your limited language skills, strange accent, and wrong interview clothes.
Try not to miss all your friends and family too much. Remember, this new culture you’re living in is much better than your old one. If you don’t think that, you’re the wrong sort of immigrant and no good and should probably leave. You new language is better. Your new clothes are better. The new food is better. Your new leisure activities are better. The new weather is better. You should acquire some self-hatred, especially in regards to your culture, but don’t be too blatant about it or you’ll make people nervous.
Do you still have that accent? Why don’t you just go home? Can’t you even try to fit in?
How was the first year? Novel! Interesting! Ok, how the second set of holidays away from home? The ones they don’t even observe over here? How’s the third set of missed holidays? Did you know your best friend just got married to somebody you’ve never met? But isn’t this adopted culture just super, bloody, fantastic? You’re the right kind of immigrant now! Not like all those other immigrants who are much less quirky and aren’t even trying to fit in!
So, why are you doing this? On a lark? To get better opportunities for your kids? Because your home country discriminates against you? Because of warfare at home? Because your new country has a stronger economy? For educational opportunities? Because you really love pasties and wanted to be near more of them? For nicer weather? Because you really wanted all these government services that immigrants are getting (but obviously don’t deserve)?
Although I’m turning into a bitter expat, I actually really like living abroad. I get to see and do all kind of things. Sunday morning, I was completely lost, biking through the English Midlands at 1:00 AM – on a Dutch bicycle. I like the novelty, for sure. And the educational opportunities. And to know more kinds of people. And, as an artist, my economic prospects are somewhat brighter here. There’s some kind of Catholic penance aspect going on at an unconscious level too. Also, I thought maybe Europe had all the answers. I mean, they have nationalized healthcare and mass demonstrations for progressive causes. But they also have right wing politicians getting into office. They have xenophobia. They have greedy big businesses and corruption. Sometimes they have mass demonstrations for regressive causes. Europe is neither better nor worse than America, although some European forms of government are more democratic than the American system. But people are the same everywhere. As one Algerian-French woman said, to me a couple of years ago, «il y a des bons et des cons.» There are good folks and assholes wherever you are. This is true of countries and it’s true of immigrants.
I don’t know why people would think it would be appropriate to attempt to engage me in conversation regarding the worthiness of other immigrants. Because when I’m around, they’re thinking about immigration and I’m the “good” kind? Because I subconsciously make them nervous? To make certain I know I’m not entirely welcome? (Your government has already made that entirely clear, don’t worry.) But seriously, if you think immigrants have it too easy, you need to go abroad for a while. Not a semester in Spain while you’re an undergrad but something more protracted. Then we’ll talk.