Yesterday was BrumCon07(.5). It was supposed to be in October, but was delayed. They plan to also have a BrumCon08 next October. So, when I arrived, I expected complete disorganization, but this was not the case at all. I plugged in all of my cables in the morning, but didn’t get to do a sound check right away as they were showing Pink Panther cartoons, which were the cause of much hilarity.
The room would probably have been slightly too big for my monitor speakers. But, during the Pink Panther cartoons, it was clear that something was deeply amiss with the PA. The MGM lion roar was deafening, and the incidental music and dialog was barely audible. The bass levels might have been perfect for a dance party. But then when people started talking, later, with a mic, it was ok sounding. I was concerned, but not alarmed.
The first talk was about hacker stereotypes and hacker ethics. The speaker had been famous when he was a teen for being Britain’s youngest (arrested) hacker. At 13, he was committing credit card fraud to feed his family. He didn’t divulge too many details, but it sounded as if his parent(s) had drug problems and neglected him. He had a computer, though. At 13, he couldn’t get a job, but he could use stolen credit cards to get groceries delivered to his house. He got arrested and tried for that. I think this would have been a really good time for social services to step in. I know we English speakers are very keen to punish everybody and make sure that people who do wrong suffer harm. But really, in this case, a kid stealing money for food? That’s a good time to look at food stamps (or whatever they’re called here) and foster care and whatnot.
Incidentally, this is why it’s not entirely unfair for Americans to think of the UK as being set in Dickens novel. (Just like you lot think we’re a cowboy movie.) Because leaving a kid in that situation is Oliver Twist like. Really, everybody, social services are good things. They help people get their lives together. They give a smart kid a future. But no, the British state sent him back home, where he kept doing credit card fraud, eventually getting less altruistic about it, until the point where, as an adult, he stole £750000 ($1.5 million) by breaking into unsecured e-commerce servers and now has an adult prison record for hacking.
Alas, he fails to distinguish between his actions at 13 and his actions at 18. Anything he did was justified simply because he did it. Now tech companies are reluctant to hire him and this is totally unfair!! Right, step 1, lose the attitude. The banks he broke into, let him fix their problems for them. The movie Catch Me If You Can was based on the memoirs of a kid who did a lot of fraud and then started working for banks. That’s probably the best future for this kid. But seriously, what’s putting people off as much as the prison record, is the whiny, self-righteous attitude. You don’t have to actually be sorry about breaking into wide-open servers. But you could perhaps try to create that impression?
I think morally, there’s a big difference between ripping off a bank and ripping off a person. Breaking into a server hosted in somebody’s living room is different than breaking into a small company’s colo, is different than breaking into a big company’s server farm. The bigger the target, the less moral trouble, imo. This didn’t come up at all, even in a discussion about the morality/ehtics of breaking in. I would think the Robin Hood model would be fundamental to such a morally murky area.
So the speaker was whining about how his juvenile record is permanently available via Google. Which is why newspapers shouldn’t reveal the names of minors convicted of crimes. It’s meaningless to seal juvenile records if it’s going to be so easy to find them. The speaker seemed to think he was special in this regard. Imagine a group of people whose private business and embarrassing past was so easily available to anybody with a computer! Why, that’s never happened to any sensitive minority group ever before! I can’t think of a single other highly obvious example!
Yeah, I’m starting to have mixed feelings about search engines. Google has taken over a lot of government functions in the Silicon Valley. But this particular function is one that has more home in a police state than the benevolent, Medici-esque system that California and Google seem to be blundering in to.
More later . . .
NHS Mental Health Trust Shrink
In order to ration care treat trans patients, the NHS wants shrinks to be involved. Specifically, you can’t get a referral to an endocrinologist without a psychiatrist. Also, importantly, nobody wants to pay for anything unless you jump through all the proper hoops like a trained circus dog. So this morning I arose bright and early to go see a shrink.
The letter informing me of my appointment told me to go to the Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital (QEPH), which is right by school. It always struck me as highly convient, having the mental hospital right next to the Uni. I also often wonder how the queen feels about having a mental hospital named after her? There must be a great number of strange things named after her. The Queen Elizabeth Car Park. The Queen Elizabeth Strip Mall. The Queen Elizabeth Home for Rabid Puppies. Does she get any say in it? “Oh, thank you for the kind offer, but I was really holding out for a suspension bridge?” (Or can there be multiple Queen Elizabeth Bridges? Would that be too confusing? Could there be both the Queen Elizabeth Bridge and the Queen Elizabeth Suspension Bridge?) I mean, personally, I wouldn’t be picky, but I have many fewer people asking to use my name for their construction projects. Nevertheless, I think I would balk at a mental hospital. What are you trying to say?
Most Brits probably have odd ideas about America. I think they imagine the shootout at the OK Corral as being highly symbolic of the country as a whole, which is not an entirely unfair assessment. Similarly, I have various stereotypes floating around in my head about the UK, many of which come from Victorian novels. High school English classes typically spend one year on American Literature and then one year on British literature. The Victorian era seems to have been a golden age of writing in England. Or, at the very least, it’s the one most enshrined in American highschools. Costume dramas made by the BBC are also a major cultural import into the states. We all imagine a dark, smoky gray London with a polluted fog overhead, women in petticoats, Dickensonian beggars, murderers left and right (with Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple on their tail) and hulking brick asylums, filled with suffering upperclass women who can’t accept their station in life. Women who want to read too much. Women who want to be men.
Fortunately, I have managed to avoid being committed. I woke at an extremely early hour and managed to spill every drop of my morning coffee on the floor before I left for my appointment, alas and woe. The QEPH is in a typical largish medical building. They have automatic doors, which, unlike mental health centers in the Netherlands, are actually automatic. The reception was separated only by a normal counter, again, unlike the Netherlands which was behind glass. Maybe they think I’m crazy, but at least they don’t think I’m dangerous. That was nice.
The doctor asked me when I first knew I might be trans. I should have a set answer for this by now. I should write out my official narrative and post it to my blog. Then, when somebody decides that I need to see a shrink, I can just give them the link. I don’t fucking know when I first had gender issues, ok? sheesh. I really don’t want to draw any kind of line anywhere. I don’t want to validate all the homophobic bullshit I used to be subjected to. I don’t don’t want invalidate decisions of other butch women not to transition. When did I cease just being a butch woman? When I started taking hormones and told people to call me he. Not before. It happened then.
Lack of coffee, up early in the morning, strident (formerly) lesbian feminist, so very very american. I must have seemed a bit like Hillary Clinton. But, you know, if she were a bloke. I was confused by the questions and gave confusing answers. I’m pretty sure I annoyed the doctor. Nevertheless, I have successfully jumped through this hoop.
He explained that there were evaluations and waiting lists and whatnot. We don’t just give out hormones on demand to people who ask for them, he explained. Why the hell not? What terrible harm would befall the commonwealth is trans people had easy access to transition? None!
Alas, this is just one hoop. This doctor is not a gender specialist. I’m to keep seeing him while I wait to see the one specialist for the region. Who is not in Birmingham. The second largest city in the UK has no gender clinic. The waiting list is apparently months long. In the mean time, I can keep taking T – and I can keep paying for it.
I am so very, very, very glad I started on hormones while I was back in the states. Sure, we’re all cowboys and it’s the wild west and all, but that’s not all bad. The social worker in San Francisco explained that the city had no vested interest in saying no to trans people. What purpose would it serve? The city pays for it’s residents to get this service if they want and need it, like the NHS pays for Brits (and foreign students). And San Francisco found it was coming out ahead when it got rid of all its hoops. People who come in for hormones also get the other health services that they need. Happier people tend to take better care of themselves and are healthier. Does it save tax money to say no to trans people? No, quite the opposite.
I left my heart in San Francisco. Sometimes, I think it’s the only place in the world where anything makes any sense.
I felt good about myself when I left QEPH. I got through this round. I was treated more or less like a normal person. When I got back outside to the bike parking, somebody had left a nice, new, red mountain bike leaning on my bike. With no lock on it at all. You’d have to be crazy to leave that bike out unlocked like that! . . . oh right . . . I wish my issues weren’t treated as mental health issues.
More on Coming Out
Even as I wonder about how to deal with new acquaintances, there are old friends and classmates who are still using old pronouns. I need to write some sort of general coming out letter. Telling everybody individually is too much stress and I can’t rely on the grapevine. So I’m writing a general form letter than I can customize to, say, send to my entire department.
Here is a draft. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, that would be good. Mostly, I want to lay out what I expect from people and a tiny bit about what they can expect from me.
I am transgender. For me, this means that although I used to go by female pronouns and titles, I now go by male ones. When people talk about me, they should use male pronouns: he, him, his, etc. My correct title is now “Mr.” although hopefully that will change to “Dr.” within the next 3 years.
I’m currently in transition, which, for me, means taking male hormones. These have already lowered my voice and caused small changes to how I look. They should continue to change my appearance such that I give off male physical cues. Hopefully, I’ll be able to grow a goatee by the time I become Dr.
This is all working out very well for me. I’m much happier and more confident. Things seem “right” to me in a way that they haven’t before. I’m very relieved to be doing it. If you run into somebody using my old pronouns, feel free to share this happy news with them.
Some people are confused as to what pronouns they should use to refer to me in the past. From a practical standpoint, if you try to flip back and forth, you will get confused. It will be easier for everybody if you use “he” throughout. Also, while I’m not “stealth” (which is to say, silent about my trans status), I do want some agency about coming out to new people. So, especially if you’ve known me a year or less, please go by “he.”
I want everyone to know that I’m “he” now. I intend to be honest about my past, but it’s not necessarily the first thing I want to come up, as you can probably imagine. Everybody trips up sometimes, but please do make an effort.
The Uni has an information page about this online. If you have questions about transgender issues in general, you can start there or on wikipedia. If you have questions about me specifically, then you can ask. Sometimes people are concerned about what questions might be inappropriate. Fortunately, there is a very funny video about this issue. (The gist is that normal rules of politeness apply).
That video is so damn funny. The first time I saw it, I thought some of her boundaries were stricter than ones I want to draw. But it’s funny how experience changes things. Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that close friends get somewhat different rules than acquaintances. I’m not really close with anybody in Brum, so this applies broadly. I should probably take it out of a form letter, though.
Coming Out?
Many trans people view being trans as a medical condition or a birth defect, which they had fixed. Why would run around telling people that you used to have an embarrassing medical problem? Most of these folks are stealth. Their trans history is nobody’s business.
Other trans people, especially genderqueers, see their trans status as a big part of their sense of self. These folks are usually out. This is a new phenomenon.
Not long ago, trans people were instructed to change their name, move out of town and lie about their past. Genderqueers did not have access to transition in that era.
Fortunately, thanks to the work of trans activists and also feminism, normativity is much less emphasized and I don’t need to go into hiding. I’ve got the moving far, far away part covered, but composing is a high-profile occupation. If you have to be stealth, it’s incompatible. I’m not willing to walk away from the years I spent learning my craft and “paying my dues” as they say. So from a practical standpoint, I’ve got to be out. From an emotional standpoint, I do terribly at being stealth anything. Secrets eat at me. So I’m out. Which means coming out.
Thus far, I’ve mostly been telling people who knew me before. That’s stressful enough. My strategy has been to try to tell the biggest gossips that I know, preferably via email, and hope they spread it around everywhere. They fill in all my other friends, and then I am spared awkward conversations. There’s undoubtedly extra commentary that goes with the news, but that would happen anyway. I imagine that in many cases, it’s a sarcastic, “big surprise!”
But I also meet new people. And I’m at kind of a loss on how to proceed. Do I want to be out? Probably. I mean, I’ve been in transition for less than 6 months. I don’t want to lie about the previous 31 years of my life. And it’s kind of a big deal. On the other hand, it’s a lot to lay on somebody the first time I meet them. I had gotten in the habit of subtly slipping my girlfriend into conversations to let people know that I’m queer, but that doesn’t work at all anymore. Also, people who knew me before are still tripping over pronouns and I can’t grow any more than the most very pathetic moustache. I’m passing, but not overwhelmingly, if you know what I mean.
Passing is great, by the way. But not without it’s own issues. I keep worrying that somebody is going to read me. The last time I was out with a crowd of strangers, I was gripped by a sudden fear that somebody would suddenly stand, point, and shout “fraud!” But this is Britain. People are so very polite. Maybe they had already worked it out and were just humoring me and I wasn’t passing at all? How could it be that my interactions with men were so totally unchanged if I was actually passing?
I’ve always gotten on well with men older than myself. I find it easy to establish a rapport. When I started to transition, I worried that I would lose this. But then I started talking to a bloke who seemed to be 5 or 10 years older than myself and it was the same as always. Exactly the same. How could this be? What was going on? Had he somehow read me? Was he gay and flirting with me? Had I always been acting like and treated like a guy? Was I acting like a girl and him responding to that without consciously following? I was completely unnerved.
Another bloke I was talking to kept bringing up balls. He didn’t know why he kept talking about them. His unconscious mind was nudging him. I guess I could have taken the opportunities to mention that (like Harry Partch) I don’t have any. But I was already unnerved. Also, is that something I really want to disclose the first time I meet somebody? I have no idea – probably not in those terms. A straight friend suggested that I “just be a guy” and not tell anybody. But then, that’s 31 years of my life. That’s this blog. That’s the last piece I posted to my podcast. That’s a whole lot of hiding.
I gave the ball bloke my card. He didn’t write. Maybe he lost my card. Maybe I should take it all down: the blog, the podcast, everything. Just be a guy. People who google me can know and people who don’t won’t. Is that what I want?
Some people tell me that I’m brave. I don’t follow their logic at all. I’m just trying to survive the best I can. If that’s brave, so is getting out of bed in the morning. Maybe we’re all brave. Maybe we’re all passing. We pretend to be the person we wish we were and come to create and inhabit that reality. So what is coming out, in that case? I used to be kind of an asshole? I used to be a software engineer? I used to be a girl?
American Politics: Why the Continuing Democrat Contest is a Good Thing
People say it’s bad. Pick up a newspaper, that says it’s bad. turn on a TV, that says it’s bad. But seriously folks, when is the last time the mass media said anything even remotely accurate about progressives in America? (I hear crickets chirping).
First of all, why not ask the voters in states with late primaries? I bet they’re not unhappy to be making important votes. I bet they’re pleased as heck. For years, everybody only cares about New Hampshire. Now, suddenly, somebody is paying attention to them! More democracy is good! Let the late voters have their say.
Secondly, Clinton and Obama are vying for the Democratic vote. If the Democratic nominee were already selected, ze would be vying for the mythical swing voter. Or worse, Republican voters. Instead, the Democratic candidates are forced to talk about issues that actually matter to their party. They have to define themselves in opposition to each other, not just as slightly less-bad Republicans.
There are more Democrats than Republicans in America. If you look at party registration, you can see that. If you go out as a pollster and start asking people, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” the gap gets really wide, more than 10%. Most people don’t vote. A huge number of eligible voters aren’t registered. But, even unregistered, they consider them selves to be Democrats. It’s sad. Why don’t they vote? Well, in a normal election cycle, their issues are completely ignored in the mad rush for swing voters. Why should they vote if they get offered nothing?
So, suddenly, the left exists. The left’s issues exist. The majority of people in America suddenly exist. Clinton and Obama are forced to talk about issues important to the left. And as this drags on, they become associated with their pledges to the left. They can’t just suddenly forget about us. We made them address the Pentagon’s illegal domestic disinformation campaign to sell the war. Every issues that they address, which McCain ignores, that’s an issue that they well might have stayed silent on. And maybe they force him to address it. The political discourse in America is being pulled in a direction which appeals to Democrats.
I hope this goes all the way up to the convention. I hope they have to keep paying attention to the party they represent all the way through it, through November, through two terms in office. Progressive issues matter! Progressive issues are vital to the health of the country and the planet.
Of course, I write all this from a distant land, where I don’t get inundated with it. But every time I see the candidates jockeying for progressive votes I smile. And then I change the channel.
Edit
Nevermind. Arg. This is why I don’t pay attention. And moved across an ocean.
Direct to Consumer
Well, I’ve been doing this commission project for over a year now. There were a few months of it that I wasn’t pushing it very actively. Most of the people who got commissions from me, though, were people with whom I already had a connection. This is not surprising. You wouldn’t buy a CD from a band that you’d never heard, so why would you buy a commission from somebody whose music you didn’t know at all.
Still, I wanted to get the idea of the project farther out. I think the best way to spread is organically, by word of mouth and via social networking. But the idea of direct-to-consumer advertising is also compelling. So I approached the writer of the Comics Curmudgeon, which is rated as one of the top 100 American blogs. His blog has nothing to do with music. I asked him if I could trade a week long banner ad for a commission. Josh was extremely enthusiastic about the idea, so I made a one minute piece for him.
So far, everybody that’s gotten a piece has been happy with it, Josh included. I think that people are more likely to like a piece of music that they feel a connection to. Personally, I’m more likely to think positively of music written by bands I already like or by my friends. Everybody has that. This seems to be especially true for people who commission pieces. In this case, Josh was happy enough that he dedicated a blog post in which he recommended me and embedded a YouTube video I made of the piece.
It’s been a couple of weeks and the banner ad has timed out. The number of people watching the video has slowed to a trickle. I don’t know how many thousands of people saw the post, or subsequently subscribed to my podcast, but I know that more than 3800 watched the video, which is a fantastic reach for me. I got zero new commissions.
This is exactly why my career in marketing was so short (no really). While it’s true that I want to reach everybody, a one-off ad in a totally unrelated medium is not the way to do it. So my failure to get any new commissions is not necessarily an indication that the project is doomed. Most people have to hear about something three times before it clicks. Commissioning music is a totally new idea to many people. So if I want to get people to understand the idea, I need to make certain they hear about it multiple times. This effort was, therefore, much too small to work. However, there’s another problem in that I can’t do 100 commissions in a week. I can do maybe three. If four thousand people suddenly understood what I was up to and thought it was cool, if less than 1% of them tried to commission me, I’d be swamped.
However, one thing that I learned when I worked in marketing is that competition is correlated with growth of the category. For example, if there was just one time of sugary, fizzy water, the manufacturer might have to explain to people why they would want to drink such a thing (I, for one, am unconvinced it’s a good idea). However, having multiple pop companies means that more people have heard of pop and the overall demand is higher. Is this cause or effect? Who knows. However, in the case of commissioning music, every other composer who starts doing this is also letting people know that such a category of goods exists. So I want more people to start doing this. I can’t say for certain that it’s going to work, but the startup costs are low.
I wonder, also, if I should retreat to a lower cost. At a time when people are losing their houses and the price of food is rising, commissioning noise music is definitely going to seem like a luxury.
Finally, while my advertisement experiment failed to gather me any new business, I’m still quite pleased with the number of ears that I reached. A number of them probably considered it to be a novelty, but that’s the path musical genres take to reach popular acceptance. One small step for noise music, one giant leap for my hit counter.
Naked Image
When I was last at the Tate Modern, I saw some video by Francesca Woodman from the 1970’s. She had a piece where she had stretched butcher paper in front of the large window of her loft. Light was shining through the window and through the paper. She stood naked behind the paper, so that her silhouette was visible and drew on the paper from behind. Then she tore the paper in a kind of provocative way, revealing increasing sexualized parts of her own body, until finally she stepped through it, tearing it all away and walking off frame.
I’ve been thinking about this piece a lot. I was first drawn to it because of the attractiveness of the artist, but the viewer is being asked to consider several things. By drawing on the paper, I think she was trying to create an idea of it as a canvas. We have a cultural idea that artists express themselves in a pure, cerebral form through their art. The canvas becomes almost an extension of self – but specifically, a very dualist kind of self. The canvas is not about the body, but about the mind.
Hélène Cixous argues that all binary oppositions eventually come back to gender. So when we put mind and body into opposition, immediately, we assign one of them to male. And, indeed, historically (and currently, alas) men are mind and women are body. These oppositions are also an implicit comparison, so the mind is more noble and pure than the body. The (male) artist is thus a triumph of masculinity. He expresses the true, the valuable and the pure of himself through his canvas. But if this is implicitly masculine, then women have greatly reduced access. They’re not artists, they’re women artists and that’s something different. Their body is thus always made visible, not just because it’s a site of difference, but because women are presumed to entirely be of and about the body.
By allowing light to filter around her naked body and through the canvas, Woodman makes this explicit in her work. The strip-tease aspect of her tearing makes a connection to sex and femininity even more explicit and invites a feminist analysis. Her drawings are torn to bits to reveal her body / herself, which / who then leaves. She breaks down the mind/body dichotomy, and, in so doing, her work is placed in the male gaze, which is not a site of empowerment. But she remains in control. There is no operator behind the camera. She controls what we see and when we see it, as much as she can, since the paper tears in unpredictable ways. By working within the male gaze, she makes it visible to the viewer.
I was also drawn to the aesthetics of the piece. It’s shot in her home. The attachment of the paper is ad hoc. The video is actually a series of takes. She tried this multiple times and put several of them on the finished tape. I like the experimental nature of it. I like that it’s about process. I think the aspect of it being in her home, which is an intimate setting (I mean that the way that small chamber music venues are described as intimate). She lets us into her life in a small way to make a statement about herself, her art and art in general.
I also admire her courage. There’s no metaphor for being naked on camera because it is the metaphor. She is actually uncovered, but never uncomfortable. It’s amazing.
So as I begin to think about making little films, I keep thinking of hers. I also think of her relationship to her body and the camera. I’ve spent most of my life striving to remain covered, living in my head. I don’t think I have the “wrong body,” but I think my identity was at odds with aspects of my body – not even in a way that I’ve been fully aware of. Which is to say, being naked on camera is not something I would ever have considered in a million years. No. No. No. What are you kidding? It’s another door that was closed – right next to all the doors that disallow crossdressing. These doors are starting to open for me. (Note that they should never have been closed in the first place.)
I’m working on a video of me giving myself a shot. It is uncovering. I thought of her video for courage to continue. My nakedness, though, is metaphorical. Do I want to put out there a picture of me in my bed room? Hesitating? Pausing? Failing?
Why do I want to do it? I have no idea. I try to get things out of my head sometimes and if you that with art, then how you do it is by putting it in other people’s heads. What does it feel like to have your identity hinge on an injection when you have a fear of needles? Well, here’s one answer.
I’m considering doing a piece with a bunch of still photos, slowly fading from one to another. In them I would be in the same location, in the same pose. I would start wearing a suit, hat and jacket and in each picture, remove one item until I was wearing nothing. (Why do I want to do it? I have no idea.)
I pass when I’m clothed. People see me as a man, which is what I want. But I’ve only done hormones and only for a few months. My body is ambiguous. Not even as ambiguous as I would like. It would be a stripping away of identity and of self. (Why do I want to do it? I have no idea.)
What is sex? What is gender? They’re both culturally constructed. My very body is queer now. I call all of these oppositions into question just by existing. My queer self is inscribed on my person, on my physical being.
I don’t want to be a shock value, though. I don’t want to be daytime TV. I don’t want to be a women’s glossy mag. I don’t want to be a bad joke. I want to be a person, clothed or unclothed. Woodman was dealing with the same sort of issues in her work, about how her image is transmitted and received. She can’t control what the perceiver thinks. Somebody like me could come up to it and think , “ooh, hot woman.” But if that person engages the work, they walk away with more than that. She does with pacing, timing, repetition of the same scenario. She’s got some advantage over me in that we, as a culture, acknowledge that cisgender women’s bodies exist.
So, I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I’m looking for thoughts.
Sharp
If you’re wondering about that photo shoot magazine business, well, they haven’t paid me yet, so I’m going to wait to mock them. But I got my T shot finally on Monday (and I feel so much better).
On Monday, I showed up to my doctor’s surgery and after asking the receptionist if I could speak with a nurse, I asked her if, as a favor, she could please change me from “Miss Celeste” in the NHS system to “Mr.” They have to use my legal name, fine. But titles aren’t legal. And every time I got something addressed to “Miss Celeste” I felt like they had tied a pink bow around my neck. “Mr” would help. A lot.
The receptionist looked at her computer. “Is your real name ‘Celeste’?”
“uh. yeah.”
“Are you from the states? Are you American?”
“yes . . .”
“Oh! Well, over here ‘Celeste’ is usually a girls name! That’s probably what’s caused the confusion.”
I did not start laughing. I said, “My mom was a big Johnny Cash fan.” Which is true, but I wasn’t exactly a boy named Sue. I went to sit down and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the receptionist get more and more confused looking until she went into the back. And then my name came up.
The surgery has a sort of an announcement system. “Would so-and-so please go to room 15?” I couldn’t tell if they said “Miss Hutchins” or “Les Hutchins” or what. They pronounce “Les” like “Lez”, not like “less.” And “Liz” is also a name, which sounds very very much like Les. It’s confusing. But my last name was clear, so I went to the room.
The nurse showed me how to open the ampoules. They’re made entirely of glass. You have to snap them open and be careful not to cut yourself. But they snap cleanly. She told me not to worry about bits of glass getting into the T. I asked her if she could just do the shot for me, since she’d opened the container.
She agreed and I asked for it in my bum. It’s a good idea to rotate injection sites, because of scar tissue and whatnot. Since I use my legs, I thought I’d ask her to do someplace that I can’t reach. She was anxious that I not lower my trousers in front of the window, but then she just pushed the needle in. No gloves. No hand washing for her. No antiseptics for me. Not even a quick jab with the needle. It just went right through my unsterilized skin. I’m surprised the British aren’t ultra-cautious about this, like they are about everything else Is it just her? I guess I don’t need to be too paranoid about that part then.
I asked if I could just have a few needles instead of buying a hundred, so she gave me some (yay) and then asked me how I dispose of them after using them. I explained that I put the cover back over them and put them back in the little plastic pouch they came in, so nobody would get stabbed, and threw them away. “Oh no, you’ll go to hell for that!” she said.
My friend has a joke he loves: There are Jews in hell for eating bacon. There are Catholics in hell for eating steak on Good Friday. And there are Anglicans in hell for eating the meat course with the salad fork.
I won’t go to hell for being all kinds of queer, I’ll go to hell for not following proper safety protocol with used sharps. She told me I need a sharps container and wrote me a prescription to get one from the pharmacy. When I saw the name on the scrip, I knew my conversation with the receptionist had not been in vain. It’s written for “Miss Les.”
Sound and Fury
I went to a noise show tonight. It was really really fucking loud. That was probably the primary adjective: loud. It was brilliant. I mean, most of my classmates did not fully agree with this assessment, but I think there’s a certain value to just hearing really fucking loud noise once in a while.
Also, there was a full room of people in the audience. A whole bunch of people turned out to hear really fucking loud noise. And there was a table selling records. I talked to the record people. There’s a local record company that just does noise music and dark ambient. Brilliant. I decided to purchase a record with the headline act on it. (It’s less fucking loud on my home system, but it would still be a wall ‘o noise.)
The record table was lit by candle light. The kind in those red glass containers you see at nightclubs and cabarets. I got the wrong CD. I didn’t notice until I got home. So I was slightly disappointed, but still popped it into my computer to put it into my itunes library. I started typing in the track names. “iii. is it wrong to love a transexual”
. . .
You know, I was in a really good mood. I had a couple of pints of beer. I hung out with people. I had some really good chips. I heard fucking loud noise.
. . .
It’s like somebody hit the pause button on my enthusiasm. I stopped breathing for a minute. I typed in the rest of the track names. And then I hit eject.
so if anybody wants a CD of dark ambient or noise, it could be yours. Unless I drop it in the trash first. I don’t think I have the energy to try to get a refund from the record company. Alas, I’ve had this conversation before.
It’s always, like, I’m excited about something and then all of the sudden, wham.
I was reading a scifi webzine. And wham. I spoke up. The editor literally told me not to worry my pretty face. The writer gave me a little lecture on what “passing” means, as if, possibly, I might not know (where would minorities be without white straight men informing of us of our own subculture?). And then explained he couldn’t transphobic because he’d had a transgender girlfriend once. Just like I could never possibly write or say anything racist because of my girlfriend. And why no straight guy could ever possibly be sexist.
I feel like the ur-queer lately. Somebody says something about gay men, and hey, I’m a queer man. Somebody says something about lesbians, and I was a lesbian. Somebody says something about about women, and I was a woman. I’m noticing sexism more than I used to. The scifi story I worried my little head about . . .. I got as far as a minor character sketch in which the main baddie was shown to be bad because he owned a woman that he used for sex. Your worst nightmare is just an aside.
Sci-fi can be dystopian. My favorites are. Sci-fi can contain slurs. Again, Man in a High Castle is slur-filled and completely dystopian. And it’s fantastic. But they’re not asides. If you’re going to have the third person narrator use a slur that’s currently in common usage and just throw in as an aside human trafficking, well, it’s fair to assume that the writer hasn’t really thought things out.
But, being ur-queer isn’t not all negative. I feel solidarity with everybody too. I feel like I can kind of fit in with any group of people. Well, as much as an Esperanto-speaking transsexual is ever going to fit in, if you know what I mean. I feel more at ease around people than I’ve ever felt. It’s a weird transition, to being much, much happier and at ease and, at the same time, a gigantic target for hate. So alien other as to not really even be a person anymore. And yet, I can go to the pub, have a pint and chat with anybody.
I need to toughen up and not let the little shit get to me. And I need to be prepared for it coming from any direction at any time from any one under any circumstance.
It’s a lot to get used to.
Feeling Sleepy
When last I posed about my adventures with the NHS, I had just gotten a prescription from a completely uncertain doctor. She had no idea if she’d written me the right amount of the right type of T nor whether or not I should have to pay for it. She didn’t even know what kind of needles I would need. She went to ask a nurse but couldn’t find one. She promised me a referral to an endocrinologist, so that somebody with experience could be checking on things. I agreed this was for the best.
If I had stayed in the states, I would have 10 weeks of testosterone left on my initial prescription, so as long as I’m getting an equivalent amount to what I was first prescribed, it’s ok that nobody has checked up on me yet. And I went asking around on the internet and the doctor had, indeed, given me an equivalent amount. So I took my prescription note to the chemist (British word for “pharmacy”) to get it filled, the day before I was due for my shot. They had to order it.
I find injecting to be stressful as hell, so I didn’t actually hurry to pick it up the next day. I arrived on Friday, a day late, to get my T. The pharmacist gave me 3 ampoules and 30 needles! But they were insulin needles. They only held 1 CC and the needle part was about half the length needed for intramuscular injections. And, I mean, I like to have spare needles, so I can practice on oranges a few times before I stab myself, but ten per shot is a little excessive. Ten per shot of totally the wrong needle is beyond useless. The pharmacist (chemist?) said he could order 2 CC needles for me . . . in a case of 100 for £20. That’s a fairly major investment on my part, not just economically. If I stay on the same kind of T, instead of switching to the once every three week formulation most frequently used by European ftms, that’s enough needles to last me 4 years. If I practice with an orange every time, that’s 2 years worth of needles. I was kind of hoping to switch from injecting to some other form, like a patch or implant or whatever. That’s a hell of a lot of needles. He promised to order them. They would arrive on Saturday. Two days late for my shot.
I got home and found I had one needle left from before. yay. Obviously, I’d prefer to have an extra (one time I took the cover off of a needle and promptly gouged into my thumb. So much for that needle.), but if I only have one, then I only have one. I watched a youtube video about how to DIY it, just to double check that I’m doing it right (more or less, I’m fine) and I put on some Steve Reich phasing music to feel happy and relaxed. I did the prep. Wash my hands. Figure out where I’m going to stab myself (left leg). Clean it. Clean the top of the ampoule before . . wha? What’s this? It’s made entirely of hard plastic. Where do I stab it? How do I get the T out of this thing?
I looked at the clock. 17:15. I looked at the web page for my Doctor’s Surgery (British word for “office”). Oh christ, they’re closed until Monday morning.
I was already a day late.
I don’t know how to describe what this feels like. People who have taken the pill or whatever can probably relate, on some level, since they’re messing around with their hormones also. The goal of the T dose taken by an FTM is to cause masculinization, but also to overwhelm his ovaries so they just give up. It’s early menopause. Which is fine, because he’s got new artificial hormones to keep him going. It’s better living through chemistry! Except that’s only as good as the pipeline coming to you.
When I started T, I still had a fair amount of anxiety, so I’d never typed the name of my drug into google. I thought reading the information might freak me out, since, you know, I got freaked out kind of easily. Oh my god, this is the most sought after steroid for weightlifters. There are body builders who take more every day than I take in two weeks. Well, I guess I don’t need to worry about dying of an overdose or something. They all report the same effect I did. More energy. More stamina. Easier to make muscles. All this physical energy and strength.
Missing a dose for several days, though, isn’t just going back to baselines levels. My baselines hormone levels have been shut down. It’s going to zero. Not only am I below the normal male range, I’m below the normal female range. I’m at nothing. I feel like. I don’t know. I want to take a nap. A really really long nap.
I feel like I’m underwater, somehow. You know how it sounds when you’ve got your head underwater and somebody’s shouting at you? You can hear it, but it sounds strange and distorted and barely understandable. I feel like that sounds.
I can get through a few days of this with tea (caffeine is a little like T. (if only there was T tea)) and chocolate. In Harry Potter, you recover from dementors by eating chocolate. It sort of revives you from having stared into the abyss. That’s the most true part of those books. But, now, I dunno. I got nothing. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to walk around. I don’t want to make music. I don’t want to make tea. I don’t want to eat the chocolate sitting by my bed. I just want to sleep. And not, like, with a longing, just like a default. It’s like staring in the abyss, but the nothing staring back at you isn’t infinitely horrifying in it’s emptiness. It’s not horrifying at all. It’s like the abyss is made up of shuffle board courts and corporate team meetings and sandwiches made of wonder bread and waiting rooms and BBC Gardening shows. It’s not dread, it’s complete numbness. The mummy’s curse causes dread. But being a mummy is all white bandages and laying in a box and nothing ever happening, just a really long nap.
A half hour goes by and I haven’t even noticed. I could stare at the wall for days.
Of course, some part of my body has noticed this state of affairs and is rousing itself to action. It’s kicking at my ovaries telling them to wake the hell up and do something about this. I really don’t want them to wake up. stay asleep. Stay asleep. It’s only another day. I’d rather be a eunuch.
Is it bad for me to oscillate like this? How the hell should I know? Probably it’s not good. It doesn’t seem like it could be. When I made a list of pros and cons, this possibility was at the top of the con column. I’m tethered to doctors and prescriptions and chemists and needles and and and. Not that being anxious all the time constituted total freedom.
I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. I’ll get through this. I don’t regret my decision. Not that I have the energy for regret.
I want to go abroad this summer for a few weeks. I don’t see how I can work that out and my prescription at the same time. Especially since the referral that came was for a shrink. I have to jump through some hoops in May and probably June. There must be a way, obviously. I’m sure I’ll work it out. And it’s not like I don’t have a fuckload of options. When I go to play a gig in the states in July, there’s 10 weeks of T I’ve still got prescribed to me. I’d rather not have to fork over the $$ for it, but I know it’s there if I get stuck.