ghosts are good company

last night i had a long and complicated dream, which isn’t so surprising… the surprising part is that i then remembered this dream when i woke up. this isn’t so much the “look at what a wacky dream i had” narrative as it is a “what does this mean about waking life?”

because in this dream i was having an argument with someone who was in to me, liked me a lot, wanted to be my friend, but flatly refused to accept that i was part of the trans community.

… and this is something that i’ve been worrying about a lot lately, as i explore what it means to be largely femme-identified in a female body. in my burlesque class i’ve been trying to choose between two pieces – one that’s pretty much just high femme, and one that’s obviously a genderqueer commentary. my analysis of these two pieces is that the genderqueer one would be easier and probably more interesting, and that the femme one would be more challenging, but also potentially boring.

i’m in burlesque 101 to challenge myself (i’m in this world to challenge myself?), but also to increase my strength as a performer. i was thinking seriously about starting hormones a few months ago, when i realized that the only thing holding me back was fear of societal repercussion (the alternate word that i was going to put there was “asshattery”)… i think that somehow i’ve come to believe that if i’m not challenged, if i’m comfortable, things aren’t worth my time.

this is everywhere in my life – work, relationships, gender – and it has such an amazing contradiction with my agoraphobia, i can’t even begin to fathom. i wonder if it comes from judging myself harshly for letting the agoraphobia win and not facing the challenges? and i wonder how the hell i might try to beat it.

this isn’t at all where i thought this entry was going to go. it was initially just going to be a reassertion of my place in the trans/gender/queer community, my role as a “militant genderqueer” … but then i wonder, if i feel the need to constantly remind everybody that i belong… am i feeling like i belong? obviously not. i have no way of knowing what everybody else is feeling, but i keep distancing myself from transmasculine spaces in particular because of my femme presentation – but other than being the most femme gay guy you might ever meet, i’m also pretty darn gay and man.

i don’t know, sweethearts. i have no idea.

my extracurriculars have been making life pretty tasty lately. there’s been knitting, which is always fun but extra-fun since it’s full of good queers! and then, mostly, there’s been choir which has been great. i joked when i decided to stay in olympia that it was for sophie and the choir(, which at that point was pending), and now that sophie’s up and moved to portland, i have to say that choir’s almost worth it on its own (not to say that i don’t miss sophie. i just got an amtrak free companion ticket and i’m going to make nat come with me to visit her and erica at some point). i’ve found it’s the same with a few of us – that even if we don’t want to go be social, we go to choir and leave feeling awesome.

nat’s feeling awesome RIGHT NOW because his top surgery funding has just come through – he can pay for it!, he just needs to make an appointment. (he says, not actually in a monotone, “i feel like jumping up and down for joy.”) i’m excited for that too, and also because i’m typing this on my new tiny computer. it’s named after our “darling, dearest, dead” friend otka, and has only fallen on the floor once – when i got butter too excited about the toy he was chasing around, causing him and otka to go flying. i’ve hidden that toy, but he’s since found another one.

……and now he’s been sitting in the dryer for the last twenty minutes.

national mentoring month celebrations went well, and i had a good time and learned a lot at the guiding lights weekend, as well. it’s really strange to go from the hectic-ness of january to a february that has almost nothing on my to-do list.

but, i’m sure i’ll figure something out. knit-n-nature is one thing i really want to do. fort flagler is one of my favorite places, and combining that with knitting? yes please.

… which reminds me that i should get back to the argyle sweatervest that i’m knitting for butter.

oh oh oh oh.

it’s been a hectic month, while at the same time being dead slow. work was crazy-busy, preparing for national mentoring month, until suddenly i was snowed in. for a week. it’s just now becoming safe to drive, and has been dreadful and wonderful at the same time – but the festivities for national mentoring month are definitely going to be lessened due to the loss of so much prep time. angst.

a major force in my world lately has been the olympia free choir. we’re performing our first show on january sixteenth:

Grand reopening

The Olympia Timberland Regional Library will celebrate its reopening from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Jan. 16. Local musicians and performers, including Kimya Dawson, will be on hand. The library is at 313 Eighth Ave. S.E.

this is the most snow i’ve experienced in my life, and i’m excited for it to go away so that things can get back to normal. it would be one thing if we were equipped to handle this at all, but… we’re not. nat and i walked over to see bolt (!! adorable) at the mall last thursday (the thursday before christmas), and the mall closed at six. i think it’s great that the mall was allowing their employees to, you know, get home safely – but i also think it’s a crazy illustration of how the snow broke down much of olympia’s capitalist system for a while.

butter has certainly been happy with the snow, though, because it means that i get to spend more time at home cuddling with him. at the point of this writing, he’s curled up in my lap with his nose buried in the crook of my elbow, asleep. he was drooling earlier.

i was going to plan a new-years-adventure for nat and i, but instead he is house sitting for his faculty, so it will be a new-years-stay-away-from-home thing (which will cost fantastically less money!) instead. we’re still trying to figure out what to do, if we want to go out or not, but i’m sure we’ll figure out something fun. free radio is having a new year’s eve disco.

i can’t wait until transit is back to normal again!

( giant weekend field trip part three – monday )

part three includes going to the remains of never never land with nat’s friend ann.  there are a few pictures here.  it was a sad trip lacking the touchstones of its sweet memories, so it was an appropriate that it was in the middle of the forest that my mother called and learned about my great-grandmother’s passing.

it’s, unsurprisingly, still hard.  i visited her in the hospital a week before she died – she’d had a stroke – and she was looking not-so-awesome, but having trouble breathing.  i felt guilty going on the field trip, rather than staying in town to keep visiting her, but i think it’s best that i had adventures rather than watching her deteriorate – she was always more of the adventure type.  you can see a picture of her from the fifties (when she was 47) here, and her obituary is online here.  it was amazing to have the entire family in town, many folks whom i haven’t seen since her 90th birthday.

butter is currently cleaning his paw while it rests on my wrist.  nat is sleeping. 

i’m hoping to, sometime in the next few weeks, stop by the schilter family farm in order to do some pumpkin-buying and hayriding.  i’ve been wanting to do the like ever since october crisped in, and upon some research decided on schilter – which turns out to be a good choice, as it seems like they were family friends… some of them were at the funeral and, in looking at the history of the farm, they share a swiss and dairy-related heritage.

since the adventures and stresses chronicled above, i’ve mostly been working and sleeping and working and sleeping.  it’s so chilly here!  i’m currently wearing polarfleece socks and still have freezy feet.

(parts one and two.)

i can see the matterhorn mountain from my window. my mother’s at a conference here at the disneyland hotel, so i’m relaxing in a bed that’s not mine. i need to get to work soon; i have proofreading to do, but for now it’s relaxytime.

i’ve been on an adventuretrip for a little while – on sunday i took a bus to the train to portland, then headed over to the zine symposium. the symposium was was pretty delightful – even if i was only there for a little while. it’s probably for the best, because had i been there longer, i’d only have managed to spend even more money. as it is i spent too much, but i also traded some of my button stock, and that comes together to mean that i have a pretty lot of awesome stuff. it was weird for me to be at the symposium because i really have no idea where to start with zines. i mean, there are *so many* that it’s overwhelming – even when it’s just single people with multiple zines they’ve written at one table it’s tricky figuring out which one of theirs i want. because they’re all awesome exciting promising.

so, um. end zine symposium tangent. i left my atm card in a machine up there, i realized as i went to pay for my dinner at the portland airport. fortunately i had enough cash, so was allowed to get on my plane to san diego.

in san diego i… bought a car. and filled it up with a bunch of my stuff. and then drove it up here.

full circle so far. on friday i’m driving up to san francisco, staying the night there, then picking up mr. butter banana saturday morning and heading to olympia, where i will take the giant step of… moving in with my boyfriend. i’m excited and worried and hopeful and we’ll see how it all goes.

i need to get a job.

i didn’t get the job. i mean, i might get the job in the future. but they’re not going to hire me as immediately as they had suggested. so i’m frustrated, and not sure where to go from here with some of my plans.

nat came home today and excitedly announced that he was surprising me with dinner guests (or an invitation to be dinner guests? i wasn’t paying too much attention, because). the response he got was perhaps not as he expected, as it involved me groaning (and whining!) in a fetal position. after consultation with said potential dinner companion as to where a low income health clinic could be found (yay after-hours and the lack of health insurance) and a visit to the doctor (i hate doctor visits), it was determined that i had a bladder infection. go go team awesome. i’m feeling a little better now, still not-so-great but stunned by nat’s rockstardom around a medical ‘emergency’ and the related anxiety/incompetence that builds in me around medical situations.

it was my mom’s birthday yesterday! it sounds like she had a great day, which is what she deserves. part of the frustration with changing plans is that i was hoping to see her this weekend, and now i’m not sure if i should head down there or not.

those are the things on my mind, this 3:35am. i’m heading back to sleep, and hope that your rest is better than mine.

although it’s been raining wonderfully for the past seven hours, and that’s perfect.

i’m almost afraid to tell you about how things are going well and seeming to come together, because it seems like whenever i tell you that things fall apart again. but. i’m pending on a job, have a pretty-sure-thing place to live, and am going to probably buy a car sometime next week. yes, after a summer of not growing up, this is where we get to. more plans, but pretty secure plans.

i’m still feeling pretty young, so recently graduated and recently smitten. every time i tell myself i’m not going to get seriously involved with somebody… i do. i mean, i was single for a year this time, which is… better for me than the, what, month or two between my last big relationships? but i’m surprised that i’m letting myself fall this hard. i’m trying my best to trust, but also to be prepared for implosion at any point. i think we both are.

so yeah. staying in olympia for a while. this boy also dreams of running off to amsterdam, so maybe (when our powers combine!) we can make that happen at some point.

i need to head to sophie’s house to water her plant. i like when she’s gone and i can sleep at her house, but i like even more when she’s in town and i can spend time with her! i have this evil plan that by being her only friend left in town, i can be her newbestfriend. don’t tell her, though. i’m keeping it on the down-low. only telling the internet, nobody else.

oh right, i graduated.

and got those seahorses in the previous post put on my body forever.

i’m antsily waiting to hear if i got a job – things sound promising, but they are taking their sweet time contacting my references. for now i’m (scouring job boards but also) living as if that is what’s going to happen, so i’m planning on couch surfing around seattolympia this summer (much like last summer, except under much lovelier circumstances).

yesterday was oly pride, which was ok – small town pride beats big city pride any day, except for when there’s not enough to do at littlepride and you’ve said hi to all your friends five times and don’t know what to do next.

so i went to a party and there was awesome music and square dancing (my favorite exhousemate was so amazed that i danced!) and babies and amazing gluten free cake, but then there was a “please save me there are no trannies at jake’s” so i went to the bars and the non-square dancing for a while.

saturday was the big gay bout, which was beauuutiful (and vagely offensive, if i want to read it that way), although the defeat of the pegacorns by the ligers was pretty devastating.

friday was solstice, monday the mariners lost to florida, which is just depressing, sunday was father’s day, friday was graduation, thursday i spoke up for washpirg to the board of trustees, tuesday i saw eli clare at u.w. (awesome) and then the sex and the city movie (not awesome), before that i was so swamped with school that i can’t begin to try to remember what was when. and the cosa nostra donnas kicked grave danger’s butt and i was sad.

so, we’re kind of caught up, yeah?

i have been very anxious and avoidant lately, which makes the world pretty awesome. it’s that time of the quarter – the new!shiny! aspect of it all has worn off, and very few of the classes are as great as i was hoping. still, i have a new momentary excitement, which is that i have a topic for my Big Paper for one of my classes. i’m going to look at gender variance and tricksters, since… those are, you know, things that this trannypuck is interested in. i’m a little worried about the trickster as a racialized entity, but since it shows up in so many cultures… that would be an interesting thing to research on its own. it’s kind of exciting to have a paper idea that actually feels like it could easily fill its required length.

so that’s exciting, and graduating in a few weeks is exciting, but oh my goodness the stress has been killing me. i’ve had two migraines since getting here (it’s a good thing i’ve still got my medication-toting habit, since it’s been at least three years since i’ve had one), and my body has been wracked with acid. fortunately, i’ve only had one actual panic attack, and even that was… under special circumstances.

work is over after friday, a ‘good while it lasted but oh golly glad it’s gone’ type thing. i still haven’t heard from either of my summer programs to know if i should, you know, buy a plane ticket… if things don’t pan out there, i’m thinking of staying in washington and maybe doing americorps or something, but i really wish that i had any sort of idea at all when i would hear from the programs!!

yep. here’s me frustrated. i’ve been knitting a lot (a lot) to try to keep calm – it’s not a horrible thing, really. it’s kind of fun to follow patterns, that is my new knitting thing.

i want to remember to share with you: some pictures, stuff from the kimya show, and… what the tinies i live with did for my birthday. these are all Important Things that i should get to once the world shifts back into… whatever the second-highest gear is.

tho bout was crazy. mad. wonderful. i got to work the door, organizing lines and making people sign waivers… it’s an overwhelming job. i spent the afternoon running up and down lines and bellowing news – we were sold out, we might be able to let a few more people it, we were really truly officially sold out. it was very strange to have interacted with nearly everyone by the time i sat down.

this week is calmer. no more flower job, less social plans. i’m waiting for my outdoor wheels to show up so that i can skate without paying the rink. i asked my grandmother if she wanted to come to skate lessons tonight, but… she didn’t.

my scarf is something like four feet long now, so that’s amazing to look at – knitting is really a place where you can keep an eye on your progress, where there is instant validation, if you will.

i’ve been planning my next few months, year or so, and i’m hopeful. i’m great at plans, and every so often i can make them pan out. this feels like one of those times – trans leadership summit is coming up, then evergreen, then summer. amsterdam. something. i’ve been eying a bunac visa for after amsterdam, i want to take a look at british housing/employment stuff and see if i could actually make it happen.

this is the part where i wiggle with potential.