[21] Literary brick wall. Help!

I’m trying to find an essay. Straight People Call me Sir by Trish Thomas, containing the following quote:

Straight people call me sir and faggots cruise me, but other butches say: “Aww, you’re not so butch.” That’s cuz I don’t go for femmes like I’m supposed to. This confuses people. When I’m out with a femme buddy, everyone assumes we’re on a date; when I’m out with a butch date, everyone assumes we’re buddies. That’s if I can even get a date, which isn’t easy for someone like me.

It appears in this article (‘G.I. Joes in Barbie Land: Recontextualizing Butch in Twentieth-Century Lesbian Culture’), and here (‘fuck yeah butches fucking butches’: awesome but short-lived blog).

The citation for it is: Thomas, Trish. “Straight People Call me Sir.” Quim 3 (Winter 1991): 21-257

But I can’t find the original text anywhere. Can anyone help me out?

[20] Pride roundup, part 1.

Worst jetlag ever.

Turns out the sushi was probably bad, too. The guys I went with both ended up with stomach issues, so my WEEK OF OUCH was not without company. I’m on antacids and omeprazole for the next week or two, and in the meantime I’ll whine a lot. But at least I probably don’t have an ulcer. (Seriously. It was a concern for a few days.)

Also, America? Get your act together and install public health services. Not being able to go to a doctor because I don’t have health insurance yet SUCKS. (Thank God one of Z’s friends is a doctor and gave some freebie advice.)

Anyhow, Pride was FABULOUS. We went to the Transmarch on Friday, along with about five-hundred people of all shapes, sizes, flavours, and genders. There was awesome music, interesting speeches, lots of banners, free condoms (there’s always free condoms at Pride events, no matter the country), and SO MANY TRANSFOLK. I spent a lot of the day being reminded of Ivan E. Coyote’s essay One Among The Many, specifically this line:

What was most amazing for me was the stuff we didn’t need to talk about. That was what touched me most, I think. Everything I didn’t have to say, all the things that didn’t need explaining. I didn’t worry about being understood or believed, because for the first time in my life I was surrounded by other butches. And they just knew.

I didn’t talk with much of anyone at Transmarch — I’m not a natural public speaker, and I tend to clam up awkwardly when nervous — but I did spend most of my time just drinking in the sights and sounds and being thrilled. In England I was the only transperson I knew, and before that, the only butch. I’m not saying there weren’t others, because of course there were — just none near me. Or at least none that I knew.

To go from being one alone, to one in five-hundred was amazing.

I marched, too, along with a whole bunch of others right through San Francisco with traffic stopped and cars honking approval and news crews taking pictures and people cheering us on…

Fabulous.

And okay, I felt lousy that night, but the day was amazing.

Saturday was Pink Saturday and we were supposed to go to a RENT sing-along in San Francisco, but it was cancelled last minute so we went to some kind of insane street rave near the Castro instead. Dancing, pot, and gratuitous nakedness were pretty much the order of the day. I enjoyed every minute of it. (No pot for me, sadly, what with the not-terribly-mentally-healthy family history, but the dancing was fun.) I got to meet Z’s girlfriend for the second time, and some of her utterly mad and slightly frightening friends (middle-aged lesbians with a fetish for puppy play). But my favourite part of the evening was admiring the leather-wearing, musclebound gay threesome performing some kind of avant guarde bondage scene hanging out of their living-room window.

I may have taken pictures.

Pride Sunday was a little more laid back, in a sunny, OMG!crowded way, and I won a Betta fish at a hoopla stall, as you do. He’s called Best Beloved Betta and is currently inhabiting a two-gallon vase, along with a small yellow ninja snail (every time you look at him he’s in a different place without ever appearing to move), and a plant. Pride Sunday will probably get its own post, because there was so much and it was all awesome. I bought my first packer, talked to a trans-counsellor who gave me some info about an organization specifically focussed on getting transpeople into work, and bought hilarious tee-shirts for my brother and his girlfriend (iTop and iBottom, both in the same size, colour, and style; I figure they can switch depending on the day*). I also got to see my ex-girlfriend JB and her new partner Quinn, who slayed me with an alcoholic mudslide of death drink. They’re a well matched set and very happy together, so I am pleased for them. And Quinn seems like good people; firm handshake, firm hug, dirty sense of humour. These are good things.

All in all, a great weekend. And there will be pictures later.

—
* Ba-dum tsh!

[19] Quickie lite.

Transmarch yesterday. Pink Saturday today. Pride tomorrow.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MORE AWESOME WEEKEND?

As ever, more on this later, when I’m actually awake.

[18] Six down, forty-four to go.

Rock on, New York.

[17] USA update #3 and coming out to dad (in detail).

new!flatmate Z is dying his hair for Transmarch, so I’m nabbing some internet time while he gets all blueified.

It’s weird living with people again, but mostly in good ways. The place is pretty tiny (Z just bought a house, so we’ll be moving to much bigger digs in a month, but for now I’m air-mattressing it in the spare room); it’s an open-plan kitchen/living room mash-up with two bedrooms and one bathroom. And five rats. Not a lot of room, and I keep accidentally breaking stuff by being the clumsiest person ever (okay, not a lot of stuff, but I did feed a section of Z’s favourite couch blanket to the rats yesterday — not on purpose!). I figure things will settle down a little when I stop feeling quite so crappy (still jetlagged and ill, but getting better) and Z has less omg!craziness going on with his realtors.

Having said that, I’m really enjoying his company.

I promised to go into more detail about coming out to dad, but a good chunk of the memory is drowned in blood-pounding terror, so we’ll see how coherent this is.

So, father’s day. A USA-themed diner in central San Francisco. Corned beef hash and coffee, and an inner loop of just tell him just tell him just tell him. My dad’s a good guy, but people get really weird about gender shifts. More so when they’re related to you. But I’m out of excuses not to tell him, and I want to do it in person, not by letter from ten-thousand miles away. Here we go, last chance.

“Dad? I, um–” voice crack. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

He looks up, eyebrows raised, and I can feel the ground fall out from under me.

“I’m really nervous about it,” I admit, hedging for time.

His eyebrows lift further. “Why?”

No good answer for that. I look at the table, at my hands, at his coffee, back up. “I’m–” Deep breath. “I’m transgender.”

Not loud enough. He doesn’t hear me. “What?”

“I’m transgender.” Stronger this time, even if my face is flushing.

His expression doesn’t change. Not a flicker. “Okay.” Then he smiles, laughs slightly. “What the hell does that mean?”

I get out something that has the words ‘transition’ and ‘male’ in it. I don’t quite remember.

“Okay, honey, whatever makes you happy.” He’s looking right at me, still smiling, edged with surprise but not the outright ‘I’m disowning you’ disappointment I was expecting.

I blink. “Really?”

He laughs. “Hey, it’s not my place to judge. If this is what you want, then it’s what you want. You know I love you to bits.”

I’m paraphrasing a little, but that’s very close to what he said. Then he asked me about the details — would I be taking hormones? getting surgeries? wouldn’t that be cheaper in England?* — while I melted into a puddle of relief on my side of the booth. Then we went to Starbucks and got coffee. And later he took me out to Macy’s Menswear section to get proper jeans. That was pretty much it.

I can’t decide if he didn’t entirely take it in at the moment, and will later. And then we might run into some issues. Or if he really is that blase about his only daughter becoming his oldest son. Either way, I’ve come out to all the people who really need to know right now.

I AM OFFICIALLY OUT.

—
*Hormones – yep.
Surgeries – top-surgery, yep, as soon as possible. Hysterectomy, yup. Lower surgery, probably not.
Cheaper in the UK – yes, potentially, if I could get it on the NHS. But that could take years, and I don’t want to wait that long. Plus, I hear extremely good things about the surgeons in the USA.

[16] USA update #2

Things that have happened in the USA so far:

SUNNY WEATHER. In Pacifica, land of fog. Except for yesterday it has been purely shorts and sun-headaches weather. I had to go buy a water bottle just to stop getting dehydrated. It’s a little on the pink side, but I plan to cover it in stickers.

SEALS. I went down to the pier on the third morning and chilled out with the crab fishermen, watching them haul in their catch, and this giant seal showed up under the pier. He was just hanging out, floating gently in the water right underneath me, waiting for tasty treats. The fishermen called him Scar Guy; he had a wicked foot-long scar down the lower half of his back, but it didn’t seem to bother him much.

CONVERTIBLES. My housemate, Z, is in the process of buying a new house, and his realtor took us to the office in her awesome convertible. I kept putting my arms up like a dork, just to feel the breeze.

GROWN UP STUFF. I’ve applied for my Social Security number (which took a hell of a lot more paperwork and proof than I thought it would — they wanted to see proof that I’d lived outside of the USA for a long time, so I took in my school records). I should get the number in two weeks, if all goes well. I also opened a bank account, which thankfully didn’t require an SS number. (About the only thing that didn’t. I can’t work, apply for health insurance, or even get a cell phone until my SS number comes through.)

FARMER’S MARKET. An outdoor market where local farmers sell their organic produce: vegetables, cheese, chickens, fruit, etc. Z and I spent a ridiculous amount of money, but there is fresh fruit in the fridge! Also chicken. Mm, chicken.

JET LAG. OMG, it has killed me this time around. Not so much being tired, but all kinds of weird little symptoms. Headaches, stomach pains, waking up totally ravenous at 0600 (and then descending like a swarm of locusts on the kitchen, because OMG OW STOMACH HURTS PUT FOOD IN IT), totally random nausea. It sucks. We had sushi yesterday and I was kept up half the night with rolling stomach cramps, like, from my pelvis right up to my ribcage in a little tidal wave of ouch. Seeing as everyone else seems to have managed their raw fish just fine, I think it’s my body being unhappy about new things.

SALTINES. As it turns out, the USA has an excellent cure for nausea — Saltines and Ginger Ale. Saltines are fabulous, and we need to get them in England. They’re just dry little cracker squares, but they work wonders. The Ginger Ale mostly tastes like Sprite, but it’s also very good.

TRANSGUYS. I met my first other transdude, S, who’s a friend of Z. We went out for sushi yesterday, and then hung out at S’s place to shoot the breeze for a while. S is much further transitioned than either Z or me — he’s about ten years on hormones, had his chest surgery, changed his documents, etc. Z is on T, but I haven’t started anything yet, so it was cool to actually get the chance to ask a real live dude what’s what. We’re going to the transmarch in San Francisco on Friday, so I’ll get to meet a lot more people then, too.

And now Z’s up and we need to take one of his rats to the vet (poor little guy has an abscess in his cheek), so more later.

[15] America and coming out to Dad (on Father’s day)

Quickie update.

Flight got swapped to an earlier date (my dad’s the pilot, so when his schedule changed, mine did too), so I’m NOW IN SAN FRANCISCO. The weather is gorgeous, everything looks like a movie set, and the hills are brutal. I may have hamstringed myself just going out for coffee.

(Dad and I are holed up in a hotel right now. I’m meeting up with Nezu later and moving all my stuff over to his, but it’s dad&me time until then, which seems appropriate for father’s day. The father is catching a fast nap right now, but we’re heading out to do ridiculous amounts of shopping soon.)

AND SECONDLY — drumroll, please — I TOLD DAD. I didn’t mean to; it just kind of fell out of my mouth over breakfast. But it’s out there and he barely even blinked. He just told me he loved me and he wants me to do whatever makes me happy.

I COULD WALK ON AIR, PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET.

I’m going to write about this in more detail when I have more time, but right now I feel so damn happy I could burst. I want to send out a big CAPSLOCK email to the rest of the family, just to blow their hair back. I COULD FIGHT A BEAR RIGHT NOW. (I won’t, because that would be cruel and I’d get massacred.) But it’s incredible what it does for you when the people you really give a damn about support your choices. I feel like I can take on the whole world right now, because my friends and family know, and THEY ARE AWESOME.

I HAVE NOTHING HOLDING ME BACK, GUYS.

AND I’M IN AMERICA.