This doesn't have a title.

The girl and I had a fight last night.

Now, I don't know what you consider a fight, but what I consider a fight is any discussion in which two people disagree to the point that voices are raised or tones become cold or one or both parties end up crying. This was all three, so I consider it a pretty significant fight, even if it wasn't over anything significant at all, or even over anything either of us wanted to happen. Which I realise is all very vague, but then you have to understand that what I mean is that we were fighting because she needed to leave and go stay someplace that wasn't at my house and she didn't want to leave and I didn't really want her to leave and my being torn about this ended in me yelling at her and her getting upset with me.

You'll be happy to know that things are okay now, because we have this funny way of crying all over each other (on my end, it apparently usually only happens when she's wearing my shirts) and then we cuddle and we're fine. Last night was made all the better by watching videos of adorable puppies and kittens and Green Brothers (we are Nerdfighters, for the curious) on YouTube. And then cuddling. And kissing. And doing all that sort of sickly 'relationship' stuff.

In bigger news, I've been talking with the girl and with Pookie and with Pookie's boy, and we're planning--cross our fingers, knock on wood--on moving into a place of our own by mid-summer. It looks entirely possible. Which is insanely exciting and terrifying.

I've come to learn that you only have to see a therapist for three months according to current standards of healthcare for them to be able to recommend you to start HRT. Now I'm at the dilemma of how to time it out. Which isn't even a very big concern right now because I can't see a therapist until I have my own insurance or the money for regular visits. All in good time.

The name issue and the plural/median issue and the gender-fluid issue and all this other stuff keeps cropping up, but in general, I'm trying to learn to not think about it too much.

Now if you'll excuse me, this is all the update you get since--what, September?--because it's officially Christmas Day, even if it's nearly 3 AM, and I have writing to do before I can even think about sleeping. Reading so late at night (and finishing a book, especially) will tend to do that to my brain.

On names and identity.

I've been thinking a lot about names lately.

Mostly, I feel like if I could just do without a name or pronouns, I would. I am starting to think that my favourite pronoun is "that one", as it's perfectly gender neutral without being a word people are unfamiliar with. (I still like zi and zir. But no one's heard of GNPs.) I don't like "it", and I don't like the singular "they", though that last one might be more appropriate than I had previously thought.

I'm not a multiple. I have characters in my head, to be sure, but they're not alters. They're not really other personalities, though there are times when they come damn close. It's hard to explain. What I am is gender-plural, I think. I've noticed lately that I respond differently to different names depending on the mood I'm in or what gender I feel really fits me from day to day.

This is mostly a product of the fact that my gender is fluid and I've been shifting away from identifying with the name Connor lately, even though it was perfect for a while. I'm not feeling as overtly masculine as I was when I took it on. I'm shifting back towards feeling like a Sarah, though that's still not quite me. I respond to Taylor's name always, even when it's not directed at me. And right now, that's the one that seems to be fitting on and off.

My Bunnie suggested that I just go by Anshin, since it's been my online handle since forever and a half. (Ten years now. Damn.) It still feels too feminine to me, but it is still more me than Saturday, or any of the other names that have come and gone as online handles.

The other day, I was feeling more like an Anthony than a Connor (my full male name is Anthony Connor Evans). It's a different attitude, but still a decidedly masculine one.

My ability to identify with certain names shifts because each name is a different identity to me. Even if it's nothing I can explain, it works. I understand that labels aren't important, so long as you know what you feel inside. But the labels are how you convey that to everyone else. Language can be such a barrier. Labels have meaning that can be explained and traded. And even though names are a sort of label, I kind of feel they're a more personal label, because their individual meaning only makes sense to the person responding to the name. So I feel like my shifts in gender tend to suit names better than labels.

Mind, I still feel more masculine than feminine. My personal fluid chart runs from neutral/androgyne to about 80%masculine. I'm never 100% male inside, and I rarely shift past about 10% feminine. So most of the identities or names I've picked up correlate. I still respond to Sarah because I've had that name for nearly 23 years, so I'm a little attached to it. I respond to Taylor, and Connor, and all manner of other names that belong to me and my characters and whoever else.

I feel like I should start wearing around "Hi, my name is" badges all the time.

Or at least starting conversations with my friends with the phrase "I'm ___ today".

Really, I'm beginning to understand that I'm a very complicated person, and nothing is as easy as putting a label on myself and expecting it to stick. I've always been so fluid in everything. There's no reason this should be any different.

On semi-fresh starts.

Not quite a clean slate, but I'll take what I can get.

I've emailed all of my professors officially coming out as trans so that they'll get my name and pronouns right. Of the five I've emailed, I've heard back from three, and they are all totally cool with this and seem nothing but helpful.  Problems may arise if I find I'm in class with lots of people I know, which given I'm a senior and am pretty much locked into my major/minor field classes, I probably will be.

My Bunnie was here for two weeks and headed back to N.C. about a week ago; she was supposed to only stay ten days, but ended up having to reschedule her flight because of a snafu with her boarding pass.  I wasn't complaining.  Neither was she.  We spent our surprise time after the airport trip fell through sharing lunch at Red Lobster and going to Barnes and Noble.  It was excellent.  As much as I love the idea of her being my girlfriend, I like her being my girlfriend in real life even more--I love the fact that we can hold hands, that we can kiss, that I can have her in my arms and everything feels so right with the world.  I've wanted this for way too long.  Of course I'm taking advantage of it.  I miss her, but I'm okay with her being gone this time, because she has her cell phone, which means I can call her without it being long-distance, we can text each other, and she has internet access, so it's like she's not really that far away.  Besides.  I'll see her again in a month when the Vampire group goes to New Orleans.

Speaking of vampires, I'm getting my fangs.  The binder is working out excellently, and now another piece of my identity should be falling into place soon.  I love the fact that my mom understands roleplay and what it means to me; she actually told me tonight that she doesn't get moms who don't get roleplay and that it's harmless and fun and we're just enjoying ourselves.  I love my mother.

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm all kinds of nervous about it.  This is the first time I'll have gone out in public actually presenting male with people knowing I'm presenting and people who know to call me Connor, and who know that I'm a guy, more or less.  I'm terrified.  It's kind of been triggering my dysphoria tonight, because I'm in a panic about looking perfect tomorrow, even though looking the part is only half the battle.  I did cut my hair again, though.  Hopefully it'll dry straight and fall right tomorrow and I'll just get lucky.  I've been PMSing for nearly a week now, so you just watch me hit my Lunar Cycle tomorrow and fuck everything up.  It'll be great.  And typical.

And on the subject of people calling me Connor.  I love my friends.  The girl's learning to call me Connor, my best friend Pookie was the first to make the switch and has been doing so consistently. (She also, after a fact, came up with the term 'chickadude'.  This is the same person who says that since I'm still fairly genderqueer, I'm a Transformer, as in the robots, and that if I'm dressed like a girl, I'm a drag racer instead of a queen.  She is the best at ridiculous gender-neutral terms.)  And my Foxy Lady has also been pretty consistent and awesome.  My Lil Sis has started calling me her Big Bro.  And I'll get my Badger to play along eventually.  No worries.  All in all?  Pretty damn good bunch of people, these guys are.

It's two in the morning and I am really damn sleep deprived.  I think I'm going to attempt to write for a bit and probably end up crashing the hell out.  Here's to tomorrow morning.

You Are Here

1. I started a Facebook page under a new name.  A male name.  One that I think I might want to start going by. This lead to a Talk from a friend that kind of left me a little shaky.  She means well.  She always does.  But my experiences are my own, the rest be damned; I hate to be so black and white about it, but if people have a problem with me creating a damn Facebook page under a male name, I really don't need to be friends with them in the first place.  Advice seconded by another friend of mine.  Perhaps these aren't things I should talk about openly, but I'm tired of being afraid and unsure, and all I want is some fucking support, and it hurts when all I get in return is people doing what feels like trying to talk me out of doing all this exploring.

2. Really missing the girl right now.  She's sick in another state and homesick on top of that, and that's making me miss her all the more, because I'm tired of sleeping alone and I want to make her better.  I always want to make her better, though, so that's nothing new.  I just really want someone to cuddle and watch movies or Iron Chef America with right now.  Stupid things like that.

3. Ordered my first binder today.  We'll see how that goes when it comes in.  In addition, I bought a pair of swim trunks today (with Captain America on them, tyvm) and some shirts at Goodwill.  The boy-wardrobe is growing.

4. Had a, ah, lovely class this morning.  I'm taking health right now so I don't have to do it this fall on top of everything else, and it's just...it's one of those classes.  This morning's assignment was a worksheet on gender roles where we had to list ten male traits and ten female traits, and whether we have any of the traits we listed for the opposite sex.  I word it this way because the damn sheet was worded this way.  Sex does not equal gender, stereotypes are fucking stupid, and there's a lot of middle ground we're ignoring completely in regards to both sex and gender.  I know, like I should be pitching a fit over a stupid worksheet in a stupid gen ed, but it just triggered my dysphoria and made me all shaky and a little freaked out and I really fucking hate this class.  Even the textbook, in the tiny paragraph on transgenderism in the chapter on sexual orientation, uses the example of a transgirl while referring to said fictional transgirl with male pronouns.  This makes me angry.

5. Writing is just not happening lately.  Shittons of RP, but I'm not just...writing.  And that sucks.

6. Hopefully, barring any more postponing, there will be a shopping trip with my buddy very soon, and I'm planning on going boy for that trip.  We'll see how that goes too.

I think that's all the updates we need.  I feel like I should have something more substantial to talk about, but I really don't.

Things Are Getting Better

Things have happened in the last few months.

One: I've started to be really comfortable with calling myself 'trans' more than 'queer', which I think is a real step forward, because it's more...me.  I'm still queer.  And I'll still be genderqueer even if I do transition--it's possible, I've decided (discovered?) to be FtM and still be genderqueer.  So I'm thinking of myself now as transmasculine, if not quite a transman.  It fits.  And I'm okay with this.

Two: Because of this, I've started going out in public in boy-mode lately.  Not all the time, because it's Arkansas, and it's summer, and it's damn hot to bind all the time, but enough.  I'm okay with it.  I'm not freaked about binding and even packing in public.  I'm starting to buy more boy clothes for occasions like this.  I bought a nice short-sleeve plaid button down the other day that'll be much more comfortable in the summer than a long-sleeve with the sleeves rolled up.  I think I'm gonna go get a pair of khaki cargo shorts soon, too, to go with it.  Which is kind of a big deal for me; I haven't worn shorts in years.  Mostly because I don't shave my legs, and I'm self-conscious about it because I'm still publicly female and therefore still expected to shave.  That said...I think it'll help me pass if I do decide to wear shorts.  I'm getting some swim trunks, too.  And, obviously, a women's swim tank, but that's mostly because it's necessary.  The swim shorts have me stupidly excited, though.  The clothing and the binding and the presenting as a boy has been really freeing.

Three: My Bunnie, my bestest bestie, is now officially my girlfriend.  This happened a couple of weeks ago, but hell.  I've been busy.  Anyway.  She told me on the phone one night--and yes, she's still away, still not home, but it's okay--that she's figured out in all this time away from me that she really is in love with me.  And we're already planning our wedding, which really, we might as well have been doing all along.

So that's my update on life right now.  I'm settling into my identity and excited about being officially in a relationship.  Next step is probably realising that this apparently makes me a straight man, which I find hilarious in so many ways.  Of all the things I never thought I would grow up to be.

Long Nights Are Long

Sometimes I can feel the levees breaking.

Rarely in my life do I ever get to a point when I don't let myself feel my emotions.  It's not always a good thing, but I thoroughly believe that the best course to take with my own emotions is to let them happen.  If I'm angry, I let myself feel that anger, even if I have to temporarily stopper it to let it out later.  If I'm upset, I go someplace private and I cry.  If I'm happy, you'd better believe everyone around me knows it.  A lot of times, I do subject the people around me to my bad moods, and I do feel bad about that, but I feel like if I try to bottle it up and smile when I just want to scream, I'll go utterly insane.  At heart, I'm a hurricane.  Something has to give.

This is the first time I can remember that I have found myself sitting here knowing a bad mood is coming on, and I can hear the floodgates creaking, ready to burst, and I'm here screaming "no!" in the back of my  mind because I don't want it to happen.  I don't even know why.

And that's twofold confusion--I don't know why I feel this black mood pressing down on me, nor do I know why I feel like I can't just let it happen.

I kind of think the mood itself is just because I'm having a fantabulously dysphoric day.  Today and yesterday have been shit for that--I know I'm in for it when I wake up in the morning and have my hand resting on my breastbone and am wondering what all this soft tissue is, and then I remember that I do still have breasts, and I can't bring myself to get out of bed because as long as I'm lying flat on my back, gravity is doing its part to make me look less like a girl.  I dream so often that I'm free of my feminine characteristics that I often wake disappointed, even for just a few minutes.

The thing is, I'm still not sure if I would change if I had the money to go through surgery.  I don't want any manner of genital surgery, I know that much, because honestly, my ideal body is fine in that regard.  But the secondary characteristics...I think sometimes that I want the top surgery, and I want to go on T, and then I would be okay.  But then I wake up with no dysphoria at all and things are fine for a week or better and I'm okay with my body because I'm just me inside, no gender/body dissonance, even if I still don't fit my ideal.

I've been questioning myself a lot lately, about whether or not I know what I am.  Terms shouldn't matter, but I feel like I need to have a word to describe myself, or a string of words at least.  I like the term trans-masculine.  I don't think I'm a transguy, not fully, but I do feel like the word 'girl' does not fit me.  Nor do I feel I'm purely androgynous or agendered.  It's confusing.  And a little painful.  I hate not knowing things.

And I kind of realise at this point that the reason I'm staving off this mood is because I'm alone right now, because my friends have gone to bed--which I should do too and therefore fault no one for--and I have no one to take this mood out on.  That makes me a horrible person.  I think I'm just now realising that my moods suffer from the "if a tree falls and no one hears it" syndrome; if I'm in a bad mood and it happens when I'm alone, I feel I have no right to complain or talk about it or anything like that.  Which is bullshit, I recognise, but I never said my brain made sense to anyone but me.  This could explain why I always feel like taking out my bad moods by writing.

It's almost always a safe bet that if I'm in a particularly black mood, my characters are going to suffer royally.  So I'm a little bit sadistic.  I can't help it.  It balances out all that masochism.

I think at some point, I need to write an entry solely about what I see when I think of me, about the image I would like to present to the world.  I'm sure someone would find it amusing.  God knows I do in my more lucid moments.

I'm still not feeling any better.  This is why I try not to hold my emotions at bay.  I always feel worse in the end.

I think it's time for ice cream.

On deepening dysphoria.

I just started a new job--working fast food, preferring cashier duty right now.  I'm good at it.  It's not been a bad job so far.  It's a place I like to eat at, my coworkers are great, and my boss is nice.  (The owner, I'm not sure about--I think he needs to get out of the kitchen, most of the time.)  The problem?  The first day I went in for training and got my uniform, I noticed one small nitpicky detail--the uniforms are stupidly gendered.  Barely, but still gendered.  The guys get baseball caps, the girls get visors.  From what I can tell, this is just so the girls can pull their ponytails through the tops of their visors and keep them off their necks.

I'd rather have a baseball cap, personally, but I'm not going to ask for one just now.  It's not that big a deal.

I left work early tonight because I was having dizzy spells and feeling faint.  I blamed this on the fact that it was hot in the store and we'd just had a huge post-church rush of people.  In reality, it was because I was about to have a panic attack.  But explaining that I was about to panic required explaining why, and the why is the part I can't really explain to anyone who doesn't know me.  I was about to have a panic attack because I was having an incredibly bad dysphoria attack.

I'm learning as I go along in all of this the things that will trigger my dysphoria.  Sometimes, I'll get little easy-to-deal-with bouts of it for no reason at all.  Lately, though, two things have been triggering major attacks of it.

One: roleplay is becoming a problem, since I'm playing a girly-girl.  It's no big around the roleplay group.  I'm out as genderqueer to all of them, so they know the clothes are just a costume, and they all comment on how weird it is to see me looking like a girl, which makes me feel more comfortable.  They understand.  But I get into costume in my dorm before heading across campus to the student center where we play, or over to the community center when we can get it, and what triggers my dysphoria is having to be seen in my costume by total strangers.  My friends have suggested that I pretend I'm in drag, as it might help.  Which it kind of does.  But the problem is that I know these other people are looking at me and thinking 'girl'.  No one would give a second thought to calling me "miss" or "ma'am" or "young lady" or "woman" when I'm in that costume.  I look like a girl.  Even when I'm dressed as a guy, I don't pass.  I'm not trying exceptionally hard to, but only once has anyone ever second-guessed my gender and called me "sir" instead, and that was because I was in a football jersey and being generally boyish.  That was an accident.  And then they tripped all over themselves apologising and correcting themselves, because I said something and my voice sounds like a deep girl's voice.  Point is, my costume triggers my dysphoria because I know I look like a girl, no questions asked, to any stranger I see.

The second thing that's been doing it lately is a little harder to get rid of.  My "lunar cycles".  I have pretty bad PMS as it is, which just compounds it, because I have terrible moodswings, painful cramps, fatigue, upset stomach, faint spells, the whole nine yards.  (I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I ended up diagnosed with PMDD.)  Problem is, I just started my cycle tonight, so I was sore and sick and feeling like I was going to pass out, and all of the people calling me "ma'am" while I was running the register was making it worse.  This has happened every month since the beginning of the year, and it gets worse every time.  Every month, the dysphoria gets a little worse and a little worse, because this is the ultimate marker of being female.  I can even handle not binding my chest all the time, and most of the time, I feel no need to.  But at least the option is there, and that's what makes it easier to deal with.  But this?  There's nothing I can do about it.  I can't afford birth control.  And my friends who are on BC tell me that insurance won't cover it, at least not most of it, even in medically necessary cases, such as preventing ovarian cancer.  If I could afford it, believe me, I'd be getting on one of the seasonal pills in a heartbeat.  It just seems like I'm stuck, because there's nothing I can do.

What's insane about this is that I don't feel like I'll ever choose to have SRS, and I'll probably never even go so far as a hysterectomy.  So I almost feel like I have no right complaining.  I almost feel like it would be easier if I were fully FtM, instead of this genderqueer-masculine mess that I am, because at least then I would have something to come out as, instead of feeling so lost and torn and unable to explain what I am inside.  But I know that's not true.  The truth is, I know exactly what I look like when I close my eyes.  I could explain the body I want to people, and I could explain who I want to be inside, but that doesn't explain what I am; it's like I have an idea, but no terms to convey it.  It's hard to come out when you're not even sure what you are.

Life is good.

Short post, probably, but an important one.

I came out as genderqueer on Facebook a couple of days ago to a select group of people.  I was in a bad mood when I did it, feeling the overwhelming effects of gender dysphoria, and thought for sure I was going to regret it.  I've had nothing but support from my friends since.  It makes me want to cry, I'm so happy that my friends are such a fantastically accepting group of people.

I've had two different people who called me by my given name, then quickly corrected to my chosen name--Taylor's name--and asked which I preferred.  I've had several people asking in advance which name I wanted to go by and what pronouns they should use with me.  My Sis asked me tonight if I wanted her to start having her nearly-three-year-old daughter call me Taylor instead of my given name.  It feels kind of weird, but so good.  For the most part, I tell them that I don't care which name they call me and which pronouns they use,not day-to-day.  At least, for the time being.  For now, the fact that they're checking with me and that they're rolling with this and accepting me for who I am is enough to make me indescribably happy.

Better yet?  Since coming out, the dysphoria's been easier to deal with, and I'm feeling less of a psychological divide between myself and who I want to be inside.  It's like just saying the words to everyone--saying out loud that I'm genderqueer--gave my own identity permission to integrate.

I really do have the best friends in the world.

Emotional Involvement in Fictional Headspaces

The longer I go on playing Taylor in this Vampire: the Requiem game, the stranger it gets, because the deeper in character I get.  Slipping into the accent and the swagger.  Developing the laugh and the grin.  Finding the right subtleties of expression.  All the actions and reactions, all the phrasings and witticisms, the quirks and neuroses, the delusions and derangements.  Loving and hating all the right people.  Bringing it all together and being unafraid to let it out.  It's an art I'm still learning, and one I'm not sure I'd be good at in a professional capacity.

But I think there comes a point when one goes beyond acting.

Maybe I'm just discovering what method acting is indirectly, which I suspect is the case, and it's how I explain what I'm doing to people who don't get the concept of roleplay, anyway.  It's improv.  It's me getting into character and not getting out.  (I'm finding I'm having a harder and harder time getting out of character lately, but that's probably because I'm in so deep in the first place.)  It really is a lot of fun, and I always love the opportunity to stop being me for a little while.

But it kind of worries me sometimes when I react in unexpected ways when I'm in character.  It means I'm in the headspace of someone I don't fully understand, and that never fails to catch me off-guard.  The character is in my head, fully formed, and we're suddenly switching places and I don't know my way around in theirs as well as they do in mine.  It normally doesn't bother me that much, because it just means I'll be writing and go "oh, hey, I didn't know that about this character," and I'll keep writing.  But in roleplay...it means that someone can say a passing word that falls like a rock in my stomach, or I'll start shaking, or I'll start laughing, and it feels like I'm not entirely the one in control, because I don't know why this is happening.  It's the character fully taking over.

Tonight at roleplay, the final act of the game was that my character was handed an envelope, presumably from the woman who is basically out to kill him.  In the envelope was a picture of this woman torturing the girl I had just slept with the night before--someone who reminded me far too much of the woman who had been the mother of my child, my baby girl.  (You see me slipping into first person here.)  Now, what startled me about this is the fact that when our storyteller described to me what was in the envelope, in very simple straightforward terms--no description of the torture, no real description at all, in fact, I'm only assuming that she was being tortured, because I have no idea--I felt as though someone had poisoned me.  Lightheaded, stomach knotting, knees weak.  I felt the colour drain from my skin.  My hands started shaking.  I had to sit down.  I did not know Taylor would react that way.  This girl...the one I'd slept with, and the one I'd been with way back when (before I was a vampire), I thought they didn't mean anything to him.  Not much.  I didn't realise he was so tied up around this girl.  And now I'm wondering if she really left him, or if maybe she died.  Or was killed.  Taylor won't tell me.  Or he doesn't remember, one, but it still is a little disturbing to me that I'm having this powerful physical reaction in character when he obviously would expect to react this way in this situation and I don't.  And I couldn't shake the feeling after I got out of character, which is kind of strange.

The point of all this is that I was entirely too in-character tonight for it to be healthy, probably.

Mind, this is all vampire!Taylor.  The Taylor I speak about in the canon (the one where he's not a vampire) is a different person than vampire!Taylor is becoming.  Which in itself is odd to me.  Even Dameon didn't change this much when I played him as a werewolf.  Then again, I did give this version of Taylor a much more traumatic backstory.  That's probably all it is.

I don't know.  I have a headache from roleplay tonight.  And I love the storyteller for doing this to me, it's great, I like tormenting my characters, don't get me wrong.  It just throws me off when they're so deeply affected by things that I did not know would screw with my head this much.  The sacrifices we make for our art, really.  Or the bizarre twists of a game.

Time to introduce my friends.

I have, over the past week or two, had a couple of different things I wanted to write about--the counter to my last entry, for instance, on why writing workshops are not entertaining, on gender issues and why it's hard to come out when you don't know what you are, and on writing in general--but I don't think any of those are quite as important as this one.  I think that five entries is far too many to go by without properly introducing my friends and why I love them.  I'm going to stick to the ones that are really, deeply important to me; understand, if you get left out, it's not because I love you less.  It's because I don't have space or time to write a novel about why I have the most amazing friends in the world.

My friends, I'm afraid, will be going by nicknames, because I feel I need to protect the not-so-innocent.  They are probably the only ones who will understand these nicknames.

The first person I have to talk about is my Bunnie.  (I am her Doggie.  This is all you need to know.)  She's been my best friend since 8th grade, though one might argue that we didn't hit best-friend-status until at least 9th grade.  Truth is, this is one of those friendships that I feel like was fated to happen, because she and I fit like puzzle pieces.  We're different, but we work.  And I love her dearly.  I would not be a writer if it weren't for my Bunnie.  She's the one who got me started writing original stuff--I'd been writing fanfic before, and I'd been writing all my life (well, 'writing', I use the term loosely), but if it hadn't been for her and the fantasy novel she's been working on since 6th grade (she'll correct me if I'm wrong), I never would have found my calling.  And I wouldn't be where I am now.  Bunnie is responsible for a lot of things I am now.  And I love her for that.  She's not in Arkansas right now, and that makes me kind of sad, because I haven't seen her in since October, but we've talked on the phone, and that's okay.  No amount of space can really separate us.  We manage to be joined at the hip even when we're in different time zones.  I actually foresee myself growing old with Bunnie, just because I really doubt any significant others will ever come between us.  (We've discussed it.  Even if either of us get married, we're going to live together anyway.)  Bunnie is the reason I believe in soul mates, and also why I believe that 'soul mate' doesn't have to mean 'lover' or anything of the sort.  She's just my Bunnie.  And I'm happy with that.  This is the Trapper to my Hawkeye, the Aziraphale to my Crowley, and, more importantly, the Dylan to my Taylor, the Cedric to my Dameon, but those last two don't make sense unless you know us.

Next is my Pookie.  Pookie and I met in a high school math class when I was in the 11th grade.  We bonded over anime, she got me into Quiz Bowl, and she probably turned me into a furry.  She has been the one who was there for me when Bunnie was driving me crazy, when I was down and really needed someone to lean on, and when I needed a break from reality for most of the Spring '09 semester.  She has been the Dollar Bill to my Mothman, which no matter how many fandoms I go through, she always will be.  She is my Radar.  She is my favourite penguin, and the Wilson to my House that I need when I'm busy being everyone else's Wilson.  Most importantly, she's my taco buddy, and I probably never would have discovered Taco John's without her.  Nor would I have discovered what it means to be a Nerdfighter.  Pookie and I have had a rather strange friendship, in that I kind of realise that I should have considered her one of my best friends all along, but it took Watchmen to really hit me over the head with that, and that's why Watchmen will always have a special place in my heart.

The next one, if she'll forgive me, I had a really hard time coming up with a nickname for, but I think I'm going to call her my Foxy Lady.  She'll know why.  I met her around the same time I met Pookie, and if I recall--though she's had to remind me--it was in an 11th grade French class.  I spent a lot of time not really getting to know her, because to be frank, her girlfriend at the time terrified me.  Foxy and I really became better friends somewhere during 12th grade or after I graduated, though I can't for the life of me tell you how or why.  I think what really did it was the fact that we started RPing together back when we were playing that epically insane VtM game.  She's the Adele to my Gabe, which in more generic terms means the Toreador to my Gangrel, which you'll have to forgive if it makes no sense.  She's the Hot Lips to my Hawkeye.  She's Sally to a lot of people, the feminine allure to my masculine tendencies.  She's been my go-to when I start having crazy gender issues lately, and I think it's a lot because she was in the right place at the right time and she was exactly the right person to talk to.  I owe her a lot right now.

I have to give a token mention to my Little Sis, who is not actually blood related to me, but who is probably at fault for half the people I was friends with in high school.  I've known her since...sometime in middle school.  She gave my story the push it needed to go in the right direction, and Dr. Adon would literally not exist without her.  She's kind of the Goten to my Gohan, if you'll pardon my using a ridiculously old reference.  She and I kind of drift in and out of being really tight, but I can't ever abandon her, because I love her too much for that, even during the times she was driving me batty.  She's also the entire reason I became friends with Bunnie, so I have to thank her for that, and she's the reason I got into roleplaying, which changed my life considerably.

Lastly, I have my Badger, who if Bunnie is the Trapper to my Hawkeye, Badger is my BJ.  I've only known her for a couple of years, and this is another one of those friendships that I kind of feel like was fated, because it spiralled into something incredibly close incredibly fast.  What you have to understand about me is that I do not make friends easily.  All of the people above I only began to really consider myself close friends with after I'd known them for two years or so, which is mostly because I have problems trusting people and truly committing to people.  Badger is special.  Badger and I met through writing classes and realised that we were quite a lot alike and somehow ended up being really good friends, and over the past couple of semesters, she has become one of my sisters.  She's someone I feel I can really talk to, and someone I really enjoy talking crazy character things with until all hours.  She introduced me to the awesome that is the Magical Doughnut Adventure.  More importantly, she introduced me to Pickman Studios, which has more or less been a weekly salvation for me since Bunnie left back in October.  She's been my inspiration to be more outgoing and to take more risks with getting close to people, because if I'd gone with my usual instinct--which is to shut people out until I know they're safe--I wouldn't be where I am now, and I'd probably be in pretty sorry shape.  But because of Badger, I have someone I can go to when I just need someone to have lunch with at random, or when I need to write, or when I just need a hug, especially with all of my other friends far away.  If I were the type to believe in miracles, I'd be convinced Badger was mine, because she showed up in my life just when I needed her and welcomed me into her fold of friends.

These people are all my sisters, and I love them all more than I can put into words.  I'm going to sign out before I start waxing too incredibly sappy here, but I'm afraid I already have.

This is why writing workshops are entertaining.

I'm taking two different fiction courses this semester--a forms class, and a workshop class. The piece I submitted for the former earlier this week was a first-preson narrative in which the identity of the speaker was never clearly marked.  My intent in writing this was to obfuscate the gender of the speaker.  Call it an experiment.  The story was about my speaker's very sexually geared relationship with a young man named Dylan.  Part of my intent was to see whether the class interpreted the speaker as male or female.

Of course, it doesn't matter either way, because my speaker was Taylor, who is both intersexed and gender-neutral.

(That was fun to explain, because the guy sitting next to me was asking "yeah, but how often does that happen?  Like one in a billion?"  Not that I have much respect for this guy anyway.  I was happy to hear the girl on the other side of him comment that it happens "more often than you may think".)

Most of the class interpreted my speaker as female.  Now, part of this could be due to the writer=narrator fallacy, which in a class of this level, I'd expect.  But I tend to think it was more a matter of that interpretation being heteronormative.  Two people, the professor included, read my speaker as male, which is closer to reality, since Taylor mostly presents as male.  One read the character as male because of the Fight Club references to "I am Jack's..." which makes sense, since people do tend to refer to the Fight Club narrator as Jack because of these lines.  The professor read the character as male because he didn't think a girl would refer to what the two characters were doing as 'fucking'.  Which I tend to think of as more of a male phrasing, myself.  But it was interesting.

Now, I really can't say why they read it one way or the other, but I just thought it was interesting that they did.  And the questions I am left with are these: is it because the other character is male?  Is it because the narrator is a submissive?  Is it because they know the writer as a female?

Just some random thoughts.  Things I probably won't find out the answers to, and I'm probably reading too much into things.

I was just incredibly thrilled that the first thing in my workshop that happened was a rather lengthy argument over whether the narrator was male or female.  I'm enjoying breaking down the idea of the binary being so clean-cut and real.  I intend to keep playing genderfuckery out in my stories this semester, just for my own entertainment.

Comments on LJ

There was a post on this community I follow over at LJ that really struck something in me.  The original poster was speaking about how unhappy they were as a female--to the point of having suicidal thoughts--but couldn't reconcile the idea of being male, either.  They were hurt and confused as to what they were.

A comment from a sympathetic anonymous poster ended with this line:

"Sometimes, I kinda think... what if I was male. But no, it doesn't feel right, either. And why the fuck does this binary have to exists, who the fuck benefits from it?"

I'm not sure what I have to say about this, because the truth is that I don't know either.

But it has gotten me thinking about where I am.  Which...is a very strange point.  A few weeks ago, I was absolutely distraught over how long my hair was getting and with how girly it was making me look.  The funny thing is that it probably wouldn't have been such a big deal if it hadn't been right at Christmas time, and as such, both of my grandmothers, upon visiting them, commented on how happy they were that my hair was getting all long and pretty again.  My immediate response was to say that I hated it and needed to go in for a haircut.  The haircut didn't happen, but I finally decided I'd had enough one night and cut a couple of inches off of it in front of the mirror in the bathroom.  Mind you, it's not the first time I'd cut my own hair.  But this was different.  This wasn't, "my bangs are getting too long, I'd better trim this mess up", it was "I have to get rid of this marker of femininity right the fuck now".  (Of course, my hair is naturally curly, which sucks because the shorter it gets, the more it curls up.)  I ended up doing a pretty bad job on it, just because it was such an impassioned act.  But I felt so much better after the fact.

The strange thing is, I'm going through another feminine cycle right now, and I'm starting to wish my hair was long again--really long, like it was back freshman year, when it was still down to my waist and I'd wear it braided every day.  I am kind of starting to miss that. And I pretty much know that my hair is never going to get that long again, because I'll get angry at it again sometime in the next few months and cut it above my shoulders again.

Why is hair length such a marker of the male/female dichotomy?  It shouldn't be.  Plenty of girls have short hair, and plenty of guys have long hair.  Some of the most feminine girls I know have their hair cropped extremely short.  Of course, at that point, it becomes a rather coquettish thing--which kind of makes me uncomfortable too, the idea that a guy can grow his hair long and not be treated as if he's gay or girly, but a girl cuts her hair short, and depending on the style, she's either treated as being cute (in a childish way) or as being a lesbian.

The binary is mostly unbeneficial because it leads to such horrible double-standards, and even more because we can't just be people.  God forbid a guy should like to sew, or a girl should like football.  Even our hobbies are gendered!  What's wrong with this world that people can't just like what they like and do what they do and everyone else can get over it without passing judgement?

But the binary exists because society likes having neat little categories to put everyone in.  Society doesn't do well when presented with grey areas.

I think this is part of the reason I've become slightly obsessed with gender-neutral names.  I look like a girl, so if I chose to change my name, I could probably get away with taking a male name and be androgynous on that basis. It would actually probably do more to confuse people than taking a name that could commonly be used as a girl name.  My name...at one point in history, my name was a boy's name, but no one has used it that way for better than a hundred years.  If I were interested in transitioning, I'd probably keep my name for this very reason.  As it stands, I'm developing quite the interest in various gender-neutral names, and I'm thinking about taking one when I get to grad school.

This might be why I'm planning on leaving--and by 'leaving', I mean going to another state.  I'd love a chance to start over.  I wasn't comfortable enough in who I was when I was a freshman to change my identity back then, and now that I'm a senior, too many people and professors know me for me to easily go into a classroom at the beginning of a semester and ask to be called by a different name.

I feel like this is a new age for me, though.  Like I'm finally coming into my own.  I could have easily named this blog with the username I've been using since I was 13, since it's become something of an alter ego for me anyway, but I wanted something new.  So I chose Saturday.  There's more to it than that, but for now, that's the important part--I'm Saturday now, because Saturday can be someone new, someone who I've never been before, on the internet or in real life.  And Saturday doesn't have to conform to any expectations, because no one has any.  I may be required to acknowledge the binary, but I certainly don't have to belong to it.

Strange to be in between.

I had a moment of acute gender!fail this week.

I'm taking a fiction workshop night class this semester.  There are only seven people, myself included, in the class, with a male professor.  All of the other students are guys.  I absolutely did not realise that I was the only female body in the room until the professor commented on it.  I looked around, and I was honestly surprised to confirm this fact--not that everyone else was male, but that I had missed this fact because I no longer think of myself as female.

I occupy a female body.  I'm decently comfortable with that, most of the time, unless the Gender Demons strike and I really start hating the fact that I'm a 38-DD.  I found a vest I totally forgot I had about a week ago.  It's water resistant and fleece-lined, which makes it ideal for this weather, especially considering I usually have my hoodie sleeves shoved up around my forearms anyway.  More importantly, it's just barely too tight, and has a zip-front, which means it does a pretty good job of constricting my ample cleavage.

This vest is the best thing that's happened to me lately.

I'm actually at a very strange time in my life.  I've gone through phases with my identity, and I think I'm about to enter another.  When I was in high school, maybe 2004, I started to realise that I was attracted to women, and so began to label myself as bisexual.  Sometime during college, I began to realise that the bisexual label didn't suit me at all--it affirmed an idea I was beginning to reject, that being the concept of a gender binary.  I can't call myself bisexual and recognise that there are more than two sexes, more than two genders.

Shortly after that, probably circa 2007, I started to notice something strange.  I noticed that whatever magical 'femaleness' I was supposed to feel wasn't really there.  Maybe it wasn't there anymore, or maybe it had never been, I don't know.  I can't remember if I ever really felt like a girl.  I know when I was a kid, I was a tomboy.  I was the antithesis of all things feminine.  I hated dresses.  I loved playing outside.  I wanted to play football in middle school.  (I decided as I got older that dresses weren't so bad, but I'll still buck and snort if forced into a dress or a skirt.  I have to really be in the mood.)  I just did not get 'girly things'.  That said, I also loved playing dress-up with my dolls and my costume box, and I loved playing House and Tea Party.  I've always been a little bit genderqueer.  I liked my Barbies and Easy-Bake as much as I liked my Legos and Hot Wheels.

The truth is, though, that I'm not sure how much the 'genderqueer' label fits me anymore, but that's what I get for lurking over at the What Is Gender forums.  There's a lot more out there than I ever expected to find.

What I find fun about these phases I've gone through is that my writing is clearly affected by it, and my characters usually know before I do.  Dameon was bi before I ever started identifying that way.  Now I have Taylor, who is very strictly a Whatever, and I identify more with Tay than I ever have with any other character, even Dameon.  I wanted to be Dameon's best friend.  I just want to be Taylor.  Which I get the chance to do once a week, and that's enough for me.  It's one day out of the week where I'm not expected to present myself as a girl.  For now, it's all the escape from the Gender Demons I need.

On People, Fictional and Otherwise

I've spent my winter break watching M*A*S*H.

I was raised on this show.  It ended four years before I was born.  My mom watched it when it first came on, and it's always been one of her favourite shows.  I have known the tune of the theme song for my entire life--it's right up there with the Andy Griffith theme and the Cheers theme for songs that will forever be locked in my brain.  I can blame Hawkeye for why I'm attracted to dark-haired men with weird senses of humour.  In fact, I'm pretty certain that if I sat down and thought about it, a lot of aspects of my personality could be traced to this show. (I know that more of my original character Dameon is based on Hawkeye than I ever realised; little things kept popping up along the way, and I'd realise much later it was something Hawk had said or done.)  We own all but the last season on DVD.  And I've spent my fall break watching the first seven.

Admittedly, I'm not watching them exactly in order.  I started with seven, then watched six and five, then started on season one about a week and a half ago.  I just finished season three last night.

If you've never seen the series, I want to know what rock you've been living under, first of all, but if you really aren't familiar with it, season three ends with an episode called "Abyssinia, Henry".  The episode is about the unit's commanding officer, Henry Blake, getting his discharge papers and preparing to go home.  At the end of the episode, you find out that his plane out of Korea was shot down, and that Henry, along with all others on board, was killed.  I've seen the episode more than a dozen times, probably, over my lifetime.  I know this episode.  I know what happens.  In a lot of ways, that makes it worse, but after having seen it so many times, I should at least be somewhat desensitised to Henry's death.  I watched the episode last night, and I cried.  I cry every single time I see the episode.  It's not the only episode of M*A*S*H that makes me cry; it's certainly not the only one that affects me emotionally so profoundly.

I was struck by the realisation last night that I have cried more over Henry Blake's death than I did over my own grandfather's death this summer.  At first, it seemed a callous thing, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I have always been more deeply affected by fiction than real life.  I don't think it's necessarily that I don't care about real people, but I think it's a testament to the fact that we can never truly know one another.  Even as author John Green advises us to "imagine people complexly", I think it is far easier to relate to and to imagine complexly fictional people than those with whom we have daily interactions.

I'm not saying I care more about Henry Blake than I did about my grandfather.  But I do think that on some level, that might be more true than I care to admit.  With fictional characters, we get more of a window into their lives than we ever do with real people.  We can see what affects them in their most private moments.  We are privy to their secrets and their darkest flaws. We are witness to their mistakes and humiliations.  We partake in their joys and excitement.  Some of the boundaries put in place by the very nature of reality are broken down when we are presented with a well-created fictional character, just as some of the boundaries we put on ourselves may be broken down when we create our own.

I wouldn't be the first person to claim that I put a piece of myself into all of my characters.  And I wouldn't be the first to claim that I see myself in characters others create, either, which I think is why I love M*A*S*H so much.  But I'm thinking now, and not in a worrisome way, about whether I invest more interest in those I feel intimately familiar with, like Hawkeye Pierce, than I do in those I know I will never know completely--or complexly, probably--like my mother or my best friend.  And that should worry me.

It's a strange place to be when I start aspiring to know my friends like I know the people at the 4077th.

Hello, everyone!

An introduction is probably in order, isn't it?

I've wanted to blog for some time, but I've never felt that I had anything of use to talk about, save the random stuff I talk about on Twitter. But that's just Twitter for you.  I always felt like if I was going to have a blog and call it a blog, I'd best have something that was worth hearing about. I feel like I have something now. You decide.

First things first, I'm a creative writing undergrad in my senior year, which hopefully means I'll graduate this year.  I'm looking at December with starry eyes right now.  That kind of freaks me out.  Expect to hear a lot about adventures in thesis writing in this blog, as well as adventures in looking for a grad school.  I don't have any commitments towards any particular grad school right now.  I just know I want to get my master's degree.

My body is 22 years old and I have lived in the same state my entire life.  I don't get to travel much, which feels like it's wounding my soul, because while I do feel at home here with my family and my friends, this state has always felt like it's out of place to me.  I feel like I need to get out and see someplace else, and for more than a week's vacation.  You'll likely hear a lot about my adventures in trying to save money to go on a road trip here, too.  Especially of the "I want to go to New Orleans" nature.  (I've been twice, but I feel like I'm overdue for another visit, especially with my newfound fascination of the culture of the area.)

Most of my traveling is the sort that takes place in my head.  I'm a fiction writer.  Writing is going to likely be what I talk most about in this blog, because it's the most central aspect of my life.  I participate in NaNoWriMo every year, and have since 2005.  I've won the last three years.  My goal this year is to finish the novel my best friend and I have been working on since we were juniors in high school, and with any luck, I'll be ready to charge to the finale in that by the time NaNo rolls around this November.  Said best friend is currently in another state, and she might be for several months.  She might come up in this blog, too.

My biggest motivation in starting a blog right now is the realisation that I'm at a very strange place in my gender identity.  I'm genderqueer, I'm panromantic, I'm a lot of things, and I'll save that talk for another day, one when I'm feeling less like myself.  It's easier to talk about what I'm not when I'm not.  Roleplaying is another huge part of my life, largely because it lets me externalise a lot of my internalised issues with identity. But that's neither here nor there.  The character I'm currently both writing about and playing is someone I've come to identify closely with, someone I think I could easily become.

That's all you need to know for now.  No promises on how often I'll write, or how much when I do.  I tend to be long-winded.  But you probably figured that one out.

Call me Saturday.