spooky_bastard

I wanted to write a love song.( Collapse )

I guess I really don't know what I want to talk about...

Hash cuts my thoughts into little sharp-edged slippery shapes. My brain slithers in lopsided circles when it tries to get from point A to point B. Somehow I manage to hit the same thoughts after each loop before scattering off again in another direction. The repetition is soothing and I drift off to sleep. When I wake up, I'm shaking and have to stay in bed for a while until I can leave the blankets without freezing, without standing like an unsteady newborn colt.

Because no-one but me reads this yet, I can say this:

I hate the things in my head that have to be dealt with. I used to think I could just stop thinking about them and they'd go away. Cutting? Just wear long sleeves and no-one will notice. Abusive girlfriend? No big deal. Sexual abuse? It wasn't explicit; it doesn't matter. Emotional abuse? Whatever... I had it coming.

But I can't forget about it. All those little splinters have to be dug out one by one before they give me blood poisoning. And as much as I hate it now, I know this is only the beginning. It'll be worse if I have to figure out how to make this work in some kind of relationship. When the people you've dated either haven't cared about what you're comfortable with or thought you made a good punching bag, it's weird to think about being with someone who'd be repectful, who'd actually care. What? You mean not everyone who wants to be with me just wants a piece of meat to use however they like? Why? What's their motive? What are they hiding?

The only way through this is... through it. I can't keep avoiding it like this, no matter how tough it'll be. Somehow I'm going to have to learn how to trust people. Even before all the shit happened, it wasn't easy, and now... well, yeah... But I'm going to have to learn to believe people when they tell me I'm worth something, that I didn't deserve the moments that lurk in my limbic system and make me panic far too often.

So I'll take a deep breath and admit all the things that I have such a hard time saying aloud...

I want someone to cuddle with. I feel like the proverbial (well, not really, but whatever) rat who's been caged alone and never gets touched or played with. I'm starting to wither without that physicality. For now, I just want someone to be with to see where it goes. Saying yes, we'll have sex or no, sex won't come into it doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to have to commit myself to something before I know what the situation will bring. What I do know is that I could spend hours snuggled up with the right person (or people), catching up on all those years I spent sitting in corners and wearing my trench coat like a hug instead of being able to interact with people. I want to touch and be touched as obsessively as new couples do, but I'm scared to initiate it. (I don't want to be anything like the ones who've used me.)

Somehow I have to get past the idea that wanting this makes me a freak, that I have to function according to another set of standards. It's okay for me not to be a monk.

This is a lot harder to write than it looks. I'll be back with more later...

I'm talkin', yeah, I'm talkin' about the diamonds on the soles of my shoes. Track me with that rubberprint if I walk in the right places, but I'm too careful. Been a cityboy for a few years already and still I travel light. My feet cross dried leaves quietly (no more little-kid scuffing and crackling) and I'm ghosty-silent coming up behind people. Not on purpose, really; it's just how I am. I like coasting, cruising on foot, moving fast along the concrete late at night. Long strides cover territory faster than ever.

The shift in pronouns has been astonishing and comfortable at the same time. Looking back at being 'she' and 'her' and -----, I can't remember how it ever felt right.

This is becoming an adrenaline rush. I'm starting come back into my body and it scares me a bit, but I'm happy about it too. Really happy. I thought I'd lost it for good; couldn't find my way back through the dysphoria and the hands until I realized what I was up against. This summer I'll swim again for the first time in years.

medicated. sedated. underrated. maybe fated. boy staledated. slow breath bated. dead nerves sated. storm abated. obfuscated. un-collated.

funny how the drugs work. eyes blurred and particular numbness in my skin. i was supposed to gain weight. my appetite went on vacation instead. it was gone for weeks. even now, my face looks slightly hollow.

i don't really mind any of it. never did. if it does the job and lets me do mine, i'll take it. somewhere in the back of my head, i snicker at the contradictory mechanics of a boy-monk tricking his body into chemical pregnancy, but even that is one step removed from my cotton-wool brain. shrug and make another litre of lemon tea instead. life's a funny thing, i think as i listen for the kettle.

ten years of paying in blood is getting old, but only in one way. not the way most people would expect at first glance. i anticipate scars, wonder if the surgeries combined will yield a pound of flesh. idle thoughts like this make me laugh at inappropriate moments, but i'm gradually learning to control that.

the realization hit on sunday: most people, were they to psychoanalyze me, would say that i love the hills because they remind me of women, but i think it's the other way around. i can imagine a life without sex, but not a life without that land. this train of thought occupied my mind for miles.

Gogol Bordello's raunchy gypsy cabaret noise makes me feel a bit better.

Hey, if I transition partway, maybe I could tour with them as a stagefreak! Do my own Ukranian-punk striptease, pretend to suck Eugene off during the show while the pogodancers look on in shock...

This is what gets tattoed just under your skin- pride and betrayal and fierce joy. It looks like galaxies, like snakes and whitewater and the slow curl of ferns under the trees.

I have my own memories marked into my skin. Build up my own mythology around the bones of my life. Write a lexicon of my own words and store it behind my eyes. This is how I survive day to day.

When I go to her, I wear my hair cut stubbly-short so that it tingles under her palms and smile when she comments on it. She knows my body better than anyone else, though we've never been lovers and never will be. I need a healer, not someone who wants to have sex. She is good for me, unlocks the wires and knots in my muscles. We joke and laugh and it is safe.

After thirteen months without any treatments, she looked me over and told me what she saw, how the binding had changed the way I stand and walk and use energy. She told me that my torso was masculinizing already, that the weight distribution was changing even without testosterone.

Pushing the Envelope bicycle courier service

metaphysicist- what does a metaphysicist do?

Who is Corkscrew Malbasa? I know he's not very old- sixteen at most. And he's tough, a smart litle bastard. I don't think he has any parents. And he wears a jean jacket lined with sheepskin. His hair is sorta long, because he can't afford to get it cut. There's a homemade tattoo of a star on the inside of his left wrist.

The Ampersand has two floors and three pool tables. The walls are dark red; the ceiling, a blue that's almost black. Neither of the bathrooms have signs on the doors. There's a bookself built into the space under the stairs. Lots of plants by the window. It gets pretty loud there at night.

The Cat and Rooster is the local queer pub. It has an old-fashioned sign out front and a few kinds of local beer on tap. An alternative to the bar scene, but don't think that means nobody ever fucks in the washrooms either. The owner's dog has a spot behind the counter.

highwire/d fuckup
at almost twenty-one
cheerfully dancing out of reach of safety nets

not like i care so much these days
state of numb
and a gender revolutionary
(sir, uh, ma'am...)
(you a guy or a chick?)

fierce boy with an army haircut
and invisible bruises
summer-storm-colour permanently smudged under eyes
scarred skin
velocity in the path of clenched fists

you were right when you called me
sir
he
him
pretty-boy

and i'm walking like it's a dance
transparent to some
invisible boy with invisible bruises

boy who won't be a man
boy who was never a real girl
boy with tensored chest
boy with congenital deformities requiring surgery
boy who has to explain himself all the time
boy who's sort of a woman too
boy with a new name
boy whose parents think he's their daughter
boy who never felt sexy until he started binding
boy who doesn't fuck anyone
boy who asked for a hug on monday
boy who feels weird about that
boy who doesn't believe in safety nets for himself
boy who feels guilty
boy with hormonal imbalances
boy who's a threat to feminism
boy who hates the michigan womyn's music festival
boy won't go back to the women's centre at school
boy who's out of place everywhere
boy without a dick
boy who wants to meet other boys like him
boy needs to sleep more
boy hates having a period
boy who was always like that

boy kicking into overdrive fuelled by drums and bass
boy wants to stand up and shout
boy stands tall and square

boy's not taking bullshit today.

off on the road, cruising.

i'll be driving back from brandon after christmas.
me and reuben and dan.
cruising through a landsacpe of rolling hills.

(among the rolling hills,
i'll do no one no ill,
and i will do no one no ill
among the rolling hills.)

miss the hills.
i'm not a floodplain boy.
never was.
when i was a kid, the hills to the south looked as big as whales.
what can i say?
i've never seen the ocean.
or the mountains.
escarpment rise pulls at something deep in my brain.
climbing those hills at twilight.
everything spread out sparkly across the fields below.
it doesn't look so bad from here, though i hate it most of the time.

i miss the land, not the people.

red dirt roads up in the hills.
little hayfields in the valleys.
scrub oak saplings like wizened oldsters.
springs in unexpected places.
whole worlds in the sloughs.
frogspawn, columbine, ferns, anemones.
crocuses in the tawny spring grass.
dogwood, maple, poplar leaves brighter green than neon.
meadowlark song bubbling up and spilling over like water shining in the sun.
hills that look like the curves of sleeping women, like waves swelling in the land.
grass waving, rippling.
do you know what it's like, seeing that for the first time every year?
foxtails caught in my socks.
deep black mud down in the old lakebed.
charting the change in dirt colour by walking across the alfalfa fields and watching molehills.
clover tall enough to hide behind.
roses in the ditch out by the old cottonwood.
alkali-white leaching up in the bare spots.
cattails holding the drainage ditch in place.
dapply shade on the hot days.
thunder every day all day when the creeks start running.
beaver dams changing the way the water runs.
banks of gravel to pick through for fossils.
burdock leaves to take away the burn of nettles.
nettles edible in the early days of june- steamed with salt and butter.
carragana flowers in painter's yellow, with nectar at the bottom.
chokecherries sucking all the moisture out of my mouth.
wild grapes, if you know where to look.
diamond willow in the swampy spots.
lunch of mushrooms sprouting along the driveway.
wild turkeys with their purple- and copper-glazed feathers.
miles of land turned rosy when the sun goes down clear.