I've started wearing ties again. Oh Fuck, it's been about two years since I felt comfortable enough in one. Let's just say that the elements I surrounded myself with in the time in between were rather quick to judge and I fell for it, slowly but surely cutting out the little masculine things I enjoyed. At the time I was kidding myself that I was fitting in. Now I see it as a major setback in my personal gender explorations.
Anyways, tonight I stepped out in a dress shirt and a tie. Apart from the fact that my chest still sticks out far more than I'd like it to, I looked good. I was happy. All I needed to do was to avoid checking myself out in side profile and I'd be fine and confident in my manufactured masculinity. Happy and fine as a non-gender-specific polymorphous individual.
I'm lucky to be sharing a very supportive environment now. The people around me are not just okay with me expressing who I am, they are encouraging me to explore it more, even. It feels great to be filling out my own skin again.
The fact that there are differences between my reality and that of other people became apperent when I went to the bathroom at the club we were having dinner at just this evening. I went to the bathroom for obvious reasons, and also to tidy up my apperance. I adjusted my tie in the mirror as I was turning to leave. At the same time, a poor older lady was walking in. She looked at me and I could see the embarrassment in her eyes. Panic that she'd walked into the wrong bathrooms. She walked backwards out the door and checked the sign.
Shit.
First thought: I don't want a scene here at all.
Second thought: Fuck you, lady. I wear who I am on the outside. I'm sure you piss in the same bathroom as your husband at home anyway.
Such a dilemma. I felt for her confusion, yet was angered by her narrow-mindedness.
Perhaps I just need to remind myself that other people's thoughts and reactions are their own, and not mine?
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3 comments:
You should wear what you feel comfortable in, forget what everyone else is worried about. I agree with you though on the chest thing. I will look in the mirror and think, damn those boobs should not be there. I just recently got a really short haircut and thought, much better, more masculine, then I seen the boobs, damn them.
I get that alot in the bathroom. I feel bad for the people but not offended.
I will look in the mirror and think, damn those boobs should not be there.
I think that too. I can look pretty good from the front, but side profile just gives the game away.
Weird thing is, there's no way I want to give up my boobs entirely. I just want to be able to hide them, to in a way be able to take them off and put them on when I want. It seems at the moment to me like a schizophrenic way of being - I'm existing as a cross dresser because there are times that I really enjoy my femininity, and other times that I would love to be seen as a hansome young boy.
Like I posted in the comments on your blog: How the hell can we understand other women when we don't understand ourselves?
I thought it was about time I cleared a few things up.
Yes you weren't supported in my environment. It wasn't so much that I wanted to change you but I wanted back the Vic that I first met. The quirky little rascal from the pink concert.
I didn't know the masculine side of you when we first got together, not the tie wearing wanna be a teenage boy side.
I loved you. But it was the you that I first met. In those first few months things were great. You had your world, I had mine and when we were together we had eyes only for each other. Perhaps it should have stayed that way.
And perhaps thats shallow of me but thats who I am.
Had I known how it was going to pan out I never would have invited you so far into my world.
You know years ago I was stuck for hours in a room full of cross dressing transgender drug addicts and I guess it affected me far more profoundly than I ever thought possible.
I'm only just begining now to break through the secrets that have been locked in my mind since childhood. I'm only just starting to deal with trauma's and violences that I'd locked away not to be remembered. When I started seeing the psych it opened a pandora's box and I admit I must have been an absolute nightmare to live with.
But my world, the one you came to live in, already had extremely strong male influences.
Much as I loved you, and I did Vic, I couldn't get any of it straight. I went with what I knew.
Your masculinity frightened me. I didn't know how to deal with it so I rejected it outright.
I was never going to be a sucessful lesbian, I like men too much. I tried when we were away together to see if i could fit into your world but in the end it was just too alien for me.
Shortland was a nightmare for more reasons than I can go into here.
I couldn't love you as man, as a variation of the masculine and i'm sorry if i hurt you but we're all on our own journeys and ours took divergent paths.
But I did love you Vic.
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