A personal blog made to set my mind in order. Within i'll be laying down numerous views and feelings involving my oddly exciting dreams, my day to day life, self analyses of my past and present, gender in all it's permutations, a review here and there, and last but not least everything with Goth.
I had a very strong identity before I met this guy, but I believe he finds alot of joy in manipulating others cause I just cannot figure out why I even agreed to move with him, was I that damn desperate? He did have a tendency telling me that he is the best I could ever get, that any other relationships I had after him would be much more terrible, did I really believe that? I know that I was still insecure about my looks and achieving happiness in a future relationship being who I am and all. We had nothing, and I mean nothing in common, and still somehow he manipulated me into staying even after we broke up. Eventually he manipulated me into letting a friend of his move in, that friend was very successful in making me think he was on my side.
I was happy hanging out with my friends in that area, I was happy going to the Goth/fetish event Purgatory in Charlotte, hell, I was happy at work until the last month I was in the area. Even when Savvas came down to visit with his boyfriend at the time, Cody, and another friend, they really wanted to kill him, Cody wanted to know when he could stab the guy with a pencil, the manipulator was such in insufferable know it all and would deny anything he disagreed with even when you laid out all the conclusive information in-front of him, he even tried to tell a friend of mine who was a physics major that my friend was wrong about physics.
Towards the end this guy had me thinking that transition might not perhaps be the right way for me, so after not being able to afford hormones due to all my income from my full time job going into rent, I just stopped cold turkey, and after a month I was in the bathtub with a razor crying on the phone to Savvas, after that, after about 8 fucking months I decided that it was time to get out. I wonder, I fucking wonder, what would have happened if I actually put the word out to the people I eventually came to know in Concord and Charlotte NC about needing to get out of that place, where would I be today, better, or worse?
Plus I know that I was not very good then, but the guy was terrible in bed, I felt more love when I esocrted than from being in bed with this guy.
Sub-sandwiches
Concord used to have the biggest mall in NC, it was the only place that I looked for a job and on that first day of looking for a job I was hired at the food court, tried getting a job at Ho Topic but the guy was an asshole. I had no idea that entire food courts were owned by one of two companies, this was HMS Host. At first they put me in a BBQ place, where my job was to scoop things onto trays, realizing that I was too smart and weird for that position the managers put me into the sub sandwich shop called Dive-In. This place was located in a corner and received very little foot traffic, it was not odd to have only 5 customers on a weekday, while that might sound boring, and it was at times, especially if you were by yourself, it was ruled by Goth kids and since the place had a dinning room we were aloud to play any music we wanted as long as it was not noticeably inappropriate.
When I first walked into the place there was one other person working that day, her name was Becca, she was on her knees cleaning something, I noticed the music and said "You're playing The Cruxshadows" she immediate stopped, looked up and said "Oh my god, you know who they are, and you can say their name right! Did they send me somebody smart this time?" we were instant friends. If I was out somewhere we were most likely hanging out. Becca was the first one to take me to see Ego Likeness and The Cruxshadows live, we drove all the way to Raleigh and had a heck of a time, and got to see people from back in Winston-salem.
After two weeks the manager of the sandwich got so frustrated with the upper management that she quit, too bad cause she was such a sweetheart who realyl cared about her workers. After that we only had a manager for December, but that guy was such an egotistical power-crazed ass who cared more about making the employees feel like shit than making the place run smoothly, he could not understand that the only reason they made him a manager there was because it just looked bad not to have one, that place ran smoothly with no problems and upper management left us alone cause we were trusted to do things right, then this guy almost ruins it, we complained so much that upper management forced the ass to quit.
I got employee of the month the first month I was there by just doing what I was supposed to do. I understood why when an employee insisted that she get permission from upper management before cutting tomatoes. Soon enough we got the place to hire a bunch of Goth kids and geeks and it was great until the last two months when everyone was quiting and having me work from 8am to 6pm 6 days a week, I ended up feeling stretched with a short fuse and, I believe, on the verge of insanity.
Purgatory
So not long after I move there and have myself a job, I am really wanting to go to Purgatory, Savvas and I checked out the Charlotte scene the previous year but were never able to make it back for a Purgatory event. The boyfriend did not want me to go of course, said that i'd most certainly get beaten up if I got otu like that, the way he said it was not out of some misguided concern, he personally did not like it, but I was already dolled up so I sucked in my breath and walked out, andI am glad I did cause I arrived for Purgatory's Halloween zombie theme show.
Before the end of 2005 Purgatory was in a relatively small space for as many people they brought in, which, to me, has always been amazing for a Goth/fetish event. Always at about 11:30pm it became hard to move around on the dance floor it was so packed. The thing I remember most about that first night, was a zombie stage show, Purgatory always had theater going on at different times during the event always based on the night's theme. So two lovers come out on stage and start making out in the makeshift cemetery, then two females zombies sneak up behind them, one zombie pushed the guy on a slab of fake concrete to the left while the girl was shoved down on her back on the slab to the right of the stage, then the zombie starts pulling his dick off and doing obscene things with it on stage, they made it look pretty real. The other zombie pulled out the girl's uterus and eventually her intestines and dancing around with them making blood spray all over the crowed, it was quite a show. The first few times at Purgatory I knew that noone would really notice me, by this time I knew these club politics worked, but I looked very out there which is something the young in this scene tend to appreciate, hell everyone appreciates it, if not in the same way, I could also dance, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I was approached, and I was buy a girl who recognized me from the Goth club Winston-Salem had, she introduced me to a few people and it started from there. Nowadays it just seems like the fact that it seems like I belong and enjoy myself so much is what attracts and oh yes I have certainly learned to enjoy a Goth/industrial, the fact that a place to go even exists makes me joyous nowadays, it's truly the only music I can dance to where my all is focused and i'm suddenly lost in frenzy and dance floor etiquette.
The thing to understand about the scene in Charlotte at that time is that it was much more cyber/candy Goth than anything else unlike the Winston/Greensboro area who all came across as very old-school in looks and feeling, unlike Winston/Greensboro the Charlotte scene felt much less like a community to me and personally I prefer a place where everyone knows your name and any new person is welcomed into the fold quickly, not to say that there were never any bad apples or that Charlotte did not have it's own groups within the scene like the followers of Astrid Haven or a particular drag family. Sure enough, no matter where the Goth scene is, gender variants of all kinds were very popular. In the Charlotte scene I most likely could have went further but there were some, lets just say, hated me making them questions why they were attracted to me, but I certainly attracted alot of people who happened to find out about me.
Finally
I had enough of Concord, the job was taking it's toll on me, I never had extra money, I lived with two assholes who made home life horrible and I was contemplating suicide so it was time to leave. I was able to make a deal to get out of my rental contract and of course my ex said that my life would be hell without him, yeah he was so very wrong.
Next is probably the most event filled two years of my life, so i'll post that withing the next few days.
Continuing my history I strongly suggest reading my previous posts "Winter" and "Why Dont you See Me."
Warning: Explicit Content!
Going Goth
I was not what most people would call a typical teenager, I did not do all those things that teenagers were supposed to do, sure I hung out with other outcasts, most of whom were really into metal music, and music was basically one of the very few things that connected the outcasts in school, I was such a big fan of Rob Zombie that I knew every lyric of every album he was ever involved in, other than that I cannot remember anything I really had in common with the other outcasts other than a ghost hunt we went on just to scare our-selfs because small town Lexington NC was so boring for kids like us. Lets see, there was me, Julie, my ex gf Amanda, and for the life of me I cannot remember this guy's name even though I have more memories of him than anyone else during that time, I know he was a very interesting study, back in the day I was a bully of my own faults and insecurities, knowing this allowed me to stop when I was still a little child, but he was a bully due to his terrible parents, home life and extremely low economic surroundings who changed his tune towards someone when one became interested in figuring him out, that was all he wanted, someone who cared. I hung out with the geeky/nerdy contingent, who oddly enough seemed to rule the school since many of them were also athletes, we would form a lan party every few months, I remember one of them constantly wearing pink before it was cool for guys to do so, but he also had long blonde curly hair, about 5'4 and did things that girls would do, he'd say that he was making a statement, but I saw something different, a few years later I got him to come to a Goth night, Savvas did the kid's make-up and because of how the kid acted Savvas was certain that he must be trans, many years after that I was hanging out with a former friend, said he went to a get to-gather with that crowed where I was a main topic where that kid could not stop making fun of me, I told my former friend about that night when Savvas did the kid's make-up, my former friend said that it explains alot about the kid, some days I briefly wonder if that kid made the leap to transition.
Sometimes i'd hang out with metal head Rob and his contingent, and I started working the sound for their band at Dizzy Gs in Greensboro at their new metal night, where I learned that the place also had a Goth night, and sadly before I could go the place closed down. None of the people I knew then knew what Goth music was, but we had a CD stealing scheme at this one store(I wish I never did that) which is where I got a little taste through the Sisters of Mercy, Floodland album. I was already into what most consider to be industrial, I was very quickly becoming a KMFDM fanatic through my brother who at the time was working at a radio station and brought home many free CDs. from there I got into the dark electronic side of Goth through Cleopatra and Metropolis compilations that they used to sell at Hot Topic
When I started to go to college, I started seeing this tall skinny guy dressed in black who grabed my interest, so I ended up approaching him, his name was Adam who was a piano prodigy, we got on well during that time, he introduced me to more music and told me that I must meet someone named Savvas, but before that could happen we had some sort of falling out that I cannot remember.
SavVas
Not to long after Adam I found myself going to a Goth dating site, I checked out the GLBT section for NC and there were only two people, Ron and Savvas, Savvas seemed like the more sane and interesting one so I ended up contacting him, Sadly he was moving to LA California with his friend Steven. Well he ended up hating LA and moved back to NC after 3 months. I working for the shop where my brother was piercing at the time when I learned of a new Goth club in Winston-Salem so I figured i'd invite Savvas, I went to pick him up after work, I wore this really cool long gothic skirt and this black with purple stitching tight hoodie that detached at the sleeves(I still have the skirt) but once I saw Savvas I thought "If he can go out in public like that, then what the fuck am I afraid of?"
SavVas 5-21-2004
Everyone in the Goth scene knew who Savvas was between Raleigh and Charlotte, he was a very positive person, someone who could be "Your best boy friend or your best girl friend" He made sure to introduce me to the right people, he knew exactly how to get me to start talking and, for once I felt like I belonged, everyone he introduced me to were so nice and polite I could not believe it, I had nothing but fun that night, after the club we had an after party at the pagan house where I learned what kind of drunk I am(the fun kind) and I poured ice on Mac who had just received a whipping BDSM style from a small cat o nine tails and Savvas's love/hate paddle.
Each time I got bolder in my look until I looked just as out there as Savvas only in my own style and the entire spring, summer, and fall was filled with nothing but clubs, partying, sex and drinking, and a certain smell in my car after Savvas puked in it one night that always reminded me of Concrete Blonde. I was 20.
In those support group meetings that I went to, I was the youngest, no one had started transitioning as young as me, with the fact that they were a very political group, it made me alone, all I had at the time was talking to Sarina on the phone but she lived in Philly. So when Savvas told me that he knew someone who had started transitioning around my age I was excited, I really wanted to meet her! but he was not so excited about the prospect and delayed introducing me to her for as long as he could.
Marina
Eventually Savvas introduced me to Marina who was kicked out of her parents because she refused to change her feminine ways. She was forced to survive by being an escort and found a family, adoration, creativity, and a bit of extra cash through doing drag shows. She had a very outgoing, forceful personality that made me very silent and very unopinionated around her and when I did try to give an opinion it was usually ignored. She had a "drag-daughter" Tia, living with her who was weighing the options of transitioning, they both were from that drag world, maybe od the same attitudes and outlooks, it was just not a world I fit in to then again, back then it was easy to make me socially nervous.
Savvas and Marina 2004
The first day we hung out with Marina and Tia(she was going by her boy name at the time) I remember getting along well with Tia, we went to Robin's house party which was pretty much a weekly event full of debauchery, that night I was willingly molested by two guys and as we were getting ready to leave we could not find Savvas, as it turned out he was getting sexual revenge by having this one guy blow him till orgasm and then making the guy go kiss his girlfriend, apparently the girlfriend was responsible for the destruction of a relationship he had with some guy, all because she was jealous. Either a week or a few days later we went to Robin's again, this time it was just me, Savvas, and Tia and we bought 4 bottles of wine, after drinking all of it Tia suddenly said "Ugh, i'm sooo hot." and she ripped off her shirt(she was still physically a full boy then), mine and Savvas's eye bulged, she had a really nice chest and abs, and it was an immediate attack, Savvas had one side, I had the other and we were on this reclining chair on the porch worshiping the body. Eventually one of Savvas's friends was creating too much trouble so Sav had to take him home, me and Tia continued for many hours, was even able to go down on her without anyone else noticing. at about 4am we decided to take it further back at her place, we took it all the way in her bedroom but our drunkenness had worn off and I believe it became the worst sexual experience that either of us ever had up til that point. At least Savvas made her happy the next night, but ever since then things were not the same between me and Tia. I'd basically be at Marina's apartment every chance I could get for the rest of the year, mostly being ignored or ferrying people, but for some reason I felt some sort of comfort there
The Twins
Matt and Jeremy Craven are the twins, two close friends of Savvas who introduced me to one night when the boys needed a ride home, they were and are musicians, Matt played the guitar and J played the drums and they were better than anyone i've ever heard, they were complete opposites personality wise, Matt was an extrovert while J was an introvert and you would never see Matt without blue and J without red. They had regular parties outside of a card shop where J played Magic: The Gathering. and it was always a fun time, I only started to be close to Matt when we were at a house party at Nicks, Savvas was gone, and Matt had alcohol poisoning that night and I was the only one able to take care of him, he kept wishing Savvas was there, I slapped him saying "Well he is not here but I am, and I am all you've got right now!"
Charlottesville, VA
Savvas disappeared visiting friends in Charlottesville VA, for 4 months no one knew where he was and I was so sad without my Savvas, He finally contacted us and came down that December to move his stuff to Charlottesville with a few people to help him and so I met two very crazy Deathrock mofos by the names of Dan and Spider McNasty, both were hard parting heavy drinking people, not too long before Dan was trying to catch the trolly in C'ville, he jumped for it, missed, and hit his head on the steel on the bottom of the trolly then fell back hard, he hasnever been exactly right since.
Not long after that me, the twins, and a few others go and visit Savvas in Charlottesville, the place was amazing, so open to everybody, a huge Goth scene and everyone you could imagine, it was lively and bubbling with personality and soul, and I fell in love with the place. I visited the place for numerous years always bringing Matt along. The second time Savvas was living in a house instead of an apartment bedroom sleeping on the floor, the Meridian house, was the new official party house for the scene up there and we stayed there during most of our visits, Savvas had a fantastic gypsy like bedroom set up in the basement while his friend Steven who was and is an Abercrombie gay guy, lived on the top floor, the other bedroom was rented out usually to someone within the scene and every week we would go to the big Gothic dance night called the Dawning where Savvas worked the door. I remember one time Dan and I were drinking wine in the living room of the house and he had his arms around me yelling, "I've got my own tranny! I've got my very own tranny!! She's mine, you can't have her!!!" we ended up in Steven's room smoking weed when Dan told me to smack him, after alot of prodding to smack him as hard as I can, I do so, I was about to says "I hope you don't smack me back." I only got halfway into that line when he did so and sent me spinning then falling to the bed where I promptly passed out. When I woke up I ran to the toilet to throw up but Dan was there and sat on the toilet not allowing me, he shakes his head and tells me no then points to the bathtub, I look up at him and say "Fuck you Dan!!" then throw up in in the bathtube, it's a really terrible sensation when you got throw up going through your nose.
Only pic I can find of me at "The Dawning"
Gecko House
Back in Greensboro NC I would go almost monthly to a Gecko house party, it was a huge house with about 9 rooms, it was meant to be a college house but it was bought by someone within the scene. Those parties were wild back in the day, drunkenness, orgies, drugs, BDSM, fire dancers, topless trampoline jumpers, live bands, bagpipes, voyeurism. The owner of the place had a bar in his room and I was known as one of the fun drunks always getting into some deep conversation or dancing, each time was like an adventure. I brought Matt one time who created too much drama, it was close to blows, and even with just that much negativity it was a banable offense. I remember ending up in a room as the party was winding down and the sun was coming up I was going down on a guy i'd become friends with when Matt walked in, sat in a chair and started to have a conversation with me, the other guy was freaked out but I did not care, just kept going until Matt said he was ready to leave, I said "OK, i'm almost done!"
Philly
In respect to Sarina Valentina I will not mention the name she was going by at the time. I had been talking to Sarina for a very long time, well I ended up planning a trip. It was me, Savvas, and Matt who did not want to go at first but I had made him talk to Sarina on the phone and I was able to convince him at the last minute. When we got there Sarina came out to meet us with some guy in tow, she was wearing white fishnets, white go-go boots, an extremely short, pink mini-skirt, blonde, pink, purple, and baby blue dreads, and a white crop top with "Fuck Me!" in black letters across it, I could see why her mother was so worried about her going out at night especially since she lived in a not so nice part of town. I remember all of us being stunned by her and Savvas saying "I do not care if you're straight, gay, or whatever, if you don't want to fuck her then something is wrong with you." and this was before she had any surgeries, she was like 17 at the time, anyway she was just as cool in person as she was over the phone, but I felt very inadequate and insecure next to her so I ended up saying little and I ended up really questioning myself, despite what came before in this post I was still not secure in my person and back then, no matter what others said to me, no matter how cool my mother got cause she knew I was passing, I still did not believe it and it was that last thought that made me realize how silly I was being by the end of the visit. My plan up there was to have Sarina and Matt hook up, I knew she would find Matt majorly hot, but there was another guy up there that was constantly vying for her attention. In her mother's paranoia she did not allow us to stay there so the interested guy said that we all could stay at his parents place.
That night Sarina was in bed with the guy and they fooling around, somehow she manipulated the guy to carry her out to the living room where Matt was sleeping then biting the guy making her fall on top of Matt where she stayed for the rest of the night. The next day that guy was absolutely paranoid, he was determined to be near us the entire time but Sarina and I somehow convinced him to take an estrogen pill, soon enough he got tired and decided to go to bed, he knew we were leaving but wanted to meet us in the city. We went to the city to meet up with Hatter, who I had gotten to know as well. Hatter was the one who helped Sarina on the way to transition, said she had to think about it at first cause she knew how beautiful Sarina would be and she was a bit jealous of that. Hatter was a 19 year old fucking awesomely crazy trans girl punk lesbian, she was a punk rock singer and bassist for her band "The New Minority", oh and she had hormonal double Ds. I remember we were all walking down the street, Sarina and Matt were holding hands, and she was constantly trying to get that short skirt to cover her butt when some guy called to Matt "You let your girl dress like that?" and Matt responds, "Least I know she'll be in my bed tonight."
We stayed at Hatter's place that night, she did not like the fact we were meat eaters and I think she was expecting me to be into music more than I was at the time. Matt and Sarina had sex that night and they were inseparable, and we had a nice day up in New Hope. We decided to go see "Land of the Dead" that night where the guy showed up again complaining that that pill kept him asleep the rest of the day and all night. Sarina's mother agreed to let us stay finally and between there and the theater Matt rode in the trunk of whichever car Sarina was in, he had to do so cause there was no room. The guy took his own car and was delayed which gave Matt and Sarina a good bit of alone time while Savvas and I sat in the living room talking to Sarina's mother, the Guy came in and realized what was going on went outside, punched a telephone poll and left, Matt said that the guy was not man enough to go after what he wanted. the next day noone got up until noon and we had to wait 3 hours for Sarina to do her make-up.making.
Me and Sarina, from a bit later
Boyfriends
I had gotten a Hungarian boyfriend with a lovely accent, I have no idea why I dated him, I just wanted a boyfriend so bad, a friend of his and Savvas told me that him and I broke up cause we had nothing in common and that is true but what she did not know was that he wanted me as a side thing, he wanted someone that would be OK with him messing around, thought i'd be ok with that but I was not.
Between 05-08 2005 I was the best me, I had gotten to be pretty confident I also seemed to have a happy-go-luckyness about me, I was loving life like never before
Marina, Crystal, and me
then I met a guy online who for the life of me, I cannot figure out why I ever fell for him, I think I was just really desperate, I had signed up for numerous dating sites and one was primarily a gay site but they had a trans section and I know that he impressed me online but when I met him in person there was, nothing really, but as it turned out he was a master manipulater and did not care who he hurt to get what he wanted and I ended up moving in with him to Concord NC near Charlotte..
I am starting to think I should write a book lol well, i'll be posting more tomorrow possibly.
This entry focuses my transsexualism and I strongly suggest reading the previous blog post "Winter"
Keeping it Underneath
I spent alot of time drawing and making comics about the made up worlds I often escaped to, this was still a way to forget about asking myself questions that I should have been asking. You see, the major problem I had after I had my surgery is that I did not know what I saw myself as, I found it so very confusing and distressing when I entertained the thought of what I would look like wearing my mother's old clothes and then found myself posing in-front of a mirror, I knew everyone wanted me to be a boy I did not know what I was, I remember when I was really young wanting certain things that were supposed to be for girls and the n feeling very shameful for those thoughts cause I thought it was not normal. Same thing when I posed in-front of that mirror, the same every other time I posed in-front of a mirror, the shame tripled when I hit puberty a slight breeze could turn me on ,I hated it, I beat myself up over the feelings I had, I did not want this.
Getting a Clue
I could not play with the girls, did not have the semblance of guts to voice what I wanted so I got into reading and playing X-Men with the boys insisting that I play Rouge I really liked Gambit too, thought he was hot. I got really into video games and spent a good deal of my time with that. One day, some exploitive talk show was on and they had someone on there who was a transsexual and it clicked for me, I immediately began researching, but even though what was said felt right to me I did not want it to be true, I was hoping that I was a transvestite or something, it was very easy to test this since I spent most of my time outside of myself and came to the conclusion that the clothes did not turn me on, still, I did not want to be TS so I turned to paganism in hopes of making it go away, it did not work, I just grew more angry and had myself a little melt down out in the woods.
Coming Out
I was always so overwhelmingly afraid that someone would find out my secret. I had so many nightmares of some shadow demon exposing me. Once, when I was 9 or 10, my brother caught me trying on some of my mother's clothes, I was absolutely mortified butt he promised not to tell anyone, much later I found out with him being a chronic lier that he told my mother , she decided it was some sort of phase apparently.
Luckily after my little meltdown I acknowledged that nothing could be done to get rid of it, besides it felt right, the only times in my young life when I felt inside myself, but I had no idea what to do about it. I found a private Yahoo group for trans teens where I made a few internet friends and got alot of info, but my fear did not allow me to come out to my parents about it, puberty did not get me to come out, it is a good thing that the thought of suicide is something I cannot stand and thinking about it so strongly and thinking about how I could do it, how easy it would be, and asking questions like "If I can't be me then why not?" this pushed me to meekly come out to my parents, my mother thought I was going to tell her that i'm gay so it did not go over well, unlike many others I am lucky that after all the yelling and arguing they said that they love me and would not kick me out, that was when I was 16.
Perfect Timing!
My parents sent me to a therapist, each one with no knowledge of what I was going through and none of them wanted to talk about my gender identity at all wasting my time at a time when I thought I had no time to waste at all. I originally told my parents right after my grandfather had died, I had the worst timing, then my grandmother was starting to follow him, I love my mother and out of pity I did not mention anything gender wise for about a year until the suicidal thoughts crept back and I told her again when my grandmother was on her deathbed dying of lung cancer just like my grandfather. I know! PERFECT TIMING! Well after visiting a therapist who tired feeding me anti-depressants and then another useless therapist every week for 6 or so months I insist on making a serious attempt to find someone who knows something, sure enough we found a social worker who knew a thing or two, and I felt like she was someone I could talk to, but after a few visits she brought my parents in there and explained to them what was going on, which elevated my parent's understanding then she said that she could only do so much, that sadly she did not know of a therapist or psychologist who knew something about gender identity but she knew of a good support group about an hour away. Even though my parents came away with a greater understanding it did not stop me and my mother from getting into an argument every time we opened our mouths.
Group
I started talking to the woman who ran these meetings found out that they were having a pool party and I decided to go, I was so very nervous that I did not really ask any questions and if I did I cannot remember, they did not think I would be back, guess I looked scared indeed. When I came to the meeting it was larger than I expected, and I remained silent, but something I remember very clearly was a transsexual named Blythe, who was/is a beauty and I thought that I would never look as good as her, during the next meeting I got the confidence to ask where they go for therapy how they get their hormones, they said that there was a psychologist across the street who deals with most of them, well what do you know.
Early Relationships
During this time I had my first real boyfriend, before hand I would pick of the guys I liked, but only between me and him, I think the first one got the wrong idea, indeed I was harsher and I had not reached that soft playfulness with it that i'd later have. Next I started sleep with a neighborhood boy when I was about 14, he had a pretty hot body and was the first person I went all the way with and he was the first person who knew I was trans. Not too long after I started dating the on girl who I would call Goth in my high school, she was me for all intents and purposes except she was not the cuddling type, when she wanted to go all the way with me I just could not do it, it did not feel right to me so we broke up, I would later come out to her and we were friends for a short time before a good ole country boy started dating her and threatened to beat me up. I dated a rich girl after her but while we got on well I would not have sex with her and I lied to her about wanting to get back with my previous girlfriend. I found out that many of the girls in my high school thought that I had that dark, mysterious, "no one knows nothing about him" thing going on. Back to that time, I had met this guy online, he was tall with long blonde hair which I was so into being a fan of the Highlander series way back when. I had to drive 4 hours to see him, I did not dress up girly or anything, I did not think I had anything good enoguh to wear, so I just went in my boys clothes, I was very late, I am terrible with directions, I missed the diner we were supposed to have but eventually found my way. He wore tight blue jeans, black boot, a white t-shirt, a man corset, and a leather motorcycle jacket, I was nervous but swooning, and despite how I dressed he treated me right and we headed towards my first Goth club experience where I sat on a desk the entire night holding on for dear life due to my social anxiety at the time, still everyone was nice and respectful towards me and left a good impression, in the end his involvment in BDSM freaked me out too much at the time so I ended it.
Finally!
As soon as I was able I went to see the psychologist across the road, I immediately liked her, she had a way of talking that made you comfortable and willing to talk about anything, she went right past the wall, and determined that two months was enough for me instead of the standard 3 months of therapy before being prescribed hormones. heh, I remember I was in the waiting room one time and a little girl with her mother were there and the little girl pointed to me and said "Mama, she's pretty" that made me feel really great. I had to go see a doctor first and I did not like him one bit, it's funny that the first time he took my blood I passed out and fell on the floor, I came to as they were lifting me up, I had forgoten where I was for a few seconds, I just knew people were grabbing me so I started punching wildly hittign him in the face. The first time I went to pick up my hormones I thought that this might be a dream, I was so happy even though I fell asleep alot....
Tomorrow i'll keep going with this journey, including key figures in my life and the Goth scene.
Today's blog is all about my past.... my early past. I feel that maybe typing my history I can come to understand my inner workings better and know how I ended up here.
Born then Separate
I was a terrible baby, my mother said to me one fine evening during one of our oh so "lovely" conversations. She said that I would cry when the sun hit me wrong, at any slight provocation, and it was hell on her, which I can understand, it seemed like I resented being born and it was obvious that I had problems from the start. My father did not want me, he only wanted one child, my older brother, he did not agree to my birth, and since he and my mother were on the outs they ended up all but officially separating. I remember up until I think I was 5 him spending every hour every day at his job, a screen printing business that he owned, him living in a little apartment in the back of the large, almost warehouse like building and nowadays when I think about it I would not be surprised if he had a fling with one of the female employees at that time. I remember there were some places in that building I was afraid to go, not surprising since I was afraid of so many things. I loved the smell of the place somehow but I can no longer seem to describe it, maybe sandalwood, a sort of varnish old type of smell, maybe something you would expect to smell in an industrial building of it's type, I would say that variations of the smell attracts me to certain men nowadays. My brother Nathan says he was emotionally distraught over the separation, I however seemed to barely notice(my brain had not made the neural connections yet) besides the fact that I felt that my father paid less attention to me than with my brother.
This is going to be a story that will take many days to tell so let me give some information so I will not have to go into long tangents in the future...
A Little bit of Southern Family History
I had a high amount of respect for both sets of my grandparents, what they achieved in life was remarkable and all of them, even my mother, father, and brother had/has an interesting pioneer, do-it-yourself spirit which has caused every single family member to have their own business or businesses where just 3(a little less actually) generations ago both sides, especially the southern side were very poor. My mother would reminisce about living in a shack close to the NC Appalachian mountains where they had an outhouse and got by on raising livestock and vegetables for their own consumption. My grandfather had it worse living in a one room shack with five brothers, he grew up tough, and he was someone others gravitated towards. Later, hanging sheet rock for his brothers, he happened to work longer and faster than them, which gave him the ability and respect to gain connections with other contractors to the point where he started his own housing business, with some contractors being favorable to my grandfather, his brothers saw this as a betrayal. By the end of his life he had made many connections and was well thought of. I remember asking him, "Granpa, you have enough money, why don't you get the internet or buy a TV that is not 30 years old?" he responded "I have everything I need, a house, my wife, a daughter, two grandchildren and my Cadillac.". My grandmother was a house wife and happy to be so and loved my grandfather so much that she did not not last more than a year after he died but she was very unhappy with where she was forced to live the last 20 or so years of her life which I do not think helped her disposition, one thing is for certain she treated me very well.
Ole Southern Racism, and Death
While I have generally good memories of of my southern set of grandparents, they treated my mother pretty terribly. They were extreme authoritarians while she was growing up, and when my mother was an adult my she was helping him with his housing business "JB Investments" making the floor plans but no matter how well she did my grandfather never complimented her and in-fact was always negative, and more often than not he would yell at her and humiliate in-front of everyone, one time, only one time did a contractor have the guts to stand up for my mother against my grandfather and he was not my daddy, it got so bad at one point that she tried to avoid him on the job.
My grandparents were also racist in that they would never allow a black person in their house, no matter how good they got along with said person, and they thought interracial couples were an abomination, and to them that was the worst thing, My mother said that she was threatened on if she every brought a black guy home, my mother seems unaffected by their racism, and I never heard any of it until I was a teen. I remember one morning I accompanied them during their weekly breakfast outing to McDonalds, an interracial couple couple who looked very in love walked by the window. I thought they looked lovely, but my grandparents commented to each other how disgusting the two were and kept saying what a poor choice the girl made, I asked them why and they were unable to give me a real answer just bullshit things like "it's not right" or "it's unnatural", just as telling, when I was a teen, I was leaving my grandparents house and my grandfather said "I'd rather you be gay than date a black woman." I was tempted to say to say back to him "Guess what, i'm dating a black guy." but that would have served no purpose other than create a rift between us. When he was dying of lung cancer they sent him a black preacher, who he tried to reject, but the preacher was determined, and not bothered by the racist slurs my grandfather threw at him, the man persisted and my grandfather respected that and relented, after many talks with the man he regretted his racism and apologized, until he died that was the only preacher he would give audience to. He also apologized to my mother for how he treated her throughout her entire life, he died peacefully with my father there holding his hand.
Short History of the Northern Family
in Dillsburg PA my great-grandfather was a taxidermist for the natural history museum, pretty cool right? My grandfather started out selling bottled milk door to door as his first business. Unlike my southern grandfather he does not come across as tough despite his height but he is a leader. He and my grandmother were involved in numerous public works and charities, they owned a string of business, about 5, when they got bored they would sell the company and start another that piqued their interest including a shoe shop and a photography business, the last and longest running one before retirement was a very successful real estate business which he sold in the early 90s. At some point he joined the Freemasons, and became a very respected community leader, I always liked teasing him "Granpa, I watched a 2 hour special on the Freemasons yesterday." with alot of concern he responded "What! What did they say?!" and i'd loudly laugh and say "No worries, they did not reveal your secrets." and he calmly responds "Oh, ok.". He was always a busy person but he had time for me if I wanted it. My grandmother was very active volunteering for church based charities, and she was a terrific musician and singer, she was the piano player for a touring gospel choir, and taught piano in schools before I was born. I believe a tiny bit of sourness from me, towards her, came when she constantly tried to turn my southern accent into a northern one as a child, she hated the word "ya'll" They are both very religious obviously, but my grandfather is a good bit more open-minded, but they both thrill at intelligence. After having two sons my grandfather was hoping that my parents would produce girls, He bought girls clothes for my brother way before it was determined he would be a boy, not wanting to waste, my brother had to wear alot of pink and shirts that said things like "i'm a good girl" for the first year of his life. I am pretty sure he did not expect to have a female grandchild in this way meaning moi, I bet he is thrilled over my niece.
Intolerance
I have never cared for my northern extended family, I always felt that they did not like us, this was especially felt at a family get-together when my grandparents redid their vows, you could feel the sneers towards me and my brother, who was already covered head to toe in tattoos. At a holiday get-together I got the distinct impression that if I said that I was not Christian or anything but a normal boy then i'd be completely ostracized and after hearing the story of what that family did to a distant relative because the boy loved pink and played with dolls, the family shamed him so much that he tried to become macho, got married and promptly killed himself. What would be odd to most, my southern family were OK with me "Does not affect me at all so why should I care?" is what I would hear most often or they were OK with it after seeing that I could pass and look like a normal girl(funny how family members can be OK with it due to how well one passes, usually your safety is what chiefly worries them) I never told my northern extended family anything about me and I don't really give a shit if I never talk to em or see them again
Beaten Down
Now that we are pretty much done with family explanations, let's talk about a possible disorder, you see I was terrible at reading and writing as well as my speech, you could attribute this to a number of disorders but I attribute this to constant ear infections, where it felt like I was underwater at least 12 hours daily, the pediatrician kept telling my mother that I was autistic but my mother did not believe that since she could come up behind me, snap her fingers loudly right next to my ear and I would not notice.
I was a bully in the first half of pre-school, the girls would not let me play and I was pretty much ignored which made me very angry, that anger was mostly about me, I hated myself so I directed it towards others, which really affects the psyche for a good long time. By the end of pre-school I had faded to the back of insignificance, I was falling very behind and was starting to get picked on constantly because of it so I kept falling back into myself and creating my own worlds in my head that I escaped to very often, My mother was extremely worried about me because I could sit in a rocking chair and rock back and forth for hours just staring. Elementary was horrible at first I was excited but it quickly became apparent that I would be ignored and be made fun of constantly, according to my mother, I was called stupid by the teacher who isolated me from the rest of the kids and encouraged them to make fun of me, her heart bled when I agreed with the teacher but then she got very angry, she rampaged at the school resulting in a class transfer.
Things were not that great with other people I knew. My father had gotten back with my Mother when I entered elementary I believe, but while I know he was really nice to me and tried to do his best to teach me sports(which I was terrible at and made fun of by the teachers as well) I do not remember a large presence from him. I don't know why but I always tried playing with the neighbor girl who was my age but because I was a boy she treated me like shit, she was basically made to play with me because our parents were friends even though her father disliked any boy around his daughter. She would be extremely reluctant to let me play with her toys ending with me going home on the verge of crying, she told me how sorry she was for being mean for the sake of being mean in high school. At home I tried my best to emulate my older brother but failed miserably at everything, he was my opposite, everyone liked him, he was very popular and good at the things he tried, so maybe, I thought, if I was like him things would change but I ended up being teased by my brother as well as his friends which again sent me away crying, in adulthood he apologized to me for this. At the house of my southern grandparents, my grandfather most certainly wanted little to do with me, I wanted to stay inside all the time hanging out with my grandmother and watch movies, I was always a big movie person, After a few times crying to my mother about not getting any attention from my grandpa it turned out he did not think I was a healthy boy, that I was not interested in what boys my age should be interested in, my mother tried to convince him at least take a few hours and do something with me that I like to do like watch movies with other people, he scoffed at that but eventually he came around and, once night started to fall, he would come inside and watch a movie with me. I had one friend named but his parents did not treat me very well either. Then there was my southern great-grandmother who called me a sissy every time that I did not do what the other boys were supposed to do.
All of that along with that intense ear infection helped nothing, one very happy memory was going to the Sylvan Learning Center where they gave me personal one on one instruction on reading and by the time I came out of there my reading, and understanding what I read was in line with a collage senior and I was still in the 3rd grade(My speech was not at an acceptable level until the 5th grade), other than accomplishing that I rarely felt happy and by the time I was eight the pediatrician kept insisting that I was autistic, but my mother finally had enough, told the pediatrician to basically go fuck himself, and we went to a different doctor where on my first visit he diagnosed me with a severe ear infection and I was scheduled immediately for surgery to have tubes put in my ears, I remember it very clearly, counting down from 10 then a neon like hammer hit me with the type of light you tend to see when your eyes are closed, with an after effect of stars, when I woke up I was groggy, it took me a minute to figure out what happened but I felt great otherwise. I never had a problem with my ears after that, my IQ quickly shot up past 100, in-fact I am a case example of how IQ can change but, as it turns out, i'll always be behind in other areas of life, still...I am lucky that the infection did not permanently damage my ears, any longer and it would have certainly done so, I have since met others who had the same problem and they were not so lucky. This is the point where all my anger and confusion over myself started to subside albeit slowly for as I come to find out, describing exactly what I feel is a gargantuan task.
Tomorrow i'll keep going on and talk more about my gender problems, transition, and such things, especially how I felt about it during different periods....
In this blog i'll be sharing everything about my comic "Between the Lines" I figure it might help me some to review the history of this project.
"Between the Lines" follows two trans kids and their gender variant group of misfits. The characters include Savvas who is in a category all his own, Razly who is all kinds of gender fucked, and Mike who just does not give much of a shit, but the two that the comic follows most closely are Shay and Dani, two friends with opposite personalities going through transition in more ways than one. BtL follows them through 5 years, the crap they go through, triumphs, and how things change with themselves and between each other. I started this project a little over 10 years ago almost a year before I started hormones and back then it was a different beast all together. I originally started it after the anger of my first time reading exactly how the TDoR list of trans murders happened, my anger and sadness over this created the character Shay, a fun loving, outgoing 25 year old that other characters tended to gravitate towards. I also put myself in the comic as the main character, if you found any of the old pages you would see exactly how little self-esteem I had and the major self-loathing I had going on. I had these two angel and demon like characters for Mek which linked to how torn I was between making myself happy or being a boy like my parents wanted me to be plus my insecurities that back then I thought I could not possibly be passible, trust me, if you see my old pictures compared to now you'll be like "Holy fucking shit!" I also had another character in there who played a kind of "straight man" and then a mean spirited TS Nikki who was only talked about within the 15 pages. I quickly became much more interested in Shay's character cause I gave an unseen reason why she's friends with Mek and that is because Shay had a friend named Dani and Mek reminded her of Dani to a very large degree. I cannot exactly remember why I let go with this version but something just did not feel right. On a side note when I first started talking to the person who would later be known as Sarina Valentina it was in a Livejournal group called "Transgender Goths" The first message I sent her was about how she looked and acted exactly like my character Shay, she agreed. Sarina will come into play later. I started the next one within my first year of hormones. It was pretty much the same but it looked better and introduced the character Rachel who had a very typical secret of the TS kind, I also had a "kinder" version of myself which means that I had a better outlook on moi. Another change was that I had planed on playing up on the fact that Shay never got over Dani and how that affects her mentally and throughout the comic Shay was supposed to come unraveled. Something still did not feel right with this one so I started again. This time Shay ended up being the center of the story, she had been living out in the country with her sister for a year and she comes back mainly for a special anniversary reminiscing on Dani. The Rachel character changed alot, everyone knew her T, she escorted, very sweet and soft-spoken and had been friends with Shay for a long time. My character had change since I had a very positive view of myself and deep into the Goth scene, I looked like a Siouxsie Sioux nightmare, I also introduced a mentor type of character basically I took that "Straight man" character, made him bi who spit out words to the wise. The mean spirited TS Nikki has a breakdown due to her past . I showed alot of flashbacks and it as I was drawing the comic and coming up with Shay and Dani's history I was finding that the flashbacks interested me much more than the rest of the story. So for the 4th one I focused almost exclusively on Dani and Shay transitioning together and it's fallout. Shay convinces Dani to take the chance of going out in public as a girl and they go out and do what teenagers do. I got rid of the Mek character completely of course and I pretty much replaced the anger with fear so for all intents and purposes Dani is Mek in this version. When thinking about that mentor character I thought what better mentor is there than the one I had in real life Savvas. Nikki was there hating on both the main characters. Razly was new but was only seen at the very end of the first chapter. The second chapter was about when Shay started transitioning and was pretty much the Sarina Valentina right before she started transition with some changes like a supportive older sister and Sarina's mother did not have alot in common with Shay's. I got, I think to the middle of chapter 2 before deciding that the art was too atrocious and started over. The 5th and most popular version lasted until about 3/4ths of way through chapter 4. Same story, just told and presented a bit better. In this we see Rachel again, this time she is a transsexual and a drag queen who has been in this game for a very long time,she provides Shay with a way to transition. She ended up being based on numerous transsexual drag queens that i've known. Then there is Rio who represented a kind of crossdresser, he was the lead singer of a very popular local band called "Burning Embers" that Dani loves. In this version Dani came out more as an individual character. In the end the entire story was a bit too.. ragged... built on creaky stilts....an overabundance of fat? Plus my art had gotten so much better, coupled with the fact that I really wanted it to be worthy of publishing I decided to redo it for those purposes. Trim the fat and refocused it I certainly did. A very close friend of mine died a few years ago, Bryce, who drew the first 10 pages of chapter 3 and his personality informs Dani this time around. I realized in context that previous versions of Dani had absolutely zero real rebeliousness she had no back-bone unless Shay put it there, she seemed to be constantly either afraid, happy, or suicidal she had no purpose other than to serve the story, someone that others can easily project onto but that is not my intent and that does not feel right for a well rounded character. I also got rid of Nikki since her character was only there for people to dislike. I took away Rio because he was only there to represent a type of trans person. I added the character Mike, who is based on my friends Matt and Mike who is a complete lune, both are fantastic guitarists which goes well with the whole "music" feel and he is a character that plays very well talking between Dani and Shay's personalities. I plan for this to be about 6 or 7 chapters unlike the 11 I had planned before, and if I can get through it i'd love to do a sequel with Shay in her 20s, hopefully, hopefully. I suppose looking over this it's obvious that the comic has become more about just wanting to tell the story of these characters, beyond the influence of a few personalities from friends I know melding with a few of the characters there is no influence from trans politics and societal ideals, something that I am happy about, I would rather have the nitty gritty.
So.... I accidently got the Master and Mistress's car towed, we all(Mistress was at work) had to take the bus to the Path and walk about 10 blocks to the tow place, was a bit of a hassle to get the car back, a shitload more restrictions up here than down south that is for sure, I ended up paying for it since they did not have the moola right now, still they were frustrated but not mad, it's not like you can change it after the fact so it would not make sense to be mad at me if I know my mistake.Though honestly it was bullshit, I parked in-front of a secondary entrance that is never used and constantly chained up with a heavy duty padlock, believe me I pass it every day of the week, it's always the huge main entrance that is open, so just like most parking policies in Jersey City, they just really want your money. Still, i'll be ultra careful in the future.
I have been thinking for awhile now on if I should move back down south, I am not feeling the city. I am someone who prefers less people, I always feel happier going into the city on a Monday where the presence of other human beings is minimal, which is odd for someone living so near THE city. Quite frankly I am someone who prefers a place between a city and country, I love to have a yard where I can grow things and woods to run in, there has never been, not even on time, that I have not felt a bit closed inhere, I love a wide space. People think I should get out more to clubs, nightlife and all that jazz, but it gets unsafe here in the middle of the night, which leaves out going to a club unless the Master happens to come with me. Positively, NJ is like the number one state for transition, easier to get all your documents changed, protected against discrimination under state law, free hormones within the NYC-metro area, and medicaid is available to me here unlike NC where the health of the poor is not really cared about.
While typing this I remembered something the Master said about the south being nothing but hicks and I had to lay it out that, outside the big cities, the north is just as full of hicks, if not more so. Down south in NC for instance acceptance completely depends on the county you're in, one county could be totally cool but the next county over will actually tell you to leave in a very menacing way, I was told by a another transsexual that her home country, Germany, is the same way. I am getting tired of people saying southern=hick, so unless you're moving to one of the big northern cities then I am sorry, you are going to run into just as many hicks in the north.
I should mention briefly that I am involved in a certain relationship described as "closed poly, built on an M/s structure" I think you might be able to figure it out from there. basically, even though I took that path I might have not of truly thought through it in the way that I could not see all the steps at the start, so now I do not think it is working out for me and I am looking for another path, either a completely different one or a modified one.
Collide is a a great darkwave/trip hop/synth pop/Goth band hailing from LA. Many of their compositions are fantastic and with one of the greatest voices i've heard they have a one-of-a-kindness thing about them. Another great song by them is their cover of "Comfortably Numb" which is arguably the greatest cover of that piece out there.
Yesterday I was walking around NYC in the village trying to see if my feelings about the city could change for the positive in 90 degree weather. I did indeed feel very good and much more relaxed unlike most of my visits to the city. A friend was with me and he wanted to introduce me to a new restaurant knowing how much I like traditional foods, sadly the restaurant had closed, not surprising I suppose knowing how hard it is to keep a restaurant operational. So he treated me to a delicious gourmet donut where we had a conversation about how people dress and what that says about them especially my my ex who would wear sweatpants to an opera and what doing such things truly says about him. Afterwards I insisted on going to "Big Gay Ice cream" across the street where I introduced my friend to who Bailey Jay is (I got interested in what she has to say through her "Sugar & Spice" podcast with Jen Richards it was my #1 podcast!) Told him that i'd like to meet her but I do not think i'd want to hang out with her, my friend gave me an odd look so I started explaining....
i've been friends with Sarina Valentina since we both started transitioning over 10 years ago but even though we were great friends over the phone, every time I visited i'd feel very inadequate, How I acted over the phone ended up not being the same in person, That was me in the past when I had very low self-esteem and little self worth, would I feel so inadequate today being much more secure in my person, or maybe it has something to do with the profession? So I started to think how my insecurities have changed, I am much more guarded today, why? I have an idea.... but i'll talk about that another time for the sake of not making this too long. Is this inadequacy only on the surface or deeper? Sure I have not known any woman who has not felt inadequate in some way, I feel this even today when passing some people on the street, so at what point does the feeling overwhelm? Sure, media plays into it alot but now I believe that it is ingrained and how much depends on the person and that no one is completely exempt.
My physical insecurities affected my mental insecurities when I was younger and it stems from many things in my past. I believe the many insecurities I have today are more invisible unlike the many insecurities I had when I was younger so it seems that I swapped my insecurities... or, maybe they just matured and I am sure many other's feel the same.
