Bigger Is Always Better

TBB called.

The weatherman hosting the bike rally made a joke about a woman he met in Key West, who turned out to be a transvestite.   TBB didn’t think it was funny, so a discussion with the manager, and a note to the talent later, saying call me for education or I talk to management at your station, she moved on.

She was flirted with by a big biker, and then challenged by his friend, who looked askance and asked how tall she was.

“Five twelve,” TBB responded.

“Oh my God!  Six feet!” he said.

“Didn’t you hear me?” TBB asked.  “I said that I’m five foot twelve.”

He was discomforted, but TBB just hugged onto her biker pal and said, “We are just a couple of weirdos, right, gorgeous.”

He agreed, smiling and TBB moved on.

She wanted to tell me one thing:  Being big feels good to her, feels right. She gets it.

And I get that I need her to be big and brilliant, and that her strength is a gift to me, just as she sees my insight as a gift to her.

Bigger is always better.  It looks good on TBB.

And I hope, not withstanding the fact that the guy who sold me the wine tonight who wouldn’t meet my eyes, that it looks good on me too.

Vomited Up A Diamond

Just talking to TBB on the phone; she was waiting while her hair took color.

I was talking about how we hold onto the fear & anxiety in order to stay small, how we disempower ourselves by crippling ourselves, how fear becomes a deeply held habit which comforts us.

She was moved.

“Oh, girl,” she told me. “You have to put that in your blog. You really do have the understanding and the insight, and that is so very unique.

“I mean, look, you just vomited up a diamond there!”

I laughed.

“You have to promise to write that down, a pure TBBism. ” I said “‘Vomited Up A Diamond,’ indeed.”

She’s got the power that TBB, even if she, like I, want to duck it. It’s not easy to hold onto your status quo in the face of Hurricane TBB (who has cycle rallyes this weekend and next, the biker bitch.”

So I help her understand that people see her as powerful, not just blonde, and she reminds me of my power.

Together, we try.

Lost Emotion

Writing about e-mail in the workplace in the New York Times, Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, says ominously, “New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.”

On the other hand, he says, face-to-face encounters are “information rich.” “This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.”

He goes on to say that the opportunity for misunderstanding increases exponentially when e-mail replaces face-to-face, or even phone, conversation. In e-mail, he says, jokes are perceived as less funny, neutral statements are perceived as more negative and positive statements as more neutral. When we send e-mail, Goleman says, “there’s little to nothing by way of emotional valence to pick up. E-mail lacks those channels for the implicit meta- messages that, in a conversation, provide its positive or negative spin.”

What a bummer for us social hermits.

Jo Page, “Reckonings” Metroland, 11 October 2007

I’m trying to put away the clothes that have been pulled out this week, and trying them on in the process.

When I put together some fun outfit, I squeal with delight.  It’s fun to create new looks, new expressions.

But there is no way to share them, no way to get feedback.  I can write about them, but that is flat.  And even a snapshot limits the communication.

Rachel is right.  It’s unfair and queasy-making to demand response to meta-messages from others.

But without those messages, and the response metas that reflect, how do we become more?

Tattoo

I know, I know, that gender expression is different than sexuality, but, well, not always.

I’m standing in my cute new sling-back peep-toe pumps and the calf length Jones Wear chiffon skirt, and I have the desire to have a tatoo on my ankle. Just a little one, just a sexy one.

Remember the line in Wedding Crashers about the girls with the tats at the base of their spine, and how they were guaranteed fun?

Yeah, kinda like that. I just want to be the girl, even if I know that’s impossible.

I know, however, that the vast majority of people who see me don’t know that I was never the girl.

My passing distance is very close, and unless they are looking for trannys, to them I look like a forty-something business woman who probably has college age kids, not someone who never was a girl.

This means that I may be in fear, but the gent still smiled and held the door for me at the mini-mart.

I just need to remember to smile back.

I also need to remember to express entitlement, and not shrink from confrontation.   You may not know this, but women can be aggressive when they are shopping, and women with power just push back, rather than moving to another aisle.  I don’t do that, yet.

I have been going to women’s rooms more this week. After using them I feel two things.

First I feel confident and assured in my own womanhood, centered in myself and not in the imposed fear I am “supposed” to feel.

But much more importantly, I feel like I don’t need to use the rest room anymore, and I can continue in the world without being crippled by a full bladder.

Yeah, being centered is better.