In the end, I feel, my struggles have been pointless.
Or at least that’s how it feels in the middle of this dark night.
One woman tells me her women’s group has discussed me and decided it would be alright if I attend. It feels like being invited to be the exhibit, and the idea that somehow, an open women’s group feels they have the right to decide if transwomen are woman enough to attend, well, that feels creepy. Then again, most women grow up looking for the validation of other women, so maybe this is just another normal I have resisted.
I was aggressively challenged at a trans gathering, called a drag queen by a gay man, and my father told me that the gimmick I got him to have an unlimited phone in the hotel room is just crazy, crazy.
And, as always, I feel like my only support is talking into this can, which helps me think things through — why else would I be doing this at 3 A.M.? — but also feels empty and alone. I know that I am a great writer, but I also know that there are much better authors out there, people who have gotten their voice out there in ways I never have.
There are the good moments. I chased around looking for a working Coca-Cola fountain, and after three failures, the one that worked was in a shop managed by the woman who used to manage my local. She called me ma’am twice and smiled, with those goofy-pretty white/pink nails, and it felt good and safe and affirming.
Even the astoundingly beautiful Candis Cayne walks in this world identified as trans, and that means identified by some as a man, by some as a drag queen, by some as not a real woman.
I remember some gimcrack show on A&E, where a British production company had volunteers cross gender. Of course, while they sold the show on walking in the world as a woman or man, the participants actually walked in the world as trannys, but no one wanted to talk about those issues, because that was too, well, not mainstream.
Walking in the world as visibly trans. Pointless.
Well, there may be a point, I’ll cede you that. But a piffle, a drop in a vast sea.
I had to tell someone who thought I was smart and had leadership that since he promises better passing that I am not useful to him. Being visibly trans is not what his clients want, rather it is what they want to avoid by using his services.
Heck, being visibly trans is, in many ways, what I want to avoid too. It’s just that after twenty years, well, I’m a bit too gimlet eyed. Makes my writing interesting, if not very engaging.
Got a movie on. One of those chick flicks where women fall in relationships, with partners, with other women, with each other. It seems so sweet and it seems so separate from me. I know how to love, but no one has ever helped me learn how to be loved, and that seems isolated from me, as if I am on the other side of the glass.
It’s raining outside. Has been for a couple of days now. Spring showers, fertility from the shy, warm and most, opening up the buds.
But me, well, it’s a tough night were I feel pointless.
Oh, well.
Callan 