recently...
working on my end game, the tough convos, intentional trinkets, unfettered spit, a new word to describe myself, a terrible sinking feeling, finally a good trip (in every sense), locking in habits, cooking for myself and others, waiting around, cat-naps in the warm breeze, boots getting grosser, undelivered gifts, sweating despite texture, linear time mishaps, some new skills, making lists just to cross things off, it's getting easier to cum, it's getting harder to leave
she said "i feel like i'm lying to you" (about something she does with him) and then she said "i feel like i'm lying to him" (about something she does with me)
ive been masking in my house because i hung out with my girlfriend (who masks) unmasked and her roommate (who doesn't mask) tested positive for covid. unmasked just long enough to smoke with my partner who is in remission from cancer and missing an organ, when i find out someone ELSE i just hung out with unmasked (WHO ALSO MASKS) also has a roommate (WHO DOESN'T MASK) test positive for covid. see a pattern here ???????? masking in my house now would do no good because ive already kissed this person and thus have shared air, so if im sick, they will be too. panicked about my other girlfriend's boyfriend not masking at work and cried about it and they did not take it well. i have to work with the public, both in customer service and s3x work, and i have to take public transit, AND I TAKE PRECAUTIONS, I MASK, I TEST, I LEAVE WHEN THE AIR FEELS TOO THIN, and so i also go to punk shows, and share a joint or cig with a pal, and kiss friends on a whimsy. and i do it with forethought, with meaning, knowing each miniscule risk i take is infinitely multiplied when weighed against what a risk it is for the person i live with to breathe the same air as me. and my complaining about it does nothing !!!! at all !!!! my partner works from home in and we have an air purifier and our bedrooms are on opposite end of the house. and yet !!!! what kind of person am i, to live here at all, knowing that every decision i make for myself has to be weighed against someone else's risk. and still !!!!! taking risks. fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK
no g_d would mistake me for a mirror;
visiting my hometown used to mean gritting my teeth at the familiarity but i guess now it means getting lost and accidentally driving past the place where i lost my virginity. i have the same cyclical parallel conversations with people i love and people i don't. i get high as fuck and dream about driving off the road (then i wake up with my hands on the wheel). i would create out of air the way other people do but nothing feels new enough to make. your roommate tests positive for covid and my roommate writes their own eulogy. they say you are one degree of separation from that and i lick my wounds. you say she killed herself and neither of us say what we're thinking - lucky. the sex gets rougher and so do the feelings. of course i like causing pain but now i'm worried it's because i want to cause harm. the problem isn't someone else it's how i compare myself to them. the problem isn't me it's the mirror and its glamour. the problem isn't the reflection it's that i don't recognize myself.
i have been so fuckin depressed all day, like middle school depressed, like when i lived in that apartment with no windows depressed, like before-i-owned-cats depressed, like debt-collector cold-call depressed, like night-and-a-day-in-jail depressed, like nostalgia and nausea rolled into one, like a virus that infects only me (maybe i need to change my meds again lol)
(I WAS TODAY YEARS OLD BEFORE I STOPPED ANSWERING EVERY SINGLE QUESTION)
"you shouldn't ask people that"
"honestly nunya beeswax"
"i don't feel comfortable answering"
"i don't know"
"you should ask someone else"
"idk, did you ask them?"
"that's none of my business"
"that's a sore subject, let's drop it"
"i don't want to tell you"
ad infinitum.
thinking about the time there was someone tattooing at a punk show but it was an outdoor gig so the tattoo gun was hooked up to the generator and everyone was like "omg gas-powered tattoos". anyway that's what diy feels like every day if you do it right :-)
(another death in the extended family) hearing about the death of a friend's friend, a lover's ex roommate, someone who was on the edge of your life, not central to you but central to people who are central to you, is a lot like hearing about the death of a cousin you didn't really know. especially when they are also trans, are also T4T, are also an addict, are also part of the networks of intimacy that make up our communal ecosystem, are also part of the fearful understanding that at any moment any of us could fall victim to the kind of statistics that are woven into the fabric of our history, and have also been privy to the terrible knowledge that again and again someone did indeed lose themself this way. every time another transsexual in our community dies, not because they wanted to but because that is often the painful intersectional narrative of addiction and transness, we all gather to whisper and shout, we will stop being petty, we will make amends, we will live, if not for ourselves or for each other then for those we have lost, and every time, every fucking time, another transsexual leaves this earth before we follow thru on that.
I FEEL SAFEST AROUND OTHER CRIMINALS;
the camaraderie of an open secret, the mutual acknowledgement of risk, the relief of recognition, the comfort of community, the normalcy of annecdote, the network of triumph, the sharp joy of escape, the rawness of release, the cyclical humor of Old Heads, how if you've never done it because you needed to then don't look at me like that, how we all know exactly how that feels, how i'm not the only one in the room who thinks these lights look too much like a cop car, how i'm not the only one in the room who knows what those lights look like from the inside
whenever i think about the the allegory of the long spoons (or the long chopsticks) i think about mutual aid - if you freely share your resources with others, then others will just as freely share their resources with you. i have been in situations where people have given me money, food, a place to crash, and literally bailing me out of jail, and i truly believe that's not because i particularly deserve special treatment or anything, but because when i have resources, i make an effort to distribute them amongst my loved ones and beyond. one could think of it as karma, doing to others as you would have them do to you, and those may be correct in a sense, but to me, as an anti-capitalist anarchist non-denominational leftist, it feels more like intentional community building, and benefitting from the abundance we have when we pool our resources. no one has to be without shelter or nourishment, we have all the skills we need to create connections that allow redistribution amongst our wider networks. if we keep our resources to ourselves, we end up hurting ourselves as well as others, in denying us all of an opportunity to not just survive but thrive. so when you feed others, you in turn are fed. das mutual aid bayybeee
there is no passing or not passing, there is just being successfully seen as whichever gender your presentation leans more towards (whether or not you want to be seen that way), or looking vaguely like one end of the binary but doing it in such a way that strangers want to k!ll you
i realized recently that i've been teaching myself to cook the same way i've been teaching myself how to code (difficult to explain rn but i feel like the same things are lighting up in my brain whenever i do each of them)
some adjectives to describe me:
the hurt i feel is from how unprepared i was and how my vulnerability in that unpreparedness felt under-appreciated and my embarrassment at being unable to say what i need or to ask for what i want and my longing for an experience that rivals my previous ones and my frustration at myself for fumbling a chance. my anxiety is in knowing how replaceable my body is. i am having a hard time reconciling with my body's mutilator. g-d is a surgeon and her knife made me hate the mirror even more. i am objectively horrifying. i startle even myself. to lose being told that i am beautiful hurts so much more than it did when i actually was. shuffle this city until i'm just another joker in your hands. i want what doesn't want me. i can't have what i don't ask for. i can't ask for it if i don't know what i want.