Travels and entertainments lately

[gement]

I went to Bumbershoot, thanks to my wonderful father, who came and stayed for the weekend and sprang for tickets, and kept track of all the schedules. I listened to a great variety of music, walked until I wanted to fall down.

At Bumbershoot, I developed an active taste for iced mochas thanks to the free Starbucks station where I drank four of them a day to keep myself on my feet. I've always despised coffee. If I desperately needed the caffeine, I would occasionally drink quad shot mochas to bury the taste of it under chocolate. Now I honestly like mochas. It's wacky. I also got a pair of 80s mirror shades which my family oddly thinks actually flatter me, and an Undriver's License, which I love.

I went to Folsom Street Fair (nsfw if you don't know and wanted to google for context), thanks to arjache who took me on a TRAIN in a SLEEPER CAR and it's amazing how much I love train travel. The travel was easily the best part of the trip, and given that the rest of the trip was walking with arjache and hobnobbing with my fellow fetishists, that's saying something.

I had to deal with a lot of poser and imposter syndrome and fear of missing something baggage at Folsom. I couldn't get read as male to save my life, which was completely understandable (surrounded by people who looked like me identifying as butch women, and very macho cis men cruising for other very macho cis men) and terribly frustrating. Then that turned into a pile of "am I just a woman lookyloo-ing at the gay men" and "why am I here windowshopping kinks instead of trying to actually get more of it into my real live bedroom" and... it was just hard.

When I don't get acknowledged often enough, I start wondering if there's anything to acknowledge, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I got some nice validation when I got home and I try not to fret.

Yesterday I took a short ferry trip and met more of J's family for the first time. It went about as well as might be expected, which is to say we were polite to each other and now I don't wonder what they look like. To quote Rimmer, "Over the years, I have come to regard you as people that I met."

Today and yesterday's entries have been rather down compared to how I actually feel. It's like I have two lines running, my mood which is generally up and my issues which are generally down. It's just a matter of which one I'm paying attention to. I'm under the impression most people have this separation, but I'm not sure.

And now I am posting this without rereading it, which is hard. Go me.

Comments

[cow.livejournal.com]

Yay trains! I'm on one right now. ♥

And I've still never been to Folsom, but Toronto has an equivalent that is amazing and I've gone both years I've been here. It can be very difficult, especially a first time, but the struggle is still important. Go back another year and win? :3

[gement.livejournal.com]

The first time, two years ago, I actually had a blast! This time I'm just in a more conflicted space overall, so that came through.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

So, where would you place yourself on the gender spectrum? (I'm being bold to assume this question is OK, given what you said above. But if it's not, please forgive the impertinence.)

[gement.livejournal.com]

You are correct! The 30 second elevator version I will volunteer to anyone including reasonably trusted coworkers is:

I'm genderqueer. I feel female about 90% of the time, but some days I just wake up a guy. Even when I feel like a girl, I strongly prefer men's clothes. Dresses usually feel like drag, and I know where I stand with a button-up shirt.

The somewhat longer version since you can't see my visual cues and I know and like you rather better than my coworkers... :

I have visual cis privilege unless I work *really hard* to change that. I'm very conflicted about my male presentation because I'm a geek, so I resisted even cutting my hair for years because most of the guys I know wear long hair and like t-shirts and utilikilts. But this does not aid in reading as male, so I did eventually cut my hair and start dressing like guys I would, frankly, never hang out with.

I think if I could magically get myself male-pronouned by strangers one day out of ten, I'd be delighted to mix it up, wear my short hair girly and show off my cleavage now and then. I love my female body pretty nearly all the time, and I know I'm very very lucky on the trans spectrum for that. But I'm so frustrated by never being seen as male that I start kind of obsessively trying all the time, even when I don't have the energy or focus to do it more than half-assedly...

And I know that means my friends can't tell what I'm doing on which day, which doesn't help. I've started hesitating before I give my birth name because it's distinctively feminine, and it's just ridiculous for me to feel conflicted about that.

So it's been taking up more and more space in my brain, and I'm not sure how to resolve that or come to terms with just looking confusing all the time. But I'd like to.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

OK. Thanks for the info. It gives me a bit more insight into understanding you as you.

I have the great good fortune to be a flaming heterosexual male. But I also hang around the edge communities enough to know a fair number of people who are not at (or even near) the ends of the gender continuum.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Secondary answer which I find of interest, so I'm volunteering the information since I know you wouldn't pry:

As a woman, I'm about a 2 on the Kinsey scale, finding a lot of women attractive but really perking up more often at men (and very butch women who give off the same cues).

As a guy I'm about a 5, and find surprisingly different men attractive, and a few superficially traditional-beauty women attractive who I usually wouldn't look at. I theorize that my shift in taste in men is partly motivated by who might be available to me. I look at queerer-reading men when I'm in guyspace because they might be interested. I don't think this is actually a reliable indicator in any way, but it's my hypothesis for explaining the difference.

Now that my gender is constantly in the blender, I'm looking at both sets, but I can still tell which brain I'm looking with, if that makes any sense.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

*nod* Thanks for the additional information.

[eeyorerin]

I have that separation quite often.

[annissamazing]

It's like I have two lines running, my mood which is generally up and my issues which are generally down.

I totally get that. I'm occasionally surprised at how down some of my posts sound, when I don't feel bad at all. I suppose that's why when I am genuinely feeling down, I come right out and say it.