This website and blog have received 20,000 hits in the past month alone. No wonder the cats are exhausted.
Please Donate
If anyone can donate this month, we’d really appreciate the help.
Since I’ve been asked a few times recently if checks are okay – of course they are! There’s a snail mail address on the Donate page that’s linked to above.
Thanks so much,
Helen
Trans Rockers
On Saturday night, after seeing our very own Penny play a gig at Galapagos in Williamsburg, a bunch of us from the MHB Boards went to the Trans Rock Music Explosion at the Bowery Poetry Club.
And there, with a lovely gathering of trans and non-trans alike, a few bands that had trans members (from one to all, depending on the band) they rocked their hearts out. I didn’t get to see all of them, since we weren’t there from the start, but I did get to see Temptress, Vibralux, and Lisa Jackson + Girl Friday.
Temptress were fun, a bar band with three women on guitar, bass, and drums, and an MTF lead singer. (One of my friends commented after they were on that there should be a law about trans bands doing more than one song from Rocky Horror, which – there should be.)
Vibralux came in all the way from Kansas City. They reminded me of the New York Dolls in some ways – at least in terms of makeup application and slutty clothes. But they rocked – I have to give them that much. They had the energy of a midwest band in NYC, amped up with “we’re in New York!” attitude. They were a blast, and their song “Play with Balls” amused me. (The lyrics went something along the lines of “girls aren’t supposed to play with dolls/ no, girls, play with balls!” which was slutty and funny at once.)
But, Lisa Jackson. She is getting a little angrier in her lyrics and stageshow – a turn I like very much – but her older songs, like “Beautiful Freak” and “Fabulously Done” are still close to my heart. (The lyrics to “Fabulously Done” are reprinted as the very last page of My Husband Betty, because I like them so much.) She’s what the trans-movement needs, and it’s almost pathetic that the trans conferences haven’t lined up to book her for every single trans conference in North America. She is a one-woman anthem, a powerful singer, and a great musician. To be honest, – and I don’t say this lightly – Lisa Jackson is the first tranny I’ve ever seen that made me think, “it’s good to be a chick.” Which is no small compliment, coming from me.
Any of these bands are worth checking out, and all of them are worth supporting.
http://www.temptressrocks.com/
http://www.vibralux.org/
http://www.lisajacksonandgirlfriday.com/
(These events get announced – and people plan to go – via the MHB Boards as well. Folks are free to join us, or at least can come knowing there’ll be a contingent on hand.)
The Return of Helen's Little Story
For those of you who were avid readers of my tranny erotica, I found the copy from the old boards I had saved, and reposted it in pages (instead of paragraphs, as it existed on the old boards).
Here it is, on the boards, in its entirety (to date).
I’ll do my best to get these two some rest in the upcoming weeks.
& Then I’ve got another one I’d like to clean up and start posting.
Stay tuned.
That Time of the Month
No, not that time of the month – but the time of the month to donate to help support the message boards and my blog. If you like what you see here, please consider donating whatever you can to help keep us going.
Think-Tank
Tonight Betty and I did a presentation on trans/GLBT issues for an emerging lefty think-tank. It was formed just after the last presidential election, formed out of frustration, anger, and a sense of outrage – not just at who won, but at how the right had stolen words like “morality” (by which they really mean heteronormativity), “family” (again, only heteronormativite families need apply) and “family values” (when they meant, keep those freaks out of my neighborhood).
A lot of the conversation was just trans 101, which Betty and I rushed into and interrupted each other and circled around and back and forth. (The poor guy keeping notes gave up at some point, I think.) We got some of the basic points across, and of course the group got to meet Betty – not your average tranny, but who is?
One of the pertinent questions asked – and this is a smart group – was Where are the Surveys? Where’s the equivalent of the Kinsey Report on trans stuff? and, in a more tactical sense, How many are you, and how do we count you?
There weren’t any good answers for these good questions. Aside from Lynn Conway’s numbers on the prevalance of transsexualism, which doesn’t include crossdressers or drag kings or any of the rest of the gender-variant community, I don’t have any. How many of us are there? More importantly, how many of us are there who will stand up and be counted? What are our issues? Who will lead us? Who are our allies, and to what other (non-trans) causes can we lend our weight?
These are only some of the questions currently being discussed on the message boards, of which I’m very proud.
Come join the dialogue.
Book Expo
i’ve been going to book expo every day including friday; today is the last day.
apparently to publishers other than my own, being a lammy finalist *does* mean something.
it is a nuthouse. the directory of exhibitors is larger than most phonebooks of most US towns, no kidding. there are literally thousands of people – all the traditional publishers (the big ones, like simon & schuster, have their own zip codes, with 25 employees on the floor) and then there are the tiny ones, the radical presses, the lesbian pulp fiction publishers, the green press, ipublishers, = you name it. i had no idea how vast the publishing industry is.
the coolest thing is FREE BOOKS! there were signings today by nick hornby & orson scott card (& gloria estefan & half a million other people i had no interest in), & it’s just like a bookstore signing – except they GIVE you the book. very cool. i’m only limited by how much weight i’m willing to carry around. my feet – well, i should be hobbled by monday.
anyway, there should be good news in not too long. hopefully a couple of weeks. i’m getting *way* more interest than i expected, & occasionally from suprising corners. so in a sense, i “mapped” in terms of the larger publishing industry, & that pleases me no end.
& i also have the good news that barbara carrellas is going to be publishing a book about “urban tantra”! i ran into her & kate bornstein today. (they’ll also be at DO in the fall, btw.)
& spent the whole day with jamison green yesterday, who is one of the most intelligent, remarkable people i have ever met. for the record. you should all go buy his becoming a visible man it definitely should have won the lammy (if MHB didn’t!)
so it’s insane, yes, but kind of buzzing with energy and books books books. i strongly recommend it for writers who are wanting to get published. in three short days you can talk to all kinds of editors, attend workshops, meet agents: kind of like a crash course in publishing.
Sex & the Shingled Girl
It turned out, after two bad diagnoses, that what I had was shingles. This is a medieval illness, a virus that causes extreme pain, pox marks, and more extreme pain. You can only get it if you’ve had chicken pox as a child; somehow part of becoming immune from chicken pox includes storing this little evil in cells. Stress or a lowered immune system can cause it to flare; I probably had both – the former due to a really bad allergy season, and the latter due to – everything else.
I was very lucky to have a transitioning doctor friend, Deborah, who diagnosed me long distance when the two doctors I saw in Brooklyn failed (one thought it was TMJ, the other Parotiditis).
It felt like an ear infection, a sinus infection, and an abscessed tooth all at once: brutal amounts of pain that even Percoset only quieted. Now, most of the pain has gone away, though occasionally I get these pangs of pain that seem to come right from the healing pox marks. Like I said: medieval.
Thanks to everyone for the good wishes, and my apologies again for missing the Lambda reading in DC and the CLAGS conference. Also, thanks to Carolyn Ann for a ride to the doctor, to Deborah for the correct diagnosis, and to Sarah Joan for the title of this post.
The Only Times
Betty & I have been separated very rarely – at least for an overnight – in our seven years together. Once for a performance of her acting company in PA, and then again in February for an NCTE Board Meeting, and now again – this weekend – for an NCTE Board meeting in DC.
It makes me sad as I was going to go with her, but because she’ll be in meetings from 9am – 5pm on Saturday, and 9am – 3pm on Sunday (right after which she returns), we really couldn’t justify spending the money for me to go.
Besides, I’m Queen of Cats this weekend. A couple of people in our building are away, so I’m watching four cats altogether: our boys, of course, and the differently-eyed Truman (one green, one blue – he’s all white) and the very young and impish Basil, who is the only female of the four.
Betty spent so many weekends working as an actor; I was looking forward to us actually getting three-day weekends now that she’s unofficially “retired” from acting. But alas – no luck. Instead, tranny politics take her away.
I’m a little sad, and a little bored, and a little lonely, and yet – not enough of any of them to do anything about it. I’ll clean, I might watch a movie, have brunch with friends. It amazes me that only a 48-hour separation makes me feel so – singular. The bed’s too big without her, indeed (though the cats will no doubt fill a great deal of the empty space).
A Happy Memorial Day to all. I hope yours is full of romance, and sex, and love and laughter.
Kitty in a Window
Aeneas watching Betty leave for the NCTE Board meeting in DC.
Happy Memorial Day, everyone!