Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
With this particular Matt, at least, it’s easy to explain: there is something so joyful and idiotic about anyone who would take the effort to make something like that.
& I’ve been in a few of those places, and the idea of the locals watching this guy dance just cracks me up.
& While I’m at it, I’m dedicating this post to Katherine.
the threads on wasted youth and teen photos have had me thinking about the idea of reconciling past selves. & i think sometimes trans folk think they corner the market on this one, but i know a lot of different people who have various kinds of misspent youths – even if they weren’t so misspent as they think. when i was a teenager, my (by then in his 20s) older brother balked whenever anyone found a photo of him from when he was a teenager – and at the time i remember thinking, “i never want to be like that about how i look now.” (& mind you, how i looked then wasn’t considered socially acceptable by any means.) sometimes i wonder if it didn’t alter other choices i made in life, in order to live a life consistent with having been that punk rock kid back in the day.
but i don’t know. there are other pasts: times i spent as a green, etc.
& maybe i’m feeling particularly vulnerable right now, because quite a few of you out there are reading or about to read my book, which is about me in ways that are more personal than perhaps people would predict.
anyway, a part of me just wanted to say: trans people are not the only ones with pasts they have to reconcile. & i say that to you trans folk just so you know it, & don’t go around thinking that that’s one more burden of transness.
i like to think all the people i’ve been, the aspects of myself i brought to the front burner or pushed to a back one, are all always there, operating all the time. like turning up the bass & turning down the treble while listening to music – some things dim & come back again, some things appear once & never re-appear, other things maintain their frequency and intensity all the while.
anyway. this was just to say, mostly.
So I said the other day that I have a system for seeing what change I will try to effect for myself in the upcoming year. I came up with it a couple of years ago when I realized I had certain goals re: my writing career but ones that I could easily & endlessly put off if I didn’t pay attention. They weren’t big things – things like getting an essay into an anthology, or getting 10k copies in print – but I simultaneously realized that I tend to be somewhat Auspergerish in my single-mindedness, so that if I focus on one thing – like weight loss – I tend to get it done & then everything else turns to crap.
A friend of mine used to refer to this as Getting Your Ducks in a Row: that once you got one errant duck back in line, another, or two, would have slipped out & wandered off.
So in order to be effective I had to keep my eye on a couple of ducks at a time, I decided I’d have four areas of self-improvement (or self-actualization, or whatever New Age-y thing you’d like to call it). Within those four areas, I break the larger goal into 12 smaller ones, & then try to get one done a month. I “check in” with my goals early in the month to see how it’s going.
& No, I’m not kidding.
I am still sick, dammit, & I already had this cold this year! Isn’t it someone else’s turn?
So how did it get to be December? – and not just December, but the day after Christmas?! That seemed fast. I’ve had people older than me tell me that the years go by faster the older you get, & some days that seems to be very, very true. Now there are these few days between Christmas and New Year’s Day left of 2006, and it was – looking back – an exhausting year. Granted, a year goes by very quickly when eight months of it are spent writing a book, but still – December already! Astonishing.
Sometimes at the end of a year I like to wonder what (1) I want to be different in my life a year from now; (2) what I thought would be different from a year ago that is or isn’t, and (3) which kinds of changes I seem to be the most effective at bringing about. There are wishes of mine that are totally unreasonable – like living in a less cluttered apartment – that will probably never happen; now I’m of the opinion that if we moved to an 8-bedroom house we’d still have too much crap – it’s just who we are & in the greater scheme of things, it just doesn’t matter to me very much. But then there are other things, like losing weight, that can be more feasible some years but less feasible even than getting rid of clutter other years.
I’m sometimes good at predicting, but I’m better still at pushing myself to achieve more than I think I can & so achieving some respectable changes. These are the kinds of things I think about when I put together my New Year’s Resolutions lists, so I don’t feel like a failure when I haven’t totally reorganized our bookcases by the end of January or something.
I’ve got a system, even. Maybe I’ll share it on another day. Right now I’m still getting over a cold, though, so it will be another night of Nyquil sleep for me so I can kick this thing once & for all.
We’re having a quiet Christmas this year: my sister threw a gathering for my family last week, so we both feel like we had a premature xmas this year. Plus, we spent anything you might call a gift budget on clothes for that TV taping a week or so ago.
But we were very glad to enjoy the company of our fellow mHB board locals for a lovely holiday party, & we’ll be going upstate to visit friends for the New Year.
Have a good holiday, everyone.
Apparently I’ve been tagged for a blog meme, by Debra over at Tragic/Beautiful.
I’m supposed to come up with Five Things You Don’t Know About Me. I’m going to hope that none of my very old friends are reading, since what they know about me may be very different from what a more generic “you” might know.
(1) I have always worried that all of my eccentricity is really driven by a niggling fear that I am painfully mediocre.
(2) I started my undergraduate career as a Theology major at Fordham University. I wanted to be a priest when I was a child and often wonder if I won’t end up some kind of monk/nun by the end of my days.
(3) My first boyfriend’s name was also Jason. (My friend Ming took to calling him “the wrong Jason” when I met the person who you all know as Betty.)
(4) I spent a good chunk of my 20s traveling:
As a result of the books and my lectures, after I turned 30, I have since seen, all stateside: Eureka Springs, AR; Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Hammond, IN; Provincetown, MA; Las Vegas, NM; Albany, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Sherman, TX, and Burlington, VT. As a result of being keynote speaker at First Event this year, I’ll finally get to see Boston!
(5) I am allergic to almost everything a person can be allergic to (dogs, cats, mold, dust, etc.) with the bizarre exception of cockroach poop.
& Now I will tag three other bloggers to list five things we don’t know about them: Betty Crow, Caprice Bellefleur, and John.
I’m starting to get emails from people asking about the new book and whether or not I’d be willing to come to one trans conference or another. Likewise, the “call for presenters” emails are also showing up.
This year, for obvious reasons, Betty & I would love to go to all the conferences we’ve attended before – to celebrate the new book, to help more people, to dispel what rumors we can and to share what we’ve learned in the years since we’ve been to them.
But the same old problem stands in my way: we can’t afford it. My publishers don’t pay for conferences, and a physical book tour, per se, isn’t financially feasible. And as per usual, unless I’m to be the keynote speaker – such as at First Event – I’m told over and over again that the conferences do not help presenters get to these conferences or even waive conference fees, much less pay for hotel rooms or travel costs or the like. I say “I’m told” because that’s what conference organizers tell people when they have requested my attendance – and yet that’s not what I hear from other presenters.
Interestingly, I’ve been told that because I’m selling books I’m a “commercial interest,” which amuses me, considering that even if I sold a book to every single person who came to these conferences – which is far from likely – I still wouldn’t make enough money to break even! But of course I don’t actually sell my own books at these conferences: IFGE does.
So my response to everyone just now is that I honestly don’t know if we can come. We can’t afford to put out the $1000-2000 it costs for us to go to a conference, but we certainly can’t do that several times next year. It costs us more of course because there are two of us – and people always want Betty to come, because she’s Betty.
Mind you, I’m not asking to make money going to these things. I just don’t want to have to spend my own money working for a conference that is – from all reports – making money. I’m happy to donate my time and costs to conferences that are non-profit and have done so in the past. It would help if I felt any of these conferences had a clear-cut policy on these issues. But beyond all that, I know I can draw an audience because I’m told I make a decent advocate for partners, and that a lot of what I have to say is very different from what you hear in the rest of the trans community, and that that difference is useful.
Unfortunately, then, I can’t go unless my expenses are covered, and that is up to the organizing committees of the various conferences.
Betty and I went shopping at Macy’s the other day because we’re going to be taping a television show later in the week (more on that when I get around to it), and the windows at Macy’s were really spectacular. The entire 34th street side is an ode to the movie Miracle on 34th Street. The Broadway side is much more magical, and in one window, a huge roaring lion is absolutely gorgeous. You could see the kids just glassy-eyed, full of wonder, reflected in the glass. I felt the crying coming on, tried to hold it back, and then Betty asked me what was wrong – and out it came. My grandma used to bring me in every year to see the windows, just me & her, & then we’d go to the Radio City Christmas Show. She died in early December & Christmas has felt a little wrong since then, even though it’s been twelve years now. It surprises me that a moment like that can get me, but you know,you throw in a big lion & there’s Narnia in the mix, and it’s like all of my childhood laid out in front of me. I become a huge puddle of a person, still missing her company, still sad to have lost – to some degree – that glassy-eyed wonder at the world.
Christmas is a rough season when you’ve lost someone close to you. My love goes out especially to the Heskins this year and to a few mHB posters who have lost loved ones this year (you know who you are).
As an early Christmas present, I bought my outfit for First Event. I will not have the flippery hair, of course, and I’m not sure about the tuxedo shirt. And no silly shoes, either – I’ll be wearing flat shoes, of course. Mine is not a size 0 or 2 like the one shown in the catalog photo, either (and now I’m wondering if I should be posting this photo at all, since I’ve just realized I will look both shorter and fatter than this lady in the picture.)
I gave in and bought it for two reasons: (1) it was made by Ann Taylor Loft, and their clothes fit me well, and aren’t so bad cost-wise, and (2) because the “tux” I wore for the past two years was not even mine – the jacket was my sisters’s – and wasn’t actually a tux, just a tuxedo jacket and a pair of pants that matched well enough.
But otherwise (ha), voila. The tux in which I will speak.
Betty bought a very pretty black cocktail dress to be my stunning date. Now we just have to figure out who leads when we dance; that’s one we still haven’t sorted out.
But we’re clear that I’m the one who’ll be speaking, no matter how many people call me “Betty” via email.