"Warring Ideals in One Dark Body"

Ahem,

Do not look at any Fails. No Lambda Fail, no hybrid Lambda/RaceFail or Lambda/Trans Fail. No, no. Not until well. You may, however, look at people known to have sense, but only if you may resist reading any comments or links. Ergo, do not look at any Fails.

Do not look at certain Facebook polls about people wishing harm on the President. This is upsetting.

Do not think about work.

Do reflect on your housemates and special friends and family and how good they are to you.

Do reflect on Hew Wolff's piece at Perverts Put Out and take time for the things one never has time for: Gastropodic Reproduction

Last night:
Whenever I go to PPO, I want to runaway and write. Such talent, truly.  Meliza Banales and Juba Kamalka dropped my jaw, and the whole show was tight, tight, tight.

I like it when the people I adore shed their clothing in public and say all kinds of smart and funny things. And I like being in rooms with many friends and lovers and their friends and their lovers, more-or-less in an equilibrium with each other, even if I'm not personally in homeostasis. I like kissing and letting my eyes settle on the people I find pleasing and feelings of affection and being held securely. It's reassuring to not feel the need to be reassured.

I also like learning about what other people like and seeing what brings a glow to their eyes whether it's football or the gift of submission.


Sick and tired of sick and tired:
I've been struggling with illness and exhaustion, and I'm so used to it by now that it doesn't matter. That works right up until I fall over. I haven't yet, so fuck it.

Sort of.

I did cancel being a medical volunteer at Folsom, and I'm sad about that. I seem to have run out of reserve. Sounds like a spoon in an empty jar.

I am treating a raging yeast infection, complete with fists full of white, yeasty, squid-like things, bad enough that all I could do was point a fan at my nads and lay there for a couple of days and resist the urge to scratch and claw myself bloody. I have a lot of brain doodling around that. What the fuck do you mean, Ms. Advice Nurse that you've never heard of acidolphilus? What do you mean make an appointment because internal medicine won't see me for urgent care to be sure it's actually a yeast infection? Why isn't Diflucan available over the counter? Get sunshine on it how? Why don't you know if Walgreens cheap-ass Perfection [snort] tampons could be causing it? Cause I never have good luck with the cheap tampons--I'm not kidding. Target-brand too.

But in all fairness also, until someone can give me specific strengths and amounts of acidolphilus, boric acid, garlic, yogurt or whatever other "natural" remedies people like to recommend, I'm taking those particular interventions out of my jump bag because I've started thinking in terms like actions, contraindications, dosage. I need to know how much to use for how long and how to know when to stop or if I've used too much. I need a lab, in other words, and some clinical trials. Fuck the FDA. Also, Mr. Walgreens Security Guard, really, I just threw the damn University of Minnesota sweatshirt on to wobble over here at 5:30 in the mornin; I don't care if you're a Cal fan or really what your problem is that you're giving me the hairy eyeball, dammit, open the door and give me some Monistat that I'm overdrawing my bank account for. And by the way, health reform NOW, goddamit.


Bio-fam:
For those of you asking how my family in Atlanta are, the answer is everyone's fine; everyone's houses are fine. It just sucks to see places you've been and worked underwater. More places, I mean.


Break-ups:
Hurt.


Work:
Thanks to my job as a research assistant, I've learned to lie much better.

I struggle with dueling philosophies and seek a naked, dogged strength somewhere.

"Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the evil which I condemn."--Henry David Thoreau

"I know what good morals are, but you're supposed to disregard good morals when you're living in a crazy, bad world. If you're in hell, how can you live like an angel? You're surrounded by devils, trying to be an angel? That's like suicide."--Tupac Shakur


School/EMT:
I'm tired and broke and angry and feel like I've got a lot of fishhooks in my skin that pull tighter and tighter. Call the wah-mbulance.

That said, I just have to turn in some paperwork to be cleared to take my national exam to become a certified EMT.

It's a few hundred to test, for the background check, the piss test, to register in the county, to take the driver's test. I don't know when I'll be able to afford it. Shelling out testing/registration money for the thrilling possibilities of a $9/hr job where I'm putting myself in a good position to reinjure my back (on top of the $2500 for the course itself that I'm paying off)... yeah, I don't know. The upside is if I can scrape up enough money working two part-time jobs, I might be able to take a phlebotomy class in spring and maybe get on as an ER Technician for a little better money and better path.

Double-take: Did I just say the upside is maybe I can work two-part time jobs? >-(

Anatomy and Physiology II is fine. I took two tests, have a study partner who seems like a good queer ally as well as honestly going for it rather than settling for learning "enough to get by" like many of my classmates. I need to review the section on the inner ear and how it relates to balance (is that a little joke for me Universe? Oh, Universe, you're such a card.)

I surprised myself by having thoughts of giving up this whole fucking nursing idea. But I can't. Because I have these pictures in my head and these songs in my heart. Sometimes the songs are sirens, and sometimes the pictures are gravel, mosaic paths all leading me to here and now. I know what I have to do, I just don't know how to do it.

When I remember who I am and who and what I care about and where we are, it matters less how I am or even what I think about it. All I have to do, all I can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep showing up. Unspoken promises aren't any less valid.

"You have a greater calling.
Answering it is all it takes.
Take a second to hear this
and go back about your day.
Know that laws don't govern us,
we're governed by what we say.
What we think, why we think it, how we handle.
Place no blame, point no fingers, take your aim.

Shoot to kill. The bullshit."--Saul Williams, Pedagogue of Young Gods

Wow. ( Read more... )

Daddy's Day tomorrow. I get different associations than most on this day, not having grown up with a father. I'll burn a candle for him, and my hands will be otherwise full as I have a date.

I cleaned my room. My toys are organized and readily accessible. There will be snack options.

What fun would being a pervert be if I couldn't pervert Hallmark sales day?

(Except I do need to call my brother too, and I'm pretty sure I don't really need to get into a another porn-site conversation with him. That was just weird.)

Gotta have a treat for Daddy's Day though, that's what I think. To show appreciation. After all, we don't have a Mistress Appreciation Day (M.A.D.--chuckle) or a Bring Your Sub to Work Day. Gotta stay on my toes. Fundamentally, I'm a good boy (not to be confused with being a hard man, a cold woman, a sissy, or a precocious, coercive girl, cause I'm all of those things too).

People don't always get my genderfluid. Sometimes I wonder if they think I am harboring a delusion about a growing penis that POOF! magically and conveniently turns into Snuffle-Upagus mist upon contact with menstrual blood or something. I mean something different when I say I am genderfluid. I mean that whatever I might be feeling (which changes frequently) the fact is that I get read in different ways all the time. It means that I'm safer in a men's room (I've had security called on me in the women's), but less comfortable. I use the women's locker room at the gym--but if I'm packing, I remove the prosthesis in a bathroom stall before undressing (and I have to walk through a lot of stares and double-takes until I get naked). I don't designate a pronoun because neither one describes me accurately and 'ze' just hasn't taken hold yet. I pass least effectively with other Black men because of my lack of facial hair, height, muscle and an ass that could be a serving tray for a cocktail waitress, but I understand some of them in a way that others can't and they can tell. High school girls hit on me. So do straight women. And gay men. At 'women's' gatherings, I am always vaguely uncomfortable--we can't have that conversation about what to do when your dick falls out on the floor of the movie theater when you get up for popcorn (Welcome, papipaulforrest, and thank you for picking up my johnson for me all those years ago and not laughing until I was over my embarrassment.) And it's not that I need to have that conversation with everyone, but I suffer their assumptions, yet there's little ground for them to have to suffer mine. (Over fondue: "Tiger, I've been keeping my dick in my panty drawer next to my birth control pills and it picks up lint like crazy--your dick always looks so clean and dry when I see you at the urinal--do you use talcum?" "Oh heavens no, that'll kill you deader than a dog turd, Ellen, what you want is a sprinkling of corn starch and a swath of silk to wrap your dick in for storage in your panty drawer...speaking of which I've got a run in these hose I've got on under my Carharts. Could I borrow some nail polish from you so it doesn't run all the way up?")

No. I don't have conversations like that--but maybe I'd like to.

Genderqueer. Genderfluid.

Whatever is going on in my pants is nothing compared to what is going on in people's heads.