Tag Archives: dating

trans talk

A variation

variation

 

on an unrequited love theme:

Him: I like her.  A lot.  And the fact that she has a penis?  Hotttt.
Her: How do I know I’m not just a fetish object if he’s so damned turned on by my penis?

A conundrum, indeed.

It’s not just about the body parts, it’s not objectification but a turn-on is a turn-on.  Historically, it seems that anything that deviates from the publicly broadcast hetero-norm (ahem homosexuality) is quickly labeled deviant or a fetish.
How conveniently dismissive.
How fucking willingly ignorant.

I sit at a trans bar as my friend crushes on this beautiful-cute woman.
“So…how do you describe your sexual identity these days?”
“I say I’m bisexual.”

I look at him, confused, and we simultaneously blurt:
“But I—you’re not.”

“Right?”
“Right.”

“But what do I say?”
“Hmm…you’re not gay.”

“I’m not gay.  I like women.  I just, you know…”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So do we say transwoman-oriented?”

It’s a tough, lonely world for transsexuals.
But.
In a sad twist of irony, it’s pretty lonely for those who are trans-oriented as well.

I hold this thought and questions happen.

Then I hear S in my head: What’s the point, if he wants me pre-op and my entire aim is to eventually have SRS?
He wants her to stay as she is, honing in on the one thing that causes her enormous grief.

Okay, so probably she ought not date a pre-op-trans-oriented individual but to assume that those who show interest are probably fetishising her for their fun time isn’t the fairest attitude.  People want romantic relationships and usually it’s best with those who turn us on sexually.

And what about the inevitable pre/post-op question?
(Or is she undecided?)
Asking this upfront is an awesome way to lose and get dismissed as a prying fetishist.
Besides, it’s really about getting to know her.
A-n-d…sometimes, say, even though pre-op is usually his type, it doesn’t matter so much when he discovers she’s had SRS.
Because he likes her.  A lot.

They don’t know about lasting into the future but in the here and now, they’re happy.
Maybe they’ll try a happily ever after, maybe it’ll be a damn fine chapter, maybe they’ll make each other shudder in the next six months.

Either way, the romantic in me wants them to have the story.

 

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trans talk

You’re never going to get hotter.

It’s like this, he says:
We see you [women] and we’re attracted to you or we’re not.  The growing more physically attracted to someone, that’s only for women.  Guys don’t work like that.

He, by the way, is a damn straight-shooting, sometimes fool.  His relationships often have a touch of cray but he thoroughly gets the male versus female perspective, to an almost alarming extent.  So I believe him; his brutal truth hasn’t let me down yet.

Oh.

So the good thing is, if he thinks you’re hot, you’re hot.  The ‘more hotter’ thing doesn’t happen.

post graph

Right.

Except this makes me feel like my attractiveness has peaked.
And it is different for women.  As the general attraction grows, the more physically attractive my potential person is to me.  They get hotter, men and women.

I ask S about this.
Me: When you were a guy, you identified with the whole finding someone attractive on sight and they don’t get more attractive?
S: Pretty much…I mean, I’d like them more but if they’re beautiful, they’re always beautiful.

Me: And now, as a woman, is it different?  Do people become more physically attractive the longer you hang out with them or the more you like them?
S: …  Actually, yeah.  When I dated ***, I didn’t think he was super cute but the more we hung out, his endearing qualities made him cuter to me.

Interesting.

Me: What about with women?  Do they grow more beautiful as you get to know them?
S: Well, seeing as I’ve only been on one date with a woman, I can’t really say.  Pause.  But I don’t think so.

As S has become thoroughly female, it’s not so often that we have before-and-after-esque chats but sometimes— like today— we do and her perspective never fails to amaze me.  It’s fascinating that she can still key into a masculine point of view as her own has shifted decidedly feminine.  As she collects new experiences and continuously expands her worldview, I can’t help but think that her transition has made her a force to be reckoned with.  I keep awaiting the day I’ll be saying, “I knew her when…”

 

 

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relationshipping

The joke

My eyeballs need cocaine

is on me.
Again.

So there’s nothing like time and distance to get over someone.
I excise the other from my life to move on.
It really helps.

I think I’ve got recovering from heartbreak down— yea!
I create emotional distance through physical distance.
I make sure our worlds don’t collide and my brain-heart is trained: the second I sniff voluntary distance (from me or the other), emotional detachment follows.

As usual, when I’m pretty confident that I can get through one emotional puzzle, the universe throws a giant hamster ball in my path.
I get a conundrum wrapped in the guise of a three-part love present.

1) I fall for someone.
2) I fall hard.
3) It’s. Long. Distance.

Of course it is.
Motherfucker.

I have trained my instincts so well that this situation is a mindfuck.
What— get close to someone when they’re countless miles and time zones away?
Are we really establishing a foundation over text?!
This sounds stupid and I shake my head at myself.

Except for the damn love, people.

And we meet so seldom that every time feels like the first time.
What am I doing?

Usually I fall in love and into a relationship like the oldest lesbian U-Haul joke we all know.
I need to learn how to pace myself in a relationship but I don’t know if this— the complete opposite— is the answer.
But it sure as hell is a lesson in a different kind of patience.

I tell myself to stay in the moment and relax when we meet even though my brain knows the moment has a very short lifespan.  There are so many thoughts, stories, feelings of the mundane and extraordinary I want to share but when I’m confronted with T minus 150 minutes and counting— I am rendered mute because my heart beats in time to the tick-tick-tock of the countdown clock.  And what are words when I can actually touch this person?  Because we’ve been wording 6,000 times over for the past too many days.

I give in to the clock; I acknowledge but don’t begrudge its presence.
I experience the moment since this moment is what I have.

I am grateful.
And excited.

And terrified.

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relationshipping

Denial vengeance

Inpatientis a thing and it is NOT fun.

We go to the show and my <10-day ex tells me, “The singer’s totally checking you out.”
“Really?!!”

That’s awesome for my self-esteem.  I look over to their merch stand and as I make eye contact with the singer, she walks to the bathroom.  My ex follows her.

They emerge some minutes later and my ex tells me about her conversation with the cute singer:
I told her I liked their set, that we came from Memphis to see them.   She asked who ‘we’ meant, I pointed to you and said, my girlfriend.

Oh.

Except we’re broken up.  And you have a crush.

My ex continues:
Since we’re not going to have sex, I’m going to see *** (her crush).

Slam my heart against the wall a little harder, why don’t you?  Just like that my ex has simultaneously cock-blocked someone I could have some random fun with AND informed me that she’ll be driving two hours to see her crush, leaving me no way to get around this small unknown town for the night.  Awesome.

It’s a damn shitty, gross feeling to know that as I’m sweating stale beer and starving, my ex is out talking to, kissing? fucking?! her crush.  Love has no rules and new love doesn’t suffer fools gladly; it is too young, wild and headstrong to pause for words like consideration and other people’s feelings.

Insomnia hits.  My stomach growls because I want greasy, hot, melty food (preferably of the starchy variety) to sop up my show alcohol, but I can’t NOT think about my ex potentially fucking her new someone and that instantly nauseates me.  I stare blankly at the TV.

3:30, 4, 4:30AM.

Thank god my little compadre pooker is with me; her familiar muzzle and warm little body comforts me.  I hug my little Izzy dog and we try to sleep.

5:30, 6, 6:30AM.

Sleep never comes but my ex comes back to drive us home.

She looks exhausted and I almost offer to drive the first bit so she can crash but I just. don’t. have. it. in. me.

I think a fuck of a lot the whole way home.

We had a remarkable decade

but

I have no regrets of an ending of us.

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random love, the sex

Let’s talk about sex

InpatientBut where to start?

How about one of my firsts.
I was 19 years old.

Me: Wait, what’s his name?
BFF: ***.  He’s really cool and he wants to meet you since he’s ***’s (her boyfriend’s) best friend and you’re my best friend and you happen to be in New York.
Me: Sure, why not.  I’ll see when I’m off this week.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

I know this guy likes to party, way more and harder than I do so my judgy mind expects a strung-out skeletal raver-kid who could be beautiful or with fucked up speedy teeth and bad skin who can’t stop scratching himself.

He’s actually much more wholesome-looking than I expect and quite polite but that could just be an effect of his charming English accent.  The strangest thing is how safe I feel around him and maybe it’s nothing more than my internal radar believing that if I don’t acquiesce, he won’t sex.  Either way, I trust him enough to easily “sure,” when he asks if I want to party.

His friends live in a way too fucking cool for school apartment in a doorman building and they’re already SMAAaa-shed.  Actually, considering that they haven’t left their place for almost three days, they are in that dreamy-haze state that saw wasted over 36 hours ago.  We’re just in time for nitrous rounds!  But I stick to my familiar weed and alcohol as he snorts, smokes and rapid-inhales a motley assortment until he’s blue in the face.  He stays blue-violet long enough that not only am I worried (of course I’m worried) but his friend who showed up god-knows-when is worried, until said friend takes a hit of something and disappears into his own high world.

Time suddenly morph-warp speeds as happens when drugs happen and as we’re sitting in a diner eating many plates of pierogies, I need to decide if I want to have sex with him because his friend is asking him if he needs a place to crash.  He still feels safe to me and as tends to happen when shared experiences take place, I feel close to him.  So why not?  Yeah, come back to my crappy dorm room.

He uses a condom.
I intake sharply as he decidedly fucks me.
He cums.
All in all, he’s pretty sweet and gentle.
I reach for a cigarette and quickly become lost in thought as I inhale delicious nicotine.
He joins me for a smoke- “Oh, right!”- because that’s what you do after a fuck?
He crashes, thank god.
I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.

So that was that.

He didn’t say degrading things that make me feel inadequate and dirty.
I didn’t fix my eyes on a single, burning bulb, willing it to render me blind to erase what was happening.
I had no problem looking at him the next day, directly in the eyes to say, “I’ve got to go to work so you’ve got to go.”

It was devoid of any meaning.
That it was a meaningless act made it absolutely meaningful; a first of many in the realm of sex.

My first one-night stand was the first time I had sex.

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relationshipping

Should I delete him?

Should I delete him

Asks my friend.
Me: Do you really want to get over him?

pause

Her: Yes.
Me: Then yes, delete.

I take one course of action to get over someone and thus far it has been 100% effective.
But I need to qualify that I have not been married with children.

The Rumi, aka Don’t Look Back, method:
1) Delete from contacts
2) Delete all text history
3) Delete or hide them from FB (and all other social media you share)
4) DO NOT respond to non-essential, emotional bullshit solicitations (i.e. requisite conversations about unjoining finances are an unfortunate necessity but responding to explanatory emails about his/her feelings blah, blah, absolutely not).

Too harsh?  What, like love-hurt isn’t?

Because this is what I know when it’s over but I’m not over them:
It fucking hurts.
The sorrow, the anger, the goddamn grief.

For instance, after a long-term relationship ended, my ex of not even a week was already dating someone, a specific someone they started talking to prior to our breakup.  That felt awesome: decade long relationship, one-week turnaround.  And a few weeks later, when their new someone came to our still-shared house to spend a lovely weekend with ex (because that new burgeoning love period is brimming over with so much damn infatuation), as my dumb luck would have it, I got to hear new someone be given a fat fucking orgasm by ex…goddammit y’all.

I thought I was doing so well.  I processed through writing as decade-long memories flooded me, Dylan on repeat in the background, and spent priceless time with invaluable friends who listened to me, quietly sat with me or simply joined me for a whiskey, give or take an occasional cry.

I thought I was getting a handle on the can’t-hardly-breathe stage and moving towards taking it week by week.

A few more weeks pass, my ex has left the state to live with said someone and I am told that they plan on getting married within a month.

Wow.

There’s an annoying last step that completes my method:
5) Time.

Sweet, slow, tortuous, curious thing, time passing.

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relationshipping

Tact or truth?

Truth or tact

asks my date the other night.

Truth.
Always truth, I say.
Duh.
I want to know where I stand; judge me openly.  Yeah, it fucking smarts at times (actually always) but truth enables me to move on after the hurtful thing is said.
And I can trust you if you’re honest.

Then I hear his reasons for tact via a three-year relationship break-up story.

Tact goes like this:
I told her it felt like we were friends more than anything else.  

Truth:
The sex wasn’t good enough.
For three years not good enough.

He explains:
I figured if she read between the lines, she’d get what I was really talking about but I wouldn’t have to spell it out for her and hurt her in the process.  I’d already accidentally given her body issues.  She was fishing for it though!  She wouldn’t let up, wanting me to name a physical imperfection; so I was honest about the only part of her body that was less than fairly perfect.  And she never got over it.

In his defense, he was a professional athlete at the time; I sure as hell wouldn’t have probed hard for his opinion unless I wanted harsh motivation to tone some shit.

So when it was time for The Talk he chose tact.

It makes me see him and tact in a different light.
Wow, he’s actually a nice guy and he really cared about her feelings.

And my choosing haughty truth makes me feel like a less thoughtful, not-as-kind person.  In the realm of relationships I always thought that I wanted to be told exactly what’s up and why because then I’d know where I stand, which leads to ultimate trust.  But sometimes it takes processing time to get at the why so in the meantime, how about don’t not tell me something just to spare my feelings.

They say it’s not what you say but how you say it, which like so many clichés is so annoyingly true.  Historically, I’ve cloaked the damn truth with so many rusted daggers that, fuck communication, all I accomplish is deeply infected hurt.  So my current goal is successfully marrying tact and truth, which means I lied.

Okay, ask me again- truth or tact?
I say yes.
Because I have turned into fucking Switzerland.

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open relationship

The first date

The first date

in an open relationship is weird.
Duh, right?  I mean, most first dates are in the weird or boring.

As with most things, GF and I have radically different approaches.
Her: So I’m going out Friday…
Me: Oh, okay.  Out, like, on a date?
Her: …Yeah.
Me: Cool.  Wait, has it even been a week since we’ve open relationshipped?  And she’s got a date?  Of course she does.  Anyone I know?
Her: ***.  I’m not sure I want to go.  I don’t know if I’m even attracted to him but he’s been wanting to hang out for a while.
Me: Oh really?  For a while?  Interesting…
Her: So I might not come home tonight.
Me: Right.  Damn this bitch is fast.  She’s really good at this dating thing; is it because she knows how the male brain works?

Strange…to think of her spending the night with someone else.  Even though it’ll be completely outside of my physical sphere, I feel an emotional prick, like the reality of open relationshipping has just stung me.  And I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.  But maybe it’s just the total newness of it all that’s making me feel a little queasy on the inside.

Then there’s me and ***…
Imagine two people who speak multiple languages between them.  You’d think they’d be able to communicate, right?  Except when you factor degrees of fluency, the odds of non-communication are amplified (mathy people, back me on this).  Actually, here’s a snapshot from my brain instead:

The first date

WHY are we in the green?!
Sure, there’s some orange here and there but he doesn’t really want to orange because of the (lack of) fluency factor.  White is completely ignored (he doesn’t even know this exists), which is my doing.  I purposely steer clear of it because it’s just enough to navigate through the rocky green and I’m not up for a potentially even more challenging white.

So I feel like I’m in a really strange language lab (that serves really good food, by the way), borderline forgetting I’m supposed to be deciphering levels of romantical interest.

How did I even get to this strange and somewhat tortuous place, trying to read signs of interest in [insert non-native language]?
Short answer: Because he asked me out.
Real answer: I wanted to know how much chemistry trumps linguistics.
Truth: The above scenario requires a lot of chemistry.

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relationshipping

She expected me to leave

She expected me to leave

but instead I stayed.

If she hadn’t come out to me, I would’ve left.
Strange?
Not so much if you know the why.

7 months of dating, cohabitating and…
we’re still getting to know each other but a little something is missing…nothing I can articulate or am losing sleep over but there’s a faint yellow light blipping on my radar.

10 happy coupled months have passed but something’s up.  It’s like we were rambling through this curious and enchanting forest, noticing randomly fascinating, new and endearingly odd things about each other and then- bam.  I hit an unexpected beige wall.

Why the boring, all of a sudden?  I know there’s way more to him than what he’s presenting these days.  It’s as though his brain is on auto-pilot and a certain spark is missing.  It’s a vague-ish subject to broach but I try…
Me: Um, are you not bored these days?  Because I am.  And frustrated.
Him: I wish I had time to be bored.  He does have a crazybusy schedule.  Maybe he’s just over his lack of him-time?
Me: It doesn’t feel like we’re in a weird, stagnant place?
Him: Well, we are because we both want to move.  Okay, I didn’t mean it so literally.  And you’re not making enough art.  If you made more art, you’d be happier.
Hmm…if this is his way of deflecting, it’s working.  But he’s being sincere and he speaks the truth so…I put the focus on myself and draw some damn unicorns with exploding goiters.

15 months, we’ve decided Tokyo is our destination city and we’ve got 11 months to get our shit together.
As I ponder an us, looking towards the future, this bit happens:
Him: When I can completely share everything with you, then I’ll know I can really commit to you.
Me: Oh.  Ouch.  We’re about to move 7,000+ miles away and maybe at some arbitrary point you’ll know you can commit?  We don’t even have the same definition of commit, do we?  Oh fuckfuckfuck.  

And now I feel like a fool.
I trust him enough to trust him with everything; at the same time, there’s nothing more I can do/be for him to trust me.

So I start to retreat; clearly I had mistaken the us in the future.

At 18 months he comes out to me.
Thank. Fucking. God.
This is everything?
Now maybe we can try to have a relationship.

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