The Return

I've long ignored my own issues, long enough to have forgotten the password as well as the existence of this blog. Long enough to settle into a weird comfort zone with myself and the conflict of my career and my identity pushed far into the background.

I probably would have continued down this road of pretending everything was okay until something happened. Rather, until someone happened. Through the grace of the never ending web of dyke drama, the girlfriend met someone over the summer who, for lack of a better term, is a lot like me. I don't know what else to say there without going into too much detail. What matters is that I finally have someone to talk to and that I've realized I can't keep running from my life, from who I am.

I also have it good because the girlfriend has some gender issues of her own. I mean, I have somewhat of an ally. Someone who takes care to pay attention to how I feel, to how I want to be seen, to how I want to be treated, to how I want to be touched and where. And that is truly incredible. I'm not sure, however, if I am stable enough in my own gender identity, which for the most part is static, to help her deal with her own fluid gender identity. I am not exactly the person to help because I don't understand wanting to be girly one day and masculine the next. I have trouble dealing with this changing identity and how to deal with it. It present a whole new set of challenges that I don't know if I am in any shape to deal with. I apologize.

This new person (who shall henceforth be denoted with the initial C) can be more of an ally, I think. At least, in a different way. Spending a week with C gave me a really interesting chance to see how the world sees me. C is my height, of similar gender presentation, and similar mannerisms (including the whole valley girl aspect). I was always fascinated watching her talk because it was sometimes akin to looking in a mirror. I was also elated that my mother got to meet her because here was someone else, like me, in my house. I quickly realized, somewhat to my disappointment, that I wasn't seeing C like the world sees C, or like the world sees me, for that matter. I was seeing C through the tainted lense of being in a similar frame of mind.

Last summer, I sat in Jim's driveway and had a conversation with him about gender. It was about how he had fallen into the gender binary and how I was still out at sea. I bring this up because I told him that I had come up with percentages. I'm not even a math person, so I don't know why I bothered putting it in terms like this, but I had come to the conclusion that my gender/sexual identity was 30% lesbian, 40% straight guy (ish), 30% gay guy. The straight guy is in sexuality only, not in personality, thank you. Although I realize the broad generalizations I am making about straight guys being douche-bags, but I don't want to be lumped into that generalization myself. Jim made the observation that, yes, that is 70% male. And of course, this doesn't really quantify my identity in any real way, only in an extremely limiting system that somewhat makes sense to the average joe. It also more applies to the laws of my attraction and not how I act and/or present.

Back to my time with C. After I realized that I wasn't seeing what the world saw, I began to think about what I did see. C emanated male energy, and I am not even one who puts a whole lot of whatever into energies and auras, but there was a definite maleness about her. (I realize that I struggle with pronouns, as I often do about myself, but I am not quite comfortable with gender neutral pronouns; I also realize that if I used them more then I would be more comfortable.) A maleness that I can't quite explain nor address adequately in this post. I, per usual, began to wonder if only she had this maleness. That I was making it up that we were similar. Yeah, we ID'd similarly, but what does that really mean in the long run if she is standing there emanating this energy that I could only aspire to in order to be taken seriously.

We talked on our last night together about this. I confided to her that I was so excited to be around her and to have finally met her and to finally be with someone who was more like me than anyone I had ever met. I sounded like a total fanboy for sure, but I have made it a point lately to tell people how I really feel about them. I think it is important if at times awkward. She seemed to echo the sentiment (at least I remember that, it was two am so hopefully I didn't make it up). I told her that I saw her mostly as a gay man and to my surprise (and excitement!) she said the same about me.

I'm not sure how my girlfriend sees me, but it meant so much to hear someone say that. Instead of someone telling me that the male illusion failed because I was too girly and giggled too much, that I was being seen as I acted. I suppose in response to the first statement of this paragraph, I need to have that conversation. Granted, she knows how to treat me most of the time, but she's never told me how I appear. I've gotten so used to being seen as male until I open my mouth, that I never thought that anyone could see past that.

I have a lot more musings about my adventures in Women's Choir and the ever looming issue of Sex. I'm determined now, with new vigor, to figure myself out in the quietly public forum so that I have a record of it, so that those close to me can read what I can't say aloud, and so that maybe even perfect strangers can have a sense of what lies beyond the binary.

_{But some day we'll catch a glimpse of eternity
As the world stands still, for a moment
And I guess we will be making history
When we all join hands just to watch the sky}