Ghost No More

Geez Louise, it's been almost two years since the last post to this blog. During that time, I've moved (twice!) and changed jobs (only once). I've started to get out as Liz a lot more, and my skills at what Stana would call femulation have matured. I rarely get read any more, and when I do, it's more an uncertainty, like "there's something different about her, I wonder ..."

The thing is, it doesn't feel like emulation to me, whether with an 'f' or not. When I'm Liz, I feel like me, and when I'm my male self, I feel like me, too. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like a born woman when I'm Liz, I have to be a bit careful in public, mindful of my "t's and q's." I guess what I do feel like is a trans woman. If I were to put a label on what I am, it would be dual-gendered, perhaps two-spirited, I don't know, but mainly just me.

Well. Reintroductions aside, I will be posting here again, general t-stuff, and over at my new blog, TransSpiration.org, where I'll write things of a more serious, spiritual nature. I hope you'll check it out!

Posted with Blogsy

Ghosts in the Machine

So.  I've been out and about, as countless trans-picture albums put it, for a number of months, since mid-September, really.  And I have precious little to show for it, at least in terms of that tgirl currency supreme, the photograph.  That's because I'm always by myself, there is never anybody out there with me.  I visit coffee shops, malls, thrift shops, malls (and, uh, malls) all without noticeable incident -- one or two odd looks, maybe, but nothing ugly.  But setting up a tripod or asking a stranger to take a picture are not exactly ways to blend in, so I never do.

Once in awhile, I see other ghosts in the machine, other lost t-folk flitting amongst the civilians, and I wonder if they're as lonely as me?  I remember one poor woman, in the Salvation Army store, who kept her eyes straight ahead, never looking at anyone, never drawing attention to herself, and I wanted to say "I've been where you are, my friend, I understand."  But I didn't . . . I was in drab, and being approached by a strange middle aged man with a knowing look isn't conducive to ones equilibrium.  Although perhaps she guessed, as I was perusing the women's shoe section at the time.

Why do we do these things to ourselves?  Why do we isolate ourselves from the only ones who understand?  Fear is the key . . . fear of rejection, of exposure, of ridicule.  Fear that if we are exposed, we will lose everything, all we think we love and cherish, gone in one frightening second of recognition.  As Frank Herbert wrote, "fear is the mind-killer."  It's also the soul-crusher and the spirit slayer.  I salute those who have overcome it, who have come out in the face of terrible condemnation and been their true selves, and hope someday to join them.

Bad blogger! Bad blogger!

I have been a baaaad blogger.  It's been almost two months since my last post. I just lost the motivation.  It was like, I'd start a post, then when it got to the point I needed to stop and think, to the point that I was at a momentary impassé, I would just give up.  I lacked the motivation to get back to it.

Part of the problem is that I have been diagnosed with adult ADHD, and one of the symptoms is that its harder to get motivated to get past the little roadblocks that crop up along the way.  Whenever a task arises that is unpleasant, we all have to work up the motivation to get over the "hump" of resistance that is created.  For people with ADHD, that hump is higher -- sometimes a lot higher.  And the symptoms of ADHD generally get worse when one is under stress, as I have during the past year over employment issues.

To compound the issue, I discovered over the Christmas break that I am clinically depressed, and probably have been for years.  This is not uncommon in ADHD-ers ... being perceived as a screw-up all your life wears on a person.  But in my case, I have the extra added bonus of a load of shame for being TG.  "Stuffing it," as my therapist puts it, hiding and burying part of me all these years tends to produce a profound depressive malaise.  As we all know, the rate of depression is much higher in trans-folk than in the general population.

Well.  As I write this, I am on my second day of anti-depressants -- a SSRI, if you must know -- and I am waiting to see if it works.  Which can take a month with this stuff, and that's speedy  With the originals, it could take months to work your way up to an effective dosage.  But this one goes to full dosage after a week, and then we'll see.

Shoving Myself Out the Door: The Evil Beard

We all take them, don't we?  We all inch toward being "out" -- whatever that means to us -- step by step, a little at a time.  For me, it was my beard ... it used to be dark and intractable.  As I talked about here, over the years I tried most of the tricks ... Dermablend, the red-lipstick trick, to no avail.  The shadow still showed through.

Not my beard

So, at last, as I became determined to finally express who I am -- whatever that is -- for good, and to be who I am -- whoever that is -- out and about in the world, I naturally started there.  (Ok, ok ... I'll stop with the whatevers, already.) Besides gradually, painfully acquiring a wardrobe, I began with the foundation, attacking that shadow.  The thing is, it's mostly not there anymore:  it's almost all on my upper lip, and a little on my chin.

Still, I worried at the problem, attacking it and fulminating about it with all the analytical glee that this (former) research scientist could muster, but the problem hadn't gotten any easier. I tried the red lipstick thing.  Again.  I tried a thick, creamy foundation.  Again.  Still, no joy.  The rest of my beard may be white, with a few dark hairs scattered around for measure, but that upper lip still gave me away.  The blue-black shadow ruled, at least in the area above my lips.

Gender Testing for Fun and Profit

I don't remember much about my childhood, a fact that has kept my therapists rapt with interest over the years.  What I do remember are individual incidences of dressing as a girl, from the proverbial trying on of Mama's slips and pantyhose to full-on dressing up, like the time I went trick-or-treating dressed as a little girl for Halloween.  That episode is the earliest I recall -- it had to have been before I was eight, and it may have been as early as four or five.  Questions of nature versus nurture aside, I was exploring my feminine side long before I those annoying black hairs started to grow on my, ah ... legs.

Increasingly over the past few years, I've wondered just where I am on the transgendered spectrum.  I'm not  a "classic," early-onset transsexual: I have not felt from my earliest days as if I were a female trapped in a male's body, I have not hated my penis and longed for a vagina, nor have I experienced a significant amount of discomfort due to my male body. (Other than wishing my very masculine body proportions were just a bit  more a feminine ... oh well, that's what padding is for.)

Scenes From a Movie: Gun Hill Road (2011)

Travels With Lizzy: The Road Home I

The things we do to express who we really are.  On my recent cross-country trip -- well, my recent cross-two-state trip -- I was determined to return to Somewhere In Western Alabama the way I had come: expressing my better side.  Problem was, the check-out time at the motel was 11:00, but I had interviews until 12:30 or so.  Where was I going to change?

The Perils of Presenting -- Greasy Face 101

Beard cover.  In the past, I've put way too much thought into it.  And for good reason: I had a pretty heavy black beard.  So fifteen years or so ago, in the early 90s, I worked up enough courage to go into a J.C. Penneys in the middle of the Colorado prairie.  Well, it was in a town, and it was on the prairie, but close to the edge, not the middle ... ok, it was in  Greeley.

Anyway, I entered the J.C. Penney and did the usual dry-run passes by the makeup counter.  I had concocted a fool-proof alibi that would spare me any embarrassment and leave the clerk totally clueless about the true nature of my mission.  The following is a recreation of that fateful day:

Motel Dreams

One thing we TG types do is decorate motels.  I mean, it's sad when we can't openly express our other side on a daily basis.  So a staple of many a transwoman's photo collection are pictures taken in various motel rooms, snapped on lonely trips away from her loved ones, standing in front of the door, or window, sitting on blandly-upholstered couches or posing provocatively on the bed.

For many, especially those toward the heterosexual crossdresser end of things, these are the only times they get to express their inner girl.  The resulting pics often have an undefinable desperation to them, as if this is it, as if they can see their entire career as a TG playing out in these rooms.

Travels With Lizzy

This is a post about a trip.  It was a watershed trip for me, for one very simple reason: it was the longest time spent in trans-mode.  Ever.  As my renaissance has progressed, and I have become increasingly proficient at presenting as the female me, I have hankered to be Lizzy for increasing lengths of time.

Approximate route of my trek

My daylight experience has been, until now, limited.  So, I decided to inch out into the daylit realms with my usual caution and prudence:  I set out from my home Somewhere in West Alabama, bound for Somewhere in North Georgia.  Trip time: five hours each way.  Route: a busy I-20/59 to Birmingham, then I-20 to Atlanta, then the dreaded Georgia 400 (and smaller two-lanes) to my destination.

I was going for a job interview, which was in two parts: dinner with the hiring committee on Friday evening, then interviews with each member the next morning.  I was determined to spend as much time as Lizzy as I possibly could.

t-Spotlight -- The Lazy Crossdresser

I live Somewhere in the Bible Belt, and at the moment, anyway, I am not near a big market, where there are makeover places, trans-friendly bars, etc., etc.  So in my recent renaissance, I have had to find help online and via the mail.  There are many helps out there in the form of books, web-sites and specialty companies, and in this occasional feature, spotlight a resource that has been of particular help to me.

First up is The Lazy Crossdresser,  by Charlie Anders, the single most positive book on getting dressed and getting out that I've ever read.  Sure, it's got the word "crossdresser" in the title, but it applies to all trangendered who experience the paralyzing fear many of us feel at the thought of getting out and about as who we are.  Plus, he doesn't write crappy sentences like I do.

News You (might be able to) Use (9/14/2011)

Is it just me, or is the rate of violence against trans-people on the rise?   I sincerely hope not, but it sure looks like it.  Diana, over at her little Corner of the Nutmeg State, reports that "Washington DC is becoming a place of death for us," and tells us about the third group of assaults on transwomen this summer in that city.

Meanwhile, the most high-profile case has been resolved.  Sort of:  the teen who pleased guilty to beating a transwoman in a Rosedale, MD McDonalds was sentenced to five years in prison, plus three of supervised probation.  The maximum sentence for such a crime is 35 years, but the 19-year-old woman had no previous record, and tearfully apologized in court.

Hi, There

Me.   But I'm working on it ...

So, here I am, writing another in a long line of introductory posts.  So be it ... folks need to know who you are, right?  I mean, there is a whole lot of blogging going on, and it behooves the smart blogger to state up front what it's all about.  Alfie.

With that in mind, let me say the "t" in "t-Spot" is for transgender, not tea ... although aren't I clever, calling it t-Spot?  I'm a little t-Spot, short and stout ... here is the handle, here is the spout.

Ok, so I'm no comedian ... but I am a transgendered woman, unspecified as to category, and I prefer to keep it that way, thank you very much.  There is far too much reductionism in our "community" for my taste.  Although categories are how we learn, they are also how we exclude and label.

After being away from it the "community" for a couple of decades, I am saddened to find the same old arguments  being . . . argued.  Just how transgendered are you, anyway?  Are you a transsexual, heading toward the promised land, or are you "only" a crossdresser?  Are you pre or post or non?  Are you truly a woman at heart or just a perverted little fetishistic panty wearer?

Ok, so I have issues.  Come explore them with me as I go on this journey from whatever I was before to whatever I am becoming.