Sorry, I couldn’t help it. I’m going to Milwaukee for the first time, & for me, Milwaukee is always going to be Laverne & Shirley’s city.

What I’ll be up to:

• Saturday, 4/18: talk for Milwaukee LGBT on trans relationships, 6-9 PM, Martin Luther Church
• Sunday, 4/19: a talk on sex & relationships at The Tool Shed, 5 - 6:30 PM
• Monday, 4/20: Gender Variance Workshop at UWM, 2 - 4 PM
• Monday, 4/20: Queer Heterosexuals Lecture at UWM, 7 - 9 PM

So do come to whatever you can if you’re in the Milwaukee area, & do spread the word. All the links are to Facebook pages, since that’s how the kids are doing it these days.

As it turns out, A Room of Her Own Foundation chose a short list of their “Honored Finalists” and yours truly is on it. Yes, I used my legal name, and someday I’ll say more about that, but you’ll be able to tell from the bio that I’m still me, and I am quite honored to see myself in this list.

I’ve been a writer a long time & it’s really something to receive this kind of recognition - and that from other women writers and a foundation created precisely to fund people like me. What’s more interesting about this award is that it’s based on the writing, of course, but also on community service.

It’s certainly a lovely way to end Women’s History Month.

So if anyone wants to know a little more about where I’m living, it turns out Prairie Home Companion is in town, & they’ve shot a little local footage for the show:

Houdini’s birthplace, yes, but also Joe McCarthy’s. It’s an odd little place I really have come to love.

I won’t be at the Femme Fever Ball I blogged about yesterday because I’ll be speaking in Milwaukee, but I will be back on the East Coast this spring, in early May, in Philly, for the Liberty Conference. Some of my fellow presenters include:

Dr. Richard Doctor, Arlene Lev, Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, Dr. Sherman Leis, Dr. Jennifer Burnett, Dr. Sandra Simmons, Dr. James Thomas, Dr. Richard Hauer, Dr. Mark Zukowski, Dr. Maureen Osborne, Rev. Karla Fleshman, Allison Lang, Jan Brown, Stephanie Battaglino, Mona Rae Mason, Lady Ellen Melissa Clark, and Georgie Jessup

I’ll be speaking at the Saturday Luncheon about relationships in a talk called “How We Love You: Let Us Count the Ways” which will address issues of identity, intimacy, compromise, sex, family, and marriage.

You can read more & register at www.transeventsusa.org.

Sorry for this boring post, but today was the 1st day of classes, which means tomorrow is the first day of Trans Lives, and it’s 2 hours at a time, which means I need to be well-rested because they won’t have read anything yet & I’ve got to talk the whole time!

Not only are we in Kenosha again, but we’re staying at the same hotel (which was planned) *and* in the exact same room (which was not planned). The boys have been fantastic, mostly sleeping for the trip. & I’m glad to say this is the last overnight before we end up in our home-for-six-months. Betty of course has been an amazing driver.

I, on the other hand, am sick as a dog. I got my flu shot, so I’m assuming it’s just a bad cold. I hope so, anyway. Drinking a lot of tea, sucking on Ricolas, sleeping on Nyquil. It’s not a real pleasure to travel like this but as someone who is allergic to everything I am way too used to being congested a lot. I’m sure it’ll be over in the next day or so. Hopefully. Classes start 1/5 so I have a little time to get well, at least.

& In the meantime, a very happy 10th anniversary to my sister and brother in law! 10 years ago I was newly married and in Vegas for their wedding, and if you’d told me then that in 10 years I’d be in a hotel room in Kenosha… okay, I might’ve believed you. I’d done enough inexplicable, unexpected things in my life by then that Wisconsin wouldn’t have been *that* surprising, but now I’m trying to think of what woudl have been.

Thanks all for your good wishes. We do the short drive (2+ hours) to Appleton tomorrow.

So how many of you will be humming that song the rest of the day now?

We’re leaving today for Appleton, Wisconsin, where I’ll be living for the next six months. It’s so odd that I have never lived anywhere other than the NYC area my entire life, only to end up living in Wisconsin for months at at time, to teach. It’s surprised me, in a good way.

We do an overnight near Akron, OH, & then another in Kenosha, WI.

I am really looking forward not just to teaching but to being back in Appleton. I really enjoyed my last stay there, & I really loved the area around Lawrence. What is weird is that I remember feeling sad when I left, but pleased to get back to Brooklyn, and now I’m doing all those feelings in reverse: feeling sad to be leaving my much-loved Brooklyn, but excited to be going back. I have decided that I have to figure out a way not to miss things so much, or to be as sad about leaving, and focus more on the going to than the coming from, but then I’ve always been a little bit this way: melancholy & maybe a little sentimental.

Either way, the boys are coming with me, and I’ll be incredibly busy, and that is an excellent combination for me.

By the time you’re reading this, we will have started the long Westward Ho that is the state of Pennsylvania. We’ll end the day just on the other side of Ohio’s state line.

Okay, then.

I am packed for six months for me & the boys: six pieces of luggage, three boxes, two crates, two backpacks, and one laundry thingy. Plus Betty’s stuff, the cats in one carrier, & some other odds & ends (litterbox, cat food). Good thing we rented an SUV, no?

We also cleaned the apt for the catsitter.

The worst thing about being Helen Boyd just now is knowing I have to bring a ton of my books because no one else will have copies - like Esther Newton’s Camp & Rottnek’s Tomboys & Sissies. The books are one crate, and one of the boxes is photocopies of handouts of other chapters & essays on gender.

But other than that, I’m ready. Just have to pack the computer & the cats tomorrow. We leave at 10am.

One of the partners on our MHB boards mentioned recently that she’d never apply for an LGBT scholarship, because she doesn’t identify as LGBT, and it reminded me that I never told the story about me & the LGBT Blogger Initiative Conference I went to.

It seems I am perplexing to people, & I felt a little bit like an odd duck while I was there. It came up because at some point, someone announced that grants might become available for LGBT bloggers, and a few people told me that they hoped I would get one. But someone also mentioned that they could see others have an issue with the fact that I’m not LGB or T. My standard response these days is - “I’m the Q that gets left off a lot.”

But still it’s an issue that has come up, & may come up even moreso that I’m thinking about going back to grad school. Will I choose, like the partner above, not to apply for any LGBT scholarships? As a sort of liminal queer, probably I wouldn’t, except that then there’s the whole issue of what I do & what I’d want to study - which is all about the LGBT, and the T in particular.

The other question I was asked, which I’ve been asked before, is why? Why the trans community? & To be honest, I just don’t know. I was charmed by my very first meetings with trans people, & continue to have a deep love for the trans community & for trans people. Aside from my Debsian sense of social justice, that is.

Tim McFeeley did a wonderful “short history of the LGBT movement” (which I was pleased to note I knew cold!) as a workhop that Sunday morning, and he closed with a quote by Frederick Douglass:

When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.

That’s my answer & I’m sticking to it.

One of my Christmas presents to myself is the news that this journal picked up a piece of mine that will show up in their Spring issue. It’s called “Cat of Nine Tale” — and yes, it is about DO & Aurora.

Working on this piece was one of the very many things I was doing this fall that kept me busy.

Tune in tonight to TransFM for the special “12 Days of Christmas” greeting from us!

Some of the lovely folks at the MHB forums went out tonight for a little holiday gathering - dinner & conversation followed by drinks at a bar on 14th Street - and it was truly lovely.

Thank you all for coming. Because of Betty’s ongoing dental surgeries, and her broken foot, we haven’t been out in a long time, so it felt really great to be out & about, chatting with folks we knew & some we got to meet tonight.

As many of you know, I was at the LGBT Bloggers’ Initiative this past weekend, feeling simultaneously like the new kid on the block and the old whore. Many of my fellow bloggers - I realized during a presentation on media access by Cathy Renna - are bloggers, only. It never occurred to me that being a blogger who was a published book author first was weird, but there I was.

Nevermind that for now. I met a smattering of lovely people who are active in the LGBT blogosphere, some of whom I knew before and some who I didn’t: Dana of Mombian, a whole bunch of the folks at Bilerico, including Bil, Serena, Irene, and Alex; some of the Pam’s House Blend crew, including Pam herself and Autumn Sandeen. Among other I ran into were Allyson Robinson at the HRC cocktail party on Friday night, Mara Keisling of NCTE on Saturday afternoon (at the infamous Mayflower Hotel), as well as Tahlib Disney-Britton of Freedom to Marry, James from gayagenda.com,  and Tobias Packer of Equality Florida.

More…

I’ve just added my blog to Facebook Notes, which I didn’t know existed until Andy Wibbels, who’s here presenting at the LGBT Blogger Initiative, pointed them out. Thanks, Andy.

So now you can read my blog without leaving Facebook.

I’m still at the Blogger Initiative in DC & having a pretty cool time of it; yesterday I had lunch with the Victory Fund at the Mayflower Hotel & heard Barney Frank speak (more on that later) & ran into Mara Keisling, Maggie Stump and Dana Beyer. I’ve noticed I always feel at home amongst the tall ladies, and that moment was a refreshing break from being a kind of confusing non-trans blogger from the trans community (more on that later too). I moderated a panel on diversity yesterday, which went really well thanks to my excellent panelists.A working shop with Cathy Renna about media access & savvy just ended, and it’s time to go eat lunch with my fellow bloggers, none of whom are in pajamas.

Mostly right now I’m missing Betty, who got home from CO last night and who is in our apartment with the kittoi, and whom I can’t wait to be with, too.

It only seems right that I should blog from the LGBT bloggers’ initiative, even though the schedule leaves precious little time.

Last night was the introductory mixer at the HRC offices - which are very fancy & chic, in case you haven’t seen them, I know I wasn’t the only one who thought “so that’s where the money goes” - and I got to meet a few staffers, as well as Allyson Robinson, the new(ish) trans outreach coordinator for HRC. I also met my roommate (more about her lovely self at another time) and the organizer of the initiative, as well as James from www.gayagenda.com, who was very very cold (since he’s from FL), Alex Blaze of Bilerico.

& I met Pam Spaulding briefly when I hung up her jacket for her. (It’s a glamorous life.) So far it’s been fun, but wow do the days start early! It’s downright unnatural to be up this time of day.

I’m off to the LGBT Blogger Initiative Conference in Washington DC for the weekend. Hoping to meet lots of cool folks and learn a whole bunch of new things. I’ll try to post from there but the schedule (& my very iffy laptop) may not allow me to; there will be a ton of workshops and panels and roundtables and suchlike.

I’ll be back late late late on Sunday, and Betty will have beaten me home from where she is in CO.

I reported for Jury Duty yesterday on a fine cold & rainy Brooklyn morning. Their timing couldn’t be worse, though I’m hoping I can get a postponement for next July if I go in person.

It would be much easier for a self-employed type like me to be able to schedule Jury Duty, but of course that’s not the way it works. Still, I usually go for a few days & don’t get chosen, & then I get my “free for four years” letter and am on my way. In fact yesterday I didn’t get chosen and am now free for 8 years! I don’t know when they increased it, but they did, & I’m pleased, since i have a lot to get done this week.

Still, I scanned my laptop for a virus I think I got on Sunday, & otherwise read more things about gender, The Well of Loneliness, and embodiment.

We’ve changed the name of the column to “Ask Helen,” but my 2nd column is up at ourchart.com, and it’s all about how couples meet each other and end up in relationships.

An old friend of mine is in town, and she was asked to guest drum at a bellydance performance tonight. As I’ve rarely gotten to see her drum, I went, & dragged my sister with me. (Betty, sadly, is not very mobile). I’ve seen bellydance performed before, but tonight, on top of my usual introverted discomfort, I kept thinking about how I was supposed to be in that room.

The dancers were all lovely. The first act, Sri Devi, was (I’m guessing) still pretty young to dancing, but she was fabulously talented and funny and fun in her performance. She seems like the type of performer who has a real star in her.

The final performance, by Hannah Nour, was really a hit out of the park. She had what I call “sea legs” for a performer - the way sailors are more comfortable on a boat than on land, some people are more comfortable performing than not. (Betty was that kind of actor.) She showed no self-concsiousness, seemed like she was really engaged and enjoying herself, and was technically stellar. And her clothes! Like a Hindu Love Goddess, all light blues and greens and whites and pinks - like a female version of the traditional representation of Rama.

Because on one level bellydance is a seductive art, sexual, exhibitionist, and yet it’s also social. It’s not burlesque. And I couldn’t figure out how to watch, at all. Most of the guys sit there just kind of ga-ga (in a more or less sexualized gaze) and a lot of the women were other dancers who were there to cheer on their friends or learn or just to appreciate the art.

But I was just there, looking like a dyke in the corner, and now that I’m aware people see me as a lesbian, it’s all I think about. I suppose if I actually desired women, I’d sit there like most of the guys, enjoying the sensuality & beauty of the ladies dancing without feeling weird about it. But because my desire, per se, is not engaged, I just sit there wondering how to watch, because it’s still titillating - dance is innately seductive, no?. I find myself tied up in knots, and kind of uncomfortable despite the performers being very comfortable with themselves and the dance form.

(I know, I know; I’m self-conscious & I think too much. Tell me something I don’t know.)

But despite my own silliness, DO GO see bellydance if you can! It’s a cool art form. The night I saw tonight happens every Sunday (thought with different performers, I think).