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.

There is something about the Christmas season that makes you think about life in sad ways.

I had a friend visiting not too long ago who had just heard that a friend of hers had decided to have a baby despite the fact that she didn’t have a husband. She kept repeating how sorry she felt for her, not to have had a husband and father, and all I could think was that she did have her child, who was healthy, and she had a good job to be a single parent - she’s a teacher - and that life comes with a lot of goddamn compromises.

I think about my lovely set of friends from high school and so many have had unfortunate surprises in their lives: babies born with serious medical conditions, boyfriends in near-fatal accidents, people who wanted children & didn’t have them (yet), people who didn’t and who did. There are so many ways things can go a little awry, or a lot awry, but I found myself feeling a little angry at the pity my friend was expressing, maybe because I’ve felt that kind of pity directed at me, although not from her, because I married someone trans.

So I’ve been thinking this winter about how to make room in my life for other people’s decisions in a way that really is fair to them. I’m tired of feeling like everyone’s a control freak, as if we all know better than others about what they need or should have. I’m not sure what the answer is but as we all get ready to see old friends and family I thought it might be something to think about.

Life is not easy, but it’s definitely that much harder when you can feel someone’s judgement on the back of your head.

Barbara Carrellas told me that tonight, this night that Obama won, her next door neighbor put a candle on their doorstep & a white handkerchief on the doorknob: the sign of a safe house during the time of the Underground Railroad.

For years I have had my key in our front door and made a point of not turning my head over my right shoulder so that I would not see the big gaping lack in the sky where the towers stood.

I’ve felt for the past 8 years like that crazy chracter Whoopi Goldberg played on Star Trek, in that one episode where she knew the ship wasn’t supposed to be at war, and that children were supposed to be on board, but weren’t. She kept telling everyone they were in the wrong reality.

We’ve been in the wrong reality for 8 years at least. There is a part of me that wants to go back to that time of outpouring of sympathy from the world we received and just apologize already for having shit on their sympathy with aggression & “the Bush doctrine” of Orwellian, preventative war. I want still for the US to say to the rest of the world that we’re sorry for our bad manners; we were traumatized and stupid and scared and that we’re very, very sorry for not having taken their shows of empathy with grace and thanks.

& Then I think of that candle on Barbara’s stoop and that white handkerchief on her doorknob and I think of how far we have gone back, what deep wounds we might heal now, and I am awed at the idea of it.

To the rest of the world: the difficult but lovable child full of promise that the US used to be is back. We’re still a big precocious brat in some ways, but full of love and honor and bravery in others: a 19 year old to your more mature years, still a little impetuous and wet behind the ears but hopeful and not entirely stupid. I feel like we’ve finally gotten to that moment full of tears and anger where we admit how much we were hurt and how much hurting we did and try, still a little clumsily, to try a little harder.

(this post is dedicated to Anne Wendy, whose British liberalism has been a bright, bright beacon.)

& Really, I will get back to gender & trans stuff. There’s a lot of stuff bubbling, but right now I’m still just worried about Obama winning. Thank you for your patience.

I know I’m often somewhat cynical about scientific studies, but this one especially seems to take the cake. Not because it’s not smart, or comes to wild, unfounded conclusions, but rather because it’s - well, obvious: thoughtful people tend to get depressed.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a “somewhat mood disordered person,” had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind.

“One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that’s when I start writing,” he said.

Psychologist types can tell me if anything specific is meant by “ruminating” - that is, if the term is used in your field to mean a kind of obsessive thinking and reviewing of thought - because otherwise, to us lay folks, ruminating just means thinking, reviewing. I don’t think of it as being a negative activity by any means, or even an obsessive one.

What they seem to miss - or don’t articulate - is that writing is a kind of thinking for a lot of writers. It’s a way of kind of nailing down a certain kind of looped thinking, following wild hairs to their logical end, sorting out complex connections. In other words, it’s a kind of sanity-making thing to do when you’re thinking all the time.

I had a writing prof who used to say that it’s impossible to tell if people who have a lot of vivid dreams become writers or if writers have a lot of vivid dreams - that is, whether the inclination to write causes someone to dream & think very intensely, or whether people who naturally dream & think intensely find writing is their only good outlet for all the stuff going on in their head. Writing, to me, is an anti-depressant, but in a certain sense it creates this other place you get to go, and like with other drugs, maybe you just get to a point where pushing the button doesn’t result in relief anymore. With DFW, it would be easy to come to that conclusion - he wrote so intensely, so intricately, for a long while, & it’s as if the moment he stopped - he couldn’t stand it anymore. Maybe, as with other drugs, we have to be careful how much we press the button, because we become resistant to its palliative qualities, eventually.

I was just bitching on the MHB boards that nearly all the only portrayals of Italian-Americans is mafia related, and people pointed out a few others - like did you know Elaine on Seinfeld was supposed to be Catholic? Nice try, but she wasn’t. Other than Ray Romano, Fonzi and Al from Happy Days, there seems to be a real dearth of the rest of us that isn’t Sopranos-esque.

* Goomba, or goombah, is a term used to describe a stereotypical Italian-American, & in a few dictionaries, implies a connection to the mob. & Yes, it’s also the name of one of the bad guys in Super Mario.

I didn’t have any goodfellas in my own Italian family, and we’re even Sicilian / Calabrian. I tend to describe my dad as “the other kind of Italian” because he is - more Joe DiMaggio than Godfather. Mostly if it’s not mafia it’s about food, or more likely, it’s about both. But honestly, is there a culture where the food isn’t important? My Big Fat Greek Wedding got closer to my experience of being Italian-American than any of those goomba movies.

& These days, in New York, there’s about three blocks left of Little Italy; Chinatown has been encroaching for years, and Italians left the city - for everywhere. (Though the midwest could use a few more, because finding inexpensive, good Italian food in Wisconsin leaves you at Pizza Hut. ugh.) But at least now there’ll be a museum of the whole Italian-American experience, located where Little Italy used to be.

(Thanks to Nettie, Caprice, VM, & Donna, all of whom put in their two cents.)

Today I’m taking the GRE, or Graduate Record Exam, and let me tell you, I’m not excited about it. I don’t mind taking a test for four hours - my time spent writing often runs longer than that - but the idea of this exam just pisses me off. I don’t do well with standardized anything, but the idea of standardized intelligence is so unbelievably counter-intuitive, especially for us humanities types.

I’ve always been good at math; I just didn’t like it. My sister, who always scored higher on verbal than math, went into banking. I always scored higher on math than verbal and I’m the writer. Maybe it’s just inborn perversity, or maybe this whole idea of a “right” answer offends me. Math encouraged the wrong bits of me entirely.

I’ve spent most of my intellectual career teaching myself not to look for a right answer, but to look instead at things in a way they’re not usually seen, to ask questions that expose more of the riddle of the thing in question. I love the idea of imbuing the subjective narrative with authority; of defining the universe in a kind of Buddhist solipsism. You know, in a healthy sort of way, that maximizes the importance of our humanity and decreases our judgment of what’s right or wrong.

Call me a recovering Catholic, but I had a literature professor in my first year at Fordham - I started out a theology major, no kidding - who called me The Church Lady because I found Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” a moral outrage. I was The Church Lady with a mohawk, but judgmental nonetheless. I think that tendency is sometimes referred to as liberal fascism, or for you D&D types, Lawful Evil. I recognized the streak and since then have learned to tame it.

And then this test comes along, a test I avoided taking the first time around by getting my MA in Writing, of all things, but now, considering doing a Ph.D., I can’t avoid any longer. And they want to know the best opposite of restive is, and I have to spend the first seconds while reading the question turning off the part of my brain that wants to know the context, and whether restive is being used sarcastically, who’s using it and what they’re describing. The next seconds I convince myself to just answer the damn question the way I expect they want it answered, and the next seconds after that I have to convince myself to stop thinking about it because my first “this is the answer they want” impulse is usually the one that gets me the check mark of correctness. It’s exhausting.

I don’t believe in check marks of correctness, and the idea - at this age! - of having to take a test to give someone a numerical way of understanding how smart I am, or am not, is pretty damned frustrating.

Either way, I’m taking the GRE today.

Please wish me luck in not sticking the pencil in my own eye out of frustration.

Our friend Lynne pointed out this interesting article from The American Scholar about the problem of elite schools. I particularly liked this section, since it’s so rare we actually talk about class in this culture:

Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.

He goes on to talk about types of smartness, the goal of liberal arts, and the uses of solitude.

Our downstairs housemate of the past 5 years or so left today, to move to his hometown, where he got offered a job he couldn’t turn down. I’ve been friends with him nearly two decades; he’s the one who made my wedding gown, and who watches our cats and feeds our fish while we’re away, and saying I will miss him is the understatement of a century.

I’m also a little envious that he got that job, the one that you’d leave NYC for, and that he’s going home to have his close friend and family nearby. There is a certain disjointedness in my life these days, and I know that mine will not come together in the ways his is - my parents are retired in FL and there’s no way on God’s green earth I would ever move down there, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be home. Maybe that’s a good thing. Instead I stay here in Brooklyn, with my sister 20 blocks away and more friends than I can count.

Except, of course, the one I’ll be missing starting today.

I don’t often wear trans shirts when I’m with Betty - no need to out her casually, she does enough outreach for one trans person - but Betty was sick this past week & so I was walking to my sister’s wear my NCTE “T” shirt (the old one - I don’t have the new one yet.)

Then someone on our boards asked if people would say yes if someone asked them if they were transgender.

And it made me wonder how often people think I’m trans - because of the t-shirts, the various places I post, the relative absence of partners in trans circles, and especially in LGBT circles. I think I mentioned here how two people I met at USC had assumed I was the partner of an FTM since the queer-identified partners of MTFs seem to be few & far-between - okay, practically non-existant.

It’s made me think of the days I was an honorary lesbian, which I am, still, kinda, depending on who’s deciding what I am.

I never told people I wasn’t a lesbian - unless the person was who wanted to sleep with me or a person who I wanted to sleep with - and in the same way I don’t think I’d care to clarify that I’m not trans if someone thought I was.

Maybe I should get a shirt that says GVETGI = Gender Variant Enough To Get It.

39. Shock & horror. It’s not possible I’m this old.

My mother was 39 when she gave birth to me, 39 years ago today. (Thanks mom.) I was her 6th child, and here I can barely manage three cats & a trans husband.

But at least Betty’s as old as me!

A couple of recent memes:

1. What is your favorite word? indeed.
2. What is your least favorite word? relax
3. What turns you on? genderfuck
4. What turns you off? passivity
5. What is your favorite curse word? cunt
6. What sound or noise do you love? rhythmic handclapping
7. What sound or noise do you hate? led zeppelin
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? fighter pilot (i’m not kidding)
9. What profession would you not like to attempt? corporate anything
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? you were right.

and

• If you get something out of a vending machine, it’s most likely the: MetroCard
• A word you sometimes catch yourself misspelling: relevant (or is it revelant?)
• You least want people to see you as: dull
• You’re a little scared of: street crime
• The least attractive thing you do in your sleep: snore
• The number of contacts in your cell phone: lots
• How many of them are relatives: plenty
• You lose your cool when someone: condescends
• When you go to the drugstore, you often can’t leave without buying: rolaids
• Your dance moves can best be described as: masculine
• The majority of your underwear is: dirty
• Something you eat even though you hate how bad it is for you: ice cream
• You think you’re really not a great: writer
• How much cash is in your wallet right now: $12
• The majority of your shoes are this color: black
• You don’t think you’ll ever be able to get rid of your: bad skin
• If your breath is bad, it’s most likely because you had the: cigarettes
• You feel embarrassed when you: fart
• The last public place where you used the restroom: City College
• Something you don’t like to debate in mixed company: obama v. hilary
• You don’t think you can pull off wearing: skinny jeans
• Something you own entirely too much of: ants stuff
• Someone you would love to see in concert who might bring down your street cred: devo?
• The last thing that you spilled on yourself: tea
• If you were on a reality show, the producers would likely portray/characterize you as the: humorless feminist

… No, not a dame. (Or a Dane, for those of you who saw Betty’s performance with the Butch McCloud cast).

Rather, there is nothing like a resume for making you aware of what exactly you’ve been doing with your time. There are moments, reviewing and updating mine, that I want to put things in parentheses

• 2008: survived Wisconsin winter
• 2002: wrote unpublished novel
• 2001 - 2008: played Sims for sanity’s sake
• 1993 - 1997: traveled extensively through SE Asia
• 1991 - still: worked on novel that I still can’t seem to get right

… stuff like that. It is interesting to see things drop off as time goes by - my job with NYPIRG in the early 90s is gone, as is my time working as an office assistant at CCNY. A long time ago my jobs at RKO Video and at my sister’s bakery disappeared.

Though sometimes, you know, I still want to mention that I was a paperboy: nothing like delivering papers to develop strong thighs and self-motivation. (I know you’re out there, fellow former paperboys! & If there are any female fellow paperboys, say hello!) I did come to suck at it because I developed a healthy fear of dogs. Amazing that I still went on to canvas door to door years later. It’s amazing what you can do to avoid the 9-5 grind.

No job yet.

My lives have diverged, some days in ways I can’t even measure.

Recently, at my 20th HS reunion, people wanted to know if they should call me Helen. Worse yet, I met up with an old friend who was in town for Comic Con and he wanted to know what to introduce me as.

But the worst is when it comes to work: on the one hand I’m a published author who has lectured at quite a lot of U.S. colleges and universities, who was recently nominated as one of the Top Ten female bloggers, and who has teaching experience at the college level.

On the other hand, I’m a freelance admin and bookkeeper who has also tutored and edited for the past couple of years.

When I look at my one resume (my author CV, to be accurate), I’m convinced the the temp people are going to want to know why on earth I need a temp job. But the other looks a little thin for someone who is approaching 40, & really looks like I haven’t been doing much for the past couple of years, which I haven’t, because I’ve been busy promoting a book and teaching, of course.

It’s a funny life. But I still need a job.

So I’ve been back in Brooklyn a few weeks, and in three months the neighborhood has changed drastically. Mostly not in a way that pleases me, either.

1. Jack’s is, after all, closed. Not only will I miss the pot roast, but I will miss the place for the sake that it was the first place I heard a song by Spoon. That is, I heard a cool song, and asked who it was, & the server said “Spoon.” I think it was their “Back to the Life.” Anyway, a place that played music cool enough for me to discover will be sadly missed.
2. We now have a 7-11. I’m really not even sure what to think of that one.
3. Our local favorite Greek diner is remodeling.
4. But the worst change of all is this: My favorite pizza joint, Lenny’s, no longer makes zeppolis.

And I’ll tell you why it sucks: because when I first moved to Brooklyn, and first went into Lenny’s, I felt like I was home. Old Italian guys making pizza who’d been making pizza for decades, photos of Italians on the walls, those awful formica stalls, fountain soda, italian ices out of paper cups, and yes, zeppolis.

I’ve always had this vague feeling I was born in the wrong era. I’m beginning, more and more, to be more sure that I was, watching the change all around me. I still haven’t gotten over paying more than 50 cents for a cup of joe, after all. Why people ever agreed to pay $2 for a cup of coffee that you have to prepare yourself so that now that’s all you can buy, I’ll never understand.

I wish these sorts of things didn’t entertain me, but they do.

Make sure you scroll over the boxes, since they tell you things, like my masculinity score (ha), my extrovert score, & best of all, my trust score.

Like I said, entertaining. Click on the “Reserved Inventor” text to go take it yourself.

(thanks to the newly-found blog of java for the link.)

(I took it twice.)

Update - here’s Betty’s:

(which explains, at least to me, why we work together so well.)

This one, on the way down to Spartanburg:

9 april - With only 45 minutes left of charge on my laptop, and having been assigned to an Amtrak car with no power outlets, I thought I’d take a minute to say: it’s nice to take a train down south in spring. Things have gradually gotten a little greener, a little brighter – from the first new greens on a weeping willow I saw in Elizabeth to the bright green buds on everything just south of Philly (which is about where I am now). I played Sims for a while – what better use of limited battery power? – and I will otherwise mostly read and listen to music; at 7PM, I eat dinner. I even have a reservation.

I arrive in Spartanburg about 4am; it’s about 4pm now. Apparently we get to Manassus at 7:22, as a lady who just called her sons who are going to pick her up there then. Really, I love cellphones on trains.

We must be approaching Wilmington; things are looking awfully financial. I think my interest rates built at least one of these buildings.

(A lot more to come on the trip to SC.)

I’ve found myself back in Brooklyn after teaching a term at Lawrence and a semester at Merrimack, needing work.

I’d prefer teaching work in the NYC area, or lectures at colleges or the like, but really I’ll consider anything that pays okay. Lecture gigs are always good fun.

I am, of course, for hire as a coach, to help find transition resources, and for other trans-related stuff. I’m happy to provide an ear or a shoulder to cry on for trans people & partners alike.

I’m also a decent editor, writer, and admin. I’m a good lecturer and teacher. I can bookkeep if necessary. If you want to see more about what I do and what I’ve done, my author website is the place to check: www.helenboydbooks.com.

But if any of you know academics, especially in English or Gender Studies, please mention me to them.

& While I’m at it, I need a new literary agent who represents fiction, too. & A grant to finish writing my novel.

Okay, I think that’s it for now.

Oprah’s doing a show on puppy mills today that I can’t even stand to watch, and I’m not even a dog person.

There are reports around that many of the people who are victims of this subprime mortgage scam are having to give up pets because the rental places they’re moving to don’t allow pets. As we well know, having three cats, & from having numerous friends with pets who had to move, it can be difficult to find a place to live with them.

Volunteers here in Park Slope catch, neuter, and release feral cats. Others like BAFN foster, save, and check in on pets that have been left behind

So why is this the case? With all the people who are currently unemployed, why don’t we have a New Deal type program to take care of our nation’s animals and to change the laws that would keep landlords from barring pets? I can understand restrictions on how many pets, or how many pounds worth of pet (our three cats, for instance, don’t do nearly as much damage as one large dog could), or whatever. But we’re a nation that loves our animals, and yet you have horrors like animal abuse and puppy mills and the stupid decisions that separated people from their pets during the Katrina evacuations.

It seems there’s plenty of work to do, and improving conditions for our four-legged Americans might be a good place to start.

Lena Dahlstrom posted a video on the mHB message boards made by the Feminist Majority Foundation called “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” and the women in it reminded me, once again, that I don’t feel femme-y enough in either style or presentation and reminded me as well that I’m offended by this PR campaign to convince people that feminists aren’t awful, ugly, fat, hairy women. So when another partner commented about being the resident “big hairy dyke” I thought, “me too.”

I’m aware that others see me as smaller than I see myself, or at least tell me they do, and of course I wax or hide most of my hairiness. Most people wouldn’t think of me as a dyke but I have for a while now, even if I’m still cautious about adopting a lesbian identity out of respect for those who are lesbian-identified and who might see me as something of an interloper. But dyke is an identity I’ve become comfortable with since I think it suits me (no pun intended) & in a lot of ways frees me. (I use ‘het dyke’, too, when it seems right.)

You all know the joke about what women would be like in a world without men, right?

Answer: Fat, hairy, and happy.

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