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New Year’s Revolutions

I used to be one of those people who wrote down my New Year’s resolutions & sealed them into an envelope that I stored away to find & open the next New Year’s. Amazingly enough they did me no good like that, a private forgotten stash of good intentions.

So this year I will announce my intentions to the world, or to whatever tiny percentage of the world reads this blog, & see if that does me any better.

I, Helen Boyd, do resolve to undertake these resolutions resolutely:

  1. I will lose another 10 pounds this year.
  2. I will try not to worry myself to death over the reviews of SNTMIM, and instead actually take a minute to enjoy getting published again.
  3. By the end of the year, I will be on some path that will lead to making money in jobs I don’t hate.

Three is enough; for anyone who knows me or has gotten to know me through this blog, these three make up quite the tall order.

So what are yours?

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So It’s Begun

I’m starting to get emails from people asking about the new book and whether or not I’d be willing to come to one trans conference or another. Likewise, the “call for presenters” emails are also showing up.

This year, for obvious reasons, Betty & I would love to go to all the conferences we’ve attended before – to celebrate the new book, to help more people, to dispel what rumors we can and to share what we’ve learned in the years since we’ve been to them.

But the same old problem stands in my way: we can’t afford it. My publishers don’t pay for conferences, and a physical book tour, per se, isn’t financially feasible. And as per usual, unless I’m to be the keynote speaker – such as at First Event – I’m told over and over again that the conferences do not help presenters get to these conferences or even waive conference fees, much less pay for hotel rooms or travel costs or the like. I say “I’m told” because that’s what conference organizers tell people when they have requested my attendance – and yet that’s not what I hear from other presenters.

Interestingly, I’ve been told that because I’m selling books I’m a “commercial interest,” which amuses me, considering that even if I sold a book to every single person who came to these conferences – which is far from likely – I still wouldn’t make enough money to break even! But of course I don’t actually sell my own books at these conferences: IFGE does.

So my response to everyone just now is that I honestly don’t know if we can come. We can’t afford to put out the $1000-2000 it costs for us to go to a conference, but we certainly can’t do that several times next year. It costs us more of course because there are two of us – and people always want Betty to come, because she’s Betty.

Mind you, I’m not asking to make money going to these things. I just don’t want to have to spend my own money working for a conference that is – from all reports – making money. I’m happy to donate my time and costs to conferences that are non-profit and have done so in the past. It would help if I felt any of these conferences had a clear-cut policy on these issues. But beyond all that, I know I can draw an audience because I’m told I make a decent advocate for partners, and that a lot of what I have to say is very different from what you hear in the rest of the trans community, and that that difference is useful.

Unfortunately, then, I can’t go unless my expenses are covered, and that is up to the organizing committees of the various conferences.

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Helen’s Holiday Gift Guide

So. I’ve noticed that two lovely women, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Tristan Taormino, have put up their holiday gift guides, and while they cover our erotic lives, I know every year I’m a loss for what to buy people that won’t stink of consumerism and waste.

That is, I seek to assuage my own guilt about being an overeducated person who lives in a Western country with clean water and half-decent healthcare (unlike most of the world’s population).

As a result, I’ve found a neat list of places who sell cool stuff for good causes:

For you doggie types, Schmitty is a Yorkie whose proceeds to go an organization called Dogs Who Care. The North Shore Animal League, on the other hand, has stuff that makes us cat types happy: Betty and I are getting new PJs courtesy of them! And if you can’t find anything at either of those two places, the Animal Rescue Site also has a store with lots of animal-inspired gifts no matter what types of critters you like.

It’s also easy to go from that site to some others with cool stuff, like the Rainforest Site’s store, where you can get anything from Fair Trade products to Brazilian art works. (Did I mention they have lots of pretty jewelry?)

For lower-impact, good health types of gifts, try gaiam.com for things like yoga videos or light therapy for the depressive in your life. (Just don’t look at their shoes. Only me and a couple of other partners would wear any of them.)

And to round things out, NOW’s store has a bunch of groovy t-shirts and you can buy one that says “Question Gender” to help support the student-run TIC conference.

So go do some good with your money, okay? Just about every organization out there sells cool stuff. If you find anything similarly cool, please post about it in the comments section.

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Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we honor our dead.

Talk to your friends who are trans; make sure they’re safe and have safe habits. Exchang phone numbers, walk people to their cars in groups, travel together late at night.

Donate money to some of the people who are helping.

And be thankful, in the spirit of the season, for everything you’ve got. Life included. Celebrate who you are and work for a time when we can stop having this Day altogether.

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Stephen King, Barbarian

From yesterday’s New York Times Book Review:

At the National Book Foundation ceremony, the bard of Bangor made sure his audience knew he stood outside the tribe: “The only person who understands how much this award means to me is my wife, Tabitha,” he said in his acceptance speech. “She also understands why I was in those early days so often bitterly angry at writers who were considered ‘literary.’ I knew I didn’t have quite enough talent or polish to be one of them, so there was an element of jealousy, but I was also infuriated by how these writers always seemed to have the inside track in my view at that time. Even a note in the acknowledgments page of a novel thanking this or that foundation for its generous assistance was enough to set me off.”

This year, King was granted the privilege of a Paris Review interview. On the ticklish subject of his literary worth, he said, “I’m shy talking about this, because I’m afraid people will laugh and say, Look at that barbarian trying to pretend he belongs in the palace.”

How I wish I could say I can’t relate at all. But I can. Betty sent me the link precisely because she listens to me grind my teeth about stuff like this. It’s nice to know that despite having made the kind of money he has from his writing that this kind of literary snobbery still gets to him. In some ways, it makes me feel better, and in another, worse.

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Why Vote

Unless you’re living under a rock, there’s a wind of change blowing this year’s Election Day, and with any luck (money, persistence, & volunteers), either the House or the Senate or both will change from being Republican-dominated to not sucking quite so much. Nutty of us, but I think Americans have learned too well what the whole ‘checks and balances’ thing was intended to prohibit.

Maybe there will be enough change, perhaps, to the degree that these ‘stay the course’ boneheads will get the message that Americans are sick of seeing Americans die, and tired too of the complete acknowledgement of how bad things have gotten under Dubya and his boys.

Good luck to the good folks in Ohio, and don’t take no (or “I need more ID”) for an answer when you go to vote. There are lawyers on your side.

GO VOTE.

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Why I Stopped Working for Straight Guys

A while back I said I’d tell the story of how I decided not to work for straight guys anymore as a bookkeeper, & now I’m finally getting around to it.
A couple of years ago when I started doing freelance bookkeeping, I put an ad up on Craigs List, like you do, & so I got a bunch of emails from people who needed my help. Some offered to trade me for clothes or salon treatments or massages (tempting): you never know, with Craig’s List. But one guy I met with had started a small business doing interior remodeling after having worked on Wall St. a while. During the first phonecall I make clear upfront that I don’t work a.m. hours (because I write until 5am, though frankly most people don’t ask why), and we talk about what he needs & how far behind he is, etc. It seems like a do-able job so we meet for lunch and that goes well, too. He wants to hire me, but forgot his organizer, he’ll call. When he calls, he asks me to come in at 10am. I tell him again I don’t work in the am. He says okay, and we agree on a day & time. He calls me to cancel a day before that meeting, & we reschedule when he calls to cancel. He asks if I can come in at 10am. I explain again I don’t work morning hours, and ask him outright if he’s going to want to work on the books regularly in the morning. He says no, and we reschedule. So I go to our first meeting, look at his QB (QuickBooks, for the uninitiated) and then we discuss a regular time to come in.
& Yes, you guessed the end of the story: he suggested 10am.What a huge waste of my time.
That, of course, was after nearly 10 years working for Mr. Famous Author Man, who was f***ing his publicist and actually thought I didn’t know. He also decided at some point that I should work full-time for him without a 401k and health insurance (when the reason I worked for him freelance was so I could set my own hours and take time off to travel, which he was well aware of). But I can’t go into the rest of that story too deeply or my head will implode.
Then there was the guy who decided since the company wasn’t making any money the first person he’d get rid of was the admin/bookkeeper. When I first got that job, they were two years behind in billing clients – two years – which is a pretty solid explanation for why there was no money coming in, eh? So I got him up to date, and then I get laid off. I heard from clients of his that as soon as I was gone they’d stopped billing clients regularly again. Smart move there.
So, that’s why. Too many arrogant lunkheads. I thought before I hurt someone I’d try to make a point of specializing in minority clients, instead – specifically women and LGBT folks – and see if that was any better. And you know what? It has been. Way better. Like millions of times better. I don’t rule out straight guys; but I will ask now if they’re comfortable listening to/taking advice from a woman, if they’ve ever had a female boss, etc. Why? Because as a bookkeeper you have to tell people what to do sometimes, and there’s no point in being someone’s bookkeeper if they don’t listen to you. Now when I don’t think it will be a good fit, I often mention upfront that I don’t work morning hours because I write until the wee hours, which always gets them to ask the question: what do you write about? (or, anything I might have read? etc.) Replying, “a book about transvestites” is pretty much a shoo-in that the rest of the conversation will be awkward and they won’t want to hire me, and I can walk away without having to say, “I don’t think you’re ready for a female bookkeeper, so go pay your male accountant way too much to tell you the same things I would have.”

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The 5th Annual Blogger BoobieThon

They’ve raised over $26,000 for Breast Cancer Awareness, so for this year’s Breast Cancer Month, I’m in!
My mother survived breast cancer, & I bet she can think of about a gazillion other ways she’d prefer to have me help raise money. I can hear her already, “You could have just walked or something.”
But no. I think using breasts to raise money for the health of breasts makes way too much sense – so go! Make a donation! Guess which ones are mine!!

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Jennifer Finney Boylan's Southern Comfort Speech

Thanks to Ms. Boylan for allowing me to reproduce it here; this is the complete & unedited version.
Hi everybody. Gosh, look at you all. You all look fantastic from up here. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room before with so many large women.
(improvised joke #1)
(improvised joke #2)
I notice that some of you look a little tired today. Which is not to say, you don’t look fabulous, I’m just saying that some of you seem like you were up kind of late last night. Did you check out the parties last night? You know the one I mean, the theme party—Come as Your Favorite Nude Author?
(beat)
First time in my life I’ve ever been in a room full of a hundred and fifty nude Kate Bornsteins.
(improvise joke #3)
I have to be honest and say I feel a little bit like a fraud up here today, because I know that there are so many of you who are so much more articulate about these issues than I am. I am an English teacher from Maine, a storyteller— what I’m not is a therapist, or scholar of gender studies, or for that matter, much of an activist. I’ve tried doing some of those things sometimes, because I want to do my part, but I have to say I just so lame at them. I’m grateful that there are people doing all the work around the country that’s being done on behalf of people like us, including the organizers of this conference—our fabulous chairwoman, Kristen, as well as heather O’malley and Cat Turner, and Lola Fleck. I’m just as grateful for all the people who came before me, who blazed the trail that has made my life easier.. I know I would not be here without them, quite literally.
There is an old saying that I find true for me this afternoon—one reason I am able to see so far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
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