A word to the wise: if you should ever have an ailing shoulder, knee or wrist, please take care to wash your hands thoroughly before playing with yourself.
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Just Because
I took this the other night, and I’m quite pleased with myself for having taken a photo of Betty that Betty likes. It’s a rare deed. That and dang she’s cute.
"Man Laws" Ads Force Woman To Hunt Down Ad Execs – Story at 11.
As if Anne Coulter hadn’t pissed me off enough, I ended up seeing coverage of the crap she’s spouting inbetween offensive commericals.
(1) The Tostitos commercial, where three guys are looking out the window eating Tostitos and commenting on the work gang below, and how three guys standing around and one guy working wouldn’t cut it in the corporate world. They pull back the camera to reveal a woman working feverishly on a laptop, who then announces, “I got it” and while the guys are high-fiving, she smiles weakly.
Fucking hysterical.
2) Then there’s the “Man Laws” of Miller Lite, which, I kid you not, has been written up by The New York Times as an attempt to atone for the “catfight” commercial they did a couple of years ago.
Are they shitting me? One of the “Man Laws” is that men only clink bottles toward the bottom, as otherwise their saliva might mix and Burt Reynolds claims that would “qualify as a kiss.” WTF?! How exactly is this supposed to be better than two women wrestling over “tastes great / less filling”?!
I can’t even talk about the “you poke it, you own it” one.
Betty is watching the NBA finals, too, which means I’m going to hear this crap every freaking time a game is on. Did someone say Worst of Both Worlds? Except this is like worst of all worlds, now: Betty en femme, drinking beer, watching sports, while sexist, idiotic commercials play. Woohoo. I’m loving life, really.
1st Preview of She's Not the Man I Married
I thought I’d put up a little preview of some stuff I’ve been writing for my next book. You know, just for fun. I can’t promise anything I put up here will end up in the final, though.
This excerpt is taken from Chapter 1 – Girl Meets Boy:
There’s an old standby in the crossdressing community, a line that crossdressers tend to use on their wives, that goes: “But I’m the same person underneath.†The wife, who is standing there looking at a person who sounds like her husband and who might look like him somewhere under the wig and breast forms and press-on nails, tries to parse what exactly that’s supposed to mean. She’s suspicious that her husband is trying to blow smoke up her ass, the same as a husband who might come up with an ingenious reason why he had to spend his weekend fishing instead of shopping for new sofa upholstery. She might look at him, adjust his wig, and then sigh and take him shopping.
Others just balk.
Some women are just smarter than me, I think, and when they first heard that line, they ran for the hills. Likewise for the ones who hightail it when they hear their husbands say, “I’ve always imagined what it would be like to have breasts,†or “When I was young, I always wished I was Susie Perkins.†They call a lawyer, they get custody of the children, and they wish their future ex-husbands well, but want no part of it. Not me. I didn’t believe in gender; gender wasn’t important.
I Should Say…
… not only am I putting up a preview of the new book tomorrow, but I’ve also found that while I’m writing I can’t just toss off ideas about gender for the blog. Thus, 80s music and all the other oddball things I’ve been posting about.
Quentin Crisp & Sting?
Okay, maybe I’m the only one who didn’t know this, because I never saw Sting’s “Englishman in New York” video, but I didn’t know QC was the friend Sting wrote it about.
Which makes me want to say obscene things to all the people who don’t like Sting or make fun of me for liking him. I think he’s a decent person, & trans-friendly as all hell: remember the skirt he wore at the Victoria’s Secret show? The fact that he cross-dresses in Brimstone & Treacle? Oh, right, and then there’s these lyrics he wrote an album or so ago:
My skirt’s too short
My tights are run
These new heels are killing me
A second pack of cigarettes
It’s a slow night, but there’s time yet
Here comes the john from his other life
He may be driving to his wife
But he slowed down, take a look
I’ve learned to read them just like books
It’s already half past ten
But they’ll be back again
Don’t judge me
You could be me in another life
In another set of circumstances
A friend of mine, he wound up dead
His dress is stained with color red
The next of kin, no fixed abode
Another victim on this road
The police just carted him away
But someone took his place next day
He’s home by Thanksgiving
But not with the living
I mean, I can’t name anyone else who’s written a song from the POV of a trans streetworker, can you?
But I promise, no more 80s music references, at least for a while. Tomorrow, though, the first preview of She’s Not the Man I Married.
My 80s
I’ve watched with some horror as the 80s have been re-written as being all about Michael J. Fox – sometimes I wonder if I dreamt it all or if I was living in another universe.
Because to me, the 80s were all about things like The Belle Stars, and Haysi Fantaysee (the Boy George line, as it were), and beautiful things like Bananarama and Funboy Three doing “Aint What You Do.”
There were all the sweet (and sweet voiced) boys, like Terry Hall (of Funboy Three and The Specials), and Dave Wakeling (of General Public and The Beat) (“Never You Done That” is one of my favorite love songs, & so damned melodically happy it hurts) and Marc Almond and Jimi Somerville, Roddy Frame and Howard Jones.
The geeks had just begun to rule the world, too: Howard DeVoto and Devo and Gary Numan.
Anyway, my 80s were not about hot cars and coke. They were more about dredlocks, lip gloss and rants about Reagan. And I haven’t failed to notice that my 80s seem to be taking a backseat historically to the super-consumerist, “we won the cold war” bullshit. Of course they love Reagan; some days I think they all have Alzheimer’s, since the queer, genderfucked, international, happy 80s seem to be disappearing from the record.
When I’m an old, old woman, I’m going to be in a rocking chair saying, “But boys did wear makeup! And girls did shave their heads!” & Then they’ll give me another little pill to forget, & I’ll hum “Europa & the Pirate Twins” till I sleep.
Joan Jett
I went to see Joan Jett with Caprice and Donna a couple of nights ago, and – well, she still rocks. She came out in her trademark low slung leather jeans, plus a bikini top. Tattoos, ripped muscles. I’ve been waiting to look half so good at some point in my life, and goddamn – she’s 48 this year. I’m 37. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.
My favorite part of the show, and the song I was most surprised to enjoy hearing, was “Crimson & Clover.” Mostly for the way she stands there looking every bit as tough as she ever did, & when she sings “my my such a sweet thing,” I’ve always heard it, “I’m not such a sweet thing.” No kidding. But then she smiles – a big, goofy, charming, smile, and you wonder if she is, or not.
Bust magazine sells WWJJD? t-shirts, which makes a lot more sense to me than the other kind.
The good news is that her next album is political and it seems she’s finally recorded her cover of The Replacements’ “Androgynous.” (Also, hopefully, coming soon to a gender book near you.)
The Joys of a Small Apartment
We have a rather small apartment – or at least quite a full one – so we eat at a table right next to the couch. I think we’ve long gotten past the idea that we’re ingesting fur with our food, sometimes.