The future in the mirror is closer than it appears. If, thanks to new technology, you had to become a girl for a year in the middle of high school, what would you do? Start a blog, of course.
Messages In A Bottle Of Estrojen
-- Kiai 29Sep03/03Nov03
Messages In A Bottle Of Estrojen - http://mestrojen.blogjournal.blog
28jun08
Hi.
Seven whole years after the dot-bomb hit, and it's still true. Most blogs are written by teenage girls displaying their awesome angst in badly-spelled prose for the whole World Wide Web to read, just as if they were writing in one of those diaries with a lock on the cover to keep everybody in the world from opening and reading it. Which is where they should have written it in the first place, most of them.
So what's my excuse?
A week ago I wouldn't be caught dead posting to a blog. Now, here I am. But then, thanks to that wonderful state law that my parents and a whole bunch of other people voted for while I'm still too young to vote it down, starting a week ago and for the whole of my high school junior year I'm a teenage girl, so I'm clueing into my birthright. Changeright. Whatever.
Or maybe it's payback to said parents, who will be shocked and dismayed and humiliated at just how much their son-turned-daughter is willing to talk about it all in public (in front of the whole planet no less). More than I will, anyway. I have this weird disconnection going, kind of like knowing that this was done to me against my will just because somebody thought it would be a good idea means it has nothing to do with me. So I can say anything I want about it because I didn't do it.
Or maybe these are just messages found in a glowing bottle on your desk just behind your keyboard (I know a few of you still use CRTs). Be sure to unplug the power cord before you shake the sand out.
Computers start out as beach sand, you know. Some of the little grains grow up to be chips and some of them grow up to be bottles. Or maybe their parents turn them into bottles when they're just getting the hang of being chips so they'll know what that's like.
No offense to the amazing friends (amazing because I didn't realize how much they were friends before because they were and are and apparently always will be girls) who are teaching me to swim in it, but...
Help -- I'm drowning in an ocean of estrogen!
-jen (yeah, that's me for the duration)
03Jul08
Well...
Strike last comment from prior entry. Now I'm drowning in a whirlpool of progesterone, as well as... Motrin, yeah, Motrin, that's the ticket. (None dare call it Midol. In my hearing, anyway.)
All of you guys who don't have parents who decided you had to go through this last year or this year, take notes: you WILL be tested on it before you graduate from high school, it's a state law now.
All you guys who were born with this insidious leak waiting to happen and don't have to worry about it for a year right now: :Pthththth~~~~~~~~~~~~~!
You'll get yours in, oh, eleven months and three weeks and five days but who's counting, when you march right up to that little window and they say "That was your one free year-long pass on the guy-ride! Now, which do you choose, this lovely ornamental draft card that in one year can turn into your free ticket into the infantry in one of three global brush wars and your own personal close brush with death on numerous occasions in places where nobody even wants to live there except for the oil... or this nice fluffy tampon?"
Don't rush me. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, okay?
-jen
05Jul08
Butt of the Joke
I still can't believe that none of my own summer shorts fit me. I mean, I'm almost a foot shorter now, my wrists are tiny, my hands are so weak that I can't throw a decent curve ball anymore, and yet my hips are way out there mocking me from out at either end of my horribly extended pelvis, daring me to try on yet another pair of last year's oversize shorts. Tell me my Mom put them in with the white cotton wash by mistake and they shrunk, please?
-jen
07Jul08
Fright Wig
"We really need to do something about your hair."
This is a frightening statement. Silly me, I didn't realize that simple fact when I first heard it, otherwise my survival instincts would have warned me to RUN.
See, there's nothing wrong with my hair. My hair is cool. It starts at one end, way up in my scalp, and the other end hangs free. Basic stuff. Now it even finishes up a lot lower than it did a couple of weeks ago. "It gives you a head start," they said. 'On what,' I should have thought.
The nice thing with hair this long is that I can tie it back with a rubber band, and then it's out of my face and I don't have to mess with it again for a few days. The not so nice thing is that this is clearly not an acceptable response as far as the Female Parental Unit is concerned.
"A girl your age shouldn't," quoth the FPU. "Can't have you embarrassing the family," uttered the FPU. "Have to take better care of it," proclaimed the FPU, as if wearing it out was a problem. I mean, it grows back, doesn't it?
Back before my body had its lumps shuffled around, the FPU was all for mowing off said hair at frequent intervals. Now it's out of my eyes, which was said FPU's primary complaint about hair back in those halcyon days of yore two weeks ago. Problem Solved, right?
Wrong-o. Said FPU did utter the words at the top of this entry, and thus did declare war on my scalp, a war waged with such utter ferocity that you'd swear that I had an oily scalp and the Texas Oil Barons were determined to occupy it and drill wells in it.
Now my scalp, with its comcomitant hair, is occupied territory. Its once admittedly oily surface has been washed clean with a completeness that would make said Texas Oil Barons weep.
The something to be done about my hair included a visit to a Den Of Uniquity wherein lay in wait several specialists in the Art of the Makeover. Said AM-DOU leveraged its hold on my hair to invade and conquer my face as well.
The hair no longer exists just to have two ends, one of them being emitted by my scalp. The face no longer exists merely as a functional and vaguely pleasing framework to keep my mouth, eyes, nostrils and ears from being pulled out of formation by their mutual gravity.
Now the hair does decorative things in synchrony with the face, to wit, precision posing designed to make the girls giggle and coo and make the guys all have to find books to hold in front of themselves.
As if that fools the girls, guys: I found that out the first day. Maybe I'll talk about that sometime, if I ever get over the embarrassment of having my recent history recounted to me in third-person picaresque reportage.
As expected of occupied territory, I no longer have free rein over it. I scratch at an itch on my cheek and FPU doth decree, "Don't do that, you'll mess up your makeup." I tell her about the itch and she doth retort, "live with it." I brush the artfully sculpted hair away from my eyes and FPU declaimeth, "Don't mess it up". Mess what up? Hair is hair, invulnerable to casual hand motions unless accompanied by cutting tools, chemicals or open flame.
FPU did decree that I must examine the work of the AM-DOU Occupation Forces in the mirror. I did so.
This must be a trick mirror, I decided, because within it I see someone I do not know but would like to know, someone I could enjoy looking at over dinner a lot, and, maybe, someday, over many breakfasts. She should get rid of that funky tee shirt, though, and wear something closer-fitting instead. Something to show off her curves. That would be nice to look at for a very long time.
Then I realize that I've been cheated, that all my earnest conversations with her would be soliloquy.
All this was amid much giggling and cooing. Did I mention that the AM-DOU Occupation Forces had enlisted in addition my current best buddies, all of whom are direct descendants of the Tribes of Venus? That's right: born like it, y'know. Not only that, but every one of them already spent a year seeing how things stood in the Fields of Mars where I come from, and then crossed back over the frontline to report on their year of espionage, their loyalty to Venus apparently never in doubt.
And now they've got me. Pink Rover, Pink Rover, send Jen on over!
The hell of it is that, other than my grave disappointment at finding out that, not only was I to be trapped behind that face I found so interesting for the next year, but as the bearer of it I was henceforth responsible for the maintenance of that trick-mirror illusion... I like it.
This is seriously weird stuff here. Far more than you'd expect from your usual 'boy meets girl by becoming same' scenario. Not only don't I mind having everything from the neck up turned into Performance Art, or at least Folk Art, but... I'm kinda looking forward to expanding the oevre to include the neck down as well.
I still don't know if I'm hiding me from me, or bringing out the me-ness of me enough that even I can see it.
Maybe that's the point.
-jen
10Jul08
Okay, Okay!
You can stop IMing me now. The votes are in. I bow to popular demand. Yes, I will be going to the Beach Blast. Yes, I now have a swimsuit to fit the new girly me. And no, you'd better not look. I say that because it's so teeny that if too many people stare at it at once it will evaporate. And then I will cry a lot and run home. Or kick righteous ass. Or something.
Don't expect me to swim in it, either. I am firmly convinced that the first touch of water will leach away all the colors leaving it perfectly transparent. Or it will come off and float away on the waters of the surf, mocking me as it is pulled out with the riptide, which is worse, because then there are two chances for your attention to be pulled to where you should not look.
We are talking about paying good money for holes on a scale not seen since the invention of the transistor. This thing is more not-there than there.
Or at least that's how I saw it when I tried it on. CK, GS, CA, you made me buy the stupid thing, you had better back me up. You promised pasties and you'd better wear them. You're professional girls, I'm a part-timer, you'd better be scoring all the eyeballs so I don't.
Stop laughing.
-jen
13Jul08
Aftermath
You can stop laughing now.
It didn't come off, in fact I practically had to tear it off me when I got home, because... Are you ready for this?
It shrunk.
Who the hell designs bikinis that shrink?
Never mind: I know who. The people who like to watch things like that. Guys.
Girls. Dear friends. Please tell me I wasn't really like that last year. I would have watched, sure, but I wouldn't have done anything to make it happen.
Yeah, yeah. That's because last year I was a wuss. I wouldn't have dared.
Speaking of...
Guys. Yeah, you, all the humans who were at Beach Blast who didn't have to wear anything above the waist to keep from getting, well, busted. (Stop laughing, I tell you. Do you think I make these things up on purpose? This is real honesty in e-motion here!)
Guys, thank you for everything you did, and everything you didn't do, to set me at my ease, even when all I had on was that ridiculous little thing. Maybe I dared because you cared, okay? All of you, girls and guys. It's good to know that I still have friends, people I can have good honest fun with, even though I change in the other side of the bath-house now.
Even if most of you guys couldn't give me a straight answer if I were to quiz you on whether my eye color changed, because you never got that far North.
The machine does that, you know. It's not a bug, it's a feature. "Genetic Code Optimizing", they call it. "Brings out the best that your genes can offer", they put in the brochure.
Brings out the most embarrassing parts of your gender, I put it. At counting-the-days-but-still-sixteen, I'm bigger than my mother, just because one of my ancestors, anywhere from the Pleistocene Era onward, was. So they catch the eye. They catch on a lot of other stuff too if I don't watch where I'm going.
(Stop laughing.)
So that's why I told you not to look, and that's why I can't blame you for looking anyway. When I was your shape, I did the same thing. I know how it is. Really I do. Really.
Just try and come up for air every once in a while to let me know my eyes are still on straight, okay?
(Girls... Hey, girls... You can stop laughing now. Please?)
-jen
17Jul08
Emily, don't read this entry. Please.
I saw Jason Schmit's welcome home. It was closed-casket drive-thru. He got his E-ticket ride in Sao Tome, and despite the cute manga name he wasn't a girl when he bought it, but I hear he got the one-half part right: cut in two by shrapnel when his truck went over a mine. He wasn't even a combatant. Yet.
We used to shoot hoops together over in the base housing courts while we were waiting for Emily and Jan to get done with their tennis lessons. Jason was seriously cool: he had a good reason for just about everything he did, even if it was a mistake. He wasn't afraid to admit it when he fucked up, either. He could tell you which reasons turned out to be the good ones, which ones were him bullshitting himself and the world around him, and which ones might have been good ones except for circumstances. I guess that last clause got him. I hear Sao Tome used to be a friendly little place when there wasn't a war on, but where there is oil we must send troops, right?
If anybody actually reads this piece of shit blog (yeah, that's real guy talk for ya), Emily needs friends and family now. I went over to help her go pick out a black dress, because she needed a bunch of girl company to keep her mind on what she was doing and off why she was doing it. I happen to be a girl just now so I was eligible.
Now she needs both kinds of friends. Girls that she can share memories and feelings with, and I'm not enough of a girl to be eligible--I can listen real good but I don't have anything to share. And guys, so when she breaks down in tears there's somebody strong there for her to grab tight and cry it out all over your shirt before it poisons her insides. I can't do that either because my boobs just don't feel like that kind of brick-wall protection right now, and it wasn't even a birth defect in my case.
And, hey, guys, she needs it to be non-judgmental. If you care about her at all. I know a lot of you did (okay--me too). And non-pushy if you do. She doesn't need some jerkazoid trying to hustle to be his replacement, she's still trying to cope with losing him, he's the only man she can see and I think it's going to be just that way for quite a while. I think I can see deep enough into this girl shit to say that for sure.
Why does she need non-judgmental support? I'll tell you exactly why she needs it, because she said I could, because everybody knows what already, seems like, but they don't know why.
Jason couldn't marry her while he was in boot, then he got shipped out before he could even kiss her. Now the military won't honor Jason's standing-last-request for a posthumous marriage because he wasn't listed as a combatant when he died. So she's not even a widow, much less a military one, she doesn't even have that much of him, instead she's what's called an unwed mother in training. Guys, if you give her shit for this, in a year when I get my balls back I'm going to kick your fucking ass--you have been warned. This means you, Jan-who-went-back-to-being-John.
Shit, I sound like a guy. I hope they don't take my blog away from me for that. If it helps Emily, though, it's worth it.
-jen
01Aug08
It's A Girl Thing
Guys, I think I have a clue to pass on from the girl side of the playhouse. That is, if I haven't gone girl too much to be able to explain it in guy-ese.
It's about shopping. It's about a little all day trip that ended up with me driving home with three big bags full of stuff I never thought I'd dream of owning when I started. But that's okay. And that's part of it.
It's about four other girls who I won't indict (hint, they've all got blogs, line up dates and times and do your own detective work) dragging me out of bed in the morning and making me dress up pretty at gunpoint and then taking me prisoner in my own car and one other while we convoyed to alien territory and then...
Well, let me start over before they start mocking me over on those other blogs. Ready? I was lonely. They knew I was lonely. They took steps. Drastic ones that put them in harm's way because of my exceedingly bitter involuntarily-female outlook and viperish tongue.
Better? It's still not the truth. Let's try that again. We all planned this in IM. I didn't lie about the lonely and viperish part. They, kindhearted veterans of the monthly hormone wars that they were, knew how to read a calendar and expected me to be bitchy, and forgave me beforehand. Then we got to planning, and yea, verily, it was fun. There are a lot of shops in that mall, y'see, and one or more of us knew how to read its map. Despite us being girls. We could even read the words, so we knew what they sell beforehand. Without even being told to study the map by me, the temporarily-ex-guy.
So when we set out in two cars, we knew exactly what we were going to do, and we knew to bring a lot of money to do it with. And what were we going to do? Go look. That's right, guys, we were going to go look to see if it looked (and sounded and smelled, and felt, and even tasted, as appropriate) as good as it looked in the online pages.
We did not go unarmed into this mission-critical expedition, no: we each had a cellphone. Thus could we summon our comrades to help us to subdue a particularly good bargain, or judge with a weight of decision worthy of the Supreme Court (albeit with much giggling, something we girls do in our off-hours to mark our territory) whether that green really went with that off-white. Not that I knew all the names of the colors, but hey, I'm usually a guy at this sort of thing.
Now, here's the thing. All of this was done in a spirit of utmost teamwork and cooperation. There were no leaders of the pack, no superstars, no drill sergeants. Nope, not a drum majorette in sight as we trekked through this virgin territory. (Watch that, buddy, I know what pun you were thinking of just then. Ha ha.) It was all done in a wondrous air of calm. And that was comforting. It felt good.
Guys, you know how, when you hang out, there's always a little badder-than, a little extra spin you put on things to liven it all up? And the more you feel you have to measure up, the harder you push? For fun? All the friggin time?
Girls aren't into that. Not when they're not actually in-your-face competing, like in sports or something, and when it's over it's over. The rest of the time, there's that comfort thing going around. Girls don't feel comfortable if the edginess doesn't end. They like the calm with some excitement tossed in sometimes, not the other way around.
So, lose the extra edge and dig the calm when you're around the girls, that's all I can say. You can actually enjoy the calm if you let yourself trust it. I can remember a few times when I got that part right, back before I changed, and I remember now that it was fun then even if I couldn't figure out why at the time. Now I know why. You might even enjoy the shopping. Hey, she does look good in most of that stuff, right?
Oops, there's my guy side peeking out again. No girl feels that she looks all that great when she's trying something on. She knows everywhere she isn't perfect, even if it's in a place where you can't see it. You don't; you see how it all comes together. That's why girls bring other girls with them to help shop, because the others see that coming-together too, though usually not with the same intensity of interest that you do. If she brings you along it's because she wants to look good to you: consider yourself highly praised. Shopping can be good for you. Nuff said.
-jen
15Aug08
WHILE YOU WERE OUT
Guys, we lost Emily.
For those who joined us late, no she didn't die. We got her there in time. It didn't even cause a miscarriage, which is just as well because I really don't think she could have taken losing that last little bit of Jason that was floating innocently in the ultrasound. They're pretty sure he bequeathed her a Y, by the way. If you should so much as care.
And they let her out after her 72-hour. And she quietly thanked them and us and I could see that there were no tears left in her eyes because there wasn't any her in her eyes. She'd left.
So it's no big surprise that she packed her bags and vanished the rest of her over the weekend, is it. She'd already left, after all. You can stop ringing her phone at all hours, now, all you're doing is harrassing her parents, and they've got enough to deal with.
And, before you ask, don't ask. Maybe I have a line on somebody who might possibly let me know how she's doing, but my lips are sealed. If you have a birthday card to send to her, or an apology, maybe it'll get there if I read it and see that it'd be good for her, but that's all. Just letting you know.
Oh, and John? You are dead to me until I get my guy shape back. Don't call, don't come around. And once I get that back, dude, you're as good as dead.
-jen
24Aug08
Does the phrase "Back To School Sale" strike terror into your heart the way it does mine?
It didn't use to. Back then, it was, "Oh, yeah, school supplies. Fine, any colors will do as long as they're primary or dull and don't have too many pictures." Clashing was when they wouldn't all fit into your backpack at the same time.
Girls have got that calmness thing going, remember, and that requires harmony. Colors have to work together, accessories have to cooperate, and not just across your own ensemble, either. If you customarily hang with four best friends, you'll be on the phone with all four of them making sure that nothing you carry will clash with anything they carry.
The consequences of failure are enormous, you understand.
A minor clash, say, a three-ring binder with the wrong stickers, will only result in feuds, food poisoning, stock market crashes and dogs falling out of the sky. A major misstep in coordination, however, such as your whole collection of binders focusing attention on someone's least-favorite pair of socks, can cause the decor to get so badly out of coordination that the color-clash tears open a hole in space-time and then strange octopus-headed gods will step through it looking for directions to the Mountains of Madness...
Yeah, yeah, how odd, a girl that's read most of H. P. Lovecraft. Every zoo must have exactly one because they're a rare and dangerous species, and they must never meet each other, either, lest they decide to accessorize using the Color Out Of Space, which is the chromatic Three-Finger-Salute for the current Universe.
Then there are affiliations and affections. These must be carefully considered as well. Such as, do I like this Boy Band enough to commit binder space to them for a whole school year? (Mmm, yeah, Boy Bands: that's a topic all its own, we'll have to get to that sometime.)
Maybe it's better to select a new fave for the year and hope that they'll still be on the charts come June. That's a safe option, at least until Yog-Sothoth starts showing up in multipage spreads across the pages of Tiger Beat. I can't wait: him and Shub-Nigurath, oh, yeah, baby.
Then there are the signals. Clues which have the force of tribal markings, or the friend-or-foe insignia painted on military aircraft, and they've got to be done right too.
This is why the obvious solution to the color coordination problem, that of buying the same colors in bulk and passing them out to everyone, will not work: that much sameness sends the wrong signal to the other teams. It says that you're too religious for your own good and your sanity is in peril. All the other teams will avoid you, lest you go postal without warning while they're in the room.
I used to like black leather stuff. I still do, but apparently black leather sends the wrong territorial signals to Real Biker Chicks, and even though in my life as a guy I sometimes rode a (borrowed) dirt bike, I don't know enough Combat With Broken Bottles to cover that bet.
Oh, and the Boy Band stickers you put on things send important affiliation signals too. If your band goes out of favor and you don't replace the stickers in time with someone who's in, you could get burned at the stake.
As you can see, the stakes are extremely high for that Initial Entrance on the First Day Of Class. Wearing the wrong color blouse, I surmise, has been known to provoke Yet Another World War. Yes, I'm nervous. Very.
Now. What's personally frightening to me is the calm (Remember the calm thing? Girls are all about the calm.) with which these girls-at-birth friends of mine can, in the course of two hours of shopping, quickly and quietly resolve all of these life-threatening issues, while I am relegated to stand-and-gape status, utterly at a loss to comprehend the magic that they somehow weave to make all these coordinations come out right. Even my stuff.
Somehow I don't feel that I am ever going to measure up.
-jen
04Sep08
Show And Tell
It's just a locker room. I can do this. After all, I've been through the time machine.
Picture the New Girl, dashing into the locker room at gym where at least a classful of half-dressed girls are busy changing into and out of gym uniforms, sometimes All The Way Down To The Metal. Picture said New Girl with a terminal case of embarrassment and trying very hard not to stare. Picture said New Girl not doing a very good job of it. I mean, stumbling against people she's trying not to look at, and then needing help from those selfsame people in getting things taken off her own body and put on again the right way.
Picture said New Girl being helped by those same half-clad girls, and finding to her amazement that it was all right, that it wasn't such a big deal after all, because everybody knew who she was, knew all about her sordid guy past, and nobody cared. And as long as we're being embarrassingly honest here, some of those selfsame girls are people I've had crushes on in the past.
How did this happen?
See, there's this thing that some of you may not know, but it's vital to understanding all of this.
Girls go into puberty two years before guys do.
So, while the guys are still doing little boy stuff out in the playground, the girls are measuring themselves against the adults. Adult women, to be precise: they know what they're going to be, they just don't know all the details yet, like how big they'll be where.
Think about it, guys: that's right about when the girls all got really mysterious and incomprehensible, enough to be more than a little scary, right? It's because they knew something that we didn't. They knew they were growing up; we didn't. We thought that recess would last forever.
Now, here I am on the other side of the playground, and I've gone through two years of the stuff in an instant. (Or however long the change-machine takes to do its thing. They put you under for that, in case you don't know, so I didn't get to see any of the gory details, I just woke up a day later and had to learn how to walk upright all over again. Because of the hips, you dork, not the weight of... Stop laughing, this is serious!) Even for somebody as clueblind as me, that's a big enough change in my own awareness to get noticed.
At first I thought it was just me being a girl now, you know, ovaries instead of testes, estrogen instead of testosterone, that kind of thing. Now that I've had a chance to talk it over with my friends, though, I'm pretty sure it's that jump in physical (as in, brain as well as body) maturity. Suddenly I'm two years older than I was, with a lot of catching up to do because of it.
Why do I suddenly know this?
Like I said, some of this is from talking with my Best Buds, my dear girlfriends.
And, hey, why is it that if I'm a girl and I say 'girlfriend', people know I'm talking about a close friend that I hang out with and do friend stuff with, but if I was a guy when I said that, people would automatically think we were doing that whole Mating Thing, you know, going steady and preparing to spawn? Why doesn't this stupid culture allow guys and girls to be friends except in the bedroom?
I think it goes back to that mystery thing. The girls are clued into the mystery for two whole years before they let the guys in through the gate. There's a culture gap there that never closes. Never. It's why I'm thinking now that maybe this Year On The Other Side thing is healthy even if it is mandatory.
A lot of this is from doing a lot of reading followed by a lot of thinking. (Hey, we've gotta have something on our minds when we're giving the hair its Hundred Strokes, otherwise it gets boring even for us. Calm only goes just so far, at least for me.)
The rest of it is probably me taking a time machine two years into my own future and noticing the difference, catching the change-fairy in the act.
Suddenly I feel a lot better about certain girls my age that I had crushes on getting together with guys two years older than me. They were the same age inside, after all. I don't need to say who; it turns out they all knew at the time, every single one of them, and were kind enough not to say anything.
Well, guess what? Now we're friends.
I don't get shy and tongue-tied around them, I don't lose track of what I'm doing when they show up, instead I can really enjoy them for what they always were before this whole hormones thing turned them into Mysterious People From The Future: my friends.
Maybe the change has insulated me from all that by hiding the testosterone under a layer of estrogen. (What? Check your Biology books: girls have testosterone, just not as much of it, and there's this whole estrogen/progesterone thing running on top of it.) And, let's face it, I've got girl-programming running in my brain now, making me more apt to notice guys than girls; it's a part of this whole I'm-a-girl thing that I've had to accept.
Or maybe the mystery is gone now that I've arrived in the future myself. I don't know.
All I know right now is, right now they're people who look Just Like Me. And we're friends.
This is cool. I guess.
-jen
17Sep08
Seventeen on Seventeen
Thank you for the party. With the following qualifications, it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.
Qualifications:
I have officially sworn off Themed Birthday Parties. I shall not run the gauntlet, and if elected I will not serve the cake. Truly, the mind boggles at the refined levels wherein the Theme Creators' intellects must dwell, and in the absence of comprehension I must henceforth abstain.
The Twin Peaks birthday cake was a study in subtlety and understated aberrant psychology. Particularly expecting me to make the first cut, and to take that first bite right there without using hands.
Of the themed party games, 'Pin The THAT Back On The Jen' was a triumph of sophisticated symbolism over native common sense. Especially when people with perfectly good blindfolds somehow unerringly wandered over to me rather than towards the two-dimensional cardboard replica on the wall while armed with said THAT already impaled on a pin. No matter who I hid behind.
You will have duly noted that I did not venture near the Hooters Dartboard game until well after end-of-play, when I had accounted for all the darts and verified the absence of any spares in private hands. I just wanted to make sure that the three-dimensional Jen was not targeted by mistake instead of the cardboard one.
I mean, Basic Biology here. If stuck with a dart, the two balloons that I went home with would not go softly pop, neither would they politely go hiss. Instead, they would cause the owner to emit extremely loud and unfriendly noises involving commitments to perform mayhem on the perpetrator. With extreme prejudice. At great length.
So it was in your own interest that I would not pose alongside Miss Sudden-Deflation 2008 for photo-op.
All things considered, I think it was a master-stroke of party planning and a Very Good Thing that no Responsible Adults were there to witness the festivities. As it was, both Male Parental Unit and Female Parental Unit were duly appreciative of the humor presented in the inevitable debriefing. I doubt they would have been so appreciative had they received the full visual impact.
I mean, I'm female enough to be flattered that you think me attractive, but some of these things I would be embarrassed to wear in bed. Under a heavy quilt. Who is this Victoria person anyway and why can't she keep a secret?
Which is why I was so thoroughly opposed to modeling said secrets. No matter how loud the chanting got.
Seriously, guys, there were a few times where you scared me a little. I'm glad you girls were there with me. Not because of any 'us versus them' kind of thing, but to help keep it on an 'all one us' basis like a party's supposed to be.
-jen
24Sep08
I do not think the Last Beach Blast of '08 was a good idea.
Let me count the reasons.
That was the wrong beach to be an alternate. I don't care if it was the last one still open for the season. It had mosquitos.
It did not have cooking grilles or firepits. It did have Rangers to object to our creating same. Cold hot dogs is oxymoronic and the first two syllables are silent.
Seeing how much IT had shrunk was not an adequate excuse for an all-day festival, not to anybody but guys and mosquitos.
Particularly for the girls, who see such as a minor curiosity rather than being of particularly major prurient interest, and are not fond of mosquitos.
Plus there were mosquitos. Was there repellent? No, but there were mosquitos.
It got cold after dark. Blankets were duly brought out. One per two people. Hm, methinks there was a plan at work in how those blankets were divvied up one per guy. Perhaps he was meant to share it with the mosquitos?
Sunset comes earlier. So do the cold winds. So do the mosquitos.
They were goosebumps, okay? Both of them.
So now you know for sure that when they vacuum-molded those things onto me they did not forget the detailing. Just like on all the other girls. Now that we were all reassured and satisfied on that point we could all go home. Away from the mosquitos.
I lied. They were mosquito bites.
-jen
04Oct08
Report from the Front
Oops, that didn't sound right. I don't think I'm going to use that header anymore. (Stop laughing.)
I think I'm beginning to understand this Boy Band thing just a little. But for me to pass on that understanding, we (meaning those of us who were or are or will be guys, me being in the once-and-future category) are going to have to talk about centerfold models first.
That's right. Playboy, Penthouse, even (ecch) Hustler. You know, the ones where you're 'only reading the articles' if anybody's looking. The stuff we under-age types aren't even supposed to be exposed to until we're released into the wild, without a clue, to mate. As if that stopped us. All this estrogen flooding my system now hasn't erased those memories, it's only changed how I feel about them; I think I'm in the middle somewhere right now. Maybe that's why I can be so analytical about it. You know, the both-sides-now thing.
Okay, think about it. There you are, out in public where you can't really do anything about it, maybe over at the Pubic Library downtown where they're sold, and you're staring at the latest centerfold. Why are you doing that?
Repeat, this is not about you hidden safe in your own room with the door locked where what you do is your own business. This is in public where, however it makes you feel, you'll just have to put up with that for the rest of the day.
What makes you look? What makes you want to look?
I mean, let's face it, she's an impossible goal. You can look but you can never touch. You do know that, right? Look at her expression, no, look at her eyes: she's thinking about the money she's going to get for this photo shoot, money that will put food on her table. It's strictly business to her: she's a camera hooker. If you talked to her and she mentioned love, and she was honest, it'd be something like, she loves how people like you are good for business.
No matter how much a vampire says she loves you, she's only comparing dining experiences.
You know all that on some level. Yet you make an effort to look at her anyway, right? Why?
It makes you feel more alive, right? On a gut level, it makes you feel a little more like you matter, like you haven't quite faded all the way back into the two-dimensional painted backdrop of real life yet. And that's a feeling we all need. We need to feel real.
And, let's face it, she's a safe impossible goal. She's a specimen, pinned (or staked) down by the camera onto that page where she can't get loose and enter your life for real. You can stare at her as long as it suits you, but you're never going to have to experience how grumpy she is before breakfast or what she looks like without her makeup. She's never going to say something utterly vapid, or blow off something that matters a lot to you because she can't understand it and it doesn't matter enough to her for her to try. She's never going to spoil the mood.
And, until you grow tired of how limited that all is (I mean, let's face it, she's just a printed image, made up of dots of colored inks on white paper, that's what you're really reacting to), you won't ever have to cope with your disappointment in her by hurrying to find someone else to stare at. You can dump her but she can't dump you.
She's unattainable and that's why she's safe for you to fixate on. Not only for raising the flag on the old flagpole, but for something a lot deeper.
Okay, now we can get to the Boy Band thing. Are you ready?
Same thing.
My buds have introduced me to the Boy Bands, and my (remember: female now) brain wants to get caught up in that whole thing just a little. We girls can compare notes and fantasies, defend favorites while we keep an eye out for something better, and it stirs that something-deeper and makes us feel alive, just like the guys who are passing around the centerfolds.
Just like the guys.
See, they're safe, those boys. They sing and dance, they pose, and it's something to get the blood flowing. (And no, we are not going to talk about where it goes when it does that now. This whole subject already puts enough of it in my cheeks as blush that I'm going to have to change my whole makeup scheme to work around it, without any Comparative Anatomy.)
But they're never going to get grabby when you're trying to have a serious discussion about how something makes you feel. They can't keep you nervous all evening that they might decide to use force when charm has failed. Their eyes always meet yours instead of CAT-scanning your chest or trying to use their X-Ray Vision to see if you're wearing a pad. They're never going to put you down for having ambitious goals because you're just a girl.
They're airbrushed perfection because they're perfectly unattainable. Though that's the part of the illusion that my best buds don't want to focus on, because it would dispel the illusion. Any more than you want to zoom in on Miss June enough to see how the ink dots line up.
What? You didn't think they're airbrushed? Come on, I know the crowd around the standup urinals taught you to be more cynical than that. They're airbrushed. Just like Miss June. Even their adorable paint-by-the-numbers quirks go through the Art Department on their way to Page Layout. Just like hers.
But it's fun for my (remember: female now) mind to imagine. They're safe, and it makes me feel more real.
Just like you.
-jen
21Oct08
Tell me again why I was supposed to be a cheerleader?
Oh, yes. I have friends who are still guys. Guys who want proof that I'm a girl.
It's not like I need proof that I'm a girl. The identity police still come calling every month like clockwork just to see if I have the requisite plumbing for them to "palp" (lovely gynecological word, that, palp, almost like "pulp", which is what it leaves me feeling like--try it on your balls sometime), and leave the Red Badge of Inevitability at the door on the way out. They've been doing it since I started being a girl, and they'll keeping doing it until I start being a guy again (they'd better).
So, why is it that I felt impelled to engage in an activity in which I am to wear skimpy clothing and jump up and down?
Because they (G, T, G again, W, F and N, and not to forget S and S and S) asked me to. They thought I would look cute, they said, which is a word that I know from my guyhood days to mean sexy.
Let me clue the guys in the congregation: by half-time, those secondary-characteristic orbs do not feel sexy, they feel pummeled. Wearing a normal bra merely confines them in a smaller chamber which mitigates, or, if it continues long enough, refines the punishment by enabling its extension. Sports bras would help, but they do not match the Cheerleader Aesthetic, now, do they? That's why girls who are naturally apt to such work by virtue of possessing a trim physique are not recruited for such work, right? As opposed to those of us who were born to be mighty, or to whom the change machine returned coinage in improper fractions, right? (Betcha didn't know a girl could use such big words. Hey, my buds suggested most of 'em, and they were born that way! Ha!)
I have in mind a slight revision to the tradition known as 'cheerleading'. It goes as follows.
In addition to the current scantily-clad females of the girl persuasion (no matter how temporarily persuaded), there shall be boys clad only in jockstraps and speedo shirts. Where the girls carry pompoms, the boys shall each carry a large nerf priapic wand (if you don't know what that means, follow the link, dickhead), to be held in such a way that, each time one of the girls leaps up, daring her mammary glands to tear themselves free at last and float off into the stratosphere (or so I remember the standard guy impression of their contents, judging by the jokes that I unthinkingly believed when I first heard them--who starts these stupid things?), and extends her pompom-bedecked arms to the side as she does now, she shall fetch a mighty wallop to the top end of said wand, causing the nether end of said wand to clip the adjacent male mightily in the groin.
I expect to see every one of you guys out on the field at 0700, dressed to rehearse.
Equal pain for equal work. That's fair, isn't it?
-jen
01Nov08
Ha, ha, ha.
I blame myself and that last entry for giving you all the costume idea, but...
The sight of the nine of you in Jen's Cheerleader Kickline, with all the helium boobs floating away...
I would have fetched all your Priapic Wands a mighty wallop if I wasn't laughing so hard. And if you hadn't won first prize with it.
I had no idea I was embarrassing myself in public in front of so many local people with this blog. Yeah, I get a little full of myself sometimes.
Thanks. I needed that.
I want a copy of the DVD. Maybe we'll do a fundraiser with it.
Can we add all of you to the lineup, just like that, for the Thankgiving Game?
-jen
27Nov08
Let's not salute it, and not even say that we did.
Okay, guys, before we even get started... I've been there, done that. Okay? I know what that little head of yours is thinking while the big head is just trying to cope with the sudden loss of blood pressure. I know because I've been socially betrayed by the very same mutinous uprising.
Now that we've got that out of the way...
We're going to talk about that woody now. Yeah, I've talked to my friends, dealt with my own embarrassment, and now I think I'm ready to talk about it.
It's natural, of course. It's what happens when your thoughts dwell on some goodlooking babe who's got your attention, and then you find that your body has just assumed that it's about to go on active duty, so it comes to attention too.
Most of the time you've got a book handy to carry in figleaf position. A jacket over your arm, the back of a chair, almost anything will do. Don't think it's not noticed anyway, but what you do about it does send signals which we'll get to in a moment.
What if you don't have anything handy to cover it with, to take it out of public view?
Simple. Leave it alone. Don't apologize. Don't pay any attention to it and it'll go away. That I do know. And it really is the safest move.
See, the problem is, if you draw attention to it, suddenly it's not just Nature in action anymore, now it's you doing it, and now it's a threat.
Girl brains are just as capable of mentally undressing people as guy brains. As expected, girl brains normally mentally undress guys, and normally this goes back to that feels-more-real thing and there's no more harm done than when your guy brain is mentally undressing girls. Until something changes.
Therein lies the problem. While you're sitting there, content to mentally undress me and not do anything about it other than that, behind your clothing One-Eyed Pete the Pirate is running up his Jolly Roger. And then my X-Ray Vision nimbly strips away the cloaking device and sees that snake coiled and poised and ready to strike. At me. This sudden vision is hard to accept with equanimity. It's okay, though, as long as it's only natural. That means that Nature did it and you're probably not going to go along with it.
If you call attention to it, though, it suddenly feels like you mean it. And then I feel threatened, for reasons that haven't changed at all since Nature first started stocking this planet with human herds. They are as follows.
You are male; I am not. You've got big muscles; I don't. You can probably force things before I can damage you enough to make you stop. And then you can get up and walk away afterwards, while I will probably get to feel the results every day for nine months, plus at least eighteen years of motherhood afterwards. Plus having to be female for most or all of those years because the kid needs me that way and my needs don't matter as much. Plus years and years of therapy.
In other words, the threat is that you are going to make all of my life-choices for me, right now, against my will, by invading my body, and that I am physically helpless to oppose that.
The hell of it is, I know that the big head doesn't intend any such thing; I've had this happen too, remember. But the big head might not have a choice if it hasn't learned caution. See, I've also had the little head do that sudden-reality-inversion thing on me, back when I had one, where stupidly aggressive actions suddenly seemed to make sense in a hazy sort of hormonally-overly-simplified way. It's that kind of 'what the hell got into me just then' self-humiliation that teaches you, or taught me, anyway, to be wary of letting my thoughts dwell on such things in public, as in, if there was anybody else in the room.
But what if you haven't mastered that kind of being-wary thing yet? Remember, if it goes too far, you play but I pay.
I think (since some of my good guy friends privately apologized afterward and asked me just what it was that crossed the line so we could avoid a repeat) that this also pins down just what was scaring me so much at my birthday party. I think that, without ever meaning more than good harmless highly-suggestive fun, you were triggering fears I didn't realize I had inherited along with the rest of my XX-Files. Fears of being raped.
Believe it or not, the "carry a book there" figleaf cover does reduce the tension. It sends a signal that you don't really mean it, and that the big head is firmly in charge here. But do it so as to dispel attention, not attract it; if you're obvious about it, we're back to that "uh-oh, he really means it" thing again, and it is scary.
This is probably a reason why us girls tend to cluster in herds large enough to repel a predator.
Damn, I never thought the change would be this intense.
-jen
23Dec08
Settle the Score
Two more guys from our school came home for Christmas; that makes an even twenty this year. This is not a Merry Christmas for their families. It was a joint service. I got to use my black dress again like I hoped I wouldn't. I knew those guys. It was not a happy time for me.
It's strange, you know. Those guys were decent but not close friends. I knew them only when I was a guy. Had I attended their funerals as a guy, I would have been really depressed, and I would have missed those guys terribly, and maybe I would have gotten righteously pissed at how they died and why, but I would have probably stayed dry.
Instead, me being the girl that I am now, I cried. The tears started when their parents stood up to say a few words, and they just wouldn't quit, I mean, TK had to drive for me because I couldn't see clearly through them. It really really got to me.
That meant that it stayed on my mind, though. Preyed on it is more like it. Until I paid attention.
We're not all that big a student body because we don't live in a big town. That makes the numbers harder to ignore. We lost twenty guys this year to one Oil War or another (because, let's face it, that's what they are: our government is holding up other countries at gunpoint for their oil). That's about three percent of our student body, over seven percent if you just count guys. That's PER YEAR. How long is a tour of duty? How many will come home alive? ALL FOR WHAT?
We don't even have a Selective Service Lottery anymore. When you're old enough, you will go.
It wouldn't be so bad if there was really any way to justify it, but this isn't a Hero War like World War II was, where people knew that the enemy would reach our shores soon if we didn't help stop them while they were fighting our friends, and a bunch of the guys volunteered to help save the world for freedom, even knowing that it would cost a lot of them their lives.
This isn't that. I really really think we're working for the bad guys here. And, because of that, I'm wondering if I should skip the change in June and stay this way, rather than go kill somebodies and then have one of them kill me, for something I not only don't believe in but can't even excuse.
There's something wrong when I have to tell my guy friends, "I think maybe you should be a girl for a few years because our government is going to waste you for sure if you're a guy." But... I think that's what I'm doing right now.
Guys, it's a big change, but I'm still me. And, if I'm going to stay this way, I'd really rather a lot of you stayed that way, for purely natural and selfish reasons. But, more important, I'd really rather you stayed alive, all of you.
I've learned a lot so far; I can help. And there are a lot of incredible friends of mine who helped me and I'm sure they'll help you.
Maybe we'll be awfully short of guys for a while, but we won't lose as many permanently, like we've lost GAC and RP and CW and TN and... Dammit, am I ever going to stop crying??
-jen
29Dec08
Slight Change
One of my both-sides-now girlfriends just clued me to something. I just found out that you're allowed one final change for free, just after you get your diploma.
So I'm going over to the blue side in June, because I feel that I need that. Especially if it's for the last time, I need to be a guy for my senior year. And then, if things haven't changed, I'm going back to the pink side, maybe for life.
You guys who are currently guys and who aren't currently seniors, maybe this makes your plans, whatever they are, a little easier. I thought you should know. In case you missed it like I did.
-jen
13Jan09
Fashion Or Survival
My amazing best buddies made sure I got some long skirts well in advance. As in, August. "You'll need them," said they. "You've got to be kidding me," said I. "It's damn hot outside," said I. "You'll see," said they.
Now I see, and I am supremely grateful once again for the timeless girl wisdom and attention to girl details ( my girl details) with which they have guided me. Never mind that we look like an Eskimo choir when we walk around together all bundled up; at least we are halfway warm.
Not that that sits well with the guys in the group. I get questions like, Why don't you wear miniskirts anymore? Why do you hide everything now? Is this part of that new plans thing?
Now, I'll admit that I got lucky with that change machine. They said it tweaks up your genes, and that was no lie. So this is not something I did, this is something I got given. And this is not me bragging about me, this is me being grateful to a stupid machine for that Genetic Code Optimizing thing, for not having anything in the looks department to be really ashamed of.
That said, I can admit that I like my legs. I like the way they look in a skirt. Even when I catch myself giving me a guy-look and spend way too much time staring in a mirror and get all embarrassed about it. I like the look and I want to show it off.
The problem is, the air gets cold in the winter, and that air is not sitting still, it's got some real wind backing it up. So what little warm air is inside that little skirt gets replaced real quick by air that's freezing, and that's seriously not fun.
So maybe you guys who are complaining about us girls hiding everything need a little object lession. Like maybe being thrown out in the snow in your underwear for an hour or so. Because that's kinda what a miniskirt is like.
Maybe I need to stop shaving my legs. You know, get some real fur action going down there. Then I can wear those miniskirts and sheer pantyhose and still be warm. You guys'd like that, right?
-jen
14Feb09
You Must Know This
You had me in tears. You know that. But you don't know why. Please sit down while I tell you.
Today was... Well, it was a surprise. Valentine's Day was never too special for me before, for a lot of reasons, most of which amounted to my being too immature to appreciate it, and at least I realized that.
To get cards today was... interesting, for what they illuminated about my current form, my current role, my current self, as seen by others. Thank you, everyone.
Then there were the gifts.
Not the chocolates. I threw those away. I thought they might be drugged and I didn't want to go there. On the off chance that you meant more than I thought, please accept my apologies. We do have a history, and I reacted to that.
There were... three.
One of you gave me a pin, and one of you gave me a charm for my bracelet, and one of you gave me a scarf.
I want you to know that I was touched, deeply, by each of these. Individually.
I'm telling you which ones because I really want each of you to know that I'm talking about you. Yes, you. You know who you are now. Now, please, listen, because you have to know this and I couldn't say it in person.
You are special. Why? Because you took the trouble to understand, which didn't come easy. I know, because I don't find any of it easy to understand myself.
I have dear friends who can help me with some of it. They're girls. They've seen both sides and they know which side they belong on. They can only help me just so far, though: they were born female, you see, and, as you know, I was not. And, as you know, I will not remain this way.
So trying to pin down my female feelings is like catching wind in a Klien bottle, like halting a wave, like painting on a rainbow. Yes, I know I've just named those three gifts again, their symbols, as you each explained them to me. I told you they were special.
You each told me that you cared about me, even knowing that things are temporary, and that you wanted me to have that gift so that I could remember being cared about. Even though the caring had to be, in some ways, as volatile, as evanescent as the form. That you hoped we could be good friends, without embarrassment, after we were back on the same side of the world, but that right now the caring went deeper than friendship and you wanted me to know that.
I would tell you that I wasn't offended: how could I be? You understood. But that's why I don't have to tell you that: you understood.
I just want you to know that I wasn't crying out of sorrow that it couldn't last. I was crying out of happiness that it could happen at all. You made me feel so good that even the crying felt good.
You know who you are. Thank you.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
-jen
22Feb09
So she told me today...
(Those of you in the know, I don't have to tell you who she is, and you can guess the rest. All the rest of you, just kick back. You don't need to know exactly who all the players are out here on the field to see how the game is going, and staying in the bleachers means you get a better chance to dodge the inevitable stray bullets, right? We are professionals at this, kids; do not try this stuff at home.)
She told me today that she thought I should be a little nicer to someone, someone who was too shy to come and tell me outright how he felt about me.
And I thought, but this is silly. I'm trying to treat everybody fairly, just because. Friends get all the behaviors in the Friends Agenda. Jerks get all the behaviors in the Jerks Agenda. Unmitigated Contemptible Assholes get... You get the drift.
So why should I change all that, just because she surmises that she suspects that she has an inkling that someone might possibly in some respect and regard have feelings for me?
I mean, feelings are nice, everybody's got some: they come in two main colors, Appropriate and Inappropriate, and some of the Inappropriates you have to pretty well put aside, bundled up and carefully labeled, until you're wearing a form in which they are Appropriate. I've done that, believe me, and it's really not something that you feel that you want to do, but it's something that you have to do. It feels like you're letting yourself down, letting opportunities go to waste, but you're letting yourself down if you don't.
You don't pull them out and wave them around and blame everybody else LOUDLY for being in the wrong shape because the feelings don't fit. People aren't like that: they don't owe you feelings. We're not just talking about trading Manhattan for trinkets, here, this is a life.
People don't owe you let's-pretend this until that changes and then it will all fit together; nobody knows that it will, and the one thing I know is that the let's-pretend won't work.
Right now my girl brain likes guys. Prior to this latest adventure, I've got a sixteen-year history of just liking girls. The fact that right now those feelings are not there for those girls (NO I'm not going to tell you who they are. Trust me, they don't want to know. They don't even want me to know.) tells me that when, at the end of this school year, the change machine returns me to the blue side of the gym, those feelings for guys won't be there. So expecting me to like a guy when I'm a guy again, when the guy won't even be honest that I'm a girl right now because he only likes guys, and is loudly unhappy unless I'm a girl-pretending-to-be-a-guy around him, is wasted emotional blackmail. I'm not anti-gay. I'm pro-truth.
And for those of you guys who might have been wondering why I don't settle on one of you and get close, just think about this.
In June I go back to being a guy. Unless you've got a change coming up then, that's exactly how long anything can last. And even if you do have a change scheduled, we don't know that either of us will have feelings for the other's new shape. Not unless you've got fourteen to seventeen years of guy-liking history behind you, and unless you're on that short list of girls, the one that I won't even look at right now because I literally don't feel like it, and unless I was and will be on your short list.
Not that I blame you for having feelings right now. So do I, and I like feeling them. Some of you are very good about helping me feel good about feeling them, too, and I hope I help in turn. If you feel like this fits you, you should be feeling the gold star on your forehead right about now. Believe me, some of the other girls, the permanent ones, have that star's coordinates carefully noted for no later than when I leave the starfield. (We've talked about it; we've even gone over stellar navigation and orbital strategy. I want them to be good for you. You deserve it and each other.)
But I know how long we don't have before those two bundles, Appropriate and Inappropriate, change places.
So I zoomed out the camera and looked at everything all over again in the wider context, scrutinizing everything for potential conflict resolution, and reran the Standardized Temporary Girl's Evaluation And Selection Criteria For Association Classification, and you know what?
Nothing changed except I reclassified a supposed friend as a neutral. Way off in the background, the UCA remained a UCA.
Warning: The creep in the mirror is closer than (s)he appears. If there's someone in the room with you, stick out your elbow. It's good self-defense practice for you and for them. If not... take a good... long... hard.. look... for... yourself.
I did. So should you.
-jen
04Mar09
Did you really think that I wouldn't find out?
If it wasn't supposed to be a secret, then why were you all sworn to silence around me? Was it because I'm a girl now?
I thought we were friends, y'know, as in, friends. As in, somebody I could trust.
You know how I found out? They move in frequency or something when the batteries get weak, and then my cordless phone wouldn't work because of the jamming. That's how I found one. Then I got my father to bring home a bugsweeper and then we found the others.
Oh, yeah, you had me staked out good. Three in my bedroom, two in my bathroom. That leaves three channels. I guess we need to take a bugsweeper to my parents' rooms now. No telling what you watched them do. I'm sure they're delighted that I know someone like you guys.
How long were they there? What all did you see? Who else did you show?
Never mind, GTK, NVS, ATL, AYT. I know better than to ask you for honest answers, and now I hope everybody else does too. Especially all the other girls. Girls who don't want their privacy violated. Girls who don't want to feel violated, period.
I got your attitude loud and clear when you told me, "It's not like you're a real girl so you shouldn't mind."
I AM A REAL GIRL.
More to the point, I am a real person.
I don't think I have anything to add to that.
-jen
07Mar09
We had The Talk the other day.
MPU (that's Male Parental Unit, and, I suppose I should confirm, though it's still pretty much safe to assume so far, born that way; male, that is) booked a couple of my hours well in advance for this, that's why I knew what was coming. The Talk.
See, we haven't really talked much in quite a while. It's not that we don't get along, we just don't intersect much. So I thought this was going to be one of those Pronouncements At An Intersection, after which he'd have to get back to work and I'd have to get back to me.
He surprised me, though. This was not The Talk that I expected.
See, we had The Talk already a few years back, when everybody but me noticed that I'd had the visit from the Armpit Fairy.
That The Talk had to do more with What To Expect From Your Hormones than anything else, which, for guys, is mainly More Than Usual of The Usual. You know, more muscles, more hair, more of That (yes, girls, it does get bigger when the fur starts to sprout, that's one thing you miss out on with the Both Sides Now program), but nothing totally new. Not like the way Us Girls who were born that way got blindsided by The Lumps and The Leak. The only real news in that The Talk was why you stink and what to do about it and why singing keeps your voice from cracking on its way down.
And, oh, yeah, there was a short briefing on Nature thinks you're ready but society doesn't yet so don't, on what that white stuff can do to your life if it goes where it shouldn't, on how that's natural and everybody does it but don't do it in public, and where to hide Those Magazines to minimize everyone's embarrassment, you know, FPU for finding them suddenly, and me for having it confirmed that I'm interested. Typical guy stuff.
So I expected a little more about all that, plus maybe late bulletins like Get Your Degree Before You Get A Wife And Child and Keep Your Driving Record Clean.
Not this time.
I am more well-read than I realized. Which is to say that it turns out that MPU and FPU are not as Netblind as I thought. Maybe from the start. So that's why the debriefing on the Last Beach Blast Of '08 didn't go deeper into hard-to-answer questions. And don't ask what they thought about the Woody Talk, because I didn't ask and they didn't tell.
So MPU made the presentation, which felt more and more like the PowerPoint slides should have been up on the wall but were mislaid at the last minute, and FPU attended in a silently supportive and sometimes holding hands with him sort of role.
Because this The Talk was about what a father wants for a daughter. Talk about a weird experience.
It started with a short discussion of The Change, in which the bullet-points were:
Then there was the main presentation itself, which got weirder still. Key bullet points were:
In short, everything that he thought he should pass along to a child of his who took up being female at or near the moment of conception, all highly condensed for easy understanding by this child of his who took it up unwillingly at the age of sixteen and is planning to resume it willingly and maybe permanently at eighteen.
Nowhere in there was a major point in the earlier The Talk, which was Why You'll Want To Continue Our Line And Our Name, which was just as well because, um, yeah, if I go through with this, there is that name change thing. And I know enough about the Guy Ego Thing to know that that cost him.
I think I can see clearly now why FPU decided to take MPU up on the merger offer Way Back When. I mean, this is someone I can seriously respect. Maybe even admire a little.
Which is new.
But, hey, it's okay for a father to be loved in a normal-family sort of way by a daughter, isn't it?
-jen
17Mar09
If anybody cares, there is a new Jason in the world.
I went over Friday after school to a Place I Shall Not Name.
Emily was there. She'd just gotten out of a hospital again, but this time for a good reason. And there was some her in her eyes again. Along with an awful lot of "would rather not be there."
Except when she looked at Him. Then there was more than just "want to be there", there was "glad to be there". "Ready to fight to be there", actually.
See, Emily's never been pushy. She's never been assertive, at least not when I was around. Even back then, when I was being someone who embarrasses me a whole lot to even admit to ever having been now. She wouldn't push, she'd walk around or she'd leave. If you wanted to see Emily, you went in to get her, she didn't come out to meet you. You know this, all you Emily-watchers.
You also know that Emily's been hurt bad. Bad enough to leave our town. Bad enough to want to leave, period, for good. And she always just took it. Took it in. Accepted it. It was almost like Emily helped those who hurt her by making sure that the blows landed.
Now there was this Emily who I saw pointing out, not in. Like she'd finished inhaling and finally started to exhale.
It was every Emily-watcher's dream, like seeing a sad dark cloud finally finish coming together just right, tight enough to ignite into a star, signaling the start of another stellar system. Hot and new and bright already and getting brighter by the minute, with enough fuel to outlast anyone and knowing it, and the steadiness of knowing it.
So she looked down at Jase (that's what she's calling him), and I could see that she was willing to fight for him at least, and maybe she'd learn from that how to fight for herself, but this was incredibly beautiful, seeing her love him enough to be ready to fight for him.
And then she looked up, and she held him out to me.
I hear gasps of astonishment out there, and I agree. I mean, I can, in my worst nightmares, remember how I used to bug her to give me some attention. Let's face it, whatever I thought I was doing (and we won't go there, okay), I was a pest to her. A junior horndog with way more mouth than manners.
Now, let me point out something else as well: I was not alone there with Emily and Jase. Some girlfriends had come over too, I mean, real girls, not just me suddenly female and trying to get by, trying to make up for past history. But she held him out to me.
I took him into my arms, and they all told me how to hold him, and how to tell when he needed a bottle, and when he needed burping, and when he needed a change, and I remembered all of that, because it was vitally important, but I was seeing this baby in my arms and that's all I could see. Those eyes.
I saw some Emily in those eyes. I saw some Jason too.
Even without his teeth, I thought I could maybe guess about his jawline when he's grown up, and I think that'll be pure Jason. That serious "wear down the stones before you get to me" expression, though... that's pure Emily.
Little hands, I mean, tiny. I took one in my hand and held them palm-heel to palm-heel, and it shook me to not only realize in doing so that this is actually a real person already, already living, but just how tiny that little person is so far. And how brave to dare this, to face up to the world, with that serious Emily expression and a set in that Jason jaw, while he's so tiny still.
And for just a moment, I ached for him a little somewhere (okay, a lot, dammit), for knowing the battle he was just beginning, to fight the world for his own life, his own space, when he was so tiny.
To be honest, I never looked at a child this closely before. I never thought to.
So maybe this was me making up for it, for all those casual thoughtless moments when I'd look at a kid and all I could think was "diapers -- run away".
Because that's what had to be done. Emily was getting a few hours of the evening to go be with friends, to do what Emily wanted to do. And I didn't have to ask for a promise that she'd still be breathing at the end of it. I just had to look at how she looked at Jase to know that if they roadblocked her from this kid she'd claw the cars apart. She really didn't want to leave him, not for a second, but she needed some time to remember Emily!Person so she could get a better grip on Emily!Mother.
So I was babysitting.
And then they were gone. I actually saw Emily smile at something someone said, just before the door closed, and I knew it was going to be good for her. It was that kind of smile that told me, "Emily's back."
And then Jase gave a little grunt, and I had a job to do.
I'd already watched Emily change him once, and my friends told me a lot of tips about how to do it right, in enough variation that I had a good idea of how the procedure should adapt to the problem. Now it was just doing it.
Okay, you've been around babies at some point, all of you. You remember how they smell when they're fresh, and you remember how they smell when they're not fresh. This kid was suddenly not fresh. That was the "run away" trigger for me when I was a guy. And girls have more sensitive noses than guys.
It didn't matter. He needed changing and cleaning. It was my job. I did it. The smell didn't get to me, it simply didn't matter, it wasn't important enough compared with this incredible already-a-person. It didn't even register in my nose, it was so unimportant.
And then he wanted some attention, some grab the finger, some try to capture the hair, some up and down, and some bottle, and some burping, and another change, and some drool on the shoulder, and some slow rocking, and finally some put him in his bed and watch him sleep. That last bit took a lot of time. So that's as far as we'd gotten in the agenda when Emily And Company got back.
But I was good at it. I was actually good at it. He trusted me, and I delivered.
Now let's get something straight here: I was never particularly an animals guy, and I am not particularly an animals, much less baby animals, girl.
Puppies... Enh, I'm okay with puppies as long as there's lots of fresh newspaper and a pen to keep them on top of it.
Kittens... They're kind of do-nothing until they're old enough to start exploring, and then they smell funny.
But Jase...
Help me here, girls.
Is this a normal girl thing? Can I expect this kind of thing to happen every time I see a cute kid? A kid who needs every chance in the world because his father, who would have been fabulous about this, can no longer be there? A kid who nearly didn't make it, because his mother nearly didn't?
Is it normal for a girl to love a kid after looking after him for just a few hours? To miss him just a little right now? I really need to know.
-jen
12Apr09
Fashion Survival
You guys don't appreciate what we girls have to do to look good, and that's how it's supposed to be.
It's a lot of work, you know. Makeup has to be done just right, otherwise it looks like makeup. Hair can't look obvious or that's all you look at. I have to make the effort to coordinate outfits, otherwise they look like it took some effort. After all that work, the point of all this beauty stuff is for it not to draw attention to itself.
It's like housework, really (and yes, FPU has been giving me remedial courses on that as part of the whole life-choices thing, along with cooking, and sewing, and, and, and... wow). You only notice it when it's not done right.
Even my amazing friends will admit to this. They told me so right up front (right after FPU paid them to do it, I suspect), a day after I woke up changed, when they came to the door saying "We're your Welcome Committee, now get dressed because your first lesson starts in five minutes." They said, "It's the price you pay to look good," and it was true.
I've gotten used to it, I'll admit to that. It doesn't bother me anymore, getting up earlier to get everything ready. That's because it's my choice. Being a female was not my choice; being a good-looking female was. My amazing friends did not force me to do this, they just made it possible, that's all. They skipped whether-to entirely, figuring that was my business, and went straight to the how-to in case I wanted-to. And, given that I was a girl already and had a how-to, I wanted-to.
However.
I am so looking forward to Spring Break. I'll sleep in, wake up and wash off all the makeup, kick back around the house, wear whatever I feel like wearing, especially my old guy tee shirts, and not care at all how I look.
Well, not much. Not a lot, that is. Okay, not quite as much. I do have standards.
-jen
30Apr09
I wasn't around much for Spring Break.
I got to babysit Jase some more. It was neat.
No, it was more than merely neat. It was something I needed. I'm still not sure why. Something about the brave look on his little face just turns me inside out, and I want to see it all happen, you know, be there so I can make sure it happens. Or something.
This is the closest I've ever come to seriously wondering what it would be like to have a child. You know, to have the magic happen inside my own body. Guys just don't think about that, well, not in public, because then there'd be real hard questions asked. But lately I'm not a guy, right? This girl brain of mine sure doesn't think so.
But I would be seriously kidding myself. Because what I'm reacting to is a little boy who's already here. Somebody who's real special to me even though he's not my child at all. He's the product of two people I admired, two people expressing their hope for the world, even if some of that hope was betrayed.
I see that hope in his eyes and I cry when I think about anything that happened to them happening to him. I don't want that hope to die. Like it almost did. With his mother. But maybe I don't have to cry so much.
See, Emily is ready to fight now. She sees the hope in Jase's eyes and she feels the same way I do about it: it must not die. But to fight, you've got to live. And to keep doing that, you've got to want to live. So Emily is ready to fight for Emily. (yes!!)
Which means letting wounds heal and getting past them. Because when you fight you're going to get wounded some more. But it's worth it.
Oh. Okay. Yeah. We got to talk.
Emily is more seriously cool than I thought. She knew what was going on with me when I didn't, and it was okay to her, she just worked around it. Which is probably the best thing that she could say to me at this point, that I didn't get in her way after all. She just forgave it and went around.
She forgave it because I was young. To which I have to plead guilty as charged. I didn't know what I was doing at all then. As opposed to now, when I still don't, usually, but at least I know it.
And now... we're getting to be good friends. Close friends. Which is what I forgot all about when my turn came to get out of recess. See, that was perhaps the coolest thing about Jason's serious cool: he knew how to be friends with the girls, while I was still tripping over my feet whenever I tried and then acting all bad to make up for it. I seriously admired him for that.
So we're friends. Is that all? No, but right now all those feelings are over in the Inappropriate bundle and I really should leave them alone. Emily needs me as a friend, and I need that, I need to be friends with her.
Even if we're both guys. See, she still has to do this both-sides-now thing to graduate, so she might change when I do. Might. She got real behind, what with everything that happened, so she might repeat this year, and a lot of it depends on that. That's up to her. It's her life, and finally she's willing to fight for it. And I want to help that happen because I'm her friend.
So...
John, I know you still read my blog because I hear all about your witty commentary.
Good. Get your ass over here FAST as soon as you read this message, anytime 24-7. We really need to talk.
-jen
27May09
Gang, something's up.
I've got two friends who I used to talk to. They don't talk to me anymore. They can't: they're dead. They got shot, and I don't know how or who or why.
I do know where and when. Each one was in front of his own house, and then he pitched over with half his brain spread over his front door.
I can't guess the why, yet, but I'm putting clues together. I can tell you that both guys were conspiracy buffs, you know, Area 51, Illuminati, New World Order, Skull and Bones, all that paranoid stuff.
I have other friends who are also conspiracy buffs, and this is to them:
SHUT UP!!
Don't talk about that in public anymore. Keep it among just our group. If you don't personally know everybody within hearing range, don't open your mouth. If you wear an X-Files tee shirt, don't. If you're a l33t h@x0r, lay off it. If you look like a rocket scientist, lose the tie and the lab coat and act harmless. If you can't do that, act clueless; maybe that'll be enough.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. You were right, I was wrong, and I'm convinced of that now, okay? We just got warned, those of us who are left, and two of my friends paid with their lives for us to get that warning.
Be careful out there. I don't want any of you added to the list of Why I'm Crying... okay? Please?
-jen
30May09
Something is definitely up.
Friends don't leave friends out in the dark. There are eleven of you that don't have cellphones. That must be fixed.
If you're one of those people, a deal has been made. Your pride is no longer relevant to the discussion. Get in touch, not on the house phone. You'll learn the details when I talk to you.
No exceptions: this is beyond all our little pissing contests. Real Life just climbed in the back window and it's got a gun.
Update: Calm down. No, my house has not been broken into; bad choice of words. My life has, though, and so has yours.
-jen
03Jun09
IM Down
Is anybody still getting through on IM? Call me. Mine has been down all day.
-jen
04Jun09
Ping
Anybody whose PC lacks a firewall, talk to C.
-jen
07Jun09
ATTENTION ALL GUYS!! GET OUT OF SIGHT NOW!!
Find a girl who'll take you in and keep you hidden, someone who was born that way. Girls who used to be guys are in danger: you have to hide too.
Don't go hide in the obvious places: they've already been down to Riverside and the Staedler place. If they know about them they know about all the others.
Stay away from your home! They're going around house to house and pulling people out, and so far not one of those people that I know of has come back.
These are NOT real Army: look at what they've got pinned to their collars.
All they have is birth records. They freaked when they saw that I was a girl. They really roughed up my parents, trying to get them to tell them where I was 'really hiding'. I think they still don't believe I'm me.
I don't think they're doing this to draft you or put you to work. I think they're going to get rid of you so you aren't a threat. I heard a rumor of firing squads but I don't know if it's true. I'm trying to find out more.
Spread the word, but don't take chances. I have heard gunshots! These people are not kidding.
East side, call up F or T (both girls). West side, call up A or N (girls again). If you don't know the number, call someone who does. Don't call me, they've got people outside 'waiting for me to come home' and they'll hear if I get too many calls.
IM has been offline for days. irc.undernet.org #mestrojen when you can, but don't let them see it or this blog on your screen. If you're port-scanned, assume you're packet-sniffed as well and drop the specifics.
I care about you all.
-jen
12Jun09
Peace at last.
All it took was a little counter-coup.
No, I'm not talking about what happened today in Washington DC. That was inevitable.
Even when the vote machines were rigged to give us a monarchy, we always had the French option -- mob rule and the guillotine, that's how they got rid of kings. Then, once we found where those people had hidden the Constitution, we could dust it off, hang it back up and start cleaning house.
We didn't even have to do all that. Targeted boycotts work wonders, if they're big enough, at shaking loose the grip of corporations on our body politic. Returning corporations to being legal non-persons takes away their power to turn us into non-persons. I think constant online exposes can do wonders for prying bad people out of office once the good people know they have enough of a chance at getting elected to make it worth their while to run.
Now we don't have any more troops off dying to make the world safe for Texas oilmen. We aren't paying a certain small country three billion dollars a year just so they can provoke more terrorism to scare us into paying even more per year, along with committing troops for their expansion plans. We don't even have people trying to turn this country into a Fundamentalist republic.
But that was all inevitable, really. I'm just in high school, and even I could see that. This country is full of good people who won't tolerate evil once they see it for what it is.
No, I'm talking about the state law mandating a year spent in another skin. Well, actually it's your own skin, but with all the softish bumps moved around and looking funny.
You might have missed it, what with all the changes in the government. Thanks to a targeted boycott in five towns, the law in this state was changed to conform with most of the others. That's all it took: five towns sending their students just across the river out of state to school so they could get their diplomas without passing through both locker rooms on the way there.
Now it's no longer mandatory for graduation from high school. You just won't get to vote until you've gone through it.
This is good.
There are a lot of things to be said for experiencing it here, in high school, where you have an existing culture and social group around you. There is also something to be said for avoiding experiencing it in high school where you have said social culture. It all depends on whether you have supportive friends or not. I do.
Hello, did you hear me? This is where I say thank you to each and every one of you. Thank you for being supportive, each in your own way, while I've been finding my way through all of this. The worst of you at least had sense enough to back off... after a while. The best of you have been... incredible. Patient, understanding... loving...
Yeah, I guess I should say it now. There are some of you that I do actually love, okay? Enough so that, if I was going to stay this way, I would definitely be getting close to more than one of you on a steady basis while I tried to decide on which one I'd be getting closer still. It would be a hard decision.
And my dearest friends, the girls who didn't let me sit and waste this year in solitary confinement in a bra. They made me appreciate what I am, that's why I can appreciate all of you for what you are.
It's no longer quite such a stark choice, now. No one has to choose between bearing babies in a mock peace at home, or bearing an assault rifle in a trumped-up war abroad. We have our country and our lives back.
Still...
-jen
13Jun09
Help me, guys. I need reasons.
You all heard about it, right? Anybody can get a change for a hundred bucks, as often as once a month. That covers the change itself and the costs of getting new documents. Driver's license is extra, but once you've got both of them you keep them both.
I didn't expect this kind of choice.
And here I am looking at a closet full of dresses and a bunch of storage boxes full of pants 'n' stuff, and knowing I've only really got room in the closet for one kind at a time.
Right now the dresses are hanging up, and they look good, and I look good in them, and I like looking good in them. It's a know you're all right kind of thing, and it's real tempting. See, it's familiar. It's where I live right now. Do I really want to have to pack up and move? Even someplace I've lived before?
But I've got some unfinished business over where I lived in those pants. Stuff I had to put away in storage when I moved into those dresses. And a few of those things (and maybe a person) are real important to me, more important than I was willing to admit back when I stored them away in the Inappropriate bundle. Along with my pants.
Plus, I get the feeling that I'm not done with this being-a-girl business until I'm done with it. For a while, at least. See, maybe it's home now to me, but I kinda get the feeling that home isn't home until you can point to it from the outside and say "that's home". So to do that I've got to step outside the front door (now that I'm sure that I won't get shot there), long enough at least to turn around and memorize what it looks like from the outside. So I can say, "Okay, that's home. Now I know."
See, I've already done that for the being-a-guy thing. I closed that door almost a year ago and had a good look at it from the outside when I left for my appointment with the change machine. I know what that place looks like from the outside; I'm outside it right now.
But do I have to do that right now? I mean, I can step out any old time now. I can even step in and out, month at a time, I've got so much choice. (I think I see why that one-month thing. They don't want you to miss your next period's class. Heh.)
So...
Why should I move? Why should I stay? And when?
You guys (and girls) are looking at me from the outside. You can see what home looks like from the outside; I still can't. You might have seen something I missed, something that makes all the difference. Or maybe it's just your opinion, your "Jen should do this now", but I'll listen to that too.
Just so you know, I'm not throwing anything out, but one or the other set of clothes is probably going into the Inappropriate bundle for quite a while.
-jen
16Jun09
Did you ever wonder...
No, calm down, this isn't going there. If there's one thing that I've learned about that, it's that it's no good trying to imagine what it will be like until it happens. That one little chromosomal change changes everything because it changes what you perceive everything through. Got that? Abandon all preconceptions (heh) all ye who enter here, and pay close attention to what really happens instead, because it's like... It's like itself, really, and there's nothing else like it.
No, this is about...
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be someone else entirely? Someone different than you've ever been?
What led to this is that I've got less than a week remaining in which to decide what I'm going to do about all these dresses. Or something.
There's nobody forcing me at gunpoint anymore. Nobody threatening me if I choose to go this way or that. And all of my friends (and I mean all of my friends--you people are so amazing) are being incredibly cool about the whole thing, making sure I know that it's my choice and they're with me no matter what. (You can't buy friends like that. You can't even make a wish for them. I don't know how I got so lucky.)
This set of amazing-but-true friends even includes my parents. Which is more amazing still. I mean, since when do MPU and FPU go strictly-hands-off on anything to do with me being me? But, on this, they do.
It's my decision.
And to make that decision, I have to evaluate the two halves of my life-to-date, the almost-year of being female and the sixteen years of being male before that. Weigh them. Pit them against each other. Make them defend themselves in a court of Me.
But neither of them is fully formed. Which makes measuring them difficult. One of them only goes up to age 16. The other one has had less than a year in which to live.
Plus, there's another person in here that I didn't count on.
And the person that is most fully formed is also the least.
Let's go over that.
We've got the male person. Starts at birth, so he's tight with that whole this-is-your-body thing, and he's got that whole starting-puberty thing on his side, but he only gets to be sixteen, so he's earnestly clueless.
Then there's this female person. Starts with a maturity gap of two years, suddenly plonked down right in the middle of the whole adolescence thing without maps or compass but with amazing guides. Still, she's busy being blown away by the being-a-girl thing much of the time. Clueless again.
I can't really judge between them, either, because neither of them is complete enough to stand on their own.
And there's a third person, seventeen years young. That's the person that knows what it's like to have both kinds of body, both kind of brain, both kinds of life. That person has got the sixteen years plus the one year, so they're the most fully formed.
They're the least formed, though, because I've just begun thinking about myself from that point of view.
And, thinking about who I am when I'm being that person, is amazing me. It's a kind of somebody that I have NO experience at all with. I've never seen this kind of person before, not that I know of. Not in the mirror, and not in any of my friends. See, they all either only know one form, or they've already chosen one form to stay in. It's like they're down on the ground where it's safe, being one or the other leg of this person.
Nobody I've talked to has said a word about this kind of thing, so I guess nobody's tried to stand up in this position, but then it's kinda tricky. See, it's not somebody who's one or the other. Not somebody who's between. It's somebody who's both. Even if they're only one at a time.
I have to be careful when I practice being that person. I can only do it when I'm alone right now, because when I stand up this way I'm carefully balancing my entirely new self on two legs, one standing on the girl me, the other standing on the guy me, and if you push me either way I'll fall.
I'm still learning to walk this way, after all. I'm real young. Real young. See, I can barely even talk about it, I'm that young!
And right now I'm learning to walk. But that means deciding which leg I'm going to step forward on: the guy leg or the girl leg?
-jen
24Jun09
Hi.
I'm back. Not for long.
Yes, I took the trip back to the blue room.
Take off, every Star-seeker. For great justice. I mean it.
You see, after this past year I can admit this: I love you all on a lot of levels, but...
I need to go find Emily.
Actually, I know where she is. What I need to find out is whether she wants me to know or not. That, and whether I can help her better in this form, or...
I'll be doing that until school starts, and then I might finish high school somewhere other than here. It depends on what I find. We don't talk much long-distance; I need to go there to find out. I'll keep this blog open until then, at least. It's a good record of when I was a girl.
It seems so strange to talk about that, even here, in impersonal letters made of shadows on a bright screen: I used to be a girl. I was a guy for a long time before that, but... I used to be a girl.
Maybe a part of me still is. Remember what I said about being three people at once? It's harder for me to focus on that, but I think I've still got it somewhere.
If I can get back up to that viewpoint from this testosterone angle, I might just have a good shot at seeing who I am. That'd be good.
And then, I might just...
Well, we'll see.
-jim
Comments
That was really, really, good
Too long - and too late - to be in the Stardust competition, but this is science fiction the way I like it. Characterful and with heart, and in a world only half a planck-unit away from our own. I skimmed a few bits because I was supposed to be getting ready to go out when this snared me; I suspect I'll be back for a more leisurely read later.
thank you
> Too long - and too late - to be in the Stardust competition
I found out about the competition when it had just been extended and expanded, and I considered 'mestrojen' for that, but I felt it wouldn't be fair, because the implicit expectation I got from the rules and the existing entries was new stories. That left only 'hookups' and 'between-two-fires', which were both finished but unreleased because I was worried about them being too involved in their respective arcana to please a general audience, so I plucked up my courage (read: scared myself silly) and posted 'hookups'.
>in a world only half a planck-unit away from our own
When I wrote it in 2003, the projected timeframe for the world and national events seemed tight but workable with some artificial foreshortening, judging by world news at the time. (The change-machine... well, that's some decades away yet -- we need to decode the human genome, to know what we're manipulating, plus those of several reef-fish, so we learn how to encode non-cataclysmic gender change into cells or provoke it if it's already there, before we even get to the genetic vandalism in 'dear friend'.) Post-peak-oil conditions have had a much gentler slope than projected, so those events could still be a couple of decades out, but the French-option reaction to disenfranchisement by corporate oligarchy in the US could happen within the next decade, in my opinion. So it's all farther away than expected, but close enough to watch worriedly :)
> science fiction the way I like it
Thank you for that. Now I've only got to figure out how to do it again. I'm still learning to write.
-k
"I'm still learning how to write"
Aren't we all?
I'll probably stop when i die. Mmm, maybe a bit later than that if I'm lucky.
Sci-Fi
This reminds of A Heinlein like story. Responsibility, Social commentary, and a future just around the corner! Very Very Well done!
grover
And you nailed the voice completely ...
... VERY VERY impressive. *hugs* This was a terrific story! Jim/ Jen is wise beyond his/her years now, which is both exhilirating and dangerous -- and a little scary.
LOVED it!
Randalynn
very nicely done
The whole idea and alternate reality is beautifully handled. It takes no effort at all to accept and go with the story and believe in the people. And leaves things suitably open to several possible futures as we reach the end. Thanks
Kristina
Wonderfull
I could really see this very touching story happen for me, including the "mandatory year" rule from those guaranteed people who always know better what's good for you. Some entries were a bit hard to understand for me (prolly because English isn't my mother tongue). I only found one unrealistic part in this storyline (except for that gender switching machine of course): conspiracy guys - and other dangerous people - don't get shot. If they become annoying they could be:
- in a traffic accident
- in a gas leak explosion
- drug overdosed
- suicided (this one seems to be popular where I live)
- resisting arrest
- food poisoned
but NOT shot. That would be way too clear as murder attempt.
Hugs,
Kimby
taking out the sentries
> conspiracy guys - and other dangerous people - don't get shot. If they become annoying they could be ... but NOT shot. That would be way too clear as murder attempt.
I defer to your superior knowledge and experience on this... and I'll be saving your list and going over recent events to see how it applies. (I'll probably refer to it in my next 'paranoid' story, too -- that seems to be a theme of mine, though usually those stories are too awful to even complete, much less release.)
I will say that, as I envisioned things in 'mestrojen', the Bad Guys were coming out of hiding to Take Over, so, since they were already putting a paramilitary army on the streets, they wouldn't be in the mood to be subtle in clearing away potential opposition -- in my mind, it was clear that the guys they took away might be facing a firing squad. How does that idea square with your experience?
-k
experience
uh...
contradictory to what you might think of me now, I'm not an evil mastermind in some plot for world domination. But if the Bad Guys were planning a coup by power, why give priority to a few civilians who *might* go nuts over it ? Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that conspiracy guys are only dangerous for 'sneaky' Bad Guys, not for powerfull Bad Guys. And shooting someone is the behaviour of the powerfull guys, not the sneaky ones.
anyway, I'll shut up now before you start to think I didn't really appreciate your story because I did.
Hugs,
Kimby
grateful
And I'll thank you for that, because that makes perfect sense. Thanks!
-k
deep
a rich story that made me think. Every person going through the teenage years should read this, TG or not. I wish I could hit the "good story" button about 10 times.
Dorothycolleen
recently discovered this story...
...and it's just freakin' brilliant. I hope people notice my recent comment and come to read it, it deserves a lot more notice.
And I agree with you wholeheartedly!
It's definitely one of the very good stories here!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Very Cool!
Very cool story. The slow start and the growth of the character was well done. Thank you.
Never Too Late To Read and Comment
I just found this delightful story thanks to the random stories link. This story was posted almost five and one-half years ago, but to me it was posted today. It deserves comments and Kudos just the same as if it were posted today. You're getting mine.
Portia
Great story. I guess the blog
Great story. I guess the blog style was a bit strange in the beginning, but I really got used to it in the end. I'm glad the political problems were ended. I mean they could have done a maleness strike, but then they'd just forced everyone to soldier.
What kind of people goes out to murder children following government conspiracies? They're all corrupt, they all know it and they still go out murdering people for saying it. I'm glad the people got rid of them in your story.
Great writing, I guess the easy gender switching really opens possibilities. The parents were great, I wish mine had explained stuff to me like that. They really never did.
Thank you for writing,
Beyogi
This is a true Masterwork. GREAT story!
I started reading this story yesterday. It fascinated me so much that I couldn't stop reading, even though it cost a sleep shortened night. How seldom I come upon a story that is free of errors in spelling or usage, that has a real message, and is done so well is on the order of hens teeth.
This is a masterwork, or maybe a Mistresswork? (if that's actually a word) I am, as my Brit friends would say, Gobsmacked. To say "Well done" or "Bravo" would be damning it with faint praise.
What it truly is, is one of those stories that, once you've finished reading it you feel disappointed, because you know it'll be a damned long time before you find another tale that will hold your interest as well as this one does. One of those tales that can be used as an accurate measuring stick for other efforts. One of those tales that makes one wish you hadn't read it so you could have once again, that excitement of reading something new, something good, something that'll make you think, and feel when you found it that you were in for a great read.
The "voice" throughout the story was dead on, making me feel as if it was being read to me rather than being read by me. This one is going in my "keeper" file. It'll never have the same feeling for me that it did when I first read it, but it WILL be one I'll re-read again and again and always find something new to marvel over.
Thank you for your hard work and attention to detail and feelings that made this one of the best in the genre, and thank you for allowing us to experience the true talent of a superb writer.
Catherine Linda Michel (Cathy_t_)
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
Amazing
This was an amazing, beautiful story. Thank you.
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