Gender Queery

Didn't the Barbarians put it best at the dawn of time...."Are you a boy? or Are you a girl?

Someone will answer the question, not necessarily you,and then... Then you know what bathrom to use. but when the question is "Am i a boy? or Am I a girl? then the fun begins. Genderqueer. this is the modern view which i didnt grow up with.

The Bugis have 5 genders. Surely we in America can have more. I grew up with the gendered soul... gender as an immutable mark upon the eternal self. And transexuals were stuck with bodies that didn't match the soul. Male and female He made them...

We didn't know that She made them. And She is a lot more playful.

I return endlessly to this question... Who am I?..Who would I be? Illness recently brought it back to me...When you are ill, and lacklustre then I felt that my feminine side was more challenged.. That is perhaps the lustre... but it is more that I am feminine with some people and more masculine with others... and illness cut me off from my normal weekend social life.. and it is harder to find Belinda.. in a coughing, sneezing.. mess in sweatpants.. than to find Bill. But we all end up coughing, sneezing.. and too lacklustre to suit up for saturday night, so what does that mean. Much of my life has been a journey from Bill to Belinda...If I am not making that journey and I have not arrived at Belinda.. then what?

So Is there a fair port called Genderqueer where weary mariners, their silks and satins in tatters can find refuge?

I can pretend so. I put on a dress or I put on a suit.. It is my choice... no? Not looking very butch in my drab..not fooling too many of them in my drag. There is a social world where I can be that. But what about in my heart, in my soul, in my loins?

Can you walk to two ways? Can you talk two ways? What about that soul? Is it gendered?

The androgyne... My hair is long. My body hairless. Small breasts... Thin not given to overly masculine demonstrations except for the occasional know it all asshole of course. The weekend, so my nails are painted but only in clear polish... I am home, and my clothes all came from the women's department, a skirt from a friend, a blouse that I have worn as a boy in NYC.. sort of a few flounces on a plain garment.

Doesn't a nomad need to wander, and every port is a place to go to, and to leave.

Halloween is coming.

What shall I wear?

tintinnabulation

Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Edgar Allen Poe

I haven't had a cigarette in six years, quitting with holiday bronchitis. Generally healthy since, but now I have been sick with respiratory infection for 7 weeks. And after 30+ years of smoking cigarettes, living through my father's tribulations with the wages of this particular vice, I felt a few times a sort of terror, and at least once I verged on an anxiety attack. Luckily my history of mental health is such that I recognized the condition, so I didn't march off to the ER.

Some seek the consolation of philosophy, but it is thin gruel. I prefer the consolations of religion, which for me is meditation, and the reaching out for the divine that I find there.

I wasn't terrified by death so much as by life; the invalid's life. How much of my life is frocking around with younger friends, making up for lost time, creating Belinda. How much of Belinda is dependent upon Eros. After all Belinda arose out of sexual fantasies and sexual desires. But when you are sick enough, there are no desires, only the desire to be well.

For me, throughout my life there have been intrusions, or manifestations. Events subject to interpretation. A sea aged plastic ornament red hearts connected by an arrow found on the beach on Mother's Day, a few years ago... and going way back... insects droning doom doom doom on a hot summer night and falling confused into conversation with my homosexual neighbor (married with kids, so quite a surprise) but that is a whole other story.

So with renewed religion, studying Goddess, Laksmii, Tripura Sundari, Devi... She of many names and modes of worship, there is sometimes, connection. There are the constants, ocean, birds, winds, the constituents of nature, or MAyA. Kinds of a feeling that it is all pretty good, pretty right. In fact I just wrote on the topic just a couple of monthes ago. Butterflies.

So in my battle with depression sleeping poorly ,waking early, I heard something, and I really couldn't place it. Finally I decided that it was sleigh bells... though we are short of snow and sleighs here in New Jersey this time of year. But later that morning, I was reading the Saundarya Lahari... the Flood of Beauty. Reading verse seven,

Kvanat kajci dama .. from the sound of Her belled and garlanded waist...

purostAd AstAm nah. ..... may she be in front of us...

Not all divinities are outfitted with girdles with bells, and I had certainly forgotten this detail, the Goddess manifest in a sound.

Synchronicities. Divine Coincidences. Some of us seem to need them, and blessedly we receive them. Anugraha... Grace. Small miracles which suggest rather than compel. I am never quite sure what to make of them, and not sure that I make of them what I should, which may be the same thing.

Definitely feeling much better now. Going out Saturday Night... returning to old habits, good and bad. Yet it is hard to deny that everything that you hold onto, clear thought,... Belinda.... goes.. and for me the terror wasn't the going, so much as being left behind... the shut-in. But that is for another time.

Nama Laksmii... Nama KAli

Sex Change Hospital

Not fully recovered from my illness, I spent a quiet night watching episodes of Sex Change Hospital. Like almost all TV shows, I wasn't aware this one existed, but once it turned up, I was shall we say in the demographic? Long ago, I knew a drag queen who taught me a lot, and always referred, mildly disapproving, to those sex changes...not the procedure... the people. So watching a number of those sex changes... (they actually show the procedures but blur them, like those private parts were in witness protection). I got to thinking.

Hearing those stories... it is a natural question In the demographic? the audience or the players? and while I have referred to my imaginary vagina, a real vagina is a whole other thing. I am more certain that I will not be on an episode bantering with Dr. Marcie Bower, about when I first realized I was a woman, my year of living as a woman complete, my coterie of shrinks proclaiming (or is it alleging) that I am not a psycho. Nor will I be in Thailand showing a wad of cash, and skipping all the rigamarole. But.... If I could snap my fingers, my wrist slightly limp, and voila... bye bye old friends, and hi new friend, then I certainly would do it. And go back to work the next morning... nobody the wiser.

But on the weekends ..Talk about accessorizing...

So does that make me a transexual. I think the obvious answer is yes. Does it mean that I am unfulfilled with my imaginary vagina? I don't think so. I just think that those genderqueer boyz and girlz are closer to the real then the well meaning doctors, and their sincere and hopeful patients. but then again I don't have a single letter that says I am not disturbed.

Shelter from the Storm

Out of commission for a few weeks with illness. And illness always brings to mind its old friend death. Not to be too melodramatic, but when you smoked cigarettes for 35 years, and then thought you dodged that bullet and the old smokers disease comes along bronchitis, and you can't get rid of it, then you need to see doctors, and who knows what they will say? So a chest X-ray, my first in probably 20 years or so. Like the young doctor said to me.. "who knows some people say if you want to stay healthy stay away from doctors" Amen brother. I dont just preach it. I live it. So showing my tits to a perfectly polite technician, and no one remarking about them. Are they invisible to the vanilla world? Or is everyone just ho hum these days. Anyway to my surprise the x-ray did not reveal imminent death though I sort of expected it. And so it was just a few weeks living the life of the infirm and convalescent.

Boo Hoo. Missed all my kinky birthday celebrations, though I had a perfectly lovely one as pater familas up in Maine on the family vacation. But the real topic is illness and gender right? Since the blog is everything and gender. Well, ill me is not particularly femme, Femme for me takes energy, enthusiasm, I need to feel something. Not just the hollow sloshing of my own effluvia. So I am almost well. My little friend the wren came visiting during the hurricane. I forced him back into the elements.
Its prevail or perish in any world I am familiar with. It looks like Belinda will prevail for a little while longer. Thanks heavens. I must have half a dozen outfits that are barely worn. Full moon on its way, and that means feeling femme, frisky and looking forward to tranny night in King of Prussia.

Ave atque vale.

Shoegasm

There are some advantages to femulation that I have only slowly come to understand. In male mode in the world, I am just another aging baby boomer, taking up space, listening to Deep Tracks on my radio, bitching about those young folks who have their heads up their ass. You know the type. But put me in a dress, respectfully doing my best to look and act effeminate, not passing usually with my stature too male, my voice too deep, but clearly a member of the third gender, transgender, not doing it on a dare or a prank, and all sorts of people notice you. Some may giggle or look askance but most smile, are friendly, talk to you, particularly women. And aren't they the most fun to talk to anyway?
Let me tell a story. I was recently at an event with a sweet submissive sissy friend, I was wielding a paddle in the middle of this large open space, which was filled with those of similar interests up to a variety of scenes. So who wanders into this place filled with the leather clad, and the barely clad, and of course the fabulously clad but a group of 5 or 6, dressed for the mall. Had they made some legendary wrong turn, and slipped by security standing agape at an ordinariness that defied understanding? Perhaps, or maybe they just knew someone in high places, who had promised them a spectacle.
Whatever the occasion, the youngest and prettiest separated from the group, a young woman on the right side of thirty, and approached me to speak, and instantaneously it was Margaret Meade in Samoa, if Ms Meade had been English. For she spoke in the British way. So she asked: Were we boys or girls? (Out of politeness I imagine) She was the soul of curiosity. What were we up to? why were we up to it? Offered an opportunity, she gave the sissy girl a couple of spanks on the bare bottom, a true participant observer.
Then she proceeded to tell me that she herself had a slight kink. She would go into her closet most mornings, put on a pair of too small shoes, and masturbate. She would have a nice cum, and then she was right for the rest of the day. We spoke a little more, and then she went on her merry way.
I assure you that girls young as my children do not normally describe their masturbatory habits when I am in drab. And if this information gets out, who knows there may be a trend for our tried and true males to put on the occasional frock and troll. I only hope they don't empty out the salvation armies.

"This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England" William Shakespeare

A case of miss-taken identity

"Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females"

Wikipedia Entry on Butterflies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly

Oh dear! I think I may have caught a touch of Wolbachia.

So the other morning a butterfly lands on my knee, and just sits for five minutes, ample time to get a few pictures with the camera phone.

But what does it mean?

Well ... it is said by those who study them that butterflies land on you because they need more salt than the nectar is supplying.

So if you have been involved in discussions with a dear Lady friend who wishes to become Herself authentically as a Domme, and if butterflies are caterpillars that decided to live authentically, then so what.

Would you see signs of divine communication in every rustle of a leaf?

Would you please step over here so that we can give you a few medications that may help?

Well .. actually I would, not the drugs, but I have seen the divine hand in the commonplace or the marvelous.

I am someone who awaits the divine communication, who has received the divine communication.

Who hungers for, and feels Devi's touch in the antics of sparrows, or dunlins.

The next weekend, I plan to go to a mall with my friend who seeks authenticity. She has promised to be brutally honest in describing how and where Belinda falls short of the ideal.

The ideal? Not to pass necessarily, since height and voice, and unalterable physical appearance can make that unlikely at best, but to strike the observor as feminine, in every surface detail, and at the bottom of my soul.

Now if the soul is gendered, then that is authenticity, but only the Catholics, Muslims, and a few others sects think that it is. In my heart of hearts I know that it is not.

How do I know?

A little birdy told me.

A Tale of Two Cities

I have been studying a little about programming blogs, so you must forgive me if I try a minor flourish in here. I have learned the hard way that this stuff is tricky






This is a tale of two cities, or rather two concerts in two cities, or rather two crowd watching two concerts in two cities. In October, I went to see Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a three day free concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. This past weekend, I went to see Dave Matthew's Band Caravan, a three day concert in Atlantic City NJ, though I only went for one day. At the Atlantic City concert, I was older than maybe 1% of the crowd. At Golden Gate Park, I was right there among the beautiful people (or as you might say, the old people). And I couldn't help but wonder. Why at the one event and not the other. It wouldn't appear to be the city. After all AC, a casino town has a traditional codger demographic. It can't be the cost, as the young are usually the ones who can be priced out of events, So it is the music. But the music isn't really that different. DMB could easily play HSB and no one would raise an eyebrow. How is it different? Well none of the DMB Caravan bands played back in the hay day of the beautiful people, while HSB included Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, Emmy Lou Harris if you get the picture. Are my compadres stuck in the past clinging to the fragile memories of youth, or am I hopelessly chasing the illusion of actual youth. Or maybe living through the experience of listening to Bass Nectar has caused a subtle brain damage, and this sentence you read is the result.