So many things to report, I'm sure. I'll start of with the physical, as usual, though there haven't been so many significant changes in the last month. Facial hair continues to march boldly onward. I look at pictures from a few months ago, and I notice how I've come to look more masculine about the face (regardless of any glitter) than I did then. My jaw is more square, etc.
I got my DUI out yesterday, after (TMI warning) three weeks of especially ridiculous cramps and constant blood. I had kind of a funny Planned Parenthood experience, as usual, in which the nurse practitioner asked me all sorts of fairly irrelevant questions (the ever popular "...so, bottom surgery?") and didn't know anything about the battle royale that is testosterone vs. hormonal birth control. I already feel a return to the sharpness of mind (not knocking the alternative) that I associate with my preferred T-heavy hormonal balance, which is nice and comforting. But perhaps expect a return to me muttering curses under my breath at cars.
I'm a little over a week away from my one year testosterone anniversary, so I feel I should put together some sort of State of the Union. Expect that in a week or so.
Once again, as is my apparently yearly tradition, I'm in an intellectual quandary about liking/being liked by women. I realize it's possible that anything I fret about to this extent isn't worth pursuing; I should just do what feels comfortable and leave it at that. On the one hand, I know I'm a faggot: I love men and I love being with men, and I love what it means to be man into men. When I am pursued by a woman I feel disoriented, if you will. On the other hand, this isn't to say I don't feel interested, or intrigued, or various other things one feels in a romantic/sexual situation--I just lose my bearings. I'm realizing this is especially true now that I'm a guy, and more-convincingly-a-guy to others. The concept of being involved with a straight woman baffles me--I never learned how to do it, and I generally disliked the girl/guy dynamic when I approached it from the other side. Am I expected to be the big spoon all the time? How am I supposed to initlate action without seeming like an invasive creep? Is it weird if I talk about faggoty shit? Do I even count as a faggot anymore? Am I just another dude? Is there anything terribly wrong with that?
I'm beginning to realize that I'm so fiercely (not in the Christian Siriano sense) faggoty because my ability to be a gay man has been so hard won (no pun intended.) There is a part of me, I admit, that feels like being gay--well, being "queer" in identity (as in having a varied and "radical" and decidedly non-hetero gender and presentation), yes, but "gay" in orientation, as in just into dating men--ties a nice little bow around my otherwise messy sex/gender life. Sometimes I get exhausted and sad trying to parse this all out, and declaring my orientation at the very least to be relatively simple makes me feel like I have some modicum of control, or even, dare I say, normalcy.
But then who am I to be so hung up on gender? Shouldn't I be open to women in the same way I would hope the boys I like would be open to trans men? Isn't a gender just a set of signifiers, and isn't there enough overlap of signifiers between genders as to render the specific label, at least in this case, a bit irrelevant? Can't I just buy into that old bi/pansexual maxim, "I fall in love with people"? Is it entirely necessary to consult a sociology textbook every time I get smiled at by someone who doesn't have a dick and a moustache, to use my friend Joey's phrase?
Who's to say. Clearly there's not a real answer to this nonsense, but this is what I've been thinking about lately. That, studying for the GREs, which are totally bilking my mellifluence.
