"...not like we thought it was!"

Jinny and I went to American Apparel yesterday.

I sort of hate contemporary fashion. I mean, I love fashion and the expression oneself through what one wears, the sociology of fashion, if you will, but...wow. Gold disco leggings.

It's not that AA (ha!) doesn't have quality basics, but their most fashionable pret-a-porter lines are just atrocious. I do see a few people wearing such things around Capitol Hill, men and women, and they are ugly. And tasteless. Blech.

It was amazingly beautiful out yesterday and it still is today. There is unseasonably warm May weather lately, leading to a "Severe Weather Warning" -- use sunblock! drink water! -- and other tips for the perpetually sun-deprived.

It's 88 out right now. And sticky. Unusual heat even for August, let alone May.

The oppressive heat seems appropriate: Big Love closes tonight, and I feel oppressed, heavy. Otherwise, I've had such a spectacular week.

This week I went to a fundraiser for a show that a friend is involved in and barely got in the door before I saw one of my former castmates inside, clearly involved in the same piece. I dashed away in a panic, quickly walking to the nearest bus stop and trying to get my heart rate back down. On my way through Fremont in the warm dusk, I stopped inside a small bookstore. Books are comfy; I understand them and feel at home with them. If I have an attack in public, frequently I manage to get around books to calm down.

I didn't do much besides skim spines as I walked around until I reached the poetry section, where, on impulse, I grabbed a fat, comprehensive Rumi translation and opened the book at random, reading the first lines that I came upon.

I thought, Yes! It isn't like I thought it was!

And I went back to find old friends, make new ones, and network. I felt powerful for the first time in a month.

When you eventually see through the veils to
how things really are, you will keep saying
again and again, "This is certainly not like
we thought it was!"

Talk to most men about male entitlement and they'll look at you like you're crazy.

I thought of a female friend of mine who once complained that sharing a room with a man took effort. "It's as though," she said, "his being there, his existence, demanded some of my attention." Talk to most men about male entitlement and they'll look at you like you're crazy. But it's real and it's more than just being able to walk around the city after dark without the fear of being raped. It's the way strangers look at you on the street, or the way they relate to you on the phone, or the way their bodies in space interact with your personal space. Think of the inconsiderate seven-foot-tall oaf who sometimes winds up in front of you at a concert and then imagine that man appearing everywhere in your life, stepping on your toes and stumbling back into you and all the while not so much as acknowledging your existence. Many MTFs experience these losses of privilege—the abstract privilege that's concomitant with masculinity—as a series of surprising, disheartening blows. Their gender transformation is going to take a bit longer than they thought, it turns out.

This week's The Stranger.

Stop being weird, Salt Lake City.

And all the other cities.

Although the Insect Man in Naples sounds sort of adorable, with his broken English.

Via Slog.

A second adjunct: 1 in 8.

Re: women's mental health.

1 in 8 women are diagnosed with major depression, which is twice the rate of diagnosis in men.

Ugh. Too much I could say about this: women not being taken seriously by mental health care providers, improper diagnosis and treatment of illness, differing cultural stigmas for men (not encouraged to step forward) and women (over-encouraged) regarding diagnosis and treatment.

Via NAMI.org.

And now, because I owe the rest of you all one:

I just wrote about 3/4 of a great blog about how much my really good male friends rule, as an adjunct to my "men can fuck themselves" blog. It all got accidentally deleted. Poop. I don't want to re-write it. I'm going to give you the truncated version now, in which I give some specific shout-outs to a few of the wonderful men in my life:

My brother-in-law, Kenneth, whose long-suffering patience with my sister and I does not go unnoticed, and my nephew, Roscoe, aged 3 and 1/2. Little boy hugs for a magical auntie are a good reason to get up in the morning.

My uncle Tim and cousin Dave, who would very much like it if I came to visit for a long, long time in New Zealand.

Jared, the first man after I got outside the hospital to make me feel like a normal person, not a fragile thing in need of being saved. He once told me You'll be fucked up forever, but you won't always be fucked up. Which makes perfect sense.

My friend Devon in DC, who takes the time to respectfully pray for me and check in on me in a concerned (but not smothering!) manner even though he's about to go on the biggest adventure of his life: fatherhood. I'll be an auntie again!

E***, the lovely man in Paris who I miss so much. Plane tickets out there are not too expensive...unlike Wellington...

J-romy, the best ex-boyfriend ever. I'm sure glad that hurricane didn't kill him.

My mentor, Tony Curry, the gayest straight man in Seattle and a wonderful friend and artist.

And, finally, the man who indirectly inspired my tirade: Anthony.

Normally, I give the men I date cute little nicknames like "Mr. Grey" or "Very Nice Rock Star". I don't particularly like to be known for the men I have sex with, because I like sex and, while many of these men (and women, when that happens) are interesting, fun people, I wouldn't describe myself as serious about any of them. None of them are interested in being serious with anyone and are rarely warm people. Fun is different than loving.

Anthony is the first one who deserves to have a name. He is the first man that I've had a sexual relationship with in a long time who treats me simply as human. A female human, to be sure, because there is a difference, but still. He was a happy accident, as I haven't been in the mood to date around lately. I haven't felt like I had anything to offer anyone, and besides, how do you bring up mental illness casually in a date setting?

Them: ...and so I got the Belltown condo after I got back from Oslo where I was honored with the Nobel in Literature -- don't you just love Norway? -- but I still mostly live in the New York townhouse. And then I got shortlisted for the Booker while I was volunteering at an AIDS clinic in South Africa, but that was before I rescued those orphans from that downed prop plane in Bolivia...and what about you? What do you do? Would you like another martini? My treat.

Me: ...uh...I make stuff...and noise...you don't happen to have a Xanax, do you?

Right? What do you say?

When Anthony and I met neither of us were looking for anything, so we kept upping the ante trying to scare the other off.

Me: You should know that I'm mentally ill and I refuse to lie about it.

Anthony: Okay. I've been arrested seven times. No convictions, but once was for inciting a riot.

Me: Whatever. I was hospitalized twice for suicidal ideation.

Anthony: You know, I was in rehab for that once. Well, that and heroin. I mean, I tried to overdose...it was thing whole thing, see, I was nineteen...

Me: Well, I was in this December...

It went on like that all night the first time we met. I guess you're not supposed to tell the other person all your faults up front, but I find it pays off in the long run.

I find him utterly remarkable: sensate, strong, masculine, loving, and brutally honest, Anthony is very much a man who lets me be true to myself, does not try to control me, and would not allow me to control him. His laugh, I think, is how I knew that I could trust him: I'm so tired of dating or being friends with men who can't laugh. They give you a tight-lipped smile and chuckle every so often, but hardly ever do they let loose with a giant belly laugh. I find that if a person can't laugh and feel that limitless joy, he or she can't grieve, either, and are either shallow or always slightly sad yet frightened of their own tears. And if they can't face their own pain, maybe they can't face the pain of others. When you love a person, you have to love their sorrow as much as you love their joy.

The fact is, meeting Anthony gave me a new perspective. He's the first person besides my sister and my therapist to tell me that I'm handling my illness well, and that he admires me and is proud of me for it. He's one of the only men to treat me like a regular person instead of an invalid, not like I have --SHHHH -- CANCER. My girlfriends* like Patricia and Jinny and Becky get where I'm coming from, because they've been where I've been, and it's no big deal. But these men in my life? Forget them for the clueless fucks they are...until I had this good person who happened to be a man treat me as the strong woman that I knew I was and not the sickly girl that the rest of them saw.

So...yes, Virginia, there are spectacular and true men who can be concerned and caring for women without being condescending, patriarchal assholes with oedipal complexes. And I know the difference between the two when I encounter them. It has nothing to do with owning a dick, just being a dick. We're all people, just trying to make it in the world, but I want to make it on my own with no one trying to live my life for me. So if you were a man who felt wrongly targeted by my last blog...well, for a start, you probably didn't read it very carefully. I'm sorry if you took the wrong message away from it. Yet this is my personal forum, where I am allowed to have strong feelings on many subjects and this one has a context that I have yet to include here. If you knew me well then you'd know that I'm far too soft-hearted to stay very angry for long unless you personally hurt me very badly. So I'm not sorry that I wrote it, and I'm not sorry that I advocate for women's rights, and I urge you to wait until I write about the context to judge my anger.

Or, call or write me yourself.

*This is not to say that I haven't met discrimination -- because what I was talking about, ultimately, is discrimination -- from women, but it tends to be of a much different type. Perhaps I'll blog about that next.