Gender Fucked

It's very strange being here. Everything is, for lack of a better work, normal in a way that I am not at all used to. I come from a unique place, I know that. It is easy to forget exactly how unique until I leave.

Where I come from, everything has been queered. Gender is highly variable, and is on display in a myriad of ways. That is my normal. I forget that this is not the case in other places.

And now I'm here, in the real world. There are no queers here. There are gay men and there are lesbians, but there are no queers. No butches, no androgynes, no high femmes, no fairies, no dykes, no sissies, no gender fucking.

It is suffocating in a way I don't think I could have imagined. There is no one here like me, no one who chafes at the boxes the way that I do. I am queerer than I look. Being here makes me want to try to look the way I feel.

"If I looked on the outside the way I feel on the inside, it would explode people's minds," he said to me. Exactly. This a million times over. At home it didn't matter as much, here it does.

It feels restrictive in a way that I haven't felt in years. Not since I was a child fighting to wear pants instead of skirts, begging to be able to cut my hair. I only won one of those battles, the other became an area of unquestioned discomfort, until now.

For some reason, when I was commonplace I needed it less. If I could see myself reflected in the people around me I didn't yearn so desperately to display it myself. And it is easy to be complacent when there is nothing at stake. That is at least half the truth.

The other half is that it matters more to me here and now. No one understood before and, even in my queer paradise, I was afraid. I wanted just one way that I could be normal and uncomplicated. I knew for a long time that it wouldn't work, but I tried. It's different now. I have someone I can talk to, someone who sees me. We look so different, and yet we are so alike. Except that he is far braver. He gives me courage.

I feel more and more like I am hiding. I don't look like who I am, I probably never will. I can, however, stop taking the easy way out. I can stop hiding in plain sight, disguised as a cisgendered, straightish girl (or as a lesbian, depending on who you ask).

At home it would have been unremarkable, here it will be a political act. More importantly, it will make me feel whole.

Checking in

I'm sure by now anyone who reads this is used to my incredibly sporadic posting style, so I won't apologize.

I'm settling into my new routine fairly well. School is much more challenging than I am used to, but that was one of my goals in coming here. I spent the first several weeks being incredibly miserable because I didn't know anybody. I'm used to having a group of peers to study with and the lack of that was difficult at first.

I probably wouldn't have made it trough the first two months if it hadn't been for Boy. After almost a year of casual friendship laced with sexual tension, we became much closer over the summer and finally slept together in August. Unfortunately, three weeks later I moved here. Since then, we've talked every day and been visiting each other as often as possible. He's incredible. Much more will be said on this subject in future posts, because one of the best things about Boy is that he makes me think.

So expect an onslaught of posts about sex and gender and kink and queerness, because I have an awful lot to say.

I'm Back

I should probably apologize for not posting in months, but anyone who bothers to read this has most likely come to expect that I only post sporadically.

So, updates...

Giant and I have come to some sort of peace with the fact that our relationship is ending. It's not ideal, but at least everything isn't as painful as it was before. Things would have been better if we could have talked about everything several months before we did. As it stands, I spent so long being hurt and frustrated by his lack of ability to deal with things that now I can't really be as emotionally invested in him as I used to be. I'm not sure if he really understands this, but he seems to at least be accepting of it. I'm glad, because it means that at least we can sometimes be friends again.

Because I attended (writing that in past tense is very odd) a rather small community college, and majored in mathematics, I've had essentially the same peer group in at least one class a semester for the past two years. Needless to say, we've become rather close. Now, everyone has graduated and will be following different paths in the fall. We are all going to miss each other very much, and one of my goals for the summer is to spend as much time with Skeptic, μ, Picasso, and Old Man as I can. I also plan to spend some time with Boy, who made a year's worth of General Chemistry bearable.

I think that's all for now, but I suspect more will be forthcoming. Expect another post to arrive in less than four months this time.