When all that is good is spoiled.

For about a week now, i have been working a research poll involving the state of health care in our country today. It's an exhausting topic, and i'll spare you my thoughts on the subject in a broader sense. The personal is something different.

My boyfriend has family suffering from cancer right now.

I have seen people deal with it at my job caring for hospice patients. It is an ugly, horrific experience for anyone unfortunate enough to be stricken with it. There is nothing noble or dignified about it, and my heart aches for those whose lives have been devastated by it. To imagine the same random ugliness striking the man i love makes me sick with fear, and heavy with empathy for any spouse that is forced to sit and watch it happen to the most important person in their life.

My boyfriend has warned me that close members of his family are bigoted and intolerant, and that i will inevitably be rejected by them. He has gone out of his way to protect me from them, and so through no fault of ours, i am helpless to do or say anything other than love and support him alone with all that i am.

i once spent 72 straight hours alone with a terminal patient before she finally died. And all i could do was hold her hand, comb her hair, read her letters from family who did not want to be there, bible passages that she once had memorized before her mind failed, and clean her each time her body did the same.

i did these things knowing that, had she been more alert, she would have been disgusted with me for being transgender. In the short weeks i cared for her in her home, staring at her pictures and mementos gathered throughout her life in a small, religious, bigoted town, i realized that there was no point in hating her back. Instead i ending up falling in love with her like she were a family member. And when she finally died, i cried for days.

Despite being rejected simply for being different, or perhaps because of it, i have developed a belief that people should love those around them as fully and expressively as they can. Don't waste a single moment with those closest to you. Nothing should ever drive a wedge between you and the ones you love the most. Especially hate.

Inane Daily Life.

There's an odd fascination some people have with the mundane that strangers experience. So i guess i'll recap things my boyfriend and i have done, now that i've had breakfast. He's learned how important breakfast is to me.

The first date my boyfriend and i went on was to go see Frank Sinatra Jr. If your only experience with this man has been his appearances on Family Guy, i recommend seeing him. Fantastic!

I don't believe that it was the sight of a tall blond man and his smaller t-girl date that got the occasional looks as much as the three-piece suit and floor-length evening gown he and i wore. The crowd was much older, as we expected. But we were a little let down by the complete lack of regard for dress people had. It's a big band performance for a late-evening show. Come on, people!

At least a few people appreciated the effort we made. Maybe someone else will be inspired to try a little harder next time.

After going to the theatre to see Religuosity, we were with several other people in the elevator when it died. Really died. They were from the same showing as us though, so they were educated, rational people and my presence did not make them feel uncomfortable at all. It was a little quiet at first, but then my boyfriend made a crack about how it was the kind of situation you find at the beginning of a porno movie (! i can't take him anywhere), and everybody laughed to distraction and relaxed. It took forever for the spectacularly incompetent mall staff to get the doors open, and the air kept getting stale and too hot to bare. Each time the doors would be forced open, there was a rush of cool air, then bam. They'd close again. Repeat endlessly. It was lame.

I have a bad habit i'm not particularly proud of, because i'm pretty sure it's not healthy. i love horror movies. This is to my boyfriend's endless amusement, because i tend to get startled easily and am prone to screaming if suddenly overwhelmed. Quite some time ago i bought something i call a Demonic Clown Midget. It's a realistic, life-size figure of a...well. The title says it all. Just looking at it creeps the hell out of me, so i had to have it. For the week of Halloween, the love of my life enjoyed hiding it in threatening positions around our house, catching me unaware at night. The hysterical scream from me never fails to provoke deeply satisfied laughter from him. I need some way to get back at him by next Halloween. If anybody has any suggestions, email away.


For Halloween night i went to a bar for the first time in my life. He was dressed in a formal suit, with a gorilla mask and hands, monocle and cane. Sounds stupid, but it kept giving me giggle fits. i'm at a loss to explain why. i wore a geisha outfit with high heels, which is short enough to barely be appropriate for Halloween, let alone anything else. But it felt good to wear something like that once! And him being a typical guy, he strongly approved...

Our sewer backed up in our house. It was gross. My boyfriend and a friend of ours managed to fix it with some snake-thingy. The sewer water was everywhere in the basement, and it was disgusting. When they were finished, my man loaded the equipment all up and took it back somewhere because it was a rental. The mess was everywhere, and ruined a small carpet area. I cleaned and mopped it, and it wasn't pleasant. Did i mention that it was gross?

About a week after that, our furnace broke down. It gets cold here in the pacific northwest. He and i are from the same city in Idaho, and it gets a lot colder there, so we're used to worse. But still, in Washington a furnace not working is still a problem. He replaced something, and removed the corrosion from something else, and now it's better than it was before. He says he likes it warmer, because apparently i open up a lot with physical contact and am more cuddle-prone when it's not too chilly. i like being warm. Sleeping with him is the best, because aside from skin contact, he's like sleeping with a living furnace. He's a walking radiant heat source.

We're both trying to find new jobs right now. But the economy being what it is, we haven't had any luck so far. We're wondering how long it will be before we see any relief in some form.

Life inside a polling center...

Evil.

1.) Sinful, wicked, inferior, offensive, disagreeable, pernicious or unlucky. All of them inadequate and archaic concepts.
2.) Something that brings sorrow, distress or calamity.

Since i began this job, i haven't had my opinion of us as a nation more thoroughly devastated. It's not just our staggering laziness (*fake cough* 'i don't feel well', 'i'm about to feed my dog', 'i'm getting a headache'). It's not the appalling rudeness (if you're going to make a suggestion about what to do with my headset, at least make one that's anatomically possible). It's the widespread willful ignorance.

Polling a woman in some distant state who angrily babbles on about the risen Muslim Anti-Christ Obama is one thing. But when i am having dental work done, and the assistant who looks like she just stepped off the set of Little House on the Prairie whispers that she heard in her last church sermon that Obama has secretly worked for Osama in the past, well...let's just say that i wish i had even more atheist friends than i already do.

Most of the polling fury is over, but Proposition 8 remains. To begin with, i don't think enough people are aware of how badly (or cleverly) worded the language is. About every other person i sourced had mistaken the intent, and were going to vote or had already voted the opposite of what they intended. Most of these people were indifferent or undecided before, and had largely tuned out the 'media blitz' both pro and con. Hopelessly outspent by out-of-state interests such as the Mormon Church and the Knights of Columbus, even pro-gay supporters had not seen any of the half-dozen commercials done to persuade the undecided.

For african-american, native american and women's rights, our history has been one of ever-expanding justice. At the point of creation for this nation, we had no prior history, and the concept of discrimination was so institutionalized that it didn't really exist. That's the entire point with Proposition 8, and what makes it so evil. We know better. And yet once again, the Christian Empire has successfully trampled the humanity of others they fear and hate under the guise of 'love'.

i recommend that those who feel sufficiently outraged by the first constitutionalization of discrimination in American history cut the government out of their future budget. Refuse to pay any taxes whatsoever. There shall be no taxation without representation, and you are no longer represented.

Don't rely on the new administration and hope for the best. Obama opposes same sex marriage, and has stated this clearly. We have to scream louder, fight harder and march longer than anyone thought possible.

And the next time you have the opportunity to voice your opinion on the phone, take the opportunity. It matters. You live in a country where we have to beg you to take a few minutes just to give your opinion, while those in other countries would die to be able to voice theirs. Your t.v. show or date can wait.

Cycle Broken...

This has made me determined not to give up our fight. Anything *is* possible. But our fight does go on, and even former wins can become losses. Now i know that with enough effort, losses can become wins.

i'm exhausted from the night. i hope everyone feels like we do right now!

i have a boyfriend.

The impossible has happened. What was once my best friend before is now becoming my heart and soul. He is straight, and after much thought has decided that i am too perfect a woman for him to pass up. We are both fine with working around my physical issue and dealing with it until i can afford surgery.

A lot of women would love the title of 'girlfriend', and it does feel wonderful. But in a much more profound way when it's with someone you really know inside and out, who also knows you, and you both care for each other without limits. Introducing each other to our families will be a hurdle, but one we will do together.

Once quite some time ago i read this quote by Julia Serano.

"When I look into trans women's eyes, I see a profound appreciation for how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as the victims rather than instigators. In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for the right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world. In a trans woman's eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that's seemingly fueled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one's femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness, or passivity, it's a fucking badge of courage. Everybody loves to say that drag queens are 'fabulous,' but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking badass!"

RiftGirl's response to it on her blog was, "Whether or not there's actually a guy out there who feels like that, I'm still investigating."

There is! i have found one to prove it.