A transgenderist and two transsexuals took a canal boat holiday. No, that’s not how we describe people now, but it was how they would have described themselves, then. They were on a lock, water flowing sedately through, boat rising slowly, unhurriably, and people on the tow-path were staring at them. The TSs were getting more and more uncomfortable. So eventually Janett just stared back, and turned her wig around.
Passing through the speed of light-
I said, “I met this hurting woman. I so want to absolve her!”
Well, they would stare. Women on a boat like that would not be wearing skirts, probably not make-up.
-certainly not matching shoes and bags.
I found when in the supermarket in a ball gown I wasn’t stared at, generally.
-Perhaps they were frightened!
You said you were a feminine man. What do you want?
(Oh buggrit, let’s not talk of reverting.) I kindof think my current compromise is OK. I am readably trans.
People stare, people don’t stare. The stare can be a threat, of mockery or violence. Mockery is a threat if it raises echoes inside me, if I think I am laughable, ridiculous or disgusting. It could just be curiosity. We are curious creatures.
I want to be stared at, as actress-provocateur. I could not make sense of this…
I am never enough, I never see in time
What do you want? Where do you want to be in five years’ time? What do you want to have or be or do?
If I don’t feel safe, it is reasonable to want safety. You see I am absolving myself. I have always done my best. If I feel a failure, if it has always seemed been too difficult for me-
You said, Readably trans. How does that work for you?
Well, it’s where I feel capable of being myself. I don’t shock and provoke. My presentation and people’s first impressions of me do the work I want them to do.
Does that not depend on their level of understanding?
Well, the authoritarian won’t like me as a feminine man, a trans woman, anything. As best he can he perceives who I am. The Liberal will accept, but not be surprised.
I was read in Bewiched as lower class. I was looking at the Guardian, and someone offered me the Express. I said, “I’m left-wing”.
The curious stare bothers us because we fear the other will see what we don’t want them to see because we don’t want to be like that.
This is who I am…
Stop fighting it…
♥♥♥
So. Absolution. Stop fighting it. This is who I am, I have always done my best, if I am where I am it is because it has not been as easy as I hoped. “Passing through the speed of light” means stopping fighting it, deciding what I must do now to escape and forcing myself to do it against all my lack of motivation and even revulsion and just accepting. This is where I am. I might then find something I wanted to do, and do it, and I might not. I can’t want it from this side of absolution.
Or something.
I read this morning in the NYT about procrastination, exactly as I had seen it- the procrastinator is smitten by the perfect picture of that which is yet to be born; he falls under the spell of all that purity and splendor [but]… is fully aware that all that has to go… [He must] be the one who defaces the ideal and brings into the world a precarious copy. Non-inclusive language. Possibly I should not link to something that writes like that, but the writer expresses it as I had. So my attitude changed: No, if I do it, it will just be wrong. Everyone will judge it and find it wanting. However simple it ought to be.
I judge myself harshly.
So stop wanting to do anything. Hello. This is me. Where I am.
Clare Flourish 
