The Smell of Friendly Man

I went out with my friend Gadget to Oxford Street on Friday night, and made brief eye contact with a few guys, who lost interest quickly, which I put down to them working out how effeminate I am, when they are looking for a man. I woke up crying uncontrollably Saturday morning, cried all morning, and cancelled my planned trip to Villawood (to support the people detained there without charge or fair reason by our racist fascist government), because I kept breaking down in tears, and was not in a state to support anyone else.

Saturday was the day of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. There seemed not to be anything about my sexuality to celebrate. My sexuality just puts me apart from all desirable humans. A sissy boy is just an object of ridicule, not lust. I refuse to get artifical breast impants, I refuse to be dependent on commercially supplied hormones, and I really like my body as it is, androgynous, slim, boyish, girlish, ambiguous, faerie. I insist on just being a girly boy with a quim, but there is no demand for that. My sexuality is just an empty unfed unfeedable unwanted beast.

Trans men, there is a demand for. "Guys with pies", as one phrase has it, appeal to people who like men, because it is masculinity that is attractive, more than a particular plumbing arrangment. Girls with boy's bodies but without the bits boys find interesting (ie the boy bits)... there' s just not much call for it. Well, not with men. Women, yeah, sure, and if only I were gynophilic I would be well partnered. But I'm not, and I'm not, and I haven't been for years now.

Or maybe it's because I am hypercritical, or because I find the preoccupations of ordinary people to be uninteresting, repulsive, or insane (eg devotion to the violence-enforced authority of the state, the breeding activities of actors, or any bullshit physical competition performed by avatars for the commercial consumption of non-particpant fat passive absorbent spectators). Yeah, well, there you go, I'm not the most easy going social creature.

Whatever the cause, I have been without a boyfriend for years, and there is no sign at all of that changing. So, I cried on and off all day, trying to keep the noise down, losing a lot of salt, and often making breathing difficult.

A male housemate came home late, and when I had managed to stop crying long enough to look passably human, I joined him in the lounge room to watch something I'd taped from television earlier. We sat together on the couch for half an hour watching the video. My equilibrium returned. Just breathing in his body odour and/or pheromones seemed to reset my chemistry to functionable. If I was only twenty years younger...But maybe I just need to breathe him in every day or so. He chooses to spend time with me, and seems to like talking with me. He hasn't shown any sign that I'm sexually interesting to him, and that's fair enough. I don't find even my own lovely quim at all as sexually interesting as an erect penis, so I can understand and accept that sexual preference (shaped by gender or sex or race or age or accent or hair style or whatever) often precludes me.

There will be contact improv dance class on Wednesday (I did finally get to a class on time, and have had fun rolling around with my fellow humans at three classes now), and I will be able to inhale some male sweat there too. And probably just getting some fun and friendly human body contact is good for my human chemistry.

I tell ya, I could really do with some more effective strategies to avoid or deal better with these tragic days waking in tears, unable to find an optimistic thought about my feelings.

Or just make sure I sneak a whiff of friendly man on a more frequent basis.