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.
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.
5 Comments:
At 17 March, 2006 08:54, Anonymous said…
dear norrie-may,
it was with some sadness i read of your current distress over the lack of a meaningful relationship in your life. i've followed your web site for a while, and we even met briefly at uwa about 25 years ago.
now i don't want to be hard, but it seems a bit rich to complain of lack of sexual attention when you've gone out of your way to remove (or not add) any distinguishing sexual characteristics. or more bluntly, with no tits and no dick it's no wonder the phone ain't ringing.
i'm reminded of plastic surgeons who cut off the occasional additional toe or finger that crops up in newborns. this procedure is often entirely cosmetic, with some attendant risk from the anaesthesia. but six fingers is a huge turn off for many people. so you either turn the child into a postergirl to educate the world about how silly it is to be turned off by six fingers, or you cut it off.
so i suppose you've done your best to educate the world how silly it is to be constrained by notions of male/female, though at an individual level it still seem the best advice for anyone who changes gender is to go all out for it. fabulous tits, muscular arms, whatever. stack on those secondary sexual characteristics, get yourself a date and someone who'll care for you.
regards,
christopher
At 17 March, 2006 10:45, Norrie said…
You could well be right, I think, and gaining secondary sex characteristics may well be necessary for me to attract a partner.
It just feels so internally wrong, disguising my androgyny, altering a body I am personally very happy with, changing myself so that some man will accept me, and I don't mean just in a non-sexual way.
The follow up post in my more personal blog, eunuchlove, discusses issues I have about buying hormones. But it may be that I just have to be humble and admit I was wrong and everyone needs secondary sex characterstics to be sexually attractive.
I am wrestling with this, but I'm not rushing to make a decision until Mercury stops being retrograde on the 26th of March.
In the meantime, in the spirit of Lent, I am just trying to be with this seemingly lightless situation.
At 20 March, 2006 19:50, Norrie said…
No, I changed my mind again, after deciding on hormones for sure. Sorry Christopher. The story and swings are at my more personal blog, eunuchlove.blogspot.com
but here's the turning point post:
-----------------------------
Right of Reply
I just watched my naked body in the mirror, and I think it's okay, it's sexy. What is WRONG with you guys???
I started off a little suspiciously, noticing the lack of secondary sexual characteristics, being critical and wondering if itwas normal for my chest to be so curved from a front view. Then I figured I was being hypercritical, and acknowledged that I didn't look so bad, and could even see that I was fanciable, but I just didn't compete well against someone with a similarly healthy human body but who also had....Special Features to that body! Men and women have "special features" on me.. well, I might have a special feature too, I thought, for just then my core muscles engaged and animated my form like a tantric yogini with flowing abdomenal ripples and the dance of Shiva in my spine.
So, that' s what I'm going to be today. I'm miles away from being sexually attractive as a woman, so in the meantime, androgynous dancer is all I got. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I think everything is right with it, and I don't like the idea of changing it... but I understand why I have to change it, and I will change it, I promise...
No, bullshit, this is my Right of Reply, and I do NOT promise to change my body, I am the part of me that loves my body absolutely as it is, and I want to keep its beautiful sexy androgyny, the whole physical form animated by my dancing soul, exactly as lithe and boyish and effeminate and completely womanly as it is.
Time for my morning exercises now (ten minutes for the Tibetan Rites, go on, google them and do them, you won't be disappointed... oh hang on, what do I know? I'm supposed to be the one with crap unsexually attractive body aren't I? ["Unsexually attractive" I'll save that phrase for later cogitation...] Well, whatever,
NO, I don't have to talk myself back around before I finish this post. This is the Right of Reply, since no one else will speak up for my body as it is. Unsexually attractive.. well, maybe that is what I am, and maybe that can work too, being attractive because of my relative lack of sexual differentiation.
And, fuckin', what's fuckin' unsexual about it? Fuckin' look at it! There's certainly nothing unattractive about it!
Except for the opinions of others.
[Sit's back in head. thinks: this could be an interesting morning. never a dull moment in this head.] [slight break for Tibtan Rites, and eye exercises in half shoulderstand]
Why should I give up the smell of me for the smell of them (men)? There would be nothing left to love... If I give up the things I love about my body in order to get loved, how much of a loving person have I left myself?
I'm not just gaining a womanly body if I go on hormones, I lose the smell of ME. So maybe no one else likes it, I like it.
And I don't want boobs in my face when I'm doing a shoulderstand. I love my body as it is. And my love is a litte angry that you would dare contemplate diminishing it for the sake of the opinions of others....
Time for the shower then...
At 30 March, 2006 04:49, Anonymous said…
dear norrie-may,
its hard not to be impressed with your convictions and of course you should do what you think is right.
that said, feeling comfortable with your own body is neither necessary nor sufficient for a relationship.
i think people romanticize the raw power of sex. to me it's about fitness for reproductive success and whatever else gets sexualized on the way to that lofty goal. a literal battle as sperm fight it out, the feotus poisons the mother and then the trauma of childbirth.
deal me in.
christopher
At 31 March, 2006 10:36, Norrie said…
Feeling comfortable with my body is something I need for a good relationship with my body.
Some say that's where heaven is, in the perfect union of soul(mind) and body.
I think there's more to sexuality that direct reproductivity. There's also social bonding, and mentoring, and love and affection.
I believe my (androphilic) sexuality to be inherent, and that it is inherent in at least a fairly constantly significant proportion of the Y chromosoned human population. The same seems true for lesbianism. Perhaps this led to ancient tribes out-thriving any others without this trait (in a certain proportion), because it benefits the survival of the tribe to have non-breeding adults who can care for others'children and be mindful of the whole tribe, not just their own family, who often enrich the souls of all without being themselves directly obsessed with their own offspring, and who may help the sexes relate better to each other... and may even increase individual health and self acceptance, for we all blends of yin and yang.
I think my self-acceptance has already borne fruit. I got lucky at the sauna yesterday : )
And a big vote of confidence from the fucking public!
More at eunuchlove.blogspot.com
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