Field Notes In/On Transition
Rolling The Dice
Once again, I’m starting off with my horoscope via the only astrologer who matters
Pasted here is the current ...Virgo Horoscope for week of July 19, 2012
So...as you probably already know, I’m a bit of a nerd. I play D&D, I read comic books, consume unseemly amounts of movies, music, cartoons... I “collect” way too many things to list here without feeling shame. (ok, not really)...but lately some of these pursuits have been wearing a bit thin. 
Living out the only fantasy that has ever mattered to me, really, seems to take up a lot of the energy I used to have for role playing games, and reading comic books. I’m having a very difficult time being enthusiastic about what has been for the the last few years, my favourite pastime. Before Transition: I ran a D&D campaign, played in one, as well as other RPGs where I played super heroes, or monster hunters, sometimes, even actual monsters. 
Maybe this is a pretty obvious evolution of fantasy becoming reality... but my rpg playing hasn’t ever been an extension of my gender dysphoria, or at least I’ve never been conscious of the connection. For me, the RPG thing is (and always has been) all about creating characters, the same way I do in all my unfinished fiction. (That is to say all the fiction I’ve ever written is unfinished. Sad but true.) I sometimes have played female characters, but simply put, those were the characters that showed up as I rolled the dice and chose the skills, class, race and all that goes into creating a character you can relate to. So storytelling.
I was too self conscious as a kid playing D&D, that people would “find out” I was really a girl, if I played too many “girly” characters. I think my interest in a nerdier lifestyle path, though, made my pretending to be a dude all through adolescence, early adulthood, easier, than say if I’d been a jock, or whatever heavy macho schtick that young men cling to. I clung to the weird, outsider stuff, and in many ways it has helped me accept being different, confused, and ultimately become who I am now.
Now I’m starting to tell my own story, or write my own story, and not just in words here in this blog, or in my constant picture taking and showing off, here, and on facebook... but with the daily actions I take to live as the person I’ve always wanted to be. Who, of course seems intent on shattering my long held fantasies of who I would be “if only”. Any writer knows that characters create their own stories, more often than not.
Of course as the author, you do have to stand back and get some distance to make some tweaks and edits here and there. Because, just like in actual life: characters/people sometimes make bad choices, or more often than not; choices that mire their narrative structure in too much melodrama, overwrought symbology.
What I’ve been finding is that as Josie writes my path, my story has a structure that I hadn’t realized before. It is, as I suspected a slower narrative than I’m used to. Previously, with my various coming outs over the years as Trans, Bi, gay, or whatever labels were in vogue at those times, I had seen my own narrative of a series of attempts at something. Were I a fantasy writer, maybe I had written a series of books that never quite paid off whatever promise, each had held.
The long narrative. See: Cable TV, current comic books; DC’s New 52, for example is a year on, now and most series have barely told one story each....TV series, like Game of Thrones or Mad Men which many people view these days Tivo’d a whole season, or on DVD, the whole season, in one go over a few nights.)with it’s ever lengthening, widening story arcs is now in vogue... in the broad field I am a part of: Story Telling.
Now, I feel like I’ve just written the first in a series of best sellers. But in a whole new genre, not what I’m known for. I’ve got some long narrative ahead of me, indeed. I live for the plot points anyhow, so it’s all good. I’m in the mood to write my Opus, in fact. Keep watching the skies! (pronounced “Skeees”)
[nerd/segue to: Look at this awesome +1 Ring Of Dragon Power I got scrounging at The Dungeon Crawl that is The East Hastings Value Village on a Saturday afternoon.]
There are Traps everywhere (mostly of the “this awesome t-shirt stinks of cat pee” variety) size zero elf bitches, trolls, many oh so so many random monsters, and of course the odd, really awesome Bag of spangly holding (holds maybe a cel phone, lipstick, and buss pass at it’s limit) or Boots of Elven kind, (that make your hobbit feet look almost normal sized), rings, amulets of protection, many a sorcerous tome, can be also be found in the treasure hoard, if you know where and how to look.
You get the idea. I had a nice day, feeling sexily, yet appropriately dressed, in shoes that I bought specifically for this particular outfit. I love it when a plan comes together. This was the first time I kind of shopped an outfit over weeks of buying and rejecting things that eventually became this outfit.
I’ve been feeling pretty good about things yesterday, so much so, that it took only a little “Dutch” courage to go in for an eyebrow wax/threading. It was a pretty easy day compared to the “Big Wax” I got (and need to get again, sigh) at the same spa a few months ago. If getting hairs pulled out of your face could ever be called soothing, this was that time. Aside from that initial puffiness being just a such a weird ass sensation, that is, I think, etched in the perma-recall zone of the olde memory banks, the whole thing was quick, easy, and the results, actually exactly what I had had in mind. 
Could not have turned out better. I had a day where I felt like my charisma has been boosted, magically somehow, I found some awesome loot, (as seen in the pictures littered throughout this entry) including what is obviously a magic hat of some kind. I’ve taken an Ozymandias-ian amount of self portraiture in the last few days, as well as a little movie of me taking a “Walkies” in my neighbourhood. 
Having had as long a time as I have gone between games in quite some time (years, now) I’ve begun to understand that the best times I had gaming thus far have been with characters that I had created with big big backstories, and even moreso, when I was doing adventure logs of each game, and sharing them with the group.
That practice seems to have gone to the wayside in all my games, which in fact is fine, as it is game time consuming. I prefer a quick recap, and on into the game with a minimum of distracted nerd chatter, strewn throughout the session, style of play. So I’m not saying I want to re-introduce the logs back into my games, as much as I want to do them for my own engagement in the character I’m creating, as the game progresses. Both the games I’m involved in, have very long term kind of settings. If my characters survive, maybe I can build a nice long arc of my enjoyment in playing that role.
What I’m planning to do is make a page on here where I will update this sort of gamelog slashfic, that is, or was my specialty. And really what motivated me to play these games that I kind of hate “the rules” of; was, writing these tales of the sessions, told in the voice(s) of my character(s). I will also post some other of my character backgrounds, and whatever other ephemera occurs to me. I already have included some of my poems, and plan on adding some other things I’ve been working on recently.
Another interesting note, is something I’ve been chewing on, many (and by many I mean a few) of the other Trans women I’ve encountered since starting my own transition, are really anti pants.... reminds them too much of being male. I feel quite the opposite, and I’ve been playing with the skirts, dresses too... but I find as much joy in looking good in a pair of ladies skinny leg jeans, as I do in any skirt or dress I own. I feel the same way about makeup. Get me through electrolysis, and then some eyeliner, lipgloss, I’m fancy lady. I know this somehow. Maybe I’m a time traveler, just catching up to herself.
I feel like I really am figuring out my style. I tend to know as soon as I look at a piece of clothing, whether it will “work” for me, or not. Even with men’s clothes, I was never sure if I was wearing the “right” look for me. I knew nice things, but I really didn’t care enough to go beyond it’s obvious “niceness”.
The Transition, is not just about me becoming as “female” as I can, it seems to in fact be about me becoming the person I always thought I would “you know, someday” just become.
I see myself still as a bit of an outsider/beginner with every aspect of the actual transition part, but the bursting with ideas for writing, photography, movies, comics, and everyday working on at least one of these crazy ideas, that is something I recall fondly as being what kept me sane and okay with myself all through University, that I could and could do well all these different artistic things. I guess there is a little Revolution (by def. a full circle) in my Evolution.
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