Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 61
July 26, 2011
Permaboner
Dear cis men who went through puberty and trans men who have been through early testosterone therapy:
Between having sex/jerking off, thinking about sex, dreaming about sex, and planning/hoping/praying to have sex, how did you ever find time to live the rest of your lives? Can you give me any pointers? Hell. At least it won't show if the teacher makes me do a math problem in front of the class.
Love,
Billy
P.S. GOD DAMMIT I CANNOT FORMAT THIS ENTRY TO PUT IT BEHIND A CUT BECAUSE SEX.
Between having sex/jerking off, thinking about sex, dreaming about sex, and planning/hoping/praying to have sex, how did you ever find time to live the rest of your lives? Can you give me any pointers? Hell. At least it won't show if the teacher makes me do a math problem in front of the class.
Love,
Billy
P.S. GOD DAMMIT I CANNOT FORMAT THIS ENTRY TO PUT IT BEHIND A CUT BECAUSE SEX.
July 24, 2011
It's Called Being Broken
Y'all know how I am -- I don't listen to any music released after 1993. But if I see one more Internet fool going on about how Amy Winehouse "chose" her "lifestyle" and "chose" to die, I'm gonna punch a motherfucker. What the fuck is wrong with people who need to proclaim this kind of shit? Do they actually feel superior because they are not sick, broken, hurting addicts? If so, that's a damn sorry thing to feel superior about.
Sleep And A Book Are Good Medicine
So after not crying, I went back to bed and slept for most of the day. When I woke up, I found that I no longer gave a shit about the thing that had hurt me, and pretty much felt fine. This is also unlike me, as I've always been a world-class brooder and dweller-upon. Or I should say Poppy was a world-class brooder and dweller-upon -- maybe Billy isn't. That would be refreshing.
I didn't cry while watching footage of the tragedies in Norway either, though I felt (and feel) terrible about it. This is the kind of thing that has consistently made me tear up since the post-K federal flood. I don't know. Testosterone is turning out to be very interesting.
I'm not awake enough for cogent literary commentary, but I'd like to take a minute to recommend the collection We're All In This Together by Owen King. The title novella in particular is one of the best stories I've read in recent memory. I thought the book was new, but after someone on my Twitter feed said they'd read it a few years ago, I noticed that it was published in 2005. Granted, I missed a lot of things in 2005, but I'm surprised that it took me six more years to find out about this book. I also noted that (A) the book has an extremely non-eye-catching cover and (B) King hasn't published anything in book form since. Maybe he's just not a prolific writer, nothing wrong with that, but I hope his publishers didn't drop the ball on this book. I suspect cover art is becoming less important as the bookstores shut down and the business moves more toward online/e-book sales, but it was still fairly important in 2005.
I didn't cry while watching footage of the tragedies in Norway either, though I felt (and feel) terrible about it. This is the kind of thing that has consistently made me tear up since the post-K federal flood. I don't know. Testosterone is turning out to be very interesting.
I'm not awake enough for cogent literary commentary, but I'd like to take a minute to recommend the collection We're All In This Together by Owen King. The title novella in particular is one of the best stories I've read in recent memory. I thought the book was new, but after someone on my Twitter feed said they'd read it a few years ago, I noticed that it was published in 2005. Granted, I missed a lot of things in 2005, but I'm surprised that it took me six more years to find out about this book. I also noted that (A) the book has an extremely non-eye-catching cover and (B) King hasn't published anything in book form since. Maybe he's just not a prolific writer, nothing wrong with that, but I hope his publishers didn't drop the ball on this book. I suspect cover art is becoming less important as the bookstores shut down and the business moves more toward online/e-book sales, but it was still fairly important in 2005.
July 23, 2011
Crying (Not)
Sometime not long before I went on testosterone, I don't remember if it was on here or Twitter, I said I wondered if I would stop crying so much after I was on it and expressed the hope that maybe I would. You can get really sick of crying if you do it too much. Someone else who had experience with T said no, that doesn't really change. They were wrong, at least in my case.
Something bad happened to me last night. It wasn't catastrophic or even very serious in the scheme of things, just something that made me feel small and shitty and ashamed. Definitely something that would have made me cry before. But I couldn't. I don't think I've cried since I started T, but this was the worst I've felt since then and the first time I kind of wanted to, just to release some tension. I could feel the pressure of tears behind my eyes, but they wouldn't come out. I just got really quiet and really grim. Then I went to bed because I didn't want to think about it anymore and slept for twelve hours.
Not sure what to make of this. I never really liked crying, and sometimes when I didn't want to cry but couldn't help myself, I absolutely hated it. But it can be a hell of a release. If this is one of the tradeoffs I have to make, it's still well worth the benefits I've gained and expect to keep gaining from T, but it's ... just very strange.
Don't worry about me; I'll be fine. Again, this wasn't anything life-affecting, just a disappointing, shitty occurrence that I don't want to talk about except in generalities. Sorry to be so vague. I'm mostly posting this for the sake of my own timeline, as this journal is one of the ways I want to keep track of the changes I go through during this transition.
(I'm not saying here that men, whether cis or trans, can't or shouldn't cry. In my experience, they sometimes do. Again, this is purely my own experience and not intended to be representative of anyone else.)
Something bad happened to me last night. It wasn't catastrophic or even very serious in the scheme of things, just something that made me feel small and shitty and ashamed. Definitely something that would have made me cry before. But I couldn't. I don't think I've cried since I started T, but this was the worst I've felt since then and the first time I kind of wanted to, just to release some tension. I could feel the pressure of tears behind my eyes, but they wouldn't come out. I just got really quiet and really grim. Then I went to bed because I didn't want to think about it anymore and slept for twelve hours.
Not sure what to make of this. I never really liked crying, and sometimes when I didn't want to cry but couldn't help myself, I absolutely hated it. But it can be a hell of a release. If this is one of the tradeoffs I have to make, it's still well worth the benefits I've gained and expect to keep gaining from T, but it's ... just very strange.
Don't worry about me; I'll be fine. Again, this wasn't anything life-affecting, just a disappointing, shitty occurrence that I don't want to talk about except in generalities. Sorry to be so vague. I'm mostly posting this for the sake of my own timeline, as this journal is one of the ways I want to keep track of the changes I go through during this transition.
(I'm not saying here that men, whether cis or trans, can't or shouldn't cry. In my experience, they sometimes do. Again, this is purely my own experience and not intended to be representative of anyone else.)
July 22, 2011
Paying For It
The sins of Amsterdam were still a recent surprise
And we were flying over Scandinavian skies ...
Not much surprises me there anymore except rudeness: some tourists, of course, and the portion of the large expat community that seems to believe Amsterdam would be a much nicer place without all those uppity Dutch people. (This is seriously a thing. Not Dutch uppityness, but snarking the Dutch while living in their city and enjoying their tolerance. It reminds me of tourists who pee on Bourbon Street and then complain that the French Quarter smells.) Visiting for the first time as a young rock star in the '80s? Yup, that'd exhaust your supplies all right. So anyway, we've covered one of Amsterdam's two major "sins," decriminalized weed. What do we think about prostitution? Not just in Amsterdam, but anywhere? The topic has intrigued me lately, in part due to reading the excellent graphic memoir Paying For It by Chester Brown, whom I've admired for years and whose work was a big (though maybe not obvious) influence on Drawing Blood. I agree with Brown's argument that adults should be able to trade sex for money (or vice versa); that's just plain old bodily autonomy. And leaving aside (for the moment, anyway) terrible situations like human trafficking, it seems to me that the prostitute is very much in control of the encounter.
What do you think? Have you ever visited a prostitute (of any gender or orientation; again, I'm not just talking about the Red Light District ladies here)? Would you? Should others be able to? Discuss at leisure.
And we were flying over Scandinavian skies ...
Not much surprises me there anymore except rudeness: some tourists, of course, and the portion of the large expat community that seems to believe Amsterdam would be a much nicer place without all those uppity Dutch people. (This is seriously a thing. Not Dutch uppityness, but snarking the Dutch while living in their city and enjoying their tolerance. It reminds me of tourists who pee on Bourbon Street and then complain that the French Quarter smells.) Visiting for the first time as a young rock star in the '80s? Yup, that'd exhaust your supplies all right. So anyway, we've covered one of Amsterdam's two major "sins," decriminalized weed. What do we think about prostitution? Not just in Amsterdam, but anywhere? The topic has intrigued me lately, in part due to reading the excellent graphic memoir Paying For It by Chester Brown, whom I've admired for years and whose work was a big (though maybe not obvious) influence on Drawing Blood. I agree with Brown's argument that adults should be able to trade sex for money (or vice versa); that's just plain old bodily autonomy. And leaving aside (for the moment, anyway) terrible situations like human trafficking, it seems to me that the prostitute is very much in control of the encounter.
What do you think? Have you ever visited a prostitute (of any gender or orientation; again, I'm not just talking about the Red Light District ladies here)? Would you? Should others be able to? Discuss at leisure.
July 20, 2011
Coffeeshop Report (or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation)
A helpful substance has been provided and I'm in much less pain than I was yesterday. Like probably 80% less. It ain't Amsterdam, but it beats the hell out of writhing in agony. Gosh, this U.S. War on Some Drugs has just worked out so well, hasn't it? Did you hear about the man in Slidell who was recently sentenced to life in prison for possessing and distributing marijuana? Our tax dollars at work. I told this story to a few people in Amsterdam who asked why I don't buy some Dutch seeds and grow my own weed, and their minds were appropriately boggled.
This seems like a good place to discuss what I learned about the changes/non-changes in Amsterdam's coffeeshops. My understanding of Dutch politics is necessarily limited, so if you know I've gotten something wrong here, please do correct me. Basically, Amsterdam is to the Netherlands rather like New Orleans is to Louisiana: an island of liberalism and tolerance in a sea of conservatism. The sea resents the shit out of the island, but knows it is the economic engine that keeps the whole deal afloat (boy, is this metaphor getting tortured or what?). Several years ago, after the assassinations of politician Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and a general backlash against Muslim immigrants, even Amsterdam voters began skewing more conservative. Now, however, in the words of my friend Jason (who isn't Dutch but has lived in Amsterdam for eight years), "they're sick of the conservative government and there's a backlash against the backlash."
Whenever I asked someone about the coffeeshops banning tourists, the word I heard was "Maastricht." This is a town near the German border where, apparently, German people often visit, buy cannabis, and take it back across the border to sell illegally. I can't say I blame them, but this has caused Germany and France (which is having the same "problem") to pressure the Dutch government to at least close or ban tourists in the border town coffeeshops. This may happen, but hasn't yet. As for Amsterdam, a number of coffeeshops have been closed, but there really was a glut, many of them sold the same mediocre products, and some were certainly involved in money laundering. The numerous coffeeshops still open are doing business as usual; if anything, the scene seems more relaxed than it has in some time. The government banned alcohol sales in coffeeshops about ten years ago, but a few seem to be serving it again, and there are plenty of bars with smoking rooms. Incongruously, but in accordance with the widespread European policy of banning smoking almost everywhere, the government banned tobacco use in coffeeshops in 2008. Yes, you could smoke all the weed and hash you wanted, but absolutely no tobacco. These days, you still can't openly display a tobacco cigarette or a pack of them, but in most coffeeshops, nobody cares if you roll up some loose tobacco in your joint.
The current mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan, is a strong ally of the coffeeshops and finds the idea banning tourists ridiculous. He knows his stuff, too; when a reporter tried to zing him by asking how much a gram of weed costs in an average coffeeshop, he answered promptly and correctly. As far as I can tell, no one in Amsterdam believes this ban is going to happen in the foreseeable future, and if somehow it should, the coffeeshops will find a way around it as they have done with numerous other misguided regulations.
... I just realized that the above is probably the best-researched and most coherent thing I've written in years. No mistaking where my interests lie these days.
This seems like a good place to discuss what I learned about the changes/non-changes in Amsterdam's coffeeshops. My understanding of Dutch politics is necessarily limited, so if you know I've gotten something wrong here, please do correct me. Basically, Amsterdam is to the Netherlands rather like New Orleans is to Louisiana: an island of liberalism and tolerance in a sea of conservatism. The sea resents the shit out of the island, but knows it is the economic engine that keeps the whole deal afloat (boy, is this metaphor getting tortured or what?). Several years ago, after the assassinations of politician Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and a general backlash against Muslim immigrants, even Amsterdam voters began skewing more conservative. Now, however, in the words of my friend Jason (who isn't Dutch but has lived in Amsterdam for eight years), "they're sick of the conservative government and there's a backlash against the backlash."
Whenever I asked someone about the coffeeshops banning tourists, the word I heard was "Maastricht." This is a town near the German border where, apparently, German people often visit, buy cannabis, and take it back across the border to sell illegally. I can't say I blame them, but this has caused Germany and France (which is having the same "problem") to pressure the Dutch government to at least close or ban tourists in the border town coffeeshops. This may happen, but hasn't yet. As for Amsterdam, a number of coffeeshops have been closed, but there really was a glut, many of them sold the same mediocre products, and some were certainly involved in money laundering. The numerous coffeeshops still open are doing business as usual; if anything, the scene seems more relaxed than it has in some time. The government banned alcohol sales in coffeeshops about ten years ago, but a few seem to be serving it again, and there are plenty of bars with smoking rooms. Incongruously, but in accordance with the widespread European policy of banning smoking almost everywhere, the government banned tobacco use in coffeeshops in 2008. Yes, you could smoke all the weed and hash you wanted, but absolutely no tobacco. These days, you still can't openly display a tobacco cigarette or a pack of them, but in most coffeeshops, nobody cares if you roll up some loose tobacco in your joint.
The current mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan, is a strong ally of the coffeeshops and finds the idea banning tourists ridiculous. He knows his stuff, too; when a reporter tried to zing him by asking how much a gram of weed costs in an average coffeeshop, he answered promptly and correctly. As far as I can tell, no one in Amsterdam believes this ban is going to happen in the foreseeable future, and if somehow it should, the coffeeshops will find a way around it as they have done with numerous other misguided regulations.
... I just realized that the above is probably the best-researched and most coherent thing I've written in years. No mistaking where my interests lie these days.
July 19, 2011
The Prodigal Suitcase
It's frustrating to feel myself falling back into physical pain, and even more frustrating because I felt so good in Amsterdam that I halfway convinced myself I would be able to do some kind of mind-over-matter deal and keep feeling that way after I came home. I know that doesn't make any sense, but when you're in pain almost all the time and then suddenly for two weeks you aren't, you realize that you've forgotten what it's like to not be hurting, and the realization that freedom from pain is even possible does some kind of number on your head. At least it did on mine. It's like, "Oh yeah -- THIS is how you don't hurt! I can do this! It's easy!" Complete bullshit, of course, of the sort I'd smack anyone else for suggesting to me.
My god-aunt Anna Mary passed away while I was gone. We used to work on St. Joseph's altars together. The funeral is this morning and I'm trying to convince myself to go, but I'm not moving very well today, and I look very different from the last time I saw this family, and I don't want to confuse or worry them when they are already grieving. I don't mean gender stuff exactly, but the combination of having lost weight, having very short hair, and walking with a cane sometimes makes people think I'm sick. I recently had one friend ask if I was doing chemo.
My suitcase finally arrived home yesterday afternoon, rifled by the TSA, nice Dutch luggage tag destroyed, and a big crack down the side. At this point, I'm not sure I would put myself through the horrors of air travel again for any lesser destination than Amsterdam. We're not yet sure how well our cheeses survived the delay in getting home -- I just shoved them in the refrigerator as soon as I unpacked them -- so there will be cheese examination and diagnosis later.
My god-aunt Anna Mary passed away while I was gone. We used to work on St. Joseph's altars together. The funeral is this morning and I'm trying to convince myself to go, but I'm not moving very well today, and I look very different from the last time I saw this family, and I don't want to confuse or worry them when they are already grieving. I don't mean gender stuff exactly, but the combination of having lost weight, having very short hair, and walking with a cane sometimes makes people think I'm sick. I recently had one friend ask if I was doing chemo.
My suitcase finally arrived home yesterday afternoon, rifled by the TSA, nice Dutch luggage tag destroyed, and a big crack down the side. At this point, I'm not sure I would put myself through the horrors of air travel again for any lesser destination than Amsterdam. We're not yet sure how well our cheeses survived the delay in getting home -- I just shoved them in the refrigerator as soon as I unpacked them -- so there will be cheese examination and diagnosis later.
July 18, 2011
Home
As long as I'm awake at 5:40am, I might as well post to let everyone know I'm home. My suitcase, however, is still merrily touring the world. I last saw it -- well, its picture on a screen -- in Dublin, where I had a brief layover thanks to three legs of my return flight being on Aer Lingus. And I'll just take this moment to say: Irish airline food ... wow. I never expect much from airline food (mere edibility is a bonus), but they really take it to a different level. For lunch, we had starch, starch, and starch (pasta with beef, pasta salad, and a roll). Also, starch (oat cookies) for dessert. Later on, just in case we hadn't gotten enough starch, they gave us tea with massive scones. I didn't eat much, but I still felt decidedly starchy.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed my Last Hurrah tour, I'm no longer terribly worried about the Amsterdam coffeeshops closing, or even barring tourists. I learned enough about this that it probably deserves its own entry, which I will write sometime when it's not 5:40am. Also, apropos of nothing, it is deluging and the streets seem to be flooding outside. Which is of course preferable to them flooding inside. Ah, God, the joys of jet lag.
(LJ spellcheck believes "deluging" is a word. I wasn't so sure.)
Seems like there was one other thing ... but, if so, it has totally left my enfeebled brain.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed my Last Hurrah tour, I'm no longer terribly worried about the Amsterdam coffeeshops closing, or even barring tourists. I learned enough about this that it probably deserves its own entry, which I will write sometime when it's not 5:40am. Also, apropos of nothing, it is deluging and the streets seem to be flooding outside. Which is of course preferable to them flooding inside. Ah, God, the joys of jet lag.
(LJ spellcheck believes "deluging" is a word. I wasn't so sure.)
Seems like there was one other thing ... but, if so, it has totally left my enfeebled brain.
July 13, 2011
Hello
Hi, all. Howyadoon? Poppy and Rickey had a huge fight, fell in the canal, and were eaten by eels, which are still understandably pissed about the medieval sport of eel-pulling. My name is Billy (not Joel) and I'll be your host from now on. I still answer to Doc, though.
Also, I owe ![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380451598i/2033940.gif)
bart_calendar a big thank-you for reasons that will not be specified at this time. He may not even know why himself, but I do, o happy me!
July 11, 2011
Another Damn Coffeeshop Review
Though it's well-known and recommended by people who should know, I'd somehow never been to Basjoe. This shall not stand. Small, physically comfortable, and very chilled out, it may even replace my formerly beloved Goa, which has become a chain and raised the prices on its just-OK weed and redecorated to look like some kind of modernist Chinese restaurant. Every time I walk by it, I can't help mourning aloud, "Why? Why???"
Anyway, I procured a single, fat, beautiful 2-gram bud of G-13 Haze here at Basjoe and am now enjoying it greatly. Also, I heard "Piano Man" playing on a stallholder's radio at Waterlooplein flea market, which gave me an extra little boost of cheer.
