"sleeping in piles" -- a discussion

Dear Chelsea, As you know, I have had a lot of experience bedding down with various assortments of people. Some of my favorite memories are from doing so. For the past few years, however, I have been trying to escape (as I so often do) from such multiple encounters because I have been "valorizing" -- a good academic word -- sexuality that involves me with men. This has been so destructive in so many ways, yet there is always the allure of doing what is socially validated for women to do -- have sex with men. Associated with this recent tendency to couple with men have been my drug use, (crack) which makes me compulsively give blow jobs (sorry to mention this); and an attempt to be independent (stand on my own two feet) and not depend on other transsexuals or women for my self-definition. I feel that whenever I do so, especially in a two-way relationship, that there is competition and conflict about who is the "most womanly." Back to sleeping in piles. For me being with many other transsexuals at once was liberating in that I could at last feel equal and safe and equivalent to my partners. We all had something in common and that was a somewhat amorphous/fluid sense of self which did not stand up well when attempting to function within categories of gay/straight/woman/man. There are some emotions, some caresses that only a trannie is capable of, and that only that another trannie can reciprocate. When you're in a pile, love seems to have no bounds. Also, it is generally a way to lower barriers that transsexuals put up against the world to protect ourselves. We always try to hide, to disappear, and this multiple sexuality allows us to represent our full selves with a number of others like ourselves, giving strength, "confidence" and a measure of human fulfillment. The reason why it seems that multiple encounters work better than one on one encounters to achieve these goals is that the Feminine Archetype (the Goddess) is grounded in us (as transsexuals pre-op, non-op and post-op) through each of us being at once aspect and whole of the community which we make. For us to separate means to seek being "outside the herd" and lessens the divine sexual communion. I best remember, of course, Bear Mountain, when about seven, eight, or was it ten of us, were in a van at Bear Mountain State Park in New York. You and Barbie and Kelly Bishop began to "publicly demonstrate" your affections, with Kelly being the encourager of others (at least me) to join in. I can tell you that I felt that I was losing boundaries and inhibitions that kept me from being in touch with my own humanity. I was in awe of your perseverance with Barbie, and I felt gladdened to express my own sexual power with you. As the long (was it six hour) evening passed, each of us encountered every one else, and communicated love and caring in a dance of warmth and eros. The next day I remember going to "Survivors of Transsexuality Anonymous" and announcing to the group that I had been with everyone in the van and that the sex was liberating and far more helpful to me in coming out to myself than going to that twelve-step group for months with people desperately clinging to every aspect of their male identity that they could. Sexual and Gender Liberation went hand in hand, and in the one or two years afterward that our group, often changing members, encountered each other in the van, traditionally with copious amounts of marijuana, I made many acquaintances and relationships that I hoped would be life-long. I remember one evening going over the Brooklyn Bridge with K.D. Lang singing "constant craving" and thinking that I was living the epitome of love. Just two more paragraphs and I'm done. As an introduction to one's self and to communal sex, sleeping in piles is a great help. However, sometimes it can be abused when lesbian transsexuals, especially, make compulsive passes at others to join in. I think this reflects a certain lack of maturity that may dissipate with time. I learned to be the focus of one such group for a brief time, and I realized that being the mother or teacher of such a "herd" is a great responsibility, that it is a way to gain respect for oneself and others, and that it can bring into the world community where none existed prior. It is a self-run, self-originated and self-regarding way of becoming who we are. No doctors, no peer counselors, no rules or outside expectations is capable of this. I hope the above is helpful. Please e-mail me and let me know. Love, Julia

A depoliticization of fear

Trying to be feverishly focused when I need to be relaxed and communicative often interferes with my goal of accurately conveying my thoughts in a manner helpful to myself and others.

I am at the library, again. I cannot use my computer, which I just bought last week, because it is not hooked up to the internet.

Topic A for me, as usual, is my personal happiness, which is perhaps annoying to you my readers but for me is an absolute necessity, given that I have tried to survive with next to none, and have found that I CANNOT do so.

So, I'll just write what comes to mind related to the above paragraph.

As I sit here, I am aware of potential threats from others to myself and from myself to others. I am simply always aware that if I look at someone the wrong way I may suffer some unpleasant consequence. This condition in my awareness causes me to be anxious and perhaps a little withdrawn. These feelings interfere also with my feeling happy. So?

I think that perhaps this feeling of tension is purposely produced within the structure of this society in order to keep people like me (transsexuals) permanently on edge and thus unable to effectively live our lives. Perhaps this sounds paranoid. I can only cite the fact that it is much easier for non-transsexuals to ignore, blame, derogate us rather than for them to address their insecurities, which are produced within the very same society.

To me, political person that I am, the question thus becomes, in whose interest is it that these feelings are present? As usual, the answer seems to me to be anyone who benefits from the absence of the expression of love in social relationships. These are the people who are afraid of losing the face of domination, who either prefer or do not know how to reject the cold comfort of sadism -- not the fun kind -- for simply being alive. The fact that there are such people (and I have often felt that in my past I often verged over into this category) means that the need for change is still present, and still compelling those who can answer its call.

I should say here that the way I define this change is -- personal liberation. I know for myself that it is only by losing fear of myself that I have been able to work my way up to writing something like what I am writing now. The crux of personal liberation is sexual and gender liberation: when no one fears themselves or their sexual and gender impulses/identities/practices/selves, then violence and hatred must be visible and limited rather than invisible and insidiously omnipresent. That's what I hope.

Since it is better to live these changes out rather than endlessly describe them and analyze them, I will allow the pudding to be the proof.

Love,

C*

P.S. I've been seriously delinquent in being kind to others. I know what I need: friendship.
There's still a lot of fear of the world. And I can be happy.


P.P.S. Ms. CEG, thanks for being my friend the other day.

Leaping Lamentation

Worst Words from a Shady BITCH


Cast before me, often I see
Creatures of vast number,
All of them me.

Dykes and Didacts, failures and friends;
They wake me from slumber,
And capsize my trends.

As kind and helpful as I have been,
They see no other than
Honey as weapon.

They call out Her names at all the corners;
Thus She has found me
Preaching and Leaching and Scratching the mourners.

Now that I'm flushed out (with all of me here),
I say pleasantry's a Woman
That one ought not jeer.

Foreign Body

Mary
Crack
Strength
Julia

Happiness
Love
Friendship
Boring



As far as I know the only words that serve to describe the condition I am in today are:

Bowling
Targeting

Bisexuality

stamp out targeting

Since there is such an undeveloped basis for writing anything cogent or useful or even expressive and emotional, I have no other choice than to make sure you read this.

Tessier-Ashpool

(Remember those names, CG?)

Fined the place where I go wrong

Feelings afraid of strength.


Strength as hateful as a fool.


There is time now to understand the vagaries of friendship and trust.

There is hope that coming to terms with failure will allow me to understand why I hate Sylvia for taking feelings that I could not accept and making them something that gave me nourishment.

I can only say that when I was the age I was at then -- 35-38 -- I knew that people wanted beauty and that they saw that in me. I resented having to be the image of the beauty that I had even though at times I reveled in and took advantage of that need of some who were very close to me.

I was feeding and fed.

I was giving and given.

I was hated and hateful.

Certainly there must be a way that the knowledge that I have betrayed the person that could see beauty in others as well as herself can keep me from destruction. I don't know.

People need to seek happiness and that means that I must ask for myself of myself what it is that I know, sustain, feel and bring to life that is not destructive.

Craziness
Hate
Happiness
Strength
Taste

Crack.

Believe.

Love,

C*

WTF

When your best friend is arrested for a serious crime and other sundry associated activities come to light, what is the best response?

WTF.


I hope that she finds what she needs to find, and that time will diminish the pain for all of us, her included.

P.S. I'm sorry for any needless WTFs I may be responsible for.

Love,

C*

Goddess as Lover

New York is the perfect place for a maniac.

I used to sense my mind shifting its various plates, angles and gewgaws in rampant instability as I roamed the streets of the Wes Village trying to fulfill my roles as ecstatic wanderer, sham hustler, misfired observer and seeker of the immediate comforts of lit-up byways, people and other scattered sustenances for my questing, disintegrating neediness.

Angry and frightened, weakened by self-doubt and impersonal mental tortures, I found there was escape into the always altering setting of people whom I would never know, and who would never know me. I loved to put on a self-conscious show as a mysterious presence slipping past those who safely belonged to the neighborhood on my way to some often really dubious assignation with a person, substance or simply a shelter from my incessantly molting consciousness. I was an urchin and I was in my early forties.

Everything changed when I lost my home(s) in Brooklyn, Hoboken and the Catskills and became briefly genuinely homeless. Then the brilliance of the sun and the reassuring green of June foliage became backdrops for hard benches to sleep on and indiferent people from whom to wait for a kindly look or an offer of a meal. I discovered the desolation of being ousted from a cocoon I wilfully shrugged off in favor of crack.