Pretty is not something I often feel

Let me open this one with a link:
Pretty is not something I often feel

Heather Ryan writes from the perspective of the plus-sized woman, and I guess I know something about that life, being somewhat large myself.  It's not the same, but I think I understand something of how she feels.

I have not entered into any sort of a relationship since my marriage ended.  I've had one casual hookup, and kissed a couple of people, but I've not dated or gotten as far as being "involved" with anyone.  I'm not sure I know how anymore.  I miss certain elements of being in a relationship, but I just don't know if I'm capable anymore.

The woman I married knew what I was when we tied the knot.   I think she knew better than I did, yet she still tried to engineer it out of me.  "I don't need you to do that anymore" was a common refrain.  I know better now.  Anyone I was to become involved with now would have to know all, and accept me, and love me for things to work.  "Maybe I'm just 2 demanding," so the song goes, but I've become an all or nothing lover, and I don't want it any other way.

It's not like I haven't been attracted to anyone.  It's just that my feelings are seldom reciprocated.  There are always caveats.  Can't be in a relationship with anyone I work with.  A lot of women who like me are turned off by the gender identity stuff.  I mean, they're cool with me being the way I am; they just don't want to be with me that way.  Some men find me attractive, but either they like the male side of me and not the female, or they're turned off because I'm too far to the male side of the spectrum to be attractive to them.  Those guys who used to message me on Facebook were much the same.

I can definitely relate to not feeling pretty.  It's not that I see myself as ugly.  I like to think my inner beauty at least partly shines through to the outside.  It's this body that puts me off myself.  I've got great legs, and all the walking has certainly helped me there.  My lumpy torso, on the other hand...  It's frustrating.

During my one of my trips out in January, I bought a new bra from Victoria's Secret.  I remember being overjoyed that they had something I could wear.  I got one of their "Biofit Uplift" bras.  "Biofit Uplift" is fancy VS language for "push-up".  I've never worn a push-up bra before, at least not with real breast forms, and so I wasn't prepared for the "uplift" feature.  One of the last times I tried to go out, I had to keep changing my top because of the bra.  I could've gotten away with showing a bit of cleavage, except that my breasts don't look that realistic without fabric covering them.  I ended up changing both the bra and my top, so it ceased to be an issue, but it left me feeling depressed, and that led to me canceling the trip outright.

Last month I went out to Skeptics in the Pub.  Walking from the bus stop to the bar, I bumped into a pleasant-seeming fellow who walked with me a ways before turning home.  We had a nice chat, I thought, except that he seemed to want me to come home with him, and I was reluctant to run off with a complete stranger.  I do have some feminine instincts.  Leaving out the usual self-preservation stuff, I didn't go with him because I got a little of a "tranny chaser" vibe from him.  Maybe I read him wrong, but I don't want to be with somebody who just wants me for the novelty of sleeping with a girl who has something extra.  I did give him my phone number, but it's almost a month on, and I haven't heard from him.  I guess I sent him all the wrong signals, too.

Counting Down the Days

Three days till I sit down with someone at the Apalachee Center to see if I can get back into an outpatient psych program.  Fourteen days till the release of Mass Effect 3.  One event fills me with a mixture of hope and uncertainty, whilst the other fills me with excitement.  Yeah, I know.  My priorities are out of whack.  If it takes the hope for a new video game to get me through the next two weeks, I see it as a small price to pay.

If I can get back into the program, then I can start seeing a therapist, get back onto antidepressants, and maybe get a referral to a gender specialist.  I don't like the idea of being dependent on chemicals, but I have seen what has become of me without them, and I'll risk a little dependency for peace of mind.  In any case, I'll know something in a few days.

It's been on-and-off, but I've been going out more.  I haven't been back to the movies, but I've done some shopping, and last weekend I made it out to another Skeptics in the Pub event.  This time I managed to get out en femme.  No one had anything negative to say, not even the folks who didn't know about that side of me.  It's nice hanging out with open-minded people.

I haven't let my love for video games dominate this blog, but I have occasionally let it have its way here.  Today is the latest instance.  This trailer features my character, the (real) female Commander Shepard.



This trailer debuted last night during AMC's "The Walking Dead", it shows a little of what the player is fighting for.



On February 14th, Bioware released a demo of the game over Xbox Live, and I have been playing it over and over.  They don't let you import your established characters into the demo, but you get to play as each of the six character classes, and they let you play out the game's opening level, as well as an abbreviated version of a later section, so you can try out some of the new abilities and such.  It's a great intro to the game and universe for new players, as well as a nice teaser for those of us who have followed since the beginning of the trilogy.  I have more to say about the game, but I fear it'd be opaque to most of my readers, so I'll abstain from a deeper critique.  Maybe after the game comes out I'll write something lengthier.

New Experiences

Monday was my first day off after several, and I decided I wanted to go to the movies.  I also decided to make this outing en femme.  I somehow missed out on writing about it, but I did finally get a couple of outings during the fall.  On the first I went out to attend that museum show I wrote about, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I never made it to the museum.  My second trip out was simply a low-key trek across town to pick up my meds.  I didn't have any real negative experiences, aside from the usual occasional laughter.  I can live with laughter.  It's much preferable to violence of any kind.

The weather of late has been wonky, even for Florida.  We've had cold, rainy days followed by sunny and hot.  Monday I ventured out in jeans and a sweater, and I was plenty warm, though I brought a denim jacket just in case.  I wore a pair of boots I'd picked up for just such an occasion, Merona Kamischel Lug-Sole Boots in Grey from Target.  I'd wanted to get out early, but I have motivational issues without my regular medication, and I got a late start.  I didn't make it out the door until 1600.

Vicki was nice enough to drive me up to my bus stop, and from there I caught the bus into the downtown area.  I then walked six blocks over to catch another bus which delivered me to the mall.  I arrived there around 1715, and to my dismay, the movie I'd come to see, David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn't start until 1845.  I had about an hour and a half to kill, and I had a little spending money with me, so I decided to shop a bit.  Tallahassee Mall has been on a downward trend for years, and there are far more empty storefronts there than open stores, but they have Burlington Coat Factory, Barnes & Noble, and a Victoria's Secret.  That last store was having their Semi-Annual Sale, featuring panties for $2.99 and bras for $15.99.  I bought one of each.  That was one of my new experiences.  I've shopped at VS before, but only bought something for one of my nieces.  I seem to remember writing about a previous trip there when I lived in Virginia.  I don't remember being treated very well, and I remember being put off because the salesperson wanted me to buy a poorly-fitting bra.  I didn't have that experience this time.  The salespeople I met were very welcoming.  The other customers I interacted with were nice, also.  The sale bras were "sorted" into bins by their band and cup size.  I'm wearing 38D now, and the 38D bins didn't have very many 38D bras in them, or even 38s of any size.  I guess a day of customers pawing through the bins would disorder them, and if they were as busy all day as they were when I shopped there, then maybe they didn't have time to re-sort them.

One thing I want to mention here, that I haven't gotten around to saying before, is that I've lost weight.  At my heaviest last year, I was pushing 230.  I'm down to 200.  Must be work and all that walking.  It's been nice, because some of my tops and such look a lot better, but it's also a bit of a pain, because my pants don't fit anymore.  For the last four or five years, I've been wearing size 12-14 jeans, and now they don't fit.  None of them, from any manufacturer, will stay up on my waist or hips without the addition of a belt.  I've gotten out and bought a couple of new pairs in the junior size 11.  They're a little snug, but they're comfortable all the same.  I'm still large on top, but I've lost a couple of inches in my chest, hence the 38 bras.

After VS, I hiked to the other end of the mall to Barnes & Noble.  I really didn't want to buy any books, but looking at them can eat up a lot of time, and it did.  I also got hit on.  There was this really persistent gentleman wandering the scifi stacks, and he really wanted to chat me up.  I suppose I should be flattered, because he either didn't "read" me, or he didn't care.  He said he thought I was hot, and he wanted to get to know me better, but it was getting late, and my movie was starting soon, and he made me nervous, so I apologized and told him I wasn't interested, and beat feet for the theater.

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo was one of the best book adaptations I've seen in a long time.  Fincher made a couple of changes from the novel, but I don't think they detracted from the story at all, and I think they might help if he's successful in making the rest of the Millennium trilogy.  I think Noomi Rapace was the best feature of the original Swedish productions, but Rooney Mara IS Lisbeth Salander.  She totally owned the character, from the "Fuck you!" street persona to the underlying vulnerability and all the nuances in between.  I love the horn earrings she wore in the movie, and I was much dismayed to learn that H&M sold out of them (as well as every stitch of the clothing line).

The movie didn't let out until 2130, and that posed a problem for me getting home.  The last bus toward home ran past the mall at 2145, and it took me longer than that to walk around to the front side of the mall where the bus stop is.  I messaged Vicki to see if I could get a ride.  She was tied up across town waiting for her husband to get off from work, so I walked up the road to the nearby Whataburger to wait.  It wasn't my first choice for either food or a place to wait, but there aren't many stores or restaurants in that neighborhood that are open late, so that's where I went.  I ordered a combo and sat down to eat and wait.  After the meal, I got bored, and decided to start walking.  I messaged Vicki to let her know I was moving on, and that I'd try to get closer to home so it'd be easier for them to pick me up.  That was the beginning of my next new experience.

I've been out walking a lot, but I haven't done much of it at night, and I haven't been out dressed as a woman.  This could have been my undoing.  I'd barely traveled half a mile from the Mall when a car rolled up beside me and the driver asked me "How much?"  I told him I wasn't a prostitute and kept walking.  A mile or so down the road, another driver pulled into an adjacent parking lot and flashed his lights at me.  BLINK BLINK.  I started to feel like I was in a bad movie.  I kept walking.  That wasn't the last time.  I was propositioned twice more, by one more driver and a pedestrian.

I couldn't figure why I was getting so much attention.  I wasn't dressed provocatively.  My makeup was understated daytime stuff.  I wasn't even walking sexily or anything.  Then I remembered all the casually-dressed prostitutes I've seen in my travels, all the solitary women I'd seen by the road in different places who turned out to be "working",  I was afraid that I was going to attract attention from the police, and I didn't want that, either.  I took the hint and got off the street.

The next block hosts a 24-hour CVS drug store.  I ate up a lot of time in there, and even purchased a few items.  Then I went out front to wait, and a few minutes later I was in the car rolling home.  I got home with just enough time to undress, clean off my makeup and nail polish before climbing into bed for a short sleep before work again.

Different Eyes, Different Vision

Here we are in a new year.  I'm going to try to write more often, and to stay on-topic.  That's as close to a New Year's resolution as you'll get from me.

I've written before about my experiments with feminine beauty enhancements.  I've gone on at length about my fingernails, culminating in last year's French manicure.  I've toed the line a few times with my eyebrows, though they don't generate the reaction they used to.  I guess waxing has become more common since I started.  Two weeks ago I decided to experiment with something a little more daring: eyelash extensions.

I thought they'd be something simple and subtle: a neat little look-enhancer that wouldn't be totally jarring with my normal day-to-day masculine appearance.  I've written here before about my mediocre experiences with mascara.  I decided to do the extensions almost on the spur of the moment.  I'd actually gone into the salon to ask about something else (leg waxing, if anyone cares) and was suffering from sticker shock over the cost.  I was determined to treat myself to something, though.  I flipped through the salon's brochure, and saw that they did eyelash extensions, and asked if they could do that instead.

Getting the extensions was certainly a new experience.  It's been a long time since I let anyone do anything that close to my eyes, and obeying the instructions to "Look that way" while the stylist leaned into my eye with a gigantic pair of tweezers was tough.  I survived, though.  The lashes I got were the shortest they offer, and they're still dramatically thicker than my natural lashes.  They were annoying at first, as I had trouble adjusting to the extra weight on my eyelids.  I probably unwitting batted them at lots of people at first, without meaning to.  I've grown used to them, though.  I like the look, but I'm not sure I want to pony up $25 every three weeks to maintain them.

Did anyone notice them?  They certainly did.  At least the women did.  The compliments have fairly streamed in, from ladies who thought they were my natural lashes to more observant people who wanted to know where I'd got them done.  From gentlemen, nothing.  I don't know if men are just less observant, or more circumspect.  I doubt it's the latter, though.  Men have always been quick to point out my manicures, and usually in a derogatory manner.  Maybe they don't want to admit to looking that close.

Tomorrow night's another Skeptics in the Pub event, and I managed to get the night off.  I am dressing up this time, so I'll get the full effect of how the lashes look with makeup.  I'll let you know how things go.

I'm a Photo Nerd Again!

That's got to sound a little weird, I admit, but I know of no other way to express the way I feel right now.

Last December, my little Olympus camera died, and with everything that came after, I never got around to getting it fixed or replaced.  You can argue my skill as a photographer, but I love to take pictures, and it's another form of expression that helps keep me grounded.

2011 was a rough year, and my opportunities for photography have been few, but that's in the past.  My Dad was generous enough to send me WalMart gift card for Xmas, and I used it and some of my own money to buy a new camera.  I got a Fujifim FinePix T190.  Real photographers will no doubt scoff at my toy.  I, on the other hand am very happy.  Thanks, Dad.

Just a Thought

"Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement." - Lewis Thomas

I don't know about the rest of you, but statements like that give me a little endorphin rush.  Would anyone else like to share in my wondrous tizzy?

Happy Halloween!

Two years ago I went out dressed for Halloween in an actual costume.  I was hoping to get back out again this year, but work intervened.  I was planning to resurrect the witch idea, with a new corset top, pointy shoes and some spiderweb tights I picked out, but it wasn't to be.  I got another idea for a costume I could have worn to work, but they don't do that around here, so I came to work in the costume I wear every other day.  It's especially grating because my family are hosting a themed party at home.  All the kids are dressing up, and the adults too, I think.  Dinner is potluck, but my sister was making up deviled eggs when I left this afternoon.  I do hope they save me some.