Dispatches From Tanganyika

Hear ye, hear ye! Now announcing the OOPS MY TESTOSTERONE-LEVEL BLOOD TEST COST $226 BOOK SALE! I'm offering first-edition, out-of-print hardcovers of GUILTY BUT INSANE, THE VALUE OF X, and THE DEVIL YOU KNOW for $15 each with free U.S. shipping. As always, books are signed and can be personalized.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/PZBART

Protip: Once you develop some confidence in your own gender presentation, it is really, really easy to embarrass strangers who misgender you. I don't do it on purpose to people who obviously mean no harm, but come on: there is no good reason to even speak to a stranger in a public restroom*, let alone challenge their presence there. A couple of years ago, this kind of shit would ruin my day, week, month. No more.

*Except possibly for negotiating restroom sex, but that's a whole other issue, and anyway you can always just employ a wide stance.

"WRONG: A Self-Portrait," acrylic paint, found hardware, and photographic self-portrait on glass, mounted on 12" x 16" stretched canvas. The screws and washers spell out WRONG in Morse code. When this piece is backlit (hung in a window or similar), this piece takes on an almost stained-glass-like appearance. $95 or best offer.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/160546706/wrong-a-self-portrait-original-painting?ref=shop_home_active

When I hear about the recent controversy surrounding Michelle Shocked -- whose music I've not listened to, but who used to live in New Orleans and was reportedly a fan of my books -- I can't help but think of my former friend Thing. She was never particularly comfortable with sexuality or gender labels, but she was female-assigned at birth, identified primarily as female, and had dated several women. She'd lived a very hard life: serious illness, depression, abuse by parents from a fundie cult background. She'd converted to Catholicism a few years back, but so did I, and it didn't make me any less queer/trans/tolerant; she seemed to take a similar nonjudgmental outlook. She hated the place where she was then living, and loved New Orleans more than anywhere else in the world. She had given me a lot of emotional support in my own hard times and I thought she deserved some happiness, so I helped her to move here by letting her stay with me while she found a house and lending her money for a deposit.

Everything was fine until I started testosterone in 2011. She'd known I was FTM and had previously been supportive of my decisions, but once I actually got on T, she just didn't seem to like me anymore. Maybe my sense of humor got cruder. Maybe I seemed more aggressive. I was definitely trying out a lot of new things, and hey, nobody has to like me. It made me sad that she didn't, but I could live with it. What I couldn't live with was the stunt she pulled while I was in Amsterdam that summer. I was relaxing, getting high, taking a vacation from pain, and most definitely not checking my e-mail ... until Thing sent me a text saying, essentially, "Are you mad about that e-mail I sent you?" Well, I logged on and found this MULTIPAGE SCREED about what an asshole I'd turned into, how it was a terrible idea for me to be taking testosterone, how she'd had another FTM friend who started on T and subsequently committed suicide, so I was probably going to kill myself pretty soon too, and gee, she'd just hate to see that happen, and also I smoked too much pot, and by the way, she had taken it upon herself to speak to my mother about all these things. Yes, while I was out of the country, she went to my 73-year-old mom and told her testosterone was probably going to make me kill myself. What a pal, right?

We didn't talk much after that, but since she was living in the neighborhood, I still saw her quite a bit. I also saw her car, which now sported two new bumper stickers: I LOVE MY "GERMAN SHEPHERD" POPE BENEDICT and YOUR MAMA WAS PRO-LIFE, DAWLIN'. There were always groups of people around her house with similar stickers on their cars. The last time I saw her, they appeared to be helping her move out of her house, and she was wearing a T-shirt that said I ♥CHIK-FIL-A. (This was at the height of that chain's push against marriage equality.)

I couldn't bring myself to speak, but I still couldn't hate her either. She'd tried to kill herself twice, she'd had enough misfortune in her life to drive any ten people crazy, and it was obvious to me that her main problem was self-hatred. More than anything else, it's sad to see people flailing away at their own identities like that. The religious right often refers to trans folk as "those poor confused people," but I'll take my kind of confusion over Thing's brand of certainty any day.

So for the past four months I've been injecting testosterone with a tiny needle because nobody told me different. Injectable testosterone is a thick, oily substance, and I would spend ten or fifteen minutes filling my syringe each month, then have trouble getting the stuff out of the needle and into my flesh. I finally saw something (don't remember what) that clued me in, and yesterday, for my most recent shot, I used a 20-gauge needle. It filled in just moments, and once I got past the fear of shoving that huge spike into my butt cheek, it was ever so much easier to inject. I'm kind of a slow learner.

I never pass as male so well as when I'm dressed in drag. On Mardi Gras, I wore a red and gold Chinese dress and a black cartwheel hat with a veil, and all day I was sir'd and sent to men's restrooms and so on. The next day, dressed in my regular clothes, I got called "ma'am" for the first time in weeks. Go figure.

Making art tonight. Hoping to list some new crosses and boxes very soon. Also, I'm on Facebook again. (Billy Martin in New Orleans, in case that link doesn't work for you.) Feel free to friend me.

Billy Joel is coming to Jazzfest, Ray Nagin is indicted, and the butcher at Fresh Market called me "sir." This has been a beautiful day in New Orleans.