The most comfortable sort of discovery from Shann yet-- barging in this time on me practicing makeup. And as soon as the door opened I couldn't help but sigh, say ~PLEASE~ don't say anything to me about this right now, and I somehow was able to look her in the eye (and thankfully I was mostly finished, and thankfully it wasn't the first attempt), and she must've made about a hundred different faces before she finally said "You... actually look... pretty GOOD." And I told her, carefully, that I had years of practice, I was just rusty. I could almost SEE the shiver that went up her spine. "What the fuck that's so WEIRD, you SOUND like a woman!" I've had years of practice there, too! And I'm far less rusty with that. --I almost started boring her with details about how plenty of men thought pitch was all there was to do with sounding more female, but it's not just pitch, not at ALL just pitch, TONE is truly what's important, and where you produce sound, and how you project it, and--
She interrupted me to ask if I wanted to be a woman (ending almost in an embarrassed, nervous whisper). And then of course I told her no, but that I enjoy being able to embody various aspects of ~the feminine~ after an entire lifetime of my family's neighbors dreaming of chasing me out of town with torches and pitchforks because of what they saw in me anyway. It's like owning it, I guess. Putting a spin on it. Yeah, i'm a he-she girlboy hermaphrodite faggot. Okay, and I'm also a fucking queen, even after the straight boys put away their he-she girlboy hermaphrodite faggot costumes (and after the clones and machos turned their noses up at us). ...And I hadn't been able to own it in a long time. Especially last year, it was more like putting on costumes to hide the he-she girlboy hermaphrodite faggot or whatever. And not even just for the band! I still don't know how the hell to be that fully and be seen as something beyond a thing to fuck or beat (every time I mention this to Pammie I can hear her smile over the phone and offer me various books to read, but sweetheart, when do I EVER have the time to read, and especially when have I ever had the time or motivation to read ~theory~...). Trying to find that confidence in myself again, though, and Shann being cautiously nice about things is a relief in that regard.
She did have various other questions of varying degrees of silliness (and some very good or important-- AIDS ones, for example, that were actually very thankfully polite), but I answered all of them, because I could tell she meant well this time. One of the BEST ones I was able to answer was about clubs-- she thought it was all about sex, and I told her it depends on the type of club, for one thing. And sometimes you're there with your dyke friends (or very nice straight ones) and it's just about catching up and dancing and getting drunk. Sex is always gonna be hovering around, at least, though, yeah. Like she said, we're guys. And yeah, sometimes it does mean nothing at all. But often, you usually at least enjoy the company of the guy you're with. You're dancing with him, you're smelling him, it's an active kind of wanting, and it's so often almost safe. Almost. There's always some distance. At least for me. But there's also an inherent connection. He's like you. You're like him. You're excited about it, relieved; you're dancing to usually-great (or at least passable with enough booze, coke, or speed) music with him, you're against him, you feel each others' heat.... it's sexy but there's a romance to it at the same time. It could lead to so much or to nothing else. There's that hope hanging between you, too, even if it doesn't have anything to do with serious or deep love. It's almost a different sort of love (not with every guy, but ones you REALLY gel with). Ephemeral, but still real. (I want to make music about that feeling, and deeper ones along that spectrum, even if it can't lyrically literally be about it, I can still sing it out in other ways...)
She said that it seemed to mostly be about sex for me last year, and I told her that that was mostly probably true. I was running on close to empty but I couldn't do anything about it. It was one of the only things left that felt truly GOOD, and was the least complicated out of everything (which is saying something). She went on pill benders. I did maybe half the pills she did and felt a bunch of guys up and got felt up, sometimes fucked, very rarely got fucked (I trust less and less guys with it. I don't know why. I just don't). "I still can't believe you felt HIM up." I mean, did you see his cock, sweetheart? (she *ALMOST* hit me after that one) He was drunk and horny and so was I. It was very stupid, but that's what it was, both thinking with our dicks.
"I didn't get to say this earlier, but if I have sex with even a SINGLE guy outside of marrying him I'm a slut. I've got people who think I'm a slut just for LIVING with you unmarried." Well, a lot of it's really about getting caught, isn't it (the people who think you're a slut for being together unmarried are just freaks)? If I'm caught, there's a real threat of my life being ruined. "Not enough to stop you, though." Not anymore, no. --I didn't want to belittle her experiences. I feel like people forget women even want sex sometimes. And it has its own stupid morality around it, and a lot of it really is still stuck in the dark ages. It's always crazy when I run into guys when I'm working-- from other bands and things-- that call groupies awful things when they're the ones that wanna fuck 'em to begin with. But it's like how it is with me a lot of the time: when you're the top, it's different. You're exempt, or it's something you're casting off onto Them, or they're a Thing and you're not, or, in the most positive sense, you know you're not going to be made a Thing yourself (and you can make sure the other guy won't be either). But anyway, things like that remind me a lot of what girls n' ladies go through. I guess they're just treating me like a woman, or some sort of woman-like thing, or... I dunno. Something along those lines. Sort of, but not quite, and angry at me about either direction of that 'sort of' and 'not quite'.
Anyway. It's so wonderful all that turned out as well as it did. Having that conversation in full makeup was funny... I forgot after awhile! It was just natural... and she got used to it, too. We get each other more again, I think. Or at least, I hope so. We get each other in a way that's more comfortable for us.
The more I do this the more I feel like myself. I feel ALIVE. That's motivation in and of itself. Walter doesn't like it, of course, but I also remind myself that I'm doing this for myself AND Cryssie, and that's even more motivation. I don't need more than the bare minimum of pills lately; so much of it is organic again. It makes it even easier to be good with Shann. It makes Benny's absence hurt... well, a bit less. It's almost over, though, which is good, because he's going to be going on the road with me, however long that is. He knows that! And I'd love to take as many guys and Marty as possible; I'd like for them to get paid. So we talked about it over the phone. Before that, too, he's going to have to re-teach me how to build a campfire, or whatever, ha. It is interesting to think about... I was laughing earlier about being with a bear in nature, but honestly, if he really knows his stuff... ooooh. God we might have to fuck as soon as we're done setting everything up. Anyway!
Went out to LR with Joe yesterday to catch up over some beers. Obviously the sex change came up-- there wasn't really avoiding it if we were really catching up. He told me that he'd always felt masculine, of course, but that being a butch lesbian still felt "off" somehow. "I was still being treated like a woman, and even being treated like a woman in nice ways, by women I loved, made me feel like shit. Which made me feel crazy." Then one day he was thumbing through one gay mag or another and came across an article written by someone born female who also felt the way he did, who started injecting testosterone and felt so happy with all the changes that happened from it-- body hair and deepening voice and the like-- that he also got his breasts surgically removed and started passing as a man full-time, in all aspects of his life. "Seeing that was possible blew my mind. I was excited but terrified, yeah? So I had to move and figure it all out on my own. Then I saw you were looking for a drummer and I just HAD to try out and see the look on your face." And it really was amazing-- I would've never guessed he was ever a woman. Crazy. It was so nice to see him so clearly happy with himself, though. Cryssie was, too. Very defiantly happy-- something I needed to see very much at the time. We toasted to finding ourselves (in my case at least, unburying parts of myself).
Dave's still holding on, but barely. There's more now from LR that're sick, too-- none close friends, but whatever-- and there's been a sort of pass-the-hat fundraiser sort of thing to have a fund for care for anyone who ends up needing it. I just cut Pat a check for a few grand, for now. Hopefully more where that came from.
--I could do a show just for that. More than one show, even. But especially a release party. Can I buy out LR for a night? Discreetly? Cover goes to that fund? A lot of ideas to think over... I hope Cryssie's still well enough for it. I'll do a show as Marjan just for that, just for her.
Hard to find time to write, but all for good reasons for now. All my writing energy was being put into writing SONGS-- and I was finally able to write about Ben just a little bit. Very quietly, wrapped in plenty else. But still there, wrapped in far less metaphors than usual (the usual is when I have to transform Teri into Benny, figuratively speaking, of course, with my voice). Ah, and everything's been so fun to sing, and so easy to want to dance to and groove to, even the slower stuff... AAAHHH I don't want to get too excited but then again... I DO! Got about a quarter of them put down so far. I've been trying my hand at some of the engineering side of things. I started picking it up here and there quite awhile ago, so it's yet another thing I'm dusting the rust off of. Vince has been helping a lot, and teaching me new tricks, even, though those tricks are still more and more translated through my own style (which itself is becoming more and more apparent-- which makes me think about the NEXT one, already, before I've even finished the first! Slow down, Julie...).
Having to plan a lot more of the promotional circuit crap this time, too, but that hasn't been too bad. A time where I truly appreciate Walter's assistance and expertise, and a time he doesn't have to trumpet that expertise to me at every second, because it's actually clearly apparent. Need to find someone for the videos, too... however many there'll be. One for Shann's song-- both of us are a little ambivalent about it, but it'll just be for fun. It's been nice having dance practice be something she gets into, even without that hanging over our heads. Our final act as a couple, in quite a few ways. I suppose in that sense, it's poetic.
Benny's home soon, and I'm looking forward to that quite a bit...! So much planning to do, but none of it is too overwhelming. Sometimes taking a bit extra, but not too much. Usually for engineering work. Sometimes I'll get home at three in the morning, but I'm used to getting home at all hours of the night and sneaking around. I just need to bang this out as soon as I can. As WELL as I can, obviously. I'm absolutely not cutting corners. I'm just so impatient about it all! Have to temper that with so much.