TRANS TURBULENT AIRLINES

 Hello Friends,

I’m back to continue my deep expose on the current state of the LGB  TQ community. The recent Dave Chappelle comedy special set the table for a huge discourse on issues surrounding trans women in particular — what kinds of jokes are transphobic? [answer: mostly the ones told by non trans people]

who is more marginalized, black folks or trans folks? [answer: black trans folks]

what was the true nature of Dave’s friendship with trans comedian Daphne Dorman? [answer: token trans friend]

What did it really mean when he said he was “Team TERF”? [answer: I am still transphobic but I’m trying to understand things]

Friends, I’ll have to admit that for the past couple of years I was cruising along not even thinking much about “trans issues” at all. During the year that I hid my face under a mask, something magical happened. I finally grew some facial hair — enough to earn “passing privilege” and to forget a time when the horrific slur “ma’am” was hurled at me everywhere I went, even if it was not meant to be hurtful. Some weight gain and some hair loss also contributed to my overall masculine presentation. I was thrilled, and because things were going so well for me transition-wise, I ass-umed all was fine in the community at large.

WELL, I WAS WRONG!!! There is a lot of shit hitting the fan, and some of it is of valid medical concern. Some of it is of valid social concern. And some of it is just pure transphobia rising to the surface because these valid medical and social concerns have started popping up.

I will give an overview of some of the turbulence affecting the trans community, and then I will give direct attention to some of the very special TERFs I have encountered.

First of all, it turns out that a lot of the people who were coming out as trans in 2015 are not really trans. Even back then I thought, is it possible that there are this many transes?? I mean, when I was a kid I knew, like, 2 people who were gender non-conforming, including me. And even we would never admit that we felt the need to live as the opposite gender full time. But in 2015, it seemed like a sizable portion of the human race had been secretly harboring feelings of gender confusion/dysphoria. And it was mostly young people. Kids, teenagers. Not as many people my age were transitioning, but they were out there too. And I felt pretty excited about this — a kind of I-am-not-alone euphoria to counteract the decades of I-am-so-alone dysphoria that had plagued me.

And most of the kids and adults who came out c. 2015 were choosing to medically transition (hormones, surgeries) as well as socially transition (wardrobe, name and pronoun changes). Not only that, but they were being celebrated for their bravery, their self-knowledge! Their journeys seemed like “success only” stories (I felt like I was the only person who wasn’t having a successful transition).

I first heard the term “Detransition” early this year. I saw it on some random youtube channel that had a transphobic tone to it so I didn’t pay much attention. I’ve known people who had to stop their hormone treatments for health reasons, but they still identified as trans. After the Chappelle special, as I was searching for info on Daphne and other trans comedians, I found a slew of “Detransitioners.” These are mostly young folks who were born female, transitioned to male for a period of time, then stopped testosterone treatments and returned to identifying as female. They sometimes call themselves FtMtFs. There aren’t as many MtFtMs going public, but there are a few of those out there too, and they tend to be older. I was surprised to see how many of these detransitioned kids were making youtube content. I know it’s possible they are “plants” from the neo-con universe, but it doesn’t seem like that is the case. They seem very sincere in their confusion and regret. [Keeping in mind that transgender people make up only about 13 % of the world population, these detransitioners make up only 5% of that 13%, but detransitioning was not something that was being talked about in 2015, 2016…].

So…more on detransitioners later. Now let’s talk about Autogynephiles.

A dubious psychologist named Ray Blanchard came up with a typology for transsexualism in males. One type is the homosexual male who is so effeminate he might as well just get castrated and live as a woman. The other type is the heterosexual fetishist who gets turned on by himself as a woman.

I can honestly say I don’t know any trans women who would describe themselves as either.

But apparently the latter type exists, and they are hijacking the whole trans rights movement with their male privilege!! They are taking over women’s spaces, and erasing the whole idea of what it means to be a woman! They are insisting that (biological) women define themselves with new language like “uterus havers” because transwomen are women even though they don’t have uteruses!  They are the force of evil known as Autogynephiles!!

They are the ones who would dress as women to get into the women’s restroom, or the changing room at the gym. And yes, there are documented cases of this happening, unfortunately. There was an autogynephilic transwoman in the UK who got sent to a women’s prison and raped someone. There have been several reports in the US of autogynephiles undressing and exposing their pre-op anatomy at women’s gyms or other women-only spaces. There are accounts of autogynephiles who troll lesbians for not wanting to have sex with them — dick & all. That’s transphobic, they say! Their main goal, it seems, is to play the victim and to make cis women feel uncomfortable.

Again I feel like I should state that I’ve never met any trans woman who fits this description, I’ve only seen/heard about them on the internet, so I am going out on a limb to suppose that they constitute a small percentage of the already small percentage of people who are trans. But they do exist, and that is cause for concern in some areas.

But more about the Autogynephiles later…let’s talk a moment about surgeries.

As a trans man I am familiar with the “trans rites” that constituted a successful FtM transition c. 2015. They included starting HRT (which I did on 12-7-15) a legal name change (which I did on 4-13-16) and “top surgery” aka double mastectomy with nipple grafts (which I did on 10-4-16). Notice I fulfilled my trans rites checklist very quickly — all within a year, and all because I was able to afford all this transformative magic (never forget the privilege!) I say that somewhat cheekily, but I am very grateful to have been able to do all these things rather expediently. It doesn’t happen that way for many trans identified people (and I have my theories about that being the origin story for the whole non binary movement, but we’ll get to that later).

The point is, once I made the decision to transition, I was helped down this path by a team of affirmative medical professionals who questioned me very little. I was under the care of a therapist who hooked me up with an endocrinologist and a “top surgeon.” I was with the therapist and a support group for a year before I made the decision to medically transition. I was 46 years old when I started the “journey.”  Most of the people I met on my way were much younger than me, and they were moving through their trans rites even faster than I was (ie, they didn’t spend a year in therapy first).

Notice I haven’t said anything about “bottom surgery” — which is the surgery everyone means when they ask “Have you had THE SURGERY??”  For FtMs in 2015 bottom surgery was not really part of the package (pun intended). Being on testosterone brings about some magical changes in the lower regions, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned in blogs from that era, and also there are some pretty life-like prosthetics you can buy to use at the urinal. Personally I felt no great need for “bottom surgery.” 

But it seems nowadays, more and more young trans men are opting for Phalloplasty. There is a better, less invasive surgery called Metoidoplasty, which makes use of the natural growth of the clitoris, severs a ligament to let it dangle free and look relatively like a micropenis. This used to be a satisfactory option for most trans men who wanted a little more enhancement down there, and I never heard of any long lasting complications or trouble healing from a Metoidoplasty.

Phalloplasty is a different story. It is a very complicated procedure that does not guarantee great results.

But let’s back up and talk about my own “top surgery” for a minute. I never once heard it called a double mastectomy with nipple grafts. It was always “top surgery” and it sounded so flippantly flamboyant! Everyone was thrilled to schedule their top surgery, including me. In Oct of 2016 I had been on T for 10 months but still did not look or sound very masculine. I was afraid the surgeon would take one look at me and decide that I was not a good candidate for top surgery. But that didn’t happen. I was a paying customer. No one questioned anything.

So I had the surgery and it all went well. I was surprised however by how , uhhh, surgical it felt. It was just top surgery, right? Elective? Cosmetic? I was not prepared for the level of pain and discomfort I felt. Basically I was sliced from the back of each armpit all the way across the chest, with each breast being fully removed, and the nipples traced by a scalpel and grafted back on somewhere higher than they had been.

There was much more healing to do than I was prepared for. They sent me home only hours after the surgery and I was barely able to straighten my spine into full standing position. I felt like I was splitting open. And then I had to get in a car and be driven home. That was scary! I thought, if we so much as bump into anything I am a goner. 

After about 8 weeks of healing I finally felt somewhat normal. I still felt like there was a piece of barb-wire yoked around my chest, right where my nipples had been. In fact, to this day I feel like my chest is tied up tightly with string. One day in 2020 after I finished running, I fell back on my bed and threw my arms up over my head and felt the most acute sensation of flesh ripping. In the days following I saw little pinpricks of blood all around the scar tissue. It has now been 5 years since my surgery and my scars still itch like crazy sometimes. My grafted on nipples itch a lot and I can’t scratch them directly because it’s too sensitive & tingly & weird. So I scratch all around them for relief.

I know this sounds like I’m complaining, or regret having the surgery. But that isn’t the point I’m trying to make. I do NOT regret having a double mastectomy with nipple grafts. I am thrilled about it actually. I could fill many more pages with how much I hated having breasts and how weird it felt to have bags of flesh dangling around & brushing up against my clothes every minute of the day. That I really hated!! I can live with itching and string. 

But I cannot, can NOT, CAN NOT, imagine living with those sensations in my genital area. I cannot imagine having to heal from scalpel wounds and stitches down there. I can’t imagine how much, and for how long, the itching of the scar tissue would affect that region.

I’ve unfortunately heard of so many young people going under the knife —for phalloplasties and vaginoplasties — and having terrible complications. In fact I haven’t heard any account of a phallo- or vaginoplasty that was without complication. These surgeries are not really ready for mass consumption. They are still extremely experimental. The things these kids go through after surgery is beyond anything I’d be willing to suffer. There is an especially cavalier attitude toward vaginoplasties —you cut the dick off and bam! instant woman. That’s how it is portrayed in movies, that’s how it is joked about by idiots. But ask any trans girl who’s undergone a vag-plasty and she will set you straight and hopefully smack the shit out of you for being so stupid.

But enough about THE SURGERIES for now. We will definitely talk more about those later. I can see this blog is getting super long and I haven’t even introduced you to the Triad of TERFs I want you to meet so badly. My god you will hate them…or love them maybe, if you’re hate-reading this blog. But they do deserve a mention in all this mayhem.

So I will mention them. Next time. In the Octopus Diary.

Farewell for now…

What's Black & White & Trans All Over

 Hello My Abandoned Little Blogspace & All the Popeyes Peeping In,

I’m back! Just in time to wrap up this frenzied and fruitful year with a big red Xmes*/Chihuanikkah ribbon! When I say frenzied and fruitful I do not mean halcyon and pear-shaped — I really mean frenzied and fruitful.

By now you know that I began this year with a horrific pharmaceutical side effect called akathisia, that we made the rash decision to not only sell our house in Sarasota but to haul our asses all the way back to Tony “Moonchild” Egler’s incipient horizon, and that somewhere in between I managed to have a chapbook published by Alien Buddha Press and you can still buy your copy today**. (I also have some poems that will be published at different venues starting very soon. I’ll keep you posted on FBhook)

Pretty exciting, ha? Sometimes I want to shout “Make it Stop!” because as you know I like sloth-paced living best and this has been more of a tasmanian dust-devil trajectory.

But what I actually came here to discuss in this very serious space are some of the frenzied & tasmanian developments within the LGB  TQ errr, community[?]  First though, I will answer a couple questions you had regarding akathisia —

1) How can you tell if you’re just really depressed & anxious, or if you’re having a reaction to your medication?

I sort of explained this in the last blog, but it’s been awhile…You can tell if your normal depression/anxiety symptoms get dialed up to 111. Beyond anything that is bearable. You can tell if you are taking any of the medications I mentioned (anti-psychotics, benzos, anti-nauseates) and you just keep feeling worse and worse. You can tell if you feel like your skin is crawling, like your spine is being nibbled by rats and you keep twisting & turning and rocking to stop the ticklish/agony of it. You can tell if your brain is a non stop nightmare zone — senselessly horrific scenes rapidly forming in your head all day. Rapidly. Speedy, unstoppable scrolls of terror. Not just a bad thought here, a sad thought there…but floods of anguish that can’t be reasoned through. The subjective and objective will blur and these nightmarish thoughts will translate into regrets about your whole existence that cast you as some kind of monster or demon who deserves to feel the way you do (and that was the tricky part — I thought I was having valid realizations about what a terrible person I was, and how everything I did in my life was a terrible affront to humanity, especially those closest to me)

Here's the only art I did in 2021 (and I did it on Jan 3rd, so a whole year ago almost) Quintuplets' Supper on the Tour Bus w/ Barefoot Mom

Some of the terrifying thoughts I can remember having throughout the winter of ’20/’21 were of my house suddenly conflagrating and my pets getting burned alive. Knowing that if I didn’t run into the fire to save them I was a terrible selfish person. Hearing their cries of pain and death and not being brave enough to burn with them. Also had a strange fear of all the glass objects in my house — from kitchenware to decorations to windows — seeing them as animate beings that would shatter if I came too close to them and try to embed their tiniest shards into my skin so that it would take painstaking effort to remove them. 

These are not thoughts that I would willingly torment myself with, even if I was very depressed & anxious. It brings to mind what (I’ve heard) happens with postpartum depression. I kept wondering to myself, Why the fuck do I have p.p. depression at my age/gender/childlessness level??

2) What actually causes it?

The uncontrollable movements/thoughts that characterize akathisia come from flooded dopamine centers in your brain, coupled with depleted serotonin centers. It happens to people with schizophrenia/bi-polar/Tourette’s who are on these anti-psychotic medications for a long time, or if they try to stop them. It’s kind of a round robin of side effects being worse than the diagnosis, going off meds, experiencing symptoms of diagnosis, going back on meds that will eventually make your skin crawl. Caring, experienced professionals are needed to recognize and help manage these precarious balances. 

It can also happen with recreational drugs like cocaine. Key is knowing your own mental/emotional playing field well enough to recognize when suicidal ideations feel like electrical cattle prods rather than well thought-out end-of-life solutions. 

[Not advocating suicide here, but I respect those who make the decision to end their lives, if it is indeed a choice to escape insurmountable circumstances]

Which brings me to my intended topic regarding the LGB  TQ’s… starting with

DAVE & DAPHNE

By now we’ve all seen the latest Dave Chappelle comedy special and have our own opinions about how transphobic it was or wasn’t. I posted my own response to it on Facebook, along with an array of responses from the trans community (as it exists on Youtube). And if you’re one of those people who had to cry out about Well, why was the part about child sex abuse in the church glossed over? OR Why didn’t the joke about Space Jews cause a huge riotous protest? I’ll explain —

a) the punchline about Dave loving to cum in the priest’s face was a triumphant punch UP against the church & its conclave of pedophiles. ‘Mmmmkay? 

b) the joke about the ’Space Jews’ was met with a lot of groans from the audience. But I’ll bet this was Dave’s way of punching up at rich Hollywood executives (we’ve heard forever that Hollywood is run by old Jewish guys)

c) the bulk of the show was not about Dave’s complicated relationship with priests or Jewish people. It was about his complicated relationship with the LGB  TQs

[I’ll explain later why I keep separating the LGB from the TQ. There is a rift in the community and it is happening between those particular letters. I also don’t include the I or the A because intersex people largely don’t want to be lumped under the umbrella of sexual/gender identities. Intersex is a medical condition and most intersex people lean into the binary one way or the other by puberty. The A can mean Asexual or Ally —and asexuals, largely, are turned off by the overt sexualization of the whole LGB  TQ movement. Allies are allies and can be offended on our behalf (or not) but are generally cisgender, heteronormative folks.]

Anyway, the special pretty much has Mr Chappelle pitting the Black Lives Matter movement against the LGB  TQ movement (which in his mind is an all white movement? it seems?). He sees the LGB  TQs as very successful at effecting change in the world & the BLM movement as not so successful. Which may or may not be true, but totally trivializes the need for both movements to be equally successful.

 

Dave makes some pretty graphic jokes about trans women’s anatomy and way-of-being in the world. Which is not what offended ME personally — I allow for sexually gratuitous humor because I grew up in the 80s and I’m kind of inured to that explicit lowness of brow, especially from men. Yawn, I say. Dave is a straight, cis man who likes pussy and LOVES his dick. Wow! Who would’ve guessed.

What I hated about those jokes is that they demonstrated a total lack of understanding of what it means to be a trans woman. What gender dysphoria feels like…WHY a (biological) man would reject his body/social role/privilege even… to be a WOMAN (whether it’s a woman who still has a dick to whip out in front of the urinal, or one who has opted for that “impossible pussy” that just isn’t real pussy).

In my opinion, if you don’t have a deep holistic understanding of things you’re trying to satirize, you should probably steer clear of satirizing, or mocking, or demeaning these things, especially if these things are human beings.

Let’s talk about Daphne now. She was a friend of Dave’s from way back — 2006, I believe he said — before he even had his Comedy Central show. They somehow became engaged in a heckling dialogue at one of his stage shows, and Dave said he just couldn’t understand why she would want to go through life pretending to be a woman, and she replied that he didn’t need to understand why, he just needed to accept that she was having a human experience.

A comedian herself, Daphne was one who could ’suck it up.’ She was strong of spirit and character, not a petulant little snowflake who would stomp out of the theater in response to a little heckling. She even gave Dave a pass on understanding her — just believe I’m having a human experience. And Dave liked that. It freed him up to continue thinking (and joking) negatively about the trans people who weren’t so accommodating. What’s their fucking problem???

Now, I’ll have to admit that I’m probably more like Daphne than your average Millennial or Gen Z trans activist. I would rather fight ignorance with razor-sharp humor than foot-stomping insistence on conformity to the new world order. But I’ll also admit that my razor-sharpness has dulled in my old age, and sometimes all I can do is grumble Baaa, not this shit again…

…and that’s pretty much how I felt about this whole special and the fall-out from it —Baaaaaa!! Why are we still at square one on this??

What I discovered though, in trying to discern just where the public at large stood on trans issues in 2021, is that we are not at square one at all.  Somewhere in 2015 we may have all been at square one. But now some of us are at square 3,817 and some of us are at square -1billion.

So…let’s return to Daphne. She and Dave remained friends for many years. He invited her to open for him when he had a show in her hometown. She continued to stand up to hecklers like a champ. She continued to be tough & suck it all up. She defended Dave when TRAs (trans rights activists — more on them later) boycotted him and called for his “cancellation” — in 2019 I think — after his previous special, which was also very focused on the LGB  TQ community.

Then the TRAs turned on Daphne. 

And here’s where the whole thing goes pear-shaped for me. Because Daphne ended up committing suicide by jumping from a roof.  And Dave joked that it was the most dude-like thing she ever could’ve done, and said she would’ve loved that joke, and that it was the fault of the TRAs who attacked her online after she defended him…

…and I had to wonder if any of that was true. Would Daphne have loved the joke about her suicide? Was it the TRAs who forced her to her death? Was Dave using Daphne —his token trans friend! — as a shield against those he perceived to be too sensitive to suck up his brand of cis/hetero humor? Would Dave appreciate a white guy making insensitive jokes about black people just because he had a black friend? [I can answer that one — in fact Dave answered it in the 00s when he walked out of his lucrative contract with Comedy Central because of how many white people were appropriating his jokes that made fun of black culture.]

It turns out that after Daphne defended Dave in 2019, about 9 people on Twitter came after her for supporting his transphobic rhetoric. (Who knows how many in-real-life TRAs may have harassed her?) It also turns out that Daphne had a lot of other aggravating circumstances in her life — money problems, estrangement from her children, other family conflicts — at the time of her suicide.

Anyway…the special went from comedy to tragedy very quickly in my eyes. But my deep dive into the rabbit hole of post-Chappelle fall-out from the post modern trans rights movement was very …confusing in an enlightening way. This blog has gotten wayyyyy llooonnnngggg, and I know your attention spans are crying out for mercy so I will be kind and wrap it up —

 — I still have a lot to say though. Recall that Dave proclaimed himself “Team TERF” at the beginning of the special. I’ve known about TERFs for awhile now, and my understanding was that they were a minority faction of the latest feminist wave that were douche-y man-haters and their hate extended to trans women because they happened to be “biological men.”

I had no idea how douche-y and vocal TERFs actually were though, and I will regale you with everything I’ve learned about TERFs and TRAs and Autogynephiles and trans-medicalism and conservative trans bloggers and Detransitioners and vaginoplasties and phalloplasties and all the other “trans rites” surgeries and Jazz Jennings who returned to TV this week instead of starting classes at Harvard. Oh, and the rift between the LGBs and the TQs… 

…so very much fascinating sociology! HERE in the Octopus Diary.

****************

*Xmes = rhymes with Hermes (the fancy scarf designer)

**You can get my poetry collection True Stories of the Odd Equinox here

AKATHISIA (aka torture)

 Dear Friends on the Internet & In Real Life,

From Dec 2020 to Mar 2021 I had akathisia. What is akathisia you ask? Well, I’ll tell you — it’s something that I don’t wish on anyone, even Marjorie Taylor Green. 

But what is it? Well I’ll tell you…it’s nothing good. It is hypothesized to have been the cause of David Foster Wallace’s suicide when he quit taking anti-depressants after 20 years. It is also wildly speculated to have played a part in the Sandy Hook shooting, as Adam Lanza was prescribed an anti-depressant that he only took sporadically (ie, not as prescribed.) It is also well documented that Bruce Springsteen and my youtube nemesis Dr Jordan Peterson experienced akathisia after taking/quitting prescribed medication.*

*the main cause of akathisia is taking Abilify (a drug prescribed for Tourette’s, schizophrenia and sometimes depression). The second main cause of akathisia is withdrawing from benzodiazapines (Xanax, Klonopin,etc…). The other main cause is being on any SSRI or anti-psychotic or anti-nausea medication.

You can look all this stuff up on the Internet. The Internet will tell you all sorts of awful things about akathisia, but what it won’t tell you is how awful it really is. There is no way of describing it, but I will try…in a minute. First though, I wrote this semi automatic poem about it & I’d appreciate if you read it — 

You left to solve a celtic cable knot 

So I felt around for ghosts in my suitcase,

Not having dragged them from Florida

But acquiring them upon arrival

Already striking cords in my

Backpack’s secret chambers, already

Papering the attic with their cut-out voices

I tune into one host w/ a tremorous

                                     androgynous

                                             tone

I ask it to tell me

The story of akathisia &

It gives me the director’s cut,

                     the 3D version

                        the prequel 

                  and the score all@once

It turns out our nerves are twined of

           finest lavender silk strands

It turns out they have worms of their own

Microscopic,

          dangerous, like the virus

              but worse? Maybe?

Capable of embedding

  glassy fibers in our greyest zones,

Capable of wielding bigger shards & burning

    the homes of butterflies

Then came 

           the holding onto doorframes & crying for angels —

              who are not people, and not as busy as God—

                 to end my recurring

                   1st day of school 

The trust in chemicals, mine & others,

           mined & othered, mind &

                       authored

        out of pure desperation to 

return to chapter one & rewrite & edit & rewrite

                       & edit

I moaned & groaned like these new

Indiana ghosts as my maggoty core was chewed

Silk worms gone wild w/ their art bombs in my legs

My map redrawn in hard-to-read lilac

Every mistake a returned message

From life’s analog-to-digital delivery systems,

Long decades of unpaid postage

Against a century of political outrage

Long hot miles to Main Street

But that’s where you & I agreed to meet

7-28-21

Thank you. 

Akathisia for me started out as terrifying & invasive thoughts racing through my mind at inappropriate times (ie, when life was going just fine) I thought I was just “being negative” or a worry-wort or a Virgo. But when I say terrifying & invasive, I mean way beyond normal human worries.  About a month after that, some physical symptoms began — I couldn’t sit still, I felt like “jumping out of my skin” , like I had drunk 8 cups of coffee when I hadn’t even drunk one, like someone was pointing a gun at my head, like the butterflies in my stomach had invaded my shoulders & hips & vertebrae…and the only solution was to keep moving. Changing positions. Rocking back & forth. Rubbing hands together. Pacing. Vocalizing sadly. Walking. Running. Cleaning the shower with a toothbrush.

By the third month I was really just looking for a way to end it. I couldn’t bear to be tortured by my own nervous system any longer. I was mentally attenuated by the terrifying thoughts. And I constantly felt like I was about to start crying, yet I was unable to. That is a surprisingly uncomfortable feeling when it happens all day, every day.

Despite the severity of my symptoms, I still regarded it as only an episode of severe depression/anxiety. I never thought it could be the Abilify I had started taking in the Fall of ’20. I had never even heard of akathisia (shocking — i thought I knew EVerything). Tony was pretty scared & kept saying “I feel like I should take you to the hospital.”

And maybe he should have. It took my doctor about 3 months to figure out what was going on. And as soon as I stopped taking the Abilify I felt “normal” again.

Those long lists of side effects they reel off in pharmaceutical commercials are no joke. “Restless leg syndrome” can be more unpleasant than it sounds. And “suicidal ideation” can be overwhelming. If you are on any medication and something changes drastically w/ your mood/health, always make sure it’s not the medication causing your symptoms.

After my experience, I scoured the internet for more info on akathisia and found it lurking in the bios of more people than I expected. The overall consensus is that it is unbelievably horrible. At least if I ever have it again, I’ll know what I’m dealing with and be able to get help quicker.

And hopefully this terrific blog is shedding light on something that isn’t well-known but is happening more & more often now that practically everyone is on some kind of prescribed meds. Have any of you experienced the kind of symptoms I described after taking a prescribed medication? Let me know. 

Here’s some further reading you can do on the subject

https://www.akathisia.life/drugs-that-cause-akathisia

Praise Poem for Elliot Page

 PRAISE

            Elliot Page

  for making so many

        movie pictures

     from inside a closet —

his little hands & feet,

             wrists & ankles

splicing scenes between

               the slats

of the accordion doors —

hundreds of frames

             serving as visors

into any # of parallel 

              universes

In scene 3, take 7

he is pregnant

he has a super useless power

he rides a pink bicycle

he plays a white violin

*Snap*  he’s grown from

                     girl to man

in a ghost town, a trailer park,

    a post-apocalyptic past &

a now that still doesn’t quite

                     understand.

12-3-20

Comments and critique welcome

Unrecognizable Octopus!!!

 FRIENDS,

In the Spring of 2020 I decided to write a series of Praise Poems that might possibly grow into a chapbook. It’s not the most original idea, but I wanted to celebrate small conquests in a quarantined existence. The original goal was to write one a day, but I fell quite short of that. That’s okay, because I still wrote way more than any chapbook could contain. I’m in the process of sorting the good from the bad, and as I do, I’ve found a few that are not quite publishable, but which I don’t mind sharing here in the Octo Diary. I welcome any commentary or critique anyone wants to offer.

This first one is about everyone’s favorite barstool poet, Rupi Kaur….

PRAISE Rupi 

Perched on the lip of her barstool

Like a vulture upon a gargoyle

Atop the tallest bank-owned tower

In Edgeville

She perches defiantly, serenely,

Then does a little swivel, twisting the

Barstool’s head toward the clouds &

Off she flies,

Or raptures, making the slightest sound,

A tap gurgling its last breath of ale

Few can even detect it

Let alone cum from its rarefied

Hush

She opens her folded hand to blow

A kiss & shows a tiny word

Written in bold 50 pt type —

             ‘SO’

She swandives from the edge

Of the sky & into the depths

Of herself

6-1-20

Are We Vignette? (Almost)

 FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN, & Some Sucky Trolls:

Lend me your Sears catalog spans of attention.

What can I say about this year? There was a lot of down time, then a lot of cabin fever, then a lot of time on the porch & in the yard. In our natural Florida habitat w/ all the clover & bumble bees & raccoons!

There could’ve been lots of arts & crafts & belles lettres going on. And there was some of that, but not nearly as much as I had planned. We did a couple episodes of the Buzbee & Whitman show but found our enthusiasm for the broadcasting arts had waned. But more on my failed arts projects later…

…what I’ve really enjoyed this year is YOUR arts projects & social studies adventures & technical advances. You’ve all come a long way. And I loved seeing how you filled your extended time slots so creatively.

Quiet Time

One realization I made this year was I am the master of my crafts. All of them. Up until now I have considered myself a foolish little dilettante playing at being an artist, or writer, or musician, or surgeon. But now I see that I am good at these things (not gifted, but finally arriving at my own latent pace). And you all are even better at your things than I am at mine.   

That’s okay. It’s not a competition. I always have been competitive though. I was an athlete before I was an artist. I grew up in a frat house full of brothers and was forced to compete at everything, even when I didn’t feel like it (most of the time.)

But I gave up being competitive this year. I’m just ready to plant flowers & vegetate. To read all the books on my to-read pile. To worry about growing old w/ depression & mental illness. To continue on the spiritual journey I started in 2017. 

Publicity Photo 2020

FIGHT CLUB

Speaking of the spirit journey, which I don’t speak of much because of y’alls’ maturity level on the subject— (Yeah, I got all your backward Zeppelin warm-fuxxies. And such. They made me cry & laugh at the same time. That’s what comedy is to me now — first the tears then the laughter. Must walk the path of darkness right into the whoopie cushion of light. [fun fact —didst thou know Led Zeppelin almost named theirself/theyselves “Whoopie Cushion”? Somehow I think their majesty would’ve been lost no matter how great the song writing, had they gone with that name]) —

Anyway, the spirit journey—which started with some shaky automatic writing in late ’17 and progressed to a vivid & violent encounter w/ the spirit world in March & April of 2019— is something I still don’t want to pour out here in this blog because it is an ongoing exegesis. 

One thing I did not want this spirit journey to be was me writing predictions for the future. That was not my intent with the auto-writing this time around. I’m nowhere near the psychic writer that D Foster Wallace was, but if you’re a quiet & astute reader you’ll find the virus, the search for a vaccine, the race riots of the summer, plus something about all game show hosts being sadists —(I’m looking at you ellen, and even you late alex!)— all made it into the mix.  

No, the thing I wished to address with my written meditations, the thing I wrapped up in white light as I scribbled away in the night, the thing I prayed rabidly for has been wiped out, at least temporarily, by this virus. And that’s a morbid twist I didn’t expect, but it has worked much faster than the legal system ever would!

Quantum Quintuplet Cartoon Doodle

ART

I told you how much I’ve enjoyed your creative efforts during our mutual quarantine, but let me say a little bit about these new scribbles you see before you — 

    first of all I know what you’re thinking “Vin, you are most definitely not the master of your craft”

But what if I told you I drew all these (most of them) w/ my eyes closed. I’m pretty much blind as a bat these days no matter how much light there is. I’m not even sure if DOTS are possible for me anymore. So there you have it…my new technique invented out of necessity. 

Art is something I wish I was better at, or went to school for, or could’ve handled going to school for; I did go to school for a few weeks, and then I flipped out (mostly about the cost of art school, but also my inferiority complex kicked into high gear around so much talent — see paragraph above about competitivity).

But I’m also glad that my artwork retains a child-like spirit, an unschooled sloppiness that no amount of framing & matting could disguise. I think it’s fitting for my quintuplet comediennes too!

4/5 Quints Ice Skate in Berlin

TRANSITION

I know I declared my transition COMPLETE on 4-25-19. I was feeling mighty masculine & toxically aggressive*, potent*, volatile* around that time. And I was looking pretty strong & fuzzy too. But I’m happy to say my transition was not complete.

I’ve changed & transformed some more since then. This really is an exercise in patience. I keep wanting to say, Yes I can see a dude in the mirror at all times. But there are stretches of time where I go back to looking quite feminine too.  And having to cover my fabulous soul patch w/ a mask has resulted in much misgendering during the pandemic. 

But someday I will be able to do one of those slideshows that starts with my first day on T and ends with Whitmanesque Whitman gazing through grey whiskers at an amazed audience.

[*These are not adjectives I want to embody as a male, and I don’t believe that these traits reflect masculinity on the whole; however I struggle with these bursts of self-dominion now, just as I went through bouts of sadness and low energy as an estrogen being. Hormones >: / Am I right?]

So….now let’s talk about my other transition. The one that took me from Baby Boomer to Gen Xer to Millennial Snowflake — all in the course of 50 years.

Pub Photo w/ initials

INCLUSIVITY

I began my life as a Baby Boomer only because I was born to Baby Boomers. I was expected to mirror their traits & values — hard work, self control, emotions way way on that back burner meant for melting butter…comparing yourself to everyone else & making sure you were just like them…but better. Not in any overt competitive way…but a sly comparison, a tallying of goods and accomplishments.

Only after moving away from home was I able to fully experience the traits & values of my poor little generation - Gen X. Oh what high ideals this generation possessed! Unfortunately we were pretty damaged by our lack of greatness to fulfill the promise of our ideals. But we also possessed enough of the hard work ethic of our parents to push through our slumps and create the world we wanted. We made progress, especially social progress, but also technological progress. And that’s what we were good for.

And only lately do I feel that I have been absorbed into the massive mosh pit of emotions that is The Millennial Generation. You who are the product of my gen’s loins do possess that high idealism, the urge for social progress and the verbal communication skills & digital intuition we passed down to you.

But you are Gen X on speed.  Our identity crisis became your mess to clean up. And while Gen Xers made progress in incorporating natural human emotions into the capitalist machinery that made up the bulk of our lives, Millennials required the capitalist machine to bend to their emotional will.

Wolf Howls to Warm Up in Iceland

Millenials are sensitive (as snowflakes apparently). This is just fine with me, as a bleeding heart libertarded artist dude, I like what the millennial & zillennial generations have allowed us to consider that we were never allowed to consider before. Mainly, that each one of us is a special stardust masterpiece—a unicorn that can’t be lumped into some Venn diagram of what a man or woman or Latino or black or Asian or disabled, etc…human is.

This, I learned, is called inclusivity and I was eager to participate in the new social order. As a Baby Boomer-Gen X prototype, designed to compete and compare at all costs, this seemed like a damn fine idea.  Even though it required some self-censorship, some uncomfortable realizations, some tears, some guilt…I felt like things were not going to go back to the old Boomer way anytime soon, so I might as well embrace something that I’d silently believed in all along.

When I was doing the ‘zine, I often made a point to specifically express that submissions were open to women, queer folks, people of color, etc… This did not mean I didn’t want subs from white guys, it just meant that I was already getting a lot of subs from white guys. I occasionally solicited work from poets I had friended online, and even then the men were more likely to submit stuff than the women. [Maybe because I have a masculine name now & they thought I was being predatory? Or why, I don’t know]

Anyway, I feel like this in itself offended some people, and I am still wondering why? I’m not a social justice warrior out to crucify those who aren’t on board with the identity politics of the day. But I’m also one who believes being a decent human doesn’t fatally wound anyone’s freedom of speech. So… I’m still in the dark as to why things are still so divided in these two camps.

If anyone wants to chime in, please do so.

Asleep in Austin

 I dragged the line into a space so new & vacant

                   My frenemies will never find it

             Maybe I do speak in the voice

                                                     of a Trumpet,

when the solo needs interrupting

                                          But remember

                               how Bush corrupted our vocab in the oughties

        & how like Obama (aka boring) we sounded

till 2016…

[piece of a poem I wrote in Oct ’19]

IN CONCLUSION

Thank you for reading this far, if you have. This is my progress report for 2020. And most of my progress is into blindness & old age. But I’m happy with what I’ve accumulated from these years on planet — I have a lot to take back to the mothership.

This is a terrible photo & I wanted to delete it but new Blogger doesn't have a delete photo option anymore. Sucky. Music lessons in Austin.

So…what about Shelter Cat & Trust Fund Baby? and The Octopus Review? and Singlewood? And regular old poetry submissions? and DOTS??? And Adventures in Reality? and all that stuff I used to just GIVE YOU FOR FREE?

There may be more…if I feel like it…remember…I’m only an 11% blogger & social media presence now.