My girlfriend can wear my old clothes!
\(^o^)/
Glad I didn’t throw away all my skirts and panties!
T-Virus Log, 17w 2D (121 days)
Last injection: 125mg in upper R arm, 2 days ago
Facial Hair: I’m letting my chin-beard grow and the longest hairs are about 2cm long, growing sparsely and of varying color and texture. There are still some peachfuzzy hairs growing everywhere but growing longer, as well as the occasional (about 1-2 hairs per square cm) darker, thicker For Real Beard Hair. It’s feelable! and my moustache is still growing in, sliiiiightly more thick hairs each time.
Body Hair: It’s coming in all over my belly, thighs and a little darker on the back of my upper arms now. Also the back of my calves. I haven’t found any on my ass or back yet, thank god.
Things That Are A Bit Weird:
- Looking at boobs. I have never been interested in boobs. I don’t really give one flying fuck one way or the other about boobs. But jesus christ do I look at boobs now. I have never identified as lesbian. I have never had a girlfriend. I have never EVER wanted to touch my own moobs. BUT. But…. but boobs. I look at them now. I catch myself looking. I catch myself grabbing
my poor girlfriend! - Still can’t cry. I have shed tears ONCE since February, and that was an extenuating circumstance (actually happy tears, not sad tears). Things that normally would make me cry— emotional Doctor Who episodes, intense moments in House, etc.— just make me sad, and I feel tears build up tightly in my throat, feel pressure in my sinuses, but the tears just don’t spill out.
- I’m smelly! Any part of me that used to sweat now sweats more and those parts get smellier. *sigh*
- I drink more liquids. I can drink a larger volume of tea/water/etc. and my body just absorbs it like a dry sponge.
- I react to the presence of large males on the street. I have always physically reacted to big dudes, aggressively, feeling threatened and like I should fight them, but now I react to them before I even SEE them properly. I sometimes see guys with big arms just walking past me on the street and I feel my adrenaline dump into my system, my muscles tighten a bit, my attention becomes suddenly focused directly on them as I size them up and see if they’re about to threaten or challenge me. This all occurs unconsciously before I even realize it’s HAPPENING.
When walking, I discovered
a light in the forest, a bell
a reflection of the sky on a pool
a spring of water, edged by the green
a spring of water, as the forest
continued unbroken, dimming, descending, to its depths
a spring of water, where the moon
lay shy softly rippled in its skin
a spring, edging through the stone
of the frigid earth for miles of
silent miles through unknowable ice until
it peeked curiously into the
air
Thus kneeling I took her in my hands
thus exhaling I touched my lips to—
—traveled silently centuries— miles in the ice
—what had not braved the sky
centuries crushing
comfortably in the stone, what had
never expected to feel my
trembling fingers nor my
heartbeat, hot and new against
this
silence of pure water, how she sighed
my fingers—
my motion disturbing her stasis,
a spring of water, breaking over
my tongue. my eyes closed I sank
into her shyness, into
my hands brushing slowly across the surface, lightly I drank
delicately
pressing, into the chill of the belly of the earth I
knelt, i worship
my hand heating the stone it rested upon
a spring of pure water touches
the tip of my tongue—
my footprints in the grass I could
taste Artemis in her depths!
Ah the keen break of breath, the delirium
of her pleasure, the inhuman
inebriation, to drink from
the tip of the arrow in my own throat!
2012-5-18
A crowd where I — alone for years
in the room where i stood
lift my eyes from the place I have wept
until my heart was dry
glancing up in the dimness
you were looking at me, your face a mirror
of pain
as i stretch forth my hand wondering you lifted yours
my skin cold with despair
my head aching my hand neared yours, reflection and—
living flesh
i stopped trying to breathe
and you were living flesh
oh hey its us
but there would be more coffee
and tacos
and Silent Hill
and ferrets
(Source: illustration-s)
I have been a big fan of karaoke for the last few years and built up a repertoire of Muse, Green Day, Offspring, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, REM, The Killers, David Bowie etc., but as I started T my voice dropped like a stone and suddenly the songs I could hit with ease were up in the broken-voice void of No Sound Produced By Vocal Cords.
This was depressing me a little bit because now I don’t want to go to karaoke with my buddies. I used to sing with Richard because we knew many of the same songs and could sing in the same range (he’s got a mid-range speaking voice for a cis guy) but now I was just feeling embarrassed.
When I tried to sing along with Green Day my voice tried to do it a full octave lower, with lots of chest resonance, and I was getting rather discouraged that I had apparently lost my whole range. ;___;
But reading this blog tells me that range is completely controlled by the muscles in your throat and around your larynx, NOT the vocal cords or larynx shape or anything that is uncontrollable. This actually makes a lot more sense. Lots of professional male singers use a tenor, especially in popular music these days, and that range is higher than their speaking voice, so it’s got to be possible to train UP to that.
So with the guidance of that blog telling me that just practicing will lift those muscles to give me a higher singing voice, I broke out the Green Day and Radiohead and practiced that for a while in my room, with my voice cracking and breaking into silence all over the place, but after several minutes i felt an ache/stretched feeling in my throat and was able to reclaim some of my range in a non-resonant, upper-throat-only sort of way. But it was such a relief I am really finally psyched about it. I don’t want to lose all my singing ability. christ.
But it looks like actually with real thoughtful practice I can get some of that back.
T-Virus Log, Day 108 (15 w, 3 d)
Most recent shot: 36 hours ago (May 17) 125 mg in L deltoid
After-injection soreness: A small instance about 24 hours later, muscle began to feel stiff and sore, but I massaged the muscle directly after the shot and for about 20 minutes intermittently afterward and this seemed to help disperse the T through the muscle. This round the soreness was negligible although the previous shot had no soreness whatsoever. During this shot the nurse grabbed a pinch of skin and muscle and jabbed me pretty hard with the needle as if she was in a hurry. Previous shot was inserted slowly and injected slowly. I wonder if physical needle trauma has anything to do with it.
Hair Loss: I am suspecting that I’m losing hair at my temples, slightly. I can’t be sure yet but some hair is coming out in the shower (I could just be shedding) and I THINK my hairline at my temples looks sparse. More data forthcoming.
Libido: I started to crash on the last shot, about 2 days before the next injection. As a consequence, about 2 days before I started to feel grumpy and tired (actual sleep schedule has been screwed so that could contribute) and a bit testy (lolpun). While this could have been caused by, ya know, lack of sleep and food, I also found it harder to climax than usual (if not impossible).
My junk might still be growing and transforming though I have passed the 3-month mark that most people seem to note the most change. Perusing transqueersxxx I can confidently report that I fall in the apparently normal range.
When I’m with my girlfriend, the least little thing will give me a raging boner. All she has to do is put her hand on my neck or slide her arm around me and the touch reverberates all over my entire body and all my nerves immediately fire up. Augmenting this, touching HER also echoes those touches all over myself as if my imagination/empathy is transferring all that sensation to me as well. All physical contact is at like 140% of what it used to be.
Body Fat: My face is losing a bit of fat and my thighs are also definitely looking smaller, less of a V shape from my butt downward. Fat on my triceps also looks less fat…? That fat is being burned a little by my work schedule and poor eating habits (sorry, body…) but some of it is certainly starting to congeal around my belly and I need to get off the computer and go walk it off. haha
As my therapist said, “Well, the fact of it is, HRT tends to create a bunch of short, fat, bald guys” which made me lol mightily.
Muscle: Muscle in my neck and shoulders almost seems to build itself. I can do about 30 pushups now from a cold start, and just doing that daily is changing my shape noticeably. I am a lazy bastard that doesn’t enjoy exercise so I am trying to motivate this behavior more. -_-
Muscle in my thighs and obliques feels harder than usual. I also have more stamina in breath and heart to do things like run up the escalator or run to catch the train. It used to make me slightly out of breath but now I barely elevate my heart rate. woo
Sleep: I have been sleeping better, but also sleeping LESS. That might mostly be due to my depression lifting somewhat (or a lot). Instead of averaging 7.5-8.5 hours a night I’ve been doing 6-7.5 and doing fine on it. I can wake up faster and without my body hurting.
Body Hair: the fuzz on my wrists/forearms is looking longer but still of a fine texture. Fuzz on my upper thighs is coming in uniformly, dark and fine. It’s about a cm long now. Happy Trail is starting to grow thick ‘pube-like’ hairs in it randomly instead of just longer/darker hairs. The whole thing is made of hairs about an inch long and is pretty visible.
Belly fuzz, both above and below my navel, is looking darker and uniform like the thigh hair.
I have noticed that after shaving my junk the hairs grow back FAST, like within a few days instead of a week.
Other: I am definitely starting to smell like a dude. My sweat smells like a dude, my skin and, uh, *juices* smell like a dude. I am extruding testosterone through my whole body. Love it.
Skin, breakouts etc. are continuing, if I stay on top of it with the medicated cream then I can repress the worst of it.
The skin on my chin where my chin-beard is trying to grow feels dry and a little itchy (I presume as it is traumatized by hair exploding through it).
My eyebrows look a little thicker and various eyebrow hairs are growing across my brow in the unibrow zone. I have no moral qualms tweezing these confused bastards into submission.
Voice has dropped basically a whole octave, which makes me sad regarding karaoke time because I used to be a tenor and have now lost most of the songs I could sing. My friend Ignats reassures me that I can re-train my voice once it settles, and because he has a deep voice and can still shriek high notes I believe him.
It’s probably practice and getting that larynx back up where it belongs for singing time.
A twenty-five year old woman was found dead in a four-story Brooklyn apartment building that caught on fire early Saturday morning. Police identified the victim as Lorena Escalera.
The New York Times on the other hand identified the woman that died in the fire as “curvaceous,” someone who “drew admiring glances” in her “gritty Brooklyn neighborhood,” and noted she was known to invite men for visits to her apartment.
Just to make sure we’re all on the same a page, a woman was found dead and the first sentence in the New York Times story about the incident was: “She was 25 and curvaceous, and she often drew admiring glances in the gritty Brooklyn neighborhood where she was known to invite men for visits to her apartment, her neighbors and the authorities said.”
The two Times writers Al Baker and Nate Schweber said Escalera was “called Lorena,” as opposed to saying she was “named Lorena” or that she simply was Lorena.
The story that should have been about an apartment fire or even a suspicious fire instead turned in to the reporters interviewing neighbors about who Escalera was supposedly sleeping with and how she dressed.
Below is an excerpt from Baker and Schweber’s story published in the Times on Saturday:
Oscar Hernandez, 30, a mechanic, said she had had some of her ribs removed in an effort to slim her waist.
“For a man, he was gorgeous,” Mr. Hernandez said, noting Ms. Escalera’s flowing hair and “hourglass figure.”
Gary Hernandez, 25, a neighbor, said that Ms. Escalera had worked as an escort and that he regularly saw her advertising her service on an adult Web site.
“She was always on her laptop posting ads about herself,” said Mr. Hernandez (who is not related to Oscar Hernandez). “Still, she was a nice person.”
A debris pile outside the apartment, which is above a funeral home, contained many colorful items. Among them were wigs, women’s shoes, coins from around the world, makeup, hair spray, handbags, a shopping bag from Spandex House, a red feather boa and a pamphlet on how to quit smoking.
Aaron McQuade, GLAAD’s Director of News and Field Media questions how the Times would have covered the story if the word “transgender” was out of the equation:
Would the New York Times ever describe a woman who is not transgender, who had died in a fire, as “curvaceous” - in the first sentence, no less? Would it carefully note that her apartment contained makeup and “women’s shoes?” Would it say that she was “called” whatever her name was - especially if police later identified her by that name?
McQuade noted on GLAAD’s blog his organization has reached out the Times to ensure that “exploitative pieces like this” aren’t printed in the future.
(Source: transfeminism)
