And Last

I used that subject last week as well.

It happens.  Click to enlarge (the cartoon not the imagination)

This is a hard post to organise and a hard post to write.

This will be my last regular post.

When I first started writing I found an audience.  A small audience.  Then one day, Femulate linked to me and my readership rose.

I decided that if the daily average fell below a certain level, or if I had no ideas for a week, I'd end the blog.

Something else happened.

I've always had time management issues.  I've tried a variety of programs, planners, structures... none seemed suited to me.

A few weeks ago, when my to-do list was out of control once again, I simply made two short lists:

Wants                                              Musts

Letting Meg go out was on the wants; a few years ago, it would have been a must, which I found interesting.  Some other recreational things were on the wants list; some were absent completely and I took that to mean I didn't care if I do them or not.

But writing my blog has moved from wants, where it probably was six months ago, to musts.

That's wrong.

Too many nights when I think I'm ready for bed instead I announce "I'll be there soon.  I have to put up a post for tomorrow."

I have things to write about.  At a minimum, I wanted to work at and critique Kathe Perez' voice program.  The world is changing for us and this is a wonderful forum to both share and learn.

But I believe Thalia is telling me to stop.  I trust my muse.  I'm afraid if I don't, she'll walk out and I'll ramble and jabber for a page every day and you won't enjoy that and I'll just embarrass myself.

If there are any comments here, I'll post them.  I may write an occasional post.  I hope to spend some time on facebook (username Meg Winters) if you want to join me there.  So far, I barely get on, but maybe that's because of the blog committment.  Give me a chance to ramp up.

I miss the blog already.

You can write me at youCanCallMeMeg@gmail.com and I may even try to figure out google+.  I keep getting notices that someone's adding me there, whatever that means.

I'm also on twitter but that's where I follow just a few people (one trans) and only post occasionally, mostly political dross.  I may expand into trans topics; right now if I get on twitter once a week that's a lot.  I am @ThePollyTicks.  Polly Ticks is my nom de nouvelles when I feel like annoying other readers on The Washington Post site.

I leave you with someone who did a better job of saying goodbye than I'm doing.  It was clear, it was succinct and it was a beginning as well as an end.  Change is good.  And buy a copy of Exploring Calvin and Hobbes.  It's a wonderful read.

The final Calvin and Hobbes strip. Click to enjoy!

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We've got five years, that's all we've got

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Penultimate

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

My Friend Beth

A few weeks ago, I said that I wasn't going to be linking to trans-articles unless something special occurred.  There were so many stories that they weren't really news anymore.  It was great!

Here's something special....  Last week The Washington Post had a long article about my friend Elizabeth Taylor.  It was headlined

Learning how to be a lady? For the transgender market, coaches help.

and it was about more than my friend Beth but she was featured (along with Erica, for whom she was doing makeup).  It also links to her website.  If you want to get a Liz Taylor makeover, I think you're going to have to make an appointment way in advance.  If you're going to only be in town for a day or a few, let her know.  I'm not her appointment secretary but I bet she'll bend over backwards to accommodate your schedule.  She's just a nice person, as I wrote when I first met her.

Beth's expertise

My writeup of my experience at her skilled hands starts just over a year ago, and is in this post and the next few.  Pictures of the great job she did are included, and more are here, on her website.

I recommend a visit.  Tell her Meg sent you. ;-)

Bulletin!  My little cockatiel, whom I wrote about when I bought him, said I should call her Cait and to enforce it, she laid an egg!  There has been no sign of the father.

I Never Thought I'd Need So Many People

Five years.

On 7 June 2010 I wrote A Bit of an Introduction and I've been blogging pretty much daily ever since.  That's over 1800 little pieces of my life.  Amazingly, it was almost three weeks before I posted a face picture of Meg (other than a thumbnail).

I've met a broad (pun) variety of people, some just virtually, some in person.

I re-read that first post, and I realised that I haven't changed much.  My world, and the world changed around me. 
My home situation changed in ways I couldn't imagine and more people know about Meg.

The T-world has changed in ways I couldn't imagine.  Barely a day goes by without a news  story about the community, and, for a change, they're not about violence towards us.

And I believe I've changed some other lives during those five years.  And if there was just one, that would make every minute worthwhile.

I learned so much from my readers over the last five years.  As David Bowie said (and I quoted) I never thought I'd need so many people.

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Sunday Funnies

The Fusco Brothers.  I've featured them in the past.  Apparently I've been enjoying them for a while: some of these go back to 1999!

The brothers are Rolf, Lance, Al, and Lars, and the pet is a wolverine named Axel. Click to enlarge.

Today's a big day for me, by the way, but like any important holiday it'll get postponed one day in deference to Sunday.

Off the Mark

Mark Parisi's Off the Mark is a long-running panel strip.  I found it in the Funny Times years ago and while going through old issues (this was July 1992!), I found one I liked; it's the first one below.  I flagged it to scan and post and then I remembered.... 

Off the Mark is searchable!

So I first keyed in the obvious keyword (lingerie) and found a few I like.  Then I keyed in the more obvious (to us) keyword (crossdress) and found a few more I liked.  I know I've done that search before and I posted a few of the results I enjoyed but I think it's been a while.

Mark requests permission for use of his cartoons.  I'd like to post the one I wanted to scan, but I won't post more.  If you go to his website you can do those same searches and find a couple of dozen fun cartoons on our favourite subject. Maybe you'll find something funny on a different topic.

Also, keep in mind this would probably be funny in a different way to civilians.  Or 20+ years ago.

Another Year Older and Deeper In Debt

Happy Birthday to Me!  But you knew that.  I have a facebook page. :)

I had an opportunity to go to the sort-of-monthly soirees last Saturday.  Due to a time change, I though I didn't have enough time to get ready.  But I really did.  But I didn't know.  By the time I found out I really had had enough time, I no longer had enough time.

Before I thought I was in time trouble, I took a long shower and shaved everywhere.  I haven't dressed since February (wow) and I was thinking "the work is done.  It's all fun from here on" but, again, I thought I didn't have time to get ready.

Background: I have two less-than-perfect knees.  It's not birthday-related.  I damaged them long ago, doing high school gymnastics.  Mostly they behave but I've had episodes where they feel neglected and manifest that in a number of nasty ways: pain with movement, or swelling, or failing to support weight.  It's always unpredictable.

Saturday night, during the time I would have been at the soiree, my right knee decided to stop doing it's job.  I almost fell, then I limped around the house, swinging my weight onto my left leg because if I tried to stand on my right I'd fall and probably do a bit more damage to the weak joint.

Imagine that in heels.

Thalia's still watching over me.

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My $0.02

Caitlyn.

I still have the Bruce Jenner interview on the dvr.  I still have not watched it.

An often-repeated show business cliche is any publicity is good publicity.  A variety of jokes have to do with a famous actor getting caught perpetrating a heinous crime and telling the cop the correct spelling of his name.

I'm not so sure.

More attention to transpeople will bring more scrutiny.  More scrutiny means more bigots emboldened to call you out when you're all you're doing is, say, using the appropriate restroom.

The attention will lead to more ignorant people thinking their either smart or funny.  I'm not sure which Mike Huckabee, the clown who would be president, thought he was when he said, “Now I wish somebody had told me when I was in high school, that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in P.E. I’m pretty sure I would’ve found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.'”

That remark says nothing about transpeople, by the way.  It says Mike Huckabee is a pervert and way back in high school he was a dirty-old-man in training.

His remark was pre-Jenner, by the way.  I don't know what prompted him, except for a deep-seated hatred.

It will change expectations.  People will consider the professionally made up, airbrushed, and photoshopped Caitlyn cover photo and wonder why we're not all bursting out of our corsets and looking half our calendar age.  They'll forget that they each know a hundred women who we look better or more passable than.

It may amplify homophobia.  Straight guys who look at some of the high-profile transbeauties are going to think they've lost their minds because their first reaction is "hot!" and their second is "wait... that's a guy" and they won't know how to handle that.  I'm afraid that will turn to anger and more crimes against transwomen for their problems.

I think long-term this will all be good.  And by this I mean more of us being visible, not necessarily the Jenner spotlight.  Light will banish the darkness.

Short-term I'm worried.  This is a big change in a country where 90% of the population say they've never met a transgender person.  I have no figures (or figure), but I'd guess that 100% of that 90% are wrong.

My gut tells me that going out is going to get riskier for a while.  I hope I'm wrong.

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A Little Drafty

I noticed I have eight "drafts" among my posts.  Three were worthless.  Four are less so, but not really blog material.  One was just a note to myself:


I'm trying to figure out how I feel about comic drag.

I wrote that morsel about three years ago and I'm still not sure how I feel.

I' do know I'm not real happy about Caitlyn Jenner though.

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And Last

Our support is all over the map, from the girl I mentioned the other day whose girlfriend would love for her to go full-time to girls who have to keep their clothes locked in trunks or in a storage facility and can't tell their SO or that part of their lives would end.

If I first found my current wife, I wouldn't understand what so many girls are going through.  I think it's why so many of the "1 percent" can't comprehend what living in poverty is like.

I can never share your experiences, but I can extrapolate from the two points of reference I have.

So the last Person Who Influenced Meg is my ex.  She gave me a taste of pain many of you have (or have had) to put up with.  And once she hired a lawyer, she gave me a taste of that poverty I mentioned above. :)

This is a bookend

This is just the lead in to the next cartoon

The other bookend.  And Loose Parts is now in the WaPo!

Penultimate

If Meg needs good advice, assistance, company, someone to talk to, or just about anything else, Charity is there.  I could go on for pages but she probably would enjoy the attention or gushing and I try my best to be sensitive to all.

Everyone should have one.  But you can't have mine!  I'd fight to the death to keep her.

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Sunday Funnies: Herman

I was looking for cartoons to post and remembered the first time I opened a book of Jim Unger's Herman panels.  I turned each page and laughed like an idiot and finally had to take the book to the register.  Many more followed.  Click or zoom to enjoy.

Saturday Cartoons

will be up soon.  I'm hoping today is a continuation of a (slightly) t-series.  Check back about 8am EDT.

Thank you,

Meg

I'm sorry.  It went from promising to disappointing.  I'll keep looking but I think the lack of t-related cartoons is a good thing.

---

There Are More

I'll finish my people who helped Meg grow next week.

But I want to say that there are many more who are too numerous to mention individually but are important nonetheless.

The girls at the soirees.  There are many, some I met only once and was in awe of for one or more reasons: their comfort, their poise, their situation, more.  One girl came to the soiree as her first time out the door and then went to Freddy's with some of the girls.  Pretty amazing.  And some of the regulars are pretty amazing too (like you, Cindy!).

My readers.  Some I've met, such as Marian and Mandy and Alana.  Some I've wanted to meet but it never worked out.  That doesn't mean it won't.  And I've learned a lot from readers taking my polls, sending me comments, writing me notes.  You're all full of surprises!

The girls I've met on my travels.  One in particular, in Colorado: when we met, she was counseling other girls and her girlfriend wants her to go full-time.  Five years earlier she had dressed for the very first time.  I find that amazing, along the lines of going to a church for the first time and being a bishop five years later.

Girls I've met through their blogs.  People like Halle and Alison and Annie (who has stopped blogging) and Kimberly Huddle.

There are two more I will get to Monday and Tuesday and that will be the end of this.

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The Future Is Here!

Next up on my Helping Meg Grow series: the internet.

Hey, if "the computer" could be a Time Person of the Year (1982), then this qualifies.

Before the internet, or the world of connected computers ~ networks like Delphi or smaller BBSs (bulletin board systems), transfolk were alone.

We were more than alone: we were weird to the point that we were SURE we were the only guys who'd ever want to willingly wear a dress or a bra or makeup.

Think back.  Odds are, when you thought about dressing you also thought that you could NEVER tell anyone about it EVER.

I'm talking to the girls who grew up pre-internet.

There would be little hints that this was not insane and you were not alone.  Maybe you saw an alternative magazine ~ some "adult" newsstands had them.  I remember seeing a couple of trans-related ads in the free sex-oriented ad mags in Las Vegas (I was just curious).  You might find an ad for the tiny handful of stores that catered to "transvestites," the only term they'd have for us.

I could never figure out why someone would go into a store where everyone immediately knew you were a tranny (even maybe someone who saw you enter from the street) so you could buy way overpriced clothing, rather than a women's shop where you could probably bull your way into a plausible excuse to buy almost anything.  Or go mail order.  Yes, they had the odd sizes.  Yes, you could try things on (wow!) but the costs (risk and financial) always seemed to high to me.

But it did mean you weren't alone.

Then BBSs showed up and if it reached a high enough client threshold someone would start a transvestite board.

Wow.  You're not alone.

The rise of the internet brought forth Usenet (which I've mentioned before).

And now, we know we're normal, we're not alone, and we can live a sane and safe life as we were meant to be.

I'm excited about the future: I plan to play a small supporting role.

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Surprise and No Surprise

We went up to Baltimore last weekend.  After visiting the aquarium, we wandered around the harbor area and walked into the visitor center for a few minutes.  They had, among other brochures and books, a visitor's guide.

Surprise: they also had an "LGBT Visitor's Guide."

It was largely a regular visitor's guide with some ads geared towards same-sex marriage and such.  There was a short table of "TAG approved" places to stay.  There was also a box explaining what TAG approved meant: it meant gay-friendly.  There was an article about the GLCCB (Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore).

No Surprise: there was no T content that I could see, although there were three small business card ads under "trans" in the back: two were support groups for transmen; one was for tgirls but "anyone who varies from traditional gender expression is welcome."

Ah well.  Someday, people will figure out we ain't (necessarily) gay.

ps ~ today's Charity's birthday.  I won't say which one because I don't want y'all to know how young she is.

---

Boo!

A special shout to four ladies I once worked with.

I told the story of surprising my old boss with the help of a former co-worker whom I came out to.  The co-worker is very conservative, quite religious, and open-minded enough that I felt it was OK to tell her about Meg and she helped me get dressed and we met our former boss for lunch on Halloween (hence the Boo!).

That was in 2008 and the story is here.  After reading, go to the very bottom (past the comments) and read the rest of the story in the next three posts.

The following year, I came out to my new boss at a new job and she was very enthusiastic about me coming in dressed on Halloween.  She was busy when I got in after dressing and I just went up to a co-worker (the office fashionista) who not only didn't recognise me but she proceeded to introduce me around the office as a new employee, fooling everybody.  That story is here, and also in four parts.

So a shout-out to four great women.  You all raised my confidence immensely and taught me t-girls were as welcome as g-girls.

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Sunday Funnies: The Middletons

I don't think I've ever featured Ralph Dunagin's The Middletons.  It has a remarkably small cast (the main characters are Morris and Midge and their son, and their dog Bumper, who's only matched in meanness by Morris' mom.

I SAID she was mean

I wanna do this