Moon Memo: Do we have the same childhood?
I guess CW for talk about teenage sexuality. And anxiety. And text editing
Living in Text
"I'm Text based."
-Paul Krugman
I'm writing this on the Thinkpad this morning. It has become the best writing tool I have ever used. Great keyboard. Stripped of all the distractions. Living mostly offline when I'm on this black machine. Just wrote on the Thinkpad in white out marker "Live in text here." That is the key to a happy life when you are working in words. Live in text.
As part of living in text, I have updated the eReader. The Boox Palma that I had for work reading feels too much like a phone, and I was avoiding it like I avoid my phone at work. The phone is a distraction from what is going on there, a welcome one sometimes. But I've been sitting in the break room watching others fall into tik tok or youtube during their breaks. And I want to read again.
So I took a chunk of this paycheck's play money and turned it into a different eReader. Not a kindle. Kindles suck. You can't read articles easily. You are stuck in amazon. It's another Boox, but it's bigger, has physical page turn buttons, allows for Readwise Reader and the Kindle app and the library app. Since I got it Friday I've read 25,000 pages between 2 books (A/S/L, Moby Dick) and a bunch of long form articles. Just got out of the bathtub, and I'm buzzing with the new book.
We All Have The Same Childhood
I'm reading A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton. This book is set during basically my childhood and early trans years.
There is a chapter early in the book where a girl named Lilith is remembering when she was a Boy Scout, and her experiences as a girl at scout camp. And she says something that just absolutely broke my heart, made me cry in a coffee shop:
Do trans women all have the same childhoods? Where we wanted to disappear? Where we wanted to disappear into manhood, or disappear entirely? Where we wanted to stop being assigned faggot at birth, maybe be assigned invisible fat women instead? What happens when we achieve that goal? Do we find happiness?
I don't think I've found happiness. I have found a place where cis people see me as a woman, and where trans women see my as invisible, unless I take up space vocally and with determination. I've found the ghost of adulthood, where you realize no one really gives a fuck, except for assholes and perverts.
This week, I had a man yell "tranny faggot" at me while I was waiting for a work training. I had to tell my boss about it, tell her that these things happen, and that they suck, and that I want to make sure be there at 9 is actually 9, not some weird equivalent of queer time. I want to disappear enough for things like that to not happen anymore. And I want to be one of the sadgrls, welcomed into cuddle piles because I am who I am. But that doesn't happen either. So what have I found?
Camp
He tasted like twenty miles of biking, like puberty and desire. We had been assigned tents because we were the weird ones in the troop. We talked about star trek and Tolkien, about Dungeons and Dragons and how much our senior patrol leader was beautiful. "Do you want to fool around?" he asked, and I have him in my mouth, and he giggles and groans, and his cum tastes like my cousin's cum (I know because I was forced to know), like my own cum (I know because I chose to know). And he will not touch my clit, because no one touches my clit or my breasts, just want to be in my mouth. And 10 years later he won't meet my eyes at his beautiful cousin's funeral, and he has 3 kids already, and is deep in the church. And I am another 15 years from womanhood. And I wonder if we all have stories like this.
Sadgirls
Last night I danced hard at my friend Miryam's last concert in Portland.
And I danced with the sad girls, an online community that has somehow let me join. They are newer girls, a few years out of pandemic confrontations of their bodies and souls. They are all younger, and beautiful, and I worry that my welcome is conditional (I am a potato, a brick to be thrown against us, a risk, a fat girl who grew up poor and is losing her teeth, older and sadder and I guess that makes me a sad girl). It feels like they are all a polycule, and I am on the outside. And that's alright.
They are extremely kind. They treat me like an equal. But I've been in this kind of group before, and was called a risk, called something that triggered dysphoria before. But that was years ago. Maybe things have changed. Maybe people are kinder now. I try my best to be charming and kind.
And I have an amazing time. I flirt. I talk poetry and books. I watch them in their little covens of sex. Jade is there, and is there with LEFT OUT FOR PRIVACY REASONS. And I am happy to be there. I am happy to be there. I am welcome, right? I am one of them, right?
This morning, I am living in text. Text knows me. At least I have control in text.
Love you all a lot.
Misha
