read me.

Today I ate bee pollen in a smoothie and I have been sneezing nonstop. And when I am not sneezing, my face is curling up attractively in preparation for a sneeze. I guess it's like a vaccination? Alex said that if you eat the pollen you'll sneeze less because your body will be used to it, and man have I been sneezing in response to the California pollen my body's not used to. Gross.

Anyway, also this thing happened today where I got reminded that I'm not in charge of how my body's read, or what folks do with those readings. Stupid. I have a hat that I like and today I wore it. It's a stupid, army green, emo doofus hat with a big TSPX¹ patch on the side; I wear it cocked to the side to signify Big Dyke, since apparently lots of eyeliner and sparkles don't, and because I was grumpy and sleepy this morning and didn't want to deal with my hair being all clean and weird.

So, I am wearing a big gay hat (which maybe is not big or gay. I don't know. I don't know how anybody fuckin reads anything I do ever any more) and doing bookstore things and this old Berkeley hippie decides that maybe it would be nice to hit on me. So he goes, "can I come flirt with you for a minute?" And I said sure, because why not. Who cares, I wasn't doing anything important.

He was like, blah blah, what's your bag, and I was like, Shrug, I guess I organize and play punk rock, and he goes OFF AND OFF AND OFF about how he'd love to have a cup of tea so I could explain punk rock to him because it seems like the Dark Side and his daughter and he saw Janice Joplin or something, and then I guess he caught wind of the fact that I was trans somehow? Because first he said something about somebody being a girl or a boy or something, and then since I didn't respond delightedly to the broaching of the trans subject, he called me "young lady. or man."

Which you don't do.

I think I was polite for a second and then less polite because I'm bad at navigating a "fuck you" at a customer. Eventually he left and I was pissed for a long time til I thought about Dog the Bounty Hunter and how much John likes him.



Then later Alex took me for a smoothie and I ate a bunch of bee pollen, which was nice, and then this boy started walking next to me and asked my name and then asked for my phone number and I was like nope! He was like, why? And I said, Because I don't really date boys. "But you on hormones," he wanted me to know, "you've got titties!" At which point our conversation ended, and fuck that guy.

It's gross and unsurprising that folks think I'm interested in how they're reading my body, but that's what male privilege is, right? Laid out in a trans context: this unexamined "here is my opinion, which is valid because it's mine, regardless of what effect it's going to have on you." Like when folks read me as trans and then NEED NEED NEED to let me know that they've put it together.

Anyway, ew. Now I am going to have a big lezzie Dirty Dancing/beer/gay bar + tomato soup date with my girlfriend. Then, tomorrow, I am going to try to remember that my main coping mechanism is to be pissed at the whole world all the time: I went to Camp Trans and forgot for a little while.



1. TranSPunX. Clearly.