I have friends coming to stay next week. I've known them a long time, they are wonderful trans allies, and I'm looking forward to it.
As they'll be staying two weeks, I've emptied the wardrobe in the guest room completely of my things and put all my clothes in the other bedroom. Amazingly, everything fits there, something I never expected or even tried before. This means that when my friends leave I will have a completely empty wardrobe in what was their bedroom. And that means .... more frocks will be needed to fill the aching void.
Yes, this is how the minds of trans women work. (Did I say trans women? ;-) )
I've been replacing furniture this summer bit by bit and I got a new shoe rack - an expandable one (always think ahead!) and I'm rather liking the collection of cute shoes I see there.
Robert Redford
My tribute to a great actor and director, of course, but also to a significant supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community. In addition, the New Queer Cinema movement emerged partly through his Sundance Film Festival that promoted lesser known film makers.
Autumn festivals
Well, the outdoor swimming pool has now closed for the season, which is a real loss as I love the location and miss the benefit - it's helped me lose five kilos (11 pounds) this summer. I love the sunlight dancing on the water as I move through it, and the greenery surrounding it. Personally, I've never liked the chlorinated rectangular starkness of a normal swimming pool and much prefer to swim in rivers, lakes or the sea. This pool, with its guitar-like outline, is a great compromise between a managed, hygienic venue and a natural body of water. Till next summer, then. Now my quest to get back into those cute dresses must rely on my diet.
We're into local food and drink festivals now. Villages dedicating weekends to beer, wine, sausages, codfish, edible snails... I like it on the riviera; there is always something going on. My slimming voice suggests cod and snails are better than sausages and beer ... just possibly not quite so fun!
Additionally, the protected nests of loggerhead turtles on the beaches here have each been disgorging dozens of baby turtles to the delight of beachgoers and nature lovers. There is something endearing about a tiny hatchling flippering its way through the sand to the waves as fast as it can. Well, I guess its instinct is to do that or get eaten, so maybe the reason is not so endearing, but here they ensure they make it to the water.
Sanremo Bay in autumn
Growing like fungus
Ever since I posted about Kew Gardens and mushrooms last month, I have had a huge increase in interest in this blog from the most diverse and unexpected places; thousands of views a day, in fact. Fungus is the trigger, folks. So to that lovely bloggerette who was wondering how to boost her viewing statistics, this might be the answer!
Did you see the lunar eclipse a few nights ago? It's always an amazing sight. Here the sky was hazy at first and I couldn't see anything until a brick-red ball emerged eerily from the murk. Later, when the eclipse was over, the sky was totally clear and the full moon was very bright, illuminating everything in its characteristic milky light.
For thousands of years the moon was associated with femininity in most cultures. Then Galileo had the idea of pointing a new-fangled device called a telescope at the moon 400+ years ago and realised that the features were mountains and craters, not some arcane pattern of patches with divine significance, and so we entered the age of science, which was great for reducing superstition. Yet I couldn't help recalling the association between the moon and femininity, and as it was a warm night and I was dressed just in a T-shirt and light skirt, I imagined how a MtF trans person in an age before Galileo might have appreciated the moonlight shining on them. Maybe as a divine endorsement or spiritual uplift or blessing for their femininity. Ah well, science has many benefits, but maybe we have lost a little mystique in the process.
Not to mention some amazing dress sense!
This lady, painted in in the same decade Galileo first looked at the sky, may be trying to emulate the full moon! And that's one statement frock she's got. Do you think we've also lost something in the intervening eras now that we're into sweatshop-made tee-shirts, cheap leggings and imitation leather accessories? Possibly.
Rocky horror
A news feature this week reminded me that the Rocky Horror Picture Show was first released fifty years ago, in the UK in August and in the US in September 1975.
It flopped.
But like a lot of initial flops, it gradually became a cult. Midnight screenings, attracting a more alternative audience, became a phenomenon, with audiences turning up dressed as the characters, bearing props and with their own well-rehearsed heckles.
Yes, the musical was a tribute to horror and sci-fi B-movies and the glam rock of the early '70s, and the crossdressing/trans element was not initially supposed to be that prominent, but the message of tolerance and freedom to be who you are was always clear. A weird way to celebrate personal authenticity and autonomy, but hey, there's hardly been a more popular stage show or film. The film is the longest continuously running film in history, and arguably the biggest cult movie.
I have the DVD and it's one of my favourites. I've never seen the film at the cinema, but I did go to the stage show with a girlfriend. I wanted to dress as Magenta the maid but this was frowned upon as my girlfriend at the time had her own intentions that way ... and very sexy she looked, too. But no, I had to go as a male - but I thought it was a suitable twist that my role in a crossdressing audience, when I dress as a woman every day, should be to dress male (a sort of vampiric one - she chose my outfit).
Anyway, thanks to fifty years of musical whackiness for helping to get the message across to so many.
Another old crossdressing comedy
In the unique repository of crossdressing history and culture that is Stana's inimitable blog, Femulate, she posted a still the other day from the 1909 short film, How Percy Won the Beauty Competition, a seven-minute music-hall style romp typical of the era, directed by and starring Alf Collins as Percy, which you can watch here:
There are innumerable films, plays and stage entertainments from the first half of the twentieth century that include crossdressing and female impersonation, and I have often wondered if the phenomenon was as much connected with trans people finding an outlet for their needs through stagecraft as audiences merely wanting entertainment.
Anyway, this short movie caught my eye more than most because the second and third scenes show Percy outside the Charles Fox wig and makeup theatrical store in central London, where many of us TGirls have got our supplies such as foundation, beard reducer, makeup brushes, etc. I knew them when they were in Tavistock Street but since first being established in 1878 they have had many other addresses in London's theatre district. I think in this film that this is the shop as it was in nearby Wellington Street. And what a bold frontage and display it had at the time!
There's a characteristic Renault taxi of the era in this still, too.
Percy doesn't seem to be the only CD in the beauty contest, which has none of the swimsuit and talent rounds that bedevil such competitions nowadays! Percy therefore wins through elegance, femininity and charming the judges, a lesson for every aspiring CD! But then ... The Benny Hill style chase scenes - which the actors and actresses are obviously enjoying a bit too much for realism - are shot in Dulwich, rather a new suburb at the time.
If you like period costumes and huge bonnets, this is the movie for you. Bring back big hats, I say! For a history of Charles Fox, there's this item online, with photos: Layers of London.
(Ah well, I guess you can take the girl out of London, but you can't take London out of the girl! The theatre district of London was very much my old stamping ground.)
Riviera life
Back to nowadays and the riviera where I now live, where we've had a near perfect summer. It's been a wet and horrible summer elsewhere in the Alps but Sanremo Bay is very sheltered and the cool air from the rain-sodden mountains has tempered the heat of summer blowing up from Africa to make the last couple of months a real treat. The official "summer seaside season" traditionally ends on September 15th when the last holidaymakers have returned to work and school, so I'm making the most of the last few days of the outdoor swimming pool.
I'm glad I rid myself of body hair to be more feminine this year. Despite the maintenance, I've felt a lot happier for it. Tomorrow evening there should be a little party at the pool, although the weather gods feel like spoiling it by scheduling a thunderstorm at the same time. I shall have to get some more bubbly wine and some nibbles for it. I don't keep wine in the house these days because it makes me fat! And after that, when baring my feet in public is no longer a thing, I shall repaint my toenails. I love having painted nails.
The other week's Creature Feature mentioned a gecko who'd moved to my ceiling for some days. I met him, or an identical friend, scuttling under the front door on my return from Milan, and several more outside the back door since. It's either the same one getting about a lot, or there's a whole bunch of them. They're welcome, though. Bugs don't stand a chance!
Today I decided to start a new career as a surgeon so I put on lots of makeup, selected a suitable wig - an untidy red one - got my loud pink polka dot dress with the wide collar on, my extra big, long shoes and, most importantly, I put my big red nose on.
I turned up for work at the hospital and immediately they put me on the wards.
"Mr Stump needs his left leg amputating, Mr Aicheson-Paines has water on the brain that needs to be sorted, and Mrs Boggis needs a colonoscopy," the Head of Surgery told me.
So I got to work and at the end of the day I reported back to him.
"I took Mr Stump's arm off, Mr Aicheson-Paines got a direct hit from my squirty flower right on his head and Mrs Boggis got the custard pie you ordered. I also had time to pull an endless line of handkerchiefs out of Mr Sniffer's nose, tripped up several nurses and put Mrs Tumble in the collapsing bed."
"Ha ha ha, the collapsing bed is always a good one!" he chortled, big red lips agape and nose flashing. Well, done Dr Richmond, you've qualified. At this rate you'll be head of surgery when I retire at the end of the year. Put it there."
I shook his hand ... and watched him convulse. Ah, the good old palm buzzer! It gets them every time.
"Aargh, my pacemaker," he gurgled as he expired from the literal shock.
Hey, at this rate I'll be head of surgery by tomorrow.
I write this because I have had a very stressful week dealing not so much with medical matters but with financial ones for a relative of mine who went to have supposedly straightforward hernia surgery in May ... and is still in hospital. I did his tax return with the help of a tax accountant but you can imagine that it's not easy compiling details from someone else's unfamiliar paperwork that I had to hunt for, using forms that I don't use myself and that I've never seen before because my tax affairs are very different, for a tax system that I have only be party to in very recent years. That and dealing with his bank have left me pretty strung out. I'll be glad to get home tomorrow ... after the rail strike is over.
I'm pleased to say that he himself has made a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks and is now able to get out of bed and even walk a bit - he was told he might never walk again. In fact, we went together down the hospital corridor for tea from the hot drinks machine which, rather like the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser in the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, gave me a cup of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
I will be up-front and straightforward with my own experience of other people's surgery (I've never stayed in a hospital in my life and I intend to keep things that way), but the large majority of people that I have known to go and have surgery have not come out that much better off for it. Your mileage will vary and you and yours may be delighted with your surgeons' efforts. As I say, though, just about everyone else I know has had botched jobs, from my father and the ten operations on one eye to repair a common problem, to my mother and sister whose surgery wounds opened, soaking their beds in blood and requiring transfusions, to this relative of mine whose botched hernia job has resulted in his living for four months with an open belly and several more interventions to go, and this from the same comedians whose routine endoscopy perforated the gullet of the patient in the bed next to him and who then spent 15 days in intensive care as a result. I knew only one person who had worthwhile cancer surgery; the others all died anyway. And in all cases we're talking about hospitals that are
deemed high quality or specialist, not some medical tent in a refugee camp in a war zone.
I have professional indemnity insurance in my line of work in case I mess up.
But I would lose my professional status altogether if I messed up this often. Why do
surgeons get away with it? It's complicated work, sure, but then so's my work and that can have serious consequences for people, too.
For the girls who have vaginoplasties, I have always been sceptical. In my experience, about three quarters of the ops do not go properly to plan. Someone who has had GRS, and who had complications herself, says she thinks 95% of GRS is imperfect. That is a horrifying figure.
You do what is right for you. This is just my view and my choice. I have no spouse or family, no-one I feel I should be around for and therefore I am not prepared to go through the aggravation of serious surgery. I joined the Dignitas organisation some years ago, have a 'living will' (as well as a legal one) and relevant documentation for doctors and lawyers so that if or when they diagnose me with cancer or tell me I have a life-threatening problem or I get squashed by a tram, I am very unlikely to go through with surgery as it's not worth it. Your situation is different and you make the choices that are right for you in your circumstances. If being undead is important to you and your only way out of the alternative is surgery, then go for surgery; but you may have to live with a greatly reduced quality of life. Similarly, I'll not go in for gender surgery as I don't trust it to work. If your dysphoria is so severe that GRS is the option you feel you need most to help you, then I will fully support you in that choice. You choose for you, and I will choose for me. I'm not trying to sway you, just telling you why I won't do it for my part. Virtually all the trans people who have GRS say they are glad to have had the surgery, and that's the important bit; it's a pity, though, that few of them get the promised part in full. Of course I'd love to be fully female in every possible way, but life is so often about weighing the odds, about pain management, about avoiding trouble and my scales therefore tip differently from others.
Thanks for reading. Stay well and look after yourself.
