This is very much my blog, so don't be surprised if this doesn't follow accepted patterns and norms. It is a place where I can be honest and I appreciate that. Here, I splurge. No one comes out looking good. It is a selfish place written by a pretty selfish person. It is a place of ranting and I am, ultimately, an unreliable narrator. Bear that in mind. I attempt to be honest, but things are very much from my point of view.
Highly subjective views of people in my life proliferate. It will deal with many things and new readers would do well to check out the "Story So Far" Page above. I can also heartily recommend that Dysphoria link if you're questioning or interested. Thank you!
Yesterday, on the bus, I got to realising that I haven't sorted my Dad's birthday present or card. He visits tomorrow. Oops. So, I felt pretty down returning to my cold and damp house and crawling into bed sometime around half midnight. I'd also recklessly agreed to phone him this morning, along with have a shower and do grocery shopping and wrap presents and sort lunch. I have managed a shower. I have managed nothing else. My Mum rang - she was concerned that I had managed to get some damp-proofing work booked for 22 December and wanted to know if I knew if I would be free for some holiday dates I'd asked for. Cue much passing between two, she said unconnected, issues over the next few minutes: why not cancel the damp work until later in the year? Why could I not just ask for the days off? Why had I not got a builder to look at the leak in my bedroom? Why had I not got the roofers round yet to deal with the work they'd done? Have I booked a plasterer yet? Maybe I should get the roofers to deal with the leak in the bedroom; why haven't I sorted my Dad's present? Maybe I could get him some alcohol. Oh, yeah, the [redacted] so maybe not. Fine, get him a book token then. Of course there's somewhere in town will sell book tokens, don't be stupid! (there isn't, for reference, I've tried this before). I shared that this was all getting on top of me and that I was lucky I'd managed to get anything booked at all re building work. Yes, I was aware that the situation with my roofers is annoying. Yes, the date was annoying for the damp proofing work. Yes, I did need to sort my bedroom. Yes, I know in order to book a train north I need to know my dates. Yes, it would be nice to have time off over Christmas and New Year. Yes, having bare wall will make the house cold. Yes, I have had my heating on.
Impasse. I shared the comments on my video lesson, how they made me happy but also sad because I can't teach any more. Mum started crying, she'd watched a documentary about a teacher who abused young boys but kept getting glowing references from places he left because none of the boys complained. He eventually went to South Africa and, now that the boys are grown and complaining, he can't be extradited to face trial and teaches in South Africa. And it was unfair, she wailed as she teared up, because I hadn't done anything like that and I said I couldn't reach again. Why not try adult education? I explained, less than patiently, again that I could not. Well, said she, life is hard but at least there is some happiness - was I not happy that-
I cut her off. No, I wasn't going to play that role for her. I was sorry she was upset, but the conversation had been upsetting for me from the get go and I wasn't going to play comforter now. I couldn't. I wasn't in the right place. The phone call ended.
So, now I'm a huge asshole on top of everything else. Fuck.
I start work at 1225, I'm on til gone midnight again. My Dad and his wife are due to visit tomorrow after 2pm, I have to have things sorted by then. They'll be fresh from a visit with my children - I can't be there if they want to see eldest. Well, that positivity from the last post lasted a while, didn't it.
You probably don't want to know, so here's a chance to turn back at the beginning of a post for a change.
For context, here's where I am right now:
1. My day at work was confused and confusing. I am discombobulated.
2. I decided to spend money on a meal out because I was so late and didn't fancy cooking in a kitchen with the noise from my broken guttering. This will have repercussions in a moment.
3. My guttering is worse, given the heavy and persistent rain.
4. I crawled into my loft. Oh, what a surprise: my leaks above the bathroom are still there, the felting installed is badly done, there are new leaks there. I mean, at this point, what else was I expecting?
So, know what follows... you don't want to read. No, I'm not going to focus on the fact that it's been a year since I changed my name like I wanted to when I woke up this morning, nor the happiness from messages from Gary and Shiona (thank you all the same).
Yeah, if you have clicked direct, now is the time to bail.
Oh, hey, look! Here's a fresh one! How she must have looked when I was first given her. I hugged her so much she was quite misshapen when I passed her on to my daughter. Who was unimpressed. Ruff was thus stuffed into a beanbag one day by Tilly whilst I was at work. When I protested she said: "well, you did pass it on and so you don't have any right to be upset."
When I was young, before I was four, I was given a teddy bear Andrex puppy. At first, it was named 'Doggy' for me, but I would change that name to 'Ruff' at some point before I was six. Unknown to my parents, because I never told them, was the fact that Ruff was a girl. When I'd seen enough episodes of Dungeons and Dragons I changed Ruff's name to 'Uni', like the baby unicorn on the show, and, in my head, Uni was obviously a girl. But, as I started learning how the world worked, I changed the name back to Ruff quickly and Ruff became a boy - because a boy shouldn't have female toys. For reference, my teddy bears (brown and blue) stayed resolutely sexless. I gained a green rabbit in a yellow jump suit from a fair or leisure park at some point and secretly assigned it female gender, naming her 'Green Rabbit' and, then, later 'Green O'Rabbit' because of April O'Neill - a crush and/or life goals depending on how I was feeling at any given moment. I know, names were not terribly easy for me to create. For illustration consider that the teddy bears were called Brown Bear (brown) and Ice Bear (blue).
My point? This shows one of the many things I was careful about as a child because I was hyper-aware of what coded masculine and feminine and deeply concerned that I code masculine enough that people didn't query things. For many reasons, I was very concerned that I not deviate from 'masculinity' from a very young age. One of those reasons was what would later be diagnosed as ASD and the other was what I would eventually embrace as the fact that I felt, very much, that I was a girl. But a secret one.
This is more realistic than was Vixen. But you get the general idea.
Case in point: some time in my early teens I was lucky enough to have the money to gain a new teddy bear - a fluffy fox. What no one knew, because it was a secret between me and her, was that she was a vixen. Imaginatively named 'Foxy', she was secretly called 'Vixen' when I was alone - because she and I understood that she couldn't be a vixen in public, not even at home, because boys don't have female teddy bears. I did have a rag-doll named 'Jessica', but she was a gifted toy from my Mum and already named so and was, obviously, a girl. She was, of course, relegated to when I stayed at my grandparents overnight and I never admitted how much I enjoyed her company - so she was eventually sold by my grandparents between visits and I had to feign disinterest despite being a bit distraught.
I would avoid ice-cream. After a certain point in my youth I noticed that women in TV shows would meet up at each other's 'places' and share ice-cream after break-ups and such like and so began to think that ice-cream flavours other than cheap neapolitan(sp?), vanilla and mint choc-chip were 'feminine' and must be avoided. Soon after that I decided that all consumption of ice-cream was too feminine and thus stopped eating it for any reason in any flavour altogether in my teens lest people through it discover how I felt inside.
You get a reasonable idea from this cross-section of my 'art'. Note the small one of the tank and A-10 Thunderbolt in the top, entitled 'Land and Air'; along with the A4 rendition of an M1 Abrams being attacked by an A-10 entitled "the inevitability of defeat" because I was such a happy soul.
The girl is there, on the left, the eye dates later (much later), along with the Velociraptor studies I did and a self-portrait in a spoon. Unlike most people in that room, I drew the whole spoon, not just me in it, meaning you get the whole room there if you want to look closely. Note the only use of colour on display here...
When I took Art for GCSE I did so, secretly, because I felt it coded feminine. Luckily, people thought I did it for an academic break. Most of my art work of the era was deliberately coded feminine in my brain: using a cat for a stained glass design at age 13, for example, with deliberate use of flowers and butterflies. No one paid me much attention in Art, I wasn't top of the class nor bottom so the teachers left me mostly alone and I was subdued and quiet enough that my classmates left me alone. One girl spotted me when I was 15 when we had some free sketching time and she spotted that I'd drawn her. She was quite taken with the portrait, commenting that it was a reasonable likeness, and also some amazement that I hadn't drawn her "boobs or something" - it never occurred to me at the time that this was something boys would do - but that was as far as it ever went. Art was very much my feminine outlet that I could indulge a bit - hiding it with helicopters, war machinery and dinosaurs - because no one really cared what I got up to in it. All with dead eyes, though.
Let's be honest, you don't need me to explain the plot - you can judge this book entirely by its cover.
In my latter GCSE years I wrote a short story about lovers eloping to Gretna Green in which there was a sex scene - I was mocked mercilessly for it, because it was all a bit 'girly' in what it focussed on (and it used the word 'ravished'), so I changed tack and ended up writing almost exclusively military fiction based on Harold Coyle or Colin Forbes or Clive Cussler. Later I would add Tom Clancy and militaria generally, carefully avoiding anything that might code too feminine. I carefully hid the fact that in Z for Zechariah that I read at 13 I identified with the girl left behind in the valley and not the brother that left when discussing it with my English teacher after school (a ruse to encourage me to read more than my Colin Dann obsession). I know now that my analysis of Carrie's War was coloured in no small part by my identification with Carrie and thus hiding it by trying to over-do my love of the Second World War setting. I would deliberately use First World War motifs, knowledge and death and destruction to combat anything I considered a bit 'girly' in my head, in my writing, in my thoughts, in my anythings. In Boy to Girl, that story I wrote, it was the defining masculine characteristic of the unnamed main character that made him male - his love of and knowledge about the First World War. I even used a mental image of soldiers attacking to stop my burgeoning male puberty body doing its thing. It was enormously effective to envisage soldiers going over the top to destroy my lustful thoughts; hiding any sexual fanstasies inamongst gas shells, blood, guts, gore and mud.
Green. The colour green coded feminine in my brain, so I stopped using it (my Mum used it as her colour of choice in game tokens when called for); along with yellow (used by my maternal grandmother in the same way). Red was allowed, it was the colour of my Dad's favourite football team; as wqas blue (natch) but not light blue. Dark and light blue were used as the main colour palate for the school uniform I devised for the boarding school in Boy to Girl and drew in secret - hiding my use of the palate in the police-style camouflage of tanks and armoured personal carriers in a far-future wartorn version of Britain I created with my brother in the early 90s. None of that art work remains, purged long ago.
Nein! Es ist verboten!!
Nicht essen!
Dancing, another thing I decided coded feminine and thus another thing that I decided very deliberately to give up and not do until I lost any ability I may have once had and instead awkwardly shuffled to music (until my mid-twenties, when Toby would tell me it was something I did that left him genuinely embarrassed by and for me - Tilly would later claim the same, along with amazement that I was incapable of holding any kind of rhythm). Bright colours generally would eventually be done away with, so that I gravitated to military olive green or muted browns and beiges. I decided hoodies were feminine, so evaded those too (except for one I got in the States because the male of the party bought one and looked suitably rugged and masculine in it, so I joined in; but then Tilly claimed it and it became feminine again). This extended to colouring in icing, sprinkles and hundreds and thousands - too feminine for me to contemplate eating. Hell, even chicken in salads became something I avoided as too feminine once I discovered the internet.
Although I have been fascinated by the feminine, I have been very careful, always on my guard, to avoid embracing it too much. And, as this incomplete list shows, much of what I avoided wasn't really masculine or feminine. It was just how I interpreted it.
So why share this now? This sort of thing seems like it would have made more sense to cover a decade ago, not now I'm out and myself, why is this whirling around my head?
Because I am a coward.
Let me explain. Recently there has been a murdered girl, who happened to be trans, and a wizarding game. And I have been having nightmares. In one, there was a game involving knocking labels from outside a post-office by climbing a step-ladder (this was an official game, by the way, endorsed by said post office). Anyway, a group of teens asked me and my friend to move aside so they could play, and one of these boys ended up being cursed to be a girl until the game was finished. He coped well with the change but, after it was all done, asked to be changed back: he wasn't a girl. And I felt awful because I had been so jealous of the luck. Of course, I was not so cursed. He was changed back, of course he was. And I woke with cold sweat and fear coursing through my veins. I had to check the house for burglars, no, I don't know either. Other dreams have been less memorable and vivid, but I wake stressed and scared and sad every time. The theme of cowardice in the dreams underlines my inability, or unwillingness, to engage with anything surrounding the murder or... anything. Especially as people I know actually stand for something.
Today I ended up at IKEA - both Five and Abbi have not been available for various reasons - and got myself a pan with a lid. Walking around I heard several comments along the lines of "is that a man?" but thought I was just being paranoid - it's been a hard day at work (the bus was very loud, very busy, it's not been a fun day) - but there was more such conversation when I stopped for a hot dog ("I'm sure that's a man in a skirt!" / "Well, don't stare!") and, on my way home, I was passed by two late teens boys on bikes who burst out in theatrical laughter as they passed. "Hey, fucker! Are you a fucking man or a fucking woman? Fucking pedo!" Later, on two separate occasions, I was passed by couples in their mid thirties who both followed the same pattern of stage-whispering loud enough for me to hear behind me: "I think that's a man!" "Well, it knows what it's doing." "Yeah, makes me a bit queasy it does." And, yeah, I've been using a lighter foundation and the light was such that my burgeoning stubble was more pronounced through it.
I shan't be able to make it to Chams this week either - I'm on an early shift necessitating a 3am get up time the day after and would like more than two and half hours to sleep before it. Another chance to stand in some form of solidarity lost. I watched The Prince as well, the play by Abigail Thorn, yesterday because I was lonely and sad. It made me cry enough that I had to wash off my mascara. I'm Sam, not Jen. And I have White Town's Your Woman playing in my head - another thing I feared coded too feminine so asked around about the lyrics, my parents reassured me that the male singer was merely pointing out that if roles were reversed he wouldn't date his paramour, not that a male was singing lyrics from a female point of view. I was both relieved and sad at the time. I later learn that it was from a woman's perspective and that was the male singer's intent. Also that the video was filmed near where I live.
I had assumed that I was ready, at long last, but I was wrong. Apparently I am not. I'd gone with Abbi on a mission, and the day was lovely and excellent and lovely in spite of that mission and it's failure. Since then I have been online to try and scratch that damn' itch and find what it was that I was looking for - but to no avail.
Work has been joined, and things have... happened. Examining paid me one last time, which was lovely too, and plugs a bit of a hole but only in the short term. Friends are struggling with real issues - where they may be trapped in a house of less value than they had supposed - and that sucks and causes them anxiety, as one would expect. Five has moved house and been in touch - ...
Interruption, I've fucked up at work. Again. This time might be impossible to bounce back from. If I am sacked tomorrow, I shan't be surprised. Annoyed and upset: sure, but not surprised.
And that's the entry. Smallest over tomorrow, of course, whenever I am most stressed and worried is when I see my children. Fuck.
I'm never far from a spiral - physically or temporally - and I'm back there agin. I think I might be broken. No, I know I'm broken. I very well might be beyond fixing though. Missed my chance to meet that truck and get an in-service payout. The law of diminishing returns. At some point taking matters into my own hands will become just as financially viable as the alternative. Just a matter of time.
Interview at one place, proof of right to work requested in another, but no response from my Union about whether I can accept a job. Still employed, officially, you see. No word on when that may end. It will, but things drag ever onward.
I might be able to look in a mirror, stand seeing me in a photo - it doesn't make the subject any better of a person.
Had planned for the Eldest to come over and watch Encanto together, got it as a late Father's Day gift and Eldest demanded we watch it together the first time. Tilly ended up sending Smallest round as well, despite misgivings, and sure enough he couldn't cope. Cue very disappointed Eldest and a Smallest desperately trying to escalate everything he could. He won, I lost my cool, and he learned I was jobless. I took him home, gained a Middlest, and then returned to finish the film. It was a good film, made me cry properly, smudged mascara and everything. Middlest went painting upstairs and enjoyed himself, Eldest got to squee about Bruno and the evening was sort of saved. Maybe.
Got some work done today, got passed for my third contract, not complaining, going to need the pay! Spent the day in professional garb because I'd taken the time to shave my legs (an hour!!) and thought I could. Again, not complaining, a shame I can't wear it all for the purpose I acquired it, but it can't be helped. So I have felt like a real professional working woman for a bit. Skirt from Shiona, so thanks again! I managed to avoid the usual exclamation of how professional I felt! I just thought it.
Sometimes, someone gets upset. Doesn't hear the laughter, takes it as a threat. But it's different after. After the event.
Yesterday I managed to wander out for a walk on the evening and break my new umbrella. I needed to get out though. Both yesterday and the day before I got out for free tea at IKEA too, which was good for my mental state and exercise. I shall miss that I suppose if I'm lucky enough to get enough hours to live off in work. Looks like I'll need to work more hours than I did already to get the pay I need at £1k less.
Ah, no, see... I missed out the part in the tale of the Smallest above where I ended up smacking him. He told Tilly and now I shan't see him unsupervised. How soon til that ends up as a reported crime? How long until I face the consequences there too? O woe is me? Ha. Ha ha. Ha fucking ha. It's as well the car goes back, I'm back to thinking about the truck. No death in service payout now though, so only five years' worth of income for the family if I find it. But, you know, may be better than what I am able to pull in otherwise.
It doesn't let up. I am to blame. I always have been. I remain so. No defence, no anything. Thirty-one days to find the truck.
What, with all the commotion I rather forgot the fundamental thing about me: my huge orifice in which I shove pies and my inability to not utilise it in the worst possible way at the worst possible times.
Yeah, I mean, I am looking very much this unkempt and out of control at the moment.
Week gone I have arranged to speak with HR to set up a timetable so we can start planning for full social transition. Good, but it's me that sets the pace and asks for what I want. Fine, you might think, but knowing my own mind has always been something of a blind spot and I am terrified of Getting It Wrong. Then I haven't marked - that thing I confidently said I would do I have not. Like usual, you would think I knew well enough to plan accordingly by now! Parents evening last night resulted in me spending money I know I don't have on take out for tea, eating about half nine to ten. Silly. I'd already had some sandwiches, a cake and an apple for tea. I will record that I was not expecting to have struggled so much with masc-ing up across the week though - it has felt very unnerving.
Tonight a friend was attending the in person support group. As predicted I was late. Rushing to get Eldest home almost worked, but Tilly was being nice and talkative, so I only got home at 8. Whereupon I cut myself shaving for the first time. Well, okay, I've done it before but it usually stops bleeding rapidly. It has not stopped yet as I type some three hours later. Bugger.
Why is it so hard to find a fucking simple blouse?
My ensemble was poorly chosen, I am not feeling it. Next dress, waistcoat and a lovely jacket with burgundy tights and my Chelsea boots. I look like someone who dressed in the dark. I arrived at 9. Couldn't see properly, but was complimented by the Chair on my jacket, which I did not reciprocate because my friend was already there and when I'm nervous I tend to get a bit like a loud and annoying show-off. A bit like? What I mean to say is that I become a loud, annoying, show-off. Then I did that thing I do and started talking too fucking much because my ego has grown again. It does need proper control to prevent becoming the size of a bloody planet and of course I ended up in a fucking political debate where I let my fucking male pride dictate my massive throbbing entitlement rather than just biting my tongue and letting the conversation move on. Because, lest we forget, I am a fucking liability.
Hopefully there was enough to salvage for my friend after I left early to charge the car. I mean, the car needed to be charged but it was the realisation of what I'd done coupled with the brittle atmosphere after my chagrin and male fucking posturing that prompted me to leave.
It wouldn't be so bad being as lazy as I am if I had that blouse! And glasses frames. And figure.
I've also been reading some old posts and remembered just how bloody self-centred I am and how much I randomly insult people I know in passing on here. Not because they deserve it, no one deserves being spoken about behind their backs for anything other than well-meant praise, but because I am a bit shit at winding my fucking neck in. Also, the amount of times I listed what I had actually managed to do versus what I have not done this last fortnight... I regularly say I'm getting worse, I know, but not marking 22 papers over a fortnight? I mean... yikes. There's e-mails too, both work and otherwise, piling up. Basically I'm doing that thing where I ignore admin and it's going to fucking bite me sooner or later, and I seem powerless to actually prevent it because I am having late nights and just watching myself ignore the urgent deadlines piling up.
It took me over ten hours to respond to a friend offering advice, unbidden, about nail varnish (it was good advice too); I didn't manage to talk to the friend who was turning up to the in-person support group to check they knew where to go, give addresses of car chargers or even just to check if they were alright. Instead I spent last night stuffing Chinese food into my pie hole and watching the last episode of Wheel of Time whilst friends were being nice over WhatsApp and I was struggling to respond to their generosity and affirmation. In short, I am very much feeling like an ungrateful bitch.
It's already a thing because nothing I do can be claimed] as original or terribly clever. Unless someone else has already done it!
Speaking of work e-mails... I was invited to a friend's school to observe how they run their QUILTBAG+ student support group and then the friend, who is bloody good at school administration as well as being bloody good at being an all-round nice human being, sent me an official e-mail to that effect to kick-start the process. To Joanna. At work. I spoke to the people I think I need to speak to in order to arrange such things and they say "forward the e-mail" - I was out to neither, so I had to provide some context before I did. The friend then doubles down and sends one of the most affirming work-related e-mails I've ever seen - pronouns and all - which is lovely but also saddening because both members of the management team were anxious, politely, to say that if such a visit were to happen, I'm not anywhere near the top of their lists to be going on it - to me - and now they have to answer this lovely e-mail and shoot me down. Talk about awkward.
But this is something of a recurring theme as well, with everyone being so nice and lovely I forget that one doesn't deserve that either, this is what people do because they are good people and good friends. The right thing to do in the face of that is reciprocate and avoid believing the hype. Otherwise you get cocky, cut your face shaving and shit all over a support group because you feel you have to defend your fucking masculinity box. It's more complex than Alan fucking Greenspan surfing backwards down a black hole made of Laffer curves. My learning curve I mean, and it's fucking steep.
Lots of things on my mind and about to lose the next few nights to going for a wedding. A family one, with the eldest and my mother in tow, some four hours' drive away (plus maybe two hours for charging if it all goes badly) so... Yeah, not looking forward to that really, but I can do it.
So, Jo, what's on your mind, girl?
Here's the side-by-side. See what I mean?
Thanks for asking, rhetorical device, I'm glad you're interested! First and foremost (really) is the fact that I was playing around with the FaceApp again and noted that the last couple of times I tried it the only differences I could spot between the images were the length of the hair and the slight smoothing of my Adam's apple. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am not complaining but I really honestly didn't ever think I was that close. So, does that mean that I could pass? Wait, more to the point, does that mean I always could?
Huh. Well.
This morning I had just washed my hair, so it was still wet here.
And that leads me into the whole concept of passing. On the forum for the support group to whom I reached out there is a newb like me who pointed out that the conversation seemed to hinge on clothing and how one appears to others. I recall having similar thoughts myself not long after starting this blog (and blowed if I can find the post I did it in, I read it recently but I don't keep notes). In other words, is the goal here to pass unnoticed in our society and behave in such a manner as to be camoflagued? I... don't have a satisfactory answer to this. However, I have long ruminated on the fact that I assert that I could not pass - it was never part of my goals or aims because I simply assumed that I would be unable to do so. That is, my goal, such as it could be described, was intensely private and self-directed - I wanted to have a feeling that matched who I was, who I am and the world can go hang with its expectations on how that should look to others.
I now know that I am autistic, I did not always know this, but I have never really worried that much what I look like. No, scratch that, I have always worried how I look to others. No, I mean, for example: I like to chew the inside of my lips. I now know this to be a stim. I likely adopted it because it is less obvious to others, less likely to gain attention. But, being a teacher, I know that some of my chewing habits are very visible - for example, I have a nub of flesh left over from some spot on the inside of my lower right lip, just shy of centre and below the lip line on the inside. When I had the spot I chewed it and sucked it so much that long after the spot went the nub of flesh remained. For whatever reason, I like to chew that now and again using the left front top tooth and bottom teeth. So I have to pull that part of my lip to the right bit of my jaw, making extremely noticeable changes to my face. I do it anyway when I feel like it, despite how it looks to outsiders - my motivations are purely on it feeling 'right' to me to do so. It is much the same to how I have approached cross-dressing.
Here it just removes my shirt, seen this before.
Really thinking I need glasses.
I have never really bothered with how it appears and have always focussed on how it feels. I still do. Now, having got so little of a wardrobe and so few spaces and times to indulge I have, naturally, been able to over-think everything. My first ever time fully dressed en femme on Toby's birthday was thus preceded by a fortnight of me carefully selecting clothes that I imagined 'matched' to some degree. But, at the same time, I went to a lot of trouble to find clothes that felt right. I had a good candidate blouse with bell sleeves very quickly (and cheaply) early on, a day in, and I rejected it because it did not feel right. It wasn't me. Similarly a skirt. The bra I got was almost entirely about how the chest band felt, I had no clue how to stuff it nor any real thoughts on cup size (I plumbed for C cup based purely on a story I'd read on fictionmania).
Why am I digressing? Well, this revelation that the App thinks I can pass suggests that... I don't know. But I got a little stab of gender euphoria that I really wasn't expecting at all. Like, I took the photo cross-dressed as a male for work. I wasn't even in appropriate clothing. The image thus wasn't about the clothing. It was simply me. And... I looked female enough that the App decided it didn't have to change much. And, unexpectedly, that made me happy.
It does, moreover, lead into my next point. A comment on my last post was about the role of Him Upstairs. It suggested that Christianity has a hard and fast rule that prohibits cross-dressing, that prevents me from indulging the desire to appear the lady that I feel myself to be.
In a jumper, FaceApp'd
A month ago.
Now, I have written a lot about my faith and my wrestling with my understanding of myself, how I was and remain harsher on myself than any minister of religion I have ever met has been. How my own reading of the Bible has often been softer than how I have chosen to interpret the laws and ideas contained within to myself. I am also at the tail end of a divorce, the comment made no mention of that, which I am fairly certain has little biblical backing to support. That divorce, bear in mind, has little to do with my realisation of being trans, as it occurred before I knew that. Did it have to do with cross-dressing? Well, kinda sorta. Read the story about that (sexless marriage and conversations with Tilly are your tags if you wish to) and you'll see that the cross-dressing is merely the conduit through which various underlying features and stresses were pushed. And it was mainly Tilly that did the pushing. Indeed, much of the issue stemmed instead from the lack of intimacy, which itself led to the discussion of my cross-dressing.
Put another way, had my relationship been less cold and difficult it is unlikely I would have circled the drain as long. One of two things would have resulted: 1. I would have realised I was trans sooner and embraced it, being in a safe and loving space to do so and explore that part of myself. 2. I would have been able to put that part of myself on a back-burner indefinitely, awaiting a time to examine it properly, and got on with the relationship. What relevance does this have to my faith and cross-dressing/femulating/being trans?
You really are a peach, rhetorical device, thank you.
I like this representation of Jesus
Not as much as one toting an AK, but eh.
The God in whom I believe is Master of the Universe (no, He Man, not you) and Creator of All Things. That means, however distasteful you find it, He creates children with congenital conditions like cancer and worse. It means that He creates things for the rest of us to deal with. It is not punishment to the child with AIDS that they are born with it, nor punishment to the victims that there are flash floods, volcanic eruptions, storms at sea, meteor strikes, lightning storms, tsunamis, earthquakes- you get the idea. Rather we are called to be as Christ, who would gather the city of Jerusalem under His wings like a mother hen, to those in need. Jesus never condemned those who needed Him for needing Him. Go, he would say once He had helped them, and sin no more. But He suggested that everyone sinned.
White Jesus, but best looking depiction I could find for the Sermon on the Mount.
In the Sermon on the Mount he offered the suggestion that men who looked on women with lust in their hearts the judgement that they had committed the sin of adultery already. If they wanted to blame it on men just being attracted to beauty, then fine, gouge out your eyes because better to be blind in Heaven than sightful in Hell. Oh, maybe it was a purely physical thing and lust, then cut off your hand and cast it away. Or, you know, you accept it's you and you ask forgiveness. Jesus never suggested that you could give it up, you just had to accept that it was you and there were no excuses. Similarly, when asked who had caused the paralysed man to be punished - was it his sin or the sin of his parents - Jesus simply absolved him of sin after telling him to get up and walk. As He asked His disciples: which is easier: to say your sins or forgiven or get up and walk?
My point?
The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, Blast Supper.
God creates people. He created me. And my trans-ness was baked in. Like my ASD. I didn't choose my ASD, I couldn't now choose to mask like I used to - I've gone beyond that Rubicon, I've passed the point of no return (no backward glances), the final threshold! I can't put the genie back in that bottle. No one is suggesting that I should. Baby, I was born this way. I'm not there to beat others into my worldview nor break myself to be part of the world. I am in the world but not of it. Gandhi said: be the change you wish to see in the world. Jesus said the same, through actions, in the Gospels (go read them if you don't believe me). "The most important commandment is these: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength; and love your neighbour as yourself. On this hang all the law and the prophets." And so, my realisation that I am trans, heck, my cross-dressing, does not interfere with either part of that edict. In fact, I would argue that the struggle to accept myself was the process I had to go through in order to learn what was meant by the edict in the first place. Love your neighbour as yourself. I am an image of the Lord God, He made me that way, I reflect God and I am trans. He meant me to have that struggle (maybe not as long as I had it, but I was meant to have it). I couldn't ever accept others as they are, to show them the Kingdom of Heaven, if I had never had to struggle with myself and who I was. My love would be useless if it had come easily to me - how then could I support others in their struggles?
Just as my ASD is part of my God-given image, so too is who I am. And thus trans-ness symbolises to me the way in which God helped me come to peace with myself.
Okay, okay, there's a single verse in the Old Testament that says women shouldn't dress as priests or wear armour and men shouldn't dress as women to seduce passersby to have sex in a temple that many modern people of religion have interpreted as saying that cross-dressing is inherently evil. It gets translated different ways in the NIV and KJV, but both use it to have a pop at cross-dressing women wearing trousers. Oh, no, wait, that can't be right, isn't it against males dressing as women? Oh, no, there's no tradition of that. Huh. Oh. No one even used it historically to argue that men shouldn't play women on the stage? Oh, no, they said it prevented women from going on the stage as they woud have don vestments as worn by men. Oh. Oh, I see. So, this stricture against men dressing in women's clothes wasn't understood that way either by the culture in which it was written, the culture of Palestine under the Romans, the early Church, the Medieval Church or the Early-Modern post-schism European Churches? It only started to be used that way in Victorian Britain and the Empire (specifically levelled against a part of Indian culture in Hinduism)? Oh, oh. Oh.
Oh.
OH.
I don't think I'm going to convince anyone on this. I've said before I don't do that. But I will say this, because I don't know who needs to hear it: God made you, you are Fearfully and Wonderfully made. Trans or Cis, gay or straight, whatever combination of the above or otherwise. God is bigger than our human classifications.
Here endeth the lesson, and thank you for coming to my Ted Talk Sermon.
Yeah, this could have been local. Not sure where it is. Thursday was the worst. School could have been open on the Friday. I'm glad it wasn't, I ended up sleeping in, but it could have been open. Things weren't that bad.
Meant I got the shopping done on Friday, I guess, which gave me all of two hours to work during the day on Saturday.
Last week was a bit of a bugger. Sent home at 4pm sharp from work without warning due to a forecast of snow and a lack of site staff meant that I did not wrap things up as I would have liked, I arrived home with little that needed to be done. Then, on Thursday, school was closed due to blizzard conditions. I did manage to get some marking. However, on returning home I was on child-care until 8.20pm, where I got some time to set work for the following day, as school had been cancelled again and work needed to be set (I doubt any of it will be done, but this is electronic and more about checking up on staff). That took until 10pm, then I went to bed. Having a cold and having had a beer meant that I woke late the following day and from 7am, when I woke, to 9pm I was on childcare and household duty, doing odd-jobs and looking after one child or another. The family had no plans, you see, so I was being used to keep things going. I got some shopping done.
Eh, I was typing, but you get the idea.
On Saturday I finally got some work done in the afternoon, I got two hours to work, whilst being chatted to by Tilly with an attendant third child, and then was given from 9pm to work again. I managed to get some reports done and finished them in the late evening. Today I actually got up slightly early, 7am again, and got some marking done whilst watching the Boy for about two hours. I have managed two tasks (reports and marking a set of work) that I could have got done amongst my normal duties at work.
Basically, I got more childcare.
I love me a good definition.
Tonight I have attempted more of the book, but I have foundered. I have not managed to set up, let alone keep, a compliments diary nor have I managed to list examples of me showing my personal qualities. Where would I have the time to do these things? Certainly not over the last few days. Tilly has a problem with me doing anything that she perceives as being 'less important' - so watching a video whilst eating is right out as that is irrelevant ("I don't know how anyone could do that if there were other people in the room" and "I feel as though I'm interrupting when I speak to you, and that you just want to tell me to leave you alone" and "I wouldn't do that myself" - you see, I'm the one with ASD). Equally, when working, she will inevitably ask me to look after our littlest or set up cooking for the evening or go on an errand for a bit or even just have a chat.
I don't do much on the shared family labour, but what I do, I do badly enough to make everyone wish I hadn't.
It's that thing from back in 2011+ - if I ask for an hour I'll get about 45 minutes, if she asks for an hour she'll take about two. I even timed it back then. I haven't bothered this time around.
Oh, and doing the pots in the morning means there's a markedly lower quality of cleaning done, apparently. I say apparently, I'm sure that's true. I take longer of an evening over it and tend to be in a hurry in a morning.
The book also requires me to discuss some aspects with someone else. However, Tilly has made it clear that she lacks the emotional space and the time to do anything like that - this is my duty and my issue, she's giving me time and space - and there isn't really anyone else. I lack the financial wherewithal to spend £60 an hour getting a professional to talk through it with me, nor can I really spare the two or three hours needed to get an hour appointment in a week. Everyone at work is busy and friends are a tad far flung. And there's a trip.
Me, if I were capable of tears.
Or human emotion.
Suffice to say, I dropped the ball on this bloody trip, as I always do when entrusted with the organisation of trips, and I hate planning trips. It'll run, just, with all the usual panic and chaos and confusion that cause me headaches whilst people do as little as possible within the framework I set. And then it will be over. For another year. Sooner or later I'm going to fall off the bloody tightrope and get bollocked, or there will be another parental complaint, or a student will complain, or there will be an actual lapse of something important. Failing that the shitty organisation that I do will result in poor results in the summer. The other shoe will drop, I'm just waiting for when and how.
Right, early to bed, early to rise. Trip tomorrow. Such fun.
As I said the last time I used this image, I rather think that it is.
But how?
At the moment I got few ideas.
I was hoping to find the time to set some records straight on this here place where I strive to be honest: changing my references to Toby to, uh, well, Toby rather than my 'Mad-Ex'. Part of the exercise in retelling events on here has shown that, despite appearances, it was I who was her Mad-Ex rather than she mine. I'm not saying she was entirely balanced, but I am saying that her characteristics are precisely why I ended up having a relationship with her and that I didn't exactly treat her well. In short, blaming her for my responses to her is a tad disingenuous.
I also wanted to come on here and update on my search for a diagnosis. By now the Boy has been diagnosed officially with ASD (and would have gained an Asperger's diagnosis were such a thing still available, so sayeth the professionals making the diagnosis). We have begun the process to gain a diagnosis for the Girlie, despite Tilly's initial reluctance to pursue it on the grounds that it would make parenting her more difficult, apparently, and she would blame her bouts of PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) on that rather than... uh... just being PDA or something. And, now, my own 30 month wait for a diagnosis session is at an end. Next Wednesday is my date with the doctors (or whoever) for a chance to be tested.
Yes, this face. The 'ah fuck, this again' face.
The worst bit is, the move of job and the consistency of the feeling rather suggest that it is not just in my head and it is not 'Imposter Syndrome'. I'm just actually as shit as I think that I am.
No, I'm wrong. I'm shitter than I think I am.
Also, this is the time of year where I usually come on here and bleat about being stressed at work and how difficult it all is. This is all still true but at least my results aren't as bad as last year. I had it confirmed that I was being 'gunned for' last year and believe my immediate boss has actually, as he stated, shielded me from most of it. I know he is a 'Smiling Assassin' but his method of telling me, off-hand and in the middle of something else, suggested it was truth rather than a mind-game. This is worrisome but not unexpected and I was aware that something was up. We'll see if my results actually make any difference in this regard this year, but I know that my ultimate boss, the Head, is not terribly hot with facts once he has formed an opinion. In other words, better results may not provide much armour against an already formed opinion that I am a drag on results. I mean, in that, I don't think the Head is all that wrong.
No, instead all of my thoughts on such matters are truncated snippets.
Oh, to be that useful and effective.
Today I got a text, an angry one, from Tilly. I hadn't dried the pots this morning. I also didn't dry them on my first proper day back at work last week (Wednesday). This constitutes consistent inability to get things done. She warned me that the failure to have the pots dried was "messing it all up" as it was hard enough to keep going with the "meals thing" (we have a whiteboard now on which Tilly writes what meals are on what days). She was "not being stroppy" and "not moaning" but both were followed by inevitable 'but's. Of course they were. She was at pains to say that it was "it" messing things up, not me. But as the "it" in question was me not drying the pots I am uncertain as to what difference that apparent clarification makes. I suspect none at all.
I didn't, and don't, know how to respond to that. Last night, as Tilly snapped at me tonight, she had asked me to get the pots done. But I ended up marking some papers (as I said I was going to) having got back from work around 7pm, looked after our youngest and made my own tea, starting work at 9.30pm and retiring to bed around 11pm. I did not find the time to wash the pots last night. This morning I really needed a bath, I haven't been able to clean myself since Sunday evening (itself something of a compromise that was reluctantly made by Tilly). I also had to make the lunches and sort out the chinchilla. I did wash the pots. I got up at 6am (my own fault, I intended to get up at 5.15am) and had completed the lunches and had a bath by 7am. I washed the pots until 7.25am. I had to get into work early-ish today to finish up some resources for colleagues. I did not manage this but I did get in early enough to get some reports done for the Governors and some urgent reviews of other things done (I'd forgotten they needed to be done, deadline is tomorrow). After that I managed to get planned for the day and then it was teaching. I digress.
Well, yes.
But Tilly told me that the pots needed to be done last night, for cooking lunch and tea and both children needed more input and she can't do that and dry the pots whilst looking after our youngest. So why weren't they done when she had specifically stipulated that they needed to be done? It's the difference between the Girlie doing maths and drying the pots and it was a consistent problem. Frankly, she told me, it would only have taken 15 minutes last night for me to dry the pots and I could have washed them this morning (the feat of drying pots that were not washed was not an issue apparently) as I did and all would have been fine. So, you see, she wasn't being stroppy or moaning but she was snapping and being angry as it is a consistent problem. My pointing out that she didn't have to make lunch and tea was another source of irritation, yes she did, not necessarily on the same day, of course she used the "shitting lunches" that I made but it could be lunch or tea, so that was clearly both. And she needed the stuff I'd washed and why couldn't I just dry it? I keep asking how to help, well, she said, this is how to fucking help.
So, Aspergic twat that I am (or just a twat, we'll see on the first bit) I come on here to plead my case. And what a fucking case, eh?
See, burying head in the sand is a valid tactic if, like me, you are, essentially, a lazy cunt.
Once again, Tilly started ranting about not having the place tidy (but she can no longer blame my work stuff as I stopped bringing it home) and heavily hinted it was my fault (it really isn't and can't be any more, and I do have to tidy downstairs in order to sleep each night, so it's not like I don't do anything there). She also repeated the claim, as I recall from 2010-13, that washing up only takes 5 minutes as well as drying not taking longer than 15 minutes. For reference, it takes 15 minutes to fill the sink at the moment because the hot tap is knackered in the kitchen, but who's counting? She didn't want to end up snapping at me, but I was goading her into it by not having things done and, in fairness, I did raise it this evening.
Oh, I'm sorry, is it obvious I'M FUCKING FURIOUS!?
I want to say "I told you so" but there's nothing to be gained by that. There was a fucking reason I didn't want us to have a third child. Tilly has a book to write, we have to support two ASD children who are fucking difficult to properly support and a fucking drain emotionally and in all other ways. We love them but by fucking God they can be hard work. And we have gone down a route of home schooling. I knew all of this. So did Tilly. I fucking knew she couldn't fucking cope with another child any more than I could be fucking arsed to offer any more fucking support. I am a fucking failure of a supportive spouse, I am very fucking aware of it, and I fucking said NO TO A FUCKING THIRD CHILD YOU STUPID BINT!
But here we are. We have a third child. And no, Tilly cannot cope. And she is snapping at me and I can't do enough. As I predicted and as I remonstrated. For all the fucking good that did.
For those keeping track, it's been over a year now. I add this simply to be an arse and somehow garner sympathy for my cause and ranting. It's a cheap shot. When it's been two years maybe, maybe, I shall have a reason to feel aggrieved. Mind you, as I've said, frankly: I can't see us having sex ever again. I don't get anything from it and I can't provide what Tilly wants in terms of the emotional connection so... Poor privileged white boy over here bemoaning first world issues. What was it Bill Wurz said? "Some people don't have enough friends, some people don't have enough food." I think that about sums it up.
Not sure that I ever posted much about my aborted attempt at a novel on this blog. It was on my literary blog. I may have mentioned that the main character of that novel actually became more than my usual textual musings on humanity and how it relates and took on a loife all their own in ways that I didn't see coming. I was happily ripping off Hitler: the Rise of Evil when the protagonist decided that they could quite happily be a leader without being divorced and without being evil. Rather, they had their own agenda. And then, because I suck at writing, all went quiet. That was years ago.
One of the oddities of the current General Election campaign in the UK at the moment is the number of people I speak to who seem to be basing decisions on the oddest of factors. At least, to me they are odd factors. Emotional renditions of the unknowable and disparaging any attempt to bring in sober reflection as being 'pie in the sky' or, worse, as being the very dream-like lying that they then reveal as the stand-in for sober reflection. It's bizarre, it's other-worldly, and it appears to actually be working. By turns I am angry, saddened and terrified.
I can't imagine that the Zanu-PF would be terribly nice to a white cross-dressing British schmuck...
My online life, as evidenced by the existence of this blog, is the sort of life that would destroy me professionally and probably personally as well. I make no bones about that. My self-destructive side would quite like for it to become a reality too, because then it all goes up in smoke. That is not the point of this post. Anyway, yes, the pictures and opinions on here pretty much exclude me from any political ambition anywhere in the developed world I would imagine. And, selfish git that I am, I'm not sure I fancy my chances in LEDCs either.
But it all came together on the way home from work today, listening to Unstoppable by Sia about putting on armour. She means make-up and going out drinking as a means to avoid showing her true self - the lyrics make that one pretty clear. But what if that were just the start? My protagonist popped up to inform me that he would likely serve another leader, a woman, and that he would deal with security and enforcement. He would be an aware Himmler to a less self-aware Hitler and he would likely take his revenge on the Dandies from the earlier portion of the book. He would burn out all that he had abandoned about himself from society around him with a twisted grin of one who sees the purification of the self in the destruction of those around him. What if Sia was putting on armour by adopting a salute and a uniform?
Speaks for itself.
But what if they don't salute or offer a salute? What if the militarisation on the back of victimisation of the majority was less about war and more about defence of culture? Without the uniforms and salutes one is left with slogans. My protagonist suggested "Zu Ende!" - "to the end" which works in both languages. And around us we have those too, the slogans that speak of danger and fear "strong and stable" and encourage the majority to view themselves as a whipped minority. After all, real persecution doesn't exist so anyone who says that they suffer issues are lying and gaming the system so the majority can do that too.
I spoke to a teaching colleague in training. I was ranting about one of my newest bug-bears - people who say "I'm a bit autistic too, we're all on the spectrum" and then follow it with "autism doesn't really exist anyway, it's just an excuse". The colleague said "oh, I agree with you!" But they'd misunderstood, they revealed that they really didn't think autism existed. After all, he said (yes, twas a he), we're all on the spectrum and all human behaviour is slightly 'autistic' to the point where people who claim to be affected are just moaning. I was got a bit angry. I pointed out that I was, he was not, and that I had two autistic children. I said "there's a bit of a difference between actually being autistic and people with things they do that they joke about being autistic". He did not speak to me again in the next two hours. I worry about that. My righteous indignation (suffered a hit/and my photon accelerator's broken a bit) wasn't and I think I came across as the sort of dick that would merely confirm this scientist's (yes, he teaches Biology) opinion.
Many colleagues are happy with voting against education this election, I have discovered, with the excuse that, yes, if their preferred candidate wins then education is fucked but at least we'll have proper leadership. They actually justify their opinions with the idea that the leader of another party is a bit of a dick and won't ever win or he has questions to answer on security or he's bringing back the 1970s. This is why I say it's different actually being AS rather than simply joking about it - the dichotomy is bridged by the sort of flexible thinking that holds no internal logic, like the news I regularly have to turn off, because it actually gives me a headache and stops me sleeping. It causes me pain to try to follow the mental gymnastics. But NT people, even if they don't agree, can not only follow it but empathise and say things like "you can see where they're coming from" whilst agreeing that it makes no sense" but "does in a way, you know?"
As a huge coward I am scared of having my relative privilege upset by the new Investigative Powers Act in the UK. I am slightly over-awed by the upsurge in nationalism masquerading as patriotism and the concept that patriotism is benign and so often say nothing when I ought to speak out. As a Christian my faith tells me to find the abused and the forgotten, the minority and the victim, and to stand with them. And so far I do little.
However, do you know of Network made in 1976? I watched it way back in 2003-4 and thought it was eerily prescient then. Now? Now I think it was a Cassandra. Consider the iconic scene that starts it off (kinda) and that everyone knows pretty well even if they don't know the film, I have found the clip on youtube below:
Now, contrast that with this clip of Keith Olbermann doing a relatively good job of talking up resistance but doing so under the auspices of GQ magazine. The trans-nationals (well, more appropriately meta-nationals) packaging and selling your rebellion back to you at a profit margin:
These could have been written to mirror one another. But, in a more general sense, Olbermann has a point. Resistance is required. Anger is required. I am good at angry. I am good at making myself an obstacle in small ways.
So, I am small-fry. I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to say, not because I have nothing to hide. I am safe enough as I am small-fry. Sure, one day they will come for me. I know that. In the meantime, my job is to stand with those who they will come for first. To speak with them and, mostly, to keep my damn' mouth shut when they're talking but stand in the way of the trucks at 3am (or whatever they actually send). To agitate. To draw attention. To stand in solidarity. To use my privilege to offer as much buffer and protection as I can.
If I felt like that, rather than punished as I do,
then this whole thing might actually be a
positive for me. Of course, it's hard to know what
the model thinks in this picture but I choose to
believe that it was consensual.
I recall an argument that claims that anything
in the BDSM genre is harmful regardless of
consent and thus should be banned.
Eh, what do I know?
There has been a significantly darker tone to my musings of late and it has got progressively darker over the last week. I have been playing music on repeat and having headaches from the pressure inside my skull. I even managed to get a discussion with Tilly on Friday night (when I had arranged tentatively to speak with a friend online) and air some of my concerns over our relationship. I thought I was making progress, I really did, and even making it clear that the most recent degeneration of our physical relationship was down to her and not me, for a change. After all, part of the litany over the last years has been that it is I that undermines and destroys any attempt that she makes in the physical department. But, as I pointed out, the spiral away was started at the end of last July, when all was well and I was being positive, and not afterward.
I'm not saying my downward spiral was caused by that change, I don't think it was, but it didn't help and does not. Nor is my mood a cause of the downward spiral of our physical relationship. Tilly was reluctant to face up to this, though she conceded the dating of it and the manner of it (being down to her rather than me). At least, she did to a point. She shared that she had been reading about ASD and Asperger's and relayed some of the things that she had found from wives who had AS husbands. Following the end of the conversation, nothing really resolved and much depression, I looked these up myself.
And what I found.
One thing my reading confirmed is that Grayson Perry is not
aspergic. It has also reminded me that most healthcare
professionals believe that cross-dressing is tied to the idea that
the cross-dresser is an autogynopheliac.
I'm not.
For the record, I find most things about me a complete turn off.
So, full disclosure here: I am very likely suffering from AS and I am very likely, therefore, the worst kind of unreliable narrator. Virtually every piece I found recommended that the AS sufferer recognise that the criticisms their neuro-typical partner made of them were real and take responsibility for them. In short, the AS sufferer must understand that they were, in a nutshell, the cause of the negative vibes in the relationship. I read posts from wives of AS husbands who said they rued the day they'd met their husbands and would recommend anyone dating someone with AS to run away right now. I read self-help blogs that proliferated with articles about AS people are incapable of affection, romance, emotion and love. I read advice that said that there was no point trying to be romantic with AS husbands (or wives) as they would not notice. I found countless references to AS sufferers in marriages approaching sex as wanting a lot or not wanting it at all but only advice on how to deal with the latter (as, apparently, the former isn't an issue to people). And, in all of this, the only advice to the AS person was: "suck it up, your brain is different, now fix it".
I got a bit upset.
Apparently.
I complimented Tilly today and shared that this was something I, as an AS person, shouldn't be able to do. Tilly paused a moment before replying. Apparently I can't do it. My compliments seem forced or 'off' and never sound sincere. Indeed, none of my compliments sound natural or complimentary. So, saying that Tilly looked nice or was wearing a pretty outfit or even commenting on playing chess like I did, these are all comments that end up making Tilly less likely to feel wanted and loved. Silence was just as bad. The end result being that she feels lonely and unloved most of the time and thus more inclined to disappear off on an evening or else not particularly inclined to be romantic to me. There was no point, so the articles suggested and Tilly reaffirmed, in offering me any compliments or trying anything romantic as I wasn't likely to spot it or, if I did, I would be unable to reciprocate or offer any inducements to continue.
AS people are also likely to be emotionally immature, said many of the links and articles that I read, that would equate to wanting more physical contact but as a child rather than as an adult. I would want someone to care for me like a mother rather than a romantic partner. I would be unable to offer anything romantic unless it was part of my current 'project' which would end with marriage. Suddenly I was minded of Tilly's comments to me that what I expected from our relationship was emotionally immature and like a teenager. Countless blogs and posts and experiences from women with AS partners spoke of their husband being an extra child - something that, again, Tilly has often commented on with me. Sex with these partners, when it occurred, was likely to be mechanical and all about getting to an end point - there would be no playing around or experimentation. Which... well, part of our discussion on Friday included the gem that Tilly did not see the point in being playful or experimental in bed because it was all about the end result and "an efficient use of the time" before children burst in or we were interrupted. The "quickest and most efficient" method of having sex, so Tilly told me, was "bog-standard missionary" and "there's no point in anything else" because "it's not enjoyable, it's not fun and it might not work".
When I raised that I wasn't interested, necessarily, in orgasm for myself this was used against me later - when talking about how I was frustrated that stroking her hair or holding her hands like she enjoyed rarely resulted in anything being done back: after all, that would be 'going further' and thus invalidated my earlier point.
Since Friday we have snuggled twice in bed at night. It's been nice. But, as there's "no emotional connection" and AS sufferers don't know how to bridge that gap, so my reading tells me, there's no hope of anything else. We agreed that we couldn't spare the time to spend with one another to make it work properly because there's no way to get anyone to look after the children. I pointed out that left about a decade until they were old enough to look after themselves. Tilly opined that there was no point as nothing she would do would ever be good enough. I returned that, no, once a month was not good enough but the sex was fine. Tilly took that to mean that the sex wasn't good enough and proof of her point.
I want to suggest that maybe Tilly has AS traits too but that seems somewhat churlish. In the meantime I suppose I have all the porn the internet has to offer and time most evenings to indulge. Ale in hand, curtains drawn and alone.
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