(taken on the MegaBus on my way to Philly)

Ok, so to be honest I’ve been falling a little bit behind in my regular blogging. I don’t have any super great excuses but it’s been a hectic month of starting to get things finalized with the manuscript for my anthology Kicked Out and in general with my day-job, touring, my family etc. etc. etc.  Anyway, I was planning on writing a blog this weekend about the experience of packing and how I’m not very good at it because I have little mini-crises all the time as in I’m going on a very short weekend tour what am I going to be packing? I do I need tutus? How many pairs of shoes? Aprons? Ladybug rain boots? Housedresses? Heels?  Anyway I was going to write a somewhat superficial short blog post about the difficulty I have when packing for gigs----but being here made me stumble onto something more…. I don’t want to say “important” because to me fashion is very important, but let’s say timely.

This weekend I’m writing to you from the beautiful Swarthmore College campus in Pennsylvania. I’m here for the 21st annual student organized Sager Symposium, which is super kick-ass, and I was absolutely thrilled when they invited me to come and be part of it with them.  The theme for this year’s conference was Intersections of Queer: Coalition Building Across Our Communities.

I did a queer storytelling workshop on Friday afternoon, and then that evening did a reading called “Stories of Cell(ve)s Replaced” which comes out of my forthcoming book GSA to Marriage: Stories of a Life Lived Queerly During the Q&A after my reading one thing that came up from audience members was this idea of femme community, what it would look like---what it COULD look like, and how as femmes we handle the idea of invisibility and being seen as inherently less queer.

I didn’t have all the answers about this; I only know what my experience is.  It was interesting though especially because an audience member and all around incredible femme author, organizer, and activist  Amber Hollibaugh (who as an aside gave an incredible lecture on Saturday about LGBTQ aging) spoke up later in the evening starting with “as a 62 year old high femme” and continuing with really important insight about how femme community is something difficult to build. She spoke about how our community should be intergenerational, but how it’s something that doesn’t always happen.  Amber also addressed how femmes don’t always befriend each other, and don’t always build community together because of complex things like desire, and how even finding one another can be difficult---I couldn’t agree more.

Those of you who know me, or who are at all familiar with my work know that queer history is something that I see as incredibly vital and it’s a theme that features very prominently in my work including one of my stories titled Searching For My History that appears in “Visible: A Femmethology” which has just this month been released from Homofactus Press! As well as other pieces that will appear in my book GSA to Marriage... including "Where I Come From" which I performed as part of the 2008 Femme Show NE tour.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of femme community this week, and how important it is for me to have in my life. It’s been a dominant theme in the past few days for me starting at the beginning of the week with Amanda Harris’ wonderful blog over at Bilerico titled “A Different Kind of Herstory: Longing for Femme Mentors. The intergenerational  nature of community is something that I find completely essential. Through the creation of chosen family I am incredibly blessed to have strong relationships with queer folks of a variety of generations. There is however a void for me in that my femme community is not always nearly as intergenerational as I would like.

I’m curious to femme readers of all ages: How intergenerational  diverse do you find your community of femmes to be?  Is it something that is important to you? Is it something you are working to build? What has that process looked like for you? I know at different points I’ve struggled with femme community in general, have you? What is the importance of femme community to you?

This weekend in New Orleans I was part of an amazing performance weekend for the Palimpsest Novel book tour.  Performing on stage with the likes of Catherynne M. Valente and S.J. Tucker was such a joy, with the audience decked out in finery, masks, steampunk gear, and maps writ upon their flesh.  Trains of heaven had snaked us from Chicago to the Bayou, and I was in bliss having never been to the city before and getting to do it surrounded by some of my favorite people.

But neither the show itself (including me spinning poi on stage for the first time in 3 years,  me doing arial ropework involving a really powerful piece about emotional angst and rape, or doing ropework on the floor that involved the painfully cathartic work of destroying a novel ripped from the bound author' hands) is not what I want to write about today.  Its about my green corset.

We all have that one piece of our wardobe that has seen so much, done so much for us, with us, against us.  It has been there during the hard times and the good.  It has seen us fat and thin and every shade between.  It has laughed at us, supported us, held us.  It might be an old brooch or a favorite pair of shoes, a scarf or a coat.  I have a number of these, and this corest is one of them.

Green Corseted as a Woman

I got this corset from Morganna Femme Couture many years ago as a custom piece.  I loved it, though snapped the front busk quickly, shipped it back and the second held.  I tend to be hard on my clothing.  It is emerald green silk duploni and it used to fit like a glove- I could tightlace down to a 38D-28-42.  It was amazing.

I gave away most of my corsets, or sold them, or traded them, when I gender transitioned.  Firstly, no longer having breasts, over-bust corsets were silly to own.  Secondly, though I still identify as a drag queen, its been hard to get "girly" when trying to train folks to call me he.  I apparently confuse, baffle, make it hard for folks. But I had to keep this one, my orange and black PVC one by the same maker, and my leather waist cincher from another creator.  I could not would not part with them.  But neither could I wear them.

I have worn a corset "out" twice since transitioning until this weekend.  It was Dark Odyssey Winter Fire 2008 for the formal dinner.  Stockings, girdle (the one shown above), super-tall stripper platform heels, layers of black satin skirts and crenolines (long in back and short in front), tight orange and black corset, custom orange and black tall anime wig from Peacock Blue... eyeliner, glitter in my beard, and a flat chest under a black shirt.  People were baffled and yet had fun... but those who had known me as Bridgett (above) tripped over their tongues, unsure how to address me.  The femme fag boys were very supportive and loved it, and me. It was good.

The second was a drag piece for the Baltimore Erotic Arts Festival- where I came out in full drag queen/fetish model (for how different are they really?) glory, danced, stripped... then ripped off my fake boobs, got fully naked, removed my makeup, and got dressed into men's garb before a "mirror" (held up by my friend Graydancer) all to the song "Unpretty" in the 2nd half by TLC.  I walked away in my own skin, comfortable, hand in hand with my refletion.

But I haven't had the stregth.  Emotionally.  The whole drag queen thing is a lot of work, and currently rocking an amish-style beard I realized I need it.  The beard.  I don't get she'd.  Ever.  Ok, except on the phone once in a while.  I love being being high femme fabulous for an evening, but if it means I have to shave it all off which will lead to me having to juggle the depression and frustration of getting she'd again... I just don't have the strength right now.

So the corsets have lay quiet, borrowed by friends or just bundled and safe.  They lay fallow.  They were untouched, unheld, pulled no skin tight and forced no lungs to contort.

Wearing my Green Corset as a Man

Until this weekend.

The night before leaving on the trip I had a hair-brained idea and put it in my bag.  Black boots, black trousers, black shirt unbuttoned under the corset showing my chest fur.  Hat, goggles, key on a necklace, leather fingerles gloves.

It was good.  I've put on a lot of girth since going on testosterone, so instead of closing it it was open 4+ inches in back, and yet the look was still very dramatic.  Perhaps moreso because most folks in the audience had no idea I had ever lived, loved, and dressed as a woman.  Had no idea that once I was the woman above.  They saw a bearded young man with a 32" corseted waist wasped in and gasped.

I could only wear it for an hour.  Costume chaanges, and I was out of practice.  It was good though, if hard.  I kept fearing that people would know, would care, and yet I knew I had to.  For me.  And in the name of art.  I'm still femme, and sometimes, I need to accept, that that means my love for corsetry needs an outlet.  I won't be shaving my beard any time soon, nor my legs, but the boning is needed, the cotortion of flesh.  I need to feel it, to see my waist cinched in, to feel my power over my form, to feel light as I dance and laugh.

My love of corsets has not faded.

Technorati Tags: clothing, corsets, ftm, gender presentation, insecurity, queer, trans, transgender, transition, transmasculine

So, it's no secret that I write erotica, mostly BDSM based, and I thought I made it fairly clear in my first two to three published works that sexual preference and gender identity was part of what made my writing work. I was wrong. Today I sent a chapter to one of my critique partners to read and we had to have a thirty minute conversation over the word genderqueer used in my heroine's thought process...and why couldn't I just say that she was butch, or a bull dyke, or -- or -- or --

I've never really left my critique partner at a lack of words before, frustrated yes...but stuck like a scratched record, no.
And I've never been comfortable with the using the word bull dyke so I'm not going to use it in my writing...although I'm really not certain if my heroine would be comfortable using it. Maybe she would.

Explaining what the word meant took longer than it should have even though the work was self explanatory as to what I meant by genderqueer. She just didn't get it, didn't really want to understand it. Finally she asked, "So, like what, are you switching genres?"

My brain screeched to a complete stop.

What?
I write erotica.

Yes, but --

I write erotica. If I can write multiple renditions of M/M/F and F/F/M ménage link-ups, M/M and M/F couple hook-ups, and even a M to F transgender scene and not ruffle her feathers in the slightest...all acceptable as being within the genre of erotica... why did writing a F/F scene totally fly outside that scope? And it isn't just my critique partner, I'm finding it at publishing houses as well. I will not get on my GLBT soapbox that if you say you offer GLBT that little L second letter over means LESBIAN = F/F. Nope. Gonna. Stay. Off. That. Soapbox.

Tonight I put a note up on my facebook looking for readers comfortable with lesbian material...
I'm sad. Very sad.

Here's a small excerpt so you can see the context:

I met her at Will’s Hardware. I was trying to find the right screws to hang a sheet of drywall in the garage and she was looking at nails. Actually she was reading the side of a small box intently and, when she glanced up to see me, blushed eight shades of red. I smiled. I couldn’t help it, she being so cute, so blonde, all blue eyes and dimples. I wondered why she was blushing so hard but then she said, “You’re Frankie, the new mechanic, right?”

That explained it. She’d heard the rumors all ready. Nice. I’m the newest freak show in town and everybody has heard the gossip. Its okay, I knew it would be hard being the only openly genderqueer for about two hundred miles…at least to the nearest real town. Houston. There had to be at least one butch there, right?

“Guilty.” I answered, “I’m Frankie Marlow and yes, I am everything you’ve heard and probably more.”

Batting her eyes, she blushed a little deeper and smiled. It had been a long time since a woman gained my full attention with just a smile. I decided she was absolutely adorable. I’d been hit on by straight girls plenty of times, mainly girls who were just looking for a little thrill, who sidled up to the bar where I was nursing a whisky and assumed their cup-size and a wink would get them into my bed if not my heart. So, I wasn’t beyond taking a straight girl to my bed, even knowing it would lead to heartbreak; most love does.

It's true. As much as we love our panties. Sometimes we have to prune our collection of panties so that we can only showcase our very best asset in its very best clothes. That is, if we must cover it at all!

Last week... no, make that for the past two months... I've been on a cleaning, de-cluttering, organizing rampage. You wouldn't know it from the looks of my house, but I work slow, okay. Just because I work slow doesn't mean I'm not getting anything done! I went through my panties for the first time in over a year to take out the ones that are no good. So, here are some rules for thinning the crops!

1. Follow FlyLady's number one rule: If you don't love it, need it, or use it - let it go! Whether that means you send it to the donation truck, the garbage truck, or give it your best friend who stopped in for a cup of tea, just do it!

2. If it has any holes in it that are not supposed to be there, put it in the trash! No holey underwear is sexy! I can understand if it's your favorite period underwear and they're so comfy and you can't bear to get rid of them, but you have to really love them to not get rid of holey panties.

3. If they are tighty whiteys, they were not meant for your fancy ass in the first place. Unless you plan to tie-dye them into fabulosity, these have got to go! There are lots of affordable alternatives to these saggy bottom, tight elastic, weak seam excuses for panties.

4. If your panties came in a 3, 5, or 7 pack from Big Mart more than six months ago, give them a big fat kiss goodbye. These aren't good quality panties anyway and you've probably worn them too thin to do much good!

5. Stained panties. This is going to be controversial. Regardless of whether it was a drink you spilled in your lap, or some other unfortunate spillage, if there are stains on your panties, this will never do. Trust me, I know it's hard  to keep this kind of thing from happening, and it's even harder to clean them afterward! Anything with a stain that won't come out goes in the pile.

6. If you can see through your panties in places where you couldn't see through them before, this is considered "normal wear and tear" for tighty whiteys and multi-pack underwear. Soon, these sheer spots will become gaping holes. Lose them before they lose you!

7. Sometimes only you can know if you have had your underwear for too long. So think back to when you bought them. Have they been in your collection for a year? Three years? Five? Even you feel they have held up well enough, if they are getting old, if the colors are fading, if they've been discolored from other garments in the wash, etc, release them from the drawer. One bad apple spoils the whole bag!

8. Fit. It's reasonable to suggest that underwear may stretch and grow with the wearer during changes in body shape or size. If any pair of underwear is too big or too small, it's no use pulling it up all the time, or picking it out of your butt or other embarrassing places! Bless someone else with panties that are otherwise nice enough, instead of worrying about your ass cleavage showing all day. (And while you're at it, love yourself at whatever size you are!)

9. A word about elastic. While underwear generally have elastic waists these days, (after all, they did away with drawstring undergarments a century or two ago...) it is important to ensure that all of the elastic waistlines (or leg openings, if applicable) are securely attached to the fabric, and have kept their original coloring. Additionally, please tug on the elastic a little bit to see if it crackles - that's a big sign that your panty has kicked the bucket.

10. Last but not least, if your ex bought these underwear for you, put them on the midnight train to Georgia! Don't come back now, y'hear?

I hope I have inspired you to only have fabulous underwear! It always makes me happy to get rid of the things that are weighing me down.

Technorati Tags: body, clothes, femmes, panties, size