hex

this journal is not public (but some pictures are)






For the record, I have a habit of making past entries completely private. Don't worry, you aren't missing out on anything.

On 20 September Cats Domino passed away & I wrote a lot about it in a journal but have not digitized that writing yet.

Since then, the cat distribution system has seen fit to send two more cats our away so we have a house of four cats. You can see them all at http://www.instagram.com/cats.domi…

I remember it was summer. I cannot remember what day of the week, only that I was on a folded out lawn chair, the sort that allows you to spread your limbs and soak up the sun and fall asleep the moment you lie down on it. The sun was on my skin and the breeze was slight. In Long Beach, in the afternoons, there silence was not interrupted by birds. If there were any, they would be sparrows, though the crows stayed on the branches in the front yard. Occassionally you could hear the sound of parrots flying overhead moving toward the trees miles away by Belmont Shore. But not this day.

On some days, some nights, the smell of the ocean would be carried as far as the neighbourhoods by Cal State Long Beach, but not this day.

And it was admittedly beautiful nevertheless. I lie there in the sun.
But then I thought to myself - I remember it distinctly - 'I wish I were dead.' And I sat there with the thought knowing full well how happy someone would have been to be me in that moment. But I wasn't.

Today I grabbed two Target bags filled with trash: one with used menstrual pads and kitty litter dust, another with used dental floss, empty toilet paper rolls, and cat shit, and I carried them out to the dumpster. It was under 90 degrees outside & for that I was thankful. There was hardly a breeze.

The cicadas took turns chirping. If you haven't heard cicadas, they do this, like a musical round. One set of cicadas in a tree will chirp and then the sound will die out before another tree begins to sing and again to the next tree and the next.

I tossed the two trash bags over the dumpster lid, the menstrual pads, the cat shit, & I stood there & listened to the cicadas.

And I did not wish I were dead. I thought, instead, thank god I can hear these cicadas. Thank god I am alive to hear this & to have cat shit to throw away because it means I have cats.

And then I went back inside my home where two of the three cats were sprawled out on the couch with the TV on playing WWE Monday Night Raw.

Wrestling, like drag, is an over-the-top performance. You of course have people who opt for more subtle personas, whose in-ring moves tell the story of themselves and their relationships with their opponents, and then you have a man who is carried out in a chair by his troop of 'boys' as peacock feathers flash across the screen. He grabs the camera and pulls it to his face as he tells you that you are going to see the best wrestler on your TV or mobile device.

Or you have a woman who is billed at 90-someodd pounds who is suplexing a woman billed at 185 pounds.

Somewhere in this performance I found myself or at least who I am now.

I have spent so many years, in large part thanks to my mother & family, trying to become smaller. Crying to become smaller. I never saw myself which was apparent by the way I would look at my old pictures & think 'Was I really that small?' when I know that at the time I did not see it that way. I would not say I had an eating disorder but I absolutely had body dysmorphia.

One of the most difficult things for me in terms of accepting my body as it relates to my gender is that I have a 14" difference between my hips and my waist which has traditionally been a marker of femininity. To be non-binary, rather than its own thing, has been pushed even by queer media as taking on a look that fits a more binary expression of gender. If you were assigned female at birth, to be non-binary means to try to look more masculine. And vice versa though quite frankly non-binary people who were assigned male at birth quite often get overlooked or erased. I struggled that everywhere I turned it seemed I was being told to be smaller, slimmer, in ways that I cannot possibly be. Hide my body.

Wrestlers go through a lot of dysmorphia. I know this because people do, but also because it is an industry in which looks can be what brings success, particulary in a reality where for the longest time Vince McMahon was running the only successful company in the country (I'm sorry, Impact Wrestling, I love you). But at the same time I see wrestlers, like Eddie Kingston, like Willow Nightingale, who are bigger in their own ways, & who are strong, & who defy the notions placed on them by outsiders who think that what it means to be a performer is to look like you are on a steady diet of lettuce, red meat, and steroids.

I started last summer to go to the gym. At first I had two goals: to get out of the house so as not to lose my mind during summer break because of a lack of structure, to start better defining my back.

Weights are intimidating. I sat at the machines and started at what, 10 lbs? 20lbs maybe? I kept going. What I found was that weights helped alleviate most (not all) of my lower back pain and almost all of my shoulder pain the more regular I became.

My mother said 'Spend more time on cardio, you don't want to get too big doing weights.' I looked at the wrestlers in front of me. I did want to get 'too big' at least as far as her opinion was concerned.

On certain Internet circles (it's Twitter, but you know it happens in other spaces online), the truscum/transmeds insisted that non-binary people were 'trenders' who did nothing to transition. But transition sees different tactics. For some it is a haircut, a change of clothing, for some it is hormone replacement (& necessary for them! support free access to it!) & for some it is surgeries (also necessary for some & should be free!).

But what I know as part of my transition can go unnoticed by most. I am building myself constantly, continuously. I look at my screen & see I do not have to be tiny, & I do not have to be a body builder either. I can just be, & I can be strong(er) & I can even be large(r). When I flex even if I am the only one who sees the differences in the mirror, I see them, & I think that is me, this is something I have worked at, & I am proud. I shave my undercut myself in the bathroom. I clean up the hair that has fallen into the sink. This is me. This is the person I am but also the look I have cultivated as a way of expressing a gender that is mine.

I think without wrestling it would have taken longer to understand and accept myself.

But I have learned to take up space.

Last weekend, which feels like forever ago, Paul & I went to Chicago for the GCW show & despite being behind TWO TALL AS FUCK DUDES, I got some pictures of the show that I liked. Here are a few & yes this is what I do now. I think most people who know me well know that for years I watched a shitton of wrestling, especially in high school, & now that there is something other than WWE I am back at it & hardcore. I'll write more about my relationship with wrestling, my body & queerness at another point but for now here are some of the pictures I really liked!

It's a shame that the STL Wrestling community here is run by some right wing weirdo who cries about gender variance particularly given just how queer wrestling & especially indie wrestling is. Christ, we have Max coming through who is non-binary, & one of STL's most established & contracted wrestling photographers (& ring announcer) - Sarah - is non-binary. We have BUSSY & THRUSSY come through on the regular. My guy, this just isn't the space for your bigoted bullshit.

In fact, there should be no space for it anywhere.