I'm not a soccer hooligan -- I'm dressed like a soccer hooligan.

Last night I dreamt of eating samples of barbecue ribs in a wal-mart and they were soooo good. I haven't eaten bbq in too long. It's almost worth flying down to Atlanta and suffering the scariness of seeing my parents in order to eat at Sonny's for all-you-can-eat chuckwagon night. Which basically means pork, ribs, beef, chicken in any combination you want, as much as you want. Must...go....to...lunch....soon.

This morning after stepping out of the shower and preparing to shave, I started singing showtunes. Well, just one showtune: "Children Will Listen" from Into the Woods. I have no idea why, thogh maybe because my parents made an appearance in my dream last night. But I sounded pretty good. Sophie didn't claw my face or anything.

On the train I listened to a mixtape from about a year ago and I still love the song Shackles (Praise You), no matter how Jesus-y it is. Well, I guess it's less Jesus and more regular God. Speaking of, today is Ash Wednesday -- a holiday I've never celebrated in my entire life and don't understand a bit, since I was raised Protestant and all. I mean, we did the whole Palm Sunday thing, and I was taught that the palms were burned and the ashes used, but we left the actual practice to those crazy Catholics. Occasionally I gave up stuff for lent, like chocolate or soda or whatever. One year I gave up bullshit and I haven't looked back since.

But every year I always get thrown off when I walk around downtown and I see the first person with some schmutz on their forehead and I want to go up and offer my handkerchief, and then realize I've probably committed some sort of blasphemy. I mean, more than I usually do on a given day.

Zips

I told a story today at lunch that I hadn't thought about in years. Around the time when I was three, my dad was stationed for a year in Korea. (At some point I got it mixed up that he was fighting in the Korea war, probably because of also watching episodes of M*A*S*H.) When he came back, he brought back lots of pairs of shoes, because they were extremely cheap there. My favorites were Zips sneakers, navy blue, with a velcro strap. I'm sure I wasn't allowed to have velcro sneakers before I learned how to tie my shoes, since that's what happened when it came to watches -- no digital watch for me until I could read a dial, so I guess I was some sort of shoe-tying prodigy. I remember the first time I did it alone was at my grandmother's old house, but I'm not sure how I old I was. But I digress.

Zips. I loved them. My father must have bought 5 pairs of them, each in a different size getting successively higher by a half. Between the ages of 4 and 6, whenever my old sneakers got too small or too raggedy, they get thrown away then my mom would open the closet and reach up to the top shelf and pull down a new box with a new pair. While I still had to go shopping occasionally for dress shoes and was aware of the concept of buying them in the store, I did in some ways believe there to be an endless supply of my favorite play shoes stored up in my closet.

What struck me about this story today is how excited I was everytime, even though the shoes were exactly the same color and style. I didn't get sick of them. During this time was also the period of eating peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches with cheetos every day for lunch for nearly a year. So often as a kid I remember being denied certain things because I was told I didn't really want them or I would get sick of them when the trend was over. As a kid I supposedly wasn't able to commit to a shirt or toy in a way that would make it worth the price. But when I think of children, I think of their uncanny ability to repeat things over and over and have things repeated back to them ad nauseum. How many times have I read the same book every night at bedtime as part of a strict ritual? Or how the same movie or episode of Barney gets watched every afternoon? They like to hear the same stories, like to play the same game over and over, and I couldn't count the times I've heard the delighted cry of "do it again!"

I mean, sure, children can be fickle and have short-attention spans as well, but I'm not even sure it's with more frequency than adults. My father was the champion of buying pieces of exercise equipment and never using them. We had a rower and a cross country skiier and a stationary bike in the basement where I logged on ten times the number of hours he did on all three, and I wasn't exactly a regular exerciser.

When I get obsessed with a song and listen to it on repeat for three days and nights (or longer), now I will think that I'm just tapping into my inner child and the ability to have endless curiosity. As I've become an adult I've become more adept at intentional focus, even if I don't feel like it. But I also should just go with it if it naturally occurs. As long as I'm not torturing the people around me, which is probably always a risk.
On an unrelated note, I've nearly fallen asleep sitting up twice while typing this. And I got more sleep last night than I have in awhile.

I can see you from a mile, running at the mouth

I just lied to this guy on the street who came up to me and asked for a cigarette. I was busy waving to the protestors walking by with signs and getting a nicotine fix to help me through the last hour and I said "sorry, man, I bummed this from someone else." In reality, I had one cigarette left in the box which I usually gladly hand over to someone, even if it's the 'lucky cigarette' because I like being able to throw away the box and realize I shouldn't be consuming them anyway. He shrugged and smiled and said thanks anyway and I felt like shit.

On at least five separate occasions today I've been in a situation where my brain is screaming, stop it. Stop talking about this again. Stop talking, stop talking. But I didn't, I couldn't, I kept going and my brain fumbled for the off switch but apparently I moved it and it couldn't be found. This happened over e-mail, twice in person, over lunch, on the phone. Five times. Five conversations that weren't really conversations but were instead me rapid-firing and dumping.

I guess this might be good for therapy because I'll be less likely to just do an hour-long information dump and instead will actually push and pull the why and how and gain some insight. But still, I hate when I do this. I hate how I feel afterwards, like I just acted really selfishly on top of the icky sensation of oversharing, where I nearly regret giving the information to the person. Not that it's even too personal, just that it's inappropriate at the time and place.

I'm sure I'm probably being too hard on myself since I've been on the receiving end of this at times and I'm usually very sympathetic to the person's need to expel. But still, I don't like it. Part of what I use this journal for is to dump it out, and then people can choose to read or not and I don't take as much responsibility for the possibility that I'm being a time-monopolizer.
A long time ago I was actually very very quiet.

question from a stranger

Someone e-mailed me through livejournal asking about hormones and I was unable to write them back at the WebTV address they provided. So if you happen to be reading this, here's my reply:

Hi,

Personally I just read everything I could get my hands
on on the internet about hormones, including the harry
benjamin standards of care and personal folks'
accounts on what they went through. Then I found a
gender therapist in my city and started going, to help
me work through any questions and to also get a letter
to take to a doctor (a requirement for most places).

There are several lists of resources of therapists and
hormone doctors around the country, so hopefully you
could find someone after a few google searches. If
you have more specific questions, I'm willing to share
my experiences with everything.

Good luck!
raybear