#am old

Because of my very tenor voice and unusual name, I’ve been misgendered on the phone since forever. Correcting folks who addressed me as “ma’am” never seemed worth the trouble and was honestly kind of funny sometimes. Heck, it still happens.

I found a frame full of photos my mother compiled over the years as a gift to me. Looking at 20-something me, I was certainly a twink. Not really masc-attracted, but the energy is staring me in the face.

I definitely believe lot of the late start on this was really a lack of vocabulary. When I was in college as a theater major, wearing make-up on stage or off, it was imitating pop stars who were “gender-bending” to be transgressive. I didn’t see it as expressing anything more. But looking at the photographic evidence, I wonder if I’d had a bit more introspection and vocabulary beyond “gay,” “straight,” and “bi,” things might be different.

Mostly, I got tired of everything associated with traditional masculinity a long time ago and decided I was done with performing. That and having gender-thieves in my SCA household who much younger, and far more introspective and self-aware than I was at their ages.

-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

In Pratchett-induced head-slap moments: I recognized that Necrotelicomnicon was a play on Necronomicon (Book of the Dead) when I first read Equal Rites, and that the named gods were spoofing things like C'thulhu, but. It took me until my recent rereading ~30 years later to look up the translation for the Latin.

It's.

...The Book of Yellow Pages.