Wishing on Sixteen Candles

Today is a Friday, which means that today is the day that I don’t have to do anything. Yes, I’m 9,000 papers behind in my grading, I have all manner of homework, the house is a mess, and the dogs need more attention. I know all that. But by the time I get to Friday, I’m too tired, too loopy with holding the rest of the week together, to do any of those things. On Friday, I get to read, or watch TV, or go to Starbucks and drink hot chocolate, or whatever I want to do.

In today’s episode of Friday, I was trying to read AND watch TV, which was not going very well. I used to be able to do both, but my attention span is getting shorter, although I don’t know how much of that is T and how much of that is Old. I was about to choose reading over watching (my usual choice), except that I noticed that Sixteen Candles was on.

Well.

I love the movies that came out when I was in high school, from Red Dawn and The Outsiders to Pretty in Pink and Say Anything.  I would go see them with friends – usually at the Mann theater next to the Safeway, but sometimes one of the several other theaters in Boulder – and since then, I have seen most of them many, many times.

I especially loved (and love) the Molly Ringwald movies. The girls she played were the kind of girl I would have wanted to be, if I had wanted to be a girl…except that I didn’t. I *was* a girl, and I hated it. At the same time, though, I didn’t want to be weird, high-strung artist (Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire), or a weird, high-strung high school student (Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club). I didn’t want to be a sweet, beautiful Soc, either (Diane Lane in The Outsiders), although that was probably the least likely possible incarnation.

What I wanted was to be Lloyd Dobler or Duckie, except that I wanted to be a little bit more of a princess, and I wanted to get the boy at the end. There is a common misperception about me that I always wanted to get the girl (and sometimes I did, which helped fuel that), but in fact, I almost always wanted the boy. This may come as a startlement to some of you, but others of you (including, perhaps, boys I dated in high school, or boys I’ve longed for since) will not find this quite so surprising.

Anyway.  More on that later, I guess.

She was often so lonely in those movies – surrounded by friends, much of the time, or talking about friends, but still oddly withdrawn and solitary.  There are whole stretches of Sixteen Candles that I don’t bother watching, because I think they’re inane, but I return all the time to the parts where Sam is trying to figure out a) how to be who she knows she is, and b) how to function in her family, and c) how to get Jake Ryan to like her.

And when I was watching this today, that scene where she comes out of the church and everyone has, again, managed to forget about her, and the cars part, and Jake is leaning over there across the street on his Porsche… Sigh.  For me, it’s not so much that he’s dreamy, or that he’s popular and cool and a senior, as it is that he’s just waiting.

Molly Ringwald always seemed so sad, and like she was always just trying to find her way.  She moves through the wackiness, but she’s usually separate from it. Anyway, in high school, I think a lot of us were sad and a little lost, and being trans in high school was hard.  For a girl who was supposed to be a boy AND kind of a princess, and who fell in love with boys… Well, you can guess.  I never meant to be a lesbian, because I never meant to be a woman, but also because I always yearned toward men.

Again: more on that later.

When I watched Sixteen Candles today, once I’d managed to get through the vague racism and the underlying menace of the creepy stalker boy Ted, I remembered (again) how much of an impact Molly Ringwald had on me back then, and still has.  I’m not articulating it very well, alas, but I think you get the point.  Hell, she even kept me watching Secret Life of an American Teenager well into the second season, by which time it had established itself as the most ludicrous show in the history of ever.

Later I’ll explain better about the boys, and about the problems (the glorious, sweet, sad problems) I had with Disney movies (Beast! <swoon>), but for now… Thanks, Molly Ringwald, for Sam Baker and the rest of those brave, sad, hopeful girls. Seeing you onscreen made things better for a teenage not-girl, a trans kid who, one day, would grow up to be a queer gay man. And, perhaps, a bit of a princess.

Glee, AGAIN

Last night was the much-anticipated Rocky Horror episode of “Glee,” so of course I watched. I really want to love “Glee,” and I wouldn’t even be here if not for Rocky Horror, so it seemed like an event I would enjoy.

And I might have, except that 19 minutes in, they dropped the T bomb. Mike Chang, formerly known as Other Asian (it’s good he gets to have a name now), had signed up to play Frank, but pulled out when his parents refused to allow him to dress up in the requisite slinky costume. The character delivered two or three lines about this, all of which provided plenty of information about his parents’ discomfort, his slight apprehension, and the fact that the show would need a new Frank. There was no reason at all for Mike to then add, almost as an afterthought, a comment about “dressing up like a tranny.”

I realize that there is a large controversy about whether tranny is an okay word. I am not the right person to address that. What I do know is that while I was watching, there were innumerable Facebook and Twitter posts from other people who were watching, and I have yet to see a single word about this problem from anyone EXCEPT Jay Morris over at jaysays.com.

When trans people complain about being scoffed at and ignored by G/L/B people, this is what we’re talking about. I sent GLAAD an email last night about it; we’ll see what they say. Last season Sue Sylvester called someone a “she-male,” which is a completely offensive and grotesque term; it lacks even the ambiguity, and the reclamation, that tranny sometimes enjoys. As Jay put it, if the writers had written a line in which Mike said something about “dressing up like a fag,” the blogosphere would be all manner of upset by now.

I have posted before about ways in which “Glee” is not our friend. While I find it entertaining, I’m continually amazed by how many people think it’s the gayest show ever. At the moment, it shares all the same erasure of queerness, and offensiveness to trans folk, that “Will & Grace” caught flack for way back when.

I want “Glee” to be what it SHOULD be, not what it IS. And until the writers figure out that they’re hurting people and contributing to the very culture of bullying that the show’s stars have spoken out about, it’s not going to happen.

(cross posted to FireCatClub)

Am I a Trans Poet? Or am I a Poet who is Trans?

I don’t know how to be a trans poet without being a TRANS POET. Half the things I write about have nothing to do with the trans thing… But then sometimes I DO write about it. Sometimes very deliberately.

Valzhyna Mort says, quoting someone else (probably Carolyn Forche?), that poets are the secretaries of the invisible. Which might mean that I have a moral imperative to be the voice for my people, because we have need for voices. I will not ever be our King or our Milk or our X, but I might possibly be our Taliesin.

Last night a poem of mine got slammed (by one person, not universally) for having trans issues in it, which apparently added “too much weight” to the poem. Is it a real criticism, or is it a reaction to me going on and on and on about trans things? I’m not sure. With some people I would be absolutely certain, one way or the other, but this time…? I think I will have a clearer idea next week, when another poem with the same issue will come up (and not one of mine, either). Will it be deemed too weighty?

In my poetry class, meanwhile, we are going to talk about the poetry of Patricia Smith, who is exactly the kind of secretary, and witness, that Forche describes. Her book Blood Dazzler about the murder of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the Bush Administration is maybe the most beautiful, most painful, most wrenching book I have ever read. It is, in Friends terminology, a “freezer book.”

I don’t know if I can write a “freezer book” of poems about the trans experience. But I am pretty sure I should try. I thought I was going to be the voice of the Bay — write my region — all that good stuff — but it seems that in fact I may have a different task. And I don’t know what to do.

Why TWO Blogs, Boy Wonder?

Hello Peeples.

Still working on the wrong computer, but at least I got my plug-ins.

Yesterday I got to wondering why I have two separate blogs. As if I think I need to keep my angry trans self and my nice cheerful trans self separate. For whom am I doing this? And why?

I am pondering this pretty hard today. Maybe I will integrate the blogs together. My main issue, I guess, is that I don’t want to dilute the purpose of the other blog, which is to address trans issues and why I get mad about them. I don’t think I am trying to keep the trans stuff out of here, or trying to shield any of you from my explorations of what’s wrong with the world.

However, I have been spending a lot of time on other blogs, and they seem better integrated. Like Sam’s blog, in which he talks about a lot of things, but mostly in a trans kind of way… I think I need to do a better job of that here, and not just be about poetry and butterflies. Although I like poetry and butterflies VERY much.

So. Going forward, I am hopeful that Faunboy will be a more thorough extension and expression of where I am and what I’m doing, while Fire Cat Club will remain very issue-focused.

First thing I am going to do here, although I am still pondering all of this, is put up my poem that I said I would put up. Hang tight, peeples, and I will put it in the very next post (minutes from now!!) in a space of its own.

Thanks for listening.

Pax.