Big, blonde and beautiful? Well, two out of three's not bad...and I'd rather be big than lumped in with Rauk.(j/k)

My grandfather died. Don’t offer me sympathy; he was a hidebound, racist, sexist, homophobic, malicious old arsehole, and our relationship was strained to say the least. This did not get me out of having to go to his funeral, though.(More on that later.)

So I came down from London to spend some time with my birth family. And one thing that my mother and her boyfriend just never shut up about the whole time was the issue of my weight.
I’ve always been big-hipped and big-chested, but these last few months I’ve gotten bigger in those areas and all-over, really. According to the doctor when I had my medical checkup I’m four pounds shy of being clinically obese. Me, I say ‘wut?’ to this. I wouldn’t call myself fat. Plump yes. But I don’t feel I look fat. Not that looking fat’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s just that I don’t think I do.

My birth father Vella’s made a few comments about this, but he is a fashion designer and has gotten used to stick insects in makeup and thus I generally ignore him. Besides, it’s mostly due to his cooking and choices of snacks that I’ve put on weight.(Mmm, fried aubergines...)
Even though Vella considers it his bounded duty to evaluate all apparent women for attractiveness, though, he has not made anywhere near as many comments as my birth mother Sarah and her boyfriend Michael.

I was there Saturday 24th to Tuesday 27th, and all the damn time it was ‘you have put on a lot of weight dear, you’re really less attractive, you used to regulate your own weight so nicely, you need to cut down...’

And the crowning idiocy, the crazy diamond of dumbassery, ‘This is because you don’t realise what a pretty girl you are, your self-esteem has always been too low, you need to make more of an effort with your appearance and then people will like you and you’ll feel better about yourself!’

The sheer stupidity of it floored me, I swear.

Fuck you, Mother Dear. Most of my self-esteem problems were your fault in the first place! And they never revolved around appearance!

Yeah, I did-at one point-have issues with the look of my body. Thing is though, that was because it was too Milesian, and I’d been hanging out with chicks from the people I called the Tuatha de Danaan then. I was holding myself to standards that bodies from this world just cannot meet no matter what their genes are like, no matter how they diet or work out, no matter how much surgery they get. And the appearance wasn’t the point in and of itself, either. I wanted to be like my de Danaan friends because they were tough, smart and mostly happy, and I felt that a Thulcandran could never be any of those things. The face in the mirror just rubbed that in every time I saw it. Maybe if I’d had some good Thulcandran mentors earlier...ah, well. Can’t change the past, and I did eventually find a very cool Thulcandran-Milese wingsister who helped me out with that whole tangle.

Anyway, point is, I wouldn’t say my self-esteem issues are gone totally, but I’ve given them a few good whacks, and I’ve at least got it into my thick skull that Thulcandrans can be very cool. Ergo, no need to wish I’d been born on another world. The bits of the multiverse I can reach as is-in body and spirit-can give me everything I need if I just figure out the how and why.

On a more universal note, I have NEVER thought that my physical appearance was a matter of grave importance in and of itself. You get told all the time when you’re a puggle, ‘the moral of the story is, it’s what’s inside that counts’. Now, back then I didn’t get that people paid lip service to that only. I took it as the truth! Crazy, huh?*

The important things, I thought, were: my intelligence; my basic decency; my artistic talents. In no particular order. Looks were just ‘stuff’, and I wasn’t really interested in ‘em much. The closest I got was how I loved to play dress-up in a witch’s hat or devil horns or pair of sparkly fairy wings or the Pocahontas dress and dog costume Vella made me. (Not both at once.) Oh, and one time he got me a dress with lions on. I couldn’t care less what I looked like in it, I just adored the lions. I liked the ladybird buttons on my school cardy, too. I was kinda potty about animals in general, I guess.

Then I got bigger...and was totally confused by the sudden strong messages that I did, actually, have to care what I looked like. More than that, I had to want to look a particular way, want this with all my being, and do everything in my power to achieve it.

Out of cheese error; please reinstall universe and reboot...

Really, I never lost the view of that puggle who played with hir plastic animals; sie wouldn’t have said ‘We’re born naked, all the rest is drag’ because sie’d never heard that phrase and didn’t really think the concept out in words at all, but sie did think it. Drag can be fun, but it’s not real life.

So now that puggle’s grown his spines and left the pouch, he’ll clench spiked fists and growl when someone starts saying that women have some kind of duty to spend a good portion of their time beautifying themselves. Worse, that they all naturally want to. Because that is How Women Are. And any woman who doesn’t, or who doesn’t have a conventional notion of what beauty is, obviously has something wrong with her. (Oh, and any man who takes as much time over his looks as a woman’s supposed to is a wanker, probably gay**, and obviously has something wrong with him. And let’s not even get into crossdressing...) Why, is this my fist embedded in your skull, Michael? Dear, dear. So sorry. Oh well, it wasn’t as if there was much in there to damage. A few pounds of manure and it’ll be as good as new!

But enough about the placental mammal contingent.

Ash thinks I look okay and not too fat. I am more inclined to give weight(pun not intended)to her opinion than that of placental mammals, really. Several sensible people I know of take the view that fatness is not in and of itself a bad thing in any case unless you’re at ‘cannot shift own bulk’ level. (Which most fat people are not.) I’ve come round to their point of view too.

When people first started mentioning that I had gained weight, I worried. But when I thought of actually looking at my body, that all dissipated.

My body is very female in build, earth mother look enhanced by milky-coffee skin and dark eyes and hair. I have curves all over, and yes, that includes my belly. (If you don’t believe me, Ash, I’ll have to send you pictures. Actually I may do that anyway.*grin*) This is all pretty troublesome a lot of times, what with the whole genderqueer thing; my body doesn’t match my brain. If I’d been told to pick one female body and stick to it I’d have picked something with broader shoulders, narrower hips, smaller tits. Oh, and something taller while I was at it. My body does not feel like it’s mine-it’s more like I picked up the wrong outfit by mistake and ended up wearing something sized for my sister.

I guess all trans and genderqueer folk have their own ways of dealing with this. The way that works best for me is to not think of my body as mine. Or rather, to not think of it as me. It’s a tool; it’s drag; it’s my Pocahontas outfit and dog suit. It’s a thing I happen to have, and till I can alter it so it’ll fit a touch better I’ll just use it as is. It works okay for what it is, it’s not its fault that She Who Gives All Gifts picked the wrong model for me. It can eat and drink, walk, run, dance badly, talk, listen, snuggle and kiss. It has hands with opposable thumbs. It has muscles should I ever choose to train them, and a working female reproductive system should I ever choose to use it. I probably won’t do either of those things, but I have the opportunity. It’s mine to play with.

And hey, why not?

So, Sarah, sorry to disappoint you but I’m not gonna diet anytime soon. I’m just gonna let my curves stay curvy as hell-if I’m gonna look earth mother, might as well go the whole hog. (Mmm, hog.) Besides-I was a Qu before I was an Echidna! It’s only fitting. I like looking this way, and my self-esteem’s never been better.

I offer big love with no apologies
How can I deny the world the most of me?
I am not afraid to throw my weight around
Pound by pound by pound.

*I also believed that being different was good; that people different from each other could be friends; that girls were able to do anything boys could do, and should if they wanted to; and that in his youth my dad had been Mowgli from Kipling’s Jungle Book. Hey, I never said I got them all right.
**Even if he’s had girlfriends and enjoyed it and gotten hickeys and so forth. Especially if he has had girlfriends, etc. Also any nasty traits in his personality are proof that he is gay. Apparently straight men can’t be vain, vicious and vapid, because these traits are what define gays. And you thought it was just that they liked penises.

Because hellfires, I had to talk about it SOME time

When I was a kid, I assumed I was female. This was on the not unreasonable grounds that everyone I knew said I was, and at the tender age of five or so I didn't see any coherent argument that'd have me disagreeing with them. I just said 'huh' mentally and went back to the more important things, like playing with my plastic animals, riding my bike round the green, pestering my mother to let me have a pet(unsuccessfully), and devouring 101 Dalmatians.

I was, however, somewhat uncomfortable. I couldn't, at that point, really put my finger on why.

One of my mother's saving graces is that she did, to her credit, stress that girls could do anything they wanted(although in my teenage years I was darkly amused they still, apparently, had to do 'anything' with shaved legs and painted faces.) Nevertheless, I didn't feel comfortable. Something just didn't feel quite right.

I remember watching Pokemon and Digimon on TV-the first anime shows I ever saw. That'd be later, when I was around ten. I remember watching them religiously, but...always being slightly confused, in the back of my head. Surely I should like Misty best, because she was a Girl like me. Or Sora. Maybe not Mimi, because she was too pink and frilly and helpless and, well, girly, but Misty and Sora were tough and brave. I liked them.

I liked them just fine, but...why did I like Ash and Izzy best of all?

I assumed it was A Crush. Girls had crushes on Boys, I knew. However, I didn't want to kiss these boys. I wanted to be them. Or to be their friends. I wanted to be Ash, with mythical beasts sleeping at my belt and riding on my shoulder, loyal friends at my side, and all the paintbox landscape to explore. I wanted to be Izzy, and have everyone amazed at my smartness, have friends who respected me and knew me as, well, me. Not a girl. Not even a smart girl. Me.

I knew girls could be smart. They could be Nobel-Prize-Winner smart. They could be Gym Leaders and Lady Knights and world-saving heroines. And yet...and yet...

When puberty hit, I was appalled at what my body was doing to me. It just seemed all wrong. Why was I bleeding and cramping? What the hell were these things on my chest, could someone please take them off? The females in my life said it was just part of being a woman. I felt I'd gotten a bum deal.

But Girls were Girls, and Boys were Boys. I knew that. So I had to try and be a Girl.

I drew the line at pink, however.

I also refused point-blank to have anything to do with bras, makeup, or fashion. The bras thing was simply because I hated wearing something so uncomfortable, but makeup and fashion I despised because I had somehow gotten hold of the idea that the only people interested in their appearance were vain, shallow and catty. Being a frump was Honest. Also, more comfortable and easier.(I eventually managed to realise that a mild interest in playing dress-up did not preclude an intelligent and thoughtful nature; this was thanks to some very nice spirit-women I met up with. Peace and love to them, wherever they are.)

My mother tried in vain to persuade me to be a Proper Girl and Dress Nicely. I fought back with all of my might. I won, more or less, though on special occasions I would have to wear a Nice Dress. Not a dress, I wore those all the time-they were comfier than pants, and I didn't really care what they looked like. For some time my favourite item of clothing was a stripy blue cotton sundress, which I had had for several years, and which had gotten pulled more or less totally out of shape in the course of that time, till in the end my mother, despairing, threw it in the bin when I put it in for the wash. That, and the blue fleece with red stars on it that Sendalinde stole to give to one of his adopted orphans-but a Pretty Dress, which you had to be careful wearing, which she would say made me look nice. I didn't think so. I looked in the mirror and felt glum.

A memory that leaps out at me-I did Work Experience at the Raptor Foundation, cleaning out the cages of rescued birds of prey, petting a cockatoo called Zu, and once picking up an adorable little owlet. It was cold, messy work, so I wore a heavy fleece, and trousers, and my hair pulled back under a hood. One day I was cleaning out some kestrels when a visitor to the place-an old fellow, white-haired-noticed me and asked me for directions to someplace. The toilets or something. I forget what. He called me 'young man'.

When he called me that...I felt suddenly, unreasonably happy and pleased. But that was wrong! I knew I was a Girl. And he had made a mistake. So I pretended instead to be offended and corrected him, and he apologised, and all was well. But I kept turning that incident over in my mind. I told myself I was indignant. I almost convinced myself that was true.

A similar thing happened when I got my hair cut short for the first time, then looked in the mirror and saw a younger version of my father's face looking back at me.

This was about the time that I really got into reading porn, and I seriously wondered about my preferences due to this. See, when I got a crush, it was always on a girl. When I thought someone was hot, girl. But I was bored by femslash. I preferred yaoi or het. I had absolutely no idea what was up with that. The reason, though I didn't know it, was that I couldn't identify with a female. So it stayed 'sex happening to someone else'...

Another memory. I took a fencing class for awhile. I needed to wear a sports bra while I did this. One day after I had put it on I looked down at myself and thought 'holy fuck, those are tits. And not a bad pair either.' And started crying.

Then one day, I was searching the net for veves, the Vodoun god-sigils, and info about the lwa. Why is another long story for another time, but anyway, I found this site. And, well, I read the stuff on religion, and then, cause I am a voracious reader, started on the stuff about being trans. And I followed a few links, and read some more things, most notably Venus Envy...

I did not, however, manage to put it all together in my head till some months later.

I was in the bath. I don't know what it is with me and bathtime revelations. It just happened. Everything came together and holy god, I was petrified. I sat there an hour, while the water got cold, just thinking Holy shit I'm fucked.

That was only the beginning of Figuring It Out. It took awhile, and a few talks with Athene, but eventually I was done Figuring It. Or, well, not done, but...reasonably certain to be going on with.

I still have to present as female, because coming out would open up so many cans of worms I might as well start a bait shop. That will have to wait for later, after I'm free of my family and on top of my OCD and generally In Control Of My Life. The waiting annoys me a lot sometimes. Like the time when someone chided me for not being 'ladylike' and I wanted so badly to scream at her, I'm not a lady!(I controlled myself and kept silent.)But I think I can handle the wait. As long as Ash knows who I am, and as long as I know. I can handle it.

I wonder if you could be my therapy~?

So recently Knux has been doing stuff in my head. Good stuff.

It's...subtle, and complicated, and hard to describe. But it's about boosting self-esteem. It's about allowing myself to feel comfortable in my body, it's about not feeling guilty, not mortifying the flesh, not practising self-denial. It's about untying my hopelessly tangled shoelaces and letting myself walk barefoot over the grass and get dirt inbetween my toes.

It's about not feeling like I'm under a moral obligation to give away every bit of security I can get a hold of, not having to be the one who saves the world, being allowed to be one of those characters with sub-par stats that never gets used for the boss battles, being allowed to be the human equivalent of my Platinum-version Weavile, who has no surefire big-hitter moves and whose stats are only average, but who is pretty and has a lot of character and is named after a good friend of mine, and who keeps up with the other five members of the team, more or less. It's about not panicking, not rushing or hurrying, staying calm, keeping it together, living in stone time.

(Water-name notwithstanding, Tigris is fire in my head; hot and quick and impatient. In fire time, every second, every nanosecond counts. Tigris always has a sense of energy about him; always poised to jump up and do something. To roar and fight or laugh booming-deep-golden and romp like...well, like a cat chasing sunbeams. Do Something. Time's a-wasting. This is the time, now is the time, every moment is the most important moment, the decisive moment, the moment of the fight, so do it, get up, do something, make something, fight something, change something, whatever you do, don't stand still. If you're standing still, you shouldn't be.)

Stone time is geological ages and patience. The slow, slow movement of mountains rising and tectonic plates shifting. They'll get there. There's no rush. No need to get in a lather. There is world enough, and time. Everything in its time, and a time for every purpose, if you only wait. Stone time is the green soft glow of the Master Emerald. It's meditation in a cool still room, and walking a meandering path through the Marble Garden, smelling the flowers, picking fruit, playing in the dirt, doubling back on yourself, lying down to sleep under a shady tree. Granite calmness, basalt wisdom. Stone just is.

Acceptance.

That's stone time.

Ow.

Throat.

Ow.

I need honey and lemons.

I. Am. Such. A. Peacock.

Skateboarder shorts.

White skateboarder shorts, to be precise.

And a white t-shirt with blue-green tigers and leopards on and a white jacket that actually gives me shoulders.

And a white headband with little black stars on.

And a necklace of snowflake obsidian chips.

Yeah, I look good. ^_^

I am not one of us

I don't know if it's just me, but I've never felt quite included.

Technically I am a member of many groups. Not groups like organisations, that's a whole 'nother post subject and one for later, but...demographics. English. Mixed race. Genderqueer. Fantasy geek. Etcetera. I don't deny this. It's obvious.

Yet whenever anyone says 'us', no matter how stirring their speech is, no matter whether I think their sentiments are right or wrong...a little voice inside me says, 'I'm not one of you.'

Not in any insulting way, you understand. Not 'I'm not one of you!' hurled like an insult, defiant and secretly terrified, but simply a statement of face. I'm not one of you. Full stop.

I don't really understand why. It's just been...well, a rock-solid certainty, for as far back as I can remember.

Maybe it's psychological. Something to do with my parents-my mother refusing to admit I was part African, my father refusing to admit I was part English, in the simplified version. Maybe it was because I hated baby dolls and action-men both as a kid, and played instead with plastic animals, narrating long complex stories with my lions and tigers and bears(oh my). I don't know.

All I know is that whatever you are, whatever I am, I am not one of you.

That does not mean I don't sympathise with your problems, or that I think you are Wrong and I am Right, or that I pig-headedly deny that we share a common enemy or friend. All it means is that I am not one of you.

I am not plural. I am me, singular, and that is all.

What that means...I don't know.

The back-from-dad's place update

A thumb-sized plastic Squall Leonhart is a surprisingly comforting thing to have in one’s pocket, even if his gunblade is broken.

_

My father is still impossible to talk to.

_

Captain Carrot and Lloyd Irving are possibly very nearly the same person. I must research this.

-

My faithful DS is dead. It died of internal bleeding, and I am much annoyed about this. I’m saving up for a new one.

-

My aunt and uncle and cousins came through big time with regards to presents. SERGEANT PEPPER’S!

-

I’ve put on weight. It’s probably all those duck legs. For some reason it all seems to go to my belly, nowhere else. Some of you are probably making pregnancy jokes on reading this. All I can say is, if it is pregnancy, we are probably about to witness the birth of a new religion. Someone should phone the Archbishop of Canterbury.

-

I hate politics. Hate hate hate.

-

Ian is still a prat. Why does he have to act like he’s lord of the manor all the time? AAARGH!

-

Tomorrow I have another appointment about getting psychiatric help. It looks like we are actually getting somewhere soonish.

-

All in all, things could be worse.

The Huntingdon flop

So apparently I cannot crossdress. I don’t know what it was exactly, probably my voice, maybe the aforementioned doe eyes, but everybody in Huntingdon yesterday knew me for a double-X-chromosome at once.

I have also learned something. If a man tries to crossdress, and cannot do this convincingly, then he is likely to get, in the best case scenario, a lot of funny looks, and in the worst case scenario, a great deal of grief. If, however, a woman tries to crossdress, and cannot do it convincingly, then absolutely nobody will notice that she was trying in the first place unless she has gone to false-moustache lengths.(I didn’t.)

It makes the whole business with the duct tape seem like a lot of unnecessary pain, I must say. Whatever else I do with my life, I’m NOT doing that again.

It’s all somewhat annoying.

The day wasn’t a total loss, however. I had fun pottering about a couple of streets in Huntingdon, got a copy of Hotel Dusk and ate a very nice meal at the George Hotel.(A sort of platter consisting of a warm baguette and ham and cold roast chicken and a whole gooey baked Camembert cheese and cherry tomatoes and two sorts of pickle and olive-oil-and-vinegar dip on the side, and afterwards a suet pudding with blackberry-and-apple filling and custard.)I also liked the way I looked, dressed as a boy. I verged on androgynous, and that pleased me. If only it wasn’t so painful to bind my breasts…

Ah, well.

I have decided something, though, as a result of all this ruminating on the problem. Every Thursday there is a market in St Neots town square, selling normal markety things-food and drink, sweets, electrical goods, and clothes.

One of the clothes stalls sells shirts. Black button-up ones with pictures on them-skulls and roses, wolves, dragons both European and Asian, motorbikes, wizards…The fellow that runs it is a long-time marketgoer, he’s been coming to St Neots every Thursday for years. I’ve always rather admired those shirts, but I’ve never bought one. Because they are men’s shirts. Or rather, geek-boys’ shirts. But the boy bit stands. So, up till now, I’ve just sort of looked wistfully at them, and walked on.

But now there’s the echidna stirring under my skin, and I’m conscious all of a sudden of the bone spikes on my fists. Breaking boxes has to start somewhere.

I’ll buy the wolf shirt, or maybe the one with the purple dragon, or whatever one looks prettiest when I see what’s on offer. I’ll wear it with my skirts-that’ll cause some second looks-and I’ll get some glitter gel to put in my hair, because I like things that sparkle. Maybe I’ll spike it up. Maybe I’ll pull it back into a tail again; I rather like the way it looks when I do that, I realised today. It’s not exactly a rat-tail; it has far more aplomb than that.

There’s ways and ways to genderfuck.

Only that makes it sound like the payoff is counted in other people’s confusion and embarrassment, and it isn’t-or not mostly.

Really, it’s about having a bit more elbow room, carving out a little space for me to choose what I want and not cut off any limbs that might hang over the edges of the Procrustean bed. It’s a small thing, of course; just a choice of clothes. But every little helps.

Some random rambly shit about bodies & sexuality, & my weird head

I have pretty eyes. Big and deep brown, with long eyelashes. Bambi eyes. People have complimented me on them before now. Sometimes they say I should swap my glasses for contacts(no thank you; the thought of floating something on my eyeball just grosses me out and anyway I’ve worn glasses so long they feel like part of my body now)so as to render my eyes more visible, make the most of them.

I remember looking in a mirror, aged about thirteen or fourteen, and not liking what I saw. This was of course commonplace. But it wasn’t always about imperfection in my face and figure…Sometimes I’d look, and see those big Bambi eyes. They looked like they belonged on some baby creature. They looked vulnerable.

And I thought, ‘I hate that. I don’t want to look that vulnerable.’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, sometimes, be in that space, be the small thing held in warm arms, and be comforted. But I didn’t want it all the time, and I didn’t want it to be the thing people saw when they saw me-regardless of what I wanted.

I was hanging out with some of the Final Fantasy spirit folk at this point in time, so I had no shortage of pretty girls to observe. I never really thought the thought in so many words, but I sort of formed an assumption-sexiness is something your body does to you. If your features add up in a certain way you’re ugly and there’s nothing you can do about it; if they add up in another way you’re pretty and there’s nothing you can do about that.

That girl I talked to back then, for instance; my friend in the blue wool cardigan. She’s pretty; by her world’s standards she’s what everyone would think of immediately if someone said ‘pretty’, slim dark-eyed and dark-haired. That’s always there, whenever anyone looks at her. It’s like she’s always in some sense on show. Not that she flaunted herself or anything, or revealed anything much. Her clothing was otherworldly of course, since she was too, but basically it was a cardy and bike shorts and a top no more revealing than the sort every Thulc girl in town was wearing. But her prettiness was always on display, even if her tits weren’t. She was an attractive woman, and people could see that straight out whenever they saw her. Her attitude didn’t have anything to do with it. Didn’t matter whose pants she actually wanted to get into, didn’t matter what she thought about people looking at her. She was on show, and everyone could see. She could have dressed in sackcloth and ashes and she’d still have been pretty, and she’d have gotten a lot of ‘what the fuck?’ comments on top of that.

Of course prettiness didn’t make her a weak person-and anyone who thinks beautiful women have to be weak should go to a dozen worlds I could name, make an observation like that to a hundred deadly and determined ladies. Go on, I dare you-but it did inject a quality into her strength, a kind of defensiveness. Don’t look at me like that-I’ll show you what a pretty woman can do…But that didn’t stop them from looking. Touching, yes. But not from looking.

She was a powerful being and a sexual being. She could offer or withhold as she liked. And she was with folk who respected that she had the choice of it, decent folk. And she dated, and the relationships went their way, and lasted for a while, or not, though sometimes she was turned down, and sometimes she turned other people down, but for the most part she had a pretty good time…

…but that prettiness. That bit of her that was there for anyone to see, a free sample of her. That vulnerability. A bit of her given away before any interaction even started. And yes, with some people she wanted to give that away, there’s one boy I know she wanted to give that to, wanted to give him the sight of her, wanted him to want it-

-but she didn’t get the choice about that bit, and nobody asked.

She was sexy. It was the way her body was. It was a fact that she simply could not get away from.

She didn’t seem to have any problems with this, didn’t even think about it probably. Like I wasn’t consciously thinking about it. But I was noticing. Somewhere, I was noticing.

And time passed, and my hormones kicked in, and I begin to notice something that puzzled me a little. The thing that seemed to make the difference about whether I was attracted to someone or not wasn’t physical. It was…well, it was a whole lot of things, different in every person, but all mental. Mind, I could appreciate physical beauty just fine, but it was just…stuff. Like how a waterfall or a sunset is beautiful. It was when I noticed an interesting mind in a well-formed body that I would start getting interested. And I don’t mean interested in a relationship, I just mean horny! I could not, and still cannot, muster up any attraction for a physically good-looking person who I know nothing about.

Hmm, I thought. Interesting.

Recently I’ve been puzzling this out a bit, and it’s been prompted by noticing a spirit or two(most of my friends are spirits)who seem to do this whole sexiness thing differently to how I saw it.

Spirits who, on pure physicality and according to my tastes at least, are not attractive. Just plain, or even a bit ugly or grotesque.

But I’ve seen them being sexy…It’s strange. I wasn’t turned on myself, but I could see the intention and the power that they could call up, an attitude, a way of moving differently, a look about them that’s just impossible to pin down…It was sexy, though it wasn’t aimed at me, wasn’t meant to be, and didn't register on my internal radars. Does it make sense to say that I could see the sexual power that they had even if it wasn’t one that touched me? And even though they weren’t doing anything overtly sexual, like stripping or whatnot?

I’ve seen them, and for them sexiness isn’t something their bodies do to them. It’s something they do to their bodies. Or with their bodies. And there’s no defensive air, no feeling of vulnerability-though they weren’t always doing it, calling up that power, for someone who they wanted to see them! Sometimes they seemed to just be doing it for the sheer joy of it.

It’s hard to put words round all this. I keep typing and then deleting things, trying to capture the concepts shifting in my head.

It’s just, sexuality always seemed to me to be a sort of vulnerability.

But I’ve read stuff people’ve wrote, about sexuality being power, being empowering. And I never really understood that. Only now I think I start to get some idea of what they meant…