To say I'm unlucky in love is probably as big of a fucking understatement as anyone will ever hear. Truth be told, strip this post bare of all its poetic pretensions and you can pretty much sum it up in a single solitary sentence. I suck at love. I suck at a lot of things, volleyball, algebra, emotional boundaries. But I suck at nothing as badly or as painfully as I suck at love. I'm a hopeless romantic with a capital H. I've never had a girlfriend. I've never even had a date. I'm a 28 year old virgin and this life I'm living is beginning to feel like the cruelest Woody Allen movie never made. This Valentines Day, like all Valentines Days, I'm alone and you, very dearest of motherfuckers, are my only company. So buckle-up for a heart-shredding bitch-fest, because I desperately need to vent.
I have been fascinated by the female species for as long as I've been aware of their existence. Needless to say, it's a rather complicated obsession, considering my own gender fluidity. My feelings towards the not-so-opposite sex have always been a rather dizzying cocktail of lust, adoration and green-eyed jealousy. I never went through a period of time in my childhood where I found girls to be gross. Even as a young boy who couldn't even pronounce gender dysphoria, let alone comprehend it, I looked upon my female classmates as enjoying a degree of simple intimacy between each other that frustrated me to no end. Mostly because, try as I might, I couldn't seem to reenact it with the male playmates I felt trapped with out of some kind of unspoken obligation to an interpretation of normal that felt anything but. I had plenty of male friends growing up. In fact I seemed to collect them in some doomed attempt to feel whole. But I would have gladly traded them all for just one girl who knew my name and spoke it like it brought her as much joy and peace as it brought to me. Childhood was nice, but it was also more than a little lonely for a boy who couldn't understand why he couldn't find sanctuary in scraped knee's and little league games.
High School was better. I found pieces of myself that I didn't know existed in the brief moments of emotional intimacy I shared with girls I felt honored to call my friends. I loved many of them, in ways that they sadly couldn't or wouldn't love me back. I never left that gilded cage known as the friend zone. I wanted desperately to make a break from this emotional prison, but fear became a strong and sly warden, too much so for me to overcome. A warden who knew that these long sought-after friendships were too precious for me to risk losing over the tension of unrequited love. So I stayed silent. I suffered quietly with a gentle smile on my face while I enjoyed a sense of solemn camaraderie that I wasn't yet prepared to fully comprehend. Deep down, I didn't just want to be with the girls. A deep, secret part of me wanted to be one of them. I was a secret girl, secretly in love with girls who I still love to this day. I can recite their names like Catholic saints- Sara, Alison, Dana, Jennifer, Kayleen- Their all still part of me. I miss them everyday.
College would be the traditional place for an nontraditional person such as myself to find them-self, sexually speaking. But the growing storm of my mental illness had other plans. Before I was ever given the opportunity to stumble through an awkward, drunken sexual encounter or a drug fueled transgression into smudged make-up and frilly lingerie, I pulled a full Tony Soprano and emotionally short-circuited, falling apart in an epic nervous breakdown brought on by my inability to grow up at the same pace as my piers. Dazed and confused, I tried in vain to reach my feet and face my demons but they were too strong. So I spent the next seven long years alone in my house trying gather the strength I needed to defeat them. Ultimately, it was the unbearable weight of my gut-wrenching loneliness that eventually forced me back out into the terror of the real world. After spending several consecutive months lying beneath a veil of tears, imagining a warm body in bed next to me just to get to sleep, I finally stepped outside of my house.
Not long after, I also stepped outside of the closet. After years of running and fooling myself, I finally embraced the fact that being male was one prison cell too many for my soul to bare occupying. I accepted the terrifying truth that an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobic like myself, who fears nothing more than change of any kind, had a gender too wild and free to fit under a single fixed label. I'm a man. I'm a woman. I'm one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand things in between. I'm gender fluid and perhaps more than anything else, I'm a lesbian. My sexuality is defined by my fluctuating femininity and it always has. It's the only label that makes any sense to me, even if it makes sense to no one else. I'm not pretty. I have a beard and I have a prick and I feel little incentive to get rid of either anytime soon. But none of those facts makes me feel like any less of a dyke, I've found a shaky peace in this complicated truth but I have yet to find love. I've yet to even come close and this fact burns me to the very core of my being.
But what can I do? I leave my house now but I don't drink, I don't dance, I don't go to church (the only thing more obnoxious than a dancing drunk is a dancing preacher.) I still lack the emotional fitness to handle school or even part-time work. Where do I go? What do I do? Online dating? I'm a little bit of a tough sell on paper, to say the least- Charming, unemployed, bearded bull-dyke with a dick seeks lipstick lesbian, manic-pixie-dream-girl to share make-up and get stoned with- Yeah! That one pretty much sells itself. I could lie, but, in case you haven't noticed, that's not exactly my thing. So for the 28th Valentines Day running I am bitterly and unhappily alone. My only hope is that some you out there can find some kind of comfort in my pain. Your hearts may be broken, but none are as broken as mine. And if you do have someone? Stop bitching about the price of flowers, grab them, hold them tight, fuck them crazy, tell them you love them and, above all else, be thankful. You have no idea how fucking lucky you are.
Be good to each other, dearest motherfuckers, and take care of yourselves, cause you're all this loveless loser's got to keep shimself warm tonight.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack; Some songs that influenced this post-
* Crazy For You By Slowdive
* Dance Music By The Mountain Goats
* Just Like Heaven By Dinosaur Jr.
* About A Girl By Nirvana
* Something I Can Never Have By The Jesus & Mary Chain
* Chick Habit By April March
Hi Comrade. It's "supremeborg" (Disqus) from Antiwar.com. I would prefer that you refer to me as "Mark" as that is my real first name.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to nitpick here, but according to your own writings, you are genetically, physiologically, and hormonally male. You are physically attracted to women, not men. It would appear to be more accurate to refer to you as a heterosexual man, rather than a transgender lesbian.
Now, I am not the most masculine man in the world, and I sometimes get along better with women than men, but I would never consider referring to myself as a woman. I am comfortable identifying myself as a heterosexual man, even though many people (including one of my uncles) have thought I was gay because I didn't adopt, out of the herd mentality, all the personality characteristics of the stereotypical "macho" man.
Every individual is unique. Even though there are different average personality traits among the gender groups, there are also differences within each group, and, sometimes, these differences are greater than the differences in the averages between each group. It seems to me, that there is nothing wrong with identifying yourself as a heterosexual man. It does not make you a woman just being different than the average man. Just because the average man is 5'9" tall, and the average woman is 5'4" tall, it doesn't make a man a woman if he is 5'4", and it doesn't make a woman a man if she is 5'9".
Just a little friendly advice - I think you would have more luck finding a woman if you viewed yourself, and described yourself to others, as a heterosexual man. My girlfriend (To me she is my wife, although we are not legally married because then she would lose her health insurance), whom I have been with for 10 years at the end of this month, is happy that I am gentle, kind, and sensitive. She does not consider me to be a woman because of that. She is happy that I have a dick, but does not demand that I have a rugged face or row after row of rippling muscles.
A lesbian woman is not going to want to be with someone who has a dick. A straight woman is not going to want to be with someone who considers themselves to be a woman. That doesn't leave you with many options. Honestly, why is it necessary to think of yourself as a woman, when you can simply accept yourself as a man, in spite of not being "average" (average is quite boring)?
A few things many straight women have desired in a man are sensitivity, empathy, and a need for emotional intimacy. This fact actually gives you an advantage over many of the more commonplace boors who call themselves "men." Granted, there are some women who consider these traits in a man to be weaknesses. But, that's the beauty of life, everyone is different!
For what it's worth, this is my two cents.
Hey comrade, do you trust me enough to send a direct email to me? I am looking for people who can help me with a writing project. I considered Thomas Knapp, but, his sheer aura of intellect kind of intimidates me. I need someone who has more free time than myself, and who has a great knowledge of world history, including political and religious history. I can give more details if you write me. I do not want to show my hand to the public, as this project is still in the idea phase, and I would not wish to given any competitors any ideas. If you'll email me at 'mwstroberg (at) comcast (dot) net' maybe we can get to know each other better, and see if there is any room for collaboration.
DeleteThanks.
Mark W. Stroberg (aka "supremeborg")
With all do respect Mark, you clearly know very little about gender dysphoria, a legitimate genetic condition that I have struggled with my whole life. I don't chose to be this way. What your suggesting I do is live a lie. I tried that for 25 years and the only thing it achieved was making me hate myself. For the record, I'm not transgender, I'm genderfluid. Which means some days I feel male, some days I feel female, but mostly I feel somewhere in between. I do feel like I am part of the larger trans* community as I don't abide the standard gender binary. I like you Mark, but you have no right to tell me or anyone else how to identify. If you knew anything about gender theory you would realize how offensive and hurtful what you wrote is.
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