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July 5, 2025

Outpost

Morning trek to the outpost for some mud. Curtains flutter and part and drink us in. An automatic bell chimes for flaps of bodies and bodies of fabric but might miss the entrance of the neighbor cat if he were to waltz out and want steamed milk foam and his tail were to billow high enough to reach the sensor in a parabolic arc of autonomous appendage movement. A cat’s tail is its own cat, equally as curious as to what it’s attached.

The potable petroleum peddler, Wisly, or Wis, not Wesley, grabs a bottom-shelf poetic device from the counter and whispers love into paper cups. A flat white woman hands a holy tarot to her bean juice elixir mixer who punches it, and is so good at and used to punching it it gets holier and holier until it ascends economic stratagems and completes its transition into liquid sunshine, brown sunshine like through typical sunglasses, a small card passing for a hot, creamy drink with a little design on top—maybe a swan or a snake or the drip off the tip of a gas hose into a rain puddle, diluted energy.

Poetry
May 24, 2025

Trying to get unstuck

Are we all living our own fantasies? Is that thought worth having if it’s almost definitely been explored in great depth by philosophers past and present?

What does it mean to be a storyteller today? It sounds romantic but how harmful is it to tell stories that sell someone’s own version of the world, or even a microcosm, for one’s personal benefit?

How can I get past the torment of wanting to archive my old writings here and wanting them to have a consistent format, which necessitates editing, which necessitates a style guide or cohesive stylistic choices, which sometimes alter or bring into question the original intent of the writing, which leads to me wanting to re-explore old ideas and polish naive thoughts, which leads me to question their accuracy, which opens endless rabbit holes, which invites the use of AI to attempt to fact-check and relieve myself of certain tedium, which alters the piece and renders it inauthentic, which counters the original archival task, which then leads one’s archive feeling poisoned, which it most certainly has become.

Deleted the Pinterest, Instagram, Bluesky, and Reddit apps from my phone again. It’s difficult because in some very specific cases they are useful, but otherwise they burn time.

I don’t want to talk about AI on here but it’s zeitgeisty and I shamefully sell it through my work and it’s so controversial it made someone I care about upset that I wanted to try to make money with it and it’s poisoned my archive and it’s unavoidable in a way.

I recently had a long-term, really long-term goal reach a brick wall and it sent me spiraling and questioning the very core of my being and I want to believe something about it being about the journey, and I do cherish the highly unique memories associated with everything leading up to the wall but I wasn’t expecting the wall at all and there it is and there’s no going past it and now I don’t know which direction to go.

I was invited to go mountaineering this weekend and it was incredibly difficult to refuse, but my knee is injured from a 15km race last weekend and I know I’d make it worse by climbing and possibly have to defer the San Francisco Marathon for the third year in a row because of injury and I’ve been working hard training for it. Steep snow would really clear my mind right now.

Leaving San Francisco is so appealing, but I love meeting people, and I recently met someone who quickly became special to me, and it dampens the prospect of boxing everything up onto a truck and heading towards new perspective, maybe because this person is providing new perspective and it feels very good and maybe it isn’t about moving but not feeling good and throwing darts at the cause and shrugging and deciding it must be all of this, this place.

Is self-compassion as hard for you as it is for me?

After hitting the wall all I think I want is to care about something new as quickly as possible. It’s not something that can be forced. Like finding a new love in another human being. But it requires making yourself available, which I think I do. All I am is available. Maybe I need to stop being so available. It’s samsaric.

There are jars of peanut butter, so many of them, and cans of tuna, almost equally as many, in my kitchen cabinet, because they last so long and I enjoy them. But time passed and they’re past expiry and I can imagine myself grabbing them off the grocery shelf and looking at those dates and thinking about how unfathomably far they were, what would happen in between then and now, and now the time has passed.

It’s so difficult to realize you can’t possibly experience everything in one lifetime. Everything is so interesting. I’m envious of people who care about something so much, because I don’t know what that’s like, and I can only imagine caring about something as much as I care about everything. But maybe those I perceive to be caring about something or who themselves perceive as much only pretend to because they, too, care about everything and it’s too overwhelming, and it’s so comforting to latch onto something, anything, but something.

I used to have a world map in my bedroom in my parents’ house and I missed it, so I bought a world map to put next to my desk. It’s here now, next to me, and it’s big, and I love it. It’s big, but the text is so small and I need to stand up and stick my nose right up to it and shine my phone flashlight to read Abu Dhabi, but I still love it. There’s so much water.

Sailing is so prohibitively expensive, and sure there are ways to do it without spending so much, but if you’re not spending money, you’re spending something else. One of my few early memories of sailing was on my Uncle Vince’s boat in Delaware. I hated it. Or I was bored. Or I didn’t hate the sailing itself but something about that day and it soured me on sailing. Then I met a boy in San Francisco, well a man with a mustache that’s nice to kiss, and we started sailing together, and I started to like it more. Or maybe I didn’t like the sailing itself but something about that boy and his mustache and saltwater kisses between tacks and jibes. It’s a romanticized version, however. There was no time for romance with Captain Dave barking orders between spits of chew into the bay.

Writing is making me feel a little less lost. I do still wish I was on the mountain, though. And I’m worried about where my mind will wander when I stop writing. I should get dressed and get coffee, because sitting here in my undies after noon doesn’t feel very responsible. If I had all the money in the world I’d probably be sitting here in my undies after noon. Maybe not here. Maybe Istanbul. I’d be having a full pot of Turkish coffee, writing to no one, staring out at the seagulls over the Bosphorus.

This is where we’ll pause for now.

Oh, and here’s a song.

January 5, 2025

Thoughts on using the bathroom

Neon pink sign reading “GO PISS GIRL” mounted on a wall, casting a pink glow.

Sarah McBride, the first openly trans congresswoman, was recently sworn in. Before she even took office, her right to use the women’s bathroom in her workplace was threatened by another member of congress. In light of this, and many other impending threats to trans rights in the years to come, I want to share my unfiltered perspective on what it’s like to use the bathroom as a trans woman.

I’m not claiming this is how all trans people feel—it’s specifically my experience. And I’m well aware that the only reason this topic is even considered controversial is because it’s propped up by scapegoating and fabricated red herrings. I’m not writing to pile onto that conversation or keep fueling political distraction, but to let you know how scary it is to take a shit as a tgirl in 2025. Because I’m cursed to think about this shit all the damn time.

…

When I first started to medically transition, that is, to take estrogen, I knew it would be a long while before physical changes started to settle in. I’d come to terms with my own gender identity, but it was yet to match how I appeared to others externally. I could alter my wardrobe to be more feminine, but I never felt I looked quite right—I didn’t want to come across as a crossdresser (Often a self-identified man dressing as a woman). I’m not sure when I started using the women’s restroom, but at some point I knew I’d have to. Early transition is full of disconcerting gray-areas. When would I appear woman enough or trans enough to earn my place in the proper public toilet?

There’s unfounded hysteria around the possibility of trans women harming cis women in public bathrooms, but not only is that exceedingly rare (If not nonexistent!), the opposite threat is far more realistic (If not ever-present). From early on until now, almost three years in, I’ve worried about being judged for not being in the proper space—for making others feel uncomfortable, when quizzically I am the one who is overwhelmingly uncomfortable.

Before even entering the bathroom, I’m afraid someone will catch a glimpse of something manly about me, perhaps hear my voice, and try to direct me to the men’s. It just happened recently. I was dressed entirely fem, out somewhere with my boyfriend, and asked for the bathroom code. When I tried to input the code and it kept beeping incorrect, an employee blushed and gave the code to the women’s. I don’t blame them for making a subconscious assumption, but damn it hurts. Such an occurrence could be dangerous in a place less generally accepting than San Francisco. And this was a single-stall bathroom, where I wouldn’t even have to worry about others once inside.

When it comes to multi-stall facilities, I always feel like I’m intruding. I tell myself that people are there to do their private business and no one cares about me, but I still don’t want to be found out. Or if people have already decided I’m not cis, I want to set a good example for other trans women by staying completely in my lane and not inadvertently spooking anyone in any way. I don’t make eye contact. I try to shift my face away in the mirror and hide behind my hair. Sometimes I reapply lipstick to assure others that I didn’t walk into the wrong place. I never dare speak, and I never stay a second more than I have to.

Even in the supposed safety of a stall, I’m worried I’ll be discovered. Someone will spy dick through the gap between the door. My pee stream will sound unnatural, even though I’m sitting down. My feet will face the wrong direction for a split second too long. Any number of hyper-specific, subconsciously gendered actions could be misinterpreted and throw someone off. And even if I manage to follow all the scripts, like a dog can smell fear, I’ll be unmasked for simply feeling unwelcome, and that internal discomfort will be read and acted upon.

Then comes the what-ifs. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’ve heard stories. What happens if someone has a problem with me in the bathroom? Do I stand up for myself? Do I apologize for causing them to feel threatened? Play dumb? Quickly walk out?

There’s no avoiding any of this. I haven’t used the men’s bathroom for years, and I can’t imagine how awkward I’d feel in there if I was ever forced to use it. It simply would not be right. In more conservative states I’ve hesitated before choosing a bathroom at, say, a gas station. Maybe in the future there will be legal consequences for choosing a bathroom on federal property. My identification documents all say I’m a woman, so I’m legally acknowledged, but there’s policy up for adoption with language around “biological sex”, “birth sex”, etc. How far would someone go to dig up personal information about me or any other trans person that might fit their definitions of sex and gender? Could there be future genital inspections? What would happen if I got a pussy?

There’s far more to say about all this, and a lot that’s already been said. I’ll share some links for further reading below. Hope you learned something new, gained a bit of empathy, and/or this resonates in a way that makes you feel less alone. Stay safe out there, and go piss girl.