Mo is only about 4 months old and is in his early days of learning. As it happened, he and I were engaged in the patience required but still pleasant repetitiveness of puppy training – he pulls on his leash, I stop and ask him to heel, he does, he is praised, he smiles a satisfied puppy smile of a confirmed job well done and then… he pulls on his leash. Despite the slowing effect of this process, the three of us had almost made it home when I heard the sound of a car coming up from behind, a little too fast in a residential area I might add. I pulled Mo to the side to ensure a wide berth and as a protective parent would put an eye on the car just to make sure it stayed that way. Let me just pause here and remind you that this whole moment was just like any moment in a hundred moments on any day. And it is for this reason that it probably took what happened next so much longer to register.

I remember the moment in an oddly slow montage of pictures. The blur of a car that I had already forgotten. A coffee cup suspended midair. The rich creamy brown fluid spun into floral patterns. A cup skidding across the ground, somersaulting and ejecting the remains of its liquid. And then the sound of a splash marked the end.  Someone in the vehicle had thrown their coffee out the window as they passed by. The cup stopped rolling 2 meters ahead of me, but I know it left the car somewhere close to beside me. Was the timing of this a mere coincidence? That it would be right then that someone would decide to litter? Beside the only two people walking along an otherwise deserted road? Perhaps it is my own feelings about littering that would make me think that someone would at least have the decency to try to do it secretly, if at all. Or, maybe the fact was that it was just not accidental.

My lover wondered aloud if the coffee had been left on the roof after all, but my memory of that moment confirmed that it had not. Even the snapshot in my mind of the on-coming car showed nothing on the roof. The coffee had definitely been thrown from inside the car. It was just a question of why. After noting the possibilities, I think my lover and I both just shoved the thought into the far regions of our minds and didn’t discuss it again. But somewhere in my head I found I started to travel back to harder days.

A friend and I were walking down the street, our attentions busy in idle conversation. A beer bottle came crashing down at my feet, glass bits bouncing and nestling into crooks created by laces, my toes freckled with the dregs of ale. It was a startling moment and we weren’t sure what had happened. Dykes! An angry man’s voice yells and our heads snap up to attention. It was late at night and the street was lonely for people. Our eyes hastily searched for the source as our minds tried to recreate the bottle’s trajectory. Instead, we found another bottle hurtling through the air, this time towards my friends face. She managed to dodge it by whipping her whole body around seconds before it exploded on the wall behind us. Both visible gender queers, apparently our presence alone was enough to evoke random violent hostility. We took off running because we felt like we were out of time and it was the safest thing to do. We didn’t know where they were, how many there were or how many more projectiles they had.

My mind wanders back to the splash of cream spread across the road in front of me. It was another startling moment and again I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. I just stared at the cup. And waited. Was it just a hooligans’ prank to be cruel to the people around them? Or was it something more criminal than that? Of course, there are many possibilities. It may have just been an act of self-centered environmental indifference, it could have just slipped from the passenger’s grip. Regardless, it also became swept up into the grip of homophobia. It doesn’t really matter why it happened in the end, it is already enough that one doesn’t know the answer.

“Great, have a seat. What can I do for you today?”

“Well, I would like to keep it simple. Could you just stand behind me and make scissor motions with your fingers?”

“What?!”

“Yeah, and if you could say ‘snip snip snip’ while you are doing it, that would be great. Thanks.”

“Look here buddy… read the sign. We only do real haircuts here. “

So yeah… I saw this sign in a barbershop window yesterday and I wondered about their reasons behind it. In essence, I know what they mean by it – men are males, males are masculine, masculinity means short hair. Period. It is an affirmation of both gender and sex constructs in four short words. And it is more. “Real men” – if not an indication of homophobia, it is certainly a clear display of our societally sanctioned transphobia. A sign stating “men’s haircuts” would have merely been a declaration of the clientele they wish to serve, although still laced with a gendered stereotype depending on how it is read.  But “real men, real haircuts” makes me kinda nervous. It’s almost threatening in a way. Why “real”? What is the purpose of this distinction? It makes it sound like they are serious about their criteria. The sign certainly does its job. I don’t want to go in there even though my hair style would easily fit under their specialty. But what if I were to go in there? How serious are they?

This post is the continuation of my last. How does one avoid depression when there is a constant invalidation of ones identity. Genderism, homophobia, heteronormativity – when do they ever end? I was on my lunch when I came across that sign. I was just trying to get some healthier food than what was available at work. It pops up when you least expect it. It pops up often. My lover and I were recently watching and enjoying the Firefly series. Then there was the ‘lesbian’ episode where the relationship between two women was fetishized for the male gaze. My lover and I just looked at each other. I don’t even know if anything was said because the disappointment was ringing too loudly in my head. We are currently watching the Dollhouse series and recently watched the episode where ‘being gay’ was used as a source of humour. The segment wasn’t even there to help the story progress. It was a throwaway line. Because it still can be. I am conflicted about liking these shows. Someday, I would like to watch a show where I don’t have to make excuses for its random homophobia.

So, my depression may be situational after all, it is just that the situation never ends. My job is in a realm considered to be male. I spend my days with people questioning my ability and knowledge, no matter how much of these things I have. I go to the bathroom and I try to be as efficient as possible. In and out. Before someone sees me. Before they can scrutinize my gender. Before they can cause a scene like they have before. I fight with doctors for basic care withheld because of their views of my sexuality. I try on clothes in the men’s department and I walk into the change room forcing myself not to look around, to not make eye contact, to not draw attention to myself. I buy men’s underwear without looking at it because somehow or another they always know that I am female then. And they know they are for me. And I can never tell if that is the reason they are sneering at me. I have yet to go into a suit shop and have a fitting because I am scared. Because the one time I did I was asked to leave. I am stoked when I find a sports jacket that fits without tailoring because then I can avoid all of that. I wear it and people I don’t even know make disparaging remarks to me. Like somehow my choice of outfits has any bearing on their day. In discussion with colleagues they act all surprised when I mention that people mistake me as a man. I don’t know if they mean this to be kind, like a friend’s response to the ‘do you think I look fat’ question.  They say they don’t see it. And they don’t see me. I go home to the arms of my lover and sometimes I just want to cry. But then I see the way she looks at me. And it is the first time I have felt normal all day. On a particularly hard day, sometimes my depression lingers. But when my world is just my bubble, it is rarely there.

The harder part is how it affects my interactions with other people. My reactions are often low-key, which makes me very hard to read. It is a matter of energy – sometimes my stores are empty, sometimes they are not. It sucks. It puts a wrench in my ability to communicate because my body language and my feelings are not always congruent. You can tell me I won a hundred bucks on a high day and I might well do a little jig. Tell me I won a hundred bucks on a low day and you may just get a ‘hey, that’s great’. Trouble is, on either of those days it would be the same kinda happy.  I would rather be doing the jig by the way, which sometimes I just do for no reason at all.  On a high day. Or a day when I am high. Or both.

My levels of depression varies – some days it shows, some days it doesn’t. Some days my depression is more intense, sometimes I barely realize it is there. Unfortunately, this creates the perfect environment for breeding my pet peeves of the non-believers and the well-intentioned varieties. Non-believers range from the ‘depressed? But you were laughing and joking just the other day’ to the ‘depression isn’t real… it’s just all in your head’. These are tedious things to hear over and over and over. First off, I am really not looking to debate you on the matter. Believe me or don’t. Second, have you ever been depressed? Then, fuck off. And no, being sad or experiencing grief is not the same thing. Those are both very real, but people usually move through them.  End of PSA. The well intended are somewhat harder to deal with because well… they mean well. I get that, I do. But no. Nothing has had to happen for me to feel this way. Being depressed is enough.

Usually I manage my depression quite well, though I am currently on medication. It is not easy to admit that because people sometimes feel the need to interrogate that decision.  No, it is not the only thing I have done. I have been in therapy several times and probably will do so again. I have tried various physical therapies like massage therapy as one example. I eat what I consider to be a healthy diet. I exercise on a regular basis. I have a great supportive and loving family at home – fg, mo and ballou. I have wonderful friends whom are close and dear to me. Medication is not at the top of my list. I just trust that I know when it becomes necessary. And, yes, I am advised that drinking and smoking pot are not helpful. But, like I said before, I have been living with this since I was thirteen… I don’t find these things making it worse and I don’t do either in excess.

So, that is the surface layer. It is sometimes hard for me to separate myself from my depression because it is always there. Depression shapes all of my experiences. It is like how being queer informs my experiences – it is how I experience the world. Everything in this entry until now feels more like the factual parts of my depression, as if I was going through a check-list. Just things I felt needed to be said before I continue on. What I find more interesting and less concrete is the question of why I experience depression. I have so long dealt with it, I think it is easy for one to say it must be a chemical imbalance. I mean, if it were situational wouldn’t I be done with it by now? I feel quite resolved about a lot of things in my life. My childhood experiences are more of a marker of where I have been then a resentment I hang onto. Maybe. Maybe I just fool myself into thinking that I have moved past these things. But, that would be like suggesting one could never move on. I like who I am and how my life is going. I have found the things I needed. My life is mine.  And I am happy. So why am I depressed? I think the answer is not surprising – living with omnipresent homophobia, heterosexism, heteronormativity, and genderism.  It certainly explains why my depression started when I was so young… it was the time in which I recognize now that I started to become aware that something was a bit different for me.

For the record, I hate moving. I guess more specifically I hate the process of moving. The being in a new place, arranging and setting things up, deciding whether or not to paint… I am good with that. Oddly, I even find packing the truck to be fun too, but that has probably more to do with the fact that it feels like a live action tetris game. I also like erratically crossing traffic filled roads because of frogger, but I digress. The process of moving, however, has two huge down points for me. One, once I start packing I always feel like I have way too much stuff and start having a crisis of conscience… egads! when did I become such a consumerist ass?! Purge! Purge! Purge! And two, I feel so disorganized, which in turn makes me feel scattered and anxious. I am sure there are lots of things I could have done to avoid or minimize this, but yeah… no. I am not that organizationally motivated. I do try to write hints on the outside of the boxes as to what their contents are but eventually end up with boxes marked “random stuff” and “it has been too long since I packed this and I cannot remember… heavy, possibly fragile”, which is very useful. I am thinking that on the next few boxes I may just jot down riddles or limericks or something along those lines just to change it up. Oh… the dis-organizational horrors to come once we make it to the other side.

But that all said… I am excited to be moving in with my lover. We have already been living together for a couple of months (which has been wonderful… absolutely, incredibly wonderful), because my lover changed her travel plans and arrived home early, but having sublet her apartment until the end of summer. However, knowing what it is like to move into spaces that are full of someone else’s stuff, I am sure it hasn’t exactly felt like home for my lover… try as I might to make it feel otherwise. But now, we are moving into a place together. Although my lover’s furniture is already there, it doesn’t feel like we are moving into her space – neither of us having been there for so long, it all feels new. Besides… it just means half of the move is already done (yes!).  I am ready to create a home together.

Seriously? Why does this still happen? Because really, if it is a gender thing, it is long outdated. If it is a gender thing, then he really didn’t see me at all.

“Family studies also show that children reared by same-sex parents are more likely to experience sexual involvement with their parents, and to be homosexual/lesbian in orientation.”

GAH!

There were pages and pages and pages of this. So yeah… spent the morning readin’ some hate-lit…  from an organization that advocates for the rights of canadian women and espouses family values. Reflecting on it now, I don’t know if the original website I was on was just a ploy or what, as the real women link was at the bottom of a online divorce service – real women are also against divorce; real families don’t do that. But whatever. It just adds itself to the myriad of other life devaluing experiences one faces everyday. I had only scanned a couple of the pages when I realized that my depression was kicking itself into high gear. The sadness I am feeling now is making it hard for me to work. I figured at least by spewing it here, I could let some of it go. Hasn’t worked yet, but I remain hopeful. One thought that keeps popping into my head was recently reading the same old same old question that appeared in the paper shortly after Pride. You know, the one that goes along the lines of “we have come so far, things are better now, are Pride parades really necessary?” Yeah, asshole. They are.

oh yeah... this is totally how we roll... maybe.

With the weekend comes adventures unknown. This time, my lover and I will be heading out for our first bike trip – a 200 km ride up, around and down the islands where we live. I am super stoked – neither of us having done this sort of a trip before, both of us having wanted to. We have paced it for three days, timed it for some ferry rides and some stealth sleeping, and we are going to be packing light . The first step was to tune our cruising bikes. Okay, the first step was to get cruising bikes. As if it were destiny, we both recently procured awesome rides for under $150 each. No major adjustments needed, the bikes are ready to go. My lover then unleashed her DIY powers and made us each 2 bucket panniers. I don’t know what excites me more about her… her ability to just create things like this or her ability to be as thrifty as that. I am serious when I say I am giddy about these panniers – it makes me feel all rugged and resourceful… and cool. Cool, however, the weather is not. Although it is better than rain, the forecast shows a continuing heatwave in effect. Keeping this in mind, we are going to probably do most of our riding early, eat an absurd amount of ice cream whenever the opportunity arises, and hopefully find some swimming holes along the way.

I think it is unfortunate that there are so many barriers and things that we will have to deal with in order to do something that many people take for granted. Mostly, I dread dealing with the ignorance and inconsideration of people on the ‘outside’, although I also grapple with my own role. I would love to be able to impregnate my lover, but that is not a possibility. And even though it has never been a possibility, I feel the sadness I suppose one must feel when they first discover that they are infertile. It obviously wasn’t a shock, but I am surprised by how unprepared I was by this reality. Again, my gender is a bit amiss. My body can get pregnant, but I have always known that would feel wrong. I have never desired it. Fortunately, my lover has.

As expensive as it will be, we will be investigating the anonymous sperm donor option. There are a multitude of reasons for this that I am not going to fully address here. I am still just trying to articulate it for myself. At this point, all I know is that the suggestion of using a friends sperm pains me. Besides all the legal and relationship issues this brings up, I also don’t like the idea of knowing the person who is more ‘related’ to my child than I am. This might be selfish, but I am already struggling with being more distant from the process than I wish to be in the first place and I don’t want to give society anymore reason to take that further away. Plus, it annoys me because I don’t believe this is the first thing people suggest to straight couples when they are faced with infertility issues.

However, I am glad to be living in a time when mixed families and non-biological parents parenting are quite common. I feel like it is one less hurdle, at least partly. I hesitate because I feel like I will always be dogged by questions that allude to there being a ‘real’ mom and ones that privilege a male father. It is already challenging enough to look at the meanings of a ‘mom’ and ‘dad’, let alone having to swallow the implicit value judgments in those types of questions. The existence of these questions prove that society here still relentlessly grips onto gender constructs. When I say that I grapple with my own role, it is my internalized response to what I perceive as an external gaze – I worry that people are going to constantly devalue my role because it doesn’t fit the assumed norm. Who is the father? I am. No, I mean who really is the father? I am, jerk. And, I want to add, it is annoying when the response to this concern is that it shouldn’t matter what other people think. Yeah. Good point. If I was concerned about wearing some weird-ass hat or something.

If it is not the father, then I worry it will be questions regarding the provision of a male role model, particularly if any of our children are male. But what does that even mean? Is it simply to say: this is a man, this is how men behave, emulate this. I think it is genderist to assume that ‘both’ sexes are somehow required to bring up well-rounded children. If the intention behind having a male role model is to provide examples of masculinity, then why wouldn’t the answer be obvious – I am a male role model. If the need to have a male role model is because it is mandatory to have a penis somewhere in the vicinity, well than, at least I have detachable ones.

It is sometimes frustrating that I find myself using the very terms I am trying to fight against, as the basis of my arguments. It makes it hard to keep centered in mind that gender constructs are just that – constructs. The bigger question should be why would I want to endorse the idea a male role model at all, even if that male role model was me. Neither my partner nor I adhere to ‘the’ gender rules, so then why would there be such a concern that ‘one’ is missing between us. I do not want my children to carry on the binary gendered system, I want them to make their own conclusions of gender. Fortunately, our children will be able to have the choice of many jumping off points and will hopefully jump into their own.

My lover walked over and picked the intercom up… and this is where the story gets hard to explain. We had not been expecting anyone in the first place, but now, waiting downstairs was the parents of a long ago ex of mine. Although I have not had much to do with my ex for years, I am friends with her sister who currently lives around the corner. Until recently, I hadn’t seen their parents for almost as many years as I hadn’t seen my ex. Then they moved into the neighbourhood too, and on the odd occasion I would see them in brief passing by situations.

However, the other night my ex-mom, for lack of a better term, saw me from her restaurant table and called me over. She had been having dinner with a friend and invited myself and my lover to join them for coffee.  I have known my ex’s parents since my early 20s. I have even lived with them twice, for short periods of time. When my ex and I split, there were no bad feelings. In fact, they bought a lot for my apartment to help me get back on my feet. But in all the time I have known them, I have never been able to shake my nervousness around them. For me, it is a matter of class differences. It is like I am constantly aware they are super intelligent, well-read, well-traveled… they are going to see through all my facades! Facades that I only have when they are in the room! I don’t know what these facades are! During coffee, my lover was wonderfully entertaining, which helped make me feel more at ease. When the night ended I said that they should come by sometime and see my art. My ex-mom said she would and would drop off some books for my lover.

Their sudden presence at our door now had a bit of a startling effect for us both. I had made an open invitation, but for some reason didn’t expect them so soon. Press play, and my lover had not yet buzzed them into the building. For the moment, she had hung up the intercom phone in order for us to quickly regroup. Perhaps huddle. Or make a break for it. My mind was distracted by one thought… crap, the house smells like pot! That concluded, my mind then took on a new realization… crap, I’m stoned. Wait. No no, I could hide that, couldn’t I? The house smelled like pot… that was the problem! Crap. I picked up the intercom and, with an odd cheerfulness that made my voice higher pitched, told them to come on up.

Eeeek… why now?! If I were a cartoon my eyes would have been replaced by swirls. Like I said, it had been a while. Unfortunately, by mere proximity, I think my lover was a bit stoned too. This theory was quickly proven when my lover said she would bake something to cover up the smell. They were on their way up the stairs! But no, wait, the buzzer buzzed again. The door release had failed. Ha, ha!  The fans had more time to air the place out! They had been on the whole time, surely the place smelled alright by now. Didn’t it? Crap. Oh, it didn’t open, okay… let me try again… are you in? Crap. They were on their way up the stairs.

I started doing that indecisive dance one does when one is stoned and only has a few seconds in which to do something but really there is nothing one can do. My lover looked around for something to burn. I looked around to get my bearings. Laundry lines were strung all around the apartment – from walls, to posts, to ladders – displaying clothes of all sorts that waved hello in the crisscrossing fan breezes. In a brief suspended moment of time, I noticed that the laundry added to the feeling of being in an urban character apartment, the kind that you sometimes see in movies. Or maybe that is just the romantic in me that makes every moment with my lover dramatic, adventuresome and intense – in all the good meanings of those words. But, the laundry also helped to remind me. I am wearing clothes, aren’t I? Alright then, here goes. I unlocked the apartment door and stuck my head into the hall.

What happened for the next 5 years or 20 minutes was this. I started talking. A lot. Like I thought that if I kept my mouth moving it would somehow distract them from any telltale smells in the apartment. It didn’t help that I had also hit the point where one who is stoned thinks everything is deep and meaningful and deep. Meaningful. Deep. When I said I talked ‘a lot’, that might just me trying to tone down my embarrassment. I think I talked more during this one visit then the rest of the time I had known them. Why am I talking about biking? Wow, when did I start talking about living off the land as a means to return to inner happiness? Oh gawd… don’t point out my art… now I am going to have to tell you the entire thought process and hidden secret meanings… for each and every painting.

The fact of the matter is that they are two of the nicest people I have ever met, and they are able to be generous in a way that I envy. They are also the type of people that when their daughters came out, they smoked cigars and drank champagne. Even before they entered my apartment, on some level I knew that they couldn’t have cared less about the pot or the laundry or the whatever. But, they are a part of the upper class, which is something that continues to intimidate me. Maybe this is why they are so often reoccurring people in my dreams… unfortunately not dreams of the nicer variety.  I know that they like me, but there is just something about my experience of class that makes me feel inept when they are around. This time, however, went better than I could have expected.

Though I was babbling to beat the band, I think they were able to see that I am more myself now than I ever have been. I think some of my insecurity comes from knowing that they knew me when I was still struggling to understand myself. There are so many things I am not proud of or ways in which I feel I betrayed myself… it took a long time and a great deal of work to become the person I love and respect, to be as comfortable and as confident. Now, I am excited and passionate about my art. I am excited and passionate about my lover and my home. It all comes together making me excited and passionate about my life. I am happy. I know they saw this too. But they probably also saw the joint hanging off the ashtray I forgot to put away.