Work sucks.

Not that I usually mind, but see, relinquishing your gender isn't exactly a good excuse to call in sick. Besides, I'm the only one who works most weekdays.

I didn't mention this before, but I work at a small record store (well, music store) that is often busy around the holidays. I was utterly exhausted after I got home yesterday, so naturally, I didn't blog. I just went to bed and met my muscles lock themselves into stiffness.

But I bring this up because about a week ago, a girl comes into the store looking for The Coral. I don't know why, but they never seem to have hit it big on this side of the Atlantic, but their output is phenomenal, so I've been a fan since I first heard "Dreaming of You." So I was thrilled when this cute girl with blonde hair and a ripped t-shirt comes in and asks for a band I've been pushing on my friends for years. I start chatting her up, and we make dinner plans. Except she tells me she's leaving town so we have to meet up when she gets back... which I just found out was this weekend. She wants to meet me saturday night, in fact. And I can't exactly tell her "Saturday's no good, my penis won't be outta the shop until Sunday at the earliest." She's in Montréal and doesn't have a phone right at the moment, and her e-mail is sketch. So I have to sit tight until she calls me and says "Hey I'm back in town." I'm just kinda stewing right now.

As far as music goes, I'm noticing the gender slant in the music I like. Take for instance, the album I had on in the store last night, Aerosmith's Pump. So, I love Aerosmith. I think they're the finest rock and roll band America ever produced. Their blues instrumentation is irresistable, their lyrics always smartass and at their best, filthy in a subtle kind of way. But when a song like "Young Lust" opens the album, as a man in a girl's body, lyrics like "Better keep your daughter inside/Or she's gonna get a dose of my pride" aren't totally comforting. And the album basically continues in that vein through "F.I.N.E.," "Love in an Elevator," "My Girl," and "Don't Get Mad, Get Even." Not to mention "What It Takes" becomes a different ordeal when you imagine a guy singing to you about that. Aerosmith has thousands, millions of female fans, I've been to their concerts. I'm assuming that means real women are better at dealing with whatever my hang up is.

I'm comfortable with my physiology. I'm comfortable with my fashion. i'm even comfortable with the slight change in my speech patterns (to everyone I've spoken to in the last three days: I really am sorry for saying "like" so much!) But it would take much more than a week, I think, to be any sort of comfortable with anything to do with sex. And that's time I hope not to have.

But I'm learning about sex, albeit from a very hypothetical point of view. The girls are being pretty sketchy on the details, joking that I should just "try it for myself," but all I'm interested right now is the dynamic - the chase rather than the, erm... act. For years I couldn't escape the notion that, as a man, I wanted sex, and women didn't; so it was my job to convince them.

The dirty little secret has been staring us in the face for years, men. The difference between men and women's attitudes toward sex is only the same as the distinction between their parts. That meaning, different on the outset, but with the same basic function. Women want sex. They do. Traditionally, it's the man, with his penis, will make the aggressive moves toward sex. The woman, with her inwardly-turned biology and psychology, wants to be chased. Wants to be shown the attention. Not convinced, per se, but at least shown she's not an object. And even though a guy like me doesn't think of women like that, words are cheap. Like I said, I can't say for sure, I've only been renting mine for half a week, and I have no intention of finding out beyond whatever I do behind closed doors with myself, if and when I decide the curiosity is killing me too bad.

I...can't type to much more in this vein... must keep focus... it's only by the grace of God and too much homework that I haven't caved already.

On that note, I came across this...

SUBTLE PASSION
(Ruth Weal, pictured)

I would have you show me the subtle passion that I have always known in your arms, I would have you strip away my calm and erode my resolve, beneath your deft fingers I long to dissolve. In promise my whole frame arches for you, in my passion I would have you pass through. Hypnotised by your hunger for me, silently begging for you to release me.

I would have you worship at the altar of my flesh; bringing our bodies together as our souls’ enmesh. I would have you fulfil my every debased secret and want. Let me see the soul that I can free with my words and my touch, I have never wanted anything or anyone ever this much. Yours is a hunger that cannot be assuaged, in my love for you I will never be swayed.

I would have you deliver the poet in me; she worships you and only thee. She was bereft when you were not in my life, in her endless grief she did weep. Broken without you in my arms, bereft of hope when I lost you from my sight, without your presence there was no light. I would own your flesh and deliver your soul, do anything to know your whole.

I would go everywhere you do, just to see your face, to see you smile for me. I would have you let me see that I can cause you more than just passion, guilt and pain. I would know that this road we travel is not in vain. I would have you know the rapture of my flesh enfolded around yours, have you know the passion in me to which you are the cause.

I would have you here this very moment, to lie here by my side, stroking my hair, dispelling my fears and owning my tears. I fear the power you have over me and how I will ever let you leave. Seeing you has changed everything, nothing now will ever be the same.

-Alex

"Haha... I'm gross"

That was the quote that ended my last entry. It's funny, because I can't remember a time since I was 10 or so that I would ever have ended a thought about my appreciation for breasts that way. I guess it's only fair to say my perspective is a little different from the usual. And that's somewhat scary.

Like, I love breasts. As a man, my eyes are immediately drawn to them, I'm a little embarrassed (and elsewise proud) to say. But even yet I've maybe had too much for them and am only embarrassed when I look like a girl looking at other girls, especially because my interest is nominal at best these days. Nobody wants to be outside the norm, least of all me any moreso than I already am.

Then I find a picture like the one here. I didn't catch the photographer (and I am absolutely embarrassed about that, as a journalist,) but I think his (or her) work is gorgeous. It's not pornographic, but I'll admit, it got me a little... aherm.

It was a long exhausting day at school. I wrote my last entry from class. It was then that I realized I had picked about the worst time of year to experiment with my own gender by way or magical medallion, since I'm dealing with school ending this week, and family and Christmas and everything, I've needlessly complicated things. Ugh, what a shmuck I've been.

I came home after 6, heated up some veal, and spent an hour or so slouched in a chair playing video games. It was not a very dainty, ladylike position, with my neck craned upward and my crotch roughly on a level with my chin. I figure I've only got a few more weeks left of playing WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2006 before I ifnally cave and get 2007. Somehow, however, after parting with my testicles, I seem to have lost that competitive edge. I hate to say this - Jesus I do because I don't think that's the actual cause - but I didn't ge tthe same flow as I did when I was a man. My reactions were sloppy and off and I got my ass kicked by the CPU. CPU! Maybe I was just less interested in playing some dude knocking some other dude around. So I went into Create-A-Superstar and designed my new "Self." She looks pretty bad, and no matter what you do I think she has to have improbably large breasts (just ike all the women on WWE television,) but I gave her my name and clothes and something vaguely resembling my hair.

I went to Wal-Mart after dinner. I don't like Wal-Mart, but it's the only place around here to get digital photos done. Right across from the electronics section was the women's section, more specifically the underwear aisle (now there's a juxtaposition.) The line was long so I kept finding my eye wandering and trying to imagine myself in some of the garments there. Modestly, I couldn't really. I guess in my head I'm still kind of a boxers guy, even if the little bow on the front of my undies suggest differently (what's up with that bow anyway?)

Ahead of me was this teenage girl printing out photos, I guess of her and her boyfriend. She was taking a long while when her mom showed up and asked what the hold up was. Finally, the mom said she wasn't going to wait around like this. The girl tried to stomp her foot to get her way. If a boy had tried that, man, you know it wouldn't work. And it didn't work for her, either.

as for me, I got home in plenty good time to watch WWE Monday Night RAW. Now it's not as though I was suddenly less into the Divas or magically understood what girls see in John Cena. But there was a really good tag team match (both a tag team and six-man tag actually,) and there was nothing that made me feel embarrassed to be a girl (like say, some kind of lame DX skit.) In fact, I think Victoria's doing a terrific job chasing Mickie James for the Women's title, and that's what I've felt since before she and I had something in common.

Wrestling is such a male-oriented form of entertainment but it's not like I've never known women who watch it. Half-naked guys rolling around on the floor? Come on. But it's more of an involving experience, an adrenaline rush when you can put yourself in the wrestler's shoes maybe. Not altogether ineffective, but then again, I'm not much of a mark these days to begin with. I was even talking recently about how the show wasn't as interesting lately as it could be. But I'll say this... when Umaga incapacitated Jeff Hardy, I felt really sorry for Jeff and mad at Umaga.

My god, maybe I am a mark...

It's a good thing RAW didn't come later in the week and that this is as temporary as it is. If this trend was likely to continue, I might find myself buying the John Cena pink camo baby tee

-Alex