Just call me June Cleaver

It’s still incredibly alien to me that I’m a) a person who cooks, now b) I’m cooking largely in order to serve someone else and c) I’m finding it really fulfilling, but here we are.

I’m enjoying the challenge of trying new recipes, and gluteny/carby things are more fun for me to make than meat dishes. The Dandy thrives on starchy carby foods and I try to avoid them, so I end up making stuff that’s mostly – if not entirely – for him.

My most recent challenge was pancakes. I found a well-reviewed basic pancake recipe on allrecipes.com (and added chocolate chips) and the results were good (verified by The Dandy, but also I broke down and ate one myself). So I had The Dandy buy us a plastic pitcher, and this week I made a double batch of pancake batter and kept it in the fridge in the pitcher so I could make him fresh hot pancakes three mornings in a row.

I like new challenges and The Dandy doesn’t usually like to eat the same things all the time, so I think it’s time to come up with a new breakfast food for him. I found this recipe for “pecan pie muffins” and will try to make them later today. A pretty small bag of pecans is like $15 but that sort of thing doesn’t even slow The Dandy down.

And this is what’s great about our arrangement. TBH I was tired of feeling like a substandard adult and probably would have tried to teach myself cooking around now, anyway, even if I were single or the panedemic hadn’t taken my income or anything like that. But I am a terribly cheap person, so expensive ingredients would daunt me and whether I was using expensive stuff or not, anytime a cooking project didn’t work out I’d be lambasting myself for wasting the money. The Dandy isn’t like that about money and doesn’t have my neurosis of feeling like everything has to be perfect the very first time. He believes in practice. So, I find a recipe I wanna try, I order all the necessary stuff with his money, and I practice. And usually things work out, but if not, The Dandy has the perfect blend of being honest but tactful. He never makes me feel bad for the stuff that doesn’t work out (well, once. Probably not intentionally) but he lets me know what could be better.

I also appreciate that I can ask him what sorts of things he’d like and he’ll tell me honestly (but politely). I’m frank with him that my goal is to make him feel cared for and hopefully blow his socks off with my awesome food, and if a thing I propose won’t get a “wow” reaction from him (and it’s not something I want to make for myself), it’s not worth doing. So I run things by him and he tells me what would make him happiest.

Oh and the other thing about cooking is, in the past I thought of it as mindless busywork (considering I could just buy the thing pre-made at a store or restaurant), and I still kind of think that, but it’s mindless busywork that makes me feel accomplished and makes The Dandy super happy.

When I was struggling to support myself, I didn’t have the energy to deal with anything but getting through my shifts and buying groceries (I didn’t even have the spoons to make clothing decisions and would wear the same thing for weeks at a time…), so making anything beyong scrambled eggs was just not gonna happen. When I had fits of anxiety I’d distract myself from them by surfing the internet with a hundred tabs open. Now I have more energy because I’m not working so much, so when I have anxiety, instead of picking fights on the internet I might go make a lemon meringue pie. It’s a distraction technique just like being on the internet is, but making the pie makes me feel useful and impresses The Dandy, so overall I’m happier.

So anyway, I’ve become the kind of person who makes fresh pancakes in the morning wtf. 😀

Why it works

Everyone I’ve lived with between moving out of my parents’ place and moving in with The Dandy (one female roommate, three different male partners) was at least as messy as I was and yet blamed me, and only me, for the state of our living quarters and/or seemed to believe the cleaning was my job.

I remember one time with the first bf I lived with, I proudly told him I’d done the dishes – fishing for praise, because most of those dishes had been dirtied by him and our other (male) roommate – and he just said “good,” in a tone like “jeez, finally she does her damn job.”

Then I went on to live with a roommate, a woman who’d been one of my best friends in high school. I made my escape from my parents with her, moving to a new city and not telling my family where. I think our arrangement, housekeeping-wise, was that I’d volunteered to clean the bathroom if she cleaned the kitchen (I’ve always hated doing dishes). At one point I remember her saying “Hey, you said you’d clean the bathroom but as far as I’m concerned you’re not really keeping your part of the bargain because you don’t pick the clothes up off the floor.” They were her clothes. I suppose it wouldn’t have killed me to fling them into her bedroom while I was cleaning, but it honestly didn’t occur to me. It felt sort of invasive and personal to handle her dirty underpants TBH, and it would have felt rude to throw her clothes into her room haphazardly but also way out of my jurisdiction to fold them and put them away for her or whatever.

Later, when I was moving out, the roommate went on a huge rant about how the apartment was always disgusting and it was all my fault – how sometimes she’d try to tidy up my horrible, horrible messes in the common areas but she’d rapidly become overwhelmed and “run out of steam.” I went straight into the kitchen and hauled the packaging for an apple pie out from under a pile of the dirty dishes she was supposed to have been doing all that time. I pointed out that she’d bought that pie as a treat for herself around Christmastime and it was currently summer. Soooooo she couldn’t even be bothered to do basic things like throw away her garbage, and she was trying to say that I’m the only messy one?

Also – I added – did she not remember the time I briefly stayed with her back in our hometown? I’d broken up with my bf and moved back in with my parents, my parents were being insufferable, and my now-roommate lived on her own, so I’d asked to crash there while I looked for a new place. Her bed was the bunk bed she’d had as a child, and when I got there I had to sleep in the top bunk with her because the bottom was completely piled with clothes. The bathroom sink had been clogged for months and she hadn’t called the landlord to fix it because she’d spilled a full ashtray in the sink and not cleaned it up, and she didn’t want the landlord seeing that. Something in the fridge had gone bad, creating a stink that permeated anything else you put in there. These were all pre-existing conditions happening when I got there, remember. This was all her.

I went straight from living with the roommate to living with my husband. He, too, accused me at one point of single-handedly “ruining” our living space with my messiness. Which is fascinating because the living room had a stack of newspapers in the corner going back two years and I don’t buy or read newspapers. But I was kind of a doormat back then and his ranting made me feel bad so I tried to dig us out from under the mess. I started cleaning off the top of his dresser, which had five (5) pairs of pants sitting on top of it. Underneath the pants was a dirty plate.

Oh also, my husband was the first to suggest that we get separated, and my horrible, horrible messiness was one of his stated reasons. I hadn’t seen this coming and took steps to keep us together, including suggesting a weekly night when we’d both do household chores. This never came to fruition because every time I said “Okay, it’s Tuesday, time to do housework!” he’d whine, “Noooooo, come watch a movie with me” and I was so starved for together-time that I easily caved. But, I mean, he’s the one who chose the messy apartment as his hill to die on – by rights, he should have been the one spearheading solutions, not undercutting mine.

Eventually I left my husband and a few years later I moved in with Minx…who also, at one point, made the big speech about how I was singlehandedly “ruining” our apartment with my mess. Which, again, I was able to immediately pinpoint proof that this wasn’t true. She at least had the good grace to look embarassed and concede my point, then. But, just like my ex husband, she usually whined and cajoled me into doing something else when I’d try to implement a cleaning night.

(God forbid anyone tries to pull this “you’re ruining our living space with your mess” shit on me again, but if they do, I’m gonna tell them I’m willing to do communal cleaning nights together and then tell them to say when. Because, in retrospect, them whining about the mess and then expecting me to be their mommy and orchestrate “tidying nights” – that they then whine and try to get out of – is bullshit. If you think I lack discipline and you don’t, prove it by stepping up and planning a solution yourself, numbnuts.)

Anyway. I was telling all of the above to someone – my friend Kaija, maybe? And she said “sounds like your exes subconsciously felt that you should be the one doing all the cleaning because vagina.” And that seems horribly, horribly feasible*.

Even before that revelation I was disgusted by the idea of anyone considering me their housewife – my mom was a housewife and forever going on about how people don’t appreciate or value that sort of labour, which it seems they really don’t. And yet now with The Dandy I’m edging into housewife status, and…I don’t hate it. Here’s why:

• He never expected me to do the bulk of the housework or cooking – his parents had a pretty egalitarian household where everyone pitched in, so I don’t think he has that expectation that a woman or woman-looking person is supposed to do all the domestic stuff.
• He values what I do. When my gigs dried up because pandemic, I offered to take on most of the cooking to compensate for no longer being able to contribute rent to the household. Within a few weeks, The Dandy observed that I’m probably saving him craploads of money because we don’t eat restaurant food nearly as much as before. He said that even if I get work again, if I’m still managing to cook most of the time, he doesn’t care if I pay rent anymore. 😀
• Again, it’s not gendered: The Dandy is a decent cook and cleaner, himself, and if I was the one with a high-paying job that left me too exhausted for chores, I could easily see him volunteering to stay home and care for the house, and I think he’d do at least as well at it as I am – it wouldn’t be an excuse for him to sit on his ass all day doing fun stuff.
• The Dandy does have a high-paying job that leaves him kinda drained. So a) it makes sense for me to do more around here than him (because my Patreon activities are flexible and don’t have to take up tons of time), and to keep him fed so he’s better able to provide for us and b) my taking care of him so nicely means that he’s willing to splash his mighty income onto me a bit, so I’m really damn motivated to keep going. 🙂

So yeah. Against all odds, I’m the house chef. Weird how things turn out sometimes.

*My also-vagina’d roommate was just, I dunno, delusional. She was a known liar/exaggerator who consistently rewrote history to suit herself.

<3

I still feel awkward asking The Dandy to buy me things, but he did offer, and I’m still without in income, so fuck it.

Last night I sent him a link to buy me a replacement head for my shaver. And I nervously said if he’s okay with buying like two or more that would be even better but obviously one will do for now.

He asked me how long it takes to go through one shaving head and I gave him an estimate. He then said “Okay, well we can order these as a subscription.” I said that would be amazing.

So I…I guess I fearfully asked The Dandy if he’d buy me two of a thing – worrying that he’d feel inconvenienced or taken advantage of – and instead, he went ahead and signed up to receive a steady stream of the thing indefinitely.

[Heart eyes]

Great timing, Gender Crisis. Fucksakes.

tl;dr I’ve been at least genderqueer, if not outright a trans man, for my entire life and I thought I’d drifted more over toward the chick side in recent years but that’s starting to look more like just another of my many periods of denial/repression.

The other day everything came crashing down on me and now I’m kind of desperately wanting to at least try going on a low dose of testosterone to see how that feels. Which is exactly what I need right now when I’m living with (and financially dependent on) a straight man and about to embark on a very public career where I showcase my physical form on video, right?

Fucksakes.

The Dandy is tentatively supportive of this, which is to say that he’s worried about losing his attraction to me if I go on T, but he’s willing to stick around and see.

I know a transmasculine person who was an art model and I reached out to them via Facebook to ask what it was like for them. They confirmed that a lot of places went cold and hostile and stopped hiring them. As a woman they were a lot closer to magazine-quality hotness than I am, though, and I wonder how much of the hostility came from “I was attracted to you and now it turns out you might not be a woman and I feel conflicted and gross about that. I will now project those feelings onto you.” Maybe I’m naive but I don’t think my popularity as a model came from me being attractive, particularly. It came from me being willing to look like an idiot.

Also my goal is to make most of my money via Patreon in future and not do in-person gigs anymore (or at least not nearly as much) so maybe I won’t feel the hostility so much, that way. Like people will join, or not. People will cancel, or not. But I won’t be interacting with them, so I won’t be hearing their hostile tone or seeing their hostile body language. And, I mean, plenty of artists fall under the trans umbrella! Maybe some people will shun my Patreon if I start looking kinda masc but others will join specifically because I’m gender nonconforming and they see themselves reflected in me?

And I’d only want to go on a microdose (at least at first) so maybe changes would be subtle enough that I’d just seem a bit more muscular and that’s about it?

I don’t know. I don’t know. This is terrifying. But I’ve thought about transitioning ever since I realized that was a thing a person could do (which was age 12, when a classmate talked about someone having a “sex change” and I was like “THAT’S NOT A THING. …Holy shit, is that a thing?”). And everything I’ve ever wanted to do for years but was too afraid to (getting tattooed, for instance, or being poly or shaving my head) turned out to be a “holy shit this is awesome, I wish I’d done it earlier” thing. I can’t remember ever wanting a thing really really badly for a really really long time and then getting it and realizing “nope, this is wrong for me, I should not have done this.”

But yeah I was reading an article about indirect symptoms of dysphoria the other day. This particular paragraph stood out:

When you don’t know what this is, or that it’s even an actual condition, it’s easy to mistake it for who you naturally are. You might think it’s part f your innate personality and disposition, and something you just have to learn to cope with. This can delay recognizing that you’re trans or that transitioning is an appropriate choice for you. Because I viewed my lifelong unease in this way, I initially believed that I didn’t even experience dysphoria, and that I was already okay. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me.

Basically, for some people, they’re anxious and awkward and never feel like they fit in and they assume that’s their inherent personality but then they transition and everything gets better.

I’m anxious and awkward and never feel like I fit in. And the fact that this might be because gender shit is kind of blowing my mind. I’m not wanting to go on T just because of a paragraph in an article on dysphoria – I understand I might just be fuckin’ awkard, in a way that can’t be fixed – but I have a lot of other gender-based conflict going on too and I do wonder if my general feelings of unease are just another symptom.

But yeah, between seeing myself on video and realizing I couldn’t relate to the body I was looking at, and reading this article on dysphoria, a bunch of shit suddenly clicked for me:

• I’ve never liked or related to my name, either. I don’t think it’s an inherently ugly name. I’ll answer to it because I know I’m supposed to. But it always feels like people are talking about someone else. I thought all of this was an issue with how my brain processes words (because I do seem to have a weird relationship with language tbh). But duh and/or hello – my name is a woman’s name. That would be why it doesn’t feel like mine.
• When I told someone about my feelings of dissociation when I saw my body on video (maybe my therapist? I honestly can’t remember), they said “It’s normal to have things you don’t like your body. I mean, women get bombarded with so many messages about how they’re supposed to look…” I blurted out “I didn’t say I didn’t like the body. It’s a perfectly fine body. I said it didn’t feel like me.” Which seems pretty telling.
• I”ve been bummed out lately by how much weight I’ve gained over the past bunch of years (I’ve put on a bit extra lately, possibly because I’ve been so sedentary during lockdown, so I’m fatter than I’ve ever been). I’d been assuming that I was bummed because my body was further away from what’s considered conventionally attractive in a woman. But looking back, I’ve complained several times to people that I’m no longer thin enough to pass as a man*. I’ve used phrases like “I’m trapped in this woman-looking meat-suit and the proportions keep getting more and more cartoonish” on numerous occasions. What I’m bummed about, then, isn’t that I’m getting further away from being a hot woman, it’s that I’m getting further away from androgynous. The Dandy observed it best: “The easiest way to look androgynous is basically to be skinny. As soon as you put on some weight, your fat patterns are gonna look distinctly masculine or feminine.”
• When I was talking to my therapist about being bummed over my weight/shape (before I put together that it was a gender issue for me), she advised me to look at body-positive media – to check out pictures of awesome fat chicks rocking their body types so I have an example of how it’s possible to look good at every size. I already do that, and have for years. I think lots of fat femmes look amazing. But – as I said to my therapist – it’s okay for them to look like that, but not for me. At the time we both chalked this statement up to simple hypocrisy but it seems obvious now that what I really meant was “it’s okay for them to be all curvy and squishy and breasty and hippy because they’re women. I’m not.”
• For my entire adult life (and before, honestly; my mom explained feminism and feminist issues to me when I was pretty young) I’ve felt like being a woman is bullshit and why would anyone want to be one? And I chalked this up to living in a patriarchy. Like why would anyone want to be a woman in this society whenmen clearly have more freedom, more respect, yadda yadda yadda? Upon reflection, though, I don’t really see cis women reacting to patriarchy that way. They tend more to be on the side of “I’m a woman and it’s great, but our society/culture is bullshit and I wished I was treated better.” So ummmm…. 😛

And I got to wondering whether my anxiety and lack of energy and a bunch of other shit I deal with might actually be manifestations of dysphoria and would go away if I took steps to change my body. And I got to wondering if my sexual issues (lowered drive, can’t get boners**) also stem from feeling wrong in my body. Even if that’s not the case, testosterone boosts sex drive and makes the clitoris grow a bit and sometimes be more sensitive, so it might solve things for me anyway.

All of these realizations hit me hard, the same way realizing I’m on the autism spectrum hit me hard – like, looking back and seeing that basically I’ve been feeling discomfort for years and just glossed over it because I thought that’s just the way things were. I summoned The Dandy and told him all of this and cried on his shoulder. To his credit, he treated my gender shit as a legitimate issue instead of dismissing it as a bunch of overthinking about an abstract concept (which even I think it kind of is – but it genuinely hurts, so it’s not really abstract. The ramifications are tangible and real). And I asked if he could maybe handle me going on microdoses of T and he’s willing to try.

The next day I called my friend V – a trans woman with a ton of trans friends of all genders, who also has experience as a counsellor – and we hashed out a whole bunch of stuff. My reasons for doubting whether I was genderqueer or man enough to go ahead and make changes were along the lines of “but I’m used to being perceived as female and I’ve finally learned how to woman more-or-less correctly” to which V pointed out that I was talking about womanhood like it was cosplay and not my identity. She pointed out that “I guess I’m okay with this” is not the same as “everything is great.” And she said that for whatever it’s worth, every trans person that she’s ever known at the beginning of their transition said all the same shit that I was saying, and all of them ended up feeling happier once they started transitioning.

The fact remains that I feel as though people have told me I’m womaning incorrectly for most of my life and I’ve finally carved out a niche for myself that sorta works and people don’t tell me I’m doing it wrong. It’s terrifying to think of losing that – to go on T and probably lose my “woman” status while also not passing as a man. Part of me loves the idea of being gender-ambiguous and part of me is scared of people giving me a “what the fuck are you?” reaction everywhere I go forever. And of having a higher sex drive but nobody wanting to fuck me because I’m a weird gender mishmash that nobody could be attracted to. Or of people only wanting to fuck me because they fetishize me.

Let’s back it up a bit. What I want to do is go on microdoses of testosterone. What testosterone will do to my body, to some degree or another, is:

• raise my sex drive
• make my clit bigger (and possibly more sensitive)
• make it easier to gain muscle (or, like…I’ll put on some upper body strength without having to even do anything because testosterone is fucking magic, but if I actually work out I’ll make way better gains than is possible for me as an estrogen-based person)
• thicken existing body hair and possibly add hair in new places, like my chest/back, depending on my genetics
• possibly make the hair on my head go thin or have male-pattern baldness, depending on my genetics
• add facial hair
• redistribute fat – my hips and tits won’t go away, but they’ll probably get smaller. I might get more of a gut, instead. I’m just praying I can offset this by using my newfound higher metabolism and muscle-building power to get in better shape
• lowered voice
• changes in bone structure/density

Unfortunately, the thing I want most out of T – higher metabolism/higher energy/greater ability to build muscle – goes away if you stop taking it. So does the increased sex drive, which was also high on my list of perks. Fat redistribution also goes back to “female” when you go off T, which is comforting to me, actually – on the very narrow chance that being masculinized isn’t for me, after all, I can put my figure back to where it was. But any hair loss or hair gain is permanent. So this is a big decision with major trade-offs. If my voice changes, that would be permanent, too. TBH most trans men I know get voices that are in a lower register but are still fairly androgynous, so I thiiiiink that’s a thing I could live with. Being bald on top or having chest hair (or, worse, back hair that I can’t reach to remove myself!) and deciding to go back to fully female – that wouldn’t be great.

I still, at the moment, want to retain plausible deniability – I wanna pass as a woman while I decide wtf I’m gonna do. So I hope that if I take a way smaller dose of testosterone than a person would who’s fully transitioning, I’d end up with (at most) a voice that’s lower but still female-passing, a clit that’s bigger but not “wtf is going on” levels of big, slightly smaller hips and breasts, more muscle, and hopefully very little change as far as hair goes but if I have to shave/wax/pluck some shit I will. But unfortunately I can’t pick and choose which effects come first or how strongly they show up, really.

What I really want is the ability to build muscle. The Dandy noticed how much I talked about that part, and told me earlier today that it sorta sounds more like I wanna use T as a shortcut to getting thinner and in better shape – I wanna go on steroids, basically. He’s…not entirely wrong? But what he’s missing (and what I explained to him) is that I’ve always been dysphoric about my upper body strength. Always. It’s not “I just wanna be a hot, in-shape woman, and it’s too harrrrrd, so gimme the juice.” It’s a gender thing, for me. When I was in my early 20s and going to goth clubs, I kept trying on skinny jeans and tight t-shirts in stores and being mad because they didn’t look the way I wanted them to on me. I stupidly attributed this to the cut/style of the clothes, and kept determinedly shopping. I never consciously realized that the clothes didn’t look right on me because the image in my head that I was trying to conform to was a guy – a wiry guy with broad shoulders and slim hips and a flat chest. No t-shirt is ever gonna have that stretching-across-my-mighty-shoulders look that I craved, because my shoulders are not mighty.

In my late 20s I started weight training on a regular basis. I got stronger, but – sadly – not really bigger per se. Even by woman standards, my body doesn’t put on much muscle – I got stronger and kind of denser but in clothes I don’t think you’d’ve noticed any real difference in my body between being thin but a sack of crap vs thin and in the best shape of my life. And I was acutely aware that my very body was plotting against me, in that estrogen prevents a person from making a lot of muscle gains – at least compared to testosterone. It started to feel like “why even work at this? My shitty body is biologically destined to be soft and squishy and in trying to put on muscle I’m just fighting destiny.” It was distressing that I was trying so hard to get defined deltoid muscles and big biceps and it just wasn’t happening at all, no matter what I did.

So yeah, the main thing I want testosterone to do for me is make it so I can finally have kickass shoulders and arms, and maybe get closer to that V-shaped torso I’ve always wanted, because those are the things I’m the most dysphoric about. I guess testosterone is a “shortcut” to muscle, in that I’d make gains faster. But also I’d be able to go beyond what I could accomplish now, in an estrogen-based body. And I wouldn’t feel like I was trapped in a body that by its very nature wants to be a squishy incompetent sack of crap. Working out on testosterone would be going with my nature instead of struggling futiley against it like I am now. And maybe then if I saw my body on video I’d have a sense of “yep, that’s me, that body is mine.”

Also…I’m wanting to start on a low dose of T because launching into big changes all at once is too scary, but…honestly it feels pretty plausible that being on T will feel good and right, and that if I start seeing any chance of being able to pass for a cis man, I’ll be like “fuck YEAAAAH, up my dose, book me for top surgery, WE ARE DOING THIIIIIS” and happily leave behind any semblance of being a chick. Like…right now the thought of developing facial hair scares me a bit because I might just look like a chick with stubble – I might look yet again like I’m womaning incorrectly. But if it came along with a sharp jawline and some incipient handsomeness…I think I might start feeling kind of thrilled about needing to shave.***

I hadn’t said any of that to The Dandy because I didn’t want to scare him. But when he brought up the idea that I was only wanting HRT to get in better shape, I told him all of it. I think he understands better, now.

It does feel kind of stupid to start hormones just as I embark on a very public career that specifically involves people scrutinizing my face and body. Plus, I mean, it might be hard to actually get on hormones. My doctor seems pretty laissez-faire but I’ve never ever told her about any of my gender shit so if I go in there gung ho for testosterone it might seem like it’s coming out of left field and she’ll be suspicious.

For the past few years I’ve tried to have a tradition of making a big life change for New Year’s. So maybe I can set a goal of January 2021 being The Year I Venture Into Transitioning At Least A Little Bit.

*A few years ago I attempted to go out dressed as a dude a few times, and I believe I was successful. I’m a fairly curvy person, but baggy clothes and a tight sports bra were enough to camouflage that reasonably well. Since then my tits have gone from a C-cup to at least DD and my hips went from 44″ to 50″. Even if I could find men’s pants that were baggy on me or a men’s t-shirt that didn’t end up skintight around my hips, no cis-dude this wide in the hips would have such comparatively scrawny arms and wrists. My proportions are off.

**The clitoris is basically a small penis (or, more properly, a dick is a giant clit). They’re the same structure. The clitoris gets erect when its owner is aroused. Except…mine doesn’t anymore, for the last ten years or so.

***My jawline is fucking glorious, actually. It’s just currenly buried under middle-aged, womanly fat. I recently saw a pic of me when I was younger and thinner though and goddamn…between my square jaw and epic cheekbones I could have pulled off being Archer for Hallowe’en. Albeit a slightly softened, feminized version.

Losing weight by eating more

I’ve put on some weight. I don’t know if it’s due to being sedentary since the pandemic lockdown began ~4 months ago or if it’s just my metabolism slowing down even further as I get older. I’m hoping it’s the former, since I’ve spent so much fucking money on made-to-measure dresses from eShakti in the past year and I’d like to be able to keep wearing them.

At any rate, I’m wanting to try to lose weight but I hate hate HATE “weight loss culture” where food is stigmatized and treated as a moral issue and we’re expected to be hungry and/or have cravings and stoically ignore it in order to be “good.” I’m not doing that; I refuse to sit around agonizing all fucking day because I want some chocolate but ohhhhh, I mustn’t!

I did realize a while back that I consistently ignore my hunger signals by accident, like not trying to lose weight or anything but just because anxiety and/or ADHD has me obsessing on other things. And when the body is deprived of fuel for long enough, shit gets kinda critical – it needs calories now now now. And so you get cravings for stuff that’s high in fat and/or sugar – calorically dense foods that give the body what it needs as efficiently as possible. tl;dr: I often don’t get around to eating until I’ve been awake for many, many hours, and by then I feel like I’m gonna die and end up wolfing down cheese and mayonnaise and chocolate and potato chips. I remember, years ago when I was much thinner, marvelling at how I dipped everything I ate in mayo and yet somehow wasn’t gaining weight – and then I realized I basically only had one meal a day most days, so probably the calories evened out.

Anyhoo like I said I refuse to feel like I’m in a state of constant self-denial and I refuse to ignore any food cravings I have. But what I will do is try to commit to eating reasonably healthy meals on a regular basis so I don’t get to that critical, klaxons blaring “oh fuck I need food NOW or I might die” feeling in my body that led to me gorging on chocolate or potato chips just to feel okay again.

This is gonna mean that I’m eating a much higher volume of food than before, and maybe more calories than before (though probably not; mayo has 100 calories per tablespoon and if I’m starved enough I’ll eat spoonfuls right out of the jar). But the food will be better for me, it’ll be coming in at much more regular intervals so my energy levels are more stable, and I’ll probably be able to exercise more as a result. Plus I’ll have a lot fewer overwhelming sugar and fat cravings.

Paradoxically, eating a ton more than before might help me lose weight.

And if it doesn’t, I’ll at least have more stable energy and moods and probably be able to get more physically fit.

Trophy Wife

Goddamn, this thing where The Dandy buys me stuff is goooood. I haven’t dared to ask him for anything strictly shiny or fun, but I’ve had a few things I felt I needed for my Patreon business and I’ve sent him links to where to purchase the items and he just…bought them. An amount of money that (right now, with my savings plummeting and no job) would be anxiety-provoking for me to spend is basically pocket change to him and I wish I’d asked him to pay for stuff way, way sooner than I did.

I used to wonder how trophy wives could stand being married to someone they didn’t love. I think I get it now. Being financially supported takes soooooo much stress off me and frees my mind and my time so I can focus on things other than working or stressing out about money. And being not just bare-essentials supported but given other, non-essential stuff that makes my life easier and better is even more amazing. If The Dandy went full-on sugar daddy with me and bought me outfits and jewelry and stuff so I could feel sophisticated and attractive, I think my heart would entirely explode with gratitude. 😀

Mind you, I love The Dandy and think he’s hot. And he’s not with me for my looks. So I’m not in an actual trophy wife situation. I’m just saying, I think I have some insights into that dynamic now. And times that he doesn’t seem to be working at our relationship nearly as much as I am and I’ve been frustrated and trying to get him to do his fair share of emotional labour, I have often thought that if all else failed I’d likely accept him paying for more things, instead. I mean like, times that I felt neglected and asked him to hang out with me more and he didn’t seem to want to, I was tempted to say “well, this relationship isn’t fulfilling me right now. But if you paid for more things for me, it might feel fulfilling again.” It sounds mercenary but it’s true. Take off even more of my money worries and I’ll be happier overall and it’ll be because of you, and maybe that would offset some of the emotional stuff I’m not getting.

Tonight I had around $70 worth of stuff I wanted and I emailed links to The Dandy as per the new regime. Then I told him I’d sent him an email of things to please order (because otherwise he might miss it) and he took a look at it and said “I think this time it’s gonna cost you.” I thought for a moment that I’d overshot and he felt taken advantage of, and my stomach went cold. But when I said “Oh?” he just asked me to make him a snack. I’m totally good with that. 😀

The Dandy also seems to be hanging out with me more than he used to and I wonder if it’s because of me doing most of the cooking (and compiling the online grocery orders so all he has to do is add whatever little things he’s craving that I may have missed, and then pay for it). I know that Acts of Service make him feel loved. When I was working, it used up most of my energy for anything else (and also I hadn’t taught myself to cook yet) so I didn’t do much around the house but load the dishwasher. I suspect that providing The Dandy with food and coffee is making him feel so loved that he’ll spend time with me and buy me stuff. Awesome.

So yeah. If I were single and some rich guy thought I was hot and wanted to keep me in very high style in exchange for companionship and sex, and I wasn’t attracted to him but he wasn’t a total goblin or terrible to be around or anything…I might go for it. The only thing that would really give me pause is if he expected me to be monogamous. Boring/performative sex to thank someone for supporting me is fine but I’d also want some actual joyous non-performative sex, y’know?

He’s gonna regret this…

The Dandy mentioned seeing someone online accidently call someone a “suppository of information” (instead of “repository”) and now I’m gonna have to call him that every time he invasively bombards me with trivia I didn’t especially want to know.

What am I supposed to feel about my meat-suit?

I’ve been gaining momentum on getting my posing Patreon set up. Which of course entails – in part – filming myself and then editing the videos.

The other night while I was watching some of the footage I noticed that I felt kind of…disconnected from it. I remembered doing the posing that I was currently watching, but the video somehow looked different than making it had felt, if that makes any sense? I was just having a hard time connecting it to me. I was basically sitting there thinking “this is what people see when they hang out with me? This is the carrying case they associate with my name and the things I do and say?”

So like…wtf is that? I don’t feel like this is how a person is supposed to feel about their body. Was the disconnect coming from seeing myself on video (which I’m not accustomed to)? Being agender and confronted by the fact that I look female? Maybe my mental image of myself hasn’t been updated since ten years and forty pounds ago and it’s a “that can’t be me, that person is kinda fat and old” reaction? Or what is it?

OCDgasm

I have a deeply impacted zit that’s been bothering me for weeks and I finally managed to pop it just now. It was the kind that feels like it has multiple chambers or something inside, where you squeeze and some stuff comes out and it seems like that’s everything, but if you apply even more pressure, there’s a sound and feeling of something breaking and then a bunch more stuff bursts out. Usually along with some blood.

This zit had three or four levels of “I thought it was done but when I squeezed even harder there was more.” I wiped each waxy white globule on the back of my hand for safekeeping.

Then I came to where The Dandy was at his computer working, told him “I finally killed that zit that’s been driving me crazy” and showed him.

I honestly thought he would seem happier for me. He knows how I am about zits. But he scrunched up his face like “why the fucking fuck…”

But when I instructed him to be happy for me, he conjured up a semi-sincere sounding but still grossed out “yay.” So I’m satisfied.

Okay but WHAT EVEN

Last night (with his previous message, that morning, being that he was about to work for six consecutive days and wouldn’t have much time to talk):

Pedant: You once asked me to wear a pair of long socks for you. Are they still in your possession?

Me: Yes, but you aren’t, so it’s moot. 😛

Pedant: I may not be physically present in your home but I am still very much in your possession.

Me (really just sick of this “seductive” shit from him): Lots of people keep having feelings for someone after a breakup, and I’m not gonna judge that. But we ARE broken up. Our relationship wasn’t working for me and I don’t see that changing. Reminiscing yesterday was fun up to a point but I’m not interested in trying to rekindle anything.

Pedant (posted exactly at the same time as I hit send on mine): I remember how much you enjoyed seeing me in them. Keep them. If you ask me to wear them again for you I will.

[Note: I have zero memory of him wearing the socks for me. Maaaaaybe it happened, but it seems like the kind of thing I’d recall, since thigh-high socks on a man are a major kink for me. I definitely ASKED him to. But I remember him balking, because they’re women’s socks and he’s low-key misogynist.]

Pedant (responding to “I don’t want to rekindle anything): I’m not asking you to. I do want to repair the dynamic we had so that whatever interactions we have in the future do work for you. If that is done, you’ll have the option to engage me in whatever kind of interactions you want. Hence the question about the socks. We wouldn’t be able to interact in any way other than telecom for the next year regardless. I am not going to waste that time.

[Nice backpedaling, Pedant. Is that how you keep your thighs so toned?]

Pedant again: Unles you’d rather I didn’t bother trying to correct my failings. 😛

[Oh my god you passive-aggressive piece of shit. I’m kinda wishing I’d said “I’m not dating you so I don’t care.” Instead I maaaybe slightly fell for his bullshit, even fully seeing the manipulation of it. Or, maybe not fell for his bullshit, but decided it might be nice to have someone hung up on me even if I’m no longer into them the same way. Dance, puppet, dance.]

Me: Okay, so I guess now I know that I COULD ask you to do titillating things for me if I wanted. Right now I just want to be able to chat with you about general life stuff sometimes. And maybe solicit advice or a pep talk from time to time when my confidence in my Patreon ideas is flagging. Your idea of financial reparations means a lot, too.

Pedant: I can provide such advice and pep talks. I’d also like you to be able to ask me about anything which troubled you when we were together because I don’t want you to have any lingering pain or doubt. I was apparently a little late making it clear to you that I admired you and I can’t imagine that there aren’t other things we should have spoken about sooner.

Pedant again, five minutes later: When I wrote to you saying that one of my emails had been meant to open a conversation to make amends to you, I was serious. That we’re no longer dating doesn’t absolve me of responsibility to deliver on that.

***

Hnnnngh, that last message had some pretty words. I know those words are empty, because the email he’s referencing boiled down to “tell me what your issues are with me so I can gaslight you.” But the words themselves are pretty. I do notice that he acknowleged my request for advice and pep talks but ignored me mentioning financial reparations. I’m betting that $25 transfer from the other day is the first and last “reparations money” I’ll see from him because it didn’t instantly buy forgiveness and really, we already know that his main priorities for spending any discretionary cash he has are concerts, Hallowe’en decor, and doing stuff with Raver Chick. Those were his priorities while we were together; I don’t see him suddenly prioritizing me now that we’re broken up.

Ironically, the money was the only thing he’s offered me that felt like it could have been a genuine attempt at righting things. It directly addressed an issue I had with him without trying to deflect or twist things around to be somehow my fault, and the giving of money has no immediate benefit to him (unlike wearing sexytime clothes for me, which would involve me doting on him and making him feel all sexy and shit).

Honestly, while yes there is a part of me that’s hung up on him still – not necessarily wanting to date or fuck him again, but wanting to win our ongoing fights, to make him finally fucking admit to the bullshit things he does and give an actual, not-backhanded apology – I also want to make him suffer. And so when I tried to firmly tell him we’re permanently done and he kinda just bounced back up again like he still thought there was a chance, I thought, okay, let’s let him keep putting effort into this. Let’s drop a subtle hint that him being willing to indulge my kinks is useful info to me butttt I just won’t be taking him up on it right now. Give him enough hope to hang himself, to fuck up an old saying. I know that most if not all of The Pedant’s promises are empty and he’s probably not gonna grow as a person no matter what I do, but it’s at least taking up a lot of his time and brainspace figuring out how to woo and/or manipulate me. So good, let him take up all his time obsessing on this. Good payback for wasting so much of my time all these years.