Why Was I Doing This Again?

Working on a post about the journey of my life told through clothing, and what it’s like dressing for my gender identity these days. This is more interesting then I make it sound, I hope. However, that post just keeps getting longer and longer, so I thought in the meantime I’d try to answer a question I asked myself before I started this blog.

Why am I writing this?

Part of it is simply because I love to write, and I have ever since sixth grade. I have no idea why my brain flipped over from loving math and numbers to loving words, but I do know that being able to put my thoughts on paper (or what have you) and having someone else read them is still thrilling to me.

Part of it is because I have a job where I spend an average of six hours a day (sometimes shorter, sometimes much longer) staring at products on a shelf, counting them and entering the information into a inventory computer that’s hanging off my belt. It’s a job where you have to be very fast (Example, I’m supposed to count 7,000 units an hour in grocery stores.) and it’s, quite frankly, mentally tedious. On one level I’m counting and on another my utterly bored mind is composing things, fiction or theoretical blog posts and such. I need to be creative just to maintain a sense of balance. My work doesn’t make me feel fulfilled, but writing gives me a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

Quite possibly the biggest reason though, has to do with the sense of loneliness I felt when I first started coming out. I’m embarrassed to admit that most of my ideas about what it meant to be queer came from the vast amounts of erotica I read, and watching the L Word (Which is going to be a whole other post, believe me) and not from actual, you know, real life.

I’d like to think, if I write about myself, and my journey and feelings and whatnot, that maybe someone will read it and find a piece of themselves reflected there, and know that, in some small way, they are not alone.

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Introductions are not the easiest thing for me. I’m used to being an outsider, a lurker by nature, hovering around the edges of a group until I’m noticed and beckoned over, or until I screw up my courage and introduce myself with a nervous smile. Consider this me striding forward with my head up, my hand out to shake, and a pounding heart.

My name is Angel, and I’m a 30 something genderqueer, pansexual nerd.

It’s not a very long sentence, is it? I long to deconstruct it, like a chef would deconstruct a classic dish and turn it into something different and exciting, but still familiar. This may be because, besides being a writer, I’m also a gastro-nerd.

My name is Angel…

My birth name is one of those terribly popular names given to girl children who were born in the early 80’s. Since there were usually at least two other people in class with the same name, I’ve been going by nicknames most of my life.  Angel is the latest and feels more like my name then the name my parents gave me.

I’m 30 something..

I envy anyone who knew enough about their own sexuality to come out in high school or college. I came out relatively late in life, at least it feels that way to me, at the time I was 27 and had been married (yes, to a man) for about three years. I’ve refined the telling of the tragic comedy that was the last year of my marriage into a stand up routine, complete with voices and emphatic hand gestures. The bit I do the most is “Coming Out to My Parents, Or Reasons Why I Might Not Be Gay According to Oprah.”

Genderqueer

I would say that identifying as “genderqueer” is a recent development but the feeling behind it is an old one. I just didn’t have the words for how I felt before I heard the term. Sometimes I feel like a girl. Sometimes I feel like a guy, and by sometimes I mean “often.” Some days I don’t feel like much of either. Overall I think I have “masculine female” as my default.

Pansexual

Now that one is a recent development, though granted my sexual orientation is the thing that I struggle with the most. While I was still married I came out as bisexual, which was more me not wanting to admit that I had never been sexually attracted to my husband then a reflection of my actual orientation. Then I came out as a lesbian, because I realized that women turned me on in a way that men never had. Then I actually became sexually attracted to a man, so I know that under certain circumstances that’s possible.  So I was homoflexible for awhile.

And then I met my… partner sounds so formal, but my Cy is outside the gender binary, so terms like girlfriend or boyfriend don’t apply. Cohort? Companion? That makes it sound like I’m a Time Lord and Cy’s my sexy companion and we have adventures in time and space in my TARDIS.  Anyhow, I think I’m just attracted to awesome human beings, regardless of gender.

Nerd

Oh yes, very much a nerd, if the aforementioned Dr. Who reference wasn’t a clue. I’m actually a big horror movie nerd, though I sadly can’t remember the last time a film scared me, as opposed to just startling me with jump scares. I’m always reading at least two books, writing or thinking about something to write, and I have an entire Neil Gaiman bookshelf. I like to knit and crochet weird things, like Flying Spaghetti Monsters, and squishy green Cthulhu’s.  I’m also a fan of molecular gastronomy and I have crushes on various nerdy celebrity chefs.

So that’s me, or as much of me as can be described in one blog post. I hope you keep watching this space for various musings on life, gender and nerdy things. And it’s a pleasure to meet you!