DOGE or DODGE?

“DOGE” or “DODGE”?!?

See: “DOGE makes its latest errors harder to find”:

“

Elon Musk’s group obscured the details of some new claims on its website, despite promises of transparency. But The Times was still able to detect another batch of mistakes.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has repeatedly posted error-filled data that inflated its success at saving taxpayer money. But after a series of news reports called out those mistakes, the group changed its tactics.

It began making its new mistakes harder to find, leaving its already secretive activities even less transparent than before.

Mr. Musk’s group posted a new set of claims to its website on March 2, saying it had saved taxpayers $10 billion by terminating 3,489 federal grants.

Previously when it posted new claims, DOGE, Mr. Musk’s government-restructuring effort, had included identifying details about the cuts it took credit for. That allowed the public to fact-check its work by comparing its figures with federal spending databases and talking to the groups whose funding had been cut.

”

[article from the New York Times]

Endings

Yesterday evening, I had the last class of a poetry course that I had been taking for the past eight weeks. 

Yesterday afternoon, I posted that message on the bulletin board of my chorus to voice my difficulties around our current concert, coming out as aro. 

And yesterday also marked the very end of direct communications with the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus with whom I had hooked up. 

Yesterday was a day of endings, of some closure. 

These endings aren’t untimely, and maybe they’re not even completely unrelated — the two endings that have to do with chorus dymanics are definitely connected for me. 

The end of the poetry course is hopefully going to lead directly into a new beginning as half a dozen of us in the group have eagerly agreed to keep in touch as “writing club” or “writing-accountability buddies” or “draft buddies”, and we exchanged email addresses at the end of class last night. Ending the ritual of a weekly evening class with the spring approaching might be nice for me from the practical viewpoint. And springtime might also encourage new writing dynamics with half of this group. I’m seeing this more as a shift.

With the chorus members, instead, it feels more like a breakup: the specific breakup with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up being a tassel within the same larger mosaic of something breaking for me within the gay men’s chorus as a whole. 

I’ve been active in this chorus for six months now. The first month & a half was really hard, hellish at times. Then, it got better: gradually at first, and then almost suddenly, becoming really wonderful — a chosen family; a loving, supporting community; but maybe more importantly than anything for me, a space where I could have fun and be playful regularly, allowing me to explore my gender & my sexuality and to blossom in ways that I usually don’t. This happened within, and was allowed by, the chorus as a whole; but also, specifically, maybe almost symbolically, with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I hooked up. 

For about six months, so much of my energy and focus and thoughts and feelings revolved around the chorus — and for about three months, I also specifically put a lot of intentional effort into trying to build a relationship with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up. Some of that effort was rewarded in lovely, gratifying ways. A lot of it, though, wasn’t. I won’t say it was wasted, because it still served me as a lesson, as an experience. I learned a lot. But the main thing I feel I learned is that “I don’t really belong there” or that “it’s not really going to work for me with them”. 

The climax was reached in February. For a few weeks starting at the end of January, I felt an incredible closeness and a real sense of possibility & connection with the chorus as a whole and with the gender-expansive gay guy in particular. I opened up, shared a lot of personal, vulnerable stuff, experimented more with my own gender expression — until the breakup, at the end of February, with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up and then the chorus retreat at the beginning of March. The latter marked the absolute climax for me of pushing my comfort zone with chorus members, exploring dynamics within the chorus as well as really experimenting with my own gender expression. It was A LOT. Maybe it felt “too close”, somehow “too much” for me. And now I feel the need to pull back. 

What I have seen and experienced over the past four months since things got better for me within the chorus finally led to my post yesterday on the bulletin board announcing my aromanticism. In these past four months I feel like I’ve really tried to connect, and tried it in different ways, with members in the choir; but it hasn’t worked. 

What was I hoping for from this group of people, beyond singing & performing together? 

I was hoping to build those types of relationships that I cannot manage to build elsewhere but still need, i.e. friendships that in their dynamics include closer forms of physical intimacy and/or touch, and/or friendships whose base is simply “play & fun”, and/or friendships that would somehow introduce me into the “gay men’s world” (whatever that may mean). 

But that hasn’t worked. Or maybe only the latter worked and I was, in fact, “introduced into the gay men’s world” and realized that it doesn’t suit me because I’m ace-aro…? 

I can’t fully explain it now, but I know there’s a major ending here. I know that my breakup with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up and my decision yesterday to finally post to the chorus bulletin board about my aromaticism are linked, the two sides of the same coin. 

I shall likely continue to sing with this chorus but I will also try to take the advice of one of my climbing buddies and see this group of people more as a “nice group of loving or supporting acquaintances” than as a pool for real friendship. As an opportunity for scheduled fun for three hours while we sing on Sunday evenings, and nothing more. 

Maybe finding or building friendships that in their dynamics include closer forms of physical intimacy and/or touch, and/or friendships whose base is simply “play & fun” is something that I am unable to do and that I just need to make peace with…?

“I know the value of my property”

“

I keep rifles in the front closet.

                 Trespassing can be a glance.

A good shot,

                 I practice with bottles, bull’s eyes.

I cross the line where the fence breaks,

                 where the wood falls in unintended directions,

and prepare an offensive

                 before any repair.

I know the value of my property.

Ungloved, I place the barbed wire.

“

[Poem Ars Poetica by Vievee Francisc]

“… a version of you that I might not have but will not lose”

“ 

As you promised me that I was more than all the miles combined

You must have had yourself a change of heart like

Halfway through the drive

‘Cause your voice trailed off exactly as you passed my exit sign

You kept on drivin’ straight and left our future to the right

Now I am stuck between my anger and the blame that I can’t face

And memories are somethin’ even smoking weed does not replace

And I am terrified of weather ’cause I see you when it rains

Doc told me to travel, but there’s Covid on the planes

And I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it’s half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I’ll drink alcohol ’til my friends come home for Christmas

And I’ll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you’re tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I’m split in half, but that’ll have to do

So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad

That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad

No, I am no longer funny, ’cause I miss the way you laugh

You once called me forever, now you still can’t call me back

And I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it’s half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I’ll drink alcohol ’til my friends come home for Christmas

And I’ll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you’re tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I’m split in half, but that’ll have to do

Oh, that’ll have to do

My other half was you

I hope this pain’s just passin’ through

But I doubt it

And I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed

And it’s half my fault, but I just like to play the victim

I’ll drink alcohol ’til my friends come home for Christmas

And I’ll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have, but I did not lose

Now you’re tire tracks and one pair of shoes

And I’m split in half, but that’ll have to do

Have to do

“

[Song Stick Season by Noah Kahan]

Aromanticism & Amatonormativity: my difficulties with our Spring concert

I’m thinking of writing the following message (as a post in the bulletin board) to my chorus members because the amatonormative assumptions that are being made around the content of our next concert have come to be just too uncomfortable and othering for me. 

I am aromantic. Coming out as aro is often harder for me than as trans or gay. Partly because many people (even within the queer community) don’t know what it means; and partly because the messages and stories and dynamics of “romanticism” (& sex) in which our society is constantly steeped make people on the aro-ace spectra often feel like outsiders. And this is how I’m often feeling about the content of our Spring concert. I love the material musically, I really do. But I don’t relate to the lyrics: they are harder and more foreign to me than if we were singing in Greek. And the explicit as well as implicit assumptions that are often made that we “all understand” or have “all experienced” things like “infatuation”, “being crazy for someone”, “flirtatiousness”, “inventing new words because we’re so in love” are uncomfortable and othering for me. I cannot relate to most of those feelings or concepts. I do not experience “romantic feelings”. I can feel profound love and commitment and care — I do, in fact, feel profound love & care for my friends, I am loyal & and committed to them — but not in the “romantic sense”. 

Given that aro-ace people are estimated to be ~1% of the population, I might be the only person in the room at rehearsals who does not relate to the lyrics we are singing or feels uncomfortable with some assumptions — which is why I haven’t said anything until now. But given that our concerts are approaching, I feel the need to share my truth and these difficulties with you all because I really enjoy making music with you all and also hope to enjoy the upcoming shows!

Oh, sweet liberation!

Despite all the pain and anger over the past couple weeks, the strongest and most consistent feeling since ending things with the gender-expansive guy with whom I had hooked up has been that of “getting my life back”.

Something cracked, and that’s where the pain comes. But the crack is also allowing “good stuff” to fill my life again; allowing me to pour “good stuff” in & out of me again. 

As Leonard Cohen sang, 

“There is a crack, a crack in everything, 

That’s how the light gets in”. 

Saturday I finalized plans for what would seem like a wonderful Sunday: climbing outdoors for several hours in the afternoon sunshine with my closest climbing buddy and then rehearsal with the gay men’s chorus in the evening. And yet, Saturday night something woke me up and I couldn’t fall asleep again for hours. I felt anger and constriction. 

After several unsuccessful attempts at falling back asleep, I gave up: I sat up in bed, flung my pillow across the bedroom, and then decided to listen to what was coming up for me. And there it was: a little voice, small but clear, saying, “I don’t want to go to chorus rehearsal tomorrow evening”. 

“OK,” I replied, “if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to go. If I don’t want to go to rehearsal, I’m simply not going to go”. And with that, I settled down, and fell back asleep within a short while. 

In the morning, as I got ready to go climbing outdoors and shared my decision with my housemate, I was able to clarify more explicitly the reasons for this “No” that had come up for me. In reality, it had been lingering there all week, since the chorus retreat the previous weekend. There were several reasons for this “No”. One was, simply, that I had had “enough of the chorus”, or “enough closeness” with chorus members, the previous weekend at retreat and still needed to “detox” from that: an example of my “close but not too close” attitude/need. Another, related, reason was that I didn’t want to reactivate emotions and dynamics that I often experience with the chorus. The gay men’s chorus has been a wonderful “place” for me to experience new emotions and dynamics, for me to find and express new parts of myself, for me to blossom and connect in new ways — and for all this, I am very grateful to the people in the chorus. But many of those emotions and dynamics have also been very intense and confusing for me, and have taken up a lot of my time and energy and attention over the past months since September, partly also because I had been exercising less (due to injuries and winter weather). So I just felt the need for a break from all that, especially after the intensity of the chorus retreat the previous weekend. I just wanted an easy, “usual weekend day out” with my closest buddy: climbing, catching up, exchanging stories, going for beers&burgers afterwards. And I didn’t want to have to do all that in a rush: I didn’t want to cut that quality time with my buddy short. That time with him is precious to me — it’s at once easy and profound and nourishing — and yesterday I needed it more than anything. I needed that easy, profound connection with a close cis-het guy friend. And I also needed to be outdoors, in the sunshine and breeze and fresh air, without having to rush somewhere else (indoors). And I needed to feel my own “wildness” and freedom and self-determination and strength: part of that was the simple physical strength of climbing; but part of it was also the emotional or mental strength of saying “No” firmly to something that didn’t feel right to me and “Yes” fully to something that, instead, felt good and healthy and affirming to me. 

Yes, I can choose. And I chose to get my life back. 

Tu vas me manquer, dude!

[Note: This entry will be very long, and partly flow-of-consciousness. This is probably a piece that will eventually, hopefully, go into my memoir. So please read with sympathy and feel free to comment as long as it’s gentle & constructive feedback.]

“Elle parle Français et beaucoup d’autres langues!” my French buddy cried after the pair who had just exclaimed to me, “Oh, so you are French!” 

“Maybe I misheard him”, I thought to myself. But then he repeated it in English, probably realizing that the other people hadn’t understood his exclamation in French – “She speaks, like, five languages!” 

This time, I certainly hadn’t misheard. So I stared at him and then half asked, half exclaimed, “She?! With this face?!?”. And as his glazed eyes focused on me again, regaining more control from whatever substances were making him a little high, he looked at me, appalled at himself, exclaimed, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I can’t believe that happened!?!” And he hid his face in his hands.

I was on my way out, leaving my French climbing buddy’s farewell party. And I teared up. And, of course, he thought I was tearing up because of the misgendering. But no, that didn’t really upset me. I was tearing up because I’ll miss him. Because, even though we rarely got a chance to climb together or even hang out in the past couple years, he is particularly dear and special to me. 

He is the first friend I made here in Colorado, meeting him within a month of when I had moved out here three years ago. It was a cold but sunny day in February. I was having my first symptoms of what later turned out to be thyroiditis. I still had my old car — the first car I had ever owned and the vehicle that had brought me to Colorado from California through a couple of snowstorms a month prior. Once I got here, within a week I was already reaching out to make new climbing buddies, mainly using a WhatsApp group from the gym as a way of finding new climbing partners. And I was taking many leaps of faith, going on several “blind climbing dates”, so to speak. This one Saturday (or Sunday?), I had agreed to meet one guy and two friends of his to climb up in the local canyon. 

As I drove up the canyon, the engine temperature dial on the dashboard started showing the temperature rising beyond safe levels. This had happened once already, crossing a pass a month prior, on my way out from California to Colorado. So I did my homework: turned the heat on as high as I could and kept going, while keeping an eye on the dial. The temperature rise slowed down but didn’t stop. So I had to stop. I waited several minutes at a pull-out and then, determined to go climbing, kept driving up the canyon. I made it to the pull-out of the crag where I was supposed to meet the other three (unknown) climbers. Just in time: the engine was steaming (partly also because of the outside near-freezing temperatures). I stepped out of my parked car to assess the situation. And as I did, a cute, friendly-looking, tall, blond guy with a strong French accent came up and asked me, “Do you need help?”

“Yes”, I replied, as I realized that I was going to have to call for a tow but that there was no cell-phone reception in this part of the canyon. “Can you drive me a little further up to where I have reception so I can call for road-side assistance?”

“Sure!”

And so we hopped into his car, he & I sitting in the front and his friend who was visiting him for a few days in the back seat. 

They were both very friendly and we got chatting quickly, so I asked them, “Vous-êtes français?” 

“Oui! Tu parles Français?”

“Oui”.

I think that’s what jump-started our friendship. That and the fact, that came out almost immediately, that we both ride motorcycles. And that, apart from climbing, we both love back-country skiing. And that we had both, literally, just moved to Colorado from California. 

After we had been chatting for a while, it came out that they were actually “the friends” of “the guy” with whom I was supposed to climb at the crag that day! So once we got somewhere where we had reception, while I made phone calls for my car issue, he handled the communication with our “common climbing buddy”. 

He waited for what was probably an hour for me to get a tow arranged. Then he drove us back to the crag and tried to insist on waiting for the tow with me, but I insisted in turn that they should all just go climbing. He took care of me that day and checked in on me a few days later. And then we started climbing together. I met his girlfriend. He met the nonbinary person who at the time was a “special friend” for me. He took me on my first free solo adventure. We gave each other rides when one of us didn’t have a functioning vehicle. 

Then we both moved out of the town where we had both been living, to different towns. I got a new job. His girlfriend moved out here and in with him. We had different schedules and often different goals, or styles, for our climbing. So we climbed and hung out less often, but the friendship remained. We kept in touch. We invited each other to birthdays & house-warming parties. We got lunch or coffee together. 

And eventually, in January 2023, almost a whole year after we had met, he was the person who drove me to & home from my gender-affirming top-surgery. He took complete care of me for almost two full days in one of the most vulnerable and important moments of my life. 

When he & I met in February 2022, I still looked like a girl. An adventurous, athletic and androgynous girl, but “female” nonetheless. I was already using “they” pronouns at the time, which he respected, but in his native French he probably defaulted to the feminine “elle”. But he never made me feel “like a girl”. He was always very affirming and validating of who I was as a person. 

As my first friend here in Colorado, he was also one of the first people to start seeing, in person, the effects of gender-affirming hormone therapy on me, and he marveled and rejoiced at the changes with me. 

And our dynamics shifted because of my shifting looks: as I started looking and sounding more and more masculine, he instinctively started treating me more like a “bro” or a “buddy” in ways that were affirming, validating, endearing. And given that we saw each other every few months, the changes in me were more evident, or startling, to him than to myself or to friends who saw me more often; so every time he & I hung out, it was like a new discovery and celebration of the boy I was turning into on the outside.  

When I arrived at his farewell party last night, after not having seen each other in over six months, it was the same enthusiastic welcome: exclamations of “dude” and “bro” and “buddy”; hugs with a pat on the back or shoulder; and, maybe above all, the admiration of the changes in my face – the jaw-line, the facial hair. 

This is why his misgendering me three hours later, when he was a little drunk, didn’t upset me. He has really seen the “girl in me”. I looked like a girl the first time we met; I looked like a girl for many months that were the building blocks, or corner stones, of our friendship. Yet he never “made me feel like a girl”, on the contrary, he has always seen, encouraged, celebrated, affirmed, validated, and even supported practically the boy that I am. 

This is why I’ll miss him, this is why I’m sad that he is leaving, even though we got to see each other so rarely in the end. 

I shall miss him being here. I’m sad that he won’t be an hour’s drive away from me, because he is, arguably, one of the most important people in my life. 

And I won’t miss only his affirming, enthusiastic support of me in my gender-journey. I shall also miss the enthusiasm he puts into things, into life. Something that we share – maybe the very thing that really brought us close that first time we met and kept us close beyond/despite our diverging goals or mismatching schedules. He goes into things – activities, relationships, dreams, projects, life – enthusiastically, whole-heartedly, with openness, with generosity, with full dedication to the other person(s) involved and with a resounding “Yes” (if he can). His “yes” are full, simple “yes”, not “yes, but”.  

And that’s the type of person that I want to have in my life. That’s the kind of person that I want to surround myself with and fill my life with. Not people who give in a stingy way. 

So yes, I shall miss my French (climbing/adventure) buddy very much. 

“Tu vas me manquer, dude”. 

“when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story”

“

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street

To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies—

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

That the war would be over before they got to you;

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other—

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.

”

[poem when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story by Gwendolyn Brooks]

Relational ablation

“Ablation” (definition/meaning, e.g. Merriam-Webster dictionary): a) surgical removal; b) loss or removal of a part (such as ice from a glacier or the outside of a nose cone)[…].

In their support of my difficulties at the retreat due to the recent ending of the relationship with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up, one of my closest nonbinary friends asked me if my decision to end that relationship felt empowering to me. 

At first, I couldn’t find an answer. 

Now, the best way I can explain how it feels is by comparing it to the ablation I had a little over two months ago. 

The decision I made about not pursuing the friendship with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up is internal: I came to that conclusion within myself, over the course of weeks, and put it into effect, practically, last Monday; but I did so in a way that is explicit or clear only to myself (& my close friends) — in the clarifying (for me also final) conversation he & I had last Monday, I did not say, “I don’t want to be friends with you anymore”. 

In our clarifying (& for me also final) conversation, we each stated what we would like from our friendship: and there’s a mismatch. On his part, he’d be happy to continue seeing each other as we have been, while also acknowledging that he’d have to put more effort into reaching out & initiating things, but without “benefits”. So theoretically, we could keep hanging out platonically every couple of weeks. But I don’t want that anymore and I’m definitely done with reaching out to initiate things with him. But I didn’t say that explicitly to him. My decision stands and is as solid as ever, but it is my own, it is internal: I have processed it and prepared myself for weeks for this; I have shared it with my close friends; I have deleted his contact info from my phone; I know it’s necessary and healthy for me; and I am determined to never reach out to him to hang out again — and I know I will hold true to this decisions of mine. 

While being very clear on the inside, though, this decisions is not evident on the outside: he probably doesn’t realize, or know about it, yet. 

And in this sense it’s like my ablation. The procedure was performed in mid-December. Technically, my body (specifically, my uterus) changed immediately on the inside. But nothing showed on the outside. An ablation doesn’t leave scars on the outside (the scars on my belly are from the salpingectomy). And the practical, long-term effects of an ablation can really be seen only months down the road: it will only be once I start “skipping my period” for several months in a row that I will eventually, finally, realize what I got done in December. All I could feel in December, after the procedure, was pain. The decision of having the procedure done in the first place was a determined, rational, practical decision for something that I knew was, or would be, necessary and healthy for me. But the relief and/or sense of liberation or empowerment will come later down the road, once an “old pattern” is finally broken or no longer repeated.

For me, the recent ending of the relationship with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up feels similar: for now, nothing “shows on the outside”, and on the inside I mostly feel pain. It will take weeks of the “old pattern” being finally broken or no longer repeated for me (& probably him) to actually realize that this relationship is over. 

And only then will I finally feel the full sense of liberation and empowerment from this decision of mine.