Eccentric Flower:199905/heels infants and greys
From Eccentric Flower
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may seventeenth heels, infants, and greys Before I forget again: There are three new photo galleries if you get bored with this ranting; you even get to see some actual humans in some of them. And koi. (The new ones are Boston 3, SF, and Chattanooga.) I've also updated the bio page slightly, but nothing that regular visitors need to check out. - - - I got mail from a friend and regular correspondent (whose name I remove here deliberately, since I'm about to quote her) wondering why men who want to wear women's things always seem to focus on the most uncomfortable aspects of women's wear: Corsets. Heels. Something that - forgive me - seems to be a common thing that men pick out as "optional fripperies." But I'm probably being too harsh here. I have a lot more of my mother in me than most people (including her) think, and I'm just not willing to go through any suffering for my looks. Underwire digs in? That's the end of that bra. Can't walk a mile in my shoes? Anyone who wants 'em can have 'em. I get this often enough that I feel I should share my clarification. I agree about the discomfort problems, but when I talk about wanting to wear women's clothing, that's not always the kind I'm referring to. Differentiate between the female clothes I want as everyday wear and the ones I like for fetish/sexiness purposes. With everyday clothes, I am choosing for comfort. It happens that I find a skirt more comfortable than jeans; that's why it's the single item of female apparel that I envy the most (and unfortunately one which is denied me). Fetish wear, or wear for sexual purposes, is usually uncomfortable - although the boots feel great, and I just got a latex dress that I feel like I could fall asleep in. Again, this is costume, and costume comes off at the end of the night. I don't like wearing a bra for more than a couple of hours, and even the most comfortable heels I own are only fun for about that long. Earrings and nail polish are demonstrative gestures that contribute very little except rebellion and a little frisson of glee when I look in the mirror. They can go either way. Makeup is again of two types - minor touches I might wear every day, and major stuff for costume purposes. Again, I agree that the latter is truly a pain. But sometimes one wants to present a definite, specific appearance. Is that any clearer? - - - I've also had a couple of readers, absorbing my relationship angst this weekend (sorry about that), ask me about the subject of children. This isn't a state secret, and I'm not breaching Nonelvis' privacy by revealing it: The chances of our having kids are somewhat more remote than a cold snap in the burning sands of the seventh circle of hell. (The ninth circle of Dante's hell actually is cold.) Nonelvis is not fond of children. At least not for doses over five minutes long. She is adamantly opposed to having them. This suits me just fine, as I don't want them. I'm more tolerant of kids than she is, but I'd make a lousy parent. No! This is not empty self-denigration of the type I've been discussing here recently. This is for real. I have a concrete basis for saying this. Today on the subway there was a woman with a small boy in a stroller. Not two years old, I'd say. He was making a very loud noise, and he was making it frequently, at regular intervals, like a siren. He didn't seem to be distressed about anything, even though the noise was an agitated one - he just wanted to make it. And you know, when small children take it into their heads to do that, there is no reasonable way to stop them. Pacifiers don't always work, sweet-talking them doesn't always work, and I don't advise getting rough with them in a public place - someone would probably call the abuse squad on you, especially in Cambridge ... but we're not going to go there, my views on discipline and children are complex and would probably upset some of you. Anyway ... my thought, as I stood on the train, trying to focus on my book but jolted out of it every fifteen seconds (I swear this cry made the whole train vibrate) was: If I were this woman, right now I would be wishing I could just drop this child out the train doors. My face would be red and I'd be hoping for the earth to rise up and swallow me whole. When they're small, you can't really exert any control over them. When they're big enough that you can communicate with them, they immediately become rebellious and defiant. Just about the time they're finally becoming human, they leave home, and you only see them a few times a year at best. And they will not learn to appreciate you until the best years of your life are gone, unless you're lucky. It's a lousy system, when you think about it. And that's why I'm not fit to be a parent. I've thought about it too much. - - - Last in our parade of miscellany, I should note that I got some excellent replies to the "Us or Them" postcard which pointed out that the people who seem dull or stupid - grey, in my terms - may not actually be so - there may be other factors at work. One reader said: I believe that each individual on this earth has something simple to teach us all. The problem is that they don't believe what they have is important, and thus stay silent. Which is why it seems that the majority of people are not intelligent or interesting. Another noted that: My usual argument in the face of the most-people-are-stupid assertion is thus: check out the lives that "most people" lead, going to crappy schools, working crappy jobs, never encouraged to develop the life of the mind that, say, you and I found. In my experience, neither education nor much employment encourages thought; rather, it is discouraged, the values stressed being conformity and obedience. [...] Nor should it be forgotten that our society's definition of "intelligence" is a little subjective. I agree with both of these readers, and I'm only sorry that wasn't clearer in my postcard. One of the best reasons not to dismiss a grey person is that they may contain hidden sparkles. Forgive me my whimsical metaphor.
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