The particularly exciting days of my week off from work have already come and gone. The weekend had some activity but nothing major—even the party at Agastya's on Sunday in Kenmore was something we only stayed at about an hour. Then, Monday was
Laney's and my Fast Ferry trip to Kingston, and then the ride on the Edmonds ferry and back before having drinks and lunch with Jessica in Kingston. That one was a long day: I left home at 9:40 a.m. to meet Laney at her apartment building, and I was back home again around 5:30 p.m.
Tuesday was
Dad and Sherri's visit, to the Seattle Waterfront. I had actually long figured I would take this day off just for their visit, before I decided to take PTO the whole week just so I wouldn't have to work from home in the transition between the old office closing and the new office opening. This was an even longer day: I left home around 7:20 so I could be down to the waterfront to catch the 8 a.m. Fast Ferry to Bremerton so I could then ride back with Dad and Sherri on the 8:45 ferry to Seattle. They had driven up to Bremerton from Olympia and parked their car there, so they could take the ferry across and not have to drive in Seattle (or walk to the waterfront from a hotel in Pioneer Square after taking the train, which had been their original plan). I said goodbye to them at about 5:10 as they waited for the 5:30 ferry back, and I took the bus home, getting back home at 5:40.
Yesterday was far less eventful. I did have some time to think about a couple of things I could have mentioned in my post about Dad and Sherri's visit but never did.
First thing: pronouns. I'm not sure why Sherri brought this up during our walk around the Seattle Aquarium particularly, but she did ask me, "Do you use pronouns?"
Honestly I was slightly amused by this question. And mind you, I could have gotten a lot snarkier with my reply, as that framing of the question often reveals the setup of an argument in bad faith. I did not think that way of Sherri, though; she was clearly asking in good faith, and I do appreciate that. I still kind of couldn't help myself, though, when I said, "Well, technically we all do."
She responded with a sort of scoff: "Well—" in a tone that basically said, "Yes, I know that."
I proceeded to give her a much more straight (so to speak) answer. I suppose I could have clarified that I don't particularly identify as nonbinary, at least not in the sense of using "they/them" pronouns. I said, "I use he/him, but I respond to any." I added that, indeed, I have "any pronouns" listed on the bio of all my socials (it's
on my Bluesky bio,
on my Threads bio,
on my Instagram bio, and
on my Facebook bio, in all cases for some time now—at least a couple of years I think). I have done this because for years I have opted not to correct people when they misgender me, because I not only don't want to make people feel uncomfortable, or particularly that they have said the wrong thing.
I even have a button on my backpack that says "any pronouns." Come to think of it, I carried my backpack all day on Tuesday. It's possible Sherri noticed it, but I have no idea.
Anyway, really, whatever pronoun people use for me, I don't think they necessarily have said the wrong thing—technically, anyway. If you want to get
really technical, I suppose I
do identify as nonbinary, just not strongly enough to insist on any particular pronoun, except that if I absolutely had to choose, I would stick with he/him. I have a feeling I would feel differently if I were younger now, but the time in which I came of age makes a difference here. I did used to tell people, 25 years ago, that I felt I was "gender variant." Jennifer used to joke that I was "part girl," and I would say "I kind of am!"
But also, for me, creating a gray area for my gender would create a gray area for my sexuality, and I just identify far more strongly as a gay man. For me, sexual attraction is binary: I am a man who is attracted to men. I see no contradiction in this if I am attracted to trans men—which has happened more than once; I even played with a trans man at the bathhouse once—because trans men are men. And this is not to say that I could never be attracted to a nonbinary person either, which has also happened, but this would almost exclusively land on the side of a nonbinary person with a penis. This still gets back to a binary choice: you either have a penis or you don't. The trans guy I played with didn't have a penis, but that guy presented as pretty definitively male otherwise. So I suppose this may be confusing or some, but I can easily feel physical attraction to men whether they are cisgender or trans, but among those occupying a gender expression space in the middle, they generally have to be not just those assigned male at birth, but those with a penis.
I think Tori Amos said it best in 1996—the year I came out!—when she sang, "Give me peace, love, and a hard cock."
To be clear, whether or not I like a hard cock has no statistical bearing on my gender identity. But for some people, at the very least, it's relevant. Probably much more so to someone my age than to someone younger. It was kind of interesting to have this conversation with Sherri that had no judgement whatsoever—which I really appreciated—because several years ago I had a brief exchange with Dad that was quite different. I had said I already went through all the effort it took just to get friends and family used to the fact that I was openly gay in the nineties. Declaring a different gender identify now would mean a second "coming out" of sorts, constant explanations and corrections of pronouns, etc. I'm too old to have any interest in the effort it would take. I can't remember exactly what I said to Dad in this conversation, but it was something along the lines of getting people to use nonbinary pronouns for me, and he just said, "I wouldn't!" And laughed. It was the kind of thing that would have left me dispirited if this were more important to me. It's therefore convenient that it just isn't.
I have noticed a newer trend of people allowing others to just make the choice: some people say their pronouns are "he/they" or "she/they," which is an indicator that you're free to use whichever pronouns you like. I'm basically already there by saying "any pronouns." I will say that "they/them" aren't pronouns that particularly speak to me or that I particularly identify with, but I'm also good with them. That said, I also like the idea of still having a male gender identity in spite of my longstanding androgyny. I don't think having unconventional gender expression should by definition be an indicator of nonbinary gender identity. I brought this up with Laney recently and she seemed to like this point of view too: "It expands the definition of your gender." Indeed: what if I like the idea of being
a man who grows long fingernails and wears eye makeup? It's what I've been for nearly thirty years, after all.
One other thing about Dad and Sherri's visit, more on the logistical side, in terms of my Flickr account: with
a 50-shot photo album for this visit that happened only for its own sake rather than for some other reason, I wasn't quite sure what collection I should put it into (and to be clear, I like all my photo albums to be organized into one or more collections; it makes them far easier to find later). In the end I created
Speaking of not taking photos (this is a tenuous transition at best), I didn't take any photos at all yesterday. As I said, yesterday was a far less eventful day. But, Shobhit came along for my scheduled in-person lunch with Karen, at her office down on Westlake.
Under normal circumstances, we would have just had our usual biweekly Zoom lunch on Friday. And come to think of it, the next time we do that (probably September 12), it will be in a brand new phone room. But, also as I said, I'm not working this week, so I had suggested maybe we could have lunch in person for this one. She started thinking of nearby places to eat at first, but then I noted that I didn't really have the budget for that—the money I had set aside for Monday and Tuesday this week took that all up—so I asked if I could just pack a lunch and bring it to eat with her at her office. She was all good with that, and later said it was okay for Shobhit to come too. But then I made the plan to go to Alexia's in Issaquah to watch a movie on Friday, so I asked Karen if she was available on Wednesday instead, as that was the one day I had left on which I had made no plans. And she was.
I actually thought I might take a photo at this lunch, but I never did. I would have had it been part of an organized weeklong event like my Birth Week, but, it wasn't.
Shobhit and I drove there, because we drove on from there afterwards to do some shopping, at Lenny's Produce and at the Greenlake Village PCC. Karen said the parking outside the dock on which her office is located used to be free, but, not anymore. Shobhit paid for an hour of parking before we went in.
We all had sandwiches. Shobhit and I both made our own and packed them before leaving. I also made chai and filled a thermos with it, and wow did Karen's eyes light up when I pulled that out of the insulated bag and said I had brought chai.
It was a lovely hour visit as always. We talked a lot about what I had been doing thus far this week, and she had a lot to say about the Overlook Walk, because her firm did accessibility consulting on it as a construction project, and they did not take all of their recommendations. This is a pretty constant frustration in her work, it seems. We also talked a bit about the future of the accessibility consulting firm she runs, and how over maybe the next five years it will gradually change over its ownership. I think Karen is getting closer to being ready to retire.
We also have a date, a week from Saturday, to visit their now-finished second house in Tulalip, and have fondue for dinner. I'm really looking forward to that.
And that basically has us all caught up. Well, except that Shobhit and I watched the original
Final Destination movie from 2000 on Tuesday night—and then, last night, we binged
four more movies in the series, like we were binging a TV show. Thankfully they're all only about 90 minutes. The fourth one, easily the worst and with stunningly terrible CGI, is only 82 minutes long,
Final Destination 5 was surprisingly fun, probably the most fun since the first.
We'll watch
Final Destination: Bloodlines today, though. It's the whole reason we binged all the others. This new one has by far the best reviews of any in the series, which piqued my interest in a way none of the others ever did. I'm sure we would have been fine just watching that one, but I am too much of an OCD completist with these things. I needed to have seen all the others, which ironically I had zero interest in for the past 25 years, first.
[posted 9:33am]
