A Writer Writes

Once upon a time, I wrote a novel. 

My computer ate it. It wasn't a great novel, society will continue unaffected by its not being published, but it was mine, and now it is lost. Apart from often angry rants and comments on social media, and this blog, I haven't written anything else since. 

It also wasn't a complete novel. I guess technically I've written part of two novels, but the other one I wrote bits of in fits and starts, and I think I've always mentally written it off as never going to be completed. It was a childish fantasy, written only to be the bad first novel full of cliché that I could discard and never have to embarrass myself by having to show to anyone else. 

The second novel, though, was high-concept, and I wrote a huge chunk of in one of the most self directed periods of my life. I worked longer and more consistently on it than I did my dissertation for university. Then my computer died, and could only be fixed by a full reinstall. 

I bought a new computer after a while, and that one was killed by an update to Windows 10. I put it aside, not having had the time to reinstall Windows to fix it, and now ity won't turn back on at all. 

I'm beginning to think Windows is just not a reliable piece of software. 

I use mobile phones for most of my computer access these days, and I've just bought a Bluetooth keyboard to make writing on one more practical; this blog is by way of a test. So far it seems to work fairly well. It's slightly smaller than a normal keyboard, but still big enough to type on in a practical way. 

I don't know why I'm concerned about writing. All people I was ever bothered about were blown away by my talents, but in the wider world I get no feedback but ringing apathy or even outright derision. I suspect that all writers feel this way, even slightly moderately successful ones. Do the star authors like Rowling or King have such anxieties, I wonder? Do they sit in marble mansions laughing uproariously at bad tempered critics, secure in the knowledge that any criticism is jealousy or ignorance, or do they merely feel like they are getting away with something?

I have honestly no idea. I know merely this. A writer writes, is compelled to write, even if it's only a baseline tapping away ephemera that float off into the night like bonfire embers. There may be fewer fireworks to accompany my work but it continues to blaze away. 

Is that a good sentence? I liked it, so it probably isn't. Ah, well. I will continue to produce something, and will try and make myself do it here, even if I can't produce the next great American novel. I'm not even American, so that would be a stretch anyway. 

Life

I haven't done this in a while, and I wasn't sure what I should come and talk about. So I asked my wife, yes I'm married to a woman, who knew, certainly not me, I asked my wife what I should come and talk about, and she said life. She's full of helpful stuff like that. So I asked her if she could narrow it down just a little, given I had already mentally excluded my award winning inorganic chemistry routine, and she said sex. So. Sex it is. 

Not sure where to start though, which is generally what I say before I start having it. My problem as a transsexual, is that I'm a terrible backseat driver, I keep saying pfft, I wouldn't have done it like that. 

Did I just out myself? I'm not very good at being stealth, I tend to assume it's obvious. If I wore a wig I would doff it like a cap.

If there is anyone here, by the way, that is thinking to themself they don't approve, or they don't believe in being transgender, or anything like that, I didn't either for most of my life. Maybe you should be worried about yourselves. 

I didn't feel like I fitted the cliché model of the trans person I'd seen in the media, so I spent six months in assessment with a gender clinic and then waited with bated breath for an assessment to officially see if I was, an assessment which basically said "Duh." 

They padded it out with more sciencey words, but that was the gist. 

My life has been full of moments of revelation about myself. I was once sitting watching a documentary about how they worked out how to fix club feet in babies, where you're born with feet on their side like that. See, like that. Not exactly like that, because that's a hand. Are you following this?

So she says, I'm a little disappointed they didn't come and interview us. I said why would they interview us? I was already mentally working out if I could afford to put her in a home. Turns out, not only was I born with a club foot, but I was like the alpha run of the methods to fix it. If you were born with a club foot, and you no longer have a club foot. If you were born with a club foot and you no longer have a club foot, you have me to thank.  People came from all over the world to look at my foot. And I don't remember any of it. 

I don't really have a joke for that bit. I asked my wife for suggestions and she suggested "I used to have a club foot, no wonder I like Spider-Man". Nope, me neither. To be fair to her, she was asleep at the time. "Spiders, spiders in the cocoa". 

Also l, as a teenager I was obsessed with sex, like most people are, but bearing in mind that I grew up before porn was so readily available, that was a difficult time for a more than slightly effeminate spotty Doctor Who obsessed pubescent. I have actually modelled my life on Doctor Who, in that I spent most of it looking like a bloke, and now I'm a lot less popular as a woman. 

Anyway. Girls were just not interested, as far as I knew, wasn't like I asked them. And I was constantly being accused of being gay. Which, in the early eighties, was not an acceptable thing to be. And despite appearances, I really wasn't. Honestly. Not a single boy I had ever seen stirred my loins. So there I was, just pleasuring myself with pictures in my mum's Cosmo, which sometimes meant in desperation it was a cartoon of a leg in the corner of a duvet advert.

Incidentally, it feels really odd miming wanking like that these days. People sometimes ask me if I have a penis, and I generally say yes, I have a whole box of them under the bed. 

This was a situation which needed to be remedied. So I located a sex shop just outside the centre of town. I wasn't quite 18, but I'd got to close enough age where I felt like I could pass for it. 16. Ever the optimist. Well, I was tall, right? That'll do. I've never been carded anywhere, ever, no matter how much I've tried to look shifty at checkouts. That's how you know you're getting old, when not being allowed to buy Lambrini feels like a compliment.

Where was I? Oh yeah, in a sex shop. So yeah, there I am, walking around and looking at covers and trying to work out which of the labels over the more obscene acts were just stuck on for the sake of modesty in a public space and which were printed on to comply with the law. It was like an extreme and expensive scratchcard. Please be a penis, please be a penis, damn, more inside. Bastards. The eighties were shit. 

Then the guy in the shop assumes I'm gay and starts to come on to me, quite aggressively.

I said "Sir. Whilst, unlike most of my contemporaries this decade, I am not homophobic, it is a mistake to judge someone's sexuality by their mannerisms or their appearance. Gaydar is not really a thing, and your association of feminity with sexuality is merely another projection of patriarchal assumptions about the world."

Actually, that's what I meant to say. What I actually found myself saying was" Yeah, alright then."

And that is the story of how I discovered I was bisexual.