Friday, 28th October, 2005

Stopping To Look At Stars

There is a particular section of my journey home from Leeds that I look forward to every week — the bit just after I come off the A65 and before I get to Bentham. It's a piece of deliciously open, windy road, with no verges and sheep all over the place. You can throw your car round the bends, using every available inch of the road, so that you're gliding like an ice-skater on the very edge of her blades, dancing a thin line between poetic movement, and going off into a ditch.

My journey home tonght started off as the usual story: DUAL CARRIAGEWAY! DUAL CARRIAGEWAY! VROOOOM! CLIMBING LANE! WINDY COUNTRY ROADS! Caravan., so most of it was spent fuming behond the wheel, praying for another of those elusive climbing lanes to whick me off into boygirl-racer heaven.

But when I came off the main road, everything was clear, and thus began a delicate ballet of tyre-friction versus cetripettal force.

But, just coming over the crest of a hill, I saw something that made me gasp for a second. I must have been going north, because there, on the horizon was the Plough, gloriously big and clear. And as my foot touched the brake and I glanced out of the side window, I realised that the whole sky was clear and full of stars.

I was like Dave, in 2001 (or was it 2010? )

I love driving home — the little bursts of adernaline, the ups and downs in emotion of slow drivers and open roads, the heady buzz of recklessness — but I did something I don't normally do.

I stopped. Got out the car, and just stood there for a few minutes, staring up at the sky which, without a streetlamp for miles around, was glistening with centuries millenia-old light from places so far away that I couldn't help but be amazed at the complexities of everything around me.

I didn't, however, like a complete numpty, have my camera with me. So no piccies.

Just stopping for a moment, taking some time out of the hectic frenzy of my usual journey, really was an incredible thing. I felt calm, relaxed, and generally at peace with things. While overhead I could see the Great Bear, Cassiopea, the Little Bear and all sorts of contellations.

Including, of course, the constellation of The Metaphor.

(yeah, I was never really that good at being cryptic)

...

Would yous mind if I talked about this weblog for a little bit? I need to explain what it is for me, and how I feel about it.

I started doing all this a fair wee while ago. I started, in fact, on the 7th of February, 2002 (I just checked ) when through some strange desire which was probably located in extreme self-inflicted peer-pressure, I decided that I could be a proper transvestite without a website.

It wasn't, admittedly, the first website I ever made or anything — I've been doing this sort of stuff since 1996 — but it was the first time I really started to, um, expose myself online.

I had, at the time, just undergone a major epiphetic moment of managing to come close to realising the girl I wondered if I could ever look like. And I wanted to share.

Putting photographs of me online in those days was very much about some kind of self-confidence boosting. It was amazing for me — someone who'd spent most of their lives being sidelined by all the good-looking guys at school — to suddenly have praise for the way that I looked ladeled on me.

I mean, imagine for a second, that you're one of the geeky kids at school. You never have a girlfriend (much) until your late teens, when bizarrely you suddenly blossom and girls start noticing you. But even then, for half of the time you spend you life frustrated because you can't look like you want to — you can't look like a girl.

But suddenly, random anonymous people from a strange land called "The Internet" are telling you that you're gorgeous. It's an incredible head-fuck, let me tell you.

Not a head-fuck in a bad sense, just a bit weird that's all. You start to base your opinion of yourself on how much people tell you that they'd like to snog you (amongst other things). Not a healthy situation.

The thing is, siobhansplace.co.uk was quite a nice little site. I had a fair few photographs on it of me — some better than others — and even though I knew that there were people browsing my site using specially adapted mice so that they could surf one-handed, it was rather flattering.

There's a certain thing that porn mags do sometimes, I guess to put their "readers" at ease, where people like "Michelle from Basildon" will tell their reporter (while whe milks a cow with her tits out — Michelle, not the cow, obviously) that she "loves the though of all those men wanking over my pictures". It's a complete fabrication, of course. Michelle from Basildon probably goes to bed each night shuddering at the thought of a million sweaty-palmed monkey-fiddlers leafing through slightly stiff copies of photographs of her.

But for a transvestite (or, more specifically, for this transvestite), what with me being a man and everything and sharing the same mindset as those made-up quotes are directed at, the thought of people having a quick one off the wrist whilst looking at me was, well, quite nice.

But yeah, siobhansplace.co.uk. Nice site. A few pictures of me, a clever little dress-up game, and one or two pages of a thing that I called my "diary" — just some random thoughts and experiences that either occured to me, or happened to me.

...

But at the start of this year, things changed. You see, I'm not just some random trannie, mincing her way through life, measuring out her time in terms of wedding-dress-opportunities and the odd risqué shag.

I'm also a militant little cow, who wants the world to start taking me — and people like me — seriously. Having spent so long putting a lot of effort into developing an online-persona, and not wanting to have to start again from scratch building up the boy side of my life in the same space, I wanted people outside of the trannie-community to take me seriously.

I wanted to be able to talk to people — happy, normal, vanilla (and, perhaps, not-so-vanilla) people, and not been thrown backwards with the phrase "Tranny!"

THe thing that's always bugged me about the way the world sees transvestites, you see, is that we're taken as being an automatic joke. And I wanted to change that — I wanted to be able to join in with conversations that I saw going on around me — conversations that I was dfeeply interested in — without being kicked into the sidelines because no-one wanted to talk to a trannie.

Which is why I forked off my diary and gave it it's own domain name.

The thing is though, having done that — and, I like to think, having partly achieved what I set out to do — the whole focus of my life online changed. It stopped being about a bunch of pictures. I stopped relying on how pretty I might (or might not) look to somehow validate my online prescence. In trannie-circles, a lot of respect is based about what you look like — but I wanted to branch out of that, and dabble my toes in a world where it was more important what you wrote — what your personality was.

So yeah, the focus of all of this went away from the pictures. I concentrated more and more on the weblog part of Me Online™. And to certain extents, it all worked. I've met some rather interesting people over the course of this year — people I'd never have got into discussions with if I'd stayed in my trannie-bubble. Sometimes I've met these people in real life, sometimes it's just been through email conversations — but in every case, it was utterly liberating to be able to talk to them, despite me being a transvestite. And in some ways, it was liberating to be able to talk to them as well as being a transvestite. It was like "Yeah Siobhan, OK, so you guys aren't all a bunch of weirdos".

And I loved that.

But behind the scenes, I've still had this furtive little traffic-generator going on. I've still had the blatant-transvestite-website running. At first, I was still updating it on a regular basis — I was running two sites (with two CSS styles) for a long time before fate stepped in and wiped the original code from my hard disk.

But even then — with a completely clean slate to work with, I rebuilt the thing. Even when the opportunity flung itself in my face and screamed "Siobhan! You could stop this slightly pornographic existence!", I didn't take the opportunity.

Because of the traffic.

...

I'm a sad cow sometimes. I do, as a few people will testify, sometimes sit here watching my Apache logs scroll past my screen. I religiously check my webstsats page at various points throughout the day, and subscribe to my own Egorati RSS feed.

And the traffic that you get from having a few naughty pictures of yourself on a site that's listed in a few random trannie-lists can be phenomenal.

The thing is (she said, refilling her glass and trying to regain some control on what little thread of a plot she had going on), it all started going wrong the day I got listed on urnotalone.com.

urnotalone.com is, I think, the trannie-equivalent of gaydar.com. (I went out for a drink with some gay friends the other night. I learnt so many things that I didnt know...). Usual story — put up a profile, make some friends, weed out the fakes and meet up for "girlie fun" with those who are left.

But I didn't list myself because I wanted any "girlie fun" (I was still with Kath at the time). I put up a profile because I knew I'd get some traffic out of it.

ELEVEN FUCKING THOUSAND PEOPLE IN ONE DAY

Poor Erin , she almost had a fit.

THe thing is, I didn't list my web address as siobhansplace.co.uk, and thus send each and every one of them to a collection of dodgy trannie shots of me in suspenders. I listed my homepage as being here.

And here's where things start to go wrong...

I was sat here, watching the logs speeding up and up and up, and I started doubting myself. I started to get all paranoid about these guys wanting to see lingerie pictures and being presented with a bunch of text.

Which is why I put the "photographs" link at the top of the page, and linked it straight to the galleries on siobhansplace.co.uk.

It didn't really occur to me at the time that I might have been doing something daft to my head at this point (in fact, it only occured to me tonight, just off the A65 as it happens) but I think that's when I started to lose the plot.

See, I was directing people away from what I wanted to be — back to what I was.

...

DOnt get me wrong here BTW. It's not that I don't like doing photographs of me trying to look like a girl. I love the whole "performance"-based aspect to it. I love the challenge of trying to turn a guy with a big nose into something that resembles a woman.

But that's not what I think I'm all about, really.

...

So yeah. "Plot Siobhan! Plot!"

I did started to get a little narked after that episode over all the people that would come here and immediately click on the "photographs" link. Obviously not (as was pointed out to me a few days ago) enough to take away the link, but enough to get a little riled.

See, over the past few months — since the start of the year I guess — this weblog has been getting more and more intimate. I've been letting myself get more and more honest about things.

I've had, for example, to stop myself posting my real name on here every once in a while by a cunnin g bit of RegEx...

But yeah, over the past few months, I've been letting myself get a little closer to the bone. And if this was just a weblog, then that would be OK, I reckon.

But it's not is it? It's also got that slightly pornographic element to it. You just have to click on "photographs" to enter a completely different world.

And I don't like that.

I have, for example, been lamenting for ages that I want to be able to share the things that I do online with my students. But how on earth would they be able to take me seriously if they looked me up on Google, and found a bunch on pictures of me, in stockings and suspenders, lying on my bed, instead of some worthy discussion of inter-website-based-communication?

...

But the real thing, I guess, is the thing that happened last weekend.

I don't know why I did it, perhaps it was just because I'd been feeling a bit down recently or something, and wanted a bit of a boost to my ego, but I did a few things to land myself on a rather prominent list of transvestite websites. As I mentioned earlier — that buzz, that excitement of seeing the logs move at a much more rapid pace was too much to ignore, and I craved the attention.

But as I was sat here, watching them pick up pace, I suddenly felt cheap.

I felt like here I was, putting my heart and soul into writing this thing, and the first thing anyone does when they get here is look at rude pictures of me.

And even though I've thrived on that feeling before, this time it felt wrong.

Which is why I had my little teenage-strop.

...

I've had a little rule that I've tried to stick to over the past four years: "Never delete anything". I've always kinda felt that whatever I write, is indicative of the mood that I'm in, and if I start going back on things and deleting them then (a) I'll get taken less seriously, and (b) I may as just as well get my name change to "Dave WIner" by deed-poll and be done with it.

I think (and correct me if I'm wrong here), only deleted something once in the past four years. And I didn;t actually delete it — I just commented it out — and it wasn;t that I said something wrong, it was just that I was a bit drunk and perhaps said something a little bit too self-congratulatory.

So you can, perhaps, see my quandry on Sunday morning.

I tried to just knock it off the front page by writing a generic "la la la" entry, but I realised that there were certain people who would read it on the following Monday — people a person that I didn't want to read it. But, like I said, I could delete it — otherwise it would destory the flow.

So I pulled the plug.

Literally.

And (and I don't think you'll get this BTW, but I'm going to tell you anyway) the sudden noise of silence was deafening.

Erin, obviously, makes noise when she's running — the constant whirring of her fans, the random clicks of the hard-drive when someone's reading my stuff.

But suddenly, there was silence.

It was as if I'd been frantically driving home from Leeds, and just turned off the A65, and noticed the stars, and stopped, and ...

(/me labours point home)

Anyway, I know it was totally Kevin The Teenager. But it felt great.

(On Monday, incidentally, I was talking to one of my students. Not about anything particularly exciting, just about me re-encoding all of their previous work into H.264 Quicktime files so that I can maybe podcast them. "Is that why the course website was down on Sunday then?" he asked. I couldn't explain exactly what had happened, obviously. But that's why I put that shitty holing-page up. I wasn't trying to be melodramtic — OK, maybe a little — but I realised that I couldn't just pull the plug. I host more than this weblog here)

...

But since then, obviously, I've been thinking a lot. I don't think I need to validate myself on the basis of how many people masturbate over pictures of me do I? I don't need to sit here, watching random IP Addresses scroll past my screen, getting a hit of self-confidence each time I see a new one.

I have, to be honest, lost the plot a little over the course of this year. Not just because of what happened recently, but because of a lot of things. I've clinged to the past in an attempt to bolster-up my presence online.

So...

...I have a little plan.

I have, obviously, gone back on a promise to myself and deleted something from my weblog. But I think, in this case, that t's justified. I think that I might have opened myself up in a way that, even though I'm not uncomfortable with most of my audience seeing, there are obviously some people (and a whole host of y-front-shufflers) that I don't want to share that with.

This past week, I've been really thinking about what I do online, and what I want to do online. And I'm starting to come to some conclusions about that. I'm starting to work out just what it is that I mean when I say that this weblog isn't just a representation of me — it's re-presentation of me.

OK, so plan:

1. I'm not ressurecting siobhansplace.co.uk in it's (seedy) photographic glory other than just another pointer to this weblog.

2. This weblog will suddenly look different one day soon.

3. I'm going to stop stressing about things. In particular, I'm going to stop spending days staring at the logs.

I think, perhaps, that I could probably have made all those points in a lot more succint way, and I've probably got more things I could have said about my relationship to this weblog. More things along the lines of "It's not just a website, it's me". But, I've probably gone past the sentient-wine threashold. So I'll leave it for another time.

In the meantime, some things that have happened to me this week...

That Was The Week...

...that was.

On Monday and Tuesday, I gave some intensive workshops to First Years and managed to get hem all sat there, at the end of the day, waving Their First DVDs™ above their heads . GOd, I love it when things go right, technically.

On Wednesday, I (as I alluded to in my little surreptitious RSS-only blogging spree) spent about £200/300 on menswear...

I have, you see, spent the past ten years wearing only black jeans and black t-shirts. My sartorial adventures have manily been execised in the strange world of women's fashion, and I've just been replacing black jeans and black t-shirts whenever they wear out.

(Or perhaps, a little too late in some cases)

But on Wednesday, what with it being an Über-pay-day and everything, I went out to buy some clothes...

(OK, so I've got ulterior motives to wanting to look good as a guy at the moment, but I might — or, actually, probably, might not as it happens — explain them later)

I went to Next and bought a black shirt. But that didn't feel radical enough. So I went round some of the more trendy shops in Lancaster (there are officially 2 of them)

See, I'm a bit of a skinny wretch. So it makes buying clothes quite hard. I can go into a girls' shop and buy anything of the '10' rail, but in guys' shops I'm a bit fucked.

I went to various places, but everything just hung off me like I was a stick.

I ended up in a little boutique down near the Firkin pub. ANd I was picking through the sale items, when I decided that I'd had enough of my pathetic approach to shooping, and asked the guy behind the counter if he'd help me choose something.

The jacket that I was trying on, he agreed, was too big for me, but he went round tha back and found a fantastic little fitted jacket, with a hood (I know ) that fitted me perfectly.

And suddenly, I kinda felt released. I went round half the shop trying things on, asking him what he thought, until I ended buying a ton of stuff, and running back home to try it all on.

Seriously — it was just the same as when I buy girls' stuff.

So, I'm now sat here, with a fair few brown, blue and green things to wear instead of black

And, I should mention, a rather fab tweed jacket with a hood, and cord patches on the elbow. He tried to get me to buy cord trousers tooo — but I explanied to him that I was an academic, and he agreed, that would have been a bit cluché

I could probably rave about my new clothes for ages, but I just thought I'd mention that I went into work on THursday, and people were seriously speechless. "Siobhan's not wearing black?!"

It felt good

Yesterday though, (actually, not "though" — that sounds bad). Yesterday, we all went out to see The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. I can't even begin to explain what it was all about, so either watch some of their stuff, or take it from me that at one point I was creased up on my seat, about to die from laughing so much.

My only two sad-points of the night were (a) the drunked twat at the end of our seating row who shouted stupid things, and (b) that I thought fondue came from Sweden and not Switzerland (and didnt; shout out either) and so missed the chance of winning a dress.

...

(Note to self — fix the god-awful spelling in the morning)

...

And, because I've probably gone on too much, and also because I always like leaving things cryptically at the end of entries:

I so still have 'it'