Friday, 3rd March, 2006

Rejected

photo DVD

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

Tom Coates had linked to this the other day. I liked it so much, I bought the DVD

Confessions

drunk hangover

God my head hurts this morning. I find, you see, that the best way to relax and recuperate after a few days of drunkeness in Leeds is a night of drunkeness in Lancaster.

There's always a thought in the back of my head as I wind my way across the Yorkshire Moors, that since I don't have to get up the next day, I can let myself go a little — unconstrained by responsibility — and get thoroughly plastered in the safety and security of knowing that no-one is watching.

The thing is though (and it happens every week like clockwork), that after I get to a certain stage of drunkeness, I have a great desire to blurt out all the secret and hidden things that I never tell anyone.

Fortunately, for the sake of my dignity and sanity, I've so far managed to stop myself on the brink of posting Forbidden Stuff™. There are, obviously, cunningly concealed and encoded references to things — but they're so obscure, you'd actually have to know what they are.

Which would defeat the point.

Regardless of that, I think it's probably a safe bet to assume that anything I write when I'm really drunk is best taken with not just a pinch of salt, but the entire sodium chloride content of the Pacific Ocean.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a man coming round to do some sparky things. And then I have to go to Barrow to pick something up.

Course you can hon

(Why is it such a shock that I bought the DVD?)

Amtrek (that's a pun)

wine

Press '3' to discuss your delivery requirements

[holding music]

"Hello, Amtrak"

"Um, hello, you've got a parcel for me, is it still there"

"Hold on"

[holding music]

"Yes, it's from Oddbins Direct"

(/me spills coffee, grabs keys, half-way out the door)

"I'm on my way"

Of Little Use

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

I need to get me a tumble-dryer

Frost softens towels? Really?

Wow

(It's not frost BTW, it's full-on settling snow )

Self Positioning

self photography internet schoolgirl fetish

(In which I try to remember what I was talking to myself about in the car the other morning)

It's always struck me as particularly noteworthy, the number of self-portraits we — this tatty band of men who like wearing women's clothing — make. Apart from the actual act of 'dressing', it seems to be one of the few actual things that we all share in common.

Each of us (nearly I guess) seem to feel the need to record, or document, each moment we spend in our 'alternative' outfits. And I guess there are numerous reasons why we do that — not least of which being the need to be seen after having gone through so much effort to achieve the best we can — but I'll most likely ramble about that some other time.

What I was thinking about, on my way in to work on Tuesday, was what I do with my photographs — or more specifically, where I put them.

In the good-old-days, before I discarded entirely the notion of "TV personal webpage", I used to have a series of galleries that I put pictures in. (They still exist BTW — but you'll have to look hard to find them).

Each time I dressed myself up, I'd plonk the camera down in front of me, run off a few (100s) shots, pick out the best ones, and slap them online.

But it was precisely this collection of photographs that made me want to get away from that whole "TV website" thing in the first place. I wanted to be more open, more serious, more OUT, and the prospect of trying to talk seriously with someone and using my weblog as some kind of talking-point wasn't very attractive, seeing as how any mention of it would inevitably lead people straight to a pages of photographs of me in suspenders.

I wasn't overly cautious about what I put on there either. Despite wanting to be so careful about the image I presented of myself, I'd invariably end up with a bucket of piss-poor photographs, and some that went against beliefs that I have about how I should and shouldn't represent myself.

The schoolgirl shots, for example

There used to be a gallery called "Schoolgirl", and I guess (for whatever reason you'd like to think of) it was the one people went to first. Dunno why, but "transvestite schoolgirl" was (and still is, incidentally) one of the highest ranking google queries that brought people to my site.

Every now and again, as a side to all of this, I'd shove one of my more satisfied pictures onto sites like Roses as well — trying to spread my wings a little.

...

The reason I was thinking about all of these things, was because of a photograph I took of myself the other day. I've been talking to someone about various out-of-the-ordinary clothing recently, and they wanted to see what my school uniform looked like.

I'm quite proud of it really — I got it from a bit of a specialist online store. It's not your usual "short skirt and stockings" number — it's a full-on box-pleated gymslip, complete with those knee-length white socks and everything.

The thing is though, after months and months of trying to take a decent picture of me in it, I never could get one that I was happy with.

But that afternoon, having posed and shot, and posed again, I managed to get one picture that I could look at and feel proud of. (God, I look cute in it )

I sent it to my friend, with the intent of never letting anyone else see it ever, but the more I looked at it (I'm a vain cow sometimes), the more I felt the need to share.

The problem I had though, was where could I put it?

I took the similar photos off my old site, because I didn't really want to give the idea that I thought it was good to be lusting after such things. It wasn't a perception of myself that I wanted people to have. And so I was reluctant to put this new picture in this weblog.

I couldn't FFS — people I know read this I don't want them flicking through and thinking Whoah. Shit Graham, that's a bit weird".

I thought maybe I could put it on Flickr (and not post it here), but the same thing struck me. I've really been enjoying treating Flickr as a (this is not the right word, but it's the closest I can get right now) 'professional' space — a space to take myself seriously, and not just piss about.

(I know, I do piss about on Flickr — but there's always an attempt to keep what I do on it in some kind of serious context)

What I wanted was a closed space — a space that was only a trannie-space...

So I stuck it on Roses

...

This might all seem rather trivial and pointless (as usual), but it occured to me that this is basically "Self Editing" — it's re-presenting an idea of myself differently, in different spaces, taking into account the different types of audiences contained in these spaces.

It's about personal positioning — an attempt to control (slightly) the impression that others have of me, by responding specifically to a certain environment.

For example, I put the pictures of me wearing practically nothing on urnotalone.com — because I figure that's what a lot of the users want. I put the photos of my everyday life (and a few of the better self-portraits) on Flickr, because that's how I've found I can best use it. And I put the more classic "tranny" shots on Roses, because I feel that's where they'd go down best.

...

Ack, I dunno. Maybe I don't actually have a point here at all. Maybe this is all just bollocks.

Instead, let me try and explain why I think it is that I've found it so hard in the past to take a decent picture of me in school uniform...

Why The Long Face?

ties fetish

Despite me rabbiting on about being "cautious about what I write about" these days, for some reason I feel it's OK to mention the little fetish I have...

...ties.

To dig-up and old theme from the past, I still insist that it's the reason why I found transvestism (as opposed to why I am a transvestite — that's a mystery I'll never find out).

Basically, long story, short ... I like girls in ties¹. I like them as much as I like boys in dresses. I've often thought that the analogy that a lot of trannies come out with — the ""girls wear trousers, why can't we wear skirts?" one — is a pile of bollocks, because trousers are no longer a gender-specific item of clothing.

Ties, on the other hand, are. To the extent that if you try and use the words "Girls wear ties, why can't men wear skirts?" someone will no doubt point out to you that women wearing ties face almost as much sexual-stereotyping as we do when we put on a skirt.

Ties are specifically male items of clothing, and if a woman wears one, she's crossing a socially-defined boundary — and that makes her (a) dangerous, and (b) ripe for observational comments.

(What I'm trying to say here, I guess, is that women cant just wear ties — if they'd ever want to that is² — they can wear them, but they get commented on. Much like us and dresses. Perhaps)

Anyway, all that has nothing to do with why I like them. I have, in the past, probably spent just as much time wondering about that as I have wondering about why I'm a trannie — and the only conclusion I've come to is that it has something to do with the shape of them.

It's basically a harsh, pointy triangle, where a harsh pointy triangle shouldn't be — next to something so beautiful as a woman's neck.

But it's precisely that thing that makes it so hard for me to take good a picture of myself wearing one

I've tried in the past — with varying levels of success. This one...

...for example, works OK. But that's because it's undone. Done up, a tie has the effect of elongating my already-long features (because I'm a man), and makes me look daft.

Well, not "daft" — just rather blokey.

The thing I've always found with photographs, you see, is that if I emphasise certain things — by wearing a slightly comically-sized dress, or pointing my toes so that my legs seem longer — I can draw attention away from all the things that "give the game away".

But the minute I wear a tie, it points (literally) up at my face, and in particular my nose.

It's like the triangular shape that it makes under my chin, is a direct reflection of the triangular (and not very feminine) shape of the end of my nose. And it makes my face look looooooooooong.

...

In the picture I took the other day though, there are certain other things that take the attention away. My bunches are rather good for a start, and I'm doing something with a pencil that draws the eye away from my nose as fast as you can say "pouting tart"

(You can tell, BTW, that I'm dying to post it can't you? No. No no no no no no. No no nopity no no no.)

¹ Sorry, should expand a little perhaps. The reason why I link this with me being a TV, is that I spent a lot of time when I was young, wishing that I was a girl, because I thought that if I was a girl, then I'd wear ties all the time. And that feeling still exists today to some extent. But I started trying to look as much like a girl as I could because of that.

I guess, maybe, it's why I do the whole make-up-and-hair thing — rather than just popping on a frock and having a quick shufty when no-one is looking.

Maybe.

² Oh yeah, sorry, just one other thing. I have never met a woman who gets the same kick (if you know what I mean) from wearing men's clothing as I do from wearing women's clothing. Does such a woman exist? Can I have her phone number?

Thon

wine pressie barrow

I went to Barrow today. Barrow is the home of my local Amtrak depot, although how the hell Barrow can be considered to be a handy "central" location for a delivery company beats me. Barrow is, I think, technically the "cul-de-sac of England".

It's also very grim

See? See?!

The thing is though, that it was a lovely drive OK, so I had to plough my way through a blizzard to get there, but as soon as I got to the South Lakes the sun came out, and it was rather glorious...

That's me stuck in a queue of traffic BTW. Not that I'm not one for taking pictures whilst driving, it's just that none of the ones I took came out right...

See? Wipers in the way — such a classic amateur-photographer mistake

Anyway, lovely afternoon, lovely drive, lovely scenery ... but at the end of that little journey was this...

(two to be precise)

Words fail me. This is one of the nicest bottles of wine I've ever drunk. The minute you stick your nose in the glass, it grabs your nostril hair, pulls it hard, and shouts "I AM A NICE WINE" as loud as it can. Then, when you actually drink it, it lingers at the back of your throat, knowing full well that you just want to go on tasting it for ever, and happily obliging.

The website says:

An intense nose of raspberry, violets and rhubarb gives way to a lengthy palate with good balance between weighty cherry fruit and smooth tannins.

I say:

Whooo! A lovely way to get pissed. From a lovely, lovely man.

I was going to invite everyone over to mine this evening, to share in this gloriousness. But it's too nice, so yous can all fuck off

...

More people should buy me wine. Definately. I'm going to try and find out if virginwines.what.ever do some kind of wish-list...

I don't think it's possible to truly maintain a different version of yourself for different audiences online

But it's not about different "versions" — it's about different perceptions. In the same way that I perceive different spaces and different communites in different ways, I know that they perceive me different;y to how others do (she said, using "differently" too many times in a sentence)

Maybe it's not even about all that. Maybe it's just about being aware of different audiences, and deciding very specifically what I'm comfortable with each of them seeing.

Maybe.

So it's really an impression or idea of ourselves that we wish to project to others. Yes ?

Yes, yes it is How successful we are, I guess, depends on the levels of consistency that we achieve.

At several points in my life, I've found myself in the position of having the opportunity to totally reinvent myself — moving to a different school, moving to a different country, that sort of thing — and even though sometimes I try to iron out all the little things that I don't like about myself, I inevitably end up projecting the same self-image as I always do.

If I wasnt hungover right now, I'd try and expand on that.