Friday, 26th May, 2006

Self Perception Via Proxy

self tranny selfperception

I'm not myself at the moment.

What I mean is, well, I'm not this self at the moment. Brain is still functioning normally, emotions are pretty much as they always are, but the little pocket of Id that I like to call "Siobhan" seems to have gone to sleep.

I have (and this explains why I've been so quiet this week) been running backwards and forwards to Leeds (and back, duh). We're roughly half-way through the Assessment Procedure right now, and although it's proving to be an immensely enjoyable and interesting experience this year, God it's knackering.

On Tuesday night, for various reasons including "I'm very tired" and "Shit, I need to give the kittens more food", I decided to pop back home just for one night. Perhaps, given my levels of tiredness, that was a strange decision — a one-hour round trip to Harrogate and back versus a five-hour round trip to Lancaster — but I needed some Me Space™, really.

All the way home (which was clear and speedy apart from a frustrating — yet aesthetically interesting — moment stuck behind an ornate Gypsy caravan), I was thinking "Me Space™. Me Space™. I'm going to get home and relax in my own particular idiom"...

...my own particular idiom being, naturally, a bottle of wine and a ballgown.

And sure enough, after shovelling tuna into bowls for Biscuit and Tish, and drying my hair (because I got soaked in a downpour during a dash to Sainsburys), I was sat in my studio, glass of wine in hand, preparing to de-stress through the much-loved medium of Excessive Crinoline™.

But.

Well.

See...

...suddenly, I felt, kinda stoopid. I looked in the mirror, and thought "WTF do you look like Graham?"

"You're a mid-thirties guy, and you're sat here in a bloody frock. Put some bloody trousers on FFS"

'She' wasn't there. It was just 'He'.

...

The next night, sat in Harrogate again, I tried to explain this sudden departure of Girl Me™. I mean, I know that transvestism has a peculiar knack of coming and going at times decided purely at random, and my own instinct to crossdress is, despite (perhaps) being more consistently realised than most, as variable as everyone else — but this felt totally different.

At various stages in my life — sometimes for prolonged periods, sometimes just on a nightly basis — the urge to don a wedding dress or even a skirt isn't as strong as it always is.

But it's very rare that I actually feel completely inclined not to.

...

I have a very singular perception of myself. I can — roughly, not precisely, — locate in my head where I think the 'boy' stops and the 'girl begins. I can look in a mirror and see 'Siobhan' (through a process of self-delusion, perhaps), and I like to think that I've got a pretty good understanding of the sort of person that I am.

But that self-perception is completely at odds with an external-perception that's been going on for the past week or so. Throughout that time, I've ben playing a role at work — a role outside of my normal personality.

The scatterbrained, slightly hysterical drunken lush that I identify with so well, has been superceeded by a calm, collected, sorter-outer. For the past ten days or so, I've been fixing things for people, tying up loose ends, and reassuring distraught twenty-one-year-olds that the files they'd thought were borked are still rescuable and that if they leave them with me for an hour or so, a DVD will come out.

In short — and permit me to pat myself on the back for a moment — I've been Mr Bloody Fix-it.

Not Ms Bloody Fix-it. Mr Bloody Fix-It.

The students (as I've mentioned over and over again) don't know about Siobhan. They have their own perception of who I am as a person — a perception devoid of any of this, a perception gained only through contact with a subset of who I think that I am.

And I think that that's gradualy rubbed off on me over the course of the past few days. Normally, when I get home (or at least, away from them all for the evening) I re-adopt the parts of myself that I don't ever show them. I let Siobhan out of the closet again, and revel in a sense of self-completeness.

But because I've been so wrapped in their work (usually well into the night), and absorbed in the perception they have of me, I've momentarily lost her.

...

M and I have talked in the past about points in our journeys home where we feel we've left Leeds well behind. For her, it's the little narrow bridge just past Harewood on the way to Harrogate. For me, it's usually the point where I get to Lancashire — just outside Wennington — and the road gets smooth.

It's at those points that we feel we become 'ourselves' again — we re-enter our sanctuaries and feel complete.

But because I've been so busy, they've come with me in my head back home. And so, on Tuesday night, it was't necessarily that I felt I looked stoopid wearing a dress — it was like they were still there.

It was like I was sat in my studio, with the whole of the Third Year watching me, criticising me, mouths agape wondering why the guy they thought they knew — the guy they'd entrusted their MPEGs and AVIs to — was sat in a big, red, off-the-shoulder number, intent on getting pissed and passing out — self-indulgently — in a crumpled heap of fabric.

There is an element of decadence within my personality — a desire (and you might have seen examples of this if you've ever been out with me) to completely allow myself to discard any form of responsibility and let myself 'go'. It's a combination of the ballgowns, and (if I'm honest) the drinking — the aesthetic and tactile indulgence of excessive dresses combined with the mental indulgence of not being completely aware of what I'm doing.

This alcohol and taffetta immersion allows me to switch off the part of my brain that is constantly self-critiquing. It's my way of relaxing and temporarily putting aside any pressures and dilemmas that I might have.

But on Tuesday night, I couldn't switch off, because all I could do was see myself through other people's eyes.

...

Virgin Wines have just delivered a crate to my door. I think I might be able to regain 'me' tonight without any problems

In a strange, spooky way, I think we possibly are

Have you had a delivery from Virgin Wines too then?

Matt Thomas — Ant Farm

link

Is it a bug, or a feature?

iCryptex.com

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Welcome to the Cult of Apple

Always gotta go one better, don't you

no matter how wasted I get, I always have complete recall. I remember everything in outstandingly clear detail.

I think, for my own sanity, it's probably good that I don't share that trait with you Sometimes it's better that I have no knowledge of what I do

Well, I certainly hope so — what with Sparkle coming up...

Here, Phishy Phishy Phishy...

email spam

I got a really weird email yesterday, one that had I not been in a Morning Haze™, I would have discounted immediately, but seeing that I was, left me bewildered for a few moments:

From: merchant@valuehost.com
Subject: [order ref 7119606] Credit Card Chargeback
Date: 25 May 2006 13:11:11 BDT
To: siobhan@eyefood.co.uk

Dear customer,

We have received a notice from your card service stating that there was a chargeback made by the owner of the card that you paid for your account with. This is a very serious matter. I have deducted the amount of the chargeback, GBP 119.40, from your account and added our standard fee of GBP 25.00 as well. (Now you can see your payment details in attachment.)

If there was some mistake, please let us know immediately so that we can get this situation resolved. We ask that you have the chargeback removed as soon as possible, as our account has already been debited for the amount in question. If you would prefer to make your payment using a new payment method that would be fine as well (you can use a different credit card or you may send a money order payable to Valuehost).

This is a time sensitive issue and must be resolved promptly at the request of the card service. Please email the billing team using the Web Administration Panel with information about how you are going to deal with this situation. I thank you for your time and hope to hear from you soon.

See your payment details in attachment.

Sincerely, Mark J. Burnett Valuehost Billing Department http://www.valuehost.com

The reasons it threw me for a moment, were because (a) the link seemed genuine and therefore I couldn't see the phishing potential, (b) I've got that many hosting plans with that many companies, and could therefore have one with Valuehost, and (c) I've just had a new credit card delivered, and may have missed a couple of 'update your account information' thingies.

But...

1. It's addressed to Siobhan. I don't use my 'female' identity or email address anywhere that asks for my credit card details.

2. In the headers, it comes from a btcentralplus.com IP address, not anything related to valuehost.com. I smell a bot.

3. "See your payment details in attachment." Bingo. It's not a phishing attempt, it's a virusy-trojan-type-thing trying to get me to open a .zip file.

Elsewhere on the web, however, a woman is stunned after trying to buy a dog from Cameroon and finding out she's been scammed

*sigh*

its something thats bugged me as I havent been able to see a pattern behind when it happens

I think what's struck me as most noticable about this particular moment of 'boyness' — because let's face it, I have as much irregularity in moment of wanting to dress as the next trannie — is that it's almost directly attributable to influence from outside of my own head, ie. it's not me not wanting to dress up because of a random emotion, rather it's the direct result of feeling like I have an audience for whom the idea of me dressing is an anomoly.

Extrapolating this though, I'm now wondering if the extent to which my dressing has proliferated over the course of the past few years is a direct result of being in contact with an environment and context where it's accepted, and encouraged, in an interesting mix of nature and nurture.

But the most disturbing thought for me, is that all this might prove just how weak-willed an individual I am, and just how much I let what other people think of me affect how I think about myself

A friend of mine has a little philosophical snippet that he brings up every once in a while — a turning-on-its-head version of Berkeley's "You are all just figments of my imagination"¹ in which he boldy states that he "is just a figment of everyone else's imagination".

I'm starting to wonder if I'm just a figment of everyone else's opinion.

¹ Yes, I know. My Philosophy is rusty. I'm grossly paraphrasing Berkeley.

Let The Tasting Commence

photo wine

An old friend is coming round to help me make a start on the wine that got delivered this morning. This one is rather nice — fruity and smooth