Sunday, 25th June, 2006

Blurry, With A Lot Of Red

photo sparkle

Would yous all please hurry up and get home and write detailed (and accurate) accounts of the past couple of days so I can find out what the fuck I did last night?

I remember shouting at people, and falling flat on my face outside AXM. I remember continuosly being ordered to leave me hair down by A Random Girl™ on Canal Street. I remember a drunk beggar shouting at me for buying a flashing sparkly thing off a Chinese woman, and not giving my money to him.

And I remember telling Becky and Jane that they were my "besht mates, and Ay fuckin love yoush".

But aside from that, I remember very little indeed.

LOL — one of these days

I always get far too drunk to take photos, but the few that I did are on Flickr. Joanna has a few I've noticed on her photostream, and I presume April will be shoving a wodge of good ones up to supplement her 15Peter20 shots of me

IMG2ASCII

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Hours of fun

/me engages rapid Protect-My-Public-Image Editing Skillz

Did anyone actually take a picture of me in that dress looking pretty? Or was I a complete trainwreck all night

Do As You're Told Curran

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Part of a display in the Manchester Art Gallery. I'd spent the most of the time at Sparkle dressed as a guy — someone was trying to tell me something

...

Jane, BTW that's not a pants photo at all. I really like it. I have no idea what exactly I'm doing in it, but I still like it

But you should see the one I didn't upload

Jo, I'm going to regret this, but email it to me. I have to see it now

Dear God. My teeth...

Thank you for not sharing that with the world

Two Very Different Head-Spaces

self going-out fear

You know, all that "I don't remember what I did" stuff was a complete lie. I remember pretty much all of what happened last night.

But that's not really important. What's important is a certain feeling I had this weekend — a feeling that might go some way to explain exactly why I spent the vast majority of my time in Manchester dressed as a bloke.

I'm not sure it was noticed or not, and perhaps it's just a reflection on the way I've been feeling recently, but it was a particularly weird feeling to be stood on Canal Street, surrounded by the great and the good of the TG world, wearing a jacket and jeans.

Part of me loves that though. Part of me (and this is exactly the same thing that was behind the original intention behind my Sometimes... picture) loves to be defiant and buck against the trend, The fact that all around me there were men dressed as women, enjoying every single fucking minute of it, yet noticing one of their number not participating was, frankly, delicious to me.

It's kinda like "I don't feel the need. I can do this whenever I like". Maybe.

But, truth be told, there were other factors at work in my adherance to an Armani wardrobe rather than a frothy Ebay one.

I was scared.

Shit scared, to be blunt.

I remember sitting in April 's apartment in The Place, as the general feelings of "Right. Let's start to get ready to go out" were being mooted. And I wished that I'd taken my clothes and make-up round there so I could have joined in with the whole 'preparatory' thing.

But, as I alluded to in my staged melodramatic email to the Angels (I caught one fish), I wasn't staying in The Place — my sister had nabbed us a free apartment on the other side of The Village.

...

I mean, yeah, it was about two streets down from Canal Street — and yeah, you could see Princess Street (I know!) from the window. But still. I didn't know the neighbourhood.

And I also noted a large chav contingency floating around when we first got there.

...

Look, basically, I was really worried about Running The Gauntlet™. I was particularly worried about the traffic lights where we'd have to stop.

Knowing full well that I was intending on wearing The Red Dress™, I was shit-scared about how exactly I was going to pull it off waiting for the little green man.

I was trying to describe this feeling to a few people during the day, and the best I could come up with was this:

"I'm not in the right frame of mind at the moment. Right now, I'm in a 'OMG Everyone is looking at me!' kind of mood. What I need to be in, is an 'OMG! Everyone! Is! Looking! At! Me!' kind of mood"

There is a huge difference between those two states of mind. And not just in the amount of exclamation marks involved. One is passive, timid, and insular. The other is extroverted, dominant, and downright agressive.

(and maybe a little drunk)

When it actually came down to it, I was fine no, I was more than fine. I was on top of the fucking world. The whole evening I heard people saying "Wow" when I walked past them — trannies and vanillas alike. On the way back to the apartment, for example, April and I got into a whole world of back-patting with some random people at a bus-stop.

It was one compliment after the other. And d'ya know what? Excuse the vanity, and ignore the photographic evidence, but I looked fucking hot last night.

Or maybe it was just the dress.

Gay Book Arson a Protest About Homelessness?

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Totally not the issue at stake, but I read "In her statement, Graham said that she went to a remote area of the library" and it was enough to do a head-flip for me — (morons.org)

YouTube — Shirley Pehlps-Roper on Fox News

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O. M. G.

Yeah! Go on April! Stick a picture of me weeing online! It'll be funny!

photo

Yes, but I'm not going to. For to make you look silly

Becky, go for it. Use Erin. Does this mean my other work is down?

Oh fuck

Well, if it's any help Selina, what I find a real catalyst to get me out of that head-space and into the other, is the company of other people. As my sister will probably confirm, I was a pacing mess as we waited in the flat for April and Julius to turn up.

With the right people around you, I think it's an easy shift into a mentality of "Fuck 'em all" — from shuffling timidly to striding defiantly.

I do wish you'd come at the weekend. I understand why you didn't, but I still think you would have loved it.

can I have Shirley Phelps Roper on my side please

You realise she's the nutjob on the right in that video Kate?