...now what?

Okay, so over the last couple of weeks I've had a lot of thinking and a lot of surprises and I guess I'm pretty much admitting that I've got some sort of vocation, some sort of calling. Though said admitting didn't happen without a lot of angst and 'say what' and generally looking over my shoulder to see who They where looking at oh you meant me?

Yeah.

So I'm in a state of 'err now what?'. I think I probably need to do some looking around and seeing what one does with a vocation. I mean, okay, one can go to seminary. And then...be a priest. Or teach theology. Or do mission work. Or many, many things I don't know about I'm sure.

...of course the first resource I find when I poke at Google is a DVD entitled 'Fishers of Men'...for the purpose of 'actively invite[ing] men to consider a vocation to the priesthood'. My emphasis. This from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

When I go on to read their FAQ on priesthood, ordination, and the seminary I note two things: one, they're pretty profligate (date I say deliberately so) in their use of 'he' and 'man' and such. The second? That reading the question-and-answer about 'What is the meaning of the laying on of hands?' and 'Why does the ordinand lie prostrate during the ordination?' brings up such a longing in me...

I'm going to skip the whole discussion of women priests for now, because it's been addressed so thoroughly by others. And if there's an issue for me, that's not it; the church I go to has no issue whatsoever with women as priests. I don't believe they have any problems with me being bisexual, either. I suspect if there's an issue it'll be the fact that I have two boyfriends. How that's going to shake down, I don't know. I certainly don't have the theological knowledge to address it myself, other than to point out that plenty of guys in the Old Testament had more than one wife and what goes around, comes around. Which argument I don't think would get me very far.

In any case. That's not so much the question right now. The questions is, in fact, 'what now?'. Jesus said 'Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.' And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

So how does one go about that these days? I have no net to forsake. I have a job I could give up, but then I'd have no money and it's hard to do the good thing when you're living in an alley. Besides which, the cats would be upset.

I don't feel the need to figure this out right away. I've got time. I've got other things to worry about, too. Which I feel bad about -- what's the lack of sufficient job compared to a calling from God? -- but again, I need to have my life in order before I can go helping others.

So I guess I pray, and I think about things; I talk to people, and do some reading. If any of the many clergy out there who read this have a 'vocation story' you've posted to your blog, I'd love a link; reading about other people's experiences has helped me a lot in dealing with mine.

Transformation

Tonight my dear friends in the Order of St. Michael at the Order's annual Retreat will be doing a ritual of Christian Transformation. Though I can't make it to West Chester to be with them, I'm planning on attending in spirit.

I've come a long, long way since the baptism and confirmation I was stuck with. I didn't agree with them, then, but didn't see a way out -- but I've gone through that elsewhere and don't need to rehash it yet again. I'm guessing that my repetition of the whole thing is a bit of guilt over the lie of it; tonight I'm hoping to inch closer to making it the truth.

Because I don't feel right taking communion while that lie is still on me. And the only way to change that is to make it the truth. And that's going to be a long and slow process; but tonight, I think, will help.

So will tomorrow. Mother Laura found me a local Ecumenical Catholic Church which looks very welcoming and has services late enough on Sunday morning that I might actually be not only conscious, but actually dressed. And I'm going to go. I emailed their outreach lady, so now I can't wuss out. Again. Like I've been.

I'm nervous as anything. You'd think I'd got a date with the hottest guy on the football team. "The level of 'OMG what if I say the wrong thing and he hates me forever' is, uh, pretty high.

Because yeah, I'm going to church. And I could dress conservatively and go up for communion and not say much of anything, and nobody's notice a thing. But I'm not (well, I am going to dress conservatively, but). I'm going to ask, after the service, if people aren't too busy, to talk to the priest and see if I'm really welcome there. Yep, bisexual. Polyamorous. Currently, in fact, in a relationship with two men. Interested in Hindu spirituality and not planning to change that (in fact, my next move after this will be to find the local Hindu temple and make a similar exploratory trip). And then I'll see what he says.

It's about seven; about nine Eastern. Time for me to go, and see about that transformation.

Six Weird Things

Again in response to Mother Laura, who challenged me to name Six Weird Things about myself. Here goes...

1) When I'm standing, especially when I'm leaning against something at the same time, I have a tendency to lean to my right. A lot. To the point that I'm off-balance and my right leg hurts and I'm sure it looks awfully silly. No idea why; years of trying have only begun to break the habit.

2) For years, my food couldn't touch my other food. I made dams out of mashed potatoes so the gravy wouldn't get in the corn, and despaired when the juice from the corn got in the mashed potatoes. If I went back for seconds, I'd rinse my plate off first. Eventually my family gave up, and gave me divided trays, like you get in the cafeteria in school. This made me happy.

3) Ever since I moved out to Colorado, that little bit of obsession has nearly entirely gone away, along with my mushroom allergy, my insomnia, my popcorn allergy (not corn...just popcorn), the remains of my dog allergy (which in fairness was going away anyway), and my intense dislike of green beans and cooked carrots. However, celery is still The Evil.

4) When I dress like a man, I move enough like one that my (gay) boyfriend says I could pass as one easily. This is still the case when I dress like a woman, to the point that I worry whether or not I'm 'passing' as a woman...even though I'm entirely biologically female.

5) Did I mention the gay boyfriend? No, I'm not sure how it happened, either, but I try not to think about it too hard in case it stops working.

6) I blow things up in my spare time. But only under very specific circumstances. (The gonnes are in the style of the early 1400s and yes, they really do go *boom*.)

Not even sure who reads this who hasn't already been tagged, so consider yourself tagged if you like, and if not, not.

Late, late night.

So Tim's been sick as anything. Coughing, achy, fever going up and down and up and down and up and down. Course he didn't tell me about the history of spiking fevers with delirium until last night, so I wasn't too worried until then -- as soon as he said that, I knew I was going to be staying at his and Ray's place for the night instead of my apartment.

For those still catching up, Tim is the gay man mentioned in my earlier post, and my lover. Perhaps an odd thing for a woman to say, but the situation is an odd thing. He's perfectly capable of appreciating a pretty woman; it's the typical female way of thinking that's not attractive to him, and apparently I'm sufficiently male in my thought processes that I count as a guy in his world. Which is fine by me; nay, bloody brilliant. Mostly I try not to think about it too hard, in case it stops working.

Ray is his boyfriend. Ray's more into girls (and he's plenty into me, and vice-versa) but somehow Tim and he work just fine. I did say it was an odd thing, didn't I?

Ray means well, but he also sleeps pretty deeply, and hasn't got a lot of experience with fevers. I do, and I sleep lightly, so I figured I'd crash on the couch and if I heard Tim talking to orcs (which is what he did the last time he had a bad fever), I'd haul his butt to the hospital.

Tim couldn't sleep, so he alternated between lying in bed for a while and snuggling with me on the couch. And the fever went up, and down, and up, and down, and never quite reached 102 but kept coming close. And then the fever would break and he's shiver and I'd wrap the blanket around him and hold him close and pray. And then it'd go up and he'd moan and sweat and ... it was awful.

Probably would have been fine had the thermometer not broken. I can tell if he's warmer than usual but I can't judge it finely enough, so that was when I decided it was time for the hospital run. Woke up Ray, got everyone bundled up and into the car, and off we went.

Which was the part I hadn't been looking forward to. I don't like hospitals much anyway, and on top of that there was the possibility of them giving Ray and I a hard time when we both wanted to stay with Tim.

Which they totally didn't. Didn't blink, didn't look at us funny. Nothing.

Ray went to deal with the financial stuff while I helped Tim out with the triage nurse. He was hanging on pretty hard but I could tell the fever was making him fuzzy-brained. Ray wasn't done when Tim and I went back, but they readily agreed to go and get Ray when he was done with the money.

And there we waited. And I know anyone paying any much attention could tell what was going on. Ray and I holding hands, then Tim and I holding hands, then Tim and Ray holding hands, depending on who was where and needed a hand to hold. I fell asleep against Ray at one point. Ray expresses anxiety by hanging onto Tim and telling him he loves him so I know they got a good eyeful of that. And? Not a blink, not a mutter, not an odd look. Everyone who came in quite deliberately addressed all three of us.

The best part, though, was the way the three of us worked as a team throughout the whole situation. It's what we've been trying for, but it's hard. Tim and I are used to working together; Tim and Ray are used to working together. Ray and I are still getting to know each other (though it's going very, very well so far). And integrating the three of us into a whole has had fits and starts, great leaps forward and a few backward. It's slowly getting better, though. Little by little.

And that's fine. We don't want to rush it; we don't want to rush into anything. I've spent years and years trying to find the right two people to be with and have had it fail terribly every single time before now. I don't want to mess this up; it's got far too much potential to be very, very good.

And Tim? Ibuprofin is keeping the fever under control. He's got a mild case of pneumonia but we caught it early and he's already on drugs. And they gave him a nebulizer treatment for his wheezing.

See, his father has severe emphysema. Can't even visit Tim in Colorado because there simply isn't enough oxygen in the air. Has to do a nebulizer treatment every couple hours or so. Eventually, and probably fairly soon, that emphysema will kill him.

Tim's been trying to quit smoking for years. Hasn't smoked for a couple of days anyway, since he's been so sick. But that nebulizer treatment? Really drove home that if he doesn't do something about it, he's going to be his father. So he's said 'this time, for sure' and I'm going to do what I can to help him stick with that.

I'm at their place now, even though Tim and Ray are both asleep. I don't need to be; Tim's fever is well under control and Ray doesn't seem to be coming down with it. But I just feel better here, where my two men are, blogging and catching up with email, and sneaking into the bedroom every once in a while just to watch them sleep.

In the interests of all bigendered folks everywhere...

The four links at the bottom of this post reference a very lovely story I first saw run by the BBC last week. Seems in the process of signing folks up for the upcoming elections, they ran across one Chanda Musalman. Physically male, but considered by herself and the rest of the village to be female, Chanda asked the election team to simply erase the terms 'male' and 'female' on her form. Not only did they oblige, they instead wrote in 'both'.

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to put 'both' on your records where it says 'gender'?

(Okay, for those of us who are, anyway.)

They haven't yet worked out how this will affect Chanda's marriage rights. With luck, they'll decide that 'both' means 'she can marry anyone', not 'she can marry nobody' (or, I suppose, 'she can marry another "both" but that's it').

I note with amusement that the BBC carefully avoided using any pronouns whatsoever when referring to Chanda. I use the female pronoun, of course; that's the way she thinks of herself. Another story, this one in the India Times, makes this clearer than the BBC story -- Chanda 'dressed up as a woman and danced at weddings and other social functions in Nepal's Terai plains' -- though that same story persistently refers to Chanda as 'he' and 'him'.

mysocalledgaylife.com quotes one Sunil Pant, head of Nepal's Blue Diamond Society, as referring to Chanda as a 'metis'. I'd only ever heard the term used in Werewolf: the Apocalypse but like so many other thigns it seems they stole it from elsewhere. In Nepal, apparently, 'metis' is defined as 'a man who dresses and identifies as a woman'. Whether or not it's considered derogatory I don't know, though I doubt Sunil meant it that way. In any case, he was the one who encouraged Chanda to 'demand the citizenship that truly represents themselves, not as a man or a women but as transgender'. This article uses 'she' and 'her' for Chanda, not surprisingly for a site that's likely a bit more open to the concept than the India Times. MSN wins points for being the only mainstream news organization I've run into so far which does as well.

Rather to my surprise I haven't come across anyone denouncing the decision. I'm sure it'll come; in the meantime, I'm just gonna sit back and dream of 'both'ness.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6329613.stm

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Rest_of_World/Nepal_recognises_first_gay_citizen_as_both_he_she/articleshow/1565078.cms

http://www.mysocalledgaylife.com/usa/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3444&Itemid=66

http://content.msn.co.in/News/Stories/FeatureIANS_050207_1340.htm

Introduction

I am a bisexual woman with occasional delusions of maleness, in a loving relationship with a gay man, who's in a loving relationship with another man, who's really more interested in women but makes the occasional exception. (We're hoping to close the triangle, so to speak, but that's another day's weirdness.) I frequently occupy a chat room filled with transwomen, women like me who really want nothing more some days than a cock to call their very own, and an assortment of other odd and kinky sorts. I can name you four five seven long-term stable triads offhand, and if I sit and think about it I can probably add a couple more. I've participated in a lot of attempts to add to that total, with, alas, fairly ugly results.

I say all this not in an attempt to add to my queer cred, cos I'm not worried about that. Sometimes, though, it's of use to write it all out and then just sit back and look at the weirdness that's become my life.

It's a pretty instructive weirdness at times, I'll admit. I can't think of a lot of situations you could throw at me that would, well, throw me. Except that my own life throws me on a pretty regular basis, and as I doubt I'm the only one out there, I figured that writing about it would help, and so would putting it out there where anyone can have a look if they like.