Month: March 2023

We’ve been under constant attack from the far right in recent months. Some would argue visibility isn’t what we need right now, it’s solidarity. We need both and today is important for so many reasons.

Trans Day of Visibility is more than just reminding people Trans people exist. It’s about us showing ourselves living our best lives. It’s how we prove to the rest of the world we’re no different from them. It’s how we tell them we’re not a threat. The more people see us as regular people the more they will stand up for us to be treated like regular people. If we don’t stand up and be seen then all they have to go by is reports they see in the media. We can’t let that be our narrative.

I came out in the summer of 2020. I started transitioning at a time when it wasn’t convenient to do so. I ended up not only losing my job, my family, my friends and my home, I lost my career too. I had to change careers because I changed my name. I can’t show my writing style by linking to stories that bear someone else’s name. Not without having to explain why that person is me even though we have different names.

I had to be visible before coming out. I worked in the news media business. I was quite visible in the local community. People knew who I was. I was a staple in the town. All the important people knew my name and recognized my face. SO when those things changed so did the way people treated me. Former friends turned into enemies. Family turned its back on me. I lost my house and had to move in with a trans friend who adopted me as her sister. I had to adjust. It wasn’t easy for me.

I have had to fight for my rights living in Texas. I was illegally discriminate against by the state when I tried to apply for food stamps. I was legally entitled to the benefit but the state said trans was not a protected class and they could discriminate against me. I had to take legal action and won. By doing that I made it easier for other trans people in Texas to get their food stamps. But I had to fight for them. I had to go through the ringer and be put in the newspaper for it to happen. I gave up my privacy so other trans people would have an easier time getting benefits they were legally entitled to themselves. Nobody showed me any gratitude for this just more trolls attacking me online.

I am tired of fighting. I wanna just live my life. That is how we win. We can’t all fight all the time. If we did we’d become too drained to keep going. We have to pick our battles. I chose to fight when I had no choice. It wasn’t easy for me. To be told by the state I wasn’t protected was heartbreaking. They tried to use that against me. That didn’t stop me from pushing forward with my legal complaint. I fought for you. I did it because I had no choice. And the thanks I get is trolls attacking me on the internet. People telling me to get a job. No matter how much I struggled in trying to find a job. It was disheartening. Then the legislative and administrative attacks on Trans and nonbinary people began in full earnest.

I don’t have any fight left in me to be honest. I put myself out there for others and got nothing in return. I won a legal battle most don’t even know was fought. That is discouraging in itself. Why should I keep fighting for people who won’t appreciate what I did for them already? I have to fight for myself. I have to be visible for my own well being. Trans Day of Visibility is about US living our best lives as best we can. By being seen as normal people we win the culture war. The legal victories will follow that.

Empire Records is a testament of changing tastes. I didn’t see this movie in it’s prime back in the 90’s early 2000s when it would have impacted me. I saw it a couple of years ago when I was living alone in a trailer house I bought. At the time I thought it was one of those hidden gems I missed out on. Upon second viewing I am scratching my head wondering what I ever saw in this film.

For starters the acting is all over the place. Some of it is terrible, some is passable none of it is good. The story doesn’t make a lick of sense. The scenes feel like they are just cut together without any rhyme or reason. It reeks of 90s MTV. I just didn’t get into it the second time.

This has happened before. I would watch a movie and become instantly enamored with it. Then years later when I try to revisit said movie I question my own sanity. I did this with Ghost World. To this day I can’t figure out what I ever saw in that film.

I don’t mind growing older. My tastes are bound to change. I think I must have been going through a 90s nostalgia phase when I watched it the first time because that’s the only explanation I have for walking away impressed. This movie did nothing for me on my second viewing except make me miss going to Hastings to brows the CD section.

Once the nostalgia wore off I realized there was nothing there. Likely because I didn’t see it when it was new I don’t have nostalgia for the specific film just the time period. I can honestly say I have little nostalgia for the 90s though. I listen to music from my youth because that’s what you do when you turn 40. I don’t, however, reminisce the good old days. I hated the 90s during the time I lived through it. I was happy to be rid of that awful decade.

I don’t know what got into me the first time around but I can honestly say I am glad the spell was broken. I doubt I will ever revisit this movie again. It did nothing for me the second time and I expected to enjoy it. I went in remembering how much I liked it. But then I sat there pondering my own existence for watching such rubbish.

Sometimes you have to leave a movie in the past. This is one of those films. If you missed out on it during it’s first run chances are you missed it entirely. It doesn’t work in todays world. I kept thinking there were far too many employees for such a small record store. Even back in the day I would have felt it was over staffed. I don’t remember Hastings having that many employees and it was a much larger store.

Then there is the Hastings factor. Obviously there was a store called Music Town which was likely a stand in for Sam Goody. I didn’t care for how oppressed the workers acted being bought by a chain. They made it sound like working for a corporate store would ruin their ability to have good times. I have worked for franchises and I have worked for mom and pop shops and I can tell you there is no difference other than the franchise you don’t have to wonder if they are going to make payroll.

I didn’t like this movie upon second viewing. This is a rare case of falling out of love with something I once enjoyed so much I bought a physical copy on DVD to enjoy it again and again. I don’t even know what happened to that DVD but I assure you it won’t be getting popped into my Playstation console anytime soon. Maybe I was drunk the first time I watched it? I don’t know but all I can say is I will avoid it like the plague going forward.

I don’t talk about my previous engagement much because it was so long ago it doesn’t even feel real anymore. It’s almost like it never happened.

I am in love with a woman named Christina. We met on the internet via Twitter. It was a long courtship that began with us chatting about the NBA finals via private messages. I wouldn’t trad my relationship with her for the world. She is the most special person I have ever met. Yet I still occasionally remember my failed relationship that nearly ended in marriage.

At the time I thought getting married was something I wanted out of life. Looking back on it I couldn’t tell you why I believed in it then so strongly whereas today I find it laughable at best. I don’t have a very positive outlook on marriage these days. But that’s not the point of this essay. I wanted to explore my feelings on another subject, love.

Two summers ago I wrote a series of articles chronicling all the women I thought I loved over the years. As I wrote through that series I came to realize most of them were nothing more than infatuations. I had an idealized version of love in my head that doesn’t match the real thing. I can tell you from my experiences with Christina I now fully understand what true love feels like. I didn’t before I met her.

I write this unsure of how I feel about Carmen, the woman I nearly married. I know we became engaged in a whirlwind of emotions that sprang from both of our broken pasts. We wanted to get married so badly we didn’t even stop to realize there wasn’t any true love between us. I had feelings for her but they weren’t love as I know it now.

I had a dream last night I was getting back together with Carmen. It was a long and complicated dream that involved some deeply buried memories resurfacing. It put me in a state of mind where I was in a pretty bad mood all day today. I don’t want to think about Carmen and what happened to her. I don’t like dwelling on how our relationship ended because it reminds me of the guilt I felt for the way she turned out.

I don’t have feelings for her anymore. I now understand that what I felt for her at the time was not love. It was something else. The both of us were using one another to better our own lives. She was using me to escape an uncomfortable home life. I was using her to live out a fantasy of what the American dream was supposed to be. I had a job working at Dominos. She was working as a teachers assistant. We both had plans to hurry up and get married as quickly as possible. Of course we didn’t have the support of either family we just wanted to be joined together to escape our respective lives. In the end it didn’t work out. She wound up in a mental heath facility committed most likely for life as she went insane. I ended up throwing myself into my music to the point I started a recording studio to distract me from my feelings.

Today I know what love looks like. When I wake up in the morning I count the minutes until I can see Christina. When I go to bed I feel guilty I can’t spend just a few more precious moments with her. Sometimes I lie in bed texting her as I fall asleep. When I look in her eyes I look into her soul. I see the counterpart to my own soul. She is beyond a shadow of a doubt the very reason I try to be a better person. Neither of us are using one another. We have a mutually beneficial relationship that stems from wanting what is best for the other person. I cry when she is sad. I smile when she is glad. I celebrate her victories and I share every moment with her I can make the time to during the day.

It took me 39 years before I knew what true love felt like. Now that I have it I can move on beyond my past. I can forget about the woman I almost married. I can look towards the future with my new partner, the most wonderful girlfriend I have ever had. I can live a full life knowing I found my soulmate. I couldn’t say that before.

A rebranding is in order. It was inevitable. This website has already gone through a number of changes over the years. It started as a comic book fan site. Then it was a horror and comic book blog. Then just a general purpose blog for my random thoughts. Now it’s time I make some changes again.

First things first, this website is not going to change. I worked hard pouring my soul into my writing here. I wanna keep it loose and open ended. This is my website. It bears my name. That being said some things are going to change.

I have made several different YouTube channels over the years. I have gone through many phases with multiple changes to content formatting. I have struggled to find a consistent brand during that time. I have created vlogs. I have made toy videos. I have done movie reviews and podcasts as well as a news cast I tried to keep up once a month. None of these projects worked because my heart wasn’t in it.

I can’t decide if I wanna make a brand new channel or rebrand the content on my main channel. I am kinda struggling with how to move forward. I haven’t been inspired to make a video in months. I chose the simple vlog format because it was easy to produce content but I forgot the one short coming of the format, topics. I have trouble coming up with topics. I didn’t want it to become a channel that mirrored the content I previously produced under my old channel, The Spiders Lair. so I decided to forgo talking about horror, comics, movies and video games on purpose. I didn’t want it to be a trans culture channel either. So I left it alone while I spent time with my thoughts.

Here is what I discovered. Everything keeps going back to horror. I like talking about horror movies. I enjoy watching horror movies more than any other type of movie. Out of the thousand plus DVDs I own 2/3rds of them are horror. I want to talk about horror only. I want to watch movies and then share my thoughts on that movie. I don’t want to edit videos. I don’t want high production values just a simple horror vlog. But I wanna make sure horror is the central focus of the channel moving forward.

Here is what I am trying to decide. Should I kill all previous content and replace it with a horror vlog, or should I start a new channel exclusively for talking horror? I don’t wanna start over again with zero subscribers. It is so difficult to get people to subscribe as it is. However I don’t want to close the door on open-ended content either. Someday I might get the whim to go back and make more toy videos just for fun. I don’t wanna confuse my audience by cluttering my horror channel up with non horror content. If I rebrand I need to decide if I go all in or create a new channel. This is what I am struggling with today. If I make a horror exclusive channel I need to come up with a brand name. Something I can market. A part of me wants to bring back The Spiders Lair. A part of me wants to return to playing the character The Retro Witch. Still a small part of me wants to try and think of something different. Something original. I don’t like going back to the well so to speak.

I can’t make this decision over night. I don’t wanna make any drastic changes right away. I don’t want to be impulsive. I would like to take my time and think this through. I don’t do that enough thanks largely in part to being bipolar. However I do want to make a change soon because I am itching to get back to making new content again. So if I rebrand my channel I wanna figure out what to do with my old content. Otherwise I need to figure out a name for my new channel. Something that stands out. In the mean time I need to get additional input from other sources before I make a decision. The inevitable podcast will follow most likely once I make a decision.

I have always struggled with self esteem. I have such low esteem of myself I often feel invisible. Nothing makes me feel more worthless than when there is a pop culture thing I am supposed to like I just can’t stand. Especially when all my like-minded peers are into the thing I don’t like.

I have always loved Star Wars. You are supposed to like Star Wars. You are supposed to like a lot of things that I do like for instance The Terminator franchise, Ghostbusters, the MCU, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I also enjoy a lot of things you are supposed to hate such as Star Wars the Phantom Menace, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Harry Potter, and The Twilight Saga. When it comes to music my tastes are quite popular. I like pop music. I like the MOST popular music mostly Lada Gaga, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and the like. The more popular something is the more I tend to dig it.

Except for a few certain things. There are things I am supposed to like I just can’t stand. For example the Halloween movies. Listen I am a big time horror fan. I rarely come across a horror movie I don’t like. I even enjoy the schlocky b movies. But despite my best efforts I can’t get into Halloween at all. I have tried. I’ve seen nearly every film in the franchise and the more I try to force myself to like them the more they push me away.

This causes feelings of alienation. Inadequacy. Low Self Esteem. And self loathing. I feel worthless. Like a true horror fan would LOVE Halloween. Does hating it make me less of a fan of the genre I proclaim to love so much? Especially since the slasher sub-genre is my personal favorite. Hell my favorite movie of all time is a slasher. So it’s not like I am a stranger to the genres tropes. I get it. I am all for the kills. Yet as hard as I try I can’t bring myself to like Halloween.

There are other things you are supposed to like I can’t stand such as Star Trek, the band Queen, Legend of Zelda and most problematically for me is the Marvel movies. While I do enjoy most of the Avengers mainline films, I feel the market is over saturated with MCU and the vast majority of it turns me off.

I can’t help but wonder if there is something wrong with me personally. I know you are allowed to dislike certain things, I get it. But when it’s something every single one of your peers loves, and you typically have similar taste otherwise, it makes me feel like a mutant or an alien only pretending to be human. I want to like the same things my friends like. I want to enjoy the movies I am supposed to enjoy. It makes me question what is wrong with me? Sometimes I think nothing. I am allowed to be different. And there it is. I just feel different. As bad as that makes me feel sometimes. I suppose that’s okay but it doesn’t change the fact I feel like a poser.

Maybe I am not as much of a horror fan as I proclaim to be? Or maybe I am looking at it all wrong? Maybe the way you enjoy the films is to forget about the non existent story and just enjoy the kills? I do that with so many other slasher movies why can’t I do that with the mother of them all? The original slasher that started the trend? I guess I have some thinking to do. Maybe I am being too harsh a critic. Maybe I set my standards too high for something that is meant to be schlock? All I know is I am tired of wanting to fit in but being unable to do so properly.

I recently got to become an aunt. It happened when my adopted sister adopted a teenager of her own. This new child has become the newest member of my family and I couldn’t be happier I found her.

I’ve had a rocky relationship with my blood family. Most of them are ultra conservative Evangelical Christians so they tend to not want anything to do with me. Thus I turned to my found family. I moved in with my adopted sister Robin two years ago last month. I lived with her and her wife for 6 months before they helped me get into a place of my own. I can honestly say they have been better for me than my own blood family.

There is a catch. Keyohnee, my new niece, lives in Quebec, Canada. Right now Robin is on a quest to fetch her and bring her back to the States where she belongs. Following a series of events she finally has a firm date when she should arrive. I couldn’t be more excited to meet her. During the few weeks since I found out about her we have bonded quite a bit. We mostly chat on Facebook Messenger but we also call each other on Discord at least once a day when we can.

I have grown attached to this girl and I am anxious to have her be a bigger part of my life. As a fully grown trans woman I understand the trials she will face living in Texas first hand. I plan on being a part of her support network. I will revel in the right to get to protect her from this world as best as I can.

When you are queer your found family becomes more important to you than blood relatives who stabbed you in the back ever were. I am willing to admit I already have love in my heart for this dear child. I can’t wait to get to know her in person. Only a few short days away and I get my wish. A niece I get to bond with on a regular basis. I am too excited for words. I want the whole world to know she is my family and I intend to see to it she is treated well.

I have been working hard to rebuild my relationship with the Goddess Brigid after we had a falling out last year. I don’t wanna go into the details but she forgave me and she has been testing my faith in her trying to build up trust. The other night she earned my trust.

I was watching WWE Monday Night Raw with my niece and girlfriend. I am working seven days in a row this week so I been beat ass tired every night. I decided to throw in the towel and go to bed early. Except I forgot to take my evening pills which includes a dream suppressant. I immediately fell a sleep and began dreaming I was in the ring with the big wrestlers and it felt real every blow to my body. It was excruciating so I forced myself awake. As a life long fan of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise I have trained myself in the art of lucid dreaming. I can wake up on  a moments notice.

Once I was awake I tested my faith in Brigid by calling out to her. I asked her to protect me from evil. I also asked her to give me good dreams. She reminded me I forgot to take my dream pills but I insisted I was trusting her completely so I didn’t take my pill. She immediately responded by rewarding me with an out of body experience. She lifted me up out of my body and I hovered above myself for a few moments. Then she let me fly around the room experiencing the euphoria of the moment before I forced myself awake. When pressed why I woke up I told her I was still scared. She comforted me and I spent the rest of the night having wonderful dreams. Peaceful dreams. Comforting dreams.

Needless to say between this and a few more answered prayers she has earned my trust. I am now confident in saying she is my Mother Goddess and I trust her with my life.

This wasn’t my first ever out of body experience but it was the most euphoric one. It also came with the knowledge and comfort knowing my Goddess was watching over me. Tonight I will sleep well knowing she is still watching me. Only, no offense to her, I will be taking my pills tonight just in case.