{"id":8370,"date":"2021-05-07T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=8370"},"modified":"2021-05-20T21:28:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T01:28:52","slug":"you-say-allo-i-say-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2021\/05\/you-say-allo-i-say-goodbye\/","title":{"rendered":"You Say Allo; I Say Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"initial-letter\">\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">My second face session went even better than the first. After all the new people at Planned Parenthood the other day, we got a new nurse here who kinda rocked to be honest; she seemed like a person it might be cool to know. She marveled at the confidence I had walking in, &#8220;this little gothic steam-punk diva.&#8221; Which was, uh, one way to put it I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;re making progress, but there&#8217;s not much to really talk about yet. At best we&#8217;re like a quarter or a third done. And it&#8217;s working! Just gotta keep on keeping on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The return though, mask all full of the smell of burnt hair\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI didn&#8217;t even make the bus before the misadventures began. First I swear to God I got a wolf whistle from a car as I crossed the street. Then while I sat at the stop, under the little bus-gazebo structure, whatever it is, there was the, uh, social interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This guy ambled up from my right\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand to his credit, he did keep his distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Excuse me miss,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I wonder if I could have a word with you.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I felt this boulder in my stomach. Here we go. What do we do here? &#8220;&#8230; Er, thank you so much for expressing an interest,&#8221; I said, &#8220;but no, I&#8217;m okay.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He boggled at me. &#8220;You&#8217;re <em>okay<\/em>?&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Yeah, I&#8217;m okay,&#8221; I nodded. After a beat I asked, &#8220;Are <em>you<\/em> okay?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was flustered but determined. &#8220;I just want to get to know you,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And well, fuck. There it was. &#8220;Well I&#8217;m very flattered,&#8221; I said, &#8220;but that&#8217;s all right. I&#8217;m not\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI don&#8217;t do that sort of thing.&#8221; I tried so very hard to keep my calm, to get ahead of the situation, to use an affirming, if firm, tone. This is not a scenario where I want to mess with a male ego. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even so, he was getting frustrated. &#8220;What sort of thing? All I want to do is get to know you,&#8221; he repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Yes, well, thank you for the gesture, seriously.&#8221; I made a point of looking right at him, leaning in. Acknowledging what he was doing, even as I refused to entertain it. &#8220;But right now I&#8217;d really prefer to just keep my space.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately he did back off and leave me alone, though it took a few rounds to make myself clear\u00e2\u20ac\u201dif the bus hadn&#8217;t arrived just then I&#8217;m not sure how long this would have continued to drag on. He boarded right after me, and sat behind somewhere, putting me on a sort mild alert the whole ride home. I wasn&#8217;t sure exactly where he was, or when he meant to get off. I continued to document things as I sat, just for&#8230; reasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I made it home fine. There were no further events. I don&#8217;t want to make more of it than it was. I mean, he did keep several paces away. He did actually say hello and ask if we could talk. And in the end he did accept that I wasn&#8217;t having it. But gee was he assertive. I&#8217;m so bad at people stuff anyway\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I expect learning to navigate eager horny dudes is hard for anyone, never mind this timid autism space cadet girl here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s this diplomatic balance. I feel a need to handle male pride very carefully, because\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit&#8217;s probably fine, but, well, things have been <em>known to happen <\/em>at times. And being trans only heightens the danger. Socially I&#8217;m not good enough to really have a sense about any of this, so it&#8217;s just this blanket caution I&#8217;m trying to exercise. Not paranoia, but&#8230; one will be mindful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway. I guess this is my life now. These are the decisions one makes. I can&#8217;t control other people; I can only work on myself. So I&#8217;d better figure some shit out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which isn&#8217;t to suggest I never got this kind of thing before\u00e2\u20ac\u201djust, uh, not from dudes, typically. Only very occasionally. But I didn&#8217;t know what to do about horny allos then, and it freaked me out even coming from women. The exact dynamics here are\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 perhaps a little more treacherous. And gee whiz are they continuous. Going outside is kind of this whole thing for me lately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t want people being horny on me. I don&#8217;t care who they are. I&#8217;m just Azure. There are, I am certain, plenty of <em>other horny people <\/em>toward whom you might better direct your energies. Nothing&#8217;s ever going to happen here. Allos go home.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My second face session went even better than the first. After all the new people at Planned Parenthood the other day, we got a new nurse here who kinda rocked to be honest; she seemed like a person it might be cool to know. She marveled at the confidence I had walking in, &#8220;this little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1156,1192,1102,1123],"class_list":["post-8370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-azure","tag-harassment","tag-sexuality","tag-transition","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8370"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8423,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8370\/revisions\/8423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}