Virtual Gypsyz

8 Julio 2003
We just arrived on Little Corn Island and we’re staying at a place called Casa Iguana. I am immediately in love with this place. It seems to be exactly what I was looking for. We’ve only been here a few hours and I’m feeling like I could stay a whole month. The best word to describe it is TREASURE. Or maybe, rather, Fantasy Island. I love this cabin with its comfy sofa and fluffy bed and patio that looks out to the turquoise/navy/aqua blue ocean. I love the lodge where you can drink tea/coffee, read and listen to chilled out jazz. Again, a TREASURE. It’s such a cliche, I know, and a horrible way for a writer to describe something, but F it - I’m inspired, I feel happy, I feel like I can rest here for a while.

Snap, crackle pop, the leaves of the palm trees go when raindrops hydrate with each drop blowing in the breeze in the afternoon tehy whisper and twitter sweet nothings and a “Hello, welcome to Casa Iguana where safety doesn’t hide in a holster beneath a blazer or luxury doesn’t mean room service and a concrete swimming pool.”

21 Julio 2003
Technology is making it so that gender will be just another characteristic like eye color and height. Does it really matter if I am male or female? If I’m both, and you want to stick to your gender roles, then that means I have double the power of any regular man or woman. I am the best of both worlds. If technology is making it so that men and women can do the same work, who cares which parts they have underneath their clothes? And speaking of clothes, who cares what they wear? If a woman can wear pants today when that was never acceptable 100 years ago, then eventually, time will allow for acceptance of a male to wear dresses and makeup. Don’t look at me like that either, like it will never happen because I know you’ve seen those male models in fashion shows wearing makeup and questionable outfits. And not all of them are gay, believe me.

“Super Human”
I am the 21st century human. I am more advanced than the average human because I have tapped into both my male and female energy. Just because it sounds crazy to you doesn’t mean it won’t someday become scientifically accepted as the direction evolution chose for humans. People who are labeled crazy by the rest of society are usually held up as geniuses after their death - Einstein, Van Gogh, Copernicus. Someday, instead of being labeled as freaks, we will be the preferred candidates at places of employment and eventually become the presidents and CEOs because unlike men, we will tap into our female energy for compassion and balance in decsion making and unlike females, we won’t let power get to our heads and become mega bitches to younger female employees. We won’t need maternity leave and we won’t screw our secretaries. There won’t be any need for sexual harrassment laws because the battle for power between the sexes would be an ancient notion for an intersex workplace.

In a sense, these small changes will echo throughout the rest of the world and ultimately extinguish the fires of war created by men and supported by women. With male and female energy together and finally in balance, everyone, whether they literally go through sex change operations or not, will go through an intersex transformation. From birth, children will be taught to be strong but sympathetic, courageous but not arrogant, to cry without feeling ashamed - no roles will be assigned by the help of toys. Barbies and Matchbox cars will either be completely trashed or dispersed among both males and females indiscriminately. Will this make for a boring world? Without the beauty of women to complement the power of a man? No. A woman can feel free to wax her eyebrows and dye her hair. A man can feel free to work on his muscles at the gym. It’s all in the mind this transformation will occur. Despite all our appearances, it’s our minds that make us who we are.

But isn’t there something beautiful about a man being a man and having completely opposite characteristics to a woman? And when they join together, they are perfect equal and opposite forces? Of course. No one is saying that ideal should be obliterated. The ideal is even more so heightened with men and women who understand the male and female energy within their own selves, respective of their partners.

Living two years in the Upper Tenderloin of San Francisco among trannies taught me what it means to be a woman. For years, I had been experimenting, playing out trial by error scenarios and trying to learn how to function inside this body I was given. But in a society that no longer strictly defines the roles assigned to each sex, I was confused, innundated by the choices flying at my face from every angle, as well as disgusted by the media’s depiction of modern femininity. When I moved to the Tenderloin, the year was 2001, the same year I got laid off and left my boyfriend of three years who I was supposed to marry. I was going through a major identity crisis trying to figure out the meaning of work as a single, educated woman; how a man would ever fit into the picture again; why I was living 3,000 miles away from my family in Florida; and tryin to make and keep friendships with other single working women. Every day I looked out my window and marveled at the caricatures of women walking the sidewalks.

“Do they think they’re women?” I would wonder.

“Do they understand how confusing it is to be a woman in this day and age?”

“Do they hope to get married and have children like other average women?”

Then I realized that if it is confusing for me, surely it was an even more complex, confusing process for them. I was questioning my own identity, but at least I didn’t have OTHER people constantly questioning it, too. While my struggle is mostly internal, they have the external and biological forces constantly working against them. ——>>>>>>>