Rest in peace, Rosa Parks.

Looks like my purity test score dropped 30% while I was in California.

Guess I did have a good time. Also explains why it’s hard to explain the trip to the parents.

I went to the Shining Mountain Café’s one-year anniversary party tonight. The whole crowd from Fractalia was there, and I ended up going, getting my cello, and jamming along. I haven’t had this much fun playing music ever.

Stosch kept hitting on me . Oddness, but kinda fun. I am so glad I know where my heart is these days.

Happy, tired and signing off,

Aria

I really dislike the sensation of having testosterone back in my system. Since my bags were stolen, I haven’t been able to take the usual pills, and I feel tense and now, after a few days, I see the rougher parts of my personality come out and it frustrates me. I start to wonder where I went.

eliottpp gave me a spare copy of Trans Forming Families, which he ordered a dozen of and sent to every member of his family (An act of bravery and pride that I am still in awe of and wish I could bring myself to do.) and I’ve been reading it. It struck me how different growing up was for me than most girls like me: I didn’t have school as a major force in my life, and what little school I did have didn’t have much of an effect on me. By being good at whatever the teachers threw at me, I could just take the tests and go hide in the library or with a book. I spent most of my time in the classroom with a book, waiting for my classmates to finish. Playground time, too, was usually not something I did, since I’d rather be in the library, reading books about folk myths from around the world.

I never had a moment in my childhood where I knew something wasn’t right — that hit me when I moved out, at age 18. Suddenly, I was forming romantic relationships for the first time, and moved to a town where I wasn’t already on a first-name basis with everyone. Stereotypes and first impressions suddenly mattered a whole lot more. I related to people more as a persona and less as a person. It was scary.

Halfway through the book, though, I find a story that is me. A kid who didn’t really toe the line as a kid, never any trouble, liked to sew and cook, intellectual, and did like some of the seemingly normal stuff, enough so that her difference didn’t stand out at all. Her parents, like mine, have tried to find every explanation other than the simple truth. “Maybe you’re just gay.” “Maybe you’re just afraid of relationships.” And they’d blame themselves, too, wondering if they caused me to be how I am. I spend a lot of time seeking out stories of people who haven’t always “Just known”, and instead discovered it later on. It’s a relative rarity, I’m finding, and that surprises me. My frame of reference for growing up just isn’t the same. I thank my parents for that, though sometimes it makes me even more lonely than ever.

Jem is amazing and has blown my mind entirely. I love her to pieces. Elliot’s done the same thing in an entirely different way. I can’t believe that I’m so blessed as to know the both of them, and to be so entirely comfortable. Relationships with no fear, no demands or needs from others are a new thing for me. There’s no dependence, just love.

San Francisco is like the Bermuda Triangle. It sucks you in and doesn’t want to let you go. In my case, it’s partly not wanting to go, but there’s been a heck of a lot that was Not My Fault in trying to leave, too.

Amtrak’s been diverted entirely around Colorado this week, and the user-interface problem that bit me when I purchased my tickets on the way in exists in their agent software too: If you ask for a date that’s unavailable due to the train being entirely rescheduled, it nearly silently offers tickets for the next available day — in this case, the 23rd of October, six days from now. I got up this morning at 6:45 to catch the Amtrak bus to Emeryville, caught it, walked up to the conductor and said “Grand Junction, please” and he gave me this look as if to say “That’s really funny. Now where are you really going?”. It turns out that not only was my ticket actually booked for next week, there is no train to Colorado today at all. Return to San Francisco with a full refund, but no path home. C’est la vie. Airfare would have been $500 for a flight today (Less than I expected for a last-minute fare, but still far more than I wanted to spend.) Greyhound it is, so I am sitting in the Transbay station with three hours to spare, having said goodbye to Jem twice today, and now had a chance to say goodbye to Jester, the fellow I spent a fair amount of time sitting next to on Haight Street, hanging out.

I can now say I’ve been to the Castro — nothing special there, but it’s a nice part of town. I guess queer folks just set me to feeling alright, but they’re just folks. The thrift shop there is darn nice, and very very tidy. If I’d had more willingness to spend money today, and a bag to put any loot in, I might have spent more time there. Mexican food where the Castro meets the Mission district is really excellent and cheap. $6 can feed you and get you a beer too, which surprised me. This city is amazingly expensive in some ways. If I hadn’t had a cheap place to sleep, I’d be far more broke than I am now.

This city’s transit system is far more complicated than most, but with a little time staring at the sadly hard to find maps, it’s not hard. I should have looked before I got on the train in, since it would have made my first couple days a lot easier. If you dropped me anywhere in San Francisco now, I could probably tell you where I am and how to get to the nearest train line.

I love that I can identify languages and ancestry so easily. It makes San Francisco a lovely tapestry of people, not just sections of town that are “White”, “Black”, and “Asian” — I listened to people speaking chinese on the bus, hebrew in the coffeeshop. I see signs in Thai, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English and French. There’s folks from East and West and South Africa, Somalis and Ethiopians and Nigerians and Ghanites. People from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, England, Ireland, Germany. I would find this a far poorer place without being able to sense the subtlety.

The people here are among the most friendly of any large city I’ve spent time in. I’d love to go to Portland to compare, but I really get a good feeling here. I’m not sure how much is tied up in Jem, though. She has a knack for finding good people and lasting connections wherever she goes. It’s a skill that I wish I had.

The trip to Davis rocked utterly. I’ve wanted to meet alexboyo and apollotiger for a while, which I did, and meeting elliotpp was even better than I imagined. I really love that boy. (Yes, Aria has managed to fall in love with a non-camper.)

Transitions from online flirting to flirting face-to-face are at once totally unnerving to me and comfortable. How people are in meatspace, contrasted with their text persona is totally natural to me, especially the inversion of introversion and extraversion. The usually chatty people online tend to be so reserved in person, and vice versa. It makes sense, if you think about that some people thrive on the facial and vocal feedback of others to communicate, and others like to think about their words and consider them, which text allows much more fluidly than slightly more realtime modes of communication. Flirting, though, enters a whole other realm, with cues and counter-cues. It’s not something I do much anyway, so it’s a new and fun thing.

I’m alive, having a blast, even if I did miss my bus this morning to go home. So I’m in San Francisco one more day. I can’t say I mind. (Universe said I should stay another day, I guess. Whatever!)

I’m alive, happy and well.

Lonely as heck among so many strangers. Having a blast. I’m scared like never before, and happy too. You’d think I’d planned to move here, the amount of energy I’ve spent on it.

I slept in Golden Gate park twice as well as I ever have in a strange hotel, and as well as the best hostel I’ve ever been in. I’m tired, dirty and happy.

I love the world, but I’m not sure it cares about me the same way.

Repeat that same thing metaphorically alllll the way down.

—Aria

Thirty minutes. Actually completely and totally packed now.

If you go to San Francisco,

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

You’re going to meet some gentle people there.

Amtrak’s website does suck.

Schedule tickets for a day with track work and it damn near silently (small warning, no special color, buried among the boilerplate) books tickets for the next day.

I’ll be arriving in San Francisco on Monday night, not Sunday, since Greyhound is $100 more, 2 hours longer, and hellish compared to the train.

Randomness:

• I like pink,
• I like dimes,
• no, I do not like your shiny new __
• unless you made it yourself,
• because I like handmade things,
• I like trains,
• and bikes,
• and tired, cold, dirty, hungry train-hoppers are among the most beautiful people on earth. Doubly so when you see them eat.

Yup, I’m going.

Funniest thing is? This is the weekend I said last month I couldn’t possibly get away from work for to go to Rubyconf. So freakin’ bizarre, life is.

I might be going to San Francisco this weekend. I love reckless plans that work out.

Since aplaceofbirches tagged me, I shall name 10 things that make you happy in a random order. Then tag 5 people.

I like …

1. Good friends
2. Good wine
3. Good food
4. Good views
5. Good love
6. Good scares
7. Good art
8. Good excercise
9. Good dancing
10. Good life.

I tag anandabrat, lightwalker, raijna, saromia, and rising_dawn.