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Jamie and Dancing

Here is a snippet from a column I wrote for TGForum two years ago. Since I expect to write a lot more about dancing here, I thought I would make it available to those who did not see it last time, to set a context.

People who have met me at transgender activies quickly discover that I love going dancing more than anything else. I am as big a fool as you can be: I have been known to dance to beeping sounds coming out of cash registers in the supermarket!

Like most children, I was taught structured dances in school, but really didn't like them. In college I found that I enjoyed doing improvisational dancing, but never pursued it -- It never really felt right dancing as a man.

When I finally figured out that I was transgender, I discovered how much I enjoy moving my body while I am wearing feminine clothing. From meeting and making many friends in the transgender community, I know that I am not alone in this interest.

Denae Doyle, who works as a feminine image consultant in the Bay Area, led a seminar at the recent Southern Comfort Convention on feminine movement. Unlike most instruction in this area which tends to jump right into walking and gestures, Denae starts off with dancing.

The idea is to help everyone let go of their male-selves. Each participant is encouraged to dance by herself, rather than paying attention to everyone else. The dance moves are from basic belly dancing and Tai Chi, swaying your hands and rolling your hips.

The results were incredible. Everyone was able to get in touch with their "inner woman" and find grace and balance in a natural way with much less direct instruction.

Denae received many complementary and encouraging comments from the participants and will be using this technique again.

So why do many transgender people love to dance? One evening I felt a clue, it just jumped into my head. For thousands of human generations, the role of transgender people in tribal cultures was to lead ceremonies by dancing. A natural ability to dance evolved right alongside the genetic triggers for being transgendered. During the last 100 generations, with the rise of the kingdom and religions based on coercion, our ceremonial role (and our very existence) has been brutally suppressed.

Fortunately things are finally changing: Now we can dance again and that is what I was born to do.

posted by Jamie at 2:19 PM

 
Dressing sexy around nerds

Every year, I attend a conference for computer hackers (in the complimentary sense of the term). Many of us have been going for years, and so they have all watched Jamie emerge and transition. The conference runs about 85% male, 10% female, & 5% tranny.

I have noticed that the more feminine and alluring I present myself to be, the more intimidating I am. I think this is because most geeks see me and form two contradictory concepts: 1) you are attractive to me; and 2) but you are a TG and if I interact with you too much, my friends might notice!

My GG friend Coco also attends this, and has noticed a related effect. For her the part 2) probably involves fear of failure in front of the guy's friends.

We both tend to tone it down in situations like this. Don't present nerdy guys, particularly in groups, with too much sexy. However once you are going steady with one, get out the short dresses and miniskirts. These guys just LOVE showing off their attractively-dressed woman and making their friends envious.
posted by Jamie at 11:43 AM

 
Alexandra and Renata Macmillan

I wrote this one year ago.

This April, my boss sent me on a last-minute business trip to Australia. Fortunately my friend LeighAnn was also going there, and I was able to schedule a week of vacation time with her and her friend Claire in Sydney and Perth before beginning my work.

We spent several days of fun in Sydney, doing things like climbing onto the Sydney harbor bridge and spending an evening dancing with a group of Chinese tourists on a tour boat. On Friday, we flew to Perth so we could visit Alexandra Macmillan and her mother Renata.

LeighAnn had met Alex earlier, when Alex was in the United States for reassignment and facial feminization surgery. The two became good friends and kept in touch.

Alex picked us up at the Perth airport, and we went to stay with her and her mother for the weekend. As we traveled around Perth, seeing the sites, I came to learn much more about Alex’s story. She had just turned 22 a few weeks before. About a year and a half earlier, she had had her GRS in the United States. To pay for this, and the facial feminization, her mother took out a second mortgage on her house. Alex’s dad, divorced from her mother, made an arduous journey from Australia to Oregon, determined to stop the GRS from taking place. By the time he arrived, he decided to accept her and encouraged her to proceed.

The Macmillan house is decorated with stunning artworks and I looked about for the artists’ signatures. There weren’t any. My favorite was a painting of plants reflected in water on an autumn day. It turned out Alex painted them all and was studying to become an architect and a designer.

Alex loves to dance, and since I do as well, we both went out to a large casino in Perth with a dance club on Saturday PM. The music was mostly classic disco and house. After several hours of dancing and fending off the advances of several Australian men, we head home.

Sunday we take LeighAnn and Claire to the airport – I have a business meeting in Perth on Monday so I will stay over an extra day. This gives Alex and I more time to get to know each other. We talk about art, the internet, the transgender experience and the issues of coping with the depression that vexes many transgenders both before and for a time after GRS. I notice a hint of desperation in her manner, particularly on Monday morning before she drops me off at my business meeting. Clearly our visit was invigorating for her and she dreads her return to the relative isolation she experiences in Perth, with no real support network to fall back on. We discuss ways of coping – I encourage her to find friends online, and to become involved in some way with other people. We hug and say goodbye, and she drives off.

My meeting goes well, and so does my longer visit to Adelaide beginning later that day. I return to the USA, and after a week, head over to the Diva Las Vegas gathering at the end of April. My friend Lannie and I had a grand time partying and dancing there – and as is typical, I arrive back at my room at sunrise. I play back a message from LeighAnn informing me that Alex had committed suicide several days before, and that 20 hours after finding out, her mother had done the same.

I am stunned. Then the questions come. Why would an incredibly beautiful 22-year-old new woman with enormous talent and a supportive family end it all? Why did her mother, an intelligent and loving being, do the same? Did the ecstasy pill her friends gave her on her birthday make things much worse? Was there anything I could have done to recognize how dire the circumstances were and to have intervened in some way?

There is also anger. Why did she befriend me, form an emotional bond with me, and then dump me in this ugly way? Where was the support network to help Alex cope with the universal experience of post-operative depression?

Digging deeper, I learn troubling facts that bring on more questions and more anger. Why did the Australian health service make her wait several months after an earlier suicide attempt before giving her an appointment with a psychiatrist, scheduled for one month after she died? Since it turned out that Alex had GRS surgery without undergoing the “real life test”, who were the idiots who let her fall through the cracks?

I think of her smile, her artwork, the variety of her personality that I glimpsed for so brief a time and the tears come back. I replay the scene of her dancing with me and feel her hugging me that time when I felt upset. Meeting her and her mother was the highlight of my trip and I will never see either of them again.

I started in the transgender community as a very active volunteer. Later, after my transition, I morphed into a party girl who teased those who courted me and danced the night away. Why not? The internet revolution and the transgender rights movement had solved all the problems we had, and I could kick back and enjoy life.

No, Jamie, the war is not over.

Since then, Leigh Ann and I have both been gradually accepting our loss. I am thankfull for every millisecond I was able to spend with Alex and Renata and hope they can live on in me somehow.
posted by Jamie at 1:32 AM

 
The San Francisco Fetish Ball

... was held Saturday, April 26, at the DNA Lounge in SOMA, San Francisco. It was a night to remember!

Lannie and I arrived at around 10:15 and things were already well underway. The stage was busy with a spectacular fetish fashion show from the Torture Garden, London. There were many models and many hot fetish outfits. The production values were better than I usually see for something like this, even in San Francisco. The promoters really went all out.

Lannie wore her purple latex minidress and sky-high platform shoes. She was attracting attention from the passing cars while we approached the club from our car and continued to turn heads inside. I kept it simple, with a black slip, lace over-dress, and leather mini. My plan was to be flexible, taking layers off as needed to stay cool. The DNA Lounge can get warm when everyone is dancing, so for most of the night it was Jamie in her slip and nylons.

The Tranny Community made a great showing. I ran into my long-lost friends Melanie and Stephane, Katie, Kristen, Rys, Sophie, Lizzie, Randi, Aiyana, and many more.

The music was fantastic. It was more house/rave than is usual for these sorts of things and it worked well. After the show they ran a back dance floor for the Industrial rivet-heads - so everyone was happy.

The DNA Lounge should have photos and steaming audio DJ sets available. The audio is only available for two weeks, unfortunately.

I plan on being back next time!
posted by Jamie at 11:20 AM

 
Are You A Gynandromorphophile?

The Spring 2003 Transgender Tapestry, in a special issue devoted to "Gender Education 101", featured an article by the Maine Gender Resource & Support Service called "The Chinese Menu". It makes the point that sexual morphology, gender identity, and sexual orientation are three completely independent facets of a person. For one of the examples of sexual orientation, they toss out the term "Gynandromorphophile", which they define as applying to "male bodied people attracted to other male-bodied people, who happen to appear very feminine".

A technical sounding name for "Tranny Chaser".

Trannies learn about Tranny Chasers early on. Quite a few Trannies are Tranny Chasers themselves. I know more than a few genetic female-bodied Tranny Chasers too.

So, are you a gynandromorphophile? - I am. I can also use that question as a smart alec response to a bad pickup line.
posted by Jamie at 7:40 PM

 
Learning Dance Music Genres

Learning the names of the tracks you dance to can be hard while you are out on the floor. It is can also be difficult to figure out what kind of music to expect when looking over the flyers or promotional emails you get. Here are several things that have helped me learn my way around.

I found a flash animation that showed a "family tree" of dance genres, along with samples. Unfortunately it has disappeared from the net. A quick search query has turned up a few other points of departure:

http://dancemusic.about.com/library/blgenres.htm has a basic introduction.

Jamie Zawinski's DNA Lounge in San Francisco streams the music from the performances live. They also retain a 2 week archive, so you can go back and re-listen to a set you danced to. Jamie also has a fascinating "Behind the Scenes" section on what it is like to be a club owner and promoter. As you can imagine, it is complicated and everybody who possibly can tries to grab a piece of the action - particularly those in the government and the building trades.

Another good trick is to type the DJ names from the flyers into a search engine. Many DJs have a web site, often including MP3 samples of their mixes. This is a good way to figure out what you are likely to hear before you pay the cover charge.

For general awareness of the music out there, I listen to our local college stations when I am in range, and I have also listened to DMX cable stations and LauchCast streams on the Internet. DMX and LaunchCast display the name of the artist and song. LaunchCast even lets you rate the tracks, causing stuff you like to repeat more often.

I find that the more you are "in the boonies", the more likely you are to hear the hit songs from the past few years.

posted by Jamie at 11:59 AM

 
Trannyshack Reno - the Edge is Farther Away than You Think

Trannyshack Reno was intense - to say the least. Joined by my friend Kristen, we boarded the bus shortly after noon on Saturday, April 19th. We were severely underdressed! Most of the participants were in "over the top drag" for both the ride up and back, and at most other times too! You can get an idea of what the trip was like by looking at photos from earlier excusions at http://www.heklina.com/. (I am sure this years photos will appear soon at that URL as well).

Milling around Glamorama before we left, Kristen and I found a heap of discarded clothes. We each found a top that worked well for us. The group had a fashion show on the ride up, and one pair of contestents changed outfits 7 times! A lot of other outrageous things happened on that bus too, many which I can't write down!

We stopped at a McDonalds in Auburn and needless to say, two busloads of drag queens caused quite a stir. Our bus driver was named Bruce and was a great sport - even after they started teasing him for having a gay name.

Several hours later, we arrived in Reno at the Cal-Neva hotel, picked up our keys, and rested up for what we knew would be a long night. Kristen's friend Brian appeared on his own, and a group of us went to a nearby casino for dinner. Needless to say, we were the talk of the town. Most of the reaction was positivie, although there was a rumor that someone was "gay bashed" - fortunately none of our group were involved (and it might not have been about sexual orientation at all).

After dinner, I changed into an evening gown and hit the casino - I tried putting one quarter into every available slot machine and had all kinds of interesting encounters with the other gamblers. Fortunately my hour of multimedia research reaped a $3 profit.

At 11:30, we changed again and went to the Cadillac Lounge for the Trannyshack drag show. The troupe played well to a small and enthusiastic crowd. As you might guess, yours trually danced a lot. The Reno TG boutique "The Hidden Woman" was there with a booth, as were several local TG personalities who served as waitresses. Reno is small enough that they have one big GBLT bar (the Cadillac Lounge) and one TG support group - which like the White Horse in Berkeley, tends to draw everybody in. Several TG gals made the show on their own, including a gal I knew from TGSF.

After the show and more dancing we returned to the hotel for after-parties. We attended several and made new friends among the DQ community. Kristen and I, having a modicum of sanity left, were able to get a few hours sleep before the bus departed at noon to take us back. Many of our co-partiers stayed up the whole time.

The bus ride home was even more decadent than the ride up. Kristen, like Lannie, has a boisterous sense of humor and was not afraid to display it both up and back. We had an "Easter Dress" fashion show, and once again terrorized the McDonalds in Auburn. I wore a white dress, taking advantage of the exception to "between Memorial Day and Labor Day only".

Around 5:30 or so we returned to our base, the Glamorama Beauty Parlor. Just before we rolled in, Kristen figured out Bruce's secret.

Glamorama had Yet Another After-party and Reception. After more chat and dancing, Kristen and I head home, bubbling with stories to tell.

Brain took some photos which we should get back soon. I will post some of the good ones here. I will also write up a few stories after they have been cleared by Security.

As someone who is known for being an adventurous TG Party Girl, this event was an eye-opener. DQs are that much more outrageous than we are. They are also sweethearts under the makeup and the costumes and I was honored to share their world.

-- Your embedded (in more ways than one) reporter,

Jamie Faye



posted by Jamie at 2:07 PM

 
Painting done, now only the floors

and a far amount of random sorting-out remains to be done here at Fentonia.

I am heading up to "Trannyshack Reno" the weekend following. Two buseloads of your more outrageous TG people & their friends. Otherwise I will be at Trannyshack on Tuesdays and often, Cheap Trick on Fridays.

Matrix Filmore is on haitus until Melinda recovers.
posted by Jamie at 6:13 PM