today

After a long surprise phone conversation I hit the chicago diner with . We chatted about all sorts of things. I think one of the two biggest topics of conversation were Simon, my ex roommate and her ex, who refuses to read her livejournal because “then I’d have to read Stephen’s and I’d never get anything done.” Talk of Simon and our (Simon’s and my) oakland roommates, and other berkeley personages was sprinkled throughout the conversation. Much more densely packed was the other major topic, a conversation about gender, sex, and sexuality, though sexuality was only discussed briefly. This was apparently her big paper for her bachelor’s. It talks about making babies as an economic activity. We tried to determine the essential and comparable elements of ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ v ‘masculinity’ and ‘feminity’. I think I was the one to point out that even with a penis cut off, a male would still be capable of reproducing (thank you, piers anthony), and that the gonads are comparable organs of reproductive necessity, but that the uterus forms a distinct, and uniquely female requirement for reproduction. (vaginas don’t qualify as necessary thanks to the possibility of C-section, though that does bring up the issue of implantation, but we didn’t discuss the implantation point).

Her thesis was that sex was essentially binary, intersex births notwithstanding, and that gender is a continuum of identity, or, rather, two separate continuums, in which a femme guy and a femme girl cannot have the same gender. They can share more in common than a butch guy and femme girl, but the self-identity gap is unbridgeable. No matter how femme a guy you are, you won’t have a period. No matter how butch the girl, you will never know that special joy of getting your nuts accidentally kneed by the person you’re sleeping with (pointing no fingers, okay, well, maybe one at myself. It was an accident, I swear.) It was fascinating. We discussed how transgender is a gender thing, but transsexualism is different in that one is trying to adjust sex, but managing only to adjust the external appearance of such. We do not yet have the capability to implant a uterus and functional gonads.

So, there’s the sex as reproduction, sex as pleasure, sex as expression of emotion, sex as development of emotion, and alot of other aspects. Nothing really mindblowing, but taken together, a very different way to examine the world.

As we were walking around after dinner, we ran across someone I knew. Someone who recognized me. His name is Evan. When I saw him, he was looking at his feet while walking towards me. I was pretty sure he’d spotted me first, and decided he didn’t want to acknowledge my existence. He looked up, I got a glimpse of his face. I said ‘hi’ as we passed, he said ‘hi’ and didn’t break stride or turn his head towards me while walking past, though I slowed down and turned to face him. Ouch. Hello? What did I do to piss him off?

I met Evan via gay.com in my last few months in chicago in 2001. We got along well. He is, by typical standards, pretty attractive. By my standards, he’s fucking hot. Sadly, he does not have a reciprocal opinion. That’s fine, he’s still fun to talk to. I once told him I thought if only we’d had more time he could have been my best friend in chicago. Yeah, I used the “best friend” phrase, I must have been smitten. Oh well.

I moved away, and we instantly dropped contact. No biggy. Forget about his existence til april when I’m coming out to chicago for whatever. Drop him a line. He has no time to meet, ah well. Run into him at the Cruizabou on that trip. Heh. He’s there with a guy, exchange a few words, no problem. Get the sense he doesn’t want to see me. Enh, no biggy. Well, today, in another, clearly accidental contact, I run into him on the street. And he wants to pretend I don’t exist. Because I’m a bitch like that, I deny him the luxury. It was a new guy he was walking with this time. Don’t know what his damage is. I know I shouldn’t care. I probably wouldn’t if I weren’t attracted to him. Or if he’d been worthless to talk to. *shrug*. This is so not worthy of my time, attention, or interest.