I'm ready for my close up, Mr. Demille.

The topless photo shoot a couple of weeks ago was fun. But then Kate suggested that I do another shoot, full monty this time. I said yes at first, but since then I've had serious reservations. I don't hate my body as intensely as I did when I was a man, but I still cringe sometimes at what forty odd years of testosterone poisoning has done to me. Someone actually wanting to celebrate this chimera of a body made me increasingly uncomfortable the more I thought about it.

I have a very dear friend who loves trans bodies. She thinks that women without penises are unnatural and weird. She yells at me when I talk about my freakish exterior. I wish I could share her enthusiasm. Perhaps one day I will, but for right now I must sit in the sauna alone, meditating, and trying to come to terms with my unusual physicality.

It has been working...somewhat. I've been weight training for over a year now and frustrated with the lack of progress. Sure I can leg press 400 pounds, but if anything I've actually gained weight over the year. But today I caught a glimpse of myself in my black ninja work out clothes (did you really expect me to wear any other color?) I decided that even though my weight hasn't changed and I have no hips, I don't look half bad.

Wiccan women see their lives as passing through the manifestations of the Goddess (i.e. Maiden/Mother/Crone.) My problem was that I was thinking that if I didn't have a Maiden phase, my body was imperfect. I see now that this was ridiculous. I'm 58 freaking years old. When other women are settling down into their crone-hood, I'm actually kinda rocking the mother phase. I'm actually looking forward to doing the full monty now. 

Of course, that was Kate's whole reason for suggesting it all along.

Introduction to Lesbian Studies 101a by Prof. Iphiginia Beanflicker

Good evening class and welcome to Lesbian Studies 101a. As I look about the room, I notice that many of you belong to a sex that one usually doesn’t find in this course. But that perfectly all right. You ladies are welcome to stay.

The starting point of any lecture on the current subject must certainly be a discussion of Sappho of Lesbos, the great Greek poetess of the Archaic period. Today, Sappho is remembered for practically inventing the art of lyric poetry. Indeed, her poems are some of the most well-constructed and melodious girl-on-girl action ever written.

But in her day, Sappho was more famous for making a school girl ….I mean, making a girl’s school.

Through the ages, Sappho has acquired a rather scandalous reputation, owing in no small measure to her unorthodox teaching method (which consisted of intense mutual matriculation.) But several newly discovered poems have cast doubt on these assumptions. One of these is a charming little ode in praise of gardening implements entitled…”Working up my dirty, dirty ho.”

The great frustration to any scholar of Sapphic poetry is that so much of it exists only as fragments. The newly discovered works are no different. In fact, all we have of one poem is a fragment of a single line.

True happiness is anal…

As this is almost certainly a poem about the virtues of analysis, you can imagine that the search is on for the back end of this line.

The most intact of the newly discovered works is a play called Γατομαχη (gatomachy.) This should be translated as “cat fight,” but it is curiously devoid of any actual felines. It does seem to involve considerable amount of howling though …and one chew toy.

The play is a retelling of the Amazonomachy and deals with a group of fierce warrior women who happen upon a bevy of young schoolgirls from the Isle of Lesbos. As one might expect, the women get into a terrible row. Oddly, none seem to be the worse for it.

It starts off with a chorus of Amazons coming forward:

We Amazons have finally licked the Lesbos’ hills.
Whose haughty breasts do heave and move in such a way
That truly would we drop our arms to press
and feel our pointy nipples touch their mirrored’ twins.

This is a rather odd way to start a battle I think. But then the Lesbosian schoolgirls come forward ...and don't really clear anything up:

And Lesbos comes to check you warrior maidens out.
O let us munch the hoary carpet on the floor
and meet enflamed’ lips with softly-plying club
that we’ll thrust deep to hasten fast-winged Nike’s joy. 

(The weapon mentioned in these verses, which I have translated as “club,” is described later as being only 7 inches long.  I’m not sure why they would think this an effective weapon to bring to any sort of battle…or why it would need to be lubricated.)

The battle is afoot, but the struggling of the armies can only be described as a bizarre wrestling match. And considerable time is spent in versification of anguished moans…well, moans of one sort or another. The struggle reaches a fever pitch at which point both armies make plaintive pleas to Zeus.


Ω θεοσ Ω θεοσ Ω θεοσ ναααααιιιιι

This line has caused quite a bit on controversy in the philological world, but it is generally excepted that it should be translated as:

O God! O God! O God! Yeeeessss!

The battle then ends abruptly and, remarkably, the Lesbosians' wind up on top. At least that what I gather from the lines of the Amazon chorus:

We’ll die a little death from just their fingers’ touch.
We Amazons have never been so soundly licked.

The Lesbosians then finish off the play with the rousing lines:

O come beloved broadly-bosomed new found friends.
Let’s lay us down and swear eternal binding oaths
And scissor bang ‘til Golden Aphrodite come. 

(I’m completely flummoxed by that last line for as far as I know, the Greeks didn’t even have scissors.)

We'll end there I think and take it up again next week with an Aeschylean satire of one of his fellow dramatists entitled, “Euripides I-ripa-dose.”

An Unromantic Poem

They say a poem’s sure to scale the wall

To women’s fortressed hearts and hidden lust.

They say that chicks love sonnets most of all.

Romantic rhymed’ speaking is a must.

Most girls have never bothered reading stuff

That looks like lectures from an English class.

Those that do like sex talk coarse and rough.

But geeky poems never got me ass.

I’ve written piles of sappy emo prose

I don’t get laid. I don’t get diddly squat.

No odes to flaxen hair or fragrant rose

Have ever got me boobs to kiss or twat.

So screw those dick weeds speaking on the fly

These sonnets suck.  It’s all a fucking lie.