who only by moving can balance

still experiencing a wee burst of relief and delight and awe every time Duolingo just casually includes queer people. (not unlike starting crying, when we saw Fun Home, at Ring of Keys, and just... not stopping.)

1. realsocialskills t-shirt, Pride edition, orders open until (I think) the 21st.

2. this train is a Good Boy (tl;dr Victoria Station got evacuated on Thursday... because nobody turned the fire alarms off before the Flying Scotsman came to visit.)

3. A friend linked to the blog Cerebral Sexuality elsenet and I am intending to sit down and have a poke through it at some point.

(The Word, Tony Hoagland.)

This morning I have been Making A Contribution To Medical Science, and consequently I have a plaster with a dinosaur on it. The ?nurse was very apologetic about it being paediatrics plasters, until I went DOES IT HAVE A DINOSAUR ON, at which point we were excitable at each other about Sophie the stegosaurus. As we were getting to finishing up paperwork, having spotted the quearring also, I tentatively enquired as to whether I might ask an intrusively personal question. "... yes," he said, warily. "You've been very carefully saying partner..." I said, and he ducked his head and looked at his ring and said "yeah, husband, we've been together for ten years and married for five", and then we had a cheerful little discussion about queers and how his husband's one of very few male midwives in the country, and they've just bought a house together and are looking forward to the long weekend, and CATS and PAINTING THE HALLWAY and in general domestic bliss, and it was lovely.

And I am updating you all on this from Homerton College Cambridge Cambs, where I am sat in the sunshine in a scented garden next to a sundial and a water feature gently applying desensitisation therapy and leeching eduroam, and when I am done I shall pack up my computer and head over the railway bridge to have lunch with my mum.

It's... something I'm not, by and large, in that I bind and I don't wear female-coded clothing, but that doesn't change the fact that I've got waist-length hair an an alto voice and hips like whoa. And honestly, most of those things I don't mind? But I don't really know, most of the time, how to make myself read queerer than what I already do, how I already dress, in my armour of DMs and cargo shorts and corduroy trousers.

But.

But then Jesus & His Judgemental Father sent me a patch to go with the two albums I ordered from them (one for me, one for the library). And I bought the kind of jacket I've always secretly wanted - heavy cotton, lots of pockets - and I've sewn the patch onto the arm, and I've put all my pin buttons onto the lapels, and I've been going out in public with a rainbow flag and a badge that reads "genderqueer" and.

And I feel scared but I also feel safer for it.

I'm surprised - perhaps I shouldn't be - by how similar this feels to the summer I started spending time in public visibly unshaven. But it does, and I am, and -

- thank you. Thank you, so much, to every single one of you who's made it possible, made it easier, for me to do this. Thank you.

This song is for every teenager who's ever come out... and for every one who hasn't.