day 39

a redraw from a couple years back that was originally a redraw from 2014 so thats a FULL DECADE OF PROGRESS, BABEY!!

have had a weird encounter the last few days. i’ve been going into a bake shop a few times a week for the last month and a couple days ago the girl at the counter came over to my table and said something about her friend, the girl who normally works there, thinking i was cute or whatever. apparently she had mentioned that to her, and so the second girl recognized the sweater, glasses, and the order, and so i guess approached me on her friend’s behalf? and i mean i was mainly just bemused by this, honestly more uncomfortable than flattered. what i think really got to me was just the view into myself i got from that, like how she described me and what was apparently significant enough about me to make an impression, specifically on this girl. the thing that made me most uncomfortable was that she mentioned i was “quiet” as though it were an appealing character trait. and then today i went in and the girl was there and so since there was no one else in there she sat down for a while until someone came in to pick up a cake order. she said i was pretty much the only person who ever got a slice of ricotta tart and that it was her favorite, i said it was good bcause it wasn’t too sweet, she said she’d been drinking americanos with it since i’d started coming in and getting that order, i said it’s nice because there’s already enough fat in the dessert that there’s no point getting a latte or a cappuccino and that balance is what makes it such a treat, she said some kind of snide shit about most of the people who bought stuff only wanting the sugariest cakes... it was nice, even i guess kind of cute when that’s all we talked about, and honestly? she’s pretty, she has something like a nice aura. but once things got further than that and i started reading her intentions i got the same feeling as before, like i was seeing myself through the eyes of someone else and i didn’t like it. i didnt bother lying or anything and just said i’d been spending my time wandering around the city all month and that’s why i was coming in, i told her i dont really have any interests or whatever, and i sort of hoped that answering like that would send the signal that there just wasn’t much for us to talk about. didn’t really though. and like she talked about herself and nothing she said made me think she’d really understand what i meant when i said i don’t really really have much of an identity or place in life. which is what made it feel so disturbing, i think, that she still kept up an interest and reacted to me being so straightforward as though it were just having a quirky sense of humour. and it’s not like i was trying to get her not to like me or anything, but i certainly wasn’t trying to come across as the way i apparently was to her. like some fantasy of a quiet, melancholic waif for her to observe was just being fed into the more i tried to demystify it by being as objective as i could. i even said something like “god i feel like i’m being looked at in a zoo or something” and all it did was make her laugh. and i felt pretty aware of being in a certain gendered space in relation to a straight girl, and honestly i felt like a chill when i kind of realize that when her friend like, described me to myself the way she did, it was all pretty much obvious closeted trans woman (maybe trans lesbian?) shit, like the long messy hair, the thick sweaters, the sleepy eyes, the mumbling, these are all things that i think typify how i engage with the world as specifically a trans woman and i don’t think they’re too uncommon in that respect. and like i didn’t feel remotely like i was monopolizing the conversation or rambling the way i do when i really like someone, i felt inhibited and in my shell because i felt that this whole situation was pointless and absurd and i felt uncomfortable, and like again i think that’s a very gendered expression, and it was picked up on and handled in a way that i was very uneasy with. and i mean i realize im going out on a pretty massive limb here, but this felt like a pretty big display of how straight women relate to trans lesbians, like not necessarily in a sexually fetish-y way, but in an exoticizing way. like it’s not really socizlly feasible for straight women to relate to cis lesbians in a tht way, like their instinct is to be somehow grossed out and that’s how they exercise privilege or whatever, but picking up on those signals in someone who it’s socially appropriate to show that kind of interest in and it’s like they see this perfect emotional and aesthetic object to.. i dont want to say victimize, but relate to in a very awkward way. and why wouldnt they, the alternative is straight men, bona fide straight men, it must feel nice to talk to someone who doesnt have the confidence or sense of self to impose themself. and like i’ve been feeling really, idk, disposable, even taken advantage of in certain respects, and something about that interaction illuminated why i’m so predisposed to that, like as long as i dont feel able to coherently relate to anbd share things with other people, and as long as that awkwardness gets filtered into a certain formulaic social relation, and a certain “gaze” if you want to call it that, it is totally impossible for me to actually showanything like the full spectrum of emotion, subjectivity, vulnerability, affection, and so forth without it crossing the wrong wires with the formula for interaction and identity that has made me who i am for other people to begin with. like how do i enter into relationships without illusions, without the hurt and alienation and flat-out depression that make me who i am making things pointless and doomed from the off? how do i have straight up autonomy with other people? sorry for such a long diary post if you actually read all that lol. i do think i’ll still go there sometimes cause i like the food, but thankfully i start work again in a ffew days so it wont be that often.