Journey to Ixtlan

What is my definition of "girl" or "woman"? This is a question I ask myself but from the transfemme angle. Physically, I am a world apart from being a "girl" or "woman." There is nothing inherently feminine about my appearance. So, what makes me transfemme? Wikipedia says that a transfeminine individual may identify with many aspects of femininity but not describe themselves as "a woman." This rings true for me. I do identify with many aspects of feminity. This lends itself to the world "identity". I have a gender identity with strong sympathies (sisterhood) with women's struggles, I feel very comfortable, even euphoric, in feminine fashions, and most importantly to me, long to step outside the box that's labeled "masculine."

How much poetry did I write in 2017? 379 poems were authored for a total of 50,366 words. I’ve written 1300 poems for a total of 169,556 words since September of 2014. I write what I know, and by measure of my topic counts on All Poetry I have:

Dance (https://allpoetry.com/list/596797-Dance-Poetry): 111
Depression (https://allpoetry.com/list/596812-Depression): 139
LGBQTIA (https://allpoetry.com/list/596824-Lgbqtia): 70

That’s a total of 320 categorized poems out of 1300. This leaves a lot of uncategorized poems! Sorting them out will be my 2018 project.

A caring man, former principal of my high school, and patriot of my country, asked: “are there different rules of evidence when dealing with sexual accusations?”. This question came in reference to a satirically led discussion about the recognition that past sexual violations may now bear their karmic fruit.

On the surface, this is a valid question. What rules of evidence exist for a person accused of a crime? If I steal a bike, did somebody see me steal the bike? Is it in my custody? If it was found elsewhere, are my fingerprints on it when they should not be? This all seems very reasonable, until you apply the same cold logic to destroyed lives, manifesting from actions decades ago. If there were two people involved in a sexual assault, and evidence was not collected at that time, did a crime not take place? Are the years of pain, stunted development, and even documentable therapy, voided because of a lack of hard evidence? It’s a problem.

Back to the caring man. He was the head principal of a high school. If there was a sexual assault there, and it turned into a he-said, she-said situation, with no hard evidence, did he turn away and state that he could do nothing for his charges? I sincerely hope not. I would expect that some action was taken short of legal arrest. That’s what is going on now in the realms of entertainment and politics. It hurts a lot when a politically powerful person is taken down, but how much would it hurt if the top football players was dismissed from sports activities, or even terminated from the school, if years’ old accusations surfaced of them sexually assaulting other students? What’s the difference? Power and politics perhaps.

“Psychology question. Why is it that the mysterious is so fascinating? Just as an abstract concept. Humans wanting to explore new places and new things. Curiosity, mystery…why?”

The terrible secret is that the mysterious is not fascinating to most people. It is an abstract concept, the frightening plunge outside their lair. These secrets terrify them, pushing them back into pockets of comfortable familiarity. The exceptional humans are the ones that explore new places and new things. The actual mystery is that we’ve stepped outside the cave at all.

Seduction is sexy. People want to be wooed, told they are sexy, and that a person wants them badly. It’s human nature!

I also feel dirty, needing a bath, after hearing Corey Gray's cover of "Scream". Why? As alternative as I am, the song disturbs me. Is Corey really that much of a pleasure troubadour? Granted, while Corey sings the song, it's not implied that the song's speaker is singer. It more probable that Corey is describing a hot-to-trot guy dropping his pick-up lines on a target.

What if a person received this invitation? Would it be appreciated? Perhaps, again, who wouldn't want to feel sexy? With that said, these lines reek of being used a few hundred (thousand) times over. How sexy is it to be the hundredth (thousandth) companion of the speaker? Oh... and the whole hunting thing is a turn-off for me. So many sexy "gonna get you" songs have a predatory feel to them, pushing non-consensual contact while having a stalking vibe. That’s my probably true unease, but that’s another story, and my opinion.


"Kill the lights, shut 'em off
You're electric
Devil eyes telling me come and get it
I have you like ooh
Baby baby ooh baby baby
Ah-ooh baby baby ooh baby baby
Girl tonight you're the prey
I'm the hunter
Take you here, take you there
Take you wonder
Imagine me whispering in your ear
Then I wanna, take off your clothes and put something on ya"

Answers to a tag regarding my Tumblr poetry blog http://poetryaccident.tumblr.com/

1. Why do you have this blog? What is the purpose of this blog?

I wanted to post my poetry in a location that was poetry-friendly and had a well-established pool of users. I considered starting a WordPress site. A friend pointed me to Tumblr. I uploaded ALL of my poems there and I’ve been updating it on a daily basis since then. I also post opinion blogs, short stories, and “sexy dips” picture sets.

2. What is your opinion of therapy and poetry/writing as a therapeutic tool?

I find poetry to be incredibly therapeutic for myself. I am able to put out the feelings I am having. The obtuse and opaque quality of poetry allows it to be incredibly explicit to myself while being vague to an audience. I also write poetry to tell others that they are not alone. I do this by using phrases and keywords that my target audience should pick up on. Others walk by, mystified at the mad ramblings of the poet.

3. What kind of poetry do you like?

For content, I enjoy when people write from their life experiences. For composition, I am in the lyrical camp. I enjoy a poem that flows well.

4. What do you think is the purpose of poetry?

Poetry is a tool for expressing emotions and thoughts. The words can be focused or blunt. The message can be direct or circumspect. In the end the poet knows the intent, and this is put out to the world.

5. What subject matter would you like to see covered by poetry?

Anything and everything is fair game for subject matter. A poet will tend to write from their life experience. The most impacting works are pulled from their emotional wells. I would love to see poets be brave enough to go there with their poems.

6. What is the purpose of Tumblr?

Tumblr itself can be a meeting place for like-minded people. They can share and see what others are sharing. I write a poem a day. Some days I don’t have an idea at the tip of my pen. My go-to fix is to browse my Tumblr feed and I’ll find inspiration in something a friend posted. It’s also neat to see the “other” side of my friends.

College Stripper Journals – Golden Boys (All That Glitters)


Rusty’s affinity for effects sometimes got us in trouble, though at times one does suffer for their craft. I’ll be clear here. There is such a thing as artistic suffering and then there is a humiliation that calls a show short. More on that later, but first you should understand why Rusty went to these lengths to fully satisfy our clients.

The college stripping scene was opening up in the middle 80s. Consider the time. MTV was established with a flamboyant worldview available on the small screen. The astronaut on the moon had given way to a mix of music gravitating between the titillation of Queen to the over the top “fashions” of Headbangers Ball. George Michael had made it OK for guys to be sexy while Prince gave permission for sexual ambiguity. This sounds like peaches and cream, but remember that I was located in the Deep South. The biz was more open than veterans reported in their tales of past woe, but there was still incredible pressure to be incredibly discrete while going big, big, big.

Against this background, and before I reveal our humiliation, I want to put to rest a trope of stripping seen in the movies. The pressure felt on the college stripping scene pushed together teams of strippers. Rusty and I were one such duo. We were somewhere between Queen and Headbangers, leaning to Duckie in Pretty in Pink. Yeah, skinny white guys, no matter the equipment, did not have the visual impact of the muscled “chips”. No, not the guys with motorcycles in California, though Ponch and Jon would have made a good duo. We meant the over muscled dancers seemingly straight out of Chippendales male revue show. The local chips worked in smaller groups, usually no more than three, and mostly consisted of the jocks muscling in, pun intended, on the biz of hard-working amateurs. You have to find humor where you can, damn natural talent. Anyway, I’ve digressed.

My point is that most stripping events were performed by two or more dancers. Why was stripping performed by two or more, with two the optimal number for splitting the proceeds: distribution of labors! I was a few years past nineteen, the supposed height of my sexual drive. Rusty was a little further along given his collegiate career, but with advanced age comes knowledge. He explained life was all about polarities. Remember, he was the philosophical English major. “With the hard comes the soft, with the long comes the short”. My translation: there are good nights and bad nights. The distribution of labors increases the odds that somebody would be on their A game. Both of us is a golden night with many appreciative customers. One of us, well, it was still a good night. The problems developed when we were, in Rusty’s sage words, soft and short. This occurred one New Years Eve week.

We were both under the weather after a grueling week of prior engagements. We considered calling in a chip to help out, but Rusty, being the theatrical type, decided to try out a prop he had been holding back for just an occasion. He figured that it would dazzle the customers and perhaps cheer us onto the hard and long. He had gotten his hands some golden craft glitter. It almost looked like spice, but Rusty explained to me that it was the real thing ready for “the show”. I don’t want to bore you with particulars here given that I’m still vague on the long past incredibly embarrassing topic, but the craft glitter is plastic and not the higher grade polyester. It does not respond well to moisture as it tends to run and clump. With all of this precursor hinting of doom explained, Rusty and I broke out the golden powder for a show.

Before we got to the party we liberally applied the glitter with helping amounts of lube. Our costumes, fitting the time of the year, were Father Time and Baby New Year. Rusty, of course, was the former given his flowing beard. We had a whole “out with the old, in with the new” show planned. Yeah, dazzle them with effects if the plot isn’t fully there. We had to present. Disaster struck after I did my “I am here to relieve you of your place” line with Rusty proudly responding “does it look like I’m spent?”. The great “reveal” had our equipment looking like it was struck with sores placed there by a Midas touch. In addition to that, the golden color had rubbed off all over. It was a gilded horror show. The enthusiasm we had managed to collect in anticipation of the unveiling quickly vanished. I don’t want to share the humiliating attempt we made to recover from this, but suffice to say, the night ended early.

There was an upside. Every cloud has a metallic lining. The incredibly fine nature of the glitter made it very difficult to fully remove even with vigorous rubbing. That led to an interesting challenge for all involved, and several did try. For a few months, our folly made our names shine that much brighter on the stripping scene. The chips may have had their abs, but we had gone through the craft fires to come out brighter on the other side. Fame recouped our spirits and the team was fully at bat. All that glitters is not gold, but we lived it large as the Golden Boys for long enough.

College Stripper Journals – Truly Tease (The Beginning)


When people find out I was a stripper in college they have questions. Yes, I was a male dancer hired to “entertain”. The most forward queries lead to the shortest conversations, such as “do you still strip?”. I’m sure they mean it in jest, given that it’s been quite a few years since those days. It’s time to share, and the best place to start is at the beginning and not the end.

I prefer that we start the inquisition with how I began in the trade. It seems like yesterday even though it was twenty-five plus years ago. Funds were stretched and I had very little time on my hands in between studying for classes like radar theory and numerical analysis. The need to study ruled out typical part-time jobs of grocery bagging or fast-food “would you like fries with that burger?”. I’d tried my hand at immersive oil frying the summer prior to college and did not relish the return to the crispy battered burns. Besides, physics textbooks were difficult to juggle while cleaning grease out of fume hoods. My search for money to spend on something more than ramen noodles was answered by my buddy Rusty who never seemed to lack for a pocket change.

First, let me tell you about Rusty. He was a long lingering English major who should have graduated years before. The college had become the warm womb that my friend relished even while the rest of us wished to leave its embrace. He was tall, skinny, and had more facial hair than the average student. Was he handsome? Perhaps, but only in a Shaggy of Scooby Doo kind of way. We met through mutual friends and became fast buds. Rusty was my mentor and inspiration. I won’t claim to be his Scooby, but I definitely played second fiddle during my collegiate performing years. This rang true in several ways. While I was a little more buff, not by much mind you given I was coming off of years of running competitions, I was downright bulky compared to my friend. He was skinny with big hair, like Tommy Chong of Cheek & Chong. This didn’t matter. Rusty’s fame was the tool of the trade combined with words of wisdom that have rung down through the years. His maxims, jingles for the dancing gigolos, allowed me to prosper even as I wished I had more, down there.

His most memorable instructed me how to carry myself with decorum. This is a fancy word for working a crowd to pile up the tips. Here’s the scoop on the money. You didn’t get much up front and still don’t. The pockets are filled, well, when you have pockets available afterward, by the tipping of appreciative customers. Rusty had looked me over and told me that I had to fully embrace his rule #3, “tease to please”. He explained that it wasn’t about what I brought to the show. It was instead about how I used it during the show. “Imply everything, they create the story”. Well, that’s an English major for you. He explained it was like a paragraph: beginning sentence, the body of the paragraph, closing sentence. The audience handled the middle if I set the mood and road it to the ending, figuratively mind you.

“It’s all about the middle” he would say. That was easy for him to say, but his sage words about the framing of the happy trail ending were gold. “Shave it to show it, shake it to make it” became the outwardly manifesting mantra that I still embrace. When I got tired of the maintenance Rusty would exclaim “don’t hide it under a bush”. Too true! The shaking seemed so much more dramatic with an unobstructed view. The clear-cut was a good combination with my Paul Simon like baby-face. Rusty and I became a compare and contrast duo with something for everyone. I was the bouncy bunny to Rusty’s steady stallion. Not surprisingly this led to my stage name, a persistent shadow that is never shaken no matter how much you do.

I can’t give out Rusty’s stage name. He’s still working the senior circuit. My nickname came from my “making it” motions. I had always been a fan of the movie Bambi, and in particular, its sassy little rabbit. It didn’t take me long to decide to use Thumper, or more often, “Lil’ Thumper” when compared to my partner in crime. To each, their own name, to each their tools. I made the most of the situation, often second fiddle, but somebody’s got to be on the bottom and somebody’s got to be on top.

That’s how I got my start, a few words about my inspiring partner, and a bit about my modus operandi, long for the short of “how I strutted it”. Rusty and I had some good times, made a few bucks, and those years launched me into a realm beyond the bright lights of the conventional world. Ramen noodles were left behind while I discovered how to truly tease.

“I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids”
– Cool Kids by Echosmith


One of the great things about being fifty one is that there is no pressure to be one of the cool kids. Why? Because I manage to fit in while being a thing incompatible to the cool structure.

Doing what I do, social dance, and being who I am, the old white guy, I inhabit a niche inhabited by very few people. There are a few of us, the older white guys who social dance with the younger crowd. We are kind of like Bigfoot, interesting to discover and a bit scary at the same time. We’d better know how to dance because beyond that there are no redeeming qualities. Dance transforms us from probable letches to acceptable partners. The full social side of dance is limited, if only because we could be fathers to many of the dancers. Dad is the one that drops off the dancers, not the one that hangs out under dim lights to strut the night away. Knowing how to dance is our salvation, a get-out-of-jail card for hanging outside the oldster social group.

I personally add to that the personal vocation, that is to say hobby, of dance photography. I become Bigfoot with a camera, the one that can get that next profile picture of you if the planets align. The scary side is partially ignored because of my obvious utility. So I don’t fit in, only being spotted in the deep woods of Maine, but darn I can get that next dip picture of you. Gold. I’m allowed to be present and accounted for as long as I am snapping pictures. That, and dancing well enough to excuse my attendance.

There is one more way that I’ve managed to fit in while being a singular quality. I write poetry about my life. I write about the ups and downs, the joy of dancing, the insecurities of relationships, and the angst of existence. My ongoing flirtation with the madness of depression is given center state from time-to-time. People walk past these with the same acknowledgment given to a carcass in the road: Blessed Be. These poetic musings are intensely personal while others touch upon a larger shared reality. My relationship with the world of dance becomes the bridge to the shared reality. Expressing the magic of social dance provides a link between myself and other generational worlds as I show that I “get it”.

In the end I hang with the cool kids, and if I squint really hard, I can almost believe I am one of them. At the same time I cannot be one of them, and in this the pressure is relieved. But wait, that may not be truth in Echosmith’s definition. I do fit in, being the person I am, so perhaps I can be an honorary cool kid in the end.

It is ironic that I’ve been meaning to write on the topic of procrastination, and one possible source of this affliction. I had an epiphany of why I delay doing things, and while this does not give me the means to overcome the root of the cause, it does give me a place of consideration.

I attended the 2016 Spring LEAF (Lake Eden Art’s Festival) event. I took lots of good pictures during the Friday and Saturday day and on Friday night. I captured on video the contra flash mob next to the main stage. The photo and video documentation I got would thrill many people. Posting it would honor the dance and arts I seek to promote. I’ve also not done anything with this material yet. Why?

The shadow side of the event was the overwhelming pain I found myself in. Old(er) age has left me with back issues, and these flared up and out across my body. By late Saturday afternoon the only parts of me that didn’t hurt were my head and my forearms. Moving hurt. Sitting hurt. Holding the camera to take pictures hurt. I could dance in short spurts, with adrenaline, joy, and muscle memory pulling me through, but the on the other side I was in that much more pain. I only had low dosage aspirin on me, no “vitamin I”. I took the aspirin with no visible impact. Sadly I did not think to reach out to my friends for something (much) stronger. My bad.

The weekend ended late Saturday afternoon when I packed up the van and made my way home. At the house I took stronger medications and the pain eased. This detour caused me to miss the Saturday night dances and events on Sunday. I don’t regret the choice in retrospect given how much I was hurting, and the exiting allowed me to recover, but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

What does this tale of woe have to do with procrastination? As I mentioned before, I took lots of pictures and video at the event. These were dutifully copied to a hard-drive to await processing. Time has come and gone, with the files not yet attended to. When I consider working with them I meet an invisible wall of resistance, something almost physical that pushes me to another task. Believe me, I always have some photo / video project waiting for attention. The LEAF work should be at the top of the list given the quality and magic of the material, but it takes backseat to less worthy efforts.

The answer to the question of “why procrastinate” came to me one day. The reply was “PAIN”. There is so much pain tied up in the material. The photos / video are joyful, but my experience during the capturing of them was a story of waking distress. The resistance I feel is purely psychological as I am not claiming that I will actually be in physical pain while I work with the material. In fact, I can’t truly “remember” the pain on a conscious level, but there seems to be some “stove hot” reluctance to approach the work. Some part of me is convinced, at an irrational level, that I will hurt again if I go there.

This was an epiphany to me because there are other areas of my life that procrastinate on. They involve cleaning up past situations that were painful, messy, and complicated in a tormenting way. Life would be better if I attacked them head on, but to do so is incredibly difficult. I’d rather end my life than take some of them on, and this is about as irrational as you can get, as well as being life threatening. The phantom pain feels like a wave that would overwhelm me, and to run is the only (in)sane choice I have.

I’m not being paid to put the LEAF photos and videos out. Their publication is based on my willingness. There is no outside prodding by interested parties. The same goes for the big things I procrastinate against. The world seems content to let the pain lay while rot sets in. This is irrational because there are almost always interested parties. Hundreds of people would love to see the LEAF material. I would be a minor hero to some. Yet this is not enough now, as I write this. The imagined wound, the implied suffering, out weighs these very real factors.

In the end I learn from the LEAF experience. It is the tip of the iceberg that threatens my life deep down. I still don’t know how to overcome this, but at least I am aware of the monster I face.