About Me, Part 42: Explosion In My Soul

Beginning in the summer of 2003, I decided to give acting/modeling one last shot. I felt that I had not much to lose. As my Miss Penny routines were winding down, I was anticipating doing something much more elaborate and challenging, lip-synching in other languages, developing routines into mini-musicals ... I felt that I needed more theatre in my performances. Hence, when I bid on, and won, a gift certificate to an acting class at a silent auction that summer (I also got a set of nice, glazed dishes) I followed up on it immediately. The classes were given at someone's home in the northeastern part of Vancouver, between the PNE and Boundary Road. After the initial session, which my certificate had covered, I paid for weekly classes through the remainder of the year and into the following spring. I learned some method acting, script memorizing, improv, and character development. All in all it was a lot of fun. But no actual acting opportunities were forthcoming.

*

My thirty-third birthday get-together was the least the enjoyable one that I had ever had. Only two guests showed up at the Reef Restaurant on Main Street; and they were both on the way somewhere else. I tried to take it all in stride, you can't always get what you want. An event earlier the same day provided a positive contrast; I had been asked by the founders of the Queer Dharma study and practice group at the Shambhala Center to take over as coordinator. I accepted. I began leading the Thursday night meetings the very next week. I brought in taped talks by various Buddhist teachers and we began each meeting by meditating. In the beginning there was also an agreed upon topic of discussion for the evening. The renewed practice centered me and also gave me the feeling that I was contributing to the well-being of the local LGBT community. As autumn began, I felt like my life was settling into place once again.

I also continued to do some personal growth work that fall. I signed up to do the sequel workshop to the Mastery, called The Next Step, at the end of September. It had taken me two years to take it, as it kept getting rescheduled. The workshop weekend was exquisite; I stretched myself much further than I had doing the earlier workshop. I also used some of the material that I was working on in my acting class in the workshop. I used my monologue, about a deeply repressed transperson, to tap into my own sense  of self-hate and shame. It was painful, but I think, a worthwhile experience. The follow-up meetings happened three times after that, in October, November and January 2004. In the last one, I came up with some goals around becoming more centered in my sexual awareness and developing more confidence in relationships.

In November, I had one more modelling experience, this time for a fashion show fundraiser at the (now defunct) Odyssey nightclub. It was a strange, disillusioning experience; I had begun to find the whole modelling world very superficial and off-putting. After the show ended, I went home relieved that it was over and vowing to never model again.

*

I had Christmas with my acting coach and her family and neighbours. There was a lot of laughter and felt a great deal of gratitude towards them for having me over. I had tried to have another orphan's Christmas that, but no had voice interest in it. I had come perilously close to spending the holidays alone. I did spend New Year's Eve alone, but that was not as big a deal. I had had a small Christmas potluck in my apartment for Queer Dharma, complete with colourful desserts, my Christmas tree and holiday tunes from a doo-wop CD and the Phil Spector Christmas album. I had also had someone from the Shambhala Center offer paint my living room in a bright, clean white egg-shell coat (another silent auction in which I bid for a painting job). Just after New Year's I went to an world clothing and textiles shop on West 4th Avenue and bought a Nepalese tapestry. The shop was going out of business and the fabric was 50 % off. My large living room now looked very comfortable indeed.

During a cold snap during the second week of January 2004, I flew back to Montreal for a week. Eastern Canada was, at that point, in the midst of a deep freeze with and average daytime temperature of minus 25 degrees Celsius plus windchill. I had prepared by buying a new winter coat, gloves and long underwear. Walking out of Trudeau airport and into the cold was a shock to the system. It had been a long time since I breathed in cold air, only to have my nostrils stick together.

I spent the week at my father and stepmother's new apartment a couple of miles north of their previous one, in Chomedy, Laval. We did visit my maternal grandmother one afternoon. My mother's mother's health had begun to deteriorate since she had moved back to the old neighbourhood in St. Leonard. She had begun to forget taking her medication or to cook her own meals. The family were discussing plans to move her into a home, but nothing had been finalized yet. I felt some sadness when I saw that a loaf of Christmas cake, one of her staple recipes, had been left for me with my name in icing on the top. A couple of nights later, we went to my father's mother's apartment, nearby, to have dinner. One of my aunts joined us. Outside, the temperature had dropped to minus 40, with the windchill. Drifts of snow blew all night. 

The next night I met my old high school friend downtown; she had driven from Guelph via Ottawa and parked on a side street. We went for a bite at a diner in the Gay Village on east Ste. Catherine Street. She gave me a lift home; on the way, we drove past the old high school. Long faded images of our group of friends hanging around outside the school or in the park across the street on lunch break filled my mind; the songs we listened to, the things we joked about, the long distance we had traveled since then. We talked about me coming out to my folks, which I had not done. One thing I like was that my friend never pushed me to come out to them until I felt that I was ready. And I was not yet ready. She said hi to my folks when she dropped me off, exchanging a few words with them, before leaving. I left for Vancouver the following day.

*

The spring of 2004 was very eventful. I went to the first anniversary anti-war march (it had been a year since the invasion of Iraq), in March. Thousands of us marched over the Burrard Bridge, through downtown south and down to Sunset Beach where we listened to Noam Chomsky speak to us from the roof of the custodial building in the park. It was a great speech on the anti-war movement in general and the necessity to keep up our protests..

In everything that spring, I tried to incorporate work in the world as part of my approach to life. Those of us in Queer Dharma decided to volunteer for the Friends for Life program in the West End. Friends for Life was an organization which offered health and well-being programs to those suffering from chronic and terminal illness (initially AIDS). They operated out of a community center in a converted Queen Anne style house, named Diamond House, and offered a meal program on Sunday evenings called Dinner with Mom. We offered to cook dinner for twenty-five people including salad, a main dish and dessert. We decorated the dining room table with a table cloth and flowers. The dinner guests were a great group who offered their thanks with a signed card, but, card were not necessary; we were honoured just to have the opportunity to do something good for our community.

The last Queer Dharma meeting of the season, in May, was a potluck at a member's apartment near Hastings and Nanaimo Streets. It was a nice, light end to a great year of practice and social engagement and we looked forward to more again in the fall.

*

Two major figures in the Buddhist world came to visit us in 2004. The first was the Fourteenth Dali Lama himself. It was the first time he had been to Vancouver and he was coming to give a few public talks. In late April, he took part in a panel at UBC. He then gave a both a private talk to Buddhist practitioners and a public one at the Pacific Coliseum on the PNE grounds. I was on a team of volunteers at the Shambhala Center's information table. I helped hand out flyers announcing the visit of the next major figure, the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, son of the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and head of the Shambhala community.

The Sakyong came to visit during the first week in May. Myself and another member of Queer Dharma were interviewed on CITR's Queer FM radio program about our group and our thoughts about Buddhist practice. The Sakyong gave a community talk at the Unitarian Church on Oak Street. He then gave a public talk at the Chan Center on UBC campus. In my brief interview with him at the Unitarian Church, I told about my ongoing battle with insomnia. He said that it, being up at night, was a great opportunity to practice meditation. I took note. After his talk (in which he mentioned the issue of sleep) at the Chan Center, I had him sign my copy of his new book. "That talk about sleep was for you," he said as he signed. I thanked him, glad that I had received some much needed guidance.

*

My acting classes ended in May; I had had my fill and had learned a lot, but had decided to put acting to rest as a serious pursuit. I had given it a fair shake and it was time to move on. The only public performing I did that year was as a roving clown in that summer's Illuminaires Lantern Festival. I still shaved my face and body and painted my nails happy for the opportunity to present in feminine fashion, but my costume was just that, a costume. After a fun evening and night, I packed costume up and gave it back to the Public Dreams Society from whom I had borrowed it and, en drabbe, I headed out into Trout Lake Park to get a gelato at one of the vendors' canteens. A wave of melancholy swept over me as I felt the dysphoria of being in the body I had.

The previous week I had gone to Vancouver Folk Festival with a friend from the Mastery. We spent the whole weekend taking in performers like Odetta and Janis Ian. That summer was a scorcher and Jericho Park felt like a frying pan. The music was memorable, it was one of the best festivals that I had seen since being in town.

But the highlight of the summer was the Pride Parade that year. My Illuminaires gig had gotten me another one in the parade courtesy of a member of the Carnival Band. They had been hired by the Co-op Housing Federation of BC to play behind their float. The band needed a few extra dancers and asked me if I wanted to be one of them. I agreed. Of course, it was a carnival theme. I went in one of the gaudiest get-ups I had ever worn. The parade was also a scorcher, broken only by the nice cool breeze off of English Bay as the parade rounded onto Beach Avenue. Afterwards, I met up with some friends and we went for lunch on Denman Street. A few pictures of me were taken there and on the way to a friend's apartment to shower and change. Vividly, I remember feeling the same dysphoria when I changed back into my "regular" clothing afterwards. A picture of me (which I still have), without make-up or outfit, shows me looking very glum indeed.

In August, I went to a couple of film events. One, with a Mastery friend, was of a new print of Fellini's La Dolce Vita. The other was a showing of a film about sexual fluidity set in Dublin, Ireland called Goldfish Memory which I went to see with a friend from the bi community. I found both films entertaining and fascinating. But the thing I remember most about the Out In Screen Film Festival that year was filling out a survey in which I had the option of indicating my identity. I did. In addition to selecting "bisexual", I placed a check beside "transgender" before hastily folding my survey form and dropping it into the raffle box. I hurried away trying to put my selection out of my mind.

*

At a work retirement party that long, hot summer, I was sitting around with some co-workers in the host's vast backyard garden when a discussion about music led to me having one of those light bulbs come on in my head. What if I had my own radio program? I was listening to a lot of vintage Jamaican music at the time, so I imagined doing such a show at either CFRO Co-op Radio or CITR UBC Radio. I would eventually do a show, but my idea would undergo a few changes first.

To be continued ...

We'll Be Right Back After These Messages ...

On a brief hiatus while I work on some writing and recover from a minor back injury. Stay tuned for more "About Me" within the week.

About Me, Part 41: Turn Down Day

By late August 2002, things were getting very stressful. Still reeling from two break-ups, I was now dealing with severe anxiety because of a project that I had taken on at work. I began to have difficulty sleeping. I tried to counter things by getting enough play in the rest of my life. After doing a performance for a going away party for someone in the Shambhala community, I did another one at Cafe Deux Soleils on Commercial Drive, opening for a local band; the band Something About Reptiles was led by the woman who ran the vintage clothing store that I frequented. I remember it being a very hot summer night and we had to close all the windows after 11:00 pm due to noise bylaws. The cafe became a cooker and my make-up began to run. To top it off, the sound system gave out in the middle of my act; it came back on, but only after a couple of minutes.

For my thirty-second birthday, I had several friends over to my apartment. I had invited the friend who had worked on my theatre troupe logo, although I had given up on the idea of starting a troupe. A colleague came from work. So did one of my neighbours from across the hall. Another friend, from France, that I had met through t'ai chi and the Shambhala Center also came as did someone from an LGBTQ meditation group at the Center. The group, Queer Dharma, was one that I had attended for nearly a year after someone had told me about it. In the aftermath of the Aaron Webster murder the previous November, a number of us in this community felt the need for some healing. I enjoyed going through the practice and teaching with a LGBTQ perspective, and in those days, we were a very sociable group.

I took a couple of weeks off in October, partly to take a breather from the project at work, which was supposed to have ended after six weeks. I had been doing some therapeutic breathe work sporadically for about a year and had been processing a lot of buried trauma. The abuse I had suffered during that summer nearly twenty years earlier resurfaced again (it had during therapy five years earlier as well) as did much grief about all the losses that I had had. A curious memory came back to me when I went for a session at the clinic on Boundary Road and Canada Way. I remembered when I was toddler, having a mysterious stomach ailment and being in the hospital for a while. At one point, I was under an x-ray machine which was pressing on my abdomen and I was screaming and crying. As the memory came up and the bodywork therapist guided me through it, I began to sob uncontrollably. I had felt cut in half with a lot of tension in the pit of my stomach; my anxiety and grief went there automatically. After this session, I felt a great deal of physical and emotional relief. I dosed off on the short trip west on the new Millennium SkyTrain line.

I also took a brief hiatus to review the Mastery workshop once again. This time, I worked through the same issues that had come up during my breath work session. It was just what the doctor had ordered.

*

In November, I and a comedian friend that I knew from the Mastery decided to go see Dame Edna perform at the Center for Performing Arts downtown. We both went as our stage personas, walking from parkade on Seymour to the Center a few blocks away. I felt very nervous as it was hockey night and I knew we would be on very crowded streets at some point. We did get to the show without incident. The show itself was funny and, after the show, we did get a photo behind the theatre with Barry Humphries, Dame Edna's creator. Afterwards, we headed back along Georgia Street in the post-hockey crowds, me with my heart in my mouth, to the parkade. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got back to the car. Back at my apartment, I had snuck through the back of the building as there was a huge crowd of parties outside the front entrance, I paid for my ticket by writing my friend up a cheque. While sitting in my living room in my silver lace 60s dress and fully made up, I felt so incredibly natural that it actually scared me. I handed my friend the cheque and tried to put it out of my mind.

I spent that Christmas with my French friend and her brother, sister-in-law and nephew at her brother's apartment on West 8th Avenue, not far from where I had stayed when I had first arrived in Vancouver. It was a calm, sleepy afternoon and evening, again just what the doctor ordered. The New Year's Eve party that I went to was a bust and very forgettable. Over the winter of 2002-03, my gender dysphoria began to intensify. I continued to groom myself, all-body shaving and nail painting, as I had for a couple of years, but it no longer seemed enough. To counter my feelings, I tried to butch up by growing a moustache and goatee and growing my hair out somewhat. My butch moment lasted until the spring and ultimately dissipated. This and my work-related stress worsened my insomnia. In March, my work project finally came to an honourable close and I began to decompress.

*

In November, it became clear to most that there was another impending invasion of Iraq about to happen. Memories of my anti-Gulf War activism in the early-90s came back as I went to the first Vancouver-area anti-war march that month. In December, I bought my first television (I had survived this long without one!) and kept it tuned to the news as skeptical as I was with its coverage. In January, there was a massive march downtown from the Burrard Bridge to the Vancouver Art Gallery which I was in. There were other rallies and protests outside the American embassy through the month. I missed the massive day of action in February as I was working that Saturday, but caught other demonstrations later that month and into March. By the third week of March, the war began to look inevitable.

As history was busy repeating itself, I found myself at another Something About Reptile show at the Main Bistro on Main Street one Saturday night. This time, I was not a performer, but rather just an audience member. I remember getting tipsy and making out with someone; the next day I felt quite ashamed. Dating was something I was not whole-heartedly into at the time. I chalk it up to being very unstable inside at the time.

In early April, I did a round of shopping for new Miss Penny clothes. A friend had informed me of a garage sale of theatre costumes on Granville Island and we went on a very rainy Saturday that month. I knew this friend from Queer Dharma. I had a chance to wear some of my new finds at a performance that I did at the Milk Bar. It was my last show at that venue as the organizer discontinued the series soon afterwards and moved to Montreal, and then Edmonton.

In May, my father flew out to see me. I had repainted my kitchen and gotten some new furniture including a table, four chairs and a hutch. I had also bought a DVD player and had begun to rent films at, the now dearly missed, Videomatica video rental store. We spent a lot of time watching television and DVDs. As I had joined the Mastery Choir for the spring season, he came to see one of our rehearsals. Most of the time, it felt kind of empty and sad. I wished that I could explain to him what I was feeling and the dysphoria that I was experiencing, but our last conversation on the subject had not gone so well. I felt very repressed while he was around and, sadly, breathed easy when I he left. The spring choir concert was the last one that I participated in.

That summer, 2003, I volunteered with the Public Dreams Society's Illuminaries lantern festival at Trout Lake Park. I helped set up the lantern installations around the park and got to ride around in the caddies as a result. As a team of volunteers, we all had a communal lunch and dinner. I left before the actual festival to go to a cabaret performance at the Wise Hall. It was hosted by a local celebrity impersonator who I had met the previous summer at Cafe Deux Soleils. She invited me to perform at the Silvertone Pub on Commercial Drive just south of Broadway.

It was an interesting show in which I performed Petula Clark's "Cat in the Window" while dressed as a female cat. There was also an Elvis Impersonator Convention going on that weekend in Surrey. One of the delegates came to perform "Suspicious Minds" for us. My performance was significant for two reasons. I met someone in the green room who would become instrumental in my transition years later. Also, save for one five years later that I did as a favour, this was my last drag performance on stage. It was no longer adequate for me to play a character. I, somehow, needed more.

To be continued ...

About Me, Part 40: Make It Easy On Yourself

I had taken to not waking up with my alarm clock radio, but instead learning to open my eyes at the right time, then getting up leisurely and getting ready for work. The morning of September 11, 2001 was no different. I made it down to my bus connection downtown without knowing what everyone else knew. My bus passed through its usual route along Hastings Street eastward; a regular passenger, who worked at a laundry facility at a social housing unit, got on in the Downtown Eastside and asked the driver if he had seen the news. "Yep," the driver responded, "Well, looks like it'll be war." I felt my heart jump. What had happened? When I got to work, I went straight to my office; on the way I passed a coworker who was glued to the internet. I turned on my computer and went to Yahoo News. I saw the headlines about the twin towers, the planes, the Pentagon, about the fourth plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I was so stunned that I felt like I had left my body. I was overcome with a sense of panic and impending doom. Was this the last last day of life on earth? How could this happen? The images being updated on Yahoo News grew more and more horrific. Who would do this? Then, I thought about the plane in Pennsylvania; my girlfriend lived in Philadelphia. Was she near the crash site? I started to shake. I sent off an email and waited anxiously for a response.

In the meantime, I went out to my shift on the reference desk. When we opened at ten o'clock, there was no one lined up outside to come in. The library was empty for the first hour. Then, patrons came in sporadically, some were crying. After a brief conversation with one patron, we were both in tears. The morning shift passed quickly; my supervisor had left information about the Red Cross and how people could find out about and locate missing loved ones if need be. It was such a surreal and apocalyptic day, bright, warm and sunny, much like the weather in New York City, but filled with terror and fear about the future. Like most, my sense of the future holding promise was seriously wounded.

During my afternoon shift, I got a long distance phone call from Philadelphia. My girlfriend and her family were fine. I breathed a sigh of relief. We spoke for a while and then, I hung up and tried to get back to work, but to no avail; I could not focus. On the way home, I got off the westbound Hastings Street bus early to avoid going downtown; its office towers and crowds seeming unbearably eerie to me. Instead, I transferred at Commercial Drive and walked up to Broadway. The sports bars and Italian and Portuguese cafes were crowded with people watching the television screens for the latest updates and the replaying footage. I vaguely remember running into a few friends on the way, but I was too numb to respond much. That night, I felt summoned to the Shambhala Center which I had not been to in two years; I needed to be around others and I needed a contemplative practice. Our practice was quiet, yet tense and our discussion afterwards was very emotional. I decided to return to meditation practice and study at the Centre. I had already been back to practicing t'ai chi for a year. Much like after my mother died, my priorities changed drastically. The carefree times were over.

*

That fall was the darkest, gloomiest one I had ever lived through to date. That first week after the attacks, Vancouver, like other North American cities, was the scene of countless candlelight vigils and interfaith memorials. With the planes grounded, stranded passengers were put up at hotels and in people's homes. A few friends in the bi community went down to Sunset Beach to have a vigil that Thursday night; while there, we were joined by an American couple who were stranded in Vancouver that week. On Friday morning, I was on the bus to work when suddenly the order came over the radio system to pull over and observe a moment of silence; I wept. 

In the aftermath of 9/11, came the war in Afghanistan, the paranoia, the spread of surveillance culture and the rise of bigotry and violence. There was also the glorification of corporate culture and the further cheapening of popular culture. I, like many other I am sure, was in need of respite. I found it in my new relationship, even though it was long-distance and I was a second partner in a polyamorous arrangement. After 9/11, we made plans for me to travel out east to Philadelphia for Christmas. Plane travel now frightened me. I decided that I would take the train and we agreed to split the cost. Not long after that, she told me that she and her husband were expecting their first child. At that point, I felt like we should end the relationship as I did not really want to be in one that was complicated by the specter of a new family on the way. However, she had become very needy of me over the previous while and begged me not to "leave". I swallowed my misgivings and promised that I would not leave. Looking back, that is when I think the relationship became very unhealthy, but, I had become needy as well; I had met someone who seemed to accept me, gender variance and all, and felt that there was no one else for me. As the fall, continued, even as I planned for my holiday trip, my interest continuing to "see" my girlfriend waned.

In the meantime, I had met someone else. New to polyamory, I felt that perhaps this kind of style could work; I could find one guy and one gal. I had found one gal, but could not seem to find a guy. Instead, at the second of two Halloween parties that fall, I met another gal. My second girlfriend was also bi and polyamorous. I told my first girlfriend about my second and vice versa. Everything seemed fine for a while. By the beginning of December, it was becoming hopelessly complicated.

*

By the time I had finished my Artist's Way course, I had lost interest in all things that I had been wanting to do (acting, etc.) and working towards. I had had no drag performances that year either. But, I was told by some friends who worked at a Main Street vintage clothing store about a regular drag performance night at the Milk Bar (formerly Charlie's) on Abbott. I went to see it one night in December and was blown away by the performances. A couple of the performers had begun to transition. I was drawn to the fact that they were transitioning and felt jealousy rise up in me. If only. I was invited by the organizer to perform on those nights and I made plans to in the new year.

One morning in mid-December, I made my way down to the train station to catch a shuttle bus down to Seattle. I prepared myself for four days and three nights of train travel. After a lineup at the border, we continued down to the Seattle bus terminal. We got there around dusk and I waited for my train to start boarding. Once on, I relaxed into a seat. It was raining that evening on the coast, but it was close to freezing. As the train headed east and up into the mountains, the rain turned to snow. Then, we headed into a nine mile tunnel through the Cascades. By the time we were out the other side, we were in an area coated in fresh white snow drifts. At some point, around Spokane, I fell asleep. When I woke up, around five in the morning, we were in the Montana Rockies. We stopped in the mining town of Libby, the ski town of Whitefish and went through the small town of Essex, where the owner of an inn stood outside of it dressed as Santa Claus, surrounded by his staff, and waved as we went by. The small towns and villages looked like ones in the European Alps. Around lunch, we came out of the Rockies, through the Continental Divide and into the rolling brown expanse of eastern Montana. We passed through a Blackfoot Reservation and saw elk by the side of the tracks. The rest of Montana was non-descript.

On the rest of the second leg of the trip, I ate in the first class dining car and made friends with the staff. I changed trains in Chicago, with an overlay of a couple of hours, and the new train left around midnight. I arrived in Philadelphia in the afternoon. My girlfriend met me at the train station there. We hugged and kissed and for a moment, I felt like we were rekindling something. Perhaps over the holidays, things would somehow settle. They did not. I found myself alternating between jealousy and revulsion, with moments of lust and neediness. There were times, during the gift exchange with my girlfriends' family, when I felt left out. They had not anticipated that I was coming. I felt as if my girlfriend and her husband were already carving a life out for themselves and that there was no place for me in it. There were some sexual interludes however, in which I usually played the role of "the girl". On New Year's Day, the Tri-State (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York) bi community organization held a cabaret event in West Philadelphia. I had agreed to perform as Donna Mummer (the New Year's Day Mummers parades are similar to Mardi Gras) and lip-synched to Brenda Holloway's "When I'm Gone". I had bought my wig and make-up on South Street, and had brought my heels with me. I borrowed a little black dress from my girlfriend. The audience liked it; I felt pretty lackluster about it.

Despite my mixed feelings about my relationship, I was in tears on the day when I left. We hugged tightly at the station and I promised to call from Chicago. When I got there, I did and we talked warmly for a few minutes before I left to catch my train back out west. The ride back was unremarkable, passing through the Montana Rockies at night. The layover in Seattle was brief and like when I had arrived back home from California a few years earlier, when I got back to my apartment, I collapsed onto my futon and went to sleep.

*

2002 brought changes at my workplace with new management. It also brought shifts in my life. I did my first performance at the Milk Bar in February. My relationship with my second girlfriend also seemed to be going very well. We hung out a great deal over the winter and often spent the night at each other's places. We went to see the Vagina Monologues at the Simon Fraser University Theatre on Burnaby Mountain. My interest in acting was rekindled by it. In early March, we went to a fetish party in East Vancouver, held by someone in the polyamory community; I had begun going regularly to the poly social nights. My girlfriend went as the guy and I went as "his" girlfriend. After the party, we went back to her townhouse in Burnaby for the night. The role playing that night was great and I looked forward to more, but that was the last time we would spend the night together.

My first girlfriend came up to Vancouver for a visit during Passover/Easter. By that time, she was eight months pregnant. I had been reluctant to have her travel and had felt like I wanted to end the relationship, but fool that I was, I had not told her that. After a very tense few days, I told her it was over. I felt horrible, but the truth was that I had been in over my head for months. For the last few days of her trip, she stayed at a hotel downtown. I covered half of her expenses. We had lunch that week and tried to talk some of this through, but it was truly over. She flew back to Philadelphia at the end of the week. I payed for half of her air travel and the last time I spoke to her was over the phone verifying that she had received the last of my cheques; she had. It was the only time, to date, that I dumped anyone as it was usually me who got dumped.

Which was the case in June 2002, when my second girlfriend broke up with me; our relationship had run out of gas and that was that. Nonetheless, after meeting to talk down at Kitsilano Beach and getting a lift home for the last time, I felt stunned.

Though I instinctively knew that polyamory was not for me, I continued to go to the social nights and events for another year. But, I felt increasingly out of place at them. I see it now, as me trying to hold on to some continuity. That summer my t'ai chi instructor, who had been my friend since my early days in Vancouver, closed his school and moved back to his hometown in Ontario. Also, a dear friend in the Mastery community passed away from cancer in July. She had been a very playful, childlike spirit and her death, at thirty-eight, was devastating to all of us who knew her. Life became sadder that year.

On the brighter side, I continued to perform as Miss Penny throughout the year and came out to more and more people as I did so. Also, I went to my first political demonstration in years that May, a protest of the new provincial government's economic policies. Some friends and coworkers were in it with me. The pendulum in my life had begun to swing away from personal issues and back in the direction of social engagement and political activism. But as I marched down Georgia and Burrard Streets that day, I began to feel the weight of all of the years I had lived since I was a young person doing this a decade earlier. From now on, my life was going to be about balance. And I looked forward to it like the quiet, wholesome respite I had been needing for so long.

To be continued ...