Blue/Jacket 10

I missed Nick as a friend too much because he had talked to me about how he would come to visit me and try to find a beautiful Swedish boyfriend, but it was all gone now and the first months were just downright miserable and went under the slogan of how do you even make friends anymore?

Missing Nick, now leaving him alone as a lost friend shredded me because I would never be able to speak to him again and as time passes and neither of us speak, even forgiving seems bleak because we know the other would yell at the other’s distance. He didn’t even bother to find out how did I make it and neither did I find out how his university is going. 

The first few months were tired and filled with isolation and coping all loss from places I would eat out after school to feeling nothing in the apartment at all, roaming from room to room, never feeling calm as the balconies were filled with Swedish flags and there was an immense desire to have snow just because it would give the illusion of everything being dead and now watching everything spring to life when I was still scared and some rebirth of things I've seen before was just plain odd. 

Alex doesn't offer me a cigarette and I keep looking at him, as he apparently seemed in bed with thought last night and I wondered how his nights were filled and it was far from something I would ever ask Jamie about, let alone Jack which seemed to flutter about us.

I haven't even properly met Jack and just talked to him, a few hours can play out however they want from taking nothing and wasting themselves as blank paper to revealing a lifetime.

But Nick still stomped on my thoughts as I would drink tea on the floor, thinking of him and how life just stopped revolving around him and too many distant memories of how even before I had come out, when he was out we would just end up looking at each other even in busses and laughing out as we thought of haircuts for me and I knew that I had loved him even if I hadn’t known myself and my love for him was the anchor for me to know what I actually knew about for years and now he was gone, because old loves still ache and the wounds are forever open because scars can always be visible on the skin even if you got some lovely tattoos on the side. And Nick himself becomes a reminder which I don’t need every day that men wouldn’t go for me, so looking at Alex and Jamie feels a bit odd and off, feeling loved or wanted is always odd when people told you that everything was wrong with you and it’s the reason for an insane hour. 

The same words circulate in your head, no matter how much you push them away because no one will ever tell you they find your body attractive and that it’s a man’s body, one thing is your own refusal of body and another when Agy ran after me and took my hand, saying that she thought about it and that the patriarchy enforced me views that women are weak and that’s why I decided that I am a man. That I gave in.

And in that moment I wanted to slap her, but then she’d accuse me of patriarchy, that I became a violent man. My hands started aching and when I came back home, I thought I would thrash the whole house down, instead I just packed and spent three hours trying to come, knowing that I could never fix the fact that I couldn’t see myself as a man, because for people I would always be some female traitor and that I would never bring use to society and leaving seemed like suicide, because I gave up trying to convince people. 

Hatred of the self makes everything worse. I hated myself that I couldn’t link my body to what I wanted and that no one would see me as a man, claiming that they knew better, because they saw my vagina and they wanted me as a woman and desperation trails for months and hands ache from all the anxiety and sitting down on the balcony, head between the legs and crying makes nothing. Because yeah, you can hate women, yeah you can hate that one man you loved, but it’s never that all women are bed or cis men are bad. But they will always think that all trans men are bad.

And time passes and I don’t even know what I had done the whole week, because I hated myself so much, because I couldn’t be loved as a man. And I knew that everything seemed to be demanding that I would just like we pray for an error to be gone, that I would be that. That people prayed that I would stop existing by solely finishing myself off and preferably that my blood would not stain and that I would not take any ground, that I would not take any space or any heart for that matter. Or that the men I would drag with me would stop being gay because for many women, it’s a shame if a man is gay. I grew up with girls whining on that and I had wanted it gone so desperately. And it was okay, because the world seemed to shift and the more I sat on that coffee meet up the more revolted I felt, passing the phones around and I felt very insignificant and I felt as if I had been spying on opinions which I should have never heard leave their small heads. But it did.

Alex happens in a haze and when he leaves the heart just keeps beating fast, trying to reminiscence that he exists and how some relationships take slower to assemble and some are written on the veins, yanking you from a fall while others caress the stars. 

I still feel like I can never believe the face of people who seem to think that there is something wrong with anyone who will not see their female problems above all. And maybe that’s why I leave and it’s odd to see that things build up in time, like odd Lego block towers built by kids, much taller than they are. It makes me question how did it happen. 

You can talk about inequality forever.

And no one will ever talk about how it feels to be peeled down by society and reminded always that what matters is how nature built your cocoon and people focus on appearance too much, we always think of how everything looks rather than the memories which drain us with surprise and we will think of beautiful places rather often than memories or because something pleased us as we looked at it, rather than the things. But maybe we rely on that because we had been alone for so long. And being stripped down only reminds us that somehow no one is looking at us. And we follow the stereotypes in our head ready to be built, up to the point that when I see single old men I always wonder or rather presume they should be gay and the associations start going in the head on how must it be and my own thoughts vine rather often on, clinging.

Growing up was a pain, wondering and hearing so many things on how gay men had to be miserable to compose, draw or make anything and because only a gay man could be miserable that would end dragging on, like a rattling snake with all it’s thought and because of the body I was given I would end up thinking even more how I couldn’t even be properly and artistically miserable, that I wouldn’t happen to end up locking myself up to see the misery reflected in the night. 

And with age you only seem more lost, numbers only remind of the time passing.

Body dysphoria will end up taking all of the lungs with the thinking from any misery which drags on from bottom to chest. And a lot is asked of would this mess happen if society wouldn’t be showing me how flat chested men are and how all of them happen to have a sock in their boxers. I never understood why does it have to be a unified thing between the dick and balls in ads. We all know what’s expected to be there, because they wouldn’t show someone with a vagina, because men have all the views of women wrong and of course someone who is presumed to be a woman would never want to be a man, would always love the vagina and would never cry about not having a penis.

When I was young, I ended up raiding my mother’s magazines, which becomes far too autobiographical to even speak of in the mind and I just look at Alex, realizing that I’m not out to him yet, just to Jamie and Jack. And in those magazines I remember there was some Freudian article on how all women wanted penises and it was rather lengthy and it seemed to make sense to me. I didn’t understand how could this apply to all women, but I agreed. And there had been too many memories which I would never look back upon, because none of us want to live a lie life. And only when we seem to calm down it is when we look back on our memories which we’ve formed knowing ourselves.

The more people misgender me the more I see that it doesn’t matter how much you transition, it ends up being for yourself because no one will bat an eyelash to see it as an act of violence and no one will stop themselves from assuming what your skin tells them you were assigned at birth as.

And looking at Alex makes me more than ponder different questions, as I wonder how long would it be until he would let go of the leather jacket and what amazes me is that you can still dream as you walk down the same or the newly seen streets, feeling sense of reality, not just from a insomnia filled night with a moving head. But then what if we’re all lucid dreaming all the time from all the things we’ve touched and the saddest thing you’ll ever hear is that you never really touch anything, it’s the small space between atoms which causes the touch feel, so we end up never fully even feeling love, just the closest distance, as if it were a wall all over again. 

When it comes to either of them, does it become greed and which one do you juggle and how come you can destroy a canvas in one day and fall in love with another while days of growing up where loitering in melancholy and there had been nothing besides the fuzz in the head screaming to just let go, clutching onto the desks and no one ever asking why

because everything seems to be connected with the fact that no one really likes a trans man, because it’s never as quirky as being a butch “girl” was. No one wants another man, because I will be to blame for all the men who have done things I have never ever thought of, while the women who will fling me outside my life will never be held accountable because the past is easier to blame than a crooked present feminism. 

I could never look at Alex in the eye, as we walked and I wondered how do you even speak to someone like that. He asks about groceries and I just run down through my list and I wonder how much does he know he’s lost. And I wonder how much would it feel and how I suddenly felt lost again, wondering how come his jacket, which still looks like it’s only been worn a day has managed to make itself into my mind. It’s surely not a souvenir and I wonder how many of them have even been manufactured and who had I seen and how could I see his face as I was growing up and how come he had been the man with the dreams. 

“I think the Devil’s wings are made of dreams.” Nick had told me once, as he had sat outside with me on the balcony, we had all the lights turned off and the sky was pitch black, the outlines of clouds were the only company. “Because just think of it... if God does exist, what if the Devil controlled the fate of everyone?”

He had exhaled, wrapping his arms around as I watched him, wondering how much of my fallen love would trail behind me and after him and it was back in those sultry moments when I believed that he would still be into me. And I had the thought while growing up that what if I had thought I was trans because Nick was into men, but as time went on and he rejected me I’d never felt so much like a man in my life and it seemed like my gender was the only thing I could confide in, tucked in my room and eating the same pick and mix Alex would get. 

“That would explain why there’s so many wars and why people become so twisted and also... doesn’t it make a weird point that the Devil was once trusted? Would that mean that the worst are the betrayers? Never people who you never knew?”

And I had looked at Alex, wrapping my scarf tighter, feeling odd about confessing that Jamie was in my bed and that Alex didn’t know that I was trans. 

“So how did you get the cool jacket, though?” Even if all I see is curiosity in Alex’s brown teddy bear eyes, he points at the back, smirking and I wonder how he still wakes up and what does happen, when Jamie leaves from him and how deep his regret had been, because the now disfunct couple showed more than distress of a dead relationship, how Alex had held Jamie in his arms and I wondered how deep actually cheating had hurt both of them and what had been running through Alex’s mind, but I couldn’t ask that even if we all jump at anyone gay who we know, as if that’s all our love circle could ever be, but we don’t ever fight it or deny it. I do end up being attracted to men, anyway. 

“Oh, I actually ended up buying in a small store in Gamla Stan, to be honest. They said it was handmade, there were maybe two or three of them when I came in first?” Alex shrugged, quickly checking his phone for the recently popped up notification and I wondered how often has Jamie taken the night bus to end up with his ex-boyfriend and I wondered what thoughts would go through the Brazilian’s head, watching the city suddenly go smaller in size, cars vanish and the roads become still and dark. I wondered why I thought of them but it was merely because I never had the guts to start a relationship, let alone even ask either of them about it. 

I always feel weird getting groceries with someone, because I feel odd kind of thinking is it okay to get a whole cart? Do you get the trolley? Alex ends up taking a basket and I follow, wondering what the fuck do vegans even eat, because before everything fell apart with my mom, I would end up working at gran’s butcher place and meat ended up being a big part of my life. Is soy milk vegan? What does he even eat? I end up taking the phone, thinking and Alex looks at me. Instead I keep pressing my phone against my lips, as we walk past the bakery and I end up going back to get croissants, praying. 

“It’s a lovely jacket.” Was my closing, before we end up going through the cereal section and spend maybe half an hour on the pick and mix, as I even manage to remember the lost fruit and panically get a salad. Alex ends up eying my choice of food and I pray that I look vegan enough, but I had ended up taking a carton of milk for myself and nachos. I’d end up getting Jamie out of bed anyway, apparently or rummaging through all the drawers, thinking what would he even eat. We could eat out though. That would involve leaving the house. 

“There’s nothing else in that store to be honest.” Alex smirks, getting far too many jelly beans. “I’m more of an H&M sort of person, Jamie’s the one who gets a kick from Acne and so does Jack, but I’m no heir or ghost writer.” 

He smiles. Alex seems to be musing on his own words and it feels like I’ve seen him tonight, crouching to see the new chocolates for the pick and mix and I wonder how much had I seen of someone who wasn’t him. And who had I loved all the time, but instead we pay and I end up inviting him to hang out again tomorrow, apologizing for my awkwardness and just reassuring myself that with nothing definite with Jamie, perhaps I could juggle my awkward thoughts a bit more, before I would realize what would end up trapping me, whether it would be a person or some belief in some Devil drawn fate, just as said  by Nick who said that love was a Devilish thing, probably because he really didn’t want me.  

“Me and Jack, actually, after I found out that Alex cheated... I was distressed and I offered him to join me in Lisbon. I didn’t want to go back to Stockholm and it was a cheap bus ride, anyway, not that we didn’t have the money, either.” Jamie shrugs as he tells me this, when I get back and he starts unloading the bags for me, right after I had entered the door and he grinned at my note, welcoming me in, as if it had all been there all along. I don’t even ask what led him to that and I wonder if he had seen us as he was on his first morning smoke. “And we had hooked up a few times, I was very depressed and I knew that Jack had liked me. I think... the oddest thing, was that he said that it meant nothing, that it was just fucking, because he knew I wasn’t keen on it. It was really weird, to have someone openly acknowledge no romantic attraction in between, I guess.”

He notices my concern.

“I don’t mean that about you in any way... I just recalled, because I dreamt again of Lisbon, I do rather often, I think of both of us drinking on staircases and not saying anything, because we couldn’t unwind ourselves and that was the biggest anti-climatic relationship I’ve ever had which was as stale as a dream. But it always comes back to me in dreams, as if Jack is bleeding about it. I don’t know why.

Or maybe I don’t want to know.”

-

Happy chapter 10 xD 

Basically I ended up writing the last Jamie part where he talks about Jack before the Alex chunk and I just put a note to write the Alex scene later and I was nervous and thinking how to do it, because there's two love lines going parallel now, so I kind of needed to balance that out and I just had the Jamie thought so I wrote it down without thinking much to be honest xD

The first Nick paragraph was a sort of washed down memory of this guy I used to be friends with a few years ago and I had told him I moved to Sweden and he said he'd want to visit me, but we don't really keep in touch and it's a bit weird, I'm not too fond of coming out to people from places I've long left and don't want anything with. He's lovely though. So that was put in, really.

I can't recall if I ever spoke of it, but Blue/Jacket takes place in the neighborhood where me and Callie first moved to, it was a nightmare but I liked the region and I just changed a few things, but it's pretty much that one:) and I kind of see Miles' apartment close to where we had rented the room. It's really odd to see how far we've done with pretty much no one besides each other and I had just started talking to my ex then, so it's... rewarding and nice, but odd indeed. 

The first months were very odd when we moved, it was nice but just like anything else, it was interesting and I'm deeply happy but kind of moving suddenly was obviously a big mental shock and I mourned a lot, even if I was much happier. Yeah, the amount of Swedish flags struck out to me.

It's quite an interesting thing in this chapter I guess that Miles doesn't really have the courage to ask about Jack or Jamie, so he ends up painting what he thinks would be and I write it as the things I see those characters doing if I could've written it then:)

I whenever end up mussing too much on the story, like the day before yesterday (because yesterday I had finished writing the chapter and headed off tired to bed xD) I was listening to Old Mary by The Dead Weather (which is my main Blue/Jacket song. Spoiler? Ahah, I dunno xD) and I got a kick from Magazine's The Book so those helped me write the Alex scene even if the songs don't have to do much and they ended up serving more help for Nick's musings on fate and I had wondered for a second who should say those words and instead of Jamie, chose Nick.

I think Blue/Jacket speaks as explicit as I could about trans men, dysphoria and transmisandry really. Agy's words were pretty much what I had heard really. It's surely one of the most hurtful I've heard and nonsense as well. That paragraph speaks with much more honesty than I can add really, because Blue/Jacket is what I open when I feel dysphoric or need to vent, so it's the pure honesty and anger, which I would not be able to describe now in such accuracy because frankly my main emotion now is anxiety, making sure that I get the backstory right and tired XD

Also I ended up writing a lot, thought of leaving the Jamie scene for the next chapter, but decided that a longer chapter would be great xD (and a big backstory for me to mumble on sleepily xD ughh XD don't worry, I love writing back stories xD) 

When I was growing up I pretty much had girls/women who I knew get sad over Ricky Martin being gay, that he had taken away some woman's happiness, that it was a shame and a traitor, so I addressed that since there's a fucking belief as if all is okay if you're a gay man and I'm really tired of that and that's why I write viciously xD Also it got inspired by Callie who told me of a guy she knew who was gay and girls would make whole attempts to sleep with him because he was gay and fake something to sleepover at his even if he had a boyfriend, that they could make him not gay, just for them. So we need to speak about that. 

Me and Callie saw a few times kid build towers much taller than them in McDonalds, this shout out is dedicated to you kiddos xD I end up seeing something which I think would be good even as a line in a story and I take it, kind of the whole roses ask me to write about them thing:)

I grew up hearing that only gay men could do the most beautiful things from designing clothes to artists and writers and grew up hearing that a gay man would always be miserable because he was gay and he would never find a partner, that always saddened me and I ended up applying it to myself, I wanted to be that gay man, I wanted to be a gay man writer locked up and writing miserably. I still am, only not miserable and taken xD

I had my birthday recently so of course I thought of age.

I hate underwear ads. I'm really not interested in the uni erection. And in general we should be pushing more imagery of men who don't bind, men who don't transition, because not all of us can, not all of us do, even if Miles kind of falls in this story under the very dysphoric man, really and I thought of it, but the point of making a character trans is not changing them, so I stuck with that. 

The magazine is actually a real story, I had found it and hah, subtle push. Looking back it was a rather... interesting trans man article. Errr, you go weird issue of Cosmopolitan? Like said, it's interesting to go back and see all the clues which led to who you are.

I ended up getting misgendered so I got obviously sad and dysphoric and had that dark thought about it, so yeah. But fuck that. Fuck misgendering, we are who we are. 

It actually made me sad to hear that we never really touch anyone, quite... sad. 

Yeah, I'm being rather hateful of the whole erasure of trans men because some people can't get over their gender issues or end up using it for their own greed and need (*cough* Erika Linder). You're either on the spectrum or not, but you can't be quirky andro cis female, andro is not your fucking adjective, so neither is frankly such words as feminine and masculine, butch falls under one. I'm sleepy and I'm tired of holding my tongue, but if you're reading this, you know what you're reading.

I'm also getting overrall annoyed at feminism and how anyone with a vagina is accepted into women circles, both sides should stay away, if you're not a woman stay away from those spaces and MOST IMPORTANTLY NO FUCKING ALL VAGINAS ARE WOMEN SO TRANS MEN WELCOME OR WHATEVER. 

I talked about Nick earlier xD actually about where Alex had bought it was decided and the location a year ago actually xD even earlier I had raided to find the location xD

There's so much hatred towards trans men that you cling onto every shitty excuse people come up with these days because it's oh so wrong to be a man now. Ugh. So it's hard to accept yourself when everyone wants you dead.

I was musing on traitors and how the worst enemies were ex-friends.

I get anxious about grocery shopping with someone else, it's like... how much milk can I buy? xD I'm rubbish at vegan diets, my health doesn't allow me to exclude many things, so yeah.

The summer thing I met Callie in, I had a roommate which agreed with the bloke she was naging to just have a summer romance and that at the time kind of seemed nice to me because I was used to seeing break ups, while here everything was decided, so I think Jack's words was a bit of an ode to that. Also the brief Jamie/Jack was decided ages ago.

I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so so much for the attention this story has been getting, I never expected it to be loved as much because of its trans content, so thank you so much.

Please tell me if you enjoyed it and thank you, dears

<3

Jamie