M. got in touch through Friends Reunited. She used to work with me at Insight. I went up to Sheffield in the snow and had lunch with everybody. A., who I had felt had a blood sugar problem much like my own, has just started Atkins. I noticed she’s so much calmer, and doesn’t seem so pink. She’s lost a stone in a fortnight. I really hope she sticks to it; she will feel so much better long term. I’m feeling slightly self-satisfied as I think a (slightly drunken) throwaway comment I made to our former boss at an awards ceremony in Sheffield may have had an influence. All I remember is I was smoking a cigar at the time.
I saw R., who is one of the coolest and most intelligent people I know. I really rate her. She has a brain the size of a planet. I find her quite sexy and I like flirting with her. It sounds like a cliché that I’m repeating to be liberal, but it’s not. R. would be cool and sexy even if you took away her gothdom and dressed her in a sack. She has some hysterically girly traits that clearly haven’t been cultured; like the way she throws pathetically, and the way she collapses into giggles when she’s teased. She’s an MTF transsexual (transgenders seem to be ubiquitous to IT departments, she’s not the first I’ve known and won’t be the last). It’s something not even worth mentioning but for the story I’m about to repeat. I’ve never thought of her as being male, but then I don’t actually think of anyone as being primarily “male” or “female,” as I wouldn’t automatically exclude or include either in my love life or my circle of friends. For me sexuality is a decidedly blurry and fluid arena, and you just can’t scare me.
Anyway, a mutual acquaintance I don’t know very well referred to R. as “the thing.” I was shocked, really shocked, in the way I would be shocked by racism or homophobia. No one who actually knew R. or worked in the same department would ever think of her in that way. Maybe I’ve been isolated from the general mass of (intellectually impaired) society for too long? I guess I thought if I could grow up and move on from finding it “a bit weird” when I was twelve, everyone else would too. I’m still reeling.
