THAT DAY

In the morning, I work on a song called HERMIT TREE--a backup in case my voice teacher hates TRIAL RUN, the one I really want to sing. Obsess on it and print out the score only at the last minute.

Damn, I forgot to eat! Gobble a snack. No time to shower now. Stink. I'm sabotaging myself socially again.

Rain and hail--so much for biking to campus. Drive, park--not easy.

Voice class is crowded. Good! I like that. Not just for the extra musical feedback--I'm attracted to several of my classmates.

I sing TRIAL RUN. The teacher says "Stop hearing it as a composer; the score you wrote is now sacred, you're a singer only." But I've never heard it played before! I need to be sure it's right before we rehearse it, or it'll be hell unlearning the errors. One note sounds off in the intro and it throws my first line off, and the pianist keeps playing F not F minor in 2nd line of each verse, further jarring me. But once we get past that, it's fine. She praises the song, in fact, as one of the best. Classmates do too. I feel happy.

Also stinky and shaking. Before I just smelled grubby--now I reek of fear. Wow, was I terrified! Didn't feel it so much while I was up there--didn't freeze or panic like so many novice performers. But my body took the brunt of the stress.

THAT NIGHT

I'm reading an article in a magazine: a man went in for minor surgery, and discovers only when he wakes up that the technical name for the procedure hid the fact it's a sex-change he never wanted! Gruesome photos as surgeons gouge out his penis. Yet the text has a light humorous tone, as if it's a mild practical joke. Jarring.

I identify physically with the victim and feel rather sick, but my reaction is to the cutting and the blood, not to the sex change per se, which the text focuses on entirely. The tone is "Ha ha, he went to sleep a man and woke up a woman." The subtext is "He didn't think much about women's lives, now he'll find out. His ego may get bruised."

But losing my sexual identity doesn't scare me at all. The opposite--when I change sex in a dream, I feel pleased and excited; I'm not only comfortable being female, it's usually a hint that that dream's important.

This surgery horrifies me because it's bloodily maiming someone without their knowledge or consent. Bruised ego? Try butchered body!

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• I have a cyst on my shoulder that's been slowly growing, irritating the muscle. They tell me it'll have to be removed soon. Minor surgery--as long as they don't screw up the records and remove the wrong thing!
• I stumbled today on a comic I drew of a dream called CHUNKS. In short: I'm at the beach. I'm female, but ashamed of my body: horribly scarred by a shark attack years ago. Big chunks gouged out. Then a surgeon walks up with gobs of flesh, MY lost flesh, asks if I want them sewn back on. But my wounds, ugly though they are, have largely filled in! I don't have room for my missing chunks. I can let them heal the rest of the way on their own.
• ACTION: Avoid surgery at all costs! My body doesn't trust doctors. Though I don't think this is only about surgery--I don't trust ANY deep intervention involving experts! Not unless I know them very, very well.
• But, deep psychological anxieties aside... I also better NOT use the power saw on those house repairs I gotta do this week! Because... you never know.

I did the house repairs with a manual saw. I put off surgery another eight months, too; but my shoulder got so sore I finally had to do it. No big problems--except they kept losing my records. I had to be quite stubborn and rock the boat to get it done at all.

Now, looking back, my dreams were angry with me about something more immediate: voice class. The butchery isn't the problems with my new song--they really were minor. It's about my body. I was numb to my own terror--wouldn't have even known I was scared until I smelled my own fear. That's like the magazine's callous jokes about sex-confusion while ignoring the physical trauma.

I did need to get over stage-fright, and these classes worked. But I ignored the cost in stress--and that stress may be the reason I got worse, until surgery was unavoidable.

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