FIRST EVENT DIARY – 2018
DAY 4, Thursday, 02/01/18
Emily Jo Donatello
(call me “Em”)
Please open the audio below in another window and listen while reading this entry:
NOTES MUSICAL TO MY EARS
I’m so pleased to report that I’ve already had several sweet messages from people who’ve been reading my diary this week and offered encouragement and compliments too. Thank you. And keep your comments coming. They really do help me, as I try to refine my style, both personal and creative.
And, imagine this! I’ve learned that a girl, a member of “Pathways” — less active than me, one I’ve never met — is reading me too and writes she’ll also be coming to First Event! Now I’ll not be the only one there from our group! I will strive to meet her and offer the friendship which has previously been offered to me.
Wednesday began auspiciously with the rare appearance of a blue blood moon around the world. In the U.S. it was best seen on the West Coast, but the East Coast, including CT and NJ, had a marvelous, near full view. Surely this cosmic event is a mere coincidence, arriving at the first of First Event. Surely auspicious. Surely?
Google tells me the driving time from Montclair, NJ, where I have the apartment, to Marlboro, Ma, where First Event ennobles the Royal Plaza Hotel, is about 4 hours.
Shall I make a rest stop along the way? New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut laws are clear: transgenders may use the restroom aligned with personal presentation. In CT the Merritt Parkway Service Areas, I-95 too, have all been renovated and are now ample. For this particular service task, I’ve noticed, people tend to avoid eye contact anyway. Doing one’s business can be a most business-like proposition.
As to legal affirmation for transgenders in public facilities, I’m not so sure about Massachusetts. I’ll just plan around those service plazas, unless an urgency overwhelms my common sense. This particular aspect of trans-travel remains rather transitory for me — should I? shouldn’t I? Why not? Yet I believe I am gaining confidence. Perhaps this trip will add to it. Maybe I won’t overthink the matter, as I always do? I do overthink too many things: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” the poet wrote.
“And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?”
Of course, I’ve now discovered, on leaving CT for NJ Wednesday, I left a few necessary medications in CT. I’ll need to stop home on the way north to MA to pick those up. My anxiety will be high, as the house needs to be empty when I get there. If it’s not, I’ll have a drama I’d rather not experience; the same could be said for anyone who might be home. How debilitating it is to try to feel good about oneself while knowing others, who otherwise respect and love you, are horrified by this aspect of your character. Debilitating and indelibly sad.
Ah, me… Away!
Psychic Hugs.
Em
email: emily_jo_donatello@yahoo.com (mind the underscores, or you’ll — like me — trip in writing)