May 2012
4 posts
3 tags
My So-Called alternative Lifestyle
Jordan is a douchey trans guy played by Jennifer Connelly, Ricky is a faggy non-binary trans boi played by a young Queen Latifa and gets hella ass all the time, Angela’s little sis is a straight trans girl, the nerdy kid Brian is a soft futch dyke, Angela’s Mom Patty is a male binary identified ultra-femme fag and everyone else is pan and super queer and rocking a radical butch-femme...
Everybody calls me pretty.
[[[Yo, when I talk about my trans*ness in this piece, and the way [it is/I am] marginalized, I’m also talking about my femmeness. I didn’t mean to exclude femmeness from the discourse, I just usually center my thought around the trans*ness of my identity, and I don’t think my femmeness can be extricated from my trans*ness. Also, I’m white, and I...
April 2012
5 posts
Great Moments in Trans*ness
Got ma’am-sir-sorry’d at the store.
Got ma’am-oh-sorry’d at the store; told the cashier “No, you got it right.”
Got straight ma’am’d on the phone at work.
Got called honey by an old man at work. Felt scared.
Was stopped by an employee at the library who stared at me in disbelief, looking from my tits to my face and back repeatedly, asking “Is you a man...
Tonight I looked down at my clit in the shower and felt, for the first time, unabashed love and appreciation for her. That feeling’s gone by now, it was just a quick flash of something I hope I’ll see more of, but for a moment I felt what I guess was a lack of clit dysphoria. I saw my clit as she is and as she should be: small, soft, pretty. It reminded me of looking at pictures of...
I dreamed about us again last night, yr hip bones so sharp I woke up spitting blood, the first time you made me eat you out, on the roof, in the floodlight, in front of yr neighbors’ glass dining room wall.
I felt stubble of yr shaving on my tongue; I felt the roughness/resistance of yr jeans against my face as you [let/made] me pull them down just far enough to smell you, felt the...
I don’t want to call myself a dyke anymore. I don’t EVER want to call myself a lesbian, or a woman, or a feminist. All of that’s been so painful for me. I renounce queerness.
If queer always means white, I want no part of it. If queer always means ‘college educated’, I want no part of it. If queer always means sexy, I want no part of it. If queer always means cis, I...
March 2012
12 posts
It is uniquely horrible and weird to be unnerved by my own image on a everyday basis.
I am interested in [inhabiting/acknowledging that I inhabit] some social space between archetypes of the white twenty-something trans* sex worker and the pre-to-early-teens white girl trying but ‘failing’ to embody an adult femininity/sexuality. A major part of my lived experience is in feeling like...
I chose not to publish this last week, when I wrote it, ‘cause I didn’t want it to be one of the last things I left behind. Now, as an artifact of how I was feeling then, I can see it on its own terms.
All the hate in the world is so immensely powerful. I want its power for myself. I want to reclaim every drop of toxin meant for me & my trans* siblings. The next time someone...
Put on a full face of makeup. Get glitter in yr eyes. Let yr roommate braid yr hair. Let yr [friend/crush] shave yr head. Cry the makeup off. Sleep in the makeup and the glitter, the tears and the braids and the sweat and the bits of hair. Wake up, put on more makeup.
[[Tell [everyone/yrself]/Try to tell yrself] you [need/don’t need] to [remember(; need) to( remember; remember;) survive./...
newly [always/forever] struggling as hard as I need to in order to accomplish the staying-alive. thinking super hard about what self care means in my life, how self care is enacted in my life. thinking:
self care is not the same as [being responsible/making responsible decisions]. self care is not the same as [staying/being] healthy. self care is not the same as being [a grown-up//a kid at...
Had two important thoughts while talking with Uri the other day.
Thought one:
When I say audaciously positive things about myself (“I’m overwhelmingly cute”, “She’s the best person in the world”, “Everybuddy wants to fuck me”), I’m simultaneously doing three things:
Mocking and parodying anyone who [likes/loves/admires] me and...
Today in a flash of self-awareness I came to terms with this:
A large part of my disidentification with ‘woman’ and my identification with non-binary identity is due to the extent to which binary-identified trans* women are bound to rigid standards of femininity (that feel unachievable to me), even or especially in queer [communities/spaces], in ways that cis women are not. I...
Field Guide
So, I wrote this long thing called “You Can Get It: A Queer Ladies’ Field Guide to Fucking Nic Bravo”. I think it speaks for itself. I’ve copied the text below; you can also find it at nicbravo.com/fieldguide.
It’s extremely sexually explicit.
You Can Get It: A Queer Ladies’ Field Guide to Fucking Nic Bravo
I’ve been thinking a lot about why I don’t get fucked as much...
February 2012
9 posts
1 tag
I spent four hours driving to and from a bigger city today in a fancy rental paid for by my work. I was a handsome little Girl Friday, running errands and advocating and getting things done and just generally operating. I dressed up in some fancy-ass clothes and strutted around in this fancy-ass mall, looking queer as shit in my skinny stretch jeans, tattered sneaks, thin and tight vintage tee,...
Thinking more about trans* women’s exclusion from queer women’s spaces. Thinking also about my position as a non-woman, non-binary trans* lady in this discussion. Let’s take a case study:
So first, Jenna at liquorinthefront posted this thing where she said:
I really hate discrimination within the queer community. Like when lesbians get pissed off if transmen come to ladies...
Unthinkable Creatures is this busy, hectic workshop filled day and night with the bodies and the work and the sounds of a bunch of intense, tough, dreamy ladies with tattoos and asymmetrical haircuts. It’s housed in an abandoned foundry: writing desks and craft tables and tattoo stations, letter presses and copiers and laptops and reams of paper and skeins of wool and crates of records and...
Writing the secret [fear/shame/anger]
This writing comes from a place [of love/of anger]. I do feel that love and anger are not mutually exclusive. Thanks to KS for reviewing this piece.
It also addresses triggering topics including suicide and trans*misogyny, like much of the writing I do in this space. Please care for yourself in whatever way necessary.
I feel such pride/joy/inspiration/optimism when I watch my drag king friends...
What we write about when we're avoiding writing...
[Trigger warning: the following thing references suicide, as does this warning.]
An incomplete list of the things that helped me repeatedly not kill myself today:
Avery Edison’s blog, twitter stream, and stand-up comedy
Billy Cheer’s twitter stream (I mean, really)
twitter in general
Oliver Bendorf’s reassurance that the injustices I see are real
Little Light’s...
I’m so, so scared [of/to write] what I’m writing right now. I’m scared because it’s something I’ve been silent about for a long time, something that’s killing me that I don’t feel like anyone wants to hear. I’m scared because there are only about 6 people in the world that I really love and interdepend on, and they’re all cis queer women or...
Two weeks ago, my friends and I threw a party to raise money for my self care fund. It was pretty good.
I’ve got a whole stack of privileges I unjustly benefit from. I’m white, not fat, “able bodied”, not in poverty; I have a BS from a state university. I also often (but decreasingly) get read as a straight or normatively gay male binary man, which carries privilege...
Trying to write/speak the very deep shame and...
I’ve been [searching for/trying to create] language to talk about my needs+desires+boundaries+feelings around my trans* experience/identity.
“medical costs” —> “health care costs” —> “self care costs”
“transition” —> “transformation” —> “trans* experience”
“feminize my...
January 2012
12 posts
…that super [weird/lovely/gross] [intimacy/violation] of the emailed receipt that shows Amos Mac’s legal name very close to my legal name. The dissociative fugue brought on by the hegemonic identity politics of institutional commerce.
After Ana Božičević’s Same Difference in Evening Will Come.
I encountered a wolf once. I was walking home from another farm. It was dusk, and I walked down the road and the wolf followed, parallel, in the field. It felt exhilarating like I could be eaten. But the exhilaration was a function of not being eaten.
—(p. 3, as posted to my Facebook wall by KS)
The exhilaration of...
queeragripoetics:
tonight i showed nic bravo the mockup i made. she read it, fast, standing in the kitchen as she ate slices of cheese.
“i don’t understand how you and maureen love the secret longing,” she said, “i feel totally the opposite. to me it is the worst thing in the world.”
Secret longing is not a thing.
My project is explicit and consensual communication about desires, needs, and...
Identity checkpoint
I am a queer non-binary trans* lady. My identity is socially constructed and fluid.
Sex: trans* (T)
Gender: queer non-binary trans* lady, diesel femme, grrrl
Attraction: dyke. Potentially attracted to people who are faab and/or trans* and/or non-binary; basically anyone, except for [very masculine] men.
Body: trans*, feminine, non-binary, unsexed; cunt-identified
Assigned at birth:...
Too many lists.
I’ve been on hormones for almost 6 weeks. I’ve seen a lot of changes already, much faster than I expected. I’m super happy with them, and I feel like my quality of life and the quality of my relationships has changed a lot. This is complicated.
I’m pretty ambivalent/suspicious of the medicalization of trans* experiences. While I have chosen a medicalized mode of living as...
Found this picture of myself and the bear from the boy days. My very first thought:
“I’d make a really hott guy…”
My body and my life are both so different now, compared to that time. The bear’s dead. My body hair is mostly gone. I weigh about ten pounds less. Those jeans are ruined and that couch is burned up and those glasses are at the bottom of a dresser drawer....
In the last four days, I’ve slept in my own bed once, I’ve had five meals, 12 cups of coffee, met tons of new people, and blossomed as a slut.
In the last three days, I’ve been freaked, fucked, cuddled, been felt up and dominated, spooned, taped up, made into bondage art, and joined FetLife.
In the past two and a half days, I’ve slept in three strange places (including...
My name is Sebastian and I run/write the blog xxboy. From now on, my original blog will feature mainly original content and commentary. If I want to “reblog” someone else’s post or raise awareness for an element of the trans community on tumblr, I will use this blog.
(via XXBOY REBLOGS)
And so was born Nic Bravo Reblogs.
December 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Access.
Three blue pills
Two medium white pills
One large white pill
One pair black tights
One cup sweet milk chai
One dab conditioner
Directions: Combine dry ingredients as if nothing was different about today. Slowly mix in wet ingredients while browsing the internet. Cover with a towel and let chest rise. Serve blazing hot in early afternoon.
October 2011
6 posts
The worst of myself.
Trigger warning: rape, misogyny, other triggers.
Recently, a dear friend from my past contacted me out of the blue and we’ve become pen pals. I love pen pals so much y’all.
She started off one of our first correspondences like so (some parts have been redacted):
Nic,
Let’s start with an anecdote!
One time, back in the day, we were sitting in the back of a...
Trigger warning: depression, suicidal ideation, other triggers.
So you know that feeling, you remember that feeling from when you were really young and skinned your knee or feel and scraped yourself? Or maybe you can identify with that pain because you have kids or young siblings or you work around kids. There was an age when I had so little experience with physical pain that every injury was a...
In which I try to convince myself that I'm not...
*A list of projects I’m working on.
Living & working on a small farm in a queer lady experiment-in-consensual-and-non-violent-communication household
Working as an author/technical editor on a USDA grant through the local land-grant institution
Working as a tech/design person for a really inspiring social change project of the local university’s business school
Consulting with...
Why I'm at home on my computer on a Friday night
Trigger warning: suicide, transphobia, gender dysphoria, other triggers.
So I’m lying in bed, cold, hungry, alone at home. It’s pride weekend and some old friends are in town and some friends of mine are debuting their new drag troupe this evening at a house party, but my social anxiety and gender dysphoria has kept me changing clothes for the last 6 hours.
My involvement with this...
Tools for fixing today
Chicken soup
Painkillers
Crest Whitestrips
Piggy time
Dr. Who
Money
Money
Money