Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in lucassmiller's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
10:58 pm	checking in Hello universe. I'm still alive. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but life got insane. Quick update: I have been on testosterone for about two-and-a-half weeks now. No visible effects yet-- I know that"s normal, but I'm impatient, dammit. I have been crazy busy with work and all the organizations I belong to, and have been getting little sleep. This past week I've had the upper respiratory infection from HELL. But I am slowly recovering. Well, I'll post more soon, I promise-- just sticking my head above water for a gulp of air. Going down again... Current Mood: sick Current Music: Billy Joel, "My Italian Restaurant" (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 8th, 2006
12:04 am	Legally Luke! So here's the big news: as of 9:30 am Thursday, January 5th, I was declared legally Lucas Scott Miller by the Civil Court of Thurston County, WA. (...wait for it...) YEEE F***IN' HAAAAHH!!!!!!!!! I rose at an obscenely early hour (having taken the day off from work) and bussed to the Thurston Co. Courthouse. I reported to Courtroom 3, where a very nice (and rather sexy) district court judge called me to the front of the courtroom, shook my hand and said, "You are Lucas Scott Miller. Congratulations." I was impressed that he seemed to really "get" what this simple little ceremony means to a transsexual person. I was equally impressed that he called me to the front of the room as "Lucas Miller", which, I had been given to understand, they only do if you request it in advance, and I hadn't. I had written on my petition form (filed three weeks earlier on my birthday), under "Reason for Name Change", that I was having a sex/gender reassignment and wanted a more gender-appropriate name, so he knew why I was there. Normally, they call people up by their old name, but he was clued in enough to realize that a tranny would appreciate being addressed by their right name, and that to call someone with a masculine gender presentation (which I kind of have at this point, though not as much as I'd like; there's no taking me for a male yet, but I was in guy clothes and haircut)by a blatantly feminine name in such a public situation could potentially put them in danger. I imagine that, here in Olympia, he and his fellow judges have probably granted hundreds of name changes to transsexual people, and so probably have picked up a fair bit of knowledge about trans issues. Then I went next door to the clerk's office, where an equally nice clerk gave me my two free certified copies of the court document ordering my legal name change, and advised me to go next to the Dept. of Licensing downtown to get my new WA state driver's license. At the bus stop, even though it was raining heavily, I couldn't keep from jumping up and down with excitement and happiness. For many transmen, the name change is the first major rite of passage in the transition process. At the DOL, another very nice and helpful person looked up the procedure for changing the sex designation on my license (from F to M), and I learned that, in order to change that, I needed a letter fom a doctor stating that I have been under care for at least a year-- which I haven't. She suggested that I might wish to wait to change over my license until I can change both the name and gender designation at once, reminding me that having a masculine name and an "F" on the license might cause hassles for me with less open-minded folks. She was right to point this out, but I didn't want to wait another six months for a valid WA license. For one thing, I need it for my job, the Social Security card, and other things. Also, until I get the boobs whacked, I can't really "pass" as a man anyway, and having an "M" on my license now would probably invite just as many hassles. So I went ahead and got the new license (temporary copy; the real one should come in the mail in a few days). After that, I get a new SS card and work through the long list of people that need to be informed (credit card companies, utility companies, the IRS, the post office, my ISP, etc.). And if, in the meantime, I encounter closed minds (which, so far, I really haven't), well, then, I'll carry pliers. On Friday, I celebrated with some friends at Jake's, all of whom are delighted for me. Many invited me to introduce myself to them as Lucas Scott Miller, even though they already know me as such, just for the morale-building value of saying it and having it positively received. I got home quite late, but I had a great time. Folks at work have been very supportive as well. I can't change over my paperwork until I get the new SS card, and until then I must remain "Louise" on my name tag and my comment cards, but my boss and co-workers have been really good about calling me Luke. All in all, this has been a very positive experience. I seem to have led a rather charmed life with regard to coming out. It's a bit odd, really-- I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the responses so far have been overwhelmingly positive. In other good news: my therapist told me Thursday night that, when next we meet on the 19th, she will hand me a letter to an endocrinologist clearing me to begin hormone treatments. All I need now is an appointment. YAY!!! Current Mood: jubilant Current Music: "Walkin' on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 20th, 2005
11:51 pm	happy happy Hey all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've been crazy busy. Between work, going to the gym, therapy, co-facilitating a weekly transfolks' support group, and all the little everyday piddly-shit of living, I've been a little off the radar. December 16th was my birthday (I'm thirty-eight; bummed I'm no longer thirty-five, but grateful I'm not yet forty) and fortunately it fell on a Friday, my one day off a week. I took myself out to lunch and did a little shopping. Then I went to the gym for a few hours, and then to Jake's (local gay bar) where a bunch of my friends bought me drinks to celebrate. Mind you, when I say "bought me drinks", I mean that I ended up consuming three Mike's Hard Lemonades in about two hours, and getting quite buzzed. Of course, my friends, who comprise a rather hard-drinking crowd compared to what I'm used to, made much fun of me for being such a lightweight. But I had a delightful time. The night before (Thursday) was our monthly Gender Smash, put on by the Gender Variant Healthcare Project. I read a poem I had written and thought of reading last month, but chickened out. But I got up on stage and read it this time, and it was encouragingly well-recieved. The Seven Gates by Lucas Scott Miller At the first gate, I give up my name. My mother's first gift, surrendered gladly, and gladly Death's gatekeeper plucks it from my lips. Papers signed and fees paid, I enter the underworld, where a black-robed, black-winged judge asks the question asked of all seekers: "Are you doing this to escape debt or criminal prosecution?" There are more fearsome fates to run from, I tell him: a lifetime wasted in this husk, being constantly called "ma'am", or by a name ill-fitting as my skin. My answer pleases him, and I pass on. At the second gate, I surrender my armor. My shaman-guide must see who it is she leads through the dark. Patiently peeling, she drops my defenses one by one at the gatekeeper's feet. As new light reveals what's old beneath, soul-scars and memory's shades, she muses into the night: "I think we can start you on hormones after the new year." With that promise clutched in my tattered heart, I once again pass beyond. At the third gate, I relinquish my blood. Family stumble over pronouns while my mother weeps for a daughter disappearing from a scrapbook of illusions. "It's still so hard to think of you as 'he'," she says as through uncomprehending fingers sift the ashes of a memory that was not. I stretch those bonds to the breaking point, not knowing if they will hold or snap, but there is slack enough in generous hearts, and I walk on. At the fourth gate, I hand over my past, all that I acheived in someone else's name: four decades now of accomplishment, advancement, adulation all awarded to a glamoury, or ghost in the machine of paper,numbers and the letter F; the before photo solid and established, while the blank-slate after offers his potential and waits his day. "Where did you get this woman's driver's license?" asks the man in blue, but resilience triumphs, and I move along. At the fifth gate, I bid farewell to face and form. Each sting of an oil-filled needle pumps the juice of manhood through my thickening muscles; skin and bone grow coarse and broad. New passions shift my continents within, tectonic, volcanic, changeable as my morphing flesh. A mountain rises at my base, burying the valley; a forest sprouts across my chest and legs-- no more a smooth plain, my voice, no longer rain but thunder. The false cloak of my hair falls in a halo around me as the barber asks, "Are you sure you want it this short?" My jaw will learn the cold thrill of razors, and my very scent has changed. The huntress's hounds may chase me down, but before that, I move on. At the sixth gate, I offer up my terrors. The leering jaws of poverty and violence, glinting in shadow, catch at the edges of my despair. My resolve comes near to shredding. Nightmares lunge from sleepless hours, cawing "You sick freak!" and "Here's your resume back-- we don't think you'd be...happy...here." But he who hesitates feeds fear until it's fat and here again's the gatekeeper with his black sack yawning wide to swallow doubt, digest it and spit back determination, and I push on. At the seventh gate, I sacrifice my flesh, pounds of it, sliced and suctioned cleanly away by the magus's knife: "We'll have to graft the nipples-- there won't be much sensation." To a steel tray, and then to oblivion, these last barriers between self and seen self vanish. Deep in gaseous dreams, the scalpel's lick feels far from me, but my offering is accepted. Lightened, released, stripped of all history, I come at last before Death's throne. The Crone's cold kiss confers wisdom even as it steals the breath that might have uttered my new name. I must hang here, meat upon a hook, a while longer, while my stitched and livid flesh grows whole. The gatekeeper visits me in my hospital bed-- he renders back each talisman transformed; all that I gave up returns to me as wisdom won and power purchased at the point of pain, And I, clad in these new truths, emerge, balanced and reflected into a bright, bright day. ---Olympia, WA 17 November 2005 My pagan pals will doubtless recognize in the poem's symbolism echoes of the Descent Of Inanna ritual some of us participated in at Rites of Spring, May 2001. The DOI, based on the Sumerian text of the same name, is basically an underworld journey created by Mark Hall-Girard as a ritual for self-transformation. It was a deeply powerful experience, as I recall, and provided me with many tools and skills that apply beautifully to the process of transitioning. Thanks, Mark, wherever you are! Anyway, today was the Xmas potluck at my job, and I ate way too much. Gonna have to do penance at the gym tomorrow...sigh. Here's wishing everyone a joyful winter holiday, and as a new year's rez, I will try to post more regularly. Current Mood: artistic Current Music: "T Drive The Cold Winter Away" by Loreena McKennitt (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
8:37 pm	Roadblocks I know i've said it before, but it bears repeating: insurance is a scam and all insurers should be shot. Today I took time off from work (which I really can't afford) and got a friend (who also took time off from work) to drive me an hour and a half up to Burien, WA for a surgical consultation with a doctor who has no experience with FTM chest reconstruction surgery, but who takes my insurance. The doctor was very brusque and rushed me through the consultation, and when I tried to tell him that I wanted to be reduced to less than an A cup, he took this really patronizing tone and said, "Why would you want to do that? Do you want to remove all your feminine characteristics?" as though I couldn't POSSIBLY want to do that. I almost yelled, "Yeah, that's the idea, jackass!" but if the insurance company has any reason to think the surgery is sex-reassignment related, they won't pay for it. In the end, he told me he couldn't take me down any further than a C or B cup. So at this point I am thinking I'll be better off with a REAL surgeon, who knows how to do what I want done and won't give me a lot of crap about it. Of course, it will take me some time to save up for that, and I can't start my year of cross-living until I get these damn tumors off of me. In a way, though, it's a relief. I was so sick of dealing with the rigamarole of the insurance company, who seems to do nothing but throw up roadblocks in my way, for very little benefit in return. If I wanted to jump through hoops, I'd have joined the damn circus. I'm also sick to death of my job. The insurance, and the possibility that I might be able to get something out of it, was the only reason to stay there, but if that's not possible, then it's time to seriously look for another job. Current Mood: frustrated Current Music: my own grinding teeth (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
3:17 am	progress and impatience Last Thursday night I went to an event in Olympia called "Gender Smash", a little monthly coffehouse/get-together thang put on by the Gender Variant Healthcare Project, a support/advocacy group for GLBTIQetc. folks who need better, and better access to, healthcare. It was a lot of fun, and I made several new acquaintances. I am thinking of applying to the GVHP Board of Directors (not as lofty or formal as it sounds) if I can fit it into my work schedule. At the least, I offered to help facilitate a weekly support group for FTMs, and to perform on stage (something) at next month's Gender Smash. Dear Gods, what kinda crack was I on when I let myself get talked into that?! In other news: I have lost about ten pounds in six weeks, and have been working out like crazy. I have cut most of the fat and sugar from my diet, and I walk everywhere. I am thinking of buying a bicycle next spring. My search continues for a top surgeon to do my chest reconstruction, and a way to pay for it that won't leave me...well...flat busted, as it were. Heh heh. Samhain is approaching, and I miss the fall foliage of New England. Since the forests here have comparatively few deciduous trees, we don't get the blaze of fall colors that I used to enjoy back home in MA. Of course that means that the land here is green year-round, but the other thing I miss is snow. Last year, I found myself highly amused by the reaction of local folks to the accumulation of six inches (if that) of snow all winter. They absolutely panicked! I couldn't imagine what all the fuss was about. It does get cold, despite the lack of snow. Of course, as my friends will recall, I like cold. And my apartment is small and cheap to heat. I think I will start the paperwork toward my legal name change soon. Originally, I had thought to wait until my top surgery was done, but I am not sure when that will happen, and I am tired of the strange schizoid feeling of having some people still call me "Louise" and others "Luke". I guess what clinched it was getting a card in the mail today from my mom. She has been really good about calling me "Luke" over email, but the envelope was addressed to "Louise Godchaux", and the small check inside (Samhain present) was made out the same. The note on the card said, "hope 'Louise' is still appropriate for checks and addresses", and I thought, well, it's legal, but I don't know about appropriate. The bind I am caught in is this: until I have the top surgery, I cannot begin living as a man, and so having a masculine name and a female gender presentation could be a problem, especially in job-hunting. But I am really impatient to leave this false identity, and the psychological limbo it creates, behind. Some lucky guys can wear a binder and "pass", but not me. There is no way I can be perceived as myself with these monstrosities hanging off my chest. And the pain and humiliation of living with them gets worse every day. Blah. I NEED my top surgery, and soon. Anyway, more later. G'night. Current Mood: discontent Current Music: "Seal Driver" by Jethro Tull (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 16th, 2005
1:28 am	hi gang It continues to rain here in Olympia. We had an unusually hot, dry summer, which actually prompted local officials to issue a drought warning-- but I think we have since made up for our precipitation shortfall. Yesterday I went up to the Evergreen campus to sit in the woods and meditate, as is my usual practice on a Friday (my one day off a week). I parked myself under a tree and listened to the rain make its way down through the branches. It never gets very cold here on the Olympic peninsula, and, as the name "Evergreen State" suggests, the vegetation consists mostly of big pines and rhododendrons. Some of you have replied to my LJ and blanket email asking about my decision to change my last name along with my first and middle. I am taking my mother's maiden name of Miller, partly because I see no reason to continue carrying the name of a man I will almost certainly never see again, and partly as a way of connecting to my maternal grandfather, who I never had the opportunity to know (he died when I was four, and had been in a non-responsive state for many years before that). I like to think he would have been proud of all his grandsons. As to Lucas, well, I considered Louis, but I hate Louis almost as much as I hate Louise. Lucas is a name I like, and it's close enough to my old name that my friends should have a fairly easy time remembering it-- I hope. I chose Scott because it seemed to go with Lucas, somehow, and to acknowledge my Scottish heritage. In other news, my stepbrother Dan shipped out to Iraq a couple weeks ago. He is a major with the 101st Airborne, a Medevac pilot. He will be coordinating military and civilian medical evacuations, but, as my mom says, in this crazy war, that only makes him more of a target... anyway, I sent him a protective amulet that I made for him with lots of prayers to Athena, Ares and Mithras. I have been working out every day, and my muscles are growing. I expect to become one buff boy once I get on testosterone (can hardly wait!). In the meantime, I am working on losing weight and saving money so I can have my chest reconstruction surgery sometime this winter or spring. Current Mood: okay Current Music: "Lola" by The Kinks (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 13th, 2005
2:32 am	sorry for delay Hello, all. Sorry it took me so long to write a second entry, but I sort of got bogged down in everyday crap. Well, okay, some of it was not so everyday: I came out to my mom-- told her about my coming transition-- and at first she was fine with it, then she had a bit of a meltdown... the grief stage set in as a delayed reaction, I guess. But things seem to have leveled out a bit now. So... some of you back home have heard this already, but for those who have not: I am beginning my transition from female to male. As a first step, I have been seeing a therapist, who is really cool and very experienced in dealing with transsexual/transgender issues. I hope she can help me get past my latest boggle: how to pay for (or better yet, get those bastards at my insurance company to pay for) my top surgery. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that all insurance is a scam, that insurance agents are all crooks and con men, and will be the first to be put up against a wall and shot come the revolution. Grrr. Sorry-- just had to vent a little spleen there. It's autumn here in Olympia WA, which means rain. Rain, rain, rain. And more rain. I love it! The land here is beautiful-- the lushest, greenest forests ever seen in a temperate zone. The Evergreen State College, from whom I have earned half a Masters degree, is surrounded by deep, dense, mostly coniferous temperate rainforest. The trees are enormous, and the woods are constantly wet and rich with the scent of fungus and pine. Deer often wander about on the campus lawns. There is a network of hiking trails that leads to a small side arm of Budd Inlet. Down on the beach, when the tide is out, you can watch the buried clams squirt water from their siphons, like tiny fountains erupting from the sand. Olympia is the capital of WA, and sits on the southernmost point of Puget Sound. On a nice day, you can stroll along the docks that make up Percival Landing State Park, basically the waterfront of the Port of Olympia. There are benches and picnic tables all along the waterfront where you can sit and enjoy some fried fish from one of the dock restaurants, and on a really nice, clear day, you can see the Olympic Range to the northwest and Mt. Rainier, in all its snow-clad grandeur, to the east. There is more public art here than I have seen in any other city I have been in, with the possible exception of Seattle (which is about an hour and a half to the north on I-5). Two or three times a year, Olympia holds an "Arts Walk", in which local businesses turn their storefronts and display windows into free gallery space for local artists, and independent craftspeople and street musicians line the sidewalks along 4th and 5th Avenues, between Capitol Way and Washington St. As beautiful as this area is, though, I miss the folks back home. There's a strange sort of culture shock in transplanting from the east to west coast: people here are extremely friendly, and, as a crusty, taciturn New Englander, I'm not used to that at all. It's very disconcerting to have total strangers on public transportation start telling you out of the blue how their mother's gall bladder surgery went, or how they just got out of prison and are looking for work, or how much they love Irish step-dancing. Back in MA, bus etiquette demands that you keep your hands in your pockets, your eyes straight ahead and your mouth shut. But not here, oh no. Everybody's your best friend, at least for the five minutes until they get off the bus. You may never have seen them before, probably will never see them again, but by the time they are done with you, you know more intimate details about them than you do about your own family! Very weird for an easterner. Current Mood: okay Current Music: Steve Gordon's Drum Prayer CD (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
3:01 am	Hello! Hi, everybody! This is my first entry in my brand new lj, and it's gonna be a short one. Tomorrow, after I've slept a bit, I'll post more extensively, but tonight is just by way of getting started. For now, just a quick hello to the folks back home, especially those I haven't talked to for a while-- I'll be emailing you all the URL for this lj so you can see what's been going on with me since I fell off the face of the earth. I've got some pretty major news, as you will probably deduce if you read my bio-- but more about that later. Big hugz, all, until tomorrow! Current Mood: sleepy Current Music: The Mummers' Dance by Loreena McKennit (1 Comment |Comment on this)