songsfortheotherkind.com

For some reason I became utterly fascinated with reptiles around the age of 10. Perhaps a lens into the exotic and beautiful, mysterious and misunderstood lives of an alien life form mirrored a precursor in myself. Or maybe I watched a little too much Steve Irwin. But dagnabbit, I thought the little (sometimes big) critters were cute. I remember holding corn snakes and how they would curl around my arms; the smooth, slinky skin caressing mine in a gentle, sensuous embrace. They would curiously investigate the rest of me, up and down my back, around my neck and on top of my head, never any threat in their movements. And those beady eyes... and that flicking tongue, delicately tasting my sweat. My heart just about melted!

I convinced my parents to buy me a pet reptile of my own. So we drove to the nearest pet store and asked what would be the easiest to take care of: a leopard gecko it was, the hardiest of reptiles with a lifespan of 10-15 years. We bought all the little accessories, all the little knick-knacks to make sure he felt right at home: UV lamp, sand, and a 150 watt incandescent heat lamp for all the warmth he could ever need. We named him Billie.

I was so proud and so happy to have a little buddy to take care of. Every day I would come home from school and fetch him from his terrarium, holding him cupped in my hands, then letting him run loose on my bed. The way he moved always transfixed me, the S-shape he would make almost slithering across the pillows. It was a thrill watching him hunt crickets. Normally in repose, his lazy eyes would come to life when he spotted food moving in the vicinity of his rock cave. He would lash out, and gulp, no more cricket! Then followed the chop-licking and contented gaze.

Then there were the daring escapades, when he decided he'd had enough of me and bolted with the pitter patter of little feet under the dresser. Boy, did it take forever to coax him out from under there.

It was about this time that I met a very rough and early puberty. I had terrible migraines and frightening thoughts that simply weren't mine. I would come home from school crying and collapse on the bed, wallowing in a dysphoria harsh and clouded. Billie always stayed at least in the corner of my mind, and sometimes after the migraine had passed, I would take him out to play.

Then Billie became sick. He stopped eating and his feces turned to watery mush. Solicitous as I was about his care, I couldn't stand seeing him this way. I took him with my dad back to the pet store to see if they would have any diagnosis. I remember clearly handing him to the clerk and watching him stuff a cricket down Billie's throat. "There, nothing wrong with him. Bring him back if you keep having problems."

I had the most awful sense of foreboding on the eve of his death. The night before I kept importuning my parents to do something, anything to help him. I felt so utterly helpless and trapped watching my friend die, someone I was responsible and had done so much to help, apparently now in vain. When he died, a dark veil came down over my life that wouldn't lift for months. I would lie awake at night, alone in the dark. The warm red lamp in his cage had gone out.

I called the man at the pet store in such anger, such vengeance at having tried to convince me that everything was fine. He seemed at least partially contrite, albeit with the premature offering of another animal purchase. Later I would find out that the store had sold me unnecessary supplies and equipment that may have even hastened Billie's death - the UV light for one, which is utterly unnecessary for nocturnal geckos.

So much strife over a little lizard might seem strange. But any sensitive person can tell you what it's like to be in care of such a tiny, fragile spark of life for the first time. It depends on you for everything, looking to you with little beady eyes for all its nourishment, warmth and attention. Without you it is helpless, and the sole reason for pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and learning its needs is the dream of seeing it thrive. To such a young and sensitive person, at such a pivotal point in life between the borders of innocence and adulthood, death was utterly symbolic of tragic loss and failure.

Eventually the pain grew more distant and another opening grew within me, allowing for the entry of another life into mine. My parents offered to get me another gecko. This time I was determined to make absolute sure every need would be fulfilled to scientific proportions. I read every book there was to read on leopard gecko care; I asked questions in online forums and compared various opinions on everything from diet to substrate of choice.

This time I wasn't going to get my friend from some second-hand store that didn't care about its animals. I looked up the most reputable breeders in the country and found a famous operation in Maryland. Strangely enough, they mailed their geckos (yes, as through postal snail mail) in insulated containers across the country with very small rates of incidence.

Leopard geckos have temperature-dependent sex determination. What this means is that depending on the average temperature at which the egg is incubated, the sex is decided between male and female. 100% of eggs incubated at 80 degrees will be female, while 98% of eggs incubated at 90 degrees will be male (according to Ron Tremper, the most famous leopard gecko breeder). Most reputable breeders incubate most of their eggs at 80 degrees by default, since only a few males are needed to keep the breeding populations going strong. I was a bit disappointed to learn this, since I wanted another male gecko (I wanted him to be as similar to Billie as possible), but was willing to bite the bullet for the sake of a healthy and happy pet. I placed my order and waited with giddy anticipation.

I remember opening that box, slowly unfolding the layers of tissue to uncover... the most beautiful little baby gecko, naught four weeks from hatching. I fell in love all over again. After marvelling over her for a while, I placed her in her carefully prepared home with her first crickets. I expected it to be at least a few days before she would be comfortable enough to begin eating, since that's how things unfolded with Billie. To my great surprise and exhilaration, I witnessed her leap clear across the cage and hit a cricket head on. She was such a strong and dynamic package of energy, and she quickly took to her new home. We named her Lavender for the beautiful markings on her torso.

She grew fast. Very fast. I couldn't believe how hungry she was, always going for more food just when I thought she would be full. She accompanied me through the remainder of elementary school and through middle school, always a quiet presence in the background of my otherwise stressful and confusing life. Sometimes at night, tucked in bed, I would get to see her mosey around the cage and climb up on the 'lizard hammock' for a silent night's vigil. I fell asleep with a small amount of company and reassurance in my heart.

One day, past her point of full maturity, we took her to a reptile center for safekeeping before we went on our yearly family vacation. The reptile expert, who I'm sure had seen thousands of reptiles and hundreds of this most common of geckos in his time, remarked at the size and beauty of Lavender. He had never seen a gecko so big and so healthy. Surprised when I told him she was a female, he looked underneath her rear and and made the announcement: Lavender was in fact a male.

Somehow, despite the nearly 100% female birth rate given for geckos incubated at his temperature, Lavin (as we renamed him) came out a male - thus making him something called a 'cool male'. Such males were generally more placid, more agreeable and 'laid back' than males incubated at 90 degrees. All which was certainly true of him - Lavin never once bit me. This small revelation of his gender mix-up made him all the more special to me. I was flattered by the expert's request that he breed Lavin with his own geckos, but ultimately declined.

A few more years passed and the time came again to take him to the center. This time my sister was transporting us, and needed to stop for a quick appointment before we dropped him off. Deciding to accompany my sister in the waiting room, I left him in the car with the windows cracked and a towel partially covering his plastic enclosure. The wait inside the office was much longer than we expected it would be, and about 20 minutes in my sister decided to go out and check on Lavin.

She returned with a solemn look on her face, and told me to follow her. In the elevator going down to the ground floor, she told me that Lavin was dead. For a few moments I simply couldn't comprehend what she was saying to me. What did she mean, dead? It didn't make any sense. He was alive just a few moments ago. We left him in the car with plenty of ventilation and a nice breeze on a spring day. Then it slowly sank in, like a boulder rolling down through my chest and into my stomach. In the elevator, I looked at the floor in utter blankness.

Upon reaching the car, I tenderly lifted the towel and saw those lifeless eyes. Eyelids contorted in such a terrible memory of that morning I found Billie dead. I stood and cried, bawling my eyes out on the hood of the car.

A few days later, he was buried alongside Billie in the backyard. Such a guilt pervaded my consciousness that I was not there in his last moments; it must have seemed like I abandoned him. This feeling haunted me for a very long time.

I got a third gecko and took care of it throughout high school. I loved it much as I loved the first two, even though it was never as special to me as Lavin. It died in a veterinary clinic while I grappled with depression in a dingy mental hospital.

Years have passed, and there are still small signs of my old love for geckos imprinted across the room at my parents' house... the room I am typing from now. The shades are of various reptile patterns; the panels on the light switches have a gecko imprinted on them. I hardly have the same fascination with geckos that I used to, but another sort of imprint seems to have made itself on my mind.

When I broke past my reservations and decided to join the pub at Avalon, I sat for what must have been an hour trying to figure out what screen name I wanted to use (I guess it's the perfectionist in me). Cute mythological references, trendy new-age monikers, none of them seemed to fit. So I went back to an alteration of the name I had used so many places: Gecko, with the obvious substitution of 'k', one of my favorite letters. It represents to me a step beyond this aspect of my past, simultaneously making peace with it.

I don't know why I felt so compelled to write at length about this; heavens know that people face much more serious things than the death of pets. My autobiographical writing has almost always focused on the 'larger' challenges and themes I've lived through. But its symbolism seems to have heavily interwoven with my life, and it only made sense to tell the story I've never spoken.

I used to be friends with a lesbian, and though eventually I had to push away, I was enriched by what we shared. She was also the most popular and outgoing person I've ever been friends with, so I got to go on some adventures that gave me a taste of the teenage mayhem I missed.

I appreciate your balanced view on gender, and agree that even for its needs of expansion, it has made quite the experience...



I am very glad to know there are women out there who are drawn to feminine men and/or androgyny. For a while I've wondered if even bisexual women would be attracted to such a 'phenomenon' as my own.

I hope you keep posting, at least here and there, Lucy. You obviously understand the deeper aspects here



Thank you Songs. I think I first came across these pronouns while doing research for a feminist philosophy class I took a few years ago... I didn't take them up at the time, just because I felt strange using them, but strange is here on a daily basis now anyways. I want to expand and experiment.

Most likely I'm going to bounce around between an assortment of them or maybe even all of them in expressing myself, depending on how I feel at the moment. It would be kind of cool for peeps to call me by the zhe/zhur on this board, just to get a feel for it. But I'm also perfectly fine with 'he' for the time being, if anyone forgets or is unaware. Even 'she' would be appreciated. No need to worry about it. I figure the simpler/more fluid, the better...

As for the Otherkind... I have felt a strong affinity and kinship for the things you have expressed, Songs, as everyone here must feel. It even comes down to little details, such as a remembrance of the blue-skinned people. I would read your posts from time to time in the old pub and hit upon all these subtle and not-so-subtle clues, to an extent that was sometimes uncanny. There is a warmth in finding signals like yours after a lifetime of unconscious searching, like sustenance rising to the surface from a muddy lake. I've determined that I'm going to go back through and read what I missed in the old pub (which is a lot), so I can relate with a little more clarity and background on this.

Perhaps the largest difference between our journeys is that I still feel a connection with the human element, and I hope you won't hold this against me. Though that's for another post and another thread.

Gekko, you are fascinating and I'm very appreciative you've shared what you have. Like everyone else here, I'm impressed by the way you communicate and by the truth and heart in your words.

_________________
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I've been exploring what I am and it's turned into dismantling the idea that I'm not one of the two mainstream genders, rather than finding a gender that I am. Early on I apparently shut down mostly as a person, and along with that accepted the division of gender and my assigned one. Later I saw that I was not experiencing what others of my assigned gender were experiencing, or what people in general were, and connected that to a deep emptyness around identity. Having the idea that I could be the other mainstream gender opened many things. That started an ongoing process of working to be able to see my being for whatever it is, without any preconceived idea of what gender its nature would be classified as. I guess I'm partly saying that it was/is a useful step for me to work within the binary since those are the tools I started with. As I find my lost self, I can then work on my own terms.

One thing I've become aware of only fairly recently is the how the language we use, often quite innocently, can further the sense of division among people. The most obvious instance is the term 'opposite sex', which implies a species irrevocably at odds with another.

While the third definition ("being the other of two related or corresponding things") is less harsh, the simple coexistence of two others tends to muddy the word:





The challenge lies in that it is so easy for these connotations to slip into the word, unconsciously, and alter the perceptions of both the individual speaking the word and those hearing it. In addition to placing the two most commonly recognized genders/sexes in perpetual conflict, the creation of two charged and fixed poles tends to eclipse the recognition of subtler expressions.

In reality, there are many more similaries and uniting factors between the sexes than differences. We hunger, we love, we cry and rejoice, we create meaning in our lives and live for the draughts of fresh perspective. We perceive through the many senses and share our experiences with one another.

In considering alternatives to 'opposite sex', a few possibilities come to mind. The most agreeable one I can think of is 'complementary':



though one of the definitions still contains a rigid two-ism:



Maybe 'other sex' is the simplest replacement, though it still seems to carry a component of isolation, used as often as it is in a phrase like 'the other sex'.

This seems to be both an inherent weakness and inherent strength of the English language, that one word can contain such a multiplicity of connotations (English is one of the only languages that has a thesaurus). It places a distinct power in the hands of the user of any such word - and there are words with much more contrasting definitions than the ones listed. Depending on the context in which it is used and the conditioning of the reader or listener, it can be interpreted in drastically different ways. This further ramifies with the very character of the moment: what the listener is feeling, what other messages are filtering in from the external and internal environments to commingle with the communication.

In the end I realize that an overhaul of a pattern of language may be a waste of time, the long way around, except perhaps in my own specific style of expression - only concerning myself with what is shining through my own words. When connecting to the warmth and understanding within, all the other communicative factors line up and take care of themselves. It's all part of one, encompassing movement of the self...

After all, when moving into a sui generis perspective, isn't any language really about the content lying between the lines, extensions beyond what the words themselves could possibly transmit?

From a movie "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"

I recently came across the asexuality forum and been surprised by the depth and freedom that they explore gender as well. It's interesting how the various "refuges" from the heteronomy tend to be natural allies, particularly for groups who aren't as adamant at being accepted into the heteronomy.