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Where has the time gone? It was almost a year ago that I received an email from a television show that offered to help search for my supposed Vietnamese foster mother. The application requires a large amount of personal information. I start to fill it out, then stop, start filling it out again, then stop again. My mind seems trapped in the risk/benefit analysis of giving up my privacy to complete strangers and the slim chance of finding a woman who isn’t even my mother.
During my interview with John Safran, he brought up the subject of privacy rights vs. birth searches. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to convey the thoughts I’d expressed in an earlier conversation with a fellow adoptee. Some people seem to focus on the privacy of parents over the need for an adoptee to know, but there’s more to it than that. Many adoptees have to give up their privacy in order to even begin a search. Many of us have to trust complete strangers with information of which we’re usually very protective. We become ripe for exploitation. Then there’s that devastating disappointment when nothing is found.
Thinking about it makes me want to scream at woman considering giving up their babies to stop. Do they understand the vulnerable position in which they place us? Did they ever consider it? I’m sure many were convinced they were doing what was best for themselves and their babies. Maybe they were in some situations, but it doesn’t feel like it from where I’m standing now.
Part of me dreads another disappointment. I’ve so far sent out two inquiries. One ran into a dead end. The other never got back to me, not even to tell they were still looking or to say they’d found nothing.
So I waffle back and forth, filling out the form a little each day as I continue to weigh the costs against the potential benefits. I know I’ll eventually send it. How can I not?
If you can play on the fiddle
How’s about a British jig and reel?
Speaking King’s English in quotation
As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust water froze
In the generation
Clear as winter ice
This is your paradise
There ain’t no need for ya
Go straight to hell boys
Y’wanna join in a chorus
Of the Amerasian blues?
When it’s Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City
Kiddie say papa papa papa papa-san take me home
See me got photo photo
Photograph of you
Mamma Mamma Mamma-san
Of you and Mamma Mamma Mamma-san
Lemme tell ya ’bout your blood bamboo kid.
It ain’t Coca-Cola it’s rice.
Straight to hell
Oh Papa-san
Please take me home
Oh Papa-san
Everybody they wanna go home
So Mamma-san says
You wanna play mind-crazed banjo
On the druggy-drag ragtime U.S.A.?
In Parkland International
Hah! Junkiedom U.S.A.
Where procaine proves the purest rock man groove
and rat poison
The volatile Molatov says-
PSSST…
HEY CHICO WE GOT A MESSAGE FOR YA…
VAMOS VAMOS MUCHACHO
FROM ALPHABET CITY ALL THE WAY A TO Z, DEAD, HEAD
Go straight to hell
Can you really cough it up loud and strong
The immigrants
They wanna sing all night long
It could be anywhere
Most likely could be any frontier
Any hemisphere
No man’s land and there ain’t no asylum here
King Solomon he never lived round here
Go straight to hell boys
Someone on flickr reminded me of this song this morning. At first it might look really offensive, but check out the wiki link above. There is another explanation here. You gotta love The Clash.
As the years seem to pass by quickly, I count the moments in my life that I have made an active point and the seemingly short list questions my purpose in this world. As I enter an age where having a little one of my own seems almost impossible, I contemplate the other gender road I have always wanted to take. If I am to be single for the rest of my life, then why don’t I live it out as the opposite gender, something I have always dreamed of since I was a child. My oversized body stuff into clothes that never fit betrays my sense of worth and I wish my life away being something I am not. If I could sculpt my body as easily as I do with my hair, then my lame excuses for avoiding the gym would be more plausible. I spend many sleepless nights wondering what my life’s successes would be if I had had the access to transition at a younger age. But then I also look at the brutalization of those brave souls who took a chance and had their lives snuffed out prematurely. Life complications always leave an endless ocean of what ifs and just because my physical state of mind would rather be elsewhere, my mental state isn’t one hundred percent supportive – at least ninety-nine point nine, but still, not one hundred percent. Being transgendered is more than just a physicality – it’s a state of mind and while I know I can be just like one of the boys and out run them at their own gender games, there’s still an uncertainty – it’s like wearing a body mask that just itches uncontrollably and you want to rip it off screaming but can’t, so instead have to settle with some cold Camille lotion to soothe away the burning pain…
