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This time last year, I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of my partner Edward’s car, tears falling down my face, reflecting the fireworks on the freeway as we returned from a long, unexpected trip to Tucson, Arizona. My mother had just passed away and I had just finished realizing that I was actually an adult. There’s something about sitting down at funeral home, discussing payment for a coffin, flowers and her last manicure that made me feel grown. I’d also just realized that despite a childhood full of concerns that the opposite would be true, as it turns out, I was the most successful person in my family. When push came to shove, no one else could afford to bury my mother. It all fell squarely on me, and of course, the life insurance (Thanks for the foresight, Mom.). A lot has changed about me since then. Losing my mom fundamentally shifted something within me. However, at that time, I was already on the continual path of reexamining how I was living my life.

These past few years have been interesting. I guess my 30s are finally starting to really feel like my 30s. I’m starting to feel that discordant feeling of both closeness and distance towards who I used to be. I feel like I’ve been many people in my short 33, going on 34 years of life. When I reflect on my 20s, the biggest thing that I can say about them is that I took myself too seriously in many ways and I was too eager to be serious. I got into a relationship almost immediately after graduating college. In retrospect I think I was afraid to live life on my own. A relationship just felt like maybe the thing I should be doing and it’s funny to think that when it happened, I thought I was a late bloomer at just 21. I was very isolated and Youtube became the thing I did when my boyfriend was at work. It was never supposed to become what it ultimately became, and that’s part of why that relationship ended. He never expected me to become more successful than him, even though he never really grew career-wise during our relationship. Things stagnated and as I became more successful, I started seeing more of the world. As I saw more of the world, I realized how much I was holding myself back. How much happiness I had denied myself. How hard it was to be honest with him as it felt even harder to be honest with myself. But back then, most of my job was entrenching myself in political conversation that were almost always contentious and about the things I embodied. All during a time where, frankly, I hadn’t really allowed myself to experience much of life beyond my bedroom. When I left that relationship and I moved to LA, I felt like my life had finally started to begin. I went out a lot. I developing friendships. I developed relationships. I ended relationships. I found my scene and became a fixture within it. I was becoming an extrovert, and that’s how most people who know me now would describe me.

However, during the pandemic, I remembered that I used to be an introvert. It took me back to the person I was during school. A person who was, objectively afraid of the world outside. Who spent all day inside, playing video games and forming an alternative identity online. A habit that would eventually lead to be becoming a Youtuber. I was one of the first overtly feminist, left leaning transgender creators on the platform and I got shit on pretty immensely for it. Many of those people have moved on and rebranded, as I’ve spoken about on this blog before, but their harassment of me had in many ways put me into a position where I fixated a bit too much on not just the politics of this country, but also the politics of online content creator communities that I’ve never really particularly cared for, in all honesty. It just encouraged me to develop bad habits. Not to mention, being one of the few made me arrogantly think that if I just made a video about something, perhaps I will have created the one thing that will change everything. Maybe my video will be the one that convinces people to no longer oppress transgender people. While it’s true to some degree thatover the years, I’ve changed a lot of hearts and a lot of minds, it was never fair for me to put that weight on my own shoulders. I started feeling overwhelmed by the pressure I once put on myself during the pandemic and I started questioning how sustainable it was for me. So i started asking myself a very different question after years and years of making content that I felt was forcing me to be hyper-fixated on things that made me miserable:

“What would your blog look like if you started to have a bit more fun”.

And so with that in mind, I’ve given myself the permission to be more emotive, more expressive and more creative. In truth, I’m in a phase of my creator journey where I am, for the first time, attempting to create content that, to me feels more like stereotypical, classic social media influencer type content. I’ve started focusing on instagram and Tiktok more and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of short, eye catching or mind boggling video. It’s been fun to try new things while also honing in a bit more on what exactly I’m doing. I’ve had some hurtles, but I actually have never felt more confident as a content creator. I now have a bit of a system and I’ve started to really enjoy writing a lot more. It was while I was sitting on my patio writing that I would get a call from my father saying that my mother had passed away.

“Mumma’s Dead”

He said to me through tears. And I knew how much he hurt in that moment. My father is not a perfect man, but one thing I have never doubted about him is how much he loved my mother. I think I learned what love looked like by seeing my father love my mother. Through her illness, he was always there. He didn’t leave her side just because she got sick. They’ve been together for most of their lives. When she passed, he began to deteriorate. I’ll never forget sitting out on my patio, receiving that phone call and screaming so loud that my neighbors popped their heads out to see if I was ok. I don’t think I’ll ever get over not being able to say good bye to her or not calling her as much as I should have. She passed away a few days before the 4th of July and honestly I was very worried I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the 4th of July this year for that reason.

As an extension of trying to live a more creative life, I’ve decided to give myself permission to buy little costumes and such for my social media content and more. There’s a lingerie shop on Hollywood Blvd I go to sometimes called Lady Love. Avi apparently “makes” all of the bikinis in the store. They’re overpriced, but I guess there’s still something kinda novel to me about going into a lingerie shop and buying a bikini. One of my last delusional purchases from him was an American flag bikini. I actually saw one in a different store, but I like Avi. He’s a sweetheart and he tries his best to find something for his girls. He always makes a point of saying to me:

“I make for Latoya!”

as he pulls up an old dusty photo of a stage piece he made for Latoya Jackson many years ago.

Like a lot of my shopping on Hollywood Blvd, I go for one thing, end up buying a bunch of other things. He has so many different colors and patterns of bikinis and to me, each one is a different photoshoot or costume base. I like the adjustable ones cuz I’m a thicker girl. Plus, I like the look. Avi has one of the few shops on the boulevard that actually carries plus sizes as well. While I was thumbing through bikinis, a thicker trans girl came into the store. She was also looking for something cute for pictures. I started talking to her about the stuff in the shop and then she told Avi

“She’s good, you should give her a job”.

I laughed. It sounds strange, but I’ve never really had a service job before. Youtube is really the only job I know. Well, aside from sex work. I was a cam girl for a very short period of time and through my life, I’ve done a lot of things for survival that were essentially sex work, but weren’t technically. Sometimes I know the girls I run into on the boulevard are working. That same day, actually, after grabbing two bikinis I looked at closely, and one American flag bikini I assumed fit me, I ran into a girl on the street. She actually stopped me because she recognized me. She was absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous skin, the most perfectly curated brows, a really cute little outfit. I couldn’t spook. I wouldn’t have even thought. But she told me she was a doll and that she was selling pussy on the boulevard. I didn’t even know that happened anymore out there… it was the middle of the day too. I was gagged for many reasons. Sometimes when I see younger transgender people, it’s interesting to me because they’re often so much better looking than any of the girls of my era were at that age, but they’re still struggling through their own complex battle with transphobia and how it impacts their ability to survive. As I stood there with my bag full of overpriced bikinis, I realized how fortunate I was to be purchasing them for “work” that I consider to be more rewarding than sex work ever was.

Naturally, the bikini didn’t fit. I wasn’t adjustable and I was going purely off vibes. I’ve never had a problem with any of the bikinis I’ve purchased from him. Guess that’s what I get for not looking closely at everything. I took it back and Avi was happy to exchange it, but I couldn’t find one that was exactly like the one I already got. I liked the stars one on boobs and the bars on another with the stars as bottoms. Felt more iconic than other patterns. He worked with me for a while trying to turn what wasn’t a fully adjustable bikini into one by cutting up elastic adding new chord, but ultimately after about 10 minutes of trying to sort it out, I decided not to exchange it. I can just fix it with the new chord he gave me. All this fuss made me more committed to wear this damn bikini. I’m not remotely patriotic, but there was something about the process of me getting the idea to get the bikini, then buying it, then fussing over it that made me think to myself “I’m gonna wear this for the forth of July and I’m gonna have fun!”. It’s like the tackiness of an American flag bikini gave me the permission to deliberately have fun, as opposed to accidentally. So I made it my goal to make this year’s forth of july celebration better more memorable than last year’s.

When I think of the 4th of July, I think of my father taking out a bunch of folding chairs and sitting them on our front lawn so we can watch the fireworks from the local High School. We never did much, just sat as a family and watched fireworks. How boring. I guess I’ve always wanted to do more so a few years ago, I decided to go to somewhere patriotic for the occasion: Texas. I know this may surprise some of you, but I’ve always been the kinda person who prefers the local vibe, even if that local vibe is kinda redneck. I don’t like limiting myself to liberal areas and I think the fact that I started drinking and going out in Orange County probably has a lot to do with that. I’ve never had an unpleasant time in a more conservative town, but there’s always time for a first. At that point, I could never say I traveled to Texas on purpose for a reason that wasn’t work, so I thought I’d give it a go. However, when I landed in Austin and immediately realized that I could have stood to do more planning. Maybe I shouldn’t entirely follow my bliss and should actually do some googling as well. I wanted to ride a few cowboys and what I got instead were Silverlake hipsters. Daggumit! I do mean that literally too; Austin is just LA 2.0. But I went to the nude lake and that was pretty fun so it is what it is! Interestingly enough though, I missed the fireworks. But I had fun nonetheless.

This year, my partner Alexander invited Edward and I to his BBQ. Of my partners, Alexander is the most classic white boy of them all. He loves finding a loose excuse to do a BBQ. Im sure I could convince him to do one for Juneteenth if I really wanted to. He works at a pretty straight-laced company, but some of his coworkers are regular fixtures at his BBQs. Sometimes that cracks me up. Alexander is married and his wife has a boyfriend who lives with them. And then there’s me, his black transgender girlfriend whom he has never attempted to pretend doesn’t exist. So I guess you gotta be very cool with all of that to get the invite even though none of these subjects ever come up in conversation. Alexander recently purchased a home and ever since we’ve been dating, we’ve talked about him getting a jacuzzi and of course he finally did. When I got that bikini, I knew I’d be wearing it in his jacuzzi. I think of my partners, he’s the one I enjoy being sexy for the most. Obviously, my partners are all very attracted to me, but he has such boyish glee when I wear something cheeky around him. He’s my most vanilla and straight laced partner so I guess it kinda makes sense, but playing off of that makes me happy because he makes me very happy. So I knew that I wanted to be in his jacuzzi for the 4th.

You’ll notice I’ve not mentioned anything about my appreciation for America’s independence. Frankly, I can’t think of a time I’ve been less patriotic in my life. Did you see the debate? I certainly didn’t. But that’s just a continuation of my pandemic-inspired trend of disengaging from politics. When Trump was elected the first time, it shattered a lot of the remaining liberal sentiment within me. It became more clear to me how little power I have to really move the needle in any way. During that time, I uploaded a video essay called The Rebranding of White Nationalism. I made it with a desire to draw attention to the fact that fascism may indeed remerge in a particularly racialized way. And it wasn’t like I was pulling that out of my ass. Many people who are close to Trump have very publicly traded in white supremacist conspiracy theories like the great replacement and that’s only gotten worse since. Back then, I got a lot of attacks from people who essentially said that I was pulling it out of my ass. Trying desperately to find racism where there was none. Many people spoke to me as though I had never done any research about the subject, when in reality, the research about the subject honestly low-key traumatized me. Living in conservative areas for most of my life has made me more willing to consider that perhaps a conservative is making a valid point or has a reason to feel how they feel. But the problem is, the people whose goal it is to instill a type of white/christian nationalism in this country have played the long con. They have worked for a very long time to gain the power they’ve been gaining and liberals have largely allowed them to do so. I can’t be proud to be an American when my options for president are the person who said it would be one of their top priorities to make my life harder as a trans woman and a man who shamelessly sides with Zionism. Neither of these men speak to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna vote in every single election, but I’m certainly not going to brag about my vote and I’ve never been able to.

Youtube forcibly privated that video essay because it discussed the Christchurch shooting. I was going to rework the video, and then I decided against it. While a lot of people told me I was crazy back then, and many even said I was being outlandish for accusing certain conservative figures for being in bed with white nationalist interests, things have gotten much more blatant. There is no question now that many of the things I said in that video were indeed correct, and that much of what we are seeing happen now is the result of repackaging very racist ideas in plausibly deniably ways. I think having so many people attack me for saying that back then kinda impacted me and made me realize how impossible it is to communicate these things to people who are honestly so undereducated that they truly believe you’re speaking in conspiracies. And the more you look into that, the more you realize that is by design. Educating against that is an uphill battle, and frankly, there are much better educators out there now who can make that content more effective than I’d ever been able to.

A few years ago, I had a thought. Let’s say that they get what they want. Let’s say that transgender people are all rounded up and permanently separated from public life. Let’s say that in a few years, my freedoms will be severely limited in a way they aren’t right now. When I look back at this time in my life, I don’t want to think of the hours I spent on Twitter defending myself. I don’t want to think of the long political video essays I worked on to no effect. I don’t want to think of all of the exhausting political conversations I had that went nowhere, but would become anecdotes in a conservative’s story about engaging with an undesirable. I want to enjoy my life. I want to enjoy my remaining days of freedom if that freedom is indeed going to be taken from me.

My doctor has me on injectable hormones and I’m supposed to be getting a new vial every month, but I realized that I didn’t really need to do that. I can just keep using the same vial and as long as I purchase syringes and needles, I can take one vial and use it for several months. Even though it feels impossible right now, it’s very possible that this time next year, I will lose complete access to my hormones. So even though I don’t want to and even though it’s expensive, I am going to keep filling my prescription every month so that I can have backup if I need it. Right now, i’m thinking a lot about how important it will become to create a local network for mutual support and aid. I host a large monthly gathering largely for this reason. Disconnecting from social media has made me more aware of the people around me and how technology has created a superficial boundary that has allowed me, as a person of a certain class to distance myself from the layer of our society that has no access to the net at all. If the internet is gone, our communities and the networks we build within our communities will become more important. There have been times in my life that I’ve gone years without introducing myself to my neighbors. That’s changed. Withdrawing a bit has allowed me to have other energy for other things. I feel guilty about it in a way, but I’ve been enjoying my life much more. If I’m wrong, the worst I’ve been is fiercely defensive of my mental health. If I’m right, I’ll at least have a backlog of positive memories. Part of why I’m writing this post is because I wanted to be able to look back at this 4th of July as one of those moments.

Edward and I got to Alexander’s BBQ pretty late. I had a date earlier in the week and I thought I’d left my purse at the restaurant, but it turns out it was just buried under a bunch of stuff on my couch. I spent a really long time looking for it and didn’t leave my place until the BBQ had already started. Very typical for Kathryn. I’m fairly convinced I have ADHD. When we got there, Alexander was of course wearing his cute BBQ bib, playing his role as man of the house, king of the grill. He made this really delicious brisket and pork. I’m remembering that we still have a bit of it in the fridge (I’ll get to that before Edward does today.). Alexander’s wife decided that we would start a new tradition! Piñatas for the 4th!

I hadn’t hit one in so long and these were pretty tough to crack. I had completely forgotten that this used to be one of my favorite things to do as a kid. I loved having any socially acceptable excuse to hit something. We made a makeshift string out of zip ties and then we each took turns hitting it. I actually ended up busting open one that had a bunch of savory snacks inside. Another had these little cheap liquor bottles in it. I was judged by everyone for collecting the little fireball shooters. Those remind me of making bad decisions in my teens.

When the party was almost over and most people had left, Edward and Alexander and I all go into the jacuzzi and I finally reached my goal of sitting in my boyfriends jacuzzi with my other boyfriend wearing that bikini I got from Lady Love. Predictably, both Alexander and Edward are engineers and one of the things I love about dating an engineer is randomly asking them how things work. I hadn’t thought of how fireworks were made so I asked them and they both explained it to me. Apparently certain metals, when mixed with gunpowder will put off specific colors when they explode. How cool is that? I know that every time I look up at fireworks, along with thinking about my mom, I’ll always think of this moment where two men I love are sharing this intentional space with me. Celebrating.. I guess BBQ and fireworks with me. I loved watching fireworks from the Jacuzzi. Edward and I just reached our 4th year together and Alexander and I have been together for just over 5. I love them both a lot and I know they both love me a lot and I’m so thankful for them and their ability to share this particular time with me. I’m not sure what I’d do without them honestly. Edward is great at keeping me on track and keeping me realistic while also reminding me not to take myself too seriously. And Alexander is great at making me always feel protected, valued and nurtured. Yeah, i’d feel how I feel about myself without them, but at the same time, it’s much easier with them here. Historically, my obsession with political discussions online has made it harder for me to truly appreciate my partners. My ex would tell you that was maybe a big issue in our relationship. I feel that my appreciation for my partners has greatly expanded as I’ve withdrawn from political discussion on social media. I certainly don’t regret that.

On our way home, Edward and I got stopped in a street closure. Youngsters mobbed a major intersection near UCS and set off fireworks and drove their cars recklessly.

I could feel the younger, more conservative version of me being annoyed by this, but the newer me wanted to join them. I saw, in a very small way, how a group of very dedicated people can stop traffic, cause a scene, regroup and then disperse…all for a little bit of fun. To me, it’s very clear that the direction this country is headed in is one that will indeed inspire some type of uprising. Conservatives know that their beliefs are not popular and they know they do not speak for the majority. That’s why their tactics are such a long con. Look into project 2025. It is not, and has never been, something that could have been solved through this election. Much of it happened under Biden. Conservatives eagerly defund education so that voters aren’t informed enough to know better and vote accordingly. I don’t think they stopped traffic because they just loved America so much that they felt compelled to disturb the peace. In fact, I’d argue that was actually a direct response to fireworks being banned in the city. I suppose seeing this little moment of disruption gave me a bit of hope that we won’t take it all laying down if it ever gets there. In a strange way that gave me hope.

I wonder if I’ll be able to do this all again next year…