Four years ago, I was taking my second year of grade nine. I had just moved back to my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada fourteen months previously. I had already been stricken by depression, but had already made the mistake of thinking that I knew myself fairly well.
When I was born, my parents named me David Christopher Kerr. The man who my mother was dating at the time of my birth decided to take my birth certificate and name me after himself: Clyde Alfred Crews. Since then, I've gone by a slew of other names. I've gone by Spartacus (online at first, then in real life) since I was fourteen. Devur, I picked up from Elly Whittaker's Lufia fanfiction. Loros, the name I use in a few Wiccan circles, is a numerologically friendly form of Alouros, the Greek word for cat. Most recently, I've taken a new name: Jennifer Catherine Kerr.
Among other things, I'm transexual. Transgender. Whatever. Honestly, I've given up trying to differentiate the two. I'm also bisexual; and while it will seem that I prefer women (thus pulling me closer to the lesbian, not the hetero, persuasion), I'm equally open to both. I've just had a lot of experience with boys being assholes. I try to only play games with my heart when the odds are stacked in my favour.
I was born an only child, and a bastard. My father married my mother when I was three years old. They divorced when I was five. I've inherited three stepchildren via my father's remarriage: Chad is eleven, Kristian is ten, and Dana is six. My "other sibilngs," sisters-by-decision, are much more important to me.
Liz is the one I worry about. It's not so much that I feel I need to, as that I'd feel somehow indirectly responsible if anything happened to her. She's dating a wonderful person named Lucas who's far better for her than anyone else I could name, even if I barely get to see her anymore.
Gemma is my sanity. Whenever I'm about to break, either out of anger or depression, it's her voice I hear, her face I see. Just the thought of her sooths me, makes me remember that there's something greater than myself to live for. I don't get to see her nearly as much as I'd like to, and I'm trying to find a way to remedy that, in spite of our jobs and her schooling. Life isn't fair sometimes, but c'est la vie.
Work. I've been working at a shitty coffee kiosk, Treats, since last Samhain (October 31, 2005). With luck, I'll be finding somewhere different to work over the summer and maybe into next winter; either serving coffee in a proper cofffee bar, or cooking on the line in some tourist restaurant, like I did last summer (Captain John's Fish Company...everyone's nice, except for the one person that needs to be). Working noon 'til nine five days a week cuts significantly into my social aptitude. I'm still trying to figure out a way to even see some people and still keep my hours. It's not worknig too well.
Friends are a scarce commodity these days. I had a stint of about thirteen months where I had loads of friends. Before that, I was jumping schools way too often (up to three schools a year, sometimes) to keep solid friends. A stupid, phobic asshole who found out I was attracted to his brother decided to spread a bunch of lies to all of my friends. Even though they eventually saw through the lack of veracity, the asshole's actions alienated everyone just enough to make them not-my-friend anymore.
I've been in love three times in my life. Attached to someone four times. Possessed twice. First came Vanessa. She dated an old old friend of mine, Zack, for a few months. I met her while they were dating. When they broke up, for some reason, she (not so literally) jumped on me. We dated for four months. Two weeks before Valentine's Day, she disappeared and I never heard from her or her family since.
Richard had...has...a beautiful soul. The soul isn't something that's apparent at first, which is why a lot of people are confused as to why I even still pine for him from time to time. He's just beautiful. I can't help but smile every time I see him, even now. He's dating a wonderful girl named Angela (maybe that's the bias talking--she's Irish, too); she seems to make him happy, which in turn, really truly makes me happy. He's straight, and not...open...enough to see me for who I am. I'll always be That David Kid to him.
Samantha. Skammy. You've made me cry more times than I can count. From my ant-like perspective, it seems like you've walked all over me just as many times. I know it's not true, and I can still even find the footing to be able to laugh at myself about you. Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic. Maybe it's as simple as my having needed someone to cling to (though there were plenty of options and I still chose you). And whether I saw it in you before or after I fell for you, you're a wonderful person. You're beautiful. Not only on the inside, but on the outside, too. You are beautiful, and don't you ever let anyone, including yourself, tell you different. You don't deserve that kind of negetivity. I won't be able to die contently if I know you didn't become every ounce as great as I know you can be.
I only dated Rochelle for a week. Seven days. Some Saturday in grade eleven Spring until the ensuing Friday. As shallow as it seems to me, I needed to find a distraction so I could convince myself I wasn't in love with Skam. It didn't work.
Jessica. Jess. In retrospect, which I refuse to believe is 20/20, I wasn't really attracted to you. I felt an immense connection to you, which I might have mistaken for love on too many occasions. You were the only person who really knew me and still told me I was a beautiful person. You were the only person who really ever told me I was beautiful. But regardless of what I felt for you, it felt good, and it broke my heart when you left.
The first time I ever really went swimming was for my fifth birthday. I had gone wading around the kiddie pool before, keeping my feet on the floor the whole time, but this was the first time I ever really swam. I swam in circles and lines. I swam under the water until I couldn't hold my breath anymore, then dove back under as soon as I took a few gasps. Nelson, British Columbia.
Pincher Creek, Alberta. Six years and two cross-country road-trips later, I go swimming for my last time. I've been in the water since, but I always keep my feet on the ground. A schoolmate who frequented the same pubilc swimming pool as I did decided he didn't like the fact that I looked at the boys just as much as the girls. He found a few feet of leverage on me and took the moment to kick me in the head as hard as he could. He kept his foot on my shoulder until I swam away.
I had my first cigarette roughly two weeks after that. I had my first drink of alcohol, a rum and coke, a year before, when I was twelve. At age eighteen, despite a great deal of knowledge about my own allergies, I tried marijuana. It was a Thursday night Athailiahs concert last April. That was a bad month.
The first time I kissed a boy was when I kissed Brent on the North Commons. I don't remember when exactly it was. It was dark, the stars were out; I could smell grass and spearmint and I felt like crying because I felt like a skank. I don't remember the first time I kissed a girl. I'm still a virgin. I don't know whether or not I'd wait for marriage/love/the right person, as I've never had the chance to make the choice. I'd like to think I'd wait. No one ever waits.
I've been a vegetarian since the June, maybe the late May of grade ten (age sixteen then). I don't know why I started, it was just a completely arbitrary choice. I had two slicees of pepperoni-bacon-mushroom pizza one night. The next night, I was eating pork ribs. I felt like throwing up. I decided I didn't like meat all that much. I decided to continue to eat poultry for a while, because honestly, I doubt if I would have had more than six meals a week if I stopped eating meat altogether. The whole chicken thing never wore off, in spite of earnest efforts. I stock lots of peanut butter at home, just in case.
I don't like peanut butter that much, but it's a good source of protein, and I can never find beans and molasses without pork, and I hate tomato sauce. I like Kraft Dinner for some reason unknown to me, I always have. I'm craving some right now. There's not always room for Jell-O. Cinammon pie and ginger cookies are much tastier.
I started playing video games when I was four: Super Mario Brothers, if I recall correctly. I played Dragon Warrior when I was five and have been addicted to RPGs ever since. Final Fantasy Six and Seven, Lufia Two, Chrono Trigger and Paladin's Quest are probably my favorites of all time. FF8 gets an honorable mention, as well as Secret of Mana.
The first band I really liked was Ace of Base; I think I was in grade two. In grade three, my afore-mentioned friend Zack introduced me to New York rap. I've always liked east coast more than west coast. I'm learning to like Detroit rappers over either, though, even though Master P is still cool in my books. I get mocked even by my friends for liking rap. Whatever. My Mum gave me The Tragically Hip's Road Apples on cassette in fifth grade, and Colin Raye's greatest hits in sixth. A transgendered friend of mine, a Swedish girl named Emma, sent me a huge sampling of her death metal collection. Dark Tranquillity rocks my socks, with In Flames, Nile, and Bal Sagoth coming close. Josie and the Pussycats had some classic songs, despite them being a fake band; so did The Wonders (Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do). I like Era, and not Apocalyptica. I do like Dashboard Confessional, so suck it.
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in grade six. I started playing Magic: The Gathering in grade five (very shortly after the release of Mirage). I started practicing magic in grade ten.
I come from two Catholic, one Protestant, and one Spiritualist grandparent (to my knowledge). My father was raised protestant and lapsed. As such, I didn't really have a religion. I attended a few Anglican masses, but was generally indifferent toward them. After three years of contemplating it, I devoted myself to Wicca in the eleventh grade.
I tried learning how to play guitar somewhere through the course of high school. Chords fucked me up because I didn't really care enough to bother teaching myself, so I taught myself how to play Kefka's Theme from Final Fantasy VI. By the time I could afford lessons, the guitar's neck had broken away from the body because of the ridiculous amount of humidity in my bedroom, and I wasn't able to play it anymore. I've been considering taking lessons on the bass guitar. It seems like it would mesh with my personality more than the six-string. And bass chicks are hot. I'd start up an emo band just so I could release an album called I slit my wrist with the shards of my broken heart.
I like both comic books and manga, and while I like anime, I'm not a great fan of cartoons. Invader Zim and Dexter's Lab are exceptions. I like anything in the way of movies from animated (Lion King) to romantic comedy (I loved You've Got Mail), to horror (the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play) and thriller (Red Eye was good until the third act started), to drama (John Q, anyone? The Recruit?), sci-fi (Pitch Black was one of my favorite movies of all time), and anything else I can think of. I like just as wide a variety of books, but don't often get the time to read. I'm in the middle of White Oleander and Neuromancer right now. Dune rocked my socks, and The Heretic is like a bible to me. Without the religious connotations. Or the belief. Or anything that would really make it a bible, except that I read it a lot. I was a huge fan of the Making Out and Sweep serieses (I forget who wrote Sweep); I hated Animorphs.
For four years or more, I've been a part of a really tight online community of amateur game developers, writers, artists, and musicians. I haven't talked to many of them in a couple of years because I haven't had a solid internet console in at least that long. Anyway, we started out as Dream Horizon Software, follwed by Sleepless Knights, then Night Skies Produtions. Other than myself and the aforementioned Emma, there was another MTF named Emily, some cool guys named Mikko and Chris (who was supposed to do a joint project with me before he disappeared off the face of the planet), a cool guy named Kelly who, like me, could never finish anything he started. Shawn Overn and Freddie (H.?) were the *great* composers. If you can find a copy of Freddie's "Jazz de Chocobo," you won't regret downloading it. There was a really cool long-distance couple named Micah and Laura. I think they're married (she has school and he has a job, which is why they're apart, last I checked). They're planning on having a kid, which is cute. He's a huge Trekkie, which interferes with my Star-Wars-is-Awesome attitude.
The girl that works next door to me, Sandy-from-Toronto, has never seen a single Star Wars film. She stood me up last week when we were going to go to Tristan and Isolde. She had a bad migraine, though, so she's forgiven.
I spent the better part of Grade Ten catching up on a lost childhood by playing Grounders and hackeysack. I'm still more coordinated with my feet than my hands. The only things I can do well with my hands are type and palm small objects.
I've had to steal a lot in the past few years. It comes out of a necessity to possess items, and a greater necessity for people to not know I possess them. I pay for things when I can think of a reasonable excuse or retort to explain my actions (resorting to, at one point, "I'm buying it for my sister, you asshole") My hair is an inherent reason to require a decent brush and calm-colored elastics, but beyond that I am, as they say, fucked.
If I could have any one physical thing I wanted, it would be a real body. Mental, it would be a photographic, archival memory. Spiritual, it would be my next life, sooner. It would have to be given to me, I couldn't cop out like that even if I wanted to. I've tried; I can't count the scars, but I could never bring myself to make them any deeper, even when I was drunk and with a couple dozen pain-killers floating through me.
I convert my emotions into writing because it's easier than dealing with them. It's hard to believe that I've gone thirty paragraphs without mentioning writing anything. I write prose, poetry, songs, rap. I have a few ideas for novels kicking around in my head. A few are obvious. There are a few short stories that I'm writing and haven't finished. The way it seems, I may never finish any of them. I seem to produce poetry much faster, in that I do actually finish a poem from time to time. I've written some rap lyrics in the past couple of months, too. Actually, ignoring a very short stint in grade ten, the past couple of months was my only time even trying to write rap lyrics. I'm told they're pretty good, even though I really don't think I write anything really good. Whatever.
I'm sitting in a SMU residence apartment right now on the computer of a friend by the name of Duncan. We had "a bit" to drink tonight: I had a glass of wine, and a glass of gin and lemon, and he finished the (once full) bottles of wine and gin. He slashed his wrist, though I saw as soon as he did it that it would heal within twenty minutes. I shouldn't be able to know that by seeing it, and I hate myself for breaking that boundary with myself. I held Duncan over the toilet for two hours while he intermittently threw up, because he kept rolling onto his back when I put him down, and I really didn't want a coffin resting on my conscience. Once he finally passed out on his side, I talked to Skam. I added her to my new MSN list and my Livejournal; I think she's finally beginning to understand the whole transgender thing now (the JENNIFER in huge letters wouldn't have done it). And no, I don't think she did have a grasp on it before. Whatever. It feels good to be sure that she may one day fully understand and accept me. I suppose that's what this was for; so that people can understand me.
Wait...didn't she leave deviantART?
