Thinking on things elisem said/wrote a time ago ...

[kiya]

I saw the boy who lives in the mirror last night.

I had just gotten out of the shower -- I had been rinsing the dye out of my hair -- and my hair was pulled back and slicked, and the towel was wrapped tightly around my chest, and we spent a little bit staring at each other.

He looks more like my brother than I do. A little darker, a little more angular in the jaw, the sideburns a little thinner and fluffier, but I can see the facial structure around his eyes and recognise those cheekbones, the thick, bushy eyebrows, the underlying bone structure there.

He looked a little spooked to have been seen, as if I had exposed him unexpectedly, caught him with his pants down. Eventually we got used to each other, familiarised ourselves with our respective twin on the other side of the mirror.

I wonder if I go in there, if he'll be there, or if I'll just see me.


[ Please be advised that I did not select the music for this. It is, in fact, what started playing just as I started writing. ]

I was going to write dream notes, but I've lost them, alas. All I remember clearly is shaddragon pointing out that there was a supernova event visible to the naked eye on/in the world we were in at the time ... Well, that and a lot of near-identically named ninjas.

Comments

[keshwyn]

I do not like the look of my boy in the mirror - he looks like my detestable uncle.

This is not his fault, but it does drive a pretty substantial wedge between us. There are days I wonder if this is part of why I am such a butch woman.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

I don't see a boy in my mirror at all... too many curves in wrong places. I sometimes catch his shadow or sillouette. He's lucky, he can grow a beard to hide his chin, and his eyebrows don't look as startling on his face; but I think I carry my overall body fat a bit better. I also think that we'd both look better with glasses. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to think about him without thinking about a Certain Ex of mine who he physically very closely resembles, and who I dislike strongly. I can, to a certain extent, separate the image of the Ex from the image of other-me... and in retrospect, it makes me wonder if the hurt and desperation from the Ex Debacle had more to do with other-me than it did with the Ex himself. Hmm.

I wonder what his relationship with his father would be like, that other-me with a "Junior" appended to his name. I wonder what choices he would have made, what he would have learned to hide, or to show. I like to think that his life would have gone as well as mine has - not too easy, wiser for the hurt, but overall worthwhile. I wonder if he'd be any easier with the thought of being a father than I am with being a mother, or if he'd also choose to not reproduce at all.

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about what you said here off and on for a while today, trying to figure out how to express what goes on in my head.

Basically, I'm failing to find good words. Except that I don't generally see a gender in the mirror at all ... mostly because I seem to be wired androgyne even if I don't look it.

I'm mostly OK with that. The true-androgyne variant is a bit skinnier and significantly flatter, with slightly sharper facial features. And a couple inches taller. Otherwise, it's pretty much me.

This does mean I have some really weird issues about pregnancy and childbearing. /: Occasionally I wish I were a bit more 'normal' in that regard.

If I'd been born male? instead of female? ... I really don't know. I don't think that my personality would change substantially, though what I'm doing with my life might.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

Mirrors, not so much, but when I caught a glimpse in the curved pane of a tinted car window... the boy there looks disturbingly like pro wrestler Jeff Hardy. I am tickled by the resemblance.