The clouds were a uniformly grey blanket hanging low above the skyscrapers, and the dreary and depressing drizzle that fell from them felt like little more than a heavy mist that slowly soaked through your clothes, then your skin, then into your very bones.

But I didn’t care.

Today was a beautiful day, and all because she said yes.

Droplets of crimson fall from her eyes. The final sign of her disease. Tears of blood shed, not for herself, but for me. After centuries together, all she’s worried about is how I’ll handle eternity alone.

Immortals should never die, but nature has no mercy.

Some say that a short, sharp sniff of the air is best. I disagree. It’s better to allow all the scents in the air to wash through you constantly and silently. Sniffing is noisy and can alert prey. Walking carefully on silent footsteps, my shadow only flitting briefly between the various long shadows of the trees around me, I follow the faint scent trail of my quarry.

It’s not long before I find my prey. Lazy. They’re not taking this seriously. This is no game.

I take aim and fire. Fluorescent green paint splashes all over their helmet. Their curses fade into the distance as I back away through cover.

Never see me coming, never see me leave.

“Back in my day…”
“Here we go again.”
“Shut it, kid.”
“You Gen Xers always seem to get a pass.”
“I said shut it.”
“Fine, O wise Elder Gen Xer, share thine wisdom.”
“You’re the one who asked for it.”
“Okay, true.”
“When I was a kid, the only Windows were the ones you looked out of, and the only Macs were long coats.”
“Dark ages.”
“I studied operating systems while command line was the default.”
“Get to the point old man.”
“You’re the one who requested my wisdom.”
“Gah.”

One hour later

“And that’s why Windows is the superior OS.”
“Finally. Thank you.”
“No problem, kid.”
“So, you’ll buy me that Windows laptop?”
“As long as you wash my windows for the next year.”

“It’s easy to make kids laugh, but you gotta be careful,” I said. She looked at me, a little bemused.
“Well, for a kid,” I continued, “seeing a grown person in a clown costume walking into a door is funny, but walking into a door is painful if you do it right.”
“So, uh,” she said, “you do it wrong?”
“Either that, or get a black eye under your makeup,” I laughed. I then explained that you have to stamp your foot a little to give the sound effect of the impact, without hitting the door so hard.
“A lot more goes into being a clown than I thought,” she said.
“In the end, people laugh,” I shrugged. “That makes it worth it.”
“When I said I wanted a man who would make me laugh,” she smiled, “I didn’t expect to be matched with a clown.”
“I didn’t expect a lawyer to be so interested in the mechanics of clowning,” I laughed.

That’s how I met your mother.

Is it a skill, a talent, a waste of time?
Is it a mysterious guiding hand, or just blind luck?
I simply sit and start to write
Often unsure of where the words will go
Often guiding them to a known goal
Either way, as leader or follower
I am slave to the words
A servant to their whims
But a happy one, content with my lot
Honoured to serve
My personal forces of creation.

The following is fiction:

“Wow,” said one person, “you look fantastic! Happy Birthday!” I nodded and smiled. Reactions from old friends were either like that, or the complete opposite. Some of my dearest friends from back in the day did something worse. They ignored me and wouldn’t meet my eyes. I went up to my oldest friend and tapped him on the shoulder.
“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded.
“You’ve changed,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “You probably got work done.”
“Work?” I asked, shocked.
“How much did you spend to lose weight?” he looked up, eyes angry. “Just to look like them?”
“The fuck?” I asked. “I didn’t get any work done. I just did what I did with my brain.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“I did my studying while running on a treadmill,” I said. “I typed my essays with a small under desk exercise system. I did to my body what I did to my brain. Train.” He looked down, ashamed. “I thought we were friends,” I continued. “I didn’t think that the only thing you liked about me was my body.”
“That’s not how it is!” he exclaimed.
“Isn’t it?” I asked. “You come to my birthday party and you tell me to my face that you hate me because I’ve worked to change my body type?” I shook my head. “You’re just as shallow as them.”

I turned and walked away. I’d never call that guy again. I didn’t train so hard just to look good. My heart demanded I exercise or die, and that ‘friend’ would rather me dead than do what I needed to do to live.

The following is fiction:

A leaf fell. It would be the first of many that would fall from this old beloved tree, but the first to fall since that day in spring. I still couldn’t bring myself to say what had happened on that day out loud. The words froze in my throat, my heart constricted in pain, my lungs felt at once short of breath, but also as if they were holding in a wail of pain that would not emerge. Only tears fell. They fell every day, like little leaves from my soul.

From Oxford Languages.

In simple terms, a genderfluid person experiences gender as something that changes, and those changes can be because of many factors.

Like Non-Binary people, Genderfluid people are under the general trans umbrella.

While there are commonalities between genderfluid people, most I’ve met have their own way of identifying as genderfluid. I’m going to talk about how and why I identify that way.

My personal type of fluidity flows through a cycle. I can spend a few days feeling more masculine, then a few days feeling like neither gender, then I’ll go to feeling feminine, and then the process will flow the other way again.

This cycle is usually slow moving, but some days, I’ll wake up and just suddenly feel the opposite of what I felt the night before.

Now, one quirk about me is that I don’t feel dysphoria. I may alter my clothing a little, depending on where I am on the spectrum, but I generally feel comfortable in my body.

I identify my gender phases and current identity through my emotional responses and physical needs. Without getting too deep into it, I do things differently, even during self-care.

My tastes in entertainment and art also change. I will switch what I’m reading, or the games I’m playing, based on who I am on a particular day. This change also affects my writing. When I’m femme identifying, I will write more feminine characters, and vice versa.

My extreme emotions also have different triggers at each end of the spectrum. What will anger me when I feel masculine will only annoy me when I feel feminine.  What will make me cry when I’m femme is easily brushed off when I’m masc.

Even the form of creativity I will work on can shift with my gender. I can go from written to visual to audio, depending on where I am on the spectrum that day.

These behaviours and expressions have been with me all my life. I’ve lived for years thinking I was just odd and different. It was only when I started reading more about gender and the gender experience that all of this fell into place.

So if you see me crying over something a “man” shouldn’t cry over or getting angry at something only a “man” would, then those are indicators of who I am on that day.

With this kind of thing, there’s always the question of sexuality. Genderfluid people can experience a shift in the type of person they’re attracted to as their gender shifts. I’m not one of them. I am always attracted to femininity. It’s just always been that way.

I have no problem answering questions, but this is the kind of post that attracts hate, so I will not be accepting comments. If you’ve seen me post this on socials, please ask there.