chairdesklamp

My life is very...strange. And of course, gentrification means I pay a mortgage worth to rent an infested death trap full of every kind of violent bigot imaginable. And of course, pandemic has taken a lot of escapes away. I miss my library. Anyway, pleasures I can still take in: A hot cup of strong green tea that tastes. Nostalgic music on tape. The few people I know in this city I can speak my native language with. A hug from a friend. I'm returning to this now, but what a post to be interrupted from making (on my phone) by literally being randomly attacked in front of the grocer's I just left. I got away without serious injury, but I want everyone to know, the anti-Asian violence spike from Covid hasn't gone down even if they're not saying "virus" anymore. I ENJOY NOT BEING ATTACKED BY RACISTS AND QUEERPHOBES THANK YOU. Sorry, as you were. I just can't seem to reconcile finishing this without mentioning what happened while typing it.

My native, you're not supposed to be proud of speaking Japanese if you're actually Japanese. You *will* get screamed at it, even by very "liberal" Westerners who say they want to "help immigrants." But I'm so proud of my native language for two reasons: A. Gender neutral way to refer to someone, either name+honorific or "that person" are completely natural speech and considered polite. I'm binary male, but I'm very proud of that inclusion. (Even if the culture is gendered, most gendering in *speech* is self-gendering, not others-gendering. In fact, using "she" or "he" like you do in English sounds unnatural and marks you as non-native speaker!) B. The word for "gentrification" is 階級浄化, lit. class-cleansing. (Which over here, racism gets added to it) I love how my native calls it out head-on.

I'm mixed, part Japanese, raised in Japan until teen, English is my third language, trans male, formerly identified as bi and really reluctant to let go of that because of biphobia including racist abusers hurting me for claming that, but I discovered what "sexual attraction" really was and that I don't feel that last year. At almost 40 I'm wondering if I even *ever* really felt romantic attraction, if maybe I'm cupioromantic, was something else aro and just lonely all along and brainwashed by amatonormativity. At the same time, I'm starting off not really trusting anyone because AVEN is so toxic and bigoted and I'm worried about a repeat. In fact, I'm ready to not post this and delete my account right now, so I'm gonna hit "post" before I lose my nerve.