Becoming Unfamous

Neither famous nor infamous.

I’ve already written about the first time I felt fame, but I just as clearly remember the last time I felt it.

It was at FarCon 2024. It was after about 5 or 6 people had come up to me that I said to myself: I missed this.

In 2021 someone called me web3 Courtney Love, and I think I was at the height of it at FarCon. Not in a good way, not in a bad way, but in a certain kind of way. I could finally see both sides of it: Some people said Oh, her! when they saw me, and others said Oh, her.

I was checking in for a flight back to Vancouver after some recent LA adventures and one of the baggage agents said: Finally, someone who isn’t boring. I was getting coffee in Vancouver, and a little boy who was in line with his dad exclaimed I love your shoes!!

Trans women are often perceived in negative ways. I’ve been the recipient of the stares, it’s why I’m sensitive to them. There has, though, been no greater joy for me than all these different expressions of hey, you’re Different.

A lot of them happened after I became Unfamous in certain circles. I think it’s different from infamy: A solid expression of oh, HER. They also happened after I made changes in my wellness routine so that I could access a calm that I was never able to before.

Having tasted at least a little bit of real fame, I’m happy to be unfamous now. I’m happy that I no longer feel a need to seek it out as some measure of being successful. I’m just a girl, but not in the bimbo feminism way. I’m just a girl, blogging in an airport on her way to another adventure. Just a girl, terrified of the future in a rapidly shifting world.

What did unfame cost? A lot of illusions. I think it’s easy to view relationships by the amount of time we’ve had them, and harder to really regard them through how they’ve been tested.

I’d known people from Clubhouse for years. I was getting my harm reductionista on in a scene for that same amount of time and generally having a fabulous time.

Writing what I did about my experience at Vibecamp was a kind of test none of those relationships had been through. I was disappointed. Those things that were so precious to me were illusions.

Do I want them back? That’s a tough question. Transition is hard. Life as a trans woman who is still in-between is really hard.

Eventually people said things like I was demanding, but not in a cute way. Which is to say, I wasn’t hot enough to be the sad girl at the party. At some of those parties I really needed a friend. Everyone else just wanted to have fun.

I have chronically bad timing in some ways, and this was one of them. I needed to be just a girl at the time, and instead I was some version of Courtney Love.

What does that mean? The things primarily running through my head were which parties I was invited to, being mad over not being invited to others, and generally screaming I’VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE to everyone around me.

Being in the vortex of excess and status that characterized the Bay at the time, I think it was normal. I also think otherwise well meaning people can only have patience with that for so long.

Becoming unfamous was a long overdue gut punch that severely upended my life. A needed one, that I wish had been delivered with softer hands.