Dining With the Privileged (2014)
How is it that those who dine most lavishly manage to pay less than they ought?
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Idiot Box (1981)
I wrote this song on the 25-mile drive to my parents house. I had spent the evening at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, where I heard four kick-ass songwriters perform in a circle. I was inspired.
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The Ballad of Me and Josie (1982) (NSFW)
When a girl works at the Chicken Ranch, there’s a price tag on her bed.
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The Great American Getaway (1978)
In 1976 both my marriage and doctoral programs were falling apart. Between quarters I left my home near Knoxville, headed for California in my 1954 Chevrolet. The 22-year-old car (now it would be 59 years old!) made the 7500-mile trip without incident, but I often thought, “What if it hadn’t?”
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Ghost in a Machine (2009)
This song is about the virtual world Second Life. If you are unfamiliar with that 3-D world, it won’t make a lot of sense; if you are familiar, it will make perfect sense.
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No One Lives it For You (1983)
I stay the hell away from pawnshops with my silver-string guitar
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My Big Award (1995)
In 1995 the International Foundation for Gender Education gave me their Trinity Award. It was a distinction I didn’t particularly want, because IFGE was fond of giving the award to its inner circle. I certainly wasn’t a part of that circle (nor did I want to be), so when I was notified I would receive the award I had mixed feelings about getting. That’s where this song came from.
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The Love’s Already Gone (1995)
I’m used to poor accommodations / Boxcar floors and Greyhound stations
Anywhere I hang my hat / I’m happy to call home
Perfectly Modular Male (1995) (NSFW)
This song, is of course, about packing—using a prosthetic device as a phallus. It’s something every FTM knows about. The song is influenced by a book by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein—The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In it, the protagonist uses a variety of prosthetic arms, depending upon need. He has a social arm with fingers and simulated a skin, an arm for manipulation of small objects, and an arm designed for brute power. So—why limit oneself to a single packie?
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I Recognize the Body (1981)
I was impressed when I learned Jimmy Buffett had written a song called “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw?” Everyone, I thought, should write a song like that.
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Time Isn’t Easing the Pain (1984)
When I wrote this song I was living in a basement in Nashville. No, I wasn’t there to break into country music. I was in grad school at Vanderbilt University.
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Don’t Take No Wooden Nickels (In the Jukebox of Your Life ) (1978)
No free lunch, no free ride…
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Resting Place (2003)
I love gospel music— not that I’m particularly religious. I just like the music, and, often, the message.
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One Half of the Song (2002)
I’ve collaborated on songs only rarely, but I often think about the amazing music that comes out of lyricist/composer teams like Elton John and Bernie Taupin or George and Ira Gershwin or John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Out of those thoughts, somehow, came this song.
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Drunk on the Beach (1994)
That song has no redeeming social value. In my defense, I have been only drunk once in my life, and it wasn’t on a beach.
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Something Unfinished (1987)
Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne” was an influence on this song. Here, too, old flames meet in a grocery store.
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Grands (1992)
I never knew my grandfathers, so I indulge in a bit of wishful thinking here, perhaps.
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Tonight She’s Got Some Plans of Her Own (1988)
Just another song of loneliness and despair.
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Townes (1986)
The late Townes Van Zandt was a terrific storyteller. In the 1980s I saw him perform many times, often with fellow singer-songwriter Guy Clark. More often than not, Townes would be so messed up he couldn’t remember the words to his songs. He would tell long rambling tales, start to play, stop, and then talk some more. He thought all the audience was his friend, and indeed it was. No one was ever rude. Except me, perhaps, for writing this song.
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Sherman (1998)
I’ve often wondered what Sherman might have privately thought about his march to the sea. Here, I speculate about that.
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An American in Paris (1993)
Jimmy Buffett once wrote a song about an American who went to Paris. His protagonist made little of the experience. Mine did.
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All You Have to Do is Say Goodbye (1995)
I don’t know how this song came about. I just picked up my guitar one day and there it was.
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Once a Year (Gender Conference) (2000)
I wrote this song about the trans conference Southern Comfort, which takes place every fall in Atlanta. It was a transformative event for me and continues to be for others. I’m happy to have been a part in its formation in 1990.
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Beginning Year Number Nine in Chronic 1A (1987)
I used to want to ask Johnson how to control things, how to control even my arms and legs, but he would have only laughed. Johnson is convinced I’ve gone the same place as Hewlitt, that we have both surpassed the need for our bodies, that if he is dedicated enough he might someday be like us. Besides, he would have said, had I been able to ask, how was he to know I wasn’t a spy, sitting immobile in my wheelchair for eight years in order to trick him into revealing his methods?
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Chance Down the Mountain (2018)
In 1834, fourteen-year-old Chance Early is forced to leave his home on the Black Mountains of North Carolina. Before his return he will have survived a duel, a steamboat explosion, and the Battle for Behar (San Antonio), and acquired a slave who refuses to be freed.
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Two Poems, Two Women (2013)
I spoke these into my iTouch while on the road from New York to Georgia. The feeling just came over me, and before I knew it they had rolled off my tongue. They’re unchanged, except for one misspoken word.
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If For Transsexual People (1991)
Any number of people have taken liberties with Rudyard Kipling’s poem If, which was meant as an inspiration for young boys. Is it any wonder I couldn’t resist? My most profound apologies to Mr. Kipling.
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Reading at Outwrite Bookstore (1997)
I did several readings by invitation at Philip Rafshoon’s Outwrite bookstore in Midtown Atlanta. HOn 27 April, 1997, I read Chapter 3 from my novel The Problem.
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Welcome to Dogwood Springs (2003)
Although there is a superficial resemblance between the community of Dogwood Springs and the municipality of tiny (pop. 800) Pine Lake, Georgia, I assure the reader the former is based only loosely upon the latter, and the Great City is based only loosely upon Atlanta. I have created the characters out of whole cloth (purchased at a bargain at Jo-Ann’s Fabrics). Any resemblance between actual human beings and the residents of Dogwood Springs is entirely coincidental. So, too, is any resemblance to the prose style of one Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.
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Bertie Makes it Worse (2011)
If I said this story wasn’t influenced by Mark Twain’s Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning, I would be lying.
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Ivan, You’re Busted! (2000)
When I became editor of Tapestry the office staff passed on to me a packet of correspondence which included several strange letters which seemed to me to be written by the same hand. “Oh, that’s Ivan,” they said. “He’s been sending us letters for years.” Ivan was their pet name for the letter writer. And so, I came up with this. IFGE never received another letter from him.
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George and the Dragon (1994)
Most of my attempts to write stories for children have turned out disasters. I like this tale, however, and hope you will, too.
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Missing Goods (2003)
This novel is a sequel to my earlier Hot Stuff. Yes, nuclear weapons are really moved on U.S. highways.
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Hot Stuff (1987)
Hot Stuff is based on a real incident. In 1979 more than 20 pounds of enriched uranium turned up missing at a nuclear fuel-enrichment plant in Erwin, Tennessee.
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The Eyes of Manukan (1981)
The Eyes of Manukan is a fantasy novel. I pounded it out on my venerable IBM Model B typewriter. Several years later I would be writing on my new VIC-20 computer.
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Chronology of Transgen Group Postings (1996)
The early internet group communication system USENET was famous for its flame wars; a number of trolls who continue to flame others on the internet today were already active in the mid-1990s. I wrote this in response to some of them.
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The Nice Lady (1990)
Ilana told herself that when she grew up, she would be just like the nice lady.
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Wanted: Nation/State to Fill Vacant Axis of Evil Slot (2003)
Wanted: Nation/State to Fill Vacant “Axis of Evil” Slot
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