Bees – Page 19 – Beeshive

How it started, how it’s progressing.

Well, as you should know, I started hormone therapy back in May of 2024. I really didn’t have the opportunity to do this sooner in life no matter how much I wanted to. And with 2027 coming up I figured that this was the only chance that I was ever going to have to transition.

May 2024

May 2024 was when I started. This blood test was to establish what my base hormone levels were.

June was the first blood test after I had started taking estradiol. My testosterone levels were cut just over half. Estrogen was starting to make its presence felt.

The July blood test showed a nice jump in estrogen levels. By this point in time I had noticed that my facial hair growth had slowed down, my skin was a lot softer, fat on my body was squishier, and I was starting to grow breasts.

The August tests show that my estrogen levels can stand to go a little higher. Hopefully the “results are pending” for my testosterone levels indicate that my testosterone levels are so low that they’re running the samples again to make sure that they’re not misreading the results.

It’s going to take a few months for the changes to really start to set in.

I’m going to reside somewhere in between the worlds of male and female. Never wanted to be male, but won’t be 100% female either.

What kept me from transitioning earlier in life?

I would have to say wholeheartedly the environment that I spent my childhood within.

This was Canadian Armed Forces policy from 1973 until 1994.

Yes, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence will both wholeheartedly point out that I was not a member of the Canadian Forces. But my father, master corporal Richard Gill was. My social worker, Captain Terry Totzke was.

A report that was commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces in 1996 and released in 2001 entitled “Canadian Forces Response to Spousal Abuse in Military Families” had a few interesting things to say that might explain how catastrophic CFAO 19-20 was toward me.

Family Violence Report Download

I have never been able to find a corresponding report on violence against children in military communities.

Military social workers were seen by many to be “company employees”. And that they were. They were officers within the chain of command. They had rank over members such as my father, plus they also had to answer to their own superiors.

Military social workers were often lacked the credentials required to be a civilian social worker, and often simply remustered from other branches of the military. This was the same for military police back in the day. You didn’t join the Canadian Forces specifically to be a military police officer or a member of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit. You could simply transfer from another completely and totally unrelated branch of the military if you decided that you wanted to be a member of the military police.

So…….. here we have Captain Totzke, instructed by his training in the Canadian Forces that ANY sexual abnormality was an undesirable mental illness that needed to be eliminated from the Canadian Forces at any cost, and here we have me, fresh off of CFB Namao and fresh from the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal in which the military police, the CFSIU, and the base commander Colonel Daniel Edward Munro knew not only about Captain Father Angus McRae having committed “acts of homosexuality” with children on the base. But the military also knew full well about the actions of the babysitter.

No doubt the military rationalized that we were all homosexuals.

If Captain Totzke didn’t really have any type of credentials for social work, this might explain why his actions were completely baffling to my civilian social workers. Might also explain why he thought that it was completely appropriate to threaten me with arrest by the military police if I ever kissed or touched another boy on base.

As far as the military was concerned, there was no difference between us kids down at the lower age spectrum, and the 14 year old babysitter, and the 50 something chaplain. We were all guilty of committing the criminal code offence of Gross Indecency , which was the crime of two males having sex.

So yeah, it would be safe to say that the Canadian Armed Forces, CFAO 19-20, captain Terry Totzke, master corporal Richard Wayne Gill, and pretty well the entire military hierarchy enforced by the National Defence Act slammed me into the closet, and slammed the door shut.

I’m almost 100% certain that the abuse at the hands of the babysitter and McRae on CFB Namao had no effect on my gender identity nor my orientation.

I’m of the belief, and science backs this up, that gender and gender identity rely on more than just XX or XY chromosomes. There’s the timing and levels of hormones released in the foetus, there’s the mother’s exposure to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, and there’s just good ol’ variations presented by the expression of the genes.

The human foetus, just like the foetus of most mammals, is predisposed to become female.

This is why you can’t generally scan for the gender of a foetus before 10 to 11 weeks as all foetuses will appear to be female.

If the foetus has XX chromosomes its gonads will develop into ovaries, which will then start secreting minute amounts of estrogen which will allow the foetus to keep developing towards female.

If the foetus has XY chromosomes its gonads will develop into testicles, which will then start secreting minute amounts of androgens. This will halt the development of female external and internal reproductive organs, and start forming masculine reproductive organs. The brain of the foetus will undergo masculinization.

Gender identity and sexual orientation are both “hard coded” in utero.

If the brain didn’t have orientation or identity hardwired into it, human reproduction would have been almost absolutely impossible.

Nobody goes to school to learn how to have sex.

The brain is hardwired for this.

Only ignorant institutions or ignorant people would think that gender identity or sexual orientation are something that someone chooses on a whim

Pride weekend…… or not.

Well, it’s Pride Weekend here in Vancouver. My apartment sits right on the parade route which is on Beach Ave to Pacific Ave this year. Meanwhile I’m over at a nice little coffee shop on the south side of False Creek over by 2nd Ave.

As I’ve said before, the commercialization and the promotion of alcohol have always been turn-offs for me.

And then there’s the do nothing politicians like Hedy Fry that wrap themselves up in the gay pride flag for votes, but then come up with every flimsy excuse for their inability to help their constituents with governmental issues.

If that’s the one benefit of having grown up in a dysfunctional household on various Canadian Forces Bases across Canada is the fact that I learnt very young that I’m on my own and there’s literally no help coming from anyone.

In fact, I learnt very young that I’m better off just keeping my mouth shut as people in positions of authority don’t like finding out that there are problems and that these persons in position of authority are more than likely to blame me for bringing the issue to their attention as they are to actually do something about the issue. The “squeaky wheel” syndrome where instead of fixing the issue that caused the squeaky wheel, you just pump on massive amounts of grease until the squeaky wheel stops squeaking whether or not the underlying issue is fixed.

So no, I’ve never felt any benefit from the “community” or a need to “belong” to the community. Especially not a community that is extremely selective with its chosen “cause célèbre”. And not a community that is extremely protective of lame duck politicians because said politicians wrap themselves up in the pride flag and wave from a float in a parade.

Queers, gays, lesbians, trans, bi, and other people on the gender spectrum have existed since time immemorial. This need to be officially sanctioned by the local LGBTQ+ community is something relatively new.

When I first came down to Vancouver in February of 1992 to apply for a job in Burnaby, I knew that there was something different about Vancouver. When I got back to Deadmonton later that week, my mind was made up. Into the dumpster went all of my furniture, gave the keys back to the landlord, and off to Vancouver I went.

Of course I migrated towards the West End. But sadly when “queer went mainstream” the West End changed. The GLBTQ+ crowd that could, moved away. The Pride Parade at the same time went from being a massive “fuck you!” to the society in general that shat all over the queer community because the church told them to, to being a massive corporate advertising campaign for banks and booze.

And I don’t ever see this changing.

And now that the GLBTQ+ crowd has had a taste of acceptance, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep that acceptance, even if it means no longer making society feel uncomfortable about issues involving the GLBTQ+ crowd.

A trans teen goes missing from a Canadian Forces Base and no one bats an eyelash when their body is found in a river near the base.

Someone brings to light the fact that the Canadian Forces gave conversion therapy to the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse due to the assumption by military social workers that male-on-male child sexual abuse was nothing more than homosexuality. Not one single fucking person cares.

This isn’t a community. This is just an excuse to get shit faced and wear glitter in a parade.

It’s all my fault……..

The fun thing about being the chief engineer at work is that bad designs by professional engineers for projects that were put in well before my time in the Captain’s chair are somehow my fault.

Friday was a 17 hour day and Saturday was a 6 hour day dealing with the A/C for a freezer room that hadn’t been designed correctly from the start, had absolutely no redundancy, and had been packed with more biological -80 freezers than it was designed to accommodate.

Had to bring in 70 kW of emergency cooling to deal with the room. This emergency cooling was comprised of four 17.5 kW water cooled A/C units.

Water hoses all over the place distributing city water to the A/C units to cool the compressors in the A/C units with the warm water going down the drain.

Had to get electrical in to install four 208 volt 3 phase plugs for the A/C units.

These units got the room under control and are cycling on and off which means that they have ample cooling capacity. More than the four 12.5 kW split A/C units that are in the room.

When sizing mechanical refrigeration for an area, if the unit is running 100% of the time and it can barely maintain its set point, the unit is grossly undersized. If the unit only comes on for 5 minutes and shuts off again, the unit is grossly oversized. For a simple reciprocating compressor with no capacity control a 20 minute run cycle with 10 to 15 minutes off between runs is about right.

So, tomorrow I gotta propose a solution for this.

Most of the system I’ll design.

I’ll propose using either four water cooled 17.5 kW units or four water cooled 35 kW units. Four 35 kW units would give the best option for redundancy. If I can get them to spring for four 35kW units, then I can have N+1 redundancy with the ability to do Lead / Lag alternating with extra capacity for out-of-the-ordinary extreme days.

I’d have to get the appropriate fluid coolers for this setup. Again, nothing too fancy, just some adiabatic coolers. I could also get some air coils put into the air handler for the Emergency Department or the 2 East unit so that the heat from the freezer room could be used to pre-heat the fresh air in the cool weather thus reducing our steam bills for these two air handlers. When pre-heat isn’t required for the Emergency Department or the 2 East unit the adiabatic cooler would just reject the heat to the atmosphere.

Pipes would have to be installed up the side of the building, but they’re tearing the place down in about 6 years, so………. And I’ve always been a function over form type of guy. And it’s not like they’d look horrible. Probably be a pair of 76mm pipes.

So, we’ll see what I’m up for tomorrow when I get in to work.

Today’s Prompt…….

10 things that I know are absolutely certain.

The law doesn’t work much for everyone. The justice system in this country is not equal and is easily manipulated by those with agendas.
The idea of justice is an illusion meant to keep the working classes in line with the bullshit belief that if you work hard then things will work out in the end.
Religion is far too great of an opiate for the masses. Far too many people refuse to face reality and instead placate themselves with magical people with magical plans. God will fix this, Jesus will fix that.
Governments can become so big that as an institution it spends an inordinate amount of time protecting itself from the wrongs it, its employees, and its agents have caused.
People really don’t give a rat’s ass unless it directly affects them.
People would rather victim blame because it’s far much easier to blame the victim than it is to admit that society’s biases and blindspots led to the victim being injured or harmed.
Some parents can be outright shitheads that should have been sterilized at puberty.
Humans are not nearly as smart or advanced as we think we are.
Expecting people to simply forget the past and move on and stop whinging doesn’t work. Especially when there is no acknowledgement of the past events.
Death is peaceful. Death is also the great equalizer. Death is the relief from the pain of life.

And those are the ten things that I believe to be absolutely certain.

Sunday Afternoon Musings

Well, gonna head into work and get some drawings done. But before I go in, just thought that I’d say my piece about the latest news regarding the Canadian Armed Forces.

13 years ago I would have greeted the appointment of a female as the Chief of Defence Staff. But I’ve come to realize that the Chief of Defence Staff isn’t in a position to fix the issues with the Canadian Armed Forces. These issues are institutional issues that are created by how the Canadian Forces function.

Call me cynical, but there is no way that Ms. Carignan will be able to overcome the defects in the Canadian Armed Forces without a massive restructuring. Ms. Carignan has far too many subordinates running their own personal little fiefdoms in their own little silos to allow her to upset their decades long routes to easy retirement.

Since I had my unfortunate involvement with the defective CFNIS in March of 2011 the Canadian Forces has had 5 Chief of Defence Staff.

In almost the same period of time there have been 9 different Vice Chief of Defence Staff.

And since 2011 we’ve had Tim Grubb, Rob Delaney, Simon Trudeau as the Provost Marshal. We’ve also had various commanders of the CFNIS such as the infamous Lt.-Col. Gilles Sansterre who was called “the incurious investigator” by the media because he didn’t want to know about the sexual abuse of young boys by the Afghan Forces on a base that was administered by the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.

And remember, the Provost Marshal is directly subordinate to the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.

Section 18 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985,
Chapter N-5 National Defence Act

Yep, that’s right. The Provost Marshal who is supposed to be a Peace Officer as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada is under the direct command of someone who is NOT a Peace Officer.

Section 83 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985,
Chapter N-5 National Defence Act

Section 85 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985,
Chapter N-5 National Defence Act

So there you have an entire section of the Canadian Armed Forces that is bound by the National Defence Act to dysfunction. It’s literally hard coded into the National Defence Act.

Even if Lt.Gen Carignan wanted to get to clean up the dysfunction in the Canadian Forces Military Police Group, she’s in for a massive battle. She will never hear the truth from low ranking investigators as those investigators may be under instructions by their superiors to simply blow sunshine up Ms. Carignan’s ass.

If you were an investigator with the rank of Sergeant or Master Corporal, and you had Lt.Gen. Carignan say “come talk to me if you have any issues you’d like to talk about”, but yet your direct chain of command told you to think twice about telling the Lt. Gen. anything but “happy time fairy tales” whatcha gonna do?

Remember, in the Canadian Forces you’re not simply gonna tootle off to NDHQ in Ottawa to have a chit-chat with the Chief of Defence Staff. No, first you have to ask your chain of command for leave from your duties. This of course is going to be where you have to explain to your chain of command why you’re going to Ottawa to see the CDS.

And when you explain to your local chain of command that you think that they’re incompetent and that they interfere too much in your investigations, guess what? Please see sections 83 and 85 of the National Defence Act.

Think I’m over exaggerating?

Three retired supreme court justices have reviewed the military justice system since 2014. And all three have basically pinched their noses at the stench and given the system a hearty thumbs down.

You can’t have a proper justice system when people with parochial and political agendas can simply issue orders in relation to any investigation.

The only way in which Lt. Gen. Carignan will ever be able to reform the rot within the Canadian Armed Forces is to abolish the Canadian Forces Military Police Group and to hand over the prosecution of all offences that are not of a purely military nature to the RCMP.

As long as Section 83 and 85 of the National Defence Act exist, junior subordinates will never be free to tell the truth about the interference from their chain of command.

And as long as their chain of command is allowed to interfere, issues will go unreported and uncorrected. This will always lead the military to the situation that it finds itself in right now. Unable to clean house because of its heavily compromised police agency.

My ovaries………

Well, seeing as how I don’t have ovaries I have to get my estrogen the good ol’ fashioned way like nature intended.

Through a transdermal patch.

A trans on a trans………. I think I just made a joke?

I’ve noticed some changes so far.

But I’m still a few weeks away from the changes really becoming pronounced.

And this ain’t cheap. Those 8 packages are just over $30.00 each for 8 patches. That works out to $3.75 per patch.

The prescription calls for 4 patches per week, so those patches will last for 3.25 months. So in one year I’ll be looking at using 208 patches. This works out to about $800 per year. And that’s if I stay with the four 50 microgram patches per week. As I progress along my dosage will be increased. It could go up from 100 micrograms (two 50 microgram patches) up to a maximum of 400 micrograms (four 100 microgram patches). So yeah, this will get pretty expensive.

And no, this isn’t covered by provincial medical and it’s not covered by my Pacific Blue Cross insurance yet.

So, if you hear alt-right nutcases whinging on about “state subsidized trannies” or government paying to force transexuals on the rest of society there isn’t any such thing. There are special cases where the government will subsidize the cost of the medications, but this generally isn’t the case, at least not for me.

So, what am I?

Male, Female, or non-binary?

I definitely am not male. I’ve never really identified as male.

And NO, this so called “gender confusion” has nothing to do with the babysitter, McRae, or Totzke. I have honestly never identified with being a male. But the environment that I grew up in would never have allowed for the expression of an identity that did not match the junk between my legs.

Yes, there will be those who will scream that the civilian world was not much different than life in a military family living on a military base. And sure, the civilian world back in the ’70s and ’80s wouldn’t have been a cake walk for a trans kid, but……… in the civilian world there was no official order demanding that you rat out your co-worker or your neighbour. In the military community there was CFAO 19-20. And yes, CFAO 19-20 didn’t apply to military dependents directly, but it set the attitude of the members of the Canadian Forces that people who didn’t conform to sexual norms were mentally defective and a liability.

But, what will I identify as?

Me, I’m going to go with the letter “X”.

There are far too many areas in North America where identifying as a trans female isn’t legal, and travel wise there are some areas as well that don’t accept genders different from what you were born as. However, almost every jurisdiction will accept “X”.

And as I said, I’m not going for bottom surgery. I’ll get parts removed, but that’s it. I’m not getting things created. So in the end I’ll look like a Ken doll, but a Ken doll with breasts. And not as muscular or masculine……..

Washrooms? Thankfully most places have unisex / single washrooms. I haven’t ever encountered problems going to the men’s room in the lower mainland, or Iceland, or Washington state or Oregon. I suppose there is the possibility that this might change once my breasts start to become larger and more visible. Women’s room? Probably not. That’s far too much of a hornet’s nest for me to go poking just to take a piss. Even though I will eventually become a sitter and unable to use urinals, going into the women’s room will undoubtedly trigger some people, and I ain’t going there.

I think that’s enough for now.

Tomorrow will be a different day.

My DNA

To clear up some things about my DNA results, because I was directed to a CBC program by my brother.

I wasn’t aware that so many people don’t understand DNA and what the DNA results mean.

The first thing that needs to be made clear is that all of the DNA testing available on the consumer market is only as reliable as the sample pools.

My DNA results state that 15% of my DNA is shared in common with indigenous communities in North America. All this means that that 15% of my DNA is shared in common with those who have submitted DNA tests to Ancestry and who have self identified as indigenous. Due to the small sample sizes Ancestry will not be able to tell me which nation my DNA is derived from. To do that Ancestry would need a much more detailed pool to pull from.

This also why even though my father and his father identified as Irish, I only share about 3% of my DNA with persons who identify with being solely Irish.

This is where things get really murky with DNA results from England and Northern Europe. England will include a massive amount of Irish. Same thing with the Scottish. As England was conquered numerous times over the ages, and as England conquered its neighbours numerous times over the years it’s pretty easy to understand that there would have been migrations and marriages between the people of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, along with the Republic of Ireland.

Again, unless everyone alive in the UK and the Republic of Ireland took a DNA test you’re not going to be able to pinpoint my ancestry down to a specific village or a specific county.

My DNA results will not explain why I like to wear dresses or why I don’t identify as a male. There just simply isn’t enough DNA sampling coupled with clinical research. And DNA will never explain societal norms such as boys wear pants, girls wear dresses, pink is for girls, blue is for boys. And this is because societal norms are learnt behaviour, they’re not encoded in your DNA.

For instance up until the 1930s, pink was the boys colour as it was seen as being the diminutive of red and red of course was seen as being a man’s colour. Blue was for girls as it was seen as being dainty and delicate. Why it changed? Who know. But it changed around the 1930s and it seemed that it was large American retailers that decided that in American pink was for girls and blue was for boys.

Dresses for boys? Even in America as late as the early 1900s it wasn’t uncommon for boys to wear dresses until they were breached around age 7 or 8. Even historically in England boys wore dresses. There are portraits of English nobility and for the longest time researchers couldn’t figure out why the boys were never in the paintings, why it was always the girls. Not too long ago historians finally realized that some of these “girls” were actually boys. And that the only way to tell the boys from the girls in these portraits is that the dresses worn by boys were plain and the boys weren’t wearing any type of jewellery where as the dresses worn by girls often had patterns or trims and the girls were always wearing bracelets, necklaces, or earrings.

Why aren’t boys in modern media and modern history depicted as wearing dresses or wearing pink? As is the case with war stories, things get cleaned up and adjusted to fit the modern narratives.

What DNA can tell you, but again without 100% certainty, is what type of genetic characteristics you will possibly express.
Are you ambidextrous?
Can you taste certain foods?
Do certain foods taste repulsive to you?
Are you double jointed?
Are you left handed?
Can you digest lactose?

Again, this is only as accurate as the number of samples that these DNA companies receive.

And as far as I know, these DNA companies all steer clear of known genetic markers for disease and disabilities. And this is because you can have markers for MS, or a particular kind of cancer, or for Down syndrome, etc. But just having these markers doesn’t mean that you will develop these issues nor does it mean that you will pass these genetic issues down to your offspring.

So no, DNA testing will never explain why I like dresses, or why I don’t identify as a male.

But what DNA testing will do to a certain extent is let me fill in my family tree.

I’ve already come across numerous connections for every branch of my tree except for the paternal side of my father side. The Gill tree is a complete dead end after Arthur Herman Gill. Maybe someday in the future someone from the Gill side of the family will submit a DNA test that will let me fill in Arthur Herman’s side of the family, but until then I’ve got numerous 2nd or 3rd cousins from the Gill clan in the Durham and Peterborough region of Ontario, but nothing yet that directly ties them to Arthur or his son Richard.

Syncope…… weeeeeeee……

So, last night got up to go to the bathroom. Before I got to the bathroom I did a deep stretch with a deep yawn and felt the pins and needles coming on.

Next thing I know I’m laying on the floor of my apartment. Knees all cut up and sore, ribs sore, and head sore. I obviously dropped pretty quick and hard.

When I came to I was having random visions and scrambled thoughts flying through my mind and then I realized where I was.

So I got back up, took stock, and took my heart rate which as 70 BPM with an O2 level of 94.

Fuck did my head feel groggy. Like it always does after one of these.

And no, these aren’t seizures.

I had these since I was a teen.

They got really bad until my mid 20’s, then they just went away after I quit smoking.

They started coming back about 2017.

I don’t know if these are related to my undetermined heart issue, but no one has come up with a good idea as to what these are other than just calling them “syncope”.

I’ve had holter testing which hasn’t revealed anything.

I did EEG testing during a sleep test which didn’t reveal anything.

I went for EEG testing around 2012 to see if I was prone to seizures. Nope. Just prone to migraines.

Usually these episodes are triggered by me standing up, stretching, and yawning right after sleeping or napping. I usually get one hell of a good head-rush and if I feel the pins and needles sensation coming on then I can grab on to something to steady myself. But if I don’t find anything to steady myself with, then down I go.

What about your meds Bobbie? Maybe these are triggered by your drugs???

Don’t think so.

I didn’t start escitalopram until 2021, and I didn’t start estrogen therapy until back in May of this year. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke nor do I partake.

Strokes? Mini-Strokes? TIAs? Testing hasn’t said anything so far.

All I know is that I’m going to have some pretty decent bruising on both of my knees over the next few days.

100 micrograms

Went to see my nurse practitioner today.

My blood work looked fine, so I’ve graduated from 50 microgram patches to 100 microgram patches.

And we’ll do the same thing in a month’s time. I’ll got for another blood test. And if my liver isn’t showing any signs of not liking the estrogen, then I can graduate to 150 micrograms. And so on and so on.

The goal is to get my testosterone down to around 1.9 nmol/L while getting my estradiol levels up to around 500 pmol/L without going over 700 pmol/L.

Should be an interesting ride for the next few months.

The one that got away

Okay, so the babysitter matter seems to be winding its way through the lawyers, which is nice.

But one matter that won’t ever get taken care of is the ’95 mugging.

As I mentioned previously in other postings, I had been to a late show at the Capitol 6 on Granville St. I went to see Congo at the Capitol 6.

Going to the late shows was something that I got into the habit of when I first moved to Vancouver. This was due to the fact that most of the jobs I had were evening jobs.

Most of the theatres on Granville were running late shows. The theatre on the south west corner of Granville and Smyth was forever showing Bob Guccione’s “Caligula”, the Caprice was showing films like Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and old black and white films.

Once the City of Vancouver turned Granville Street into Booze Can Alley in the early 2000’s all of the theatres were converted into booze cans / night clubs. The Capitol 6 was shut down in the early 2000’s to make way for condos. The Granville 7 ceased operations in the late 2000. Outside of the Vogue theatre, which itself was at risk of being gutted and converted into a bar, there are no movie theatres left on Granville St.

In July of ’95 I was working for Elashi developments / Lois Lanes Bowling & Billiards out in East Richmond on Gilley Road. I got off work as I usually did at 22:00 and I caught the #410 to 22nd street station. And like I did every Friday previously, I took the train downtown instead of into New West.

I forgot what I wanted to see, but I ended up seeing a movie called “Congo”. This movie was panned and reviled by the critics at the time, but the film that I had wanted to see wasn’t going to be shown as the film hadn’t arrived on time.

Young kids these days will never know the frustration of showing up to a theatre and being unable to see a film because it didn’t arrive in time, it got sent to the wrong theatre , or it got so damaged that the theatre had to request a new print. Nowadays theatres get their movies either via digital satellite download, or by a hard drive package.

Before leaving the bowling centre, Rosa had given a fist full of Canadian Tire money as she knew I was planning on going to Canadian Tire the next day to pick up some parts for a car that I was trying to get running.

I’ve gone into detail on this matter before, so I’m not going to go into the details again. But to quickly recap, some guy and his girlfriend in the concession stand line mistook the Canadian Tire money in my pocket as high denomination bills.

Security tape from the theatre showed them leaving the concession line as soon as I did, and they followed me right into the theatre. The same tape also apparently showed them leaving the theatre and following me right out the front doors.

The movies would end around 01:30 to 02:00 and as is still the case these days, there is no Skytrain back east at these hours. The only way to get home to New West was to catch the #19 which would make its way from downtown to Stanley Park. And the only way to get a seat on the #19 would be to board the bus over at Pender and Burrard. And that’s where I was heading after the movie was over.

The blue asterisk is where the Capitol 6 used to be. The Yellow dot at Pender and Burrard was my intended destination. The black star is as far as I made it.

Looking south on Burrard to West Georgia.

This is where I got “clubbed”.

Didn’t hear much except for somebody running up behind me. As I had just passed the bus stop in the photo I assumed that it was just someone running either for the bus or was running down to Pender to get the #19.

The guy was about 6′ tall, East Indian male, beard, well built.

The female was white, about 5’6″, white heels, white mini-skirt.

He was armed with a red steering wheel club.

From what I can remember, he didn’t have this is the theatre.

The female was armed with a fair sized kitchen knife. I distinctly remember the three rivets in the handle.

I don’t think that most people walk around with a 10″ chef’s knife in their purse.

The only thing that I can think of is that they had a car parked nearby. And if they were this quick to arm themselves, this probably wasn’t the first time they had jumped someone.

He kept striking me with the club as I was on the ground and kicking me in the back and in the head. As he tried to search my pockets for the “money” he’d keep telling the female to stab me with the knife if I tried to fight back or tried to hit him.

All they managed to get was my wallet that didn’t contain much in money. The security guards from the Hyatt Regency raced over and chased them two suspects away.

Hyatt Regency hotel across the street where the two security guards came from.

I spent Saturday morning getting stitches in my scalp from the blows from the club.

The Vancouver Police Department officer, Constable Gil Puder, was a complete jerk. Even the nurse putting my stitches in was getting upset with him and told him that his questions were inappropriate and that he’d have to leave.

As he walked away he tossed the statement sheet on my stretcher and said that when I felt like telling him the truth I could fill the form in and get it back to him

When I was released Rosa came to pick me up and drove me back to my apartment.

My jacket had so much blood in it that when it dried out it was not flexible. I had to crunch it up to get it into the washing machine.

I went back downtown on Monday. I was hoping to find my wallet as it had all of my identification in it. When I got to the place where I had been mugged, the maintenance crew from Park Place were outside using the pressure washer to clean my blood off the sidewalk. I guess it had dried on Saturday and Sunday and was proving difficult to clean off.

I traced my steps from the Saturday morning and I figured out that it had to be someone from around the movie theatre. It was just by chance that I decided to ask the theatre if they had a video tape of the Friday night.

The manager was nice, she asked me for a description of the people, and then she went to view the video tape. She came back about 20 minutes later and said that she saw the two people I had described and me. She said that they were in the concession lineup next to me, they seemed to get excited when I pulled something out of my pocket, and then the left the lineup and followed me right into the theatre. When the movie was over they followed me right out. When I went to the washroom, he followed me into the washroom, and then he followed me right out.

What did they get excited about?

The Canadian Tire money.

The manger said that she would put the tapes aside and if the VPD officer wanted to come by and pick them up that they’d be waiting.

I called constable Puder.

Nope, he wasn’t buying it.

He had made up his mind that I was a gay male prostitute and that I tried picking this guy up in a gay bar and that until I admitted the truth he wasn’t going to waste his time.

Now, after having spent three years in the care of Terry Totzke for issues related to the apparent homosexuality that I had exhibited when I “allowed” myself to be molested, I wasn’t in the right mindset to deal with this.

I still don’t know what it was that made Puder think that I was gay, let alone a prostitute.

First, I didn’t drink, so I wouldn’t be anywhere near a bar.

And at that point in my life, you couldn’t have found me anywhere near Davie Street. I would have gone out of my way to stay away from any place like Davie street.

Second, I was still quite fucked up from having been dealt with by Terry Totzke, so I wasn’t even sexually interested in anything back then.

Was it the way that I dressed?

Was it some sort of lisp that I wasn’t aware that I had?

Was it my moustache that I had at the time?

Was it my haircut?

At the time I had been mugged it would have been 12 years since being dealt with by Terry Totzke for being a “homosexual”.

I survived working at Classic Billiards with my sexuality being questioned by the two co-owners who were police officers with the Metropolitan Toronto Police service.

I lost a job that I had moved to in Toronto for because my manager hadn’t been told that he was getting a fruit.

So, to have constable Puder literally blame me for getting myself mugged it was the CFB Namao matter all over again.

When cops tell you that there is no such thing as the “thin blue line”, they’re full of shit. The problem with cops is they’re trained in the “us vs. them” mentality. They’re trained, and it’s drilled into their skulls, that they are the only ones standing between law & order and the complete collapse of society.

And the VPD had all sorts of problems back in the ’90s. The dysfunction within the VPD is what led to Robert Pickton’s murder spree in the DTES.

When I went into the VPD on Main Street and tried to make a complaint against Puder and to ask for the case to be transferred to another constable I was literally shown the front doors of the Main St. station and told to get out and that if I came back again that I’d be charged with trespassing and harassment.

Puder died in the late ’90s.

I had someone I knew suggest that Puder’s brain tumour had fucked him up so badly that his brain was fried.

So whaddya think?

Was it Puder’s brain tumour that fucked up his common sense?

Or is “gaydar” a real thing and that gay/bi/trans people give off “signals”?

I mean, the babysitter and McRae, Totzke, Earl, Ed, Dirk, Don, Puder, Ron, Alex, and others can’t have just been randomly guessing that I was “gay”.

Even the kids at Pierre Laporte in North York often claimed that I was gay, a fag, a homo, that I walked like a girl, etc.

I do have the VPD incident report, and except for the notes from the morning that I was in the hospital, there’s nothing else to the investigation. I guess that Puder really did kill the investigation.

And so this one will go down as another unsolved crime.