Bees – Page 48 – Beeshive

My Name……

To those of you that have known me prior to May of 2008, you may have known me under a different name.

In August of 2006 I had a very detailed and pointed conversation with my father relating to the events of CFB Namao and his parenting skills and abilities. These conversations continued on for about a month until Richard got bored.

It was then that I realized that there was never going to be a “father – son” relationship between the two of us. His ideals of family norms seem to have been shaped by television and popular media. Not the slightest were his ideas based in reality. This may have been a side effect of his having been in the Canadian Armed Forces since his 17th birthday and not having any idea of what the real world function like. The chain of command told him all he needed to know. His station was not to question.

I decided that seeing as how my past was acting like such an anchor I’d do something that I had always wanted to do.

Change my name.

It’s actually not a hard process to undertake, but there is a process none the less.

First, you have to choose your name and how much of your name you want to change.

I changed my entire name.

First name, middle name, and last name.

The first name was easy. I never really like the name “Robert”. As a kid friends of the family had always called me Robbie or Bobby. Both names had an appeal to me. Bobbie even more so than Robbie. Robbie was still too close to “Robert” for my liking. Bobby I didn’t like as it was too “male”. However, I did like “Bobbie”.

Bobbie is an interesting name. Bobby is the masculine spelling. Bobbi is the feminine spelling. And Bobbie is the unisex spelling. Throughout the last 100 years according to the various censuses, Bobbie has gone between being a dominant male baby name to being a dominant female baby name. The unisex aspect of it appealed to me as I’ve never really identified as either male or female.

It took a while to decide on my last name. It wasn’t until I was working as a canvaser for the 2008 City of Vancouver Municipal Election that I came across my last name. I had decided when I wanted to change my name that I wanted my last name to complement my first name. As I was making my way though a voters list I came across someone with the last name of “Bees”. I did a bit of research on the Internet. Turns out the surname Bees has quite a long history behind it.

I also liked the name “Bobbie Bees” because it actually has a lot of “B’s” in it.

So, please with my new name I decided to head off to the Vital Statistics office to initiate the process. This was basically collecting all of the paperwork required and then filling out the paperwork.

“Bobbie Bees” was almost my new name until I was ready to submit my paperwork. When I took the paperwork in, the worker at the counter asked me if I really only wanted a surname and a family name without a middle name. I hadn’t really planned on having a middle name as I’d never really used my previous middle name. The worker suggested that I should pick a new middle name as this would give me an alternative name that I could use depending on the situation. The worker suggested that I choose my birthstone as my new middle name.

My birthstone is sapphire.

The worker agreed with me that “Bobbie Sapphire” and “Sapphire Bees” both sounded like stripper names.

In the list of birthstones I happened to spy “Garnet”.

I checked the definition of “garnet” in the dictionary. It was a red coloured gemstone known for its abrasive qualities.

And Garnet was also the name of one of my favourite characters from Final Fantasy IX. So Garnet it was.

Now that my new name was chosen, it was time to finalize the paperwork and pay the fees. I also had to attend the fingerprinting section of RCMP “E” division headquarters to get my finger prints checked.

I couple of weeks later I received a letter from the RCMP notifying Vital Statistics in both BC and Nova Scotia that I had passed the records check and that there was no reason to deny me the name change request.

The next letter I received from from Nova Scotia congratulating me on the name change and letting me know how to request new birth certificates and how to properly destroy my old certificates.

All my other ID had to be updated as well.

At this point in time I’m of the opinion that people should have “childhood” names and “adult” names. Childhood names are often picked by people who don’t have any idea of what their child would like to be named and they pick the names based upon reasons that may mean nothing to the child. When a child turns 16, they should be encouraged to pick a new name that suits them, that suits their identity, and fits with their idea of the world that surrounds them.

There were some unintended consequences of my name change.

In 2008, I hadn’t spoken to my mother since February of 1992 when I moved to Vancouver, BC. When I legally changed my name, my “dead name” ceased to exist. The only place my “dead name” exists is within law enforcement. Even today, I am not allowed to use my “dead name” for any legal purpose.

My mother would have turned 65 in 2011. So she would have been eligible to collect her CPP. For some reason she had to be able to prove to CPP how many dependent children she had had. She requested my brothers birth certificate from the Nova Scotia government. But when she tried to obtain mine, the Nova Scotia government told her that my birth certificate was restricted and that she could not have a copy.

When I tracked my mother down in late 2013 to ask her about some of the answers my father had given me in a Federal Court of Canada matter she said that she was surprised to hear from me. She explained that when the Nova Scotia government wouldn’t give her a copy of my birth certificate she had assumed that I was dead.

She didn’t really seem to care that I was still alive. But I think at that point in her life she was just too broken down and defeated to care.

I’ve been Bobbie Bees for over 12 years at this point in my life. I wasn’t able to kill off Robert like I had hoped I would have been to. “Robert” lives on due to the trauma , neglect, and abuse he was subjected to. “Robert” and the people that harmed him will be with me until the day I die.

But at least Bobbie Garnet Bees allows me a respite from “Robert”.

Dresses

I wear dresses, got a problem with that?

So, I’ll spend a little time talking about my preference for dresses.

I started “playing around” with dresses at a very young age.

When I lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater as a child, I do remember on more than one occasion going out to play with my friends, whom were always more than likely girls than they were boys, and I would come home wearing one of their dresses.

I don’t ever remember my father catching me in a dress, as he was almost always off on exercises. My mother on the other hand was never really upset, but she made it known to me that boys don’t wear girls clothes.

As a child, I could never understand why boys weren’t allowed to wear dresses. As far as I was concerned, they were far more comfortable and functional than pants, or even shorts. And besides, girls were allowed to wear pants, so why shouldn’t boys be allowed to wear dresses.

My family left CFB Shearwater around the the spring of 1977. I didn’t get to wear a dress again until somewhere around the summer of 1981 when I was just shy of my 10th birthday.

There was a girl named Megan who went to Major General Griesbach School on CFB Griesbach. On more than one occasion we swapped clothes and went to the local malls off base.

This was during the time when the fallout from CFB Namao was fresh and I was getting counselling from the military social worker to help deal with my apparent “homosexual tendencies”. The counselling only served to make my dress escapades that much more delicious and dangerous.

Even though my father was at home more often, he never once caught me wearing dresses. He came very close once though. Megan and I had swapped clothing and went over to Lake Beaumaris mall which was just north west of the base. We were walking around on the second level of the mall when I saw my father, my stepmother, and my younger brother heading towards us. Megan and I ducked downstairs to the washroom to change back.

There was a time around the summer of 1982 when Sue, my stepmother, had threatened me that if I didn’t stop crying that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress. I really wanted that dress. Imagine, my own dress. But I also realized that she wasn’t buying me a dress as a gift. She was threatening to dehumanize me and humiliate me by making me wear a dress.

It was then that I realized that there was something really fucked up with who was allowed to wear what clothing.

I was given an IQ test as a child when I was around 9 years of age and I scored 136 +/- 6, which wasn’t too shabby. Maybe, just maybe, this IQ allowed me to see that there was absolutely no logical reason that I shouldn’t have been allowed to wear dresses.

Wearing dresses didn’t make me want to become a girl. It was just comfortable clothing that I loved better than pants. I’ve always despised pants. I don’t like the way they touch me, or bunch up behind my knees, or crush my crotch, or squeeze around my hips. Dresses just hang nicely from my shoulders. They don’t really touch me. They don’t bunch up behind my knees. They cover my body without causing any discomfort.

I never wore dresses again until I was into my 20s.

As much as I loved dresses, and still wanted to wear them, I mostly had precarious employment through my early 20s. I sure as hell didn’t have a family that I could fall back on if I found myself between jobs due to my preference for clothing. I couldn’t risk my employers discovering that I liked to wear skirts and dresses. And let’s be honest, the ’90s were nowhere near as liberal and open as the ’00s.

Still wearing dresses was kinda like a “dirty secret” that I kept behind closed doors.

It wasn’t until in the late ’90s when I gained more secure employment that I would start wearing “woman’s clothing” in public. It would start off as skirts on the odd occasion. Then I worked up to dresses.

By the time I started working for my current employer in 2005 I was wearing dresses or skirts, even kilts, almost exclusively.

I wear pants at work (yech), but the work I do would chew up a dress. I do wear dresses to and from work, so it’s not like anyone at work doesn’t know that I wear dresses and skirts.

I’ve never felt at risk or in danger in the Metro Vancouver area.

What type of dresses do I like?

Nothing fancy, just plain Jane work dresses. A-line and fit-and-flare dresses are my favourite dresses to wear.

Nothing too “femme”. Being a guy who wears dresses has introduced me to women who absolutely hate dresses, and women who wear dresses, but absolutely detest “femme” dresses with buttons and bows and frills.

One thing that I have discovered is that a sizeable portion of women will never wear a dress as an adult as they despise them because they were forced to wear them as children.

I don’t have the lumps, and bumps, and curves that dresses are usually designed to accentuate, so I’m more happy with a loose fit. And as I said, I strive for more of a fit that doesn’t touch me on constrict me.

The first post

This is my new blog. I will run this blog separately from my other blog at:
https:cfbnamao.ca
I feel that the CFB Namao blog has gone as far as it can, that matter is now in the hands of the courts.

Not to sound too dramatic, but this blog will deal with my life all the way up to my death.

This blog will be about my tattoos, my bicycling, my photography, my musings on depression, anxiety, and mental illness, my work, and just about anything else that tickles my fancy from time to time.

I might talk about politics from time to time. I’ll more than likely veer into the topic of Medical Assistance in Dying. And just about every topic in between.

I’ll try to keep this blog interesting without boring you to tears with minutiae.

I’ll try to post at least once a week. Keeping the other blog up to date got tiring because there are only so many posts you can make about the military’s fuck ups. It gets painfully tiring and boring writing about the same crap day after day, week after week.

I’ll try to keep these posts under 10 minutes of reading time. I find that in this day and age posts have to be kept short and sweet as there are far too many things vying for everyone’s eyes these days.

That said, I’ll try to have my first official post up shortly.