The Red Coffin

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:37:21 GMT

It's been so long since I've posted here I figure it's time for a re-introduction. Hi, my name's Quinn. I'm a 33 year old non-binary trans guy (six years on T this November!), oil painter, and singer. I like heavy music, sex, downers, leather, vampires, harpsichords, horror movies, vampires, the colour red, iced coffee, and vampires.

I guess I'm in kind of a transitional phase right now (hyuk hyuk hyuk). Covid hitting was ironically what gave me the chance to start to understand my own nebulous health issues, and since being diagnosed with multiple chronic (and invisible) disabilities a lot of things have started to make sense. Unfortunately covid also fucked my life up by turning a common cold into multiple infections, pneumonia, and then fybromyalgia, which I will have for the rest of my life. Turns out when my life was shit and I'd tell myself something like "Well, at least I have my physical health..." that was not doing so great too.

In the past couple of years I've had more stable housing and relationships than I ever have. I got diagnosed with severe combination ADHD which came as kind of a surprise but now seems like the pinnacle of duh moments. Between that and the physical stuff I now understand why it seems like everything is ten times harder for me than everyone else: because it fucking is. Unlearning the impulse to blame myself for everything, along with a huge helping of disability theory, has definitely improved my mental health A LOT. I feel really grateful that I've been able to build the support system I have now, but I also feel furious that most people were just born into families that could take care of them and give them a place to live. I'm still chewing on that as an aspect of my identity.

I'm an artist now, a painter mostly. I studied a Cert IV in Visual Art at TAFE a few years ago, and before that I'd been in a few group shows and been a part of putting together an exhibit with a local transmasc peer support organisation. Then I got covid and long covid and everything started coming apart at the seams again. Around the start of last year I started to regain my ability to walk more than a few steps and be awake for more than a few hours at a time, so things have started their gradual return upwards once again. Melbourne was in lockdown for 18 months, so it really feels like there's another chunk of my memory missing when I think about the recent past. Everyone here does, it's strange.

I'm gonna do a little spring cleaning around here, my blog page needs a new layout and I'm not keen on the old username anymore. Why thy fuck does it cost $40AUD to change your fucking username? Yeesh. I'll get around to it, I feel like keeping Dreamwidth afloat is a worthy cause.

How are you all doing? What did I miss?

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I'll have a matcha-misu iced latte...

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 08:31:36 GMT

I've been living in my new apartment for just under a week. It's Sunday, 36 degrees, and I have no airconditioning or internet, so I bit the bullet and committed the ultimate sin for a Melbournian, especially one lucky enough to be blessed with my current location: I went to Starbucks.

The washing machine in my new building is on my floor, thankfully, but unthankfully only takes gold coins. It costs $5 for a wash and I have spent the last several days trying to aquire enough gold coins to run the machine. For some godforsaken reason everything I buy ends up either coming out at a multiple of $5 or just giving me 30c in change. As someone whose financial life has regrettably become entirely digital I find myself at a loss, and my new city rat persona is shaken somewhat.

Every other little curveball I've been able to field easily: the broken intercom, the four flights of stairs with no elevator, the miniscule kitchen with a mini bar fridge. I ended up asking the cashier at Starbucks to change my fiver for gold coins and the poor thing was so exhausted it took several minutes to communicate what I was asking. Voila, my washing machine coins!

Thank fuck, I'm down to my last pair of undies too.

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Testing out the new beta stuff

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 09:31:09 GMT

I think this is working just fine?

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Sun, 28 Feb 2021 08:59:05 GMT

I want to write something, anything, but I don't know where to start.

I think I just want to know someone will listen.

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I'm gonna be on a podcast! And I'm recording a duet with myself!

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 06:18:35 GMT

Two friends of mine are starting a podcast, but they're such astute weirdos I expect this one might actually be interesting. I'm gonna talk about spirituality, which I think will be interesting since I haven't met a lot of other people who've made the switch from Jehovah's Witness to satanist, besides Feijra who is one of the people running the podcast.

Lately I've had this strange feeling, like the outside world isn't so barred off from my inside world. I think the realisation that I could be starting testosterone very soon is filtering down into other aspects of my subconcious. I want to do one of those duets, where I record one part before and the other after my voice changes. I realised that if I'm starting T soon I need to get to work on that, so I've given myself a 6 week deadline to get the first vocal part recorded. I even got Alex on board to help. It's a shame the restrictions are so strict right now otherwise it would be great to get some lessons from his mum (she's a classically trained opera singer and teacher), but for now I'll work with youtube courses and stuff.

When I first thought of this idea I knew immediately which song I wanted to do:

I haven't sung for years, and now that I'm finally understanding the extent to which vocal dysphoria has impacted my life this feels... incredible. Healing. Exciting. It feels like the sin coming up, feeling the first rays of sunlight warming my skin after a cold night. It feels like I am the sun and the one watching it.

I'm inspired. I feel like the dreams I have don't have to just be dreams anymore. I miss modelling, I want to go back to it as my real self and do more freaky editorial shit now that I'm not under the thumb of a controlling douchbag who demanded my personality be reduced to sexy arm candy. I want to be seen, to be heard, and that desire feels different now in some way that I don't have the words to describe. I wonder how much of my anxiety, the hopelessness and the heavy weight I've been dragging around with me for so goddamn long is amplified by dysphoria? What else will I be capable of once I've shifted into my new reality?

I'm so looking forward to finding out. Good thing I didn't kill myself back in March, eh? Come to think of it, Feijra was the one who convinced me to wait. "Don't you want to see what happens with this Covid shit? At least stick around till the end of the show." Now it's a whole new show with a brand new script, and this time I'm the one holding the pen.

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Fuck

Sun, 31 May 2020 23:43:43 GMT

There must be some serious astrological shit going on upstairs right now. The outer world feels as unstable and shifting as my inner world, but I really believe something good is going to come out the other side of this.

Australia is prone to bushfires because so many of our native plants evolved to use fire to germinate their seeds. The fire is the thing that causes new growth, as well as removing the dead growth.

Right now the fire is raging, but there are so many seeds that have already been planted. Whatever happens, what comes out the other side will be new, and because it was forged in fire, it will be strong.

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Messy messy

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:03:25 GMT

Fuck me I'm a mess lately. But I seem to be coping a lot better than most people. Maybe I'm not as much of a mess as I thought?

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Sat, 14 Mar 2020 01:36:28 GMT

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken."

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

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Grey

Sun, 23 Dec 2018 04:49:47 GMT

I'm starting to realise I'm at a very strange point in my life.

I'm no stranger to those dramatic phases of metamorphosis that everyone goes through now and then - reinventing yourself as an autonomous person as a teenager, the feeling of shedding old skin with a drastic haircut, New Year, New Me etc. The difference this time is that I don't know what I want to be when I come out the other side.

I have always thought of myself as a character, one that requires fleshing out with a backstory, particular clothing and colour choices. Despite my unstable sense of identity I've always had an idea, an inkling what I *wanted* to portray. I'm stuck because I don't really have that same drive, the intense desire to be understood, to make myself understandable, to feel connected to others.

Now I have those things. I feel safe, happy, loved, understood. I don't feel like a miserable enigma anymore. I have things I want to say, I just don't remember what they were. Maybe they don't matter so much anymore.

I always used to have the feeling that I had to make use of the Misery while I had it, squeeze as much art out of it as I could because it wasn't going to last forever and one day I would be happy and boring and make middle of the road pop songs or something. But I didn't have the skills to make use of it at the time (which might have helped me cope in more constructive ways tbh) and now I don't have anything.

I've always felt like creativity was the central drive of my existence. I wanted to be famous so I would be loved, understood, listened to. So I would be real in the eyes of others. The last few years have been a process of realising that I could find those things without feeling like I had to earn them, or prove myself worthy by being exceptionally talented and all that.

Now, even though I have the safe home, the happy family, all the things I wanted, I feel aimless. I gave up a lot of my dreams to be able to survive, and now that survival has been accomplished and pretty much secured (for now at least) I don't remember why I was so determined to survive in the first place.

I wanted to be famous. I wanted people to love me so that everyone would be sad when I killed myself and I would have a state funeral and everyone would watch my beautiful coffin on the television and cry with their relatives. Now I don't want to kill myself anymore. I want to live, but now there's so much time ahead of me I don't know what to do with it.

Conor's advice was to just take it one day at a time and follow what interests me, so I'm going to do some of the things I've been putting off for a while, like getting a tattoo and taking some short courses. I'm hopefully getting a computer after Christmas so I can get back into video editing, and have a crack at music production again. I've been learning a lot about tarot cards, and getting in touch with my dad's side of the family. There is a way forward, I just can't really see it yet. I know I like music, and making things with my hands, and colours. I'm going to have a crack at painting as well, something I loved doing in high school.

For now it feels like I'm just filling time, but then again I used to have panic attacks thinking about how I'd never live long enough to learn all the things I wanted to learn. Learning is something that has always mattered to me, and that hasn't changed through all the bullshit, so I'm going to follow that thread and see where it leads.

Do you ever feel pressure to be A Creative? Have you ever felt disconnected from your creativity this way? I'd like to hear from others on this.

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One day

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 11:48:05 GMT

One day I will be able to paint my bedroom. One day the walls with no longer be blank, like the bank, white, suffocating walls of rental properties and housing commission houses that have followed me my entire life.

One day I will have a to make a decision between all the shades of blue paint chips and samples I've collected. One day I will have to decide which wall the mural will go on, and whether it will have sunflowers or roses. One day I will paint the ceiling too, and at night I will fall asleep in the soft blue belly of my home, knowing I have made it mine and no one can or will take it away from me. One day I will be free, and I will be home.

For now I will bury myself in the ground, slide deep into the soil and plant myself like a seed, for I am planting a garden. A home will need roots that grow deep into the earth to keep me anchored. I will need them to stop me being carried away by the wind under my large leaves. I will gather so much sunlight with my beautiful leaves I will glow, and through my roots I will share this bounty with others.

One day. But first I must plant this seed.

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Lately

Sun, 09 Dec 2018 20:16:50 GMT

I haven't been sleeping well lately. Between the heatwave and the nightmares, sleep feels impossible till daytime peeks around the edges of my curtains.

It is 6:58am and I need to write. Lately everything has been bottled up inside me. Latley nothing feels like relief, not writing or drawing or sticking paint chips and newspaper clippings to my walls.

Lately I haven't been writing in my journal. I've felt less pressure to write since that fucked up moxie trip just before New Years, like the suffocating compulsion that has driven me to record the hourly events of my life for the last dozen or so years has suddenly released it's grip. I still feel this compulsive need to T E L L S O M E O N E but I don't know who, or how, or what I'm trying to say.

The birds are chirping. There is clear, crisp sunlight outside. I sit on my bed, in my whirlwind mess of a bedroom, in my whirlwind mess of a life.

I want to rip off my extra long acrylic fingernails to be able to type better. These magnificent talons that have made me feel so vicious, so capable of violence, that have made me feel safe, feel like a burden today. They keep the world always at a small distance, but it is enough. Enough to make me feel safe. Enough to feel suffocated.

I think about this feeling for a second too long, and an involuntary shudder passes up my spine, so strong I shake my head without wanting to.

I don't want to need talons anymore. I wish I didn't have to seem dangerous to seem safe. I wish my gentleness were not mistaken for invitation or weakness. Let me speak without searching for hidden meanings in my words. Let me exist without being prey, to your ego, your desires, your vitriol, pigheadedness, abrasive hatred, entitlement, insults, pick up lines, come ons. Dehumanising catchprases flung out with a practiced tongue and a spray of spit. Your voice loud, eyes roaming, oblivious.

Let me exist without being a magnet. Let me be soft without needing to harden in defense. Let me find the light I need to find without fucking ruining it for me for once. Let me retract my claws for once. Let me stop being sharp long enough to reach out, so that my hands might find someone else's and I can know that I'm not alone.

Please, just this once. (It will never be "just once")
Please just let me be soft.
Please

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Can I schedule posts?

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 07:48:41 GMT

Does anyone know if I can schedule posts for the future here on DW? I've searched the help section and couldn't find anything on it so hmmm. The Edit Date feature at the top of the post feature just changes the date and publishes it immediately, it's weird.

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I've been thinking about deleting my Facebook again

Fri, 09 Jun 2017 16:44:05 GMT

But now that I've pared it down a bit I'm discovering what is actually useful about it.

Pros:
1. The various trans positivity groups, as well as the slowly growing group of trans friends I've made who are all avid memers and just the fact that trans people can interact and support each other through digital means, even when we're so seperated.

2. Events and shit, because no one advertises anywhere fucking else.

3. International friends. Because duh.

4. Being able to convey my ideas and thoughts and feelings to that weird in-between group of people who aren't close but aren't Just Aquaintences either. Whenever I share something in depth about myself - usually it's about mental health or something like that - I get a fair few insightful and intelligent comments from people saying they appreciate my honesty or the way I articulated the issue. The conversations that start from these posts are what I love the most about Facebook, and I feel like they capture a tiny bit of that joy I got from the internet to begin with, when it was safe to talk about the dark and scary parts of myself with strangers who wouldn't tell my mother or my teachers about my questionin gender and my hallucinations.

5. Other people who do the same. Birds of a feather flock together, so I have a fair few friends who are mentally ill and struggling, some are dealing with physical health issues as well, and I love seeing the little things they post about how they're doing, or how their cat cheered them up. Love that shit, want it all the time. Literally the kind of content I want to see.

6. Brink shit I guess?? We do everything on Facebook

7. Being able to put a call out for "Do I know any animators/colourists/graphic designers?" or "Can someone recommend a good dentist on the West Side?" is fucking useful.

8. The Rough Trade group, as well as other swap groups. It's great to be able to just say "I have x and I want y" or see what others are getting rid of. The whole attitude of the group is super anti-consumerist and I love it.

9. I guess there's other buy and sell groups if I ever get around to cracking open that old box of gawth clothes.

CONS:
1. Ads.

2. Zuckerfuck has turned the idea of being social into a fucking competition with his algorithms. Who can be the most interesting, who can post the coolest picture. It's fucking warped the way I see things and I'm sure it's had a similar effect on other people too.

3. You can get zucced for anything and everything. I've seen so many of my friends lose their accounts for random fucking resons. All their history, comments, photos, gone.

4. No control. Over your name, your privacy settings, who can search for you, when people add you to groups. It fucking sucks.

5. I'm extremely fucking paranoid about datamining and shit. It's probably worse because I don't understand it well but it does my fucking head in knowing that everything I do online is being analysed and shit, and there is SO MUCH of me as a person on FB they could probably make an AI based on my info.

6. It's so fucking cluttered I miss out on so much of the good stuff. FB isn't the cost place to connect with friends that it used to be, and I need to accept that instead of trying to wish it back to that. It's another advertising platform, attempting to turn us all into products, and in a way we've been more than agreeable to the idea. The whole 'personal branding' bullshit is another modern phenomena that makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a fork, and now that I've quit most other social media I'm realising how much it affected my view of myself. I wonder how it affects others too.

7. No creativity! Getting a Neocities made me realise how much control you can have over the appearance of your online space IF YOU'RE FUCKING ALLOWED. I've been conned by all the blue and white hellsites into thinking of the continuous feed with a static column either side and a banner at the top as the only way to communicate with people. It's fucked. At least let me change my fucking backgroud.

8. The endless, endless scrolling that never goes anywhere because they keep rearranging the order of posts in my feed and I never know how far through I've gone. And the fact that an old fucking status can rise from the dead into my feed with a comment or a like. And shit belonging to other people I'm not even friends with on FB finding its way into my newsfeed because we both had a mutual friend that liked it. Christ almighty, this is the thing that fucks me up bigtime.

So yeah. I'm not 100% sure what to do next. I think maybe deactivate for a short while, and if I really miss FB for the good reasons I listed, then I can try making a secret account just for like my 20 favourite people and the maybe 6 groups I like.

As is my usual habit when considering whether or not to abandon the Zacc's Old Fashioned Sink Hole, I was Googling around reading other people's stories of life in a post-Facebook world. Interestingly enough, amongst all the articles listing dozens of reasons Why You Should Delete Your Facebook, only one put forward the idea that Facebook, along with other social media giants, should be regulated due to the way they intentionally exploit human nature, neuroscience, psychology, and a host of other fields to make their websites as addicting as possible. I find it fascinating that everything else I've read, as well as my own attitude, puts the onus on the user of the website to either limit their use or avoid it completely. When framed in the context of addiction this seems convoluted and ignorant. Facebook did used to be a nice place to interact with people, which is why I'm so attached to it. I'm not the one changing the privacy policies or rearranging the newsfeeds though. I feel relief that I don't have to blame myself for adding yet another form of socially acceptable communication to the ever growing list of things I suck at, especially one that I used to be so good at and really enjoy.

I guess this is a version of "it's not me, it's you." Facebook has changed. We don't mesh as well together as we used to. It's so weird coming to terms with the platform that shaped my social life, how I communicate, how I express myself and share things with my friends, is just a way for some other jackoff to manipulate people and make money. Wasn't the internet supposed to free us from that bullshit? From capitalism and gender and anti-intellectualism and restrictive copyright laws and all that shit? What happened?

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Satanic Pixie Dream Quinn

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 14:32:51 GMT

There was a silver lining in the oozing, convulsing pustule of my first day back at uni:

I ducked into the Salvo's on the way home from uni, hunting for a winter coat. Found said coat for $2, along with a reasonably priced pair of blue cheetah print jeans that I've wanted since my blue cheetah print leggings wore out. Score.

After paying for my things at the counter, I place my card back into it's slot in my phone case and drop the whole thing on the counter while I attempt to cram my purchases into my backpack, completely forgetting the sticker on the front with a pentagram and goat's skull on the front.

The chatter coming from the woman at the counter started sounding more and more nervous, and I realised she'd noticed the sticker, so I took my sweet time getting my bag zipped up while she went on about saving the turtles or something.

I left feeling both warm and amused.

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