Pssst, that’s a guy

Wow what an amazing couple of weeks. July 12^th 2012 is my new birthday because that is the day the judge signed my Decree Changing Name & Gender, otherwise known as Form NC-230. That was one of the best days of my life and I was shocked at how awesome it felt to hold that document in my hands. Many months ago somebody was asking me about the legal name change process and I said I didn’t really know anything about it yet and I wasn’t worried about it either. “I’ll get it figured out eventually” I said. “It’s no big deal, just paperwork”. Boy was I wrong. I was literally giddy as we walked out of the courthouse. (‘we’ being me and my awesome lawyer friend Jaye who was doing a little Pro Bono charity work) I felt like I was on the verge of tears or laughter at any given moment for the rest of the day. My next two stops were the Social Security office and the DMV and I was totally okay about the prospect of long lines and glum public servants, except the lines weren’t long and the clerks weren’t glum. The lady at the SSA office was positively delightful and the guy at the DMV was equally cheerful. The experience couldn’t have been better really, I don’t know what I was expecting but I had no idea anything could have been done so quickly and friendly in those particular organizations. All in all, it was a great day by any measure.

So my name and gender are legally changed and my transition is now complete. Well, it’s complete as far as the State of CA is concerned, but I still have a long way to go according to my body. I’ve been at this for what feels like forever (two and a half years) and I keep forgetting that I’m still very early in this transition. Sure I’ve been on Estrogen for awhile but I’ve only been testosterone free for a couple of months. My hair has been growing out for a couple of years but it’s really only just now beginning to fill in and look more feminine, (instead of like an aging rocker) not to mention all of the hair I lost at the scalp advancement scar which follows my new hairline from ear to ear. I notice my face looking slightly more feminine every few weeks or so, due to the slow healing of my FFS and my nose looks like it kind of shrinks about 10% every month as it heals. Everything is going well, it’s just going really slow and I’m looking forward to the day when I won’t be hyper aware of every little masculine thing about me.

I’m also looking forward to not being called a man. Throughout this whole process you gather strength the way a snowball gathers snow while rolling downhill. Every day makes me stronger in some way or another but it’s amazing how demoralizing something so simple can be on some days. At this stage of my transition, I’m passing pretty well, and I would even say that many people I meet might even be surprised to learn of my immediate past. However, I’m also at the stage where it is still not uncommon to be recognized as a transsexual. I don’t really mind if people notice, I fully understand what I look like, and I don’t have any delusions about my place in the world, but… sometimes it kinda hurts. A few weeks ago I was sitting in a hallway looking down at my laptop and a couple of women walked by, slowing down as they passed me and I heard one whisper to the other as they turned the corner “that’s a guy”. Hearing that made my heart slow down a little, why do people whisper so loudly? Back in the day, that wouldn’t have bothered me at all, but lately, it seems to hurt more, even though it doesn’t happen that often. That’s the paradox isn’t it. If it happens all the time, you become immune to it, but when it only happens occasionally it stings every time. So there it was, something about me looked so unmistakably masculine that a complete stranger noticed it in a passing glance. What the heck was it?! Well I think I know. In the position that I was sitting, with my head down over my laptop, the top of my head would have been the most prominent thing they would have noticed. The top of my head is also probably my most masculine feature right now. Even after some scalp advancement surgery I still have an unmistakably male hairline due to years of testosterone poisoning as well as losing a ton of hair during surgery. Thankfully it is not permanent and in fact is already growing back quite nicely, but I may indeed have a full year post surgery before I’ve lost most of my defining male characteristics forever. Another year.

These last two years feel like they’ve flown by, but this year, the most significant year of my transition seems to creep by as slowly as, …well as slowly as hair grows.

patience is a biscuit

Wow it has been a long time since I updated my blog. I was thinking the other day about why I don’t feel compelled to write so much lately. It seemed like I was always making mental notes of experiences to add to my little journal but that hardly ever happens anymore. It doesn’t really make sense because the last couple of months have been literally full of bloggable experiences. I had some drama while trying to get my FFS scheduled at the beginning of the year. I managed to get the money together and get it done, and there was about 4 weeks there where life was moving pretty fast. Still nothing struck me as something I must write about. My saucy lawyer friend helped me to get my name and gender change paperwork filed at the local courthouse so all I have to do now is wait for the gavel to drop on my new legal name. That was an ordeal that was begging to be blogged about but I didn’t even think about it. Now I’m back at work and living as Melissa full time for a whole two weeks now and it’s not until today that I’m thinking I should maybe write some of this stuff down. Maybe it's because so much of my transition is public now. Back in the day everything was happening in private or in my head and I wanted to share my experience with people, but mostly record it for myself. These days my transition is right out there like live theatre. Pretty much everything I'm experiencing is being experienced by everyone else in my life. My boss was telling me once that things at work might be sensitive because "nobody has dealt with anything like this before". Well, neither have I! My friends and colleagues are experiencing everything for the first time right along with me. I thought I was openly transitioning before, but all I was really doing was just openly talking about it.

I was telling a friend the other day that I’m surprised by how emotionally exhausting my life has been lately. January just marked two full years of this transition and I really thought that the hard stuff was behind me. I have no idea why I thought that except I had been through some pretty hard stuff already. The first day I walked into the office as my new self, might as well been the first day I ever walked outside cross dressed. Even though I had been “out” for quite a while, it was incredibly difficult to get out of my car and walk into the building. This wasn’t playing dress up for a night on the town, this was the real deal and I had to be accepted as a professional person by people who have only known me as a “man” for many years. I’m not ashamed to say that I gave serious thought to just leaving and trying again the next day, but if this transition has taught me anything it’s that you have to be true to yourself. I am Melissa, this is the new me, this is the new normal so let’s get on with it. Of course everybody was wonderful and now two weeks later, I can finally start to imagine this as actually normal. It’s no picnic though because I’m terribly self-conscious about my still healing face. My nose, chin and jaw are still swollen and the scar along my hairline is awful looking, not to mention extremely uncomfortable and itchy. I lost a LOT of hair during and after the surgery so my hair is thin as well as damaged and since I can’t just wear a hat every day, I’m dealing with all of this healing and re-growing right out in the open in front of everyone. I’m not exactly looking my best and everyone is incredibly supportive, but I can’t help but be kind of sensitive about how I look. I suppose it’s just vanity and this will ultimately be a good experience for me, but right now I need to find solace in my countless blessings and once again re-calibrate my patience. Life takes time.

Office Space

It was back in January 2010 that I decided once and for all what I had to do. I can’t believe it’s been two whole years already. Time is funny like that, in some ways it feels like a flash but in others it feels like this transition has been going on forever. 2010 was a busy year, I started therapy, started hormones, started really working on my body, started electrolysis, and started coming out. That was the year when I abandoned all pretense of being “straight” in my personal life. I stopped pretending to like girls, and I stopped pretending to be masculine. That was also the year when I really started pushing the envelope with the cross dressing. I had done a little bit in 2009 but I was already getting bored by the whole experience and I would have quit cross dressing altogether if my therapist hadn’t told me that “gender is a lived experience”, and a feminine presentation was part of the work I had to do. So I did it. I was a terrible cross dresser but I stuck at it and eventually I started to understand what it was all about. It’s about owning who you are. I have always been very self-conscious about my face so I eventually gave up trying to look female and just became comfortable in my own skin. By the time we rolled into 2011, I was quite comfortable being almost anywhere in a very androgynous presentation. The more comfortable I became, the more confusion I caused to waiters and clerks etc. I think these days I actually feel like I’ve shed my skin, like a Cicada or something. I feel like there’s nothing masculine left and after my FFS is healed I honestly don’t think anyone who doesn’t already know, would ever know.

I started coming out professionally in the summer of 2011. I told work friends, and family, and clients, and then …October came along and I really came out at work. By the time November was over I was 100% out to my boss, his boss, HR and everyone else who had a pulse. What the hell happened?  I gotta tell ya, this was not what I had planned but I just went crazy or something and basically started telling everyone who would stand still long enough that I was a tranny. It’s like years of hiding just sort of bubbled over and exploded. Luckily, everyone was okay. Our HR director was very helpful and understanding and basically just said “we would work it out”. I was surprised but this whole experience really got me thinking about how we always tend to expect the worst from people. My dad, who isn’t exactly thrilled about this whole thing, said something pretty profound during one of our coming out conversations. I mentioned that I didn’t plan on transitioning in my current job and he asked why not? Well, I said because I don’t think they would take it very well, and he said; “Why don’t you give them a chance to make up their own minds? They might surprise you”. He was absolutely right of course. They did surprise me and I was forced to learn that people have a much greater capacity for understanding and compassion than I gave them credit for. So that’s just one more thing to add to the long list of things that I had wrong about transitioning. This process is so bizarre and mind bending that the only thing that I know for sure anymore, is that I don’t know a damn thing about a damn thing. Every time I think I know how something is going to unfold, it ends up being just one more thing I was wrong about. I am not just learning a lot about myself in this transition, I’m also learning a bunch of life lessons that I’m sure will serve me well in the years to come. Everything changes in a few weeks with my FFS and then I start a new chapter of my life, and that chapter will be titled; How to succeed in business without embarrassing your poor bosses. I do feel a little guilty for putting them through this along with me, but I will make it up to them for sure. For the price of a little heartburn for a short while, they get a dedicated and grateful employee who will never forget the understanding they showed me during a very difficult time of my life. I’ve never been one to get sentimental over a job or a company but I just can’t help but feel extremely lucky to have these people on my side. I would have argued strongly against staying at my job just a year ago, but now I can hardly remember why. In my field, I could work anywhere, but I truly can’t imagine working anywhere else.

are we there yet?

“You look more feminine and pretty than I’ve ever seen you look”.

That’s what my friend Jenni said as we were headed across the bridge to the city. We were both looking forward to a great time, and I was feeling much better about myself than I was at last year’s event. So now it’s four in the morning and I’m still on the verge of tears, because I guess I had my first official breakdown yesterday at Santacon. It was totally unexpected because I thought I was emotionally okay with this whole transition by now. In the beginning, I cried a lot. I cried during the whole time I was bouncing back and forth between accepting myself, or continuing my life as it was. I cried when I finally gave up and said out loud to no one, except some trees, that I was a transsexual. I cried when I started the hormones …and I think that was about it for the emotional theatrics. There may have been a few assorted tears about one thing or another, but mostly happy tears and I really thought the hard part was behind me.

So much has happened in the last two years that I can barely remember what I felt like in the very beginning. It’s been like a snowball that started real slow and eventually picked up speed and keeps getting bigger and faster, at an exponential rate. The last six months have probably been the most eventful so far. I basically finished coming out to everyone as trans including everyone at work, and I have the date scheduled for my FFS. I am now a real life transitioning transsexual and I feel like a walking billboard, or tranny information center sometimes, and I’m totally okay with it. Like I said, I really thought I was in a good place emotionally. Now I’m starting to wonder. It’s never really bothered me that people looked twice, or snickered at me, or whispered so loud that everyone within fifty feet could hear. (whispers are supposed to be quiet!) I’ve kinda always reveled in it, and was proud to let my freak flag fly. But now it’s different for some reason. My presentation improves every week, and so many of the little things that make up the life of a tranny really do get easier over time, but there is one thing that seems to be getting harder. I remember when it was all about “passing”, when all I cared about was putting together a convincing presentation. I rarely passed up close but somehow it didn’t bother me. People knew what I was, and for the most part they were polite about it. There wasn’t any reason to whisper because it was obvious. I don’t recall getting my feelings hurt ever, and I was generally under the impression that my feelings couldn’t be hurt in that way. “Only somebody I cared about could hurt my feelings”, I would proclaim to my poor friends who I’m sure have been through quite an ordeal over the last year or two. Well yesterday, I crossed a new milestone in my transition; hyper sensitivity. I am closer now than I ever was to the holy grail of “passing” up close and in broad daylight. I’m closer, but I’m still not there, and it is really starting to hurt. I used to love it when people would want to take their pictures with me, or I would see someone across the street pointing their camera at me. It didn’t bother me at all, I was in San Francisco and I was part of the scenery, a real live tranny! Well yesterday in a line for the restroom, a girl came up to me and complimented me on my dress. (cute, short, saucy, Santa tramp outfit) What a sweet compliment I thought, and I was starting to think that maybe today wasn’t so bad and then about a minute later, she came back with two friends and said she just had to get a picture with me. That was crushing. Right out of the blue I felt like there was a sign above my head; Real Live Tranny, and I felt really self-conscious for the first time in many months. This time, it hurt much worse than it ever did. I don’t blame the girls of course, they were very sweet and they had no idea it was so painful for me. It was Santcon after all, and everyone was dressed up. I could have just been a regular dude playing around as far as they knew. Here I am getting my picture taken between two girls who were laughing and giggling, and I can’t remember ever feeling so alone.

Before you think I was just over reacting, let me clarify that it was just that kind of day. From the minute we walked out of the parking garage, I felt like a spectacle. I just seemed to notice a lot more people noticing me for some reason. More double takes, more pointing, more quick head turns as I looked their way. More whispers. Maybe it was the time of day, (noonish) maybe it was the gathering of thousands of people who were not all from my beloved Bay. Nobody was mean to me, I didn’t notice any hostility or dirty looks, I was simply VERY aware of being read as a tranny. After a while, it really started to get to me, and as much as I tried to keep smiling it was just getting harder and harder. The most painful times were when they didn’t read me right away. I was standing in the crowd at Washington Square waiting for the Naked Santa, um exposition, and some guy walked up and started flirting with me. The usual “where are you from” stuff and yadda yadda, and then I could see him suddenly realize what I was, and he just turned around and walked away. I wasn’t even attracted to him (too short, too skinny) but it hit me pretty hard that I was so hideous a creature that he couldn’t even take a second to say “gotta go”.  This kind of thing would have never bothered me in the past, but then again I don’t think anyone would have been fooled even for a minute in broad daylight. So is that the problem? ALMOST passing? Whatever it is, I don’t like this stage and I’m eager to move on to the next one. My FFS (Facial Feminization Surgery) is supposed to be in April, but I’m going to try and get it pushed up as early as possible. Yesterday was a vivid example of what my life will be like if I don’t get my face fixed. If I ever want to get out of the Castro, or the fetish zone, then my face MUST look female. There is a reason why I’m delaying my professional transition until the FFS and now it’s the same reason why I think I’m done “cross dressing”. I simply don’t want to be a freak. I want people to take me seriously as a person, as a woman, and I can see now, that will never happen as long as I look like a man.

Courage?

I’ve been thinking. Since I’ve started coming out as trans at work I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how accepting everyone has been. Oh, I know, those of you who have been following my progress are probably wondering why I haven’t gotten another job yet. That was the plan right? Get another job at a trans friendly place and THEN transition. Well, what can I say? I told someone recently that plans are best drawn in sand because that’s about how permanent they are. I started this whole process with several milestones in mind but they’re all blending into one another. I wasn’t supposed to start telling people I was a transsexual until next year. So much for that plan, I’ve been yapping about being a tranny since the summer! Basically, none of my plan is going according to plan, but everything is still going much better than I expected.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but I work in construction. I haven’t been in the field and done any “real” work for well over ten years now but I still manage and share an office building with a lot of alpha male types who I was sure would not be okay with my transition. In fact, I almost didn’t go through with it at all because I was scared of the reception I might get from the people I work with. It was way back in 2009 when I finally realized what my problem was and let me tell ya something, that was a tough year. I had a promotion, a project bleeding money, AND my own gender issues to deal with, and I’m sorry to say I dealt with it by drinking lots of wine. I don’t know why wine instead of my beloved Jack Daniels but for some reason I was on a “two buck Chuck” kick and I was buying that stuff by the case. Well, needless to say, the wine didn’t help much and when I noticed that I was starting to break into bottle number two on a pretty regular basis, I decided I should probably lay off the wine for a few days. I also noticed that I was gaining weight like crazy, even though I was riding my mountain bike at least 40 miles a week. I got up to probably 230 lbs. and when the New Year rolled around I had made the decision to completely forget all this tranny crap. I had been cross dressing with friends and I was openly bi-sexual and I was having some fun I guess, but to say I was unfulfilled would be an understatement. I just figured that being a tranny wasn’t the answer and I wasn’t going to ruin my life doing something so outrageous as changing my gender. It simply wasn’t an option. “I know how I feel, but I’ve made it this far and I can keep going just fine.” Then I had the accident.

Sometime around the middle of January I was involved in a pretty bad car accident. I was driving home from an out of town meeting and somebody turned in front of me and I hit them at about 50 to 60 miles an hour. I don’t know exactly, but I was going at least that fast and it didn’t seem like I slowed down much when I stood on the brake. I wasn’t hurt at all, but my brand new truck (4 days old) was almost totaled. The other truck was completely totaled and rolled over on its side and it was quite the scene there in the middle of nowhere on a two lane highway. I was completely stunned. In the span of 30 seconds the most violent thing I’ve ever been involved in happened, and was over. When the police and firemen got there they couldn’t believe that no one was hurt. The guys in the ambulance almost forced me to go to the hospital with them because they were sure I must have been hurt somehow. I felt fine. I could have gone dancing. The crash didn’t affect me at all physically, but it changed everything mentally. For the first time I realized that life is short. I know we all say that, but I really understood it while I was standing there on the side of the road. I realized that I have been living my whole life in fear. I have been afraid to be honest with myself and others about how I really feel since I was old enough to pretend. How could I have wasted so many years being afraid? That night I cried, and swore to myself that I would stop being a coward and I would be true to myself and live an authentic life, whatever that was.

That wreck was a real inconvenience, because it took them five months to fix my truck and I had to pay for my own rental car because the other guy didn’t have insurance and my coverage included everything EXCEPT rental cars. I don’t know if you’ve priced out rental cars lately but they are expensive, but as I look back on it now, I’m thankful for that wreck. I can’t say for sure what would have happened but I know I would have wasted at least another year pretending to be happy if I hadn’t had that epiphany on the side of the road.

Commitment

It’s Labor Day. The last day of a four day weekend for me and I’ve been stuck here in the house for the whole time. Thursday night I had a special electrolysis session where I go to the dentist first and have him numb as much area around my mouth as he can. Then I walk next door to my electrologist (Angie) and she works on the hair around my upper and lower lips for a couple of hours. I plan these sessions for long weekends because working so long in such a concentrated area tends to leave my mouth looking pretty bad.

For the first couple of days the swelling is so bad that I literally look like a character from a Simpsons cartoon. Then the swelling goes down and I’m left with a couple of days of what could only be described as kind of a scabby fu-man-chu goatee. It’s not attractive, to put it mildly. A guy that I’m dating invited me to the pride festival in Oakland and I wanted to go soooo bad, but there is no way in hell I’m letting anybody see me like this. Especially a guy who I like kissing. So I stayed hidden at home all weekend long. As I sit here surfing a gazillion TV channels, …again, it occurs to me that this transition is a long ugly process. Why in the world would somebody put themselves through this? I ask myself that at least once a week. Not because I question the decision, but because I’m amazed at how thrilled I am to be doing it. There is nothing fun about this whole process, at all, so why am I having so much fun? There’s no doubt about the commitment required to complete the transition so I have much respect for anybody that’s done it. Along the same lines, if anybody thinks that we just decide one day to change our gender and it’s as simple as that, than they simply don’t know what they’re talking about.

I equate this to a long painful march to freedom. Imagine if you spent most of your life in a prison, and one day somebody tells you there is a path to freedom, but you have to walk it barefoot and it’s gonna hurt. Each step is very painful, but each step brings you one step closer to the rest of your life. Every now and then you step in something warm and wonderful and relaxing, and sometimes you step in something warm and not so wonderful. Each agonizing step makes you question the wisdom of taking another one but you know that you must, because the alternative to the pain is the prison. Pain is better. Pain is something you understand but freedom is only something you’ve dreamed about. One more step, one more step towards your dream. What is freedom worth to you? What are you willing to do to be free? What’s more painful? Living a lie, or the long walk to the truth? Yeah it hurts, …but it’s worth every step baby.

It takes balls to be a tranny!

This has been a crazy year for me already and we’re barely halfway through it! Back in January I got my ears pierced and decided that this was going to be my big coming out year. Well, I can tell you for sure that I had no idea how big it was really going to be.

It was around last summer when I started my HRT and basically shifted into androgynous mode full time, except for work. If you saw me anywhere on the weekends it would be quite obvious to you that I was either a cross-dresser or a total queer, depending on what I was wearing. Sure I got a few weird looks at Home Depot but for the most part I was a little bit surprised to see that nobody seemed to care. Maybe a little disappointed too that not a single one of my imagined fears came to fruition. No threats or glares or anything uncomfortable really, but there was one thing I didn’t expect; joy. Yeah, I can’t put into words how incredible it feels to be free. I don’t have to pretend to be a dude anymore. I can walk the way I walk, and stand the way I stand, and talk the way I talk without worrying about somebody calling me a fag or saying I walk like a girl. I have visceral memories of being in high school and consciously minding every step because some guy once told his friend loud enough for me to hear “this dude walks like a girl” as they walked behind me in the hall. I was mortified, and literally spent years trying to correct it. Guess what, once I dropped the act, my natural way of moving slowly started to return, and I’m so relieved that those years of pretending weren’t able to fundamentally change who I am. So now I’m totally out, or so I thought. Sure I was out to my social circle and those that I encountered while out and about. After about 6 mos on HRT I started to tell anyone who would listen that I was actually transitioning. I was like a wrecking ball of honesty about being a tranny. Except …for a few notable exceptions; my family and my job.

Obviously changing genders is a huge undertaking and when I started HRT, I decided that I would manage this process the way I would manage a project at work, with careful attention to the schedule, and dogged adherence to the plan. That original plan included a phased coming out schedule, with the first phase being social, and the next phase being professional. By the end of last year, I had basically finished the social phase, but there were some things that I hadn’t considered. First of all, there was an element of my social and professional lives that definitely overlapped, and secondly, I hadn’t considered my family at all yet. So, needless to say I had a ways to go before I could honestly say that I was totally out as anything. That’s when I proclaimed 2011 as my big coming out year. I got a head start and came out as trans to a couple of my closer friends in the office. Then January rolled around and I came out to my cousin, who is probably my closest family member since we’ve practically lived together our whole lives. I was on a roll but I wasn’t picking up steam yet. Each new person felt good, but everything was still very calculated so the sense of joy I felt was essentially as measured as the process was. Baby steps, I would say to myself, I have plenty of time and there’s no reason to be in a hurry. I was working the plan, but then I encountered another issue that I hadn’t expected; impatience. I totally overestimated my own ability to stay on schedule. The more I was out in my personal life, the harder it became to be “in” at work. I revised my plan again; I would come out as trans to colleagues who worked at other companies, and a few more select people in my office, and as just gay to everyone else at work. That was working out great for a few months. I was admitting my trans status to carefully selected people and was proudly queer to everyone else. It wasn’t totally honest, but at least I didn’t have to pretend I was straight and normal. I really did feel free, but I still hadn’t made any advancement with my family. The first was my sister. She and I have never been really close but we’ve always loved each other and I’m very proud of the woman she’s become. She contacted me about coming down to CA and bringing my mom up to the Bay Area to visit for a couple of days. Well then, there’s something you should know about your big brother. So I told her everything. She was much more surprised than I expected her to be, but nonetheless she was about as supportive as I could hope. Next in line was mom and my opportunity came just a couple of weeks later when she called me while I was waiting for my electrolysis appointment. I have a strict routine that I follow before I let Angie work on my face for two or three hours. It involves a few shots of 151 and a couple of vicodin. Needless to say, I was very chatty by the time mom called, and it went much better than I expected. She had made many remarks while I was growing up about how I’d better not be gay, so I pretty much figured that telling her I was transsexual would be the end of whatever relationship we had. Well, I was wrong and she turned out to be reluctantly supportive. The last one in line was dear old dad. Now he and I were also never that close (notice a trend?) but I’ve always had a great deal of respect for him. He is an honest, hardworking guy and he would do anything to help someone who needed it. A good man to say the least, but he and I weren’t able to find much common ground while I was growing up. It’s ironic but I really believe that my family relationships would have probably been so much better if I could have been honest with everyone, including myself. Anyhoo, telling dad was a breeze and he said he was surprised but it really didn’t matter to him as long as I was happy.

For those keeping score, not a single person who I came out to reacted negatively in any way. Everyone was very supportive and again I found myself questioning my obviously irrational fear all of those years. It occurred to me that coming out to other people has never really been the issue. The honest truth is people have been far more accepting than I was. That’s right; I wasn’t able to admit who I was until I could finally accept myself for who I was. It sounds crazy but since I’ve learned to love myself, telling other people that I’m trans is shockingly easy, almost too easy because now I’m really picking up steam. So much steam in fact that I’m beginning to come out as trans at work at an alarming pace. Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, my Melissa page is spreading like wildfire through the office. Do I care? Not a bit, in fact I’m thankful that it’s happening because history has shown me two things in this regard;

1. I don’t have the guts to come out without being provoked and

2. Nobody seems to give a damn about it.

The only problem is I’m way off schedule. My carefully managed transition is beginning to get a little out of control and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it. Obviously I’ll be revising my plan, but I’m still at the mercy of my HRT program, so I can’t move up the date for my Facial Feminization Surgery. I think I will just be prepared to revise my plan every six months or so. How about that? I started with a two year plan one year ago and now I’m down to a six month plan. It’s been a crazy year so far and I’m very excited to see what the rest of it brings.

Man or Ma'am?

I am at a weird place in my transition. I can’t really explain it, but it feels kind of like I’m caught in the middle. In a way I am because I’m only halfway through my program and I can’t really move on until I have a few things finished. I figure about this time next year I’ll start taking the steps to completing my transition which for me means changing my name and living full time as a woman. Of course there are a number of things that need to happen before that can happen. Not the least of which are completing (or mostly completing) the hair removal on my face, and finding a new job. I also plan to have FFS (facial feminization surgery) before I take the plunge as well. So I guess technically, I am definitely in between stages of my life. I’m okay with it mostly, but I have to admit that I do get a little impatient sometimes. Especially lately when it seems like I’m also in between genders.

I don’t know when it happened but when I go out wearing cute jeans and a tight top with my hair in a loose ponytail, and absolutely no makeup, pretty much half of the people I meet think I’m a girl. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it, but it definitely took some getting used to. I mean, it wasn’t very long ago when I would go out in a dress, wig, make-up and heels and people would still call me sir. I’m not sure if this new unintentional “passing” is because of my attitude or the HRT. There is no doubt that I feel so much more comfortable in my skin these days and that’s gotta make a difference so it’s probably about 50/50 I guess. Yep, right in the middle. The weird thing about all of this is the bathroom. Now bathrooms are always an issue for TG people for one reason or another but the general rule is, you use the restroom of the gender you are presenting as. If you’re trying to pass as a woman, then use the women’s restroom. Lately it hasn’t been so easy for me. Case in point, I was in the city a couple of weeks ago having “the” meeting with a business associate. I came out to him as trans and told him about my plans to go full time next year and basically enlisted him as a trusted ally. The meeting went fantastic and I realized once again how lucky I am to live in this area and have such amazing friends. Anyway, after the meeting I went downstairs to use the restroom. Now I did have a cute outfit on, but I definitely wasn’t trying to pass as a woman so I went into the mens’ room. On my way out, I bumped into a guy who was coming in and after he took one look at me, he stepped back and looked at the door and said “whoa, did I walk into the wrong one?” I smiled and said “Nope, it’s the right one honey.” And walked away and literally floated back up the stairs.

Yes I’m at a weird place in my transition, but I’m not complaining. Just one year ago, I couldn’t even imagine passing as a woman even if I was in full drag. Now I’m passing sometimes without even trying. What a ride.

Stumblin' in

Why am I sitting here at my computer on such a beautiful day? It is absolutely gorgeous outside and here I sit banging away at my keyboard like some weird hermit philosopher. That’s just how it is for me I guess. I never seem to be able to write when I want to, only when the words want to, inspiration only hits me every now and then, so when it hits, I’d better pay attention. Today I’m thinking about my transition. I was up late last night reading a lot of blogs by T-girls in various stages of transition and even some cross-dressers. I felt a kinship with very few of them. It is fascinating to me that we are all so different even though we have such a huge issue in common. A lot has happened to me in the last couple of years since I “discovered” my little problem.  I was extremely naïve when I first began researching my feelings, but now I can hardly remember what it was like to be so confused. The transition path that I have been traveling feels like the most natural thing in the world. That’s why I was so interested in the blogs that I found from those that regret transitioning. At first I couldn’t imagine why someone would regret making an effort to find themselves but after reading I began to understand how someone could inadvisably stumble down the wrong path. Obviously a gender change is a huge event. This isn’t a new hairstyle, or even a major change in lifestyle, it is a complete departure from everything you’ve known. How could someone do such a thing by mistake? Well, I think it would be much easier to do than one could imagine. The spectrum of gender expression is so wide that it would be quite easy to confuse feelings with fantasies. I say I was naïve and it was mainly because I had somehow miraculously lived forty years without ever being aware of any TG community. I never even considered the concept of men who feel compelled to cross-dress and I certainly wasn’t aware that they existed in such huge numbers. It’s no secret by now that as a young boy I wished I was born a girl, but it is a complete mystery to me why I never seriously explored cross-dressing. Oh there were little episodes here and there, but I’m talking about three, maybe four times spread out over twenty years and except for once it was just part of bedroom play with my then wife. When I first began scouring the internet for answers, I found dozens of websites and forums devoted to cross-dressers. At first I was delighted to find people like me, but after a few months I began to realize that they weren’t like me at all. I was actually quite disheartened that I didn’t share the prevailing experience of wanting to cross-dress throughout my life, and I thought this meant that maybe I was wrong again about who or what I was. Remember, I struggled for many years with the idea that I was gay, and then finally came out, only to realize that I wasn’t attracted to gay men. How’s that for a mindbender? So now I find out that I don’t really have gender issues either? Yikes, what in the hell is wrong with me then? Looking back, I feel very fortunate to have been so naïve and confused because it was that confusion that drove me into therapy. I have always felt like an imposter as a man, but I really had no idea what that was supposed to mean and I was hoping that a therapist could help me understand myself a lot better. I didn’t know that a letter from a therapist was required before I could start an HRT program, so when she asked me if that’s why I was there, I quite honestly said no. I was there because I wanted to be sure I’m not crazy before I started doing something crazy. After the standard twelve sessions I had my letter and the comfortable knowledge that not being a cross-dresser didn’t mean I wasn’t a transsexual, it just meant I wasn’t a cross-dresser. To this day, after ten months on HRT, I’m still not a cross-dresser. Thankfully I never had that issue to contend with, because I can imagine that it would really screw up your perceptions about who you are. It’s my understanding that the overwhelming majority of cross-dressers are straight men who somehow feel compelled to explore their own subordinated femininity. Some of them are rather manly men who are very closeted and terribly conflicted about the whole thing. Some of them aren’t really exploring femininity they just get a bit of a sexual charge out of wearing women’s clothes. Honestly there seems to be an endless variety of men who cross dress and they all seem to have their own reasons for doing it so I don’t pretend to understand them, but I can’t deny that I find the whole thing fascinating. The whole concept of a “gender spectrum” is as interesting to me as it is foreign to those fortunate souls who were born with no issues about their gender or sexuality. How wonderful that must be to grow up as a normal heterosexual man or woman. I am finally proud of who I am, but indeed, my life would have been so much easier if I wasn’t born so “special”.  

Some boys are born different

So I was watching TV the other day and that commercial comes on that has all of these allegedly fictional characters in a support group complaining about how no one believes they exist. I think it’s a pretty funny concept and it got me thinking about a very dear friend of mine who is also not supposed to exist. A few different “know it all” types on a few different internet forums have proclaimed with hilarious certainty that there is no such thing as a female cross-dresser. Well, I guess someone forgot to tell Danni because she is most certainly real. In fact she’s so real that for the rest of this article, I will only refer to him in the masculine because that’s how I relate to him. The first question I get when I tell people about him is, “Is he a trans- man?” and the answer is no. Danni is a cross-dresser who lives his life as a woman, his birth gender. Most of his friends only know him as female and he is known only as female in his professional life. The description so far may make you wonder why I insist on using the masculine pronoun, but that’s only because you don’t know him like I do. He may look like an attractive woman to the world, but his eyes tell a different story to me. His eyes are deep and fascinating and I can get lost in them for hours as they alternately reveal and conceal the reflections of a tortured soul. Danni is indeed an enigma, but there is no question that cross dressing women exist and walk among us.

I met him a couple of years ago when I was just on the verge of self-acceptance. At the time I was still toying with the idea that I may have some deeper gender issues and I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it. We sort of bonded right away over our mutual dysfunction and I was literally drunk with excitement over meeting someone that I could finally be open with. Remember, I used to believe that I was bisexual and I honestly thought that Danni presented an opportunity to be “out” at home and still live as a man everywhere else. Yes I thought I’d found the holy grail of deeply closeted trannies, a lifestyle loophole; A girl who wanted to be a guy, but more importantly, wanted me to be a girl. I could live my life normally and still indulge my femininity, and I wouldn’t have to come “out” to anyone except those that we deemed to be safe. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, and the sad truth is that’s exactly how I felt. It was all about me and what an amazing turn of events it was for me, and I’m pretty sure Danni must have sensed my misplaced mania and he basically disappeared for a few months. He stopped returning my calls and emails and I was heartbroken. After a few weeks I started thinking that there must surely be other people out there like Danni and if I was lucky enough to meet one, then I would be lucky enough to meet another one, and this time, I would be more relaxed about the whole thing. And then I started thinking about that “whole thing”. What exactly was I looking for? A beard? Someone to help me fool the world? Someone to help me find ways to go on pretending? Over the next few months I did some deep soul searching. I spent hours and days and weeks thinking about my life and who I have yet to become. I started writing about my past, and in that process uncovered memories that actually made me cry from pain that I had long forgotten. Pain that has been buried by the sands of time, an almost visceral pain that can mercifully be forgotten, but apparently never goes away.

I began to slowly realize that recruiting an accomplice was about the most selfish thing that I could ever do. I have spent a lifetime trying to make relationships with women work and during that time I have hurt more women than I want to admit. My intentions were always good because I wanted nothing more than to be a normal, straight, man. Unfortunately, suppression on that level inflicts emotional damage to not just me, but everyone close to me. My attraction to men was easy enough to hide, but sex is such a small part of sexuality that pretending to love women was literally changing the shape of my character. I have had some wonderful women standing beside me but I was too cowardly to let them in, to show them who I really was. My biggest regret is allowing fear to steal so many years from me and those I’ve loved.

Danni eventually contacted me again and by that time, I had come to the conclusion that I could not plan my life around hiding anymore. I was a transsexual woman and I was going to start revealing myself to the world. Danni was a blessing in drag, because he accepted me as Misty from the very beginning. He introduced me to some of his wonderful friends and they were also completely accepting and seemed to welcome me into their circle as a girl. This is pretty awesome stuff for someone so early in transition and as I look back on that experience, I’m really thankful because it was the acceptance and encouragement of Danni and his incredible friends that helped me to see that I was indeed on the right path. Believe it or not I was still not sure back then if I wanted to even start HRT. So much has happened, and I’ve progressed so far in the last couple of years that it’s easy to forget how confused I was at that time. I guess you could even say that I was pretty much at the nexus of my confusion. All of these different issues and feelings had pushed their way to the front and were each battling for my acknowledgement. I had already accepted that I was bisexual by that time, and I think Danni and I both entertained the idea that we could have a romantic relationship. We fooled around a bit sexually, and over a few months of sporadic dating, discovered quite a lot about ourselves and each other. During this time in fact I credit Danni with singlehandedly making me totally gay. I’m just kidding of course, but before I met Danni I was convinced that my attraction to men was only physical and my attraction to women was emotional, so that essentially meant that I was unable to have anything more than a sexual relationship with men. It was just sex, right? Well, not exactly. We can apparently convince ourselves of almost anything and the truth is almost always the first casualty. The truth is, I love men romantically and women emotionally. Danni was the lone catalyst for this discovery. I had been very successful in limiting my interactions with men so as to not allow even the slightest bit of romance to enter the picture. It was just sex, no flirting, no snuggling, no talking even. After all, why bother? I only wanted sex right? Then along comes Danni. He looks like a woman most of the time so my defenses were not up. We got close, and flirted, and snuggled and talked, a lot. There is something very special about him, he is all man under that feminine skin. It was him that made me realize that I had been fooling myself all those years. Looking into his eyes and feeling what it’s like to have a man looking back at me stirred something inside that I had been denying for a lifetime. The whole idea of being bisexual sort of hinges on the fact that I would be sexually attracted to both sexes and truth is, I’m not. It wasn’t unusual for me to long for something masculine when I was with a woman, but I never wanted anything feminine when I was with a man. Being with Danni on the other hand, was almost like a cosmic prank. Everything feels right except for his body. It was weird to look into his eyes while we were making love and see a man, but feel a woman with my hands. I can’t really explain the feeling in a way that would be easier for you to understand, but I suspect he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Being with Danni made me realize that I can indeed have a romantic relationship with a man while facing the stark reality that a woman’s body is not sexually exciting to me. This cross-dressing woman who some say doesn’t even exist has literally changed my life, and for that I will always be grateful to him.

The innocent years

I occasionally read the blogs from other T-girls and there are a few special gals out there that humble and inspire me. One of them is Debra Mckenzie. She’s a bit younger, a bit cuter, and a bit further along in her transition so it’s easy to see why she inspires me, but her courage in facing down the slings and arrows of this outrageous decision is also extremely humbling and that courage, that stern conviction, that determination to live a life completely whole, is contagious. Her strength makes me want to be stronger. So right about now I’m sure many of my regular readers are asking themselves “what’s Jerica got to do with our favorite tranny?” Well, she recently wrote something that got me thinking about my childhood.

My life has been kind of segmented into sections of discovery and denial. Throughout most of my 20’s and 30’s, I was determined to answer the taunts of my childhood by becoming as masculine as I possibly could. I’ve written at length about the struggles of overcoming my essentially feminine characteristics and struggling to “pass” as a man before I finally gave up as I turned 40 and began to slowly embark on my current path of transition. This means that a nearly 20 year chunk of my life was completely out of step with my spirit and who I really am. I’ve said that those years are wasted, and sometimes it’s difficult to believe that they weren’t but I also believe that those years of struggle and futility were necessary for me to understand who I really am. I can now argue with conviction that my diagnosis is absolutely real. This is not a whim or a flight of fancy, this is my awakening. There are many things that fascinate me about this self discovery, not the least of which is what I call the dark years. Those 20 years between my discovery and my acceptance. Yes, I became aware of my nature as a preteen. I’ve documented my desire to play with the girls instead of the boys and the heartbreak of ultimately being shunned by both. The girls stopped wanting to play jump-rope with me because I was a boy after all, and the boys didn’t want me playing kick-ball with them because I was a, well, I was a …sissy.

There was a distinct moment in time when my life could have gone either way. I knew I wasn’t a girl, but I also knew that I wished more than anything that I was. The kids were calling me a fag, but I don’t think any of us knew exactly what that meant, I know I didn’t. I kinda thought it meant that I was like a girl so I didn’t really mind until around 4^th grade when the girls started to say it too. It was right about this stage of my life that the slightest bit of support from someone, anyone, could have saved me from the dark years. I knew that I was different but I wasn’t really afraid of it yet. I mean, I was totally aware of what I was supposed to be and how I was supposed to act, but I would have had no problem being open and authentic about who I really was if just one single person could have given me hope or showed me another way. That window was only open for a couple of years before I was swept into the typical arc of boyhood and learning to be a man. I soon realized that regardless of how I felt, there was no option but to “man up” and fit in with the guys. I fell in with a more liberal crowd in my later teen years but by then, the damage had been done. My innermost desire had been completely sublimated by my intense and sustained effort to be nothing but an average straight, masculine, man.

The dark years have been explored in this blog, but the preteen years are even more interesting to me. I like to imagine what would have happened if I would have known or heard about someone who was like me, or if I would have had an older sister who liked to dress me up, or anyone who recognized my difference and tried to help or understand me. What if I would have grown up in a city or a more progressive area instead of an extremely rural part of the south? In the end, these questions are just for fun but I think it is worthwhile to remember my dreams and fantasies from my more innocent years. Because I was so young, there was no sexual component to my desire to be a girl. I stole a pair of my little sister’s panties at 5 or 6 to play with a neighbor girl and I don’t remember why exactly, but I know for sure that there were no sexual feelings. I think it was simply me wanting to wear what girls wear and there was nothing else that fit. I do remember them being very tight and uncomfortable, but I can’t remember another instance of cross-dressing. I never reconciled my desire to be a girl with wearing girl’s clothes. I don’t really know why, it seems like such a logical step but I didn’t consciously cross dress until my late 30’s. There is another very curious thing that bears mentioning. I was an imaginative kid, I read a lot and I spent a lot of time alone daydreaming, and my one recurring daydream about my future is quite interesting indeed. I used to imagine myself as a full grown woman walking down a city street. I never imagined a teen girl, or a cheerleader, or a beauty queen or anything fun, just an image of a fashionably dressed woman walking confidently down a busy city sidewalk. Is that strange? I also imagined that someday I would spend a year pretending to be a woman so I could write a book about it. In my young mind, that was the only way I could do such a thing. I’m totally normal; I’m just living as a woman for the book! Why didn’t I imagine myself as a young girl? Sometimes I think I would love to try that regressive hypnosis therapy, where they hypnotize you to remember lost memories. I think that might answer so many questions, but then again, there may be things I don’t want to remember so the whole prospect of it seems kind of scary.

I recently found some old pictures of me taken at the time when I was most authentic, before I was scared, before the self hate, before I learned that boys shouldn’t try to be pretty. Up until I found these pictures, I had totally forgotten about that time, but these pictures brought back a flood of memories and I actually cried as I looked through them.  The picture I’ve attached below is especially interesting. I don’t know how old I was exactly, but I remember those shorts very well. They were my favorite shorts because I thought they made me look cute. They were short and tight and the color really set off my tan legs, and by the next summer I was told by either my mom or dad that I shouldn’t wear them anymore because they looked too feminine. That was the beginning of the end of my innocence. In this picture, you can see how happy I was, but you can also see something that would end up changing the course of my life; the disgust of my father. You can see the way he’s looking at me that he didn’t quite appreciate this femmy boy. These pictures capture that moment in time when I was most real, but it wasn’t very long before the pressures of heteronormativity  (yes I just invented a word) forced me into an uncomfortable suit of masculinity that would take me years to get out of. By the time I got into 6^th grade I began battling a weight problem that would plague me until I finally came out to myself as trans only a couple of years ago. I’m not posting this picture to indict my dad as somehow being a bad father. It’s not his fault that he reacted the way he did, he was just as much a product of his environment as I was. I don’t blame anyone really for not accepting me, how could they know? But what would my life had been like if somebody did?

Development requires exposure

So the last two weekends have been fairly interesting for the simple fact that nothing interesting happened at all. Um, I guess I should elaborate on that a bit. I go out with friends pretty much every weekend and we typically gravitate towards tranny friendly environments for obvious reasons and it seems like something dramatic (or traumatic) happens every time we go out for one reason or another. I should say that my friends are all genetic females and they’re all incredibly patient and supportive as I advance through the early stages of my transition. It wasn’t too long ago that my dear friend Jenni had to endure sitting in a car with me until we finally just left, because I was too afraid to get out!

So, every time out seems like an adventure as I slowly become more comfortable with being out and blending in. Oh that’s an important point by the way. A couple of years ago, I was actually more comfortable going out, even during the day because I accepted myself as a crossdresser. My makeup was horrible and my fashion choices teetered perilously close to unfortunate, but I never really expected that I would be thought of as anything other than a guy. It was enough for me to try and be attractive, being mistaken for a woman wasn’t even a fantasy yet. A funny thing happened as time went on. I gradually morphed from a somewhat slutty crossdresser into an actual real life transsexual complete with long hair and an HRT program. At some point over the last 12 months, my presentation goals have totally changed. I see myself so differently now, and these days I consider each outing to be practice for my impending transition. I will be living full time in the next 12 months and it has become so important to me to be accepted as a female that I’ve actually become more anxious about interacting in public now than I was almost two years ago. I think it’s because I was merely wearing a costume back then, and now I feel like I’m naked. It seems strange to talk about, but when you consider that I’ve been wearing a mask for my whole life, it starts to make sense. I’ve written at length about never feeling comfortable as a boy but I eventually got to be very good at faking it. So good in fact, that my whole existence became a sort of performance. I learned to hide behind a stoic mask of masculinity. My costume was made of scars and muscle from various manly pursuits that were required by the role. There were wardrobe malfunctions to be sure, but most of the audience was completely unaware that the actor was broken inside. The mask was effective and it was also comfortable and convenient when life got stressful. When I started crossdressing I didn’t take off the mask, I just put makeup on it. Now things are so different. I am really learning how to drop the act, it’s a role I’ve been playing for as long as I can remember and I’m finally learning to go off script. I’m improvising baby, and it’s exhilarating. My mask is becoming less and less necessary every single day as I continue to explore and find my authentic self. My daily wardrobe choices are becoming more androgynous and my female presentation is totally influenced by my desire to pass or blend in as a woman. It won’t be long before my life as a male will be just a memory and my old costume will be gone forever.

As you can imagine, dropping the act and going out as nothing but me can be a tiny bit terrifying. I honestly feel more comfortable presenting as female so that isn’t the problem. What? Then what the hell is the problem!?! I know it’s confusing, imagine what it’s like in my head. The problem is how I’m perceived by people, or at least my perception of how I’m being perceived. You see, I’m not nervous about being seen in a dress or makeup, I’m nervous about being thought of as a crossdresser. Oh is that all! I know it sounds silly but there’s a huge difference in my mind with somebody thinking; “that used to be a man” and, “that’s a man”. I know because of my age and advanced stage of testosterone poisoning that I may never be able to live in “stealth”, but I would be satisfied if people would identify me as “once” a man rather than “as” a man. I think it’s a reachable goal, but I have to admit that I’m in a very sensitive place in my transition right now, and losing my trusty old mask doesn’t make it any easier. Anyhoo, back to the beginning of this article; the last couple of weekends have been notable because they were so normal. I went to two different restaurants, with normal straight people, on two different occasions, with two different sets of friends, and I felt pretty damn normal. Someday soon, nights like these won’t even be worth talking about, except for the wonderful friends I’ve somehow been blessed with, but right now, at this stage of my transition, these nights are exactly what I need. I could tell that some people read me, but I could also tell that most of them were completely oblivious to the tranny in their midst. I’ve never felt so free and natural and all I was doing was having dinner with friends. It wasn’t that long ago you know, when I didn’t think I would ever be able to successfully transition, and now thanks to a couple of mundane evenings, I actually think I’m well on my way.

Should SNL return the Estro-Maxx?

Okay so a whole lot of my TG sisters seem to be upset about the “estro maxx” skit that aired on SNL this last weekend. Many GLBT organizations have gone on record calling the skit offensive and are actually demanding an apology from SNL and NBC. It seems like everyone is in agreement that we should all be horribly offended, …except me.

I actually saw the skit the first time it aired Saturday night and my first reaction was honestly just simple amusement. I actually laughed out loud when the first actor showed us his new breasts. The guy on the treadmill was pretty funny too, in fact I thought the whole thing was at least mildly funny. I didn’t feel the least bit offended and I certainly wasn’t outraged. I mean it was tasteless and juvenile sure, but I didn’t feel attacked or humiliated at all. After seeing all the brouhaha that it was causing the next day, I watched it again and this time I have to admit to being mildly offended. It’s funny how the zeitgeist can influence your perception isn’t it? Which by the way, is kind of the point of this article. It’s pretty obvious to me that offense begets offense. Basically, people are now watching this goofy little skit knowing they are supposed to be offended. I can definitely attest to the power of expectation because what I thought was funny at first, I began to find offensive merely because of the emotional reactions of my sisters. It’s easy to see how situations can spin out of control when people start reacting with their heart instead of their heads. Now, I need to say that I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone especially my TS girls because we are ALL following our hearts down our path of transition and many of us had to learn the hard way that our heart was the only thing we could trust anymore. It’s just wrong to belittle any woman for being true to her own feelings but it is especially wrong in the case of TS women. The only thing I would like to say about this whole deal is I think we all need to be careful about what we allow to hurt us. If you are honestly offended by this skit than I am on your side and I’m ready to consider that it’s probably offensive, even though I wasn’t personally offended. If however you just feel like you SHOULD be offended because somebody you respect was, please give yourself permission to explore your feelings honestly. It’s okay to not be offended after all, I believe we can be totally supportive of each other without agreeing with each other about everything. Some of us are more easily offended than others, and if you’re like me, then you might be wholly incapable of being offended at all. Please someone say you’re like me because sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of an emotional robot. ;-)

I would like to hear from the girls who agree with me that the skit had to have been written by someone who understands the struggle. Not the way they described it on the fake commercial, but I really feel like whoever wrote it is somehow familiar with the process. My roommate for example thought it was very funny but she said that she would have just thought it was silly if she didn’t live with me. I mean let’s face it, what we’re doing to ourselves is pretty drastic. I am literally changing right before her eyes and we joke all of the time about various trans changes, like my hair getting longer and my penis getting smaller, my butt getting bigger, yadda yadda. I mean really, if you can’t laugh at yourself during this whole awkward thing, than you will be crying. I mean literally crying and it seems like I’ve been doing that a lot too. This is such a painful process both physically (electrolysis anyone?) and emotionally that the very last thing I want to find is more pain so I’m absolutely not looking for it. On the contrary, I am looking for more reasons to laugh and I kinda felt like the SNL skit was laughing with us more than at us. It’s weird to even use the word “us” because I didn’t identify with any of those characters but that was probably why I wasn’t offended in the first place and if that’s indeed the case, then most of “us” shouldn’t be offended either because those characters were just ridiculous were they not? Making fun of them, is nowhere close to making fun of me or my sisters so I guess that explains it. I don’t identify with the subjects so I don’t identify with the oppression. Hmmmm, wait a minute, I think I just thought of something….

Bad Wife?

What's the deal with Gay marriage?

I mean what is supposed to be so bad about it? I live in California so I've been thinking about this for quite some time and maybe I'm biased or maybe I'm stupid, but I just can't figure out why the so called conservatives have such a problem with gay people getting married. I do understand why they hate homosexuals, because God tells them to, duh, but why are they so dead set against letting them marry each other? I realize that being born gay is essentially a sentence to eternal damnation, but that can't be the reason can it? Surely just sinning doesn't negate your right to get married. All kinds of convicted and/or confessed criminals get married all the time, heck, they are allowed to get married right there in prison. Child molesters, and rapists, and murderers are allowed to get married and divorced at will. I've never seen a petition drive to deny or prevent any straight person's right to marry no matter how reprehensible they might be. On the other hand, entire segments of the population will rise up on occasion and angrily demand a constitutional amendment to prevent law abiding American citizens from joining together in marriage. Why in the world would someone work so hard for the sole purpose of preventing someone else from being happy? It's been a long time since I've studied the constitution but I could swear that there was something in there about guaranteeing the pursuit of happiness, or something like that. I would definitely remember if there was some caveat or exclusion in regard to sexual orientation, or if any kind of sex was mentioned at all for that matter. No, the constitution was boringly sex free, there is no question about it, so if that's the case, then how or why would somebody's personal sexual relationship preclude the protections of the US constitution?

I'm not expecting any coherent answers to any of these questions. There is of course no logical reason to deny anyone the right to marry based on their sexual preference, but logic has never found a place in religious dogma. Those that wish so desperately to impose their will on the rest of us, will not be swayed by such things as reason or compassion. It's just a tiny bit scary that someone's religious beliefs could so blatantly influence state or federal law.

So homosexuality is a sin, I get it.

Should that matter?

Bad Santa

So here I am sitting here feeling way hung over. Or hung way over, or some other clever way of saying that I got a hangover that won’t quit. It’s 12:30 on Sunday and I feel like the narrator in that Johnny Cash song. No way to hold my head that doesn’t hurt. I’ve been hung over before but this is the first time I’m feeling embarrassed about it. No wait, the second time, and both times involve my dear friend Jenni and throwing up in cars. I’m not saying it’s her fault, but I should be, because she’s clearly a bad influence.

Yesterday was the Santa Con event, or whatever it’s called, in San Francisco and basically it’s a huge party with thousands of people roaming around all over the city dressed in something resembling Santa Claus. Me and my girls were dressed in hot little outfits of course just like every other girl, and most of the guys were pretty much dressed just like a Coca Cola Santa. This was my first time, but it definitely won’t be my last. It was fun from the minute we parked until well, until, …I’m not really sure when the night ended, but Jenni told me I had a really great time. You won’t find an accurate reporting of the days events in this story, but it’s my hope that I can at least convey the sheer joy of the drunken debauchery that we participated in and convince my friends to show up and play with us next year because the old adage of ‘the more the merrier’, has never been so true. Plus I apparently need more people around me to tell me when to stop drinking.

We had a small group, just me, Jenni, her sister Bonnie and Bonnie’s boyfriend. About a half hour after we got there Jenni met up with her boyfriend so there were five of us. Yes I was the third wheel twice over, thank you for bringing that up. Anyway, we magically found parking just a block away from where all the Santas were converging. It was one of those little corner lots and it cost 8 bucks to park all day and we thought it was a great deal, but I had no idea how good of a deal it would end up being. We started the afternoon with water bottles full of wine that Jenni brought. So before we even left the parking lot I was about two glasses of wine into the party. This is the first decision that I wish I could have back. We met up with all the Santas um, somewhere. I don’t remember where that was but there were literally hundreds of Santas all milling around on the sidewalk outside of some bar. I can’t remember if I had a drink there or not, but if I did, I shouldn’t have. After we got tired of milling, we headed down Market St towards the Castro and I think even for the Castro, a hundred Santas walking down the street has got to look a little bit spectacular. We were all hungry so our first order of business was to find something to eat. Luckily I’ve been to the Castro once or twice so I knew of a great little place called Café Flore where we could eat and still watch all the action on the street. Wouldn’t you know that they were having a special on Cosmos? I know bad idea, so I had two. The second decision I wish I could have back. One would have done the job nicely, but they were just so good, I couldn’t resist one more. I felt myself getting a stern buzz, but nothing to worry about yet. While we were sitting there talking to other Santa revelers a big guy walks up and tells me I’m really cute. Well then, come over and sit next to me baby, says I, …and he declined, saying something about being straight but just wanted to tell me I was cute. Whatever! I don’t think Jenni thought he was very good looking but I thought he was at least two kinds of yummy so I shamelessly flirted with him for a few more minutes and then he left with his friends. We eventually all left and stopped to talk to a bunch of other Santas outside the Lookout and my big Santa guy actually found me and started flirting with me this time. I was loving the attention of course and I actually started thinking that he might ask me out. We were chatting on the corner for awhile and I was again shamelessly standing as close as I could to him. I could tell that he was interested at least a little bit but he started talking about being straight and wanting to have a real girl to make a family and yadda yadda, so I was rapidly losing interest in this conversation and told him that he didn’t have any idea how much fun he could have had if he was nicer to me, and I started to walk away but that jerk smiled and said something cute that just made me want to play with him more, but I didn’t want to get my feelings hurt so I kept walking away kinda disappointed in him, but mostly just mildly sad about my situation. I think loneliness probably comes with the whole tranny experience, but they don’t mention that in the brochure. Anyway, so by now you should have an idea about my frame of mind as I headed to rendezvous with my group.  Jenni texted me that they were all at Twin Peaks and that sounded good to me, I was ready to party and I needed another drink. In hindsight I did NOT need another drink because I don’t remember walking to Twin Peaks. I remember being there, but I don’t recall actually getting there. The bar was fabulously crowded and one cute guy gave up his seat for me, so since I was there at the bar, I thought I should order a drink. “Whaddya want baby?” Said the bartender and I said “Um, how ‘bout a Long Island?” This is where things start to break up in my memory and get a little fuzzy. I don’t know how long we were there. I remember having a really good time listening to people tell me I was pretty. I remember standing in the bathroom line with an angry lady. I remember almost tripping coming back down the stairs and I remember finishing my drink. I don’t remember leaving, but I remember walking away with the group. Jenni and I were talking about something and I think we agreed that boys suck. We walked for a few minutes and then suddenly we were in some kind of club. It was awesome, I was dancing and having a blast. There were a lot of hot guys in the club but of course mostly women on the dance floor, and it was sooooo much fun. Jenni’s boyfriend went to get us drinks and he came back with two, yes two Jack & Cokes for me. TWO! I really shouldn’t have drunk even one of them at that point, but I drank them both, which is another one of those decisions I would like to have back please. I could have stayed there all night but I think everyone else wanted to leave. At least I think so, I don’t really know what happened, I was dancing, and then I wasn’t and we were walking again. Then we were in some kind of Mexican restaurant. I think I went to the bathroom there, and I might have even thrown up for the first time, but I can’t be sure. Jenni said I ordered a bunch of food and didn’t eat any of it. Apparently our seats were long benches and I passed out instead. I really don’t have any memory of that restaurant, except that I was very comfortable on that bench. I’m told that Bonnie and her boyfriend left because they had to get back to Sacramento and Jenni and her man basically carried me out to the street so we could get a cab and go back to his place for the night. This should be where the story ends, but no, I hadn’t embarrassed myself completely yet. I don’t remember getting into the cab but I distinctly remember opening the door so I could throw up. The car must have been moving because I could feel the wind in my face. The next thing I know, we are standing in the street because the cab driver made us get out. My next memory is walking and walking and walking. Well, I wasn’t really walking because I was being dragged along in between Jenni and her guy. I didn’t know where we were going but we didn’t seem to be getting there very quickly. My very next memory is being settled onto the couch by Jenni’s boyfriend who very sweetly gave me a pillow and a blanket. Then that’s it, I was out like a lamp. It was about 8pm. Oh, did you think it was later than that? Did I mention that this whole adventure started at about 1:30 in the afternoon for us? I was woken up by my phone at about 2:30am. My roomie expected me home that night and she was worried that I might be passed out drunk somewhere. I wasn’t able to answer in time so I texted her back, these are the real text messages;

Me:

I just woke up

I don’t know where I am

but I’m okay

Her:

What?

R U in SF?

Me:

Yes

Her:

R U in somebody’s bed?

Me:

Couch

Her:

Is it a hotel?

Me:

No

Looks like an apartment

Her:

Do you know where?

Me:

No

I’m going back to sleep now

I’ll call you when I wake up

I had totally forgotten that whole little conversation, so when I saw these texts in the morning I cracked up. There is no doubt that I was waaaaaay too drunk and I was lucky to have Jenni there to take care of me, because I sure as hell couldn’t take care of myself. So I pretty much just toss and turn until morning, when Jenni wakes up and comes in to check on me and plan our next move. “So what are we gonna do now?” she says. Hmmm, it’s 8 in the morning, none of us have vehicles and I’m a dude in a totally destroyed Santa dress. You should have seen me, my hair was a wreck, my wig was a tangled mess, my hose were ruined and the top of my strapless dress would not stay up at all. Oh, my makeup was long gone too. All of it left on the pillow except for the sexy raccoon eyes, which was fine because by that time I was also showing a little stubble. Is that hot or what? This is what I looked like when Jenni and I walked out onto the street that morning. I can only imagine what people were thinking. Neither one of us really knew where we were, so we just started walking down the street looking for a cab. We didn’t even go a block and one drove by, which Jenni ran into the street and flagged down. He stops and we get in, he takes one look at me then says, “where to?” That’s it, no questions, no weird look, just another dude in a Santa dress. Only in San Francisco would my outfit not even prompt a question. I love that city more than words can express.

It turns out that we were just a few blocks away from where we parked. Oh yeah, remember that great deal at the lot? Well, 8 bucks paid for all day AND all night baby and my car was sitting there all by itself in that lot just like we left it. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. After being totally wasted and not knowing where I was for what seemed like a whole day, it was very nice to see something familiar again. well, that’s the end of the story finally and you know it was a great time when the story goes into the next day. My first Santa Con was memorable for good and bad reasons and I think I finally learned my lesson when it comes to drinking. I gotta slow it down, because I could have had a LOT more fun if I hadn’t drank too much and ruined mine and everyone else’s night. Next year will be so much better, I’m already thinking about my outfit.

Wigging Out!

Well, I did it! I went out without a wig. I've been threatening to do it for a while now and I finally did it.

I won't be doing that again for at least a few more months!

It was not as liberating as I thought it would be, in fact it was awful. My hair has been growing out for almost a year and it's definitely long, pony tail long actually, except for ...the front. Let me just say that I am NOT balding. I was thinning rapidly, and you could say that my hairline was very obviously masculine, but I wasn't balding okay.

That was before HRT. In the last couple of months my hair has been filling in quite nicely thank you. I have a crop of new hairs along the hairline and I can say unequivocally that my once receding hairline is now in fact, advancing. Having said all of that, it's just not quite ready for prime time yet. It looks fine around the house and it looks fine in a ponytail but when I put on makeup, I look even more like a dude than normal somehow. I don't know why it looks so bad, but it does. It's crazy because up until last Saturday I hated the wigs and couldn't wait until I no longer needed one. I am still counting the days until I don't need it anymore, but I can honestly say that I no longer hate the wig. I love it now, it's almost like a security blanket. The hormones are definitely working their magic but I still have a ways to go in regard to my facial feminization and my hairline. The wig just covers up so many masculine attributes, it frames my face much better than my real hair does and the bangs cover up my big mannish forehead. The wig also does something else, it gives me confidence. I realize that I'm essentially just hiding behind some fake hair, but so what. There is no doubt in my mind that I feel much prettier with it than without it.

My transition goal for 2010 was to ring in the new year as Misty with my own hair, but I'm okay with adjusting that goal a bit. The worst thing about the wig was the heat in the summer anyway, so my new goal is to dump the wig by summertime. I'll be wearing a wig on New Years Eve and I will be feeling beautiful and confident. Hopefully I'll also be smooching Mr Right at the dawn of the new year, or even better, smooching until dawn ;-)

Blackhawk Girls

I’ve been thinking for awhile about the subject of this posting. If you’ve been reading this blog then you already know that I cherish my girlfriends and how grateful I am to have them in my life. Today I want to explore these relationships from another perspective.

It’s easy to understand why I adore them, but why in the world would they want to associate with me? Why do strong, beautiful women spend any time at all entertaining my transition, much less accept me as a Tgirl? I will admit that these concerns stem mostly from an innate insecurity that comes from never feeling that I was accepted by anyone throughout my life. Without going off into a completely different post, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to be accepted as a man and even though I look like a man, I was apparently never able to fully disguise who I was inside, because it was a rare occasion that I was able to “fit in” as one of them. I felt like I was always on the outside looking in. I’m digressing, but suffice to say that being accepted by anybody as who I really am, is almost intoxicating. My BFF Jenni says that it’s easy to accept me as Misty because I’m not creepy or weird. I think that’s a compliment, but with her I can never tell. ;-)

There are three gorgeous ladies in particular that inspired this little bout of navel gazing and I’ll call them the Blackhawk Girls. My relationship with these women is still very new and I would say that we are in the earliest stages of friendship yet, but they are a perfect example of the evolution of my life since I’ve come out. They all work at a place where I’ve been undergoing transition related procedures since March. Now I should tell you that these procedures are only trans related in my case. Most of their customers are women and I could have easily kept my transition a secret from them and just been another one of their male clients. However it was right around March of this year coincidentally, when I decided to stop keeping secrets, so I was honest with everyone I met there from the very beginning. Speaking of the beginning, my first visit was great, and it really set the tone for what was to come. First of all, I couldn’t find the place, so I ended up on the phone with Brett who was so sweet that she talked me all the way through the directions and didn’t hang up until I got there. When I got there, she greeted me so warmly that I felt comfortable immediately. Then she brought me back to an exam room to meet Sandy for my initial consultation. At this point I was starting to get nervous because I knew I would have to be honest about why I was there. So Sandy came in the room and the fact that she was so attractive didn’t help things at all. I was prepared for her to be disgusted by my little revelation, but I took a deep breath and told her that my plan was to be in transition before the end of the year. So there, I said it and you know what? She was totally cool with it, better than cool, she told me all about how she used to work in the city at a place where she saw Tgirls every day. She started asking me questions about my plans and said she thought it was great and wished me luck before she left to get the doctor. By now my confidence was soaring and I didn’t have any trouble at all being honest with the doc, who was also very supportive and after that wonderful experience, I knew that Blackhawk was the place for me. …and it all started with sweet and kindhearted Brett. It ended that day with Amy who scheduled my next appointment and gave me some more information on the procedure. She was wearing a great outfit so I told her she was rocking it, and her reaction was perfect. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I walked away thinking I gotta party with that girl. Needless to say my first experience with the Blackhawk Girls was extremely positive.

To be honest though I was really kinda nervous about seeing them all again, I imagined that Sandy had told everybody what I was as soon as I left and they were all going to be giggling at me behind my back. This place is not in the city, and in fact it’s in a really conservative area and as far as I know everybody in town is talking about the tranny by now. Geez what have I done? Was I ready for this? Well, as usual, our imagined fears are far more fearsome than anything in reality, and I had nothing to worry about. The girls were all very professional and just as sweet as ever. I’ve been going back for follow ups and procedures every month now, and the girls and I got friendlier with each visit. I have felt nothing but acceptance from them and that is the key to what I’m trying to say. Up until now, most of my friends were girls that knew me before, or girls that only knew me as Misty. This is the first time I met someone as a man and confided in them that I was a transsexual. I did it again a few months later with my awesome friend Diane, but I would have never had the courage to come out to her or anyone so soon if it wasn’t for my girls at Blackhawk.

So now we’re getting to the root of why they’re so special to me, their acceptance and support has helped to set me free. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but I’ve made a lot of progress this year emotionally and physically, and I think it’s directly because of my budding relationship with those girls. Oh sure, there was no question about my path, but I’m convinced that they played a huge role in helping me get this far. Total strangers just a few short months ago have had a huge impact on my transition. I’m sure they would disagree, but the fact is their acceptance gave me confidence and that confidence led to more acceptance, it’s really quite simple. Amy, Brett and Sandy were not being overly friendly, they were just being professional and courteous, but they were also being compassionate. Here I was, looking like a total dude and coming out to them as a transsexual woman. I can only imagine what they were thinking, but they were never anything but sweet to me and for that sweetness I will always be grateful.

Thankful (and a little drunk)

So it’s another Thanksgiving coming and going, but this one is special to me in at least one way. It’s my first one since I started my transition, and it’s quite possible that it may be my last one as a man. Wow, just writing that kinda gave me the chills. It’s incredibly exciting to imagine living my life the way I’ve dreamed of living it since I was a little girl. I’m very thankful that I have finally found my way, in fact I’m very thankful for what seems like a countless array of blessings and good fortune in my life, but that’s not what I want to write about today.

Today my thoughts are with the people who are not so fortunate, specifically those people who are struggling for one reason or another with their sexuality or gender orientation. I know first hand what it feels like to hate yourself. What it feels like to lie in bed at night making deals with God, if he would just make you normal, you would do whatever he asks. Please God, I will go to church every day, I will learn every word in the bible, please just let me wake up normal.

I grew up fairly poor in a very rural and very southern part of the country. There were no resources for kids like me and as far as I knew, there were no kids like me anywhere. Actually I felt isolated for much of my life because while the gay rights movement was marching through the years, the transgender movement was non existent. Trans women were showing up on Donahue and Springer, but that didn’t exactly speak to me. Not that it would have mattered, I was so deeply closeted due to my provincial childhood that I probably could have actually met a trans woman and still refused to face the truth.

Things are much different for kids today thanks to the miracle of the internet. There was a time, when I was a preteen that I would have been very open to self discovery. During that time I hadn’t yet started to turn everyone’s fear and prejudice in on myself. I knew I was a boy and I was okay with it, but I was still not ashamed to be who I was and I loved trying to be pretty. I never wore makeup but I insisted on long hair and I loved wearing cute clothes. I would spend hours cutting my little denim shorts just right. If I was able to access the internet and read about kids just like me, then I believe I would have had the strength to continue being my authentic self. Instead, I was vulnerable to emotional and physical abuse from the other kids including my own family and eventually, I began to learn that I’d better start trying to be normal. That began a charade that would last for nearly 30 years.

Today I want to reach out to those people that are feeling alone. If you are living in a little town somewhere and you feel like you’re the only boy who feels like a girl, or the only girl who feels like a boy, I’m here to tell you that you are not. There are a gazillion sites on the web for you to explore as I’m sure you know, but I am a real person who has lived through what you’re going through right now, and I have come out on the other side much stronger than I ever thought possible. There is nothing wrong with you no matter what anybody says, and in case you haven’t noticed yet, there is no “normal”. I know plenty of so called normal people that are as weird and freaky as anything those people could ever accuse you of being. I’ve wasted 30 years of my life pretending to be something I’m not and I would hate to see you or anyone else make life changing decisions from a place of fear and self loathing. Learn to love yourself now because you are who you are and that will never change, so live the life you want to live, for you, not for them. Be thankful for who you are because you are color in a world of grey and beige so embrace and celebrate everything that makes you special. You may be unable to show your true colors because of family or work or school, but that’s okay. That’s only temporary and the important thing is that you accept yourself and look forward to living your life to the fullest as soon as you can.

I’m thankful today that I’ve survived to grow into the woman of my dreams and I’m thankful that I’m able to look back on my life and appreciate the hard lessons, but most of all I’m thankful for you and our trans brothers and sisters. We may be walking alone, but we’re all sharing the same path. Enjoy the journey.

Progress?

Oh the life of a tranny in transition. Today I went back to my new favorite little shopping hole; 4th street in Berkley, and had another one of my epiphanies.

When I go out during the day, I usually like to butch it up a bit because I don't like to bring attention to myself. No seriously, during the day, I like to blend in. So I dress like a regular dude and just casually go about my business. On days like today, that business consisted of shopping for some makeup and a cute top that goes with tight skinny jeans and adorable ankle boots. Just a standard shopping trip really, but it definitely isn't standard to the people who are in the store with me. Now, there's two different dynamics at play in this situation. One of them is my comfort level and the other one is the comfort level of the people around me. It wasn't very long ago when I was about as uncomfortable buying makeup as you would imagine any guy would be, no matter what I was wearing. These days I'm totally comfortable with it, in fact the last couple of times, I found myself sitting in a store crowded with women, and a few husbands, while the awesome consultant tried out different colors on my face!

Is that progress?

Now let's go down the street to one of my new favorite clothing stores; Convert. It's a little pricey but the sales girl was so cute and so sweet to me that I will definitely be back. Anyhoo, I was looking for that cute top for my skinny jeans so that's exactly what I told my girl. Okay, let me get you the visual, I walk in wearing men's jeans, men's shoes, a man's shirt and a biker jacket. Fairly butch for me, and I tell her what I'm looking for and she doesn't even look surprised in the least. Just another dude looking for a cute top for skinny jeans. Now my hair is kinda long, but I don't think it screams feminine ...yet. The point is, she was just awesome, so we started looking around and in a few minutes, I walk into the dressing room with a crowd of people around, carrying my obviously feminine clothes. I don’t know if anyone noticed because I didn’t care enough to notice anybody who might have noticed me.

Is that progress?

What’s happening here, ever so quietly, is me becoming comfortable being me. It seems like such a weird concept right? I’ve been thinking about it and I think for most people, they finally start getting comfortable with themselves at around this age, what age? um, let’s say 39ish. This seems to be the time when people either accept or reject their station in life. I think most people accept who they are but some, like me, do not. As you know from my earlier posts, I spent much of my life desperately trying to be something I couldn’t feel, so now ironically I will now spend the rest of my life desperately trying to be something that I don’t appear to be.

Is that progress?

I learn something new about myself every day. Today I learned that I love being “out”. I think by now I am pretty much totally out in my personal life. Except for work which is a pretty big chunk of my week, I’m very open about who I am. I will tell anyone who asks, and sometimes even if they don’t that I have just started my transition. It’s wonderful beyond words to just talk about it like it’s no big deal. Like I was born with this weird condition and I’m finally seeing someone about it and everything is gonna be great. I catch myself daydreaming all of the time now about the day that I will finally cut the ties to my old life and begin living full time as Melissa. (Misty to my friends).

Speaking of my friends, none of this transition would be possible without my amazing girlfriends. I don’t mean any of them in particular, I mean ALL of them. Each one of them brings something to my life that wasn’t there before. I am truly blessed to have these women in my life. People who have known me my whole life may find that to be the biggest shock of all. Oh sure, they might be a little taken aback by the transition, but they would surely be more surprised by my love for these new friends. You see, I’ve never been a very sociable person and in fact I’ve avoided people and relationships in general for as long as I can remember. My therapist correctly presumes it’s because I couldn’t be honest with anyone, so if I can’t be myself, then I might as well just be by myself. These last few months have been a real awakening for me. I am literally coming out of my shell and allowing myself to care, and be cared for. I’ve never really thought anyone cared in the past because how could they care if they don’t even know who I am? I knew that if I was honest about these strange feelings then they would definitely not care about me. They would think I was a freak or worse. Why in the hell would I put myself in the very vulnerable position of caring about them or what they thought about me? It’s a sad and twisted circle of loneliness, but since I never really felt lonely, I thought I was okay. My new friends on the other hand, know exactly who I am and they seem to like me anyway. It’s only now, after all of these years that I finally understand how valuable and precious friendships can be.

Is that progress?



I love GIRLS!

Well, that should get a few people's attention. I won't keep you in suspense; I don't love them THAT way. It took me many many years to realize, and then a few more to admit it, but I am definitely not attracted to women sexually. Some people might be reading this and thinking, "duh, look at you!", but the fact that I'm transgender doesn't have anything at all do with my sexuality, but that's a totally different issue that I'm sure I'll write about later.

Whoa, gender and sexuality aren't related? That's some heavy poo to lay on the average straight person, I know, but pretty much all of my friends live very normal, very straight lives. For most of my friends in fact, I'm their ONLY tranny friend. Now, this doesn't seem strange to me at all and to be honest I actually kind of like being the only T-girl in my little social circle. I have felt like an outcast my whole life so I've become quite accustomed to it, but for some weird reason, I do NOT feel like a freak when I'm with my girls.

I'm thinking about this topic today because someone asked me if I always knew I was gay. Well, the answer is a difficult one, yes and no. No, because I wasn't attracted to men until my late teens. Yes, because I wasn't attracted to women sexually until my late teens. Notice that I became attracted to men at around the same time I became "sexually" attracted to women. It's fascinating biology I'm sure, but the real deal here is that I was always, and still am, very attracted to women ...as friends. I have always loved being around girls and was never comfortable hanging out with the guys at all. In my late teens I was always on a quest to find the girls. No girls at the party? Then we gotta hit the road bro, because I need to find some ladies! I was young, and dumb, and full of testosterone, so I never realized what was really going on. Everybody, including me thought I was a ladies man, but the sad reality of it was that I wasn't looking for sex, I was looking for their friendship. I was totally cool just hanging out with them and chatting about whatever, but it always progressed to sex. As soon as the clothes came off, I wanted to be somewhere else. Does that sound gay?

It's true, I really didn't want the sex, emotionally, but of course physically is another story. A 19 year old kid is gonna get it done once the opportunity um, arises. I had a lot of luck with the ladies and you can imagine why, I mean how many long haired 19 year old dudes are willing to just sit and talk with a girl about whatever she wanted to talk about, which was usually other people at the party. I wasn't acting interested, I was genuinely engaged in gossip, and jokes, and lots of laughing, and it's really no surprise that women might find that appealing. Hell, I know I would. ;-)

So throughout my life I've had good luck with women, and it was a curse. Okay, I don't mean a curse in some cheesy teen movie kind of way. I mean that it was extremely confusing for me to be so attracted to them, but yet not attracted to them, at the same time. Ladies, imagine being exactly who you are, and relating to other women exactly the way you do. Except for one tiny little difference, you look like a man! What do you do? Of course they like you, but they don't relate to you in the same way anymore. They think you're a sweet guy and if they're not single, they're not interested. If they are single, they are probably interested in something much different than you are. You're just looking for a friend, but they're looking for a mate. The idea of having a straight man for a girlfriend is just not clicking. Surely you must be interested in something more than walking and talking. Unless you're gay.

Wow, this is one of those extremely rare cases where being gay would be so much easier.

I honestly believe that if I wasn't so deeply confused about my place in the gender spectrum, then I would have just come out as gay before I was 21. What do you do when you just don't feel gay? Now to straight people this little problem might seem easy to decode. I mean really, you're a 19 year old kid who doesn't want to have sex with a teen girl? Totally gay. Next question. It does seem pretty obvious in hindsight but keep in mind that I loved women. I loved to kiss and kissing them aroused me, and how in the hell was I supposed to know the difference between what I was feeling and what any other dude was feeling? I never felt gay, but ...I didn't know that either. What? How complicated does this get? Well, stay with me because I'm about to explain the difference between gay men and trans women. I say that I didn't feel gay because I have a much better perspective now of what it actually means to be gay. Back then I did feel something different, something that I thought might be gay, but I refused to accept it.

I felt like I was a girl.

I'm warning you that I'm writing from the top of my head and I have no idea what I may type next, so this might get deep.

I was not a flamboyant kid. I was sort of pseudo intellectual and a bit of a bookworm. My parents were not happy that I wasn't a rough and tumble boy. They didn't like it that I would get called sissy or fag and I didn't fight back, I didn't like to fight. I was a wimp I guess, but to this day I don't like to physically hurt people. Boys never liked me, I was clumsy and sensitive and smart and I never really cared to play the games they were picking me last for anyway. Ironically, my desire to hang out with the girls is what eventually earned me the title of fag. I learned early that boys didn't play with girls unless they were preying on them. I didn't feel gay, I just didn't feel like a boy.

I felt like a girl.

As I got older I started to realize that there might be something wrong with me. I still did not make the connection that I had some gender issues, but I finally started to think that I might be gay. You see, in my naivete, I thought all gay guys wanted to be girls. It sounds so silly to me now, but back then it made perfect sense. Imagine my confusion when I was still unable to reconcile my attraction to women. I still thought that attraction was born of my sexuality. Was I bisexual?

Who knows what finally brought me to the truth, but there will be plenty more therapy sessions and many more blog posts to explore it. This post is about my girls. I'm finally in a place where I have a complete understanding of the attraction and so do women. I still look like a boy of course, but I'm slowly learning to drop the dude act and just be myself. It's a lot of hard work to undo a lifetime of pretending but it's the most worthwhile work I've ever done, because the rewards are tremendous. The best thing I've experienced over the last couple of years is having real girlfriends. It's truly amazing to be able to relate to women in the way I've always wanted to without any sexual chemistry getting in my way. I can finally say that I am no longer confused about my sexuality.

I love everything about women,  ...except their vaginas. :-)