Bad Tranny Home

Pssst, that’s a guy

2012-08-22T04:03:09Z

Wow what an amazing couple of weeks. July 12^th2012 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

2012-06-02T16:18:19Z

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

2012-01-11T05:13:20Z

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?

2011-12-12T01:20:10Z

“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?

2011-11-06T21:40:32Z

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

2011-09-06T05:07:19Z

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!

2011-08-29T04:41:35Z

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?

2011-07-18T01:58:23Z

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

2011-07-18T01:21:29Z

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

2011-04-21T04:55:59Z

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.