Alawys Going Somewhere

Image from Louis Paulin
On UnSplash

 Back in what I call my formative years, I grew used to trying to outrun my problems. Between college and my military service I literally was moved or decided to move on my own an average of every year and a half. It all started when I left home for college for a year and a half. Amazingly, during this time my gender dysphoria disappeared and suddenly I was free to live a somewhat normal gender life. I say normal because during this time I had several dates with girls from the East Coast who were much more sophisticated sexually than anything I had seen in my shy Midwestern upbringing. In fact, my Mom unknowingly set me up with my first sexual experience with one of her older (not a minor) students where she taught high school.  I think she was nineteen and I was eighteen, so I had a lot to learn. 

The school I went away to was one a group of Midwestern Ivy League schools for students on the East Coast who couldn't make it into the top notch schools or universities in their back yards. What happened was I ended up partying with my friends mainly from Philadelphia and Baltimore and not studying enough to maintain grades to not get drafted into the Vietnam War. After a year and a half I picked up and moved back home to attend a much more academically forgiving nearby university where I could thrive. Which I did by even making the Dean's List several times before I graduated. More importantly to me back then was the fact I was drawn back into my old cross dressing memories of home while I was able still to land a Disk Jockey job at a small local radio station which happened to be owned by a very powerful congressman which turned out to be very important to my future. For awhile I was quite satisfied with satisfying my cross dressing desires by putting on my feminine clothes when my parents weren't around just like the old days while at the same time attending to school while I built my self a career in the commercial radio business. 

Just when I thought I had it all together, Uncle Sam came along with several all expense paid tickets to work and travel in exchange for three years of my life. I was able to salvage my radio career with the help of the congressman I worked for but my cross dressing would certainly have to be on hold for the foreseeable future. My first move was a bus trip to beautiful (?) Ft. Knox in Kentucky for Army basic training. I didn't get to see any gold but I saw many fellow recruits going through tank infantry school. A nice way of saying they were headed to Vietnam to be cannon or grenade fodder for the war. Basic was tough but not tough enough to wash out any or all ideas I had of ever following my feminine dreams. In fact in many ways I think basic just made my dreams stronger because I couldn't wait to get out and live them.

Following Basic at Ft. Knox, little did I know the amount of travel Uncle Sam had planned for me. It all started innocently enough by getting transferred for advanced training at the Defense Information School in relatively close by Indianapolis, Indiana. It was close enough to my home I could drive back and forth for weekends and leave but not close enough for me to cross dress when I was home. It turned out I wasn't going to stay in Indy long before I was sent to Thailand along with my close knit classmates to help run a radio/tv station in Udorn which had recently been destroyed by a battle damaged F-4 fighter jet which crashed at the end of the runway killing all working in the station. Since we were Army working for the Air Force, we received extra pay to live off base. Of course living off base put me face to face with the Thai Ladyboy culture. As advertised, many were indeed beautiful but all I did was admire from afar. I was afraid of any stigma which would have been attached to me if I had tried to know any of the alluring creatures further. 

After my year in Thailand, I was trying hard to get assigned to Europe and work for the AFN Radio Network. I finally did make it but not with more moving around. What happened was I had two sets of orders. One verbal and one paper. I decided to follow the one on paper and report to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for duty in their information office. What turned out was I wasn't supposed to be there and was sent back home with another weeks worth of leave before I had to leave for Germany, where I wanted to go to start with. After all those convoluted military moves I finally had the chance to live out my dream of seeing Europe because once again I received extra pay to live off base.

I am fairly sure all of this moving affected me in many ways when I was honorably discharged from the military and through with school. More on how it affected my gender dysphoria in another post.