You Wanna be my Girl

 During my errands this morning, I heard the "Jet" song "Do you Wanna be my Girl." If you aren't familiar, the lead singer mentions his lust interest in the song as having long blond hair and long legs. Back in the day, I tried my best to look the same way as I wore my skirts too short and matched them with a long blond wig. Through it all, I certainly wasn't having any music written about me. Ironically I was doing all the wrong things fashion wise as I supposedly didn't want to attract any attention and blend in with the world. My problem was I was presenting to attract men and not blend in with the other women around me. 

Girls Night Out from the Jessie Hart Collection
I'm seated in Stripes on Left

As I look back at my life, I see how often and desperately I wanted to be my own girl. Way back in high school after I was turned down yet again asking a girl on a date, I would run home and if possible shave my legs, put on a pair of pantyhose , apply makeup and finish dressing as my favorite girl...me. I always knew she wouldn't turn me down. This continued through out my life until the Army briefly forced my male self  to stand up and be counted. That didn't continue long because my dominant feminine self was always waiting patiently and often not so patiently to live her life in the public's eye. Not only I found did she want to be my girl, she wanted to be "the girl". 

Being "the girl" turned out to be the best move I could make. The big differences came as I was coming out of my gender closet and into the world. Instead of feeling terrified, I felt excited and so natural I couldn't wait to do more to achieve my inner woman's goals of coming out. As I quickly learned, when I got out of her way, she knew who she was and developed quickly. So much so, she was slowly but surely pushing my wife of twenty five years out of the marriage.  

Sadly the only thing which saved the marriage as long as it did was her untimely, sudden death from a heart attack at the age of fifty. Often before she passed, we had a dog who was certainly a one person dog and the person was me. My wife always said if something happened to her, the dog would never miss her. Which is very close to what happened. What also occurred was when she passed, the door was suddenly opened for my feminine self to come out. In many ways it seemed she had waited long enough for her turn and here it was. Even though the entire experience was and is a total shock to my being and I loved my wife dearly, I knew the path was clear to my gender freedom. At my age of sixty I was in a position to take the gender leap to freedom and not look back. All of a sudden, I didn't know how much time I had left as I lost more and more of my closest friends to cancer. 

The answer was clear, I wanted to be my girl. Even though I knew there were going to be many more bridges to cross and some even to burn. I was given a second chance in life I just couldn't turn down.