The Last Line of Defense

 

Image from Gayatri Malthroa 
on UnSplash.

Throughout nearly half of a century, my male self-fought the complete transition I made into a feminine lifestyle.

During that extended period of time, I think I tried everything possible to convince myself that I was wrong to want to play in the girls’ sandbox at all. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I “purged” many times of my feminine belongings. Leaving me with nothing but my most cherished pieces of girl’s/woman’s clothing and makeup. The makeup was easy because I knew I could always buy more. Perhaps the most precious items I never threw away were the nice wigs I was able to buy and the silicone breast forms which ironically were given to me by a fellow cross dresser who was purging also. Deep down inside, I knew I would need the wigs and breast forms again when my urge to cross-dress returned. As my own personal history told me it would.

It turned out that purging was not my last defense, no matter how hard I tried. In fact, the more I tried not to be feminine in any way shape or form, it seemed I slipped closer and closer to it. Especially when I learned I could dress to blend with most of the ciswomen around me. It was then I learned how natural I felt when I began to get it right and could feel all the gender euphoria I could feel.

What I did continually feel was my masculinity slipping away and I only used it on occasions with my wife in mixed company and when I was working in a high-pressure environment. For years, when I was out in the world experimenting living a new life, I felt as if I was sliding down a steep hill towards a transgender cliff which I had no idea of how I would be able to land.

In all fairness to my second wife, she never opposed me cross-dressing and knew about it when we got married. But on the other hand, completely opposed any idea of me becoming a transfeminine person. Between her and my male self, they made formidable opponents in my life when I thought about living as a trans woman. What made it all worse was when my wife kept saying she did not want to live with another woman and did not agree to that when we got married and I had to agree with her. Putting me in a very difficult situation in my life. I escaped the best I could by sneaking out of the house behind her back at any given time I found to test the world time and again to see if I would be allowed to go back behind the gender curtain. Which in many ways, represented escaping the last defense to staying in the male world I had.

Of course, my wife found out on numerous occasions what I was doing as a trans woman and resisted all my progress. When she did, we had giant battles which she normally won and I tried the therapy route to help me with my gender issues. Therapy helped me in many ways in my life but not so much with my deep-seated gender issues. I was expecting too much when one therapist told me if I thought our sessions would ever relieve my tensions, I would be wrong until I was able to make the final decision on if I was able to be a woman or not. At that point, I had two of the most far-reaching quotes that I ignored which were told to me. One of which was the time I was told I was the only one who could decide my gender future and the second was when my wife told me to go ahead and be man enough to be a woman. I was so sure I could do it my way and it cost me dearly. Especially, in terms of my overall mental health when juggling two genders and two lives at once became too much to handle. I did not know if I was coming or going on which day it was on how I was expected to act.

As many of you know, my second wife tragically died of a massive heart attack, leaving me with only my male self to do gender battle with. His last defenses deteriorated quickly as I became deeply unhappy and lonely and took solace in my inner female self for comfort. She stepped up big time, and very soon when I was not working nights, I was in one of my regular drinking venues seeking company. That was when I discovered I had more in common with the lesbians I met than with any man. Since most of them rejected me anyhow for leaving the good old boys club. I was able to say good riddance and go forward in my life into a world I never thought possible could ever be a part of. I had never really got along well with men in my life, and it turned out nothing had really changed. Except the way I was exploring the world. Finally, as my true self. As I was finding me after all those years of searching.

The last defense my male self-had was when my third wife Liz and only daughter came to my rescue with unwavering support for my final dive off the steep gender cliff. They made the landing very soft, and even easy. More precisely, Liz made me a believer in myself again and my daughter gave me support I needed from what blood family I had left since my brother rejected me, and my parents had long since passed away. Add in the couple of lesbians I always socialized with and I had all the support I needed to succeed in where I had dreamed of going and being accepted behind the gender curtain.

By far, I would be remiss if I did not mention the power of HRT or gender affirming hormones in removing any of the final defenses my male self-had going for him. I could not believe how fast the hormones acted as my body began to change, inside and out. It would take a whole post to describe all the impacts the hormones made to me. In fact, I have my annual appointment with my endocrinologist coming up this week, and with it, the chance to get refills on my hormonal patches.

Maybe I can thank her then for helping me to win my battle with my male self. Since I receive my HRT meds through the Veterans Administration, I always hope nothing changes from the top down with my ability to keep receiving a huge part of what makes me whole. I worked too long to get here.

Thanks again for joining me on my journey and I hope my experiences help you too.

Any comments, claps or subscriptions are welcome and make my work so worthwhile!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Laughing Matter

 

Image from Priscilla Du Preeze
on UnSplash. 

I am always amused when someone thinks I had a choice to follow my transgender path. Obviously, they were not there for all the trials and tribulations I had and the extreme harassment I received as I came out into the world. All the times I hurried home crying when I was stared at or glared at by the public before I was able to improve my feminine presentation to the point where I could blend in.

I did all I could to improve my testosterone damaged body by going on a crash diet and did my best to improve my skin by using moisturizers everyday after I shaved before I went to work. Why would I attempt all of that if I thought crossing the gender border was just a choice I could make. The farther I went, the more I had to do to improve. Mainly because it felt like it was the right thing to do.

Perhaps the most important sacrifice I needed to be prepared to make was losing my white male entitlements or male privileges. Even though I did not respect the growing rights that I had obtained through hard work as a male, I needed to keep in mind continually I did not really want them anyhow and there were better days ahead if I ever had achieved my dream of living as a transgender woman fulltime.

Through it all though, I wondered why all this gender turmoil was happening to me. Often when the poor, poor pitiful me aspect of my life was at it’s worse, I would “man-up” and purge myself of most of my feminine belongings. As most of us know, purging does not work for any length of time. All it did for me was make me go out and buy more makeup, clothes and shoes to express my femininity again. A total waste of money, but at least I always tried to build back better following every purge I tried. Finally, I looked back at purging as just another rite of passage I needed to through as I followed along my gender path to success, and I was able to put my transgender victim mentality behind me.

As I grew older and set in my cross-dressing ways, I knew increasingly I had no choice in how I lived my life. I was rapidly going through yet another gender transition from just having a so-called hobby into being a transgender woman. I was doing more than just shopping for more and more clothes and was trying out new ways to experience the world the way ciswomen do. I started doing a portion of the grocery shopping successfully as the new transfeminine me all the way to starting to do all my Christmas shopping in unique situations also. Just to see if I could.

At that point, the things I needed to go through to survive in life became increasingly evident to me. I would need to express myself as a woman and I had no choice but to do it. I also knew the risk I was taking when I thought about losing the male life, I had worked so hard and long to be successful at. What would my daughter think of her new dad was one of the few variables as I knew I would lose my long-term marriage and great job that I had. I needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt I was doing the right thing, and I truly had no choice but to stay on the course I was on. This is where my transgender humor comes in. Why would anyone ever put themselves through such a life full of turmoil if they ever had a choice. Or, when just putting on a dress becomes so much more than a fun experience, where do you go then?

It is no secret where I went and I had the chance to experience so much more in my life because it is exceedingly rare when a human gets the chance to experience both sides of the binary gender spectrum. The problem is we transgender women and transgender men don’t have a chance to enjoy the trip because of the pressure we put on ourselves to perform behind the gender curtain we chose. If we are not doing it to ourselves, the pressure is certainly on from the public to do it too. Especially these days with the charged anti-transgender political attitude we are seeing from the orange menace in Washington DC, and in many states such as my own native Ohio.

If we can ever get the public at large to understand we trans people never had a choice on the life’s direction we ultimately took, we would come out so much further ahead. Sadly, the path to get there does not seem to be getting any closer for many of us as the things we have to go through just keep on coming. I know for those of you who are still on your transition path or even consider it, it is a major step to take. Hopefully on the way, you can take the time to stop for a moment and enjoy how far you have come. I always thought if it does not kill me, it will just make me stronger would help me along. And on a lesser scale, the old sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me saying really applied to me also.

When you are on your path long enough to realize there is no turning back, you will also know you had no choice but to keep going towards your goal. It was never easy, but so worthwhile as you navigated the final blind curves, potholes and stop signs. At the least, you will know you lived a life where you had a choice and made the most of it.

Plus, certainly it was no laughing matter. 

As always, thank you for reading along with my experiences. Any comments, extra claps or subscriptions are welcome!

 

 

 

 

In Praise of Femme Lesbians

 

Image from Alexander Krivitsky
on UnSplash.

Back in the day, femme lesbians were known as “lipstick lesbians” and were usually in heavy demand from butch and super butch women in the community.

As I write this post, it brings back many unique and even pleasant memories for me. Why? It is because during that time in my life, I was desperately seeking where I fit in on the gender spectrum. As I drifted from point A to point B, I discovered the only place I really fit in was with the lesbian community. If I could only be accepted which was far from a given.

It all started with me when I was going to several mixed, male and female gay venues in Columbus, Ohio years ago. One night I was in a very crowded venue trying to get drink when I very butch lesbian offered to buy one for me. It was the first time I felt as if I was in the right place at the right time and someone appreciated me for who I was. It all started me on a path I still am on to this day with my third wife Liz who identifies as a lesbian. She was the one person and only one who had told me she never saw in male in me, but I am getting ahead in my experiences on how I arrived here.

It all basically started seriously when I started to go regularly to two small lesbian venues in Dayton, Ohio. One I was accepted in and one I was not. The one I was not accepted in showed their dislike for me in many ways, including shutting off the juke box when I played Shania Twain’s “I Feel Like a Woman”. No sense of humor at all! The other venue was the total opposite, and I even discovered I knew one of the bartenders from my male life. It was there that I had many exciting adventures into a terrifying world I did not know much about except when I was drawn to it and it was drawn to me. Going all the way back to one of the many diverse parties I went to in Columbus, Ohio when I hit it off with another woman and we took off and visited a very popular gay night spot called “Wall Street”. Since I was still married at the time, nothing happened except again I learned where I really belonged on the gender spectrum.

Through most of it, I was playing the odds, I could explore the world as a femme lesbian and still get home and cleaned up before my wife did. One night in particular was rough when a butch in a cowboy hat demanded that I sing karaoke with her, make no mistake that I am a terrible singer and wanted nothing to do with her but she was convincing and I thought of the only song that I knew to sing to was “David Allan Coe’s You have Never Even Called me By My Name.” And here I was sharing a microphone in my blond wig and tight jeans with a butch in a cowboy hat doing my best to let her do most of the singing. By the way, “David Allan Coe” just passed away recently in his eighties, and after I was done singing, I got the hell out of there when the butch said my voice was lower than hers and I never saw her again.

Other than my brief singing career, I had many more interactions with lesbian women and even my first time I was asked out to dinner came at the request of a super butch who went on to transition completely to a transgender man. Even though I was scared to death, I still managed to have a good time which set me up for future successes when I went to lesbian mixers with my friends. They were shy but I was not and ended up in several interesting situations when one woman said she should buy me a drink and take me home with her (I got the drink but did not go home with her) and the night I was caught kissing a strange woman by the pool table in a venue we were in.

Perhaps, other than the karaoke experience, the evening I was asked by my friend to be her “wing person” and approach another woman about getting her phone number for my friend. I never got that phone number, but I did get a once-in-a-lifetime experience to remember.

Being accepted the way I was by other women saved me from having to consider my sexuality at all. In fact, I was enjoying much more attention as a transgender woman than I ever had as a man when it came to other ciswomen. I think it was because I represented an alternative to many lesbian women who had experienced men in their past and did not identify as “Gold Star” women. Gold Star lesbians identify as women who have never been with a man sexually. To all the ones that did not wear their “stars” proudly, I represented a unique gender middle ground. It helped me too, when the ciswomen I encountered did not have the same sexual hangups that most men seem to carry around with them along with their fragile egos.

Maybe the best part was that I did not have any problems fitting in with my image as a lipstick or femme lesbians and was well aware of all they had in the LGBTQ community to make societal inroads which we always desperately needed. I desperately needed it too as I searched for where I belonged in life. All along I was a femme lesbian hidden behind layers of masculinity waiting to get out and enjoy the world. It was quite the coming out process for me. As I learned I could validate myself as a person without the help of a man which was exceedingly difficult for me to do sexually or mentally. Thanks to all the women I met, I never had to do it.

 

 

Connecting the Gender Dots

 

Image from Beya Yurtzkuran'
on UnSplash. 

Connecting all the dots in a life when you have gender issues is never easy.

Especially so when your life’s workbook is completely blank and you have nowhere to go but to struggle. The great majority of transgender women and transgender men grew up with unapproving parents and/or no peer group pressure to shape our gender youth and help us along. At the best, the closest dots we were trying to connect were fuzzy and far away.

On the other hand, with me, my male dots were always crystal clear and easy to at least try to connect. If I was successful on a sports team, I would connect an easy dot is a great example. But if I was cross-dressing as a girl in front of the mirror, I was always confused on how I should act or feel. The only certainty I had was I knew I wanted to feel pretty.

As I progressed through life’s lessons, I learned the impact of achieving the connecting of my feminine dots while at the same time, leaving my male ones behind. Sacrifice became the ultimate name of the game. Especially when my second (out of three wives) kept calling me selfish for my complete pursuit to begin to leave my male past behind and live as a complete transfeminine person. What made matters worse was the fact that my gender dots on both sides of the spectrum were becoming clearer. I was becoming more successful as a father and as a provider as I advanced in my chosen profession, but at the same time, I became better and better at presenting myself as a convincing woman. For the longest time, my dots formed a parallel path. Heading ultimately for a collision.

I was stubborn and tried to separate the dots I was connecting until it affected my mental health so badly I could do it no longer. I was like a juggler trying to balance the two main binary genders as fast as I could and it nearly cost me my life. I was finding it harder than ever to separate my old unwanted male self from my new exciting yet terrifying new feminine self when one side began to bleed into the other. For example, when I was in a company meeting full of men, I would daydream how it would be if I was there as the only woman. Before reality would slap me down and back into the present.

Finally, I could take it no longer, and I began to give up on connecting any more of my male dots at all. I figured if I connected any more dots, it would just create more baggage I would have to deal with when I male to female transitioned. Mentally, I began to make contingency plans on what to do when I could ever connect my female dots and live out my dream. It is when I began to kick my experimentation portion of my life into high gear. I wanted to make certain as little as possible would be standing in my way as I moved forward in life. I needed to deal with the possibility I would lose contact with my wife and family then figure out what I would do to support myself financially. I was fortunate when my daughter stuck around to support me when my only remaining blood relative (brother) did not and I was old enough to support myself on an early social security retirement I earned and selling collectables my second wife who tragically passed away, and I collected over the years. So, I had connected all my obvious dots fairly well.

From there, the most challenging aspect of life I needed to face was the actual one on one daily living a trans woman has to take on. Learning the lessons a ciswoman is raised to know as she transitions from a female to a woman. Such as the shifting from white male privileges to the female privileges that I had only had the chance to dream about and not know because I had never been allowed behind the gender curtain. Once I was allowed behind the curtain, many aspects I never fully realized ciswomen actually go through became a reality to me. I was connecting my dots and maturing into the transgender woman I always dreamed of becoming. All my misconceptions about just achieving the appearance aspect of femininization faded away as I learned there was so much more to me than just trying my best to have an attractive face. It was quite the shallow existence for me as I needed to develop myself into a quality new human being that the world reacted to on a everyday basis.

As it turned out, HRT or gender affirming hormones took final care of the attractive part of my being as I went from being attractive to being the real me. Because the hormones softened my skin and facial lines and helped me to grow breasts, hips and hair. Like I said, all of which were the real me just waiting all this time for the changes to happen.

All the dots I connected were in a big circle. I went from a young boy for the first time being amazed at what he saw in the mirror (and wondering what was next), all the way to being able years later to being able to find the real me and live out my goal of crossing the gender border into a transfeminine world. I could not wait to give away all my male clothes; enjoy the new hormones I was on and live a new life. I was even able to take vacations with my third wife Liz to places I had never been before. All as my new self.

I can’t say connecting all my dots was ever fun and at times very scary, but they were always with me as I lived my life. At my advanced age of seventy-six, I am fortunate that I had the chance to find the real me before it was time for me to connect the final dot and step into the next dimension.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stopping when You are Ahead

 

JJ Hart. Girls Night Out.
I am top left. 

Somehow, I never learned to stop when I was ahead when I was growing up. Or, as my parents always said, I tried when I was given an inch, I always tried to take a mile.

That whole idea really manifested itself when I began to explore my gender desires and start to cross-dress in my mom’s clothes. As I perceived myself to be successful with one new look, I always wanted more very soon. I could not stop when I was ahead and kept on pushing the boundaries of danger when I cross-dressed at home in the bathroom. Even if my brother was home too. I was risking what I had of the young male life I thought I needed to protect.

Somehow, my guardian angel was looking over me as I never got caught as a kid with my cross-dressing activities and I simply wanted more than I could get most of the time such as a nice, fashionable wig. Rather than the Halloween store wigs I was stuck with. Due primarily to financial constraints. During this time of my life, I was stuck with just being able to dream of what my life could be like when I grew into a more complete transfeminine person. It turned out to be a long (decades) away from coming true. Take wigs for example. When I finally arrived at the point where I financially could afford it, I went overboard on haunting the local wig stores around me looking for just the right wig which I thought would be the perfect addition to my hair collection to allow me to present better in the world. As I did it, mostly all that I accomplished was acquiring quite the collection of potential drag clown wigs which I did not have the patience and/or knowledge to take care of.

At that point, I could not stop when I was ahead or behind my quest to be at least an attractive woman. Every time I experienced the least little bit of gender euphoria when I went out in public, it fired me up and encouraged me to do more. Unfortunately, that meant taking extra chances with my actions and ultimately my safety. I needed to learn the hard way what ciswomen were raised to know about not putting yourself into potentially dangerous situations. I barely lucked it out when I escaped situations with no harm to me, so I essentially did not have to stop when I was ahead as a trans woman. I just had to be wiser when my male privileges were stripped away such as the personal security privilege men inherently have.

As I emerged as a wiser novice transgender woman, the reality of what I was attempting set in and I could not stop. Even if I was ahead. I began to set up a stairstep approach to my male to female feminization process which would I hoped, give me a more in-depth look at a woman’s life behind the gender curtain. Which I had spent countless hours thinking about. I started to consider all the things I wanted to discover as a woman that I had dreamed of as a man which led me to set up my own transgender mental bucket list of things to do. Basically, I set up activities at levels of difficulty. So, when I accomplished one I did not have to stop and move to another. Using the women’s room was a prime example of sliding behind the gender curtain and using a women’s only space. I knew a little of what to expect from my days as a restaurant manager when I needed to monitor how the women’s room was kept for problems I could encounter. Not starting from scratch helped me to survive in my new world with cis women.

Fortunately, I spent much of my time in the world successfully as I learned the basics of how ciswomen live. By doing so, I simply could not quit and kept on trying new things. My bucket was quickly being worn out by the challenges I was facing. Mainly by meeting the number of women who showed interest in me. I have always thought they were just curious about what I was doing in their world and was I living my life the best I could in the girls’ club. In my case, I was different and hopefully presented the best of the two main binary gender worlds as I socialized with many different women who seemingly were happy to see me.

By this time in my life, I simply could not stop what I had started as far as chasing my femininization process. It involved doing a deep dive into how women communicate and compete with each other, among other important things. Probably, communication was the most difficult aspect of my transition to learn. For the first time in my life as a transwoman, I needed to listen closely and completely to what was being said to me for hidden meanings and nonverbal cues. Then, as far as competition as a woman was concerned, I needed to learn that women compete just as hard as men. Just on a whole different spectrum of passive aggressive actions and reactions. Believe me, I learned the hard way a number of times when I made the wrong move and needed to watch my back from a smiling face who was out to get me.

Once I succeeded in learning all of my feminine lessons, my confidence was at a all time high. Especially with the small group of lesbian friends I had build around me by sheer luck. They ended up protecting me during my fragile times I was learning the final ropes of what it would take to round myself out as a transgender woman. By this time, my inner self could take over after being buried all those years and end up running my life’s goal that she always had a hand in. After waiting all those decades to live, she no longer had to stop while she was ahead. She was home and I was a whole person.

 

 

 

My Life's Passion

JJ Hart on vacation
last winter. 

Without a doubt, the one passion which has consumed my life the most has been my desire to be a woman.

I continually write about my youth as a confused boy wondering if I was the only boy in the world who wanted to be a girl. My desires extended all the way to what I wanted for Christmas (the doll baby I never got) all the way to when I lied about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Rather than rock the boat I always said some sort of a male profession such as a doctor or a lawyer rather than what I really wanted to be, a woman.

All I could do was take refuge in my mirror which told me I made a pretty girl out of the boy I was at the time. It became a passion for me to use as much of my free time as possible to cross-dress. At the same time, I became really good at acting like a boy by playing sports and having an interest in cars. I was so good, it kept the bullies away until male puberty invaded my body. Outside of hating the changes puberty was making to my body, I remember being intensely aware of my new masculinity and what to do with it. Even walking like a man was a chore for me to learn to do. I was so afraid of walking like a “sissy” and be made fun of by the bullies that I feared what to do. Little did I know that later in life my passion would be to unlearn all that I needed to learn at the time about being masculine.

As much as I tried and as tormented, I because of my gender passions, I could not seem to lose my desire to be feminine over my hated male image. At the time, I was in the midst of what I call the information “dark ages” before the internet and any social media input. Even the word transvestite was new to me as I struggled to find my footing in life. In other words, my gender closet was very dark and lonely, with little opportunity to have any future at all in my passion to understand and be feminine.

I stayed that way until I grew older and my passion included receiving my cherished issues of “Transvestia” magazine and I could read the “wisdom” of “Virginia Prince” whenever I could get my hands on another issue. For a while I thought it was working until I began to read about the social mixers certain chapters had to meet and greet other cross-dressers or transsexuals as they were known back in those days. Amazingly, one of the chapters in my native Ohio held mixers on a fairly regular basis that I could attend. I thought for sure, meeting others with similar gender issues could help me but I was wrong. Their passions exposed the many layers of where I could fit in (or not) with the remainder of the cross-dressing community and at the least, I hoped I could come away from the social by making a friend or two.

The only thing that really came out of the mixers was the knowledge that another chapter was coming close to establishing their own socials in Columbus, Ohio which was vastly closer for me to attend. Maybe I was too standoffish or even shy to make what I would call friends, but I continued to keep going any way and even was rewarded with invitations to smaller more diverse parties in Columbus which did not have to supposedly adhere to all of “Virginia Prince’s” archaic rules such as admitting heterosexual members only. As I said, the parties I went to were very diverse from lesbians to cross dresser admirers all the way to transgender women getting ready for gender realignment surgeries. The learning process I went through every time I went fueled my passion to learn more about my place in this new exciting world, I was becoming a part of. I could not wait to be invited to the next party.

I felt so secure from my party experiences, that I decided to do more exploring in my own in public. That is when I began to seek out the straight venues I used to go to as a man when I always wondered what it would be like to experience them as a woman. My passion for my new life exploded when I discovered I could be accepted which kept me out of the gay venues which I did not feel comfortable in at all. I was able to go out to be alone and mostly socialize by myself for the most part as I worked hard on my passion to fill out my gender workbook which was seriously lagging behind my fast-paced life as a novice transgender woman.

By this time, I had decided I had made the right decision to follow my feminine passion and try to survive in a world run by ciswomen. My path felt natural and I was rapidly coming close to the time when I was going to push all my male privileges I had earned to the middle of the table and bet my life on the transfeminine path I was on. I could not believe that my entire life’s dream/goal was suddenly within my grasp. If only I had the courage to finally follow through on my passion.

I did follow through and with the help of my future wife Liz, I went on HRT, threw out or gave away all my male clothes and never looked back on my male life except to decide which baggage to bring with me. I even went as far as taking female vocal lessons to try to teach me all important feminine communication skills which I desperately needed. It all turned out to be a labor of love as I listened and learned from the world around me.

The boy so long ago in the mirror finally had his deep-seated passions rewarded.

 

 

 

  

Burning my Gender Bridges

 

Image from Kellen Riggin 
on UnSplash. 

Sadly, following  my gender path included burning many bridges behind me which connected me to my old male past.

I think the problem stemmed from the self-destructive behavior I always exhibited when I did anything remotely successful as a man. I still had not yet faced the fact that I wanted nothing to do with being a guy, and everything that came with it. Including the potential of living with the white male privilege that was an automatic addition to my life.

Then, there was always the part of relief if I was ever caught cross-dressing early in life. Finally, I would be exposed as the deeply feminine person I really was. Life was much simpler back in those days, and I wondered how bad it would be to go to a psychiatrist and try to explain to him or her how I was not mentally ill; I just wanted to be a girl and my ultimate goal in life was to grow into a woman someday. The only way to get there was to risk everything and not get caught, but I never did and did not have to burn any bridges to find my way into early forms of conversion therapy.

It was not until much later in life did, I really began to torch my bridges behind me. The problem was, I needed to build my bridges longer and stronger to carry all the increased male baggage I had accumulated. Most of which was against my will. This was when my male life was outpacing my female life and I was building a small family and a very good job while at the same time managing to hang on to a long-term marriage where my wife was learning about and fighting against any thoughts of me sliding towards leading a transgender lifestyle. I desperately did not want her to be on any bridge that I burnt, and the pressure built on me not to light the match on my life if I took the huge step and decided to keep femininizing myself.

As I reached deeper and deeper into myself looking for an answer, I felt increasingly natural when I was attempting to put together my feminine self. No matter how risky burning my previous gender bridges behind was, I could not shake the idea I was doing something right by transitioning my old male life away.

The next big problem I faced was letting the world I was in know I was switching from my male club membership to the girls’ club. As I was being increasingly successful in carving out a new secret life as a trans woman, I did not want it to be secret any longer. So, I did the natural thing for me, I tried to make it impossible for me to turn back on my gender path. I started to go into my own restaurant dressed as me to see if I was recognized which I quickly was. I could have lost my executive general manager’s job immediately if I was but I was prepared to burn that bridge when I came to it. Looking back, it was not the smartest decision I ever made in my life but one I was desperate to make as my female self was crying out for attention.

When I progressed to a certain point in my male to female transition plan, burning bridges became just an automatic part of the plan because I did not need the male part of my life anymore, I was getting rid of. The prime example as I always point to is the night that something had changed in my thinking that I was not cross-dressing to go out and socialize, I was finally trying to formally join the world as a full-fledged transfeminine participant. The evening was a resounding success, and I knew from that point forward that I could never go back to being a man again. I could see my bridge burning over a not-so-distant horizon and it actually was scary and good at the same time.

I probably would have burnt more bridges earlier in my life if it was not for my second wife and my male self who was hanging on for dear life but still refusing to give up his hold on me. They put up a formidable fight to the point of putting out the fires I started on purpose. It lasted until my wife passed away, leaving only my weakened male self to fight me.

The final bridge to burn was when I was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. It was an all hands-on deck torching when my external and even internal body began to change. My sudden change in skin tone, slightly protruding breasts and longer hair which I refused to cut gave my external transition away and the part no one saw, but I felt, such as my emotional growth made itself known to me.

Following years of gender turmoil and change, having nothing in my way felt very good and I loved the hormonal changes I was going through with my new wife Liz. Which was well over a decade now. As I said, burning bridges in my life was always a scary idea but one I needed to do to get to where I wanted to go as a transgender woman surviving in the world of ciswomen everywhere.

I was fortunate in that I did not get burned as much as I did along the way in the process. I must have been quicker than I thought as my trans destiny showed me the way during the darkest nights. Who knows? Being caught on one of my bridges may have been for the best when I needed to work my way out of danger, but it never came to that with me. I became quite good at burning my bridges…or lucky.

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to comment, clap or subscribe and just read along with me.

Without you, it means nothing!

 

 

 

 

Nothing Lasts Forever...or Does It?

 

Image from Lucas Stankey
on UnSplash. 

Yesterday when I first went to the bathroom to begin my start to the day, I turned the light on and was greeted by a slight “pop” and the bulb going out. I was disappointed that it was one of those bulbs that is supposed to last forever. Then, I began to think that nothing lasts forever, especially light bulbs no matter what they say.

As I normally always do, I took the idea I was following to another level and compared it with my old broken-down self. No surprise, but I was not built to last forever either. Just like my transgender desires, or were they? I know when I was very young trying on my mom’s clothes and makeup, I thought perhaps I would outgrow my desire to be a girl as I became older. As it turned out, the opposite was true. I did not outgrow my desire to be feminine; I grew into it as I became more skilled in applying make-up and cross-dressing myself the more, I wanted to try my newfound skills in the public eye.

When I accomplished the seismic shift from mirror approval to public approval, I knew any approval would not last forever because of the mixed reactions I was having in public where I tried to go. Outside of the usual gaggle of teen girls who would laugh at me, I found that the largest part of society did not notice me when I took the effort to blend in with the other ciswomen around me. The mistake I was making was very simple when I finally took the time to figure it out. To dress for success did not mean to dress to attract unwanted extra attention. Success meant that I fit in with the public at large. Carefully, since I was a large woman, but a woman none the less when I presented myself correctly.

At that point, the responsibility of being a stable presentable transfeminine person began to set in. Just looking the part of a woman would not last forever as by then I certainly knew I would never just outgrow my feminine desires. By responsibility I mean it became time for me to fully accept what I was becoming in the world. To catch up, I took feminine vocal lessons to improve the nuances of my speech patterns and worked hard to listen to my progress. If nothing was going to last forever in my life as a trans woman, I was driven to do it right. Outside of the very good job I had and the relationship I was desperately clinging to with my wife, being a transgender woman who passed in the world was my ultimate goal.

That point in my life became a blur as I was learning almost daily what went on behind the gender curtain, I was given access to. It was not all good, but I knew the bad would not last forever if I continued past the stop signs, I encountered on my gender path to my ultimate goal of shedding my male past. The best part was no one knew him and I could build a new life from scratch with the good and bad of living as long as I did as a man. Everything was going so well for awhile that I was waiting for the next high heeled shoe to fall on me since nothing lasts forever. Sadly, I was right when my personal world around me began to rapidly crumble.

I call it my dark period when almost everyone I cared about passed away. I knew about the finality of death because of my parent’s death, but I wrongly assumed I would be the first to go in the small circle of friends and family I had built up because of my self-destructive lifestyle.

The person who helped me out of my dark age was my wife Liz who made me a believer in myself, and my forever could be with her. That was over twelve years ago now, and I hope it can go on forever too. I am just grateful I was able to find her when I needed her the most because I was drinking way too much and struggling.

The moral to the story is that life is but a circle and you can ride out the down parts if destiny shows you the way. It was true for me that the darkest hour was right before the dawn when I attempted the ultimate self-destructive act of all. Taking my own life. I failed and ended up being able to live the most exciting and self-fulfilling days of my life. I would have missed everything from the tour bus experiences Liz and I took all the way to being humbled in my two fairly recent hospital stays for Covid and pneumonia. Sometimes I think I was just given the chance to do as much living as I could in the time allotted to me. Being transgender just added to the mystique of my life.

Whatever the case, I was completely wrong when I was a kid thinking I would grow out of my dreams of being a woman, transgender or not. Growing into my dreams was certainly the most challenging thing I have ever attempted. Sometimes causing me joy and sometimes causing me extreme pain and suffering.

I know nothing lasts forever, but when mine ends, I will know I gave it my best shot.

Recently I learned that even backwards Ohio who only concentrates of passing anti-transgender bills, is considering a bill which would legalize euthanasia for terminally ill persons. Even though I seriously doubt the republican legislature will pass the bill, it would be nice to be able to end your own life when the time has come and gone to do it. I would love to have control of my own destiny. Nothing lasts forever, including humans.

Sorry to end this on such a negative tone but death is as sure as birth and we need to make the best of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Gender Workbook was Blank

 

Image from Marcus Winkler
on UnSplash. 

Somedays, I prefer explaining the trip up my gender path as filling out my gender workbook. Of course, the problem I had doing it was I had absolutely no help. No mother or peer group pressure to tell me if I was doing right from wrong when it came to cross-dressing myself as a girl or applying makeup.

Ironically (as I said in a recent post), knowing my mom the way I did she would have been against me shaving my legs and wearing makeup as early as I did as her secret daughter. I was only trying to get a head start on writing my own gender workbook and trying to catch up with all the girls around me who also were sneaking around wearing makeup and wearing panty hose.

It was fairly easy for me to make up my own workbook rules when it was just me and the mirror to deal with. No matter what I did as far as my feminine presentation was concerned was accepted by my mirror which kept lying to me and telling me I was a pretty girl. Which was much easier before I hit the curse of male puberty and all the changes my body was going through. I was seeing unwanted growth and angles while the girls I envied around me were getting curves. When I went to bed every night, I dreamed of my life being different but of course it never was. I would not get the curves I wanted until decades later in life when I was fortunate to have good health enough to be able to start HRT or gender affirming hormones.

There turned out to be tons of effort I needed to put into my workbook before I could arrive at the point where I could even think about starting hormones. The shortcuts I kept trying to make never seemed to work and usually got me in trouble. When I did find trouble by trying to do too much with poor fashion choices, finally I gained some sense, rewrote my gender workbook and went on to successfully try to blend in with the world of ciswomen as a transgender woman. Looking back, I think that page of my book had so many erase and start over marks that I could barely read it.

When I really began to get serious about seeing if I could be successful as a trans woman was when I desperately needed my gender workbook to help me, but it just couldn’t because I had not put the time and effort into filling it out. I had never given enough thought to how different the lives of men and women really were. Perhaps you remember the book “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” which when I read it, I wondered where trans people came from. I did not know yet we transgender women and transgender men get to occupy a special planet all our own with our unique knowledge of both men and women.

As I first began to mature into a more complete transfeminine person, I sometimes discovered my mental gender notes became overwhelming, and I needed to head back home to go over in my mind about what just happened to me. Good or bad, it did not matter. What was most unexpected to me was the amount of acceptance I received in the new world I was in. I had become used to the glares and abuse I took when I went out of the house in my early days and learned the majority of the world did not care about me one way or another. All the way to those other women who encouraged me to be in their world. Nowhere in my gender workbook did I ever imagine such a thing ever happening to a person like me just trying to find a new foothold in the world as my authentic self after all the years of struggling.

Sadly, there were still times when I ran out of ink to write in my gender workbook, and I attempted to purge everything I had accomplished and go totally back to my old safe male world. As most of us know, purges never work, and before I knew it I was out buying more feminine clothes and makeup to femininize myself all over again. By doing so, I finally came to the point of stopping obsessing over how I looked and settled into just being the person I was meant to be all along. I just did not want anything to do with me being a privileged male anymore, I just wanted to live out the long-held dream goal of mine to live as close as I could to a woman.

Even at that point, my gender workbook was different than other trans women friends I had known when I made the decision to live my life without all the major gender realignment surgeries and facial surgeries the others had gone through. I had two comments which described me the best when a transwoman friend of mine said I passed out of sheer willpower and another which came in on a comment and said I was just another old guy on hormones. Both were right in their own ways, and I wrote a mental note in my workbook that I would never be the prettiest woman in the room, but I could be the nicest. As far as the comment on me being an old guy on hormones, I wondered if the commenter was just jealous and it did not matter anyhow because I had always considered my gender to be between my ears and not between my legs and I had made it through life as far as I did with no surgeries at all, so there was no need to risk damage when I was older.

Also, I was fortunate to have been able to have other ciswomen around me help finish my gender workbook to where it is today. More than they ever knew, they taught me how to validate myself as a trans woman and welcomed me into their world. A major accomplishment in my life.

 

A More Innocent Time

 

Image from Arun Sharma
on UnSplash. 

On occasion, I look back at the early days of my cross-dressing past wistfully thinking those days were the innocent ones of my life before everything began to get more complicated.

In those days, all I needed to do was make sure I did not destroy mom’s pantyhose or stockings and be careful to put back her clothes where I found them. I guess I was successful because she never said anything to me. Using her makeup was much easier because she always kept samples in a side drawer in the bathroom, I could experiment with. At that time, the whole cross-dressing experience seemed to be an innocent game. Except for my deep paranoia about getting caught. Even the paranoia led me to being more creative about hiding my feminine clothes and makeup. What I had of it.

When the reality of serving in the military during the increasingly deadly Vietnam War slowly but surely made its way into my life, much of my innocence began to go away. The stark reality of going without my dresses and makeup for three years of my young life began to set in. After I passed my draft, medical exams and tests there was nothing I could do about it. Because I was not prepared to run to Canada to evade serving in the military. During that time as well as many years after I was honorably discharged from the Army, I continued to be quite naïve or innocent that all I needed to do to survive as a transgender woman in the world was to do my best to look really feminine. These were the days when my second wife and I battled back and forth about how I was cross dressing as a woman. She always thought my makeup was overdone and I was too fond of wearing “girly” fashion for her tastes. I tried to tone it down for the occasions we went out as two women but her expectations of me were so strict that if I followed her directions, I might as well not bother cross-dressing at all.

Even though I lost most of the battles with her about my evolving fashion sense, I won a few wars when she had to ask me for makeup guidance when we were going out to a fancier setting. Revenge was sweet. For a while, life was very routine for us as we both had challenging employment when we moved from our native Ohio to the suburbs of New York City, a real culture shock to us both. I was disappointed when the more liberal attitude I expected in the big city never materialized because we had to rent from an elderly Italian man and his wife who I knew would have never accepted a trans woman in their apartment. Long story short, my wife loved NYC while I disliked it and started my habit of rapidly changing jobs and moving to outrun my gender issues. Undoubtedly, I had entered one of the most exhaustive phases of my life as I tried to balance my growing transfeminine desires with a wife, a job and a family.

By this time, my growing one on one interactions with the public were driving what I had left of my innocence away. I began to realize that I was locked in a life-or-death gender struggle which may be impossible to ignore. What did I do? I exchanged my exhausting job changing for settling down in one great job opportunity, and at the same time begin to explore the new and exciting world of being a trans woman fulltime. For a time, I was fulfilled by both aspects of my new life until I began to be overwhelmed by the speed both my job and me being able to carve out a life as a new trans woman was coming together. I never imagined I would be so successful, and so terrified about what I would do about them together.

I like to refer to the process I was going through as trying to piece together a large, complex puzzle of life. On one hand, I had my male side loving the financial increases he was seeing. Then my female side pushing back to what was more important. Making money as an unhappy man or living a softer more fulfilling life as a transgender woman. Almost daily I struggled with finding the right pieces for my puzzle. All I accomplished was taking all the satisfaction I was feeling from either side as they battled on.

As I faced the new world I was living in, I was determined to be less self-destructive but that did not work either as I continued to do things like go to my restaurant competitors dressed as my authentic trans woman self. I was not that good, and it did not take long for the gossip to get out about what I was doing. Sabotaging all that I had worked so hard to achieve in my career to finally let people know who I really was. I was destroying once and for all my male past and the innocence was gone. However, with the loss of innocence came the deep feelings that I had finally made the right choice and everything I had done in life directly or indirectly had influenced my future. My primary example is fathering my daughter, who over the years has accepted me and I love very much. Without being forced into the Army where I met her mother, I would never have had the experience of my life. I am just fortunate that I was destined to live as long as I have to have the chance to see the pieces of my puzzle come together and have a chance to experience one of the most interesting and scary experiences a human can take. That of course is crossing the gender border from male to female to live on the other side.

I was never good with puzzles, especially my own, and to lose my innocence finishing mine was a real treat.

 

 

More Changes

 

Image from Brad Starkey 
on UnSplash.

More changes are coming to our house beginning today. Thanks to my wife Liz, we are tearing out one of our old bathtubs and putting in a new walk-in shower. Which is perfect for my immobile status and makes it less dangerous for me to take a shower.

You would think, by this time in my life, I would be used to change but it seems I have just become more set in my ways as a senior citizen transgender woman. As with many of you, our gender issues changed us for the first time quite early in life. Mine manifested itself the first time I felt the magic of trying on my mom’s clothes and I worked my way forward from there.

At that time, I labored under the impression my love for feminine clothes would eventually go away but it was something I ended up growing into rather than away from. The older I got, the more skilled I became at acquiring key items in my wardrobe and hiding them away in places even my younger brother would not find. I even increased the number of odd jobs I would do (such as a newspaper route) to augment my meager allowance and allowed me to buy items such as makeup and panty hose which felt so good on my legs I was shaving earlier than probably half the girls my age that were allowed to do. To shave them I had to use my mom’s electric shaver which I needed to carefully clean after every use. Again, somehow, I managed to escape detection as I continued to cross dress.

It wasn’t until my military days that I really began to push for more changes in how I was approaching my femininity. It was a Halloween party I went to when I only had about eight months left to serve that changed everything. For my “costume” I chose a slutty woman’s look to go with my friends looks. Further down the road, during a night of drinking fine German beer, my “costume” came up in a casual conversation with three of my closest friends, including my first wife. As we talked about the amount of time and effort to look the way I did, I finally thought to hell with it, and told the group I was a transvestite (the term of the day) and I liked to wear women’s clothing. Surprisingly, no one cared and life went on normally for me even after for the first time in my life I risked it all and told someone else my deepest darkest secret. I felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders, but my freedom was fleeting because of what I did in the Army. If anyone of my higher ups had found out about my secret, it could have easily caused me to have be put up for a dishonorable discharge with less than the eight months I had left to go. Which would have been heartbreaking with all the changes the Army had put me through.

As I always write about, my newfound freedom to tell anyone else about my ongoing male to female femininization project came to a screeching halt when I tried to tell my mom. She rejected me totally and sent me scurrying back to my closet as far as telling any blood family about my potential transgender dreams. The only close person to me that I knew was my first wife and surprisingly her sister who told no one. I think sometimes by coming out the way I did at Halloween parties was a plea for the public to listen to me and when I did ever transition, no one would be surprised. Surprisingly, I was so macho in my male life, nobody ever did. Including the few people who were still alive years later when I came out. All I got was surprise from the people I knew. The main reaction was that I seemed too macho to ever be a woman. 

All the changes I went through as a novice transgender woman in my thirties and forties were immense as I learned what I was really facing if I followed my gender path to my ultimate goal of living fulltime as a trans woman. I kept being stopped by blind curves and huge Ohio potholes as I learned the hard way what ciswomen must go through to live their daily lives. I had become a social person later In life and desperately needed it to continue when I went behind the gender curtain and emerged a better person. I spent so many evenings planning to be by myself that the loneliness was really getting to me before changes suddenly began to set in. It all started when a bartender at one of the venues I visited often set me up to meet her lesbian mother to have a casual drink where she worked.

We became friends and were able to see each other often until another woman entered our little group and we became a friendly threesome and gathered to watch sports on the big screens. Of all things, the third woman was another lesbian who slid her phone number down the bar to me one night when I was alone and I responded feeling much better about myself.

The most amazing experience I had was yet to come when my future wife Liz responded to an online ad I placed. Predictably, I had to sort through the ton of online responses I received all the way to being stood up on pre-planned meetings with men I met online who I refused to not meet in public. I met Liz on the other hand in one of the sites where I was advertising in a “woman seeking woman” room and she responded to me and kept responding until we set up our first date midway between our homes which were approximately seventy-five miles apart. We went to a drag show then to a Renaissance Festival and fairly soon she invited me to move in with her. That was over twelve years ago, and I surely made the right decision.

With all this social success, I need to point out again how many dues I needed to pay before I was successful. I look at it as a full circle karma payback to all the lonely times I spent after my second wife died along with most of my closest friends. I had nowhere to turn for comfort and was forced to step out of my usual social conditions to look for connections. But that did lead me right back to the old big sports bars I so enjoyed and felt at home in as a man. Again, a full circle social moment. At least, the bartenders would socialize with me if I did not cause any trouble and tipped well. At that time in my life, any interaction was welcome as I went through the biggest changes in my life.

Change is a natural part of life anyway, but it seems we transgender women and transgender men have more than of our fair share of change to deal with. To be sure it is difficult as we pay our dues to live a life as our authentic selves.

 

 

 

 

 

I Always Was a Dreamer

 

JJ Hart

I always was a dreamer and a person who thought why not me if others could do it.

I guess it all started with the parents I had who were from the “greatest generation” or WWII and Great Depression survivors. Ironically, I was taught to think for myself as long as my thoughts did not conflict with theirs. That is why I could never tell anyone in my family of my dream to someday be a woman. I needed to fall back on my default answer that I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer which kept me out of the psychiatrist’s office.

My most difficult dreams were waking up when I was still male and my vision of being feminine was just that…a vision. I had only dreamed that I was the pretty girl I desperately wanted to be. It was then that I started to play the odds that I would not be caught wearing my mom’s makeup or dresses, or worse yet get caught shopping for my own makeup in a downtown store close to where my dad worked as a banker. As luck would have it, I managed to always be clean and dressed back into my unwanted male clothes by the time my parents or my only brother came home from wherever they had been. Even though I had been able to briefly help decrease the gender pressure I felt from cross-dressing, deep down I knew I had other urges and I began to dream of what I was ever going to do about them.

The first problem I had was I had little to no confidence in my ability to present as an attractive feminine being when I tried. I was fond of thinking I looked like a circus clown in drag. And I am sure I did before I was able to come to a basic understanding of how to use makeup. On most occasions, I could only dream of the time when I could look better as a girl in my mirror and I kept playing with the odds I would not be caught and ruin my whole future as I knew it.

The playing the odds attitude helped me considerably when it came time for me to serve in the military during the long drawn out and deadly Vietnam War. Rather than serve the basic two years if I was drafted, I could have a couple other choices such as enlisting for three years and attempting to get a job I wanted to do or even join the National Guard for six years and basically stay out of the war that way. As decision time approached, I made a split-second decision to turn down the guard offer and take the enlistment offer as I hoped I could get a job in the Army that I really wanted. Which was I really wanted to continue my radio DJ career in the military which was nearly impossible to do as the Army only had sixty broadcasters in their entire system. I played with the odds and won and the three years I spent serving my country turned out to be very beneficial to me as I got exactly what I wanted. A slot in the American Forces Radio and Television Service in Thailand, then Germany.

My success in my near to impossible military profession taught me that perhaps I could be successful in my transgender dreams also. Nothing might be impossible if I only kept trying and refused to stop during my gender journey. I was naïve, which was probably for the best because I had no idea of all the stop signs, I would continue to face before I was allowed to play in the girl’s sandbox. I always knew women led a more layered, nuanced existences than men, but I didn’t know how much more different I would have it as a transfeminine person until I tried.

I knew when I started to become successful in my dream to live in a world full of competitive ciswomen, my ultimate goal might have been within reach. My presentation in the world as a trans woman was benefitted from all those frustrating hours, I spent experimenting with makeup when I was younger. The next challenges turned out to be the most difficult ones when the world (primarily ciswomen) wanted to challenge me with their curiosity about what I was doing in their world. I discovered what I already knew from my past that whatever did not kill me just made me stronger from the rare negative interactions I had with other women. I was able to learn valuable lessons on how to look for passive aggressive disagreements and recover along with the claw marks up and down my back.

Another positive was that I rarely had a wishful dream that I was a woman anymore. My feminine dreams just went to the shallow extent of showing me how my life would be if I was more attractive or had the chance of not missing all the days of growing up in the world as the girl I always knew I was. Plus, I knew I must be doing something right because none of my feminine dreams turned out to be nightmares in the real world.

In addition to wondering what my second wife would think of me now as a trans woman who has had a decade or so to fill out her gender workbook, I wonder if my parents would have ever come to accept me either. Or at least recognize the mental seeds they planted in their oldest son who turned out to be their oldest daughter after all. Somehow, the irony is not lost on me how such rigid parents could raise such a child who turned out to be such a dreamer. Somehow, I believe my dad who was a self-made successful man would have come to accept me long before my mom who I tried to come out to and was rejected years before.

Even then, she could not break my spirit or my dreams.