Out of My Mind, Into the World

Image from
the JJ Hart
Archives.

There were many times during my transgender transition I was thinking I was somehow out of my mind. 

I even went as far as telling others there was something wrong with me. Of course there was something wrong and it was because I was trying to live as a man, not my natural woman. It just took me too many years to realize I was doing everything so backwards when it came to dealing with my gender issues. I was not a man cross dressing as a woman, I was the opposite, a woman cross dressing as a man trying desperately to get by. It seemed so unfair because of all the time and effort I put into having my man card. 

Then, I began to put as much effort as I could into my girl self. I tried my best to observe the girls around me in school and model myself after them. Of course in those days, I was severely limited  by my family and financial situation. Even still, I persisted through the idea I had something wrong with me just because I wanted to be a girl. Plus, I knew if I was ever caught cross dressing into my more normal self, I would be sent off to the first non-understanding therapist my parents could find and he would label me mentally ill when I knew deep down I wasn't.

Adding to my gender difficulties was the fact I was so alone. In the pre-internet days, any information about men wanting to be women was very hard to come by and I was convinced I was the only person in the world who felt the same way I did. It wasn't until somehow I discovered Virginia Prince and Transvestia magazine did I understand there was quite the community of men who called themselves transvestites. Once I did make the discovery, I knew somehow I needed to interact with the nearest group to me in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio which was still quite the distance away. Regardless, I knew I needed to make the connection. I still vividly remember the diversity of the mixers I went to. I thought by reading the so-called hetero restrictions on the members would limit the diversity of attendees but it did not. There were everyone from cigar smoking cross dressers in cowboy hats seemingly afraid of losing too much of their masculinity all the way to the impossibly feminine transsexuals who had  worked hard to lose all of their maleness.

In the middle of it all, was me wondering where I fit in. I was too much woman for the cross dressers and not enough for the transsexuals. Once again I was frustrated with my results as I worked my way out of my mind and into the world. 

It took me quite a bit of work to fully make it into the world. The steps I took led me away from the old restrictive transvestite mixers, all the way to being invited to smaller diverse parties in Columbus, Ohio which I enjoyed immensely. Primarily because I was accepted for the person I was becoming. I was heading into the world for once because no one knew or cared about knowing my old male self. I even took the process another step farther when I began to go out by myself and become a regular in my favorite venues I was used to going to as a guy.

I found I was never out of my mind as the world accepted me. I just had to wait for them to catch up. If I had realized it years ago, how much easier my life would have been.

Connecting the Dots

Image from UnSplash

Throughout life, I found many dots I needed to connect to save my life as I knew it. 

The first dots were the ones I had to connect to live at all. They were the ones which connected me into an unwanted male world. As I mentioned in yesterday's post I was born into a heavy male dominated family where competition between the men in the family was a given. My Dad had two brothers who were always in a friendly battle for which one had the best job, house etc. My best guess is my only brother and I carried the competition to our own level by playing sports. All this time, I secretly would have been happy playing with the girls in the neighborhood but naturally never had the chance. 

Those days, I had fewer gender dots to connect since my main cross dressing activity was with the full length hall way mirror. I was able to hide my deepest gender dreams away and happily dress as a girl when ever I had the opportunity. When I did, I compared it to playing one of the old mechanical  pinball machines. As I viewed myself in the mirror, it was like I hit the one thousand point bumper in the machine and gender euphoria swept in. 

The older I became and the more sophisticated my cross dressing world became, the more dots I needed to connect to survive in the gender complex world I was in. As I progressed, the mirror wasn't good enough for me and I wanted to try more dots. Those were the exciting days of going to transvestite mixers in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Those mixers really showed me all of the potential dots I could connect with to live my life. Was I gay, or a cross dresser, or transsexual or transgender? So many questions to ponder and answer. For once, the mixers showed me other examples of choices I could possibly have. 

Ironically, the military service I had provided me three years to pause my connection of dots to try to figure out which direction I was going to go. When I was discharged, I knew deep down I was transgender but was afraid to lose all that I had worked so hard to accomplish as my male self.  Through out my relatively short life, I had acquired two college degrees,  an honorable service discharge and fathered a daughter. All before I was twenty five. I had connected many dots except for the largest ones which concerned my gender. 

Finally, as I treaded water through the years, I took the leap of faith and connected my final gender dots. Possibly the biggest dot was being approved for gender affirming hormones. When I did connect, a whole new world opened for me. 

Now of course, as I approach three quarters of a century in this world, (75 years) , I wonder how many other dots will I have to connect to make it to the finish line. 

Trans Girl and the Biker

Image from Gijs Coolen
on UnSplash

Several times during my life I have encountered key experiences which involved a motorcycle.

The first was in Cleveland, Ohio and involved my second wife. At the time I was a very novice transvestite or cross dresser out for one of my first ventures in public. Since my wife and I had some time to waste, we decided to find a venue to have a drink in during the afternoon. Before the mixer began. as we sat at the bar a loud motorcycle rolled up almost completely in front of the door. His "bike" was impossible to miss. 

As it turned out, he and my wife began talking. It was the first time I really had ever noticed her flirting with another man when I had been around. Naturally, this time, dressed the way I was head to toe as a woman, I couldn't do anything about it anyhow. The worst part to me was, she seemed to enjoy watching my reaction. For the first time in my life, I was competing with another woman for the attention of the motorcycle guy. Her conversation went to the point when and if he offered her a ride and I wondered if she was going to accept. After keeping me in limbo for what seemed like forever, he did and she turned him down and stayed with her husband/girlfriend. She had made her point and moved on as I was left to wonder what could have happened had she left with him. Since she has long since passed away, I will never know.

The second experience came years later in a suburb of nearby Dayton, Ohio. In a certain venue I had become a regular in, I had been accepted into a small group of rather diverse acquaintances. One lesbian and four or five straight folks. One of them was a big bear of guy who rode a classic motorcycle and ran the lumber section of a nearby large home improvement store. Another of the "regulars" was an exotic beautiful hair dresser who danced on the side. It turned out within a fairly short amount of time, she decided to marry the big guy. I thought at the time, she wasn't the marrying type and I was right. It turned out their marriage lasted  approximately one week and it was over. To make matters worse, everyone in the group except for me seemed to not care about his feelings. Slowly but surely, we began to chat and formed a small bond.

As we did, the rest of the group as well as some others in the venue began to notice. I just felt he was hurt and needed a shoulder to lean on and it almost worked out to taking a ride on the back of his motorcycle. Which would have been my first ever. I would have/should have pursued it more except back in those days I was wearing a wig and all I could imagine was my wig flying off when I was riding. The ride never came and shortly there after, he was transferred out of town to another store. Leaving me with another "what if" moment. He was one of the few men I had ever formed a bond with and I missed him.

Whatever the case, he left and life moved on as it always does. The only other encounter with a cycle man came at a highway waffle place when I suddenly encountered a real life outlaw biker type eating his breakfast. He paid me no real attention as I tried not to notice him and nothing happened. 

To this day, this trans girl has never even been on a motorcycle at all. It's OK though, I have enough other habits to keep me occupied.