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| 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.
