The Prom Gown

Image from Joeyy Lee
on UnSplash

Years ago, I received a prophetic statement from an unknowing doctor when our family was on vacation in Canada. 

When we were not out fishing with Dad, we played football on a hard-packed lot behind the fishing camp with a bunch of local kids. Being the budding football star I never was, I decided to try to play running back and was actually successful bulling my way through the opposing boys on the other team, for awhile. On a play I would learn to regret, I was picked up and thrown down on my shoulder and suffered a broken collar bone.

I say regret primarily because my Dad was not amused about having to interrupt his vacation to take me to a hospital for treatment. At the hospital, I had X-rays taken and was diagnosed with a broken collar bone. I was seen by a doctor and had my shoulder bandaged up in a sling and was told it would heal on it's own. Leaving only a tell tale bump which showed it had ever happened. Then the doctor said, since I would not be wearing any prom gowns in my future, it would not matter anyway.

I thought at the time, wait a minute! What if I wanted to wear one of the beautiful gowns I had seen on women in my future. What then. I think that comment hurt worse than the actual breaking of the bone. Plus, when I did go to proms and was stuck in an ugly tuxedo, I always looked at the girls around me for any tell-tale bumps to show a collar bone break. I never did see any. 

Along the way, I had several other instances of my feminine aura shining through. I have/had a nephew who from an early age developed a very unsavory attitude towards life which sometimes carried over to me. It started with my politics clashing with his right wing bigotry and going from there. On several occasions, he secretly complimented me by saying I threw a football like a girl. He even said one time when I bought my new Porsche Boxster, I had bought a girls car. Like I said, he was trying to hurt me but was secretly making me feel good. I could not wait to be the attractive blond woman in a sharp sports car.

There were other times when I was called feminine when I was doing my best to be a macho man. Several times at work, I was called "Ma'am" out of the clear blue sky in the middle of a normal conversation with a customer. Looking back, I think it was my feminine aura slipping through my male fence. 

Even though it took me years to realize my dream of living as a transgender woman was much more than living as a part-time cross dresser, I realized there were several tell-tale signs along the way. Maybe the doctor was trying to tell me someday I would want to actually wear a beautiful prom dress which showed off my collar bone break bump. Or my evil nephew would go on to having his own insecurities to deal with. I have not seen him for over a decade, so I don't know or care. He would probably just say he was right about calling me a girl. 

It turned out there were many people who saw through my disguise and at the least knew I wasn't who I was desperately trying to be. A stable, non toxic, productive man. I failed miserably and all I ever wanted was to be the one wearing the beautiful prom gown.   

Calling me a woman was the ultimate compliment. 

Gender Energy Shift

Image from Riccardo Annandale
on UnSplash 

I remember years ago when I was still presenting primarily as a  man, every now and then unexpectedly someone would refer to me with feminine pronouns. 

Secretly of course I loved it but never could figure out why someone had cracked my male façade to see the true inner me. Many years later I thought I had discovered the reason why it happened. After I met my wife Liz, I began to search various forms of my spirituality and one of my searches led me to the concept that every person has an aura they project on the world around them. I quickly thought of the times I was called a woman while I was presenting as a man and thought at the time I was subconsciously projecting as a woman. I set out to remember the energy shift process and try to utilize it in my daily life when I ventured out of my gender closet.

Every time I was mis-gendered, I would concentrate harder on the next person. In other words, I tried to think woman in the strictest sense and change my aura so the next person would pick up on it. Sadly I don't have any scientific results but the process seemed to work for me. Perhaps too, the process was working because I had worked so hard to shift my gender energies as I came out as a fulltime transgender woman. I was helped when I didn't have to carry around the extra weight of trying my best to maintain two binary genders in one life. A terrific amount of weight was lifted when I decided my male past had to go in favor of a feminine future.

Along the way I learned too that most people are into their own little worlds and don't really care much about yours unless you somehow rudely invade their world. I found also there are some people who will always "read" you the wrong way, no matter how hard you try. It was difficult but I learned to put those people behind me and just move on as quick as I could. I know I wondered at the time, had my aura somehow slipped back into my old unwanted male self and had I possibly just grew too comfortable as my new transgender self.

Possibly, the biggest energy shift I experienced happened when I was able to begin living my dream as a trans woman. I felt so relieved and I knew I had worked so hard to achieve my dream, no one would ever be able to take it away. Very few of us live long enough to experience living out any of their goals, so anyway that I could I needed to enjoy the new gender energy shift I was experiencing. So far the buzz has never gone away.    

Gender Quiz

Yesterday, I went in for my pulmonary breathing test.

I arrived early, checked in at the kiosk and pulled out my phone to pass the time. Nobody gave me a second look.

As I sat there though, my regular Doctor appeared briefly and saw me. Since I wasn't supposed to see her, I was surprised when she came over to talk. She is very nice and I enjoyed talking to her quite a bit until...she stuck the dreaded "he word" into the conversation. For the life of me, I don't know why all of the sudden I am having such a miserable time being mis-gendered.

I have examined how I go about my prep work before I go out and don't think there is much of a difference. But why would someone call a person obviously wearing feminine clothes with breasts and wearing makeup a he?

I have always believed in the power of how a person projects their personal aura. Perhaps, with time, I have become more lackadaisical in public. I just assume most of the public accepts me as a feminine being.

Maybe I should spend more time channeling my inner female.

Then again, the great majority of people don't understand what it does to a transgender person to be mis-gendered. I know it can really destroy or make my day when I have achieved the lofty "she" status in a conversation.

One thing is for sure, the redneck woman glaring and staring at me on the way out didn't care about pronouns. She was just all ugliness.

Then again, you can't educate everyone.

I See You...Kind Of.

In the Cyrsti's Condo "We Gotz Mail" department Laine commented on our "You Are Glowing" post:

"That (aura idea) makes lots of sense. I know lots of people who picked up on who I am. One of them is a close friend who in some ways is really out there, although he tries to be a grounded, feet on the ground kind of guy. When I came out as trans, he confessed to me that he had always seen me as a woman, and was always confused as to why other people were referring to me with male pronouns and treating me like a man! In fact, when I thought back over our interactions, I realized that he had always treated me much more like a woman than a man.

 Other sensitive people have picked it up and noticed. I have some female friends who have always treated me as one of the girls. Even though I can pretend, it's really only the people that don't connect on that energy/spirit/heart level that really miss it. I don't get colors, but I do get feelings, and I've been able to tell with other people before. It's an amazing thing, and you're right, noticing it and paying attention to it helps to increase your sensitivity to it."

Thanks Laine!  If you start looking closer into this whole "aura" idea, many gender questions we have about ourselves make more sense.  It's like the young boy or girl whose parents are hoping "will outgrow" their transgender aura.  As we all know, that just isn't the case. To this day, I have one of the few male friends I have ever met who claims on occasion he was able to purge all his female belongings and not look back-but can't quite figure out why his bff's at work are two women who join him for lunch everyday.  I tell him he is one of the girls but he just says, "I'm known as the biggest bastard at work."

Like you and your friend Laine, those two women have connected to who my friend really is deep down inside and why wouldn't women be the most likely to connect?

During the mating/marriage courtship, it's primarily the women who have to sort out the relationships to see if they can find a mate and a match to live with. Plus in the everyday world a woman just has to develop an extra sense to insure her security.

I'm sure Laine, most of the more accomplished transgender readers here in the Condo would agree when you "tap" into your interior girl, aura is a more natural part of transitioning than we think. The fact remains, developing extra senses which could be lumped under the "women's intuition" definition is a very real deal.

You Are Glowing!

Haven't written about one of my pet gender "theories" for a while here in Cyrsti's Condo.

For decades I have felt "appearance" wasn't the only defining prerequisite in presenting yourself as a woman in public. Of equal importance to presenting was simply being yourself.  If indeed you have an inner girl and you let her out of your physical closet amazing things can happen.

I say "if" because I feel having or not having an inner girl is the dividing line between being a cross dresser or a transgender or transsexual person. My strict easy definition says a cross dresser wants to look like a woman, the trans girls want to be one. Before you take me to task though, I know there are shades of gray (which hopefully is not one of my colors.)

Years ago I also started to feel my inner transgender self went very deep and I was subconsciously presenting a feminine aura other people were sensing.  I was completely in shock at the number of times I was presenting at work as a macho male and someone would unknowingly called me mam.

As I began to "sync up" my interior and exterior selves over the years, it's been easy to understand why women again have a huge lead over men in this social skill. As I navigate the world as a trans woman, I have had to become more adept at judging other people's aura- for personal security and any number of other reasons. I don't attach a color to people but I do believe my experiences as a transgender woman gives me a real potential to be more adept than either of the binary genders in understanding aura.

Early example of aura.

As it goes now, more than a few folks believe they are extra sensitive to auras and can read them and I'm not referring to psychics. One of my interactions not so long ago reinforced my ideas.

I was at one of my favorite places (of course I was) and one of the other patrons came in off the patio with her boyfriend for a refill and began to read the "aura's" around the bar.  I don't know what significance are attached to colors but she immediately said there were tons of "browns and greens" around the bar-until she got to me and stopped.

She really stopped and said my colors were quite different and she was having a difficult time sorting them out and we had to really talk sometime.  I just laughed and said she wasn't the first who had said something similar like that to me but I never gave her any further information about me.  It all happened so quick and she never mis gendered me, so I just stored the experience away in my "this gender thing is more than skin deep department".

I have not seen her since and who knows what colors she was reading but the experience was definitely something else to think about from my view on the "gender fence". Maybe someday, I will get my "colors done" and not at a cosmetics counter!