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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Playing on the Girl's Team

 

Image from Fa Barbosa
on UnSplash.

I am fond of calling my initiation into the world of ciswomen as being allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox. But recently, I have seen it described as playing on the girls’ team. When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what you call it when you have essentially given up life as you know it to transition into the feminine world.

When I was allowed to play on the girls’ team, of course there were many new things I needed to learn because I was seeking admittance to a new and complex, layered feminine existence. For the longest time as I was learning what life really was like for ciswomen, I took the easy way out by thinking all I needed to do was look the part. This is when my second wife began to mock me by calling me the “Pretty, Pretty Princess.” She was right as my presentation was advancing quickly forward and I had ego trips when women at transgender socials I went to on Long Island, New York mistook me for a real woman and wanted to see a male identification before they would let me in.

Even though I was extremely flattered when they asked for my ID, deep down I knew my wife was right and all I was trying to be was a princess. That was when I tried to begin studying the lives of women around me to discover the deeper meaning of being allowed to play on the girls’ team. Which I knew my wife would never help me with. She was busy with bigger issues such as the possibility of losing her husband to another woman which was me.

Initially, the shock of playing on a different gender team came from losing all of my male privilege such as using my size to bluster my way through life. All of a sudden, my size which I took for granted became a problem for me to disguise with the best fashion choices I could. All I knew for certain was I was told I had good legs at the Halloween parties I attended as a woman, so I tried to build my style from there. All the way to putting together my own tennis outfit even though I had never played a game in my life. Eventually, I needed to back off from showing too much leg and getting kicked off the girls’ team for not blending in and attracting too much attention to myself.

It took a while, but finally I began to realize what feminine privilege was all about and it was so much more than just having men open doors for me. Privildge to me meant I could appreciate the world around me so much more deeply. I had many more avenues to explore in the world once I escaped the restrictive bonds of living in my old unwanted male world. Other women freely interacted with me once I was firmly accepted on the girls’ team and once I learned the rules of engagement and communication, I was able to have so much more enjoyment in my life. Most importantly, I knew I never wanted to go back no matter how many stop signs I faced on my gender path.

Sadly, my second wife passed away before she could see the maturation of her princess into a fully-fledged transfeminine person. Looking back, I don’t think we could have ever stayed married but hopefully we could have remained friends while I continued to fill out my gender workbook. I finally learned I did not have to rely on her assistance to gain admission to the girls’ team because she had given all she could to help me. As with any other female, I needed to find my own way to womanhood. And even though I was not born as a psychical female, I surely thought like one and fought to be one my entire life.

As a novice on the girls’ team, I needed to earn my way also which included many bumps and bruises along the way when I learned I was much more than a cross-dresser who liked to wear women’s clothes, the mental process I went through was much more complex and tougher. To quote an old popular “Kenny Rodgers” song, I had to know when to hold them, know when to fold them and know when to run when I was dealing exclusively with other women.

Fortunately, my newfound acceptance on the girls’ team meant I needed to do very little running. No one came up to me and tried to pull my wig off in public, and for the most part I had to just deal with silence, stares and glares when I encountered a woman who for some reason wanted to hate me. There was one in particular who was also invited to the girls’ nights outs I was invited to who had a problem with me being there. I was able to ignore her for the most part or try to kill her with kindness. Finally, it occurred to me that her problem may not have anything to do with me, it may have been with the world. Maybe she resented the fact that I was happy, and she was miserable.

The more I was allowed to play on the girls’ team, the more I learned from them on the nuances of the new life I so badly wanted to live. Along the way, I never imagined learning so much in such a short amount of time. I also never thought feminine privilege could mean that much to me after I left all my male privilege behind. Especially when the effects of HRT softened my world and improved all my senses,

Whatever you want to call it, playing on the girls’ team or playing in the girls’ sandbox never mattered to me. The most important part was that I made it and rarely got any sand thrown in my face as the princess grew up.

 

I've Got Someone for That

 

JJ Hart on Left, wife Liz on Right. 

Maybe you have seen the commercial on television where a group of men seemingly have an answer for a friend who can solve a certain problem. To a point, then they are all stumped on what to do.

I saw the commercial again this morning and applied it to my path to living a transgender existence. My basic idea was, I did not ever have someone to provide guidance in all my gender issues. In the pre-internet days, which I write about often, I needed to rely on publications such as “Transvestia” or “Tapestry” for any real information on having someone to help me understand what I was going through in my life. I was overjoyed for awhile when the magazines helped lead me to actually meeting in person others at cross-dresser-transgender mixers which were close enough to me so I could attend. Surely, (don’t call me Shirley my name was Karen back in those days) I could meet someone there who I could explain my gender issues to and feel as if I had someone to confide in and help me.

In reality, even after I went to the social mixers, I still did not come away with feeling like I had someone to be my friend. No matter how you defined what the publications called me. A transvestite or a cross-dresser, I just knew I was different and still belonged in the group of men in the commercial who were stumped on what to do. That defined the new groups I was meeting for the first time.

Since I could not find a friend at the mixers, I withdrew into myself and did the best I could cross-dressing and dreaming of a better day in front of the mirror. I was stubborn and kept on attending socials until I began to be invited to smaller parties at a house in nearby Columbus, Ohio. The parties were very diverse, and I learned a lot from the others around me and even developed acquaintances who shared my gender path. Or so I thought because a few of them took a sharp curve away from me and went as far as having gender realignment surgery. Back in those days when you took such a radical step, you were expected to leave your past totally behind and start all over again and I started to drift away from them. Very soon I was stumped again and very confused on where I was going as a transfeminine person.

The only thing I knew for certain was my sexuality did not change when I entered my feminine world. I even was attracted to the very few lesbians who were attending the parties I was going to, and often we would briefly leave to visit other lesbian friendly venues in Columbus. At least it was one small feeling I knew I could count on.

Through it all, I did have someone who was my second wife. On many of the party nights, she would accompany me which sometimes was bad and sometimes it was good. She was the one who saved me from being trapped in a small hallway by a huge admirer one night, which was good, and other nights her presence hindered my ability to expand and test my feminine personality. Sadly, I learned more about myself when she was not around as I considered her my best friend most of the time. She was not the person I needed all the time though, which created huge problems in our long-term relationship. She always knew I was a cross-dresser but drew the line if I drifted towards any of the transgender women at the party.   

At that point, I did feel like I did have someone who understood what I was going through at the party but had the feelings rejected at home. The worst part of the whole thing was, I had gone too far with my transfeminine experimentations to ever turn back but I tried to have the best of both worlds. Save my marriage on one hand and live a part time life as a trans woman on the other. I still carry the guilt coming from the number of times I broke my promise to my wife and left the house dressed when she was at work. I have always described it as cheating on her, with myself.

One way or another, I was gaining confidence in my feminine self to continue to build a new life which felt so natural because for a change I had someone to lean on. For those of you who don’t know, my second wife passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack leaving me with a huge hole in my life along with a truck load of guilt which I could never make up for.

In her sudden absence, I fell back on the only person I knew who could help me as I decided to end my male life for good and live out the remainder of my life as a trans woman. It turned out all the labor of love I put into my femininized life came back to help me because I had all the hard work of refining my presentation behind me. I had a working knowledge of what to do to survive in the world of alpha ciswomen. I just had to refine my new life to a point where I could thrive with new friends. When I had reached new milestones in my life such as HRT hormonal changes, I was met with welcome to our world and knowing smiles rather than masculine scowls and glares. I loved my new life.

The only problem I had was I took too long to transition across the male to female gender border. It turned out I had someone all along to help me if I ever gave her the chance. I was stuck in the good old boys’ male privilege club way too long and it was hard to give up. Once I found someone like my wife Liz to point out the obvious to me, I knew for sure I had that special someone and I could live an authentic life as a transgender woman.

 

Everything Was Fine Until It Wasn't

 

Image from Danny
Messina on UnSplash

Many times, when I was sailing along thoroughly enjoying my feminine self out in the world, I would come to a rude awakening that something was not right. As I experimented as a novice cross-dresser fresh out of the mirror at home, I learned any number of things could be wrong. Including the cruel imposter syndrome which haunted me. A great topic for another blog post.

Or maybe my makeup was not on point, and I looked like a clown in drag, or I had that old male scowl on my face instead of a pleasant little smile which gave away the fact I was not enjoying myself the way I should. But something was wrong as I was doing what I wanted to do for a change, and I needed to show it. Not revert to my old male ways of trying to scare people off before they even started to interact with me. It is something I work on to this day as it is easy for me to fall back into old gender habits. I needed to work hard to put my entire new feminine image into play when I was out or no matter how good my makeup and fashion looked, I was not going anywhere in my development as a transgender woman.

A quick example of the problems I was facing with my face happened one day when I was out shopping in a woman’s clothing store. When I came around a rack of clothes, I was startled by a young girl staring up at me. Worse yet, I was prepared for the worst when she took off looking for her mother. I was semi-relieved when I heard her say, look at the BIG woman, and I thought she had that part right. Until she said, the BIG MEAN woman, and I immediately felt bad that she thought I was mean. From that point forward, I put a slight feminine smile on my face as my final touch of makeup. Everything was right with the world that day (including the little girl who thought I was a woman) until it wasn’t.  Lesson learned.

Changing the way, I looked at the world with my face was just the beginning of improving my overall presentation in the world of ciswomen, young and old. Early on, I paid quite a few brutal dues when it came to encountering groups of teen girls in the malls I went to. We all were in the process of discovering our femininity, and the girls took their humor out on me vocally and it hurt but the process helped me to develop myself to a point where I could better blend in with the new world I was trying to conquer. I just had to learn to conquer in a different way than I had ever had to before. I could not just hope to bluster my way through life as a man which I had gotten used to, I needed to finesse my way through until I began to feel the benefits of female privilege past the occasional man who opened a door for me.

Everything was fine, until I learned I was just getting started on my dream to live a transfeminine future. I had no idea how complex a woman’s life could be with a passive aggressive future in store for me. Plus, a future where for a change, to survive with other women I needed to completely listen to what they were saying and make sure I looked them straight into the eye, so I did not miss any nonverbal communication which was coming my way. Several times, I was helped out of potentially dangerous situations with toxic men by paying close attention to the nonverbal cues being given to me by concerned women with much more experience than me.

For the most part, this time of my life, in my thirties and forties , everything was fine with the gender juggling act I was attempting until I pushed myself too hard, challenged my mental health and continually got in trouble with my second wife who caught me trying to sneak back into the house after a night of living as my newly thriving feminine self. At that point, massive fights occurred which ended with me trying to promise I would never go out again. Which I knew would never happen. Once I had seen the world from my vantage point of a trans woman, deep down I knew I could never go back to a completely male life. I think my wife knew that too and that is why the fights we had became so vicious. Particularly when she told me I made a terrible woman because (in my words) my gender workbook was not filled out, and I had not paid my dues. Which was exactly what I was doing when I went out to live. I was sad I couldn't share my new knowledge with her but it was just not meant to be before she suddenly passed away.

After she died, nothing was fine as I was intensely lonely and needed a shoulder to grieve on. I found that shoulder in a predictable place and she was there all the time, my transgender self. When failure was not an option in my life, all the lonely nights I spent exploring the world around me with other women proved to be an invaluable experience when I learned I did not “make” a terrible woman after all. It turned out, I did not “make” anything at all, I just found my way to a place I always should have been, and everything turned out of be fine and I could take the wasn’t away from it.

I was even happy for the first time in my life as the heavy expectations of a male life I wanted no part of were removed for good. Being free to be the true me was the best move I ever made and my only problem was I did not do it sooner. Everything was fine, it was just hidden from me by myself. When revealed, I was free to never look back.

 

 

A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mayur Gala

Once I stopped being a victim thinking I was the only male in the world who wanted to be feminine, I quit being so negative about my life as a whole. That is when I started to enjoy wearing my mom’s clothes and experimenting with her makeup. All I really knew was that the process of cross dressing took away the problems I was experiencing in everyday male life to the point of even relaxing me. The only real issue I had was when the next time was I could find the privacy to do it.

I even went to the point (in warm weather) of stashing a small collection of clothes and makeup in a hollowed-out tree in a woods next to our house. I was in my own world and enjoyed the privacy I had to feel the clothes and dreaming that I was one of the attractive girls I saw at school and envied very much. At that time, I did not understand how I would take on a lifetime of work to pursue my labor of love.

The first task I needed to accomplish was when I was financially able to do it, was shop for and acquire a whole new set of clothes so I could present better in a world of ciswomen I needed to compete with in many ways. The first task I needed to complete was to slim down my male body as much as I could so I could fit into more stylish clothes I was suddenly finding in all the thrift stores I was shopping at. I liked the stores for two main reasons, the first of which was price of the items displayed and secondly, I never had any problems using the changing rooms to see if the items I was looking at actually fit. Plus, the challenge of doing so much shopping was something I loved. The only problem was where I was going to store away all my fashion treasures from the prying eyes of my wife who would wonder where they came from. Fortunately, we had a huge old house with plenty of places I could store my clothes.

After I began to dramatically improve my worldly presentation and use the public as my mirror, I found myself in a position where I could blend in with the public. To test myself, I even did tricks such as wearing sunglasses where I could see the eyes of the public when they could not see mine. That way, I could tell if they were staring at me or not and I was overjoyed to learn I had passed the test, and the public was ignoring me. From there I could widen my horizons on where I was attempting to go as a novice transgender woman. I was in love!

My love ironically did not last long because very soon, I discovered the public actually wanted to interact with me. Suddenly, I needed to work on a presentable voice so I could attempt to basically communicate mainly with other women since men did not want to have anything to do with me since I left the men’s club, I used to be part of. The fact remained; I did not miss male interaction at all. It was something I never had in my male life either as I always preferred the company of women. Surprisingly to me, as I transitioned, I was having no problem gaining feminine company. Probably because ciswomen for the most part were curious about what I was doing in their world. Plus, the women did not carry the paranoia about their sexuality that men had, they were not scared of me. Finally, I was showing the ultimate honesty about who I was which many women appreciated. For any number of those reasons, I loved the interactions I was having and being able to learn more from them about being a woman than ever before.

The fact I was loving my life at this point as a transfeminine person led me to realize that for the first time, my life was headed in the right direction. I felt so natural and even happy when I followed my gender path to a point where I was allowed behind the gender curtain to see if I really wanted to give up all my male privileges and keep moving forward to my ultimate goal of starting gender affirming hormones or HRT. If I could be approved by a doctor to do it. As I always say, I was approved and the changes were magical and I was in love again.

Before you begin to think my love revolved just around me and not another human being, my future wife Liz came into my life over a decade ago and changed everything. I was in my sixties and was thinking about spending the rest of my life alone when Liz and I met on an online dating site. We got along and she turned out to be the final push I needed to leave the male world behind. She was the missing link I needed to turn my transgender life around, and I love her very much.

It feels good to say that I love someone else more than I love myself or my gender transition for the first time in my life. According to my second wife who died many years ago. It would be interesting to see now what she would have thought about the feminine person I have become.

My final point is it is said you must love yourself before you can truly love someone else. Maybe I needed to learn my true self as a transgender woman before I could love someone else. It certainly took me long enough to love myself, a lifetime for me which spanned over half a century. Once I realized my path was a long labor of love, I learned the hard way I needed to be patient. Which was difficult for me, but I made it through and learned from my labor of love.

 

 

 

 

The Winds of Gender Change

 

Image from Taylor Flowe
on UnSplash. 

Per normal, we have had a very windy spring here in southwestern Ohio USA. For some reason, I have never associated spring with my gender changes like I have during the fall season. I remember vividly the fall evenings I spent driving around feeling melancholy about the fact that I was stuck in my old unwanted male life. Seemingly, forever. Maybe it was because of the trees losing their leaves which set the fall off from the spring. I just knew it was happening.

Fall was especially bad when I was on a six-month delay to go to the Army basic training at FT. Knox, Kentucky. It marked the time for me that I knew I would have three years away from my gender cross-dressing activities which kept me sane at the time. I was afraid of going to basic infantry training as well as losing my ties to my feminine self for the next three years. The only reality to me was that I had no choice but let the winds of change take me away to a new uncertain future.

When I was in the service, my theme song began to be “Call Me the Breeze” by Lynard Skynyrd because of all the moving I was doing from the US to Thailand, to Germany, I was truly able to feel the wind thanks to the efforts of Uncle Sam and his military. I did it so well that I was even offered a promotion if I stayed in an extra year, which I turned down. Instead, I got out and resumed my civilian life at a small radio station I worked at before the winds of gender change got the best of me, and I started to follow my instincts and began to explore the world as a transgender woman. Which was becoming increasingly evident to me was where I fit in in the gender spectrum.

In the beginning, all I had was Halloween parties to express my femininity and even there, I was not doing a good job of doing it. I was stuck trying to do a trashy look when in fact, my inner woman was pushing for a more realistic approach such as being a professional ciswoman. What did happen was, I got the basics of what it would take if I ever threw caution to the wind and went across the gender border from male to female. It was at those parties that I found that all of a sudden, the other women wanted to talk to me while the men left me alone which would be a theme for my life as I transitioned.

Once I left all the Halloween parties behind me, I started to attend small diverse LGBTQ mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio. When I did, it was as if there was one of those huge Hollywood movie fans at my back pushing me forward. From lesbians to transsexuals, all were there so I could judge where I would be if I moved forward in the world. Due to the fact that I was still solidly married and had a very good job, I needed to shut the fan off, or at least put it on a slow speed so I could catch my breath and figure it all out because of the gender complexity it all presented. Did I want to give up my life of male privilege to be a trans woman, at that point in time I was undecided.

It turned out, indecision was my worst enemy as I entered the world to explore it as a transfeminine person. Most of my ventures were ill-advised attempts to be accepted in gay venues in Dayton, Ohio where I was barely welcomed and when I was, it was because they thought I was another drag queen. Which was far from the truth. It was not until the winds of change blew me through the doors of the same sports venues I enjoyed as a man did my world began to turn around for the best. To my amazement, I earned my acceptance in those places easier than the gay bars I was going to, or the lesbian bars which were closing due to lack of business. Before I knew it, I was treated like a regular. Even with the restroom privileges I needed so badly.

I was flying high until the winds of change dictated a change and I crashed to earth when everyone dear to me began to pass away in a two year period. Including my wife of twenty-five years. I was in shock and so lonely I drank too much and took unnecessary chances with my life as the winds of change continued to blow strongly. Every time I thought the winds were receding, they would pick up again threatening to blow me off my high heeled shoes.

I was fortunate when I saw the name of a doctor who would check me out and then prescribe HRT or gender affirming hormones and I took immediate advantage to do something I had wanted to do for a very long time. Sync up my inner person with an exterior which was feminized. Even with the minimum dosage I had to begin with, I could feel and immediate change in several areas such as with my emotions and breast growth. When I began to see myself as a different femininized person in the morning mirror, I was becoming more and more excited over the winds of change which were pushing me ahead into a new exciting world.  

The only part of my being who was not surprised by all the changes was my feminine self who had been hidden away all those years with no way to express herself as when she was in the Army. If patience is a virtue; she had it all as my male self-put on a tremendous fight to maintain what he had earned as far as privileges went. Fortunately, the winds were blowing in the right direction, and she won the ultimate battle for my life. I discovered that without her, I would not have had a life worth living.

 

 

It was Always in my Way

JJ Hart on Left, wife Liz on Right.

Every time I turned around, my gender issues were always in my way. When I was younger and my life was simpler, the issues manifested themselves mainly around the sports I was trying to play. Since I was never good enough to win consistently, I usually had to head home to my makeup, mirror and skirts to feel better. One way or another, I always was soothed by looking at my feminine self in the mirror.

Of course, with age came complexity in life which included a military disruption of three years during the Vietnam War. My Army training very much was in the way of expressing any of my feminine qualities. Drill sergeants frowned upon any miniskirts or lipstick during basic training. So, I needed to resort to deeply hiding my secrets away, not unlike what I had done my entire life. I kept thinking against hope that someday I would be the pretty girl in the new car I was saving up for. I did get the new car, but being the pretty girl was very much up for debate and something I was always trying to achieve.

To remove the obstacles, I faced to living the transgender dreams I had, I needed to do a lot of living I discovered. Life was never going to be as easy as just looking the part of a ciswoman. If I truly wanted to go through all the living to earn the title, I needed to get out of my shell and into the world as a novice trans woman. Sadly, as I followed my gender path, there was always something emerging to get in my way. Such as a wife, family, friends and job which I did not want to risk losing. It seemed the better I did as a man, the more I had to lose.

All along, I thought the gender curtain would be more of a gentle barrier to cross to see how the feminine half of the population lived without men. I was not prepared for all I needed to go through to earn my way to having female privileges to replace the male ones I was losing. To begin with, I was painfully shy and insecure about talking to any other woman at all. Plus, as I learned all the different forms of communication women use, adding them into my world was a challenge. Such as having to stay in the present when someone talked to me and not try to anticipate what they were going to say. I discovered it was much easier to anticipate what a man was going to say from all my years as living as one, than a woman with non-verbal (eye to eye) communication skills. Not to mention, a ciswoman’s passive aggressive behavior which I misjudged several times before I adjusted to the new world I was in.

When I was able to get communication out of my way, I could move on to other obstacles in my way. I was still having problems with putting together a complete convincing picture as a transfeminine person. I had not practiced enough to feel natural in my world of makeup and high heels to feel natural and relax. Every time I was able to relax and enjoy myself as a transgender woman, I would do something to give myself away. It was not until I quit thinking I was fooling anyone into thinking I was a ciswoman did I do better. Mainly because I was just being me. At this point, I needed to overcome another major hurdle I had when I was a man. I never thought, or was raised to think, I was ever good enough to excel in the world and if I could never make it as a man how could I ever make it as a trans woman. It was a major boulder to move from my path.

It took a while, but I did build the self-esteem as a woman that I never had as a man. I did it slowly with the explorations I took into the world. I was able to build the all-important confidence I needed slowly but surely with the help of a totally new set of friends and acquaintances I built up who had no knowledge at all of my former life as a man. As my wife Liz told me, very few people ever have the chance to start over again, so make the best of it and I was able to. Soon enough, I was as comfortable in my tennis shoes as I was in my high heeled boots, and I was able to build upon nothing being in my way as I built my female privilege.

I knew then, I had made the right choice to follow my dreams into a trans woman world because I felt so natural. The light at the end of the tunnel was not the train as it beckoned me into a new world. It turned out, the main thing that was in my way all along was myself. Once I got me out of the way and for once was truthful with myself, I was able to move forward with a mental clarity I had never known before.

It was certainly worth the struggle to make sure my second chance in life was worth it. Sure, my gender issues were a major hurdle to move but it was no big surprise when I considered how deep gender runs in all humans. In many senses, discovering the true nature of me made life that much more interesting.

 

 

 

 

Imagination or Knowledge

 

JJ Hart. 

In the very beginning of my transgender journey, I often wondered if it was all just part of my very active imagination. Perhaps it was all part of me secretly hoping all of my gender issues would magically go away.

Of course, my gender dysphoria never went away until much later in life when I faced up to it and all I was doing as I viewed myself in the mirror cross-dressed as a girl, was slowly instill the knowledge my trans desires were not going anywhere. In fact, back in those days, the transgender term had not even been invented to use at all. I was living in the pre-internet “dark ages” of information. All I had was the well-worn issue of “Transvestia” from Virginia Prince to connect me at all to the world of people who had the same gender issues as I did. Closets were impossibly dark and lonely back then.

It took the knowledge of my situation to finally break into the light and see the world as a small part of who I really was. I finally used my issue of “Transvestia” to locate nearby mixers which were headlined for heterosexual transvestites only. If that was true or not, I found a diverse mixture of people attending which ranged from beginning cross-dressers all the way to impossibly feminine transsexual women heading for gender surgeries. The frustrating part for me was that even with the choice of individuals I felt close to, I could not find a group to hang out with. I was frustrated that I had come this far to still feel this completely different. The light was there, but it was very dim due to my complete misunderstanding of who I really was.

The one fact I was waking up to was that none of what I was feeling was my imagination. My gender issues ran very deep and would be very difficult to solve. As I always point out, since I was so busy being an active man at the time, the conflict was real. Once I realized what I was really battling. On the plus side, about this time, the internet became part of my life, and I was able to see and even reach out to others like me. It was all well and good until my second wife, who was more computer savvy than me, caught on to what I was doing and tried to stop me. After I used my imagination to find ways around her, I was still able to build knowledge of what it would look like if I was actually able to enter the world as a transgender woman.

Once I began to really explore the world as a novice transfeminine person, I really had to use my imagination to succeed in getting out every spare moment I had from work. I would purposely schedule myself off from my work on the days I knew my wife was going to be working late just so I had free time for exploration, is a prime example. In that case, imagination became knowledge as I actually began to explore what I needed to explore behind the gender curtain. Even to the point of making new friends who had no knowledge at all of my previous male life which I was trying hard to do away with.

More importantly, as I sat myself up for success in venues I really wanted to be in as a woman, imagination further faded as knowledge sat in as I was able to fill out my gender notebook. No more gay venues for me where I was treated as a drag queen and even ignored when I tried to order a drink, all the way to be treated as a regular where I wanted to be was the knowledge that I needed to succeed further.

During this time also, I spent a lot of time soul searching about if I was doing the right thing about attempting to femininize myself even more with my new lifestyle and going even further my seeing it I could be approved for HRT. Mainly because I felt so natural as my feminine self among ciswomen, I thought I would take the path of least resistance and continue building knowledge of taking the gender leap I was considering. In essence, I was taking all the imagination that the young girl in front of the mirror away and replacing it with the knowledge of what I could expect living as a fulltime transgender woman. I needed all the knowledge I could get because the risks in jumping the gender border were so great. It all meant saying goodbye to all the male privileges I had worked so hard to build up. Not to mention the extra pressure of the possibility of giving up spouse, family, friends and employment as I knew it. I needed to be prepared to burn it all and start over.

What I ended up doing was, hedging my bets a little by making new friends in a new feminine life which I hoped would soften the fall if I decided to jump off the cliff and never go back to my male self. At this point, I always mention all the women who helped me along but somehow, I miss the most important one, my inner female who came through in a big way when she was allowed to run my life for a change. Once I gave her the platform to flourish, there was no imagination of the path she was going to take.  She took the highroad without all the evilness you see in some fulltime transgender women. She just wanted to enjoy her life and be an active part of the world and the LGBTQ community. And she wanted to help others by writing about her experiences.

Which brings me full circle to where I am today. No imagination, just the knowledge of experience to get me by in the world.

 

 

 

When Gender Calls

 

Image from Brooke Cagel on UnSplash. 

When I was very young, when I listened closely, I could hear the faint sound of my true gender calling me.

Please keep in mind that very early on I could not quite understand what the voice was trying to tell me. I just knew something was not right. As I grew older and started experimenting with Mom’s clothes (even to the point of shaving my legs), did I have a basic understanding of what the voice was trying to tell me. From the first view of myself in our full-length hallway mirror, I had an idea that I had arrived in the right place as I stared at the pretty girl that I had a hand in creating.

It was then that the real gender work began. The first problem I had was trying to find the private time I had to cross-dress. And once I did, when would I have the time to do it again as the gender pressure built on me every time. What I did not understand and wouldn’t for many years was that I was much more than someone who just wanted to wear pretty feminine clothing. My true gender was calling and would never be satisfied until it was properly expressed. Even though I did not fully understand the path I was on and would have to accept it over the years to come. Especially all the blind curves and stop signs I ran into. I was not prepared for all the trials and tribulations I would have to go through to even try to pursue my gender dreams which always had to do with living a transfeminine life. At that time, the phrase had not yet been invented or used, so all I knew was I wanted to be a woman with all the perceived benefits which came with it.

Jumping ahead, the benefits of living as a full-time trans woman were there but just vastly different that I thought they would be. I still had the joy of selecting and wearing pretty clothes which changed with the seasons. It turned out, some of the enjoyment was taken away when I needed to pick out an outfit every day when I gave away all my male clothes and the reality of my existence set in. I guess you could say the novelty of dressing like a woman became a necessity when my gender called.

Speaking of my gender calling, I needed to learn how to accept it when it was trying to get through in my busy life as a man. I knew who was calling all of the time, I was just afraid of facing the reality of me answering it. I ran from it until I could run no more and I had myself painted into a feminine corner of reality I could not get out of.

What I am referring to is all the nights I went out as a trans woman to be alone and ended up socializing and carving out a new life faster than I ever thought possible. Suddenly, my gender phone was ringing off the hook and demanding more and more attention. The conversations became deeper and deeper as discussions about spouses, family and jobs took center stage. At a crucial point, I needed to lose all my fears of debating the pros and cons of gender change and consider the future which increasingly looked feminine to me. I respected the world of ciswomen from all angles, and I wanted to explore my desire to fit in more and more.

Finally, my gender voice became mildly abusive and challenged me to think deeply about the life situation I was in. What was I doing by constantly fighting a situation where I felt natural and good at. For once, I put my stubborn male self behind me and listened. Sure, there were bound to be bigots and haters still on my path, but I would have to ignore them and stand up for myself. The availability of gender affirming hormones or HRT helped me a lot because the hormones softened my skin and harsh male facial angles and made it easier to present a feminine face to the public. Which in turn, gave me more confidence. For the first time in my life, my external and internal features came close to matching.

At least now, my gender voice could quit screaming and calling me stupid for the way I was trying to run my life. Then perhaps, I could answer my gender phone and think about more pressing issues such as how I was going to run my life as a successful, happy transgender woman since happiness was something which eluded me for most of my life.

During a classic “if I had known then what I know now” moment, if I had known way back in my past how deep my gender issues ran, I was so much more than someone who enjoyed wearing feminine clothes. I wanted to be a woman as my ultimate goal in life. It would have been nice too, to have other guidance to help me along in my gender dysphoria struggles. In those days, not only were there not any qualified therapists to help, but there also wasn’t even internet to refer to for information so our closets were very lonely and dark.

Certainly, the one thing missing in my closet was a phone so I could talk when gender called. Maybe it would have saved me a great amount of stress and turmoil. I say maybe because of who knows, I would have had the maturity and courage to lick up the phone and have a honest and far-reaching discussion with myself about who I really was.

Maybe, when your gender calls, there will be a real person such as a supporting spouse to talk to about your life. So many transgender women and transgender men don’t have that luxury. One way or another, pick up the phone and talk. It could be the best therapy for you.

 

 

 

No Matter Where you Go...There you Are

 

JJ Hart, Cincinnati Pride, 
Three years ago.

I always thought no matter where you go, there you are was meant to be a humorous statement, until I lived it during searching for my transgender roots.

Often, I have written about the time and effort I put into moving myself and my family as I switched jobs flutily trying to find my dream of having a feminine future. Sadly, it seemed, after a short time, I was back to where I started. Spinning my tires and getting nowhere. That person I was looking at in the mirror just would not change. When that happened, I would start taking bigger and bigger chances with my future probably hoping someone else would discover my deep dark gender secret. No one except my second wife ever did to any extent, so I was forced again to face my gender dysphoria on my own.

The problem was I was not ready to face my truth as one therapist told me that I was the only one who could make the final call on my gender needs. Would I be a man or a woman was a dauting idea for me, and for the longest time, ran from my decision.

What I tried to do was research how it would be to be a woman in the world I was in. Again, hoping I would receive a magical answer on which way I should go. As close as I came was the days which I was able to pass as a presentable ciswoman. I started doing things such as specific duties such as going to the grocery store, for example, where I was able to literally melt a teen grocery bagger in my big fluffy sweater and mini skirt which was the fashion of the day. It was eye opening because it was the first time I had ever had that sort of a reaction from a male at all. Ironically, all it did was make me feel good about my feminine self for a short time as I prepared to enter the world. No matter where I went, there I was.

Where I was, was a spot where I needed to face reality. Was I going to listen to my wife and never go out explore the world as a woman or stay at home and pass the time drinking and dreaming of the next time, I had the courage to go out. Every time the call to go out came up I had to answer to save what was left of my mental health, and I hit the road doing slutty things such as flashing semi-trucks in my miniskirts. Somehow, I was under the mistaken impression it all gave me validation as a woman. It did not and I outgrew the temptation quickly and went back to doing weekly chores such as trips to the grocery stores.

It wasn’t until much later in my life when I started to truly understand where I should be in the world. I left the gay venues I was frequenting and started exclusively going to the lesbian and straight bars all together to see if I could make it in a world that I enjoyed. In those cases where I went, there I was and I liked it. The world was a blur of excitement and trepidation as I tried more and more venues to see if I would be accepted, and I found in some I was.

Before I knew it, and had the where with all to acknowledge it, I was moving from the transgender woman image I had of myself. I was slowly becoming the best version of me, and one I had dreamed of my entire life. Being just me meant that for once, no matter where I went, there you are meant something basic to me. Getting there was never easy and I took a lot of chances, but I made it through many storms and high winds to make it. Looking back, I don’t know how I did.

Being just me brought me deep satisfaction and allowed me to allow myself to let my feminine side rule my world. There was nothing I could do about always being a transfeminine person, but being a quality version of me was going to be a work in progress as I meshed all my virtues together. The problem then became recognizing exactly what my virtues were and what I could take from living on both sides of the main gender binaries, male and female. I needed to look at the process as a blessing that few humans get to go through rather than a curse that most haters and bigots said it was.

When I took my life firmly in control and was able to surround myself with strong allies, finding out where I was stepped out of the mist and into the sunlight. In the bright light, I found I could be a nice quality person that people responded to as me, not because I was transgender.

At that point, no matter where you go, there you are became very real to me because I had landed squarely where I wanted to be. Sure, I took a long winding path to get here, but now I am finally proud to say I am just me. Certainly, I would not recommend all the running and drinking I did to anyone else but hopefully you can find your own path which brings you to the stage of just being you. And sometimes, all the things we do to survive our gender issues make for a more interesting life than most people have. At least it worked for me as I made my way through the no matter where you go, there you are phase of my life. Which turned out to be most of it. Hopefully you don’t have to take fifty years like I did to have the courage to do what is right for you.

 

More Euphoria

 

Image from Marcus Winkler 
on UnSplash.

Yesterday, I wrote a post describing the joys of gender euphoria and promptly received this comment from “Joey”:

“Hello JJ! I am Joey. I discovered your blog today from a link on Stana's blog, femulate.org I am a crossdresser who presents male while wearing tasteful, feminine outfits. I do feel some euphoria, primarily when I have been out in normal life while dressed pretty for a couple of hours, and all of the stress hormones go away. Only my wife and a few other people know about this side of my life, so it is stressful when I go out in public every week or two. But after the stress, it is very freeing and happy!”

First of all, Joey, welcome to the blog! Hope you enjoy it. The feelings you described were similar to mine too. I know I could not wait until I could shed my male clothes, wear something pretty and sample what the world had to offer for me that day before I had to go back to my old boring stressful male existence. Sure, I felt stress going out as a transgender woman when I first started to do it, but it was nothing compared to my male life. When I was mistaken for a ciswoman, my heart literally sang with joy, and the best part about it was, it all felt so natural. What a homecoming!

My only caution about seeking out more of the male to female femininization process is, it led me to take premature chances with my life. I did not understand all the layers that went into a woman’s life and the only way to gain understanding was by doing it. It was only then that I was given the opportunity to look behind the gender curtain to see what really went on. As I did, I was surprised to learn that many things were the same and women learn in their lives to keep certain things secret from men. Which is why both genders have such a difficult time understanding each other. For example, ciswomen have developed two basic ways of negotiating their lives which have to be understood by any novice transgender woman.

The first is the use of non-verbal communication. Women often give information to other women through their eyes and bypass men all together. I can’t tell you how many silent warnings I got from other women when I was in potential danger from a toxic male.  The second major lesson I learned was how to operate in the new world of passive aggressive women. I needed to have my head on a swivel to look for some other woman coming after me after she initially was smiling and was nice to me. I looked at both of these major changes in my life as just another way of playing the game, and the only problem I had was switching gears when I had to go back to my male life. I had built a career of being aggressive in my business and the change was often difficult for my mental health.

Even though the path went quite slowly for me several times in my life, on occasion, it sped up. Almost to the point of being out of control. My male self-had a unique way of saving his existence when it was on the brink of being taken away. Which made matters worse in my convoluted gender world. How could he continue to be so strong in his resistance when my gender euphoria was so strong when I was successful as a trans woman? I am sure you can understand my dilemma and perhaps have even been there yourself. Somehow, someway, I needed to arrive at a point where I did not define myself as a transgender woman. I defined myself as just me.

Sadly, that point did not come for many years in my life. As my male self-fought long and hard for his right to live on in the world he was successful in. Many times, I good old shot of gender euphoria was all I had to keep going if I was ever going to have a chance of reaching my feminine dream of attempting to live full time. Fortunately, for my life-long dreams, my gender euphoria turned out to be strong too, in its own way. Far past the feel of hose on shaved legs and the sound of my high heels when I walked, all the way to having the confidence knowing who I was. Acquiring the ability to look and another woman eye to eye and communicate on her level was so important to me as I needed to break the communication gap I had with the world when I started to live as a transgender woman.

I am aware that gender euphoria can be different for all of us as we follow our gender paths. Referring back to “Joey’s” comment that she enjoyed being tastefully dressed when she went out. That became so important to me too when I was able to begin to blend into the everyday world as I knew it. Out went the too short miniskirts, replaced my more tasteful denim skirts was a prime example. I was told my legs were always a fashion positive for me so I wanted to show them, but I learned moderation was the best way to go when it came to my male to female femininization process. When I did, my moderation led to a different kind of gender euphoria when I searched for the best way to find my dream.

Euphoria, I found, is also joy of living in a feminine world. Where I always dreamed, I could be. More importantly, once I got there and was living my dream, it was everything I thought it could be and I started to wish I had not waited so long to do it. Of course, thinking that way was just wishful thinking because we are given only one life to live.

I learned I had made the best choice I could and living as a woman was the way to do it.