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.

 

Reflections on a Theme

 

Image from Alexsandra King
on UnSplash. 

Reflections on a theme could really go several ways.

The first one goes all the way back to my earliest days of gazing in the mirror at my new girl-like figure. Since I did not have much to work with as far as clothes and makeup went, I needed to use a lot of my imagination when I looked at myself. All I remember is, every article of clothing I could wear was cherished and I hoped I did not destroy it and clue my mom into someone had been into her clothes.

On the other hand, makeup was a little easier to hide, since mom had a whole drawer full of used makeup and samples for me to experiment with until I arrived at the point where I did not think I looked like a circus clown doing drag. As I said, imagination played heavily into my girlish pursuits back in those days until one fact came in loud and clear. Just dressing like a girl fell far short of meeting my expectations of how I wanted to feel. More than just looking like a girl, I wanted to know how it would be to feel like one. It turned out to be an idea I would carry with me throughout my life. Little did I know I would be writing about the same theme some fifty years later as I still struggle to understand all the aspects of the gender dysphoria I went through before I just gave up and went to my dominant side which was OK because in her own way my mom was a dominant woman and had to be to survive in the world of men she was in.

I guess you could say mom was the first feminine role model I had. As I reflected on her, I saw a person who worked hard to get a college degree during the depression years then ran off with a man her parents probably did not totally approve of. In other words, she was strong-willed and often got her way. Except for the daughter, she never knew she had who was watching more than just the way she applied her makeup. I was watching how she navigated the world. In my own way, I went through my own great depression as I learned how difficult it was going to be to be a transfeminine person. Long before the term was ever used.

During this time, I spent a lot of time reflecting on who I was and why I was this way. Surely, I was one of a very few boys around me who wanted to be a girl. One of the many ideas I reflected on was the fact that I was simply afraid to go out and compete with the other boys. Which even though was probably true to an extent, I knew I had to do it anyway, so I had no choice but to make a half-hearted attempt at doing boy things to throw gender doubters off my path when they realized what an effeminate boy I really was. Since I was not athletic enough to hang with the jocks or smart enough to hang with the brains, I ended up taking some sort of a middle path with a group of troublemakers which at least kept me away from the bullies. Sadly, there was no group for boys who wanted to be girls.

As I stayed in the mirror for years and years, I built up quite the love for my reflection as I went along. So much so that I caught my reflection lying to me. No matter how ridiculous I looked, the reflection I was seeing told me I looked great which hurt my overall feminine approach to life, out of the mirror. It was not until I gathered all my courage and began to explore the world as a novice crossdresser ot transgender woman, did my reflection begin to change. What happened was, for better or for worse, I traded out my home mirror for one in public. As strangers began to notice me, I very quickly received feedback on my reflection from them. Was I convincing the world that I was a serious transgender woman and not some sort of a joke or someone up to no good that was all the craze back in those days on television and in the movies.

All of this reflection on a theme quickly became very important to me since I had finally made the move to get out of my closet and see the world through the eyes of a very serious trans woman. Soon I reached the point of no return and just had to rely on my home mirror to apply my makeup and fix my hair. The rest was up to me to do in the public’s eye, where my true reflection always was. My theme always should have been I was a feminine based individual all of my life with strong ties to woman role models. My goal never was to be the, “Pretty, pretty princess” as my wife called me. I was just going through a phase so get to a point where I could become a strong independent trans woman. I did not know at the time how much the world would change and I would need every bit of my new self to survive under a corrupt president who wants to erase the LGBTQ community.

Now, when I see myself in the mirror, the only reflection on a theme that I see is me. I am a survivor of my internal gender dysphoria wars and external problems along the way too. Some were interesting, some I learned from and most were quickly forgotten as life intervened. All I know is, I would never have found out if I had been stuck in my reflection on a theme. Which was being a woman. Being stubborn enough to keep pushing ahead was what kept me going. Deep down, I knew I was right.

 

 

 

 

Send in the Clowns?

 Recently I wrote a post concerning my opposition to drag queens having too much of an impact of
various Pride celebrations and received this comment from Connie: 

"It would make for a pretty boring parade if the drag queens were replaced by trans women "just wanting to blend in." Not that one group necessarily shows more pride than the other; just different ways of expressing it. Personally, I much prefer to exhibit my self-pride with a quiet confidence - but, then, I'm not trying to entertain anyone with it. I'm not saying that drag queens are clowns, but I think that they serve the same purpose in a pride parade that the clowns do in a more-traditional parade.

I'm sure that the TV news show file clips of drag queens, when referencing Pride, because it's sensational. The real life of a trans woman or man is rarely newsworthy or sensational. Although, I must say, just being able to be myself feels quite sensational to me!"

To be sure, drag queens make for good television but again the whole spectacle takes away from my respect for the whole event.  

As far as your comment about transgender women just wanting to blend in goes, I would prefer to see any of the trans women or men who are making a difference in the overall community be spotlighted. Perhaps a few of the big corporations are contributing to the event would be made aware of the problems the transgender community faces. Instead of the brief support  given the LGBT community, it could be more of a yearly process. 

Clowns are fun for a day or two promoting their weekend drag shows but do nothing for the transgender community.