On a Gender Vacation without a Passport

 

JJ Hart

I saw on the news this morning that shortly after the Fourth of July holiday is the busiest time to travel during the year. It got me to thinking about my own major vacations when I shed my male self and began my life as a transfeminine person.

Mainly, I remember the times when I just needed a passport to go past my natural fears, put my cross-dressing past behind me and step into the world of a transgender woman. That invisible passport was difficult for me to come by since I needed to overcome my fragile confidence to step out of my gender shadows to get it. It was difficult because my earliest days of going public as a trans woman were often brutal when the public got ahold of me and I was laughed at routinely. It literally took me years of work in my cross-dressing workbook to get to the point where I could go out into the world and make a good effort to blend in. When I did, I began to earn my vacation away from my male self.

The more vacations away from him that I had, the more I began to appreciate the new world of ciswomen I was allowed into. As rock and roll idol “Billy Idol” was singing, the more I did, I wanted “More, More, More.” (Rebel Yell, 1984) Early on, I was naive and did not realize what I was getting myself into and partially thought my need for a gender passport would eventually burn itself out and go away. But of course, the need to have a passport just burned brighter in my soul. It seemed because of the need for femininity increasingly felt so natural to me.

It turned out at that time, when I was out in the world as a trans woman, either I was getting it very right or very wrong. Mainly because I did not know what I was doing such as how to move the best I could as a woman or how I communicated with other women at the time. Because they were overwhelmingly the only people who were interested in talking to me at all as nearly all men shunned me. I was amazed at how many women in their own unique way wanted to see my gender passport and let me in behind the gender curtain.

It all led me to finally legally change my name with the help of my daughter. We came up with a family name which honored one of my grandparents and my mom too. Who never supported her new daughter, but I forgave her and took her first name as my new middle name anyhow. As a plus, my new initials were easy for my three young grandkids to remember me by, so the name was well accepted by all.

Since I had my new permanent name in place, I could start building a new permanent feminine persona every time I went out to try to carve out a new life as a trans woman. As I was carving, sometimes I hit very hard granite and had to stop and start over until I could find the sandstone softer rock and keep moving towards my gender goal of living fulltime as a transfeminine person. As I carved, I needed to make certain I was always on the outlook for cave-ins which could cause havoc with my male life. Which was still very much in the picture. Because he still controlled most of my life the public saw as well as life with my second wife (who wanted no part of losing a transgender spouse) and a very good job I had at that time too.

As life moved on for me, I discovered brief moments of gender euphoria which kept me going through the dark days of my male to female femininization. Such as when I was able to leave the gay bar venues which I felt uncomfortable in and set out to be accepted in straight sports bars which I knew so well as a man. I was in my gender heaven when I worked my way into regular status in several of the venues I coveted. Once I was accepted by the staff, I could be accepted by their customers also and I thought I had it made. Sadly, by that time the one lesbian bar I used to go to and was accepted in closed its doors and that outlet for me was over.

These days, the closet thing that I have (so far) to an actual passport is my drivers license which has a “F” for female on it and my relocated copies of my name change documents I recently went with my wife Liz on the three-hour round-trip journey to my hometown to pick up. With all the turmoil caused by the idiots in Washington DC it seems in the future I may need a real passport to vote. So, I am getting ready for that if I need one.

Other than that, I am satisfied with the lifetime of progress I have made by having a suitable passport which allows me to live a public life mainly with the acceptance and help of the ciswomen around me. I was able to ignore the occasional hater like the pharmacist long ago when I started HRT who insisted in a crowded pharmacy in screaming loudly did, I know what the Estradiol medications would do to me. Not that she cared, but I promptly took my business elsewhere. It was no business of hers to judge me anyhow and try to out me to the world.

The passport I earned allowed me to open fantastic gender doors that I never thought I could do and the one I need to get will allow me to vote I am afraid here in backwards Ohio. I am not planning to ever travel outside of the country again in my life, so I won’t need a passport for that. Just the one I have already earned the hard way along my gender path.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who take the time to read along with my writing! It always means so much when you take the time to read and comment.

 

 

 

 

 

Just Feeling Good Being Me

 

Image from Mathilda Khoo
on UnSplash.

Just feeling good being me took me years to learn. In fact, I needed to go through three male to female transitions to get there. 

First, I needed to go through all my cross-dressing years and feel the angst of how I looked above everything else. In fact, when I go back and read some of my very early blog posts, all I basically mentioned was my presentation as a woman and not how I felt as one. It probably was because I did not feel transfeminine at all at that point in my life. Or, in other words, I had not matured yet in my journey to transgender womanhood.

I wonder if I had known what a long and winding route, I ended up taking, if I would have still attempted it years later. But it turned out, life had a different path for me than nearly all the other people I knew. Since I was deprived of having any input on where I wanted to go with my gender struggles, I was left on my own to find my way. Many times, the only clues that I got came from the dreams I was having that I was actually a pretty girl and was very disappointed when I still woke up in my male life. I was not feeling good at that point until I could make it back to my makeup and dresses to cross-dress in front of the mirror. That was all well and good, except the time feeling good, or gender euphoria I learned it was called, did not last very long.

Somehow, the good feelings took over regardless and I pursued a feminine life even harder. It did not matter that the more I tried to do to transform myself into a pretty girl could result in disaster if I was ever discovered. I don’t know how I never was, except mom maybe knew and just did not want to bring it up thinking I would outgrow it. It turns out the only thing I outgrew was her clothes and I had to be resourceful to find fashion items that I could add to my wardrobe and wear. Like one day in junior high school, I found a discarded stretchy elastic skirt that fit me, and I brought it home with me and cherished it for years to come. I was fortunate in finding me a pair of girls’ shoes in my size at the store where I had first gone shopping with my own money for makeup. I could even afford them along with being able to buy a new pair of panty hose. To come up with the money, I worked a rural newspaper route and put the money I earned together with money I earned from doing chores around the house. I was on a mission to succeed feeling good as me, as a girl.

The mission was due to be paused as military duty came my way during the Vietnam War as I ended up serving three years in the Army. My new task was to put my cross-dressing life on a back burner as I went away to serve. Even though I was bitter at the time since I was drafted by the government to do something I was totally against, I got a lot of good from it as I traveled the world (covering three continents in three years) and learning powerful lessons about life. Army basic training in particular taught me what I could do to survive on a temporary basis without a skirt and makeup to fall back on.

Even on those long-forced marches I was on, during a not so mild Ft. Knox winter, I learned to always look ahead and not behind me. I used the lesson on the days when I encountered a gender hater or TERF (cis woman gender gatekeeper) who wanted to berate me because I knew I could outlast them. The TERF just couldn’t grasp that I was not there to threaten their femininity, I was there to be me and live mine.

After all that learning experience, I still had a long way to go to feel good about being me. As I always say, I was similar to most other men in not understanding what really goes into a ciswomen’s life. It did not matter that I had spent my life admiring women from afar, I was still a novice at trying to go behind the gender curtain to truly understand a woman’s life. And I would not come close to feeling better about the gender disconnect in my life until I did.

I left the world of gay venues and started to enjoy my new life in either one of the very few lesbian bars which were still open at the time, or one of the big straight sports bars I was used to going to as a man. All I knew was I was being accepted as the transgender woman I always wanted to be as a regular in those venues and I loved putting my old male self completely in my past. The new strangers did not know anything about him and the positives and negatives about his life, and I wanted to keep it that way. Until I found a few friends I could trust. At that point only could I begin to fill out my life’s story to them. While at the same time never alluding to the fact that I ever lived a male life at all.

I was a little slow, but my life came full circle from being a part-time cross-dresser to a transgender woman, back to just being who I was always meant to be (me) and I could feel good about who I was for the first time in my life.

Earlier in this post when I was mentioning my military experience, I wanted to take the time to thank Dana and Bobbie for their input on my Fourth of July post. They were both in the Navy and Bobbie in particular is very active in the state of Michigan pushing equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. I know too there are other trans vets who follow along and I appreciate you too! All of you who just read and or comment are always deeply appreciated. Trans vet or not.

 

 

 

In Praise of Femme Lesbians

 

Image from Alexander Krivitsky
on UnSplash.

Back in the day, femme lesbians were known as “lipstick lesbians” and were usually in heavy demand from butch and super butch women in the community.

As I write this post, it brings back many unique and even pleasant memories for me. Why? It is because during that time in my life, I was desperately seeking where I fit in on the gender spectrum. As I drifted from point A to point B, I discovered the only place I really fit in was with the lesbian community. If I could only be accepted which was far from a given.

It all started with me when I was going to several mixed, male and female gay venues in Columbus, Ohio years ago. One night I was in a very crowded venue trying to get drink when I very butch lesbian offered to buy one for me. It was the first time I felt as if I was in the right place at the right time and someone appreciated me for who I was. It all started me on a path I still am on to this day with my third wife Liz who identifies as a lesbian. She was the one person and only one who had told me she never saw in male in me, but I am getting ahead in my experiences on how I arrived here.

It all basically started seriously when I started to go regularly to two small lesbian venues in Dayton, Ohio. One I was accepted in and one I was not. The one I was not accepted in showed their dislike for me in many ways, including shutting off the juke box when I played Shania Twain’s “I Feel Like a Woman”. No sense of humor at all! The other venue was the total opposite, and I even discovered I knew one of the bartenders from my male life. It was there that I had many exciting adventures into a terrifying world I did not know much about except when I was drawn to it and it was drawn to me. Going all the way back to one of the many diverse parties I went to in Columbus, Ohio when I hit it off with another woman and we took off and visited a very popular gay night spot called “Wall Street”. Since I was still married at the time, nothing happened except again I learned where I really belonged on the gender spectrum.

Through most of it, I was playing the odds, I could explore the world as a femme lesbian and still get home and cleaned up before my wife did. One night in particular was rough when a butch in a cowboy hat demanded that I sing karaoke with her, make no mistake that I am a terrible singer and wanted nothing to do with her but she was convincing and I thought of the only song that I knew to sing to was “David Allan Coe’s You have Never Even Called me By My Name.” And here I was sharing a microphone in my blond wig and tight jeans with a butch in a cowboy hat doing my best to let her do most of the singing. By the way, “David Allan Coe” just passed away recently in his eighties, and after I was done singing, I got the hell out of there when the butch said my voice was lower than hers and I never saw her again.

Other than my brief singing career, I had many more interactions with lesbian women and even my first time I was asked out to dinner came at the request of a super butch who went on to transition completely to a transgender man. Even though I was scared to death, I still managed to have a good time which set me up for future successes when I went to lesbian mixers with my friends. They were shy but I was not and ended up in several interesting situations when one woman said she should buy me a drink and take me home with her (I got the drink but did not go home with her) and the night I was caught kissing a strange woman by the pool table in a venue we were in.

Perhaps, other than the karaoke experience, the evening I was asked by my friend to be her “wing person” and approach another woman about getting her phone number for my friend. I never got that phone number, but I did get a once-in-a-lifetime experience to remember.

Being accepted the way I was by other women saved me from having to consider my sexuality at all. In fact, I was enjoying much more attention as a transgender woman than I ever had as a man when it came to other ciswomen. I think it was because I represented an alternative to many lesbian women who had experienced men in their past and did not identify as “Gold Star” women. Gold Star lesbians identify as women who have never been with a man sexually. To all the ones that did not wear their “stars” proudly, I represented a unique gender middle ground. It helped me too, when the ciswomen I encountered did not have the same sexual hangups that most men seem to carry around with them along with their fragile egos.

Maybe the best part was that I did not have any problems fitting in with my image as a lipstick or femme lesbians and was well aware of all they had in the LGBTQ community to make societal inroads which we always desperately needed. I desperately needed it too as I searched for where I belonged in life. All along I was a femme lesbian hidden behind layers of masculinity waiting to get out and enjoy the world. It was quite the coming out process for me. As I learned I could validate myself as a person without the help of a man which was exceedingly difficult for me to do sexually or mentally. Thanks to all the women I met, I never had to do it.

 

 

It Makes me Sad

 Perhaps you have read about the demise of the lesbian bars around the country. This morning I read  a place in Columbus, Ohio where I used to frequent a bit is now the last remaining lesbian bar in the entire state of Ohio. According to the "Columbus Dispatch" article I read, Slammers is one of only fifteen lesbian bars left in the nation.

Slammers/Columbus

I liked Slammers for any number of reasons including it was a "safe" place for me to go. Unlike the male gay bars I tried to go to. in lesbian bars I enjoyed the music and the fact I wasn't treated as if I was a drag queen. 

Then again too, as I have written about before, lesbian bars played a strong role as I sought to develop myself as a transgender woman. Along the way, I was asked to sing karaoke (or told) by a super butch woman in a cowboy hat who I was never sure if she knew I was trans all the way to being asked to be a "wing person" for a lesbian friend of mine trying to pick up a date.   

It all was a simple choice for me. I felt natural and at home in the bars I went too, except for one lesbian biker bar I went to where they hated me. Plus "Wall Street" in Columbus was my first foray into leaving the friendly confines of the cross dresser mixer I went to. I joined the more ambitious "A" listers for trips to  the lesbian orientated dance club. 

Unfortunately, even then I could feel the demise of the women's bar spaces as the two I went to in Dayton, Ohio closed. Competition proved to be too great from other venues who began to accept a more diverse clientele. 

Covid complications of course have played a role in many closings around the country.  But there is also a venue in Northern Kentucky across the Ohio River from Cincinnati which partially bills itself as a lesbian which is still open.

Still, a part of my transgender youth is missing and I am sad.