Honesty was Always the Best Policy

 

Image from Jon Tyson on 
UnSplash. 

Very early on in my life, I thought my default mechanism to anyone challenging my masculinity would be to lie about it. Fortunately, I did not have to take that route often because of all the elaborate ways I utilized to hide my feminine desires. Examples were the times I was competing in sports or working on cars. People close to me just assumed I was a “normal” male.

It wasn’t until much later in life when I began to get serious about dating women, did honesty become a real priority when it came to explaining my life. My first experience with telling a woman I was serious about, has been relayed several times here as recently as in the last several days. She is the one I coerced into dressing me head to toe as a woman which was the first time a ciswoman had attempted to do it for me. The whole plan turned out to be a disaster because of so many things. As I have mentioned before, I just wasn’t that impressed with the outcome she presented to me as she applied my makeup and the long blond wig I so desperately wanted. By then, I had spent years doing my own makeup and I thought I did a better job.

Little did I know that disappointment would only be the beginning of many with her. Being honest in our relationship early on led to an engagement but then a total break up because of a date I had with Uncle Sam and the Vietnam War. Rather than support me as I served, my then fiancé insisted I tell the draft board and the world I was gay to try to not get drafted which would have been a total lie. I knew I was a cross dresser but also had a pretty good idea I was not gay. Instead of wrecking my personal life as I knew it, we broke the engagement and went on our not so merry ways. I knew where I was headed, the US Army for three years. It was not the most pleasant time I ever spent in my life, but at least I was honest with myself.

Time went by in the Army until I found myself in a place to exercise some of my cross-dressing desires by going to a hospital Halloween party I was invited to by friends. By doing so, I through caution to the wind and decided to go all out dressed as a woman. I only had about eight months or so to go in the Army, so I was willing to risk getting in trouble to satisfy my need to cross-dress after such a long time of being denied.

All three of my closest friends that I socialized with all the time were at the party too, and as luck would have it, several weeks later, the subject of our “costumes” came up after a long night of enjoying very good German beer. When my turn came to talk about how I had went to all the effort to femininize myself for one night (including shaving my legs), I finally just was honest with my friends and told them I was a transvestite and the Halloween party was far from being just a one night deal of seeing what it would be like to dress as a woman. It was the first time I had ever admitted to anyone that I had a fondness for being a woman, so it was quite the liberating experience.

It was also a far-reaching experience because included in my group of friends was a woman who I got to know quite well. So, well in fact that later on we went on to be married and she became the mother of my only daughter who I cherish to this day and is one of my biggest supporters. Obviously, from day one in our relationship, she was aware of my feminine desires and accepted them.

Much of the same happened with my second wife, who was much more strong willed than wife number one. Even so, I felt honesty was the best policy and I nervously told her again I was a transvestite or cross-dresser before we were married. Ironically, the problem came with me not cheating on her with myself. What I was increasingly doing was doing exactly what I had sworn not to do. Leave the house dressed as a woman. By doing so, I broke one of the main bonds of our marriage which was not lying to her about what I was doing all the time.

Needless to say, like any other ciswoman, my second wife had keen instincts of what I was doing and was constantly on the outlook for things like extra forgotten makeup on my face when I was out and about as a novice trans woman. Since I prided myself in the rest of my life on my honesty, the constant lying I was doing to the woman I loved broke my heart. Especially when I could not stop doing it.

My heart was further shattered when she passed away quite unexpectedly from a massive heart attack and I was on my own after twenty-five years of marriage. The only redeeming thing I did was completely purge my feminine side for six months before she died. Even to the point of growing a beard. It was the only thing I could do to try to redeem myself.

Ironically, her death forced open the biggest door to my honesty there was, being honest with myself. When I looked deep, I found that all along I had been just wasting my time trying to be a man with all the privilege that came with it. I had learned to play the male game effectively but did not want any thing to do with my gender prizes after I won them. Being honest with myself for a change was the best feeling of all except I did feel guilty about all the stress and tension I had put others through because of my inner weakness. Total honesty certainly would have been the best policy in my life.

 

 

 

 

I Needed Help

 

Image from Kelly Sikkema on UnSplash.

Starting at the very beginning of my long gender journey, it seemed I needed help at every turn.

For the longest time, I thought any ciswoman could help me improve my major concern of just looking as feminine as I could. When it finally happened to me in my college days, I was so practiced in the art of makeup, I thought I could still do a better job than the woman who was working on me. I was truly disappointed and all I ended up doing was out myself as a transvestite (or cross-dresser) to someone who would hold it against me later in life. Lesson learned and it took me years to trust anyone at all with my secret. Ironically, my secret carried over all the way to the transgender-crossdresser mixer where I had the courage to take off my wig and makeup and experience the makeup magic of a professional artist. “He” was able to work wonders with my appearance and even explain what he was doing. More than any ciswoman had ever been able to do for me. So it wasn’t a woman at all who helped me initially, it was a man.

As the years flew by though, the next help I tried was therapy. I needed it to help save my long-term marriage to my second wife who was always against me leaving the house as a transfeminine person. Several times, when she caught me, I volunteered to go therapy to hopefully solve my “problem”. It turns out, therapy ran the gamut for me from very good to very bad. But overall, the good was very good and outdid the very bad, where the therapist did not know anything about gender issues or even care to learn by listening to me. I even went to the extent of driving a long distance to one of the only practicing gender therapists in Ohio at that time. She was good and even was the first therapist to diagnose my Bi-polar depression at a time when I had to fight a major battle just to get out of bed and go to work.

On top of that, she gave me the best advice that I have never listened to. That she could do nothing about me wanting to be a girl. Only I could fight that battle, if I chose to. As I said, I chose not to listen and went on to fight a losing gender battle for years which turned out to be a waste of time and energy.

The next therapist of note that I had turned out to be a match made in heaven by such a place as the Veterans’ Administration. When I applied for gender affirming hormones under VA’s new program way back then, I had to go through therapy to be approved. It ended up working so well that not only did my new therapist pave the way for HRT, but she also ended up producing the paperwork I needed to change my legal gender markers within the VA and in the outside world too. I was with her for years before she moved on to another hospital and now the only therapy, I need is the LGBTQ support group meeting I attend most every Friday.

As you can tell, therapy has been a mixed blessing for me. At times, it is a total waste of time and energy but at other times a real-life saver. Perhaps it was my own fault because I did not understand you can only get out of therapy what you put into it. Being the self-contained, stubborn person that I am, it took me a while to understand what I was trying to accomplish.

As I backed off therapy as my major impact in my male to female femininization process, I began to rely on my dealings with the public to get me by in life. I still needed major help, but I needed to find different places to find it. That is where my socialization process as a transgender woman became so valuable. Since I had become a social person as a male before my wife and close friends had all passed away, I was intensely lonely with no where to turn except to my inner feminine self.

She guided me slowly to a spot where I still needed help but could hide it. What I mean is I could learn from every social interaction I encountered. The small group of ciswomen I socialized with became my teachers and even my protectors without them even realizing it. I was going through a master’s class in gender at such a rapid pace I could not believe my good fortune. For the first time in my life, other women were coming to me for help as a transgender woman. They sensed my background in both the major binary genders could prove to be valuable lessons for them as women with men.

It felt good to me to be able to pay forward in any small way I could any of the lessons I had learned the hard way. Being with therapy or any other help I could give. It is another reason I decided to start blogging about my gender dysphoria so many years before. It is interesting to read any of those ancient posts and see how many of them just revolved my appearance as a cross dresser before I transitioned into a full-time trans woman.

Sometimes too, help can come in ways when you least expect it. From a supporting spouse, all the way to finding your whole new LGBTQ community, there are many ways to find help. Hopefully, you can find your own help. No matter how large or small it could be. Just be ready to accept it when it is offered.

 

Innocence Lost

 

JJ Hart

Looking back at my long life, I reflected on the more innocent times, or were they?

One of the many things that amuse me about a certain political movement that pretends to want to make America great again, was when was it great? Was it the pre-civil rights era struggles of the 1950’s? Or the seismic changes of the 1960’s when the Vietnam War raged on. Plus, it is easy to forget how much of this country was built on the back of slavery.

During the 50’s as I was watching the plethora of westerns on our new television, I was also running to cross-dress in front of my mirror and pretended I was the pretty girl I saw on television being saved by the handsome cowboy. Totally ignoring the fact that the native Americans fighting the cowboys and Army were fighting for their land which was being stolen from them. But I stayed innocent behind my skirts and makeup until the Vietnam War caught up with me. Which made it impossible for me to remain neutral anymore. What the hell were we doing as a country fighting a losing war in a southeast Asian country anyhow?

It was about that time that I had to draw a line in the sand and reject the beliefs of my “greatest generation parents” who had survived a great depression as well as WWII. I just could not accept their thoughts about life any longer which included my ideas about my gender. Which were developing quickly. I knew for the longest time that something was wrong in my life, I just couldn't tell completely what it was.

Again, it was the military which covered up my desire to be feminine. Going away to Army basic training proved to the most dedicated people watching me that I was nothing more than a so-called normal male. All my time in the military did was strengthen my idea of who I was as a human and give me the extra ability to take advantage of who I truly was as a transfeminine person. Around this time also, was when I discovered the power of the internet which led me to a whole wide world of information and people to know. The people were the first I ever met who shared the same transgender desires than I did. My innocence was forever lost.

As I became more active in the world as a transgender woman and transitioned from being a serious cross dresser, I found I did not have the same rights as the typical American was supposed to have. For awhile under a previous President, our trans situation was better such as transgender military members being allowed to serve their country. Today, all that has changed of course under the current regime in Washington. I can’t say any of my innocence was lost because I could see all of this happening years ago when he was elected for the first time.

Even though, we transgender women and trans men make up a very small portion of the population we have to bear the unrestricted hate and bigotry of one of the political parties which is heart breaking to me. Especially when I need to take into consideration the transgender youth in the country who will have to fight these unfair laws forever it seems. Their innocence never had a chance to start before it was disrupted.

How do we truly make America great again? Try to restore the basic goodness of people everywhere. While I was in the hospital, I had several nurses tell me how mean the public has become. So, it is just not towards transgender people at all. It all starts at the top in Washington and works its way downward into society.  At my age of seventy six, my age of innocence was lost years ago when I first glimpsed myself as a girl in the mirror. Even then I knew I needed more than clothes to succeed in life as a feminine person. I just wish I had acted on my desires earlier. Other than that, I fear we have lost years of developing a creative nurturing society that we need to help all of us. Including the small but vibrant transgender community. Who can’t afford to take many more shots.

I wish I could be more positive about our lives, but I am just looking at my life as I see it and comparing it to my past. I just hope together we can all make it. Innocence or not.

 

 

Solving the Gender Puzzle

Christine Jorgensen. 

Many times, during my life, I have looked at my gender issues as having a big puzzle to solve.

From my earliest age of recollection, I can remember thinking that something about me was really wrong, but I could not put my finger on what the problem exactly was. Most likely, it was not until I began to have a fascination with my mom’s clothes did, I began to discover what the puzzle I had was really all about. At that point did I embark on a lifetime journey or path to figure it out. I had no idea of all the twists and turns my path would take me on until I could finally put the pieces of my gender puzzle together.

Perhaps the biggest part of the puzzle to me was the fact that I was born into a male world with no way out in sight. I lived in a rural area around the same kids growing up from kindergarten through ninth grade, so I figured no one else had the same puzzle to solve that I did. Plus, in the pre-internet days, when I was growing up, there was no easy way to access any outside information. Especially none as radical as having anything to do with gender issues. As close as I could come was sneaking a look at all the “National Enquirer” type trash rags at a friend of mine’s aunt’s small neighborhood convenience store. Every once in a while, they would run a sensationalized story about “Christine Jorgensen” or another G. I. who wanted to change his/her sex. I remember the first time I saw one of the stories, I was hooked and could not wait to go back and look for more stories.

In some ways, just looking at these stories made finding pieces to my puzzle even more difficult to do. There was just no way I could ever see myself ever arriving at the point where I could go through such drastic measures to be a woman. I would just have to rely on my dreams to give me hope of ever living my life the way I wanted. Which of course was that of a transfeminine person. Hell, the word did not even exist back then in the sixties and having any sort of gender dysphoria was still considered to be a form of mental illness. Any hope of piecing together my gender puzzle would somehow just have to wait. For a bigger problem called military duty.

As I entered my formative years of high school, the Vietnam War was still escalating and the government had to establish a military draft to fill the ranks of unwilling participants, which included me. With all the stress hanging over me, I went off to college to at least prolong the draft position I had for four more years. Surely, the war would be over by then, but it wasn’t and it was my time to serve in the Army. I had the dual problems of not wanting to experience a military career from what it might do to me along with the problems I would have expressed any of my gender issues which I was just starting to do when I was drafted. My one certainty was miniskirts on soldiers would be frowned upon in Army basic training. Any work on my gender puzzle would have to wait for three long years.

Three years later, I survived my military service much better than I ever thought possible. I got to travel the world on Uncle Sam’s dime and even was able to experience the beautiful, exotic “Lady Boys” of Thailand when I was stationed there for a year. Even though I was fascinated with their culture, I was never brave enough to approach. Much later on, when I was in Germany, I gathered my courage to go to a hospital Halloween party dressed head to toe as a woman which led me later to my first coming out piece to my puzzle. Over huge amounts of good German beer one night, I admitted to three of my closest friends that my Halloween “costume” was more than a one-time deal. I was a transvestite and was attracted to dressing like a woman. Luckily for me, no one else cared and my secret was safe for the remaining six months I had to serve in the Army.

After I had served my time in the military, piecing together my gender puzzle became a bigger priority. Initially, I needed to rely on Halloween parties every year to express my need for public exposure as a transgender woman as by that time, I was realizing I was much more than a cross-dressing part-time guy. One of the biggest “aha” moments of my life came the night I made the mental shift from cross dresser to transgender woman and went out into the world. Despite being scared to death, I made the evening a success and knew deep down there was no going back. I had found a giant piece to my puzzle and I began to wonder what took me so long.

From then on, the pieces to my giant puzzle began to come together quickly as I began to carve out a life for myself in a world of cisgender women. To this day, the path I took seemed like a blur and once I began rolling downhill towards living my dream I could not stop. I was going crazy looking for the final pieces of my puzzle until I discovered the magic of gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones evened out my testosterone poisoned personality and enabled me to feel emotions I never realized I had. For the first time ever, I was able to feel the feminine way I tried so hard to appear like.

I have never been good at puzzles my entire life and find them to be exceedingly boring and frustrating…except my gender puzzle. Even though I don’t think I will ever finish it in this lifetime, the amount of work I put into it turned out to be very satisfying and just what the therapist in me ordered. I was able to finish to the point where I could see myself in the puzzle and was satisfied with what I saw.

  

Meeting a Hero's Wife

 

Image from UnSplash.

This is a short post which basically revolves around the unexpected meeting I had yesterday with a very special person.

Nearly every Friday afternoon I attend a LGBTQ support group (virtually) at the Dayton, Ohio Veteran’s Administration hospital.

It is one of the best support groups I have ever been involved in, and it is rare that all the original attendees still come to the meetings. It is a very diverse group with everyone from gay men and lesbians to transgender women like me. Yesterday we had a full house including a new participant who I assumed to be a questioning lesbian ciswoman.

I turned out to be very wrong and as the hour meeting went on the moderator very skillfully brought it out of her why she was there. It turns out she is the wife of a hero. Her spouse is one of the transgender service persons forced to leave the military by the supreme coward who dodged the draft “Captain Bone Spurs.” Better known as president tRumpt. When she told their story, I was wowed and expressed my position that her spouse was a true hero and would she be joining the group in the future.

Since she said, they were just exploring the area for LGBTQ contacts, that would be a real possibility. And I was thrilled to have the chance to meet her. So, I will see if I have the chance after the Christmas holiday when we have our next support session. I will let you know what happens.

In the meantime, my wife Liz and I will not be attending any concerts by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this season. Years ago, I tested my courage and even found a sequined formal dress to wear to a holiday concert with Liz. Even though, it was not my favorite form of music, I managed to calm down and enjoy the show when I learned not everyone else was looking at me.

We even stopped for drinks on the way home (in an Uber) so we would not have to drive and had a great time. Since Liz is a Wiccan, we don’t celebrate Christmas as such, we celebrate Yule instead which is close since the Christians “borrowed” Christmas from the pagans in ancient times. Plus, my daughter converted to Judaism years ago, so I am pretty much left out of the Christmas holidays altogether which is a total change from the years with my second wife who was a fanatic. Poetic justice, I guess.

Even though those days are past me, I am fortunate to still have Liz’s family to feel the holiday warmth from. I know many in the transgender community are not so well off this time of year.

For me, just the chance to meet a hero’s wife in person was a huge gift unto itself. As I said, I hope she comes back for more interaction and brings the hero with her.

 

 

A Marathon not a Sprint

 

Image from Peter Boccia
on UnSplash.

In my life, I have rarely ever had to run any distance at all. The only times when I did was when I played football and was in the Army. So, I was never a sprinter until I discovered my love of cross dressing as close as I could to a pretty girl. I could not wait until I came home from football practice, and no one was home so I could put on a short skirt like the cheerleaders I admired so much, were wearing.

I wonder now, if I knew how long it would take me and all the trials and tribulations I went through to arrive where I am today, would I have given up on my journey. I doubt it because along the way, my gender feelings ran so deep and I felt so natural as my feminine self, I could have ever turned back. I needed to settle in for the gender marathon I was facing because sprints (which I compare with brief moments of gender euphoria) were hard to come by. It is a good thing, because I was always better at marathons anyway.

I can blame my marital situation on the fact that I was still trying to run gender sprints. Rather than face up to the truth of who I was, for years I tried to maintain the delicate balance of a stable marriage and a rapidly growing love of public living as a transgender woman. All my sprints did were cause problems at home when I was caught and put a tremendous strain on my twenty-year -plus marriage. On occasion, life between us became so bad my wife on several occasions simply told me to be man enough to be a woman. I hadn’t been yet, but I was working on it. She did not know it, but her challenges kept me going during my gender marathon. I just needed time to get it through my old unwanted male head that being a woman (transgender or not) meant more than looking like one.

I receive many comments from those individuals who are just wondering where their gender path will take them. When I do, I try my best to point out I did not magically appear where I am now. It took me a lot of work and disappointment to realize I needed to be better than the average ciswoman to survive in their world. They had a head start on me in the race to womanhood and I needed to work hard to catch up. Along the way too, I found some ciswomen were eager to help me into their world, and some were not. Maybe they had their own marathons they were running in life.

Another thing I learned from running a gender marathon was I had the time to relax and enjoy the journey on occasion. I felt much different than the fast pace of fleeting gender euphoria when I was involved in a gender sprint. Then, it was back again to living in the present as a transfeminine person, rather than living in the future and missing most of the enjoyment. Slowing down also gave me time to research who I really was and who I was, was on the right path in my life. Because I had huge decisions to make. Family, marriage, jobs and friends could have been all on the line. At times I was crushed under the pressure of it all and had to put it down for a different day. Something I could have never done as a gender sprinter.

The moral to the story was that slowing down helped me to determine my own pace. The problem was that I wasted valuable time coming out of my male closet longer than I should of. I finally came to the conclusion that I could not have it both ways. I ended up doing what was right for me keeping in mind that your story you are writing in life could be totally different.

Either way, what you consider is a gender sprint or a marathon is a personal matter and has a lot to do with how old you are. Even though I have read about male to female transitions well after the age of sixty (when I did it) I think it is rarer because those who think they can put it off longer because they have put it off as long as they could. But then, on the other hand, there are people like me who realized their gender truth and could not put off making a move any longer. Before I had to sprint for the finish line of life itself.

 

 

 

 

 

I "Doesn't" Know It

 It used to be when I was asked why I preferred to be feminine over masculine, and I quoted a famous baseball announcer for the Cincinnati Reds and said, “I doesn’t know it.” At the time and continuing to this day, I can’t tell you why I identify as a transgender woman. I am just being me.

The problems began when I began my gender path and ran head-on into many obstacles I needed to conquer. I suppose it all started with the possibility my mom was treated with the DES medication to help with problem pregnancies. This was back in 1949, and she had suffered through three still births before I came along. Even though nothing was ever proven, DES flooded the uterus with the estrogen hormone in women and was suspected of causing gender issues later in life with the children under the treatment. Naturally, if I had my choice of being transgender and being alive, I would take the trans life every time because the life I have lived has been different and even more exciting than the normal persons I know.

So, if I cannot blame DES on my lifetime of gender issues, what could I blame? I doesn’t know it. Could I blame mom for letting me watch her apply her makeup before she went out, or my dad who set nearly impossible male standards for me to live up to. Since both of them were products of the “greatest generation” (survivors of the great depression and WWII). They were stuck in their ways, and I was left out when it came to any possible discussion of my gender issues. Plus, both of them have long since passed away, so why bother.

Even though I tried to come out to my mom after I got out of the Army, and was rudely rejected with the threat of psychiatric care, years later when I changed my legal name, I chose my mom’s first name as my middle name and kept my dad’s family name to honor both of them for the sacrifices they made to bring me into the world. I am sure with the lack of knowledge about gender issues at all, they would have honestly said they doesn’t know it when it came to me and my so-called problems which turned out to be anything but in the future.

As I cracked my gender shell and escaped into the world, I discovered two main groups of people to deal with. The easiest group were men who largely left me alone except on isolated circumstances when they tried to mentally abuse me for leaving the male club, I had been a part of. The only thing the abuse did to me was prove I had made the right decision. The other main group was the ciswomen I met. They proved to be very curious of what I was doing in their world and once they determined I meant no harm and was serious for the most part left me alone. The only thing I knew for sure was I was getting more female attention than I ever had in my life, and I needed to make sure I made the most of it. I needed to walk a delicate balance of when to open my mouth and interact, then shut up and listen and learn the basics of survival as a transfeminine person in the world. 

The gender learning curve was difficult, but I managed to learn what was offered to me unknowingly by the women around me. They never knew all they did for me, but I was amazed at the depth of the feminine world around me as compared to the male world I knew. At times I felt as if I was sinking in the new depths, I found myself in until the women I knew rescued me and made me stronger. Finally, I made it to a point where I did know it. I was following my gender instincts for a change and doing the natural right thing. It was time to take the next step and see if I could get approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. It turned out I made the right decision after quite a bit of thought.

The way my body took to the hormones gave me a whole new opportunity to experience a life I always should have been living. I doesn’t know it was forever replaced by a peaceful gender spirit I wished I could have experienced sooner in life. By this time, I was sixty and had lived quite the life to make up for, as a man. Now I had to make up for lost time and do the best to experience all the gender wonders I had discovered as a transgender woman. 

What Was I Walking Into

 

Image from the 
Paris Photographer
on UnSplash. 

Many times, in my life, I have wondered what I was walking into. Sometimes, it did not have anything to do with being transgender but many times it did. And sometimes I was wearing high heels which I was not used to which increased the risk of what I was doing.

The main time it did not was when I went into the Army during the Vietnam War. I had no idea what basic training would have in store for me except I would need to get in better physical condition. I did make a half-hearted effort at trying but failed miserably and gave up. On another negative side, I knew I would have to give up all my cherished cross-dressing activities for the next three years of my life.

It turned out, in the scheme of life, three years did not turn out to be that long as traveling the world to three continents kept me plenty busy and I grew used to the idea of not knowing what I was walking into. So much so that I adopted “Call me the Breeze” by “Lynard Skynyrd “as my official song when I was on the radio. Because I was always rolling down the road. Through it all, I learned that my affinity for women never changed. I wanted deeply to live in their world and all the running I was doing would never change that. It was a lesson in life I wished I would have listened to later.

When I served my three years in the military, my restless spirit continued to dominate me and caused me to try to outrun my gender issues. I constantly was trying different jobs in different places unsuccessfully trying to run away from being transgender. Sometimes I had secret agendas, sometimes I did not. Like the time we moved from Ohio to New York City. Somehow, I thought being closer to a more liberal populace would help me to be able to come out of my gender shell. It did not work out that way because of several different reasons which would take another blog post to explain.

Another idea I had which actually worked out better for me was the time we moved from a very rural area of Southern Ohio along the Ohio River to Columbus, Ohio which was a couple of hours away. This time, I knew for sure that I could get back in contact with the friends I had made in years previous at the gender diverse parties and mixers I was going to. I was successful and reestablished myself with the group and tried to make up for lost time and at the same time, settle down.

When I did settle down, I was able to start exploring the feminine world as a transgender woman which meant almost nightly, I was walking into new situations I had never seen before. From gay and lesbian venues to big sports bars, the world was new and sometimes scary. Again, “Call me the Breeze” should have been my theme song due to all the new situations I was facing. Anything I enjoyed doing as a man, I tried to do as a woman to see if I still enjoyed it. Spoiler alert…I did and kept on trying more and more new situations to see if I could handle what I was walking into.

On the flip side, I am hesitant to recommend this type of transgender lifestyle to anyone. Too many times, I boosted my confidence through alcohol abuse and was fortunate to have never caused any major problems all the time I drove when I shouldn’t have. These days I barely drink at all and never drive when I do. The other problem comes from the increasingly nasty anti-transgender reaction which will undoubtedly be stirred up again in the upcoming elections by the orange Russian asset’s minions across the country. We have a close senate race coming up here in Ohio and I am sure I will see the transgender lies about the Democratic candidate before too long. He has run before, and the television ads were nasty.

Regardless, I am fortunate that these days, I present mainly as old and don’t have many problems walking into new situations. I will have several coming up in the next six months or so to keep me on my transfeminine game. I have an eye appointment at the VA as well as a hematology visit coming up soon as well as another bus tour vacation south in January. Not to mention my mammogram which will be in February this coming year.

It has become part of life for me to wonder what I am walking to at my stage of life. Especially hematology where they are going to do a total blood work check up on how my body is working but I will jump off of that bridge when I come to it. Which is what I have done through most of my life. This time I had to do it without all the male privilege I had built up which as scary.

 

 

I Almost Waited too Long to Transition

 

Image from Lizgrin F 
on UnSplash.

I almost went too far when it came to not deciding to transition from male to female in my life.

During the previous half century of cross-dressing my life away in the mirror, I put off making my final decision so many times. One of the main problems was, I was sixty years old and was forced to consider my mortality, which I had always taken for granted. Plus, another issue I had was feeling just a little too comfortable with all the male privilege I had struggled to build up in my life. Often it seemed, destiny had stepped into my life to guide it a certain way because I was very self-destructive and selfish. So much so that my mom always said I had a guardian angel riding with me when I did stupid things behind the wheel. All along, of course, I was trying to hide the pain of hiding who I truly was.

On the other hand, I was basically an impulsive person who felt all rules were temporary and could be worked around. Such as my time in the Army when I was able to land a job with the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), which was nearly impossible to do. In the meantime, I was facing the biggest struggle of my life as I needed to figure out what I was going to do about my gender issues. It was always the elephant in the corner of every room I was in.

What I decided to do was research as much as I could my dream goal of living a life as a transgender woman. When I did, my very real struggles began. Early on, nothing came easy on my gender path. I was being laughed at when I went out in public as a novice until I got it right. As I fortunately exited that portion of my life, I was able to see more clearly what I was up against, and it was daunting. I had very little idea of the layered lives ciswomen lead as compared to men. When I realized what I was up against, I needed to set my transition timetable back. And to make matters worse, my male self was becoming increasingly successful in his life. Building up a solid base of marriage, family, friends and job. How could I ever replace all of that and when could I do it.

The only recourse I had at the time was the worst one I could consider. Internalize my deepest gender thoughts and keep trying to attempt to do the best I could to survive a life caught between the two main primary genders. Three days as a trans woman and three days as a man was killing me and I tried to no avail to take the extra day off to relax. It turned out I could not because all I thought of on my supposed day off was what I was going to do the next time I went exploring the world as a transfeminine person. Which brings up a good point, during this time of my life, any thoughts I had that I was just a cross dresser were slipping away. Only to be replaced by the fact that I refused to accept. I was more a woman of my own making than I ever thought.

One way or another it was in my fifties when I began seriously researching the word transgender and what it meant to me. I was happy when I finally found the terminology which applied to me but again what was I going to do about it. I was not getting any younger. I still made the worst of all possible choices and continued my path of least resistance. At least that is how it appeared to the outside world which I was effectively hiding my efforts of femininizing from them. I had won my award as a strong male role model with a good marriage, family and job, and now I wanted to give it all back for a radical gender change into womanhood.

When my sixtieth birthday rolled around, I finally decided I needed to make a major change before it was too late. I went to a doctor and took the steps to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT and the real changes started. As good as I felt though, I could not shake the sorrow I had from moving permanently away from my male life. Even after my mental health improved.

Finally, I realized I had waited too long for the change and should have had the courage to do it long before I did. But at least I managed to make the major gender change I did before it was too late. And what about my elephant who was my constant companion? I set it free.

I Never Missed a Beat

 

JJ Hart

Once I started down or up my long gender path, I never missed a beat, even though on occasion, the beats were far apart.

The beat started when the first time I experienced the thrill of experimenting with my mom’s clothes, I knew I was hooked as much as the garters I learned to use way back then to hold up mom’s hosiery. From then on, I went in as many spurts as I could to try to achieve my ultimate dream of being a girl, rather than just looking like one. The problem was I was restricted to hiding my gender ambitions from a totally unforgiving world. Primarily, an ultra-curious slightly younger brother who seemingly was always around. Locking myself away in the bathroom away from him only had the chance of working so many times as the instances I had of being totally alone were rare.

Even so, I managed to perfect my makeup routines in the rare moments I had. Perhaps the days of watching mom put “her face on” did me good. At least I had a working knowledge of how makeup should work, even though I struggled to improve my efforts and not look like a clown in drag. I wanted desperately to look like the other girls around me I saw at school. So much so, I daydreamed my life away wanting to be them. Luckily, at the time, I did not know how many beats I would have to make to reach my feminine dreams.

It turned out the biggest obstacle to my transgender dreams turned out to be the looming possibility of military service in the Vietnam War. It lasted so long in my youth, I literally started to worry about it when I was fourteen. At the least, my worst-case scenario of being drafted and sent off to war would wreck any ideas of fast forwarding my gender goals for years. Three, to be exact when the worst case happened, and I did get drafted. Then I took the option of serving an extra year to try to work in an Army vocation of my choice. As destiny would have it, everything turned out the best it could. Even to the point of seeing the world and coming out to very close friends that I was a transvestite. Which, in the long term, set up another problem.

The problem turned out to be that I was not being honest with myself or anyone else. I missed a beat in the worst possible way. I was not so much a transvestite or cross dresser, I was something much deeper than just having an innocent desire to wear women’s clothes. Deep down inside of me, a little voice was beginning to be heard that I wanted to again be a woman in my own right. The clothes I resorted to calming my desires meant little to nothing to me in the long term of my life. Worse yet, I missed many crucial beats of my life, as I ignored the little voice which was threatening to grow into a loud roar.

All of it set me up to escape my gender closet and begin to seriously explore the world as a transfeminine person. I needed to see if I could make it at all. When I did, the beat of my life began to totally pick up and I discovered I could make it as a transgender woman…if I wanted it bad enough. Plus, I needed to figure out what was I prepared to lose if I made the major step and transitioned into my version of womanhood. A long-term marriage, family, friends, and job potentially could all be gone if I followed the beats of my heart.

In what now seems like a blur, I was able to put less than desirable transition decisions behind me and then struck gold. Which was my experience with on-line relationships. After being stood up on countless (dates) my wife Liz of over a decade reached out to me saying I had sad eyes, and we have been together since. Never missing a beat.

Needless to say, that inner voice I mentioned deserves praise also. When given a chance, she led the way into a new exciting world of ciswomen I had only dreamed about. Even though I had gone down such a long gender path to arrive where I am today, it still does my soul good when a neighbor calls Liz and I “ladies” on our walks when we meet up. After all, I am just making up for lost time and missing many beats.

 

 

 

Change was Coming

 

JJ Hart

As I grew into myself, I learned the truth. Change was coming if I liked it or not.

Change was one of the reasons I loved the fall season so much. As the weather cooled off and football came on, I could go through my feminine wardrobe and see what I could keep and what had to be discarded. Plus, I can’t forget Halloween which of course is the cross dressers’ national holiday in October.

Sadly, as the leaves began to change and fall from the trees, the whole time was bittersweet for me. The worst fall I could remember was when I was on a six-month delay to join the Army and I was working at a small radio station in Bowling Green, Ohio. If you are not familiar with that part of northwest Ohio, it is very flat to the point that any hills are manmade. One night, I was just driving around feeling sorry for myself as I looked ahead to Army basic training and I was so sad as the leaves blew in front of me. If I could have cried, I would have, but tears were nearly impossible for me in my male pre-HRT days. Similar to everything else in those days, I internalized my feelings and tried to move on as deep down I knew change had to happen.

During that time, I almost outed myself to my roommates in the apartment I was staying in until I left for basic. On one trip home, I brought back one of my favorite outfits along with a wig and makeup to Bowling Green. One day when I left, I assumed I had hidden my belongings well enough to not be discovered but I was wrong, and one night when I was preparing to surprise a male visitor to the apartment, after I went to work of shaving my legs and face, I checked for my clothes, and they were gone. I certainly thought, for a while change was coming then it was not. No one said a word to me and very soon, I was off to play soldier anyway so nothing else mattered.

Back in those Vietnam War days, basic training was an intense team building experience when a few drill sergeants needed to try to get a bunch of raw recruits ready for possible combat. During this time, the only way I could keep my girl self-alive was to bury her deeply in my subconscious mind, So, when we were on long forced marches around Ft. Knox, I made sure I thought about the well-being of my girl and the changes we would go through after my military service was finished.

Looking back at the three years I served; the time now seems like a blur and when I was discharged, I came really close to making a big change then by picking my future wife up at the airport cross dressed as my transfeminine self. I even went as far as hinting as such when I wrote her a letter. (Remember those?) Again, my male self-won out and I decided not to, and my big change had to go back to coming again. I did not have the courage yet to face my gender truth and took the easy way out and went back to accepting all the male privileges I had earned.

It was not until I became a parent and had reached my thirties did change to me become a real priority. I will always remember my thirtieth birthday being my hardest because I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do with my life. Sure, I had employment and financial issues to be aware of but again the underlying big elephant in the room was what changes would have to happen with my gender. I knew it was never going to be easy to present well as a woman, and I needed to work extra hard to earn whatever passing grades I could achieve in the public’s eye. Once I made the mental changes to proceed, much of my work became cosmetic in nature.

I was able to move the elephant aside and set about learning what it would take me to really live life as a transgender woman and not just be the “Pretty, pretty princess” my second wife called me. As change set in, I learned very few trans women or women at all live the life of a princess and I had a lot of work to do to put my male life behind me.

The last major change I put myself through was the hormonal one when I started gender affirming hormones. The HRT allowed me to sync up my external and internal selves and live a more productive life as a transfeminine person.

Planting the Gender Seeds

 

Image from Sebastian
Demitro on UnSplash.  

After my initial experiments with my mom’s clothes, I blamed the cross dressing and started to plant my gender seeds, as I wanted to be feminine all the time. Sadly, for me, it took me decades to realize the seeds were already planted and were growing. All along, I had an idea that was the case, but I was afraid to do anything about it. Mainly, because I had no one to turn to for understanding. The times were very dark in the 1950’s when I was growing up for any understanding of gender issues at all. As I always mention too, I grew up as the oldest son in a male dominated family, so my goals were set for me as a boy.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I had served my time in the military that I was able to water my gender seeds and watch them grow. My first realization I could come out of my gender closet came in the final months of my time in Germany in the Army when I went to a Halloween party thrown by the nearby hospital staff dressed completely as a woman with shaved legs and all. The biggest moment came weeks later when I admitted to my closest friends, my costume was not a costume at all. I loved to dress as a woman and was a transvestite as we were called back then. In the 1970’s.

The best part was, my friends could care less and more importantly, the higher up’s in the Army never found out and I was honorably discharged after my three years were up on time with no problems. Coming out to my friends really set me up for success in growing more and diverse gender seeds…until my mom came along and tried to kill them. I was emboldened by my recent success in coming out and one night I decided to tell her. She responded the expected way with shock and the added offer of paying for a trip to a psychiatrist. From there, the discussion rapidly ended, never to be brought up again for the rest of her life. I knew deep down I was not crazy and did not need a mental health professional to tell me I was.

With that knowledge, my gender seeds continued to develop, even though they were in the darkness of my closet for the most part. Until I could stand it no longer, the only times I ventured out in public as a novice transgender woman was the occasional Halloween party and business trip I went on. Somehow, I was able to smuggle my feminine wardrobe, wig, and makeup past my wife and enjoy a night out on the town when I arrived there. For the most part, the experiences I went through helped me to nourish my transgender seeds and come away with a better understanding of where I fit into the world as a transfeminine person.

Even though I was becoming more successful in chasing my dream to ever live as a trans woman, I kept finding I had a long way to go. In order to see my seeds finally bloom, I needed to have the cisgender alpha females I encountered to accept me. They closely examined me and let me in to play in the girl’s sandbox. To get there, I needed to tend to my seeds which were still blooming. The mistakes I made all centered around when I was overconfident about where I was headed and I got burnt. Fortunately, I was able to reach down and pick one of my flowers and offer it as a peace offering. The flower was enough to move my life along.

My garden proved to me to be worth all the effort I put into it. All the tears I suffered early on when I went out into the world as a transfeminine person were used to water my seeds and watch them grow. Plus, all the time and effort I put into learning the makeup arts after looking like a clown in drag came back to help me. I took the time also to plant diverse seeds which helped me when I encountered difficult situations. Which I never knew where and when they were coming from.

It turned out that I never had much of a green thumb in my male life, but a flourishing trans thumb when it counted the most. It was quite the discovery for me when I discovered how layered and complex the women’s world I was in. I also benefited from the careful job I did of planting and protecting my young seeds. On occasion, I regret the time it took them to grow, but in many ways, I was the prisoner of when I grew up in the dark days in the pre-internet era. But taking the extra time to become strong and thrive in my new life was worth it. As I said, the seeds were there all along, all I needed to do was nourish them. 

 

 

Gender Immigration

 

L'eggs said it best.

With all the negative publicity being brought to the new immigrants to this country by the orange felon/pedo in Washington, I thought it might be time to connect the dots to my own immigration. A gender one.

My immigration plans began as a vacation. I was tired of the male world I was competing in and taking a break as a cross-dressed girl in makeup was a great way to escape my life. Little did I know, from these humble beginnings, I was starting a lifelong journey which in many ways, I am still on over a half a century later. Had I known, I would have ever attempted to undertake such a radical immigration.

Early on, I was just looking to grab the so-called low hanging fruit of cross dressing. I enjoyed the feel of the clothes, all the way to the thrill of hose on my freshly shaven legs. Then, I slowly began to realize so much else was happening. Increasingly I wanted to be more and more like a girl and started to wonder about pushing my male self out. It was difficult because I came from a highly male dominated family. As I pushed forward, my immigration into the feminine side of life became more intense. I tried my best to acquire new more fashionable clothes and even bought my own makeup and panty hose. Do you remember the “L'eggs” panty hose which came in plastic egg shaped containers which it seemed you could buy everywhere, and is still made today. I learned the hard way; how easy it was to destroy a pair when I unfortunately ran one of the legs. Ruining my outfit.

Progression was slowed by a late-teen collision with serving time in the military due to the Vietnam war. Obviously, I could not bring any of my “stash” of women’s clothes or makeup with me, so I was stuck. No more gender immigration for at least three years of my young life. There were several major positive things which happened for me while I was stuck being a man in the Army. A prime example was all the traveling I was able to do around the world in places such as Thailand and Europe (Germany). The whole process enabled me to keep my mind off my gender issues and set me up with the idea I could outrun my problems. Which, of course, turned out to be impossible. Which should be the topic for another blog post.

After the Army, my life changed again as I entered the world of parenthood. Being a parent of a daughter was an unexpected but pleasant surprise, and my gender immigration was put on hold briefly again. I say briefly, because I discovered my transgender issues ran deeper than I had thought. My presentation as a novice transfeminine person was coming along. My first wife did not care, and I was able to explore my potential future as a gender immigrant at events such as Halloween parties. Each party to me represented a chance to see how I was being accepted as a woman in society.

After a few years, I ended up divorcing my first wife and marrying my second. She also knew about and accepted my cross dressing from the beginning of our relationship but never accepted me being transgender as I immigrated towards being a woman. My male side was like being the Titanic, slowly sinking and then picking up speed with her fighting me all the way. It turned out, the issues I was facing were like the tip of the iceberg. With most of it being hidden from everyone. Including me. She tragically passed away before the final resolution in our relationship was ever decided.

When she moved on to the other side of existence, it was left up to me to decide the future of my immigration. I had certainly paid my dues by taking on all the menial and not so menial work of being a woman. I was on gender affirming hormones and was living as much as I was able as a transgender woman, so I was close to filling out my immigration papers and was ready to go into a world I had only dreamed of. My presentation had improved to the point where I was not the most attractive woman in the room, but I could handle myself to the point where most of the world just did not notice me. So, my immigration was more successful than I ever thought possible.

Perhaps the best part of immigrating was learning to accept and love myself for who I really was. Which meant all the hassles I had over the years as I tested out the world, made my immigration worth it.

 

 

Transgender-When Life Throws you a Curve.

 

Image from Chu CHU on UnSplash.

It’s baseball season as we head down to the “dogdays of summer” around here in Cincinnati. As I have mentioned many times, the gender gods allowed me to take my passion for sports with me when I transitioned from male to female. This year, I have been completely emotionally immersed in the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball team. So much so, sometimes I feel guilty about my involvement.

Overall, though, life threw me a real curveball when it came to sports. For several reasons, athletics helped me to keep the bullies away, since I was doing “boy” things. As I played, I found I could not hit well at all, primarily a curveball and resorted to running home to my dresses and makeup to feel better about my failures. And I did, which solidified my deepening idea I should have been a girl all along. Dressing in my pretty feminine clothes certainly felt better than crying in the shower after I committed a key error or struck out to end the game.

As time went on, I faced the reality of non-athletes everywhere, life had thrown me a curve ball I just couldn’t hit. Somehow, I just needed to adjust and become the fan I am today and quit being a victim. I think perhaps it was my Army duty which took any idea of self-pity away from me. So what if my draft number was twenty-three, I would just have to enlist for three years to make the best of it. Plus, the entire routine of basic infantry training took any idea of being a victim away from me. At least I was not one of the guys crying on the night bus to Ft. Knox in the middle of a Kentucky winter. Somehow, I would have to make the best of a situation I did not want to be in.

It turned out, that idea carried right over into my gender dysphoria. The older and more experienced I became as a transgender woman, ended up clashing with my increasingly successful male life. Life had thrown me a gender curveball, and it was not fair but the problem was mine to deal with.

Initially, I kept striking out on my path to transgender womanhood. I was woefully unprepared for the world I so desperately wanted to enter. The path was quite dark with many bumps and curves, so I needed to be careful with the high heeled steps I was taking. Perhaps the most important problem I faced was when I was completely outed as a man in a dress was quickly going home and attempting to figure out what I was doing wrong. Was it my fashion, or my makeup, or what?

This time I refused to be fooled by a gender curveball and hung in there until my life began to change for the better. Slowly, I was being accepted as my true transfeminine self in the public’s eye. I was not hitting any home runs yet, but I was making contact with the public and was successful.

Incredibly to me, the more contact I was making, the more I needed to make. In particular, women were curious what I was doing in their world and drew me into conversations which were uneasy for me in the beginning. Life was throwing me curveball after curveball, and I became halfway decent at making contact with the strangers I met. I think too that after the public met me, more than a few of them reacted to the fact that I was a person who was living with their truth. Then I needed to catch up and respect myself for living my truth. Which was difficult for me to do for years.

Ironically, at that point, I went to work for a company which would not accept any of their successful managers being victims. I carried their training over into my real life and was better prepared for any and all setbacks I encountered. I began to see my supposed setback in life just could be a positive if I made it one. Not so much different than when I went to Army basic training wondering how I was going to make it without my cross-dressing crutches.

After immersing myself in the world of cisgender women, I came out as a better person. Certainly, well rounded in how the two main binary genders interact with each other. I could not ever make it as any sort of an athlete, but it turned out I could as a transgender woman. A journey I came to respect many times along the way.