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.

 

 

 

 

What was Meant to be, Will Be

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Outreach program.

The longer I lived and experienced a feminine based experience, the more I realized my life was turning into what I always expected it to be.

Yesterday, I spoke about the “aha” moment I had when I transitioned from being a serious cross dresser to living as a novice transgender woman. Even though I was scared to death to do it, after the experience was over, I felt so extremely natural I knew my life would never be the same again. In other words, my new life as a trans woman was always meant to be and felt like it. Over the years of thinking about my new life and seeking answers, the only excuse I could find was that my mom had several still births before me and resorted to the new (at the time) DES drug which was prescribed to help problem pregnancies. DES was known to flood the uterus with estrogen to help the birth mother and was “rumored” to be a cause of gender dysphoria in children later in life. But all of that was just a theory.

I was left to be on my own forever wondering why I felt so natural when I tried to cross that gender border into womanhood. As my mind wandered into all the different scenarios I could have been confronted with, nothing was ever placed in concrete. As much as I disliked competing in the male culture, still I was relatively successful in doing it and had managed to carve out a life in a gender I wanted nothing to do with. So, it was not that.

The older I became, and the more experience I forced my way into, the more I felt living in a cisgender women’s world was the place for me. If I could make it happen. First, I needed to get past my appearance paranoia/obsession and open my eyes to what was really going on around me in the world when I was exploring it as a transfeminine person. I was naïve in my gender thinking about women as a whole and tended to put them all up on a pedestal. Which I found out was completely wrong.  Quickly I learned that although women operate on different wave lengths as men, almost all the basics were still there for me to learn. At that point, I had plenty of other “aha” moments when I realized the intricacies of how the two main binary genders operated on a daily basis.

I learned too that there were simply some things I could not do by simply observing the ciswomen around me, I needed to interact with them before they would let their guard down and let me see their true selves. The more immersed I became in their culture, the more I wanted to be and again for the first time in my life I began to feel natural in my own skin and felt like my life was meant to be.

I found I was a quick learner when it came to being a quality trans woman and not a standoffish bitchy one. I learned I could make friends easily with most all other women and the rest did not matter anyhow.  Most of them were evil in their own ways, and I did not need their problems if I was ever going to get where I was trying to be. I had bigger issues to face such as how I could learn to communicate effectively as my new, out, authentic self who I learned could not wait for her chance in the real world. She knew exactly who she wanted to be if she ever got the chance. All of a sudden, I was having fun in my life again and the male to female transition problems I was experiencing began to fade into my past. Even though I carried an immense amount of baggage with me from my male life, I was still able to pick and choose what I always wanted to remember from the male world I came from.

If I paid attention to the knowledge, I had gained from having experience on both sides of the gender border, it gave me a real head start on how to conduct myself around men and women. I even was asked questions from women about how to deal with their man and how he may be feeling and I was very flattered to have tried to help.

As I always bring up, my biggest problem with all of my gender transition was how long it took me to do it. Waiting until the coast was clear and when I was nearly sixty years old took away valuable years of my feminine life which I could have experienced more of the world. If I had it all to do over again, I would have been braver and known the huge gender move I was about to make was always meant to be, so just do it. Pull the bandage off my old male life and get on to the future.

Maybe, if I ever have a tombstone, I can have it engraved with the simple words, “She was always meant to be.”

Making the New You...You

 

JJ Hart

Making the new you… you probably know is a lot more than putting on a dress, wig and makeup.

Most of the time, it takes time to grow into what you always had thought yourself to be all along. A fully feminine person. By that, I don’t mean you have to go out and have major gender surgeries to feel complete although many transgender women do. In my case and at my advanced age of seventy-six, I have long since given up on gender surgeries because they don’t define me. But that is like HRT or gender affirming hormones, just because you can’t take them does not make you any less of a transfeminine person.

Going back to my original point, I think it is important that we take the time and opportunity to grow into our new authentic selves which have been a part of us forever. I know forever is a big word which people like me have run from our entire lives. It is especially frustrating when you discover the truth has been right in front of you forever. Instead, I took the long route or path of slowly discovering I could indeed make it to my dream of living life as a transgender woman. I had to go back and back fill my entire personality and outlook on life to do it.

In the book I am writing through another format for my daughter and other family members who have questions about my life. This week’s topic is what I would do differently if I had a chance to go back and do it again. It was an easy question to answer; I would certainly go back and transitioned earlier in life than I did. The problem I have with thinking this way is I am selfish and I would want certain aspects of my male life to live themselves out before I made the big gender jump across the border for good. For instance, I would hate to give up my stake in having my daughter who is one of the greatest gifts of my life. Plus, you can’t forget the world and its reaction to transfeminine people was much different back then and if I transitioned then I would consider surgeries to advance my standing in an often-unforgiving world. Chances are, I would, simply because I had so much longer to live.

It would have been interesting because back then, I had such little understanding of what I was really facing if I continued along my gender path. I was still laboring under the impression that a pretty face would be all I needed to get by as a trans woman. There was still so much to do to enable the authentic me to emerge into the world. What would I do when and if I needed to have the pretty face actually communicate in the world with other humans. I had come to the point where I could make her move more convincingly as a woman, now I had the biggest jump to make. I did the best I could. Even to the point of taking vocal lessons on the small ways ciswomen communicate with the world. The entire process was intense but worth it.

The only way I made it through the rebuilding process was to make it a completely selfish pursuit which I spent every spare moment thinking about. My male time in life shrunk to a bare minimum, or just enough time to get by and keep him moving on the essentials of life such as a job.

On the feminine side, I found I had help from understanding ciswomen that accepted me. I write about them often. Emphasizing their warmth and humor when at the same time were the best gender teachers I could have ever asked for. Together, they all helped the new me be me and move on from there.

From there meant I could begin to attend “meet up” groups in the Cincinnati area with my wife to be Liz. We went to writers’ groups as well as artisan/crafts groups which helped me to come farther out of my gender shell and just be the new me. If you live in an area which has groups such as meet ups, I highly recommend them as vehicles to experience new vistas of your gender experience. I always looked at them as a way to expand who I was in the world as I shed my old male past. Which led one step farther into a spiritual group which Liz was already a part of. I was invited in with open arms which gave me yet another new outlet to experience.

Making the new you, you will never be an easy experience depending on how much gender baggage you had to shed along the way. The longer I waited, the more I had to figure out what to keep and what I needed to get rid of. Whichever way you decide to go, just try to make the best possible decisions and keep moving towards your dream. Just think, your whole journey could be a labor of love.

 

 

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

Image from Mor Shani
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes I wonder if some people don’t take the time to understand how much practice I needed to do as I became my authentic self. I guess I could say I went through nearly a half century of work to become who I dreamed of being. It was far from easy.

Starting at the beginning, I never had much to work with as far as being an effeminate boy. Not to mention, I was born into a very male dominated family. Very early I learned I was going to have to work hard to not look like a clown in drag when I tried my best to look like a pretty girl in front of the family mirror. I always equated putting on makeup with painting the plastic model cars I had. Which I was always very bad at doing.  

It did not help when I earned my own meager amount of money working around the house or delivering newspapers in the neighborhood. Then I used the money to try to shop for makeup. I still remember to this day, the first time I was confronted by the sheer number of various makeup brands and variations to try. I finally selected several products out of desperation and hoped for the best as I was trying not to use my mom’s makeup anymore. Now, I don’t remember how successful I was, but I kept on trying to practice on my face until I got it right. Or so I thought. It wasn’t until years later that I visited a true professional makeup artist that I discovered I was not working on the true potential of my makeup to its maximum effectiveness. I was merely making the same basic mistakes over and over again.

I was fortunate to have the makeup artist who was able to explain to me in terms of understanding what he was doing, so I could repeat the process later. Practice for once made perfect. I was able to paint my model cars in a way that my friends admired them. But this time, I was actively admired at the crossdresser-transgender social mixer I was at, and this time when I tried to hang out with the “A” listers (as I called the beautiful, more advanced crowd of attendees) I was accepted. The best part of the whole evening was I then had a basis of where I needed to be as far as being an accomplished cross dresser but on the other hand, I was presented with a deeper set of questions about what I was going to do about my male life as I knew it.

What I decided I had to do was take my transfeminine show on the road so to speak and see if it would play at all in the public’s eye. Away from all the safety of mixers and gay or lesbian mixers. That is when the real practice set in. I needed to stop all of the hard-earned male muscle memory I had learned and start to learn the best that I could the graceful, fluid moves of a cisgender woman. Naturally, the whole process was difficult to do. Especially when I was switching back and forth between the two main binary genders almost daily. Constantly, I needed to remind myself of who and where I was so I would not end up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Through it all, when I thought I was being successful in going down my transgender path, roadblocks always emerged which sent me back to my drawing board and started setting up more practice. Those were the days of taking every spare moment I had to sneak out of the house and begin to carve out a new life for myself as a trans woman. Once I made it successfully out of the gay venues I was going to and into a few of the big sports bars I was used to going to as a guy, I started to relax and enjoy my new exciting life even more.

No matter how much I try to gloss over this part of my life, the fact still remained I was essentially cheating on my wife when I went out as myself. Deception was never my strong suit, and I was never proud when I needed to lie about what I was doing. By this time, I had reached the point of no return but still was afraid to face it. I hid it by staying in the so-called practice mode I was in. If I could have just one more experience being a transfeminine person, it would make it so much easier when I decided to permanently put my old unwanted male self behind me for good.

Finally, I quit kidding myself, and I was doing so much than practicing over and over again to live a transgender life. I had always dreamed of doing it, so it was time to do something about it and live it. Who knows, maybe all that practice at living a feminine life saved me in the end as I finally learned to move and communicate my way around in a ciswoman’s world.

 

Dark Side of the Gender Moon

 

Image from Maria Kovalets
on UnSplash.

Exploring the dark side of the gender moon for me meant a lot of work.

I equate it to the first times I could experience wearing my own hair in public without the help of a wig of any sort. The satisfying part was that I did not have to worry about the style and color of the wig I selected and how hot it was going to be on my head during the warm summer months when my makeup threatened to melt off of me as soon as I put it on. On the other hand, I needed to master the art of looking at the back of my head in a mirror to see how my new hair looked. I began to think of it as the dark side of the moon. No longer would I have the ease of styling a wig on a wig stand in the back so I knew it would look good on my head.  

Also, not wearing wigs anymore opened up a new wonderful world for me of visiting women’s beauty salons. I will forever remember the first time my daughter gifted me a visit to her upscale salon/spa. I was just coming out of my gender shell and the whole prospect of having my hair done terrified me, but I hitched up my big girl panties and said yes. Little did I know what was instore for me. Thanks to my daughter, first of all I needed to walk through seemingly an endless gauntlet of women in chairs in various stages of having their hair done. I gathered up all of my courage and tried to walk as femininely as I could until I met my new stylist.

The first of many decisions I needed to make was what color I wanted my new hair to be. As my daughter and stylist hovered over me with what seemed like an endless set of examples to choose from, I chose a red/blond streaked shade and then had to pick how long or short I wanted my new hairstyle to be. I had no idea choosing the dark side of my gender moon would be this difficult. Quickly though, I chose an off the shoulder look which maintained most of the hair I had grown. All too soon, my appointment was over and I was spun around in the chair to see the new me and I loved her! All the years of frustration of not being able to afford quality wigs or take care of them faded away and the best part was I had been blessed with visits to women’s spaces such as beauty salons and I walked away from the experience knowing why so many ciswomen value their beauty visits to the hair salon the way they do. The day following my first visit to a serious upscale salon, I thought I had been exposed to so much estrogen, I could skip my daily dosage.

I guess you could say, having my hair done was just the first of dark side of the moon gender moments in my transfeminine life. When you add in all my other journeys into women only spaces, there were plenty of other experiences to mention. Like the one I rarely recall when I was invited to go out and party with a few of the servers, I met at one of the regular sports bars I hung out at. Like the experiences of having my hair done, I had been out several times on girls’ nights out invitations in my past, but never like this one. These women were all much younger and prettier than I was so I wondered how I would fit in. The answer was that even though they were all nice to me, I did not really fit in at all. The other women were too busy getting hit on by guys so there was little time for other socializing. I quietly sipped my drinks and pleasantly left with the group when most of them did. More lessons learned.

As far as any major male to female feminization process goes, there are inherent risks to be taken when you go through the process of losing your male privileges and discovering your new feminine ones. I know in my case, I was starting to know I was successful as a transgender woman when I began to be treated in certain ways. Such as when men in particular began to question my intelligence as I talked to them. I thought to myself, did I treat women this way?  I was definitely on the dark side of my gender moon as I explored a new world.

As you begin to explore your new world, there is plenty to do such as gathering the courage to use the women’s rest room. Which is a natural need when you are out and about for any length of time as your new trans woman self. Not any of the rightwing paranoia being spewed by the bigots saying we are men using the women’s room.

Actually, exploring the dark side of your gender moon can be an exciting experience and one you have waited your whole life to take. Take it far past just styling your own hair and/or wig and expand it all the way to discovering a new world you wanted to live in so badly. Just try to enjoy the discoveries you make and any aha moments you live through. There is so much to be learned when you jump the binary gender border to live on the other side. All the work I put in was certainly worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acceptance...all that And More

 

JJ Hart.

Just a short post this morning since I was out and about with my wife Liz to medical appointments and more.

This morning, I got up early to go with my wife Liz to her doctor’s office appointment. Per norm, I did not expect much interaction with the public since we were going at such an early hour. So, I could keep my feminine prep to a minimum.

I kept my prep to a close shave and brushed my hair along with leggings and sweatshirt top and I was ready to go. With my rain boots along with the wrap my daughter got me for my birthday to keep the cold wet away. As Liz went to the receptionist at the hospital to be checked in, I grabbed a nearby seat to sit and wait, and the receptionist very much ignored me one way or another. I was off to a good start as all of the other people who followed us into the large waiting room were off in their own world and ignored me also.

As I was playing on my phone as I waited for Liz, I began to think about how far that I have come over the years when it comes to being accepted as me, as my true self. I used to obsess on my appearance when I went out and about at all, until I noticed I was the only woman doing it. Gender acceptance was as important to me then but was still somehow different. These days, my acceptance level seems to be at an all time high which is great for my continued confidence as a transgender woman.  I will certainly need all that I can get when Liz and I take off again for another extended vacation south from Ohio in the latter part of January. As always, my paranoia stems from using the women’s room in the states we travel through which frown on it.

Through it all, I keep telling myself this is the fourth or fifth tour we have been on, and I have never had any restroom problems, so why start now.

Other than that, we don’t have much going on except I have a mammogram in February.  It is hard to believe the winter will have moved on so quickly from me. Especially at my age, it is sad to see life moving by so fast. 

Back to the present, to reward Liz for getting her flu and pneumonia shots, we went through our favorite coffee shop, drive through for warm coffee drinks and a light breakfast sandwich and the girl at the drive through window said, “you girls have a nice day.”  With that comment, she made sure I did.

No matter how long I live my dream of being a transfeminine person, reinforcement from a stranger is always great acceptance and more.

 

 

 

The Hustle and Bustle of Christmas as a Transgender Woman

 

Image from Clarke Sanders
on UnSplash.

Doing the Christmas shopping shuffle as a transgender woman, often takes a lot of courage and confidence to do it.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have written about my holiday adventures leading up to the big day. From taking a short trip to Clifton Mill to view their extensive, festive lighting display all the way to letting two men load my heavy purchase for me at an Oak furniture store, I stretched the boundaries of what I was used to as a new cross dresser or trans woman in public. After it was all said and done, even though I was terrified most of the time, I was happy I tried it all. I came out of doing the Christmas shuffle with much more confidence in my girl self than I had going into the season.

In fact, as I have written before, Christmas quickly outpaced Halloween as my favorite holiday. Why? There were several factors, such as the length of the season and the creativity I could put into celebrating it. Plus, for once, I was doing good for others by buying gifts for them as I shopped. I positively loved it and wondered where the experience had been most of my life.

If you are a procrastinator and last-minute gift shopper like I was, doing the Christmas shuffle as a transgender woman is ideal for you. As you can get lost in the crowds quite easily and no one pays attention to a single woman out doing her late shopping. Custom made for you to do your shuffle and head back home.

I was fortunate when my second wife left her bookkeeping job and took a managerial position at a large bookstore chain. So, at Christmas, she was very busy and worked many hours. It was easy for me to schedule my hours around hers, so I had plenty of time to get out of the house and do gift shopping. I could obsess on wearing just the right outfit to blend in with a busy world and at the same time, search for just the right gift. Along the way also, I could stop in and grab a bite to eat at a restaurant and again stretch my ability to deal one on one with the world as a transfeminine person. Yet another reason, I came to prefer Christmas over Halloween because I hoped I was not perceived as a man wearing a costume, or worse yet some sort of drag queen.

As the big day approached, the sky was the limit for me. I did my shuffle as much as finances allowed and stockpiled my gifts for my special night where I stayed home with some high-powered eggnog and wrapped my treasures to go under the tree if they would fit. Of course, my wife was close to being a professional gift wrapper and I was just the opposite. But as the eggnog kicked in, I did not care, and besides it was the thought that counted. Right?

Finally, the big day arrived and I was shuffled out. Plus, we had family connections to visit all day on Christmas day. My thoughts for once were in other places than doing my precious shuffle which I had learned so much from. After the day wound down and my wife and I were alone, we opened the final gifts from each other. Which included a gift for my feminine self. I will forever remember a nice fancy fuzzy baby blue sweater she gifted me. It was snug fitting and I filled it out nicely with my new silicone breast forms I received from a cross-dresser acquaintance of mine who was purging. Naturally, that part of our gift giving day was the part of the day which was the most anticipated for me. I was like a little kid, brimming with anticipation.

Every year after the intense transgender Christmas shuffle was over, I had the chance to sit back and reflect on all my experiences and what they meant. Without hesitation, I think the confidence I built up from going out in the world as my trans self was the most important aspect of what happened to me. I learned what it meant to blend in with ciswomen around me and survive better than I ever could before. I also discovered the vast majority of the world did not and does not care about having a transgender person in their midst. The biggest difference is that back then, we did not have a Russian asset in the White House leading his blind, spineless party into demonizing a small portion of the population. Back then, I was merely a curiosity to many people, especially ciswomen.

When my second wife passed away, the need to do the major Christmas shuffle went with her too. The only blood family I had left was a brother and a daughter to worry about at all during the holidays. When I came out to them, I was roundly rejected by my brother and completely accepted by my daughter and her family. So, I broke even and even did better when I considered the relationship, I was able to build up with my daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren. I won the family coming out shuffle in a big way.

Even still, sometimes I miss the hustle and bustle of doing the transgender Christmas shuffle as over the years, I have gone nearly the entire direction in the other way. It is hard to say what I miss most but it probably having the financial resources to buy basically as many gifts as I could afford might be it.  Maybe it all came from having a guilty conscience from sneaking out of our house to join the world as my authentic true self instead of my old boring male self and breaking the pledge, I gave my wife that I never would.

Whatever the case, I was extremely selfish and was a contradiction when I did it to buy gifts for others. I guess it fit in with the whole contradiction I felt from my deep-set gender dysphoria to begin with. I dealt with it all the best I could, did my Christmas gender shuffle and moved on with my life making the most of it.

 

 

Gender Euphoria equals Black Friday Fun

 

Image from Markus Winkler
on UnSplash.

Yesterday’s Thanksgiving feast at my daughter’s -in-laws proved to be everything I thought it would be.

To begin with, all the usual suspects were there, including my trans grandchild who drove back from Maine with their partner for the dinner. Of course, my daughter and son-in-law were there also, with my first wife who I remain friends with today. Even though she slips up on occasion and calls me by my dead name. I forgive her because she is the mother of my only child and is getting a little forgetful in her old age. As I am.

To be surrounded by family who knew me before and to be accepted the way I was, always means a lot to me. Giving me a family to fall back on when my blood family rejected me, which I wrote about in my last post. I have never forgiven them for what they did and have kept my distance for over a decade now. If you missed my post, my bitterness stems from when my brother and sister-in-law asked me not to come to our Thanksgiving dinner when I came out to them as transgender.

As I have mentioned several times, my new chosen family has more than made up for my blood family loss. Especially in times such as yesterday when I am supplied with plenty of gender euphoria. Which brings me to the second part of this post, my first “Black Friday” shopping experience as a transgender woman.

The whole “Black Friday” woman’s shopping experience was always one I wanted to experience on my own as a transfeminine person and finally I had the chance because my second wife worked retail and would be busy. I knew if I played my cards right, I could set my work schedule up so I did not have to be at work until later in the afternoon, so I could pull my dream off. I knew what I was going to wear and knew where I was going to wear it, so I was set for an early morning departure as I pulled up my panty hose and picked out a big fluffy sweater, mini denim skirt and comfortable walking shoes. Just in case I could not find a close spot in the parking lot at the mall I chose.

As I found a parking spot and entered the crowded mall, I could not believe I was living out one of the big bucket list items on my gender dream. I was actually shopping for Christmas bargains with many other ciswomen who were oblivious to having a trans woman among them. The only problem I had was time. I did not have very much of it before I needed to head home and get ready for work in my old boring male clothes. Even still, I managed to walk away from the experience with the knowledge I could, indeed, make it in the public’s eye as a woman going about her everyday life.

Little did I know, my experience on “Black Friday” set me up for other bucket list activities and ones that required me having more skill in my new exciting yet scary gender. By going down the path I was on, I slowly realized I could never go back. Even if I had wanted to. As I always point out for me, my biggest problem was communicating with other women. I was always shy to begin with and the whole idea of talking to strangers as a transgender woman was staggering. Life became more than just interacting with clerks in clothing stores when I set out to learn how I may be treated in my male to female gender dream world. I even went as far as taking voice lessons to improve my vocal quality of life.

What proved to be the deciding factor was every time I was accepted in the world as my true self, I felt the flood of gender euphoria and wanted more. I felt so natural in my dream life, it did not feel like a dream anymore. It felt like I was living the life I always should have lived.

To get there, I needed to cross many bridges, some of which were very steep. Since I was afraid of heights, many times I was afraid to climb them and needed all the internal encouragement or gender euphoria to keep going. Thanksgiving dinner proved to be a big help as I was able to gain the confidence of a group of people I knew before I transitioned. It was the bridge I needed to do a lot of holiday shopping which I will write about more as Christmas approaches.

 

 

Tired of Looking Over my Shoulder

 

Christopher Morley
1974 movie
Freebie and the Bean.

In a continuation of yesterday’s post in many ways, today’s post is about how I grew weary of looking over my shoulder as a transgender woman.

Looking back, all I can remember from the earliest days I had cross-dressing in front of the mirror were the all too brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced and the all too numerous times I spent looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was going to catch me. Then life as I knew it would be ruined. To stop this from happening, I became very good at hiding my clothes and makeup away from the prying eyes of my slightly younger brother and the rest of my family. I even resorted to hiding a small amount of clothes, makeup and a mirror in a trash bag in a hollowed-out tree in the woods next to our house in the country. Even with all of this hiding, I still found myself spending a lot of time looking over my shoulder.

Somehow, I thought when I grew older, I would conquer all my gender issues, and they would magically disappear, but they just grew with me. The better I became applying makeup and selecting feminine clothes, the more I wanted to do. Like a dog chasing its tail, the more success I had led me to want to do more in the public’s eye. Sadly, as I grew into my high school and precollege years, I was still stuck in the same old routine of dressing at home, hiding from my family and looking over my shoulder. The only relief I remember was the night friends and I went to a high school carnival and one of the male students was parading around dressed as a pretty girl. I was fascinated but again was looking over my shoulder to make sure none of my friends noticed how interested I was.

Which was exactly how I felt when I saw the movie “Freebie and the Bean” in 1974. I did not know it or had never heard of actor “Christopher Morley” who was an accomplished female impersonator. He had a part in the movie which I found amazing because he was so believable as a woman. As with the student cross dressed as a pretty girl, when I saw Morley, I needed to look over my shoulder at my friends to see if they noticed my newfound interest in the film we were watching. I guess I was pretty good at hiding my interest because nobody ever said anything about it.

Moving forward, there were the early cross-dressing days when I was still trying to perfect my everyday presentation as a transgender woman. I constantly worried about someone sneaking up behind me and pulling off my ill-fitting wig. What would I do then? Put it back on or just pick the wig up and run out the door. Fortunately, I never had to find out when I figured it was my inner female paranoia talking to me that I was not looking good enough to pass her standards yet.

By this time, looking over my shoulder became a habit. There was a time when my second wife and I moved to a small town in southern Ohio to run a new restaurant there. In order to suppress all my cross-dressing desires, I started to do the grocery shopping as a woman then go ahead and do a little lite shopping for myself. One day when I was blissfully doing my thing as a transfeminine person, I unexpectedly ran straight into my wife’s boss doing his errands. As bad luck would have it, my wife and I were invited that weekend to a small party at her boss’s house and I needed to really look over my shoulder when I heard him mention to my wife about the “big woman” he had seen in a store. Rightfully so, I was always guilty until proven innocent with my wife and she turned directly to stare the look of death at me. It took me weeks of denial to finally live it down.

Denial, lying and other mistruths became a way of life for me with my wife before she passed away after twenty-five years of marriage. The only thing I am proud of is that I did manage a full out purge six months before she died. To prevent any backsliding, I even grew a beard. Needless to say, I was miserable during this time but nothing like I was going to live through later.

After all the tragedy I went through during this time, I finally had enough of looking over my shoulder for decades and decided to follow my instincts and come out to the world as a transgender woman. Not spending all that time and effort was completely refreshing and allowed me to totally concentrate on my new life as a trans woman.

 

It is Right When you Know it Is

 

Image from Caroline Herman
on UnSplash.

Some have asked me over the years, when did I know it was the right time for me to leave my closet and emerge into the world as a transgender woman. It is a complex question with a very easy answer. I always knew I was having problems with my gender but did not have a clue for years what to do about it.

The only relief I had was the brief time I had to rapidly cross dress in front of the mirror, away from my family and friends. Even when I was able to accomplish my goal of looking like a pretty girl, I still was aware deep down that something was not right with my life. In my own way, I set out to find any gender solutions I could, on my own, with no available sources to aid me. Plus, at the time, my male self was rapidly settling into a relatively successful life, and he wanted nothing to do giving up any of it to my inner feminine self. It turned out, this would be a battle I would have had to face for decades of my life to come. I would spend any available free time I had as a cross dresser, only to have what I learned rejected when I went back to my male life.

The only thing which kept me going was the deep idea I had that what I was doing was actually the natural part of my existence. And the parttime male life was an act. The act which became so good over the years that I shocked a number of people I knew when I finally came out as a transgender woman. I always had assumed they had thought something was up with me when they saw me at Halloween parties dressed as a woman but never did. It was like my male self-tried to dig a deep hole to bury my female self was never quite successful as she kept digging herself out.

The years at that point seem to fly by with the continuing fights with my second wife over considering if I was transgender at all and at the same time, me improving my transfeminine presentation during the times I was out in the public’s eye. I started to do more than just walk around in malls to see if I could present well and started to accomplish small tasks such as doing part of the family grocery shopping as a woman. I found I could do the tasks, and my life began to feel so natural again. The opposite of when I needed to go back to living as a man. It seemed unfair to me when my wife and my male self-ganged up on me to protect their interests in the relationship and I did not know what to do because I was just doing what was becoming more natural to me.

All the infighting only did one thing and that was prolonging the truth from coming out. I had always been destined to be feminine and when the time was right, I would be able to claim my birthright. The longer I lived as a transgender woman among ciswomen I knew I was in the right spot and had to face the facts about myself. My wife unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack leaving only my male self to protest any idea of me being trans and starting the HRT medical treatment. Under a doctor’s care of course.

Finally, when faced with the reality of my future life, my male self-gave in to my inner feminine self who had waited so long to live and prosper. More importantly, I was tired of all the internal fighting and knew I had readied myself to make a choice. All the frustrating years of playing with makeup and clothes came back to help me. I did not have to worry so much about my presentation when I made the decision to permanently be in the public’s eye as a transgender woman. I found a great majority of the world either didn’t pay any attention or were just curious of me which was a great surprise. I could relax and enjoy the wonderful new world I had always dreamed of.

When I finally stopped the gender in-fighting I suffered through all those years, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders at the age of sixty. Why I waited so long to face my true self in the mirror and decide to do the right thing will forever be a mystery to me. My only excuse is, I just knew the time was right.

 

A Thing of Beauty?

 

My Trans Friend Racquel.

During my male to female gender transition years, I always stressed to the max about my appearance as a transgender woman or cross dresser.

Every now and then, I go back into my very early blog posts to see what I was fixated on and quickly noticed I was all about how I looked. In those days, I thought being a woman was all about looks and beauty and I wanted to overcome my testosterone poisoned body to achieve what I could.

The big test of my so-called beauty pageant was when I began to free myself from the mirror and break out of my closet into the world. By doing so, I found I had a lot of work to do if I was able to make it in the world as a transfeminine person at all. My first big test was too present well enough that the teen girls would not notice me and send me home in tears. During that time, my makeup had to be just perfect, and I did not want to ruin my mascara and carefully applied eyeliner by crying. Even when my makeup and hair was done just right, I struggled to think I was anything close to being beautiful. I just wanted to be presentable and live my new experience as a transgender woman.

It wasn’t until my second wife began to call me the “Pretty, pretty princess” when we fought about my cross-dressing desires, did I begin to think about what she was really saying. Since she was an attractive but a no-nonsense makeup woman, and she was my idol in so many ways, I tried to tone down my makeup the best I could to please her. On occasion, she would even go out with me as my feminine self, so I wanted to do the best I could to not embarrass her or myself with how I looked. Of course, the problem continued to be I could not get away with wearing no makeup like she did which led to more fighting.

Many years later, after she passed away, I began to build my own feminine self from what I had learned about beauty and how it related to other ciswomen around me. The first thing I did was becoming a better student of women than I had ever been before. I needed to remove the male blinders I still had to get a realistic view of the world I so desperately wanted to enter and be a part of. I discovered I paid an inordinate amount of time admiring the beautiful ciswomen I saw and not notice the vast majority of women who were doing the best they could with the physical attributes they had to work with. An example was, I was always worried about my height as a trans woman until I began to notice plenty of other tall successful women in the world I was in.

I became less of the “princess” and more of the trans feminine person who was just trying to blend in an survive. It was about this time when Racquel, a trans woman friend of mine told me I passed out of sheer will-power. My willpower took me into a world of lesbian women when hers took a different path into facial operations and men. I guess, in our own ways we were successful transitioning into the world at large with her as a tall, slim beauty and me on a completely different level socializing at lesbian mixers with my friends. By doing so, I learned valuable lifetime lessons on how to live my life without the validation of men at all. If they liked me fine, and if they didn’t (which most did not) that was fine too. Afterall, I was not the ideal girl to being brought home to see the family for the holidays.

Years later, after I met my wife Liz and we became serious, it was difficult enough for me to meet her family for the holidays. Her dad was an extremely right-wing gun rights supporter, and her brother never talked so I did not know what they thought about me. I will never know, since dad passed away years ago and her brother lives south of Cincinnati in Louisville, Kentucky. All I know is, I was extremely ill at ease during holidays with the family.

Now, all I know is that I present well as being old with non-age-appropriate long hair. I can’t do anything about my age and love my hair, so it is not going anywhere. Perhaps I am making up for all the years I had to have my hair cut short in my youth and military days.

As with all other ciswomen, over the years, I have learned to work with what I have been given physically. I was extremely fortunate to have found people who accepted me for who I am as I presented as myself out of sheer willpower.

 

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.

 

 

Up the Down Gender Slide

 

Image from Abbs Johnson
on UnSplash.

Maybe you remember Ralphie (In a Christmas Story movie) who desperately wanted a BB Gun for Christmas and froze up when he was in a department store telling Santa what he wanted for the big day. What happened was Ralphie got kicked down the slide when Santa told him he was getting a football. Finally, Ralphie struggled his way back up the downslide and told Santa he really wanted a BB Gun and was then told he would shoot his eye out.

This scene paralleled my life in several ways. The main one was, I never asked for a BB Gun but got one anyway and secondly, I never asked Santa for the baby doll I really wanted. In many ways, the whole idea of struggling up the down slide when I considered my gender became routine. Instead of shooting my eye with a BB Gun, I became more concerned with hurting my eyes with my mascara stick. Plus, when I tried to hide my cross-dressing activities from my second wife, I tried to be more effective in removing all of my eye makeup so my wife couldn’t tell. It was a challenge to say the least. But not the biggest challenge of all.

First, I needed to break all the male tendencies I had built up over the years. How did I present as a trans woman, all the way to how did I move and communicate. I knew ciswomen operated on a different wavelength than men but how different I never planned on. For example, the amount of nonverbal communication between women surprised me. I quickly learned to watch for the visual cues I picked up when I was in a potentially dangerous situation, I was not aware of.

Ironically, the more I struggled to go up the down slide, the more slippery it became. I had to become more mentally tough as a transfeminine person to even survive in a potentially hostile world. It meant going back to the drawing board when I was pushed down the up-gender slide even more. By mentally tough I mean with my resources, facial feminization would not be possible and there was nothing I could ever do about the testosterone poisoned thick male body, I would have to work with what I had. That damn slide was not going to get to me. What I did do though, was put myself on a highly effective diet which ended up in me losing approximately fifty pounds as well as beginning to take better care of my skin after I shaved every day. By doing better skin care, I was able to use less makeup and look more natural.

With these changes, I was able to actually start climbing up my gender slide, so that someday maybe I could get the baby doll I wanted to have instead of a BB Gun. Mentally, at least.

Other changes I had to make as I climbed to the top of my gender slide was conquering my fear of heights. There came times when I thought I was moving too fast, and I was in danger of losing all my hard-earned male privileges such as family, marriage, jobs and friends. I did not want to beat myself and my male self-had me looking over my shoulder. Then I resolved to never stop working towards my goal of transgender womanhood and moving on to a totally different goal of being able to interact more effectively with the ciswomen I met. I always called it playing in the girls’ sandbox.

Maybe it was my gender paranoia weighing in on me, but I kept seeing potential problems coming at me when I was out of the mirror and into the world. Some turned out to be real, but most were not. I found I did not meet as many gender bigots or anti-transgender ciswomen TERFs as I thought I would. Men were for the most part always standoffish and ciswomen just were not for whatever reason. Maybe, in their own ways, they had climbed their own gender slides and understood what I was going through and did not mind sharing with me.

If you are starting your own gender slide, or even reaching the top, just remember the trip will never be easy. But to coin a saying, if it was easy, would have it been worth it. I know for me; it was the toughest trip of my life. Plus, you are human and will make a mistake on occasion. Especially, when you are not allowed behind the gender curtain to learn the basics cisgender women were raised with. At that point in time, it is up to you to climb your slide and thrive. Not just survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gender "Muscle" Memory

 

Image from Jeremy Bishop
on UnSplash

Perhaps you have heard an elite athlete talk about having muscle memory when they play their sport. Especially professional baseball players who make a living off of hitting curve balls. Which has nothing to do with presenting as a transgender woman, or does it?

I remember the days when I was going through an unwanted male puberty, and I was so self-conscious of how I was walking as a man. I did not want to attract any bullies by thinking I was too effeminate. I must have been fairly successful because I rarely had any problems. I was just a boy who liked sports and cars and stayed under society’s bigotry radar.

Then, when I started to explore the feminine world, I needed to throw out all of my walk like a man training and start to mimic the distinctive walk of a woman the best I could. I took me a while to do it, but I finally came up with a transfeminine walk that did not look like a linebacker in drag. The problem became doing it enough to have it become muscle memory. Mainly because I was not doing it all the time. Spending a day as a transgender woman learning the world, then reverting back to being a man on a job which demanded control was literally mentally killing me. On the days I had to be a man, I felt as if I was in some sort of a gender fog as I could see and feel my dream of womanhood but could not quite achieve it.

What I did was try to practice my feminine muscle memory anytime I did not think anyone was watching. Big box stores later in the evening were my favorites because they were largely empty of other shoppers. Later I wonder if I made the store’s security cameras and they were amused by a man trying to walk like a woman. But, of course, I never found out because I was not doing anything wrong. At least I found out I was being a success as a novice woman when on a few occasions on my male days at work, I was referred to as a woman.

Finally, practice started to make a successful feminine presentation possible for me, and I started to relax when I was out of my closet and the mirror exploring the world. The only problem I ran into was when I became too comfortable and forgot what I was doing. Like the time I was walking through a mall not paying attention when one of my heels became stuck in a sidewalk crack and I twisted my ankle. Lesson learned as from then on, when I was wearing heels, to watch out for cracks in the sidewalks. Muscle memory the hard way.

Until I began to live my life increasingly more as a transgender woman was I able to put the image I always saw in the mirror into motion. The pretty pictures I was able to take of myself were one thing but surviving in the world of cisgender women was another. Every time I thought I had learned all I needed to know, something else came along to shock me into going farther. I was growing increasingly frustrated and again my fragile mental health was suffering. Until I found a good therapist to help me face my truth. I should never had attempted to assume the male role I was in and all of the muscle memory which came with it. All it solved was making my life more complex when I tried to change it and enter the feminine world for good.

Especially with the help of the gender affirming hormones I was approved to take, my confidence as a trans woman grew and any resistance to losing my old male muscle memory went away. I carved out a new life and even found away to be happy in it. I was similar to the very successful baseball player who is winning the world series as my outward motion fit my inward feminine feelings. Even the HRT hormones enabled me to develop my own hips I was so envious of on other women. Anything I could do to come closer to my dream was welcomed.

Having the gender muscle memory from so long ago is something I still think about to this day. Even though I am highly immobile. It was the way I could get started towards another huge step in my male to female gender transition.