Exceeding my Expectations

 

JJ Hart

I once worked at a great job where the company’s motto was, we exceed expectations.

As luck would have it, about the time I worked there was the same time that I really kicked my gender explorations into hyper-speed. It was the time when if I was not spending time with my second wife or working, I was out the door as a novice transgender woman learning the world. Looking back, that period of my life seems like a blur as both sides of my gender personality competed for attention.

In many ways the competition was not fair because I was beginning to feel so natural in the feminine world as my fear of doing it subsided. I was discovering that my testosterone poisoned body could indeed be shaped into something that could blend in with the ciswomen who ran the world I wanted to be part of. My confidence rose every time I succeeded in presenting successfully in the world as a transfeminine person. I was exceeding my expectations and many times I could not believe it was me.

To do so, when I could, I picked out many feminine things I could do to prove to myself that I could. Such as the time I was able to do the “Black Friday” Christmas shopping with the overwhelming majority of the women in a mall I always wanted to go to back when malls were still the place to be to shop after Thanksgiving for deals. I had tried for years to schedule such an adventure but finally, the sun, moon and stars came together for me, and I was able to do it.

When I pulled into the mall, it was already packed and I was lucky I found a close parking place to a side entrance and wore my most comfortable boots with my big soft sweater and leggings to brave the Ohio cold and headed inside the warm mall. As I said, the place was packed with women on a shopping mission, and I soon learned they could not be bothered with worrying about a single trans woman going about her business. Sadly, I did not have a long time to spend there because I needed to go to work later in the afternoon, so I had to leave my adventure behind and drive home. But, on the plus side, I could mark another experience off my feminine bucket list as I finally was able to take on the world as a woman during one of their favorite activities…getting the best shopping bargains at the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday deals.

As I took that off my transgender bucket list, I needed to rack my brain to think of other primarily ciswomen dominated things to do. Next, I decided to try my hand on seeing if I could be accepted in a couple of the small lesbian bars I had heard of in the Dayton, Ohio area. I turned out to be extremely successful in one of them and extremely hated in another. Which at the time, I did not think was too bad. The venue I was intensely disliked in was essentially a lesbian biker bar which did not accept trans women such as me at all. But the other bar did and I ended up having several great experiences there.

Such as the night when I was forced to sing karaoke by a super-butch lesbian in a cowboy hat who I did not think she ever realized I was trans. At any rate, I made sure I had paid for drinks and left before she realized why my voice was deeper than hers when we both tried to sing a classic country song by “David Allan Coe.” Then there was the night I was approached by another butch who bought me a beer and told me she ought to pick me up and take me home with her. The only problem was that I was still married at the time, and my wife would have never believed me if I told her I was abducted by an alien lesbian. Probably the best part was, out of all the people I knew in the bar was the main bartender who by accident I learned knew my male self. I never knew if she had given my secret away that the “lipstick femme lesbian” everyone was approaching was transgender. Before I found out, sadly the venue had closed, but my expectations were exceeded when I knew I could be accepted by the lesbian culture.

Perhaps my biggest win came when I was able to get away from the gay venues, I was seeking refuge in from the world and try to become more of a regular in all the straight I sports bars I used to be a regular in when I was a man. I say the biggest win because for the first time in my life I was coming out of my gender shell with the chance to learn who I really was in my new trans womanhood. All of my expectations were quickly exceeded the night I finally gathered my courage to go back to the nights I thought I was only a part-time cross dresser and prove myself wrong. I was so much more as I struggled to learn about and live my reality. The night I did it for the first time at a TGIF Fridays, set a standard for me and taught me a lesson I could never unlearn, I could never go back to being a man again.

Setting up a whole new set of expectations for me was never easy. Especially when it comes to something as complex as living as a whole new gender. I was naive about how complex a ciswoman’s life could be, as I primarily learned I had so much more to work through than just worrying about my appearance. Which was just the first high heeled step into the real world of women. Many times, I needed to kick my heels off and dive barefoot into the girls’ sandbox to survive and exceed all the expectations I had ever had.

Hey You!!!! Thanks for reading along with all my writings and as always thanks for any comments you may have.

 

 

 

 

 

In Praise of Transgender Men

 

Image from Aiden Craver
on UnSplash. 

I am fairly certain that this is the first time I have written a post which almost exclusively deals with transgender men and how they relate to trans women. But it is long overdue as I know I have several transmen who join me on occasion and read along.

Plus, they are kind enough to comment on my writing to give me an idea of what life is all about from the other side of the major transgender border. Sometimes I even have a hard time remembering what the time was like when I was struggling to be a man, so I can understand and comment back.

My actual dealing with trans men goes back to my first dinner date as a transfeminine person. At the time, the person who asked me out identified as a super butch lesbian who had not yet decided completely to live a male life. We went to dinner at TGIF Fridays and yes I was scared to be on my first date as he reminded me of later. It was the first time I was not in complete control (or thought I was) for a date and I got to see life through a whole different viewpoint.

To this day, I still follow his social media to see what he is up to and on very rare occasions in the past, he included me in some of his observations which happened when he transitioned from the other side.

It turns out, many of the same obstacles of crossing the gender border are the same but just reversed of course. Such as the problem of suddenly using the opposite restroom that you were used to using. I wondered what the shift was like from a brand-new male viewpoint when you were expected not to make any eye contact with another guy in “the room”. You were there for one reason only, and that was not to socialize, do your business and get out. Then there is the problem of having to use the stall to pee and having another guy hear you do it. As we all know, cismen have a very fragile sexuality which could be challenged unknowingly at any time when you play behind the gender curtain from female to male.

Not so long ago, I received a comment from a trans guy named “Omey” who said he was not accepted much anymore by the girls he used to know but I would think leaving the girls club would not be dealt with so harshly as leaving the men’s club is for transgender women. I know the club house door was slammed shut on me quickly when I left the men’s club for good. Again, it goes back to a man’s basic lack of belief in his sexuality. I found ciswomen did not care as much that I was living in their world as much as men resented me leaving theirs. And I wonder what transgender men face as a challenge from other men as they try to break into the “team.” Because, like the rest of us, they have no gender workbook to work from.

I know I am forgetting many of the details that went into being a successful cisman for me such as the one-on-one confrontations I had with other men. I was fortunate in that I had built up enough male privilege to get by. Basically, other men could not challenge me at work because I was the boss and could fire them. Even though that was always my last resort. I also found that men are more effective when they build teams and women when they are allowed to form cliques behind alpha-females. Which I know is a stereotype but a successful one for me.

Then there is the argument who has an easier route to passing in the world as their chosen gender, trans men or trans women. I am biased, but I think trans men have an easier time of transitioning into the public once testosterone has a chance to take hold of their body. It is the reason we see so many transgender men later in life with male pattern baldness. Before the baldness sets in, trans men also have the benefit of a good haircut which can make them appear more masculine where transgender women usually must wear wigs because their baldness has set in already.

The more intrusive cosmetic operations from both sides of the gender spectrum are pretty much a give and take in my opinion. Trans women can’t wait to grow their own breasts through HRT while trans men want to go through the traumatic operation to rid themselves of theirs. It’s all a matter of which side of the spectrum you are on, but trans women are more apt to go through more severe facial femininization surgeries to rid themselves of their testosterone poisoned male features. Not to mention the incredible expense most must go through to do it.

My praise goes out to the transgender men who can bring the best examples of the feminine culture with them. Such as deep love and understanding and applying it to a masculine world which desperately needs improving. There are far too many toxic males running around these days. I know early on I benefitted from the understanding of trans men and found them to be so much more intellectually stimulating than cismen and their drama. That is why I so enjoy hearing from trans men, ciswomen and the rest of you on a regular basis.

I am sure, no matter where you end up as a trans man or transgender woman, you are more than happy to give up your place in your old gender world to anyone who wants it. We just need to be allowed to take the best of both worlds and build a better one from it.

Thanks again to all of you who read along and even take the time to contribute to my writing! I’m sure in this post I have skimmed over many of the obstacles transgender men face, and I just hope I flipped my usual script and mentioned a few.

 

 

Gender Binges

 

Image from Andy Arjun
on UnSplash.  

Binge cross-dressing happened a lot to me when I was quite young.

Once I was able to scrape together my meager finances to put together a small wardrobe of feminine clothes that barely fit me, I could not stay away from wearing them more and more. In fact, I was able to come up with two main hiding places away from the prying eyes of my family and most importantly, my slightly younger brother. It was about that time that I really became involved with binging in my new clothes which I felt made me look like a pretty girl.

Very soon, regardless of the risk involved with me cross-dressing as a girl, I was doing it as much as I could get away with. I think now that my mom had to know something about my cross-dressing but was either afraid to say anything about such a complex subject or thought it was a phase that would go away. Obviously, the joke was on her. My wanting to be a woman never did go away; I just matured into it. Plus, back in the late 1950’s and early 1960's, there was very little good information about gender issues to deal with, so we were on our own as gender issues were called mental illnesses. Which even I knew at such a young age was not true. For all I knew at the time, I really liked experimenting with mom’s clothes and makeup and binge dressing was becoming routine.

As I said, once I began to mature into being a more accomplished cross-dresser (even before I considered myself transgender) I managed to dress more and more. I was even able to buy a beautiful long blond human hair wig that she hated and I loved. Finally, after I changed girlfriends, she went away and I kept the most important part of the relationship to me which of course was the wig. It brought me to a whole other level of cross-dressing away from Halloween wigs into the real deal. Back in the 1960’s when miniskirts were in, I could not wait until I could find a chance to slide on pantyhose and miniskirt and top it all off with my blond wig. Yes, I did binge any chance that I got!

Sadly, my binge dressing needed to come to a complete halt during my military years in the Army. Instead of worrying about how short I could wear my miniskirts, I had a more immediate and important problem of how to deal with weapons and drill sergeants in Army basic training. How I survived was that I put all my fond memories of cross-dressing in the back of my head and daydreamed about the future I knew I could have shaving my legs again and binge dressing as a woman.

After I served my time in the military, the only immediate release I had from all the tension I felt to be feminine at all was with all the many and varied Halloween parties I went to. During that time, I went from being a French woman with my blond hair, black outfit, tights and beret, all the way to professional woman one year when I was mistaken for a ciswoman just getting off work. The good news was I was learning a lot, and the bad news was Halloween only came about once a year. I needed desperately to find another way to binge with a purpose and express myself as a transgender woman. A term I was beginning to accept as my own.

Once I began to accept who I was, I needed to set out to prove it to myself and the world that I could live my truth. It was then that my binging took a whole different direction from where I was before. Thanks to the basic acceptance I gained from successful Halloween parties, I had the confidence to know I could look the part and blend in with society as another ciswoman. Little did I know then, the hardest part of my male to female femininization project was yet to come.

It took me finally getting out of the gay bars I regularly went to for some sort of validation I never received and into being accepted as a regular in many of the straight venues I went to and enjoyed as a man. My validation as a regular gave me the confidence to keep trying to improve myself as a transgender woman rounding out her life in the world. As I achieved goal after goal I set up on my trans bucket list, I really binged out every chance that I got which put me into a direct collision with my second wife who did not want to live with another woman and my male self who was dead against giving up his life all together.

By all out gender binging, I had set myself up for an internal war I was fortunate to survive. It took me all I could do to keep all my lives together as the years progressed. All I knew was I was able to carve out a dream existence as a transfeminine person. No one knew of my male past, and I loved experiencing every moment of my new life. Deep down, for once I felt I was fighting my self when I was binging as a trans woman and expressing my true self.

By turning back, the clock the best I could, I tried to take the best that I learned from my male life and apply it to building a solid base for my female life. I think it worked because I was able to decide which of my male baggage was important enough to bring along and I benefitted from being blessed with a long life, so I can see a number of important things come full circle (which is another blog post.)

The bottom line is I have always been an impulsive person which helped me all the times I just had to binge to satisfy my needs. Dealing with my gender issues was just an integral part of that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Staying in Rhythm as a Trans Woman

 

JJ Hart gaining my rhythm with women.
I ma in first row on left.

 

It took me years to get into rhythm as a new transgender woman when I no longer considered myself a weekend cross-dresser.

The main problem I had was I needed to go back and forth between my male life and the feminine life I was trying desperately to learn. My wife and I had come to an uneasy truce about my increasing need to explore the world of ciswomen. She thought it was fair that I took three days out of my week to cross-dress and would even see that I had the money to go to a motel to complete my male to female femininization. Anything but me leaving the house dressed as me.

As you can tell, that was more than a fair deal but not a deal I could keep. Every time I was getting used to the makeup, clothes and movements of being a woman, I had to have it all taken away with a jolt of reality when I had to go back fulltime into my unwanted male world. Before long, I grew tired of the truce and having my gender rhythm destroyed and started to leave the house as me any time I wanted. As with most good times, my brief on an off life as a transgender woman was threatened with ending as my second wife discovered me time after time, I had excuses for being dis-honest and jeopardizing the good marriage I had but deep down I had no choice if I wanted to keep my feminine rhythm going.

Through all the good times and bad times with my second wife, I was learning what it would take for me to express my femininity and it was all me who drove us to our breaking point. More than once when I tried things such as gender therapy to curb my desires to be a woman. The only time that therapy helped me was when I was diagnosed with being a Bi-Polar depressive person which said a lot to me. Mainly it explained why I was spending days at a time not wanting to get out of bed and others when I thought I could conquer the world and it had nothing to do with being transgender. After trying several medications, I did not tolerate well, I found some that I could, and they keep my moods stable to this day. I was able to work my depression issues into my life and build them into the rhythm so I could live a good life.

Even with all the success I was having on my depression medications, I still had to face the problems I had switching back and forth between the two main binary genders. Most of the time on a daily basis. As I would rush home from work, pull off my shirt and tie and be the woman I always wanted to be until my wife came home. I was able to juggle my genders and make some sort of a life with all of this until the untimely passing of my wife from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. Even though we never saw eye to eye on my transfeminine desires, I still loved her deeply and our marriage made it to the twenty-five-year mark.

Naturally, the whole tragic deal sent me into a tailspin, and I had to figure out what to do about my all of a sudden very lonely life. Was I going to go back to try to establish a male life with another ciswoman or get rid of my male life altogether and start all over as a transgender woman.

By this time in my life, I did not want to try another relationship with a ciswoman I would have to lie to, so the answer was clear. Take all the time and effort I had put into building my new rhythm as a trans woman and head for a new life. All the time and effort I put into presenting as well as I could as a woman, as well as communicating well as one too came back to help me. Confidence as well as an extreme amount of destiny opened doors for me that I never thought possible would happen. As my third wife Liz told me very few people ever have the opportunity to stop their lives, learn from their mistakes, and start over again. Don’t screw it up.

I took the insight I received from my time as a man observing how ciswomen live around them and tried to mold that into a new life. Because I fell into the arms of loving women during my male to female transition, I did not have to worry about such rhythms such as my sexuality ever becoming an issue. I had always desired women sexually as a woman myself, and nothing had to change. Add in my passion for history and sports and I hit the trifecta of being exactly in the place I wanted to be. Through it all, I could not believe it was all finally happening to me after all the years of sneaking around and struggling with my gender.

Better yet, I had reached the point where if I looked like a woman, walked like a woman and communicated as a woman, then I was a woman. Even though I did not gain my status the same way most women do. Their gender rhythm came naturally while I needed to work to find mine was the only difference.

Even though I was a slow learner when it came to learning to finally live how I was always meant to live, I was a survivor which was all that mattered and when I learned my feminine rhythm I never had to let it go.

As always, thanks so very much for reading along with my exploits in exploring the transgender world. Any comments you might have are always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gender Evolution

 

Image from Hoite Prins
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes I think I give the wrong impression when it comes to my reactions to cross-dressing as a whole.

In reality, the last thing I want to do is put myself up on some sort of pedestal because I have survived my own personal gender wars and evolved from a young boy experimenting in his women’s clothes to living full-time as a transfeminine person in the world. After all, I was the one who spent nearly four decades cross-dressing my life away trying to make a final decision on which way my life would take me. So, saying “just a cross-dresser” would be totally wrong for me to do. In fact, cross dressing saved my life from taking off the overall pressure I was feeling from living my gender conflicted life. Just the slightest glimmer of hope I got from the mirror was all I had to get by and I used it to the max.

As I look back from the journey I took from wearing my mom’s clothes when they still fit me, all the way to getting rid of all my male clothing altogether (except my Army uniform), it was quite the lifetime of evolution. Sadly, not all the times were good, but they were all deep learning experiences. Such as all the times I was dressing to thrill myself. Not to properly attempt to blend in with the ciswomen around me. Very difficult lessons to learn as I needed to put my faux teenaged cross-dressing years behind me quickly if I ever wanted to be a success. I was far from being a teen girl since I was in my thirties with the testosterone poisoned body I was working with. I needed to evolve and do it fast if I was ever would be able test the idea I could survive as a transgender woman, leading a successful life.

Suddenly, out of the clear blue sky which was my existence more or less back in those days, something mentally clicked in me as I was preparing to go out into the world one night. As I slipped into my panty hose and heels, put on my makeup and wig, my whole thought pattern changed. I was no longer trying to just go out and successfully present well as a look-a-like ciswoman, I was going out to fit right into their community as a novice trans woman. The thought hit me like a thunderbolt and scared me to even think that way, but I could feel my life making a seismic shift for the better. If I could be successful, which still was a big question.

I am not shy about writing about one of the most exciting nights of my life went I went to mingle with a group of professional ciswomen who worked at a nearby mall. I don’t know what scared me worse, the fear of being recognized as an intruder and embarrassed or the fear of knowing if I was successful, I could never go back to the male life I was starting to evolve away from. I just know I was so scared I thought I would need an oxygen tank to help me breathe when I went in the venue to mingle with all those young attractive women.

You can probably guess what happened from there. I was very successful and knew my future as a cross-dresser was behind me as I had evolved into a novice transgender woman. Complete with two new straight venues I had established myself in as a regular. Something I never thought possible just a few months before when I was frequenting gay venues getting mistaken for just another drag queen. I should be more appreciative towards the reaction I received from the gay community because their attitudes sent me flying to places, I knew and enjoyed as a man. If I had evolved enough as a trans woman to do it.

At that point, my evolution into being allowed behind the women’s gender curtain was forced fed to me quickly. Mainly from other women who I met and wanted to help me adjust to the world I so desperately wanted to be a part of. Sometimes, I was overconfident and was sent back to my gender drawing board when I tried to go too fast, too soon but I never had to go back to the days when I was learning to adjust to the world outside my closet as a cross-dresser. Every angle I pursued in the world seemed to be new and exciting as I learned my feminine lessons well. You might say, I was the ultimate gender sponge because I was finally realizing my gender light at the end of the tunnel was not the train and a good life as a transfeminine person was certainly possible if I kept evolving. All the years of worrying about my future I had wasted in my life were just that…wasted and I needed to move on.

Better yet, I learned the world of ciswomen I was evolving into was worth every bit of the work I had put into it. Sure, I did encounter a few haters, bigots and TERF’s (ciswomen who hated me) but with my newfound confidence I had evolved into, I could quickly ignore them and get along with my life. If I got to the point where I ever needed my new friends to step up for me, they would but I had made it to the point where I could fight my own battles if I needed to.

In many ways, I see the evolution of transgender women and transgender men as the future as now the genders seem to be blurring for the younger generations. Maybe when the old white men finally die out, their bigotry will die out with them. Right now they are scared of the potential a trans tribe carries to understand what goes on both sides of the gender coin and we will be allowed to evolve back to where we were with native American cultures which honored us. But that is an evolvement topic for another time.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

The First Time

 

JJ Hart

There are plenty of first times in a person’s life that we can set up on a pedestal and remember. Such as, the first time you had sex or the first time you drove a car can create some memorable experiences.

I venture a guess that we transgender women and transgender men have more than our fair share of first times to look back on. I know I do. For example, I remember vividly the first time I went exploring in my mom’s garment drawers, and deep down something clicked inside me that I was on a new and exciting path I could never get off of. I also remember the first time I drove a car on a country road at the age of fourteen when no one else was around and I remember the first time I had sex with a woman, and she told me that I would never forget her and she was right.

For many reasons, these were the easy firsts to remember other than times such as when I was in the delivery room for the birth of my only child and negative ones such as when I needed to go to Ft. Hayes in Columbus, Ohio for my draft induction physical. Standing in a room full of naked men was not my idea of fun and a first time I did not want to revisit. There were also lesser first times such as graduating college and receiving my honorable discharge from military service that I was proud of but not as much as I was when I started to fill out my gender workbook and begin to advance towards a stable transfeminine future. It was only then that I began to grasp the importance of life’s first times that I was sometimes racing past before I even knew it. I was so bad about not living in the present and appreciating it for what it was. I was always thinking about the future before the present was over.

When I began to search for my feminine self in the world, I needed to stay in the present more than I had ever needed to in the past. If I did not, I would forget what I was trying to do that night as far as being a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman. I could be mirror-ready with my clothes, makeup and hair and still destroy that image with the wrong movements if I became too careless and forgot where and who I was. Who I was, was the most important time of my life as for the first time, I was attempting to see if I could (against all odds) survive a dream run towards my goal of living as a trans woman in a world of ciswomen everywhere.

As I did become successful, my mindset began to change, and I started to think of myself of a transgender woman more than some sort of a casual cross dresser. I knew it was completely a mental move but still a very important one as I scaled the steep walls of my gender path. At the time, the term transgender was just being used more and more, and for the first time in my life I found something that really described who I was. All those years I had gone to those “Tri-Ess” cross-dresser social mixers were wasted because I still came away with the idea that most of the others were not like me. It took me a while, but I finally began to appreciate the individual that I was for the first time. When I began to remove the cross-dresser word from my mental vocabulary, I was beginning to insert the use of woman and inwardly began to refer to myself as a she, became a milestone in my existence because I was coming to the point of understanding for the first time, I was a woman. Just one with a unique background which should be celebrated, not scorned.

My only problem I had with the whole direction I was heading in my life with my feminine self was that the potential I had to hurt others I loved in the process. And if I had followed my instincts and done the male to female transition, would I had been better off in the long run. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I was wasting my life as a man. What was left of it was only the physical image I presented to the world when I worked and when I was around friends. I was still under the impression I needed his male privileges to exist in the world which were nice to have in the short term but had to go for the first time when I decided to transition into a new, exciting transfeminine world.

Not to say the new world did not present constant challenges to not slip back into my old ingrained masculine ways from living nearly fifty years on and off in that world I was born into without a choice of getting out of. It seemed I was in a dark closet I could not get out of until I made more than a few serious efforts such as going out and carving out my own new life with people who knew nothing of my past. For the first time, I made it in a world full of ciswomen who saw nothing wrong with me being behind their gender curtain and it was as if I had always belonged to the new world I was in. Which was true, I had never been able to get there until I took chances and made the effort. Of course, back in those days, the world was in essence a kinder and gentler place with people less inclined to be in others business.

In my male life, I had always been quite guarded because I did not want anyone in my gender business. As I went female, everything changed and I did not mind anyone knowing my big secret. I was a woman of a transgender background, and I found people who respected me for my honesty on how I was living my life. For some reasons, especially lesbians who let me into their world, and socialized with me as we were regulars watching sports in a few big venues and regulars for the first time at lesbian mixers, I was invited too. In fact, often I was a better “mixer” at these socials than my friends were. I was having fun for the first time in a long time in my life.

I was moving so fast, I finally had to slow down and think of how far I was able to come with the help of my small circle of friends and my future wife Liz. I needed to work on staying in the present for the first time in my life I had a present worth living for, not just going through the motions.

Thank you all for staying with me through all my experiences, and responding with claps, comments and suggestions. As I always say, without you all, none of this is worth it to me.

 

 

 

The Last Line of Defense

 

Image from Gayatri Malthroa 
on UnSplash.

Throughout nearly half of a century, my male self-fought the complete transition I made into a feminine lifestyle.

During that extended period of time, I think I tried everything possible to convince myself that I was wrong to want to play in the girls’ sandbox at all. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I “purged” many times of my feminine belongings. Leaving me with nothing but my most cherished pieces of girl’s/woman’s clothing and makeup. The makeup was easy because I knew I could always buy more. Perhaps the most precious items I never threw away were the nice wigs I was able to buy and the silicone breast forms which ironically were given to me by a fellow cross dresser who was purging also. Deep down inside, I knew I would need the wigs and breast forms again when my urge to cross-dress returned. As my own personal history told me it would.

It turned out that purging was not my last defense, no matter how hard I tried. In fact, the more I tried not to be feminine in any way shape or form, it seemed I slipped closer and closer to it. Especially when I learned I could dress to blend with most of the ciswomen around me. It was then I learned how natural I felt when I began to get it right and could feel all the gender euphoria I could feel.

What I did continually feel was my masculinity slipping away and I only used it on occasions with my wife in mixed company and when I was working in a high-pressure environment. For years, when I was out in the world experimenting living a new life, I felt as if I was sliding down a steep hill towards a transgender cliff which I had no idea of how I would be able to land.

In all fairness to my second wife, she never opposed me cross-dressing and knew about it when we got married. But on the other hand, completely opposed any idea of me becoming a transfeminine person. Between her and my male self, they made formidable opponents in my life when I thought about living as a trans woman. What made it all worse was when my wife kept saying she did not want to live with another woman and did not agree to that when we got married and I had to agree with her. Putting me in a very difficult situation in my life. I escaped the best I could by sneaking out of the house behind her back at any given time I found to test the world time and again to see if I would be allowed to go back behind the gender curtain. Which in many ways, represented escaping the last defense to staying in the male world I had.

Of course, my wife found out on numerous occasions what I was doing as a trans woman and resisted all my progress. When she did, we had giant battles which she normally won and I tried the therapy route to help me with my gender issues. Therapy helped me in many ways in my life but not so much with my deep-seated gender issues. I was expecting too much when one therapist told me if I thought our sessions would ever relieve my tensions, I would be wrong until I was able to make the final decision on if I was able to be a woman or not. At that point, I had two of the most far-reaching quotes that I ignored which were told to me. One of which was the time I was told I was the only one who could decide my gender future and the second was when my wife told me to go ahead and be man enough to be a woman. I was so sure I could do it my way and it cost me dearly. Especially, in terms of my overall mental health when juggling two genders and two lives at once became too much to handle. I did not know if I was coming or going on which day it was on how I was expected to act.

As many of you know, my second wife tragically died of a massive heart attack, leaving me with only my male self to do gender battle with. His last defenses deteriorated quickly as I became deeply unhappy and lonely and took solace in my inner female self for comfort. She stepped up big time, and very soon when I was not working nights, I was in one of my regular drinking venues seeking company. That was when I discovered I had more in common with the lesbians I met than with any man. Since most of them rejected me anyhow for leaving the good old boys club. I was able to say good riddance and go forward in my life into a world I never thought possible could ever be a part of. I had never really got along well with men in my life, and it turned out nothing had really changed. Except the way I was exploring the world. Finally, as my true self. As I was finding me after all those years of searching.

The last defense my male self-had was when my third wife Liz and only daughter came to my rescue with unwavering support for my final dive off the steep gender cliff. They made the landing very soft, and even easy. More precisely, Liz made me a believer in myself again and my daughter gave me support I needed from what blood family I had left since my brother rejected me, and my parents had long since passed away. Add in the couple of lesbians I always socialized with and I had all the support I needed to succeed in where I had dreamed of going and being accepted behind the gender curtain.

By far, I would be remiss if I did not mention the power of HRT or gender affirming hormones in removing any of the final defenses my male self-had going for him. I could not believe how fast the hormones acted as my body began to change, inside and out. It would take a whole post to describe all the impacts the hormones made to me. In fact, I have my annual appointment with my endocrinologist coming up this week, and with it, the chance to get refills on my hormonal patches.

Maybe I can thank her then for helping me to win my battle with my male self. Since I receive my HRT meds through the Veterans Administration, I always hope nothing changes from the top down with my ability to keep receiving a huge part of what makes me whole. I worked too long to get here.

Thanks again for joining me on my journey and I hope my experiences help you too.

Any comments, claps or subscriptions are welcome and make my work so worthwhile!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Laughing Matter

 

Image from Priscilla Du Preeze
on UnSplash. 

I am always amused when someone thinks I had a choice to follow my transgender path. Obviously, they were not there for all the trials and tribulations I had and the extreme harassment I received as I came out into the world. All the times I hurried home crying when I was stared at or glared at by the public before I was able to improve my feminine presentation to the point where I could blend in.

I did all I could to improve my testosterone damaged body by going on a crash diet and did my best to improve my skin by using moisturizers everyday after I shaved before I went to work. Why would I attempt all of that if I thought crossing the gender border was just a choice I could make. The farther I went, the more I had to do to improve. Mainly because it felt like it was the right thing to do.

Perhaps the most important sacrifice I needed to be prepared to make was losing my white male entitlements or male privileges. Even though I did not respect the growing rights that I had obtained through hard work as a male, I needed to keep in mind continually I did not really want them anyhow and there were better days ahead if I ever had achieved my dream of living as a transgender woman fulltime.

Through it all though, I wondered why all this gender turmoil was happening to me. Often when the poor, poor pitiful me aspect of my life was at it’s worse, I would “man-up” and purge myself of most of my feminine belongings. As most of us know, purging does not work for any length of time. All it did for me was make me go out and buy more makeup, clothes and shoes to express my femininity again. A total waste of money, but at least I always tried to build back better following every purge I tried. Finally, I looked back at purging as just another rite of passage I needed to through as I followed along my gender path to success, and I was able to put my transgender victim mentality behind me.

As I grew older and set in my cross-dressing ways, I knew increasingly I had no choice in how I lived my life. I was rapidly going through yet another gender transition from just having a so-called hobby into being a transgender woman. I was doing more than just shopping for more and more clothes and was trying out new ways to experience the world the way ciswomen do. I started doing a portion of the grocery shopping successfully as the new transfeminine me all the way to starting to do all my Christmas shopping in unique situations also. Just to see if I could.

At that point, the things I needed to go through to survive in life became increasingly evident to me. I would need to express myself as a woman and I had no choice but to do it. I also knew the risk I was taking when I thought about losing the male life, I had worked so hard and long to be successful at. What would my daughter think of her new dad was one of the few variables as I knew I would lose my long-term marriage and great job that I had. I needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt I was doing the right thing, and I truly had no choice but to stay on the course I was on. This is where my transgender humor comes in. Why would anyone ever put themselves through such a life full of turmoil if they ever had a choice. Or, when just putting on a dress becomes so much more than a fun experience, where do you go then?

It is no secret where I went and I had the chance to experience so much more in my life because it is exceedingly rare when a human gets the chance to experience both sides of the binary gender spectrum. The problem is we transgender women and transgender men don’t have a chance to enjoy the trip because of the pressure we put on ourselves to perform behind the gender curtain we chose. If we are not doing it to ourselves, the pressure is certainly on from the public to do it too. Especially these days with the charged anti-transgender political attitude we are seeing from the orange menace in Washington DC, and in many states such as my own native Ohio.

If we can ever get the public at large to understand we trans people never had a choice on the life’s direction we ultimately took, we would come out so much further ahead. Sadly, the path to get there does not seem to be getting any closer for many of us as the things we have to go through just keep on coming. I know for those of you who are still on your transition path or even consider it, it is a major step to take. Hopefully on the way, you can take the time to stop for a moment and enjoy how far you have come. I always thought if it does not kill me, it will just make me stronger would help me along. And on a lesser scale, the old sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me saying really applied to me also.

When you are on your path long enough to realize there is no turning back, you will also know you had no choice but to keep going towards your goal. It was never easy, but so worthwhile as you navigated the final blind curves, potholes and stop signs. At the least, you will know you lived a life where you had a choice and made the most of it.

Plus, certainly it was no laughing matter. 

As always, thank you for reading along with my experiences. Any comments, extra claps or subscriptions are welcome!

 

 

 

 

My Gender Workbook was Blank

 

Image from Marcus Winkler
on UnSplash. 

Somedays, I prefer explaining the trip up my gender path as filling out my gender workbook. Of course, the problem I had doing it was I had absolutely no help. No mother or peer group pressure to tell me if I was doing right from wrong when it came to cross-dressing myself as a girl or applying makeup.

Ironically (as I said in a recent post), knowing my mom the way I did she would have been against me shaving my legs and wearing makeup as early as I did as her secret daughter. I was only trying to get a head start on writing my own gender workbook and trying to catch up with all the girls around me who also were sneaking around wearing makeup and wearing panty hose.

It was fairly easy for me to make up my own workbook rules when it was just me and the mirror to deal with. No matter what I did as far as my feminine presentation was concerned was accepted by my mirror which kept lying to me and telling me I was a pretty girl. Which was much easier before I hit the curse of male puberty and all the changes my body was going through. I was seeing unwanted growth and angles while the girls I envied around me were getting curves. When I went to bed every night, I dreamed of my life being different but of course it never was. I would not get the curves I wanted until decades later in life when I was fortunate to have good health enough to be able to start HRT or gender affirming hormones.

There turned out to be tons of effort I needed to put into my workbook before I could arrive at the point where I could even think about starting hormones. The shortcuts I kept trying to make never seemed to work and usually got me in trouble. When I did find trouble by trying to do too much with poor fashion choices, finally I gained some sense, rewrote my gender workbook and went on to successfully try to blend in with the world of ciswomen as a transgender woman. Looking back, I think that page of my book had so many erase and start over marks that I could barely read it.

When I really began to get serious about seeing if I could be successful as a trans woman was when I desperately needed my gender workbook to help me, but it just couldn’t because I had not put the time and effort into filling it out. I had never given enough thought to how different the lives of men and women really were. Perhaps you remember the book “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” which when I read it, I wondered where trans people came from. I did not know yet we transgender women and transgender men get to occupy a special planet all our own with our unique knowledge of both men and women.

As I first began to mature into a more complete transfeminine person, I sometimes discovered my mental gender notes became overwhelming, and I needed to head back home to go over in my mind about what just happened to me. Good or bad, it did not matter. What was most unexpected to me was the amount of acceptance I received in the new world I was in. I had become used to the glares and abuse I took when I went out of the house in my early days and learned the majority of the world did not care about me one way or another. All the way to those other women who encouraged me to be in their world. Nowhere in my gender workbook did I ever imagine such a thing ever happening to a person like me just trying to find a new foothold in the world as my authentic self after all the years of struggling.

Sadly, there were still times when I ran out of ink to write in my gender workbook, and I attempted to purge everything I had accomplished and go totally back to my old safe male world. As most of us know, purges never work, and before I knew it I was out buying more feminine clothes and makeup to femininize myself all over again. By doing so, I finally came to the point of stopping obsessing over how I looked and settled into just being the person I was meant to be all along. I just did not want anything to do with me being a privileged male anymore, I just wanted to live out the long-held dream goal of mine to live as close as I could to a woman.

Even at that point, my gender workbook was different than other trans women friends I had known when I made the decision to live my life without all the major gender realignment surgeries and facial surgeries the others had gone through. I had two comments which described me the best when a transwoman friend of mine said I passed out of sheer willpower and another which came in on a comment and said I was just another old guy on hormones. Both were right in their own ways, and I wrote a mental note in my workbook that I would never be the prettiest woman in the room, but I could be the nicest. As far as the comment on me being an old guy on hormones, I wondered if the commenter was just jealous and it did not matter anyhow because I had always considered my gender to be between my ears and not between my legs and I had made it through life as far as I did with no surgeries at all, so there was no need to risk damage when I was older.

Also, I was fortunate to have been able to have other ciswomen around me help finish my gender workbook to where it is today. More than they ever knew, they taught me how to validate myself as a trans woman and welcomed me into their world. A major accomplishment in my life.

 

A Musical Interlude

 

AFTN Image. I am on the left and Dave
Mallett is on the right taking a break, Circa 1972. 

I have mentioned many times that I started my working career as a radio DJ on local AM “Top40” stations all the way to entertaining the military on American Radio and Television stations in Thailand and Germany.

During that time, I developed a great attachment to various forms of music including the blues which I suffered from at the time from untreated Bi-Polar depression. Then I began to feel the music deeper than ever before and it helped me to overcome the deep issues I had from my gender dysphoria.

Ironically, out of the clear blue sky yesterday, I heard one of those songs which had affected me so deeply. Actually, I saw “Rascal Flatts” perform their remake of “Life is a Highway” by “Tom Cochrane” on a New Years Eve show I was watching this year.  When I did, the memories from the late 1970’s/early 80’s came flooding back to me when I heard these lyrics for the first time:

“Life is a highway
I want to ride it all night long
If you're going my way
I want to drive it all night long”

I was in Columbus, Ohio finishing up yet another exciting evening of partying with friends at a small diverse cross-dresser-transgender mixer I was at. When I heard the song, it was one of those magic moments when I had the lights of the Columbus skyline in my rearview mirror and nothing but open road ahead to collect my thoughts about the evening. It seemed all my senses were at their highest possible point as I savored the summer evening and for once did not think of everything which would come up in the future when I crashed back into my unwanted male life. All I knew was I wanted to drive the transgender highway I was on all night long and never lose the feelings I was experiencing. With lyrics such as this:

“Life's like a road that you travel on
Where there's one day here and the next day gone
Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind
There's a world outside every darkened door
Where blues won't haunt you anymore
Where the brave are free and lovers soar
Come ride with me to the distant shore”

I really wanted to ride to the distant shore but was not certain how I was going to get there. So, I relied on music to dull the gender pain I felt daily except when I was stepping out to feel what a feminine lifestyle would mean for me.

Yet another song which reflects so deeply what I was feeling is the classic “Nights in White Satin” by the “Moody Blues”. Again, here are a couple of brief excerpts from the song if you have never heard it:

“Nights in white satin, never reaching the end
Letters I've written, never meaning to send
Beauty I've always missed, with these eyes before
Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore”

Most certainly, I was at the point where I could not say what the truth was about my gender at that time. I was at my peak of being non-committal about where I wanted to go in my life. Should I sell it all off for what I could get as a man and start all over again as a transgender woman was my dilemma. Was I missing the beauty with my eyes before. And here was the hardest part, spelled out for me so well by the “Moody Blues”:

“Gazing at people some hand in hand
Just what I'm going through they can't understand
Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be you will be in the end”

That was the hard part. Did I want to be a transfeminine person, pay the dues and achieve my goals in the end. It turned out I did achieve my dream later in life when I could not take living as a man any longer, so what I wanted to be, I was in the end. And what about those people who tried to me their thoughts they cannot defend? They were so difficult sometimes to overcome.

I am sure, with the amount of music which has been produced over the years, you have music which profoundly speaks to you and your gender issues too. Sometimes I feel. Since we transgender women and trans men go through such profound changes in our lives, we may feel the music deeper than our non-trans counterparts.

In the meantime, we are stuck on Cochranes highway. Riding it all day as well as all night long.

 

Fearing Change as a Gender Challenged Woman

Image from Joshua Gaunt 
on UnSplash. 

Gender change came so very slowly for me during my life.

First, I needed to free myself from the male bonds I was born into which I had no control over. Looking back, I think one of the main problems I had was fearing the changes I was looking to go through if I faced up to reality. From that point forward, life became a struggle as I feared changing it.

What I became was the best transgender procrastinator I knew. Any excuse I could come up with not to go through with living my dream, I clung to like a survivor on the Titanic. What I would do about spouses, family and employment were a few of the major questions I was asking. So, what did I do? I ran as hard and as fast as I could from the problem. I was running so hard, I even changed jobs very quickly so I would not be bored with my life as a transfeminine fugitive. Eventually, even though I grew tired of the pace, I found a stable good job and settled part of my life down. I say part of my life because during that time my gender issues were raging out of control.

Even though I was slowly becoming successful at blending my feminine self in with the world of cisgender women, I still had many fears to conquer. Just when I thought life was improving for me, I would hit another roadblock and send me running back to my cross-dressing drawing board. Which was crazily marked with clownish makeup until I got it right. The fear of applying skilled makeup kept me occupied for years it seemed. On the other hand, when I got my male ego out of the way and realized I needed to dress for other women and not men, did I begin to improve my overall look and the laughter I used to receive in public began to die away. When it did, I learned the most powerful force I had to combat gender change was having confidence in myself. Surely, I would never be the prettiest most beautiful woman in the room, but a lot of other cisgender women were not either and they were surviving and even thriving just fine. There were many layers to building womanhood and I just needed to find mine.

For some reason, the more success I felt as a transgender woman, the more fear I had. I guess it was because of my old male self-starting to panic because he was losing his dominance over my life. For years, what had seemed like the impossible gender dream was now looking as if it could become a reality. As he fought his new reality, the stakes towards living a successful life as a trans woman, increased dramatically. Every step I was taking towards my dream seemed to feel as if I was walking in quicksand since at any time, life as I knew it could be disrupted beyond repair in the little backwards town I lived in. I still lived in mortal fear that any day I could be discovered and the acquaintances I had built up over the years would realize I was living a gender lie. Which I was.

I finally made it to a point where I could not procrastinate my life any longer and I began to use every spare moment to explore the world as a transfeminine person. It all meant I accepted the challenge to finally go all in with making the final preparations for my new life. The bittersweet part of it all was part of my male to female final transition was built on tragedy. In the space of a couple short years, I lost my second wife as well as all of the friends I had built up over the years to death, and I had to start all over again. Sure, I was still afraid to do it but deep down I knew transition was the only way I could go. Suddenly it was up to only me to decide if I wanted to take the ultimate step and try to get a doctor’s permission to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was approved and then the changes I was hoping for began to really happen for me. The changes were so dramatic, I sometimes take an entire blog post to relate them to you.

What frustrates me now are the haters who say that because I took so long to transition, I am not trans enough for them. Normally, they are younger LGBTQ individuals who have no idea of what the world was like way back when I was growing up. We all have our own gender crosses to bear, and we need to understand each other’s journey.

Sadly, there are all those transgender women and trans men who can’t take the burden of gender change fear any longer and tragically try to take the self-harm way out. The suicide rate in our community is completely too high and could come down with proper help and understanding.

In my case, my excuse is I had a heavy dose of ignorance combined with fear and procrastination as reasons it took me nearly a half a century to come out of my gender shell and live freely in the world as a transgender woman. These days, if you can steer clear of all the online trolls and haters, you can still get valuable information on the internet concerning ideas on how to build a new life as a woman from scratch. Plus, fear for me was a powerful motivator and when I was forced into a corner because of my gender, I came out fighting because I believed I was right.

It turned out I was.