It Was Always a Challenge

 

Image from Dwayne Joe
on UnSplash.

As a boy and onward to manhood, I had plenty of challenges to be sure of. Early on, my challenges were in athletics where I had very little natural ability, except for a passion to play ball of any sort.

On the positive side, my love for sports kept the bullies away for the most part and on the negative side, I lost a lot when I played. In the meantime, my feminine side beckoned and I was challenged even more because once again, I was not blessed with very little ability to present well as a girl. Testosterone tore my body up and produced many results that I did not want such as a bigger body and hairy legs and arms. Not good for a boy who wanted to be a girl as the major goal in her life.

At that time, I did not realize how complex my life would become when I decided much later to pursue the life of a transgender woman. How would I ever maintain a marriage as well as a successful career as a man that I was expected to do, if I wanted to be a woman at the same time. It was the beginning of an intense amount of pressure that I needed to live with as it became part of my permanent baggage when at the time, I was trying my best to minimize my life. Especially when I was in the military and almost everything I owned was being shipped home, on my back or in my duffel bag. I would never be free of entanglements in my life that I had then.

Then, even if I was trying not to add more baggage, life set in when I was discharged from the Army and marriage as well as my first and only child were quickly coming my way. All along I was conflicted about the new challenges I faced, I had set up basic guardrails in my life such as telling my first wife I was a confirmed cross-dresser or transvestite at the time and trying to use birth control which ended up failing on me which I will not go into.

I suppose I had no choice but to accept the new life challenges I faced with parenthood and trying to build a career for her and my small family as I moved along. It was what I was supposed to do, and I was trying to meet the demands of doing it. What I never counted on was the strength of my feminine inner self. She was always demanding more and I was on the verge several times of responding to her call when I had very little other male baggage to deal with. But I did not and went on to struggle with my gender dysphoria the best I could by internalizing it. The only release I ever had was cross-dressing in front of the mirror for my own pleasure as I dreamed how it would be to live a life as a trans woman.

A well-known path out for me became the exciting Halloween parties I could go to in my favorite costume…as a woman of course. The parties showed me I could begin to exist on my own terms as the person I always dreamed of being. If I answered the challenge to do it. If I had the courage to present myself to friends as a woman, could I ever decide to do it as another avenue out of my closet and into the world. While I was at the first Halloween parties I went to, the more I learned of the basics of being in a new exciting yet scary world where I always wanted to be.

I learned quickly that cismen around me would avoid me completely, while ciswomen asked me questions about who did my makeup and how did I gather the courage to shave my legs for my “costume”.  Later on, I used the basics I learned from the parties I went to when I tried to meet the challenge of being out with other women who wanted to communicate with and were still curious why I would want to meet the challenge of being in their world. By this time, I was becoming more confident in my true feminine self that the thrill of going to Halloween parties disappeared.

Just because the parties went away and my confidence increased did not mean that the challenges I was facing went away with it. I needed to face the complexities of living a life as a transfeminine person head on if I was ever going to be successful, I needed to communicate with a world which wanted to know more about me for the first time and it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. It was the time I had always dreamed of when I could finally put the mirror behind me and put the total new me into motion. When another woman came at me with questions, I was there to answer hers and was beginning to be able to ask her questions of my own by looking her directly in the eye and doing it.

The only advice about overcoming the communication challenges you will face in the world I have is to somehow get out of your closet and experience what is going on firsthand. By doing that, you can let your own unique personality out into the world and leave your unwanted baggage behind you if you are a transgender woman or a transgender man. The same rules apply, just in different gender worlds you must live in and react to. If you do not answer your challenges and try your best to get out of your closet, you will make yourself a victim and never do it.

Also, the only warning I have is depending on where you live, know the anti-transgender laws and attitudes you will be facing and plan ahead accordingly. Remember you can not rely upon the old male security privileges you used to have and find yourself in a dangerous situation. Ciswomen are raised to be careful of potentially toxic situations and avoid them too.

You can also use your challenges as a mini-bucket list and move on after you have accomplished one goal. It is a relatively easy way to manage your male to female or female to male transition.

Good luck with your challenges and thanks for reading along. I appreciate you and any comments you may have!

 

To the Dentist We Go

Image from Geo Days 
on UnSplash.

This is going to be another short post day because my wife Liz must go for an emergency visit to the dentist. Of course, we all have been in that situation before and if is a situation that you haven’t done, you don’t want to be in it.

As with my other recent doctor’s appointments going with Liz, I am wearing another of my “The Ohio State University” shirts because tonight is a huge game with Texas. Along with my leggings and tennis shoes.

Also, this morning I have already shaved closely, brushed back and tied my hair back which leaves me just enough time to apply a light coat of makeup and lip gloss. A routine I normally always follow if I am going to a place such as a medical appointment. Where most of the other people are involved in their own world, or the world of their cell phones. And will never notice a stray transgender woman in their midst.

Even though I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, I am always prepared for it in the back of my mind and probably will be forever.

If it does, you will be the first to know!

The Age of Gender Innocence

 

Image from Nicola Dowie 
on UnSplash.

I used to think that my initial days of cross-dressing were the most innocent days of my life. I was very young and the feel of the feminine clothes on my body and the expectation of seeing myself in the full-length family mirror brought me to the height of anticipation. For the moment at least, I was putting aside all the worries I had of ever being able to live successfully in a male world.

Now, with the benefit of age on my side, I wonder if I was ever so innocent. Sure, I loved all the things about being a cross-dresser such as shaving my legs and wearing panty hose, all the way to feeling all the sensations of being able to wear the same pretty clothes I had seen the girls around me wear. The biggest problem remained was that just the wearing of the clothes was never enough. The thrill I felt of dressing up was guaranteed to only last a couple of days before I could not wait to do it again. Even my young mind knew there was still something wrong.

What was wrong was I was not a cross-dresser at all; I was a transgender woman waiting her turn to live in the world. In the meantime, I would have to depend on the temporary thrills of mirror worship to get me by in life. It all set me on a very long path of gender discovery. Complete with many ups and downs along the way to make the journey either very scary or at least very interesting. It took me years of mirror living before I could ever gather the confidence I needed to finally conquer my fears and go out into the world as a novice trans woman. Of course, there were the on-going challenges of learning makeup as well as shopping for my own clothes on an extreme budget. When I discovered the thrill of shopping at thrift stores, I was able to find clothes that fit me well by having the chance to try them on before I bought them. If I made a fashion mistake when I got it home, it was not such a big deal because it did not cost that much to start with.

Rapidly, my days of gender innocence were fading away as I became more involved in the world of ciswomen. I quickly discovered their world was much more than just the external world of fashion, hair and makeup. Their world was so much more complex than a cisman’s I was not prepared for it. I found I had a lot of work to do to be accepted at all. To prove I belonged there at all, the first step was to prove I was serious about doing it. I would first have to prove to other women, I was not trying to enter their world as some sort of a dare, or that I was not up to something no good. I desperately wanted to cross the gender border and join the girls’ club and leave the men’s club forever. When I was able to, entrance behind the gender curtain opened for me like never before.

It took many times behind the curtain for my innocence to really go away. I needed to battle my paranoia with being shy to start with and then having to communicate on a whole different level before I could relax at the girl’s night’s out I was suddenly being invited to comfortably. And that was not the only one thing I needed to deal with. Such as how I would ever dress to blend with the rest of the ciswomen in the group I was invited to. I certainly did not want to embarrass myself by dressing too much or not enough and finding that special point where I blended right in. My innocence was real, since I was dealing with a world I had never been in before, but the pressure was real because I wanted to make it a success so desperately. I can compare the experience to first dates I went on with women I did not know well as a man. How would I start the conversation and what would I say.

It turned out I did not have to worry that much because the group conversation was easy to follow without men around. It flowed around family basically and the relationships the women were having with their men. I just flip-flopped my past life as a man to one of a woman. Being purposely vague about key issues such as not having the birth of my daughter but I was there when it happened. My communication efforts seemed to work with all but one woman who just glared at me. I ignored her glare and stayed in the conversation and got invited back.

As I experienced more of the world as a trans woman, the more my innocence went away. Sure, I encountered the occasional toxic woman or TERF but with my confidence level soaring I was able to handle most all of them. If you are wondering why I have not mentioned any men, it is because there were so few of them. For the most part, they knew I had left the men’s club and wanted nothing to do with me, Plus, I cannot take all the credit for my success I had a very tight knit group of women friends around me to support me too.

Perhaps the most lesson I learned about gender innocence was the amount of difference there is between the two main primary genders. Basically, I learned that men operate on some sort of a power matrix. When they are challenged, they are less likely to give you a chance unless there is something in it for them. Women, on the other hand, are much more open to the world. Especially when it comes to their sexuality, which is not as frail as a man’s.

As I always say, if you are just starting up your gender path, be prepared for a change in your innocence as you enter the world of your preferred gender. And thank you for reading along as I described mine.

 

 

Just Another Lonely Day

Image from Jarge Johansen
on UnSplash.

Throughout most of my life, I was desperately lonely, as I had no one to fall back on as I explored my gender issues.

Growing up in a rural area, I started with just a
small circle of kids I interacted with and it rarely grew significantly, so again I was stuck with why I felt the way I did about myself. All I knew was I had a difficult time interacting with the boys at all and the girls seemed as if they were some unreachable magical creatures I knew nothing about.  While all of this was happening, all I could do was carve out my own little world where I was a pretty girl in front of the mirror in mom’s clothes and makeup.

Little did I know how those humble cross-dressing beginnings would come back to influence my life later. In fact, forever. As I grew, I became more skilled in using makeup and finding clothes which I could fit into when I outgrew moms. Then, the more I cross-dressed, the more I wanted to. Which did nothing for my extreme loneliness. It seemed to me; I would never find a way out and really did not until I hit my late high school and college days. What happened was, a group of girls at high school learned that a friend of theirs did not have a date to the junior prom and I did not either and matched us up for the evening. After a successful date, I was not so lonely when another friend of mine set me up with a single girl he knew and suddenly, I was a socialite as I entered college. In truth, deep down I was still the deeply conflicted person I always had been.

Amazingly, my early college years were so intense that I forgot about my gender issues for six months or so before they crept back in. When they did, they became as intense as they were before I left for college and stayed that way until they were put on my back burner when the military draft caught up to me when I graduated. For a while I was engaged to a woman I knew from college until she left me just before I was due to report to Ft. Knox for Army basic training leaving me completely alone again. When my fellow soldiers were getting mail from wives and girlfriends, I was getting an occasional letter from mom. At the least, I appreciated her efforts and once again I was back to being used to being intensely alone.

All along I wondered what my military time would do to my gender issues. Would they go away temporarily like they did in college or not was my question. The answer I was looking for did not take long to become evident to me. No my gender dysphoria was not going away and in fact, tools I had learned in the Army just made my dysphoria stronger. For example, I became more confident in myself as I had a better idea of what I could survive and I spent hours of what spare time I had daydreaming of what I would do with my feminine self once I had served my three years.

It was not very long after I was discharged that I gathered the courage to ask my first wife to marry me. Since she was in the Army too with me for over a year, she had witnessed my Halloween party costume at a hospital party we had went to with friends. Plus, my later confession to three friends plus her that I was actually a transvestite and my costume went a lot deeper than it looked. She also turned out later be the mother of my first and only child and the marriage did last several years until I fell madly in love with my second wife.

Oddly enough it was another Halloween party which allowed me to confess to her my deep dark secret that I was a cross-dresser. It turned out that she did not care which was the case for the twenty-five years we were married. Until I began to transition into a transgender woman. Just before she passed away from a massive heart attack. During those years we had our share of good times and bad times somehow, we always made it through, and she never knew how much of a role model she was to me when I went my separate way as a trans woman. Following her untimely death at the age of fifty.

When she passed, I went into a lonely shock I had not felt through the majority of my life. I could not understand why I was having to start all over again in my mid-fifties and search for another relationship. And furthermore, which direction would I take with the gender issues I had during my life. By this time, I was well ahead of my goal to possibly live as a transfeminine person. I had major decisions to make in my life, so I kept on searching for answers. To start with, I tried dating ciswomen again as a man which failed miserably and at the same time, get more serious in my explorations ss a trans woman which I found to be a natural social release for me.

By the time a couple more years of wasting valuable time went by, I was sitting by myself enjoying my new company and I thought why was I not living like this all the time? How stupid could I be not to take advantage of what I had learned in the world so far as a transgender woman. Most importantly, my lifetime’s dream of living as a woman was within reach, and I was not taking advantage of it.

From that point forward I put together a timetable to give away my remaining male clothes and pursue HRT therapy. There would be no turning back from that point forward. I was tired of the gender struggle and loneliness I was enduring. I was afraid if I did not make the change now, I never would have the chance.

You might say I played the odds and they came out in my favor but on the other hand, I researched the odds extensively before I did it.

 

 

 

When A Good Day was in the Details

 

Image from Ali Hassan
on UnSplash

I remember vividly the frustration I felt when I tried to connect all the dots I needed to connect to make blending into the world as a feminine person a reality. A good day was when I was able to recognize the details and improve my overall feminine presentation.

It was because I had so much new to remember when I finally summoned the courage to leave the mirror and get out into the world. The mirror was kind to me and often would not tell me when I was looking like a circus clown in drag. It took being out in the public’s eye to do that for me, unfortunately. When the stares and laughter caught up to me in the initial stages of being out of my shell, I had to scurry home to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board to go over all the details I was trying to put together if I ever was going to make it as a novice transfeminine person.

It seemed when I arrived at the point where I did a reasonably good job of applying my makeup, then I would make some huge mistake with how I was moving and mess up the feminine image I was trying to portray. One example that comes to mind was when I was in a mall blissfully minding my own business as a woman when one of my heels stuck in a crack in the sidewalk and I almost fell. After I determined that no one else noticed my embarrassing move, I gathered myself back up and resumed my journey. A lot wiser for the experience which I am sure that many ciswomen have gone through. It was just that the overall gender learning experience at times seemed to be so cruel and frustrating.

Overall, it took me submitting to practice, practice, practice to make it to just an entry level where I did not look like a linebacker in a dress when I moved in a new, scary world. Of course, I knew ciswomen move very differently than cismen, but to copy it was not going to be easy for me. It also seemed all eyes were upon me as a transgender woman which was and was not the case. As I found out if I could just do the basics, most people would be in their own worlds and not notice me at all. That is, if I did not give them anything out of the ordinary to look at which initially I was quite bad at. Why? Because I tried dressing as a teen girl, which was a major mistake as I was trying to disguise my thirty-year-old testosterone poisoned body.  It did not take me long to get laughed out of doing it and settled into a more reasonable look which was able to blend in with the ciswomen around me.

At that point, a good day was when I was able to put my overall appearance together with the way I moved as I began to put the ideal mirror image I always had into motion. I began to try my hand by going to well attended events such as urban festivals in downtown Dayton, Ohio. When I went, I always wore my best sunglasses so I could look to see if other people were paying attention to me and I knew I had made significant strides towards living my dream and I was ecstatic. For once it seemed, everything was coming together for me in my life until I hit two major roadblocks. My second wife and my male self-sensed the potential of losing their lives with me as they knew them.

It was all good for awhile as I was able to maintain the delicate gender balance I was trying to live until the portion of my life, I came to call my own dark ages when I lost my wife and three of my closest male friends to death. Naturally, I was knocked for a loop and did not know which way was up for a while. As an experiment I even tried to date ciswomen again as a man, but it did not work since I did not want to start to explain all over again to another woman my gender issues. Finally, I resorted to taking myself out to an outdoor concert in a Dayton suburb because my daughter gave me two tickets to see “Joe Cocker”. The woman I was going to take essentially stood me up a week before the concert which gave me time to consider taking myself. Which is what I did as I went in a black sleeveless top, black flowing silky pants and sparkly silver sandals. No one gave me a second look as I nervously played with my long dark-haired wig and I enjoyed myself immensely.

I knew right then, I was on the right path because I felt so natural in my new world as I was connecting all the right dots and my feminine power was in the details. Until I hit my next big roadblock. Just how was my new transfeminine person going to do her most difficult task of all, which was being able to communicate with the world around me. A world which I had to put all the way up there with my initial feminine problems such as makeup, hair and movement as my most difficult task to take on. Here I was in this big, highly nuanced new world I was in with very few tools to help me.

At first, I resorted to mimicking the tone of the other ciswoman who was trying to talk to me. Which worked well enough to get me by with short, simple conversations with clerks and salespeople but fell miserably short when someone really wanted to communicate with me. That’s when I knew I needed to seek out professional help about feminine vocal patterns which helped me to learn the basics of being able to not necessarily sound like a woman when I was talking but still say the right things a woman would say. a huge detail I needed to communicate in the new world I was in,

I was fortunate when I survived my dark ages and the onslaught of my male self-trying to survive that I was still able to move forward. I began each day with good feelings for once concerning how I felt about my gender dysphoria in my life. No matter what the mirror was telling me in the morning, deep down I had connected all the dots and attended to all my gender details, so I knew who I was.

It made all the difference in the world as it took me so long to do it.

Thanks as always for reading along. I hope you can find and overcome all the gender details and connect your dots along the way. Comments are always welcome!

 

 

 

 

I Wish I Knew Why

 

 

Image from Jon Tyson
on UnSplash

It has been a while since anyone has asked me when I knew I was transgender. In fact, it was several years ago when one of my grandkids was coming out to my daughter as being trans.

My daughter then asked me if I had always known, true? I told her yes that was true except in the exceedingly early days of my life when I knew something was wrong with me but I just did not know what. As I grew older and I experienced that first magical visit to mom’s clothing drawer did I truly knew what the problem was. I really liked the feel of mom’s clothes and that was only the beginning as I wanted to be a girl full-time sometime in my life. Just the buzz of wearing feminine clothes was never going to be enough. So, I set out on a long journey to see if I could ever achieve my dream.

When I was able to begin to interact with others with gender issues, I found early on that it was not going to be the end to my questions that I thought it could be. For example, I was too much girl for many of the cross-dressers I met and not enough woman for the then called transsexuals I encountered in person at the social/mixers I traveled to. The closest ones initially were nearly a two-hour drive away before mixers were then set up in a nearby central location for me. It was then that I was able to meet others who identified as true transgender women and I fit in perfectly with them. Finally, I began to have answers to my identity as a person.

Of course, I needed to take all sorts of side journeys as I sought out the key to why this transgender world had chosen me. In my research I even came across the theory that the drug “D.E.S” which was given to women with a history of problem pregnancies around the time I was born, could conceivably be linked to a person having= gender issues later in life. Because to ensure the fetus went full term in the womb, the womb was flooded with estrogen to aid the birth process. I thought “D.E.S.” might fit me because my mom had suffered through three still births before I came along. Ultimately, “D.E.S” stayed just as it started with me. Another solution to an extraordinarily complex gender problem with no concrete answers.

Then there was the victim mode I wrote so much about when I went through a poor, poor pitiful me time of my life. I could not understand why I needed to be stuck with all the gender issues I had when no one I knew had them either. To this day, I envy men who have been able to go through their lives as men without the added distraction of wanting to be a ciswoman. Finally, I made the difficult turn considering my overwhelming desire to be feminine as a good thing. Because it set me off from society as a unique person with a look at both sides of the gender border. Removing my victim mentality made all the difference in the world to me as I began to look ahead for the possibilities which laid ahead. Rather than always looking over my shoulder and dwelling on the mistakes I had made.

The more success I experienced when I first was able to carve out a new life for myself as a transfeminine person, the more the wish I knew mentality I had lived with my whole life began to fade away. From that point, I went into my confidence mode because without it, I was powerless to do anything I wanted to do as a trans woman. I found that as long as I held my head high and did my best to be a quality person in the world, the more people left me alone since humans are like sharks. They sense blood in the water, and I was not adding any of mine. Confidence also allowed me to try different things. To judge if I really wanted to jump the gender border and give up living life as a man altogether. Even though it was the most difficult decision of my life, having even a sliver of hope that I could live my dream that propelled me forward to a gender tipping point that so many ask about.

This time, I could tell anyone who asked why I decided to leave a successful male life to take on a decided uncertain one as a transgender woman. The answer I always gave was deceptively easy. I had reached my own gender tipping point where I was living more as a woman (and feeling natural doing it) and less as a man as I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable doing it. By doing as much research as I had, I had given myself no choice as what I should do. When became now and that was the time, I decided to take the next step and pursue gender affirming hormones or HRT to sync my inner mind with my external body the public saw. I knew it was the point of no return for me as my body took to the new hormones magically.

I knew from there that all my explorations as a trans woman pus the addition of HRT allowed me the most powerful female privilege of all. The power to finally be myself. The wish I knew why I was different my whole life was answered with a resounding yes, I did know it all along and refused to face my own truth. I was living a counterproductive life as I was going overboard trying to be successful as a man when I was a woman forced into her shell all the time struggling to get out. The best part was when she said I told you so, as she destroyed what was left of my old male ego.

I finished strong when my why me became a why not as I had the chance to live my feminine truth among the ciswomen of the world.

Thanks for reading along and I hope you will discover your why me in life! Comments from you are always welcomed.

 

 

 

 

Labor Day 2026

 

Pik Nik with JJ Hart (left) and wife Liz. 

Time flies when you are having fun, especially when you are just getting older in life. Once again, another Labor Day and summer have come and gone. It’s like my mom used to say, life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer to the end it gets, the faster it goes.

Around here in Southwestern Ohio though, we are entering what is called “Indian Summer” with temperatures which remind us of August. So, most of the fall fashions we have purchased will have to wait for another month until October rolls around.

Fall has always been my favorite time of the year as the leaves of the trees begin to change their colors, football is in full swing and I get to go through my fall and winter wardrobe to see what needs updating. It is one of the joys of living in a climate which still changes four times a year. In many ways, it seems like only yesterday when I first experienced my first summer to fall fashion transition as a transgender woman.  I thought now I was finally going to get to experience all the pretty clothes that ciswomen get to do. In a sense that was true once I could afford to update my fashion and find the proper sizes which fit me. To do so, I wore out my shoes going to thrift stores looking for fashion bargains which flattered me.

Of course, I forgot to mention the cross-dressers’ national holiday, Halloween which gives us the chance to flaunt how good we can look like a woman. Often for a neutral audience. I know for me it was the first time anyone saw me as myself outside of my mirror. For the first several serious Halloween parties of my adult life, I experienced the good and bad of being in public as a trans woman or even a novice cross-dresser. The good part was that I think I was successful in presenting as a woman while having the freedom to do it. However, the bad part was having to wait an entire year to do it again. Finally, I could take it no longer and needed desperately to take my feminine show on the road and head out to the malls unattended.

Once I began to try to get out of the mirror and into the world as a trans woman, Halloween just became the icing on my cake as my so-called “costume” changed from shock value trashy all the way to professional ciswoman ideas designed to see if I could fool people I did not know. No pun intended, but I made the transition from trash to class quite easily and I loved it. It gave me the direction I needed to go forward in my male to female femininization journey. I will be presenting more of my Halloween adventures as we get closer to the actual date of the holiday.

Sadly, not all my memories of fall are good ones. I vividly remember the nights I drove around alone seeking answers to my confused life which basically revolved around which gender was I and what was I ever going to do about my upcoming date with the Army. The rapidly blowing leaves in front of my headlights only reflected the despair of my life at that time.

So, that is why Labor Day represents more than just another holiday to me. As I said, the holiday makes me feel deeply about beginnings and ends as nature starts her transition from summer to winter and calls it fall and gives us brilliantly colored trees and cooler temperatures to enjoy.

Just a short Labor Day post today celebrating the beginning of fall around here. No matter where you are, I hope you can celebrate it too!

 

 

 

See and Being Seen as Me

 

JJ Hart (center) with Liz (left) and 
daughter (right) 

Yesterday was one of those rare days when I needed to get out in the world and do several errands with my wife Liz.

The errands revolved around going to two of her doctor’s visits she had in one day. That means playing the eye game in waiting rooms for me because I always want to see if anyone is paying attention to the only transgender woman in the room. I am happy to say no one did and I went on with my life.

Since I was only going to waiting rooms, there was no reason to do anything else but dress casually and cool since our temperatures were supposed to reach near the one-hundred-degree mark (F) for the day. So, I chose my lightweight new “The Ohio State Buckeyes” shirt and a pair of leggings for the day since the “Buckeyes” first game is coming up later tomorrow. Also to try to stay cool, I pulled my very long hair back and went with a light foundation and lip gloss.

One way or another no one in waiting room number one paid me any attention as I played a quick “eye-tag” game with them to again see if there was any recognition of me as anything out of the normal.

It was not so long ago that I would have been paranoid about even going at all, but I am happy to say all the old fears are past me now. It is certainly no fun waiting for my wife Liz in a doctor’s office but it is something we do for each other when we can and I need her help when I need to go to the downtown Cincinnati Veterans Administration hospital for an appointment because it always involves a lot of walking which I need help with. It is a great tradeoff for me.

In the second waiting room, ironically, it was my Ohio State shirt which got me into a conversation with a woman who was older than even me. She noticed my shirt and asked if I had any grandchildren who attended school there and I said one graduated and one had just started a year ago. She responded that she had one of her grandchildren who had attended OSU a couple years ago and was a physicist now and I told her my oldest was a nuclear engineer as a civilian for the Navy in Maine and they seem to like it. The conversation was pleasant and made the time go so much faster as she waited for her husband to get through in the bathroom and left before Liz returned.

Speaking of kids, today is my daughter’s fiftieth birthday and I would like to send out my wishes to her as she climbs a mountain somewhere in Maine. All I know about it is, it is on the end of the Appalachian trail. I am so proud of her and my son-in-law for raising such a diverse and successful family which includes one transgender child who is in Maine. She has always been one of my biggest supporters.

It is always good to get out in the world and be accepted as a transgender woman Making myself available to do so has sometimes been a difficult task to take on, but I was fortunate enough to find ways to do it.

I am not sure that there is ever an easy path to living a transgender life and a trans woman or trans man. Genders are so ingrained in us from birth that they are so difficult to change. We get to a point where we try to internalize our truths. Making them an even bigger burden to take on. Now, just being able to interact with another woman on an equal basis means so much to me and takes back to the days when I was just learning to do it. Then, as in now, the secret to doing it was having the confidence to do it. Which for me, was never an easy thing to do because I was always so shy to start with. It seemed to me that once I built my frail confidence to a point where I could enjoy it, something would come along and destroy all my work. Really, it was not until I brought what was left of my of my old male building blocks into my life’s equation, did I begin to see true improvement.

Among other things, he taught me how to stand my ground as a trans woman during the difficult times. Deep down I was learning the life choices I was making were the correct ones.

Which takes me full circle into being relaxed as a transfeminine me in a room full of people yesterday and being able freely being able to talk to a ciswoman about family in another waiting room. I was able to learn the right way to do it from all the girls’ nights out I was invited to where the main topic was not work but was family.

On the other hand, part of me is like our old family cat as he seems to never be totally relaxed. Even when I am in the middle of a conversation like I was yesterday, I was still closely observing the ciswoman I was talking to see if she had any spark of knowledge that I was a transwoman. Perhaps my life experiences will make it impossible for all my paranoia to totally go away.

Best yet, both appointments came back good for Liz’ health, which was a great relief.

In the meantime, again Happy Birthday to my daughter who has been so supportive of me over the years and I hope those of you who are just finding your way long your gender path, I hope all goes well for you and thank you for reading!

 

 

Loving What You Do as a Trans Woman is Never Work

 

JJ Hart Doing Transgender Outreach. 

Perhaps you have heard the old saying about hard work. It goes something like this... If you love what you do, it is never work. Anyway, I looked at it, the phrase really fit my life as a transgender woman or an early cross-dresser.

Even though, early on it was hard work finding one of mom’s dresses I could still fit into and not rip apart in the seams, I still tried it. As I grew into a more mature version of my feminine self, I learned my work to transform myself into the woman I was always meant to be was not going to be an easy task as testosterone poisoning was ravaging the body I wanted to have as a girl during male puberty. While the girls around me were developing the curves I wanted, all I got was a larger angled male body I hated. If I wanted to continue, my path was cut out for me, and it was not going to be an easy one to follow. I would have to make it a labor of love to ever succeed.

The first thing I needed to do was find feminine clothes that fit me, and at the same time disguised my male body with my large torso, broad shoulders and narrow hips. Plus, I had the extra problem of look really liking the feminine shape wear I need to wear to suggest I had hips when I cross-dressed as a woman. It was always too restrictive for me to enjoy and I was not careful; the restrictions went as far as hurting my chances of success in a women’s restroom setting. If you know what I mean. What I did was make extensive use of pieces of foam which I wore under my panty hose to give me the illusion of hips under the skirts and leggings I wore back in those days. I remember spending day upon day of destroying foam rubber pieces until I thought I got them just right. That solved the hip problem partially so I could concentrate on my all-important breasts.

To advance my presence in the world as a transgender woman, having the proper breasts was another labor of love and at times a comedy show. Before the advent of easily obtainable silicone breast forms, I tried a number of ill-fated ideas to give myself the proper breasts which fit the size of my body but were not too big and looked like I came from a circus somewhere. Before my first silicone breasts were gifted to me by a purging cross-dresser friend of mine who was getting rid of all his feminine belongings, I tried exotic ideas such as bird seed and water balloons. Water balloons I liked because they warmed to the temperature of my body and did a realistic job of looking like real breasts in the bras I wore at the time.

All along, I knew on the negative side, I was taking a big chance using water balloons for breast forms because they can easily break. And of course, the worst-case scenario happened to me one night when one of my balloons broke in public. Luckily, I was going to the women’s room anyhow and it was empty so I could clean up and head back home to end my love affair with water balloons as breast forms forever.

As I put all this concentration into making my transfeminine better, I was concentrating less on my male life. Although it was a labor of love for me, it was not for my second wife who grew tired of my obsession to be an attractive woman and told me I was missing the whole point of being feminine. It was not to be obsessed with makeup and clothes; it was being able to slide behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen’s lives really play out. It did not take many times of being called a terrible woman for me to drop what I was doing, change course and try to find out what she was trying to tell me. Then I found myself in a “Catch 22” of sorts because if no one would allow me to play in the girls’ sandbox how would I ever learn to do it. It was like the job interviews I went to, where they told me I did not have enough experience but would not give me a chance to work for them and gain the experience.

I finally had to stop being the victim and head out into the world to discover what my wife was talking about. If indeed I was a terrible woman, I need to correct that and move forward. It was then I went on a collision course with myself to determine what I really wanted in life. Did I want to be the successful man I was becoming or have the chance to live out my dream living in a ciswoman’s world.

The labor of love that I entered involved me having to learn what a ciswomen’s life was all about. I knew it was going to be quite the change to learn a new scary complex world, but I was not prepared for the barrage of information I needed to deal with. It seemed that half the women I met wanted to interact with me and find out what I was doing In itself, interaction was not bad if I was ready for it. Which I was not. I had to go on a crash course in understanding my communication with women like I had never known before. I was used to listening to ciswomen the way cismen always to by hearing only what they want to hear and ignoring the rest. Woman, on the other hand, have so many nuances in their communication that I had a lot to learn. But again, it was a labor of love for me and no work at all. If I had put that much work into my college studies, I would have finished with a four-point average. It showed me where my priorities in life really were.

From the first time I tried to experiment with mom’s makeup to living the life I live today, my male to female gender transition was never any work because I loved doing it.

I also love writing for you in the hope I can help you along in your life’s journey. Thanks for reading along and any comments are always appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

It Was Exhausting Waiting for the World

Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie"

 Over the years, it was exhausting for me waiting for the world to catch up to me.

As I always mention, I was born into the pre-internet and social media years when information about any gender issues was difficult to find. I am old enough to remember the sensationalized reports on television in Dayton, Ohio when the police staged raids on “homosexual” venues and I saw them arrest men dressed as women.

In addition to the negative publicity I was watching, I knew from my limited research from books at the library, that cross-dressing was considered to be a mental illness which I did not feel was true with me. I was not mentally ill, I just wanted to be a girl, and it was simple as that. All it did was put extra pressure on me to never be discovered by my family or my brother in the feminine clothes I had found.

I felt so all alone as a “transvestite” as we were known back in those days until my second wife and I purchased our first home computer. Which opened a whole new world to me including a way to contact others with gender issues such as me. Before that, all I had were the “Transvestia” Magazines I subscribed to and the “Tri-Ess” social mixers I drove hours to get to. I could not believe the world was suddenly at my finger tips when it came to discovering others outside of the “Tri-Ess” community.

All went well, until my second wife caught me in one of the old “AOL” chatrooms having a private conversation with another cross-dresser in a nearby city. I needed to learn quickly on how to cover my internet tracks better if I was ever going to stay out of trouble. The world was not catching up to me as I was catching up to it through the power of the internet. Then 1982 rolled around along with the classic gender movie of all time, “Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role as an actor who lands a soap opera job playing a woman with life changing experiences. For once, there was a film which did not portray a man in a dress as a criminal up to no good and I could not wait to see the film.

With the resultant good publicity which came from “Tootsie” I thought that maybe the puritanical gender ideas of the country would have changed and the public somehow would be more receptive to cross-dressers and transgender folk forever. Of course, I was being naive and over time, the public shifted back to the same old place it had always been…not accepting to people with gender issues like me.

Sadly, I had to go back to carving my own path as a novice transgender woman on my own without the publicity of a movie to help me, including the daytime talk shows which were the new television craze. It seemed to me that every week, one of them featured something about a cross-dresser on their show. In all fairness, some productions such as “Phil Donahoe” tried to present a fair view of our culture while the “Jerry Springers” of the tube just sought to sensationalize us. So, once again, the world had not caught up to me at all and did not help me when I needed to carve out my own life for a change in the world. I did not want another ciswoman thinking she was talking to a future “Jerry Springer” person, and I was real and down to earth. I was just trying to live a normal down-to-earth life like she was.

By this time, I had given up on the world ever catching up with the complex lives that transgender women and transgender men lead. It is why unless you are a very open person and secure in your world, you will never understand where we are coming from. That is fine, you do not have to understand, just do not try to stand in our way as we try to live.

Now I worry that all the fragile transgender rights we had gained under recent presidential administrations in Washington will be erased to an extent it will take decades to ever get them back. Then, I will have lived long enough to go from the “Tootsie” era of understanding to the “Orange Clown’s” world of rejection of our right to even exist. An experience I never wanted to have, and it is even worse here in my native Ohio where the state recently revoked their gender change requirements for driver licenses. So as they used to say back in the day on Top 40 radio stations the hits just keep on a coming.

Every once in a while, I hear rumblings from the regime in Washington trying to do away with my gender care through the Veterans Administration. So far (knock on wood) I have been part of the program for so long, and it is tied to my depression issues I have flown beneath the radar, and I hope others can too.

As a tribe, transgender folk have always existed through time, and if you are just realizing your potential as a trans person, welcome to a scary yet exciting world where you can be yourself. At least you can fall back on the resources you can find on the internet to help you and bring a little light into your dark closet you have been in for so long. Just remember not to let the brightness of your new day blind you to your new reality.

In the meantime, the world has caught up to you in your own way. Enjoy it because you have endured so much to get here.

Thanks so much for joining me in my lifetime of gender trials and tribulations! I set out to help anyone I could, and I hope that is you! All comments are welcome.

When My Tomorrow Became my Today

JJ Hart

My desires to always look like a pretty girl early in life led me to always be a tomorrow person.

 I always thought that somehow tomorrow I could get a real wig, nicer clothes and more makeup which would help with my feminine transformation. I guess you could say that the whole process made me into quite the dreamer as I sat in school and envied the girls around me in their pretty clothes I could not have. At least today but maybe not tomorrow if any of my dreams came true.

Soon I discovered that dreams never came true on their own and would take an enormous amount of work on my part to make a dream happen. Especially once as complex as crossing the gender border to live a transfeminine life. I often wonder if I would have had an ounce of foresight into how difficult I was going to have it; would I have ever undertaken such a crazy path to begin with. One which would completely consume all the spare energy I could use.

The first problem I had to conquer in my feminine life was my often-frustrating attempts to look like a woman and not some sort of a clown in drag at the circus. I found I was setting the bar way too high in my appearance standards as there was never going to be a day when I could match the prettiest women I envied. I just needed to blend in with the rest of the ciswomen in the world just going about their everyday lives. It took me many painful attempts at presenting properly as a trans woman before I got it right and was able to move around in the world without causing any undue attention to myself. When I did, I was happy to stay in the present until my brief gender euphoria went away. As I crashed from the euphoria of living as myself, I was bitter, nasty and tried to take my frustrations out on the world of ciswomen around me. Why could not I be like them and live in their world held me back in mine, so I kept dreaming about the next time I could I could live my dream in the world fully cross-dressed as a woman.

The good part was that all along I was becoming better in my presentation as a woman and was finding it easier to cross the gender border. The bad part was once I did it, I wanted to stay and not go back to the male I was living. It was then that my todays became longer, and my tomorrows seemed further away. My new mentors became the established transgender women I had met at the socials I was going to in nearby Columbus, Ohio. They had crossed border and were living successful lives and I wanted to learn more about how they did it. What I learned was that every trans person’s journey was different and it was rarely ever easy. All I ever knew was that every time I was accepted into their circle, I felt natural and wanted to learn more about them.

As I look back on it, the one thing the mentors had on me was their natural beauty which I never had, so I had to keep putting my tomorrow off until I found out I could do a male to female transformation my own way. Or out of sheer willpower as I had a transwoman friend of, mine tell me in a straight bar we were in one night. By this time, I had given up on any natural feminine beauty I might have and made my tomorrow become my today by using other strengths ciswomen bring to the table when they don’t happen to share the extreme passing gene that some women have. They go on to lead fun and fulfilling lives by tuning out all the demands to be beautiful they hear. That is what I had to do because for sure ciswomen come on all shapes and models and I could certainly find a group I could fit in with. Which in my case, happened to be lesbians.

I was really seeking out the company of lesbians so to speak; I just happened to stumble across their culture at a small lesbian venue I started to go to as well a through a bartender at a big sports bar I used to go to who introduced me to her mom. Through it all, I knew the next step for me was to become more feminine by using HRT or gender affirming hormones. My approval to take the hormones focused my tomorrow so much I could not wait to get there. I changed during the time I was socializing with my new lesbian friends who took me to watch sports as well as big lesbian mixers. I was having the time of my life as my tomorrow was rapidly becoming my today.

Maybe most importantly, my friends helped me to validate myself as who I was really was as the subject of my past life as a man never came up. They did not want to know, and I did not want to bring it up as I was just appreciating my spot in my new present as a transfeminine person.

The final touches in my today came when my daughter accepted me totally and I met my current wife of over a decade Liz. They helped rid myself of any lingering doubts of how I should live my life. Over my gender cliff I went into their soft arms and my gender tomorrow was gone for good.

My only passing regret was that it took me so long to face up to who I was always was as a full-fledged human being. There was no way I should have let it go as long as I did, I should have let tomorrow be my today. I was all wrong as I tried to cross-dress my pain away. My excuse is I was jinxed all along into leading a backwards gender life thinking I was a man trying to be a woman rather than the other way around. That way, I would have never let my todays and tomorrows get mixed up the way they did.

 

 

It Was All That and More

Tim Curry in the 
"Rocky Horror Picture Show"

It took me decades of living to finally achieve my dream of slipping behind the feminine gender curtain and staying there permanently. When I summoned the courage to do it, my feeling of gender euphoria was deep and permanent.

It turned out that all the dreams and hopes I had ever had over the years came to fruition. Largely with the help of a few key women friends, I was kicked out of my old male nest and  into their embrace.  It was more than I ever asked for and I thought ever deserved because I was raised never to be happy or satisfied with anything I ever did. It could be too that I was happy because of all the work I put in to achieving my transgender goal was working.

Along my gender path, I discovered many blind spots along the way. Several of which almost derailed my attempts to reach my goal altogether. Examples included the times when I was out in the world as a crossdresser and almost was attacked by two men on a dark urban sidewalk outside of a gay venue in Dayton, Ohio I had just left. Or the time I was cornered by a cross-dresser “admirer” who was much bigger than I at a social mixer in Columbus, Ohio. Both were sudden reminders of how different a world I was in as a trans woman when all my personal security was taken away.  Following both of those unfortunate interactions, I learned the hard way to go slowly around any future blind curves I was facing.

It was about this time when I discovered that being able to make it behind the gender curtain was going to take much more than I thought. Mainly because even if I knew ciswomen operated on a whole different wavelength than cismen, I had no idea as to how complex the differences in life went between the genders. Suddenly, I realized why men said they never understood women. It was because women had set their worlds up that way to protect themselves from potentially toxic men. Which I needed to be particularly careful of since I was spending a lot of my life consuming alcohol in venues as a novice single woman. One night comes back to me as a strong learning experience when a toxic drunk man approached me and attempted to start a conversation. Quickly one of my woman bar tenders approached me and with out a word warned me to stay away from him. From then on non-verbal communication became a part of my learning experience when I dealt with other women.

Finally, I got to the point where I could navigate all the blind gender curves I was facing and was even up to the challenge. It became the all that and more time of my life. Sure I had my setbacks, but overall, I was successful except for the night a group of drunken men kept playing “Dude Looks Like a Lady” on the jukebox in a venue where I never had any trouble entertaining myself before. Finally, the spineless manager came up to me and said I needed to leave so I picked up my purse and headed up the street a couple blocks to another venue I was accepted in. It took a month or so but one night when I was back in that venue, one of my former bartenders from the venue I was kicked out of found me and gave me a personal invitation to come back. It seems “Mr. Manager” got fired for drug abuse and I had indirectly got my revenge because I never saw the drunks who harassed me that night again. Revenge was certainly sweet.

Back in those days, acceptance came easier for me than I ever thought possible when I left the restrictive gay venues I was in and began to explore the world as my true self. It was probably because my confidence kept growing every time, I was successful in going out. I needed to come to the point where if anyone had a problem with me, it was their problem not mine and happiness was just around the next blind curve and I just had to see around the curve to discover it because I was still so stubborn to continue to hang on to what was left of my marriage and my male life. Then sadly, destiny set in and I lost my second wife to a massive heart attack and three of my closest male friends to cancer in a two-year period. Leaving me desperately alone and searching for answers.

As I said, destiny set in and I went full circle into a transfeminine future complete with new friends, wife and life. I changed for good when my third wife Liz told me she had never seen any male in me at all, so why did not I just give up the charade I was living with one foot on either side of the two binary genders. It was as if I had paid my dues living as a man which was a lie and it was time to move on into my new world which included the magic of HRT. Which really helped to soften my view of the world as well as my own body as I synced my mental processes up with my external public presentation.

I never recommend anyone take as long as I did to follow their male to female (or female to male) trips across the border. But then again times change and hopefully the gender pendulum will swing back in our favor from all the ridiculous attacks from a certain orange president in Washington and his blind followers. Regardless of what happens though, crossing that border and finding your way behind the gender curtain will never be easy. So buckle up for the ride of your life.

Over the days which have recently passed, I did mention the death of music and world icon “Dolly Parton” but neglected to mention “Tim Curry” of film fame for his role in the 1975 cult movie classic “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” which helped to re-define the boundaries of gender for all of us. He was 80 as was Dolly and will be missed although his work will live on forever.

 

 

Leaving the Male Noise Behind Me

 

Image from Vinicius Amano
on UnSplash. 
 

I write often of the misadventures I had growing up as a gender I never wanted to be. Often my life seemed unbearable when I made a big error on the baseball field or missed a key tackle on the football field, causing my team to lose. When I did, the only thing I knew to do was to run home to my dresses and makeup and do my best to tune out all the noise of male failure in my head. If I could not be a good athlete, maybe I could try to be a pretty girl.

To make matters worse, the older I got, the more noise kept popping up in my head. Especially from my male side, who was increasingly watching any chance o a future he had slip away. Successes such as making it through the military, and job promotions did not help either.

As the probability of a male to female gender transition increased, the noise did too. Mainly because I noticed an increase in the male world, I was never have been a part of. Perhaps, it was because I was thinking about leaving it anyhow, so I was looking for sure if I wanted to.

One of the sounds I noticed the most were coming from the alpha-males who were posturing for a better place in the world. Since in many ways, my job forced me to be successful in my competition with the alpha’s (as well as my upbringing) I could listen to the noise and tell exactly where it was coming from and how I could compete. Which ultimately led me down a path I had no desire to be on.

The further I traveled along the transgender path I was on, the more I noticed the noise from both sides of the gender border increasing as I stopped to look around at one of the many stop signs I had along the way. Sometimes the screaming from both sides reached a pitch I could barely stand as each side was yelling, they were better. To make matters worse, my male side had most all the advantages which he used to his benefit when he stated his claim on my life. Afterall, he had been there from the beginning and had taken the time and effort to learn how the male world operated and how he could fit it. All my feminine side could do then was continue to cross-dress in front of my favorite mirror and dream of an uncertain future.

The one main thing she had going for her was she had the advantage of feeling natural when she was allowed to express herself in the world. It was a powerful emotion which at least kept the male screaming down to a minimum, for a while. What always happened was, I had a several days of gender euphoria after I cross-dressed which would sadly fade when I mentally and physically had to go back to my male world. Which was far from being a mellow existence. The gender headphones I was continually trying to wear in life never seemed to work well. Even to the point of causing so much guilt, I would purge (throw away) my feminine clothes and vowed to never wear them again. You know how ell that worked as my female side screamed louder and louder to once again be a bigger part of my world and I would be forced to give in.

The sad part about all the noise I was subjected to internally and externally by my gender dysphoria was wrecking my fragile mental health. I never bargained, ever having to deal with the stress of having to bargain with two of the main binary genders ripping my life apart. I only survived by taking advantage of finally listening to good therapists who told me that my gender issues would never just go away and would always be a part of me. I guess you could say that it was therapy which helped me cut through all the noise and essentially saved my life from being extremely self-destructive.

Finally, when the noise reached a fever pitch, I needed to take drastic measures to do something about it That is when I went on an aggressive all-out push to see what a ciswoman’s world was all about and better yet, could I ever be accepted into it. My so-called discovery tour took me out of the worlds of dark gay venues into the lights of straight places such as TGIF Fridays which back in those days was becoming a safe venue for single women to go to. To do what I wanted to do, I needed to put my extreme fear of discovery behind me and see if I could survive in Fridays. When I did, a portion of my noise suddenly made sense to me, and I realized what I needed to do to tune out the rest.

I was proving to myself that there was nothing wrong in what I was doing, and I was starting to ignore all the panic warnings I was receiving from my male side about what I would lose if I left him behind to follow a feminine road. The best part was, the more I started to listen to the feminine noise, it made me feel better about where my life was heading. Even though many of the things I was trying scared me to death, as I succeeded in each step, I was building a calm confidence I would never lose.

Of course, the more my feminine noise clamed me and made me whole, my male noise started to subside to a low whimper. Gone were the days of being lonely and searching for my gender identity when I discovered ciswomen lesbian friends who gave me mine. As they taught me more about validating my own womanhood than they ever knew they did.

Very soon I even healed from my destructive days of listening to all that male noise and was able to throw those old gender headsets aside and live my dream life.

Hey you!!!! Thanks for reading along with how I escaped my male gender noise and maybe it can help you escape yours too. In any case thanks for being here!