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| Image from Leo Visions on UnSplash. |
You never know until you try was drilled into me as a kid by my WWII generation parents whenever I was facing a potential difficult situation. Little did they know, their insistence on me trying to do the improbable would come back to haunt them in a very different way. Back in those days (in the 1950’s) gender issues were referred to as mental illness and any reference to their eldest son being mentally ill would have been frowned on, so I was stuck wondering if I was really a boy who wanted to be a girl.
The only thing I knew to do was to keep cross-dressing in
front of the family’s full length hallway mirror. Imagining I was one of the
pretty girls I desperately wanted to be. At the time, I had no idea my gender
issues would last the better part of fifty years and take up huge portions of
my life. Not that I could have done anything about it if I had tried which I
did a number of times when I purged nearly all my feminine belongings swearing never
to pick them up again. I was stuck being a male and somehow, I needed to make
the best of it. Like so many people I knew with gender issues, purging never
worked. The pressure built until I could take it no longer and again, I was accumulating
women’s clothes again and wearing them.
At the least I tried to go back to mentally being male full-time
and failed miserably at it. All I knew was when I was not thinking about
getting out of my dark, lonely gender closet, I was not happy at all and when I
at least tried to be me in the mirror it took the pressure off. Even if it was
only for a while. At the same time, I was acutely aware that I was doing the
best I could to see if I could improve my appearance as a pretty girl. How I
never got caught doing all of this, I will never know, and I even resorted to
taking plastic bags of clothes and makeup into the neighboring woods so I could
escape the prying eyes of my slightly younger brother and family.
My mentality of never knowing you could do something until
you try really came to the forefront when I was drafted into the Army during
the Vietnam War. Instead of taking the two-year plan with a ticket to Southeast
Asia, I took a chance and signed up to try to get a job I wanted in the
American Forces Radio and Television Service. With a lot of luck and the help
of a congressman whose radio station I worked for, against all odds, I got one
of the sixty job slots in the Army for AFRTS. It turned out the whole process
turned my life around and taught me that anything could be possible. If you
went out of your way to try. Probably the most valuable lesson that I could
have ever learned as I looked ahead at my path to becoming a successful transfeminine
person. If it had worked for me once, why couldn’t it do it again.
As I set out to leave my gender closet behind and improve my
life, I know I took on a journey I would not readily recommend to others. When
I started to leave the mirror and join the world as a trans woman, I used a
tool that I had already used effectively as a man in my previous life. It was alcohol,
and I knew I could use it to build up much needed courage to be in the world as
a transgender woman and not get myself into more trouble as I was presenting as
a single woman in an establishment which served alcohol. Gay, straight or
lesbian, it did not matter. I found I could get by if I stayed out of the
redneck leaning venues. I was also well schooled in the artform of driving
while buzzed from all my days in the Army when I did all the driving. More than
anything else, this was back in the days before the major crackdowns on drunken
drivers, so I was safer, and in NO WAY do I recommend what I did.
Also, what I think is tougher these days than when I was
intensely lonely and looking for companionship is the world of on-line dating. When
I was seeking a date, I played both sides of the gender coin, because I was in
the unique position of being a transgender woman who favored lesbians. Looking
back, I think I got the most attention from men seeking men dating sites. But
just knowing that the amount of trash I would receive was at its best humorous and
at its worst, a disaster because I refused to meet anyone in a public place
which was not of my choosing. I was stood up more times than I would care to
count or remember because my life was destined to change forever when I met my future
wife Liz on a woman seeking woman dating site.
Liz responded to my picture saying I had sad eyes which was
entirely possible at that time of my life. Amazingly, she lived relatively close
to me in a town (Cincinnati) that I had always admired. From there, I began to
become involved in her friend’s girl’s nights out and I was able to do more to
learn what was behind the gender curtain than I had ever thought possible. The
entire on-line dating world for me proved again you never know what you are
going to get until you try.
These days again it is more problematic to find someone online
with all the scammers out there, but destiny can never find you if you never venture
out of your dark lonely closet and light up your path to a brighter future.
I wonder what my deceased parents would think now of what
they taught me so long ago.
