Pic Nic Day

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

 I didn't think about it immediately but the picnic Liz and I attended yesterday was my first ever as my authentic self.  None of that mattered however, I was just looking to enjoy the day. 

I guess rule one with a picnic is having good weather and we were blessed with a close to perfect mid summer southern Ohio day. Rule two for me is having a place to sit down and eat. It is also important to note the picnic was hosted by the transgender - cross dresser group I am a member of. The majority of people attending I believe were transgender in various stages of transition along with a few spouses and cis women. 

The food was good and even the diverse group of people managed to play well together without any of the "I am more trans than you" rhetoric or any other politics sneaking in. With me others know what side of the political fence I am on and they leave me alone if they wanted to or not. 

It was nice also to see a few acquaintances we haven't seen in awhile and of course look back on a few of the long gone gay venues in Cincinnati we happen to frequent on different occasions. I am not from Cincinnati so my visits were far fewer than others. Plus I had to really try to come up with excuses to use on my wife on why I was spending a night away from home. How I worked it out was my company's headquarters was in Lexington, Kentucky so Cincinnati happened to be about mid point in my trip from home. I only managed to find it and make it there twice. Instead of staying overnight in Lexington, I would stay in Cincinnati.

One of the visits was very memorable. I got all dolled up in my best tight short mini, black top, heels and blond wig and I was ready to go after applying my makeup. From my knowledge of gay male venues I was not expecting much attention but I got a real surprise. Fairly quickly I was attracting quite a bit of attention from a guy at the bar. In a relatively short period of time, he moved over close to me and started a conversation. 

It wasn't too long after that when he started to try to  touch me until this other woman showed up looking for him. Quickly I was thinking now what I did I get myself into. Then he made things worse in my mind when he aaid to her "Why don't you have legs like her (me)!" I just gave her a sign like I give up and walked away and luckily she did also. 

That was my share of picnic topics  while the other person was talking about having sex in cars with other guys. I guarantee our topic was spicier than the food! I can't speak for the rest of the thirty or so people that were there but I imagine their conservations were rated "PG". 

    

And the Process Begins

 

Liz on left and I. Photo courtesy Jessie 
Hart

After nearly eleven years, my partner Liz and I have decided to "tie the knot" and get married. No need to hurry, right? 

This morning I was able to fill out the necessary paperwork forms on line here in Cincinnati. 

Overall, we are looking to have a very small wedding in October with Josh our "officiant" my daughter and anyone who wants to come from her family plus her son AJ.

This will actually be my  third marriage and none of the others were really fancy affairs. On the other hand, it is Liz's first marriage so I am leaving the planning up to her. At this time I don't anticipate donning a fancy white wedding dress for a number of reasons. For one white should be out because I am far from a virgin. Secondly I can't see spending the money on a dress I would only wear once and finally none of my other weddings were "dress up" affairs so there is no reason for this one to be either. 

There are several other decisions we have had to make ahead of time. One of which was one of us who would naturally migrate towards the wife's role and that would be me. So you could say Liz put a ring on it after eleven years. The second major decision was who was going to change names (if either). To make things easier on me, Liz has agreed to take on my last name. 

I am sure as we grow closer to the actual marriage date there will be other hurdles to jump. In the meantime I am going to try to enjoy this latest chapter to my life. 

The Broadband Gender

 

Photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash

"Wikipedia" defines broadband as "In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections."

For this post I am attempting to equate a transgender person with having a broadband look at gender. Even though we have our peaks and valleys of transitioning, the end result is we still have the chance to live as one gender or another during your life. 

Going back to the definition, the ability to transport multiple signals also describes many transgender women and men. Rather if we like it or not, along the way in our life we learn the hard way (in my case) to live as a male cross dresser. It took me years to finally come to the conclusion that all along I wasn't cross dressing as a woman but doing the exact opposite. 

When I transitioned into a feminine world and started to try to date men, I found I was left out in several areas. I was biased but I felt a transgender woman had a lot to offer a man in a relationship. After all I had spent enough years on the other side of the gender border to have an idea of what a man would want. My only drawback was I was woefully unprepared sexually. I was prepared to learn though. As my life would direct me, I would meet and stay with other women mostly so I never had to explore further being with a man.

For the longest time, I couldn't understand why more women were interested in me as I was transitioning than before. Maybe it had to do with the fact I was obviously not living a lie and sexually women weren't as uptight as men. So they were not so shy to be seen with me. Through it all I was able to become the "broadband gender." All the time I was spending with women allowed me to learn, communicate and live my way into a life I only ever dreamed of living. 

Sometimes I think much of society which is against the transgender population is jealous of us. We are the select few who somehow negotiate the often perilous journey to finding our true gender selves. How many of the gender bigots secretly wish they could live just a portion of our lives. Then there are the cis women who will always refuse to accept transgender woman just because at sometime in our lives they think we were men. 

Either way, it is a steep path to where we can take advantage of being a part of the broadband gender. In many ways it can be described as reaching a sort of gender euphoria. Was it singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell who wrote the song "Both Sides Now".  The song itself is about love but has a couple verses which can lend themselves to a transgender life:

"I've looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all"

Maybe being the broadband gender we do have an idea of life from both sides of the gender spectrum. 

More Gender Euohoria

Gender Euphoria: Courtesy 
Jessie Hart

 For most of us, gender euphoria is difficult if not impossible to achieve. When it does happen it is normally a memorial experience. 

Gracie Rose wrote in and commented on her recent experience with gender euphoria:

"I take immeasurable pleasure when referred to as ma'am, she etc. I not only feel like I'm accepted, but it reflect how I have felt inside for over 50 years." Similar to you Gracie, I am also gratified beyond measure when someone calls Liz and I ladies. Thanks for the comment!

I believe my first and perhaps most important case of gender euphoria came when I went to the well documented visit to Fridays venue. For those of you who may not know, Fridays was the original restaurant/bar venue to accept single women. They spread quickly from their original locations in New York City and Dallas then opened one close to me in Dayton, Ohio. After "scouting" the venue many times as my male self, I decided to see if I could visit and be successful as my authentic feminine self. Even though I was terrified, I made it through and gender euphoria filled my soul. I knew from then on I could never go back to being just an everyday cross dresser (even though there is nothing wrong with that) again. 

We are fortunate when gender euphoria comes along to rescue our gender journey. I remember many times after I was reduced to tears following a particularly unpleasant experience with the public, I then found acceptance and/or kindness with others in the world. All the resultant euphoria helped me to keep going down my gender journey. 

During my journey also I was fortunate to be able to find gender euphoria in a many unlikely places. One of which was the NFL Monday Night Football game I was invited to by a very close friend. Of course I was terrified but managed to make it through a major new experience as a transgender woman. From lesbian mixers to just hanging out at the bar, good times were had by all. And perhaps most importantly I was learning how to play in the girl's sandbox. 

As I experience the world as a fulltime transgender woman, gender euphoria is more difficult to come by. I suppose it is because we don't get out as much as we used to, so we don't encounter many strangers. We are going to a picnic this Sunday but it is with the transgender - cross dresser group I am a  member of.  No strangers, no euphoria, I just hope to enjoy seeing some of them again plus it's supposed to be beautiful weather day. 

In the grand scope of life we deserve our share of gender euphoria. We earned it.  

Digging a Hole

Photo from Karin Klosterman
on Unspash

 As I entered my second gender transition from cross dresser to transgender woman I considered it as sliding down a very slippery gender slope. For years I was paranoid about how I would negotiate a landing. Or, how would the world and people close to me accept the reality of my gender transition. 

Little did I know my paranoia would be wasted because of friends and most of my family accepted me with no problems. 

The hole I dug happened before all of that. As I attempted more and more to explore the world as a transgender woman, I became increasingly brave in how I was attempting to accomplish my goal. An example was how I was able to leave the house cross dressed so many times. Seemingly without exposure. I did most of it from an 1860's vintage brick house we were restoring. Since at one time in it's past it was a boarding house, it had several doors I could use to sneak out. Many times in the very beginning I was able to go out and walk around the block. Before I moved up to being brave enough to take the car and drive around  knowing full well I was risking a huge fight or even a divorce if my wife ever found out.

Still I worked hard to dig my gender hole deeper. I went as far as saving all the spare change I could find to augment my ever growing stash of clothing and makeup which I was able to hide in a spot she (my wife) never went. At one point of time I needed so much room I needed to expand to another rarely used closet in the house. If my wife who already knew I was a cross dresser ever caught on to my extra buying habits, she never let me know.

As I went deeper, it was increasingly difficult for me to turn back and try to find my way out. The problem was too, I felt so natural, I did not want to turn back. It was around this time I decided to bring out the big digging equipment and seek out more life as a transgender woman. Mainly to see if I could. The short answer was I found I could and positively loved it. The problem I still had at the time was my wife was dead set against it and I couldn't live as a woman and stay with her. 

In a fairly short period of time the issue resolved itself when she unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of 50. I was heartbroken but I saw my gender door open wide. With just a little more digging I could start hormone replacement therapy and seriously further along my feminine transition. I thought the whole hormonal process would be mainly a physical one but I was very mistaken when the internal changes occurred too. Which I will save for another blog post on HRT.

As I look back at the entire process of digging a gender hole, I know now I wasn't sliding down a slippery slope to living as my authentic self,  in reality I was climbing up a hill I never asked for to a life I always wanted.

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Mirror Mirror

 

Mirror Image Courtesy 
Jessie Hart

Yesterday in my post I briefly mentioned my life in the mirror as a cross dresser. As I remember I wasn't giving the mirror enough credit for running my life.  Then ss I concentrated more and more on my feminine appearance, the mirror began to take on an increasingly  important role. So much so my mirror worship began to extend itself into the public eye. 

What happened was as I began to explore the world as a girl, I sought out the nearest mirror to critique my appearance and reinforce the idea I was finally escaping my gender closet. I found and located all sorts of mirrors to occupy my interests. Examples included numerous mirrors in clothing stores all the way to mirrors in craft or warehouse improvement stores. If there was a mirror, I found it. 

My all time favorite as I remember was a mirror in a coat warehouse store I used to frequent. Somehow I picked out a light blue wool beautiful winter coat I could never afford. The closest I could come was to admire how good I looked with that coat on in the mirror. I am surprised I wasn't kicked out of the store for never buying it. 

The huge problem with using mirrors as feedback is, it is only one way feedback and highly biased. I can't begin to tell you how many times I thought I looked fabulous only to be immediately laughed at when I went out. It took so many years for me to realize my strengths and weaknesses I had a problem too of trying to validate myself as a woman with men simply by pushing the standards of classy dress into the trashy category. It all led to the mirror leading me into more than a few screenful situations when I went out. 

Finally I made it to the point where I could trust the mirror to tell me the truth. I backed it up with how other women treated me, Finally I learned to cross dress to blend. My feedback became from how I was treated as a person as my closet door began to open more and more. As it did, society became my mirror and I was able to afford clothes which better highlighted who I was trying to become as a woman in society. The clown wigs went away and were replaced by more realistic wigs which better reflected who I was. 

Even now though I still fight the mirror. Most mornings when I wake up I always fight the temptation to look at myself in the mirror. Most of the time I think who is the old hag staring back. Then I think well at least I am a 73 year old feminine old hag nd maybe with a touch of makeup I can improve my image, 

At any rate, by now I should know to never trust the mirror anyhow. Take the best you may feel you look and combine it with the worst and believe you are seeing your truth.  

One Little Word

 

Photo Courtesy
Jessie Hart

Often I wonder how one little word gained such power in my life. That one word of course is "she." 

From my youngest days I also wondered how magical it would be to be called the she word. It never happened. As life went on and I became a little more advanced in looking feminine, I dreamed of getting out of the mirror and into the world as a feminine person. Many, many times the mirror would lie to me and not let on to me how much farther I would have to go to achieve my goal. Plus the only time I was sneaking out of the house as a girl was when I snuck out a few times to walk down our longish driveway to the mailbox. 

Time went on and I stubbornly kept working on my craft...applying makeup and finally in my college days I gathered my courage to leave the house at night and drive to a local shopping center to see if I could see my reflection in the windows of the stores. A few I could and I was thrilled and encouraged at the sight. Still though, it was a lonely experience and there was no one to call me "she". I would have to wait many more years for it to happen. 

Next up were my Army days and it wasn't in the drill sergeants' vocabulary to call me she. Even my rather successful Halloween appearances as a woman weren't good enough to earn me the title. 

It wasn't until I began to become very serious about my appearance and experimenting with going out in public more and more did the she word become tantalizing close. What happened was the public I was increasingly interacting with indirectly was demanding I be more feminine. 

The tipping point came when I started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I always considered HRT was the dividing point between my first and second gender transition. The first was when I was a cross dresser and the second was when I went down the transgender path. Finally the changes I was experiencing under HRT demanded she would enter the vocal format when it came to me. In no way shape or form I was a "he" anymore. 

Approximately during this same time period HRT made it much easier to transition my main pronouns from he to she. Relatively quickly I became so androgynous the public was becoming confused when they met me. 

It may have taken me fifty years to do it but people started to finally call me she. My authentic pronoun. I did discover also I was correct when I was young it would be a wonderful magical experience to be called "she". 

A Strong Woman

Female Body Builder. 
Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash

 Recently I have noticed a rebirth of the posts asking what is a woman. As always I see the entire subject as essentially unanswerable. A woman to me is a highly personal subject which depends on the socialization of the person. I believe no one is born a woman, or a man. In both cases, life socializes both genders into whatever life they end up living. 

Currently, especially with the latest Supreme Court decision there are different pressures on women. Perhaps now, more than ever it is more difficult to be a strong woman. And, as always being a transgender woman becomes even more tougher. 

In some circles, we transgender women are rejected by cis-women as somehow being bogus. Surely our route to womanhood is very different than theirs but who is to say it is a wrong one, or even a dead end. Reading all the experiences on Medium has helped me to reinforce my belief in following the transgender pathway as a true gender journey to becoming a woman. Often a stronger woman due to all of the life experiences we have faced. Following a path we have no real choice but to follow, we have to fight the effects of testosterone and the loss of male privilege. 

I met an example a couple nights ago I met in person a Facebook acquaintance who is also a part of the transgender-crossdresser group I am part of. She works in the healthcare industry and carries herself as a confident young (to me) woman. I couldn't help but be confident our transgender future is in better hands with people such as her in existence. 

It's easy to point out a woman is the stereotypical gentle mother figure. The glue who holds the family together. The truth as we all discover, a woman is so much more. It took me a while to learn what my wife was trying to tell me when she said I had no idea what being a woman was really all about. In fact it was just a couple days after I was mistaken for a cis-woman at a transvestite mixer I went to. I was on a cross dresser ego trip when she brought me down saying I made a terrible woman. I replied how could that be when I was almost denied admission to a mixer I went to without her. She immediately said she wasn't talking about how I looked, it was how I acted. It wasn't until much later when I really began to live a feminine life did I know what she meant.

I learned the hard way women live a much more complex life overall than a man. Everything from raising children to communicating a different way within their own gender. A strong woman has a lot to learn and keep up with. 

I have been fortunate to have known, loved and even learned from some of the best.    

Bi-Personality?

Photo Courtesy Jessie Hart

Along the way, of course I have read extensively on being Bi-Polar which I am and Bi-Sexual which I am not. 

Looking back, yet another of the "Bi's" I considered I was that I was Bi-Personality. Finally I determined all of it was just another phase I was going through to justify my gender issues. Along the way I had gone through a number of other "phases" or so I thought. One of the main ones was I cross dressed in feminine clothes temporarily to relieve the pressures of life. As I grew older and faced such pressures as college and the military, I would grow out of my need to cross dress. Wow! Was I wrong. The older I got the more I grew into my feminine self. Even to the point of coming out as transgender.  

One of the more extreme "phases" I went through was thinking I simply had two personalities, one male and one female. The more I considered it, the less simple it all became. What I refused to do was listen to my authentic feminine self causing great stress. Finally I could take the stress no longer and decided to begin hormone replacement therapy to start gender transitioning seriously. 

At this point I was interested to learn if my transition would have any serious positive effect of my Bi-Polar status. The short story was it didn't. I still suffered the same anxiety and depression I did before. So I could take that "Bi" off my list. Or one didn't explain the other. As it turned out, transitioning was going to solve another "Bi" in my life. Was I indeed suddenly sexuality attracted to men? Fairly quickly I learned I wasn't into men except in the rarest cases. Even though I felt a man's attention validated me as a woman, the final sexual result was not worth it. 

With the other two "Bi's" out of the way, the final one to be determined was I truly "Bi-Personality" or was one of the binary genders (male or female) more dominate. I am sure it is no surprise to all of you what the final answer turned out to be. The feminine side of me finally earned her chance to take over and run my life and essentially restored it from a very dark place. I have forever wondered just what I could have made of myself if I had taken the steps much earlier to live as my authentic feminine self. 

Perhaps of all the "Bi's" the personality one has been the most important. Of course the "Bi-Polar" made me miserable until I came to a place where understanding and medication helped to control it. Finally "Bi" Sexual was the easiest to solve.

In other ways also, the "Bi's" fit together in my life similar to a puzzle. I needed a therapist (which I found) who was willing to accept my "Bi Polar and Gender Dysphoria" were two aspects of my personality which didn't necessarily effect the other. And, my sexuality was left to me to determine. 

To finish off this post, should I say "Bi-Bi"?  

Bucket List

 

Jimmy Buffett Courtesy Sony Pictures

It's Jimmy Buffett day here in Cincinnati. Jimmy's concert has been an entertainment mainstay for years with people camping out a day early along the Ohio River venue to insure a good seat or view of the festivities. 

Every year the concert was one of the must do activities for my deceased wife and I to do. No matter what the cost I purchased tickets as close to the stage as I could. Plus we would gladly make the hour trip (one way) to get there. Of course all of these trips I made were as my old male self. I remember vividly being distracted at the concert by the other cis women and their clothes which sometimes bordered on the skimpy. My heart broke when I couldn't join them.

Ironically, in the present, since I moved to Cincinnati with Liz we only live approximately twenty miles from the venue where Jimmy is entertaining. Also the fact remains I have transitioned into a full time transgender woman so the opportunity to cross a Jimmy Buffett concert off my transgender bucket list should be one I could mark off my list...if I had one.

That's right, I don't have a bucket list. Throughout my life I have been able to finally find a way to do most everything I wanted to do. Most of it is to do with my major goal of becoming a full time functioning feminine person. My example is when I was growing up and someone asked me what I wanted to be later in life, my secret answer was always a girl. My thoughts continued all the way through adult hood till my deceased wife and I went on a vacation and it wasn't long until she started to ask me why I was miserable. Being the man I always tried to be, I apologized and didn't tell her the truth, I wanted to be on vacation with her as a woman. Very quickly my so called bucket list was history. Mainly because I knew I couldn't move forward and transition to a woman and preserve my marriage, job and many other aspects of my life. 

In many ways I felt I was swimming with sharks not unlike the central figure in Jimmy's Fin's song. If I varied my path one way or another, the sharks were waiting for me. 

Regardless, I still don't have much of a bucket list as I approach 73 years of age. Most I have are involved with staying healthy later in life. Long gone are the ideas of going to Kathmandu as we had a chance to do when I was in the Army in Thailand. Sadly, I know for certain my friends I was trying to go with have passed on. 

Perhaps you could also say my bucket has just rusted out. I keep thinking next year maybe the one I magically become healthy enough to brave the crowds and see Jimmy Buffett performing in Cincinnati before he retires. 

  

Mardi Gras

 

Photo by Ugur Arpaci on Unsplash

Several years ago, pre Covid, my partner Liz and I decided to take a bus tour down from our native Ohio to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We had done a couple other bus trips in the past so I was ready for the rest room challenges I would face...I thought.  

Very early on I learned  the toilet on the bus would be off limits to all except those in dire need. Which meant the bus would make scheduled stops at certain rest areas. My first learning experience came when I stood in line with approximately twenty other women waiting to use the bathroom. At the time I thought I never signed up for this but the first couple places we stopped were in rural areas, so everything went fine. So, at that time I started to gain confidence that no one on the bus would complain a transgender woman was using the wrong rest room.

On the way down to New Orleans, things began to change. The rest stops turned into truck stops and other stops along state lines in deep southern states. The worst by far came when we stopped on the Mississippi/Alabama line. I was petrified but had to go so I had no choice to join the waiting line of women. Even then, all went fairly well until I was coming out of the stall I used and came face to face with two obviously disapproving women. I tried to speed up the process and get my hands washed and leave the bathroom before I happened to run into those women again. I was so scared I was worried about a state patrolman or local sheriff pulling the bus over for a check. Fortunately nothing like that happened  and the bus rolled on without incident. 

Ironically, the only push back I received from anyone on the bus was when we arrived in New Orleans and stopped to eat at an upscale seafood restaurant. After dinner I excused myself  to use the Ladies Room and when I stepped in the door, one of the other passengers was washing her hands. She looked at me and said with a little surprise "Oh you use the same bathroom we do." She did not refer to the experience again and life on the bus went on until we arrived at our destination. A beautiful restored hotel within walking distance of Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. 

We then took full advantage of the two unplanned days we had to take advantage of the "Big Easy". Also most ot the pressure of using the rest room was  taken away. Until the night of Mardi Gras itself. Since rest rooms were at a premium, venues were requiring a purchase to use theirs. We did make our way through the madness of Bourbon Street to finally learn a couple of the venues we could eat and use the facilities at were just a block off the strip. One turned out to be the oldest gay venue in the city which we stopped at and the other a tavern which served food which had a patio style courtyard  where we could eat. 

Before it was time to turn around and go back, I decided to use what could only be described as an out house with a flush toilet. It reeked of sewer gas, so I hurriedly took care of business and started to leave. Of course when I opened the door, a line of women had formed on the other side. I felt bad if they thought I had caused the odor, but it was time to face the long walk back to the hotel. 

As far as the entire Mardi Gras experience went, I wouldn't trade it for the world but it is certainly designed for a younger person than me. It's definitely the party to go to if you are worried about presenting as an out transgender woman. Obviously nearly anything goes. 

Restroom availability and usage are a different story. At some point you are going to have to pull down those big girl panties and go for it. You haven't lived until you have waited in a line of women at a rest room. Mardi Gras or not it is a rite of transgender passage.