Flashing a Trans Girl

From the Archives. Club Diversity
Columbus, Ohio.

Before you think I am preparing to write a post about me "flashing" another person. No my skirt was not too short or anything else on that occasion. I was wearing my typical fall fashion, boots, jeans and sweater. 

In truth and as boring as it may seem, the only person  who was flashed was me and I don't think anyone else noticed. At least, I hoped not. As it was, my flash occurred just after I increased my dosage of gender affirming hormones. On the evening in question, I was out doing what I normally did, trying to enjoy myself with a drink at one of the venues I regularly went to. 

Suddenly out of the clear blue sky, I felt my face flush and I felt as if I was internally combusting. As I attempted to slyly look at the patrons around me, I was surprised and please to note, no one was rushing towards me with a coat or blanket wanting to put out the flames. Then, as quickly as it came on, my first hot flash as a transgender woman was over and I went back to my drink. I can not say the whole experience was as unpleasant as much as it was unexpected. Up to that point, my gender affirming hormones had ushered me into the second puberty of my life...a feminine one. 

While I could not go back and totally erase all the unwanted benefits of my first puberty which I called testosterone poisoning, my new HRT could help me into a new world. As my breasts and hair grew, my skin softened, along with my facial contours. Not having to wear wigs anymore as well as using less makeup helped my feminization in the public's eye as well as giving me a new found confidence. What I missed the most was having anyone to talk to about my second puberty. When I did bring up the facets of changes I was going through, my female friends just said welcome to their world. Little did they know how long and how much I wanted to be in their world. 

Up to the point of my flash, I had never cried in my life, even during the passing of both of my parents. The best way to describe the new me who could cry was when my testosterone was driven down, the hard edges were taken off my life. All of a sudden, my first good cry occurred one evening when a thunderstorm rolled through my Ohio town and I quietly mourned the loss of my male self. I took no real pity and for the first time, I was able to understand the difference between a good cry and a bad one.

As you can imagine, I was elated with the results of my second puberty in life which did not occur until I was in my sixties. Even though, if I had it all to do over again and transition earlier, I would not have wanted to miss out on the times of accomplishment and fun I had carved out as my old male self. He had taken me a long way in life on a basically successful journey which gave me highlights of having a daughter who supports me to this day, all the way to living with wives/women who helped me unknowingly be a better transgender woman. 

In a nutshell, very few humans have the opportunity to go back and try again. By going through a second puberty and flashing myself, I had the rare chance to not screw it up and be a better person. While I consider my hot flash learning experience as one of the top moments in my life, I also consider the process part of my passage into my unique womanhood. Not unlike having a mammogram. I am just glad, no one else noticed I was on fire one minute and reaching for my coat the second because my thermostat was broken and I was freezing. All part of my second puberty.

See, I told you this post wasn't going to be part of a sensual flash in anyway. Sorry! 

Mansplaining a Trans Girl

Woman being 
mansplained by Al Eimes
on Unsplash .

First, mansplaining to me is a highly insulting way to communicate with women and one I tried my best not to do before I transitioned into the world of a transgender woman. 

In fact I think I went out of the way to not mansplain anything to the women I worked and lived around. I hope now it wasn't noticeable and I was coming off as dismissal. Regardless, I did my best until I was admitted behind the gender curtain and was able to see how the female half lived. 

The problem was, I took so many years to get to the point of being allowed to look behind the curtain and play in the girl's sandbox. So I never quite understood what the mansplaining fuss was all about, until it slapped me one night in a regular venue I was accepted in. What happened was somehow I became part of a small group of men discussing a topic I knew a lot about, like sports. I was still new to the system and tried to interject my thoughts into the conversation. Just as I would have as my male self. To my surprise, I was rudely ignored by the men and I quickly left and went on my way. The whole process was another of my life changing moments when I was transitioning. 

I didn't know what I was expecting since I had seen mansplaining all my life from other men around me when they interacted with women. Why would I be any different? Well, I wasn't and the better my presentation as a transgender woman became, the more I was talked down to. It was like I had lost most of my intelligence and all my life time experiences in addition to other male privileges. 

Quickly I learned to play the game of being a dumb blond, which I was most of the time back in those days. A prime example came one night when my car broke down and I had to call a tow truck. As luck would have it, a well meaning policeman showed up to help and between the driver and the cop figured out the best route to get my car home without even asking me. I was infuriated until the whole evening declined even farther when the tow driver started to explain to me how his wrecker worked. on the ride back Finally, I relaxed and started to ask him questions about what his wife packed him for dinner and why were wheels round. (Just kidding.) But I tried to make the questions of my status as a woman for him which was obviously very low. 

Maybe I should have been happy I presented so well that I lost a main part of myself forever. I learned how women are really treated and prepared myself for other gender lessons. The main one I write about often is the loss of personal security I witnessed up close and personal when I transitioned. I learned to park in the most well lit and safest places I could with the shortest walk to wherever I was going, to name one important point. For the first time in my life, I was the prey when I was out in the public's eye and it was quite the change.

Slowly but surely on the rare occasions I needed to communicate with a man, I learned to draw from my personal experiences and understand where he was coming from. I waited for him to come to me and interject my ideas when I could as a transgender woman. By doing so, I was able to build my confidence back up in public. 

Today when I am mansplained, I take it with a grain of salt because I know there are plenty of women who reverse the process with their communication with men. I remember several nights when I was fine with talking to the woman in a couple I didn't know and having it all change in a flash when he started to show any interest at all in me. There was no womansplaining going on as I instantly knew where I stood. It also never took me long to understand all the non-verbal cues women use to signal each other. 

 It is one of the reasons both binary genders have such a difficult time of communicating. Upper level understanding of the genders is one of the rare benefits of being transgender and should be embraced. When you can do it, you truly have the chance to advance as a human. 

On the Transgender Precipice

 

Image from Wira Dyatmika on
UnSplash.

As I followed a winding, difficult path to my dream of living as a fulltime transgender woman, I took years to climb the gender mountain.

Just one of the problems was  I was afraid of heights. The higher I climbed the rarer the air became because I had never been in all the situations I encountered. As I entered the world as a trans woman, there were so many situations I never expected to happen. I knew women led multi layered lives but not to the extent I encountered. Initially I thought if I had conquered all the fashion, hair and makeup basics, I had it made in the world. Needless to say, I was wrong. 

Even though my male self contributed to me feeling petrified as I climbed, I kept going. As I decided to leave the male gay venues I was going to and try lesbian and straight bars, I really needed to climb to a new level to survive. When I reached a new level, I paused to look around and see what I had accomplished if anything. What I did accomplish was a degree of acceptance from the venues I went to. Except for one evening when three guys kept playing "Dude Looks Like a Lady" on the jukebox over and over again, I begrudgingly held my spot and became an accepted regular in several places. As I did, my view of the world as a transgender woman became clearer and clearer. My gender dysphoric fog was clearing and increasingly all I could see was a future life living as a woman. 

At the same time, I was still a regular at the diverse mixers in Columbus, Ohio where I met a total range of people from cross dressers to transsexual women who were headed for gender realignment surgery or a sex change as it was known back then. By meeting and learning from all these people, I was able to chart my own path to my transgender precipice. 

The two main things I remember are how desperate I was for information on my gender issues and how scared I was of receiving an answer. Was my therapist right and I could do nothing about my feminine desires? If so, I had reached a precipice in my life and I needed to make a decision which would change my life forever. Of course my spoiler alert is, from my gender view, I could see a wonderful if not difficult future ahead as a trans woman. What happened was, as I built a new circle of women friends who never knew me as my past male self, I kept pushing and pushing myself to the edge of my transgender precipice until I fell down the cliff. 

Unknowingly, for the most part, I had set myself up for a soft gender landing. I gave away the remainder of my male clothes and set out to quit climbing and live a new life. What a relief it was to stop expending all the energy I was using to live two gender lives. The process exhausted me and ruined my fragile mental health. My friends helped me through this difficult time of my life more than I can ever say.

With my fears of gender heights behind me, I met my wife Liz and she helped me seal the deal and live my life as a transgender woman. That was fourteen years ago and we have been happy ever since. I don't think I could have ever envisioned I would meet up and marry another woman in my long life but I did. I guess the fog on my mountain was hiding my future.  

Transgender Reconnections

 

Image from the
Jessie Hart
Archives

As I followed the path to a transgender transition, I made several important reconnections. 

Little did I know or realize how many twists and turns I would take before I found my truth. Most importantly I needed to realize I was not a man cross dressing as a woman, I was the reverse. A woman trying to make it as a cross dressed man in life. Because of that, nothing seemed to quite fit in my life as I struggled to survive in an unwanted male world. As I attempted to outrun all my problems,  I drank alcohol to excess as well as moved around and changed jobs way too much. I was always running, searching for my transgender reconnections. Sadly, I searched for nearly a half a century before I was able to have any success and connect with my authentic gender self.

During all those years, I was teased with success as I left my cross dressing mirror and slowly entered the world as a novice transgender woman. Along the way, I made all the mistakes I could think of plus some I could not have imagined happening. In my haste to reach the conclusion to my reconnection, I needed to first discover what it was. Through it all, my inner female was screaming at me for more and more attention but my male self did his best to play all his cards and hang on. The game they were playing wrecked havoc with my mental health and I sought out therapy for help. As with anything else, therapy is what you put into it and I went through several very good therapists as well as a couple not so good ones. Then there was the problem of me listening to what they had to say to start with because my male self was telling me therapy was just a waste of time and money. On the other hand, my female self saw the benefits, especially if the therapy process was slowly opening her world at all. 

Sometimes too, reconnections were tantalizingly close. There were so many days or nights when I could relax and enjoy a glimpse of what a life as a transgender woman could be like. The more reconnections with a feminine world I could make, the more natural and better I felt. Probably, most importantly, all of the gender progress I was making was because I believed in myself and my confidence was building. I had escaped the basic confines of the wardrobe and makeup challenges and made it to the one on one communications I was suddenly faced with as a trans woman. It was during this point of my transgender reconnection process I learned the most. Mainly because, I was relaxing and letting my long hidden female self take over. It turns out all those years of having to quietly sit back and watch my male self struggle enabled her to be a better person when she got the chance. 

When I reconnected with my female self, I was able to be a full person again and I knew one of my therapists said it right when she told me there was nothing either of us could go about me wanting to be a woman. If I had followed her advice and set out to discover what my second wife had told me all along, I would have taken the time and really looked into what a women's world was all about. Other than the outward appearances of fashion and makeup. It was the biggest reconnection I couldn't make until I had earned it by actually adopting and living a life as a trans woman. Even to the point of beginning HRT or gender affirming hormones. 

In many ways, the new hormones were the final piece of the puzzle in reconnecting my transgender self to the world. Physically and emotionally I was ready to face the world as a united human being.  

Down the Transgender Rabbit Hole

 

Image from Benoit Baumatin on UnSplash.

Long ago, I sought out a rabbit hole I found I did not want to escape.

In the beginning, I did not go deep into the hole so I could supposedly easily escape if I wanted to. The farther I went, the harder it was to escape even I wanted to. What happened was gender euphoria set in and the entire cross dressing experience became increasingly pleasurable as well as feeling incredibly natural. The problem I faced was how to cover the entrance to my rabbit hole so no one else in my family could discover it. Very early it was easy when I could attempt to borrow select clothes from my Mom's closet which ended when I became too big to wear them. Then I had to rely on my own limited financial resources to buy fashion and makeup accessories. 

For awhile, the pressure to go away and cross dress became so intense I needed to find a spot away from the house to establish another private rabbit hole. I found the best spot in a quiet wooded area next to our rural home. I was able to protect my secret collection of feminine clothes in plastic bags and hope they would be protected enough as well as not be discovered. I did well, because they never were and I was provided another place to go to cross dress. If even for a short period of time. 

The better I became at perfecting the "art" of fashion and makeup, the more I wanted to leave my novice transgender rabbit hole and look around at the world. At first, the world proved to be a very difficult place to be. After too many public failures I was sent scurrying back to my rabbit hole to seek comfort and try to figure out what all I was doing wrong with my feminine presentation. The entire feminization process for me proved to be a difficult one as my entrenched male self fought for his dominance and kept on trying to cover up my rabbit hole with ill advised purges. Very quickly he found out the gender purges I was going through were a complete waste of time and money. 

Once I reached the middle portion of my life, my rabbit hole needed to be expanded from a crossdresser rabbit hole into one large enough to contain a full fledged transgender woman. I needed room for more wigs, shoes and women's essentials to survive in the world. As I was entering a new exciting yet scary world without my white male privilege, the sunlight outside my rabbit hole was at times blinding. Even more so when the world all of a sudden expected me to communicate with them when at the least, I had to order face to face with servers or bar staff trying to take my order. What was a novice trans woman to do? What I attempted to do was make the best of a potential destructive situation. Very early in the game, I came to the conclusion the world knew I was transgender for the most part and those who cared, could just get over it because I was just living my truth.

Of course, once I was able to leave my rabbit hole in my past and live, I had no desire to go back to it's dark confines. Each time I was successful in the feminine world, my male self lost more and more of any control he had left. 

The writing was on the rabbit hole wall when I started gender affirming hormones. I knew I had made the correct decision when my body and mind took to the new hormones so naturally. In addition to all the bodily changes which took place, I cherished the new emotions I felt. Being able to cry for the first time in my life was quite the experience. 

Perhaps, most importantly, was when I discovered the lack of predators I really had when I left my rabbit hole. Of course dealing with the occasional man was a problem but with my circle of lesbian women friends, not so much as they taught me true validation as a person. Once I learned to validate myself, I was freed from my old male rabbit hole for good and jumped into the sunlight.

It's Complicated

Image from 
Alexander Grey
on UnSplash.

To begin with, I would like to mention a comment I received from "Pammie". In essence she challenged my daughter and son in law's idea of me earning a "Mother's Day" title. Pammie is the mother of four and I completely understand her position. I simply said, I did not seek out the title and I was not bragging. Being bestowed with what I consider the highest honor possible is amazing and I cherish it .Thanks for the comment which brings me to the subject of this post.

Anyway you cut it, being transgender is the ultimate in living a complicated life. It's no wonder many "civilians"  in the world don't understand what a trans person is when we often don't understand it ourselves. I know it took me years to come to a conclusion I was transgender and what it meant. Obviously when I did come to the conclusion I had been avoiding all my life, I needed to explain I was transgender to those closest to me. Destiny seemed to follow me once again (as it so often did) when I was completely accepted by some and totally rejected by others. More precisely, my daughter came out as a fierce ally and on the other hand, an embarrassing rejection from my only sibling, a younger brother. Essentially, he sold me out to appease his right-wing religious in-laws. I knew it was coming, so I moved on and haven't seen him in over a decade.

The problem is each gender's life is considered to be a given to the lucky majority who never question it. To the unlucky minority who for whatever reason we don't often know, we are stuck trying to determine which gender we are. Even to the point of accepting a relatively new term called "gender fluid." If the term had been around during my youth, it would have solved so many issues I went through. All the days I woke up wondering if I was a boy or a girl could be put behind me. 

Then it comes to the basic point of telling other humans of our plight, it becomes very complicated. How do you even attempt to explain your transgender needs to an elderly parent such as I did, or a family worth of offspring who have always viewed you a certain way. A way you carefully crafted all those years to hide your deepest darkest secret. You are not and never were the gender you appeared to be. I know life throws you many unexpected challenges and I am biased but I can't think of anything else which is so complicated to explain. 

Years ago, when my daughter was struggling with her oldest child coming out as transgender to her. One day she said to me how did I know I was trans and then answered her own question by saying I had always known. Which was true, I had always known something was different about me. I just didn't know how to express it. It seemed to be so unfair to me when I needed to address my complicated issues surrounding my gender which my friends did not have to face. 

Over the years and especially when I started blogging, I did expect push back on my transgender ideas but have received relatively few. One of the best comments I can recall when a person called me just another old guy on hormones. I received quite a  chuckle from that. I laughed because once again I had encountered another person who did not understand how complicated our lives are. Most don't understand it is a life time of effort to transition into another gender. For example no one understands in order not to back track on how I perceive myself as a transgender woman, I need to be on gender affirming hormones for life.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the end of life situations trans people face. I am fortunate to have several transgender allies in my life so I don't have to worry about having my gender questioned at death. One way or another, the entire death process represents the complicated life we face. 

Earning Motherhood

 

Liz on left with me preparing to celebrate
Mother's Day with her son over a Margarita.
Photo by AJ Trumble.

To be clear, I never have asked for the honor of being called "Mother" from either one of my off springs. 

I have a daughter of my own who means the world to me and a step son who I love very much. I met him when I met my wife Liz and was accepted into his world immediately with no questions asked. 

My daughter started the Mother's Day ball rolling last year when I received a small gift and a Happy Mother's Day for the first time from her. Truthfully, I was brought to tears by the thought. I was forever finished with Father's Day. 

I consider the title of Mother to be the ultimate compliment and as I said, not one I take lightly. I also think being referred to as Mother represents a total erasure of all the years of testosterone poisoning and an unwanted male life I went through. It means to me, my immediate family sees me as a full fledged trans woman. I even respected my own Mom enough to use her first name as my middle name when I legally changed it. Even though she never approved of my gender transition. Even to the point of being a relatively harmless cross dresser or transvestite. Back in those days, neither one of us knew the depth of gender issues. I considered Mom to be a product of her generation (WWII/Depression) and moved on after her death. 

Needless to say, most of my gender journey was never easy and represented many roadblocks along the way. I can only say, I never expected to arrive where I am today. Maybe I should come up with another book and call it "From the Mirror to the World...A Transgender Journey." 

We shall see.

Being a Transgender Victim

Image from University of Cincinnati
Trans Seminar.  

It is difficult not to play or be the victim if you are transgender. 

It is always easy to think why me and resort to various escape mechanisms such as in my case, running home and cross dressing in my dress when anything went remotely wrong in my frail male world. Making the varsity football team just wasn't as important as trying to look like a cheerleader in my mirror at home. 

Many years went by before I grew out of being a victim. Perhaps I made my biggest strides in Army basic training when I had no where to run and hide behind my feminine feelings. Ironically, my intense introduction to man hood would in turn enable me to be a better transgender woman in the future. Or as my second wife used to tell me, be man enough to be a woman. For the longest time, I had no answer to what she was telling me. To begin with, I had no idea of how I would support myself as a trans woman and at the same time, I was still very inexperienced as a woman. I had a ton of learning to do. 

As I finally was able to escape the confines of my male existence, I fell back heavily on his new found idea of never being a victim. When I initially was going through all the trials and tribulations of attempting to present convincingly as a woman, many times I was a dismal failure. The easy thing to do would have been to be a victim and blame the world but I chose the other path and kept going back to my cross dressing drawing board and try again. By doing so, slowly I was able to learn what I needed to get by.

By not becoming a victim, I was able to look the world in the eye and learn to communicate one on one with mainly women in public. Very quickly, I was able to see in their eyes what their perception of me was. Mostly I found the majority of women knew I was transgender and were curious what I was doing in their world. By the time I reached that point in our interaction, there was no turning back and I was in so deep I could not back out and hide at home or in my car. Most importantly I learned to stand my ground and learn a new feminine life. Of course there were many new rules I needed to observe and accept before I could move on but I did. The whole process was not without setbacks and many times I needed time to rest before I re-entered the fray cis-women call life. I had learned from my work experience, women have the tendency to form cliques unlike the teams men form, so I knew once I was accepted by a women's clique, I had it made. Just getting there was the issue.

As I widened my search in the venues I frequented, destiny enabled me to be successful. By pure luck, one of the bartenders who always waited on me set me up on a date with her lesbian Mom and we became close friends  and remain so to this day. Then, one night another woman sent me a note down the bar and we became friends also and the three of us were inseparable for years.

Probably, my most chance encounter of all came when my current wife Liz answered my "ad" on a dating site and we have been together for nearly fourteen years now. She came along on-line after having to put up with an incredible amount of trash. For some reason, I refused to become a victim again and kept trying.

Being transgender is a difficult situation to find yourself in. As I always point out, trans is NOT a choice but being a victim is and it is a difficult burden to overcome. 

Transgender Closure?

Image from Nick Bolton
on UnSplash.

 Sometimes it seems as if closure to a transgender woman never comes.

In the very early days in the mirror as I cross dressed, I thought I had reached closure when gender euphoria kicked in when I admired myself. It did until the pressure built to cross dress again and again. Predictably what happened was, I became so frustrated with the process of moving back and forth between the male and female binary genders, I decided to purge (throw away) all of my feminine belongings and go back to a male life. The problem was, deep down I knew purging was not going to solve my transgender issues. Plus very certainly, I was getting no closure and I would always go back to the mirror.

Through it all, I was very naïve and thought closure was around every corner as I continued along my gender path. It turned out, all the small victories I celebrated had nothing to do with winning the war and having any closure at all. The prime example I can recall came when I decided to transition from a cross dresser to a transgender woman. When I was beginning to be successful, I thought I finally had it made when something came along and changed my mind. Foremost among life changing closure experiences occurred when I learned what my second wife warned me about. I really had no idea of what a woman went through in life and I had to learn before I could be accepted. 

I needed to lose my impostor feminine syndrome on several levels. Even though, I couldn't have things such as periods and pregnancies, I had other problems to deal with as a transgender woman to pay my dues. Primarily, losing all my male privileges was what I gave up first to join the world of women. I didn't expect any special privileges to be let in, I just wanted to be given the chance to let my feminine inner soul flourish in the world. She waited nearly a half a century to live and had learned a lot. Even still, I was viewed with a certain amount of mis-trust by several women who I think thought I could run home and go back to my old male life. There was no easy way to prove to them I had given all my male clothes away and there was no turning back for me. 

Once I broke down gender doors thanks to the help of certain close friends, I was able to enjoy more and more activities such girls nights out without impostor syndrome setting in. Finally, I was feeling more and more closure from my old male life. In many ways, I had insulated him from myself altogether. Even more so when I started gender affirming hormones and started to feel the full effects. I started to understand aspects of a woman's life such as emotions all the way to simple things such as the influences such as temperature changes on the body. Suddenly, I discovered women were not just being sissies when they said they were cold all the time except when they were having hot flashes which I went through also. 

As I was going through all the changes in life hormones sent me through, closure set in and I knew there was never going to be any going back. It took me awhile to realize the closure I was attempting represented the most intelligent decision I ever made with my life. I didn't have to worry about any more impostor syndrome because I knew I had paid my dues. 

Now the closure I need to look forward to is doing whatever I can to insure my final years are as smooth as possible. Much of it will be out of my control so I will just have to do the best I can try to pay it forward with organizations such as the "Alzheimer's Organization." My Dad passed from a very ugly case of Dementia years ago, so I hope I won't have to put my loved ones through the same thing. The rest, however is mainly out of my control with no chance at closure. 

Poor Executuion equals a Hot Mess

Image from Author, Columbus, Ohio.

More times than I would care to remember, evenings when I went out to explore the world as a cross dresser or novice transgender woman turned out to be a hot mess. 

Particularly frustrating were the evenings or days when I thought I had planned everything out so well. I picked out the perfect outfit and applied my makeup just right and was ready to go. Perhaps my biggest issues had to do with figuring out where I was going to go and when I needed to be back before my wife returned home. Did I have a relatively long time to explore the world, or a short time to visit a few of my favorite venues and be back in time to remove all vestiges of my makeup and attempt to return to my male life. 

In the beginning, big mistakes would appear to ruin my time and turn it into a hot mess. I did not understand because I thought I was doing my best to put my new feminine cross dressed image to the public test. Some of my problems came from taking too many chances and others came from just purely being new to the world. Examples of taking a chance came when I used water balloons as breast forms, knowing full well how fragile they were. Predictably, one broke when I was out in public, making a huge mess in a rest room I was in. The only good thing which happened was, the room was empty except for me and I was able to clean up my mess and exit before anyone else came in.  From there, I learned the hard way to invest in silicone breast forms which I was able to use until I was able to grow my own breasts with gender affirming hormones. 

Other mistakes I would put under the title of ill-advised were the times I was simply having too good of a time and lost track of what time it was. Those were the evenings, I came home and ran directly into my second wife who was not amused. A huge fight always ensued until she settled down days or even weeks later. The whole process was not pleasant and just kept repeating itself essentially until just before she passed away. Finally I decided to purge my trans-feminization self and grew a beard for the last six months of her life. During this time, I didn't know she was as sick as she was and she passed totally unexpectedly and I often wondered if we could have stayed together for any length of time had she lived. All I do know was, I was making a hot mess out of our life because of my transgender issues. 

During this time also, I was desperately trying to catch up with all the small issues a woman has done to live her life. I did so many things such as wedging my heels in sidewalk cracks, which of course destroyed any image I was doing my best to project as a confident well dressed professional woman. 

Through it all, my wife still prodded me on by telling me I still didn't know anything about really being a woman. I wasn't able to learn until later how correct she was. My excuse is I wasn't allowed to play in the girl's sandbox until I earned it. I compare the process to being able to land a job by finally having all the qualifications needed. Until someone gives you the chance to move up, you have to earn your way or you never get the chance. I was always under qualified to play with the rest of the girls until I forced my way in.

Getting there wasn't easy. I needed to find a group of women I could learn from and not be judged at every turn. I also need to locate women who had no knowledge of my previous male self. He was never mentioned and most certainly, I never brought him up. When I did my life became so much easier. I did not have to worry about my transgender execution and hot messes became increasingly a part of my past.

Trans Girl Secrets

Image from Ben White 
on Unsplash.

Secrets became a very important part of my life at a very young age.

It all started when I viewed myself in women's clothes  in front of the mirror for the first time. I realized my life would never be the same again. Plus I also knew my desire to be a girl would not be well received by my family at all. It was in the late 1950's and early 1960's when cross dressing was still considered to be a crime where I lived near Dayton, Ohio. In those days any sort of gender dysphoria was thought to be a mental illness. Even then, I couldn't see the act of cross dressing in women's clothes to be an act of mental illness. 

What happened then was I needed to go into a dark secretive closet, I would not come out of completely for a half a century. Along the way, I included very few outsiders in my secret. Four or five to be exact. I did not even include myself in my secret. What I am referring to is the fact I wanted to do much more in my life than just cross dress as a girl, when in reality, the reverse was true. I was a woman cross dressing as a man the entire time and I was indeed transgender after all.

Predictably, one secret leads to another and another and in my case led to lies being told later on. My dishonesty came when I refused to admit to myself who I really was and took out my frustration on those closest to me. I became a very unpleasant person to be around when my gender dysphoria was at its worst. Even to the point of me losing a job because of what I was going through. It was like I was setting myself up for failure at every turn in my life as I waited for more and more people to discover my secret. 

The longer my secret was hidden away and on the other hand, I was desperately trying to discover a new feminine world as a transgender woman, the heavier my secret became. I attempted to hide all my transgender activities from my second wife and was reasonably successful. I say reasonably because I would do more and more as a trans woman until she caught me and the gender battle between us would continue. She was wiser than I was when at one point she told me to just leave her and live a life as a woman. That made her the second woman in my life who I should have listened to when they told me the same thing. The first was my gender therapist years before. 

Sadly, my male self was not ready to give up the strangle hold he had on my life and encouraged me to do the male thing and try to ignore and internalize all my struggles. Of course in the end run, the only thing which happened was the pressure just kept on building as I managed to keep my secret. However, no matter how hard my male self tried to protect his domain, he was slowly sliding down a cliff of no return. Finally, with the help of several close friends I made the gender leap of faith. I gave away all of my male clothes, started gender affirming hormones (HRT) and never looked back. 

Perhaps the best part of not having to protect my secret and not live a lie was my new friends never knew my old male self at all. My inner feminine soul was finally free to live her life. When she did, she became the third woman in my life to tell me the same thing.

The only secret I really ever had was I was never really a man at all. 

A Night at a Concert

Image from the Jessie Hart Archives

Following the time when my wife passed away, I actually tried to date another cis woman, once.

During this brief period of my life, my old male self was still desperately hanging on to the idea he could still exist at all. At that time, one of my servers came into my restaurant with her very attractive Mother. After several inquiries I found her Mother was single and she would ask if she would go out with me. She did and we started our very short history of dating. 

Right from the start I found she was a bit of a prima donna when we met on a date in downtown Cincinnati. I suggested stopping at a micro brewery for a quick appetizer when she wanted to go to an upscale steak house on my dime. I should have known then she was out of my league but I kept on trying anyhow. In a very short period of time, I told my daughter I was dating again. In response, she came up with two tickets to a local park pavilion near her house. The concert performer was Joe Cocker, so I could not wait to go. I even asked the new woman I was dating if she wanted to go and she initially said yes and the date was on, or so I thought. A couple days later and a week before the concert in the park, she called me and broke up our brief affair. I was slightly shocked but then again not so much as I began to consider what I would go with an extra ticket to see Joe. 

At the time, I was increasingly exploring the world as a transgender woman, so I thought why not take myself on a date in the park. I knew exactly what I would wear .My long silky black slacks with my black matching sleeveless top and black flats for comfortable walking. I then applied my makeup and topped my outfit off with my long black straight wig and I was ready for the half hour drive to the venue. By this time all of this happened, I was becoming very comfortable with my feminine self so I was really looking forward to the evening as it approached. I had spent many a evening being alone with myself. I wasn't very nervous as much as excited by the expectation of having a good time. 

The evening of the concert turned out to be ideal weather wise, a beautiful warm but not too humid Ohio summer evening. I showed my ticket and was admitted to the venue without a problem. Before I went to my seat, I decided to buy a drink and then headed to sit down. Again I experienced no problems with anyone in the venue in my section. I was able to enjoy my drink and relax even further before the music started. I especially enjoyed the silky sensation of my clothes in the summer evening air.

I was glad I went because I had been a Joe Cocker fan since the Woodstock concert days and it wasn't too long following the concert, he passed away and I was still able to be completely enjoy his performance before it was too late.

As far as I was concerned and as selfish as it may sound, the whole exciting evening was more fun for me than taking a woman I barely knew. Plus my experience even further increased my confidence as a novice transgender woman. Even to the point of coming out to my daughter who I told that I enjoyed the concert very much but never added who my "date" was. 

The night at the concert was one of those lifetime experiences I will never forget. It was the last time I ever tried to date as a man and the first time I was ever to seriously explore my life as a transgender woman. Once I did, the more I understood it was the life for me. 

It Has Never Been a Sprint

 

Image from Marcus
Spiske on UnSplash

A transgender life is never a sprint, it is a marathon. 

From the first time we slide on the hose and view ourselves in a mirror, we never believe the gender journey we have started would last as long as it did. Initially for me, I was on a very short term program when I would cross dress as a girl one day and live off the proverbial buzz until I could follow my dream and cross dress again. 

I wonder now if I had known the journey I followed would have so many bumps in the road and would have lasted so long would I have still done it. On the other hand, I was never a sprinter and a marathon was a closer match to my personality. Plus, there were milestones along the way which kept me going. Very early on, I knew I needed much more than just the feel of women's clothes to propel me forward. There just had to be more than just looking like a girl, I wanted to do more and be a girl. I knew the journey would be difficult and maybe impossible but I needed to keep trying. 

First of all, I needed to learn the basics of feminine appearance so I could safely explore the world as my new exciting self. With no help and very little money, I haunted the thrift stores trying different wardrobe items which were very inexpensive until I finally began to see improvement. My sprint during the time in my life when I was experimenting more and more was exhausting. The one thing which was evident to me was I was on my own. To win or lose was my passion but first I needed to see away around surviving a stint in the military where I could not express my feminine self. Fortunately, I could fall back on what my male self had taught me about internalizing my feelings. During my three years of military service, I managed to survive without cross dressing except for one notable Halloween party which led to me coming out to a few friends of mine as a transvestite. Included in the group of three was a woman who was to become my first wife and the mother of my only child. This brief sprint set the stage for me coming out to others in the future. 

For awhile, I was over confident about others accepting my authentic self until a conversation with my Mom brought me back down to earth. She soundly rejected me and I was off I pursuing my gender marathon again. Even with the set back, I had plenty of energy to move forward. Move forward I did, regardless of living with an unapproving wife. I needed to hide nearly all of what I was doing as I ran my next sprint. 

By this time, my sprints were becoming more defined as  I was increasingly discovering my dream of living a fulltime life as a transgender woman just could be a reality. Next up on my sprint were gender affirming hormones and making the decision to never look back where I had come from as a male and plan ahead a life as a transgender woman. 

The only constant I found on my gender marathon was change. Every time I thought I had it made in the process, something came along to disrupt my thinking. It could be as minor as being mis-gendered in the world or so much more now as I reach the twi-light of my life. Now making it to the finish line of my gender marathon in the best shape possible is my main goal.

Transgender Expectations

 

Picnic Image. My wife Liz on the right.

When I began the long and very difficult transgender journey I decided to take, I had many expectations.

At the time, I was still entranced with wearing all the pretty clothes a woman had access to. I could not wait to have my own wardrobe which would match any occasion from casual to formal. I was very naïve back in those days and thought a woman's life was all about how she looked. I was so wrong as I discovered as I explored more and more of a transgender woman's life. In addition to the layers cis-women went through in their lives, trans women face all of those and more. To begin with, we don't have the benefit of growing up around other girls and learning from them. Making our own way was difficult when the only input was coming from the mirror. 

Loneliness ruled my feminine side all the time my male side was trying his best to survive in the world he never really felt comfortable in. As I observed all the girls around me, my expectations of what their life was all about just increased. The problem was I had a distorted view of everything feminine. One example was I was shy and never liked having to ask a girl out on a date. I thought the whole process was so unfair just like worrying about serving in the military and getting shipped off to Vietnam. 

What I did not realize was the gender grass was not always greener on the feminine side. Was it easier to be the one asking someone out, or waiting for someone to ask you out. As far as the military went, there was nothing I could do about it, so I tried to hide my resentment and move on. 

As I did move on, I discovered many other expectations I never planned on. Communication was one of the major hurdles I needed to overcome before I could learn to live a quality life as a transgender woman. I was blindsided quickly when the public wanted to talk to me faster than I was ready to respond. Initially, before I went through vocal lessons, I tried to just talk in a soft background voice and hope for the best. Trying to match the voice to my appearance was not an expectation I planned on but it happened. It was just all a part of moving out of the mirror and into the world. 

As I matured as a trans woman and started to communicate with other women, I learned the grass was certainly not greener on the feminine side of gender. As I thought back to the Christmas envy I had because of my two girl cousins who were dressed in their new dresses and white tights. Liz ruined my illusions of pleasure when she told me stories of getting in trouble for getting her tights ruined by playing with the boys. 

Even though I found the grass was not greener on the other gender side, the more I learned of the gender differences I faced, the more I wanted to continue my journey. It seemed the more I experienced, I more I felt I had paid my dues as a transgender woman. More or less, as a rite of passage such as a mammogram. 

Since females are not born women but rather socialized into womanhood, transgender women have to go through the same process. By following all those expectations all those years, I finally arrived. The path I followed was difficult but in many ways the same as other women, transgender or not. 

Living in Your Own Prison

 

Image from Engin Akyurt
on UnSplash

When someone says living a life as a transgender woman or trans man is a choice I get a huge chuckle. 

I wish the people who think my life was a choice, needed to live a small time in my shoes and  then they could truly decide my life was never a choice. I was living in my gender prison. In many ways, I could describe my confines to a bigger version of what was called my personal closet. Either way, I was stuck in a very dark and isolated space where I was all alone. Especially in the pre-internet days when I was living.

When the internet came along with social media, I was able to locate a few others who were cross dressers or transgender women , which made life a little easier in my prison. My biggest problem then became hiding my new on-line contacts from my wife who was more tech savvy than I was. Let's just say I needed to learn the hard way when my wife found a discussion I was having with a person in nearby Indiana and I had to become much too comfortable with.

Looking back, I could call the few, brief times when I tried to purge my feminine wardrobe and be a full time man as being out of my prison on parole. The problem was deep down I knew what I was doing was wrong and the pressure would build to build a new feminine wardrobe and try again in front of the mirror. I could almost predict when I would go back to my gender prison. 

Yet another casualty of me serving time in my closet was one I always mention, my mental health. Since it was already fragile and I was going to therapy for help, I didn't need any extra problems to push me closer to the edge.  I was becoming a hot mess as I took more and more chances when I left the house as my novice transgender self and explored the world. The problem became, I was feeling more and more natural when I escaped my prison. Even still, the process was not easy and involved too much scary trial experiences when I first went out. 

The entire process became all I thought about and when I was in my my male mode I caught myself thinking too much of the next time I was going to be able to experience life as a transgender woman. Plus, at the least I was busy studying the mannerisms of all the cis-women around me. I was locked in to one thing only and it was being a woman myself. It was a good thing I had my therapist to talk out my exploding feelings about my gender. 

I guess the only frustrating part of trying to explain to the outside world what it means to be transgender is there was no choice. If I would have continued in my self destructive male ways, I would have killed myself and become yet another statistic. Fortunately, destiny had other ideas for me when I escaped my gender prison and started to live an authentic life as a trans woman. Similar to so many others in the transgender community I was a survivor and thrived when I was free to do so. 

Bad Gender Decisions

 

Image from unknown origin. 

I often wonder if during all the writings I do, as I  describe how I succeeded in living my dream as a transgender woman, do I emphasize the bad decisions I made. 

Needless to say, I made plenty of choices I wished I had back to try again. First of all, I suffered from the same problems nearly all novice cross dressers or transgender women go through. Unlike cis gender girls our age, we didn't have the peer pressure or knowledge to help us be girls or women. We were not invited to the sleepovers where the girls experimented with makeup and clothes and it showed. I equated the whole makeup process to painting model cars when I was growing up. It took lots of practice to get the basics right. In the meantime, as I learned, many times I made bad decisions and came out looking like a clown. This was especially true with the clothes I chose to try to wear. I tried way too long to force my male body into clothes designed for sexy teenaged girls and I paid the price when the mirror lied to me and I tried to go out in the public's eye. 

When I was laughed at in public, I knew my feminine life had to change for the better if I was ever going to be able to survive. I just could not keep coming home in tears after another night out making bad decisions. Certainly. the process was not improving my deepening gender dysphoria. In desperation I sought out help from one of the only known gender therapists in Ohio at the time which was a good decision. The bad decision came when I decided to not listen to what she told me. She told me there was nothing she or I could do concerning my deep seated desire to be a woman. I would have to learn to live with it. If I had not been so hard headed and stubborn, I would have taken her advice and prepared myself for a life as a transgender woman. 

Once I started to really explore the feminine world, I made plenty of bad decisions. The primary example was when I became comfortable in presenting in places such as clothing stores, book stores and malls, I would always challenge myself to do new activities as a trans woman. Activities where I had to face the public and communicate one on one with the world. By doing so, I knew sooner or later I was going to have to challenge myself and use the women's restroom. Nature was calling and I knew I needed to answer the call. 

I started the process innocently enough by using the women's room in one of the bookstores I went to on a regular basis. I would do my best to make sure the room was empty before I went in and took care of my business. I was fortunate in that I read about and knew quite a few basics women follow when they gather in the restroom. I also knew from my experience in the restaurant/bar business women were not always the pristine gender they are known to be but that is another story. As well the other basics I needed to learn such as looking other women in the eye, washing my hands and stopping to adjust my hair and makeup. 

For the most part the only bad decisions I ever made as far as rest room usage was concerned was which rest room venue I decided to use. On a typical night, I would plan to go to my regular venues  plus maybe try out a new place. By this time, I was becoming fairly secure in my presentation to the point I wanted to try to challenge myself. I decided to go to a borderline redneck venue, order a couple of beers and try to use the restroom before I left. Before I knew it, someone had called the police on me and I was told to leave. Which had to be the worst decision I ever made. From there I went back to my usual regular venues and everything was back to normal.

Normal for me was difficult to change. I was so use to pushing my boundaries as a novice transgender woman, I had a difficult time adjusting my life when I no longer had to push so hard. I was enjoying the fact I did not have to face making bad gender decisions to begin with.

Are You Really Someone Else as a Trans Person?

 

Image from Kevin Laminto 
on UnSplash

For the longest time, I considered the idea I was two separate people.

On one hand, I was living the male life I was entrenched in and on the other, I was attempting to carve out the precious time I needed to explore my cross dressing self in front of the mirror. Trying to live a life on the gender border between male and female as very difficult to say the least. When I was in male mode, I spent every spare moment wanting to cross dress again at the least and trying to imagine what living as a girl would be like the rest of the time. To make matters worse, I even dreamed of being a pretty girl when I was asleep. Then I had to wake up confused and bitter when I found out life really hadn't changed and I was still a male after all. I needed to go again and challenge an unwanted world. 

Through it all, I often wondered why me? It took years for me to embrace who I really was and know the answer. I was just me and it would have to be good enough. However, the family upbringing I went through made it so difficult. During my youth, I was taught nothing was good enough. When I brought home any "B's: in my studies, they were not good enough. Where were the expected "A's." The never good enough attitude carried with me into my cross dressing life, all the way to when I became a novice transgender woman. In other words, when I acquired a new dress, when its newness wore off, I always felt I could look better in another dress, It led me to being a thrift store shop-a -holic. I couldn't wait until I could take what I had set aside money wise from my wife and use what time I could set aside to locate the next great outfit. 

My problem became especially bad when I was able to afford shopping for new wigs. I went through what I called my clown era of wigs before I settled into one or two wigs I wore all the time. By doing so, I was able to finally begin to build myself as a stable transgender woman in the world. I was beginning to learn I was someone else and that person was not a guy. 

As I was doing all of this  and as I lived a new and exciting world as a trans woman, I found I was taking all the stress off my mental health. The new authentic me enabled me to feel more confident on the gender path I was taking. I was fortunate also to have had a good therapist at the time to help me talk my way through it with her. Since I had previously been diagnosed as being Bi-Polar, both of us were careful to keep my gender issues separate. Plus, no mention was ever made of me being two people. I set the idea aside as being yet another mistaken idea from my youth. It could have been my male self attempting yet another move to survive the onslaught of life changing ideas which threatened his very existence. 

My life today proves I was always only one person and that was my feminine side. It is so sad I needed to fight so long to feminize my entire life as a transgender woman. The only true person I needed to be.  

Teamwork makes the Dreamwork as a Trans Woman

Girls Night Out, I am on the bottom far left.

Similar to so many other cross dressers or novice transgender women I have heard from, they dream of enlisting a cis-woman to aid in their appearance.

I was included in having a similar fantasy. All the way to the point of begging my fiancé to completely dress me as a woman if I rented an out of the way motel room for privacy. Sadly, for me, she agreed and she did do her best to dress me as the woman of my dreams.  I say sadly for two reasons. The first being I did not see that much of an improvement over what I was able to do for myself since by that time I had practiced in the mirror myself for years. The second reason I say sadly came years later when I was facing being drafted into the military and being sent off to Vietnam. At the time she pressed me to tell the draft board I was gay to be deferred from going. Even though I didn't and don't have anything against the gay community, I knew I wasn't gay and wasn't going to lie to escape military service. The end result was she ended up breaking the engagement when I went off to the Army which I learned later was the best thing which could have happened in my life to that point.

As you can tell, I didn't have anyone to enable my teamwork work from any sort of a dream work. One of the problems I was having was working my way through exactly what my gender dream. I was still years away from facing my reality of being a transgender woman. So I suffered alone with my gender dysphoria before I was able to break out of my gender closet. It wasn't until much later when I discovered the beneficial beauty of having cis-woman friends who accepted the new transgender me for who I was. When I let it happen, my dreamwork began to flourish. 

Quickly I began to learn the world from the aspect of being an invited participant in girls' nights out. I was invited along to several different groups of women. All the way from married women to younger girls still in the dating pool. Neither mattered to me because I was learning so much about living a women's life with no men around. Even though when I went out with the younger group, I found how it was to be the decidedly older and less attractive woman in the group. Again, it didn't matter as I flattered and happy to be invited to begin with. 

This was an exciting time of my life when all of a sudden my dream of living a life of a fulltime transgender woman seemed to be so reachable. Being included and  embraced by the women I met was the difference. We went to birthday dinners together, went to parties with each other and of course used the rest room together, All of which turned into the ultimate bonding experience as a new trans woman.

Was I scared? Sure I was but the embraces I received within the group quickly put me at ease so I could enjoy myself and gain confidence in the new feminine person I was creating. It turned out I did not have much creating to do because once my feminine soul hit the world, she flourished. 

Even still, being in a women's world and experiencing their teamwork, did make the dream work happen for me. I was a better person for it once I left my gender dysphoria behind. My mental health improved as well as everything else in my life once I left my male self behind.

Opportunity Knocks

 

Civil War Cemetery image
from the Jessie Hart Archives
 

In my life I have found several really rare times where true opportunity actually knocked on my door. 

As I indicated, the situations were exceedingly rare and required split second decisions on how I was going to proceed. Possibly the first main one happened when I went with the "A" list trans women from the cross dresser - transgender mixer I was at in Cleveland. It was the night I gathered my courage, put on my big girl panties and was able to enjoy a professional makeover at the mixer. The result was I looked better than I ever had in my life and really wanted to claim my spot with the other impossibly feminine women in the room who were planning to continue the meeting with going to gay venues afterwards. At the second venue we went to, for the first time in my life as a woman I was approached by a good looking man who wanted to socialize. Since I was in a city I knew nothing about and with acquaintances who were about to call a taxi and leave, I decided to turn his advances down and leave. I often wonder what would have happened if I had stayed. What sort of opportunity if any, did I miss?

 Most likely, the second opportunity I did take advantage of was when suddenly I decided I had had enough of cross dressing and wanted to follow my gender instincts even further. It was the night I was determined to go out and blend in with a group of young professional women at an upscale bar/restaurant I had frequented several times as my male self. More than anything else, I wanted to see if I could blend in with the group as a transgender woman and enjoy myself. Perhaps what I remember most about the evening was how scared I was as I waited in the parking lot constantly checking my hair and makeup before I gathered the courage to go into the venue. As it turned out, opportunity did knock that night. I enjoyed myself after I could take a normal breath again and I knew my life as a casual cross dresser was gone forever. I needed new horizons to conquer as a novice transgender woman.

As I settled into attempting to find my way as a trans woman in the world, I tried to try different venues and situations to deal with. Some were successful, some were not. The ones which I can remember the most were the times I tested going to more or less red-neck country venues. I quickly discovered I wasn't welcome and moved on quickly but not before the cops were called on me a couple of times. No opportunity to succeed in those places for sure and I never went back.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity which came knocking at my door was when I had the chance to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. At my age of sixty, I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to harm myself, so I took the proper precautions and sought out a doctor to prescribe the medications I had waited for so long. Fortunately for me my health proved not to be an issue and I was given minimum dosages to get me started. Seemingly, my body took to the hormones like I always should have been on them and new changes started almost immediately. In no time at all, I was moved up to a higher dosage and my new changes took over my body. So much so, I needed to move up my transition timetable when my hair started to take off and grow along with my softening skin and protruding breasts. 

Then, the most unexpected opportunity happened when I met my current wife Liz on line nearly fourteen years ago. At my age and transgender history, I was prepared to spend the rest of my life alone and especially never expected to ever be married again. Opportunity was telling me to never say never and here I am.

I have a very hard head however and many times opportunity had to knock loudly to get my attention. Often because I was stuck with life changing conditions where I could lose everything. I tried to fall back on my inner self and hope for the best and finally I let her lead me the right direction. 

Take Your Pleasure Seriously

 

Ohio River image from the
Jessie Hart archives. 

For a gender dysphoric person, the scale seems to be balanced against experiencing any gender euphoria.

 In my case, destiny allowed just enough gender euphoria for me to continue down my gender journey. As I questioned what I was doing, the "why" of it never really came into question. I just knew deep down I was on a process I could not control. It would control me. Deep down inside, regardless of any doubts I may have had dissolved when I felt so natural when I was dressed as a girl. In other words, I was home when I was away from my unwanted heavy male self. 

Still I persisted and tried to find my way in the male universe, I was taking my pleasure seriously when I was dressed head to toe as a woman. I found following one dream (feminine) didn't mean giving up on the other (masculine.) I often wonder, if there was any help available to me back in the pre-internet dark ages would I have had the courage to seek it out. One problem was back in those days we who existed with gender issues were still considered to be mentally ill. Which I knew I wasn't.

The gender unrest I lived through and with was to continue until much later in life. Nearly a half a century to be exact, I gave up any hope of ever returning to a male life and never looked back. Riding a wave of gender euphoria was something I had never experienced before. Living as my authentic self was amazing and even though my male self was still fighting to be recognized. He was to be denied and my life went full circle back to the earliest days of wondering what gender I really was.

By going full circle, I had a lot of ground to cover. In many ways, the world caught up with me. I was able to follow the progression of a term which would describe me and in a very small way enabled me to be a part of a transgender community. Along the way many things changed. Primarily in the terminology which began with what was transgender anyhow and went all the way to the LGBT label which has grown these days to include other letters which includes other communities. Including gender fluid people which on occasion, described how I perceived myself all those years ago. 

During my full circle journey, I learned to take my pleasure seriously. Different than most transgender women and one I don't necessarily recommend, I learned the so called "ropes" of being a single woman (trans or not) in alcohol serving venues. All of the sudden, I found myself in situations where I was the single woman. The positive side of taking my pleasure seriously was when I discovered a small community I could thrive in. The negative side came when I was approached by intoxicated men not in control of themselves. Early on, when I needed some sort of protection, I used my cell phone. Making a big show of acting as if I was talking to another person on the phone who was coming to join me and fill the empty seat beside me. Of course after I gained my small group of lesbian friends, I was nearly completely insulated from the world of men. Also my ideas of sexuality were determined for good. I had way more interaction with women than I ever had as a guy.

Along the way, my new found gender euphoria as I learned to live as a transgender woman began to put my unwanted male life behind me, I had managed to live through the down points in my life and come full circle into a new day. I don't know if the ups have ever equaled the downs but at the least I was never bored.