Life Turns on a Dime Part Three

As I settled back into my home town (approx 80,000 peeps then) I was able to scratch out a living on one of the local radio stations as a DJ and pocket a few more dimes from the bar I co-owned. My Dad described it best when he said "Well at least the flies didn't have to stop when they flew through one of the two doors."

As always, I was drinking heavily and making early plans for Halloween around July.Well, a girl can dream, right?  My first year back party was notable in that I thought I looked damn good in my black dress, heels and beret until a guy in a mask came up and said "I know who you are." Finally he said I looked like my Mom and I knew who he was. Over the years that followed, he turned out to be quite the homo/transphobe, so his comment that night was probably the nicest thing he ever had to say about me. (Like I cared.)

Time went by, my daughter was growing and the recession of the early 1980's claimed the bar as one of it's victims as my town was dead center in the infamous "Rust Belt". Times were rough and I ended up taking a job in a fast food chain and taking over a store in Yonkers, New York-which was quite the shock.

As luck would have it though, here I was in a part of the country more liberal towards a growing LGBT community and I still couldn't take much advantage of it. One notable exception was when my new wife stayed home and I went to a "transvestite mixer" on Long Island. This evening turned out to be a real eye opener for me, for a number of reasons.

First of all, the mixer was being held in a motel bar with several "admirers" in attendance. And, I was flattered by the women at the door who weren't going to let me in because I was "real." To make a long story short, I was hit on a couple of times before I packed my inflated ego and went home.

The evening caused so much pain between my wife and I she finally said "That's it, be man enough to be a woman." One of the most profound things I have ever been told-and ignored until after her death decades later.

In the meantime, we moved back to Ohio and set up special times when I would go get a motel room,dress and mainly go shopping, Which was good and bad. It was good of course because I could really learn the ropes as a woman and bad because I started to cheat on her and go out when I thought she wouldn't know.

All of that worked well enough until one day she got off early and caught me driving past her in the other family car or the time I accidentally ended up walking right past her boss in a parking lot. Later he would mention the "Big redhead" he saw, and she knew.

What really hurt me was lying to her and the ripping and tearing I was going through as a person. It was about that time in the 1990's after one of my "adventures" I set up gender marriage counseling appointments in nearby Columbus, Ohio. The counselor came right to the point and said I had and will always have gender dysphoria but did I know I was bi-polar?   Well, that made sense too-but what the hell? Something else wrong with me? Since that time it seems like half the world is bi something so it was nice to be on the cutting edge.

About that time too, I was getting much better at my overall feminine presentation and started to volunteer to go grocery shopping when she was at work etc. The problem became too we moved to a much smaller town and getting recognized was an even bigger risk. So. I began to wonder was the "thrill factor" of dressing like a woman was drawing me to it?

Coming up next "validation versus reality."

Life Turns on a Dime- Part Two

After I was discharged from the Army in 1975, I essentially loaded all my possessions (including my ever present gender dysphoria) into the back of a VW Beetle I had bought in Germany, spent some time at home in Ohio and headed for Texas. I had a real close friend who was being discharged about the same time in El Paso. (Ft. Bliss)

I had packed my stash of women's clothes and almost was brave enough to try my hand at walking around outside my room at a motel I stayed at on the way down to Texas. The mirror was busily lying to me and telling me I was the best looking blond ever when I came to my senses, became scared and spent the rest of the trip feeling guilty about at least trying a short trip to the motel's restaurant/bar.

Of course I didn't have too long to ponder my insecurities when my car broke down outside of El Paso in the dessert. I don't even remember now what I did to get a hold of my friend in the dark ages before cell phones, so I waited until the morning and flagged down another motorist to get me to the nearest garage. Fortunately, all I had was a destroyed distributor cap (remember those?) so relatively quickly I was back on the road with too much time to think about my future.

My friend was married so I slept in the guest room and both of them worked during the days so I could cross dress to my heart's content. Unfortunately I was becoming increasingly frustrated with simply staying inside.  Looking back, I should have started to realize then I was so much more than a cross dresser but I would continue to try to outrun or out drink my feelings.

After a couple months I moved back to Ohio if for no other reason than I knew the territory better and what I would have to do to try to finally try to get out the door as a woman. I can use the "woman" word now because back in those days, transgender wasn't even used as a word and quite frankly I didn't know what I was.

The defining moment I do remember was the first time I saw my reflection in the window of a store on another night I yet almost went into another.

The huge defining moment of my life though, came in 1975 when my first wife was discharged from the Army and came to live with me in Ohio and about the time I was about to run back to Texas, we found out she was pregnant. (Even with birth control.) My daughter beat the odds and forced me to settle down.(Kind of.) I went back to school, bought a small bar with my friend and tried to out drink who I really was.

The revelation was still decades away.

A Voice in the Darkness?

I have always respected Helen Boyd who authored "My Husband Betty" and "She's Not the Man I Married" plus her other blogging and writing.

I picked this up from her post "The Other America" and thought I would pass along a link and an excerpt for you all to read:

THE OTHER AMERICA

JANUARY 13, 2017 HELEN BOYD  LEAVE A COMMENT

You can’t listen to the few words Joe Biden spoke when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with distinction, without realizing what deeply decent people we have had running this country.

At a moment when Moonlight, Fences, and Hidden Figures are in theaters.

At a moment when rights for trans people were really having an effect.

At a moment when the Pipeline protests caught the national attention and once again, Native Americans showed us how to respect our land and ourselves.

At a moment when everything seemed to be going something like right finally, when our national conversation about the prison pipeline and the deep patriotism of the Muslim parents of a fallen war hero reminded us of the worst and the best we can be as a nation — at that very moment, it all fell apart.

It hasn’t yet. The fumes of Obama’s legacy are what we’re running on now. It was only 8 years ago when the high hopes and inspired souls overjoyed so many of us; that we looked at each other with wide-eyed amazement as if to say can you believe we did this? And the rest of the world looked at the US with surprise and respect: we could be still be America. We were.

I don’t know what we’re going to become. That other America, the wretched one, the gilded mean one of bottom lines and wealthy excess, of poorer people making the groceries stretch a little longer, of a nervous middle class, what of it there still is, of people dying from medical conditions they might have survived in a more generous time.

For more please go here.