Outreach Lunch

 

Today is the Alzheimer's Association diversity council holiday luncheon.  

It will be interesting on several levels. The first level will be the near hour drive to get to the venue in a rainstorm. Of course, I put off getting gas in the car so I will have to stop in the rain to fill the car up with gas. Which will undoubtedly ruin all the time and effort I put into doing my makeup and hair this morning. One of the problems of being a woman.

The second level I will face is all the people I will be meeting for the first time in person. Since I joined the diversity council, all the meetings have been virtual, so I did not have to worry as much about my overall appearance. Resorting to a close shave and light makeup to get me by. This morning, I needed to be on point with my makeup and hair regardless of the weather, so I put more time and effort into my appearance. 

Plus, there will be more people at the luncheon since the Dayton, Ohio chapter is joining us for the holiday luncheon.  Since I have been received well by all the people in the Cincinnati chapter, I have no reason to believe the other new people will be any different. 

When we go around the table for any new news, I can even come up with my own. I can tell the experience of mine with the television reporter who supposedly wanted to interview me concerning LGBTQ elder care when in fact he kept steering the interview towards my feelings about the election. I will try to explain to the group why I turned him down and with it, a chance to publicize the work of the Alzheimer's diversity council. 

Overall, I hope I can catch a break with the heavy rain which is forecast and enjoy my lunch. Sometimes I struggle being social around strangers, so we will see.

In the meantime, you do not need to be in Cincinnati to volunteer your time to a local or regional Alzheimer's chapter.  If I am any kind of an example, you will be welcomed with open arms. Also, in my case, I am trying to pay forward the assistance my family received when my dad passed years ago from the very ugly disease.

If anything happens good or bad at the luncheon, I will write about it later. 

Trans Fun?

 

Holiday Image, JJ Hart author.

Are we having any fun yet as the holidays are upon us? 

Certainly, it is a tough time of the year as transgender women and trans men face the daunting task of facing unapproving families. Too many of us face a lonely existence this holiday month. In many ways, we are uniquely qualified to face the challenge. For those of us who were ravaged by testosterone poisoning and not gifted by natural feminine features, our path is a steep one to finding any acceptance at all in our transgender womanhood. 

In my sense, there was only brief gender euphoria moments during too many instances of rejection by the public. Every now and then, I would have moments of fun when I briefly succeeded at my goal of successfully presenting as a woman. Then, all too often I would ruin it all by not knowing how to move as a woman or more importantly having any idea how to communicate with the public as the person I had always wanted to be. 

Through it all, I did have enough fun, or at least satisfaction to keep moving forward. To be certain, there was a difference between having fun or being satisfied with what I was doing. To be satisfied meant deep down I felt natural when I was pursuing my feminine dreams. To put it another way, there was a flood of water under my gender bridge primarily in the decade after 2007 when my second wife passed away and opened the door to a total transition into transgender womanhood. If I wasn't hanging out with lesbians in their venues, I was finding my way in big sports bars as a regular. Slowly but surely, I learned I still was alone on my gender path, even though I was meeting and learning from a few of the cis women I stayed close to. It was difficult because I had always trained myself to keep everyone else at an arm's length so I would not be hurt. The difference was now I was finally at the level personally where I wanted to be as my authentic self so I could accept new friends.

If I had liked, it or not I had finally reached the bottom-line where I had always wanted to be. When I did, I began too actually relax and enjoy myself. Which means I was having fun, regardless of myself. Perhaps I was fortunate in that my path forward was complex but maybe not as complex as is the norm these days. Social media contacts were just becoming the norm and maybe it meant the tons of trash I needed to sift through to find my wife Liz was destiny and not luck since she actually sought me out online after reading my profile. Then, there was my public persona which I don't necessarily recommend because I was going out to venues as a single transgender woman. Back in those days at least, one did not have to worry about someone else putting date drugs in your drink while you were not looking. 

Looking back, I did have fun during those days and primarily it was because my confidence in my new self was increasing because of the people around me. I could copy what they did as women and do the best I could. Which was better than I had ever done before. I had paid my transition dues and was ready to face the future.  

Tennis Anyone?

Image from Tony Luginsland
on UnSplash.

 Back when I managed a prominent casual dining/bar venue, we had two women who would frequently come to our bar after finishing their round of tennis. 

Of course, I always noticed and was jealous of their short tennis outfits. I immediately put acquiring some sort of a tennis outfit on my cross dressing to do list. Since I had always admired short mini skirts and dresses on women, finding a short mini white dress to wear as the primary part of a tennis outfit was a priority.

As luck would have it, I found the ideal dress at a women's clothing shop in a mall I always went to. Once I had the white dress, I discovered the rest of the outfit would be fairly easy to put together. I ended up finding an inexpensive pair of white tennis shoes and socks to go with the shoes. The only problem I had then was what I was going to do about the hair on my legs. 

Even though my wife knew I shaved my legs on occasion, she was not overjoyed when I shaved. Primarily because she worried, I was up to no good when I shaved my legs, and she was right. On this occasion, I could not wait to show off my legs and new tennis outfit in one of the malls I always went to. Before I went to the mall, as always, I needed to create the time to do it away from my wife's disapproving eyes. I waited until she was working a day shift, and I began the fairly intense process of shaving my face and legs. 

Once I completed the shave and applied my makeup and hair, I was ready to test out my new tennis look outfit on the world. Immediately, I felt the thrill of my shaved legs in the short white dress I was wearing. So out the door I went into the world. As I arrived in the mall, I noticed my supposedly admiring public was primarily made up of retired men in the mall just to walk and admire the view. Since I was the view, I wore a pair of sunglasses so I could watch their reaction to me without being obvious. It worked and I could see them staring at the tall blond in a tennis outfit.

As I saw it, I received all the pleasure from tennis without putting in all the work. Now all I needed to figure out was how to hide my extra women's clothing. On this occasion, I used a little used closet and hid my new treasured outfit among a set of my old male clothes I never wore. 

For a change, my ideas of how to come as close as I could to learning for myself how a woman would feel in a tennis outfit came together. I could show off my legs and have fun doing it. Plus, I could cross another item off my transgender bucket list. Quickly, I was off to another quest.