Welcome to Hell

As I continue my Cyrsti's Condo post from yesterday, the best place to pick up the story is when I was honorably discharged from the Army. All of the sudden I had this incredible sense of freedom.

As in all freedom's though, this one carried a price. It all started with the naive notion I could continue to come out to others as a transvestite (the common term for a cross dresser) in the mid 1970's. As I have written about several times, I was soundly rejected by my Mom and from there mostly headed back into my closet.

By "mostly" I meant, only my wife really knew anything about my cross dressing desires except for a few Halloween adventures when perhaps I looked a little too accomplished as a woman in front of a few of my friends. Amazingly though my normal macho exterior I worked so hard for carried the day.

As you can probably guess, the yearly Halloween adventure and dressing up at home behind closed doors wasn't nearly enough. The formula was fairly simple. The more I cross dressed the better I became at it and then I felt more and more natural which led to more gender confusion.

Virginia Prince 1940

About that time I learned of Virginia Prince and her Transvestia Magazine. I quickly learned I was not alone and I felt it was time to meet others like me. I also found there were mixers going on within driving distance of me.

As I attended the mixers, I learned quickly there were layers of different people. All the way from the cross dressers who were desperately trying to hold on to their masculinity by smoking big cigars in drag all the way to impossibly feminine figures.  This created yet another quandary for me. Where did I fit in?

I was far removed from most of the macho cross dressers but was curiously attracted to the fabulous feminine creatures. Of course at that time (and in many instances still do) I ended up in a middle niche I carved out for myself.

The problem this all created for me was it caused me more extreme gender dysphoria pressure. My answer was increasing my alcohol consumption, getting a divorce, losing a business and moving from Ohio to the New York City area. In other words, I was out of control...sort of. Out of the chaos came another marriage to a woman who knew of my cross dressing desires and who I was destined to be married to for twenty five years. She passed away quite unexpectedly from a heart attack at the age of 50.

The problem with all of this was, slowly I was coming to grips with the fact I was probably more of a new term I was learning more about. Could it be I was transgender? 

Being transgender meant all kinds of potential problems and changes.

The pressure became so intense it led me to try to commit suicide.

More on that in my next post.

It's Not a Choice!

One of the most frequent questions I used to get when I met a stranger was, when did I know I was transgender.

After many years of fumbling around with the answer, the most correct one finally came to me...I have always been this way.

Now, having said that, certainly there were milestones in my life I could look back on which confirmed my gender dysphoria. 

As a youth, for some reason I never gave much thought to why I wanted dolls for Christmas instead of BB guns. I also didn't really know why my attraction to girls in school seemed to be different than most of the other boys.

I don't remember acting on any of my cross dressing or girlish desires until I was ten or twelve. In fact, I had a paper route which I used the money from to primarily buy feminine clothes and makeup. When I did, I could stay out of my Mom's wardrobe and makeup. All I had to do was find a good way to hide my stash.

As I grew more accomplished during my high school years, I was also able to keep the bullies away by playing sports, working on cars and dating the occasional girl. All of which just seemed to widen my internal gender gap.

Very soon out of high school (in college) it looked as if the Vietnam War would make a major influence in my life. As it turned out I was drafted out of college and had to face the problem of not being able to do anything about my gender issues for three years. For you purists, I enlisted for three years to be able to better choose my Army job.  As it turned out a good choice when I landed a job in the American Forces Radio and Television Service.

Why was that important you ask? Because my job landed me in one of the least military areas in the Army. Thanks to that and a Halloween party in Germany, I was able to dress as a woman and eventually come out as a transvestite for the first time to my friends and future wife.

For awhile I thought I had won the lottery as some of my gender pressure was dialed back. As it turned out though, the true struggles were just beginning.

I will get into those in the next post as well as explaining how fighting my gender dysphoria nearly killed me.

It took me years to learn it was never a choice.

Veterans Day

Most certainly, being a transgender veteran means I pay closer attention to Veteran's Day. And, I appreciate the thanks I get for my service. Vietnam Vets like me didn't get many when we were discharged from the military.

It's ironic though, the person who may have benefited the most from me being in the Army, never thanked me for my service. That would be my daughter. You could connect the dots and determine she may not be around at all if it wasn't for the connection between her mother and I  (who was also in the Army) when we were in Germany. For what ever reason she can't seem to remember.

Thanks to Connie, Liz and others for their thanks!

This is always the time I thank all you other veterans. I know many of you were not forced to serve (the Vietnam draft) but went on your own accord. The ironic part of all of this is, the percentages of transgender military members is probably much higher than anyone has thought. Think of all who paid the ultimate sacrifice and were in the deep closet.

Also I consider too the tragic transgender military ban orchestrated by our "cadet draft dodger" in chief. It shows again how far we haven't come.

On a positive note, thanks to all who took the time and effort to serve!

It's All in a Name

Connie brought up an interesting point about responding, or not, to one's old "dead name."

"Your slight digression made me want to know more. At that time, you had two names. Today, you have a different one. How, then, do you respond, should someone call you by any one of them? I imagine that you would react differently, depending on which one was used. My dead name has become almost incognizant to me after adopting my new name many years ago.

If I hear someone in a crowded place say, "Connie," I will likely turn my head in recognition these days, but I no longer do that when my dead name is heard. Well, not until just a couple weeks ago, anyway. I was grocery shopping, and I heard a woman say, in a stern voice, "(Dead name), stop doing that!" I turned around to see a small boy holding a can of something from the bottom shelf, and Mom was standing right over him with a waving finger. It doesn't take a psychologist to tell me why I reacted to the sound of an irritated mother shouting (Dead name), but I can only laugh now about such a thing. 

Among many other things I did, as a kid, that would irritate my mother was my natural walk; placing most of my weight on the balls of my feet, rather than using a firm step on my heels. I did learn to affect a more-masculine walk, but my mother would always let me know when I had "regressed" to my natural one. Later, as an adult, I started shaping my eyebrows as much as I thought I could get away with, and every time mother saw me, she would say the same thing she said to me regarding my walk: (Dead name), stop doing that! Hmm, maybe I have Cowboy Nightmares and Cowgirl Dreams. :-)"

Sometimes I think I more than burnt out the name situation. Like so many other cross dressers and early transgender women, I chose the name of the cis women of the period I was in whom I admired the most. For example, my earliest feminine name was Karen. Because I used to sit close to a cis girl named Karen in middle school. Back in those days, I didn't understand why my crushes weren't really sexual ones but more out of admiration. I wanted so bad to be them.

Over the years, I have been a Darcy, a Roxy a Cyrsti (of course) and finally a Jessie which is my legal name now. Ironically, Cyrsti's Condo was so established by the time I chose my legal name, I decided to leave it alone. Jessie is actually a family name. 

As far as responding to my dead (male) name, I still catch myself turning around on the very rare occasions I hear it. I am more likely to fight responding when someone uses the "Sir" word when a stranger is using it with another person. Fortunately. more times than not they are directly not referring to me anyhow. 

Now on to my Mom:

My mother and I were much alike and thus never agreed on anything.  I was so focused on living a lie as a guy, I don't think walking was ever an issue. On the other hand, I con't imagine she never noticed my forays into her clothes and makeup. Either I covered it up better than I thought, or she ignored my cross dressing urges thinking it was a faze. 

When I came out to her when I was discharged from the Army as a transvestite, she offered to send me to electrode shock therapy. I told her she wasn't going to plug me into a wall socket and the subject was never brought up again. 

I guess I got the final revenge because I chose her name as my middle name.

Looking back on it now, I hope she would have considered it a honor of sorts. You see, it's all in a name.

Cowboy Dreams

This is an older experience I haven't shared for awhile here in Cyrsti's Condo. In fact it goes back to the 1990's.

In those days, I was spending my life divided between the two binary genders. Along the way, I managed to locate a couple small lesbian bars I liked to drink in. One disliked me totally, the other I was accepted in.

On certain nights, the venue I was accepted in had karaoke. I don't sing at all (except for a David Allan Coe song I knew.)  The song was/is "You Never Even Called Me By My Name but I digress.

I was only vaguely aware it was karaoke night when I got there. I didn't really care because of course singing was the last thing on my mind.

I also remember I was wearing my blond wig with jeans, boots and some sort of tight top. Indirectly, I wanted to look nice for the other patrons. It turns out I did I guess!

About half way into my second beer, a big butch lesbian comes up (in a cowboy hat no less) and demanded, not asked, if I would sing with her. Of course I tried to politely decline. Then I learned quickly I was going to choose the song and sing it with her.

As I panicked, I thought there was only one song I knew and mentioned David Allan Coe to her, hoping she wouldn't want to do it. No such luck though, she grabbed my hand and headed to the stage. Fortunately the lights were dim in the place and there weren't many patrons there yet and I did the best I could to sing with her.

After we were done, she looked at me and said my voice was lower than hers and headed another direction. I took that as my time to escape. I paid the bartender who knew the truth about me and took off.

I never saw the butch lesbian in there again and wondered if she ever learned the truth about her duet partner that night so long ago.