Public Transportation

More happy endings on YouTube! Thanks Lynne!

Veterans Administration Update

In the midst of everything else that has happened around here in Cyrsti's Condo I neglected to pass along a very important directive from the VA.
The good news is the transgender directive was renewed from last year. The bad news is it is the same. Briefly the directive mandates the Veterans Administration to provide us with treatment up to the surgical threshold.
Now I'm not looking at this directive as a small deal and when the U.S. military as a whole refuses to allow transgender men and women to serve, I'm surprised it has happened at all.
Plus financially, if you are a transgender vet, this directive does have the potential to save you thousands of dollars should you decide to go the HRT route the right way...with medical supervision.

Here are two of the VHA DIRECTIVE 2013-003 provisions:


a. VA provides health care for transgender patients, including those who present at various points on their transition from one gender to the next. This applies to all Veterans who are enrolled in VA’s health care system or are otherwise eligible for VA care, including those who have had sex reassignment surgery outside of VHA, those who might be considering such surgical intervention, and those who do not wish to undergo sex reassignment surgery but self identify as transgender. Intersex individuals may or may not have interest in changing gender or in acting in ways that are discordant with their assigned gender.

b. VA does not provide sex reassignment surgery or plastic reconstructive surgery for strictly cosmetic purposes.

Finally, as with everything else in life this directive is not permanent but a renewable deal. So if you are considering getting into the system you may want to consider it!

Inspiration Transgender Style

From the Idaho Statesman the story certainly is not new to those in the transgender culture but the ending just could be:

"Growing up throughout your life as a correct gender is … taken for granted. As (girls) grow up, they get their life experiences. They get to go to prom as the date that gets picked up. They get to have kids, have parties and do each other's hair. I've always wanted to do that stuff. I never could. "You can't do that as a guy."
Erika is now 28. It took her 26 years to figure out why she felt so different, why she was so depressed and angry and so frustrated with life. It took 26 years, a growing sense of desperation and a random Internet post for her to begin to understand herself. "

The random internet post led her to Liz:


"Liz Kandziolka, 30, was also born a boy. She declines to give her birth name, the one belonging to her as a boy. "I'd rather just leave it in the past where it belongs," she says. Erika concurs: "That old person is gone." But as a young man, seeking both direction and a marketable career, Liz joined the military. In retrospect, she says that was a way of trying to "hyper-masculinize" herself. Liz was stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base and deployed to the United Arab Emirates. Liz: "A group of online friends pointed me towards transgender. 'Look it up,' (they said). So I did. I was reading through it: Click. That's exactly what I'm feeling. Everything. Right there." A woman can serve in the military, but a transgender woman cannot. "They still consider it a mental disorder," says Liz. It would be an angry and frustrating five years until she was discharged as a man, before Liz could begin living as a woman."

As we know the basis of our life is so simple under the "gender binary" and so difficult when we add our layers of life. The bottom line from Liz and Erika says it all:

Liz: "We just want to like what we like and be who we want to be, regardless of what anyone else thinks. …

Read the entire story here.  

As a side note for all of you who recoil at the idea of an internet contact...I also met my serious partner through a "random internet contact".

Truck Stop Girl

One of the humorous stories of the trip to Mardi Gras happened when we had to stop at a very busy truck stop just before we got to New Orleans. The driver had to fuel up the bus and the rest of us were on our own to potty and get a refreshment before we actually went over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway and into the city itself.

So here I was in a very visible situation in a truck stop dammit! Yes I was just dressed in jeans, sweater and tennis shoes but...this part of doing the full time girl thing was not quite what I envisioned getting tossed into on this trip.  I didn't panic though and actually the whole situation turned out to be almost humorous.  Why not try out my femininity in a truck stop?

Thirty minutes seemed like 30 hours though as I confirmed my superhuman transgender powers didn't include becoming invisible. What did happen was I certainly did get quite a few glances from the clientele filling up their big rigs but no offers for a ride!
Just kidding!

Once again, I decided to never delude myself into thinking I should try anything the easy way.

Yes Virginia-Hormones Do Work

Another quality transition transgender woman video from YouTube of course!

 

The Not So Sweet

Many times the hardest part of this transgender path I'm traveling is taking too much for granted.
I'm thinking the whole world accepts my girl world and life is good. Then of course, here comes reality.
The first dose came at a buffet in **Birmingham, Alabama. The trip down from Cincinnati had been very effortless. Of course I got the usual curious looks from my fellow passengers but nary a side look at a restaurant near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
In Birmingham however I came really close to a total laugh and smirk from an employee at the place we stopped. After a brief moment of hurt, I moved on knowing my chances were good I would never be back. So to hell with him.

I'm not necessarily picking on Alabama here but one of the other ugly moments I think almost occurred when we stopped at the so-called welcome center when we got into the state.  The women's rest room was dark, crowded and smelly to start with. In addition there were two other women not on our tour I'm fairly certain didn't approve of me being there. Fortunately, the bus was close by and we left one of my fans still glaring in the distance. She reinforced my theory that the most active transphobic peeps are women.

For some reason that experience really bothered me for awhile which didn't make any sense because this wasn't my first rodeo. The good part was I didn't have long to dwell on it!
The only other instance was predictable and not negative when you consider the source. Our first dinner as we arrived in New Orleans was a group affair at an upscale venue. This was actually the first and last we had as a group.  Girlfriend and I were sitting towards the end of the long table with four other women easily over the age of 70 and our tour guide. One started asking me how the two of us got together.  I'm still not good at  projecting female in every one on one conversation which at the least gives me a chance to win the other person over no matter how I look to her. I simply failed miserably with this woman who started to slide the "he" word into the conversation about me to others. Plus as luck would have it we encountered each other in the restroom where she softly said "Oh you use the women's room". Overall though, she was a delightful person and I'm fairly sure she had never encountered a transgender person before. She was simply in uncharted territory.

I guess looking back at the seven days, all of this was fairly minor. I do have to make the excuse that most of the time I was utterly denied mirror access. Believe me, during 12 days I need all the help I can get. Finally, I know as time goes by and HRT works it's magic my public presentation will improve but bottom line is I will always have certain male facial angles and body structures which will be challenges. What disappoints me is when I don't take advantage of what I do have which happened several times during the trip.

Enough of these negatives! The next couple posts will cover more of the fun I had including one of the Q&A sessions I had with girl friend about a boob job.











**Please note my experiences in any of the places I mention are isolated and do not reflect an overall opinion of places I know nothing about.

The Blood, the Mud and the Beads!

We arrived in time to check in and walk the 4 blocks or so to Bourbon Street and the Lundi Gras party.
The night turned out to be a combination of a "bucket list"/learning experience.  We started down Bourbon Street fairly comfortably and fairly early with street side drinks in hand. Certainly the crowds were large but nothing unmanageable. We paused several places to lean on a wall and people watch. Here I was as my real self partying in New Orleans! Life was good then BOOM! We moved another 4 blocks or so up the street and then I found out what life in a "mosh pit" must be like. No one moved, beads were flying from as high as two stories up and of course were under your feet. I found out quickly this part of Mardi Gras was ideal for a 20 something person but girlfriend and I went, experienced and bailed! Remember too that the actual "Fat Tuesday" celebration was the next night.

I'm sure that those of you who visit Cyrsti's Condo and have been to New Orleans will vouch for the fact you need to wear comfortable shoes and clothes be ready for a lot of physical contact and be ever alert for flying beads!
The main lesson though was you can party and enjoy the whole experience more if you chose your battles on the fringes of Bourbon Street. Which we did on Tuesday night which is the actual Mardi Gras.

My girlfriend is a Wicca so she had an active interest in some of the shops in the area one of which was down near the cluster of gay venues and a block or so off the main street. Also, we had a chance to find a place where we could sit in an outdoor back patio area. Order drinks and food, enjoy each other's company and have restroom access. At my age taking the meds I am and drinking Louisiana's own Abita Beer I need to plan for potty breaks. As we all know, not the easiest deal for a transgender person. Where we were sitting though, I could watch the traffic to the women's room and make my break while the going was good (no pun intended). As it turned out, that particular restroom  was a story unto itself. It was small and I have no idea of what the woman ahead of me had to eat before she used that restroom...but the place was positively radioactive. Other amenities included the wooden board over the back of the toilet tank and the obligatory water and TP on the floor. Outside of the smell, I found the overall condition of the restroom was about normal for the ones I visited in the Bourbon Street war zone. My biggest problem was not coming out of the room and facing the women waiting to get in (to see if they were going to make a stink about me using the restroom) it was the embarrassment of them thinking I made that stink to start with!

The key to the evening was the weather. The intermittent rain stayed away for the most part and the weather stayed around 70 degrees so I could wear my off the shoulder top and feel a little exotic. But the evening was far from over and I will tell you more in an upcoming post!

My disclaimer here is that New Orleans is a positively wonderful and fascinating place and Mardi Gras is just a part of it!

It's Magic Fay!

From The Guardian archives in the UK:


"It's a man's world in the Magic Circle. Let any spellbinding magicienne, as the female exponents of the art call themselves, try for admission and they'll be quickly asked to disappear. For the Circle, founded in 1905, now numbering more than a thousand members and with a rule discouraging the 'disclosure of magical secrets to the public' is a Men Only organisation. This is causing some annoyance to Oliver Winter, who three years ago was just an ordinary chap, an associate member of the Circle, with an amateur interest in slicing girls in half and doing the usual with rabbits. Today, things are very different, having been involved in a bit of medical magic himself - he changed his sex to female and his name to Fay Presto - he has become Britain's first professional transsexual magician. She finds herself outside the Magic Circle and it will take more than a wave of the wand to get her back in again. 'If they just want to be a gentleman's club they must be allowed to do so.' says Miss Presto, a tall handsome blonde with long painted finger nails. 'But they also set themselves up as the arbiters of all that is right and proper in magic.'

Indeed, it's the magic of the best kind for most transgender men and women!

Road Princess

The reality of the last seven days was overshadowed by the place I was headed. I had no idea of what was to occur.
Let me lay out some details.

Photo by Liz T

First of all we were going down to New Orleans on a tour bus which is an approximate 12 hour trip on the road with nearly 20 other peeps older than even I. The good part of the experience is we were on a bus and the bad part was we were on a bus. I was able to spend mega time with my girl friend and see parts of the country I wasn't familiar with. Some of the country I want to see again. Some I don't. I had the feeling that parts of Alabama and Mississippi haven't seen many transgender folk. A bus rolling down the road doesn't present a problem but rest room stops obviously do. Also it's tough to blend with a group of 70 something women headed into a rest stop. Plus the first task was to win them over. I don't labor under any impression they viewed me as a card carrying genetic woman but I'm fairly sure the discussion over what I really was and my relationship with my girlfriend was. That of course didn't bother me and by the time the trip was over I was accepted by most as a de facto woman. Oddly, the acceptance showed me how far I have come down my transgender path and how far I have to go. I learned why reputable therapists and SRS centers want you to live as a woman or man before you go down a surgical path of no return.

On later posts (for all you statisticians) I will break down my perceptions of the public perception of me and no I didn't forget the basis of this all: Mardi Gras itself. I can only say the event is everything I thought it would me and more and so is the city of New Orleans itself. They do a fabulous job. Returning to the city itself reinforced how much I love the food, music and architecture. On the dark side, examples of the terrible devastation of hurricane Katrina are still evident. I can't vouch for other huge parties but I believe Mardi Gras lives up to it's reputation as one of the best. I'm far from a tour guide but I do have more than a couple ideas of how to navigate the area now and can't wait to go back.

I will use this quote often: "The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" because it describes my trip. My girlfriend gave me a journal to jot down ideas and I have plenty to cover and they are coming up here in Cyrsti's Condo.