GenderBendy

Full femme debut at work today (just for a minute)

There's a transgender conference happening on the USM Portland campus today, where I work, and I have agreed to be on an "ask a trans person" panel.  It's from 1:30 to 3pm.  Originally I was going to take the whole day off to do this, but why?  I don't need all day to change any more...I don't even need an hour.  And I'm totally out at work.  So yesterday I asked my boss if he minded if I changed here at the station before walking over, and he said that would be fine...

...so later today I'll be taking half an hour in the bathroom to shave, do my makeup, put on my skirt and top and pantyhose and heels and jewelry and scarf (not necessarily in that order), and then I'll step out into the hall and get my coat and purse and walk out the front door and across campus. 

Yeah, I have butterflies, but not too bad.

My one unanswered question...should I prep my coworkers, or just appear on the scene?  To prep might be to make too much of it; to just appear might make someone more uncomfortable.  I am pleased to feel that I can trust myself to make the best choice in the moment.

Butching up for the tire guys

Yesterday I had an appointment to get my tires balanced and rotated at a little garage in Portland.  Of all the places I go regularly in my life, this is the one I would be most nervous about visiting in femme mode, because the place is so completely male.  There are signed pictures of race-car drivers on the wall, a lamp made of an oil-funnel, and in the waiting area (don't as me why) a gas grill tricked up to look like a hotrod engine.  The guys wear work blues, boots, and battery-company caps.  They have old pre-trendy tattoos and grease-blackened hands, smoke as they work, and never seem to smile.  Can you see me going into such a place looking the way I do in my picture?

Yeah, me neither.

If/when I start living full time as a woman, it'll be a challenge to get my car worked on...but in the meantime it's still easy to get most of the way back to MAN when I need to, or at least as far back as I have ever been - a professor-type in a Honda. 

So, I butched up for the tire guys.

I was already not shaving because of an upcoming electrolysis appointment, so with what's left of my beard after the laser I was as scruffy as I am still capable of looking.  I left my earrings and scarf behind, and went to the appointment right after a workout at the gym, so I was able to slick my hair back behind my ears.  At the garage I kept my shoulders squared and my hands in my pockets, and used a deep strong voice.  The only thing I couldn't change was my eyebrows, aggressively plucked a week ago for a party, and my hair color and length - but hey, one of the guys had longer hair than me. 

I passed.  :-)

Yesterday (coincidentally) was also the first day in weeks in which I felt at least somewhat masculine again, because on Thursday I have my first appointment with an endocrinologist, and I'm feeling cautious as I approach the possibility of starting hormones.   It's the first step with real risks (heart attack, for instance) and real consequences if I change my mind...once you've grown the breasts, you can't ungrow them.

It is important to remind myself that until I actually do it I can always change my mind about transition...always find creative ways to settle in the middle and play indefinitely here.  I'd prefer that, actually, if I can manage it...but oh, the drive is so strong.  Even feeling ambiguous as I did yesterday, as soon as I got home from work I still put on my femme comfy clothes.  

Well, what will happen will happen.  So far it has worked to neither force any action nor suppress any healthy-seeming impulse.  So, that's what I'm going to keep doing.

The chocolate-covered mandarin orange segments were divine

Happy Valentine's Day to me.  I love me.  Thanks me, I'm truly touched.  :-)

I feel giddy.  The party was really fun, and I did in fact do some flirting and also some networking...social and professional.  I feel so young and new, still, when I am inhabiting my femininity, I tend to forget that I'm a smart competent grownup with a lot of good life experience, and that people will respect that.  I have little sense of my own worth, I think...a "what, little 'ol me?" kind of thing.  Which is stupid.  Why should I not be accepted and liked and respected by people?  I'm an interesting person, to say the least.

Fun crowd...a mix of academics, neighbors, and parenting-friends.  Not quite the high-powered literary gathering I was expecting, but that's probably just as well.  Nobody batted an eye at me, even though my shapewear and dress pushed me well past "normal woman" into tranny-caricature.  I was by far the most voluptuous individual there... :-)  It was valuable to be able to  look at other women playing dress-up and to see how close I actually already am without enhancements of any kind, just in my own skin, to being shaped like a woman.

The poem-reading didn't end up happening...I gather our hosts thought it would interrupt the energy of the party, which seemed right.  We all just taped our poems up on a door.  Mine was a little damp...I had been carrying it, folded up, in my decolletage...  ;>

Early in the evening I danced a little in a loose group of dancers, enjoying feeling slinky and sexy, but still really dancing alone.  Then, later, I really felt like I wanted to dance with someone, a man, and a self-confident handsome middle-aged gent with whom I had had a short conversation earlier in the evening was standing there, so without thinking about it I stepped up to him and said "Are you secure enough in your masculinity to dance with me?"  "It would be my pleasure," he said, and we danced.  Not touching...the kind of face-each-other-and-wiggle I remember from college.  He made small talk.

A little later, in the standing around saying goodbye but actually having more conversations phase, I do believe he chatted me up.  He was solicitous, bordering on gallant...he told me if I ever needed an ally, to call on him...and he said he wanted to give me a hug, so we hugged.  And I liked it.  Oh, I did.  This was a social interaction I grasped intuitively (or at least so it felt):  the beginning of a negotiation.  And behold, I become aroused as I type.  I really really might be a heterosexual woman.  I want to flirt with men, excite men's interest, toy and play with and tease men, and in the end succumb to their strength...oh, my, it's getting warm in here...

I did some emerging from the cocoon last night, is what I did.  Not all the way.  Big parts poking out now, though...legs and feelers... hints of wings.  I pause now and respirate, extremities trembling a bit...soon I will be all the way out, drying my wings in the sun...then that first tentative spread and flex, and a launch into whimsical serendipitous flight... :-)

First party tonight!

My first party!  I'm so excited!!!

Actually, not three exclamation points' worth...I just wanted to see what that would look like...but I am looking forward to it.  :-)

The invitation is from a person I hardly know, to a Valentine's Day Ball, and it specifies "creative formal romantic" dress.  I e-mailed back to ask if that description would include full-on cross-dressing, and the reply was "Absolutely!", so that's how I'm going.

I plan to wear a dress which Ardis gave me.  It's a stretchy black form-fitting number with delicate white butterflies on it, a flippy hem below the knee, and a matching bolero-jacket with long sleeves which slim my arms nicely.  I will be wearing shapewear but not a wig...I'm getting good results with my own hair these days.  Plus a nice careful makeup job and all my favorite jewelry, black stockings, and the low black open-toed pumps...the invitation says to bring your dancing shoes.  To finish it off with a dash of color, I'll also add my flamboyant over-sized purple scarf with the exotic vaguely Turkish-looking pattern in the weave, worn loosely like a shawl, or perhaps draped between my elbows behind my back...and I think I'll wear perfume too.

I am surprised at how calm I'm feeling.  If there's anything I'm anxious about, it's that we're supposed to bring a love poem to read.  The audience is likely to be full of the cream of Maine literati (our hosts are big in that world), and I'm not feeling confident about my voice right now, so that will be a squirmy moment.  I'm also not sure what poem to read.  It's down to two choices from the "Sonnets From The Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  One would be cheeky in the context of the party, because it's written from the point of view of a humble unknown poet addressing a famous big-shot poet, and the other is just a pretty "love me for love's sake" poem which nicely expresses the emotional vulnerability of the trans heart.  I'm leaning toward the latter.

One more thing...I've given myself permission, should the occasion arise, to flirt.  With whom?  With whomever...

Tune back in tomorrow for a full report!!!  :-)

The end of a whirlwind week

I've had a couple of kind inquiries about how I'm doing since coming out at work on Wednesday, and I'm doing fine, thanks.  A lot has happened in a short time, all of it good.

Thursday:  I had many more e-mails waiting for me when I got to work, expressing congrats and support.  No stink bombs.  Several people said they thought what I had done took real balls, which is funny when you think about it.  There was one e-mail from a volunteer friend who read my blog from top to bottom with real attention and said some really nice things about it.  I am totally susceptible to compliments of my writing (take note if you ever want to try to get something out of me), and enjoyed a warm buzz for the rest of the day.  Otherwise, a more or less ordinary busy day at work. 

Friday:  e-mails trickling off...some people saving saying something nice for a face-to-face encounter.  Still no stink bombs.  Sharing news this personal invites return confidences...I've had more than one conversation which was mostly listening on my part.  And, otherwise, another regular busy day.  Then home to prepare for a trip to western MA for the second laser treatment on my beard.

The Weekend:  The second treatment was not nearly as traumatic as the first.  (See Zap! for an account of that.)  I knew what to expect this time, and also I'm extremely pleased with how well the first one worked.  Afterward Ardis and I started talking clothes (she's an old family friend...we played together as toddlers) and next thing I know, we're at her house and she's hauling outfits out of multiple closets for me to try, and it turns out we wear the same size shoe, and an hour and a half later I'm driving on to Sue's house (Sue is Ardis's mother and a kind of surrogate mom to me too) with two big bags in the back ...some really nice stuff.  Thanks Ardis!  Total pink fog orgy!  :-)

Sue had invited me to a night of comedy improv at a local VFW hall, and I had asked if she minded if I went in femme mode, and she said she was expecting it, so I got dressed, wolfed some stew, and out we went, stopping back at Ardis's house to pick her up too.  This was pretty much my first time out as a woman in a completely ordinary everyday social setting...non-shopping (where they have to be polite), non-LGBT friendly.  Nobody looked at me twice.  Sue and Ardis were great...just treating me like their old girlfriend in town for the weekend.  I got to experience what life will be like when I'm transitioned... and it was a bit of a letdown.  I was tired and feeling a little shook up, and the fact that I was dressed the way I wanted didn't make that go away.  I know this is a lesson I need to learn, that even if my transition goes perfectly I'm still going to have plenty of sucky times, and that was perhaps the beginning of learning it.  I still savored every moment, though.

Before I left Sue's house this morning I had added a third big bag of clothes to the back of my car...thanks Sue...clothes-swapping like this may happen all the time in girl world, but not in boy world, so it feels special, and it's a thrill to have so many more wardrobe options...  :-)

One last event of note:  I stopped for the weekly grocery shop on my way home, and an employee of the store who pointedly declined to serve me several months back was once again behind the seafood counter. (Original account here.)  He saw me coming and moved into a little alcove with his face hidden, pretending to be busy.  I felt the adrenaline begin to bubble up, and without giving myself a chance to really think about it I stepped up to the counter and waited a moment to see if he would acknowledge my presence.  He did not, so I said clearly and loudly, "Could I buy some fish please?" 

Reluctantly, with hostile eyes, he served me.  When he handed me the bag of salmon fillet, I met his eye for just a second and said warmly "Thank you kindly," and then stayed a moment more to cross things off my list before rolling out of sight.  It was a sweet ending to a fine weekend.

I've made an enormous amount of progress in a very short time.  My children are due to arrive any time now for their week with me, and I think I need to slow down now, breathe, rest...show myself I can still take a step back, bide my time...work, write, parent.

First Event wrap

I'm home from my second day of First Event, the big trans-conference north of Boston, and I'm still flying.  For two days in a row I got to be myself, and toward the end of the second day, yesterday, I really began to let go into that.  Just a few times so far as I feel my way forward into femininity - and yesterday afternoon was one of them - I have suddenly noticed that I'm talking high and light and fast and expressively, that my voice is more full of breath than it ever is in man-mode, that my hands and in fact my whole body are uninhibitedly involved in my expressing myself, and that a big girl-smile is stretching my mouth wide, because I feel like smiling, I just can't help it.  In those moments I feel the quick warm feminine joy at the center of my being just beaming out of me, and I feel free.  That is such a lovely feeling.  :-)

There were way more people at the conference yesterday, Saturday, than there had been on Friday, including a goodly number of people in their teens and twenties, and many more trans men than before.  The look of the crowd at mixed trans events still makes me smile: tall big-boned women with fabulous hair, and short soft-featured crew-cutted boys in jeans and t-shirts.  We look so different, but in conversation and friendship I find that the sharing of the journey usually seems to eclipse the relatively minor matter of which direction you're going.

By conference end I had had three private consultations with three different plastic surgeons about FFS - Facial Feminization Surgery:

Dr. O is the patriarch of this select fraternity.  He favors thorough reconstruction of the bones of the face, and his results are startling, sometimes to the point of making you look like a completely different person...but, always, an entirely feminine person, and sometimes strikingly attractive.  I can't deny the seductive pull of his work, but I'm concerned about a few things...he dictates rather than collaborates, and he also told me my ideal weight at 6' is 30 pounds less than my current 180.  Who says I have to be skeletally thin to be an attractive woman?  Hm...I don't think I'm the first person to ask that question... :-p

Dr. B. is young, relatively unknown, and hungry.  He offered to cover my airfare and lodging for trips to California to be operated on by him.  He favors a less invasive approach - more soft-tissue, less bone - and he seems less completely bound to an underlying unquestioned assumption about what constitutes beauty.

Dr. M., who also does genital surgery, radiates competence.  He was pleasant to talk with, and seemed to strike a good balance between offering professional guidance and listening to my concerns.

I didn't talk to Dr. Z, because going to him seems to constitute joining a cult.  I don't want to be a Z-girl.  And I missed the chance to talk to Dr. S, but I will definitely talk to him, too, because he's based in Boston, in easy driving distance.  All the rest of them are in Arizona and California...lots of air fare...

And price?  Ah, yes...I'm still waiting from quotes from the other two, but Dr. O's estimate:  $45K, plus another $13K if I need a face lift after, which I probably would. Whee.

Best moment of the day:  a compliment from a stranger..."You take up space in a womanly way."  Typed out like that I guess it looks rather odd, but in context I took it to mean that to the speaker my over-all presentation was coming across as strongly femme...a validation of my ongoing effort to become a woman from the inside out.  Of course I gushed my thanks... :-)

Worst moment (not bad, just mildly yucky):  being one of only four members of the audience for a presentation about dealing with the media by a hard-faced trans man who edits a GLBT newspaper somewhere out west, and observing that he was making good public-speaking eye-contact with the other three people in the room...by appearance, a boy and two girls all in their twenties...and carefully passing over me each time.  It reminded me of the way I have sometimes felt pointedly ignored by activist Lesbians when I am in man-mode.  Whatever.  I left.

I dressed in man comfy-clothes when I got up this morning, just because I'm used to them.  Ordinary life beckons once again...and that's almost a relief.  When you have learned patience, all times are soon.

First Event day one

So I dressed and did my makeup and headed south, in a tizzy again.  I may have been working hard on this for a year, but I'm still a noob.  I forgot my lunch and my planner book, but decided not to go back for them.  Trans conference here I come.

I wore my red skirt with the spangles and the new embroidered white top which my sister gave my daughter for Christmas, and which she didn't like...quelle domage! :-).  Plus, low heels, makeup including this new outrageous purple-with-sparkles eyeshadow I picked up on a whim the other day, and jewelry including my favorite cheapo but elegant-looking dangly earrings.  And I had blowdried my hair with the curling brush the way Sue at Clip and Snip showed me...I'm getting the hang of that.

Today for sure I'll ask someone to take my picture and post it.  I was feeling too diffident yesterday.  [note added 15 hours later...new profile pic at right taken today :-)]

I spent a lot of time in sessions which were essentially pitches by plastic surgeons, complete with before-and-after slides of genital and facial surgeries.  Yes, I am comparison shopping.  There is some amazing work being done.  There was one guy who was really aggressive and loud, and I thought, I like his work, but he would intimidate me in consults...I couldn't work with him.  Being bold about being shy...

There were a couple of other transitioned women there who really had the voice thing down...I want to seek them out again today and ask them about their voice work.

Some encounters...I had a nice conversation with effervescent 70-something Billie Bliss and her new girlfriend.  Billie talked about the hugger-mugger of crossdressing in the 60's.  And Hope very kindly asked to join my at my solo table at lunch, when I was sitting there feeling lonely and exposed, and I listened to her story of crossdressing within marriage.  She didn't come out to her wife for almost a decade of marriage, but they are still together post-revelation.  The wife is accepting but doesn't want to see her dressed.

There were a few big-hair spangly-dress women there, but they were not the majority which my dazzled memory of last year conjured up.  Most everyone there was a lot like me...trying to fit their long jaws and big shoulders into some kind of femme look.  Most people seemed to be feeling as I felt...tentative and a little stiff, but so happy to be out in the world.  For the first time in my life I have a group which I, the real I, can really join, and I struggle to understand how to do that.  Feeling slightly apart has been the habit of a lifetime.  It's hard to just stop.

My last session of the day was a little gathering of politically active trans folks led by Denise LeClair, a Washington-based activist.  I sat quietly and listened and began to realize that some of the real movers and shakers of trans USA were in that room.  I felt too bashful to participate much, but now there are some important folks who someday, if I ever need to, I can approach with "You won't remember me, but we met at..."  I did chat with Denise after (we have a curious personal connection - her brother is the partner of my former spouse), and did a pronoun-slip with her...I hate it when I do that!  *SQUIRM*!  I corrected and apologized immediately, and she said it was all right, obviously completely not upset.  I continue to learn about letting things like that roll off...

OK, gotta get going for my visit today.  I'm going to try to network more, and I have a free consult with one of the premier surgeons in the late afternoon...dangerous to be doing that, with regard to setting the transition-ache going again, but I have to seize the chance.

Second First Event

I'm up early this morning - it's around 5am - to get ready to go to First Event, a big annual conference for trans folk in Peabody, MA, north of Boston.  It's an hour drive each way for me, so I plan to dress and drive today and tomorrow.  (Gotta come out to my neighbors one of these days so I can stop fussing about how to get from the house to the car in a skirt...)

Last year's First Event was my first time ever dressed in public, less than two months after my initial trans-revelation.  I drove down in man mode in a state of high trepidation, my painted nails hidden inside gloves, and changed in one of the complimentary changing rooms into my Goodwill polyester skirt and a plum-colored silk top, which I unknowingly put on backward.  (Single buttons go in back...)  I didn't have a wig or any shapewear, though I would acquire both before the day was done, in a pink fog in the shopping area.  Until I bought the wig I did the best I could with a hair-tie obscuring my short man-cut, and while I no doubt looked rather patched together none of the gorgeously decked out crossdressers said a thing.  I like that about the trans gatherings I've been to so far...everyone is very accepting.

I feel so much more confident this year, and I'm looking forward to wearing a different nice outfit each of the two days...but, I've made the decision to go once again without wig or shapewear.  I've grown my hair out and gotten it colored, and when I blow-dry and style it right, it looks solidly femme; and with regard to body shape I've been practicing getting by on posture and mannerism.  That's how it will be once I've fully transitioned.  Even with hormones I'm going to be shaped much as I am now, so I figure it's time to go it with only the standard props: my own body, hair and voice, plus clothes, makeup, and attitude.  Chin up, dear.  Loosen those hips...stick that ass up a little higher...

Something I've learned:  a little too much is just enough.  I carry it best when I'm a touch flamboyant, which is a challenge for me.  I'm the shy hide-in-a-corner (for forty years) type.  I can't go back now, though...just gotta keep sashaying forward into the light.

Stay tuned for a report on day one!

Comeback accomplished...now what?

Last week I went through with my plan to put on a deeper femme look than I had ever taken out into public before, and attend a drag show in Portland.  Oh, and I did want to go out so badly...when I was finishing my makeup at Deb's house, my hand was shaking so much I had to steady it with the other one. 

I had a nice time.  I met people I knew and surprised them, and received some nice compliments.  I also derived deep pleasure from sashaying back and forth between two huge mirrors on opposite walls of the hotel ballroom, working on my walk. 

The evening was a little odd because several times I found myself explaining, actually this is not drag...I'm trans.  One friend asked me my drag name and when I supplied the pedestrian "Lisa," he looked blank.  (The star performer that evening was Mimi Imfirst.)  I now grasp from first-hand experience the sharp divide between these two ways of being...drag is guys at play; what I do is practice for a new self.

Here is a pic Alex took for me:

The evening was supposed to be my triumphant comeback after having a slur yelled at me the last time I went out.  I spent eight weeks figuring out what my stance and armor would be in the face of inevitable future prejudice.  I thickened my skin, sought and found again my core of self-love, rekindled my sense of play...and accomplished my comeback. 

My sense of victory, though, was more muted than I expected.  

I've been pondering about why, and I think it has to do with where I am now in my transition.  It was right around this time last year when, feeling confused and desperate, I wrote in my journal "I just want to be a girl."  I have been consciously trans for a year.  And where do I stand?  Still on the first steps of a long road.  The soonest I can conceive of living as a woman is a couple of years from now, and the soonest I can imagine being where I ultimately want to be years after that.  I have my adolescent children to consider, and money is a problem.  And I don't want to rush.  I want this metamorphosis to happen at an organic pace.  I want to open into womanhood with no more trauma than a flower unfolding to the sun.

In the meantime, sometimes I squirm, sometimes I ache, and most of the time I keep my head down and pull hard against the harness-straps of life, keeping busy, keeping myself together...keeping myself distracted from fear and worry...from loneliness...

I've waited so long...it seems a terrible injustice to have to wait still more.  But I feel I must.  So, patience...and, while I am being patient, I'm musing about when is the next time I can go out and play.  I need the practice, and it really is fun, even if it also makes me feel underneath how far I still have to go.

Going out, again

Tonight there's a big drag show in Portland, the Royal Majesty show, and I plan to attend dressed.  Since I lost my nerve the last time I planned to go out, this will still be the first time since that man yelled "faggot" at me in the Goodwill parking lot, several weeks ago now.

This will be my first time in public wearing a dress.  It has always been jeans or a skirt and a top before.  It's a sleeveless shapewear-hugging black and silver sheath.  I'll also be wearing the red-gold tranny-mane for the first time in public, plus stockings, heels, perfume, and several pieces of favorite jewelry.  The look I'm aiming for is gorgeous elegance.

New dress, new hair, a new high-water mark of femme presentation...but I intend the biggest first tonight to be internal.  Up until now when I've gone out in public I have felt all fluttery and vulnerable.  My self-confidence, normally so reliable, has deserted me.  Tonight I intend to hold my head high and look everyone right in the eye and strut my stuff.  I give myself permission, right now and forever more, to feel at home and free in my femininity no matter where I am or who I'm with.