GenderBendy

Daddio forever

My dear children whom I love more than anything,

In December I asked you to come up with something else to call me besides “Daddio,” and to start using female pronouns when talking to me and about me. Then I pushed you, hard. I did it because each year before Christmas for many years I have grieved all over again for my mother’s death and yearned desperately for the acceptance I will never get from her. I was feeling extremely needy, and in my need I turned to you. That was a parenting fail. It is not your job, at this stage in your lives, to parent me, nor, for that matter, to play any role for anyone, no matter how much you love them. It is your job to continue to work on figuring out who you are going to be in the world and to move toward your versions of adulthood, and it is my job to support you in your growing up. I’m back to doing that, and I’m sorry I faltered.

I withdraw my request that you stop calling me “Daddio.” That word is full of love and the history of who we have been together all through your childhood, and I don’t want to lose it or what it represents. So, I welcome “Daddio” as long as you want to keep using it...for the rest of our lives, if you want.

I do still hope that in your own time, when you feel ready, you could start using female pronouns for me, and that you will stay open to the idea of finding other new things to call me which include recognition of who I am now. I say this because while I *am* still the same dad you have always known, I am also in a real way a woman you’ve only just met. It’s like, “Um...hi. My name’s Lisa, and I’ve been lurking inside your dad all these years...actually, I *was* him, but in disguise. Now I’m standing here right in front of you as my actual self. So, anyway, um...nice to finally meet you...and, uh, I feel like baking...what kind of cookies do you want?"

Trans *is* weird, but it's a thing that can be gotten used to, and we are all such smart people and have so much love between us, I’m sure that over time we can find creative positive ways to incorporate my true gender into our family dynamic. And regardless of what you call me or what pronouns you use, I’m here for you, and I always will be. No doubt I will falter again from time to time...I’m only human...but I’m here.

Now, go finish your homework.

Love,

Daddio/Lisa/E/Zabi...etc. etc.

Insight on the holiday gauntlet

One day as the Christmas season approached Elizabeth told her 16-year-old son that she wanted him to stop calling her “Daddio.” She told him that every time he said it it felt like being punched in the stomach. Looking uncomfortable, he reluctantly agreed. The next day, she followed up: she said she was repeating the request so he knew she was serious about it, and that she also wanted female pronouns and gender words. He listened silently and did not refuse; but as the week went on he used the same masculine gender words as before, and scowled at her when she corrected him.

A few days later, when Elizabeth picked her daughter up from college, she told her that she was asking these things of her too. Her daughter, having recently claimed Queer identity herself, was more accepting, at least to talk about it, but as the days passed she avoided pronouns rather than switching to “she,” and also still said “Daddio.”

Several days went by. Elizabeth wept often, thinking of her long-dead mother, as she often did in the weeks before Christmas each year, with grief and fury and aching need for maternal comfort all balled together in a black mass...and her will to push her children to greater acceptance faltered. She couldn't see a way to back off from having pushed them without returning to the old bad man-box, but she knew it was wrong to have turned to them in her need, so driving her son to school one morning she said, “About the gender words thing...”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, wiping at his eye.

“Wait, let me finish. I think you’re going to like what I’m going to say. You have told me you can’t deal with this right now, and I’m accepting that. I’m backing off.”

“Thank you.”

That felt right, but it didn't stop the storm of pain and sadness, which loomed just as black as ever. Elizabeth held herself together in hopes of making it to her next therapy appointment...but at the appointed hour the door did not open. She waited fifteen minutes, then knocked. There had been a scheduling snafu; her therapist was seeing another patient. “I need to see you,” Elizabeth said. Text me later, said the therapist, and Elizabeth stumbled downstairs.

In her parked car she burst into wild sobs. “I want my mother!” she screamed. And, “I deserve to exist in the world! I do! I do! I deserve to exist!”...needing to say it so vehemently because of a terrible fear that it wasn’t true. Her courage and strength had failed her, and she felt as at other times at this same nadir the crushing weight of so many years of existence with self denied, of existence only through the mask of maleness, of shadow-life. She sobbed in her car for nearly an hour, then texted and asked if she could come back in, and her therapist texted back yes.

The session was oddly strained. Even in the midst of blurting out her dilemma Elizabeth sensed her therapist groping for responses...she sensed impatience, annoyance. Her therapist defended the children’s right to process in their own time, and to be parented by Elizabeth even as she struggled with her own pain, and Elizabeth agreed. But what about her own terrible need then? With time running out, the therapist said the words which Elizabeth needed to hear: “You do deserve to exist in the world.”

In a grateful rush: “Yes, thank you...I needed to hear someone say that. Thank you so much.”

“You do. You deserve to exist as Lisa you deserve to exist as Dave...”

“What? I wish you hadn’t said that last part.”

In a vehement note-to-self whisper: “I’m never going to say that name again.”

The last few minutes of the appointment were awkward, and Elizabeth left without making another appointment.

On the way home, bumped out of her rut of self-pity by irritation, Elizabeth formulated a new thought: OK, for the past twenty years I’ve been mising the presence of a mom in my Christmases...so fuck it, I’m gonna be the mom. My children can call me what they like, but what they’re getting is mothering.

She put her thought and heart into selecting presents; she cleaned; she bought herself a mixer and baked enough not only to satisfy her household’s sweet teeth, but to take plates to neighbors too; she wrapped; she played the piano while her daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend decorated the tree. In a word, for the first time in her adult life, she committed to the holiday, not as a religious nor a commercial celebration, but as the simple family gathering it had been for her when she was growing up...and the children seemed to have a good Christmas.

And, what about Elizabeth? Well, she survived. The amount of hurt she felt running the seasonal gauntlet was not less than in previous years; but in trying to make a real warm holiday happen in her own home she felt more joy in the day than ever before since her mother’s death, and she figured that counted as a victory.

Three years and counting

December is my darkest month. That was true before any of this gender business surfaced, and it’s still true. I always feel sad in December because my parents are dead and gone, and this year I’ve made a quick hard start to the annual holiday blues.
     
Besides just missing them, I want to show my parents me. I want to say to each of them: all that time, you had a daughter instead of a son, and neither of us knew it. Can you love me? It would have been the hardest question I would ever have had to ask in my whole life, but I still want to ask it. I never get to do that. Never.

A dark phrase recurs in my life: “No love for you.” I find myself saying it when I miss my parents, when I review my tragicomic romantic history, after each rejection on match.com, and when I look in the mirror and fail to imagine a masculine person I could love who might be able to see past the leftover bits of my physical maleness and love me back.

Does this purported possible partner have to be a masculine person? No...but I can’t see how to love another feminine person, because I fear her wanting me to be the masculine one, which is what I did for all those years, to my enduring pain. I don’t know if I can ever go back there. But, on the other hand, why not? Wouldn’t it be better if someone loved and wanted the whole me, including the 45 years of life as a man, which will always be part of who I am?

I. DON’T. KNOW.

I’m fucking confused, because I don’t feel any different. I feel like I felt when everyone in the world including me saw me as a man. So how am I not still a man? Or is self in essence genderless, and gender a cloak we put on when we turn to face the world?

I’m in another patch of wishing this had never happened. Not doubting...there’s no doubt. But I’m fucking sick of it. I want to stop being trans now. I want to not have to work so hard at just presenting myself to the world every day. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKF CUKF CUFKUCKUF CFKUCK UCDFKU CFKU CKLFU CLKFU XCKFU DXKFU XDLFKUS  DLFKSDUFLKLkdf get the idea?

Anyway, guess what? I’ve been self-aware as trans for three years. It was at this dark time of year in 2008 I wrote “I just want to be a girl” in my journal, from which all else has followed. I was going to work up a peppy and clever summing-up post about that, but the above is what came out instead.

There *have* been some positive developments recently. After some bureaucratic hassle I got my new passport the other day, with my new legal name and an “F” for gender. That means I can keep my consultation appointment in a couple of weeks in Montreal, in preparation for SRS this coming summer.

Also, my daughter, home from college for the holiday, told me she has started calling me her mom when she’s talking to people about me. That’s so lovely...but on the other hand, she also still calls me “Daddio.” The “Daddio” issue just sucks. It’s what both my children have always called me, and it is a word full of history and love, so I can hardly blame them for hanging onto it, but every time they say it I feel shoved back into an old bad wrong box, and it makes me wretched.

Here’s my big three-years-and-counting insight: I’m not done yet. With day-to-day living going well and my surgery scheduled, I’ve been feeling like I’ve completed something, or at least arranged for the completion...but really, everything is still in process. Helping my children come to terms, the search for love, hormonal changes, the search for a voice I can stand, electrolysis, the question of whether to get facial surgery (which I’ve been aching for again)... all still incomplete, all still happening.

I’m so fucking tired...but, here I still am, surviving a day at a time, writing, working, persevering...enduring. There is joy. I know, because I remember feeling it. I can’t access it now, but I feel pretty confident that it will be back. Meanwhile, I endure. Happy fucking December.

Adventures in cyberdateland

I’ve been on match.com for a well over a week, and have had several interesting and instructive encounters. Not in person...I’m being too cautious for that. E-mail exchanges.

Case #1: Creepy guy
Him: So you’re trans, cool, and you look fantastic!
Me: Thanks! Gonna post a pic? Tell me more about you...and hey, it’s cool you’re so cool about trans.
Him: No pic - I don’t want backlash at work. Not much to tell about me. I had someone in my family go through transition, so I know what it’s like. You should know for me this is a straight heterosexual relationship. You look amazing!
Me: (thinking: “relationship”?) Uh...thanks! Tell me more about your trans relative...I’d like to hear the story.
Him: Not much to tell; it just helps me understand who you are. You should know, at the age we are I expect to get sexual early in a relationship.
Me: Bye.
Him: Don’t deny your sexuality!
Me: (no answer)
(True confession time: while I would never hook up with such a person, his aggressiveness was good for a tickle of titillation. Such forthright single-minded desire, for me! My, my. *fans self*)

Case #2: Self-effacing guy
Him: So you’re trans...wow, you’re so brave.
Me: Thanks! Tell me more about you.
Him: Oh, I’m just an ordinary guy. I'm boring, really - not like you. Nothing much to tell...I live with five cats and my former girlfriend.
Me: Good luck, bye.

Case #3: Courteous guy
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: I just found someone, but best of luck in your search.
Him: So sorry, Madamoiselle, I didn’t put your name in my first e-mail.
Me: No worries. Thanks for the reply.
(This conversation was conducted in French.)

Case #4: Religious guy
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: Thanks, I just found someone, but there’s this book you really should read...it changed my life...(4 long paragraphs I didn’t read).

Cases #5 - 8 or so: Polite rejections
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: (polite discouraging reply, good luck)
Me: (polite thanks, good luck)

Cases #9 - 25 or so: Impolite rejections
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: (no answer)

And, finally, Case #26: Tingle tingle
Him: Your profile is unusual. I’m intrigued. Wanna get coffee or a glass of wine sometime?
Me: Thanks! I like your profile too - it’s quirky and funny. And thanks for the invitation...I’d like to, but this is new for me, so I’m feeling cautious. Could we exchange a few more e-mails first? And, please tell me more about you...
Him: No problem...we’ll go at your pace. About me: (some interesting deep stuff about life as a journey, overcoming struggles, attitude about the remaining years...)
Me: I think we have some things in common...thanks for sharing so freely! And here’s some lighter stuff about me: (description of my day, mentioning work, parenting...trying to convey an idea of my life)
Him: (no answer for two days)
Me: (checking e-mail frequently, wondering if I somehow scared him off, wondering if I should e-mail him again, aware that I will feel disappointed if I don’t hear back or get the brush-off now)

I wonder, how different would this experience be if I was cisgendered? Hmm...maybe not much. And, hey, #26, if you ever read this, as of this writing you've already touched me, and whatever happens, I will remember you fondly as the first man to express honest-seeming gentlemanly interest in me as a woman on line. That's actually pretty big...so, thanks. :-)

Hey baby, click on me!

The feeling of wanting a special someone in my life has been building for a long time, and I guess with my surgery scheduled I could finally give myself permission to look, because earlier this week I went to Zoosk.com and submitted a “woman looking for men” profile. I picked Zoosk because of their hip young vibe, figuring they would be more accepting than the stodgy old established dating sites. This was my self-description:

Well, I'm trans. I hate to lead with that, because it is not nearly the most important thing about me, but I figure it's good to be clear from the start. In short, I was born with a male body and lived the first 46 years of my life as a man, but that was all a mistake and is in the past, and now I am totally grooving on living as the woman I was always supposed to be. (I am in the process of getting the male body issue fixed). Aside from that, I'm a non-profit manager with sidelines in writing and crossword-puzzle construction; I have two teenage children, one in college and one in high school; and my big project right now is to become fluent in French. I have a dream of moving to France someday for a while to teach English, so if we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, darling, you better be willing to travel... ;-) (Note: I'm curious whether the gatekeepers at Zoosk.com will allow me, an out trans woman, on their site. If you're reading this, they did, and good for them. But if you are the gatekeeper and you are about to reject my profile, shame on you.)

Yep, shame on them. Everything I entered was rejected with boilerplate e-mails citing “inappropriate content.” While deleting the last shreds of my profile I wrote in the “why are you leaving?” text box that I felt I had been discriminated against and would appreciate an e-mail back with an explanation of the rationale of their decision. No reply.

Next I went to match.com, whose services I had used when I was dating as a man looking for women. According to one ranking table I found they have the largest customer base of any dating site. Lo and behold, my profile, with the same descrip above, was accepted! Good for them.

In my first 24 hours my profile has been viewed 54 times, and I have been winked at about a dozen times.

It’s gratifying, of course, to be winked at, but I wonder if some of these guys have done anything more than glance at my headshot before they wink, because with about half of them when I clicked to view *their* profiles, they had become unavailable. I take that to mean they went back to learn who they had winked at, discovered I’m trans, and shut me out.

Yes, I am assuming rejection. I wish I wasn’t, but on the other hand, I already know from abundant experience how freaky my mere existence is for most men. Kinda cute, still has a penis...fuck fuck fuck, run screaming from the screen! Also, most of the guys who have winked at me live thousands of miles away. Tulsa? WTF? How did you even find me?

I’ve done some searching too, and winked at four guys, discovering in the process a little more about who I am looking for. All four sound cerebral, and look and/or sound unconventional and quirky; I detect humor and engagement with life in all of them; they can all spell and write; and they are all tall. This last is shallow, I know, but I *do* so enjoy feeling petite and svelte standing next to someone... :-p I sent one, a writer in Mass, a one-line e-mail, because some word-play in his profile made me smile. No answer so far, and no other e-mails.

So here I am, sweet 49 and never been kissed. I’m feeling vulnerable and tentative, but also curious and eager; and as with surgery, I hardly dare imagine how good it might be. I might discover, for the first time in my life, what love and sex are both really about...which would be terribly sad in a way, but which could also be fucking incredible.

Out of a flame war, pandemic love

Last night my 19-year old daughter Madeleine posted on facebook some whimsical wordplay based on terms she is trying out to describe her sexuality. She has already claimed “pansexual,” (which I also am coming to prefer for myself), meaning attracted to people based on who they are as people, regardless of biological sex or gender; and she’s trying out the word “demisexual”, meaning not tending to feel sexual attraction except to a person with whom one has first become emotionally intimate (which I also like for myself...I hope you don’t mind, dearest, that I’m co-opting your words). “Demisexual” is a new-minted word, courtesy of the asexuality movement, for an old-fashioned idea: sex as an adjunct to, an extension and expression of, love. So Mad’s line was that she’s a “pandemic romantic,” which, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny.

A few of her friends posted light-hearted comments, and then one particular friend, whom I will call X, posted this: “‘Pansexual’ is an orientation. ‘Demisexual’ is not. Neither is ‘romantic’. Just sayin'.”

An escalation ensued. Points got misunderstood, feelings got hurt, and what could have been a substantive conversation about the complexities of identity quickly turned personal. An hour and 40-some posts later, several people had posted things they are probably regretting today (if they’re done fuming), my daughter had defriended X, and various friends both in cyber and real space were giving her hugs in commiseration for having been the unwitting trigger of, and scorched figure at the center of, a doozy of a flame war.

This incident has helped me crystallize some thoughts about sex, gender, and queer identity. First of all, I respectfully disagree with X. Demisexuality and being a romantic *are* both orientations. In fact, in a way, they are more radical orientations than the L, G, and B of LGBT, because, just as pansexuality challenges the unquestioned assumption behind these letters that gender matters, they challenge the unquestioned assumption that sex matters. They are a “none of the above” option. They say: “If I, whoever I turn out to be, should happen to want to go to bed with my sweetie, whoever my sweetie turns out to be, it will be because I love my sweetie and my sweetie loves me. Love is different from sex and knows no gender, and love is what matters most to me.”

I am *not* saying that LGB folk don’t understand or care about love. Completely not. But queer culture does seem to me to be as obsessed with sex as our culture as a whole is. I don’t really have a problem with that, though as a person who cares less about sex than love it makes me feel marginalized at both cultural levels. And I could hardly blame people fighting for equality for their sexual identities if they felt threatened by the idea that sex doesn’t matter. I do have a problem, though, when it becomes politically incorrect to speak of non-sexual or only-incidentally-sexual love.

And, I *am* saying that the emphasis on traditional concepts of gender inherent in the definitions of L, G, and B sometimes feels inimical to the interests of us T folk. My dear LGB friends: I thank you most fervently for the enormous amount of help and support you have given me in my gender work, both individually and, by fighting a version of the same fight first, on a global scale. I have learned and benefited from your struggle. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the forces of prejudice and hate which so seldom distinguish between us. And, I enjoy your company, feel at ease with you, and am so grateful to have been welcomed in under the big LGBT umbrella. But, alas, all that said, I do also sometimes see you as part of the gender hegemony against which, all my life, I have struggled. I will never self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, hetero or homo, because all of this terminology fails to challenge and continues to perpetrate the bad old binary concept of gender. Until I come up with something I like better, I am a pandemisexual romantic trans woman.

May I invite you to join me and Mad in seeking new ways of talking about ourselves and each other which celebrate the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of gender as thoroughly as we have celebrated the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of sexuality? And could we all, please, get at least part of the way back to the charming old-fashioned notion of speaking reverently of love?

Monsieur A & Monsieur B

Earlier this week I came up with a new dream. Inspired by my planned visit to Montreal next summer I have once again taken up the study of French, and my new dream is, maybe someday I could move to France for a while and teach English. My teacher says there are jobs for Americans because of French businessmen wanting to learn to speak with an American accent.

I like this dream for two reasons. First of all, I just like it. Sounds like the new adventure I crave, and I’d become fluently bilingual, which I’d love to be. But, also, I like it because it has nothing to do with gender. Honestly, I’m bored of gender, of thinking and talking and writing about it all the time. The gender work I’m doing still matters to me just as much as ever, but I have it well in hand, and these days it feels at best routine and at worst tiresome. Several other things in my life interest me more right now, e.g.:

• Parenting: Goes without saying, really - just always need to be there for each kid as each kid needs.
• Writing: I got an article published by the Phoenix (in their Out In Maine LGBT supplement) and the editor wants more of my work. I’m writing professionally! Yay!
• Money: I still need to figure out a way to make more of it.
• The smell  in my house of some small animal decaying: Where is it coming from and how can I get rid of it?

Et cetera.

Oh, and one more big one: I’d really like to date a male-bodied, masculine person now. Doesn’t mean I’m done with female-bodied people, but I’ve tried that. Nope, for now I’m feeling hungry for masculine attention and ready to reciprocate with feminine attention. Which brings us to Messieurs A and B.

Monsieur A was my best friend through junior high and high school. He was a quiet, introverted boy with a sweet smile and the strength of character to hang out with that weird kid with the long hair who looked like a girl. We shared common geeky interests, private humor, and even for a while a private alphabet, in which we would write each other messages on the chalkboards of classrooms. From time to time he would pat me on the head. With A I felt cared about, safe, and (not clearly, but in a way which still mattered), seen. In retrospect it is clear that, in a hopeless never-to-speak-its-name way, I was in love with him.

Just one time I felt an intense moment of attraction toward A. It was during a rest stop on a hike. We were sitting on rocks, sipping water and talking of nothing in particular, and all at once I felt conscious of his closeness in a way I’ve only experienced a few other times in my life, always with men. It was more than just sexual, though it was that. I yearned to merge with him...two selves becoming one new whole. All I could make of this at the time was that it meant I was gay, and in those days I had not even begun to deconstruct the homophobia I had learned from my father, so the moment upset me. I thrust it away and expressed nothing, then or later.

A and I lost contact after college. Just once, about ten years ago, I sought him out during a business trip in his city. We had dinner at a restaurant and walked around a little, talking. Same quiet somewhat elusive man, married to a woman I have never met, with children. I felt a faint echo of the same tingle. And, recently, I’ve been thinking about him. The other day I found myself fantasizing about meeting him again...about him taking me (now him, now me) in his arms and kissing me...and I burst into tears.

I had been thinking I had come out to everyone, but I haven’t to A. Should I write him an e-mail? Hm...that’s good for butterflies.

Monsieur B is one of those few men of my present acquaintance who have started to talk to me in an unguarded way, new to my experience, which I take to mean that they see me simply as a woman. Most of the men I know are wonderfully accepting and supportive of my transition...and subtly cagey. Their eyes jitter as they compute moment by moment how to talk to me. With all the power I have lost, I have gained the power to make men squirm.

But B just talks to me. His face is open and candid, and if I meet his eyes he meets mine right back. He’s willing to confide in a minor way - everyday thoughts and feelings about work and such - and he also listens with apparent interest when I confide. He has a quick mind, which I find attractive, and he’s passionate about what he does, which ditto. So, sometimes when we talk, I find myself having to make an extra effort to pay attention to what he’s saying because I’m becoming mesmerized by his moving lips and tingling a little all over.

This is neither complicated nor deep. I’m enjoying feeling attraction toward specific present men, making a few shy attempts at flirting, and hoping that something might happen. I realize this is a passive stance, but at least for now that feels right. I can always get brazen later on if I want. In the meantime, if Monsieur B asked me out to dinner, with heart a-flutter I would say yes.

Might *you* in fact be Monsieur B? That would be telling. ;->

Got my surgery date

There’s a notation in my planner book now, on the monthly spread for next June, in the box for Wednesday the 27th: “SRS.” In 263 days Drs. Brassard and Bélanger in Montréal will fashion, from my present redundancies, sophisticated simulacra of a vagina and clitoris.

It has been harder coming to this decision than I thought it would be. I don’t mean fear of the knife, or anxiety about money, though I’m experiencing both. I mean emotionally. Both the need I feel to do this and the loss it turns out to entail rise out of deeper places in the psyche than I was expecting.

Need. I feel like I’m over-dramatizing when I say it, but it’s true: I can’t stand to look at myself naked in the mirror any more. I either keep my panties on, or cover with a hand. It's hard to pin down the right word for how I feel now about the original accouterments. Hate is not quite right. Disgust? No, that’s not quite right either. I don’t repulse myself. Outrage? Yes, that’s closer. Fresh, each time. What, still!? No! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! Those have GOT to go!

Another thing: I can’t conceive of being naked with another person until I get this done. I don’t want anyone to see me, and I don’t want anyone to want me for a thing from which I feel so estranged. Until my body is closer to right, the only choice which feels safe is to hold myself apart from all others. But oh, I am so fucking lonely. I have run up a 40 years’ deficit of loving and being loved as a feminine being, and I am eons beyond sick of it. Words fail. Just...fuck.

And, loss. With every big transition step - revelation, coming out, starting hormones, name change, going full time - I find myself grieving all over again for all time I have lost, and also battling through another round of anger at the random unfairness of it all. I am so weary of “If only...” and “Why me?”, but I don’t seem able to avoid them. And don’t forget, “I want my Mommy!” At each step I also seem to have to grieve all over again for my parents. Part of it is that I ache to show them who I really am...but mostly, in the defenseless way of a hurting child, I just want them, want their love. Again: fuck.

One sort of bright spot: going through this wringer so often, I'm getting better at it. I'm becoming an emotional-processing virtuosa. Tra la, hooray for me.

Then there is the loss my transition is inflicting on my children...which, after numerous attempts, I find I cannot write about right now. What I can say: That I love them, and that I always will. That I will never stop doing my best to parent them. That I’m sorry. That I’m so incredibly proud of them. That they are my life’s greatest joy.

As usual, I have questioned, challenged, second-guessed my resolve; and as usual, the proof is in action. I’ve held steadily to my purpose through all the steps so far. I’ve done my research and chosen my surgeons. I’ve paid professionals to certify that I am in my right mind. I’ve figured out how to take the money out of my retirement account. (Another truly bright spot: it appears I will avoid the penalty for early withdrawal because I’ll have allowable medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of my income in the same year...a savings of a couple thousand.) And, I’ve made a first withdrawal for a down payment. Still to come: getting a passport, arranging to exit my life for three weeks, estate planning just in case, a battery of pre-surgery tests...waiting...and then, a ride from a friend.

I’ll still be able to change my mind up until the moment the anaesthesiologist comes to sedate me. Who knows, I might; but I don’t think so.

The candle-count puzzle

Here's an intriguing question: how old am I?

Five! I’m five! See my fingers? Count them! One two three four five! Five!

That’s good, honey, but I need you to hush for a second so I can write this, OK?

(Pouts.)

OK, that’s one answer. There’s a part of me that seems to have frozen in childhood - my innermost passionate vulnerable girl-self - and at this point I don’t know if she’s ever going to change. Which is fine. I love her, and after all she is me...but it’s more complicated than that.

Transition for me has followed the course of a hyper-accelerated second life, starting with my gender revelation in November ‘08, which, with its sense of dawning glory, did feel like being born. Then for several months, while responsible adult male self trudged on through his regular days, I explored with trepidation and trembling joy what it meant to be alive...

Guess what, I’m five!

Shh, sweetheart...let me finish. C’mere so I can hold you. Better? OK, good.

As I was saying, in those early secret days every step felt huge, every risk drastic. My e-mail updates to my few long-distance confidants have the breathless “lookitme lookitme!” tone of a girl riding a bike by herself for the first time. For a little while, I did truly feel...honey?

Five?

That’s right, very good. And six and seven and eight, calendar pages flipping by...

Then came adolescence. During this stretch I became even more self-involved than usual, felt emotionally needy most of the time, and experienced a real sense of resentment about my responsibilities in life. In sum, I reminded myself (forgive me, my dears) of my own teenagers on their worst days.

That stage feels done now too, thank goodness, and these days I think of myself as being in my twenties. Elements of this phase include a (re-)growing awareness of the world and my potential role in it, a strengthening of the impulse to self-expression, a tendency to vehement opinion, a greater willingness and ability to bear my responsibilities with fortitude, and a feeling of readiness to love and be loved.

So, two and a half years post-revelation, I feel 25 or so. That comes out to ten trans-years for each year of real time; and that maps well onto what I’ve heard about other transitioning people’s complete arcs, that they feel pretty much done after four or five years. So maybe in another two and half years the age I feel and the age I actually am will match up again, and then I can just get on with the rest of my life.

What’s that? 49? Pff...that’s just the number of years I have been alive. Doesn't matter hardly at all.

Worry less, write more

I am alive! And significantly altered on left-over wine on a Monday night. But what the fuck. I’m 49 and working in an absurdly easy job until my youngest graduates from high school. In the river of life this is a long back-eddy, Mercury in retrograde, whatever. Moving backwards to move forwards. Backwards! (Onwards.)

Being interviewed at L.L. Bean was a surreal experience. The dead faces, the exquisite cheerfulness. Do you realize I have never in my life worked for a corporation? Except that one summer between sophomore and junior year, when I worked for the Curry Company, renting rafts to tourists and making their camp beds in the back-country of Yosemite. It is so fucking odd to go into a place where a whole bunch of people are making good money subscribing to the imperative of a commercial myth. World Class Customer Service. Figuring out how to feel good about riding the cash cow, I call it. And if anyone from Bean reads this blog, my job chances will be fucked. So be it. No one is paying attention.

And hey, I’m provisionally second-job employed. Money does turn out to matter, when you don’t have enough of it. Beyond that, I read somewhere recently, once you’ve got enough to live on more doesn’t make you any happier. So how did dollars become the ultimate measure of success? Nothing else turns people into such craven grasping wretches...not sex, not love, not alcohol, not drugs, not the hope of fame, not the fear of death. From time to time I think, I never learned to care about money, I fucked up my life. And the rest of the time I think...what an incredible moment! What a fucking rush! Once safe housed fed, the greatest pleasure is just to be alive; the rest is meaningless quanta of difference. You drive a fancier car than me. So the fuck what. I got to work safely today, and home again too. That’s all that matters.

Oh, and connecting with another. That matters too. What were the most important parts of my day today? Talking to friends. Jessica. Jenny. Feeling those moments of sympatico, empathy, non-exclusive non-familial non-sexual love. You spoke to me, I heard you; I spoke, you heard. Thank you. I love you.

Except for me mentioning it in this sentence, nothing in this entry is particularly about being trans. Being trans doesn’t define me. If anything defines me, it is that I write. Go ahead, I dare you...read me. It’s like fucking, only more intimate.

In between the previous two paragraphs I checked my e-mail and read a post in the Facial Feminization Surgery Yahoo group, in which one trans woman advised another to go to Dr. Z if she wants to be made artifically stunning, and to go to Dr. D in Argentina if she wants a natural feminine version of her old face. If you weren’t beautiful before, she says, you won’t be after, just female you. And just like that, I long-term plan to get a  Dr. D face. So, something trans after all.

Speaking of which, a friend taped my performance at the Femme Show for me and I put it on YouTube as a link you have to know to access. It so doesn’t suck, and I’m eager to share it with people, but I’ve kept it private out of concern that the wrong person at my son’s school might get ahold of it, and he would be embarrassed. but if you’d like to see it (and you don't go to Wells High School), let me know, and I’ll send you the link.

As part of an ongoing experiment the nub of which is to edit myself less the older I get, I’m posting this now.