Lab Rat Attention Whore

[tay-en-pointe.livejournal.com]

A few weeks ago, a coworker asked to interview me for a project she was working on at Univerty of New Orleans. I said, Sure. However, time constraints and the fact that we work opposing schedules made setting a time nearly impossible. In the end, we decided she would email me the questions, and i would write my responses.
Apparently they were good responses. A few days ago, an aquaintance contacted me and asked if she could interview me for an anthropology project at LSU in Baton Rouge. Again, I said sure.
So, if these women are so interested on an academic level, I thought, Why not post the answers here? Maybe they can help someone. Thanks.

1) When did you know you wanted to be a woman?
First, it's important for me to say, I never "wanted" this. I never asked for it, I didn't want to pursue it, I fought it, and sometimes I still wonder if it's worth it all. I don't think anyone wants this. They may want to dress in the clothing of the other gender, like cross-dressers, or even perform that way (onstage and just with friends) like drag queens/kings, and transvestites. It's different for a transsexual. I didn't want to be this way. I just finally faced the fact that that's what I am.
That being said, it's still a difficult question. On the one hand, the answer is I faced my transgenderism about 5 years ago, when I first sought counseling. (Note: a lot of people refer to this as "Gender Dysphoria" or "Gender Identity Disorder". I do not. I don't look at this as a disorder. I think that lends a certain degree of negativity to the process of trying to live as the person you are.)
I was thirty-five years old. I'd been married for almost five years. I finally got an Internet connection, and the first site I searched for and found was a transsexual chat site. My wife asked me why I'd chosen to search for that. And I didn't have an answer for her.
After several years of on again off again therapy with two wonderful psychologists, the way I look at it is this. I was handed at birth a book, a manual written by my parents on how I would live my life. At that time, there wasn't the technology that could predetermine a child's gender. I'm sure they had an alternate manual ready had I been born female.
I got the male version, though. And since I tested somewhat special in the intelligent category, a bunch of appendixes got written in. I would be a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman. I would get married, own a house, have 2.5 children, and lead the happy American Dream life. This is how I was programmed from the start.
Looking back on it now, I can say I "knew" I was a woman as early as seven or eight years old. When I found myself alone in the house, I found myself in my mother's closet, trying on wigs and dresses. When I was eleven, two things happened. My mom got a job, making me a latchkey kid, and I broke my elbow in a fall from a tree. I couldn't really go out and play, but I didn't really care. I never seemed to fit it. The labels attached to me were geek, brainiac, and bookworm. So, in the afternoons, I would get dressed in my mom's clothes, and practice with her makeup. When I was about 12, I came to the realization that she would soon have to start to notice that her makeup was being used. So I quit. I quit it all.
Still, again looking back over my past, tons of signs were there: Having more friends who were girls than boys; crying easily, being overly emotional; secretly being much more interested in hair design and fashion than sports. Of course, the obvious thought was that I was gay, but I knew I didn't like men. I'd had an encounter when I was about 14 and had discovered the world of hitch hiking. It left me sick and disturbed. But then, that's gonna be the focus of another question.
The desire to dress, to better understand women, to want to sleep with them as much as want to be them, was something I turned into a fantasy. It was safe that way. Sometimes, when I acted on it, I'd feel free. Other times, it just went against everything I had been taught in the way I'd grown up. I acted out in other ways: I got in trouble with my parents, and eventually with the law. I've been arrested and jailed 3 times. I wrote fantasy fiction stories in which someone'd seduce me and then I'd wake up somehow transformed into a woman.
I spent a good portion of my mid-twenties living in West Hollywood, which was, and maybe still is called "Boy's Town." In the three years I lived there, I wasn't hit on once. My roommate was a gay scallywag, and even he didn't hit on me. It was really hard on the ego, to be honest. Not only was I not tweaking any gaydar, but now, thinking about it, the pheromones just didn't connect. Though they didn't know, couldn't because of my appearance know that I was a girl, they still instinctively knew I wasn't like them.

2. How confusing was your sexual identity for you in light of your sexual preference?
There's a movie I saw once, I don't remember the name of it, but in that movie, a male character asks a female character out on a date. She admits that she's a lesbian. He gives a sappy grin and says, "Cool, so am I."
That tweaked some anger buttons in me, but I wasn't sure why. As I continued through life, I remember, especially during that phase in the 80s when men suddenly turned sensitive, that these men would often use lines like that to try to pick up women. I was bartending by now, and heard it, or its many derivatives, a lot. It made me sick to hear something so needy and pathetic and just downright dishonest, all said in order to get laid.
But, there you have it. I'm a transsexual, I still for a variety of reasons still present male, and I like women. I'm a lesbian.
I spent the majority of my adolescence without a girlfriend. I think I was too sensitive and emotional, certainly not Captain of the football team material. I also think that, just like the gay men of Boy's Town later on, I lacked something psyco-pheramonal. I was also very confused, and highly insecure, and I think that's generally a turn off to others. You don't want to get involved with a needy person, because the risk of hurting them is just too great. The girlfriends I did have, right down to my ex wife, though different in so many ways physical and psychological, all did share one trait: they were always very strong willed, and very much of an independent bend. None of them were very concerned with how others viewed them, or what they did, or whom they went out with.
Sex for me was weird. At first, of course it was as wonderful as is anything new to someone. But eventually, it became tiresome. I might have an orgasm, or even two or three in a long night, but they were rarely satisfying. Eventually I'd be depressed. Since that experience in the car of the guy that picked me up as a hitchhiker, I'd not been with a man. They held no attraction for me whatsoever. I was repelled by the male form, right down to my own, as I was fascinated with that of females. I tried a guy again in college, with miserable results.
My time in Boy's Town ended with me coming about as close to dying from a crack cocaine overdose as you can and still survive. I was working for a corporate restaurant company, one I'd been with since they'd opened their second store. Friends with the East Coast VP, I called him the day after my crack experience, and put in for a transfer. He asked where I wanted to go. I said wherever a store was opening next. I didn't care. I just needed to get out of LA before I died.
I moved to Atlanta, and became friends with one of the managers there. I'd actually met her in LA when she'd been out for a seminar, so she was a contact for me. I ended up moving into the same apartment complex she lived in, and we became friends as well as coworkers. I was still a bartender, but also a store opener/trainer. We spent a great deal of time together. One night I was standing up in a wedding for the groom who was marrying the bride who had asked S to stand up with. S had always only seen me in my work uniform, or in the lazy day off jeans and T-shirt I'd wear if we'd go get something to eat, or to a movie, on our day off. In a brand new suit, she didn't recognize me at all. When I called her on it, something shifted. It seems I'd somehow transformed, even though it was still within a male guise. We became romantic, and got married a year later. The sex, though, was never really great. I think I did her a horrible disservice in marrying her. I think that I'd given up on all the rebellion and anger and drug abuse, and getting arrested that had happened before I moved to Atlanta. I was a good employee, I was a nice person, and I was fast approaching the age of 30. All my childhood or teen years' friends were married, some were having kids. I wanted a normal life.
We got married in October of that year, and 6 months later, she got a great job offer in Charlotte, NC, so we moved. I found a job in a microbrewery/restaurant/nightclub, and within 6 months was their GM. The money was flowing in. We bought a house, new cars, and then a purebred Akita. On the surface we were happy, successful, and living the American dream. In the bedroom, passion had all but left our relationship within that first year. Then I bought a new computer, and discovered the online world, and spent most of my free time in chatrooms with other transsexuals. These people finally understood me. And there were a lot of these people like me. Some liked men, and some liked women. It became obvious that the straight girls didn't much care for the gay girls. The straight girls who liked me felt that being penetrated made them feel more feminine. The gay girls didn't disagree, but felt that this could be achieved with much more passion and much less frustration with a partner wearing a strap on.
When I finally came out to S, she acted supportive, but she was horribly hurt, and spoke often (I learned all this later) about me to others in a not so flattering light. Eventually I moved out. I gave her the house, her car, the dogs (there were now three, as we'd got a boy Akita, bred them, and kept one of the pups: that way we could have a nuclear family of dogs without having to create one of our own), and assumed all our debt. I felt it was the least I could do. I got a job offer to move down to New Orleans. I took it. I'd been on Hormone Replacement Therapy for about 3 months.
I found myself in a relationship with a woman I worked with within three months of moving here. But in the end, it didn't work out. She couldn't deal with my being a woman. She wasn't gay, and even if she could somehow justify it in her mind, she knew she could never come out with something like that to her family. I didn't want her to have to justify anything, so we called it quits. I ended up in another relationship soon after that, with a girl much too young for me. She was cool with it, and everything seemed okay, but then about a month into that one, I had a hormonal growth spurt, and my breasts really popped out. It was then that I discovered an odd thing about having a relationship with "straight" or "bi-curious" women, a phenomenon I've named, "Booby Envy." Though I'd never been much of a breast girl, I realized that it would probably be in my best interest to find a lover whose boobs were bigger than my hormonally induced ones.
It was obvious that I would also most probably have to find someone who was lesbian as a partner. Since I still present male, this has proven to be a difficult task. I did try men a few more times to make sure, and each time, I found myself more and more certain. Yep, I was a lesbian.
As a friend of mine, a middle aged Creole woman I waited tables with in the Quarter, put it: "Seems to me like you're takin' an awful long walk round the block just to get back into your own front door."
I don't think I've ever heard it better put.
My "girlfriend" these days, is bi, but she's really not my girlfriend. She's my Dominant, or Master, in a Leather, SM relationship. This relationship serves her very well, as it does me too. She is devoted to her husband, and frankly, I don't want anything more intense than what she and I share. She fully understands, and encourages me in finding someone right, but I'm really not looking for that right now. The way I see it, I'm changing every day, physically, emotionally, growing psychologically, etc. How can I commit to a person in a loving relationship if I'm not sure who exactly I'll be in a couple years when I fully transition? It's not fair to them, and neither is it actually fair to me.

3. What kind of struggles have you dealt with?
I think I've mentioned some of them in the first two questions. However, there are at least three more significant ones that bear looking at.
First, the financial struggle. I was offered a job down here with Copeland's. I was hired as a manager, and then within a couple months flipped into their corporate training department. I was good at both these jobs, but the job wasn't why I moved here. I moved here because it seemed to offer a more open attitude towards what I was doing than Charlotte. The company moved me down here, and the contract that allowed me to accept their moving cost check said that I had to work for them for at least 6 months. Otherwise I'd have to pay the money back. I waited until 6 months, and one day, and then resigned for personal reasons. Fortunately, it's a shitty company to work for, so I had plenty of things to fall back on during my exit interviews.
I took a job in the French Quarter, and eventually moved down here. And several things occurred. The health benefits I'd had with Copeland's, and the Cobra I'd signed on with expired. It was one of two really bad "Seasons" down here. My drinking went out of control. I lost my truck for lack of payment. I was already bankrupt. Without my Insurance, my prescriptions run $225 a month. My doctor, an Internist, works at Tulane Internal Meds Center, which only takes certain PPA's. Those run well over $300 a month for a "male" individual of my age and race and with my smoking habits. So, I spent over $200 a month on my pills, and then see her once or twice a year for $150 a pop, and then pay another $50 a year for bloodwork tests. It's pretty damn expensive being a woman. I had a good fall year before this last, and began to get myself back on my feet. I have a savings account now, with money being put in fairly regularly. I paid $800 back in March to begin an 8-session laser treatment to remove my facial hair, the final session of which is slated for tomorrow. I probably have another couple hundred on a few more sessions before paying for some electrolysis to have the gray hairs on my chin (only dark hair responds to laser, it attacks pigment) removed. Of course, I'd like slightly larger breasts. The cost of the final surgery, SRS is so abhorrently large, I wonder sometimes if I'll ever be able to afford it. But at least, if the next few months hold out the way they've been where I work now, I can start to work on my wardrobe, some makeup supply, and get that cd and workbook package that is supposed to be the best voice training education on the market.
Second, the social struggle. I've lost a lot of friends with this decision. I think people you've known all your life just can't handle something like this. They feel betrayed to the point that you can't really grab enough alone time to explain that it's okay, that you'd spent a large portion of your life deceiving yourself.
I have only one brother, who doesn't understand it, and we'd never really been close. It was easy for him to sever ties.
My mother is accepting on the surface only. The alternative, which would be to admit to her social circle that it was all her fault, and that she's lost her first and oh so promising son, is unacceptable. Read that again, and you'll get a glimpse into the mind of my mother. "That it was HER fault." She's never been able to see anything in life outside the realm of herself. She sends me money at my birthday and at Xmas, and we talk on the phone maybe four times a year. The conversations are strained at best. We've both found emails a more delicate way to communicate. We both call the other at times we know we're more than likely to get voicemail.
My dad died several years ago. (Yes, his death was the catalyst that let me start to explore the truth behind the fantasy of what I was.) So basically, I'm disconnected from my biological family. That sucks.
Third, I struggle with misconceptions, and social instinct in the people I consider friends or at least close. Because I still present the way I do, I don't expect others who know to use proper pronouns, for example. Still, its hard to hear someone who knows I am a girl refer to me as "he". It's not hard in a way that angers me, but rather, in a way that simply jars me, like an aftershock of an earthquake. I wonder what it will be like when that goes away. I struggle also with others' views of what I am. As noted in an earlier question, I am not a cross-dresser, nor a transvestite. You suggested for Halloween that we switch genders and go in drag. I said no. I don't harbor any sort of anger or frustration in your idea. But the way I see it, I dress in "drag" every day. And on Halloween, I was in drag as well, as the evil and nefarious ex-boss Donald Becker.
The last struggle I want to mention is a personal one. I can shave my face with my eyes closed. I grew up instinctively avoiding mirrors. Almost like a vampire, I didn't ever see my true reflection. Often, with my Dominant, she will smile, and say, "There you are!" She means she sees me, all girl, no makeup, no dress, just the face and body of a girl. It happens with more and more frequency these days. We both agree that it happens when I'm happy, or relaxed. Often, on the street, or in restaurants, I'm referred to as Ma'am or Miss, or, when I'm with L, something along the lines of "Have a nice day ladies."
That's not the struggle. The struggle is that for the most part, I still can't see myself. On the rare occasions I can, there's a sort of lingering melancholy. Just a little while ago, I went into my bathroom to take my pills, and when I swung shut the medicine cabinet, there I was. I grinned. And I grinned back. And then I went away.
It's like living with a ghost.

4. How do you think your life will be different after you are physically a woman?
I've sort of answered this in the previous questions. I think I will be happy. I think I will be more relaxed. I think I will have gained an amazing level of self-knowledge in having gone through this process. I think that I will finally be able to truly pursue, should it occur, a romantic and intimate relationship with another lesbian.
There are all sorts of tests, traps and pitfalls that a psychologist will put you through along the way. For example, before my shrink in Charlotte would approve me for HRT, she had to be sure that I understood something very key. I had to know that changing my gender wasn't going to alleviate every problem I have. Suicide rates for transsexuals are still remarkably high. I think the reason for this comes from them believing that the gender change will allow them to start an entirely new life. The problem is, if you have other issues, with family, or just maybe some psychological glitches, those don't get cut off with the equipment. You wake up one day, fully transitioned, to find yourself just as miserable as before. And there's no going back from that road. It's one-way only.
I think that I will be treated differently by plumbers and mechanics, flirted at by bartenders and waiters. Maybe I'll get more free drinks bought for me. I think that, should I ever return to a more corporate world, I will receive less pay for the same job I used to do as a man. I think I will be discriminated against, maybe even hated by people who fear change, when change is pretty much the cornerstone of my life.
I think life will continue to be a struggle in a million ways, but diminished by one crucial one. I think that when I'm at the supermarket, in the produce section, looking at a basket of blackberries, a random passerby will look at me and think, "That woman looking at the blackberries is kinda cute." And then that thought process will simply end, as the passerby moves to the ketchup aisle.
I think that I will, for the most part, live a fairly peaceful life.