Thought She Was James Dean For a Day

Like the mighty oak felled by tiny woodlice, the great big tranny has spent all of the new year at the mercy of some vicious spirochete. Strictly speaking, I don’t actually know its shape, but spirochete is such a fantastic word, isn’t it?

Being forced, and I do mean forced, because I will lumber through most things until I drop, to lay in bed for several days has given me ample room to, well, sleep mostly, but also ponder, roam, and generally survey the savannah of transitioning. I take the most provocative stance I can, on my side with a tissue packed ‘neath my nostril. “Sam, do you really, really, want to be a man?”

Let me see if I can give you a taste, a little Hannibal Lectorish sampling of my brains. My brain is literally inhabited by two people. One is the dude, the guy who sees himself in the mirror and shouts “Finally!” This guy could not be happier about the changes happening in this body he inhabits. The shoulder breadth, the lat flare, hip and thigh fat shifting; he marks each new patch of hair growth, the change in his hairline, with glee and victory.

Then there is the woman. She’s fought long and hard to find a place of ease and comfort in this body; she’s come to enjoy both it and the personality she’s crafted. She’s reluctant to go. She understands she’s not really going anywhere, but she also knows with certainty that if she looks like a man, she will be treated like one, and therefore on an important level, cease to exist. She’s the one that’s been around forever, forever Sam-time anyway, although I suspect at early childhood, these two were one. She sees the new hair growth, the fullness of face, and is circumspect, scared even. “What are you doing?” she asks me. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

No, nope, naw, I’m not entirely sure. But I’m mostly sure.

I look at myself in the mirror; I flatten my boobs. “You gotta move in the world like a man.” I say aloud with utter commitment while simultaneously wondering “am I really going through with this?”

My interior ten year old couldn’t be more delighted. How I longed to be one of the boys! The clothes they wore, the way they fit on their boy body, their swagger and confidence: those things should have been mine. What an ache, what a bitter taste; every moment I saw myself juxtaposed against their natural maleness felt like the time I ran barefoot through the field at kickball, feeling so free, so high – until I stepped on a wasp.

I plucked the hindquarters of that insect out of my foot and I kept moving, but my chagrin, my disappointment, my muted despair at being always put on the other side dogged my every tomboy step. I spent all my time in fantasy, on my bike or in the creek or living through the pages of a book. Always I was an explorer, a doctor, a centurion, a husband.

Now I’m an adult, an adult whatever, with a variety of experiences and desires under my belt. A friend of mine called from San Francisco; he’s been making out with a transguy. He asked me some questions I really couldn’t answer as a pre-op, possibly no-op, transsexual. I did share with him my own renewed craving to sleep with a man while I’m still a woman. Such as I am. One last drive around the old neighborhood or something. He laughed and pointed out that “you might find you like it like that!” “I might indeed.” I say soberly. Clearly, life is a crap shoot. You just never know what you may expose about yourself if you stick around long enough and pay attention. We all probably have something, some yearning, large or small, tugging at our pants leg, our skirt hem. Don’t even bother trying to kick that thing off; it’s just going to keep coming back.

Anysexchange, I’m exhausted and need to wrap this up. This is my first post for 2009. I am, indecorous spirochetes aside, amped for what’s next. This transitioning business is so terrifying, so wonderful, so fascinating – and I’ll never get to do it again. I’m glad I’m paying attention. I never did much to anything else. I always wanted whatever it was to be over with so I could be at the thing up ahead, whether it was adolescence or the next party. I guess I simply have no clue what’s up ahead, I can’t even imagine it. Certainly it’s been fraught with indelicate and delicious surprise thus far. So it could still go any kind of way, any way at all. We just don’t know. But I’d put my money on the tranny.