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I'm getting better in many different ways

My liver is almost back to normal as of a week ago. My Endo returned from his summer vacation just in time to agree to prescribe me hormone therapy contingent on a new blood test, to be conducted next Wednesday, on my 35th birthday.

I'm settling into full-time life as a woman quite comfortably. People clock me as trans everywhere I go, but I'm getting used to that, and I'm also comfortable that it will pass, once the hormones kick in and I get my voice under control.

In the mean time, I'm just loving being a woman. I feel like I've had a fishbowl over my head for years, and it has finally been removed, and the world feels startlingly close and responsive. It's like watching TV in colour. It's like being in the front row. I feel alive.

We've all got our body issues; mine happen to centre on some incongruous genitalia that emit testosterone. But I'm getting social acceptance as a woman, and my loved ones have managed to reach a level of acceptance that allows them to be supportive.

So I feel supported, and alive, and my various challenges, taken one at a time, feel surmountable. I guess the slide is over.

Knock wood.

My name change forms are in the mail!

I mailed my name change paperwork off today. For some ridiculous reason, they still take six to eight weeks to process these things, so the leaves will be turning by the time my name change is done.

In Ontario, I can get my gender changed on my driver's license with a letter from my doctor, so I'll do that when I give the license people my name change certificate, and I'll have all the right letters in the right places inside my wallet.

It's bizarre how much less friction there is in my life now. Everyone else has stopped trying to frustrate my transition, and, more importantly, I've almost completely stopped obstructing myself.

What! Why the fuck are you obstructing yourself, you might ask.

Well, the key reason I hid my transness was my desire to be normal--to fit in, to not be broken, or creepy, or weird. So, the mechanism I used to suppress myself was fashioned from transphobia. I convinced myself that being trans was completely unacceptable (for me only; I didn't externalize my transphobia, thankfully!).

When I broke through the suppression, the back of my mind was like a haunted house filled with gruesome characters I had built to scare myself into secrecy. When I think of being a woman, one of these thing looms over me and castigates me for my failure to control myself. For my failure to DO IT RIGHT, and remain a man. What am I, a fucking failure, the stupid creature created by my sub-conscious wants to know. But it really doesn't care about the answer anyway. It's just the fears of a little child grown into a gibbering voice in the back of my mind because those fears weren't dealt with the first time around.

Since I finally became convinced that my ex, my family, and my son were all going to accept my transition, my own remaining ambivalence has come to the fore. It's nothing that two hours of yoga every day for a couple of months won't take the edge off of, thankfully.

J. seems quite comfortable now, if anyone's out there reading and wondering. I'm letting him set his own pace on changing my pronouns, and I'm going to try to find a comfortable way for him to call me something other than "Daddy" when he's shouting at me across the playground.

Repeatedly, as I've pursued step after terrifying step on this journey, I've found myself thinking "this is the best day of my life." The first time was after I spent an afternoon cleaning my basement wearing a skirt. That would have been about 2.5 years ago.

I'm pretty sure I haven't thought that since June 19, when I got the shitty liver results. But today, when I put the envelope in the mail, up it popped. "Best day of my life" floating around inside my brain, a comment from myself. It kind of makes me think I'm on the right track!

Last night, as he was going to sleep, my son J. asked me “how do you know you want to become a girl?”

I replied “I know that I need to be girl. I’ve always wanted to be girl. Even at your age, I knew that I wanted to be girl. Some people—but not many—are born like that. Some girls are born needing to be boys, and some boys are born needing to be girls.” I paused, and then asked the obvious question: “How are you feeling about my becoming a girl, J.?”

“Not really great,” he said, rolling his head to face away from me as he spoke.

Sadness blossomed inside me. I had no idea how to respond. Don’t try to argue with is feelings, I told myself. I was lying on my side, next to him on the bed. “I’m sorry that you feel that way, honey. Do you think you can tell me why you feel that way?”

“It just feels different, that’s all,” sniffling.

“I think that might be because I’ve been sick.”

“No—it’s different. Like, when I look at Richard (his friend’s dad, asleep upstairs), or at Sean, A.’s dad, it makes me feel sad.”

“Because your Dad’s not going to be a man anymore. What about S.? He has two moms. Do you want to talk about this with him?” (S’ mom is lesbian.)

“It works different for him. He has a dad and two moms, and Jeannine is his step-mom.”

“And you don’t have a Dad anymore at all.” This is one of those moments when I’m in awe of him, for having identified the exact sort of loss he’s incurring in such stark detail.

“Right! And I’m also mad and you guys for taking so long to tell me!” By now, we’re both crying.

“J.! This is serious adult stuff! We told you as soon as we could. Your mother and I have done the best we can with this!” I could not believe I was saying this to my five year old son. This sort of frankness is reserved for older children.

“Why are you crying?” he asked, sobbing himself.

“Because I made you sad, bear!”

“Oh. Don’t worry Daddy!”

He feels guilty for making me cry. This is amazing. “J. this has been hard for everyone. For all of us. It’s ok for you to be sad about it. And’s it’s ok for me to be sad about it. But it’s going to work out. I promise you. You still want me, and your mom, as your parents, right?” He nodded, tears beading on his cheekbones.

“I promise it will work out,” I repeated, wishing I could be more sure I could deliver on that promise.

Later, after I’d stood in the bathroom sobbing for a while, I was able to put it into better perspective. In the couple of weeks since I came out to him, he has zeroed in precisely on the issues this presents, specifically for him:

- If my daddy becomes a girl, how will other people understand that?
- My father’s queerness queers my family. From now on, I’ll have no manly archetype of Daddy to guard my legitimacy.

It amazes me to see him pick out the loss of privilege so quickly. He lost the ability to refer to “Daddy” and expect others to understand the sort of person he was referring to. That’s a tangible loss that he has reason to feel sad about. On the whole, he wouldn’t have me not be me, or stop wanting to be my son, or loving me, but he’s incurring losses, and he knows it. Ouch.

Being five, he seemed to take the whole thing in stride. I woke up shattered; he was completely fine, and delighted to hang out with me. Cuddly, in fact. Within an hour or two he had forgotten that too, and was buzzing off with his friends and their Dad to go fishing.

After showering, I walked down to the dock and ended up taking a couple of casts. I wasn’t trying to be reassuring; the rod just ended up in my hand, and I found myself flinging the lure out into the air. After a couple of casts plopping into the water fifteen feet from me (a specialty of mine in the five or so times I’ve fished), I got the hang of it to some degree, and sent it out there pretty far a couple of times. J. exclaimed. I smiled to myself, and reeled the lure in and put it away before the my real fishing skills reasserted themselves. “We’re not going to catch any fish here at mid-day,” I pronounced.

Going full time, with my liver tied behind my back

Everything was coming together. The two-plus years since I started coming out have been cataclysmic. I’ve been one of those messy, crazy, crisis trannies in a lot of ways, though I worked as hard as I could to stay in control. It just unfolded as a crisis.

So, after more than two years—losing my marriage but holding onto my relationship with my ex-wife, hanging onto my parents and friends, losing faith in my own sanity and stability, and shredding my career and my psyche in a crazed battle between two pieces of myself—there I stood. Separated amicably, living “as a woman” except in front of my son and, less importantly, in front of my father (strange symmetry, huh?). My ex was still using my male name and male pronouns. My social transition was moving along nicely.

My beard was history. I had been on T-blockers for about four months. My looks had just passed some passability threshold, and I was moving through the world with comparative ease. I was set to begin voice therapy in July. I had an appointment to see my Endocrinologist on July 23, and I was on a waiting list to see him sooner. My physical transition had been frustratingly slow, but it was moving.

On June 17, his office called. Someone else had cancelled. On June 18, he agreed to prescribe female hormones for me once he had good blood work and a brief note from my psychotherapist.

I walked out of the hospital feeling my life changing profoundly. I suppose people with transfigured lives must stagger out of that door into the brightness all day long: new parents, newly bereft, freshly diagnosed, cured. All day, walking into the light, stepping around the clump of bikes locked to the bike rack, and walking stunned, heedless of traffic, across the street towards the single bench on the sidewalk, in front of the parking lot.

I sat down, and packed my fake cigarette with weed from my dugout. A woman dressed in the loose pastel cotton pants and shift of a hospital employee sat down next to me and, in an English accent, asked if my cigarette was fake.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Oh—is it for quitting?”

“No. It’s for smoking my marijuana. I use it medicinally.” I’ve felt more comfortable saying this since Dr. M. offered me my medical marijuana card. (He’s just trying to protect me from bad weed, I think). Now at least, I could be a legal medicinal marijuana user, providing the proper paperwork was completed and fees paid. I’m not sure I’ll ever bother getting the card, but I’m still going to refer to all weed smoked during business hours as “medicine.”

“Oh,” she replied. “I was hoping you had some new way of quitting smoking.”

“Sorry,” I said. Embarassed by my mid-day drug use, I pushed myself to my feet and walked over to unlock my bike from the signpost it was shackled to. I fitted my helmet over my hair clip, climbed astride my steed, and wobbled my way slowly down the pedestrian walkway leading to McCaul Street.

I wanted to stop and tell everyone I was passing. I could see myself clutching the lapels of a middle-aged Chinese man in a blazer: “Can you believe it’s actually finally going to happen?”

I decided to go visit S., since she would be more understanding than the random people in the pedestrian walkway. She hugged me, and I told her “I need to be careful not to get too crazy over this.”

On June 19, my endo was on the phone at 8 am. My liver was inflamed. Had I filled my prescription yet? I shouldn’t. In fact, I needed to stop taking my T-blockers now. I could have a new blood test next week. This sort of thing didn’t normally happen to him.

My psych (still June 19) was worried too. The liver is a non-redundant completely vital part of a person, so they get antsy when it complains. He withdrew my mood stabilizer (good riddance), and continued tapering my anti-depressants. “This is drug-induced. One to two months,” he said. I was still hoping that my next test would show a different picture.

The next blood test was worse. “No hormone treatment until your liver function is normal. Sorry” said the neat printing of my endo’s assistant on the post-it note stuck to my results, which were taped to the door in a sealed envelope.

Two days later, Pride began, and the day after that, I left for nine days in Italy.

Once D. and A.’s wedding was over, eight days after that fate-sealing second blood test, sitting in a villa in Tuscany, it caught up with me. I realized that my physical transition was regressing, that I was back on my natural testosterone, and that I had lost my traction. I freaked out silently for a few hours, did yoga, and then freaked out some more (unheard of, post-yoga freaking).

I paced erratically around the Villa, holding my head, worrying—being upset. Finally, I picked my way down to the poolside, where some of my oldest friends sat, and awkwardly admitted that I was breaking down, and that my life was, once again, falling apart. I held the sides of my chair and gnashed my teeth as I explained. Holy fuck can I be a drama queen.

When I returned from Italy, I tried to make the best of it. If I have to lose my physical transition for now, then I’ll have to really work on the social part, I told myself.

The depression continued to settle in. I found myself spending hours on the couch or bed. At my worst, I proved unable to shower for four hours. I spent the first two hours lying on the sofa clutching a pillow, listening to myself breathe, wondering when I would feel strong enough to go to the shower, then I stood, removed the muumuu I was wearing (don’t ask) and then fell onto the bed, and lay there naked, immobilized for two more hours.

I held on as best I could. I began work on my legal name change. I met my mother for lunch, and explained that I had to meet with my father “as a woman,” since once my son returned from the trip he was on, I was going to come out to him, and then there would be no “man” presentation (such as it was by this point) left. The little island of man-ness that I had let my father linger on was disappearing.

I had procrastinated transitioning myself fully around my Dad because he’s a bit of a loose cannon. I knew it would work out in the end, but also that he might fire off a couple of shots during the process. Now, I needed to find the strength to invite him, and meet with him, while depressed, with my physical transition’s regression weighing on me and my confidence.

We met for tapas, and it went quite well. As expected, he was awkward, but he did it! The worst part was the look on his face when he first talked to the waitress. He, corporate titan, was afraid of being judged for sitting across from his transsexual daughter. She probably clocked me as trans, but was oblivious to his shame and vulnerability.

That was what I came there for, truthfully. I wanted him to see it not be a big deal. Although it felt like the unimaginable to him, it wasn’t going to turn me into a social outcast. He needed to see that. It worked, I guess.

The liver results kept getting worse. My Mom started begging me to come to their cottage to convalesce for a couple of weeks.

I agreed, and I ended up coming out to J, my son, there.

A week later, I was still there, and my extended family was converging on the place. My Mom’s the oldest of eight. Family get-togethers regularly top 20 people. Every summer, they hold a tournament featuring horrendous golf, grilled sausages, and campfire sing-alongs. This is no joke. I actually have this family.

Last weekend, we had 28 for dinner on Friday, and 30 on Saturday. The 25 or so additional people who came this year were around for most of the weekend, and holy shit were they working hard to assimilate my transition! All but the lesbian couple (who have already got it down) were stumbling over my name change, and my pronouns, and correcting themselves, and correcting each other, and taking me aside to express their support. It was really touching. Even the teenagers were great with it. Everyone just took the whole thing in stride. It was awesome to behold.

I’m beholding the awesomeness in hindsight, because my mind was awash in white noise and exhaustion the entire time. 30 people I love, including my parents, one of my brothers, my ex-wife, and my son, all partying around me for days. They might as well have clapped a suction cup on my head and sucked the energy out of my brain like villains in a Dr. Who episode. That might have been less exhausting.

On Tuesday—it was a long weekend here—they were all gone except my parents, and I woke after nine hours of sleep, hopelessly depressed. There were massive bags under my eyes. I ate breakfast and showered in silence, rage bubbling just beneath my surface, for no reason.

I crawled back into bed around noon, and slept for four hours. Since then, my body and brain have slowly been returning to equilibrium.

Yesterday, the enormity of the milestones I’ve been stumbling across while caught in this bout of depression began to dawn on me. I’ve come out to my Dad. I’ve come out to my son. I’ve transitioned socially so completely that my ex, my son, my parents, and my extended family, are calling me by my new name, and are expecting nothing other than me-as-a-woman, for the rest of my life.

Rather than gracefully sail into womanhood, I’ve limped my tortured ass across the line, but I’m fucking there!

There is NO ONE who matters to me in this world who hasn’t accepted my transition. I don’t think I’ll ever be expected to appear as a man again. I suppose that will take years to sink in completely, but it’s blowing my mind right about now. Holy shit!

Symptoms of testosterone's detestable resurgence

Let’s talk about testosterone’s loathsome presence (to me!) in my bloodstream again (thanks to my inflamed liver), and all the changes in my body that I can feel most keenly in reverse.

My body hair is back. Once again, when in the shower holding the razor, I need to remember whether it’s lower-back-to-feet day or tummy-to-hands day.

The face gets a shave daily. Before I had laser a couple of weeks ago, I was shaving the my upper lip twice each day, and each shave was close enough to remove a layer of skin, so that afterwards I could feel no hint of stubble with my finger-tip. The greyness of the beard hair beneath the skin was still visible, but that can’t be helped with a razor. Said greyness and any cuts or redness, I covered with concealer. I did try tweezing a bit—I have far fewer hairs than I started with—but it was too painful.

I looked in the mirror today, and my face had a slab-like character that I recall, but hadn’t noticed in a while. It’s not unattractive—just masculine. Today, of course, it sent me into a dysphoric tailspin.

My skin is greasier, and I have a smattering of zits on my forehead. I had thought the zits on my cheekbones were ingrown hairs from laser, but now I’m wondering if they’re part of this horrid regressive male puberty that I’m trapped into.

My testicles have become engorged eggs again, and the skin of my scrotum is shiny and thin—no longer shriveled and defeated looking.

The other day, I grappled with a morning erection. I could hear myself in my memory, proudly claiming, months ago, that I had had my last spontaneous erection. Should I be touching wood or something here? I asked myself then.

Today, it seemed like the pretty curves that I where I build a gradient of shade to soften my eye lids were slouching. I shaded them back into curviness.

Holy fuck and I sick of the arts of disguise! When will I be able to roll out of bed and simply be me, and a woman, and not have to employ any subterfuge to shore up my idenitity? I don’t mind shoring up my looks with subterfuge, but it would be a fuck of a lot more comfortable if my body weren’t stubbornly sticking in the wrong gender. Who wants to battle depression with eye shadow? I want stronger measures!

I'm switching from being a boy to being a girl

On Saturday, I finally told my son J. about my transition.

He's five. I had just supervised his life-jacketed form flying off the dock at my family's summer place—lucky us, I know—and now he was warming up in the sun on top of the boathouse. I had refused to swim since the thought of me in a bathing suit for either gender makes me want to puke.

Anxiety mounting inside me, I watched him. He prattled on about bugs and jumping off the dock and kids at school and whatever else, as usual; just happy to be with me after so many weeks of sporadic togetherness.

After a couple of fruitless lip-puckerings, I spat it out: "J. I have something I need to talk to you about."

He stopped chattering and looked at me expectantly.

"Umm..I'm switching from being a boy to being a girl."

"You're switching from being a boy to a girl!" He was smiling, almost laughing out loud, at the outlandishness of the news. Even at five, one's Dad coming out as transsexual is cause for raised eyebrows. “How do you do that!?”

I laughed. “Doctors will help me. I’ve already changed a lot. I’ve lost weight. I’ve grown my hair. I will change my voice.”

“How do you change your voice?”

“It takes time and practice.”

“You’re really switching from being a boy to being a girl?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Shit. It’s not like I didn’t expect him to ask, but it was still hard to know how to explain how unusual this is, but not to make it sound negative. “I had a hard time being happy as a boy. Actually, it was impossible for me to be happy being a boy. That’s very unusual; most people are happy being the sex they’re born as. So, I’ve been experimenting with being a girl—trying it out—and I think I’ll be happier as a girl. Well, actually, I know I’m happier as a girl.”

Highly amused, he smiled widely. “You’ve been experimenting? You’ve been trying it out?”

“Yes. Do you think I’m different now?”

“Ahh….yes!” he said, incredulous at my stupidity like only a five year old can be.

“Do you care?”

“No!” and he smiled again.

“Because I’ll still be your Daddy, and I’ll always be your Daddy.”

“How can you still be my Daddy if you’re going to be a girl?”

Smarty pants. “Well, I’ll always be your parent. And you can call me whatever you want to. You can still call me ‘Daddy’ if you want.”

I’m fervently hoping that he won’t want to call me Daddy forever, but I would like him to decide how and when (and if, I guess) he wants to change it.

“J., I’m going to be me-as-a-girl—not anyone else. I will look different, but this won’t change the way things are between us.”

“Are you going to get the vagina?”

I nearly choked on my juice box. “Why do you ask that?”

He grinned. Another stupid adult question. “Because girls have vaginas!”

I rolled my eyes. “Maybe,” I responded, “but we don’t need to talk about that now.” And being the lovely child that he is, he honoured that small request and backed down.

We went back to chattering about our surroundings and whatever else came to mind.

He has asked about the vagina a couple of times since, though. He has also wanted to know when I would be fully a girl, how the doctors were going to help me, whether I would still be good at building things (!), how to spell Dee (my new name), and probably several other things I’m forgetting.

We’ve spent a few hours with me in woman mode, which amounts to me wearing boobs and a skirt, but otherwise looking the same. He felt that I looked different (the boobs make ALL the difference, I suspect), but he was so natural, it was seamless.

Actually, it was like folding myself into the embrace of a cozy blanket on a clear winter’s night. He has been so cute about it. It’s so overjoying for me to get to be myself around him in an unfettered way. To finally not have to hide from him. To get a chance to feel my chest-swelling love for him with less of the taint of my maleness fouling my mood

A., his mom, has been wonderful too. She is awe-inspiring. Even though I’m resigned to losing her, she still breaks my heart.

Falling down the Spanish Steps

The liver thing is really messing my life up. One day, I'm counting down less than a week's worth of days until I go on Estrogen. The next, I'm going off all my medications, and my transition is regressing. What a blow!

The liver worsened, rather than instantly improving as I'd hoped it would. I don't have the results of my most recent tests, but according to the tests I took before before I went to Italy, my liver is one unhappy organ.

I wasn't prepared to be sucked into this cruel vortex. I have lost control of my life (after just regaining SOME control), and that's depressing. My hormonal transition is on hold indefinitely, and that's hugely depressing. On top of that, I have to go off all my mood meds. Overall, I'm happy to be getting off them, but the timing couldn't be worse. I seemed to have left most of the depression behind, and now I've suddenly plunged back into it, over my head. Yet, here I am going off anti-depressants that I've
been on for more than three years.

When I was in Rome, I visited the Spanish Steps. As you might expect, the steps cover several stories in elevation, and are made of marble. My life has been knocked off its feet at the top of this staircase, and I'm tumbling bumpily down the stairs. I have no idea when I'll reach a landing, whether I'll be able to stop myself when I do, and how bruised I'll be from the fall.

And when I do come to rest, I'm going to have to climb back up.

Pepe Le Pieu Sexully Assaults Transsexual!

One of my better outings last week was a trip to the Prada outlet in Montevarchi (which had more than Prada, but nothing not nice), near where we were staying for the wedding.

The last time I was at this particular store--three years ago or so--I was there as a straight man, on my honeymoon with my straight wife. That time, I bought one man thing (a vest), but spent most of my time picking out things for A. to try on. This time, I bought a few things for myself! And I also bought a few things for A, because she couldn't be there, and that's the sort of exes we are.

I spent last Saturday night (July 5/08) in Rome. C. and I shared a room, and M., H., and their baby, N., stayed in another. We stayed at the Hotel Rex., which was pretty nice, and nicely priced.

I arrived in Rome separately, but not long behind the rest of the group. When I arrived, I needed to practice yoga. So I sent them off ahead, and spent some time unwinding my body.

I then got dressed in a leisurely fashion. I decided to try out some of my new stuff, which ended up seeing me a little dressed up for a touristy wander around Rome, which was fine, because it's Italy, after all. I grew to regret my shoe choice, but the rest of the outfit was comfortable, and it was nice to look stylish while peering into boutiques on Via Nazionale.

As per usual, I was smoking the occasional hit of weed from my pipe while on my wander. Unaccompanied women in their 30s don't often get seen smoking weed on the street at dinner-time. At home, I employ a fake cigarette, and that's very unobtrusive. In Italy, I had a small pipe. So, I was a bit more obvious, cupping my hands around the pipe bowl and the lighter, leaning my head to one side to tip the bowl towards the wind-driven flame, then never rising from this posture with a lit cigarette in my mouth. If you watched, you knew I was smoking a pipe.

At one point, near the Colliseum, I took a break sitting on a large marble block, barely in the shade of some massive ancient building or other. I packed my pipe.

I was fairly careful to time my pulls to moments when the sidewalk near me was relatively uncrowded, but it was windy, and sometimes it would take so long to get a light that someone would have gotten close in the interim.

I think I breached one poor woman's world-view. There I sat, a stylishly dressed, relatively young woman, taking a break in the shade. She must have been thinking: But why was it taking so long to light her cigarette? Wait a second! There's no cigarette there! Wait! Is that even a woman?! But it can't be a man! OH! What in the world!?

Her expression grew steadily more disconcerted as she drew nearer. When she was passing by me, I was done smoking, and I tried that quick "I mean no harm" flash of a smile that women aim at each other, but she was having none of it. She just stared back, her head turning so that her eyes stayed pointed at me as her body carried the rest of itself past.

Once she was gone, the little smile broke into a big grin, mostly because she was just looking so hopelessly disturbed by my very existence. I'm getting more used to upsetting people. The only real answer is to laugh.

Shortly afterwards, I connected with the rest of the group by phone text message, and I set off to find them in the rather large park surrounding the Domum Aureus ruin site, opposite the Coliseum. Unfortunately, I cut uphill too early, and was separated from them by some band of ruins or other.

The part of the park that I found myself in wasn't all that beautiful. The grass was browning, and there were few pedestrians. C. was reporting their location to me by text, and I continued towards them.

When I arrived at their ostensible location, there were no children present, and it wasn't really the right place for a 1-year-old. There were about five people in sight, and all looked dubious in one way or another. One was sprawled across a bench on his back. A slick of liquid had leaked from a can that lay below his out-flung arm.

C and I determined that they were below me somewhere, further down the hill, and I backtracked to get around the ruins that separated us. I had passed what looked like promising pathway not far behind.

I was walking across the grass, cursed (but wicked) shoes in hand, towards the path in question when someone called out. I ignored the call (tranny instincts--head down). He called again. I glanced up, and sure enough, it was a man on the sidewalk, a short distance away, and he was shouting at me.

I waved him off, and continued walking. He called again, and when I turned, he pantomimed his admiration for my beauty and all that. I didn't really know what to do. He wasn't an unattractive man. He was young, and well dressed, as Italian men tend to be. I don't even like men, but I was flattered, and flustered. So I blushed, and turned away, and continued walking.

Shit! I thought immediately. That blushing head-turn, inadvertent though it was, felt risky. And it was. I kept my head averted for a few steps, and then glanced left, and he was halfway across the lawn to the path I was on, beseeching me, inviting me, into his arms.

As though anyone but gay men just get together in parks like this! I sternly waved him away. But he persisted. He was like Pepe Le Pieu from the Bugs Bunny show, chasing that poor inarticulate cat like a moronic automaton while she makes it very clear, non-verbally, that she wants nothing to do with him.

The man kept coming towards me. I quickened my pace, heading for the steps leading down the hill. After a few more steps, he reached my side, and began walking next to me, breathing on the side of my head, with his hands held wide as though ready to grab me, but also not hiding anything. One was behind me, and one in front of me. He was walking beside me, half-turned towards me, crooning in Italian.

I had no idea whether he knew I was trans, but I suspected he didn't. He saw me from a distance to start, and cognitive dissonance would help him preserve his initial impression. I decided that giving him the deep booming man-voice might escalate this from chasing me through the park to beating the shit out of me.

So I kept making myself clear in my modulated, androgynous voice. I said some very unambiguous things, like "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" to his face, which was well within my personal space.

He kept on beseeching me, crooning at me like I was some sort of pigeon that he was feeding bread, and hoping to stroke.

A moment later I felt his hand slither across the back of my neck. I grabbed his left wrist and flung his arm away, told him to go away again, and began half-running (in a determinedly feminine way so as to avoid being outed and shit-kicked) down the steps shouting "help!" and "M!" and "C!" in the hopes that my friends were within earshot.

They weren't. My assaulter kept pace with me easily, still trying to talk pigeon to me. He groped my neck again.

I was forced to stop to put on my shoes, and he moved very close, and darted his left hand across my chest and slid his fingers across the underside of my breasts (which, of course, are fake, but that would be hard to detect through a bra from that angle).

I screamed "FUCK OFF!" into his face, and stormed off again. A few steps later, I broke onto the main path, heels clacking, jogging towards a couple having their wedding photos taken. He remained behind, and I never looked back.

It took another 10 minutes or so to find my friends, and another 20 to calm down enough to move again. Holy shit! Talk about taking the bad parts of womanhood along with the good!

Celebrating real life and love in all its fragility in Tuscany

I've been in Italy all week, staying at a really fabulous villa atop a Tuscan hillside. We're here for the wedding of my friends D. and A.

Italy is great, just like it was the last time I was here. The food is nice. The buildings artfully terraced across the hilly landscape are breathtaking. Everything has this amazing patina. Their built environment is so much more beautiful than ours. It lifts the spirit.

We wandered around and had conversations about Jane Jacobs, and the social value of livable civic space. We drove around crazily--like the Italians do, which is the only way to do it if you want to avoid being run over--on winding hillside roads laughing, aghast at the drivers whipping by us on short straight-aways with blind corners just ahead. Italian drivers love to occupy two lanes at once. That's bothersome if you have two lanes or more in each direction, but harrowing when the lane-straddler is in the oncoming lane. So far, they've all (perhaps five of them!) swerved back into their own lane in time

The wedding was completely beautiful. We sat on a grassy lawn on a terrace, looking over the shoulders of the bride and groom, far across the Arno river valley, during an early evening graced by perfect weather. It was beautiful. They both looked beautiful, and everything was seemed perfect. Then, they surprised me, and made me proud.

The two of them, a Canadian-Italian man and an Irish-Cantonese woman, elected to include the part of the Jewish ceremony where the newlyweds share a glass of wine, and the groom stomps on the empty glass, and we all shout "Mazel Tov!" It symbolizes the troubles that undoubtedly lay ahead for this newly married couple.

I loved this part, sitting, as I was, three hours drive from the equally beautiful and exceedingly familiar place where my ex and I spent our honeymoon about three years ago. All week, there has been a strong overtone of bittersweetness for me. Lots of the things I see here remind me of what I've lost, and being at a wedding where most of the other friends are straight coupes, I'm constantly reminded of my singleness--my aloneness. I can see them depending on each other, and I feel beset, and alone. Loved, but alone. So I felt really happy being part of a ceremony that spoke to my experience too--that marriage is fraught and challenging, and life is crazy, and it's great to tangle with it as a couple, but let's celebrate real life, and real love, and human striving and suffering and stories instead of the storybook perfection too many weddings aim for.

Swimming in dysphoria without a bathing suit

So, I've been feeling pretty good for a crazy trannie who just abruptly went off her mood stabilizers and androgen blockers, and further-tapered her anti-depressant dose (in response to the liver situation, discussed in the last post).

Today, not so much. I was getting along fine until I spoke with my mother, and she began dispensing relationship advice--I guess this is separation advice at this point--while I was trying to get out the door to get to my first voice therapy session.

The call shouldn't have been a big deal, and the voice therapy session was good. Yet, three hours later, I was still walking around glowering, thinking about putting my own eye out. Mood alert! I can't be trusted!

But I didn't change course. I couldn't see the iceberg hiding in Change, the lingerie store I was bound for, where I could purportedly buy better bras and bathing suits. I had some problems to solve before next week's trip to Italy

Everything looked fairly innocuous when I arrived at Change. Many of the bras were too lacy for me (i.e. there was lace involved), but there were some slightly sleeker ones too. As expected, most of the bathing suits looked like they would be too small to cover my breast forms entirely.

Then, suddenly, I was forced to submit to the fitting. It should have been fine. It really should have. But it was completely awful instead, sadly.

At Change, they have re-calibrated the bra sizing system (hence the purportedly better bra mentioned above). They've added bonus cup sizes to improve granularity, and they measure each and every new customer. Whereas I was wearing a 36B, I now find myself wearing a 32D (their size; a normal 32D will not fit me), and it's by far the most comfortable bra I've ever worn.

However, in order to engineer this perfect fit, the sales person needs to see you IN the bra. I barely let myself see me in a bra! My boobs are fake, and since they're expensive, and I hate their fakeness anyway, they're patched with packing tape where they've ripped in a couple of places. They could not be uglier, or more compromising.

She brings me this gauzy purple bra, and announces that she would like me to put it on, and then she would like to see me in it. I just stood there for a moment, staring, flummoxed.

"I'm not sure I can do this," I said.

"Umm...why?"

"I'm not comfortable with you looking at me in that."

She traded it for something less lacy. I put it on, and it seemed to fit quite well, but a large band of silicone breast could be clearly seen above the top of the bra.

She wanted me to show it to her. I demurred. She explained that all she needed to do was to tug on the band. I let her into the fitting room, covering the tops of my boobs with my hands, feeling utterly ashamed of the falseness of my womanhood, and of being seen with my disguise exposed.

She tugged at the band around my chest, and tightened it, opining that the band could be tighter. She brought another, but the cups hung away from my chest, leaving gaps at the tops. I requested something less airy, and the the third bra was the one.

Then I began trying on bathing suits. I tried on five or six, and eventually arrived at one that was ever-so-slightly too small to cover my boobs sufficiently. A year ago, I likely would have convinced myself to buy it, but I have learned that close to big enough = not big enough, when it comes to women's garments.

The whole time, she's talking to me, and handing me things, and being totally nice, but all I can do is hear my male voice (or my falsetto, whatever it is I've got going on these days), and see my tape-encrusted fake boobs jutting out of whatever cute bathing suit she's brought me, and I'm slowly descending into this pit of despair.

Thankfully, I still managed to be nice to the people at the store. But I've spent most of the rest of the day in a state of fairly pronounced dysphoria--really harsh, fist-clenching negativity. This is a part of the "real" drug-free me that I don't miss.

What do you mean I have an asymptomatic liver ailment?

Today didn't start off in the best way. I awoke to my phone ringing. That's not all that surprising, or bad in itself. Based on the volume, I concluded that it wasn't in the bedroom, so I let it ring, certain I'd never make it anyway.

Then it started up again a moment or two later. I always answer the second call. Two consecutive calls means "pick up the fucking phone if you're there you phone-phobic bitch!"

When I picked up the phone, it was Dr. B., my endocrinologist. He told me he already had my blood results from yesterday at 3pm, and that my liver enzymes were elevated. He sounded a touch upset as he explained that the drug he has me on wasn't known to have that side-effect, and wasn't known for having rare side effects. I gather, based on this, that some drugs must produce completely outlandish side-effects in a very small number of cases. In his view, it was possible that I was the only person ever known to have contracted drug-effect-hepatitis from my T-blocker, Androcur.

He told me to stop taking the Androcur, and to come in for new blood work in a week. This entire conversation was happening pre-coffee. I think I had managed to shrug on a bathrobe, but I might have been naked.

I nearly began crying when he said I had to go off the Androcur. The day before, he had agreed to prescribe estrogen once he had good blood work and a letter from Dr. M. (no problem there), and I was practically flying! I am very keen to take estrogen.

Why? Because I am SO tired of gender dysphoria. Most recently, it really has felt dysphoric, too. The trans makes me want to tear my own eyeballs out, or scalp myself. I don't actually injure myself; it's more about visualizing self-harm, but that doesn't make it pleasant. I have no idea how much better hormonal transition will make me feel, but I'm certain it'll help. And there I found myself, still not having brewed a coffee, being asked to let the testosterone back into my system!

I dazedly wondered whether "no" was an option, but decided not to argue with the eminent professor emeritus of endocrinology, who was at his desk phoning patients with their fucked up blood results before I had even managed to brew a coffee.

I agreed to stop taking my meds for one week, and come in for a fresh blood test next Wednesday. That's a really quick turnaround for the eminent super teaching doctor. I have this image of him as some super human being who trains people to perform miracles while knowing more than anyone about hormones and the like. He's a very nice man. He just happened to call with bad news before coffee.

Feeling torpedoed, I brewed coffee and stared at my computer screen while drinking it and taking deep pulls from my marijuana vaporizer. I moped around and wrote inconsequential emails for a couple of hours, and then began my junket of therapy sessions (well, if two can be called a junket).

My first session, with Dr. M., was fairly helpful. He consulted his thick manual of drugs for treating mood disorders--it looks like the phone book for a small city--and it turns out that Seroquel, my "mood stabilizer" (if you look it up, it's called a second generation atypical anti-psychotic, I believe, but we call it a mood stabilizer because I'm not psychotic, and I'm taking it at dosages well below those that the bona-fide psychos get), does cause hepatitis and "fatty liver" (something I pray I don't have) in some people.

I recall starting Seroquel almost exactly when I first saw Dr B (and started Androcur), so I'm laying my money on the Seroquel being the culprit. Sadly, I'll have to wait a week before we'll know. I'm anxious that Dr B, my endo, will feel the need to be conservative in the wake of this. I feel the need to move forward with my hormonal transition.

Why can't I just get a clay ashtray and a hug?

There is way too much overhead in every situation in my life these days. Father's Day is a prime example.

I assume that most fathers with young children are eagerly awaiting this Sunday's consumerist celebration of dad-hood, but I'm having difficulty looking forward to it at all.

I'm irritated that Father's Day has to be complex in the first place. All I really want is to be able to get a hug or two and maybe a clay ashtray from my son.

But how am I supposed to feel comfortable on Father's Day? My son has already spilled the beans that he has made me a tie. A manly concept. Hopefully the result is cute enough to be worn with pride, and a skirt.

My son coming home with a tie is one of countless gender-binary-reinforcing messages that I'll be bombarded with this weekend. I've already spent a week being inundated by ads for RV-sized gas grills and navy blue shirts cut for a 40" waist. Somehow, Father's Day is a celebration of manhood, not parentage. Dads are assumed to want--on this, our special day--to indulge in ball-scratching and the grilling of huge steaks without fear of ridicule. For one day a year, the normally embarrassing middle aged man is celebrated for being himself.

I completely support the idea. I just don't want to be tarred with that brush. I'm not that person. I am a very different kind of father.

Which, in some senses, means I'm a failure in the traditional father role. I can't show my son how to throw a ball because I've never been able to do it properly myself. I will not be initiating him in the ways of manhood because I am stripping away my manhood as fast as I can, and I'll be long finished by the time he's a man. Whatever special gifts a father offers to his son by virtue of his gender, I can't offer.

Rationally speaking, I know that I offer more than enough, and much more than many fathers, but I do feel guilty about stopping being that boy's father. I'll always be his parent, but I won't identify as a dad. The dad archetype is explicitly male.

I guess there are lots of queer parents out there in similar situations. Eventually, I'm sure we'll come up with some alternative to Father's Day that works, but this year, I have to pretend I'm happy as a dad. That feels like more lying to my son about who I am, and I hate doing that.

On top of my own relationship with my identity as a father, I have my relationship with my own father to fret over. My dad is struggling to accept my transness. He loves me unconditionally, but he's abrupt and emotionally handicapped at his best moments. My coming out launched him into a whole new galaxy of awkwardness. When the whole family's together I am acutely conscious of the complexity that my changing has injected into all of our lives.

If I want to get together with my whole family, I have to climb partway back into the fetid coffin of my manhood. I have let my Dad avoid seeing me "as a woman" thus far. He has seen me wearing androgynous clothes intended for women, and makeup, but never with the breast forms or a skirt. That's the same way I present around my son (bad for me, best for him), but my Dad hasn't even seen the most current, feminine, version of that look. I doubt he'll take it smoothly, so that means I'll have to weather his awkwardness, and that's guaranteed to get my guilt going.

Who wouldn't be looking forward to Father's Day?

A day without makeup? What am I--sane?

I can't remember the last time I went an entire day without applying any makeup.

Ok. The truth is that I smushed a little pink lip balm onto my lips a couple of times, but that was it. Like lip balm counts.

This is important because I use makeup for feminization. Sure, it's also about making myself look prettier, but the process of doing that accomplishes the far more important goal of feminizing my appearance, and that makes me feel better in some strange and basic way. It makes me feel more secure in who I am. Writing that sentence makes me cringe at my insecurity. I don't like feeling dependent on makeup for my sanity.

Anyway, today I just never got around to it. I looked at myself in the mirror several times, and I saw woman-in-waiting, not man. I managed to stay in the positive column on the gender scale all day, fueled only by internal certainty, and the acceptance and support of the family and friends around me.

I feel like I should get a ribbon. This is a win! Sure, some people aspire to more, but a makeup-free Sunday at the cottage is downright sane, and sane is highly prized by me.

I'm dying to put on my makeup tomorrow. :D

George Smitherman gets my vote

Tipped off by a friend, I went to see George Smitherman speak at the University of Toronto this morning. He was the opening speaker at Healthy Queer Communities, a one day free conference on Queer Studies in Education, put on by OISE (the education faculty).

I must be a little heated up about this SRS + CAMH situation. I've been fighting depression and low productivity for years, and suddenly, within the space of three weeks, I've written a lengthy letter to the Health Minister, and gone guns-blazing to the CAMH "support" group. And now I found myself pedaling sweatily over to Bloor and St. George at 9 am (!) to put the Health Minister on the spot, in person.

He was well prepared. He touched on several topics. When he began addressing trans rights and access to SRS, he tried to proactively address the community's concerns by talking about Sherbourne, and about how many people felt that it was the leader in trans care, and how he envisioned it as a "Centre of Excellence" for trans care (it already is, so far as I can tell), and felt that eventually, it would have a place in the gatekeeping scheme for trans care like SRS.

It's not hard to tell why he's a successful politician. That is one charismatic, slick man. Likable, and slick. He'll be around for a while. I'm delighted to have him on my side (the queer side).

I want to take a moment to paint a picture of how queer-positive Ontario is right now. It is SO exciting! This morning, the (gay) Minister of Health for my province, with a population of more than 10 million people, spent time talking about trans health care, and about the province launching research programs to better understand the needs of queer communities. He said "there seem to be more people identifying as trans today, so far as I can tell." He has an informed personal opinion on the prevalence of transness. He talked about how proud he was personally of getting SRS funded.

I was so pleased that I almost let him off the hook.

The first question was from another trans woman. I know her first name was Susan, and her credentials included sitting on the board of the Rainbow Health Network. She was fairly effusive too. I think she cited some ongoing concerns, but she spent more time itemizing all the queer-positive things he had accomplished.

He smiled and joked that since the province has queer Health and Education ministers, 69 cents of every tax dollar flows through queer hands. The queer community has the ear of the province, he said. Ontario seems to have been reading its Florida. Being queer-positive is sound strategy, politically.

Finally, I stood up and thanked him for funding SRS, explained that I had written to him, and that I had had a bad experience at CAMH, and was concerned about the idea of giving them more power over trans people. I asked him for a timeline for the initial implementation of the funding, and for the promised reform of the gatekeeping function (and the way trans care is handled in the Province overall).

"The initial implementation is already complete" he announced, to scattered applause. It was exciting to hear. It IS a reality.

He could offer no timeline for the research and reform of trans care in Ontario. He promised that they would happen, but the details clearly haven't been worked out. I will write him to remind him that if they aren't worked out before his tenure ends, they may never be worked out.

He frankly admitted that he needed to include CAMH in any resuscitation of SRS funding, because that was the way it had been before it was delisted. He promised to renew the Gender Identity clinic at CAMH.

I jumped back up to the mic to chip in:

"I think renewing CAMH is criticial! I was at the trans support group there last week to see what their standards would be. Maxine Peterson, the only full-time resource--this is not a big organization--explained to me that she had been there 26 years, and that their policies were not going to change. So they're quite proud of their 26 years of rigidity over there."

The woman in front of me was laughing. He smiled, and said "well I'm a very persuasive person," and then something to the effect that he would find a way to make this work.

I was nodding the whole time. He seems to already have the bare bones of a strategy in place: re-list SRS as it was, renew CAMH, research changing trans and broader queer community health needs, and implement some sort of strategy based on that research.

It sounds like exactly what we need. I wonder if we'll get it. I don't live in Smitherman's riding, but I will be voting Liberal in the next election. My home is adapting to make room for my people :).

CAMH Support Group, Part 2

As I was seating myself, I commented to Maxine, CAMH's facilitator (a trans woman herself), that I was surprised to find the group so small given the news.

"I had expected it to be a full house, given last week's announcement."

"So did I," she said, and then paused for a second, before continuing "but they still hate us."

"Yeah. I'm part of that group, actually" I admitted as I settled into my seat.

Turning towards Maxine, Helen, the other woman in the group, asked "why does everyone hate CAMH?"

Maxine turned towards me, lifting her face and raising her eyebrows to pass the question my way.

I was worked up. Just being in that place again was making me crazy. Receiving care from a sexology clinic at a mental health hospital is implicitly pathologizing. The doctors at CAMH believe that people like me are slavishly pursuing a self-destructive course because we love (in a fetish-like way) the notion of ourselves as women. This is not the prevailing view among transgender care professionals.

I had smoked weed and taken a Clonazepam (anti-anxiety med) before going over, because I could tell I was ready to bite someone's head off. The drugs didn't take much edge off, but I think they helped me avoid flying off the handle. I was aiming for a forthright sharing of conflicting opinions, not a counter-productive conflict. And when I'm upset, I can be possessed, and let fly too angrily and meanly, damaging my cause.

"I'm upset because you encouraged me to fight myself. You offered to counsel my parents, and then encouraged them to frustrate me instead of support me!"

"I did not! I have never encouraged a family member to frustrate anyone."

"Well, after my Mother came here, she developed a strategy that we later called 'the doctrine of frustration.'"

"I have no idea what that means!" she said, looking hurt, rather than hostile.

"That's fine. She comes up with things on her own. I can accept that," I demurred. I wasn't sure who had coined 'the doctrine of frustration' (DOF), and I was prepared to believe that it wasn't Maxine. My mother had never told me that Maxine had outright told her to frustrate me. What she had told me, repeatedly, was that Maxine "seemed to be suggesting that they shouldn't offer me any help."

A year later, by the time she and my father were meeting with Dr. McDermid, my trans-positive MD, this had matured into something McD referred to as the DOF. He told me that Maxine Peterson seemed to have advised my mother to adopt this strategy.

When you're the only advisor that people have on an issue, there's little difference between explicitly encouraging someone to oppose a loved one and implying that frustration would be the best course of action. But I backed down anyway.

"Ok fine. There's a better reason that people hate you. And I don't dislike you, Maxine--I dislike your organization. I'm not sure how I can criticize the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic without criticizing you, since you are the clinic, but I respect you--just not your modality. You're pathologizing. You are massively out of step with the rest of the transgender care world. I worked SO HARD to finally accept that I had gender issues, and to start to deal with them. And then I came here, and you made me feel worse. From your vantage point, I'm sick. You diagnosed me with Gender Identity Disorder! My experience here made me feel so much worse about myself, it set me back months!

"If there weren't a disorder, there wouldn't be care," she said. She probably says those words in exactly that way several times per day. She's right, too.

"I realize it has to be listed somewhere in the manuals that doctors have, and until it's listed somewhere else--as an endocrine disorder, perhaps--it should remain in the DSM" (the diagnostic manual for psychiatrists). "But the fact that it's listed in the DSM has no implications for care. There's no treatment! So providing care from the vantage point of a sexology clinic isn't helpful. It's not supportive."

So far as I'm concerned, the sexologists should be free to do their research. If they, as people who strive to explain everything they can in terms of sex, need to believe that I'm motivated by sex, I can live with that. But there is no synergy between a group of somewhat renegade sexologists and the delivery of care for trans people. A separate organization that can be honestly trans-positive is the best thing for trans people.

"And we're not out-of-step. Several provinces (she listed four or five) use the same standards that we do."

"Which are?"

"Two years in full gender role."

I gathered, after more discussion, that legal name change and proof of income, using the new name, were critical components of my full-time womanhood. So, though I live as a woman full time, I can't punch my card to begin my interminable two year wait until I change my name.

Adopting regressive standards just because they happen to be in place in other jurisdictions is foolish. We should be asking what standards are appropriate.

I wonder if I could keep my given name, and just change my M to an F, or perhaps a question mark, since I think that the gender binary is a bullshit construct. Insisting on legal name change and proof of income is hugely demeaning, especially to anyone who feels most comfortable between the genders. It would be appropriate to insist on a sustained, rational understanding of what it is that they want to do, and to determine that they're not suffering from Dissociative Disorder (trying to build themselves a new persona so they can dissociate from some trauma in their past). Anything beyond that is discriminatory. What if I'm independently wealthy, or an incredibly successful leech, or a sex worker who can't declare legal income? What if I want to live my life as a woman, under the name "John Thomas?" What business do they have telling me I can't?

I don't want to live between genders. I want to live as a woman. I don't believe in the gender binary, but our entire world lives by that model. My goal is to bend my gender to my will, so I can become more comfortable as myself inside our gender-binary-loving society. But I know people who would like to live between genders, but desire surgeries.

For example, I know an FTM person who isn't comfortable specifying hir gender. When ze was coming to terms with hir transness, ze decided that ze didn't want to take hormones. So, ze binds hir breasts, and dresses as a man. Ze is as trans as I am, and would very much to have hir chest surgically reconstructed without breasts, but can't qualify because the blatantly hetero-normative standards applied by places like CAMH don't provide for hir existence. Ze is well into hir 30s, in a stable, long term relationship with a female partner, and lives life dressed as a man, with breasts bound tightly against hir chest, so as to be undetectable. In what way would the removal of those breasts, which would make ze much more comfortable in hir body, risk making hir life more difficult? Oh no! The invisible breasts are gone! Think of the ramifications!

"How often do you review your standards? What's the process? Who takes part in the review?" I asked.

"It's usually a group thing," she replied, "but Dr. Dickie has the final say, obviously."

"So do you expect to be changing those standards anytime soon?"

"I highly doubt it. I've been here 26 years, and I think that you and the community can take that to the bank. We will not be changing our standards."

I refrained from asking how any conscientious transgender care provider could have made it through the last 26 years without modernizing their standards. Were I her, I would have been embarrassed to admit to that sort of rigidity, but it seemed a matter of pride to her. Her chest puffed up with implacability--like she was certain that she had always been right, was still right, and was going to prove it by refusing to yield, regardless of how marginal her views become.

The rest of the session was fairly unremarkable. l had accomplished my goals: finding out what I needed to do to qualify for surgery coverage, and letting Maxine (aka CAMH) know that I disagree with their approach, and that I was submitting to their care under duress. Once that was done, we chatted more amicably about my transition, and about Goodhandy's.

Neither of them were familiar with Goodhandy's the darling of the trans community. GH's is a queer sex club. Sex among customers is encouraged. The trans community loves GH's for giving trans sex workers somewhere safe to go. But don't rush over there right away. You have to go on your day(s). On Wednesdays, gay male porn studs have their ways with one another on stage. On Thursday, it's MTF night. The trans sex workers have a safe place to go, perform, and dance. They meet new clients, and turn tricks inside small private booths. No money is supposed to change hands in those booths--referred to as The Diamond Room--but the reality is almost certainly quite different. Friday is FTM/dyke night (but I've felt quite welcome), and Saturday is pansexual night. Anything goes!

"This is the Toronto outside these walls!" I exclaimed to the two of them, trying to point out how cloistered and pessimistic things are inside The Clarke.

Right about then, the clock struck 7:30, and the session was over. Clearly weary of clashing with me, Maxine collected her things, and we left the room as a group, pretending I hadn't just verbally assaulted her life's work, or maybe that the assault was ok, since she's a professional, and I'm entitled to my opinion.

My trip to the CAMH support group, Part 1

I got riled up about CAMH being proposed as the gatekeeper for SRS (sex reassignment surgery), which is being re-listed for coverage under Ontario's health care system.

I really don't like the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic! I think they hurt me, they wasted my time, and they made my family's journey harder. I think their views are hopelessly out-dated, and they're too conservative to change them. I'm surprised they still exist, actually. They're a relic from the days when Sexologists were in charge of providing care for trans people, as though we were insane sexual perverts. This model for care is hugely outdated and needlessly demeaning and demoralizing.

CAMH has upset me so much that I'm upset with them for getting me so upset! I think they tried to offer me some help, and normally I would be able to find some way to forgive anyone with good intentions. I don't expect very much of people, so it's hard to end up in my bad books.

But those fuckers at CAMH really hurt me. I spent 18 months in total crisis. It was hell for me, and for my almost-ex-wife, and my family. Several of those months could have been avoided had CAMH not entered the picture.

Their pathologizing, sexologizing modality dovetailed with my self-loathing and self-denial, and ratcheted up the unbearable tension inside me.

Instead of encouraging me to find the best way forward for myself, they encouraged me to concentrate on minimizing my transness. They diagnosed me with Gender Identity Disorder, acknowledged that I felt a severe degree of gender dysphoria, but encouraged me to view transition as a last resort that would almost certainly leave me lonely and marginally employable.

Dr. Dickie, the only physician at the CAMH Gender Clinic these days, is a part-time resource. His main job is to be head of General Sexology at CAMH, and he also has a professorship with U of T, I believe. He told me I was hopelessly in the grips of my screwed-up sexuality, and that I was a "shoo-in" because of my small hands and stature. This was before the letter that told me not to transition.

Facing huge losses in my personal life, and supported by no one, including my care giver, I fought my transition. I remember knowing the whole while, at some level, that I had to transition. That certainty never wavered. I threw everything I had at it, and it just sat there completely impervious. I resent and regret all the lies I told myself and others (my SO in particular) as I tried to hold each successive line in the sand on my ass-backward tumble from man to transsexual.

The result? I finally came to accept that I needed to transition, and my head started to clear. Had I started out in trans-positive care, I think that process could have been easier, and maybe less painful.

I think the negative influence they had on my life borders on malpractice. Care-givers who are up-to-date in their profession don't tell trans people to deny themselves as much as possible!

Where does they get off posing as experts, while disagreeing with all the rest of the experts in the world save a couple of whackos (e.g. Dr. Bailey at Northwestern)? This is like being a Global Climate Change skeptic, persisting in pretending that reality and an overwhelming opposing consensus hasn't put you out of business.

Dang! I've devoted all my time to ranting about my first time through that place. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about yesterday, when, even though I loaded up on weed and clonazepam in an attempt to calm myself a little, I went into that little meanly furnished meeting room at the Clarke building with both guns blazing.

Stop hating me because I'm not hideously ugly

I have the mixed, but mostly good fortune of being a fairly attractive person. I was hot as a man, and I'm still borderline-hot as a trans woman. I'm also lucky enough to be 5'8" with a size 10 shoe, so my size isn't a big tell.

This is the best photo of me as a woman. In fact, it is the only photo I like. It was taken at a fashion show that my lovely friend S. persuaded me to model in. They straightened my normally curly hair, and slathered makeup all over my face in a professional way, and I ended up looking pretty good!


Being a passably attractive trans woman is a mixed bag. I wouldn't choose to be less attractive, but it's not the bed of roses you might imagine.

The good:
I look good, and I feel good as a result. More valuable--and this one makes me feel guilty as hell--is that because I look ok as a woman, it seems to be easier for people to accept me as a woman.

The bad:
I'm not inconspicuous. People look at me, and the majority of those people clock me. So, walking down the street, I can sometimes feel the envelope of cognitive dissonance around me as others are confused by my gender and presentation.

The other bad seems to be that other trans women tend to look at me like they want to strangle me. I can understand the way they feel. I won the looks lottery as a trans woman, and many trans women struggle very hard in life thanks in part to their looks.

I'm heading over to the CAMH support group this evening. It should be interesting. I bet there'll be a full house. Lots of people are going to want to talk about surgery and OHIP coverage. I'm not looking forward to those I-want-to-strangle-you-your-struggle-isn't-real looks. That's bullshit. My struggle is still a fucking struggle!

Living suspended in our loss

My almost-ex-wife G. and I live suspended in our loss. We hung onto each other so tightly, and loved each other so urgently, that we managed to hold our marriage together through my entire crisis (eighteen months of craziness!).

Finally, the dust settled, and there I was: a trans woman waiting to go on hormones. She's a straight woman who seems to be a lesbian magnet, but she's so disinterested she's turned down every opportunity.

I couldn't compromise on my gender, and she couldn't compromise on her het-ness. On top of that, she hated living with my transition because it makes me crazy and "others" her by association--being my spouse means looking pretty queer. She must have hated those raised eyebrows. It's unbearably frustrating to feel someone else passing judgment on you without any conversation or chance to explain the context. My straight wife hated feeling those (fairly rare) stares that get directed at queers, especially those as openly trans as me.

Finally, after much therapy, we could no longer avoid the heart-rending truth: despite our love, our marriage couldn't work. I knew I was wrong for her, and she knew that I needed to transition. So we mutually, amicably, very sadly, agreed to split up.

And now we live inside our loss, trying to build a new relationship as friends and co-parents, both still loving the other, wishing she could make it work, but unshakably confident that it can't work.

It puts me in mind of a post-apocalyptic existence, holed up in the ruins of your once happy home, bravely making what use you can of the partially wrecked structure.

Tonight I'm throwing a house-warming party at my new place, and I'm simultaneously liquidating my guy clothes. When I think about the idea of inviting people over to celebrate this deeply unsatisfactory compromise I've been forced to accept, I feel like screaming. But getting better demands moving forward, and celebrating the person I am becoming. I spend more than enough time mourning the loss of the life I had.

My partial passability can be confusing

Yesterday, I found myself in Richmond Hill, a sprawling suburb to the north of the city. The best coffee going was Starbucks, and so I was in Starbucks, getting a coffee.

I suspected that the woman behind the counter clocked me as trans when she took my order. When she turned to make my coffee, her colleague dragged himself from his perch on a stool, and started manning the cash.

When he had finished processing my payment, she tried to tell him about the slice of cake I had ordered.

"He has a pastry too," she said, somewhat awkwardly (me being not much of a he), over the sound of the machines. It's too bad that people don't naturally guess that using target-gender pronouns works better (i.e. it's easier and more respectful to call me "she").

So far as he could tell, there were no men in the place. He stared at her like she had gone completely crazy, and said "what?"

She looked at him, wondering when he had lost his ability to turn and pass me a pastry.

He smiled encouragingly, clearly wanting to help.

I looked at her sternly, trying to do my best Ben Kenobi. "Just hand me the pastry," I said, leaning forward. She and he were equidistant from the pastry case. It wasn't an implausible solution, but she hesitated. "Just hand me the pastry," I said again.

So she handed me the pastry, and the boy turned to take the order of the woman behind me in line, and the cognitive dissonance clouding the air disappeared.

When I caught up with her at the little orange circle of counter Starbucks likes to perch completed beverage orders on, I explained myself. "I don't think your colleague had noticed I'm trans. That's why I interceded there."

She looked at me confusedly (they don't get a lot of trannies using words like 'intercede' in conversation in Richmond Hill), so I repeated myself. "I don't think he noticed I'm trans. That was why that was confusing."

"Oh, sorry!"

"It's ok. It's confusing. I'm used to it. It's easier if you just call me 'she.'"

She didn't respond, and that felt like the appropriate response to me. Having discussed my gender status, we had already gone deeper than our customer-barista relationship really ought to.

She slid the coffee onto the orange surface, and we both said "thanks," as Canadians often do at the end of service interactions. I picked up my coffee and headed for the door.

Hating hating myself

The feeling I hate the most is the self-loathing. I hate it. It’s not the self-loathing of the apathetic, although it sometimes touches down there briefly. This is the self-loathing of the freak. The problem. The black sheep who just couldn’t ever get it right, and has now finally gone and fucked it up beyond all imagining.

That’s not the way that my family or friends feel; that’s how I feel about myself. Silent screaming hatred.

It feels like all sorts of awful things. Like I want to collapse. Like I want to grab hold of the hair at the back of my head, and rip off my scalp and face in one forward and downward yanking motion. Like I want to stab a knife in my chest near my heart, on an angle, and rotate the handle in a circle like I’m cutting and eye out of a potato. Like hopelessness. Like when I try to grab hold of my being, there’s a hole in my fabric, and my hand passes through. An old wound.

It’s old hatred. It’s like I created this monster to patrol my gender boundaries: a reflexive torrent of self-loathing. And now I have no more use for it, but it still performs its function. Not all the time, since I’ve spent two years dismantling the fucker, but now I’m right in the line of fire when the hatred starts to build.

I have become exactly the way I was never supposed to be. Imagine the fury that patrolling part of me feels at failing in its only task—the task it was created for—protecting my manhood and normalcy. I have scorned my own automaton, and turned my back on its work. So it, part of me, rains its hatred on the way I need to be.

Dusting off the blog

For a while, my keenness for blogging disappeared. Life was far too complex and shitty. W. and I were desperately trying to hold our marriage together. Everything seemed too painful and too fraught to muse about in a public forum, even anonymously.

It had been so long since I had felt like posting, I had pretty much given up on the blog for good, even though I like the name. But suddenly, today, I was imbued with motivation to dust this thing off and start again.

Some recent news and events

• My marriage is over, which saddens me desperately, but the split is amicable, and that's a silver lining of sorts.
• I am out to basically everyone in the world except my son. We don't want him to blame my transition for our separation (though he would be on the right track). So I'm holding tight while he absorbs the separation before I drop the gender change idea in his lap.
• I am on androgen-blockers. They have definitely started to make a difference, but all that does is put me closer, but still agonizingly short or my goal. Female hormones will probably start in mid-summer.
  
• Psychologically, I no longer feel like I'm on a runaway roller coaster every second of every day. Now it's intermittent, and at other times, I actually feel like a functioning person. This is good fucking news! :)