Friday, October 14, 2011

The Transsexual Umpire; (Work In Progress)(UPDATED)

The Transsexual Umpire; Navigating Life In A Mix And Match Body

Introduction

Twitter is an interesting thing. I think more than any other new idea in the ever expanding information age, Twitter has manahed to cut a hole in the space

between even minor celebrities and everyday average people. I simple boring girl like me has been able to make friends on Twitter, real friends, that as

little as 5 years ago wouldn't have been conceivable.

Because of Twitter, there are adult film actresses, TV actors, Pro Wrestlers, Film stars, and published authors who have of their own volition gotten to

know me, and consider me a real friend, someone they actually care about. Not to say any schlub can tweet at a celebrity and expect to make a friend. Every

single one of the Twitter celeb friends I have approached me first, usually because someone else they followed re-tweeted something I said that they found

interesting.

After that, they'd get to know me. And I never treated them like "Ohmigawd wow you're so-and-so! I've seen/read/masturbated to all your work like fer

shure!!!". I just treated them like I treat everyone else, as people. Which I suppose above all else is why they consider me a friend. These people,

especially the ones in sex work, like finding people who treat them like a normal every day person. It's why I have the personal private contact info for

some of them. I earned their trust by just being myself and accepting them as is.

They in turn accept me as is, defects and all. They worry about me when I'm sick or sad abbout something, and they get genuinely excited for me when I'm

happy about something.

Which leads me to why I'm telling you this.

I'm not a name-dropper, so no, I won't be naming any names. No names of any celebrities who call me friend, except one.

Ms. Kate Bornstein.

Kate is the acclaimed published author of several help books for people working though or trying to understand their genfer incongruities. From simple

heterosexual male crossdressers to full-tilt 100% transsexuals, both M2F and F2M, and all the variations in between, Kate's books are written to help

someone who's internal identity and/or external presentation doesn't match society's arbitrary rules for the genitals they were born with.

Aunty Kate is so prolific a writer that she makes a very good living with speaking arrangements. She speaks about Gender at college and university campuses,

at medical symposiums, at social conferences. Her opinions and ideas hold weight.

So when she tells you after reading your silly ranty angry bitch blogging that you're a damned good writer and you had BETTER get off your ass and write an

actual book, you generally listen. Or should. Me? I put it off for the past two years because I couldn't for the life of me decide what in the bloody hell I

was going to fill an entire book's worth of non-fiction writing with.

Oh I have plenty of thoughts and ideas for fiction. Hell I made it through the first four chapters of a trans-themed crime drama about a serial killer who

was targetting pre-op transsexual women, performing the SRS so they'd die with the body they wanted and be forever safe from those who would beat them up,

and the transphobic police detective whose only child was a proud and defiant MTF girl, who evolves over the course of the story to let go of his "son" and

accept his daughter when the killer targets her. I lost it in a hard drive crash and never felt like starting over from scratch, and no one I'd sent prelim

copies to kept one I could continue from. Fiction was never a problem.

But writing about reality? Talking about my life in anything longer than a 1000 word blog entry? Filling an entire book with my cranky fat bitch opinions

about the world around me? That I wasn't sure I could do.

I mean truth be told, I'm not even a transsexual. I used to think I was. But I'm not. I'm actually a natal female who has a penis where her clitoris SHOULD

be, and a scar where her vagina once actually was. I'm intersexed. Mother Nature came to work drunk on my birthday and grabbed parts from the wrong box.

Which isn't to say I don't identify still with Trans women. I AM still a "woman with a penis". I consider myself trans by psychiatric history and life

experience, having been raised as a boy. I just can't outright lie and still claim to BE one. I've found myself once again in a position of being sort of on

the outside looking in. While I still have many trans friends, a lot of the more bitter and insecure trans women out there hate women like me. Mostly, of

all the stupid reasons to hate someone, because I needed neither hormones nor silicon to have a decent sized rack.

But Kate thinks I write very well. And she thinks, despite her and I locking horns a few times on topics we disagree on, that my opinions and feelings and

history are important and powerful and relevant and need to be shared. And for the past two years, on Twitter, via e-mail, even on comments left on my blog,

she's been goading me to write an actual full length book.

I personally don't think anyone not already friend or family will particularly care to read the disjointed opinions or autobiography of an overweight freak

of nature, but Kate insists.

So I'm finally giving in. This is what I've come up with. This book, like I myself, is going to be mix and match. Some chapters will be my ranting. Like my

blog, but longer and more in-depth. The other chapters will be biographical, relating sections of my patchwork life that I think are most relevant to the

person I've become. It's the best I could come up with. I don't think, in writing non-fiction, anyone WOULD want to sit down and read an entire book of

either or.

But somehow, people have accepted the some of Column A and some of Column B that I am. So maybe they'll like a book modelled after the Frankenstein's

Transwoman who's writing it.

And then maybe Aunty Kate will smile and be satisfied I listened.

1. It's A...... It's A..... Hold That Thought

Alright, the very first thing you need to understand about me as you read this is that I'm a legitimate freak of nature. I'm intersexed. If you're

unfamiliar with the term, it's what us hermaphrodite folks actually prefer to be called. Intersexed sounds a lot less Fantasy Freakshow than Hermaphrodite.

Intersexed means for whatever reasons, something went wrong in the womb and the person in question was born with some sort of visible sexual incongruity.

And contrary to what most people think, the fabled perfect Penis And Vagina combo is exceptionally rare. Being born intersexed is rare enough. Less than 5%

of all births each year are born intersexed. And less than 1% OF that 5% are born as "True Hermaphrodites" as the terminology goes.

I was as close to the fabled 1% as you're ever likely to meet.

When I was born, and please, try not to eat anything for the next few paragraph, with the following configuration.

I had a penis, which while perhaps in the Doctor's opinion a little below average, appeared normal, healthy and functional. I had a scrotum, with one gonad

already descending as normal, and the other, he presumed, would follow suit shortly thereafter. What made him concerned however was that, embedded in my

scrotum, like someone had stapled it on, was a very small hole. No labia, just a hole. According to the records I got through a Freedom of Information

request, it was a pinhole sized opening. The clinical term I'm told is "Ovo-Testicular DSD".

The Doctor's assumption was that it would never be big enough to accomodate anything thicker than a pencil.

Yes you read that right. The doctor's primary criteria in deciding how to proceed was whether or not I could grow up to comfortably accomodate being

sexually penetrated by a penis. Doncha just love patriarchy?

The normal procedure most everywhere else in North America with an intersexed child is to look at the genitals and decide which sex's bits are closest to

normal and healthy-looking, and get rid of the rest. Normally with a "pinhole sized" vagina, most doctors leave it alone and hope it will just close up on

it's own, or, if it grows and normalizes, remove the penis when the infant has passed one year old. It was common accepted practise you see, until the past

decade when grown intersexed eople and newer modern more open-minded parents began filing lawsuits over it, to just "fix" intersexed children.

Lucky me though! I got a doctor in his fifties who'd never encountered a baby like me before, and he decided it was in my best interests to be a boy, so he

decided to go full tilt boogie with it. So he used a heated metal rod to cauterize any mucous membranes I might have, then snipped and stitched to correct

the scrotum.

But wait there's more! We haven't reached the really REALLY fun part yet!

The other gonad descended too, but it wasn't a testicle, it was an ovary! Which was connected to my uterus!!! Wow isn't that awesome? A lazy-ass old fart

with a medical degree and not a whit of decency, compassion or common fucking sense, made ALL his decisions about MY future based on whether or not I could

score a husband as a woman when I grew up if he removed the boy bits, WITHOUT doing ANY kind of internal examination!

If you're a woman you know how much fun those awesome periods are. All rainbows and unicorns and tampon commercials clearly written by brainless men telling

you to have a happy period! And if you're a man I'm sure you run in terror from a woman running low on Haagen-Daaz every 4 weeks. Knowing that, imagine how

much fun menstruating iswhen the blood had nowhere to go. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you come back from your "Why???" moment.

So that's my life now. An idiot old fart decided to experiment on making me perfectly normal and doomed me to a lifetime of shame, self-loathing, abuse, and

permanent health problems. All because he didn't think I was going to be fuckable when I grew up if he'd left my girl parts alone.

Like any other trans girl, I always felt different. As far back as I can remember I knew I should have been a girl. And thanks to one of my older brothers I

always knew that meant there was something wrong with me. I remember once at age 4 being at a grocery store with my mom and having a stranger tell her what

a lovely little girl she had. I giggled at this. After mom told my stepfather about it and they had a good laugh, the middle child of my three older

brothers, who, from youngest to eldest I will refer to in this book as Cobain, Closetcase, and Cultsheep, (I'll elaborate on those later), took me aside and

told me boys don't giggle when someone calls them a girl, they get mad and yell. And if he heard about me giggling again he'd beat the giggles out of me.

So from then on every time someone in a store or the park or whereever told my mom how pretty her little girl was, I'd loudly and "angrily" shout "I not a

girl! I a boyyyy!!!". Loud overcompensation just so Closetcase wouldn't beat me up.

When puberty came around I'd already had a long history of anger-management issues and violent school outbursts. Having to live as a boy was hell, and I was

mad a lot. So when I realized I was growing real breasts and my hips were widening instead of my shoulders to go with the fuzz now growing on my chin, I was

caught in a sad self-loathing mix of happy vindication and even angrier disgust.

On the one hand, BOOBS!!! I had boobs! I'd been right all along! Boys don't grow boobs! I really WAS supposed to be a girl!

On the other hand, facial hair and a deepening voice. What the hell kind of freak was I? God fuck, I was going to get the shit kicked out of me in school,

even more than normal.

And so began a decade of hip and breast hiding baggy jogging pants and sweatshirts, and painful days of using a tensor bandage to keep my breasts hidden. My

anger only got worse. I hated myself, I hated the world for letting me exist as I was, I hated everyone IN the world for making me feel like a worthless

freakish piece of shit. And it was in a fit of this anger, 2 days before I turned 16, that I lost my temper in the group home my parents had left me in, and

beat up one of the staff who'd pulled a petty power trip on me by trying to make me pay for my morning bus tickets out of my allowance even though we were

all allotted them every weekday for school.

It was a petty little bit of bullying, which is sadly common in group homes. Every single group home I'd ever been in always had at least one, sometimes

more than one person on the staff who abused their authority and bullied the kids in their care. If the target wasn't me it was someone else. I've seen kids

bullied by staff for as petty a reason as not matting down a stubborn cowlick in their hair. And the kids are of course never believed when they complain.

So it was petty bullying, and a petty thing to flip out over. But by then my anger was hair trigger and constantly simmering, and I lost it. I beat the

woman up, trashed her car, and did so much damage to the home itself that I was told I'd made it unlivable for a few weeks while they repaired it. The staff

who had bullied me with her silly little power trip was so traumatized she quit her job and called off her wedding. She spent years in therapy. All because

I couldn't control my anger at being a freak having to hide myself away, and being ignored and dismissed by every shrink I ever tried telling it to.

After all, they just KNEW my anger was REALLY about my parents divorcing when I was too young to even bloody remember it. I had Daddy issues they said. Any

claim of gender identy issues was just a silly attempt to deflect the REAL reason for my anger. Which just pissed me off worse.

So I destroyed a life because she was getting off on being a minor inconvenience to mine. Because I couldn't control my anger anymore.

Oh don't worry. I was paid back for it in spades. Fate made damn sure I was properly punished for what I'd done. And I deserved what I got. No therapist, no

friend, my mom, my wife, no one will EVER convince me I didn't deserve every single second of what happened to me in jail.

2. The Three Stooges Redux

Alright, before I tell the juvey story, and trust me, I need to work up to that, I told promised I'd explain the pseudonyms to which I'll be referring to my

elder brothers throughout this book.

I'd already decided I wasn't going to use any legal names. There are more than a few worthless people I'm biologicly related to who, on the off chance I

actually make any money off of this rambling stream of consciousness, would not hesitate to sue me for an undeserved cut because they'd consider the brutal

honest truth to be slander. But just giving everyone some random new name felt kinda bland to me. So everyone gets nicknames! It's a party!

I have three older half brothers, and two younger half-sisters and a half-brother. I grew up with the elder and barely know the younger set. Hell I've never

even actually met or spoken to the youngest brother.

Anyway, I'll stop going off on tangents, (despite this being the whole point of this silly book), and finish my explanation.

The youngest of my three elder brothers, and the only one I ever actually had a close relationship with, gets moniker'd as Cobain because he was an

exceptionally talented and creative musician who was plagued by drugs and demons. He could never clean up long. His ex wife kept his daughter from him, his

last serious love overdosed in their bed in my mom's basement. He never made peace with his biological father leaving my mom, and he never made peace with

his demons. He overdosed on heroin in November 2001.

The eldest brother is Cultsheep, because he wasted the last decade of his life suckered in by the Jehovah's Witnesses, bullying us all with his newfound

beliefs. For example, when our mom and stepdad lived in Ontario for 5 years and he still in Vancouver, he and his son came to visit us one summer. And in my

own bloody house he wouldn't let me watch the Beetlejuice cartoon on Saturday morning because it was "demonic and evil and would corrupt his son". He died

in hospital in November of 1989 of a rare blood disease. It rendered him braindead. But had he allowed a blood transfusion the first night there was a 50/50

chance he might have survived. Members of his church backed his idiot decision because "The blood of Christ was enough to save him, and a transfusion would

prevent his chance of reaching Heaven". By the time he was too out of it to protest and my mom chased the selfish assholes out of the hospital, it was too

late to save him, the transfusion only gave him an extra day.

Gee can you tell I have issues with organized mainstream religion?

Finally, we have Closetcase. The middle of the three older brothers. Saving him for last here because he's the brother I honestly don't love. I loved

Cobain. He was the first one in my family after I came out as a woman to fully accept me as is. And despite his misguided religious stupidity, I loved

Cultsheep. He at least meant well.

I don't love Closetcase. I don't outright hate him because hate is unhealthy and I try not to hold grudges as best I can. But I don't love him. He's family

by biology only, and I could give a rat's ass about him or his life. I tolerate him politely only for my mom's sake.

So, you're wondering, how did he get saddled with "Closetcase" as his pseudonym for my book? Easy. He's one of the biggest self-loathing gay men I've ever

met. And his refusal to accept his sexuality and desperation to convince himself he's straight have made him a bullying abusive piece of shit as long as

I've known him. He has a long history of drug issues, a prison history, and life-threatening STD's from his history of careless self-destruction. He puts

most professional Ex-Gay asholes to shame. Compared to my brother a self-loathing queen in denial like Greg Quinlan or George Rekers look positively upright

and decent by comparision.

Closetcase used to date Transsexual women and fulltime homosexual male crossdressers. Yes, he was one of THOSE. The gay man so desperate to suck a cock, but

so terrified of anyone knowing he wants to suck a cock, that he went out of his way to date trans women and passable crossdressers so he would appear

perfectly heterosexual to anyone who saw him and his lovers together, while getting to indulge his shame-inducing desires in private.

So you can imagine when I announced to the family, (I thought I was a trannsexual woman until some standard pre-SRS approval testing discovered the truth),

that I was trans and would from that day forward live full-time as a woman, he was less than thrilled. He'd always been bullying and abusive to me before.

He'd stolen from me, run up bills in my name, beat me up a few times to de-sissy me, left more cats in my care than I could afford to feed, and stuck me

with overdue unpaid rent in two different apartments he'd suckered me into sharing with him because I couldn't afford anything else.

But after I came out he got worse. He'd bully me openly, no longer caring if Mom or Stepdad were watching, threatening me harm, going out of his way to

misgender me, forcing me to do chores at mom's for him that she'd asked him to do. Well, at least until the day he tried to bully me about not carrying

heavy laundry bags to the car at my mom's one day after my wife had told me not to. I'm in constant excruciating pain and she gets mad at me if try to

overwork myself. She overheard him and got right up in his face. Like all bullies, he was too chickenshit to press his luck with someone clearly more than

willing to beat the piss out of him.

To this day he only tries to bully me now if my Mom or my wife aren't in earshot or sight of us. And he still refuses to call me a she. My wife, mom and

stepdad and I all agree, he hates me because I've become what he used to hide his sexuality behind, and I'm now a constant reminder of his innate

internalized homophobia.

He's a perfect example of why "Ex-Gay" is a complete and total crock. You're born gay, period. No one chooses to be gay, and no one can really choose to not

be gay. All you can do is put on a fake smile and live in deep denial, and denying your true nature never has positive results. I feel so much pity for ex-

gay hypocrites, who force unhappy lives in loveless marriages upon themselves to please a hateful interpretation of God that has no actual bibival legs to

stand on. Ex-Gay is a lie, and it only causes harm. If my brother could just accept who he really truly is, he'd have had a much happier life. Instead, he's

miserable and making the poor nice woman he lives with miserable by faking love for her to aboid admitting he wants a dick in his mouth, because he believes

that liking cock makes him inferior.

3. Karma.

Alright, this isn't going to be pretty. I'll give you fair warning right now. This chapter is very high risk of triggering anyone who has been raped, or is

sensitive to traumatic events. I'm going to talk openly and bluntly as I am prone to do, about what happened to me in juvey. If you think you might be

triggered, skip this chapter. I CANNOT stress this enough. This is going to get ugly. Skip this chapter if you don't have a strong stomach.

Alright, now, those of you still reading this page are still here because you wanted to know what I meant at the end of the first chapter when I said I was

punished in spades for what I did at the group home. Obviously I'm saying I was raped. The warning I just gave kinda gave that away. But the devil is in the

details as they say. So let me explain what I went through, and the effects it's had on my life.

I'd been in juvey, (Young Offender Detention here in Canada), for near a year, in Phase 1 custody. Phase 1 is for offenders aged 13 to 15, which I had been

sentenced to because I was still 15 when I was arrested and charged. While in an open custody group home, I got in another fight with staff, though not near

as destructive. This time 4 male staff ganged up on me and beat me up a little after I had used my foot to push away, that's PUSH AWAY, not kick, a female

staff member who had tried to sneak up on me to take my tape deck away. I had been living with guilt for a year since attacking the other woman, because my

birth father had beat my mom up a lot, and after I calmed down the day I'd been arrested, I realized I was letting my anger turn me into HIM. So I had begun

bottling my anger and turning it inward rather than hurt anyone like that again.

Of course 5 trusted group home staff against the word of one angry teenager with a documented history of attacking a woman meant I was arrested without

hesitation. And as I was now 16, I was sentenced to Phase 2 time. 16-17 years olds get this, and the detention facilities used are a lot more like adult

jail than any Phase 1 facility. I arrived at my new home 6 days before my 17th birthday.

The gaurds at every place I'd been to the past year had allowed me to keep my body hidden, not wanting to deal with the stress and grief and paperwork of my

freakishness being known to the other boys. At that age, even with my best efforts to look masculine, I looked kinda like a ginger Christina Ricci with a

few extra pounds, and the gaurds knew letting my tits be seen would only invite trouble they didn't need.

The gaurds here however couldn't give a fuck. My tensors, they insisted, could be used to strangle someone. They wouldn't give me baggy clothing either,

even though all the other kids had sweatshirts, I only got a tight teeshirt to wear. The gaurds weren't shy about making Faggot and Queer comments, so I can

safely assume they did this HOPING somebody would beat me up. This is further evidenced by the fact the new arrivals are supposed to go in A-Ward with the

other first time Phase 2 offenders, and the gaurds put me in C-Ward with the repeat offenders, the violent cases. Kids in for robbery, assault, rape, even a

couple murderers.

I spent the first 3 days hiding in the corner with my arms crossed trying to hide my breasts. Strangely, those first three days no one really bothered me. I

got funny looks yes, but no one talked to me, and no one hit me. I was expecting to get beaten up pretty much hourly, but nothing happened. It made me

stupidly let my gaurd down.

On my 4th day, 2 days before my 17th birthday, a couple boys got into a fistfight at dinner when one stole the other's pie. While everyone was distracted, I

figured, as I had not yet showered here to keep hidden, I snuck into the showers to wash quickly. I hate feeling greasy and I thought since no one had seen

me go in while watching the fight that I'd be safe if I was quick. That was a very stupid assumption.

I'd just finished lathering up my hair and was about to rinse it off, in the stall farthest from the open door and most obscured, when my face hit the wall

very hard, several times. To this day my right eyebrow still droops noticably from the damage this caused. Dizzy from this with shampoo suds running into my

eyes, I wasn't really able to struggle much as two boys pinned me against the stall wall and held my legs apart. Five other boys took turns while I was held

still, and through my haze I saw blood splashing on the floor between my legs.

I don't know how long it lasted. When they'd finished with me, one of them rammed my face into the wall again and punched me hard in the stomach. When I

fell to the floor, he kicked me in my groin, said "Nice tits fag", and left. I passed out as one of the other boys peed on me. A gaurd shook me awake at

bedcheck, blood still trickling from my rear. My request to see the doctor was ignored. The gaurd, laughing, asked me if I had fun being such a fucking fag

for my new boyfriends, ordered me to dry off and get dressed, and put me in my cell.

One of the boys who raped me in the shower was also my cellmate. he was already asleep that night on the top bunk. I crawled onto my bed and put my back to

the corner. The next night, and every night after til I was transferred a little over 3 months later, he raped me. I tried to struggle the first few nights

and got punched in the face for my troubles. After that I just laid still and bit my pillow so as to not scream for him. Twenty years later now as I'm

writing this, and I still bleed nearly every time I shit. The damage was never treated, and I healed badly. Until my wife came along, I couldn't sleep at

night, and when I did sleep I slept back to the wall in a locked room. I'm a chronic insomniac. I sleep a little better now with my wife around, and I only

get nightmares during the anniversary period of May 11th to August 24th every year, and now only sporadicly if something makes me feel triggery before bed.

Venturing into TMI territory, it took me 5 years to trust my wife enough to let her use a strap-on with me in bed. I wanted to let her try, she wanted to do

it, but I just couldn't. Not for 5 years. 5 years of the woman I love cuddling me, coaxing me, telling me I'm beautiful and I'm safe in her arms, before I

could relax enough to experiment sexually with my own wife.

And I deserved it. I destroyed a woman's life. Made her afraid to leave the house, ruined her wedding, cost her her job, all over a pair of bus tickets

because I couldn't keep my rage in check. What I went through in juvey was karma. And no one will ever convince me otherwise. And if I had the power to

rewrite my life, I wouldn't undo that, because my trauma in Juvey made me who I am not. The anger was beaten out of me that first night.

I'm kind, selfless. I put other people before myself always. I take care of people, my own needs don't matter to me. I'm a good person, a far better person

than I was before juvey. And I wouldn't be if I hadn't been punished by karma. I know deeply, truly, without any doubt, what it means to hurt someone like I

did, because the universe hurt me back tenfold. And I can NEVER hurt anyone like that again, knowing how it destroys a life.

And no, I'm not suggesting for even a second that any other victim of rape deserves it. No one deserves to be raped. Not even me. What I deserved was

retribution. What I deserved was trauma. I deserved to forever know, every single minute for the rest of my life, what I had done to that woman by beating

her up that day. And I will. I won't ever for a single second forget what I've done.

My wife and friends and family keep telling me I'm still punishing myself. That I'm wrong, and I didn't deserve what I got just to be taught empathy. Fran

tries to lighten the mood by joking that if it really WAS Karma teaching me a lesson it seriously overcompensated. The sad thing is... I dunno, sometimes my

mind knows she's right. But my heart will never accept that. And that's why I'll never truly be past it.

I think about it a lot less. It's been a few years now since I stopped cutting myself. But I think it'll always be there, lurking just under the surface, to

keep me good.

Alright, enough of that. We got the really ugly stuff out of the way as early as I could stomach it. Let's move on to other things.

4. The Threesome That Killed A Sad Man

Alright. Now that I've gotten the single ugliest story in my life out of the way, let's move on. Time now to write a letter to Penthouse. Except that mine

is, y'know, actually true. And the happy ending in mine resulted from the destruction of the fantasy, not the fulfilling of it.

You see, before Juvey, when I was fuelled by my anger and not thinking anything through enough, I was hellbound and determined to begin transitioning and

living as a woman the moment I turned 18. After Juvey though, I was broken. I was afraid to come out. I began to overthink everything. I was afraid that, if

the rapes could happen while I was actively trying to hide my femininity, what could happen to me if I was open about it?

So I buried it. All of it. I buried the rapes, I buried my identity, and I resigned myself to life as a sad depressed man. For two years after the rapes I

lived in complete denial it had ever happened. At least until my first post-rape sex, when, while giving me a blowjob, the prostitute I was with that night

tried to do the finger up the ass trick to make me cum harder, and everything came flooding back. I screamed, cried, and collapsed on her floor sobbing. She

just held me the rest of the night. She listened as I sobbed out what I'd been through, told me it was okay, told me she understood.

We became friends for awhile, but she got fed up with me after 6 months of trying to convince me to both seek a counseller and to come out of the closet.

She stopped answering my calls after telling me to look her up when I stopped living in fear. Sadly by the time I did she'd become another body on the pig

farm in Coquitlam. If you're curious go Google "Pickton Farm Coquitlam missing women". I don't care to discuss her death. I just wish she'd lived to see

what I've grown into.

Anyway, after she cut off our friendship, I just sort of drifted through life, empty and alone, refusing to talk to a counsellor, resigned to being an

increasingly overweight ugly man. I'd gained near 100 pounds since Juvey, depression eating gone wild. When I was 24, on New Year's Eve, I didn't feel like

being home alone even though I had no friends. So I went downtown and sat at a bar sipping a Coke while people danced and mingled around me. After an hour,

on my 4th Coke, watching something on TV I couldn't hear, around 10:30, the bartender refilled my Coke without me asking him to. He told me it was on the

table behind me across the pub floor.

I turned around and saw two ridiculously beautiful women. They could easily have been models. Women I wouldn't in any possible scenario I could imagine

having the SLIGHTEST chance with. And yet they were waving me over. So I swallowed nervously and took my drink over to their table with me to thank them.

We all sat talking for a half-hour or so. They seemed to find my shy nervousness endearing. After awhile they asked me if I wanted to come upstairs to their

hotel room. They thought it was adorably naive when I asked why. They said point blank, to be sure there'd be zero confusion, that they wanted me to fuck

them. So I said yes. Not out of some "Wow I get to fuck hot chicks!" mentality, but out of my empty need to be touched and not feel alone.

As I was, despite being overweight, still young and reasonably healthy at this point, (The constant chronic pain I'm in these days has pretty much destroyed

my libido), I was actually energetic enough to do very well in bed. We stayed up there for a couple hours. They made me cum 4 times, and I lost count of how

many times they got off, at my hands and at each others'. It was one of the few times I'd had sex that I actually enjoyed it. I've never really actually

much enjoyed sex. I mostly had it when I had it in a vain attempt to fill the empty space inside, not out of any actual desire to get laid, and before

meeting my wife I can think of exactly THREE times I actually enjoyed myself in bed. It was, honestly, the second best sex of my life.

But, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, lest you think this a fake Penthouse letter, remember that life back then had a tendancy to punch me in the

face after kissing me.

So we all went back downstairs, having fucked our way past midnight. We sat back down, and they were all smiles, asking me if I'd like to do that again

soon, raving about my peformance, and not in the fake "there there you tried" way. We traded phone numbers, and I was about to leave to make sure I caught

the last bus home. But my low self-esteem couldn't keep it's nose out of it, and I turned back to them and asked the question that ruined the evening

forever.

I asked them why me.

There were so many far more attractive guys in the pub than me. Why did they choose the chubby average looking guy instead of one of the many gymrat studs?

They took my hand, and smiled a warm affectionate smile, and without the slightest hint of awareness at how they were about to sound, they told me "Because

fat guys try harder in bed".

I sat there quietly for a moment, absorbing that. Then I quietly handed them back their phone numbers, and with tears running down my face, I paid for my

drink and I left. They called out after me to come back, shouting they were sorry and they didn't mean it to sound hurtful. But I just kept walking. I cried

the whole way home, and cried myself to sleep. There were several messages in my voicemail, but I just deleted them all. I didn't want to hear any

apologies. They called a few more times the next day but I never picked up. That afternoon, I made New Years Day my new start. I'd decided that life would

find ways to hurt me and kick me while I was down no matter who I was, and if I was going to be a punching bag, I was damn well going to do it on my terms.

I packed every piece of male clothing I owned and every existing picture of me as a male adult into a suitcase and walked down the hill to the Fraser River

by the train tracks, dumped everything into an oil drum, and in a moment that would make Peter Parker proud, burned everything. The illusion of a sad man

died that day. And Penny was finally free to exist in the open.

There was one new voicemail when I got home. I listened to this one. It was the brunette of the pair, and she repeated what I assumed was the gist of all

the other messages, that they meant it as a compliment, that they really did enjoy my company, that they hoped I'd calm down and reconsider seeing them

again, but would understand if I was too hurt to do so, and that they were truly sorry they'd been so insensitive. I deleted it and never tried to contact

them.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't let my anger decide that. I know I probably hurt them too by storming out and never giving them a second chance. For all I

know I could have ended up being their girlfriend. They can't have not realized my breasts were actually breasts and not chubby guy tits, given both that

they paid attention to them and liked how I reacted to the attention. Maybe they'd have accepted me being a woman. Maybe they'd have even helped me learned

the ropes as it were. I'll never know. I let my hurt write them off. I was too focused on coming out of the closet to stop and think things through

rationally.

I never ran into them again. Sometimes I wonder what I'd tell them if I did. I used to think I'd yell at them for being so insensitive that night. But age

gives us different eyes, and realizing as I do now that I seriously overreacted and hurt their feelings too, I'd probably hug them, apologise for

overreacting, and ask if we could start over as friends. And I'd thank them for being the catalyst that finally kicked me out of the closet.

5. Vampirella

One of my lessons in accepting people as is and not caving in to what other people think I should think came at the expense of a nice strange girl who

actually wanted me. I doubt I actually hurt her much, she took EVERYTHING in stride. But I was unkind to her, and having never found a chance to apologize,

it haunts me to remember how I treated her.

I never knew what her real name was. She, much like me, always seemed out of place at the weekly goth night. Amongst the throngs of stiuck-up self-absorbed

non-conformists who conformed to whatever was goth enough, people like us stood out. Me (still living as a man at the time) in my jeans and black velvet

shirts with black lipstick on, her always happy and bright and cheerful. Neither of us belonged in this crowd. But I had a few aqquaintances there and I

hated being alone, so I put up with the sneers.

Everyone called her vampirella. It was meant as an insult, because she claimed to be a vampire, but she took it as a compliment and adopted the nickname as

her own. Make no mistake, she was a little loopy, and seemed to live with one foot in a fantasy world, but she was harmless, and she was nice, and she liked

me. A lot. And had I not been so fucking insecure and desperate to be accepted by the group, I more than like would have dated her.

But I WAS an insecure weak-willed little prick then. And when my aqquaibntances, (friends talk to you outside of a weekly club event), started filling my

head with petty bullshit, I let them. They told me all kinds of crap.

She probably has a bajillion STD's because she goes home with a different guy every week.
She likes to cut her lovers and fill glass jars with their blood.
She's a pycho nut job who believes she's really a vampire.

And like all insecure twits desperate for peer approval, I just believed them, without asking HER. And they had told me this AFTER she and I had gotten a

little frisky on the dance floor. Her kissing me, and me rubbing her ladybits throught her tights til she came. I HAD planned on going home with her that

night. She's made it crystal clear she wanted me to. And then my "friends" started warning me to "run away from the nasty crazy skanky freak", and I robbed

myself of the chance to have one person showing me genuine affection and desire so I could have a clique of deluded self-important snobs instead.

This is why I never play the stock market. I suck at choosing wisely.

For the next year, she kept trying to woo me. Every week I'd get a flower and a kiss on the cheek and a winking "You know where to find me". Never in the

creepy stalkerish way. Afterwards she always just went to dance. And she never followed me home or called 55 times a day. All she ever did was make sure I

knew she still wanted me and was waiting for me to ignore the gossip. I think she knew why I suddenly seemed to lose interest. Maybe she saw the real me

deep inside buried under all my shame and fear and clique-approval seeking. Maybe she hoped I'd eventually find the strength to ignore the clique and follow

my own instincts. I'll never know.

I wussed out in the end. I eventually did realize the regulars at Sanctuary at best pitied me and at worst thought I was a poser and a joke. I also knew I

wanted to be with Vampirella. But by then she'd finally given up waiting for me. So I just stopped going altogether after several of the regulars made it

clear that my transitioning was a joke and I was too ugly to pass for a "real woman".

My last night attending, I only showed up and stayeds five minutes. I wasn't dressed goth. I had on a flowy tan and white skirt and a lacy purple shirt. I

had normal make-up on. I got stared at, heard the comments. Didn't care. I knew I was a better person than all of them, and it was time to start showing it

and stop trying to please people who don't care about me.

I found Vampirella. Took her hand, kissed it, and wished her a happy life. Then I left the club. And I haven't gone back since. I should have, to ask her

for a second chance. But I never did. I assumed she wouldn't want to give me one. But I know she would have.

If she reads this and recoginizes herself and I, I hope she knows how sorry I am for passing her up to appease shallow twonks I owed nothing to.

Another example of me learning to be a better person because being stupid cost me something that could have been wonderful.