Introduction

Hi there, welcome to Sparkle 2009. Before I start, could we have a round of applause for Marla Morley, Tina Payne and the other folks who’ve helped put this fine event together?

Like far too many of us here, I grew up feeling cursed and alone. But because of organizations like the River City Gems, I can look out on a room like this and see scores of smiling people, just like me, or people who love someone like me, or people who care for folks like me.

Let’s take a moment to show our appreciation to our partners and the professional people dedicated to us. Could we see who you-all are by a show of hands? We’re in this by birth. You’re in it by choice.

Thank you for that. Thank you for your open minds. Thank you for your loving hearts. Thank you.

Description

As transgendered people we all have amazing stories that have gone largely unwitnessed and woefully undershared. Every one of us here tonight has a very special story that he or she is bursting to tell.

So with due humility—I’d like to offer you a brief version of mine so as to spark some interesting dinner conversations and ongoing dialogues.

By speaking only as the unique individual that I am and incriminating only myself, I’m going to raise topics that we TGs often shy from, and I’m going to do it in the areas of communication, compassion, and creative solutions.

Creative Solutions

I don’t know how much any of you might already know about me, but when it comes to finding creative solutions to the challenge of being transgendered, some would say I take the cake—and perhaps eat it too.

With respect to my lifestyle, please allow me to admit a thing or two up front.

I refer to myself as a crossdresser because I go out once a week as a woman, not because I’m simply a man in a dress.

And though at times I’ve considered transition, I know I’m not simply a woman trapped in the body of a man either.

I see myself as neither man nor woman,
but truly and deeply trans, a real imbetweenie,
cursed and blessed with a certain kind of intersexed brain.
Perhaps, deep down, you are too.

As if that wasn’t challenging enough, I ultimately had to admit that part of that whole picture, for me at least, was that I was bisexual and couldn’t move forward in marriage or life without making some kind of allowance for it.

Don’t worry, folks, I’m not gonna ask for a show of hands on this one. So with all that being said, let me share a passage from my book and give you a glimpse of the creative life that I lead.

Last Friday was a Friday like many others, and I was oh so ready for it, I felt, as I bade my last patient farewell and motored my way home.

There, after an impromptu game of Hide and Go Seek, I gave my two kids a kiss, touched base with our nanny, and headed upstairs to the master bathroom,

I shed my shirt and tie and shaved my chest and then, with a fresh blade, shaved my face. While still in boxer shorts, I studied my face in the mirror and started to apply makeup.

Soon, I heard my wife get home from work, greet the kids, and pad upstairs. “Hi, Rick-a-dee,” she sang, as she popped in and touched me affectionately on the back. She’s a natural beauty, with wavy hair and a sunny disposition.

“Hey, you,” I grinned. “I’d give ya a kiss, but ya might get a mouth full of lipstick.”

“I’ll pass,” she replied with a giggle. I had to admit the bright red lips looked pretty silly with my soldier-short hair. “You can kiss me twice tomorrow,” she offered.

“It’s a deal,” I replied. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” she said. “We’re getting closer to signing that cool new band from Orange County. But I’ll tell ya more about it on the way to Hanna’s recital in the morning. You look like you’re rushing.”

“I’ve got an eight o’clock dinner reservation,” I explained simply, considering what my wife had said she would want to know and not want to know about the softer side of my social life.

“Okay,” she replied, knowing to steer clear of Where? and With whom? “Have fun. I’ll see ya later.” She gave me a little kiss on the back of my head, and on her way out the door, looked over her shoulder and teased, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

That’s always been good enough for me, I thought, as I held back a chuckle and smiled, ever thankful that the love of my life allowed me the space I needed to fully express myself.

Do any of you have your own creative solutions to the challenge of being transgendered? Can I see by a show of hands? Don’t worry. I won’t press anyone for details.

Childhood

As you can see, I’m very fortunate to be living out my own little California dream, especially when I think about how the path that led me here started out feeling like my own worst nightmare.

I was a very regular boy born along with three sisters to a Jewish doctor and homemaker in Buffalo, NY.

+ I was not effeminate as a child and enjoyed blocks and records rather than the dolls and tea parties my sisters preferred. And from there it was off to dodgeball and math.

O Sure, I tried on my older sister’s panties when I was eleven.

+ But I figured Wouldn’t anybody be curious? Besides I was thriving as a soccer player and later as a sailor.

O True, I was shocked when I first masturbated at 17 and discovered that I had to imagine I was a woman for a moment in order to get off.

+ But I figured it was just a strange reaction to being alone and soon proved it to myself by all the fun I had with my first girlfriend.

+ I worked hard in high school and won my way into Harvard and followed that up with medical school, where I fell in love with a breathtaking Japanese-American girl.

O We got engaged and everything seemed to be going well until I stopped dead in my tracks at the notion of “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Did any of you get woken up to your transgenderism like that before getting married? Can we see by a show of hands? Or how ’bout a wake-up call when the kids all left home? Could we have another show of hands? What about a wake-up call when you realized you wouldn’t live forever?

Compassion

Well, me freaking out before getting married brings me to the next scene I’d like to share. It’s about compassion, something we all desperately need at one time or another in our transgendered lives—no matter how feisty and independent we may be as a breed.

Some of you may be living through some very hard times now. I was desperate back in 1990. I might not have lived through 1990. I reached out to a med school classmate of mine named Demetra, and I’ll never forget some of things she told me.

“I’m surprised to hear you’ve been hurting so badly,” she began, settling in and pushing some unruly dark hair off her face. “I thought you were just a naturally brooding kind of guy.”

“Maybe so, but not like this. I’ve done some terrible things,” I explained and nervously confessed that I had experimented with a man, that I was afraid I might have become HIV positive, and that I was horribly ashamed I might have passed it on to Betsy, my fiancée.

Demetra seemed to find my story compelling and allowed me to tell it comfortably. So I dared go further. “The whole reason I bothered experimenting was that I needed to know what it’s like to be a woman. I’ve been turned on by lingerie and troubled by this kind of thing for years.”

Her jaw dropped a little, and she looked like she might be about to say something.

“Listen, I know this is really fucked up,” I assured her. “And that I made things worse by acting out. And that exposing Betsy to danger like that was very, very wrong.” Finally, I stopped to see what she would say. I felt like some kind of pathetic movie-villain, but I was trying to come clean and ready to accept help. Would she rise to her feet aghast and promptly show me the door?

“I feel bad for you,” she said softly. “You’ve got some serious psychological baggage that you tried to work out on your own. Does Betsy know what you’ve done?” I nodded. “How did she take it?”

“She said it would have been better if I’d told her I’d killed someone.”
“No wonder you feel so badly about this.”
“I wish that was all there was to it.”
“Maybe going through this will make you a better, more sensitive person.”
“I’m already nice,” I protested. “I’m probably the nicest of the four kids in my family.”
“These things aren’t fair,” she said, clearly feeling my pain. “Sometimes it just sucks what we have to deal with.”

Spellbound, I thought, Who is this woman? She told me there was a richness to me that went beyond anything I was aware of. When I replied I was afraid I’d get AIDS and never get the chance to appreciate any of it, she let me know that she had just finished working at an AIDS clinic and thought I was going to be okay.

“I feel like such a miserable freak,” I admitted, unable to rein it in. “I walk by people on the street and think, I’d trade places with him or him or him.”

“The only normal people,” she replied, “are the ones you don’t know very well.”

I laughed for the first time in weeks, and when we hugged to say goodbye I held her like she was my last bridge to happiness and sanity.

Have any of you ever known compassion like that? Have any of you offered that kind of compassion to someone else, be they transgendered or not? Can we see by another show of hands?

Aftermath

Some might say, “What happens in the Red Lion stays in the Red Lion.” And I suppose it very often does. But for me, what happened in Boston did anything but. It blew up like a bomb and reduced me to a quivering wreck.

Maybe some of you feel woefully abnormal?
Maybe some of you resent your fate and fear everything that it might mean in your life?
If so, I am here with you tonight, standing tall and proud, to say there is hope.

Ultimately I turned out to be HIV negative. And in retrospect, I can see that my fear of AIDS far exceeded the risks I’d taken and served to distract me from the sheer terror I felt over who I was turning out to be.

More out of mutual desperation than anything else,
Betsy and I married, then split up two and a half years later,
fortunately without having any children in the process.

In the meantime, I got a lot of professional help and linked up with my transgender sisters at the Tiffany Club and Chicago Tri-Ess.

Communication

Any of you remember how scary it is to meet another trans person for the first time? Anyone experiencing it right now? How ’bout in the past year? Let’s all extend a hand to these folks and welcome them into our conversations and all the fun we have later on.

I came of age before people really went to banquets and conventions, and before we all got on the Internet. The first transperson I ever met was a Tiffany Club officer who pulled up alongside me in a dark, empty parking lot in rural New England, before interviewing me and showing me to their secret clubhouse.

But, in the final passage I’d like to present here tonight, I’m single, thirty, and living in Chicago.

And it brings up the final point I want to emphasize, that is, the importance of communicating with those we love.

I suppose we t-people could more or less live however we want to, if we were happy being single. But most of us want someone special in our lives and because of that we have to be especially good communicators.

I had reconnected with an old girlfriend, named Melissa, and she flew in for a long weekend to see if we still had the same chemistry and might be up for a long-distance relationship.

We took in the sights of Chicago by day, relaxed over romantic dinners by night, and made love for the first time in seven years.

“I suppose it’s time I shared my secret with you,” I began, that Monday night back at my apartment.

“Uh oh,” she said, as she braced herself against the back of her chair.
“I’m a crossdresser,” I said nervously, but proud to be telling her up front.

She gulped and thought for a moment. “Of all the things I worried about with men. This is something I never even thought of. What exactly does it mean?”

“It means I’m turned on by women’s clothes and generally curious about all things female.”

“Where do you do it?”
“Generally, here in the apartment as a way to relax before bed.”
“Would you ever go out in public?”
“No,” I said at the time, “because my whole fantasy is to be a beautiful woman, not be seen as a freak.” I cringed as I saw myself at the local supermarket in a dress and lipstick. “Even the few times people helped me dress up, I still looked like a man.”

“Are you gay?”
“No, and I know what I’m talking about. I’ve experimented, and I’m glad I did. Even though I’ve never been attracted to men, being a woman with a man was an exciting extension of my fantasies. Nonetheless, it didn’t come naturally.”

“Really?” she remarked in amazement.
“So anyway, I can’t deny that I’m a crossdresser, but I’m a basically heterosexual one.”

“O-kay,” she said with a little skepticism. I explained to her that ninety-five percent of crossdressers are heterosexual and that I might want to dress up for a Tri-Ess meeting sometime. “Are you still interested in me?” I asked, leaning forward and feeling vulnerable.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it,” she replied, pulling back. She remained pleasant and somewhat affectionate that night, flew back to L.A. in the morning, and called me a few days later.

We exchanged greetings, while my heart began to beat faster. “How are you,” I inquired, “in the wake of that bomb I just dropped?”

“I’m all right,” she said. “I talked to my shrink about it. Of course, she didn’t tell me what to do, but she was very helpful. I’m gonna have a lot more questions about your crossdressing and we’ll have to see how it goes, but I think I’m okay with it.”

I sighed long with relief. I wouldn’t lose Melissa. I wouldn’t have to try my luck with another woman and maybe lose her too. I might not have to spend my life alone.

Evolution

After that, you might think everything should have been smooth sailing, but my transgenderism evolved. Perhaps your transgenderism has evolved? Maybe it’s still evolving? Anyone out there still evolving? Could I get one final show of hands?

After a couple of years, I found that dressing up for monthly outings with Melissa was not enough for me and more than enough for her.

And we ultimately decided that it would be best for me to separate out my crossdressing from the rest of my rather conventional, but deeply satisfying life with her, as a left-leaning, young professional couple in suburban Los Angeles.

I could have a night a week to pursue my needs as a woman, while she got the chance to catch up with a friend or do something she was interested in.

In that way, we’ve been able to grow as individuals while continuing to be comfortable and content as a couple.

Still, it wasn’t always easy. And for those interested, you can check out Alice in Genderland to see just how much of a doozy and devoted partner I’ve been over the years.

Wrap-Up

After a year of dating and two of living together, Melissa and I married in 1996 and had the first of our two children in 1998.

We seem to have hit on a solution that works for us, and have now been happily married for thirteen years.
Hopefully you’re on your way to finding a solution that works for you too.

I’ve no doubt broken a taboo or two in telling my story here tonight and perhaps scandalized a few of you in process. But most of all, I hope I’ve kept you entertained for a while and created some space for all of us to talk more about compassion, communication, and creative solutions as we rise to the challenge of being transgendered.

Thank you all for being such wonderful listeners and have a great time here tonight at Sparkle!

To learn more about me than you’d ever dare to ask, please see my smart, sexy memoir, Alice in Genderland: A Crossdresser Comes of Age