Flashback: The Obligatory Bio, Part 1

"Whatever happened to you, to make you more girl than girls are?"
"As Girls Go" Suzanne Vega

I know this story is roughly the same for all of us, yet I feel compelled to tell how I got here. Bear with me...

I remember wishing I was a girl as early as age 6. Going to bed hoping to be transformed, dreaming of awakening to a closet full of dresses and jumpers. Inevitably, I was disappointed. I would spend lots of time in small, dark places, frequently my mother's closet. The smell of shoe leather, the softness of the dresses, transported me. When I reached latchkey status at age 12, crossdressing began in earnest. Like all of us, shame came with it.

Didn't have many friends in grade school. I really didn't fit in with the boys or girls. I was very shy and not athletic. I usually had a friend or two of each gender. Girls were a constant source of envy, especially the tall, thin ones. I could easily imagine myself in their place, full of confidence and grace, rather than a wart on the backside of life. Self loathing? You bet.

That I ever got entangled with a girl is a minor miracle. My senior year I was stalked and won by a funny, insecure, kind but judgemental, quasi-hippie chick. I don't know what she saw in me. We moved in together a month into college, wed at 21, and are still married. Of course, I was diving into her closet at every opportunity, and feeling a lot of guilt about it.

Leading up to the wedding, I desperately wanted to tell her of my secret life. I couldn't figure out how to do it. Two years later, my therapist finally convinced me to reveal my secret. She was blindsided, never suspected, but was willing to talk about it. For a few weeks, she maintained an open mind, went shopping with me, the best outcome I could've imagined. But being out of the closet was too exciting. I pushed too far too fast, and she made up her mind. The experiment was over. I retreated to the closet.

Looking back, I can see that I made moves down the road to womanhood a couple of times before last year. A year after my disclosure, we got separated. It wasn't overtly about the crossdressing, but I think it contributed to the anger and tension. While we were apart, I began ordering clothes, underwear and shoes through the mail. I even crudely shaved my legs. If we had stayed apart, I might have been full-time in my twenties. I managed to get the genie back into the bottle, but the price was bottling up my emotions with it. The only strong emotion I had from 24 to 42 was anger, and plenty of it. We reunited, mostly so she wouldn't look like a failure to her family. Three children followed, and a world of dysfunction.

In 2002, I was away on a business trip for a month. I began shaving my back, which made me feel almost human. A lot of my anger subsided while I was out of the house, and I began to see things more clearly. I composed a letter late one night, detailing my intent to follow my muse, feeling that it would free me up sexually and emotionally. I brought the letter home with me, but within two days I knew I couldn't give it to her. Another door closed.

But in October of last year, the bell rang for real, and it would not be denied.