A few weeks after I started hormone replacement therapy, I developed a strong craving for dill pickles. I found this both amusing and a little alarming. What other unexpected changes were in store for me? Was this just a phase?
A phase it may be, but months later, I still crave pickles; I go through about a jar a week currently. A friend's daughter, in learning about my pickle craze, asked her mother, "Is Miss Wendy pregnant?" That tickled me. Though I'm not pregnant, I am hormonal, and as it turns out, it's not an uncommon craving.
I think back to another time when I craved pickles; I was hormonal then, too. When I was in my early teens, I seemed to be ravenously hungry all the time. Both my parents worked, so when my brother and I came home from school, we were on our own for an hour or so. Almost first thing, I would head to the refrigerator, and get some pickles. If there was any excess, I would pour the juice into a glass and drink it. I would further fortify myself with dry-roasted peanuts and hope that I could make it until supper.
At the time, just at the beginning of puberty, I was very confused. I was very clearly attracted to girls, yet I both wanted to date them and to be one of them. Was I gay? No, I liked girls and not boys. But why did I want to dress and act like a girl?
At school my male and female classmates began to pair up. Alas, I didn't appear to be much of a catch to the girls. I was very small for my age; I didn't really catch up until I was around 16. I wore glasses and was known as being--gasp!--smart. I had a less than movie-star-perfect smile. And I was ashamed because of my secret crossdressing. I began to fervently wish that puberty would hurry up and get to work on me, so that I could become a man. I realized and regretted that I wouldn't look so nice in dresses any more, but the anticipation that women would begin to notice me seemed to make up for it. And maybe I wouldn't even want to dress up anymore. "When I was a child, I behaved as a girl, but when I became a man, I put away girlish things." Or something like that. It did not ever even cross my mind that some women might be attracted to me as a woman.
Well, as it turned out, it took more than testosterone to entice women to flock to my side. I had to like and have confidence in myself, and that was a tall order. By the time I got myself together enough to start dating seriously, I was beginning to have second thoughts about what puberty had done to me.
Now I'm much older, but pubescent again. Some of what the first adolescence did to my body is not changeable, but I feel like I'm moving--albeit slowly--in the right direction. I certainly don't expect women to flock to my side once I become a "grown-up woman"; as a widow still in mourning, I wouldn't even want them to. But maybe, just maybe, when I'm ready, lightning will strike a second time. If not, that's OK, too.
Meanwhile, where are those pickles?
Monday, July 18, 2016
Monday, July 11, 2016
Memoria
I recently finished reading She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan. It's a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it; it's very well-written, poignant and funny by turns. I was struck both by the similarities and vast differences in the experiences of each transgender person. And reading the book reminded me of a time in which I was briefly in physical proximity to Ms. Boylan.
It was 2007, at the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta. SCC is one of the largest and longest-running transgender conferences in the world. It was two weeks before my wedding; for my wife-to-be and I, it was our fourth straight year at SCC. It was a strange, scary, and wonderful time; we were excited about our upcoming nuptials but worried about her health. She had a lump in her neck that was growing rapidly; it had, in the space of a couple of months, gone from being about the size of a quarter to the size of my fist; large enough that it was about to cross her collar bone. In about another month we would learn that she had small-cell lung cancer; the lump was a swollen lymph node, filling with cancerous cells.
This particular SCC, despite the worries, had been the most enjoyable for me so far. I had had the opportunity to finally meet in person several online friends that I had made in the past year or so. Also, for the first time, I was spending the whole extended weekend as a woman, from the time we left the house until we returned. I was in love with my soulmate, a woman who loved me just as I was.
This particular morning we were sitting in the large hotel atrium, next to a Starbucks stand; my fiancée was having her morning coffee. She had befriended the elderly barista, with whom she seemed to form an instant connection. The barista seemed very gentle and very wise; she had had cancer, and seemed to see in my fiancée a reflection of herself. She went so far as to give my dear a Starbucks travel mug, gratis.
A couple of tables over, an attractive woman in jeans, with long, blond hair, sat with her feet propped up on a chair, engrossed in a book. I recognized her as Jennifer Finney Boylan; even though I had missed her presentation the conference and had not even read any of her books yet, she was (and is) a celebrity. I was struck by how comfortable and unselfconscious she seemed; just an ordinary woman enjoying her book and coffee. I longed to be so centered; I had spent nearly ten years oscillating between two identities, one male, one female. Paradoxically, this kept me sane; though it could be egregious at times, I was able to be a woman at least part of the time, which I needed, and to maintain the semblance of a normal male life, which I was holding on to. I wished that I could think of something to say to her, but really, what could I have said? I left her in peace to her book and coffee.
The morning drew on, and all of us sitting next to the Starbucks stand went our separate ways.
A year later, my wife and I were at the same hotel for SCC 2008, our fifth and final year. She was emaciated and bald from the radiation, but had been pronounced cancer-free. Though we didn't quite understand it yet, she was also exhibiting some early signs of dementia; her brain was cloudy much of the time. Leaning on my arm for support, she made her way to the Starbucks stand, only to find a different barista working there. She asked this new person where her friend was. "She died of cancer earlier this year", was the sad reply. My wife, who had only known this woman for a couple of days a year before, put her head on my shoulder and cried.
Nearly eight years later, she is dead, too. In the intervening period, we both suffered much as her health declined. I also realized, and grudgingly accepted, that I needed to stop the oscillation between genders and become, at last, a woman solely. I read Jennifer Finney Boylan's books and wonder why I didn't read them before. I think it's because I was afraid that, in reading her story, I would see too much of the dream of myself I was trying not to see. I think that my wife saw herself, and the future she dreaded, in the barista.
And so the world goes; we intersect, sometimes we travel in the same direction for a while, and then we diverge, each pulled along her own path.
It was 2007, at the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta. SCC is one of the largest and longest-running transgender conferences in the world. It was two weeks before my wedding; for my wife-to-be and I, it was our fourth straight year at SCC. It was a strange, scary, and wonderful time; we were excited about our upcoming nuptials but worried about her health. She had a lump in her neck that was growing rapidly; it had, in the space of a couple of months, gone from being about the size of a quarter to the size of my fist; large enough that it was about to cross her collar bone. In about another month we would learn that she had small-cell lung cancer; the lump was a swollen lymph node, filling with cancerous cells.
This particular SCC, despite the worries, had been the most enjoyable for me so far. I had had the opportunity to finally meet in person several online friends that I had made in the past year or so. Also, for the first time, I was spending the whole extended weekend as a woman, from the time we left the house until we returned. I was in love with my soulmate, a woman who loved me just as I was.
This particular morning we were sitting in the large hotel atrium, next to a Starbucks stand; my fiancée was having her morning coffee. She had befriended the elderly barista, with whom she seemed to form an instant connection. The barista seemed very gentle and very wise; she had had cancer, and seemed to see in my fiancée a reflection of herself. She went so far as to give my dear a Starbucks travel mug, gratis.
A couple of tables over, an attractive woman in jeans, with long, blond hair, sat with her feet propped up on a chair, engrossed in a book. I recognized her as Jennifer Finney Boylan; even though I had missed her presentation the conference and had not even read any of her books yet, she was (and is) a celebrity. I was struck by how comfortable and unselfconscious she seemed; just an ordinary woman enjoying her book and coffee. I longed to be so centered; I had spent nearly ten years oscillating between two identities, one male, one female. Paradoxically, this kept me sane; though it could be egregious at times, I was able to be a woman at least part of the time, which I needed, and to maintain the semblance of a normal male life, which I was holding on to. I wished that I could think of something to say to her, but really, what could I have said? I left her in peace to her book and coffee.
The morning drew on, and all of us sitting next to the Starbucks stand went our separate ways.
A year later, my wife and I were at the same hotel for SCC 2008, our fifth and final year. She was emaciated and bald from the radiation, but had been pronounced cancer-free. Though we didn't quite understand it yet, she was also exhibiting some early signs of dementia; her brain was cloudy much of the time. Leaning on my arm for support, she made her way to the Starbucks stand, only to find a different barista working there. She asked this new person where her friend was. "She died of cancer earlier this year", was the sad reply. My wife, who had only known this woman for a couple of days a year before, put her head on my shoulder and cried.
Nearly eight years later, she is dead, too. In the intervening period, we both suffered much as her health declined. I also realized, and grudgingly accepted, that I needed to stop the oscillation between genders and become, at last, a woman solely. I read Jennifer Finney Boylan's books and wonder why I didn't read them before. I think it's because I was afraid that, in reading her story, I would see too much of the dream of myself I was trying not to see. I think that my wife saw herself, and the future she dreaded, in the barista.
And so the world goes; we intersect, sometimes we travel in the same direction for a while, and then we diverge, each pulled along her own path.
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