Of Pickles and Puberties

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?