2 posts from June 2009

I've been turning this over in my head for the last three weeks.

I've never really gone into too much detail about this, but throughout my life I've had an overactive imagination.  I love creating hypothetical scenarios and then running them through in my head.  This has always been my defense mechanism to combat boredom - if the real world isn't grabbing my attention (classrooms or meetings or churches or car rides, for example), I'm both capable and likely to be constructing some daydream in my head that I will be completely lost in.  These days, I like to dream about what my future might bring, because I still haven't quite gotten over the fact that I pass as a woman now.

That said, there was a time where the future was off-limits.  That's what a majority of this post is going to be about.

I'm talking specifically about 2003-2007, the period of my life in which I had decided that I was going to drop all notion of transitioning whatsoever.  At that point, I had told some of my close friends that I was transgendered and had lived my life wanting to be female.  When I look back at it now, I wish I had used the momentum I had gained from telling people and being accepted to seek out therapy and come out to my family.  What I did then, instead of seek help, was to decide that I was crazy.  Surely I was just a confused cross-dresser!  My fear was that I was self-diagnosing myself as a transgendered woman as a way to rationalize my discomfort doing typically male things (approaching women, playing sports, seeking cheap thrills), and the only solution to that was to try harder to fit in as male.

I got a job that I held down for two years without telling anyone.  I started dating and had two short-lived relationships.  I started to give sports a try and found, to my surprise, that I liked them.  What I found was that I was perfectly capable of living life as a male, although it meant having to accept that transitioning and living as a woman would never happen.  While I wouldn't say this thought depressed me, it made me feel truly apathetic about what the future would bring.  Interestingly enough, I don't think I was really fooling anyone - my bedroom looked like that of a high school girl (anime posters covering every inch of the wall, a loft bed with pink satin sheets, a computer desk with cute toys all over the place) and I wore clothes that no man in his right mind would ever normally wear.

During this time, I daydreamed a lot.  The number one thing that I would think about is how much better my life would have been if I were born female.  Or, at the very least, if I had transitioned younger.  I would come up with scenarios in my head of how things would be different if I were female.  How would people treat me if I were a woman?  What type of fashion sense would I have?  What kind of guys would I attract/look for?  What would my interests be?  What would high school have been like?  I let myself retreat into these thoughts all the time - if I couldn't get the life I wanted in the real world, my imagination was going to have to suffice.

One daydream that I repeated a lot came when I rediscovered Phish back in 2004.  I had all of their studio albums when I was a freshman in high school, and had even seen them live back in 1995 when I was a junior.  The good news was that I had discovered that pretty much all of the live shows they had played over the last 15 years were now available on the internet, and the stuff I heard I had really liked.  The bad news was that they had literally broken up perhaps one month before I found this out.  Phish is a band whose entire premise rests on each concert they play being worth going to, which resulted in a Grateful-Dead-esque following of fans who would follow the band on tour.  For the years that followed, I regretted that I had never really gotten a chance to do that.  There was something about the idea of travelling around the country with people like me and music I loved that absolutely appealed to me.  I loved both the aesthetics and the philosophies of the Phish 'scene' and it just seemed like a perfect fit.  I would oftentimes imagine that, if I were a biological female when I was in high school, I probably would have had more confidence to seek out my own personality instead of falling in with a crowd.  I'd picture, in detail, talking music with guys at shows  and feeling completely comfortable flirting with them.  The imaginary tour basically became my 'happy place' in my head when I would start to feel down about my utter lack of a future.

Of course, this was all in my imagination.  In the real world, Phish had broken up and I was still living life as an unhappy guy.  Recordings of shows because 90% of the music that I listened to, and that would pretty much have to do.  That pretty much covers 2004-2007.  Thankfully, I woke up and realized that I owed it to myself to seek happiness in my life, and eventually got things underway with transitioning.  Somewhere during transition, I found other bands that I really liked that still toured, and discovered a love for live music all over again.  I've written about more than a few of these in this blog - I've certainly had my fair share of relevant moments at some of these concerts.

A few months after I went full-time, I saw an announcement that Phish was playing a reunion show in March.  Soon after, a summer tour with a stop in MA (at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, known as Great Woods) was announced.  After I got tickets to that, a tour opener at Fenway Park was announced the week before the show I had tickets for.  To be honest, at that point I was feeling lukewarm with Phish - after listening to them for years, and having found more music that I liked, I figured that I would have an OK time and at least get to see what I had been missing out on.  If anything, the two shows would be a fun chance to meet new people.

I mentioned in the last post what a good time Fenway was.  Great Woods was even better.  I had offered a ride to someone from an online forum so that I would at least have company for the trip, and he made for good company.  We walked around the parking lot for three hours - because of the large amount of people that will follow Phish around on tour, the parking lots become a large combination flea market/cookout/party/meetup for fans for hours before the show begins.  It was really cool - the day was beautiful, and the vibe around the lot was "we don't necessarily care about rules or norms, but we're a big parking lot of friendly people so come say hi!".  Perfect. 

I had more crazy adventures.  I helped a girl sneak into the seating area from the lawn, and she repaid me by teaching me the tricks to sneak to the front row.  I bounced around a couple of different spots, and had no problem getting to meet any of the people that I found myself next to.  There were definitely some characters around that made people-watching rewarding.  And the music seemed way better than it did at Fenway - I think it was aided by both better sound and a better setlist.  Much like with the Fenway show one week before, I didn't think once about being transgendered and I had an absolute blast.

It wasn't until the next day that I realized I was literally living out a dream of mine.  People sometimes tell me that I am one of the more positive people they've ever met - well, why shouldn't I be?  How many people come up with a situation that seems impossible for so many reasons, only to one day realize that it's happening?   I'm going to a music festival in the middle of July, and I'm going to travel out to Denver in late July/early August to try and catch four nights of Phish at Red Rocks.  I'm totally ecstatic - for the first time, I'm looking forward to going out, and this is largely because I finally feel comfortable with the idea of socializing with new people.  I'm no longer worried about being seen as a "guy in a dress" and rather look forward to being seen as "that cool chick at the show".  Also, between brokeness, apathy, and lack of confidence, I haven't traveled out of the northeast in 5 years, which makes the prospect of flying out west even better.

So, suffice to say, all is well.  It's not just "passing as female and going to shows", I have really felt on top of things in most facets of my life.  Work is tough but I'm able to handle it, stay sane, and have fun at the same time.  I still have plenty of friends who I adore to death.  There is still a bit of sadness associated with the passing of my father, but I feel like I'm handling it as good as anyone could in that type of situation.  I have been talking to more people online - between that and concerts, the network of people who only know me as Michelle is increasing, and that's a good feeling.  The Sox are in first place, the band is back together, and all in all I'm really pleased with the way things are going.

I'm going to end this post before I jinx myself any further.  Good night!

For the longest time, I had been battling with shyness caused as a result of my gender.  Part of it was knowing that I didn't have much experience living as a woman, and was still feeling my way through some social situations (especially around other guys).  Part of it was being transsexual, a label which unfortunately has a lot of stigma attached to it.  Part of it was in having all-too-good of an idea what guys are like, which is both intriguing and scary at the same time.  At any rate, I had resigned myself to the fact that I should be straight up with new acquaintances.  I would let them know right up front that I'm transgendered and don't have a problem with it, because it would reinforce that there's nothing worth being ashamed of and allow them to get to know me for who I am.

At least, that's how it worked in my head.  And in theory, it is correct, because I still maintain that there's nothing to be ashamed.  I'm not 'broken' or 'crazy' or 'perverted' or whatever else people think of when they find out, and I'm wasn't going to be afraid to let people know that the stereotypes are false.

I had an epiphany at that show on Sunday night.  From leaving the house on Sunday until getting back home way later that night, I tried not to think at all of the fact that I'm transgendered.  I went out and just acted like a biological female would.  Starting right on the train, I met an engaged couple who I was able to immediately get along with.  We proceeded to have all sorts of adventures throughout the night, including going into the kitchens on the 5th floor because one the guy had worked at Fenway Park the year before.  I joined them for the second set (after wandering around all parts of Fenway sneaking into better and better seats for the first set) near the third base line and just had a blast.  Great music, great lights, and everyone around me was really sociable and friendly so I got the fun of meeting a whole bunch of new people.  My confidence was at an all-time high - and still is - all because I realized that I need to stop thinking of myself as "different" so much.

It's a tough thing to realize how much 'needing to be out' was holding me back.  It doesn't really matter that there's nothing to be ashamed of - it still shouldn't be what people base their first impression of me on.  If the whole point that I'm going on is that 'who I am' is more important than 'what I am', why do I feel the need to bring up 'what I am' as soon as possible?  It's not really necessary, since my biological gender isn't going to be relevant to 99% of the people I meet anyways.

It's gotten me thinking about starting over and going stealth.  I have maintained that I don't feel the need to do that just yet, because I like my job and have lots of friends and generally have a good thing going.  Sunday night was the first time I realized just how much I like people not knowing that I'm anything but a 'normal' woman.  It was the most freeing thing ever!  There is now an allure to starting over that I had previously not really considered.   

Tomorrow and Saturday night are two more concerts, and in both cases I'm not planning on mentioning my gender issues at all unless there is some worthwhile reason to.  No more of this "what if they find out I'm trans- and go crazy?" stuff psyching me out - I'm just going to be myself and assume that things will work out.  If things go well - great.  If they don't - well, I'll likely come out a stronger person for it.  I usually give this advice - to just eschew fear and take risks - to friends that ask me for advice, and yet hadn't really challenged myself until Sunday.  Already, I'm looking forward to meeting new people in a way that I never had before.  It's pretty great.

In general, life is looking up.  There are certainly things (first and foremost: money) that are stressing me out, but I'll deal with them in due course.  Right now, the positives are outweighing the negatives, and that's all I can ask for.