On Friday night, I went to my fourth Phish show in Hartford. What a night!
The day before the show, I went onto a forum for concert-goers and found a guy who was asking for a ride from Boston to Hartford for the show. A ride with company is certainly better than a ride alone, and I had good luck the last time I offered someone a ride, and so I sent him a message offering to help him out. I left work early on Friday so that we could get there in time, and he met me at 3:30 and we hit the road.
One thing about the Phish/concert scene that has been so appealing to me is that it is a chance to start over in an environment where no one knows that I'm transgendered. For that reason, I didn't feel the need to tell my passenger about my past, and the conversation on the car ride down was mostly smalltalk and discussion about the music. I certainly had a good impression of him - like most other Phish fans I've met, he seemed very laid back and friendly, two traits that I hold in high esteem. We split up once we got to the show to meet our respective crews, and he told me that he wasn't sure if he would need a ride back. I told him to send me a text after the show and we could figure stuff out from there.
I met up with my friends by their car partied a bit in the lot, getting ready for the show. I knew that two of them had never seen Phish before and were in for a treat, but little did I know just how good it was going to be. People who had seen 100+ shows across two decades of concerts were calling it "one of the best Phish shows they had ever seen". I was happy to see that everyone in my group was having a great time. The only hitch that came up was that we got separated from one of our friends, the one in the group who happened to not have a cellphone - we spent a good twenty minutes looking for him before we decided that he must have gone back to the car. Fortunately, this was the case, and so that crisis was averted.
After the show, the guy I gave a ride to messaged me back, saying that he would, in fact, like a ride back. I met up with him in the lot, at a spot where someone was playing the drums. We chilled out for a bit and talked about what we had just witnessed - I could easily say it was the best show I had been to, and when he (someone who had been seeing Phish since 1997) agreed with me, I was pleasantly surprised.
On the way back, we started talking about our lives a bit more. He told me about his past, which was both interesting to hear and flattering to be entrusted with. Based on that, I opened up a bit more about myself and told him that I was transgendered. I wasn't surprised that he didn't have an issue with it, but I was a bit surprised to learn that he had read me pretty much right upon meeting me. It's so rare that people actually indicate that they know or suspect that I'm transgendered that I think I had tricked myself into thinking it doesn't happen. Unforuntately, he noticed my Adam's Apple, and until surgeries happen there really isn't much that I can do about that.
It was all good, though. A year or so ago, my biggest fear was being read by others after being full-time. Right there, I finally got confirmation that it does in fact happen - as it turned out, there was nothing to be afraid of at all. It didn't matter that he knew I was transgendered, because he was still completely nice/respectful to me and we ended up getting along just fine. He had some questions - I'm sure I was the first transwoman he's ever met, and so I was more than happy to answer them. If anything, him knowing that I'm transgendered just meant that I no longer felt like there was a big chunk of my life I couldn't talk about. It actually alleviated more pressure than it caused.
I have been thinking lately about how I have historically approached the question of what to do about people finding out my history. Before/early on in transition, I was petrified of anyone knowing I was transgendered and kept it secret, mostly because I was embarrassed about it. When I went full-time, I 180'ed, deciding that I wasn't embarrassed about being transgendered and didn't want to keep secrets anymore. When I started expanding my social circle and realized that people treated me differently when they didn't know my past, I stopped telling people again. After Friday night, I'm modifying it again - I'm going to keep my trans- status under wraps until I feel like I know the other person better, and then will judge the situation from there. What I've realized is that as long as people develop a first impression of me before they know, it's not really damaging for people to find out.
Every time I think I'm in the tail end of this transition thing, I learn something new!
