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‘Breaking Out The Loose Ends’
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(24 Apr 18)
(Draft)
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Greetings, Wai, Sahwdee Khaf, Yasou.
I am overdue for a post to this web-site.
Much has been happening – life – allow me to share some moments that I hope are of interest to you, Dear Reader.
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I found Mary G a few weeks ago – my Pinewood school-mate and Prom date for 10th Grade and 11th Grade. We are doing well catching up on old times.
Here’s one of her favourite songs:
- Lance Appleton
- ‘One God Apostolic’
- (https://youtu.be/WWm3CWxhmJw).
It’s good. Give a listen.
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In terminology during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s when I was young, there we these.
‘Pseudo Transsexual’: Someone with a mental development of a sex different from their assigned sex, but has minimal desire to change from their assigned anatomical sex. ‘I want to be a girl.’ ‘I want to be a boy.’
”True Transsexual’: Someone with a mental development of a sex different from their assigned sex and is determined to change it – consistently, persistently, insistently. ‘I am a girl!’ ‘I am a boy!’
‘Feminine Protesting’ tantrums: When a boy insists that she is a girl. ‘Masculine Protesting’ was for a girl who insists that he is a boy.
‘Gender Dysphoria’: A mental condition when identity is incongruent with anatomy.
Some people insist using ‘Transgender’. That is becoming an umbrella term that actually does not apply to many it purports to include. Its literal meaning is someone who changes their gender identity. My gender identity has always been female, so ‘Transgender’ doesn’t apply to me.
‘Transsexual’ is used by some to report that they changed their sex anatomy. Technically, this also doesn’t apply to me because I always have been a genetic female. It was my birth room doctor who erroneously assigned me to ‘male’; it was my family who forced me to ‘present’ as male based upon that faulty assignment. It was one of my doctors during Transition who diagnosed me female due to Inter-sex in 1982.
‘Trans’ tends to be used as both short-hand and as a way to better include ‘Transgender’ and ‘Transsexual’.
Some people currently scorn the use of ‘sex change’, I don’t. It was a common term that I recall from my youngest days and into the 1980s. While maybe in detail it is not what happened to me from my perspective, it is a simple term to explain what I did as perceived by the outside world.
‘Hermaphrodite’ was in common use until some time recently. It fell into disfavour, but I have no idea why. I have seen ‘Inter-sex’ being used as far back as 1974. I am fine using either term for myself.
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I don’t have value in chiropractic. As to what it is – I consider it as little more than a massage.
My dad had kidney cancer from at least 1963; it’s what killed him by 1989.
I often wonder if my dad’s prescription pills that I was downing in October 1968 (trying to commit suicide) were pills meant to treat my dad’s kidney illness. He was hospitalised in January 1969.
My earlier suicide efforts were kinda dumb – the ‘I’ll show you’ sort.
When my dad and I stayed at his sister’s home (Summer 1967), I would sit on the railroad tracks near their home, I hoped a train would hit me. None came. I didn’t know that the rail was a commuter line – morning and evening rush hour only. D’oh!
Anyway.
Skip to 1980s. My dad’s illness was hitting him. He continually complained of ‘back’ pain. I was employed in the medical community – health insurance utilisation review. I was honestly concerned for my dad’s health. He went to chiropractic; he refused to see medical doctors or cancer doctors as I tried insisting. His chiropractor obviously failed to recognise my dad’s true reason for ‘back’ pain – his kidney cancer that was spreading throughout his entire anatomy.
As Lisa told me, my dad was teaching class one day (January 1989). He suddenly collapsed right there in his classroom. Emergency ambulance took him to the hospital, doctors finally examined him, they told him that he had six months to live.
You and me – we compare our dad’s timeline to our own. I am at my dad’s timeline same as when that hospital doctor told him that he was terminally ill.
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My Thai Experience friend sent this URL to me:
- Dr. Marci Bowers
- Converging Identities in a Changing World
- TEDx
- (https://youtu.be/fdNM2rFfVFY)
I tried to listen to that Dr. Bowers’ video.
‘Try’ is the key word. The audio volume is almost nothing – I have my device’s volume full blast, but can barely hear her.
It is frustrating!
Whoever edited this didn’t bother to check the volume levels.
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I have been experiencing back pain – or at least perceiving pain at my lower back – during the past three weeks.
The frustration is how that pain – or at least the perception of a sensation that my mind interprets as ‘pain’ – comes and goes with no connection to anything.
My back feels okay lying down, getting up, walking, moving, bending – small twinges, but quite okay.
Sitting initiates paralysing ‘pain’ – I can barely move when I try getting up – it is absolutely excruciating – YOUCH! – the pain hits. But once I walk, move, bend, stretch, then I have no disabling pain – just a twinge.
Lying down on my back, I can move, bend, and no pain.
This is frustrating!
I think that I am hungry and want to eat, but when that pain hits, I lose all interest. I have barely eaten much these past weeks: a couple burritos from the fast food joint, Dragon Fruit, four apples, two Dragon Fruit, three pears, a can of sardines, yoghourt, and three cans of pineapple.
I went to my clinic’s Urgent Care facility. They took X-ray views of my back and sides to determine any injury or deterioration of my spinal cord, vertebrae, discs. No real issue there. My X-ray established that I can eliminate vertebrae, disc, and spinal column injury or damage. The doctor supposed that my pains are muscular and prescribed muscle relaxers.
It is not as though I did something to stress a muscle – no over-working, no excessive movement.
Two days later I began experiencing diarrhea that continued for five days. But I had a colonoscopy less than 18 months ago; my Primary told me at my appointment from last week that there is nothing wrong with my bowels.
Along the way I saw network TV news reports about e coli poisoning spreading through the area. I read about e coli from a handful of reliable Internet web-sites and wonder if this is what I have.
I clean fruits and vegetables as reasonably as possible – skin fruit, too (banana, orange, avocado). I wash eating utensils and dishes. I wash after using the toilet.
I read that it helps to soak fruits and vegetables in baking soda before a final wash. I bought baking soda the other day, mixed some in a bowl with baking soda in some water, soaked some items. We’ll see if that helps clean better – if this was e coli from tainted food.
The only event that I can determine is that perhaps an e coli infected person touched something on the city bus and that I touched that infected surface.
A friend suggested seeking chiropractic treatment. I don’t have value in chiropractic. As to what it is – I consider that it is little more than a massage.
My dad had kidney cancer from at least 1963; it’s what killed him by 1989. He was hospitalised in January 1969. I often wonder if my dad’s prescription pills that I was downing in October 1968 (trying to commit suicide) were pills meant to treat my dad’s kidney illness.
Anyway.
Skip to 1980s. My dad’s illness was hitting him. He continually complained of ‘back’ pain. I was employed in the medical community – health insurance utilisation review. I was honestly concerned for my dad’s health. He went to chiropractic and refused to see medical doctors or cancer doctors as I tried insisting. His chiropractor obviously failed to recognise my dad’s true reason for ‘back’ pain – his kidney cancer that was spreading throughout his entire anatomy.
As Lisa told me, my dad was teaching class one day (January 1989). He suddenly collapsed right there in his classroom. Emergency ambulance took him to the hospital, medical doctors finally examined him, they told him that he had six months to live.
I compare my dad’s chronology to my own. I am now at a time in my life corresponding to my dad’s life when that hospital doctor told him that he was terminally ill. These are heavy thoughts for me to ponder; I can barely comprehend my dad’s thoughts.
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Quite simply put, no one goes into fits when a child with apparent female anatomy says that she is a girl; similarly, no fuss when a child with male anatomy says that he is a boy.
But just let a child self-identify different than how their birth room doctors assigned them and whole populations want to deny civil rights, go to war, kill.
You likely said to people when you were a child – ‘I’m a girl’ (when your doctor assigned you female) or ‘I am a boy’ (when your doctor assigned you male). No one sought to beat you for it.
Well, when I affirmed to my family that I am a girl – at least as young as age 3 – my parents beat me, my sister beat me.
But they were inconsistent.
We would go visit relatives here where I grew up. I made a bee-line to the bathroom, put on my teen cousins’ make-up, and was greeted with: ‘Oh, Nickie, what a cute little girl!’. Then my cousins, my sister, and I would all go into our cousins’ bedroom, play records, and I would dance ‘like a girl’ to their amusement.
My school where I attended Kindergarten and 1st Grade had no issue when I used the girls toilet. The only time I ever got in trouble being in the girls restroom was when my girl friend and I got caught throwing wet toilet paper at the ceiling and walls.
When I wore Kathy’s clothes, I got punished for taking them without permission, not for wearing them.
First time I was forced to use male toilets at school was Catholic school beginning at 2nd Grade. The nuns would have none of me dare use the girls toilet.
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I took time to ponder the past four decades. It all fits – it is all interconnected.
- Stanford University Medical Center’s ‘Gender Dysphoria Program’ accepted me in 1977.
- Forty years ago this month was my first medical appointment to obtain clearance; my physician approved me to proceed with Transition
I have few of my own experiences to compare that are typical of the ‘vanilla’ M-F Trans person.
One was wearing women’s undies – full-time beginning when my dad and I lived at New Mexico (1977 – 1978).
I first bought my undies and female attire through the Sears catalogue (1977) – separate orders from that which my dad made, but scheduled for the same pick-up date. We ordered many items from that catalogue. I was the one who drove to pick-up our merchandise.
I didn’t have the nerve to go as Nick to buy in the store. No urge to browse lingerie specialty shops for me. I still buy undies, bras, slips at the intimate section at Target or K-Mart; it’s just utilitarian to me, not erotic or sensual.
My Transition was long ago; I can’t consult with my diaries because they were stolen (2014).
I got to start thinking about 1979.
A pivotal year! Gawd, yes! That year – 1979 – was so pivotal.
I had my medical appointment with the local physician (January).
- What if I chickened out?
- What if I said that all I wanted was a general physical exam now that I had health insurance?
- What if I failed to present my Stanford papers to him?
- What if he tossed me from his office?
- What if he didn’t offer referrals me to get my counsellor? That led to my Internist? That began my estrogen?
Brave?
Scared!
I had no idea what to expect. I was honest with him – I told him that I didn’t obligate him to be my doctor unless he could do it, but rather use his connections to help me find someone at Flagstaff.
I was scared about work. I feared that I would need a doctor’s letter to verify my appointments and that they would reveal my medical privacy. My work supervisor never required any verification from me. I suppose that she knew anyway.
I visited with Kathy and my mom that February. They both were overhearing my telephone call to a counsellor. I overheard them later talking about me. That is okay, I was always glad that you heard – it forced my family to comprehend my initiative even though they refused to talk with me about it. That was when I heard my mom say her words to Kathy – that she was ‘one and done’ with Kathy, that she is not my birth mother. That truth freed me.
That Summer 1979 was my first Forest Service vacation. My dad drove to New Jersey, Kathy drove me to the airport, I flew to meet my dad at New Jersey, we stayed one week, we drove home the next week.
My Estrogen was beginning, it was working its magic. My personality was suddenly quite different; little bothered me during that time because of my new-found euphoria. I also felt good physically – upstairs and downstairs. You know – same as Cis female puberty.
I wore T-shirts that trip – the same that I had been wearing before ‘E’. My lack of self-consciousness, lack of new self-awareness, hardly realised how much I might have been showing upstairs. I didn’t think much about til I was there in New Jersey. Maybe my T-shirts were now too tight? It was too late to pack something different. At least I remembered to pack male undies. How could I toss my female panties in the wash at my Aunt’s home before leaving New Jersey? Can you imagine her wailing about that discovery! That was probably the last time when I wore male undies for such a duration.
My dad most certainly must have known that something was, um, developing.
I so much wanted to share my news – with my dad, with family. Nope, family was out, I couldn’t take that chance and start an argument where I had no place to go for safety.
I was the one who made driving music – usually I would dub a mix of genres and artists that my dad and I both liked. We could play the cassettes when we drove through radio dead zones. But something was very different about the music that Summer 1979. The only male performance was Paul McCartney’s ‘Back to the Egg’. All the other artists were female: Blondie, Suzi Quatro, Shocking Blue, Heart, Jan Park, Dana, Patti Smith, Genya Raven, Janis Ian among what I immediately recall.
My dad refused to talk to me during our alone time. Maybe it was fear – my dad was afraid for the inevitable that he saw was happening right before him. Maybe he was trying to be sincere when he kept telling me to ‘talk to a priest’? That started when we lived at New Mexico (1977). But that priest was absolutely anti-Transsexual. I knew because of his sermons. He didn’t say ‘Transsexual’, but it was part of his weekly diatribe.
My dad and I drove cross-country mostly in silence.
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I think that it helpt me that I hardly fell susceptible to lures from advertisements. Certainly having older female cousins and an older sister presented female role models and female realities to me – clothing styles, make-up, hair fashion, hygiene. I as much grew up as a girl presenting as a boy – an unwilling F-M.
I wonder what people do today. I submit that you Newbie transitioners only become aware of advertising targeting women when you begin your Transition. You try figuring what real Cis females do. You see that advertising – newspaper, magazine, TV – selling the ideal woman. You don’t know what to think because female life is new. You suddenly see all that junk and you get that false notion that women do what is shown in those ads. Lingerie stores can attract the Newbies – someone new in their Transition.
I see Trans women walk around in gaudy clothes that do not match – as if they figure that when the label says ‘female’, then they wear it. Nope, not like that. Female sense for everyday attire is a simple match of clothing and accessories.
Some M-F Trans persons appear – at least to me – as though they have not bathed in a week, washed their hair in the past month, no sense of self and presentation. But I am reluctant to judge because I don’t know where they are in their life – maybe they are in crisis, maybe someone taught them badly, maybe they don’t know better.
Others know how to dress appropriately – tops, skirts, jeans always match, always well-groomed and bathed. You are pleasant to be with.
My best time was from 1985 (when I went full-time) to 1989 (before my dad died). I was in great physical condition, I cared about my self. My clothing was fashionable; my wardrobe during my work life was reasonable office conservative – plain matching tops and skirts, nothing flashy, no low-cut tops, no skirts or hems above the knee. My dad’s death put me in a downward spiral that I have been fighting for 30 years.
My current attire is what could be termed comfortable.
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I found this album on YouTube a few days ago – music from my Transition past that I really miss (it was stolen by those crooks in 2014). I dubbed my album to audio cassette back in 1979 as driving music for my dad and I.
- Jan Park
- (https://youtu.be/rhrW8hQc3Gc)
I could sing along with it when I had my singing voice. I just began my Estrogen when this album came out (1979). The opening track – ‘Something happening to me …’. Yes!
I played Jan Park again when I was outside on my patio washing a couple towels and a sheet the other day.
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Another album from my past in 1979:
- Dana
- ‘The Girl Is Back’
- (https://youtu.be/d-NwSIVQhFc)
I used the intro of that song for background music on several productions I did at the radio station where I was a DJ.
Allow me to share some of the lyrics, how I felt them, how I re-worked some of the lyrics to fit events in my life during 1979 when this album was released:
(1)
‘The smaller the town, the more the rumours fly around and they stab you in the back.’
– Small-town people, small-town employer – the rumours of my status, my co-workers with their hurtful gossip.
(2)
‘When you’re 17 …’, ‘Read between the lines …’
– I am a Janis Ian fan, had most all her albums, relate this to my interpretation of Ian’s ‘At Seventeen’, ‘Society’s Child’.
(3)
‘Makes you realise living in a town this size …’
– But the small-town people and co-workers didn’t even know my name, they never ‘knew’ me.
(4)
‘You know it made me see ..’
– They were never fooling me.
(5)
‘The stab in the back and the rumours in fact …’
– Are more than in my mind – they were quite real, quite painful.
(6)
‘I found the truth …’
Telling me to be! Not going back.
(7)
‘The girl is back …’
– You can say I’m going ‘home’ – somewhere else will be my ‘home’. You could say I’m never calling that small town, that small-town employer, my ‘home’ though I left with many emotions from there.
Many reasons why I stopped there when I drove the moving truck from Utah to Tucson (1985).
I could have easily filled up gas at Flagstaff and drove right through without stopping.
I had to see if anyone still knew me five years later. Nope. No one recognised me.
The woman at the diner downstairs from where I once resided didn’t bat an eye at me, not one sliver of recognition.
Nor the filling station on the corner. I could have gone to the Whiting Brothers that was cheaper, but the guy at the filling station knew Nick every day for two years. All he saw of me Sharon in 1985 was some crazy bitch who has no business driving a truck – about what he was cursing at me when I drove to the pumps.
I travelled there sometime later – don’t recall what year other than likely before 1989. I went to my former Forest Service employer pretending to be a tourist seeking information. OMG! Lydia was still working the reception desk. My heart nearly beat me out of my gourd. All the days Lydia and I talked during lunch and break for two years, not even Lydia, a decade following Nick’s departure, recognised Sharon.
I also saw a few others during the few minutes there, I currently don’t recall whom. They didn’t recognise me.
Most all those co-workers were phonies. They considered Nick only as a foul rumour – queer, f*gg*t – words they spoke behind my back when they didn’t know I was listening. Or maybe because they knew that I was listening, but they were too cowardly to tell me to my face.
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This came into my Facebook feed:
- ‘Where the Right-Wing’s Playbook Came From’
- Dr. Gillian Frank helps us recognize the political tactics that are being used against the trans community.
- (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uHzrPGyiwqo)
I noticed it is from ‘Ehipassiko’ – that was the first Trans web-site that I found three years ago, but haven’t checked in since maybe two years ago.
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Well, I don’t know.
Is it me?
Is it them?
I met many people these three years since I put my stealth in my past – people at Trans support groups.
Then I look at all the people I met doing TV for more than 20 years.
People from work.
I have only one friend in my life from all these years.
Am I that unpleasant to everyone else?
Maybe my self-isolation stunted my capacity to socialise?
Certainly outsiders could surmise that I am weird if maybe my Transsexualism complicates my presence that they don’t understand. But they do not know that I am Transsexual and Inter-sex.
Certainly people at the support groups can’t use my Trans and Inter-sex against me. They are hardly in a position to render that judgement against me.
Yep. Support groups played their role in my life and now it is time to move on.
We’ll see what happens with other social ideas.
This past Saturday morning was the Phoenix Electric Auto Club meeting. I decided to ditch this month. Maybe next?
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I agree that the past is done. My past made me who I am today. I would be someone else somewhere else if I had a different past.
Just one tweak, for example.
If I left Tucson that fatefull December 1999 Sunday evening a few minutes earlier (or later?). I was being sociable with the gas station attendant, wishing him Merry Christmas in case I didn’t return til next year. Five minutes earlier (or later) and that bus might not have hit me.
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Experiment with your estrogen if you think it will work.
I have been amiss – off my estrogen and progesterone meds – these past two, three weeks. I had none during the 10 days prior to my blood draw. I figure that will test where I am without all exogenous hormones.
I still have not made much effort to keep current. I don’t totally care right now. But it’s not just prescriptions. I have also ditched vitamins and supplements.
That is not to mention lack of interest in food.
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Religion makes a difference to people.
Some can’t get past their dogma that lets them abuse and beat a Trans child or other Trans family member (such as mine). Other families allow the opportunity to learn with the child.
You are accurate about the life-or-death option. My family chose that they would rather have me a dead ‘male’ than a living daughter.
My mother beat me quite severely when she had custody of my sister and me.
When our dad got custody, then he was the one who beat me – sometimes hitting me for 30 minutes and more. Kathy used to keep score of the time and tell me how long.
The reason why my dad and I travelled to Greece was directly following a beating. We had a real bad argument the first Thursday of February 1971. He literally pulled at my right arm trying to dislocate it all the while taunting me to scream. ‘No one will hear you.’
The next day, he came home from work and told me that he applied to two foreign schools – one at Afghanistan, the other at Greece.
Pinewood hired my dad. There you have it.
All through Spring 1971, my dad warned me that I better keep my mouth shut, ‘or else’. I did have arguments with my dad while we lived there at Greece, but I also had the sense to take in the experience.
Nowadays, not one local ‘family’ member has anything to do with me. I occasionally send texts to them asking to visit – no reply. My Cousin Bev recently unfriended me from Facebook. Kathy does not correspond with me.
I can’t say that no ‘family’ will communicate with me. Relatives from West Virginia occasionally text me. Cousin Nancy posted some harsh comments to my Facebook page recently. And there is her older brother Cousin James.
I am the only one in ‘family’ who is Left of Ghengis Khan. My ‘family’ are long-time Republi-con. Bev’s older brother made the rounds in his state’s politics – himself a loyal Republi-con appointed by Republi-con governors to be director of various state agencies to impose Republi-con ideology. He ran the state Republi-con Party, or whatever it was.
My sister Kathy and her family are among the infamous ‘1%’.
Sometimes I try excusing my ‘family’.
My dad received the Bronze Star for combat in Korea. God only knows what he must have experienced the couple years when he was there.
My mom was an alcoholic. She frequently told me how she was bullied at school as ‘that little Mexican girl’ so much that she quit high school early and found comfort in booze. She was okay sober, but deadly on booze.
Our dad goaded Kathy to beat me or else he would beat her.
Crazy family.
There was no such thing as ‘domestic violence’ when I was growing up during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. Besides, even if there was, what was the point? I was a child during my mom’s custody; my dad presented evidence of abuse and beatings to the Family Court, but they ruled that my sister and I had to remain in our mother’s charge – susceptible to further beatings during her drunken rages. I lived dependent upon my dad til 1978 when the Forest Service hired me; if I had called the police on my father and they arrested him, prosecuted him, sent him to prison – then what was I to do?
I so understand people who have been demoralised by family abuse. It is a trap with no escape.
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Most all politoical candidates pose to their electorate: ‘Elections have consequences’.
I pose that same point to you, Dear Reader. Liberal or Con-servative. Democratic or Republi-con.
We don’t elect candidates in a vacuum. No candidate is perfect – same as the rest of us. Thus, our choice is not merely the individual candidate, but their political party, their political platform, the history, the following – all part of those ‘consequences’.
There are people in my life who claimed to hold similar perspectives as mine, yet they are Republi-con, they campaigned for Crooked Drumpf, they tell me to wait and give him time. Others now claim that they preferred a different Republi-con candidate. Does not matter. You failed to consider the consequences of your vote.
These people remain absolutely blind about Hillary Clinton. They only know their Republi-con Party line: hate Clinton, love Crooked Drumpf. They have no motivation to recognise that their Party lies to them.
Some are starting to peel away, deny that they ever supported Republi-cons or Crooked Drumpf. Yet they are not taking concern for the consequences of their vote.
People change only through their own initiative. Some will not examine themselves, they refuse information contrary to what they hold as their truth.
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Barbara Bush.
Sorry, I don’t feel mushy about her. She was mildly defined as a Feminist during the 1970s. But both husband George and boss Reagan read the riot act to her in 1980 – either fall in line politically, ‘or else’. She abandoned her principles to surrender to George, Reagan, the Party.
I have no respect for her doing that.
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So here I am – I am at this place in my journey because of what I did 40 years ago. I wanna laugh. I wanna cry. I wanna celebrate.
With you – friends, family, support group members, strangers on the city bus.
Or without you.
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Dear Reader, allow me to spend my time outside on my patio enjoying the Spring weather, the fresh air, hearing the birds chirping and cooing. I would like to socialise with the human species, but find it difficult as long as the rest of it considers me that misfit outcast.
Thank you for visiting today. Please return for another essay. Meanwhile, enjoy the other compositions here at this web-site.
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Slim and Me 