And they lived happily ever after

So, a few weeks ago, I was reading Gwen Smith’s blog. She mentioned that this year’s V-Day performances of the Vagina Monologues would include the transgender option from last year’s transgender V-Day performance in LA. At first, I wondered if a transgender group in the San Francisco Bay Area could put something together in time to perform our own version, but I realized I didn’t have enough time for something to come together, nor enough time for myself to be involved with planning it.

I looked online to see if there were any local performances, and found that the University of California - Berkeley was having three performances. I contacted them via email to see if they were having the transgender option. Two people responded that they were. They also mentioned that they were in need of transgender performers and asked if I knew anyone who might be interested.

I passed along the names of Sherilyn Connelly, who I met at the Cotillion when she performed her own spoken word piece, and Gwen Smith, who was very much involved with last year’s performance piece.

Longer story short, Sherilyn and I auditioned for spots in their monologue and got them. I wasn’t sure I was even supposed to audition, but I said what the hell, looked over the script for a few minutes, then read the entire thing as an audition. They appeared to like my rendition well enough to ask me to perform Eve’s transgender monologue this year. Cool. Sherilyn and I will also hopefully be writing our own personal monologues since it appeared that most of the production crew weren’t that impressed with Eve’s T-monologue. They didn’t think it was as personal as others they have had. You see, UC-Berkeley has had transgender performers in the past - regardless if there were transgender monologues or not. So, I guess this will be keeping me busy. The last of their three shows falls just over a week before I have my own vagina.

That still seems to weird to say. Vagina. My vagina. When I look in the mirror and pull my penis to the side and hide it so I can’t see it - cupping it as though it weren’t there - and imagine that there is a vagina there, things seem right. What’s remarkable, though, is that there is this feeling of just being me. Me. And it feels nice, like a warm happy glow. I wonder if that glow - this happy high feeling - exists post-op? I also wonder how reality sets in afterward. Will I grow depressed due to loneliness? I’ve been alone most of my life, but the times I have been in some type of relationship, I have been a lot happier. I have so much I want to do in life, but now I feel hampered by my age and my debt. I can and will work off the debt, but dealing with growing old is something I will just have to deal with. I’d like to deal with it with someone I love - but that is a new bridge I will have to cross.