Thursday, February 22, 2007

Jimmy Kimmel Loves Transsexuals

As usual, I was up way too late last night. I'd watched LOST a few hours prior, so the TV was still on ABC. I don't usually watch ABC except for LOST.

Anyway, Jimmy Kimmel had guest Rebecca Romijn on. Rebecca is currently seen on Ugly Betty as Alexis Meade, a transsexual woman. Jimmy mentioned this at the beginning of his program, so I figured I'd stay up a little longer and see what they said.

After bringing her out, Jimmy showed a number of pictures of transsexuals...including Renee Richards, Amanda Lepore, and a few others that I didn't recognize. (To be honest, I was slightly hoping he didn't pop up an image of myself. Luckily for me, I don't have many super clear images up...just enough so you know who I am.)

So, Jimmy then mentions that most of the transsexuals he showed didn't look anything like the supermodel Rebecca currently is...since that is who she is playing on Ugly Betty. It is kinda ironic that a show modeled around their main star being someone who is ugly has a transsexual character that is a supermodel.

Jimmy thought most transgender people weren't as feminine as she appeared. Rebecca chimed in that there were plenty of feminine transsexuals...and that she had a transsexual friend that had lived as a woman longer than she had lived as a man. I found that to be quite interesting that she had an acquaintance that was transgender.

Although Jimmy seemed slightly only slightly uncomfortable talking about transsexuals, he took a fairly reasonable approach to her playing a transsexual.

On a wicked little side note, I have an acquaintance who has spent a little time with a certain talk show host. We shan't mention names, but I do find it remarkable just how many people are quite "curious" about transsexuals.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

A year of boobies

Actually, it's been a little over a year. They've softened up quite a bit and dropped nicely into place. They could actually drop a little more to look a little better, but they're doing quite well.

A few months ago, one of my teammates commented that he could tell women with fake boobs, and he didn't believe me when I told him I had mine done. He wanted to see. (Hahaha...guys!) I felt it was a compliment that he didn't know I had a breast augmentation.

Anyway, as I mentioned, they have fallen nicely into place. They still aren't as soft as I would like, but the shape and placement are pretty good. My left incision area is pretty much only noticeable to me. My right one is a little more noticeable, but most people still would not be able to detect it unless I pointed it out to them.

I still have a little numbness with my right breast...in a circular area below my nipple..that just barely touches the nipple area. It's not full numbness, but there is limited sensation there. I would say the area is slighly larger than a half-dollar.

Overall, I'd give the whole thing an A-, simply for the issue of the numbness. Although I did have to buy all new dresses for those special occasions, my clothes fit a lot better now...and I feel a lot more comfortable with my body.

On another note, I recently heard a rumor that Dr. Gray was no longer performing BA's on transgender patients. When I chatted with him in my initial consult, he seemed fairly ok with working with transgender people. He said he'd been working with us since his residency days and I didn't sense any real issues. One of his office staff is obviously gay, so I wondered what was going on. I sent Dr. Gray an email and his office staff responded. Dr. Gray isn't operating on trangender people because the hospital he operates in is no longer accepting transgender patients. It's a Catholic hospital, so they seem to have a big issue with it. I've heard rumors that certain actions are being taken, so we'll have to wait to see. It'd be nice if Dr. Gray would simply move his operations to a different hospital, but I'm not sure how likely that action is. Anyway, if anyone is considering Dr. Gray as a potential option, you might want to either reconsider, or look into the actions being taken against Seton Medical Center.

I've included below the mission statement listed on their opening page:

Seton Medical Center has provided medical care to the people of San Francisco and Northern San Mateo County for over a century. Our history is testimony of our service in providing care and a compassionate environment for the sick, the poor and the underserved.


It seems very hypocritical to me.

Monday, February 12, 2007

The Greg Behrendt Show

My usual morning news goes off at 9am. Often times, I'm still getting ready for work. Yes, I'm a slacker. Hey, it is California, right? When in Rome, I might as well be a Roman.

Anyway, the channel I watch used to have Montell on, but they have since switched to the Greg Behrendt show. I've seen a bit of it the past few months. Today was the first transgender episode I have seen since watching it.

Greg's show takes place in LA, so I'm sure he's fairly aware of T's. Him and his psychologist were definitely more about the relationship between the T and her girlfriend that telling the T how to live her life. They weren't quite up on pronouns, but then again, I'm not sure how the T would like to be addressed. You see, the transgender person said they were transgender...perhaps a transgenderist. She stated she wasn't a cross-dresser nor a transsexual, and that she did not plan on having surgery...she just wanted to live her life in the female persona.

The girlfriend of five years knew of the persona, but was not aware of her desire to live fulltime. It was sprung on her during the show.

That's gotta be hard. Don't drag your SO to a TV show to tell them some disastrous secret, OK? It takes many of us years to deal with the GID...how can we ask them to accept things right then...on national TV? It's just unfair.

Anyway, I only caught the first part, and taped the rest of it. I'll have to watch it later tonight. My initial reaction is that the show did a fairly decent job handling it...besides the overdramatization created via the need for network ratings.

PS...I love his uncomfortable phone calls.

Pastrami

So...my trip to New York City....

It was an early flight out of the Bay Area into Chicago for a short layover. Beth and I were both there around the same time, but via different flights. She was also at Midway while I was at O'hare. Both of us were flying to New York to participate in the Transfigurations show at the igallery. Being Superbowl weekend, I saw a ton of Bears fans headed to Miami or walking around in their jerseys...just in the airport.

Beth and I arrived in La Guardia around rush hour. Fortunately, we were headed into the city, and not out of it like everyone else. We decided to stay at the same hotel as the artist, Jana Marcus. She picked a very posh place just north of Times Square called Michelangelo. It sounds befitting an artist, right?

As soon as we ran the bags up to our room, we were off to the premiere opening. We arrived to find a few friends already there, with more to arrive soon. The picture layout looked wonderful and the place was actually packed solid.

While chatting with Jana and entourage, I noticed a young man eyeing me. He was slightly taller than me, young, and fairly attractive. I soon recognized him as one of the subjects of Jana's timeline series. It's amazing how much he has changed with time...even since the one year on hormones. (Wow...testosterone is such a powerful drug.)

Jana soon introduced the two of us. He complimented me on my 'appearance' and didn't know I was T...especially since my photo did not make this showing. Had I not seen his pictures, I never would have known he was T either. I caught him eyeing me a few more times during the weekend, but when I saw him head off to iceskate with his female friend, I thought they might be dating. He lives in Southern California now, so that would be a bit hard anyway. (They weren't dating, btw.)

Saturday morning involved sleeping in a little, then Beth and I headed off to the Museum of Natural History. There was a lot of cool stuff, and some not so cool stuff. We soon picked up a straggler...one of the museum volunteer curators that found a liking to Beth. After the museum, we headed off to the afternoon panel at the art show.

Jana talked first and went over what she put into the show. She went through a lot of the slides that didn't make the NY show, including all of the nudes. That was the first time I was present in the room where my nude was shown. I probably felt nervous for about half a second before I went "oh, whatever". I used to go topless all the time in boymode, so it's really no big deal. Plus, her shot doesn't show that much down below.

Next, we watched the Aidan's movie about his transition and the effects it's had on himself and family. It's a remarkable look back at who he was. It's really amazing looking back to see how most of us never do that well at living in the wrong bodies...and then how comfortable when we do have the right one.

After the movie, we started the panel. It was myself, Beth, Aidan, Lyle, and one more whose name escapes me right now who chatted about our lives and the project. Most of the people in the audience were not T, but a few were. It was a very cool glimpse at how the project has affected us. The group went out afterward, and then a smaller group of us kinda wandered around Saturday night. Once Beth and I made it back to our hotel room, I convinced her to walk with me down to Times Square to get a picture or two...all well past midnight...and with tons of people still out doing the touristy thing.

On Sunday, I decided I was going to cram in as much touristy stuff that I could. While Beth was off having brunch with a few family members, I had brunch in the East Village with a pair of NY friends. I dragged them down to Battery Park in the freezing wind blown cold so I could catch a distant glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. We then headed slightly northeast to walk past Ground Zero before jumping back on the subway. It was so cold we had to duck into several places just to stand there with the doorman so we could warm up.

"Just act like you own the place," I said in a jokingly manner. I'm sure the doormen were happy to help out a few frozen damsels in distress.

Beth later joked that you could tell the temperature by how soon one of us said a four letter word to describe how cold it was. (And, yes, it wasn't necessarily the temperature, but the fraking wind that really caused the real trouble.)

After warming up and regrouping with Beth, we headed for more site-seeing. This time we ran by Rockefeller Center and went to the Top of the Rock. Since the Superbowl was on later that day, the lines were super short. In fact, there weren't really any lines at all. After that, it was mainly just Beth and I. I talked her into going up in the Empire State Building. Again, no line at all. I think we maybe had 5-6 people in front of us at the actual elevator, when on a normal day, the line to buy tickets would extend outside the building. We literally walked through tons of roped off sections made for the usual lines.

Both buildings provided incredible views. They had guides on what was visible, and even included 'ghost images' where the Trade Center Towers had been. It was amazing just how big they were.

I guess I'm one of those that could just sit up there all day and look out at the world. Even in college, I resided on the 7th floor of one dorm. I'd just sit on the balcony at night and look out over the city entangled in the rolling forest. Unfortunately, the wind-chill led me to shorten my observance time. I talked Beth into a little Korean barbeque which happened to be right around the corner from ESB.

We spent that evening at a cool little bar that had an all-female activity going on for those of us not participating in Super Bowl activities. Our New York visit was coming to a close.

Because we ate relatively early in the afternoon, Beth and I were both kinda hungry when we finally made it back to our hotel room. I was looking for something sweet, while Beth was looking forPizza. We saw a deli open near the hotel and ran down in the four-letter-word-in-2-seconds cold. I saw cake which made me fairly happy. Back across the street, I saw a Dunkin Donuts with a Pizza Hut attached. I asked Beth if she wanted me to see if they were still open, so I ran across to the corner. The door was locked.

"They're closed."

I turned around to see two guys sitting in an older model 2 door sedan.

"Why didn't you and your girlfriend order something from the deli?"

"Umm...she's not my girlfriend...and she was interested in pizza."

"Ahh...well, me and my friend just got off work and picked up our pastrami sandwiches. What are you two up to? "

"Ummmm...we have an early flight in the morning."

"Well, let me ask this...are you female?"

OK, OMG!!!!! WTF? I go to a transgender panel where an FTM can't read me, but something about me leads this guy to ask if I am female. In this case, he wanted either a yes or no answer.

"I'm female...what made you ask me that?"

"I dunno..."

"Did you think I was a transsexual?"

"No no no...it's New York...I gotta ask."

Beth has now followed me across the street.

"Hey, what's going on?" asks Beth.

"These guys wanna go up to our hotel room," I say.

"Hey, I didn't say that."

OK, he's right...he didn't say that, but that's what he was thinking.

Beth and I walked back to the deli after ditching them. I had cake.

The next morning we caught our flights home. Ahhhh...no more four-letter-word-temperatures.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Cotillion 2007

I stayed busy this past weekend. I spent Friday night at a friend's place just hanging out, then got up early Saturday morning to get my hair done. I had it flat-ironed and trimmed. I seriously wish it were straight all of the time, and will likely look into the Japanese hair straightening method again.

After that, I made my way to the same X-ray office that Dr. O uses for FFS. I had the same pictures taken, but this time for Dr. Meltzer. (More on that below) Sunny was her usual sunny self. I think she was curious why I was there, at first, but soon pointed out that I was a former Dr. O patient. I told her I recognized here from 3 years ago, but that she likely didn't recognize me. I pulled my old picture out of my purse and showed it to her. She said I looked slightly familiar.

I then ran home and chilled a while before getting ready for TGSF's Cotillion. I was to handle the emcee part of the Debutante Walk again this year. When I arrived, I saw Lenny Broberg, the co-host of the Cotillion. We joked about me wearing the same dress as Donna Sachet again this year, but we soon saw that she had on a different colored one from me. I went black this year, so it's kind of a boring color for many. Basically, though, it was the only dress I could find that fit AND looked decent. My trip into Bloomies and Macy's yielded poor results, so I settled on a size 12 from Cache. Yeah, a size 12. I knew their sizes ran small, but wow. I usually wear anywhere from a 6-10, but a 12 fitting snug....hmmm. Not only that, but I'm still down in weight this year after being sick and not working out that much.

I ran into a number of old friends, and a few new people I'd only corresponded with online. It's nice to catch up, but also to meet people that I've emailed with. After the intermission, I read the names of people attending their first Cotillion as they walked across the stage. When the first guy popped into our little mix, I had to keep him up on stage for a little bit. Lenny fed me a couple lines to use, as well, so it was played up quite nicely.

After finally making it home Saturday night, I got up early the next morning to go into work for a short time before flying out to Phoenix. I had a consult with Dr. Meltzer Monday afternoon concerning jaw work and a lower facelift. Some will say I don't need it, but the extra skin around my chin and neck is not going away...and will only get worse with time. I've been told facelifts are easier to recover from and provide better results when done fairly young. I'm also interested in refining the right side of my jaw. Dr. Meltzer and I looked over the X-rays and there is definitely something going on in the one area I am concerned about. It almost looks like the bone hasn't quite fused back together on one side. (I have a little notch/bump that is especially sore with electro in that area of the notch.)

Anyway, he's supposed to send me a quote for the facelift/bonework/removal of the chin gear. I'd like to have the screws and plates removed, just for my own satisfaction...plus I think it might be causing some of the soreness with the notch area.

I flew home Monday night. I'm still swamped at work, so catching up hasn't been fun, especially since I was in training 3 days last week. I fly out tomorrow for New York and the Transfigurations art show. There is supposed to be a panel on Saturday that a few of us are participating in, but I also hope to say hey to a number of friends in the New York area.