Good-bye 2003

Last Tuesday, I flew into the Midwest to spend time with my family for Christmas. A slight delay in the Bay Area caused my layover in Dallas to become a brisk walk from Gate 35 to Gate 36 and onto the next plane. I kinda like those layovers.

Once arriving and being greeted by my parents, they informed me that my sister wouldn’t be attending. My Mom said she still had a lot of stress, didn’t have much time off with her son since she had to spend extra time with him when he was sick, and of course a little of me. Later that week, when it was just Dad and I, he told me that it was mainly me. I miss my sister.

I flew in girl mode and planned to stay that way for 6 days. My first long “test.” We went to see my grandmother (who took the whole thing very well) on Wednesday with a couple of aunts and uncles there as well. One of my uncles was really impressed with my presentation and even half joked, “Well, maybe I should become a woman. What do you think, would I make an attractive woman?” My uncle isn’t usually this funny, but in this case he’s a riot, for you see he’s pretty manly and half bald, not that he can help that. Lucky for me, he’s very supportive of my journey. In fact, many of my extended family are supportive. It’s nice to be around people like that who will give me a chance. Many of them see that I’m much happier, and they’ve told me this. Those are great comments to hear.

On Christmas Day, I found my parents at the computer watching my sister and her son on one webcam in Missouri and my brother-in-law on a webcam in Korea. We all watched as my nephew spent his first Christmas morning. OK, I’m not a religious person, but I enjoy the tradition of Christmas. As my sister was finishing up their Christmas, we decided to unwrap some gifts as well. No boy gifts! Awesome! My sister gave me a gift certificate for Victoria’s Secret and my mom gave me a set of perfumes and lotions from VS as well. Those two gifts rock, but everything was great in general.

My sister called a few times while I was at my parents, and we even talked for a while. She was very polite, and we talked about a few items for about 5 minutes. It was a very nice conversation. I miss those.

During the stay, we made stops at Wal-mart twice. As far as I could tell, I didn’t get many direct stares, although I’m not sure how my wake looked as no one was covering my six. I think that situation would bug a lot of people since they’d be worried about being seen with a transgender person in the middle of Hickville, but everything went pretty good both times.

Those six days as me rocked. I totally left the male shell behind a few days into it. It was so wonderful. Although I know this journey is for me, at that point I knew absolutely for sure that I will be happy as me. It’s very hard to describe, but I’ll try. I’ll try to relate it to a roller coaster. You know that initial ching ching ching up the very tallest portion at the beginning where you wonder if your decision to ride the super scary extra looping death defying vomit inducing ride is the right decision for you? It’s super scary because you know that initial fall looms in your immediate future, but once you get through it all, you’re ready to do it again. OK, well, I made it through the first loop and it wasn’t that bad.

During the stay, I told everyone that any name or pronoun was fine to use. It didn’t matter. Everyone tried their hardest to use Kara, she, and her, but they still slipped. It wasn’t that bad, though. My dad did start using one of my old nicknames that I picked up in college, though, which I don’t really care to hang on to. Hopefully he’ll switch to Kara or “care” in the future. Otherwise, things were pretty good on the name front. They’re trying which is all I can ask for.

My mom and cousin tried their hand at styling my hair while I was there. My mom tried blow drying it straight and curling it in larger curls, but as I told her, it’s pretty hard to do anything with it. She threw about an hour and a half at it, but what came through didn’t live long. It was a monster! I messed a little with the front side bangs and threw the rest into a ponytail, though, so it worked, but it just needed a little help. Now, that hairdo would have worked if I was attending the Emmy’s or something as I would have garnished a ton of attention. My cousin also tried to braid my hair, but with the curls it’s just so hard to make it look like something decent. They both tried though, which is respectable. Now they both sorta know how hard it is dealing with super curly hair, but I still get a ton of straight haired people telling me they wished they had curly hair. And I tell them back that I wish I had straight hair. Even when I showed them my morning hair the next day, they still wanted curly hair. Phbbbtttt!!!!

After reading some of Claire’s blog over the past few months, I found an entry about a T named Fonda Le Femme in Arkansas who does shows. She’s more of an illusionist or drag queen, but you can tell there’s still a lot of girl in her as well. Since one of her shows wasn’t that far away from my parents, I decided to check it out. I got to the club a little early and inquired as to what type of club it was. It was usually a hip hop club, but on Sunday’s it was more of a gay club with the drag show. Hmm...OK, well I figured that wouldn’t be too bad. Actually, as people started arriving, there was a mixture of gay men, lesbians, straight women, and a few straight guys. There was one DQ roaming the audience, and 5 DQ/Female Illusionists in the show. Actually, two of them might have been TS since one appeared to have breast growth when she wore pasties and the other just gave off that vibe.

I talked to Fonda a little before the show and she was a little curious as to what transition actually involved. She asked a little about the facial surgery, and wondered how I did with it. I told her I hadn’t had it yet, and she was a little surprised. I guess she thought my chin was already very femme. I told her the hormones have helped thin it out a lot, but that the bone was just that way. I told her the hormones really help with thinning out portions of the face. Her face was already very lean, and she’d already had a nose job making it look very feminine. Her presentation was really nice, although a little dramatic for the show.

While I was hanging around before, during, and a little after the show, though, I had a few guys kinda hitting on me. The guy at the door kept calling me ‘sweetheart.’ The owner/manager was checking me out initially, then kept stopping by to talk a little after that. One of the guys at the bar gradually made his way over to me and asked ‘where my homey was.’ I told him I wasn’t with a homey, but I think he kinda figured out I wasn’t interested or that I was T, and he soon left me alone. Later, one of the big security guards kept talking to me here and there. I went back out to my car to get something, and as I did, he whistled. When I came back in, he said he would have walked me to my car. After a few short conversations, he stops by and asks, “Will you marry me?” Oh please...such flattery??? I told him that I wasn’t his type, with him asking what type I was. He ran off to some “emergency” before he could prod me any further.

Although I felt comfortable in the club with not too many people reading me, I could still feel a few of the stares. There was a group of three women that would occasionally look my way trying to figure me out. And two women walked by me with one stopping to whisper at the other, then both looking back at me. I know...I’m on display for people to gawk at. I’m something different, so people stare, just like looking at a person with a physical handicap or some physical difference. A lot of T’s are scared by this, but I’ve gotten sorta used to it. I’m fine with it as long as they don’t hurt me or confront me in a bad nature.

While on vacation, I was able to finish off two more books for this year. I read Oryx and Crake the past two weeks, and finished off Feminizing Hormonal Therapy For The Transgendered. Earlier this year I finished off Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods -- My Mother’s, My Father’s, and Mine. It was OK, but rather boring until the last third of the book.

Middlesex was a really good book, and was the book that my coworker Robi had already read. It took me a while to get through it since it was quite long, but the story was well written and had a ton of detail. The main character is intersexed (although the author is not), but he doesn’t go through much of the GID and transition that many TS and IS individuals go through. In the book, though, the character does admit that he was different than many of the other IS people he met later in life. The character also meets a transsexual near the end of the story when the character travels to, where else, San Francisco. I think it could have used a better ending, but it worked.

Oryx and Crake was a book mentioned on GenderPeace, and Courtney lent me her copy when she visited at Halloween. I started it a few weeks ago and finished it on my vacation. The story kept me entertained, but the ending totally blew.

I have a few books I have been working on this past year, and hopefully I’ll be able to finish them sometime this new year. I’m about halfway through The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender. It’s the precursor to True Selves. I also have Transistor Radio and The Man Who Would be Queen on my bookshelf waiting to be read.

OK, well, I am heading out to meet some friends to celebrate the New Year. It’s also the countdown to the new California state law protection which adds ‘gender identity’ to the non-discrimination policy of the state. Whoo hoo! Happy New Year!!!