Well, this is not a question I got from my Catholic Catechism in first grade. (Actually they never told us where the soul really was--thus leading to my own explorations.) as described, the soul was kind of a spiritual abacus summing up graces minus sins (big and little), but all in code so you never knew where you stood. In general it was enough just to try to be good and get to confession for the occasional lapses. I have to admit that as a child I didn't concern myself very much with where the soul might be since it did it's accounting in real-time without any help from me and seldom bothered me with updates on how I was doing. It was similar to my daily standings account balance report which every week, if I looked, showed a few more pennies and no overdrafts.
As a child I was occasionally a deep thinker since I spent a lot of time alone; I wasn't particularly religious. But I was an explorer. In particular of my body, which at the time I had no idea that any religious concerns were implied.
So there I was during the summer of my seventh year, alone at the beach, on an overcast day at low/tide. Ie, this was dullsville, at low tide there were no waves, no places to dive from, and you had to walk across long stretches of brown slime. I found myself climbing on the steps and diving platforms that I loved to use at high tide. On that gray , bored day, for no particular reason, I grabbed one of my nipples gently and started rubbing it. Not expecting anything, I was pleasantly surprised when I liked the sensation--sort is a small warm glow. Interesting I thought. Let's try it on the other one. I did with the same pleasurable novel result. Now for the grand experiment--rub both nipples at once. And this was good, very good Far better than either nipple alone. Wow! This is cool. I wonder if I can do it any time I want. Just then, as I contemplated planning future sessions solely for the purpose of self-titillation, I became self-conscious. I suddenly looked around to see if any one was watching me; I could get that my behavior would have struck many as strange. But no one was looking. There were few at the beach and I had the waterless diving platform to myself. Self-consciousness now prompted me to abandon my experiment, but I had learned something new, something important.
I do have to acknowledge that at this age I had already discovered the joys, if not the whys of masturbation. I was a regular. Anytime I had time alone in my room (which I had a lot if, even though I shared my room with a twin brother) I comforted and consoled myself for my lack of friends or anything to do with masturbation (this was way before I was spilling any seed). At times I wondered how it was that God had created something so wonderful, so uncomplicated (that would come later), and free. It was great. At first I made no connection between my new nipple fun and rubbing my penis, other than that they were both for private consumption only.
The years rolled by and I remained a lonely, bright, too tall, skinny schoolboy. In sixth grade I crossed a line with my masturbating and deliberately rubbed my legs together around my penis while bored. It simply hadn't occurred to me that this was either inappropriate or worthy of attention. My sixth grade nun, Sr Leo Christine seemed as consternated as I was when she interrupted class to tell me to stand up and, after a few minutes to go out to the library, where she joined me later. She was shocked to learn that I had no idea I was doing anything wrong. I was one of the good boys in the class. No one had ever directly spoken to me about this behavior, and I had been doing it for a long time. I was upset, even tearful, as I was guessing that this meant that my grades would suffer, but she reassured me they would not. I just needed to speak with my dad about this matter. Ok.
Dad seemed as surprised as I was that I had no idea what was wrong with this behavior. "Hasn't anyone ever talked to you about 'masturbating' (my first formal hearing of this word; it had always just been 'rubbing myself') I said 'No,' surprised that he asked since I thought that was his job. He now gave me the advice not to rub myself in public, and we let it go at that.
Two years later, after finishing 8th grade my dad figured it was time to give my twin and I the birds and the bees talk. He talked about hormones, and urges, and penises getting hard into erections that would allow intercourse. "Oh, you mean 'fucking', Dad. Yeah, we know all about that.' , my twin brother John said precociously, with me not being quite sure what he was talking about, but I played along. My dad went on to introduce us to the potential dangers of sex play with others, particularly other older boys. At this point I chimed in. "Oh, you mean like Alonzo (our weekly floor cleaning man)". He used to visit me in my bedroom when I was home from school sick. He used to rub my penis, but it wasn't much fun. I had never mentioned it to anyone before. When all this was done, judging from our Dad's obvious discomfort, we estimated that he may have learned more than we did that day. Shortly afterwards Alonzo was fired, but the incidents were never mentioned again.
When that summer was complete my twin and I went off to boarding school. I was so sick with the idea that I got physically ill at the departure time, vomiting all over the place, so I arrived at school a week late.
Starting Boarding school was a terrible experience. We were too young and too immature. The hazing rituals were cruel and demeaning and we had never been subjected to anything like that before. We were separated into different dorms. I was tossed into a room with a nice enough roommate, but with only 1 week of clothes, which all got sent out to the cleaners after the first week, so there was nothing but dirty clothes to use for the second week. The malodorous result quickly made me unpopular. I was compelled to participate in sports (football) despite no prior experience. On my very first play the quarterback handed me the ball and told me to run while the whole defensive team piled on. That was their idea of a good time. I got relegated to 3rd string tackle after that. I hated the coach.
And then there was study hall, compulsory periods to start your homework, followed by trips to the chapel for compline and vespers, led by the Benedictine monks who ran the school.
In short I had lots of reasons to continue my lonely but athletic masturbation exercises with any chance I got. This activity went firmly into the closet at this point.
Prep school was an odd crucible. It took 3 years to realize that I had some genuine athletic talent in football (offensive and defensive end), basketball (high-scoring center on a team that tied for the state Prep championship), and track (shot put, discus, and javelin setting records in shot put and javelin). But this was in the future. For the present I was an uncoordinated nerd. At least I got good grades, but this gave my classmates even less reason to like me. The best you can say is that they kept you busy and supervised all the time, and that gradually it became less painful . All (my relatively little) free time went to masturbating, with whatever (occasionally borrowed) sweater was available.
The other usual adolescent focus was sex--good old boy-girl dating. It was compulsory to have some good stories to tell (baseball) regardless of your current reality . Of course, some of the boys did actually lose their virginity, but it was impossible to tell which because they all said they did. The single exception was me. I liked pretty girls and pretty boys about equally, but completely platonically. I did not regard myself as having a sex . Wasn't even sure what gender meant. My masturbation was purely an act of self-love with no interest in involving anyone else. I barely understood boys, most of whom seemed arrogantly cruel. I searched out the shy sensitive ones so I could seem outgoing by comparison. Girls were an entirely absent unknown quantity. I would much rather have learned how to say hello to one far more than having sex with one. I couldn't for the life of me figure why I would want sex. I was doing fine by myself. Everything else just confused me.
The real surprise was that I never really moved beyond this state of mind. In college I studied hard for two years, went on a total of 3 dates with no clue as to what either I or they wanted. I continued to have no need for sex due to my regular masturbatory relief. The one improvement in this area was that I now had a couple is small jobs which gave me spending money for sweaters. I planned these shopping trips with the utmost of care, always narrowing down several exciting candidates to just one paragon of assorted colors and textures:. Then there would be the ritual breaking in with a long intensely tactile masturbatory session . I would not have any actual fantasies at all. I would just submerge myself in a world of touch all over.
Eventually college bade me to move on no matter how ready I felt. My major had been classics and classical archaeology, and there wasn't much I was ready to do with that. "My future lay in ruins," as one classmate said.
Having been a boy scout leader for the last two years of college, and having found far more life and grounding there than in the classroom, I decided to try to become a youth program coordinator for the local Catholic community, which had sponsored the Boy Scout troop. I had come to know most of the parents well, enjoyed the kids, who looked up to me as a fearless leader of fun. I had recently been elected to the parish council, so at one meeting I proposed that they create this position, and that I fill the position, and both resolutions passed. Thus I got myself into the seamy world of rectory politics.
It turned out that I loved what I was doing (although the $100 a week under the table pay wasn't getting me anywhere), but I hated the politics watching the pastor who hired meget squeezed out, watching his successor build a stately empire in his stead, and bringing with him an assistant who had a thing for little boys. The disaffected college chaplain actively tried to have me fired. I decided I liked working with kids and their parents, so I would pursue this avenue without the politics by becoming a pediatrician. The minor set back was that as yet I had done no pre-med classes, as this was all rather unexpected.
I am not here to tell you the story of medical school (will save that for another day). It suffices to say I did 2 years of pre-med studies and then went into Penn, where my best friend was studying.
In med school I studied hard and was able to graduate in only 3 years instead of 4. My major accomplishment was becoming a star touch football quarterback with an undefeated record in pick up play. I was starting to become hungry for companionship and dated about a dozen different ladies. The rather consistent pattern was my avid pursuit for several weeks until I had them somewhat interested, and then that interest would make me run. I was always far hotter in the chase of those who weren't really interested. Over time the inanity of this pattern dawned on even me. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark--right here inside little old me.
I got an internship in pediatrics in a children's hispital in DC. The 100 hour weeks left no time for any life at all, and I got desperately lonely. Dated my first nurse on the children's ward at CHOP, a cute pageboy blond, but was unable to complete coitus with her, and then really freaked when she wanted me to meet her parents anyway. Exit stage left. The next nurse looked similar, also failed to complete coitus, but gave me my first and quite sensational blow job (an act I was never able to complete" again). After several dates (and attempted sex), I was becoming attached and offered, if we still felt like this in the Fall (it was May), let's think about getting married. She interpreted that as an engagement and went out and bought her own $1200 engagement ring, without any input from me! Aaaarrrrrgggghhh! Exit, stage left.
I had already learned to hate my internship after hospital politics played a direct role in the death of one of my patients. I discovered an opportunity to go out west for a fellowship in public health, and I took it. I lived in International House in Berkeley and enjoyed its splendid diversity, among which I did not stand out as that weird. I played more tennis than study but I relaxed and did well enough to graduate. There was one petite, sassy freshman lady who was bright and scintillating in a way that I later realized recalled my mother to whom I was very awkwardly attracted to, but, while she encouraged me for a while, she was not interested in me. Then there was this very nice homespun gal who was studying physical therapy and who was very interested in me, but I felt nothing for her. This is a sick pattern, I realized, and I went into therapy.
I called the first psychologist I found in the Yellow Pages and there she was in the A's. She was good. For the first time I realized that I had emotions, whether I liked them or not, and they were in fact playing havoc with my life. What I too little realized was that she had emotions too, and like Barbara Streisand in the Prince of Tides she was falling for this bright but terribly naive young man. To make a long story short she started to arrange therapy sessions in local cafes instead of her office, which she said was unavailable. Then she persuaded this dummy that I'd be better off pairing off with someone like her, who "understood" me than in the watered down version of my mother whom I preferred. We got married a year later. All I can say is that on the long drives from Berkeley to her niece's home in LA, which we did a lot, we could never find anything to talk about.
My career at that point took me back into a residency to get board certified, but this time in Family Medicine. The career she wanted, desperately, was motherhood, and after her revelation that she had lied to me about her age--instead of being my age at 35, she was 10 years older. That removed any mystery about why we couldn't get pregnant. (I know, I just should have left, but that was something I just didn't do.) An infertility specialist said there was nothing to do, so we explored the surrogacy option, only to have our surrogate leave town with our money. The residency was hard--shitty hours again--and the marriage was hard. She suffered major depression, refused to try medication, and ended up making a suicide attempt with an electrical cord, which broke fortunately, in our shower. I heard the crash, went and picked her up, arranged a therapy appointment for both of us, and then declared I wanted out. She left promptly to stay with her niece in LA, where I gather her niece did not have a very good time. She made a suicide attempt again, was hospitalized, improved over weeks, then signed into s Holiday Inn and finished the job with sleeping pills.
I was then in my third and last year of residency. I had found a job with a medical school in North Carolina, East Carolina University. At about the same time I got my acceptance letter, I finally got some results from a personal ad I had placed in "Cleveland" magazine. A divorcee with two beautiful children who had been left by her ENT physician husband (for good and sufficient reason as it later turned out). That didn't leave me much time to figure our relationship out before moving to NC, so I invited her to come with me, and she did--with 3 year old Nate and 4 year old Ted.
What became almost instantly clear once we set up house together was that she was a borderline (borderline personality disorder)--you know, the I hate you don't leave me shit. We cycled with absolute regularity for about 10 years, and even had a son of my own, Connor in 1987. When we worked, what really worked was the sex. She was kind of a kinky nymphomaniac. She had once seduced her married uncle, an Obstetrician, gotten pregnant, got him to do the abortion, and then told her kids what had happened to their "brother." I found all this out much later. The relevant part of this saga for my gender development was that in her lusty pursuit of good sex she was willing to play out fantasies, and she asked me what mine was. After some hemming and hawing, I sputtered out that I wanted to dress as a woman, something I had never shared with anyone before. And dress up I did. She was an enthusiastic stage and prop hand. She got me my dress, panties, tights, wig, makeup, and butt plug. And to my great surprise I lived it--my new life as Shelly. Soon thereafter the kindliness came out and she wanted to try spanking and other more S&M delights, which I gave up after a single outing. It stopped soon thereafter, but I had learned something. There was a woman in me, and she was very satisfying. I kept my dresses though, and wig, and when we split up a year later I kept on playing Shelly.
After the breakup, I had my son Connor and bought my own place. I split my time between working at home writing a.newsletter for physicians and practicing medicine part time.
Fast forward a couple of years. I meet a woman at a community building workshop sponsored by Scott Peck's group. We hit it off. I can't complete sex initially, but gradually improve my issues. We get engaged in 3 months and are married in another 4. My mission is to build up my newsletter, which I did --up to a circulation of 3500 subscriptions for a gross of $260 K. That was the peak. The internet's free treasure trove of information slowly killed my newsletter. My wife's career objective, in a telling déjà by, was to be a mother. So we did the infertility work up, in vitro fertilization, which worked, then didn't work ending in a miscarriage. Then we adopted. First one, then in another year, two, ant then finally, 4 years later, a third. My life, as I knew it, was over.
* * * *
Zooming past 15 years of self-anihilation. I loved my kids. My wife turned out to be a narcicist who curiously abandoned interest in her boys as they got older. I officially left on February 16th, 2011 to start a new job in the high Sierras between California and Nevada. In the final years of our empty relationship I started pondering alternatives and searching for explanations. Maybe I was gay. Shortly after I got to my new home in the mountains I signed up for the Prime Timers, a gay organization. I was chronically pretty horny at this point and not willing to go near another woman. Just one week after my registration I got a call from Mike, a pleasant man my age, and we were able to have a pretty relaxed conversation. He invited me over on the weekend, some 70 miles away, and I accepted. He was a big, solid, rolly-poly kind of man, who was unexpectedly very sweet. As soon as I got there he offered me a Harvey Wallbanger, my favorite drink, and asked what I'd like for dinner, but the choices were limited. Then he invited me to stay the night, which had not been part of the original invite, and, curious, I said 'yes'. He responded by getting kind of misty-eyed when I accepted, and I thought this was endearing. We did try to have sex that night. (I had had only one prior gay relationship.) We both fumbled around a bit out of nervousness and neither reached a climax, but we had a good time. He wasn't certain that I would want to come again, but I very much did. It was wonderful to have someone who was so solicitous towards me. That was so novel.
So we developed a regular ritual of Wednesday nights and every other weekend over his house for Wallbangers and TV. I persuaded him to watch every episode of '24' with me, which kept us busy for quite a while. I was really enjoying being in my male element. The sex for me evolved only slowly, as I have always been exceedingly slow to get relaxed enough to have sex with anyone--even when it didn't involved penetration. He very much liked what I did for him. We fell in love. For me it was about true companionship, and escape, and exploring sexuality, and retreat from my separated ex- and family nightmares, like the bankruptcy I had to go through. Then sex started to work for me after a couple of months, and I was having the most intense and relatively prolonged orgasms. What caught me by complete surprise was the persistent 'glow' after sex and the cuddliness I felt. My therapist, in whom I confided all, told me this was the 'pitocin effect'. The pitocin hormone is released from the pituitary with enough pleasant tactile stimulation and it just creates this glow. Who knew that this is why women like breast-feeding so much. I had never previously experienced anything like it. It was super powerful. I need to remember that--the pitocin effect.
But while we were developing this closeness and sexual intimacy a funny thing happened to me. I had not said anything to Mike about my fetish for sweaters. The very strange thing was that somehow I intuitively and strongly realized that I couldn't go on without my sweaters. It just wouldn't mean anything. So I decided to tell him, believing that he would think me crazy. It turned out that this created no problem for him at all. If I wanted to wear sweaters, of any color or texture, I should just feel free. Huge relief. Sweaters made me feel soft, sensuous, vulnerable, and pretty. Then funny thing #2 happened. We continued our regular routine of Harvey's, TV, dinner, and sex (sometimes sex before dinner). At first I found myself concentrating on how good the sweaters felt during sex and thinking about what they meant for me (there was a long history). At some point my fantasies evolved from wearing sweaters to wearing dresses. There was no history of this, except for a single episode in the attic of trying on some old clothes of my mother's at age 12, and a curious period after my separation from my first wife, where I started wearing to bed and masturbating in a rust-colored sweater dress that she had left behind. I was ashamed of this at the time, but it was quite powerful nonetheless. Then there was the acting out of fantasies I had done with wife #2. She had asked me what was my juiciest fantasy, which I had never really thought about before, and I responded that I would like to dress as a woman for sex. Don't know where that came from other than the fact that she was just so sexually liberated. She actually quite like it, and so did I. She bought the clothes I needed. And then finally with ex- #3, I had taken to wearing some of her sweaters at times--she had a great collection; and since there was nothing going on sexually between us, it seemed quite OK. So getting back to sex with Mike I turned out to be far more comfortable, and far more willing to proceed in the direction of wearing dresses with him, and more than that, I wanted to be his woman, to serve him and take care of him; I was actually fantasying becoming his wife. Sadly, once revealed, over many conversations so he could grasp what I was saying, it became clear that this was not a direction in which he wanted to go. He wanted a man. He was quite clear about having been in love with me, and having been extremely attracted to me, but as a man, and he didn't want a woman. I think things would have ended abruptly around then, but he didn't know how to tell me that, so we just continued on, slowly fading from each other's passionate thoughts. When this horny hunk of a man become consistently impotent I realized something was wrong, but I didn't know how to handle it either. He startled me one weekend by suggesting he let me go enough that I could try other men to be sure I really wanted him. That caught me by surprise and I went home and incubated it. I then wrote a long letter explaining that I had no interest in any other men, that, in fact, I wasn't even really gay. By this time, through my reading and in a mad search for an explanation of my own behavior and feelings, I had come to realize I was what was now called 'transgender', late onset type. That I was actually more interested in women as a woman, but that he was my 'glorious exception.' I was offering to continue in the relationship. He responded with an email telling me that he wanted me to move my stuff out. This really hurt at the time. Mike had been the best relationship I had ever had--the closest thing to feeling emotionally at home. The prospects were always clearly limited because he was an avowed red-neck, never read a book, was a right-wing extremist who hated the Muslim Obama. It's just aamazing that we were able to feel so close for as long as we did.
Anyway, it was time for transgender Colin/now-Colleen in spirit to get to work. Once I had made my discovery, I had decided I needed to get into therapy to help me accept this about myself. The therapist was very good and very supportive. I have been lucky in my therapists, just not in love. The experience had the effect of confirming my inclinations and allowed me to accept them. While with Mike I bought my first sweater dress, just for myself, from Old Navy, a dark blue-green thing with a large cowl neck that felt wonderful. I slept in it almost every night. Then I got an interest in more women's clothing, fueled by the easy ordering online from Old Navy and Woman Within. Then I bought some books on makeup, which I didn't really understand, but I tried, with no success at all. I decided my 5 o'clock shadow had to go, and I signed up for laser treatments, which did work very well on my upper lip, chest, and abdomen. By time I signed up for treatment for the rest of my beard, it had gone gray and it didn't work. I soon shaved off all body hair--arms and legs. And then I started experimenting with at first topical treatments (yam extract, etc.) to help develop some breast tissue. It had some effect. I got to the nodule stage. And then, right after surgery for a testicular cyst, I started estrogen, estradiol, at a dose of 0.25 mg a day; it was cheap, only $10 for 90 days at Wal-Mart. It had a very nice slow steady effect on my breasts. This was one of the things that Mike had noticed that led him to realize that he didn't want to go there with me. The pills also clearly improved my mood at times and fostered my sensitivity and ability to express emotions, which was very out of character for me. And I ordered some primitive, ultra-cheap wigs from Amazon, which were terrible, but in those early days, I was thrilled. I started collecting a wardrobe. Through OK Cupid, I found two transgender dates, and had a total of 5 dates. For the first, a very nice, interesting, retired techie, I found that the male voice in a transgender person turned me off. I was sorry about this, but that was the fact. The other person who promised to be a 'mentor' for me, announced that she was in love with me on the second date after having given me a tour to the SF waterfront where she had once contemplated suicide. After she used the L word, I felt duty bound to tell her about Mike, and that I thought that relationship was ending, but she said, no, I had to choose, now. So it was good-bye.
So then what. I didn't have a plan. Like everyone else in my situation, I didn't have any idea about how to proceed to find someone to love. I just retreated back into work, and enjoyed my nights as Colleen.
And then came Donnis.
* * * *
Zooming past 15 years of self-anihilation. I loved my kids. My wife turned out to be a narcicist who curiously abandoned interest in her boys as they got older. I officially left on February 16th, 2011 to start a new job in the high Sierras between California and Nevada. In the final years of our empty relationship I started pondering alternatives and searching for explanations. Maybe I was gay. Shortly after I got to my new home in the mountains I signed up for the Prime Timers, a gay organization. I was chronically pretty horny at this point and not willing to go near another woman. Just one week after my registration I got a call from Mike, a pleasant man my age, and we were able to have a pretty relaxed conversation. He invited me over on the weekend, some 70 miles away, and I accepted. He was a big, solid, rolly-poly kind of man, who was unexpectedly very sweet. As soon as I got there he offered me a Harvey Wallbanger, my favorite drink, and asked what I'd like for dinner, but the choices were limited. Then he invited me to stay the night, which had not been part of the original invite, and, curious, I said 'yes'. He responded by getting kind of misty-eyed when I accepted, and I thought this was endearing. We did try to have sex that night. (I had had only one prior gay relationship.) We both fumbled around a bit out of nervousness and neither reached a climax, but we had a good time. He wasn't certain that I would want to come again, but I very much did. It was wonderful to have someone who was so solicitous towards me. That was so novel.
So we developed a regular ritual of Wednesday nights and every other weekend over his house for Wallbangers and TV. I persuaded him to watch every episode of '24' with me, which kept us busy for quite a while. I was really enjoying being in my male element. The sex for me evolved only slowly, as I have always been exceedingly slow to get relaxed enough to have sex with anyone--even when it didn't involved penetration. He very much liked what I did for him. We fell in love. For me it was about true companionship, and escape, and exploring sexuality, and retreat from my separated ex- and family nightmares, like the bankruptcy I had to go through. Then sex started to work for me after a couple of months, and I was having the most intense and relatively prolonged orgasms. What caught me by complete surprise was the persistent 'glow' after sex and the cuddliness I felt. My therapist, in whom I confided all, told me this was the 'pitocin effect'. The pitocin hormone is released from the pituitary with enough pleasant tactile stimulation and it just creates this glow. Who knew that this is why women like breast-feeding so much. I had never previously experienced anything like it. It was super powerful. I need to remember that--the pitocin effect.
But while we were developing this closeness and sexual intimacy a funny thing happened to me. I had not said anything to Mike about my fetish for sweaters. The very strange thing was that somehow I intuitively and strongly realized that I couldn't go on without my sweaters. It just wouldn't mean anything. So I decided to tell him, believing that he would think me crazy. It turned out that this created no problem for him at all. If I wanted to wear sweaters, of any color or texture, I should just feel free. Huge relief. Sweaters made me feel soft, sensuous, vulnerable, and pretty. Then funny thing #2 happened. We continued our regular routine of Harvey's, TV, dinner, and sex (sometimes sex before dinner). At first I found myself concentrating on how good the sweaters felt during sex and thinking about what they meant for me (there was a long history). At some point my fantasies evolved from wearing sweaters to wearing dresses. There was no history of this, except for a single episode in the attic of trying on some old clothes of my mother's at age 12, and a curious period after my separation from my first wife, where I started wearing to bed and masturbating in a rust-colored sweater dress that she had left behind. I was ashamed of this at the time, but it was quite powerful nonetheless. Then there was the acting out of fantasies I had done with wife #2. She had asked me what was my juiciest fantasy, which I had never really thought about before, and I responded that I would like to dress as a woman for sex. Don't know where that came from other than the fact that she was just so sexually liberated. She actually quite like it, and so did I. She bought the clothes I needed. And then finally with ex- #3, I had taken to wearing some of her sweaters at times--she had a great collection; and since there was nothing going on sexually between us, it seemed quite OK. So getting back to sex with Mike I turned out to be far more comfortable, and far more willing to proceed in the direction of wearing dresses with him, and more than that, I wanted to be his woman, to serve him and take care of him; I was actually fantasying becoming his wife. Sadly, once revealed, over many conversations so he could grasp what I was saying, it became clear that this was not a direction in which he wanted to go. He wanted a man. He was quite clear about having been in love with me, and having been extremely attracted to me, but as a man, and he didn't want a woman. I think things would have ended abruptly around then, but he didn't know how to tell me that, so we just continued on, slowly fading from each other's passionate thoughts. When this horny hunk of a man become consistently impotent I realized something was wrong, but I didn't know how to handle it either. He startled me one weekend by suggesting he let me go enough that I could try other men to be sure I really wanted him. That caught me by surprise and I went home and incubated it. I then wrote a long letter explaining that I had no interest in any other men, that, in fact, I wasn't even really gay. By this time, through my reading and in a mad search for an explanation of my own behavior and feelings, I had come to realize I was what was now called 'transgender', late onset type. That I was actually more interested in women as a woman, but that he was my 'glorious exception.' I was offering to continue in the relationship. He responded with an email telling me that he wanted me to move my stuff out. This really hurt at the time. Mike had been the best relationship I had ever had--the closest thing to feeling emotionally at home. The prospects were always clearly limited because he was an avowed red-neck, never read a book, was a right-wing extremist who hated the Muslim Obama. It's just aamazing that we were able to feel so close for as long as we did.
Anyway, it was time for transgender Colin/now-Colleen in spirit to get to work. Once I had made my discovery, I had decided I needed to get into therapy to help me accept this about myself. The therapist was very good and very supportive. I have been lucky in my therapists, just not in love. The experience had the effect of confirming my inclinations and allowed me to accept them. While with Mike I bought my first sweater dress, just for myself, from Old Navy, a dark blue-green thing with a large cowl neck that felt wonderful. I slept in it almost every night. Then I got an interest in more women's clothing, fueled by the easy ordering online from Old Navy and Woman Within. Then I bought some books on makeup, which I didn't really understand, but I tried, with no success at all. I decided my 5 o'clock shadow had to go, and I signed up for laser treatments, which did work very well on my upper lip, chest, and abdomen. By time I signed up for treatment for the rest of my beard, it had gone gray and it didn't work. I soon shaved off all body hair--arms and legs. And then I started experimenting with at first topical treatments (yam extract, etc.) to help develop some breast tissue. It had some effect. I got to the nodule stage. And then, right after surgery for a testicular cyst, I started estrogen, estradiol, at a dose of 0.25 mg a day; it was cheap, only $10 for 90 days at Wal-Mart. It had a very nice slow steady effect on my breasts. This was one of the things that Mike had noticed that led him to realize that he didn't want to go there with me. The pills also clearly improved my mood at times and fostered my sensitivity and ability to express emotions, which was very out of character for me. And I ordered some primitive, ultra-cheap wigs from Amazon, which were terrible, but in those early days, I was thrilled. I started collecting a wardrobe. Through OK Cupid, I found two transgender dates, and had a total of 5 dates. For the first, a very nice, interesting, retired techie, I found that the male voice in a transgender person turned me off. I was sorry about this, but that was the fact. The other person who promised to be a 'mentor' for me, announced that she was in love with me on the second date after having given me a tour to the SF waterfront where she had once contemplated suicide. After she used the L word, I felt duty bound to tell her about Mike, and that I thought that relationship was ending, but she said, no, I had to choose, now. So it was good-bye.
So then what. I didn't have a plan. Like everyone else in my situation, I didn't have any idea about how to proceed to find someone to love. I just retreated back into work, and enjoyed my nights as Colleen.
And then came Donnis.
