It's who I am....

I've been pretty sick these last few days. Actually, I have been sick for about 6 weeks. Every cold virus or flu bug that comes along has been attaching itself to me. For all I know it's the same damn bug and it is refusing to leave my body. All I know is that since Tuesday, I have felt like worse crap than I have in all the previous 6 weeks before this put together.

What that has done is keep me from writing. For me, writing is a process that takes a tremendous amount of time and energy. Time I have had, energy I have not had. I've had a lot of sleep though, and this is a good thing. I'd like to thank my good little buddies (Gilligan in particular) who have come over bearing gifts of chicken soup, medicine and most importantly, oatmeal cookies. They won't read this cause they never read my shit, but I want to thank them (well, really her) and acknowledge her for taking care of me nonetheless. Thank you LaDonna, that's what friends are for... don't ever forget that.

It's not that I am feeling any better right now than I have in the past three days, it's just that I literally have been on my back in bed for close to 36 hours and other than getting up to take the dog out, play a little Frontierville, Mafia Wars and shower, I have been in bed sleeping. At the moment, my body still hurts just as bad as it did 72 hours ago when this hit me hard, but I figure you can only lay there for just so long before your body is hurting from laying down for so long.

So I decided that since my angel of mercy (and chicken soup) has gone home for the night and left me here to die alone (just kidding, just in case she does read this), I might as well see how much energy I can muster up to write for a while. So here goes...

What I wanted to address was gender identity and affectional orientation from my perspective and experience. My first experience with knowing someone who was going through SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) was when I was 23 years old and working as a bartender in a lesbian bar in North Hollywood, CA. A very obviously male person dressed as a female (in a bad wig, falsies and all) walked into the bar one afternoon and asked for one of those silly sweet wine drinks we made there. We started talking. She introduced herself as Carolyn. Over the course of the next year or so, she and I got to be pretty good friends. Carolyn had a wife and children, was 43 years old, was a construction foreman, had been a drill sergeant in the Marines, and had lived just about as butch of a life as a man can live up until that point.

Carolyn finally had her surgery, became the woman she had always dreamed of becoming and came home from Colorado all aglow and happy with life. I of course think she is now a heterosexual woman. Much to my chagrin, she asked me out on a date (like a real date). I have to say that that really freaked me out big time. It turned out that Carolyn's affectional orientation pre-transition was that of a heterosexual man. Her affectional orientation did not change, just her gender. She remained attracted to women (and had a crush on my young 24 year old ass), just as she was before the transition. What she was now however was a lesbian. Thirty some odd years later, I am not sure what she is or if she is even still alive. I only know that that was a huge eye opener for me about gender identity and affectional orientation.

Since that time I have met a variety of people who are pre-and post transition, both male and female. I have discovered that people run the gamut of being heterosexual to homosexual to bisexual after SRS. What they were before SRS also ran the gamut. One particular person I knew still preferred gay men after her SRS. They weren't attracted to her anymore now that she was a female, but she still preferred gay men over straight men. For whatever reason, she was not drawn to heterosexual males emotionally.

In my case, my gender identity has always been that of male. What I can (and do) fall in love with (affectional orientation) however, has morphed over the years. Part of that is experience in life and part of it is being post menopausal. I have only met one FtM like myself who was past menopause when he began the transition. He, as far as I know, is a heterosexual man. So really, I have very few role models in life right now. What I end up (or don't end up) being when all is said and done remains to be seen.

My history however is that I have gone from being attracted to "high femmes" as a young teenager, to being almost exclusively attracted to other people like myself pre or post op. It's truly been many years since I found a feminine woman attractive (at least found myself attracted to her sexually or emotionally anyway). Probably over 30 years actually. If you had asked me 20 some odd years ago what I would identify as affectionally and sexually once I had transitioned from female to male, I would have told you I was a heterosexual male. Now, not so much.

What happened to change my perspective on my affectional orientation since I am not in the least bit attracted to men born male? What happened was, I fell in love with some one several years ago. "She" was the "great love" of my life. I have never loved anyone as utterly before or since. When that relationship ended, I was devastated. A few years after the break-up, "she" called me up and began an interrogation of me about my transgendered beingness. And at that point, came out to me as a transman who was in therapy to begin the transition process. He, has since transitioned and lives fully as male now. His physical appearance changed, he however, remained the same person I had been in love with.

Imagine me, after all these years, seeing myself as a heterosexual male, suddenly confronted with still being in love with someone who was now a male. I had to think long and hard on that one. I was and am, still deeply in love with him. And trust me, he's a guy, muscles, beard and all.

We are still friends all these years later. He treats me like another guy. He is after all in his mind, a heterosexual male. I am a good buddy, a pal. One he was once in love with. A man, who is now transitioning, someone he loved beyond words once upon a time. I will never ask him how this makes him feel. He's not much on sharing feelings anyway, never was either. He knew up front I was a transman. He loved me nonetheless. I loved him nonetheless, and still do. I don't ever want to be with him again, but that has nothing to do with his being a man. It has to do with waking up and realizing that that would have been a disastrous relationship of huge magnitude had it actually gone on for any real length of time. Trust me, we were a bad match for a relationship. Nevertheless, don't ever think I haven't wondered what it would be like to make love with him again, beard, muscles and all.

What it did do is wake me up permanently to the fact that what I love has nothing to do with what I think my gender identity or affectional preference/orientation is or isn't.

When I look back at what I have been affectionally and sexually attracted to in the last 30 years or so, it's been "boys" like me. Whether they were consciously aware of their "maleness" or not, what I have found most attractive are those "bois" who look and act like me. I am sure someone has come up with a label for people who's affectional orientation is like mine, I just haven't heard it yet. Maybe that is what "gender queer" is, I am not sure. I am pretty politically incorrect when it comes to the labels people have been coming up with in the last several years, so who knows.

If I were busy trying to label myself, I guess I would think I was a gay man. But that would be incorrect since I am still not attracted to men born male. I have a lot of gay male friends, I don't want to have sex with any of them. However, when the right "boi" comes along, I find myself actually looking. Sort of anyway, after all, I don't really have any hormones at all at the moment. Once hormone therapy begins however, I will have hormones again and in abundance. Only this time it will be testosterone. For those of you who have never experienced "T", let me just say this, there is a very valid biologically based reason men think about sex every few second. Well see what happens with me....

I am thinking my next post will be about the fun I have not been having just trying to start hormone therapy here in Bumfuck Arkansas, and having to deal with assholes parading around with MDs after their names who are complete idiots when it comes to the human gender identity spectrum. Just so you know, I hate doctors. A lot.

Anyway, until next time, have a great week, weekend, next week, Thanksgiving, life....