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Oh it was all fun and games in the beginning; getting all dressed up, dashing to the car so my neighbors didn’t notice me and then hanging out at a club. Nope, not a care in the world unless of course you count Kimberly’s restrictions she had put in place.
You know, not in the neighborhood, don’t tell her family and keep it from her coworkers. Don’t get me wrong, it was totally understandable. No one needs to know our personal information but as far as I was concerned, no one needed to know about it…yet.
So in the beginning, all I was responsible for was calling the doctors, scheduling an appointment and making time for the clubs. “Easy, peasy.” I thought but…
I had no idea where I fit in. I didn’t have any transgender friends at all. Heck, the only thing I knew about being transgender was it was who I was. Actually, I have to say that at one point I thought I was just a cross dresser. Something I could do when I felt like it, something I could take or leave. In fact the few people that were aware of my so called “problem” was my wife Kimberly and my son Brendan.
Brendan was and is a comic at heart; even if it meant he had to sacrifice someone’s feelings but he never meant any harm. When I first told my boy he was about 18. I knew eventually he would barge into the house at the wrong time and see me, his dad, looking more like his mom so, I told him. The problem with telling him was it made me feel at home, at home, dressing like my true self.
First time he saw me he was like “Cool, you look good dad.” And within a couple of days he was back, seeing me again brought about the comment, “Is this going to be an all the time thing now?” I assured him that it wouldn’t be because, well back then I thought it wouldn’t.
So then 3 years later I relied on him, my wife Kimberly and Tony to escort me to places that had never been before. Of course mostly gay bars, truth be told I didn’t even know that there were places for people like me.
You can imagine that this would get pretty old, pretty quick and Brendan was adamant about me telling my daughter. She was a tough one; she was kind of like me, as a man as in stubborn, opinionated and strong willed. So, against my better judgement I showed her a picture of me looking, well more like Kendra.
Well it did not go as I had expected. God people surprise me every single day. Instead of her losing her cool, laughing or slinging a homophobic slur she just simply said, “You look like such and such (name redacted to spare someone’s feelings)
From that moment on Miranda and I were closer than we had ever been. We shopped together; we talked fashion; makeup and she borrowed my clothes. Of course that also meant I had one more person in my stable.
I look back on those days and see the stress I had put on my family. My kids were adults, my wife had no interest in hanging out at gay bars but they did, for me. I realized then how lucky I was, most girls didn’t have that type of support system, but I did. That was when I made a promise to myself. “I would not turn away any transgender girl that needed help.
So yeah, life was perfect; except it wasn’t, I just didn’t know it yet
