My Story Part 39 – Dreams

At Outreaches (speaking to groups), I am asked questions about my childhood and growing up and if there was anything that “made me” the way I am. Those questions bother me because it indicates they don’t really understand the nature of why people are transgender or gay, lesbian or bisexuals; we are born with our gender identity or our sexual orientation.

I grew up in a “typical” family of the fifties and sixties, two parent (male & female), two kids and a dog. My father was your “typical” 9 to 5 father who worked, came home and took an active part in his family; he was active in my brother sports and scouting with my brother and me. My mother was a stay-at-home mother, which was “typical” for the 50’s and 60’s. We took family vacations together, traveling around the east coast or staying at a lake cottage during the summer.

My brother was in to sports, while I hated sports and loved science. I guess you could have called me a “nerd” or “geek” in today language, I was a member of the science club and we made a giant Tesla Coil, it was so large that we were in an article in the New York Times. I hung out with a clique at the local McDonald’s (it was the only one, I believe in the whole state back in the sixties and early seventies… imagine that. They just sold 1 million burgers!) who were into cars, they all had these big muscle cars, GTO’s, Camaro 350 SS, Chevy II Nova, Road Runner and I had a little Opel Rally Kadett per order of my parents. I never was that interested in cars, but that was the “manly” thing to do and I knew all the keywords, dual Hollies 450, tunnel ram, bored and ported, etc., I was always hovering on the outside of the circle. However, that is where the “typical” ended, I do not think that a “typical” thought when he saw a girl in a dress, “That’s a cute dress; I wonder where she got it?’ or wishing when they were on a date that they were the girl. Or dreaming that they were one of the cheerleaders, instead of the star quarterback.

One of my earliest dreams when I was probably 10 or 11 was to have my brain swapped by an evil scientist and waking up to find myself in a girl’s body. Everyone would be horrified or wouldn’t believe me, but would secretly want it. You have to remember that one, I was preteen, two, that no one even knew about gender reassignment surgery at that time and three, and no one really knew anything about transsexual at that time. Yes, Christine Jorgensen happened around that time, but it wouldn’t be carried in the papers or magazines that my parents read.

So, it is hard for me to say that I know what a man thinks because I never really was a “man”. On the out side, I may have looked like and act like a man, but on the inside I didn’t feel like a man. Conversely, it is hard for me to say now that I am a woman because I don’t think that I think anything like a woman thinks. That is why I label myself as a “trans-woman”.