My Story 166 -- Coming Out

Many of the newly out trans people do not realize that us old folk also came out of the closet, I remember the first time that I stuck my head out the door.

You hear the conservatives saying that children are being coerced on the internet or some other nonsense, well for me it was the internet. Yup, it was all because of the internet that I came out of the closet.

At work they got us all desktop computers that were connected to the internet via T1 lines. So one day my boss comes up to me and says… “Why don’t you use to search for a replacement transformer for one on this, this internet thing?” Okay this sounds like it might be pretty neat to do (This was 1998) and back then the search engines were not that great… they positively were not Google or Bing, they were like Excite, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, AltaVista, and Dogpile.

So I typed in “transformers,” hit return, and up pops trans sites!

I quick turned off the computer… did I see what I thought that I saw?

At work they gave us money to buy home computers and they gave us the Microsoft Office package, I figured that I could further explore this “transgender” thing at home, so I signed up for the program. Of course it was an IBM PC (I wish that I kept it) and I ordered dial up internet (Remember this was 1998, the best thing that you could get back then was a T1 line and that was big bucks.) and off and running I went.

I found all these successful people who transitioned like Dr. Becky Allison and I made me realize that transitioning was possible.

Then I found support groups… whoa!

From my dairy…

Diary: 9/18/99
I finally got the nerve to send an e-mail off to Connecticut Outreach Society to day and I got this reply.

From:
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 22:19:13 EDT
Subject: Re: COS Meeting
To:
CC:
X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 9
In a message dated 9/18/1999 9:34:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> After reading your website I realize that you probably get hundreds of the
> emails, but for me this is the first time that I have ever said anything to
> anybody about my Cross-dressing. I think I would like to go to your next
> meeting on Sept 22, but I would like some more information about COS.
I am glad that you have taken this first step - it is a HUGE one! It's not an easy thing to deal with I know.

And as they say the rest is history.