I have a daughter. Her name is Christa. We met a couple of years ago as I was finishing up my electrolysis appointments. I have not spoken of her to you before because I did not have her specific permission to write about her, though I have referred to her on occasion, and, to my mind, there was not anything out of the ordinary to talk about. In many ways she is simply your twenty something young woman. Struggling to make her way in the world like most of the rest of us.
She has allowed me to speak about this in hopes that her experience could be of some use to others. It is her way of paying it forward.
Christa was presented to me as an electrology student where I was getting my face cleared. It was the policy of the electrologist to offer students to her regular clients in exchange for a break in the hourly price. Just as an aside, Christa is the best electrologist I have ever met, and I'm not saying that as motherly pride. She really is that good.
And from our first moments together, we were simpatico. Our appointments were gab fests, girl talk, laughing until we cried, and motherly advice all rolled into one. And all the while she would be pulling hairs out of my face without missing a beat. I told you she was good!
A couple of months into our sessions, through happenstance and accident she was in an immediate, desperate need of housing. Since we got along so well, I offered to put her up in my house until such time as she could find a place of her own. She slept on the couch, much to the annoyance of the cats who usually slept there. They came to accepted her as simply part of the furniture and slept on top of her, much to the annoyance of her sinuses.
She got along wonderfully with everyone in the family, and she and my oldest granddaughter became best buds.
After looking for apartments for a couple of weeks, she confessed to me that moving out and being alone frightened her, but she would do it if she had to.
With a smile, I confessed that our house would be much less joyfully chaotic if she moved out, but I would bear it if I had to as well.
We smiled, hugged and started making plans for her full moving in. We reorganized my office/spare bedroom and moved her bed and most crucial items in there. She put the rest of her stuff in storage.
She had immigrated from a far off land called Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Home of Skyline chili, and world famous as the location for a sit-com “WKRP in Cincinnati”. ( Best line from the show: “As God as my witness, I swear I though turkeys could fly...”)
She is a transwoman and while completely transitioned, was pre-surgical when we met. And also while a very smart person, was not completely aware of all the issues in her new life.
Early on in my transition, I longed to be a mentor, to pay forward the debt that I owe for my smooth transition from male to female. To make the transition for someone else easier. To help illuminate the path that they must walk.
I got everything I wished for, and more. I became more than a mentor, I became a Mom.
I am Christa's Mom-away-from-Mom. We share everything, except clothes. She is a size 0, where as I am like She-Hulk. I hate her... but in a good way.
And she has a wonderful natal mother back in her far off land. Christa's mom and I exchange letters regularly and have met on a few occasions. Her mom is a warm and witty person who definitely sees the glass as half-full. She feels that her newly minted daughter is in a safe and loving place and loves Christa without reservation. In our letters I try to keep her up to date on how her daughter is doing and explain the things in Christa's life that drove her to this point and how it affects her, and how her mom can come to terms with the changes that are occurring. Her mom in turn, gives me information and stories from Christa's childhood and insight into their family dynamic. In other words, much to her chagrin, Christa cannot pull the wool over either of her mom's eyes.
Christa and I talk about everything. Clothes, life, surgery, and boys. A lot about boys. She is one of the straightest women I have ever met.
And while with me I have watched her grow into her new life and in many ways mature from a teenage girl into a young, and beautiful, woman. It's something that we all must go through in our transition and she has graduated with honors.
I was her support person following her FFS/BA. I tended her while she recovered from her physically traumatic experience.
Her mom, who is a registered nurse, felt that Christa could not have been taken care of any better even if she were in the hospital with her mom by Christa's side.
Christa and my family have spent a great deal of time together. She is charming, warm and friendly, and completely trustworthy. I love her as dearly as I do my other daughters.
Last night, though, I had to do something that I thought I would never have to do. Something I thought that I, as a newly minted female myself, would never be able to do. We had a mother-daughter chat.
Unfortunately, not the one were mom talks about her pre-pubescent girls maturing body and prepares her for some of the changes that are about to occur and the things she needs to start carrying in her purse. Obviously, no need.
Nor was it about how to dress nice without looking trashy. We've already had that one.
It was about boys. More specifically, about men and how women have to develop a sixth sense about them, and situations, and always keeping a route of escape.
Christa is a natural beauty. Small framed and light skinned, with an infectious smile and a lilting manner of speech that is disarming. And her FFS/BA has accentuated her positive features and has given her a confidence that she previously lacked. Think of Deborah Ann Woll, the actress who plays the character Jessica on “True Blood”. The characters' speech, mannerisms and overall body image is very similar to Christa's. Without the fangs, of course.
But her strengths have also proven to be her weakness. In her transition period, she has rarely been read. And while she has had some very nasty encounters and physical violence done to her, she has not had to developed the thick skin that some of us less statuesque women have had to grow.
The other evening, I came downstairs and found her lying on the rec room couch staring at the tube, not really watching it.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing” she says. I pull up a hassock and sit next to her.
“You say that just like a girl.”
“I don't want to talk about it.” Her tone of voice says that she really does want to talk about it, but it hurts too much.
I know my daughters well enough to know when I should pry a little bit and when I should just drop it.
“I'm going outside for a cigarette, do you want one?”
“No.” Oh dear, this was serious!
“Well, how about you come outside anyway and you can sit with me.”
“Alright...” Her voice trails off in a tone that tells me she would rather come outside with me than be badgered anymore.
We go outside and sit on the stoop. Night has fallen, I light two cigarettes and hand her one.
“So what's going on?”
She had gone out earlier to one of the bars that Pat and I frequent. Pat brought me there to help introduce me back into the “straight” life, but this time as a woman.
It is a red necked kind of bar, a little sleazy, a little rough, but Pat has been going there for years and everyone know her and she is friends with just about everyone. It's a little bit of a biker bar and it is not unusual to see two or three hawgs parked out front. And the bikers may be boisterous but usually well behaved.
I was terrified the first time I went. I never hung out with that kind of clientele in my previous life because I was always fearful of getting into some kind of alpha male confrontation.
Pat introduced me to all her friends there and I soon lost my hesitations going there. By now most of the regulars there know about me but accept me because Pat and I are partners. It is sometimes a hoot to watch some newcomer as Pat and I kiss at the bar. They really get a charge out of the “lezzy” action. Some of the regulars have asked inappropriate questions, and some have hit on me. It is flattering in one respect, but I am a “4-drink girl”* to most of these guys, so I don't let it go to my head.
* 4-drink girl – A girl who only looks good after four or more strong drinks.
Pat and I started taking Christa to the bar soon after she moved in as part of her integration into society. Both Christa and I had visited gay bars during our transitions and the acceptance there, of course, is no problem, but going out into the straight world is something quite different.
Christa loves to go to this bar, or did, because they have a pool table and she is a natural to be chatted up for a game of pool and suds. She dresses down a bit (read skanky) because she likes to show off a little.
I sometimes feel that we have thrown her into the deep end of the pool by introducing her to such a rough crowd, but we keep an eye on her and everyone plays nice. One of the bartenders is friends with her and she will throw anyone out who trash talks Christa.
But usually we go as a group. I don't go there alone, because I have a family history of alcoholism and try to never drink alone. So it is usually the two or three of us that go.
Christa, in her previous life, really had no problem going into these types of bars because she was, and still is a biker. She has a Harley which she takes loving care of and is an excellent rider. She has been riding motorcycles since she was sixteen and has been a member of several clubs. She feels comfortable in the presence of bikers, feeling that there is a biker brotherhood that she belongs to. She has been to Sturgis and Daytona, as female, and kind of enjoys that rough and tumble crowd.
That night, she rode her bike up to that bar, alone.
Outside the bar, there were three other bikes parked there. She walked in wearing her skin tight leather chaps and a tight leather vest with her Harley logo emblazoned on the back.
She said that as she was drinking her beer, one of the bikers, a short thin man who Christa towered over in her high heeled leather boots, came up to her and started chatting her up.
(From her description, I recognized this fellow as someone who chatted Pat and I up the previous week and tried his best to stick his tongue down my throat. Later, as I smoked a cigarette outside, he came out and asked when I had done my transformation. I told him I had always been a woman and there was nothing to transform. I knew he had read me, but if this dork couldn't get his terms right, I wasn't about to educate him.)
He he was hitting on Christa pretty hard, probably like he came on to me. After a while he started getting texts from his two other buddies of “Dude Looks Like a Lady!” (I hate that song and think Aerosmith should be rename “Cheap Trick”).
The skinny one shows Christa the text and she tells him that she is appalled that he would think that.
Things start going downhill when the bikers start calling her names. Bad names. Her bartender friend isn't there that night and no one else in the bar comes to her defense. She started to worry for her safety and puts on her helmet and leaves the bar. The catcalls and insults get intense as she leaves.
As she is pulling out she noticed that one of the bikers has come out and tries to follow her. She couldn't tell which one it was, but she didn't really care to be caught by him.
That is when Christa and her baby became one. She has taken very good care of her bike and has personally added many performance options. She gunned the throttle and that clowns headlight faded into the distance. Her Sportster is no match for any but the most high performance bikes.
She rode around for a while using her skills as a rider and expert mechanic to put a lot of rode between her and that knuckle dragger.
She came home later after riding her adrenaline rush off.
“Honey, I'm so sorry that happened to you! I'm glad that you are safe.”
“I feel so betrayed”
“What? Why?”
“I'm not completely innocent, but I have always been comfortable with bikers, I always felt like I was one of them, that we had a bond. If a biker is stranded by the side of the rode, just about any biker will stop to help. It's that code that holds them together.”
I told her, “But you have to think about what you were doing. You were a single woman in a rough bar with a bunch of half drunk homophobic bikers and you got read. Are you surprised by how they reacted? Guys think with their gonads first and their brains second, you know that. And when that guy was hitting on you got told, he probably was feeling like his manhood had been tromped on and he felt he had to retaliate to regain his balls. It's a good thing you got out of there when you did, you could have been beaten up or killed!”
“Yeah, but they were fellow bikers! I thought I knew them. We have a code!”
“The “code” stops where the penis begins! Listen girl, every November there is a ceremony to honor the memory of the trans people who have been killed that year. It's too damn long as it is, and I don't want to be the one that reads your name on that list! Dammit girl! You have to be careful out there! It's goddamned dangerous! You have to watch yourself every moment! Have you ever heard of Angie Zapata?”
“You're a woman now and every woman has to watch every guy evey time. We are physically weaker so we have to watch out for ourselves. Watch every man in the room, pick out the ones who are looking from the ones who are imagining you as a conquest. Keep a special eye on the droolers. And always keep a path to the door. You have a target on your back now. You have to think like that, really. The vast majority of guys aren't neanderthals but enough are to put your life at risk.
“And as trans woman we are doubly at risk. It's bad enough to get mugged or raped, but then to have some homophobe read you, you have another risk.” I was so terrified for her after the fact that I was having a hard time not yelling or crying.
“It shouldn't be that way, Sandy. I just let my guard down.”
“No, life shouldn't be that way, but it is. And you can never really let your guard down. This is the life we signed up for when we transitioned. This is how our lives will be from now on. There will always be those who fear and hate us.”
I lean over to hug her, but she pulls away. “No, please, I'm still to frightened and angry. Not now.”
“Ok, honey, whenever you are ready, I always have hugs.” She goes in to finish looking at the movie she wasn't watching.
“Good night, hon. Please be careful, ok?”
“Ok, mom”
-Sandy
She has allowed me to speak about this in hopes that her experience could be of some use to others. It is her way of paying it forward.
Christa was presented to me as an electrology student where I was getting my face cleared. It was the policy of the electrologist to offer students to her regular clients in exchange for a break in the hourly price. Just as an aside, Christa is the best electrologist I have ever met, and I'm not saying that as motherly pride. She really is that good.
And from our first moments together, we were simpatico. Our appointments were gab fests, girl talk, laughing until we cried, and motherly advice all rolled into one. And all the while she would be pulling hairs out of my face without missing a beat. I told you she was good!
A couple of months into our sessions, through happenstance and accident she was in an immediate, desperate need of housing. Since we got along so well, I offered to put her up in my house until such time as she could find a place of her own. She slept on the couch, much to the annoyance of the cats who usually slept there. They came to accepted her as simply part of the furniture and slept on top of her, much to the annoyance of her sinuses.
She got along wonderfully with everyone in the family, and she and my oldest granddaughter became best buds.
After looking for apartments for a couple of weeks, she confessed to me that moving out and being alone frightened her, but she would do it if she had to.
With a smile, I confessed that our house would be much less joyfully chaotic if she moved out, but I would bear it if I had to as well.
We smiled, hugged and started making plans for her full moving in. We reorganized my office/spare bedroom and moved her bed and most crucial items in there. She put the rest of her stuff in storage.
She had immigrated from a far off land called Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Home of Skyline chili, and world famous as the location for a sit-com “WKRP in Cincinnati”. ( Best line from the show: “As God as my witness, I swear I though turkeys could fly...”)
She is a transwoman and while completely transitioned, was pre-surgical when we met. And also while a very smart person, was not completely aware of all the issues in her new life.
Early on in my transition, I longed to be a mentor, to pay forward the debt that I owe for my smooth transition from male to female. To make the transition for someone else easier. To help illuminate the path that they must walk.
I got everything I wished for, and more. I became more than a mentor, I became a Mom.
I am Christa's Mom-away-from-Mom. We share everything, except clothes. She is a size 0, where as I am like She-Hulk. I hate her... but in a good way.
And she has a wonderful natal mother back in her far off land. Christa's mom and I exchange letters regularly and have met on a few occasions. Her mom is a warm and witty person who definitely sees the glass as half-full. She feels that her newly minted daughter is in a safe and loving place and loves Christa without reservation. In our letters I try to keep her up to date on how her daughter is doing and explain the things in Christa's life that drove her to this point and how it affects her, and how her mom can come to terms with the changes that are occurring. Her mom in turn, gives me information and stories from Christa's childhood and insight into their family dynamic. In other words, much to her chagrin, Christa cannot pull the wool over either of her mom's eyes.
Christa and I talk about everything. Clothes, life, surgery, and boys. A lot about boys. She is one of the straightest women I have ever met.
And while with me I have watched her grow into her new life and in many ways mature from a teenage girl into a young, and beautiful, woman. It's something that we all must go through in our transition and she has graduated with honors.
I was her support person following her FFS/BA. I tended her while she recovered from her physically traumatic experience.
Her mom, who is a registered nurse, felt that Christa could not have been taken care of any better even if she were in the hospital with her mom by Christa's side.
Christa and my family have spent a great deal of time together. She is charming, warm and friendly, and completely trustworthy. I love her as dearly as I do my other daughters.
Last night, though, I had to do something that I thought I would never have to do. Something I thought that I, as a newly minted female myself, would never be able to do. We had a mother-daughter chat.
Unfortunately, not the one were mom talks about her pre-pubescent girls maturing body and prepares her for some of the changes that are about to occur and the things she needs to start carrying in her purse. Obviously, no need.
Nor was it about how to dress nice without looking trashy. We've already had that one.
It was about boys. More specifically, about men and how women have to develop a sixth sense about them, and situations, and always keeping a route of escape.
Christa is a natural beauty. Small framed and light skinned, with an infectious smile and a lilting manner of speech that is disarming. And her FFS/BA has accentuated her positive features and has given her a confidence that she previously lacked. Think of Deborah Ann Woll, the actress who plays the character Jessica on “True Blood”. The characters' speech, mannerisms and overall body image is very similar to Christa's. Without the fangs, of course.
But her strengths have also proven to be her weakness. In her transition period, she has rarely been read. And while she has had some very nasty encounters and physical violence done to her, she has not had to developed the thick skin that some of us less statuesque women have had to grow.
The other evening, I came downstairs and found her lying on the rec room couch staring at the tube, not really watching it.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing” she says. I pull up a hassock and sit next to her.
“You say that just like a girl.”
“I don't want to talk about it.” Her tone of voice says that she really does want to talk about it, but it hurts too much.
I know my daughters well enough to know when I should pry a little bit and when I should just drop it.
“I'm going outside for a cigarette, do you want one?”
“No.” Oh dear, this was serious!
“Well, how about you come outside anyway and you can sit with me.”
“Alright...” Her voice trails off in a tone that tells me she would rather come outside with me than be badgered anymore.
We go outside and sit on the stoop. Night has fallen, I light two cigarettes and hand her one.
“So what's going on?”
She had gone out earlier to one of the bars that Pat and I frequent. Pat brought me there to help introduce me back into the “straight” life, but this time as a woman.
It is a red necked kind of bar, a little sleazy, a little rough, but Pat has been going there for years and everyone know her and she is friends with just about everyone. It's a little bit of a biker bar and it is not unusual to see two or three hawgs parked out front. And the bikers may be boisterous but usually well behaved.
I was terrified the first time I went. I never hung out with that kind of clientele in my previous life because I was always fearful of getting into some kind of alpha male confrontation.
Pat introduced me to all her friends there and I soon lost my hesitations going there. By now most of the regulars there know about me but accept me because Pat and I are partners. It is sometimes a hoot to watch some newcomer as Pat and I kiss at the bar. They really get a charge out of the “lezzy” action. Some of the regulars have asked inappropriate questions, and some have hit on me. It is flattering in one respect, but I am a “4-drink girl”* to most of these guys, so I don't let it go to my head.
* 4-drink girl – A girl who only looks good after four or more strong drinks.
Pat and I started taking Christa to the bar soon after she moved in as part of her integration into society. Both Christa and I had visited gay bars during our transitions and the acceptance there, of course, is no problem, but going out into the straight world is something quite different.
Christa loves to go to this bar, or did, because they have a pool table and she is a natural to be chatted up for a game of pool and suds. She dresses down a bit (read skanky) because she likes to show off a little.
I sometimes feel that we have thrown her into the deep end of the pool by introducing her to such a rough crowd, but we keep an eye on her and everyone plays nice. One of the bartenders is friends with her and she will throw anyone out who trash talks Christa.
But usually we go as a group. I don't go there alone, because I have a family history of alcoholism and try to never drink alone. So it is usually the two or three of us that go.
Christa, in her previous life, really had no problem going into these types of bars because she was, and still is a biker. She has a Harley which she takes loving care of and is an excellent rider. She has been riding motorcycles since she was sixteen and has been a member of several clubs. She feels comfortable in the presence of bikers, feeling that there is a biker brotherhood that she belongs to. She has been to Sturgis and Daytona, as female, and kind of enjoys that rough and tumble crowd.
That night, she rode her bike up to that bar, alone.
Outside the bar, there were three other bikes parked there. She walked in wearing her skin tight leather chaps and a tight leather vest with her Harley logo emblazoned on the back.
She said that as she was drinking her beer, one of the bikers, a short thin man who Christa towered over in her high heeled leather boots, came up to her and started chatting her up.
(From her description, I recognized this fellow as someone who chatted Pat and I up the previous week and tried his best to stick his tongue down my throat. Later, as I smoked a cigarette outside, he came out and asked when I had done my transformation. I told him I had always been a woman and there was nothing to transform. I knew he had read me, but if this dork couldn't get his terms right, I wasn't about to educate him.)
He he was hitting on Christa pretty hard, probably like he came on to me. After a while he started getting texts from his two other buddies of “Dude Looks Like a Lady!” (I hate that song and think Aerosmith should be rename “Cheap Trick”).
The skinny one shows Christa the text and she tells him that she is appalled that he would think that.
Things start going downhill when the bikers start calling her names. Bad names. Her bartender friend isn't there that night and no one else in the bar comes to her defense. She started to worry for her safety and puts on her helmet and leaves the bar. The catcalls and insults get intense as she leaves.
As she is pulling out she noticed that one of the bikers has come out and tries to follow her. She couldn't tell which one it was, but she didn't really care to be caught by him.
That is when Christa and her baby became one. She has taken very good care of her bike and has personally added many performance options. She gunned the throttle and that clowns headlight faded into the distance. Her Sportster is no match for any but the most high performance bikes.
She rode around for a while using her skills as a rider and expert mechanic to put a lot of rode between her and that knuckle dragger.
She came home later after riding her adrenaline rush off.
“Honey, I'm so sorry that happened to you! I'm glad that you are safe.”
“I feel so betrayed”
“What? Why?”
“I'm not completely innocent, but I have always been comfortable with bikers, I always felt like I was one of them, that we had a bond. If a biker is stranded by the side of the rode, just about any biker will stop to help. It's that code that holds them together.”
I told her, “But you have to think about what you were doing. You were a single woman in a rough bar with a bunch of half drunk homophobic bikers and you got read. Are you surprised by how they reacted? Guys think with their gonads first and their brains second, you know that. And when that guy was hitting on you got told, he probably was feeling like his manhood had been tromped on and he felt he had to retaliate to regain his balls. It's a good thing you got out of there when you did, you could have been beaten up or killed!”
“Yeah, but they were fellow bikers! I thought I knew them. We have a code!”
“The “code” stops where the penis begins! Listen girl, every November there is a ceremony to honor the memory of the trans people who have been killed that year. It's too damn long as it is, and I don't want to be the one that reads your name on that list! Dammit girl! You have to be careful out there! It's goddamned dangerous! You have to watch yourself every moment! Have you ever heard of Angie Zapata?”
“You're a woman now and every woman has to watch every guy evey time. We are physically weaker so we have to watch out for ourselves. Watch every man in the room, pick out the ones who are looking from the ones who are imagining you as a conquest. Keep a special eye on the droolers. And always keep a path to the door. You have a target on your back now. You have to think like that, really. The vast majority of guys aren't neanderthals but enough are to put your life at risk.
“And as trans woman we are doubly at risk. It's bad enough to get mugged or raped, but then to have some homophobe read you, you have another risk.” I was so terrified for her after the fact that I was having a hard time not yelling or crying.
“It shouldn't be that way, Sandy. I just let my guard down.”
“No, life shouldn't be that way, but it is. And you can never really let your guard down. This is the life we signed up for when we transitioned. This is how our lives will be from now on. There will always be those who fear and hate us.”
I lean over to hug her, but she pulls away. “No, please, I'm still to frightened and angry. Not now.”
“Ok, honey, whenever you are ready, I always have hugs.” She goes in to finish looking at the movie she wasn't watching.
“Good night, hon. Please be careful, ok?”
“Ok, mom”
-Sandy
