Chapter 8: A Flight, A New Life

Denver in the wintertime can be very depressing. My sessions with my therapist were going nowhere. My one-room hole-in-the-wall added only to the total atmosphere.

I, myself, didn't look much better. Since that night I found Andrea in her sexual puppy pile, I had let myself go. I still showered and wore clean clothes but that was about it. I had to ponder when it was the last time I had had a haircut or bought new clothes.

It was then at one of the few meeting I had with one of Aunt Madge's (now my) financial advisors that he asked me why I was still in Denver of all places. He himself had flown in from Houston and was very out of sorts with the cold windy Denver weather.

His idea appealed to me somehow. I signed over a limited power of attorney to my divorce lawyer. Sold my car. I threw most of my clothing away. Put most all my personal belongings in storage. Then I got on a plane headed for Miami.

Once there I bought myself a cherry red Mustang convertible and started to look for a place to stay.

Since my bank account now read at around three quarters of a million, I started to look into buying something real. I wanted some place to live that made me feel good.

I didn't want too big of a place. I didn't want involvement. I wanted comfort and freedom. Instead of searching, I let be searched. I knew enough about real estate from Andrea, to know that I didn't know enough, to do it on my own.

Talk about dejavue all over. I didn't give the matter a thought when I called what looked like a larger realtor and was assigned to a lady. She could have been Andrea's sister for all it mattered.

She was though, good at her job. In short order, she had figured out what I wanted and I was settling into a nice two-bedroom condominium. It had a large terrace overlooking the beach with a private harbor not far away. It was in a Mediterranean style with terra-cotta tile in the kitchen, living room, and flowing out on to the terrace. In addition, the walls of the kitchen, halls, and living room were stucco. I decorated the living room in black Italian leather and cherry wood furniture.

On the other side of the condo lay a small old styled very upbeat community. There were little cafes and shops of all kinds. With my mid-west small town background, the diversity of peoples in that town was first perplexing but amazing.

My neighbors, to the one side of my place, were a lesbian couple. On the other side... I still haven't figured it out. Four people (2 male/2 female) lived in the two-bedroom place but how they paired up, I don't know. Seemed like every other day it was a different combination... male/male... female/female... male/female... it was all there.

After I had the condo and had enough furniture in it to live, the next thing on my agenda was to get a haircut and new clothes, clothes that fit the climate and my hopefully new outlook on life.

I had seen a little hair salon on the route I always took, so that's where I stopped off first.

For some reason, I decide to keep my hair longer. I told the young hair stylist that I wanted to let my hair grow longer and needed something that would work. I didn't have the slightest idea how but she said she could do something.

During the time that she was washing my hair, she asked if I wanted a manicure. In a moment of splurging and thinking that men have manicures as well, I said, "Why not." Another young woman came to me, so I just sat back and enjoyed being pampered.

Well... It was a unisex hairstyle, that's for sure. Maybe, it would have looked manly on a more manly man but on me it looked more "female dykish" than anything. It was a longish layer cut just touching my shoulders and taper up, covering fully my ears, to bangs over the front. There was a part high on the left side and the bangs were long, jagged and hung down past my eyebrows. The whole haircut had a jagged, layered appearance. Since I could wear it with the bangs forward or brushed to the side, I decided to keep it. It did frame my face and give it an even more feminine appearance, nevertheless.

My manicure, I didn't like as much. She had kept the nails as long as they had been, only rounding and tapering them oval. What I didn't like was the lightly glossy effect that they had. I thought she should have kept them natural.

Just a bit down the road was an upscale men and women's boutique. So, that was the next stop on my spree. I had decided I was going to get some suits, shirts, sweaters and trousers. Jeans I still had enough.

I told the saleslady what I wanted and that I wanted them not only stylish, but also comfortable enough for everyday wear. I wanted suits but not stiff business suits. For shirts I wanted more mock turtlenecks and fancy t-shirts. She also showed me some moccasins styled loafers and I bought one of each color, black, dark brown and tan.

I was in there for hours and the mustang was pretty well packed by the time I was finished. I'm sure I made her day. When I left the shop, I left my old clothes there, wearing one of my all-new jackets, trousers and a mock sweater. (It was winter and even a little cool in Florida.)

The jacket and trousers were of cashmere/wool/silk mixture and the mock was cashmere/silk. The trousers were what I liked the best. They did fit me a little loose around the hips but they were the first pair of trousers I had ever bought that did not bunch up in the waist. Strange was only that the zipper fly opened to the left instead of to the right. The pants were one of four that I had grabbed off one rack and tried on while the saleslady was helping someone else.

Coming back to my condo, was the first time I saw the lesbian couple which lived next door to me. The more feminine of the couple was very friendly and waved to me, saying hello.

I think I saw her grin and say, "Nice" when she first saw me. The other had then glared at her. I remembered speculating if the more feminine one was maybe bisexual. I made a mental note to try and make friends with the other one first, as I didn't want to become a point of contention between them.

Later, the more feminine one talked a bit with me over the common wall of our terraces. She invited me to go with them to a club that night.

It was an engaging evening, interesting for me since I had never had anything to do with lesbians. The two of them and I stayed close friends for a year until they broke up and both moved away. I still call, email and write both of them.

Still, even though, and maybe because, I had moved and was living better, the Pandorian box that I had opened was more actual than ever before.

I had certainly noticed that my new more feminine hairstyle had made me feel better and people acted differently around me. (Yes, I had also figured out that the four pairs of trousers from that one rack were women's trousers.)

Yet, in that first night at the lesbian bar, I had more women hit on me than I had ever had in my whole life!

I had stepped out of my usual drab characterization of who I was and people seemed to be accepting me more, because of that.

Okay, they, in the lesbian bar, had thought I was a woman but even after I explained that I wasn't female, they weren't offended. They didn't change in their behavior towards me at all.

Much later, my neighbors explained to me, that even they had thought (and for quite some time) that I was a boi, an F2M, female to male, transgendered.

I had never given transgenderism much thought. Other then what one sees in Hollywood movies, that's about all I knew. I had seen Sex in the City and Mrs. Doubtfire, things like that. That was my idea of what transgenderism was.

It was Jen and Sandy (the lesbian couple) that forced me to start thinking out of the box. Questioning my ideals of what I thought was normal and necessary.

Still, it took time and a lot of talks with Jen and Sandy to come to terms with me finally looking past my denial of fact, as to who and what I really saw myself as.

There were a lot of little baby steps taken, the plucking of eyebrows, the wearing of small amounts of lipstick or eye shadow, getting my ears pierced, to finally the day I wore a bra and breast forms and went out with them dressed enfemme and butch, in a woman's business suit and a blouse.

Later, I became a "certified lez" (and the designated purse carrier), when we went out. After a time, I always went enfemme with them. It got hard not to dress female. My eyebrows were plucked. My nails were too long to be a man's. In shorts or a bathing suit, my hairless legs were a dead give-away. While my hair... still styled with that layered look, hung well down my back, and couldn't be considered anything but a very feminine hairstyle.

It wasn't a case of no one taking notice. Have you ever examined how men seem to always study women? Have you ever noticed how women observe each other?

Women observe each other constantly, comparing... judging...

Well, and men... They have a natural tendency to always study women... no matter what.

Being a woman is being always in the limelight.

Yes, I had been noticed but in the same way, any woman would be noticed and that felt so good!

It was scary at first. People would look at me, and I just knew they were laughing at me.

It was only when men started to try and flirt with me that I realized why people were looking. Realized, how it is natural that women are more looked at and studied, more than men.

It was odd and unusual, after having lived most of my life as a male and that of an indistinct one at that, to now be noticed so much.

Men are peculiar creatures.

As Conner, I was at best ignored. Otherwise, and then some, I always knew some form of ridicule, even if it was unintentional.

As Story, I am fawned over, pampered, but never ignored.

Well, that's how I perceived it at first. Now unless it gets to be obnoxious or I am seeking it, it's just seems natural. I guess, maybe, if I had been born a woman, I wouldn't even notice or think about it.

Cross-dressing had been fun and games. But, we had reached our limits. What we had done felt nice. But, it wasn't satisfaction for me. It helped me safely try out and observe a few aspects of being a woman but that was all.

Between the physical me and the mental me, I was still divided. There was a division between mind and body which made anything we did only a play game.

The next baby step, I could only take with the help of professionals. The first of these steps would be to again go into counseling. This time I needed someone more understanding and sympathetic to my intentions.

My problem was that I was that woman in the mirror. However it had happened, I had been born with the wrong gender. She was what I should have been and what I had to be, to become whole and content with myself and my life. Anything less was insufficient.

Playing the part, without the intentions of actually becoming what I needed to be, should have been, was only self-abuse. That is why, I perceived the young woman in Janice's mirror, to be mocking me.

It's a difficult decision to make, to change one's life so entirely. For many an even harder decision than mine was.

I could, of course, question my mother's and Janice's influence on me. That I had been indoctrinated, into believing, that I would be better off female than male.

Still, a lot of how we feel about our selves is dictated by how others feel and act towards us. That was the argument that I couldn't avoid.

In neither gender would I be entirely accepted or functional.

As Conner, I could not have children and neither as Story.

Being Conner, I would always carry the stigma of wimp and being less manly... not quite a man. I would always be seen as odd, different, less than... as handicapped. Physically, I couldn't conform to the image society required of a man.

As Story, I would be an M2F, a transsexual, and be confronted subtly but profoundly by prejudice and intolerance.

My only hope was to become so feminine that those with prejudice would not know. It was sad but true.

I did not have to worry about the effect on loved ones or on my occupation to consider.

Andrea was history. Aunt Madge was dead. My mother... my father... my brother? Who cared? Not me!

Occupation? My checks would be deposited to my bank account monthly... no matter what. If one of Aunt Madge's financial advisors didn't like what I became... good bye, and next one.

It therefore was a question of, "In which gender would I have less problems, and have a richer more fulfilling life?"

I knew I couldn't transition 100% into being female. There would always be small but critical discrepancies.

My physical features were such that as Conner, I would never be accepted but as Story, I would have little or no problems.

In fact, since once having stepped over permanently into cross-dressing, people seemed more readily to accept me as the person I was. Where Conner was tolerated, people seemed to go out of their way to get to know Story.

Morally? As Conner I had been neglected, abused, and ignored most of my whole life. Was my destiny to remain so, or was the reasoning behind my suffering that I learn, break the circle of abuse, and then transform myself, my life, into a being, able to excel, and be accepted?

As such, Conner had two strikes against him, before he even started out. People will always judge the outsides of a person, before they look further. There are doors that would always remain closed to Conner.

I have always been acutely aware of my looks, and their value. Story was... a completely different story. The feminine body of Story would be pleasant to look at and conformative to my personality. Rather than alienating, closing people's minds and thoughts towards me, Story's body would compliment my character, insuring people's interest in my agenda.

Fate had not given me money for no reason. Money isn't self-intending. It's not a goal. It's a means. If Aunt Madge's life taught me anything, it was that my fortune was in providing serve and help to others. Those that receive the most, have the responsibility, to give the most.