Born in the Wrong Body
Out shopping one day, shortly after I turned sixteen, I walked down a well-lit hallway that led to the public restrooms. Rounding a turn in the hall, the two doors came into view on opposite walls. Before turning away from the women’s room, as I stared at the door, quick flashes of a more Utopian life passed through my mind. A middle-age woman glanced my way before disappearing inside. It would have felt natural to follow her in, though that would have made her gasp in horror.
That’s because I still looked like a man, barely a year out of a late puberty. Not a masculine man, a wimpy one. Still, during puberty, my body had changed in a way that broke my heart. When the other girls at school were looking at their new breasts in the mirror, I was looking at a penis that had gotten larger.
Call it a temporary lapse, me wanting to forget my body’s configured differently than the other women that use that room. Given certain circumstances, I would have these fleeting fantasies of feeling normal; usually followed by memories of the day my mother, after catching me looking at myself in the mirror in a pair of nylon panties, went through every drawer in my room and threw out all the female intimates I had hidden; or those days in junior high PE class, changing into those awful gym shorts, invariably humiliated when Johnny Perkins taunted me, mocked my slender hairless body, my girlie white skin, my small boyish penis.
It was my sense of self, my feminine sensibilities that urged me to use the restroom I felt most comfortable in, instead of facing the lifelong dread of making myself go in and pee with the men. It didn’t matter the rest of my world saw me as a man, for me it was impossible to accept. It didn’t matter my shoulders were small and my protruding nipples sometimes felt swollen and sensitive, as if they were about to blossom into full blown breasts (but never did); I was stuck with the basic shape of a male. It didn’t matter if I secretly shaved my underarms and legs; I still looked like a man. But I’m not. Not then, that day at Macy’s; not now. I’m a woman. Born a woman and destined to stay a woman for the rest of my life.
I had been looking at the swimsuits in Macy’s, wondering what I would look like in a stringy two piece, never mind being almost decade away from all the necessary treatments and operations. I would do things like that to escape the tormenting world I lived in, always checking to make sure no one who knew me was in the store before holding something up in front of the mirror to see how it would look on me.
So how do I describe the conflicts that haunted me every time my parents looked at me with unspoken questions and doubt; every time the boys mocked me and called me a sissy while the girls looked on with detached pity; every time I saw a dress in a store window I’d love to try on, but to do so meant I must be a pervert; every time my eyes fell on a boy’s lips I would love to kiss, only to realize kissing me was the last thing he would want to do? How do I tell you how wretched I felt every miserable time I considered patronizing a gay bar to find out what it would be like to sleep with a man, only to walk away in shame and self-loathing before entering the door?
That day at Macy’s I was still a college degree and a few years into my career away from my first hormone injections, a physical and emotional transition that’s enormously expensive. It had been one more of one day at a time. When I finally finished my last two years of high school, I still faced three years of loneliness without ever having a date. I couldn’t bring myself to ask a girl out. What was the point? I was attracted to men; not gay men, but men who were attracted to women, perhaps the most confounding aspect of this unwanted torment. My misguided genes had reduced my options for romance to zero. But by then I had a plan.
In college I learned it’s called gender angst: an overwhelming feeling of being a woman born with a male form, a dread of passing in front of a mirror, a love/hate relationship with one’s body, especially one’s genitals. You long for a man’s breath whispering in your ear, only to realize you’re the one expected to be the whisperer, and it’s suppose to be in some other lovely young temptress’s ear. You want to feel smooth and soft and feel a light airy dress caressing the curves of your body; instead, you find yourself standing before a steam-filmed mirror, shaving off the hair that threatens to hide your jaw, something no woman can imagine herself doing.
Growing up, I never felt a sense of controversy about who I am. Only despair. Through puberty and my teenage years, and on into adulthood, I never felt an urge to act or look like a man. I did, however, struggle to be accepted, failing no matter how hard I tried to fit in. I identified with the girls, but didn’t look like them; I looked like the boys, but couldn’t understand why they liked to play baseball, hit each other on the arm, yell catcalls at the girls. Eventually, I quit trying. Except for Christie. I’m not sure I could have survived my adolescence had it not been for her, the girl down the street, my best friend. Somehow she understood I was different and accepted me for who I am. I’ll never forget the hours we spent together, confiding in each other, giggling about incidents that had happened at school, gossiping about classmates. It didn’t bother her if I behaved like a girl. One day in her room, when her parents were away on vacation, she applied makeup to my face. I still remember how it felt to sit staring at my reflection, watching the metamorphosis. “You’re beautiful,” she said, admiring her handiwork. “Too bad you’re not a girl.”
In college, I approached my psychology professor one day after class. He sat behind his desk quietly listening to my story. Then his eyes lifted and he studied me. “So this is why I have an IT major in my psychology class,” he said as a sympathetic smile formed on his face. We met later in a coffee shop where he began an impromptu psychological analysis; which, for the first time in my tormented life, happened to be the first time I was able to talk to someone about who I am, the first time I had felt a sense of relief. Eventually, after several more discussions over coffee, he concurred with my plan—I was a natural candidate for sexual reassignment.
After college, one year into my new job in the information technology industry, I finally started the hormone injections, planning to eventually have breast implants; but decided against that when my own reached size C on their own. By the time I had worked two years, I had just about saved enough money for the final operation, the procedure that would remove my testicles and transform my much-ignored penis into a vital effervescent vagina. It had become a matter of being prepared emotionally for the last step; a step that, as it turns out, also involved a certain man I had fallen in love with; a man that, much to my surprise, had become indecisive. Today, if you saw me in a swimsuit or wearing nothing more than a pair of panties, and my genitals are pulled back and securely taped into place between my legs, you’d think you were looking a very attractive young woman, if I do say so myself.
Since I wore loose-fitting business clothes to work, no one noticed my body’s subtle changes. My hips had become fuller, providing me with more of an hour glass shape. My ass had rounded and taken on the more pronounced curves of a woman. My legs looked less muscular and more feminine, even longer, though I felt certain that was an illusion. Much of my body hair had thinned and disappeared. The more stubborn hairs were dealt with by way of laser hair removal, including my face. I had quit having to shave. My arms had grown slender and felt weaker. My entire body mass was softer. Many of my male coworkers wore long hair, so no one paid heed to mine as it grew longer. In the privacy of my apartment, wearing full makeup, I finally looked like I wanted to, everywhere except between my legs. It was time for the next phase.
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