how does he know?

when i try to remember myself as a child i see a little boy. yeah i played softball and i grew up with two older sisters but i spent enormous amounts of time with my dad helping him fix things at our house and other people's houses. i remember not understanding why i couldnt go into the boys bathroom at school and not understanding how the girls in class played but not getting the chance to play with the boys cause i was different. when out with my dad i remember him having to tell people that i was the daughter not the son - and i think for a while i convinced myself that that was just a nickname. i didnt get it (until puberty) that he and i were at all different. and now that i think about it.. i think puberty is when i stopped caring and got angry.

no, my childhood wasnt spectacular, but i was always fed, i always slept in a bed unless id peed in it (sigh), and i always had clothes to wear --so id say my sisters, parents, and grandparents did pretty good with me. the only problem was that we never talked about feelings or about what was going on. life just kinda happened, and we just kinda let it.


but how did i come to know that im a transman? kind of a long story...

i was in college - USC (Trojans Baby!). there, people identified me as a lesbian. i didnt like the term, but settled with it cause i didnt know any other. i hated gender specific discussion groups and actually wanted to stay with the guys but couldnt--nope, i didnt know then. in the spring of my freshman year there was a retreat called GenQ (Generation Queer). i dont remember much about the retreat (this was in 2001) except for the part where we were separated into gender-specific groups. i dont even remember how they explained it exactly, but there were "definitions" read of people who fit in the groups for male and female. i couldnt identify with either exactly, but i could identify with the "queer/unidentified" description. there were three of us. we ended up talking til about 2am about gender issues and what it all felt like and a little about transition. i thought maybe id found what i had been looking for...but still didnt really get it (that i was a transman).

throwing myself completely off track i spent the next five years drinking and drugging the uncomfortable feelings away - and not just the gender ones, but feelings about EVERYTHING. i was numb for most of that time. every glbt event and halloween party i went to i went as a guy-cause i could. even considered joining a drag king troupe or at least dating a guy from one (probably more out of wanting to be a guy all the time than wanting him). i spent years melding myself into the person someone else wanted cause i didnt understand that who i wanted to be was important.

when i got clean the feelings of "i dont like being called a lesbian" came back. might i mention that God works in mysterious ways? my first sponsor, who i met at a women's meeting, was a guy named Danny. (I love my Danny.) he worked for me - and made more sense to me than i couldve ever recognized back then. sadly i still tried to be a girl.. fit-in as a lesbian, but it didnt work. i was frustratingly unable to identify with other women. recently i realized that its cause im not a woman, im a man. and even more recently i discovered, that its ok to be the man that i am on the inside - despite what anyone ever sees on the outside.

i cant say "yeah, i always knew i was trans" because i think i actually thought i WAS a boy for a while. its just that gender wasnt a big deal at my house cause there were so many other things going on there. i can say i know NOW and have a name for it .. and have a solution to it ...where before it was just kinda me.

Ray