My Greatest Adventure
It started like any other day. A 120 minute ride, punctuated by yawns, swearing, and my coffee cup vibrating madly in it's questionable resting place, in the convenient little piece of plastic the Ford motor company so thoughtfully put in my dash. It was a day I had waited for nearly a lifetime. I was driving to Baltimore MD for my evaluation follow-up, for my GP to make the fateful decision, if I should, or should not be approved for HRT. I kept checking the mirror. My hair was still fairly short, and I was fully in drab, I didn't feel very feminine, yet, I felt as though things were right in the universe, everything was aligned and seemed to make sense for me to begin my repair to womanhood. I had done my initial 90 days in therapy as per the Benjamine standards, and apparently had displayed all the classic symptomology of gender dysphoria. My counselor evidently felt that if I chose to begin feminization, she would approve me. I wanted desperatly to transition, but I did make it evident to her that I would not even attempt transition without a good head start, meaning, the benefits of HRT and electrology, and substantial weight loss.
The mere mention of hormones sends euphoric rushes through most pre-HRT transsexuals I know. Every tiny nerve ending seems to stand erect at the prospect of starting it. I had no such reaction. All the negative things I had read, and my counselor had told me about hormones, rang in my head. Impotence!, permanent feminization!, breasts!!,... and then there were the social ramifications, the laughing, the staring, the pointing, and verbal abuse and at worst, physical violence. Strangely, I was not nervous about seeing the Doctor, No indeed,... I was petrified with fear!! I was absolutely terrified that the Doctor would look at me and say,... "I'm very sorry, you cannot be approved for HRT at this time, conversely, I was terrified he would say "I am approving you for HRT at this time". I've said it before, I knew that once I placed those pills on my tongue, my life would never be the same, but I needed a back door, a safe out, a free pole. What if I needed to return to being a male? What if I found a woman who so enthralled me I felt compelled to continue to play the male game? *I had found my answer in my own rhetoric.
I wheeled into the parking garage and found a spot on the uppermost level. I checked my watch and got out of my car, I began the walk through the parking deck and onto the traverse that linked the hospital and the deck together, butterflies in my stomach, I checked my watch again, I noticed how big and manly a watch it was. I became aware of myself,... how male I was at this moment, and how vulnerable I was in contrast. I strode stiffly through the lobby and to the elevator, hoping there would not be many passengers on it. I had always felt a bit out of place in my Doctor's waiting room. On this day, I felt acutely displaced. Involuntarily I sucked in a breath, and opened the door to the waiting room, I quickly found a magazine and a seat. Soon a rather large, middle-age man entered the room, his brown eyes scanning the place for the most advantageous seating. For some reason, I felt like a traitor to the male gender, in the past I would have had no trouble giving this man eye contact and nodding my salutations in that grim manner that men do. This day, I glanced up and immediately averted my eyes to the ground.
A few moments later an elderly black woman was escorted into the area, the man who was grasping her elbow eased her into one of the burt orange bowling-type seats that sat in rows in the room, and turned promply to leave. I smiled sheepishly at her, and she replied with a little grin of her own. I tried to look at her in quick little glances so one no one would notice my interest. She had on a long flowered blue dress and was covered from the waist up by a brown knit sweater. On her benevalent grey head rested a neat little blue hat with a few adornments stuck in random around it. Her big black, clunky granny shoes made her ankles look so thin and frail, I wondered how she managed to drag her feet along. I now felt like a pretender. I wondered what this woman would say if I told her I was a woman also. I could imagine her throwing back her head in laughter. I could almost hear her saying "Child if you got one of those things down there you ain't no woman".
I heard the receptionist call my name and I rose from my seat, wondering if either of the people who had entered the room had any inkling of what I was doing there. The nurse who was waiting by the door that led to the examination rooms was a young black girl of about 26. She pointed me to a side room and told me she would be taking my blood pressure before the Doctor saw me. I wondered if she had read my chart. I also wondered if she knew why I was there. After she removed the cuff she took my temperature and smiled as she wrote the results on my chart. I thought maybe she had seen the word 'Transsexual' stamped on my notes in large burning red letters. Embarrasment flushed my cheeks. She engaged me in a short conversation about the weather as she showed me to the examination room. I was glad she was at least talking to me. She smiled as she opened the door to the exam room and told me to sit on the table and the Doctor would be in soon. The paper crinkled noisily as I tried to sit upon it in a manner that it would not do so. I looked around the room and read everything there was to read on the walls. I gazed out the window through the wide metal slats that were the blinds. I watched people move about on the street below. I thought how nice it would be to be able to walk down the street as a female and have no one swing their head around in disbelief as I passed. I frowned as I pondered wheteher that would ever be the case for me.
40 minutes passed. I was begining to get restless. I was feeling cramped and uncomfortable and as usual, I felt as if maybe this were a sign. Maybe I should just get up and leave. Maybe this is all just a crazy dream I've had since childhood. Maybe I'm okay after all,... someone touched the doorknob from the outside and it broke my defeating train of thought. The Doctor stepped through the door with his usual disarming smile. He apologized for keeping me waiting and launched into a series of questions about my health, my marriage, and my commitment to transitioning. I was a bit apprehensive as he asked me to remove my shirt and trousers. He performed a fairly routine examination, with all the accompanying probing and requests to breath and cough at the properly prescribed times. Satisfied, he asked me to dress, as I did so, he pulled a little chair directly in front of me and asked me to sit on the table. He looked at me with compassion in his eyes and asked me, "Are you sure this is what you want"? I nodded in silence, a confident smile on my lips. He began to explain the affects the hormones would have on me. I noticed that as he talked he had a genuine concern, and I could sense his caring. It made me feel at ease. He stood up and went to the counter top where he began to write my prescriptions. I must admit, as he wrote a feeling of completeness washed over me. I felt right.
He explained to me where to go to get the meds. He mentioned that the Hospital had a pharmacy but he said he thought it would be better for me to go to a one that was a few blocks away. He said they were familiar with him there and would ask no questions. I thanked the Doctor as he escorted me back to the front office. He asked the nurse to make another appointment for me and as he turned to leave he stopped and extended his hand, he smiled and wished me good luck and shook my hand warmly. I liked this man, this male who had compassion for his brother, his brother whom he knew would some day become his sister.
I walked the hall toward the elevator. In an hour and twenty minutes the world had changed.
I exited the elevator, not able to recall the ride down. I wandered through the lobby of the Hospital, it seemed so much bigger and brighter. The colors were nearly jumping off the walls at me. I found a plush chair near the front exit and settled into it, I was drained. For the next hour I would struggle with the realization that I was begining a great adventure that I had been planning to take since childhood. As I sat I watched the people in the lobby. I saw tall people, short people, thin and fat people. I saw very short men, I saw very tall women. It finally struck me when I saw a very tall, very large, very pretty girl struggling toward the elvator with a cast on her leg, that I too may be able to live my life as a female. I would never be thin or waif-like, but I knew in my heart I could become the woman I always dreamed to be.
I left Baltimore after visiting the pharmacy that was recommended to me. It wouldn't have been very exciting had I not sat there nervously wondering what every TS wonders when they fill their first script. The pharmacist and his two assistants kept glancing up from behind the tall wooden counter, trying to get a look at this big guy who was sitting there waiting for the medicine that would over time, change his body chemistry to that of a woman. The thin counter girl called my name and pushed my bag of meds across the counter to me. I was expecting this, so I treated as such. I didn't really worry about it, it didn't affect me the way I had always envisioned it. I left the building clutching my precious cache of girl drugs. As I was driving home I kept looking at the bag which contained my medicine, as if it would answer the question that burned in me, "Am I doing the right thing"?
Once home, I went upstairs to my bedroom and I put the pills in my dresser. I had not taken any of them. I plodded back down stairs and sat on the couch in silence. I reflected on my life, over and over and again. Could I take the ridicule? What would I do if someone pointed me out on the street or worse yet, what if they yelled something nasty at me?,... what would I do? What would happen when my in-laws found out I was taking female hormones? What would MY family do? What if?,... what if?... I think God put his hand on my shoulder and said,... "Who are you living your life for?" I realized something in that moment of anxiety and pain and silence. Not only was I not living the truth for God, I was not even living the truth for myself. I had never, in my entire life, done most things because I had wanted to. My motivation was not to please me, I did things to please society, I did things to please my friends, my parents (sort of), my wife. If I did happen to do something for me, it was with an extreme measure of guilt, and a feeling that I was somehow letting everyone down. Where did I fit into this equation?
I got up from the couch, it was clear to me now, I knew what I had to do. I took slow calculated steps up the hardwood staircase. I continued down the hall to the bedroom. Gently, I slid the drawer open to my dresser, retrieved the bottles and started toward the bathroom. Once there I paused for a few moments and stared in the mirror that hung over the sink. I saw Robin standing there smiling and nodding gently. Suddenly, my heart was full, I twisted open the tops of the slender brown plastic containers and poured forth my womanhood. Quickly, I popped the pills in my mouth, hesitated for a brief moment, then smiled as I drank from my hand under the faucet. I had done it. I had taken the first step in this, my greatest adventure.
©1997 Robin Leigh. Not to be used without express written permission!