Journal Entries for Leanne
Discovery
July 16th, 2008 6:30 pm MDT
So I'm thinking that my last post went through, but I don't see it so I try again. It was all about childhood and how I was told one day by my parents that I was named a girl's name (which would work for a boy) because my mom wanted a girl. I came out just like she wanted in gender, but god I hate how long it's taken to say what I've know for a long, long, time: I was born in the wrong body. So I struggle through childhood, never seeming to get the jokes in the locker room (I was the "manager" for the football team in jr. high, shorthand for the "woose" who was not really all guy). I remember having the girls tell me my legs were pretty, once when at a little league practice. I remember earlier, and often, sneaking into my younger sister's room to try on her shoes and bra. I remember my dad and my older brother thinking there was something wrong with me because I didn't like hunting or working on cars or putting those horrible fish hooks on worms. I remember being a gymnast, the only guy in fact, in the early Texas days of gymnastics when we younger boys on our own had to wear black girls tights instead of gymnastic suits, or at least that's what my mom got for me. I remember loving talking with girls but hating the guys conversations. I dated a lot, and I was quite the Casanova, but I always roamed, never happy, and never really making it with the girls. I seemed to understand them but not know how to woo them. So I grow up and marry and have a buttload of children, and have a career, and all the time am looking, am wandering and wondering. And I want to be a girl. I always like the line in Cheers, when the show starts. And one day in Portland, after years of missed opportunities and backed out of appointments in places all over the world, I met Victoria Sinclair, and I find my self, my soul. And I am calm. But I must now go on. But where? And how?
Discovery
July 16th, 2008 5:40 pm MDT
So, I am like a lot of us, struggling for years and years and years, wishing I had been born sexually as I am genetically. But I wasn't, so I spend all my life trying to find out who I am. Ever since I can remember, I was the different child. I did not like to do what my older brother did, and my dad, whom I love deeply, who was an oil field roughneck as tough as they come, sometimes could not stand my inadequacies as a young man, so he called me a sissy. Or so I remember. And I remember the day, very distinctly, in Little League, when I'm on the mound in practice trying to pitch, to see if I could, and some girls standing around said I had pretty legs. Too bad I became a gymnast, and developed wierd looking angles of muscles in my arms and now bowey legs. And I remember growing up and finding my younger sister's shoes, and stealing them to run into the bathroom and try them on, and her bra, and later her hose. And my mother's slips, and her jewelry. And I remember in gymnastics, at the time new to Texas, having to wear black girls tights, and having the girls on the team laugh at me, the only boy in elementary school who wanted to do gymnastics. Or maybe, to be with those most like me. Anyway, I grew up and did all the normal things --- marriage and children and job. But I always kept looking at the girls, then women, wanting not to fuck them but to be them. And because I couldn't, in Texas of all places, what the hell to do but drink and get angry and work and travel and wonder and wander? But I am finding myself now, and oh how wonderful it is. I know I'm no looker, but I'm happy. Look at those eyes. It's so damn obvious. But what now? Now that I know, because of Victoria Sinclair, what might be? What?
Revelations
July 14th, 2008 10:15 pm MDT
So, after fifty years or so of frustration, I get to Portland for a confernce, and I schedule a transformation, and I cancel, and the wonderful goddess (because there seems no other way to explain what she did) of a person Victoria encourages me to go through with it, and I do it, and then I do another, and we go to Embers, and I seem to fit in, but most of all I LOVE IT and the FREEDOM I feel, and I am supported, and encouraged, and I cannot stand taking off the new, REAL me, and I cry, and I cry some more, and I have to finally leave Portland, and I dress on my own in L.A., with makeup, and I feel so FREE, and I wish, oh how I wish, for more of MYSELF, but I must soon leave for the facade that is the 30 year old marriage, because I care, like all women do, and I love my partner, and I have children to care for, so I suffer more and more and more.
BUT I KNOW NOW. I will not quit. Or so I hope. I am a woman, and I must be free. Help me, oh help me, I pray, to the goddesses of joy and peace and love.
But there's no way, none, I can really be WOMAN. I can't keep my legs together right, I don't have the right clothes, my arms are too manly and fall the wrong way. I am not woman, but I AM.
So I cry, and I wonder, where is there room for me, oh world of blacks and whites? How can I find the world I want, where I am at peace, and I can dress, and love, and live?
