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Just about six months since I had started seeing my new psychologist,
'Samuel', we had discussed at length my mixed-sex 'situation', what
it meant to me personally and what it meant to the world
socially and we both agreed that I was emotionally prepared to
look into the medical part of my 'situation' and find what my options
were for addressing it. One area of concern was outside
support. While it was all good to have him on my side, I
really should have someone in my social life aware of the 'situation'
and be supportive as well. As my family members weren't an option,
all of them living hundreds if not thousands of miles away except for
my mother, and she had been the one who insisted I keep my
'situation' a secret and not tell anyone, I guessed I'd have to
find someone else.
With March Nineteen Ninety-Two it was starting to get warm enough for
Daina and I to once again go hiking in the nearby mountains and
parks. Given how well our friendship had developed over the years, I
decided I would tell her
on one of our hikes. When we arrived at the foothills of the nearest
mountain I realized, with the effort of hiking up and down the paths,
that it wouldn't be conducive to a good discussion and also lack
privacy given the occasional other hikers we would pass by on the
trail. So I waited until we were getting back to the car and then
let Daina know I wanted to talk to her about something. Apparently
Daina had noticed my contemplative quietness during the hike and
concluded that something was up and I had now confirmed it -- To
her fears. Back in the car, Daina decided to start it and
begin driving though that hadn't been my plan. Sure enough, with
Daina paying attention to the twists & turns of the mountain side
road, it didn't feel like the right atmosphere for the discussion and
I asked her to find somewhere to pull aside so we could talk. She
decided this meant she needed to drive faster, but I finally
insisted she stop at the next overlook pull-off and she reluctantly
did.
''What!'' was her prompt to me once we stopped and she shut off the
car. While not an ideal beginning to the topic, I felt it was the
best I was going to get to talk to her about my 'situation'. Let's
face it, when is a good time to bring up something like that?
And so I decided to start from the beginning with puberty where boys
begin to become men and girls begin to become women and in my case it
was 'pretty much a mixed bag'. This attempt to ease into the subject
only brought a confused look so I decided to be more explicit that I
had been a boy but when I turned thirteen, parts of me developed as a
woman while the male parts of me withered a bit and I had only
developed a few speckles of beard but nothing else. ''So you're
saying you wanted to be a woman?'' she guessed, still not grasping
the situation. No, not necessarily, I returned, it was a
case of my body, physically, not knowing what it should be and I was
seeing a doctor to figure it out.
She was clearly perplexed and asked a few questions which lead me to
believe she still wasn't understanding what I was trying to explain
to her. This was before the time when I had come up with that
succinct line I thought I was a boy but when puberty came I got a
big surprise. Perhaps I came up with this line after my much
more wordier attempt to explain it to Daina hadn't been very
effective. She didn't seem to want to talk about it any further and
I couldn't figure out what else to say on my end of the conversation.
So she restarted the car and we continued driving to her place.
Once we were there, she brought up the topic again but it was still
clear that she was thinking this was an emotional 'feeling' I was
talking about not a physical occurrence. So I decided just to lift
up my tee shirt, unclip the ACE bandage strapping me down and pull it
free, letting my boobs drop out. She stood there mute for a moment
then turned away. ''Never do that, ever again,'' she said in a
solemn voice and I left for her bathroom to cinch myself back up.
When I came back into the condo's combination dining room/living
area, Daina decided she should just take me back to my apartment for
the rest of the day as she needed to think. I felt this was bad
news, but didn't want to stir up any more resentments by trying to
force the topic on her any further. It was a quiet drive back and I
told her to give me a call later when she wanted to talk more. I got
out of the car and she just as quietly left. I watched her drive
away uncertain if I'd ever hear from her again.
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