Please Don't Call Me Sir PART I

Transgender, cisgender, pangender, oh my!!! These terms, and more, did not exist in my little world in the 70's. Growing up in small town America had it's benefits for some, but not someone that felt different, thought different, and looked different, as I did. You fell in to one of two categories, girl or boy, male or female. Trying to get out of one of those boxes was not easy. I would dare say in the town I was in at the time, getting out of a box was not even possible. There were terms for the people that didn't fit in one of the boxes in a neat and tidy way. Those terms included old maids, old bachelors who never "took a wife", odd, weird, eccentric (I rather like this one above the rest), fags and dykes. I did not have an understanding of the sexuality associated with the terms. In my pre-teen mind the terms were just adjectives describing one's appearance or how someone chose to live. I knew they were derogatory in nature, but it wouldn't be until much later, after leaving that small town, that I would truly know the meaning and the impact of the words.

My confusion surrounding my gender started at a very young age. If you were able to speak to my mother, she would tell you there were even earlier signs, before my memory, that I had some stereotypical male tendencies. For instance, I loved tools. So much so that when I was three, my uncles crafted me my own workbench for Christmas. I am lucky in the way that my preferences were embraced by my family and it was never any kind of "thing". I liked tools, I liked hanging out in my grandpa's workshop and going to the dump with him. On the contrary, my friends liked Barbie dolls...I also liked playing Barbie dolls too, if I could be Ken and play with the Barbie camper! The only issue about my preferences was short lived and it revolved around how my mother wanted me to dress. Short lived, because if it was in my control, I wasn't having it. More on that to come, after all, we do have to try to fit in boxes sometimes, even when we don't want to.

When I was 9 years old we moved to Florida. We "moved" on a greyhound bus. A single mom with two children in tow, making a journey to start anew (as we often would), in Lake Worth, Florida. My brother was only 4, so he wasn't much company on the grueling bus ride, 24 hours of free motion sickness included! To this day I become nauseated by the smell of toilet cleaner, a smell that just permeates the hind quarters of greyhound buses. Thank God for layovers. We had a long one in Washington, DC. 3 hours. Time to eat, use the bathroom and just breath some fresh air. During this time my mother had befriended a fellow passenger and her young son, about my age. I spent time in the terminal with him and at some point during our interactions, doing whatever 9 year olds do in a sprawling, crowded, noisy bus station, I realized that he thought I was a boy. I went with it, I did not correct him and in fact, I introduced myself using a typical male name. We carried on as naturally as can be and spent the remainder of the bus trip riding together...hours later I arrived in Florida the same person that I left New York as, just with a new experience that I did not understand and would spend years trying to decipher.