"A Personal Musing of Motivation and Desire," or "What the Hell am I Gonna Do Next?"

I remember lying in my bed as a small boy. I remember laying there, staring at the ceiling, or across the room at some curtains, and thinking that there was a woman in the room with me; feeling, almost seeing and hearing, some kind of vague feminine spirit. I remember thinking that this is impossible. The world is simple; what you see is what you get. There is no womanly ghost in the room protecting me and making me feel safe in an insecure world. There is no female guardian here for me. I told myself that every night until I believed it. If it wasn’t true, why did I have to tell myself every night for so long? I still can’t feel her. I still don’t understand where those feelings came from. My current belief system doesn’t explain this memory well, and it’s too vague to blow it off as imagination or to believe that I really was in touch with a spirit. My beliefs make room for either possibility. That’s not even close to the point, though.

This same age, I’m guessing I was about six or so, was also the age that I started identifying with girls. I’d never liked the boys as much, they seemed silly in ways that I wasn’t silly. They pretended and made excuses an awful lot; “that didn’t hurt (*sniff*!!),” “I can do a hundred pushups, but not right now because I just did them at home, so I’m too tired,” “that was out-of-bounds,” “you won because you cheated, I didn’t really lose” etc., etc. I always wondered why I didn’t care about that stuff, and why I really just wanted to hang out and have fun without feeling like someone had to be the best/coolest/strongest/most macho. I usually waited for this kind of crap to be over without participating too much. Sometimes, though, I’d lie along with the rest of them. It always made me feel guilty and scared they’d find out the truth.

As I grew up, I hung out with the boys for fear of being labeled a sissy. I played little league baseball and football and didn’t ever really enjoy either one. I sucked at baseball, really badly, and I didn’t understand why purposefully putting yourself in pain by smashing into other boys in the freezing cold, sweltering heat, pouring rain, or even on a beautiful day, made you a better and more complete person. I figured it did, though; all the men in my family thought so anyway, so I did it and pretty much continuously wished I was doing something fun and relaxing instead of grueling. I quit baseball, because it’s okay to give something up if you suck at it, but if you don’t like being miserable, there must be something wrong with you. I learned that from watching the reaction by coaches and teams when someone else would quit. I didn’t want to be called those names and laughed at like that.

About sixth grade, other people started to realize that I was different. The guys started picking on me, pretty ruthlessly. They didn’t stop for about three years. I think it was in eight grade that I finally got it down how to be unnoticeable. They left me alone, but I never did make a stand really. I sometimes tried to stand up for myself by talking my way out of a conflict, and it worked sometimes, but most of the time, I would look at the ground, embarrassed and ashamed that I was unwilling to throw punches, and wait for them to go away.

I figured out, though, sometime during seventh grade, that if you’re bruised, you should take pride in it and brag about it. Being a lineman on the football team, it was pretty easy to be consistently minorly injured. Girls responded with pity and attention, guys responded by leaving you alone. I remember wishing I didn’t have to continue to prove to the world that I really was a guy. See? I play football, I have balls!! My arms are covered in cuts and bruises from hitting other players, I’m a man! I don’t wear armpads, even though I’m a lineman!! I’m virile!!

Eventually, I learned to enjoy it. I learned at that same time to be angry. The more I liked things like football and chasing tits and calling cruelty friendship, the angrier I got. By the time I graduated High School, I was a man’s man, I was masculine and virile and was afraid of intimacy. I dumped girls for no reason, or cheated on the ones I really cared about, and found people to pick on and made crude and obnoxious jokes and was pissed off. Really mad. That’s what a man is, right? That’s how the other “men” looked. And always, no matter what, be ready to prove you’re a man at the drop of a hat.

It wasn’t all bad, though. I was on the speech team and in band, and there were enough guys in there that I wasn’t totally off balance. There were enough guys in my life that weren’t hung up on all that stuff that I did have some outlet where I could be real. I had a bunch of friends that I could be real with, and I felt good and at peace then, when I didn’t have to be on guard and worried. I felt like a weirdo at these times, though, and I was always a little afraid that someone might decided to take issue with these other activities on the field or in the locker room. Sometimes they did, and I was always ashamed that I wasn’t as manly as they were. What the hell was wrong with me?

I got to college and found out that there were other ways to feel aside from angry, scared, or like a weirdo. There were all kinds of cool ways to be really high!! I tried them all a bunch of times. The guys I hung out with, we still did a lot of pretending, I was so good at it by this time, that I didn’t recognize it for what it was. I enjoyed it, though. I really did enjoy those guys and those times, as scared as I was of the future, and of myself, I was having fun. I guess that’s what powerful chemical mood alteration can do for you.

The first time I dropped acid, I shaved my whole body. I loved it for the whole next week, until it started to itch horribly, but I couldn’t shave sober. I was scared also that someone would see my hairless body, so I spent a lot of time worrying that I might not be covered. I didn’t want guys to find out I was such a “fag.” Over time, I gave drugs up, but I can’t regret my experience with them. LSD especially, allowed me to cut through the crap and see myself as I really am; above simple explanation and beyond labels. I wish I could have arrived at this point without chemical help, and I probably would have someday, but I believe that my experience with drugs accelerated this process of self-realization.

At some point, I started shaving consistently. It makes me feel comfortable. It makes me feel real. I may be acting like a manly man, but here’s the proof to myself that there was more to me that this bullshitting. I started painting my toenails, and as school went by, became more and more of a transvestite. I still haven’t been out in public dressed (in fact nobody knows) or invested a lot of money in it, but when I’m wearing a skirt at home or hose under my clothes, and girl’s underwear, I feel peaceful. I feel better about myself and more confident. It’s never been about sexual excitement like it is for some people (not that I judge those who enjoy this fetish in any way). It’s made me hard a time or two, but I always just waited for that hard-on to go away, it ruined my look.

At the same time that I was becoming more comfortable with cross-dressing, I became more comfortable with myself. Being dressed made me feel horribly guilty and weird for a long time. I was fearful I’d get caught, or that it would show in my personality. As time progressed, though, I faced those fears and allowed some of those personality traits that I’d been hiding for so long to emerge. I felt that by doing this, I had lost the respect of some males in my life, but became comfortable with the fact that I didn’t need that kind of false respect anyway. I came to think of myself as an androgyne. I’m not a female, I have many genuinely masculine qualities that I enjoy and respect about myself. Dresses and makeup aren’t my thing. Neither is gossip or shopping. I learned that I’m not stereotypically either gender, and I learned that I like that about myself. I got in touch with my emotions, with my beliefs, and with myself. With this comfort in myself, I felt that respect re-emerge in people. I realized at some point that people respect self-respect above all forms of pretending. I also realized that my perception of waxing and waning respect from others was probably more based on internal personal change than on real changes in other people’s opinions of me.

Along with all of this, a desire for castration has slowly emerged. I’ve had periods of absolute obsession with this idea. I’ve attempted to castrate myself with a number of jury-rigged apparatus, and I’ve recently bought a Burdizzo through an online auction, although it hasn’t arrived in the mail yet. I realize now that I have viewed it as an action that I could take that would magically heal me and therefor my relationship with the world. The dilemma I face is whether I need to take such extreme action to continue to grow as myself. In many ways, I believe that the lack of certain hormones and desires will allow me to be truer to myself. I believe that a more androgynous body will allow me to be more comfortable with my androgynous spirit and soul. Alternatively, I wonder if it will just re-emphasize the rift between myself and the world that has been present at so many points in my life. I wonder if I must be so extreme, when balance might be easier to find without such an action.

Will I use that clamp when it arrives? I don’t honestly know at this point, but I know that it will take a lot of thought, meditation, and prayer. Sometimes I think I need to do this to be me, and other times, I worry that I’ll lose myself if I do this. I recognize this as the most important decision I’ll make, or at least way up there in the top three or so.

If I could shape-shift at will, that would be the ideal for me. Maybe if I could put on a woman’s shape when the mood suited me, and a man’s shape when that mood suited me, then I could be happier. If I were able to decide in the morning that I wanted to be a girl today, or a boy, or somewhere in between, I know that I would be really happy. This isn’t about fantasy for me at this point, this is a question of how I can determine my reality in a way that makes me complete.

I think that maybe this isn’t a decision that I’m prepared to make, and so I will most likely wait, and give inspiration and understanding time to find me. That has always been the most effective way for me to feel good about huge choices, but it is so very hard to be patient about this. God help me.