This Is So Passé

Today’s article is one more about me, which is subject that I do not like to write about. I hate to write about myself because I do not want it to be seen as bragging. I know that there are some things we have in common; therefore, I will try to explore them and not sound as if I am bragging. So as Sergeant Joe Friday would say, “just the facts Ma’am.”

My question in the great debate is how do we know if we pass or not. For others and myself that is a very important question. I am fortunate because I think I pass. Now I know some people who also think that they pass but in my humble opinion, the only people that they are fooling are themselves. So am I fooling myself too? Is my passing all in my mind? That is and has been my great question for many years.

You see most of us are vain to some degree (okay, I have a PhD in vanity), and we seek to determine if we pass or not. We naturally ask our friends but are they really being honest with us? Do they tell us the truth or do they lie to us so as to not hurt our feelings? Are they too close to us to be totally objective? I know that there have been times when I thought that I looked pretty good and my friends all said I looked fabulous (okay maybe fabulous is a bit over the top but they said I was passable). We would go somewhere and naturally there was someone there with a camera and I have never found a camera shy transgendered person in my entire life. I think it has something to do with that vanity thingy again. Well, a week later I would receive copies of the photos and “oh my gawd” I looked horrible. I not only did not look passable but I could have tried out for the lead in the movie “Night Of The Living Dead.” Now who lied to me? Was it my friends who told me that I looked passable (translate that into passable as in a hitchhiker that you would never stop to pick up) or was it myself who thought she looked good (bad lighting in the makeup mirror?) Maybe it was the person who sent me the pictures. She probably used a photo program to make them even more horrendous and only sent the most repulsive ones (you know how jealous some girls can be.)

I know I cannot be objective about myself because I am too darn close to the subject. I mean I have been looking in the mirror everyday for fifty years (did I just say that????) and I know every flaw, every problem area, everything there is that is wrong with me and how it naturally goes against the ideal woman image I want to see. So do people read me and it just does not matter to them or do I really pass?

It would have been really great to get a totally objective opinion from an impartial third party. I used to drive my friends crazy asking them to get opinion from their friends about how I looked. I would fantasize about walking up to strangers on the street and just quizzing them on how I looked. One method that my friends and I would often do was to go into a store separately and let one watch the people as they interacted with the other and see if we got second looks, finger points, and/or laughter.

I guess what finally convinced me that I was not being read was when I started passing when I was not trying to pass. I mean I reached a point in my transition where I started getting ma’am’ed in drab. Now no one tries to pass while in drab and pretending to be a guy and it was then and only then did I start believing what my friends had been telling. I guess my best look is that of butch lesbian.

So had my friends been lying to me or telling the truth? Were people I was meeting reading me and just not caring or was I passing? I do not know. I guess I wanted to believe that I had been passing all this time and just refusing to believe it. I have not been good at many things in my life before so why would I be good at this now? Why did I put my trust in strangers and not my friends? I guess when you want something so much; you can’t believe it when you get it.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page