My Life has become a research project.
Archive for the ‘Transgender Issues’ Category
My Life has become a research project.
Original Composition
January 2012
Sometimes I see a transperson in a public place, in a restaurant, in a store, standing with an acquaintance… and I know. Or I think I know. Our eyes lock and there’s a moment where I recognize them — and maybe they recognize me — as someone who lives their life in the gray area between genders.
It happened to me just now. I’ve heard other transpeople talk about it, too — that moment of recognition. It’s agonizing and reassuring at the same time. You’re immediately curious about them, entranced by them, you want to know what about them set off your bell that says “you are like me.” They may or may not be trans — you can never tell for sure. But there’s something about them that draws you.
It’s agonizing because you can’t just walk up to them and say, “Are you like me? What’s your life story?” It’s not exactly an appropriate grocery-store conversation. But, maybe, sometimes, you can smile and nod and acknowledge that you held eyes… and maybe acknowledge that you’ve recognized each other.
That’s the reassuring part. Seeing that there are others like you, out living their normal lives, doing their normal things while living in the gray area like you.
We moved when I was three and a half years old. I only have two memories from that house, before we moved. One, really.
The vaguest memory is just a picture-memory. A static picture of lights and colors, of how the house was set up. I remember looking at the rooms of the house from the hallway. I remember looking into the blue-light of the rooms, filled with the light of the day, probably of the morning, and seeing nothing in the rooms. Knowing they were my brothers’ rooms. I was vaguely aware of a room down the hallway, and another at the other end, and of the den or living room behind me.
That’s all. It must have been the day we moved because I don’t recall any furniture, just the carpet on the floor. It’s a memory so vague and fuzzy that I’m not even sure it’s real.
But I have one other memory from that home. One single memory. And it is my earliest cue that I might be transgendered…
I was standing in the living room. I was a child, probably three years old. The room had high, vaulted wooden ceilings. The walls were wooden, and there were no windows so the room was filled with the yellowish light of lamps reflecting off of the brown walls and furniture. The carpet was brown, too — light brown. I remember laying and rolling on that carpet, savoring the feeling of it as I rubbed my hands and forearms across it over and over again.
I was standing in the den in my whitey-tighties. No, my plain white underwear; just in my underwear, as girls are wont to do.
But in my mind, they were white briefs exactly like the ones my brothers and dad wore. Just like them. And I had a bulge, like the boys. I was proud of it. It felt so natural and normal. I looked like dad.
I had taken a golf ball and put it down there. In my crotch, so I could look like them. It seemed the way it was supposed to be. It felt good; it looked good. This memory wasn’t the first time I had done it; it was just something I did every now and then. Golf balls were a typical toy for me then. Dad had plenty of them around the house. I probably got the idea when I heard someone joking about “balls” with reference to their crotch.
I don’t know if my parents ever noticed. I kept on doing it, but I don’t think I ever did it in public. I’ll tell you more about it later.
We all know that “escorting” is code for something akin to “high-class prostitution.”
However, the critical legal difference is that escorts charge for their time but prostitutes charge for sex acts.
“I’ll take $200 for an hour and a half of my time.” — Legal
“I’ll take $50 for a blowjob.” — Illegal
Another big difference between “escorts” and “prostitutes” is that escorts are generally people who genuinely enjoy having lots of sex, but “prostitutes” are often people who are selling sex only as a last resort — they don’t really want to be fucking a lot of people, but they do it because they need the money. Escorts are often people who are capable of generating income in other ways, but they choose to do escorting because it’s something they enjoy.
Escorts are hired for their company and for their “sexual prowess”; prostitutes are hired only for the sex.
There are, of course, exceptions.
These distinctions held true for me personally. I always held firm to the principle that I was selling my time and not selling sex.
Lots of people sell their time.
Massage therapists sell half hour, hour, and 90 minute massages.
Licensed Family Counselors (LPCs) sell their time, typically in 50-minute blocks.
Music teachers do half hour or hour long music lessons.
Personal trainers sell hour-long appointments.
Lots of people sell their time; they are selling the expertise that they share during that time.
As an escort, my expertise was sexual in nature.
When someone hired me as an escort, they essentially rented me for an hour or more. They simply got me — my stories, my knowledge, my curiosity, my company… and my sexual interests.
I was a horny boy. At that point in my life I enjoyed sleeping with a wide variety of people, and so escorting worked out wonderfully for me as a way to educate, experience, perform, learn, and love… and get paid. Don’t we all want to get paid for being ourselves?
That said, I’m still for rent. You can still buy an hour of my time. In fact, please do. But at this point in my life I am not interested in having sex with a lot of people, so please don’t assume that would be included.
I can, however, talk your ear off about sex and quite a few other things.
I sing, I dance, I tell jokes and stories. I’m available for parties, lunches, telephone & webcam conferences and more!
I’ve gotten a lot of comments about my hair. Several people have told me that I’m the only transman they’ve seen who has long hair.
It takes a fairly high level of gender security for any man to have long hair; any man who has long hair will occasionally be “ma’am”ed.
It doesn’t matter how “masculine” you are; if you have long hair, there will always be someone who mistakes you for a woman. And that’s exactly why I have long hair: to prove them wrong.
I want to join the leagues of bikers and hippies and faeries and other men who grow their hair long and defy the gender norm every time someone realizes that they’re a man with long hair.
These men already oppose the norm in some other way, and their long hair is a visual opposition to the tyranny of the norm.
“Men do not have to be this way,” is what a man says every time he wears his hair long. They are no less a man for having long hair.
I am one of those men, and that is why I keep my hair long.
I think this is one of the sexiest pictures I’ve ever had of me.
Webcam pic. Taken a few years ago, probably close to or before a year on T.
I think the mystery behind the winky face is what makes it so sexy.