Masculinity Lost, Femininity Found

by Emma Kate

    

A little bit at a time in those crucial weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas significant erosion set in as far as my male identity was concerned. Until that point I had been half-trying to identify with the males who were part of the team, but as the days and weeks passed that seemed to become increasingly difficult. For a while I was very much a loner socially, but then the women started reaching out to me and little by little I was drawn into their networks. Alongside the increasing need to wear female clothing came a growing comfort in relationships and friendships with the women, as one of them rather than as a man who is allowed to the fringes of the female world but cannot go beyond that. It took a long while to feel at home in this role, but it was at this time that the balance started to change.

I looked up from my manuscript, and it amazed me to see this crowd of medical and psychological people seemingly hanging on my words. I had always been a pretty good public speaker, and now I was using those speaking skills to persuade my audience about the unprecedented thing that had happened to me. I gave them a fleeting smile and went on, and some even smiled back!

"My first major foray into female dressing came before Christmas, when it became necessary for me to wear a bra because by that time I had something akin to little girl breasts. I could disguise what was happening, but here they were now hovering on the outer edges of an A cup, and moving toward a B, and everyone decided this would be a lot more comfortable. With so feminine a garment as a bra now part of my everyday apparel it was even more impossible to pretend I was male." I paused, smiled again, and went on, "For any of you who might be curious, I still wear a B cup – and hope I don't get much bigger than that!" Relaxed laughter followed.

After much pleading and cajoling Rachel had gotten me involved with a couple of groups. One was a group of genetic women who I started to meet with socially and then with a group for transsexuals who were transitioning from the male to the female side of the equation. I have often pondered these two groups and realized that in many ways I felt more at home with the lifelong girls than the would-be ones.

The truth is there's a tremendous difference of mentality between those who voluntarily take this route and one who has no choices. "Wow," said Susan, a vivacious blonde, who had recently separated from her wife and started living as a woman, when I came to my first meeting wearing female jeans, a rollneck and a bra, "Rob, you're gorgeous, but we need to find you a proper name." Every single one of these women had for years thought of herself as whatever her new first name was. That wasn't me at all.

I took a sip of water and then carried on with my presentation. "It was just before Christmas that I took another giant step and with the help of some friends I selected a new name, one which I was immediately to be called by, by the team working with me. The end of the year I had legally ceased to be Robert Adam and had become Katherine Louise. At the same time I took my grandmother's maiden name, Putnam, as my own last name. That is who I have been ever since."

"Perhaps it is because it had been in gestation for so long, but I was surprised how quickly I found myself at home as Kathy, and having a female name meant I no longer had any reason to disguise my identity as a woman. Once I had got over the awkwardness of appearing in public wearing women's clothing, jewelry and carrying a purse, the easier it was for me to live into being the person that I was becoming. At first it had felt so silly, but as we headed into the New Year with each day it became easier. It took me about five or six week to make the external transition from Robert to Kathy, and it was as that first January of my life in Seattle began to send Robert off into oblivion."

What cold words to describe something so incredible! I had arrived in Seattle still shell-shocked that this was happening to me, and spent months fighting against it. The very idea of dressing as a woman didn't do anything for me whatsoever, yet about a week before Christmas with bits and pieces of change having happened I gave up the fiction that I was still a male. I managed to hold the inevitable off until December 27 when Rachel and I went shopping, after which I just tumbled head first into my new identity.

First, there were clothes. We had a decent-sized budget so that after three or four hours hard shipping I was kitted out with lovely stuff that began at my skin and worked outward. By mid-afternoon I was exhausted wondering how women could keep up such a pace, but Rachel had already arranged for me to have what she called the whole treatment at a beauty parlor and spa that was situated in the mall. She had the tenacity to be able to carry on browsing the stores while my hair was colored and styled, I was given a manicure and a pedicure. During the previous three months, my beard had gradually given way to light fuzz, so now was the time for a little electrolysis to remove the few remaining man-like hairs, to have my eyebrows plucked and shaped, and to be introduced to the mysterious world of cosmetics and makeup.

It was quite late when everything was finished and Rachel had done the statutory squealing about how gorgeous I now looked. This was the first time I had had all that stuff on my face and felt as if I was a fake, wearing a mask, and that everyone was looking at me. Of course, that wasn't the case, as I have since learned having got used to it. Rachel, however, was far from finished, and insisted that we go to her apartment so I could "dress properly," then we would go out and get seafood together. Rachel lived in a delightful part of Seattle, on Capitol Hill, and shared with two other girls to whom she introduced me. "This used to be Robert." I smiled at them. "Now, girls," Rachel said as we headed for her room, "Watch for the transformation."

When the door was closed she took command, "OK, Rob, and this is the very last time I am going to call you Rob, strip naked."

Rachel, like everyone else on the transition team, had seen me naked goodness knows how many times before, so stripping was no problem, only this time when I took an article of clothing off she tossed it into a garbage sack. "You aren't going to need this any more," she kept saying. "From now on you will be Kathy, and Kathies does wear this kind of thing." By this time I was nude and she was inspecting me. "You are going to have the loveliest boobs, honey, and great curves. I am so envious."

As Rachel took my underwear from me she looked down at my penis. It was a war zone. One of my testicles was in the process of being absorbed back into my body and the evidence was of forces at play in my body which were transforming them into ovaries. It was also beginning to be clear that my penis was now programmed in some amazing way to become a clitoris. Surgeons who undertook sexual reassignment surgery were fascinated to know how Mother Nature was going to reorganize what they spent hours doing in the operating room. It also seemed that this was a good time to start sitting down to pee, besides given the clothes I would now be wearing the men's room would be out of bounds to me.

"Well," she had laughed, pointing at the pathetic remains of what had been my male organ, "We are none too soon in making these changes, are we?" Then she slung my shorts into the garbage and brought out matching bra and panties, "Try these on," she said. After that she handed me pantyhose and a slip that matched the bra and panties. As I dressed in these unfamiliar garments I stood looking at myself in the mirror. It was obvious to me that these all fitted my new body far better than male clothes now did. I was surprised at how they felt, too. I had listened to women complaining many times about having to wear pantyhose, but I found them snug and comfortable in the way that they smoothed against my body.

As I stood admiring myself, Rachel came up with the crisp pink cotton shirt, just a little darker and slightly less pastel than the underwear I now had on. I had never worn pink before! "This will match your lingerie," she instructed me, "And it also goes with your lipstick and fingernails. It is important to color coordinate whenever you can – although I have to admit that's something we T-girls sometimes go overboard about."

Twenty minutes or so later the transformation was completed and I walked out in a pink blouse, navy blue skirt and cardigan and a pair of winter boots. My hair had an auburn tint, flicked under at the shoulders and I had bangs for the first time in my life. "Girls," Rachel announced, "Meet the new Kathy Putnam." Applause followed. I spent the next few days trying to get used to my new style, and didn't wander too far from the house on my own.

Some days later I was taken to a drinks and nibbles gathering where no one knew me or knew anything about me, and here I was in a social environment for the first time in my life as Kathy. At this point my voice, although starting to crack upward, as it were, was still very unreliable. As a result Rachel had been working on with me to feminize it and my vocabulary. I had not been too attentive until I realized that at a social do no one was going to give me any kind of break, and now I was living and dressing as a woman, I didn't want to be taken as an impostor.

However, I had felt so self-conscious during my evening out, made some very silly mistakes, tossed and turned all night, cried a bit, so that the following morning I desperately realized that I wanted to be known and accepted as Kathy. It now became vital to me that how I talked, how I dressed, and how I presented myself had to be right for a woman of my age and background.

I think one of the things that I also concluded as a result of that evening that it was utterly foolish to pretend I was still Robert, and I determined I would cease entertaining that illusion. Besides, I now had a smooth face, a feminine hair-do, large enough breasts to need a bra, a penis that was each day becoming more and more like a large clitoris, and it wouldn't be too long before I had real hips. Standing naked and looking at myself in the full-length mirror as the days passed, I was impressed by how my legs were shaping up, and at least one of the men in the research team when he saw me in a skirt for the first time teased me because I had taken so long to reveal limbs that were so shapely. I think I must have blushed.

Once more I made eye contact with my audience and gave them another little smile. "I don't know what I had expected when I finally made the leap to living as a female, but I think I was afraid of the probably trauma. It was actually rather fun to finally start being the person I was becoming, so it was more of a relief than an agony. I no longer had to wonder each morning how I would disguise myself, now the challenge became how to dress, act, and talk so that I perfectly fitted into the gender into which I was migrating. With help from various women, but particularly Rachel, I found that it was rather fun to take an interest in fashion, and the other arts of self-presentation. After making the leap into a more womanly approach to life I began to feel more content, and it started to feel as if I might actually have a future ahead of me. Then, as the spring came along, I was surprised to discover that I appreciated being appreciated by a male – and this included dating."

I smiled again, and with a giggle told the audience, "…and I'm not going to tell you what happened on that date." More laughter followed.

It had been early summer when I went on my first date with a man. It happened like this: in order to keep me busy, Rachel arranged for me to work as a volunteer at a hospital a couple of afternoons a week. The story we used was that I was a young divorcee (true) who had come through some stressful health problems (true), and this was good therapy to help me get me back into the swing of life again (also true). It was while sitting in the coffee shop with a delightful retired lady, Nancy, that one afternoon I met this rather handsome doctor in his mid-thirties.

"Kathy, this is Dr. Philip Jenkinson, and I guess you can say that we used to be related."

I looked quizzical as I shook his hand. "What Nancy means," he laughed, "Is that until a little while ago I was husband to her daughter, Amanda."

"What happened?" I blurted out, hardly thinking whether it was good manners or not.

He smiled sadly. "Amanda is a brilliant doctor, and got offered a very good position at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. I was going to join her, but before I could get there she met and moved in with someone else. To cut a long story short, we are now divorced and she is planning to marry this dude."

Philip's words stayed in my mind, and there was a warmth in his eyes that did something to me, although at that point I wasn't quite sure what – but I liked it, sort of. I was by this time wrestling with a whole new set of emotions and perceptions, and they were at the same time both frightening and exciting. Gosh, it would be nice to spend an evening with him, I had thought to myself as I had been driving back to the house overlooking Puget Sound.

A day or two later, I got an email from Tina saying that it would be helpful if I could come back East to complete several legal things related to our divorce, to finalize the legal documents related to our common property, and to gather up my remaining possessions. "Besides," she said in her message, "I, Kristina Anne Glover, am eager to meet Katherine Louise Putnam, the woman who used to be my husband." Kathy Putnam was not sure what Tina Glover would make of her, for Tina was an athletic, outdoorsy type, much as Robert had been. Now after more than a year in this incubator on the West Coast during which I had ceased being Robert, I had found a lot of things I had been as a male ebbing away, and being replaced by a much softer me, whose flavor was distinctly feminine. It is amazing what happens when nature re-engineers your body.

It was between agreeing that I would go East and actually leaving that Philip asked me out for dinner. A genuine terror came over me as I prepared to go out with a man for the first time, and was a bag of nerves all day. He picked me up at 6.30, but I had been getting ready since lunchtime. Rachel helped me get ready and kept scolding me for being so picky about what I would wear, how I would behave, and so forth. "Oh, do stop fussing, girl," she finally said in exasperation as I puffed some rather expensive perfume on my wrists.

It was a lovely spring evening and I wore a little floral dress with a scooped neckline and fullish skirt that draped beautifully. Philip actually brought me flowers and told me he thought I looked divine. I relaxed once I was sitting in his car and we were chatting together – which was when I realized just how easy flirting is! We ate dinner at a little seafood place where we were able to have a fascinating conversation, then as we walked over Queen Anne Hill he suddenly took my hand and held it. A chill of anticipation began in the pit of my stomach and spread over my whole body so that I shivered, little goose bumps appearing up and down my bare arms.

Philip laughed, "I forget," he grinned, "The air has a chill in it and you girls tend to wear the thinnest next-to-nothings in the name of style…"

"And sexiness," I added and then immediately wished I could take the words back when I saw his smirk. Philip shed his brazer, draped it over my shoulders, and tucking my arm in his, and we walked slowly back to the car together. Because we had developed a pretty elaborate 'story' mined from the pieces of my past but cast in more feminine terms, and because I had over the past year I had started to adapt to an overtly female rather than male way of presenting myself, Philip had absolutely no idea that I had actually started life in the same gender as himself.

He walked me to the door when we got home and slipping the coat off my shoulders and helped him put it back on. Then to my surprise he turned, gathered me in his arms, and for the first time in my life a male kissed me on my lips. I couldn't help wrapping my arms around his neck as he held me close around the waist. Just as I was savoring the deliciously musky flavor of a romantic man, he whispered in my ear, "Kathy, you smell gorgeous." I wished I could invite him in, but it was more than my life was worth – maybe in a few months, but what man is willing to wait that long?

The flight back East was the one on which I wept, and there was such delight when the women around me comforted me. I had come to appreciate the way the female half of the population bonded with and supported one another, and I loved the way women built relationships. I don't know why I cried, I think there was a certain fear of seeing Tina again, and anxiety that she would hurt me. The last time she had seen me I shaved my chin every day, had fairly short male hair, and was wearing jeans and a teeshirt. This time I was wearing a floral sleeveless top, some silky purple slacks, and sandals with a two inch heel; there were auburn tints in my hair, and over my arm I was carrying a little white cardigan and I looked about as far away from Robert as anyone could imagine. It was

I saw Tina waiting for me as I came into the baggage claim area and walked past her several times, but she did not recognize me. It was only when I had picked my fashionable red roll-on case off the carousel did I go up to a now worried-looking Tina and ask, "Are you looking for me?"

While there are handbooks to help couples maneuver their way through a divorce, there aren't guidebooks for ex-spouses meeting again for the first time after one of them has involuntarily begun changing sex! Tina and I just stood there tongue-tied and looking at each other for several seconds before hugging and bursting into tears. Her emotions were clearly as raw and anxious as mine. I found myself looking at her through different eyes, not so much those of an ex- as those of a woman. But even the way we dressed demonstrated that we were on a rapid trajectory away from each other – she in jeans and a sweatshirt and me in fashionable finery, her face free of cosmetics, mine perfectly made up, her hair short, sporty, and easy to care for, mine longer and increasingly the focus of feminine vanity.

We said very little until we got to the house and I was settled in the guest room. She had sat on the bed and watched me put my things in drawers and the closet, and commented on how much lovely stuff I had acquired. I smiled, shrugged, and replied that since Christmas my changing body had given me no choice, and if I was to be a woman then I may as well do the feminine thing the very best I possibly could. We went down to the kitchen where Tina poured out two glasses of wine which we sat and sipped as we chatted. Then she turned and asked, "And how are you adjusting to being on my side of the gender divide?"

"Well, it took some adjusting, I have to confess that for months I fought it pretty hard – and at times the pain of changing was just horrible," I answered, looking at her and smiling softly, "But I think I am over the worst of that now, and as a result am starting to enjoy bits and pieces of it."

She glanced over at me. "With a wardrobe like that I would have to say that you are."

"Losing your old identity isn't easy," I replied, "But they are making it worth my while to be the subject of their research, so I do have the chance to set myself up properly in my new life."

"I'd say… those aren't cheap rags that you are wearing, my dear."

I grinned at her, "Call them some of the perks for losing my name, my identity, my beard, my penis, and goodness knows what else." There was an awkward silence and from her eyes I knew exactly what she was asking, so I got up and there in the middle of the kitchen, stripped myself naked. I should probably have stopped at my top and bra, but I couldn't resist getting her take on what was happening between my legs. Down there everything was just about reconfigured and while internally the organs were not yet in the places they ought to be, externally there was no way of telling that I hadn't always been a female.

Tina looked astounded, let out a little whimper, gagged, put her hand over her mouth, then shot out of the room, and the next thing I knew was sprawled on the floor beside the toilet throwing up. Without thinking I walked through to where she sat on the bathroom floor and knelt down to comfort her but she pushed me away. "I don't mean to be offensive," she groaned, "But I find your body disgusting. It revolts me. I can't believe that I was once married to something as grotesque as you." I was devastated at her words and the venom with which she spat them out, and after grabbing my clothes I feld upstairs, flung my still naked self on my bed and wept copiously.

A few days earlier Philip had seen the woman in me and found what he saw beautiful, but Tina could only remember the man that I once had been – and was nauseated. I think that was the first occasion when I personally realized what a woman means when she says her self-confidence has been dented. Finally, I cried myself to sleep.

It was dark and after midnight when I woke up shivering. As I lay there trying to orient myself I could hear Tina's distinctive giggle. It was the giggle she made when she was making love. Slipping on my robe and creeping quietly out onto the porch I tip-toed to her bedroom window where through a crack in the blind I could see her sitting astride a male and enjoying his penis. After that I slept fitfully, although around four in the morning heard my ex-wife's lover slipping out.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," said a subdued Tina over breakfast, "But I had no idea what you would look like now and it shocked me, took me aback."

So began a long, revealing conversation during which we effectively buried what remained of our relationship, agreeing that friendship was possible but nothing more than that. During the next few days we saw lawyers and I cleared up the final details of my life as it once had been, and then Tina put me on a plane back to the West Coast, which was now where I knew I belonged. Tina, it appeared, was sexually active with a couple of men and in love with a third. I really didn't want to get in her way, and she made it clear she did not wish to get into mine. All we said when she dropped me off at the airport was, "Bye, see you again sometime."

When I got back I was emotionally drained, but over those weeks I had now broken my ties with my past. The Robert I had been was dead, the legal business was sorted out, and there was nothing to link me to Tina again. She and I now had little in common, and listening to her making love several times at night, it was clear I meant nothing to her.

I went through some very heavy counseling in the wake of all this, but what finally pushed it from my mind was when I woke up in the middle of one night in agony. I felt I was being split down my groin. I couldn't see anything externally, but it was clear something significant was happening inside. For weeks I was in intense and almost constant pain, but ultrasounds and MRIs were revealing that a fundamental change was taking place as my ovaries were being born, and my vagina was taking shape. For days I was drugged with morphine, which helped subdue some of the discomfort.

Explaining the inner confusion that accompanies such physical agony is almost impossible, especially when the audience you are addressing is the brains and hands behind a lot of American medicine, but I stood there on the platform that afternoon and struggled to do so. All that I have told you in the last dozen or so paragraphs I boiled down to several carefully chosen sentences that hinted at the changing circumstances of my life, gave enough detail to satisfy their medical and scientific curiosity, but avoided allowing them to learn too much about the way it reshaped my life and altered my most intimate relationships. I concluded this part of my presentation with the words, "No matter how well prepared you have been, it is strange to adjust to having a vagina after the whole of your life with a penis – the hopes and the expectations are very different."

How does someone undergoing the extraordinary transition that had taken over my life explain the cascade of emotions and feelings unleashed? How does one explain what it feels like over the course a couple of years to watch one's sexual organs altered out of all recognition? The questions raised by such a transition are endless and probably never properly answerable. While much of me had come to terms with the reality that the remainder of my life would be spent on the distaff side of life, I cannot describe the misgivings and depression that accompanied watching the reside of my penis being absorbed into my body, its place being slowly taken by what would soon be a very natural and naturally functioning set of female organs.

I glanced up from my text at the men and women in the audience. "Becoming a woman has been like peeling an onion, for it has been as if layer after layer of the old me have been taken away in order to make place for each layer of the new me. At each turning point I have thought that I have finally shed all my male skin, but on each occasion I have found that there was more to be done. I expect there are still some bits and pieces left that await transformation. However, it was from this time that Kathy completely predominated."

I was surprised that I should receive a round of warm applause at this point. I did not think that what I had said was particularly profound, but it seemed to strike a chord with those who were listening. I caught myself smiling in embarrassment, and shifting my weight from foot to foot as this continued for longer than I had expected. Then I went on. "If the first twenty months of this was a fearful transition being forced upon me by something not properly understood, and something that was beyond my will, the next twenty months were to be spent learning to relish the delights of my new gender. I can truly say with the song writer that I have now reached a point where I love being a girl."

In the next two or three minutes I drew my presentation to a close with some observations on the route that my life had taken, the freedom that I now felt in my femininity, and ended with a series of photographs that had been taken of me at various stages of my development. My final words were these: "Ladies and gentlemen, I feel immensely privileges to have been able to share my strange odyssey with you today. As you can imagine, this has been an adventure, but as I look at the path before me I am grateful to have been given what amounts to this second chance at life. Of course there are things from my past that I miss, but if someone were to ask me now to choose between who I was and who I now am, I would have to tell you that being Kathy Putnam is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me."

  

  

  

*********************************************
© 2008 by Emma Kate. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, and compilation design) may be printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without the express written consent of StorySite and the copyright holder.