By Paula Gaikowski, Femulate Contributing Editor
Turning 60 this year has led to a lot of self-reflection. Anyone who is transgender knows many a night is spent laying awake at 3 AM wondering, imagining and wool-gathering over our mysterious puzzle.
A few nights ago, I found myself tracing the progression and struggle of Paula from an early age to now.
Some transgender persons come to the realization later in life. For me, I always wanted to be a girl. As soon as I knew the difference, I wanted to be over there.
I remember the first day of kindergarten, the boys and girls were separated into two lines with the girls all in pretty dresses and shoes. I was so envious.
Those early memories continued and at 6 or 7, I remember going to a Halloween party where there was a girl in a beautiful party dress.
I asked, “What’s your costume?”
“I am a girl,” the little boy replied. Stunned at the realization that this was a boy, I could not take my eyes off him as he ran around the room that night in a pink dress with crinolines, tights and Mary Janes.
Perhaps if I couldn’t be a girl, I could at least dress like one.
Next came the start of crossdressing and a more intense desire to be a girl.
During my first Holy Communion, the church was filled with 1st grade boys and girls — the boys in white suit jackets and the girls in beautiful white satin and lace dresses with veils. I was captivated and a few weeks later, I found my sister’s communion dress and tried it on. It became a favorite until I outgrew it.
I remember sitting in Mrs. Carlson’s 2nd grade classroom and wondering what it felt like to wear the tights that most girls wore. I started raiding my sister’s and mother’s closets trying on tights and any other dress or skirt I could find that fit. When I think back, this wasn’t something I did on occasion — I did this two or three times a week. This continued and by the time I was 11 years old, I had graduated to lingerie, pantyhose, high heels and make-up.
Through middle school and high school, I continued to crossdress on a very regular basis. After school from 3:15 to 5:00, it was all-clear to play girl to my heart’s content. I would often try to mimic styles and fashions that I had seen during the week in school. I became an expert putting things back the way I found them. However, as a parent myself now, I think they must have known.
During high school, I would read anything I could find written about “sex changes.” In a garage sale, I found an autobiography of Christine Jorgensen that I read in secret. I would scan newspapers and magazines for mentions of crossdressers or transsexuals. At 15 or 16, when others were making career plans, I was taking a sex change into account. Everything I read told me that surgery would cost several thousand dollars.
The Air Force solved many problems for me. It got me out of the house and gave me a chance to save enough money for a sex change. Yes, no kidding, that was my thought process at that age. That’s why I’ve written that in today’s environment, transition would have been a certainty.
So off I flew into the wild blue yonder. Basic training was difficult not because I was transgender but because I was naïve and lazy. Then off to technical school in Biloxi, Mississippi. Then to Germany, with a follow-on tour to Andrews Air Force Base. The whole process was good for me as I matured, traveled and gained technical experience.
These are typically the years when a person’s sexuality matures. I knew I was transgender; however, I was also fearful of being gay because of the hatefulness and disapproval for gay people around me.
I was captivated by women. A pretty girl would always catch my eye. Thank God, I’m not gay. How could I be when I felt that way about women.
I made the mistake of confusing admiration and envy, with lust and sexual desire. Here are a few examples of how this manifested itself during the four years I was in the Air Force. There wasn’t any shortage of the guys going out to strip clubs and brothels that surrounded most military bases in Germany. I can remember feeling so uncomfortable for the women in these strip clubs, I wanted to rescue them not lust after them.
I would accompany my friends to the brothels in Frankfurt and finally, I acquiesced and decided to lose my virginity one night. I was trying to prove something. I remember the beautiful young woman very well and once inside I could not do it. I gave her extra money to wait out my time and then make a great show of it to my friends waiting outside.
I was very good at making friends with and talking with women, but I would never close the deal so to speak. This happened all the time, talking, flirting, nothing. I never would make a move, ask her out, hold her hand or kiss her. Looking back now, I believe it was due to my instinct as a female deep down inside. I just didn’t get the male-female mating ritual. I wasn’t programed like the other guys.
I could list several examples, but for sake of brevity let me tell one. I worked in a communications control center and on days off, I would head to Shenandoah National Park where I would camp and hike. I worked with Rita, a girl from upstate New York who also loved the outdoors. We hit it off well and talked about camping, hiking and kayaking in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I missed all the clues that she was sending because I was surprised to see her ride up to the campsite on her motorcycle. Long story short, dinner, a few beers by the campfire and lights out in the tent with her on one side and me, the gentlemen on the other. This is how oblivious I was! It never dawned on me she was there to hook up. A few months later, she asked why I hadn’t done anything that night. My answer “I dunno” and I really didn’t know.
Just before I got out of the Air Force, I had this bizarre affair with a lesbian who I worked with. She and I were heavy drinkers and partiers at the time and would often wind up in bed. Nothing ever happened, but I had a big-time crush on her. We would sleep together several nights a week and yes, just sleep. I realize now she was using me as cover — back then, if you were gay you were out of the military and they actively looked for and prosecuted gay persons.
Now it’s 1981 and I’m back home in New Jersey. I find a job at a computer company. My first paycheck comes. I cash it and go to the Willow Brook mall and buy a dress, shoes, hosiery and lingerie. All too small, so I purged.
My life began to revolve around work, drinking and hunting with my redneck buddies. I hardly even thought about being a girl. At work, I met my future wife. We talk, flirt and again nothing. We talk, we flirt and she calls me. Boom — we are off and running. She lets me wear her bra one night and she even buys me some lingerie — WOW!
This is perfect. I’m in love. We marry and off we go. However, what I thought was approval turned out to be tepid toleration. For a number of years, we would go forward and then backward. A few months of encouragement would then be met with resentment
Just to emphasize how strong my dysphoria was, I remember the morning of my wedding, being a bit melancholy, thinking well this means I’ll never be a woman.
A wonderful marriage, family, career, home, it was all there except for this one little problem of gender dysphoria. There were periods where depression would bury me. I kept myself busy with career, home maintenance, church, non-profits, elderly parents and child care.
Still, as I did when I was 8 years old, I would seek refuge, a few taboo moments of sanctuary dressed as a woman. When keeping busy didn’t work, overeating and drinking were brought in to cloud the ache.
Isolated, confused, and trans, I would sometimes stop and buy Drag magazine. I would read it hidden away in the back of a New York City deli or sometimes take my lunch on a bench near Trinity Church in the shadow of the twin towers. In relative anonymity, I would enter into a world where there were others like me.
In the mid 1990’s, along came the Internet and with it, a connection to a community and finally, information and answers. My world began to open up.
My crossdressing became an unspoken truth in our marriage, seldom directly addressed and sometimes talked about disparagingly. Don’t ask, don’t tell became the model for dealing with the issue. In my late 40’s, I entered a dark period sinking into deep depression along with anxiety attacks.
When I hit 50, I was overweight, drinking too much and in bad health. Finding an objective and informed person, you can discuss, share and solve your issues, which was a key ingredient in my journey. In my case, this was Dr D. I no longer saw being transgender as a problem to be solved. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I cast off society’s condemnation of being transgender and realized that I am a good person and that part of my personality and character involves being transgender. Attributes I see missing in many men, such as nurturing, kindness, compassion and cooperation are parts of my personality that I believe come from my feminine side.
Through the years, I had worked so hard and sacrificed so many things for so many people in my life. Now at 50, the one thing I wanted most, the one thing that had nagged at me since childhood was going to be left unanswered. I could not do it. I could not let it go. I needed to express that woman who I knew lived inside me. I may never transition, but I needed to experience the world as a woman in some way.
In 2009, I was emerging from the darkness of yet another crossdressing purge. But as any transgender person knows, purging doesn’t work. My need for feminine expression had returned with a vengeance. I had once again accumulated a wardrobe and around this time, I started traveling for business. I started going to M·A·C stores and found acceptance and support.
Next, I started shopping for clothes while I was in drab and I was surprised to find that the sales associates were enthusiastic and supportive when I told them I was transgender. City after city, I began to accumulate everything I needed.
Finally, in Memphis after visiting Graceland, I saw it in a strip mall a store named Graceland Wigs. The last piece I needed was a wig. With my new-found confidence, I entered the store and was overwhelmed by hundred of wigs lining the walls. After a few minutes of awkward browsing I came clean with the store owner and was soon sitting in a chair in front of a mirror trying on wigs and telling her my story. She was a bit of a character and after about two hours trying on dozens of wigs, I left the store with advice earned through a lifetime of hardship, an overabundance of amusing anecdotes, guidance on being a woman and a cute pageboy style brunette wig.
A few weeks later, I would step out of my hotel room in Denver and not look back. For the next eight years, I would travel all over the country and the world and during my free time, I would explore the world as a woman. I would shop, get M·A·C makeovers, meet friends for dinner, attend a transgender conference, visit the doctor, attend concerts and visit museums. I would go out as a woman in the UK, Canada and Australia. It was also during this time I started writing for Femulate. Those were glorious times and I began to feel somewhat fulfilled.
In 2016, I began having trouble with my back and it became chronic. I began to overeat and drink. The weight came on and the pain grew worse. I stopped dressing. I entered into a dark period with pain and along with it, a sense of despair and hopelessness.
In 2019, post-surgery, I am now coming back. I am eating healthy and I’m off sugar and junk foods. My back feels great and I started building back my wardrobe. I’m writing for Femulate again and feel a sense of renewal and hope. Where the next few years lead? Who knows? But Paula will be there.
That’s my story — the evolution of a human who is transgender. How I dealt with it and how I continue to deal with it.
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