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In previous entries, I’ve mentioned a trans woman I’ve been friends with since mid-April, and for purposes of anonymity in this blog, I’ve named her “Randi Sue.”  (Some years ago, it was my own username on a website because a character I created in my stories many, many years ago was named Randy.)  Randi Sue had her MTF reassignment surgery one year ago yesterday and I asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner with me and celebrate the occasion.    She selected the Conga Latin Bistro not far from our University of Minnesota student neighborhood known as Dinkytown, and we met there at 7:00.

I’m keeping this relationship platonic on my end.  When she suggested a few days earlier that I drive to her house — about a 25 minute drive from my house — and then we would go together to the restaurant, another half-hour drive from her house, I hesitated to approve that plan.  I hashed over the pros and cons of that with my husband and I said that taking separate cars would be a good way to keep sexual advances at bay.  He agreed that it would circumvent the offer of “would you like to come in for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee?” and help to prevent any situations from getting started.    That is, he went on, unless I wanted such a thing to happen.

No, I didn’t, so I explained to Randi Sue that I hadn’t been getting home from work until 5:30 every evening.  To make a 7:00 dinner reservation, I’d have to leave my house by 6:00 to get to her house by 6:30.  I wanted time to shower and change my clothes after a day in the lab, and I said it would be better if I just left from my house and met her at the restaurant at 7:00.  When she asked if I wanted to move the reservation until later in the evening, I said no, not on a work night.

We did have a nice supper and some good conversation.  I gifted her with a necklace, bracelet and earring set that I had made, beading having been one of my hobbies for about 13 years now.  I know that she has some difficulty getting bracelets to fit her larger wrists, and I took that into account when making that item.  The length was fine on both the bracelet and the necklace, and she seemed to really like them.  She took off the jewelry she had been wearing and put on what I had given her. 

I think I was right in my intuition not to meet up at her house.  The suggestions for a night of wild lovemaking started as our evening neared its close.  I deflected these suggestions and said that I was going to go home and get some sleep.  It was a work night, after all!

Okay, why don’t I want to go to bed with this woman, a woman I had some very good sex with on two occasions during the first week of our relationship?  It would be as easy as pie to say yes and enjoy the experience!

It’s because she is still in such a state of transition in her life.  I need to have a certain level of trust in my partner in order to have a good sexual relationship with him/her.  I need a fair degree of stability in that relationship.  I don’t do “casual sex” well at all!

Not only is Randi Sue a year into her surgical transition, she is recently into a divorced status as well.  Her spouse of 22 years wanted a divorce when Randi Sue decided to surgically transition, and the divorce was finalized just last month.  There have been a lot of major changes in this person’s life!

During the three months that I’ve known her, she has reversed her position on “casual sex.”  During the first couple of weeks of our relationship, she was firm in stating that she couldn’t have sex without being in love.  This was worrisome to me since we had already had sex and she had announced on the second occasion that she thought she was falling in love with me.  That was just too quick for me to wrap my head around and I drew back from it.  A month later, she is talking about not wanting to get seriously involved with anyone — just wanting to hang loose for now — but that she didn’t want to give up sex.  She was feeling in an “experimental” mode then and followed through on it by having sex with a man for the first time as a woman, even though she had told me that she really wasn’t interested in men; she liked women!

A few weeks ago, she wrote up a new profile under a different username on the dating site we belong to, this time called herself lesbian while still keeping the profile where she calls herself bisexual.  This fragmentation is enough to make my head spin!  She recently decided, however, to drop the lesbian profile and keep the bisexual profile, although your guess is as good as mine regarding where she stands with this orientation issue at the moment. 

The bottom line is that she is still in a state of intense self-discovery and exploration, and she’s doing a lot of vacilating while she tries on these different emotions and roles.  That’s common for the phase of life known as adolescence, and that’s quite what she’s in, even though she is almost as old as I am.  I’ve teased her a bit about her being only a year old now.  She said she thought it sounded better if she started at age 16 and aged from there.  In effect, then, we celebrated her 17th birthday last night!

We hugged goodbye on the sidewalk by the restaurant and she went home in her car and I went home in my car.  Later in bed, my husband away on a business trip, I confided to my Mia-Kitty, the Siamese who shares my bed every night, that Mom had had an offer to have hot sex with a woman but had come home to her Mia-Kitty instead.  Mia gave me a head-butt, purred, and snuggled in with her mama, glad that I made the decision I did.  I’m glad, too.  It seems to be the path to follow in this particular relationship while a lot of changes are taking place in my trans friend’s life, the surgical transition a year ago just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

My husband and I have had quite a few open discussions about transgenderism (is that a word?) lately due to my recent relationships with two more trans individuals.  I’ve been thinking about why I have such a laid-back whatever attitude towards it when others struggle with this situation.

My first experience with a trans individual was with a woman who was in her late 30s at the time I met her, and I must have been about 22.  I didn’t know that she was a trans individual at the time I met her.  Perhaps she didn’t, either.  It wasn’t discussed.  I just knew that she was a “dyke,” a very nonfeminine lesbian, and she was very interested in having me as her lover.  I succumbed to her pursuits and had sex with her a couple of times.  On the second occasion, I actually got some of her clothes off and discovered that she was wearing men’s briefs underneath her jeans.  I didn’t comment on it.  In an intuitive way, I sort of understood what it was about and didn’t feel the need to mention it.

I drifted away from the church congregation that we were both members of, and I went for maybe a year without seeing her.  I coincidentally showed up at church again after a long absence on the day of her commitment ceremony to Kate which followed the regular service.  I knew nothing about this, nor did I realize all the changes that had taken place during that time I had been gone.  During the commitment ceremony, Tara was called “David.”  (No, I don’t use people’s real names in these posts.)  At the reception in the church basement, I offered my congratulations to the couple, and Tara told me that her name was now legally “David.”  S/he was on testosterone therapy and making the transition to living as a man.  I was glad for her/him (okay, the pronouns are hard when you’ve known a person as one sex and then he/she switches it on you at some point!) and said so.  It seemed like the way that “David” would be happiest, and I knew that.

It was during my relationship with Tara that I met Max.  I was sitting next to Tara during a church service and the minister asked for prayers for Max who was in the hospital.  I leaned over and asked Tara what Max was in the hospital for.  “A hysterectomy,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.  And nothing more needed to be said.  That one surprised me because I had only known Max as Max and never even had an inkling that Max had female sex organs.  He had already had his mastectomy before I met him.  I became good friends with Max and visited him in the hospital when he underwent his first surgical procedure to construct a semblance of a penis and saw firsthand what cosmetic procedures were being attempted.  I was a friend, and I was interested, and I accepted it for what it was.

There was a man named Kenny in our church congregation at this time as well.  On the first Sunday after New Year’s, Kenny showed up to direct the choir as Victoria.  He/she had made the public transition to start the new year.  Again, I took this all in and quietly acknowledged the situation, having to say that Victoria looked a hell of a lot more attractive as Victoria than she did as Kenny!

A lot of years went by — 17 to be exact — while I was abstinent from sexual relationships with women and absent from publically hanging out with the GLBT community in any organized way.  Then I started dating again.  I had a three-year relationship with Maura.  After we stopped seeing each other, the next person I dated was a MTF trans woman.  She said she felt very comfortable with me.  I learned a lot about “transition” from her: emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

I’ve known several other MTF trans women since then.  They said as well that they felt comfortable with me.  I was easy to talk to, easy to be with.

It’s just me being me.  I have had a natural, easygoing attitude about sex since I started to learn about it as a pubescent child.  I had a keen interest in sexual matters, not just from the usual childhood curiosity standpoint but from the medical and scientific standpoint as well.  I was born too late to be one of Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s associates, but I well could have been if I had been a peer in his era!  From finding the library copy of Dr. Kinsey’s Sexual Response in the Human Female in my room as a high school freshman to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) on my nightstand as a sophomore and The Sensuous Man in my collection as a junior, I drove my parents nuts with my unabashed interest in human sexuality.  My somewhat explicit journaling while still in high school turned my mother completely gray-haired and ashen-faced!

Nothing much shocks me.  Nothing much surprises me in the realm of human sexuality.  I’ve always believed that we in Western society have done ourselves more harm than good by the puritanical attitudes we’ve maintained over the centuries about our own sexuality.  Yes, I believe in sexual ethics.  I believe that sexual behavior should be shared in a loving manner,  mindful of and responsible for the potential consequences of that behavior.  However, those ethics don’t develop in a healthy way in the midst of inhibited attitudes and shame.

As a teenager, I became acquainted with and embraced my bisexuality, learning early in my life that there are more shades of gray in our sexuality than clear lines of demarcation.  I know that I have many fluid, androgynous qualities.  I move comfortably between my male traits and my female traits, embracing them all as a part of me.  I don’t feel any discomfort about loving men and loving women.  Even my male alter ego can love a man as well as a woman!  It’s all just part of me and the full spectrum of feelings and desires that I’m able to experience.

Do I understand gender dysphoria, the feeling of being the other gender while carrying the chromosomes and primary sexual characteristics of the genetic sex?  No, I don’t.  I’ve never stood in those shoes.  I’ve got XX chromosomes and sex organs and have always felt comfortable with my identity as a woman.  I don’t know what causes gender dysphoria in some individuals.  I’d like to know more about it, but I’m not sure that science has the answer to that situation so I haven’t done any review of the literature on it.  I may at some point just to see what I can glean from it, but I’m anticipating that it’ll be a hodge-podge and mishmash of stuff, perhaps much of it contradictory and all of it inconclusive.

What I’ve done is accept.   I don’t understand and comprehend gender dysphoria in a personal sense.  I don’t think I really can from my perspective.  I accept that it exists.  I accept that gender reassignment is the solution for some people in this situation.  I accept that their basic needs are the same as everyone else’s. 

That’s what I understand.

I’m trying to develop a social network within the bisexual community here in the Twin Cities.  I’m trying to do my part towards supporting a sense of community for the bisexual population  within the GLBT community.  I believe in this cause.  It’s been sorely lacking in my own life, and I would imagine that many people who identify as bisexual feel the same sense of aloneness and isolation in their lives.

The only group I’ve connected with so far here in the Twin Cities that seems to have any merit in this regard is the Bisexual Organizing Project, and they have a grand total of 240 members, a handful of which participate in any social events!  That seems like a very low number considering the rather substantial bisexual population that must surely exist here in a large, liberal metropolitan area.  However, it is what it is.  (Organizing bisexuals is a lot like herding cats, a whole line of thinking reserved for another post!)

The monthly “bi brunch” is being held this Sunday at a member’s home northwest of Minneapolis, followed by the every-other-month board meeting.  I’ve vaciliated about attending.  I’ve been tending more towards going rather than not going since finding out through the Yahoo Group postings that Millie is otherwise occupied on Mother’s Day! 

I extended an offer to Anne to ride with me to the brunch and meeting on Sunday, aware that she currently does not have a car and relies mostly on public transit.  I’m not going to let that relationship of two “dates” duration deter me from getting involved with the group.  I have absolutely no ill feelings towards Anne.  I wanted to be her friend.

My husband has no ill feelings towards me being friends with Anne.  He stated that he had some trouble wrapping his head around my potential sexual involvement with trans women, and he further went on to later refine this discomfort to say that he has trouble with the concept of me getting sexually involved with pre-surgical trans women.  I understand this feeling, even though I don’t share his same level of discomfort.  I respect his feelings, especially since they were stated in a very appropriate personal ownership of these feelings without any demands, ultimatums, slams or insults in any way associated with his sharing of these feelings.

We’ve talked quite a lot about this whole situation in recent days, and I’m impressed with the level of honesty, open communication, and non-defensive sharing that has gone on.  I’ve acknowledged his feelings.  He’s acknowledged mine, and we’re learning from each other.  Saturday night, I did draw my line in the sand, which was this: “I understand your feelings about my potential sexual relationships with trans women, particularly pre-surgical trans women, but I expect that they’ll always be welcomed warmly as friends in our home and treated no differently than anyone else in that regard.” 

He was firm in his agreement of that position.  “Absolutely!” he stated.  “Of course!” 

Of course, I never expected that there would be any problem with that aspect of my relationships.  He’s a good man, not a bigot, not a “red neck,” not narrow-minded and rigid in his beliefs.  He’s trying to wrap his head around a complex set of issues, a set of issues that his own personal experiences have not covered in his life, and I respect him for the effort he puts into expanding his insights.

Anne, however, appeared to reject my offer of friendship.  The feeling I got was that if she can’t have me as a lover, then she doesn’t want my company.

So be it.  You can’t have everyone as your lover.  Some people are platonic friends, and that is well and good.

The Bisexual Organizing Project with its 240 members appears to be its own little ”Peyton Place,” with members having romantic and sexual partnerships with each other.  That seems to be a complicating factor in its dynamics.  Probably even interferes with its smooth operation at times, depending on who is sleeping with whom and who isn’t anymore, etc.!  I really would like to keep those complications to a minimum if I’m going to get more involved with this group!

Anne turned me down for the ride to the Brunch and Board Meeting on Sunday.  I told her to let me know if she changes her mind, that her contribution and input to the group is welcomed and appreciated.

I want to support this community, not do things to cause conflict and ill will.  Let’s pray I succeed.