… One of my coworkers in his 20s said that Snapchat is where matches on dating apps go to die so I was SUPER hesitant to give her my info… plus I wasn’t wearing any makeup and the last thing on earth I wanted to do was send her pics. However, I gave her my handle and my app blew up with her photos. I was stunned at how good looking she was. Like, I actually got nervous. …
Read more "More Than Enough"…when I started applying for promotions, I made the decision to do the entire process en femme. I wanted my potential bosses to see me and treat me as I am from day one. …
Read more "A Normal Member"My blue and purple wigs felt like a middle finger… a dare to anyone to challenge my baldness.
It’s like I was saying “Yeah, it’s a wig. Yeah, its blue. If you can’t handle me being bald, then fuck off.”
But, if you told me I could instantly change one thing about my body, it would be my baldness. I still don’t like it.
People want to ask me and are simultaneously scared to ask me about the changes I’m going through right now. Any time me being transgender comes up, I tell people a quote from Kate Bornstein, “An honest question never hurt me. It’s people’s opinions that hurt.” I then let them ask me whatever they want.
Read more "So, you have questions."We have a fetish in The West with stories having a lesson or a moral. A story can’t just be a story. For some strange reason, we have a compulsion to have something to apply or learn. I blame Ancient Greece for this weird obsession.
Fine. You want to know what I’ve learned over the last few years?
Read more "WHAT I’VE LEARNED"I guess I’ve just hit the point at which hiding takes more energy than being myself. What that means, for me, is that I’m transitioning. It’s a huge step that I’ve been wrestling with for two years. All of my excuses to not transition have fallen away.
Read more "I’m Done Limiting"Around the same time that I had just given up and decided that I didn’t have any hope of a financial future, my boss in Specialty asked me to apply for a Full Time opening we had. Within a month of being hired, the people around me realized that I was capable of more than I was doing.
Read more "Turned Into Something"We messaged for a while, talking about her dog, life goals, our kids, and other random shit. Once I decided she probably wasn’t going to murder me, I asked her out for coffee. It was awkward, like most first dates. I just talked and let her talk. I felt like it was going OK. It was at the end of the date, as I walked her to her car, that she gave me this flirtatious look and I felt my insides twist a little.
Read more "She Didn’t Bat an Eye"I walked in silence as God unfolded the last piece of origami from that experience for me. God stopped me writing at I AM because I’m not a man. One year prior, I had come out of the closet kicking and screaming, holding onto the doorframe with a white knuckle grip… but the truth had finally come out. As I walked, I was awed by what I was being shown. Creation had conspired to show me the truth, fifteen years before I was willing to admit it to myself.
Read more "Epilogue"The part that makes me most sad is that the people in your communities that most need to hear what I have to say dismissed me a long time ago. That’s part of the problem with the way you handled me when you found out I was transgender… you cut me off, ostracized me, and threw the one bible verse related to gender expression in my face.
Read more "With the Sinners"
Dallas Begnaud 