The Stories Never Told

I have a lot of skeletons in my closet, as the saying goes. It's not a perfect little idiom, because the things to which I refer aren't things I'm ashamed of, per se. Rather, they're things I just very rarely feel comfortable enough to talk about. So I'm going to vent a little, tell a few stories that I'm not sure I've ever told anyone else.

It's odd, but these stories--they don't weigh heavily on me. They're more like balloons, trying desperately to float up and away.

I don't NEED to tell them. They NEED to be told.

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My earliest memories are clouded by a sense of wrongness. Even way back then, I knew there was something odd about me. But the first time I could put a specific descriptor to my troubles was in first grade--I think.

My first grade teacher had an assistant. She lived down the street from me about a block and a half, incidentally. Her name might have been...Meyer? Ms. Meyer? I remember sitting in class one day, after I'd finished working on an assignment, watching around me. I was a fast kid when it came to everything except reading clocks and counting change, so I did a lot of observing back then.

I remember the noise of low pumps clicking on classroom linoleum, I remember her smile, I remember her voice. But mostly I remember the thoughts: I hope when I grow up I'll be just like her. I know that's not what everyone wants from me but it's what I want.

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Coming out anecdote: I remember the very day I came out to my parents: August 27th, 2005. That was a pretty typical coming out story: I took a drive with my mother, told her to pull over, I had something to tell her...the rest is very standard fare.

But my friend Chris was a different story.

He had set up an FTP server for some reason which I don't quite remember, and he wanted me to test it. So I went to upload something small but identifiable. I opted for OH.doc, which was part of a chemistry lab report on something.

I realized about thirty seconds later that I had actually upped Oh!.doc, which was all the amateur erotica I had written in the past year (What? It helps ease tension!). I decided at that point that if I was airing some of my dirty laundry I might as well do all of it (this was back when being trans was still "dirty laundry" for me). So I came out to Chris, and eventually I decided, might as well get everybody else on board, too. I ended up coming out to all of my friends because I accidentally uploaded very amateurish self-insertion erotica to my friend's FTP server. I knew I'd end up here, more or less, but I certainly took an odd (and ridiculously embarrassing) path to get here.

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When I was little I used to play a game with my little sister: she'd chase me around--I'd "run" from her--and if she caught me she'd make me up "like a girl". Maybe that's why I was chubby way back then: I had a vested interest in plausible deniability for when I let her catch me. And I always let her catch me.

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More stories to come as they bubble up during late-night introspection sessions!