When I came into the world, Truman would still be president for a couple months. My first inkling of being different arrived somewhere towards the end of Ike’s first term, but I truly knew what I enjoyed and knew how ‘we’ were regarded during the last months of the Johnson administration. I learned to hide, avoided a few close calls in the Nixon Era, and a stint in the Army lead me to believe I’d outgrown the condition.
That lasted until I had daily private access to my wife’s things, and began to surreptitiously acquire my own. The first time I dressed completely and saw a female face in the Mirror was late in the Ford years. I was actually frightened by how much I liked the way I looked, and didn’t repeat that exercise for almost 35 years. I underdressed all that time, but never ventured outside the bedroom en femme, for fear of irreversibly becoming this thing I so enjoyed.
the major deterrent to exploring and expressing myself was the fact that during each of the decades prior to the millennium, I was buying into the societal prejudices and engaged in a steady cycle of indulgence followed by remorse. Something I’m sure most of us over 50 can relate to.
I was in my mid 50s when I finally began shaking free of those beliefs and constraints. I could never have escaped if the culture had not become vastly more open and tolerant.
