I was born in North Dakota, Devils Lake North Dakota and about the middle of nowhere, in the 60s and came of age washing all these whole sitcoms and Dark Shadows. I don't know if you remember Dark Shadows. I loved that show. It's terrible but I really loved it. Yeah. I knew early on that I was a boy. I was interested in all the boy things. Like I didn't want a doll, I wanted a G. I. Joe. I wanted a G. I. Joe would come for grip. I was not interested in dresses, when I got comic, every couple weeks my dad would take us to the comic store, had a comic store in town, and I get all the cool scary comics and probably inappropriate for my age but what the hell. I would look at these ads in the back. I don't know if you've seen these other amazing. These ads in the back of these 1970s comic books were for like Charles Atlas bodybuilding program. With a kid getting sand kicked in his face, and like I said I'm not that. I want that, she's like no you can't have that, "That's not for girls". You can't have that. They had a fake beard and mustache thing that you could like paste on. If you send in a sample of your hair they would try to match it and send you this like based on mustache and goatee thing, and I asked for that and that was a big fat no, big surprise. So I knew early on that I wanted to be other than what I was, and so I spent a long time fighting with my mother every summer before school about school clothes. What I didn't want to wear and what she wanted me to wear and that continued on up through high school, when she insisted that I do my hair and wear makeup. There was an epic fight over the pink skirt. I had to wear to an event and that was an epic blowout the pink spray and the boy in the pink skirt. So yeah I spent a lot of time being really unhappy about a lot of things. My dad was a little better than my mom. He was willing to buy me the G. I. Joe and got me things like the comic books and crystal radio sets from Radio Shack, where you can build your own radio and chemistry sets and stuff like that. I knew that I didn't fit with whatever everybody else's idea was of what I was supposed to be, I really was not interested in any of it. I think they just figured out I was a tomboy at that time and just figured out the girl out of it, and when I didn't was very upsetting to my mother, was very upsetting to her. Yeah. So I think I didn't even hear the word transgender or know that I could do something else until I was maybe I don't know 10 or 11 maybe and I saw a Newsweek magazine article about I think it was Christine Jorgensen at the time. I was like you could do that. I thought can go the other way too? I didn't ask anybody about it, but I thought that's for me. But again I felt like I couldn't do anything about it, I didn't know anybody like me. By the time I was in high school, the closest I could get was I'd have a confidant who was the town librarian. He was gay. I just assumed at that time because I was starting to get interested in dating, was interested in girls and so I don't know I guess I kind of figured I was a lesbian and that's what I should do. So yeah that was definitely. I mean yeah my mother's idea she wanted me to do all the things, she wanted me to do my hair and go to the prom and date boys and I was like no, not for me. That is not for me. But I didn't say anything and I had this one confidant that I could talk to you in high school. But again I seemed well this is the only way of doing this. Then when I got into college it kind of just continued on from there, although I had a more clearer idea by that point that I wanted to change myself physically and do what I was supposed to be. But that was the 80s, and I still hadn't met anybody who was like me, I hadn't seen anybody who was like me, I didn't know what to do, and there was no internet at that time, you couldn't just like do a Google search. Yeah, so yeah so I didn't actually start doing anything about transitioning until I was almost 40. Because by then I had finally met some transgender people, and when I met with a group of trans men for the first time, and I don't remember what it was. It was a local group of some kind and they met at a Church. I remember going to the first meeting and thinking I can do this, and I thought no I can't do it because I'm small, unfortunate my hands are too small, nobody will be able to accept me as a man. Then this guy at the end of the meeting, he got up and he just came over and he put his hand out, and our hands were the same size basically maybe a little bit bigger. He's like yeah you can, absolutely you can. So I think that was a pivotal moment for me, in thinking finally yes I can. I think when she died, it was difficult just because we never got anything resolved, but also at her funeral. Or some of her friends from high school came, and I know they didn't know about me. So there was some awkward moments. Some of them are nuns. So I didn't know how that would go over. But I had a couple of trans friends there at the funeral, and they were like," You need to go talk to them, just go talk to them." I'm terrified of them. "Go talk to them." So I did and I did what I think that my mother was, she always was very concerned about me behaving like a lady which meant having some social graces. So and that's what I did. I exercised my best social graces with them, was kind to them, talk with them, and I think some of them were okay with that and others were not. Some of them were pretty cold. But I got a nice follow-up e-mail from one of the nuns, surprisingly and she said, "It was so nice to meet you and I'm so sorry about your mom." So people surprise you. Sometimes the people that you think are going to be not cool are. So I try not to have any kind of preconceived notion of who's going to react what way based on because that's my own thing in my own head, how people react to me and now I'm trying not to have any of that. Because you don't know. Early on that's all I was full of was fear, I was just a ball of fear. Fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of losing my friends. I did lose a few. Fear of just losing people or frankly just based on my size the vulnerability I feel in the world in general, I do I think as a person have a hyper-vigilance about me. For a number of reasons, I mean I think I grew up as a hyper-vigilant child because my mom had epilepsy and she had grand mal seizures and my dad was often away. He had to go out in the field or be out-of-state and mum would be home along with us and we were instructed on what to do if she fainted. So yeah, we were always hyper-vigilant about that, mainly like did she hit her head when she goes down and I was like five or six. I'm supposed to absorb all this information and put it into place. So I think being hyper-vigilant in that way just led me to be hyper-vigilant about the world in general and fearful. Then I layer this on top of it. I think for awhile, the yeah I definitely felt a lot of that. But then I think it was maybe a little bit before Katrina. But definitely after I met Katrina. Katrina is not afraid of anything. She's not have that and so she was like you need to know that people are not out to get you. It's going to be okay. You have lots of friends, you have lots of people who like you, you're a likable person, you're going to be fine, stop assuming that people have a feeling about you. They may not be even thinking about you, and that's true. When that finally clicked in, it was like okay. Then I felt better about and more open to just not assuming things about people or situations, and then I felt like even if I'm in the situation that I feel discomfort. I still have the knowledge that I'm okay. Even if you're not feeling okay, I'm okay and maybe I can help make the situation okay for you. So yeah I think that helped.
