Going Through It Again

Today I was talking someone who’s related to me but not part of my “nuclear” family.  (I won’t get into the implications of that term!)  He’s a couple of years younger than half my age.  We talked about one thing and another; he mentioned some high-school friends he’d recently seen.  Then, he told me something I was not expecting from him, or anybody:  “I’d really like to go through puberty again.”

As someone who experienced puberty “again”, I didn’t know whether to laugh, argue with him or react in some other way.  Before I started my transition, I simply could not imagine myself going through puberty—or, more precisely, what it meant for me—again.  For a long time, I wished that I didn’t have to experience it at all.

The difference between the way I used to feel about my puberty, and his wish that he could experience his again, could be summed up as follows:  He told me that in his puberty, he experienced his first attraction to a girl.  “I knew I was straight.  Nothing has ever made me happier,” he claimed.  On the other hand, my puberty meant—to my horror—that I was becoming a man. 

For a long time, I was angry about that.  Not only did I have to become a man—at least by the definitions that were accepted at that time—I had to deal with sexual feelings that I couldn’t reconcile with being a man or a woman, at least as I understood those terms at that time in my life.  Because I didn’t have what academics call a “frame of reference” and a vocabulary to describe my feelings in a way that would have made sense to anyone I knew at the time, having those feelings was even more bewildering and terrifying than seeing my pubic hair grow around a sexual organ I didn’t want.

I wouldn’t want to go through any of that again.  However, I am thankful that I did.  When I went through my second puberty, in my 40’s (when I started taking hormones), much of what I felt made more sense to me—and was even cause for joy—as a result of the changes that came during my early teen years.

One of the things I realized was that in puberty, the emotional and mental changes are even more important than the physical ones.  So, while I was happy to see my breasts grow and the lines in my face soften, I was even more thrilled to not only experience the giddiness and crying jags, and new depths of feeling about everything from songs I heard on the radio to a Shakespeare play, and to feel my senses open in ways I never imagined on walks and bike rides.  Best of all, I had ways of understanding those things, and the fact that I wasn’t developing new sexual feelings as much as I was able to more thoroughly experienced the ones I’d had since my first puberty.

Still, even though I am glad to have experienced my “second” puberty, I cannot understand why my relative, or anyone else, would want to re-experience his or her pre-teen puberty.  Then again, my first puberty brought me into a part of my life I’d never wanted to experience, while my relative got what he’d hoped for when he experienced what will most likely be his only puberty. At least I got what I’d hoped to have from my second.

A Butterfly Under A Heat Lamp Grows A Fur Collar

I know...Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong took his--the human race's--first step on the moon. If I were a world-famous blogger (or world-famous anything else), I'd be more or less obligated to say something about that historic event. Well, now I will indulge in one of the luxuries of obscurity: I won't talk about it.

Instead, I'll talk about myself. After all, isn't that the reason you're reading this? I mean, come on: I just had my gender reassignment surgery. Did you really think I was going to talk about some ancient space odyssey?

So what will I talk about that will take your mind off Neil Armstrong and the moon? Well, my body, of course! Tell me now: My body is vastly more interesting than the moon, or some guys on a spaceship. Right?

All right. So I'm going to talk about my body--or, more specifically, something that's happening to it. Or might be happening to it.

You might say that I'm going through a third puberty. Just what everybody dreams of, right? Or maybe I'm experiencing the latest stage of my second puberty, which has been a major part of my midlife.

So what sign am I taking for this wonder? Over the last couple of days, I've noticed fine reddish-blonde hairs growing just above the clitoris Dr. Bowers created from flesh that used to surround my male organs. I knew this would happen sooner or later; I was surprised only at how quickly I could see those hairs which, like the others on my body, are light and fine.

Of course, they are a welcome sign of my progress. Even more welcome is, of course, the development of my vagina, which at the moment looks like a mylar butterfly that was left under a heat lamp and is growing a fur collar. The basic shape of my new organs are there; all I have to do is to wait for the scars to continue their healing and for the skin of those lobes to camoflague itself with the surrounding flesh. I feel the twinges and tautness one normally feels with scars that are healing and skin that's morphing into its post-scar shape and color.

I've always heard that birth involves pain, scars, healing and re-growth. I haven't had much pain, or at least less than I expected. And the scars are neither as extensive nor as deep as I'd expected. But I can certainly see the healing and re-growth--remarkably, on a day-to-day basis. I never expected anything like that, especially at such a late date in my life.

But somehow none of the changes evokes as many memories and comparisons for me as the hairs growing just above my newly-formed and newly-forming organs. I really can't compare my new labia or clitoris to my scrotum or penile shaft, even though Dr. Bowers used those male organs to create my new female organs. But I can compare, not only the appearance of my old pubic hairs to my new ones, but even more important, my experience of seeing those first ones way back when with noticing the first of my current growth.

While my new hairs are a joyous (at least to me) sign that my body is on its way to taking on the feminine forms I'd always wanted, the hairs that appeared in the same area of my body during my teen years filled me with horror and disgust. Somehow, each of those hairs were--to use one of the world's most hackneyed comparisons--nails in my coffin. Maleness was, for me, a form of dying; becoming a man was my synonym for death.

On the other hand, most boys can't wait to see those hairs on their bodies. For a boy, having to take off his clothes in a high-school locker room when the area above his penis is as bare as a baby's bum at is about as terrifying an experience as he can have in the company of peers whose crotches seem to be covered with thickets. He feels exposed; on the other boys, it seems that each of those hairs staves off another physical or verbal jab.

Unless, of course, his pubic hairs grow in a year (or more) later than those of his peers. Then, those late-blooming brushes become causes for further ridicule. I know: That is what happened to me.

Entering manhood--or what most boys think of as manhood--later and less vigorously than the other boys in his life is worse than not entering it at all. Especially if that boy is anything like I was. The anguish and self-hatred that I already felt over being forced to live as male (mainly because no one else seemed to know there was any other way) was compounded by this seeming death-blow to any hope I had of, if not becoming a woman, at least not becoming a man.

And, one day, when I was changing my clothes, my brother didn't bother to knock on the door before entering my room. He saw that blaze of hair and ran upstairs, announcing his discovery to everyone else in my family.

To be fair, he was--if I recall correctly--about eight or nine years old at that time. Still, I hated him, and would hate him for a long time afterward. Not only did he violate one of the few moments of privacy I had in those days; he seemed to announce to the world that, for me, there was no turning back--or no turning at all. There would be only a life defined by the betrayal of my body and the expectations that it--or, more precisely, my brother's announcement of it--engendered.

Whatever physical irritation I'm feeling now pales next to the burden I felt then. At least whatever I feel today is a sign that I'm developing into the woman I always knew myself to be.

That's one short hair for a girl, one giant growth for....Naah, that won't end up in Bartlett's. But you get the idea.