I Go to School: Autobiogrphy of Kit Moss

Valinda Elementary Scchool, La Puente, CA

The next part of this story is my elementary school.  You can see it above.  It sort of looks familiar and sort of doesn't but given it's probably at least 60 years old, that's no mystery.

My first teacher was Mrs. Barcalow, a kindergarten teacher.  I don't remember a lot from that class.  There was a fat girl who used to punch people.  The principal once brought us all real orange juice Popsicles.  I remember there was one of those Brio train sets.

My first grade teacher was Miss Dorius.  She divided us up into three reading groups, Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla.  I was pissed when I was not in Chocolate.  I had a crush on a boy, my first time, and once kissed him on the arm.  He had beautiful eyes.  The less said about the teacher's reaction the better.  I remember the Dick and Jane reader with that little asshole Sally.  I did not like them.  I once took my toy Calico Cat and Gingham Dog my mother made me for show and tell.  I brought the dog another time and insisted it was a horse.  I used to daydream my mother was the teacher.

My second grade teacher was Miss Rose Cotton.  She had breasts out to here, and the fathers of the kids loved her.  I just didn't see it.  She also taught the summer school with one other teacher.  We did things with paper plates and sand, but I don't remember what.

I do remember Paul Grenier.  We played Roy Rogers endlessly.  I remember when recess was over we would ride our "horses"  back to class to the strains of "Happy Trails to You".  Joel, the boy who was the bad guy, always rode away when I approached him.  I wish I could tell you Paul once kissed me, but for reasons I cannot divulge, he didn't.   I guess you can say I pretended he did when I asked him on the school bus what he thought I should be when I grew up, and he said "A ghost!"  Paul had had polio, wore a brace on one leg, and I heard he died not long after we moved away.

That summer we moved to Juneau, Alaska.   My father got a job with the Department of Personnel at the State of Alaska.  I remember drawing a picture of what I thought my new home would look like, complete with igloo.

Not my original drawing.

I Am Born: An Autobiography of Kit Moss

U.S. Naval Ammunition Depot, 1952

I decided one technique for accepting oneself as male is to rewrite one's life as a boy and man.  I plan to start this on this blog with the birth of Christopher Hawthorne Moss on January 3, 1952, in Hawthorne, Nevada.

 Kit's parents, Merle and Louis, had one daughter already, Denise, who always was a bit perplexed by her little brother. He was cute but cried a great deal, given that he had colic.  His mother put whisky in his bottle of milk to help him sleep.  Heaven only knows what affect that had on him.

His family moved away from Hawthorne when he was only five months old.  His dad had gotten involved with one of the officer's wives at the Navy facility where the man worked.  They moved back to Los Angeles, California, where his mother had grown up and his father had moved in the late 1940s after his years in World War II.

There are stories I can tell you about Kit before his family moved to La Puente, CA, and I will.  But for now, let's just look at some of the photos I can find of this sharp little boy.

Good Riddance, 2014!

    2014 was a helluva year.  It had its high points, writing two books, getting a Rainbow Award runner up for BELOVED PILGRIM, finding a certain amount of serenity at the tender age of 62, but so much happened that has left me reeling I have to acknowledge it.  Or try to.
     I don't have a lot of memory of January through April 15 of last year.  If we read through the diary I'll remember things, but just coming up with the memory off the top of my head is pretty foggy.  I do, or I think I do, remember the moments on April 15 when it all changed.  I remember talking to a couple people on the 14th and saying I had a terrible headache.  Then the next morning I remember being in the gardrobe and hearing the telephone ring.  I think I remember walking to the phone and having some trouble reaching for it.  And that's it.  I think that is the point that I had my stroke.
Jim tells me he called and got the answering machine, then called again a couple times, went to his boss Julie and told her he had a bad feeling and was going home to see what was the matter.  He probably saved my life .
     When he got home he looked around the apartment, then noticed our cats, one sitting on the table and the other one on the floor, looking at me where I sat on a Rubbermaid tub scrunched over.  He went to me and asked me how I was.  I apparently said "Bushy." He called 911, and the ambulance arrived in about five minutes.  They did all the paramedic stuff they do, asked if I could have taken too much insulin, then took me away on a gurney or whatever those are called.  They took me to Evergreen Hospital.  Jim went upstairs and printed out my prescriptions list and went to the hospital too.
     Now if you ask me the next thing that happened it was almost three weeks later. Maybe it was less.  I just looked at the calendar for May  and I can't tell you what day it was, the 2nd or the 9th.  Jim of course can remember every excruciating detail.  He remembers my being taken off to surgery right away to have a hole cut in my skull to drain off fluid that was collecting in my brain.  I had a ventilator put in so I could breathe, and I was given powerful sedatives to keep me from suffering from the ventilator.  I was out entirely for a almost two weeks.  Jim kept coming and spending most of the day and night with me in the ICU, trying to comfort me, to talk to me, to read to me, while I itched.  I did not really seem to know him at first, but after the ventilator was out he brought a list of questions about our lives at the suggestion of  the speech therapist.  He read them to me.  At first I answered pretty much everything with "January 3rd, 1952, no matter whether a date was called for.  I identified myself as Nan Hawthorne.
     Slowly I began to answer other questions.    Jim showed me a picture of the cats and asked me about them.  I said that Mr. Hata was "a nice kitty" and was pleased when he told me he was my kitty.    I finally answered every question, although by this time I had been moved from the ICU to the PRU and again to the ARU (Acute Rehabilitation Unit).  It was in the ARU that I remember anything at all.  He told me I had the most trouble remembering my mother's full name and I think the name of my high school or  college.
     He was very worried this entire time while I was dreaming about Julian Assange for some bizarre reason, but more on that next.  He worried I would be brain damaged, incontinent, and would require constant supervision.  In a word, he thought he had lost me.  The cats were at home alone, even after Jim took Mr. Hata to have teeth pulled, and he told me he sat on the bed one night and wept.  It breaks my heart to think of him so alone and scared.  He got  hardly any support.  It makes me realize how isolated we have made ourselves, but I honestly don't know what to do about it.
     About this time I started to be more conscious.  As I said, I dreamed about Julian Assange.  I remember in one dream  I was climbing on some sort of merry go round in a kids' playground in a park.  Assange was talking to us all, whoever "we" were.  That so impressed me I would talk about him to Jim and everyone else, including Laurel and Tiffany when they came to visit me at the hospital.  I also had a dream that I went to an urgent care clinic where the nurse Rasi made me fill out a long form because he was afraid I was exhibiting drug-seeking behavior.  I remember I was in my hospital gown and had peed all over myself.  I remember how Tiffany and I talked about someone named "Marianne"that I thought was significant somehow, as I think one of my nurses was a bitchy one named that, though I also remember that her real name was Elizabeth.
     At any rate I became more aware of my surroundings in the ARU and recall the therapists and my nurses.  I couldn't work the remote for the TV which also called the nurses if I had to get up from my bed,which had an alarm on it if I tired.  It was awful.  That's why I kept wetting myself.
     The glorious day came when I was allowed to come home.  I saw my cats, got to sleep in my own bed with my darling husband, and though I saw rehab techs for a couple weeks at home, I started getting better.  Jim has been astounded at  my progress.
     Of course he doesn't really know what goes on in my head.  That's one reason I decided to write this "end of the year" post.  Apparently what I had on April 14th and 15th was a bleeding stroke.  A blood vessel broke and I bled into my brain damaging my caudate nucleus.  That is apparently where ideas connect and are formed into memories in one's brain.  I was lucky and most of the blood drained into ventricles which kept it from damaging my brain worse.  These two things are what leaves me where I am today.
     Of course I am myself amazed and grateful to Jim.  He took a lot of time off from work, time that later resulted in some problems with contracts that he could not have prevented being gone, but he also can't give this as an excuse, that not being constructive.  He worried about me, took care of me, chided me to  take better care of myself, and generally he suffered.  If I wasn't completely smitten with him the first 32 years I most certainly am now that we have had our 33rd anniversary.  I fussed at him about drinking for a few months, but I think I am beginning to get some perspective on that and am leaving him alone about it.

So what is life like now?  I think it may be useful to enumerate the issues.

1. My brain is generally in  a sort of vague fog.  Almost every day I spend some time a little confused.  My rehab doctor has pointed this out to me many times, and I am now starting to believe her.  I find that most of the time I have to do things in a methodical way.  For instance, I was just in the shower and had to wash my hair, choose soap to wash my face, then another soap to wash my body, then rinse everything off one by one.  How can I describe just how carefully and deliberately I had to do all that?  Because I am alone and not sharing every thought, I appear completely competent.  Only I know that nothing is going that smoothly.  The fact is I manage it all safely so it doesn't matter, except that it annoys and worries me.  I don't like feeling incopetent.
2. My short term memory is rather wobbly.  I am involved in too many things and even taking notes on it all doesn't seem to prevent forgetting something I said I would do.  I utterly forgot about Times Rainbow, for instance, making me seem foggy and vague to Lori Lake who is doing the anthology with me.  I also committed to do the Gender Odyssey blog but don't seem to be able to regulate when and what.  I know I should not have taken these things on, but it's too late now.  Until someone fires me, I will keep muddling on.
3. At one point when I was in the hospital I told Jim that "something tells me that gender is  important".  That is, that I am not Nan Hawthorne but Christopher Hawthorne Moss.  Being transgender just slipped my mind.  But it doesn't make it not so.  After seven months I am slowly coming to some new conclusions about my own gender.  I know I am not a woman in the sense I am coming to understand.  I now believe there is some truth to a difference between the sexes, how we think, how we act.  I am decidedly not happy with what that means when it comes to my being female.  I don't really like women as a group.  Whether or not they are truly the way they seem to me now I don't know.  I just know I do not want any part of it.  Sexually it's more uncertain.  I find both men and women sexually attractive but in different ways, and I find at nearly 63 and on the medications I am on, I am not really all that into sex.  I like to think of myself as a gay man, but I really am some sort of middle thing, genderqueer or whatever.  I changed my name and my identity and there it is going to stay.
4. What about surgery or a mustache?  I think I will bag the latter.  I actually don't think one can even have a mustache transplant or I just don't want to for discomfort.  But shouldn't I look at top surgery the same way?  What difference does it make what gender I appear to others?  Do I really want to go through it?  Some days I say yes.  Some days I am not so certain.  I live most of my life in my mind anyway.
5. And speaking of that, what about my writing?  Since I went on Ridalin I am much more focused.  I finished Angel Eyes and even wrote A Fine Bromance.  I can see myself continuing to focus on one book after another, though right now I to need to turn my attention to Time's Rainbow.  My progress is as methodical as I mentioned about my shower, but it works for writing, though I actually am worried that my work is not up to my usual excellence.  Nevertheless, it feels more productive and satisfying.  I sent Angel Eyes to Dreamspinner Press wondering if they will find it wanting in terms of HEA (Happily Ever After), but I know A Fine Bromance will please them.  I just need to get the teen-speak down.  I feel I can keep at writing unless I am completely mistaken about my ability.  I am prepared to do nothing but write. 
6. And now to health and longevity.  I honestly have no idea how long I expect I will live.  I sometimes wonder if I will make it out of 2015.  No reason, just an impression that I can pretty easily dismiss.  I do want to improve my health, lose weight, fix my blood sugar and lessen the impact of my spine problems.  I am pretty sanguine about living.  The main reasons I want to live a good long time is for Jim's sake.  I no longer even feel like I need to live to write all my books.  But Jim needs me here and cogent. 

     I am sure I will remember other things I want to comment on.  For now I feel like I did a good job here.  I am tired and want lunch and want to get up so my butt doesn't hurt.  So for now I will call it good.  

    

 But for now I say goodbye to 2014 and welcome the promise of 2015.  I hope this will be a good year.

Web Sites on Transgender History

The following are random web sites I have collected to use primarily for research for blog articles for the three blogs at Gender Odyssey, Gender Odyssey Family and Gender Diversity.  There will be several such lists on different topics.  These lists may change as we find and add more resources.  From time to time we will add notes about the resources, and you are welcome to comment on them.  Drop us a note and include the name of the resource about which you are commenting.   There will be a date stamp at the bottom to let you know when the latest changes were made.

Transgender People in History

Scholarly articles for transgender history

Timeline: A Look Back at the History of Transgender ... - glaad

History of transgenderism in the United States - Wikipedia ...

GLBT Historical Society

Transgender Timeline - Transgender History ... - Library

Transgender History: Trans Expression in Ancient Times ...

Transgender History: Into the Modern Age (1700s - 1932 ...

A brief history of transgender issues | Society | The Guardian

Transgender Americans: America's Next Great Civil ...

A Look at African-American Trans Trailblazers ...

Last updated  12-10-14.

Facebook Comments on My Passing Dilemma

If anyone ever criticizes Facebook to me I am going to go ballistic.  I have not only relocated old friends there, I have made so many new ones, and that is truly the case with the transgender community.  How did anyone ever live without it?

Anyway, I got lots of acceptance for my  last post about passing on Facebook.  Very supportive.  One asked for direct contact since he is at high risk for stroke and want to know more about the influence of T on that issue.  The best advice I got was just to believe I am a man and who cares what others think, and that people will accept what I project.

I had not mentioned top surgery in my earlier post.  I do plan to seek it sometime in 2015.  I have to get myself cleared for it by the neurologist first.

It also occurs to me that wearing my packer might give me a psychic boost.

I can't thank all those who responded to my post enough..  You are all tops in my book.  And thank you Facebook for making this possible and easy.

TRANSMEN IN THE MILITARY: Hua Mulan

Originally published at DODFED GLOB

Legend or history? Who can tell with Hua Mulan, but the story of this woman turned soldier is compelling enough for Disney to tackle it. If Mulan never lived, certainly her story fit hundreds of others with the desire to "fight like a man" as well as the ability, forced or preferring to don a male identity in order to fulfill the plan.

Hua Mulan 's place in history is uncertain. The oldest mentions of her come from the Northern Wall dynasty, which ruled from 386–534 CE. The original ballad (see translation below) has been lost, but there is ample evidence of its existence in the form of poetic interpretations and early Chinese scholarship. It was turned into a novel during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). It has remained a favorite story in Chna for hundreds of years and is one of the earliest examples of stories about gender equality in the Chinese language.

Who was Hua Mulan and why did she choose to take on a male identity? When the emperor called for all adult men to be conscripted into the army to fight for him, Mulan was distressed that she had no brothers, and her father, who was elderly, could not show their family's loyalty to the empire. She decided to don the identity of a man as well as the armor and fought for no less than twelve years alongside male companions. She was so brave and valiant that the Emperor wanted to reward her with a government position, but in her modesty she turned the post down, choosing instead to return home to her father. In the legend Mulan reveals that she is a biological female and she and her closest companion turn into rabbits and go away side by side as equals. Hua Mulan's story exemplifies several Chinese cultural vbalues, modesty, fillial loyalty and courage.

Ode of Mulan

(Anonymous)

Tsiek tsiek and again tsiek tsiek,
Mu-lan weaves, facing the door.
You don't hear the shuttle's sound,
You only hear Daughter's sighs.
They ask Daughter who's in her heart,
They ask Daughter who's on her mind.
"No one is on Daughter's heart,
No one is on Daughter's mind.
Last night I saw the draft posters,
The Khan is calling many troops,
The army list is in twelve scrolls,
On every scroll there's Father's name.
Father has no grown-up son,
Mu-lan has no elder brother.
I want to buy a saddle and horse,
And serve in the army in Father's place."

In the East Market she buys a spirited horse,
In the West Market she buys a saddle,
In the South Market she buys a bridle,
In the North Market she buys a long whip.
At dawn she takes leave of Father and Mother,
In the evening camps on the Yellow River's bank.
She doesn't hear the sound of Father and Mother calling,
She only hears the Yellow River's flowing water cry tsien tsien.

At dawn she takes leave of the Yellow River,
In the evening she arrives at Black Mountain.
She doesn't hear the sound of Father and Mother calling,
She only hears Mount Yen's nomad horses cry tsiu tsiu.
She goes ten thousand miles on the business of war,
She crosses passes and mountains like flying.
Northern gusts carry the rattle of army pots,
Chilly light shines on iron armor.
Generals die in a hundred battles,
Stout soldiers return after ten years.

On her return she sees the Son of Heaven,
The Son of Heaven sits in the Splendid Hall.
He gives out promotions in twelve ranks
And prizes of a hundred thousand and more.
The Khan asks her what she desires.
"Mu-lan has no use for a minister's post.
I wish to ride a swift mount
To take me back to my home."

When Father and Mother hear Daughter is coming
They go outside the wall to meet her, leaning on each other.
When Elder Sister hears Younger Sister is coming
She fixes her rouge, facing the door.
When Little Brother hears Elder Sister is coming
He whets the knife, quick quick, for pig and sheep.
"I open the door to my east chamber,
I sit on my couch in the west room,
I take off my wartime gown
And put on my old-time clothes."
Facing the window she fixes her cloudlike hair,
Hanging up a mirror she dabs on yellow flower powder
She goes out the door and sees her comrades.
Her comrades are all amazed and perplexed.
Traveling together for twelve years
They didn't know Mu-lan was a girl.
"The he-hare's feet go hop and skip,
The she-hare's eyes are muddled and fuddled.
Two hares running side by side close to the ground,
How can they tell if I am he or she?"

See calligraphy and Chinese text at http://www.chinapage.com/mulan.html

What Do You Call a Straight Man Who Stays with his Transman Partner? Jim.

You hear about straight women who stay with their transwoman partners, preferring, perhaps, the continued friendship with a woman over being single.  But how often do you hear about straight men who accept their wife's transition and stay with her?  Is it that men can't handle being partnered with another man?  Do they not want to appear gay?  Or was it just that their partnership lacked loyalty and commitment and a genuine desire for the good of the partner?  I have to conclude it is the last, since Jim Tedford, my partner of 33 years, has stayed with me even though I insist I am a man.

Did I consider this choice he would have to make when I came to the conclusion I am a transman?  Yes and no.  I was so fixated on who I am that I think I was willing, at least I thought I was, to accept whatever decision Jim made about staying with me.  Or perhaps I just thought he would stay, for whatever reasons.  I can't say that expecting him to stay was not one of the most selfish, most self-absorbed things I have ever done.  I am ashamed of myself, except that I feel I had to make the choice, or, barring that, I just did and I am beyond grateful Jim had the grace to accept what I chose.

I have known for a while that Jim accepted my assertion that my brain is male.  I suspect my Aries moon would just make me rush ahead, but what should surprise me is that he still loves me.  He was baffled at first, asked questions like: "What does it mean?"  I have had various explanations to his decisions, (when I stopped to think about it) primarily that Jim just did not want to be alone and that we have all this shared history.  I called it everything to myself from petty to arrogant that I assumed that was the main reason.  I have had occasion to think more deeply more recently.

In April, possibly because I went on testosterone, I sustained a hemorrhagic stroke, a brain bleed.  Jim came home early to find me sitting on a box on the floor with our cats sitting by me watching me, perhaps guarding me.  He called the paramedics who came quickly and took me to the hospital.  An MRI showed them I had had a bleed in my caudate nucleus.  I was completely out by then, constantly drifting off to sleep, unable to communicate.  Jim sat by my side, uncertain whether I would live or die, or whether if I did live I would be compos mentis, just what he could expect to see happen to the person he had shared his life with for more than three decades.

But Jim stood up for me from the first moment.  He told the hospital I was Christopher Moss, a man.  There is nothing about me that says "man".  I have large breasts.  I have a vagina.  I have no facial hair at all.  If my face had begun to take on a more masculine appearance, no one at the hospital would have seen me before to judge.  I was silent so my lower-toned voice was unheard.  The hospital had to take Jim's word for it.  What would happen to me if I lived would be another matter.

I was unconscious, unable to speak with the respirator tubes down my throat.  My wrists were lashed to the rails of the bed to keep me from pulling out IVs and the tubes.  I was more or less incapacitated. After the doctors first tried to prepare Jim for my death, then for my being impaired, then to staying in the hospital for months, and having the respirator installed for weeks, I surprised everyone by getting better.  Within two weeks I was off the respirator and able to begin relating to people.  Jim could not tell if I recognized him at first, but then I must have.  

When I was first able to speak I insisted my name was Nan Louise Hawthorne.  Every time I was asked I stated it emphatically.  Jim was surprised, but he decided to accept whatever I came to identify myself as.  That should have told me everything that he loved me and wanted me to be whoever I was.

Then one day I answered the question about my name, "Nan Louise Hawthorne... but something tells me gender is important."   Jim told me the first time I answered the question with "Christopher Hawthorne Moss" he was pleased.  He knew I was truly returning to him.

I have already written about Evergreen Hospital and how they almost to a person respected my status as a transgender person.  Happily the days of gender segregation are over, but that in itself shows respect.  My records were correct, my doctors and nurses used the right name and pronoun, in my case "he", and no one ever questioned me as to my choice.  

I know to a huge extent I owe this to Jim.  He was loyal to a degree that is astounding.  He did not take advantage of my disability to return me to being female.  He stated emphatically that I am a man and that he was my husband.  He did it, he says, "Because I love you, whoever you are."

If I ever took that for granted I do not any  more.  I have been acutely aware of opportunities for discomfort for him, but now I  know he completely accepts me as I am.

What makes Jim so special?  Let me count the ways:

1.  He is realistic... he looks at his life with calm and perception.  He does not veer off into the realm of self-serving interpretation or coloring.
2.  He is fair.   He learned young from dysfunctional parents that their notions of what is right in the world was dead wrong.  He questioned, and being intelligent, he figured out the truth.
3.  He is intelligent, intelligent enough to know when he is bull shitting himself.
4.  He is empathetic.  He knows, and what's more, cares how others feel.  He knows when what they feel is true and right.
5.  He is fair-minded.  He doesn't judge without all the evidence or at least an intelligent stab at it.
6.  He is real.  He does not have a façade that he believes in to his own detriment.  He sees himself clearly, and that is what he presents to the world.
7.  Jim is compassionate.  He knows when I am less than fair or generous and he forgives me for it.

Is he perfect?  Of course not.  It takes a lot of effort to be all these things, and it gets to him from time to time.  He copes with it as he can.

One thing Jim said is that over the past two years since I came out he has watched me become a serene and happy person, stable, untroubled, that I don't "chew" on things any more.  He figures that has to mean I am who I am supposed to be, that the consistency of my brain and body is no longer important, that my brain is me.

And he loves me.  He is attending the Gender Odyssey conference this year with me to, as I put it to a friend, "babysit my addled brain."  I am sure he will be uncertain, uncomfortable, but a weekend with all the trannies will get him more used to what I came to accept two years ago, people just following the personality of their brains.  He will relax almost immediately.  Yeah, these folks are different... so what?  They are being enormously true to themselves.  That is, after all, what he has done by coming to accept that he loves me.

I am astounded by him, by his growth, but his deep and abiding love for me, by his sheer completeness as a person.  I have tried to return his love, his loyalty, and I am not that convinced I have achieved what I hope to attain.  He knows me well, knows how focused on myself I can be.  He sees somehow in me though the earnest person I am however childish or selfish I can be.  He knows, somehow, how much I love and appreciate him.

I just hope he feels it.  My top priority in life now is to deserve his love