Dreams Take Flight — An Unexpected Turn of Events

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The Scene: A boardroom at the airline company headquarters. The flight attendant formerly and still formally known as Patrick and his two cabin colleagues, Jill and Margo, have been summoned to explain why apparently someone else had been working in Patrick’s place. The three are expecting that their dismissal will follow. ‘Patricia’ is asked to explain.

It was as if Patricia had been waiting and preparing for this moment for a long time. In fact she hadn’t. What came out was spontaneous and surprised even her. “First of all,” she started, “I want to assure you that Jill and Margo are totally blameless for anything that has happened. If they have any fault it is in being too good friends with someone in distress.

“Second, I have not been illegally taking any of Patrick’s shifts. I am Patrick and Patrick is me.” The panel of supervisors across the table looked sternly back at Patricia but gave no indication of surprise.

Patricia continued, “Ever since I was a young child people have been telling me that I should have been born a girl. As a boy, I was always smaller and slighter than my classmates. I liked sports but I wasn’t very good at them. My parents tried to assure me that I would catch up to the boys when puberty came along. I would grow big like my father and brother, I was told. But puberty came and went and nothing happened. Well, hardly anything anyway. My beard stopped at a scraggly mustache and sideburns. My muscles and shoulders did not develop. My voice hardly changed. If we’d been in the city I probably would have been checked for testosterone deficiency but we were farm folk and every litter had its runt. I was it.

“I liked sports but was not good enough or strong enough to make any team. I lagged behind in being able to do farm chores like loading bales of hay in to the barn. I was given lighter work.

“I loved singing and was good at it. I was in the choirs at high school and at our church but in both cases the choir leader put me at the end of a row of girls. I guess they didn’t want me contaminating the male voices.

“I had crushes on girls but they liked me back as a friend, not as a boyfriend. When I got to college someone suggested as a prank that I join an all-girls singing group, sort of like the movie Some Like It Hot. The girls went along with it and we were pretty good. We won a talent contest. We went to a frat house to celebrate and some guy hit on me. He thought I was really a girl.”

“Ah, perhaps we can skip the rest of that,” interjected a supervisor, and move along. How did you come to be flying with us as Patricia?”

“That was our doing,” interjected Margo, “We can’t let Patty take all the blame. We’d known her for several years. She was a great guy but there was always something closed about Patrick. Then we discovered her singing as a woman and immediately noticed how animated and alive she was. There was a sparkle.”

“We decided that night that Patricia would be great to work with,” added Jill. “It started out it was going to be only one day but she was good at her job, we liked her and the customers liked her, too. It seemed we were not specifically breaking any company rules so we continued. It seemed everyone was happy. Patty was happy, we were happy, the pilots were happy and the passengers were happy. It seems the only ones who were not happy were the ‘CRAPers’, oops I mean the client relations people.”

There was a moment of silence. The three flight attendants figured they were about to be stripped of their badges and escorted out of the building.

Finally one of the supervisors spoke, “We know all that. It took us a while to catch on to what was going on but when we started to get unsolicited reviews from our customers talking about ‘Patricia’ and how much fun she made them have and we could not find her in our personnel files we had to check it out. We were ready to terminate her work months ago but Legal put a hold on it. You are correct that while we have rules about unauthorized switching of shifts and rules about flight attendants’ uniforms we do not have specific rules about which uniforms the males and females wear.

“It seems that if we had fired you Patricia your association would have filed a grievance and a year from now you could be re-instated with back pay, probably damages, too. So we are not going that route,” he said with a smile.

Everyone smiled. “But,” said Patty, “there must be a but?”

“But if you are going to continue working with us we’d like it to be all as Patrick or all as Patricia. We..”

“Patricia!” interjected Patricia without any hesitation.

“Okay, we ask that you agree to assessment by a doctor specialized in the field of gender change and that you take legal steps to change your name and legal status to conform to your new gender.

“And there is one other thing. We ask that everyone here sign non-disclosure agreements. We would like to keep this between us until, say, 2019. Patricia we are happy with you being you and we know you are good at your job but the company just does not need the backlash some of the press might give this. You don’t need it either, do you?”

The three friends and colleagues looked at each other. “Where do we sign?” they said in unison.

Now let’s pause for a moment. Those of you reading this here on TGForum will know this is not a likely story. Nobody, not even Patrick, would suddenly decide to undergo gender reassignment. It is a long and difficult process. It is difficult emotionally, socially, physically and financially. It is something that we do not undertake lightly or on a spur of the moment decision.

The truth was that this was not a decision made on the moment. Unlike many of us in the TG spectrum Patrick did not know from an early age that he should have been a girl. However he did have well-meaning people – family and friends – occasionally telling him that he would make a lovely girl. When he got around to trying ‘drag’ he had to admit to being seduced by the positive attention he got. His roommates notwithstanding everyone seemed to enjoy Patricia and she enjoyed the men hitting on her.

Then something else happened. Patricia discovered she was enjoying — really enjoying — the part where she got to put on makeup and dress as a woman. She loved how a little eyeliner and mascara could make her eyes sparkle. She loved the new slimmer shape of her eyebrows and wider (padded) shape of her hips. As Patricia she was never without lipstick, preferring a dark plum for day wear and a bright cherry red when she was going on stage.

She loved to wear perfume. Giorgio was her brand but after the girls spoke to her she learned to tone it down a bit. As they advised, “A little says a lot.”

“It was like positive reinforcement,” Patty said many years later, “When I was Patrick people paid little attention to me. There was hostility at times. But Patricia got good vibes all the time. With that social reward it was no wonder I came to enjoy being Patricia.”

One day back in Denver Jill and Margo had told Patricia that they were going dress shopping and would she like to come along. The holiday season was coming up and their husbands wanted them to have something new and special to wear. Patricia had no one to dress for but the girls assured her it would be a fun experience anyway and besides they could use her advice.

What a day that was for Patricia! With their husband’s AMEX cards in their purses Jill and Margo were not heading to Sears or JC Penney. It was Macy’s and Dillard’s for them. Patricia was uncertain at first. She was used to the male habit of trying on something to make sure it was the right size to buy then buying it. Her friends taught her to try on dresses for the sheer joy of feeling and seeing how they looked on her. She had always favored slim fitting sheath dresses in monotone colors. Her friends opened her eyes to how good she looked in A-line and especially princess or empire waist dresses. “Let the guys imagine the lovely hips they think you have under there,” they advised.

Sequined dresses were popular back in those days. Patricia found a blue and silver low cut sequined dress that she knew would make her a hit at a New Year’s Eve party where she had been asked to sing. She already knew how to tape her chest to give herself that realistic cleavage look. It was $150 she had not planned to spend but she had to go for it. “Here, we’ll put it on Larry’s card,” said Jill, “He’ll never know it was not for me. Besides his secretary will run it through the company books as an entertainment expense.”

“Well, thank you so much,” smiled Patricia, “I’ll have to find a way to entertain him.”

“Not so fast!” shot back Jill, “the entertainment is for the clients.”

“That’s who I meant,” retorted Patricia. The three girls laughed.

Those were good times for Patricia. She was learning a lot and discovering a lot about herself. With her life as Patrick behind her she discovered she had a lot more time to explore life as Patricia. She had a good mind and she loved learning. She studied part time at the university. She had always loved sports and when a friend encouraged her to try downhill skiing she took to it with a passion. In the world of gay men of the day sports was not a thing you did but as a liberated woman she was free to ski in the winter, bike in the summer and enjoy the sun.

Her roommates came to accept Patricia and once they got their head around her being the same person under the clothes they again loved their love making. Patricia loved it too because although there were plenty of men interested in dating Patricia none knew what would be discovered underneath.

That is none except Dan, their frequent co-pilot/ first officer. Patricia enjoyed Dan and his flirting but they kept things cool knowing the worked together and he was married.

Then came the evening Dan told Patricia that he and his wife had split up. It seems things had not been going well between them and he had finally confessed his crush on Patricia. His wife in turn had confessed that she was having an affair with another company pilot, one who lived just down the street. Within days Dan’s wife was living down the street and Dan had the house to himself.

The first time Patricia slept over at Dan’s house she knew that was not the house for her. The water bed seemed to make her seasick during their love making and just knowing Dan’s ex was living in the same neighborhood and probably going around telling everyone she was trans was too much. Dan agreed that they should make a fresh start so they bought a nice condo apartment on the east side of Denver not far from the old airport.

In time Patricia completed her psychological assessment, she says with ‘flying colors’ and was able to get her important identification papers changed to indicate gender as female. Thank you, Colorado.

Patricia contemplated a trip down to the Trinidad, CO clinic to have her gender reassignment surgery. However Dan asked her to keep the plumbing she had. She was happy to oblige. In time she opted for breast augmentation and Dan heartily agreed with that one.

So it came to pass that for many years Patricia H—- worked for the company. Patricia confided to Jill and Margo that she could not ask for a better lover than Dan. Apparently he was gentle yet passionate and after he climaxed with an explosive energy he was most happy to spoon up to Patricia as the two fell asleep together. When all their paperwork was done, the two married thus becoming one of the first company couples to both be working in air jobs.

Patricia had had lots of experience with male lovers and admirers. She knew Dan’s attention was unusual. She eventually found out why and she told me. Another time I’ll tell you what made Dan be Dan. Hint: it didn’t happen by accident.

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Tags: crossdressing, featured, Identity, Transgender

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment