Firsts
Yes, I am aware of what’s going on in the streets of my country. But I’m still going to submit what I already wrote.
Being Trans is all about Firsts. As most older transwomen were raised male, we don’t get the firsts that GGs experience. (I’m going to focus on transwomen here, as I can’t speak to the transman experience.) But we do have our own firsts, usually experienced alone and with a sense of Fear, Shame, and Wonder.
First time wearing pantyhose/bra/lingerie.
First time fully dressed as a Woman.
First time trying makeup.
First time going out into public as a Woman.
First time out Alone as a Woman.
There are so many firsts, and they make us what we are. Each has their own unique experiences, but isn’t it amazing how many of these we have in common? How we all understand the feelings?
I have written many times about my first time in public as a Woman on Halloween 2008. But I have never written about my first time out wearing something feminine. I have never forgotten it, but it wasn’t exactly public.
It was early spring, 1980. I was in 8th grade. I had this horrible compulsion . . . I knew I was supposed to be a girl, but I wasn’t. And the girls in my school, they were all blossoming. Becoming women. And I wasn’t. I so desperately wanted this for myself. I wished someone understood, but, in this pre-Internet age, I was the only “freak” like me in the world.
Growing up in Spring City, there was a driveway leading to a church parking lot across the street from my house. That church, like most of Spring City, was on a hill, so the downhill side of it rose fairly high. And on that side, there was a painted steel fire escape, accessed by an alley between the church and a house. It went up the equivalent of five stories. The neighborhood kids often climbed it during the day; playing hide and seek or whatever. Me, I climbed it quietly at night sometimes, as it offered quite a view of Royersford across the river, especially at night. The lights of Main Street curved down the hill, maybe a mile away, but seemingly in another world: a world as foreign and inviting as any in my overactive imagination. My world back then was barely more than a few blocks. My Junior High School was over in Royersford, and attending it “doubled” the size of my world.
The Fire Escape Today. The fencing and barbed wire were not there back then.
It was early spring, and there was a misty drizzle falling, muffling noise and adding to my isolation. My homework was finished, and none of my friends were around. So, while my parents watched TV (I forget where my brother was, but he wasn’t in his room,) I sneaked upstairs to my parent’s room and borrowed one of my mum’s bras. I then grabbed two rolled up tube socks from my drawer, and sneaked them all out in my coat pockets. I couldn’t believe I was doing this.
I walked through the parking lot and around the church. Making sure no one was watching, I ducked down the alley and climbed the fire escape as quietly as I could. When I reached the top, I sat in the small doorway ledge attached to the landing. Then, I sat a while, looking at the lights of Royersford through the rain.
I took off my jacket and my t-shirt (that’s all I wore back then: t-shirts.) I put on the bra, which was too big, stuffed the cups with the socks, and put my shirt and jacket back on. Then, I sat quietly on the cold steel in the misty rain, which was getting just a little harder.
I retreated into the doorway as the rain intensified into a shower. I sat, feeling. . . feeling. . . a strange sense of calm melancholy. I was outside: exposed to the world. I was terrified of being spotted, yet there was the thrill of doing something “wrong.” And feeling so at Peace as I expressed my femininity.
I remember thinking of all the girls in my grade who were wearing bras right then as well. How lucky they were. Not understanding the challenges the new rushes of estrogen were inflicting upon them. All I knew is that I wished in my soul that I were going through those changes — that I would blossom like they did.
The Top Landing
I remember sitting in the white painted doorway, crying. Sobbing. . . like a girl.
I remember taking one last look down at the bulges in my shirt, and then stripping off my jacket shirt, and the bra. It was white, as were the socks. I stuffed them in my jacket pockets.
I sat looking out at the lights in the distance. I don’t know for how long. Eventually, I quietly descended the slippery steel stairs, and walked alone through the misty night back home.
My parents were still sitting where I left them, watching TV. They didn’t even glance at me when I came in; my hair soaked from the rain. I ran upstairs with my coat on, put the socks back in my drawer, and hid the bra between the mattresses of my bed. I put it back on a little later that night.
The next day at school, I was standing in the lunch line. A few people ahead of me was Mike, who lived on the same street as the church — maybe half a block up the hill from it. I saw him smiling, whispering in the ear of the kid next to him, and pointing at me. I smiled weakly — terrified that he had seen me on the fire escape the night before. I later learned that he whispered nothing to the kid. He was trying to make me paranoid. It worked.
Not long after that, using money saved up from my allowance and shoveling snow, I ordered my first piece of female clothing from the Sears catalog.
A bra. Same size as my mum’s. White.
I purged that first bra long, long ago. I remember burning it in the brick grill my dad built on the patio. I burned all of my female things on a sweltering hot early August day in 1983, while my parents and brother were down in Delaware for the week. I then put the ashes inside a garbage bag, and set it out with the trash the next day.
And immediately fell into a deep depression that continues in some form to this very day.
I have come a LONG way since that night 36 years ago. I suppressed who I was for over two decades. I grew into despised manhood. Tried my damnedest to die. Married and had a daughter. And eventually, accepted who and what I am: a Woman.
But, that wet night was really the first time I dared to express any shred of femininity.
Was it worth it?
Now I’m full time living my Truth. I own several bras (though none of them are white, Lorraine!) and I no longer need tube socks as I fill the cups nicely, thank you for asking. But I’m still experiencing firsts. I always will. That’s one of life’s great adventures — doing things the first time — exploring who and what I am.
What are some of YOUR firsts? I invite you to share your moments in the comments, dear reader. Share with us all how you felt that first time you challenged the forbidden. You never know whom it may help.
Be well.
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Sophie, I must say you are quite an attractive lady. I cannot remember my “first”time wearing female clothing. I would wear my sister’s and mom’s things. Growing up in the 50’s, 60’s who knew what I was feeling. I like many others can say, I felt that I was a girl, not a boy. I liked the person who looked back from the mirror when I was wearing female clothes. What I do remember clearly is going to work for the first time wearing a dress. It was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining. I got up, dressed in a sleeveless dress, beige in color, I had done my make-up, and the dress had a jacket with a flower print. I live in NJ, and was driving to a client in Allentown, PA, Air Products. I was on the Schuylkill expressway where it intersects with I 476 an all of a sudden it occurred to me…I was on my way to see a client dressed as a woman, being a woman. You must understand, all of my clients had been told I was transitioning. No one complained. Be aware that this was over 20yr ago.Well I arrived to my appointment and the lobby was full of people. Of course, I was so self-conscious, looking around to see if anyone was staring. No one did, no one even paid any attention to me. The person I had the appointment with met me in the lobby. Now I had been calling on Air Products for quite sometime, so I was well known. The lady I met with took me to a conference room to discuss the order (the reason I was there). When the door was closed she just looked me up and down and stated: “You look terrific!! I was expecting a man in a dress.” We then went to work and I left with my order, and went on my way to the other appointments I had that day.
I remember that first time that I put on my mom’s bra, nylon stockings, garter belt and slip. I tried some of her lipstick, rouge and face powder. I added a mist of her perfume. The sight in the mirror was mesmerizing.I never felt so feminine before. The taste of her lipstick and the fragrance of her perfume gave me the first real sense of being a girl.
My Female First was a Depo-Provera injection – that’s an unusual First for a t-girl for sure, but for me it was my very first Female Experience. For many years prior to my transition I was very envious of my lady partner and other cis women close to me who were getting the Depo shot for birth control. I wanted to have the same experience so badly, but it was absolutely forbidden to me because my gender marker said ‘M’. When injected into a male body, the same medication acts as “chemical castration” (a scary term for what we t-girls would prefer to call a demasculinizing agent or an antiandrogen or an androgen blocker), but because I never developed a male sexuality, giving up male sexual functioning was no loss for me – I never had that to begin with, hence there was really nothing for me to give up.
When I got unfairly excluded from a women’s group for my apparent male sex one time too many, I decided I was going to get my Depo shot by hook or by crook – not only for my own inner enjoyment, but also to serve as a formal renunciation of masculinity. I was prepared to do it all on my own, using medication ordered from an international free market pharmacy that doesn’t ask for Rx, but before proceeding with the self-injection I decided I would do my due diligence and TRY getting my shot legitimately. This way I would be able to say “I tried” to anyone who would chastise me for self-injecting a medicine from the black market.
Thus I decided to come out as transgender at least to the medical community: I called the local TG clinic and made my first appointment. It was a low-cost community clinic dealing mostly with high-risk clientele (t-girls doing sex work), and my total risk investment was $20 – that’s how much I would have lost if I went there and they said No – such low dollar risk was the only condition under which I was willing to give the gatekeeper system a try. There is absolutely no way in Hell I will ever give hundreds of dollars (or more) to a gatekeeper who might deny me what I am asking for but take my money nonetheless!
But in this case my total risk was only $20, so I gave it a try. I had my counselor and doctor appointments at that TG clinic, and on the third appointment – that’s when they would normally give a t-girl her first estrogen script – I told them that I wasn’t ready to start estrogen yet, but I wanted a Depo shot very very badly. And to my great relief, they agreed! They didn’t stock that medication at the clinic (its use for TGs is very uncommon), but they wrote me a legitimate prescription for Depo-Provera which I could fill at a local pharmacy. It even said “inject once every 3 months for gender transition” – how neat!
For the actual injection I brought the vial I bought at CVS (using that legitimate script) back to the clinic and had their nurse give me the shot. My original hope was that I would come en femme for my first shot of Female Medication, but it didn’t work out that way – at the time of that first shot I still did not own a single item of female clothing, so I was dressed in my old clothes. That is the one part I wish I had done better. I did get my first set of female clothes (a dress, a skirt+blouse set, a bra, panties, some other stuff I don’t remember) about a month and a half after that first injection, and when I came for my next clinic visit (which included my second Depo shot) I was wearing a skirt with panties underneath.
Then I added estrogen to my hormone regimen (prescribed by the doctors at that TG clinic – I would have had no problem with doing it the black market way, but thankfully I didn’t need to) and started electrolysis. And the rest, as they say, is HERstory. 🙂 I have now been living full-time as a woman for a little over a year, and I know I made the right decision – female is definitely the right gender for me.