Tis the Season

Happy Holidays everyone! To get the Holiday Season off to a proper start, I bought a cute Christmas sweater at Targé. I wore my sweater to the Office Holiday Party in hopes of winning the Ugly Sweater Contest. I lost, it was close, I demanded a recount, but in the end, I conceded. However, our team did win the Holiday trivia contest which entitled us to a batch of home baked toll house cookies from one of the office organizers. They were quite delicious. I do my best to resist all the holiday treats bestowed upon us by our clients and left in the common spaces in various parts of cube land, but sometimes you just have to give in.

So I started writing my Christmas cards the other day. (Disclaimer — I try to be sensitive to other religions during the Holiday season). Writing Christmas cards is a bit old-fashioned I suppose, but it’s a nice way to keep in touch with old friends. I don’t mind getting those one-page fits all family update newsreels, but my Christmas card list is small and intimate and I like to send a handwritten greeting to my friends. Matter of fact, I will be zeroing in on that task just as soon as I finish this column.

Over the past couple of years, I have not done a very good job of completing all the Christmas cards that I intended to send because, a) I have been too busy (a lame excuse who isn’t busy this time of year? Suck it up will ya? When January rolls around there will be nothing to do. And don’t give me that “I am turning over a new leaf and starting an exercise routine” song and dance on January 1. I have been working out all year long, insuring me a prime spot of Santa’s nice list. Look, if you must know, I am just not that naughty)… and b) I have been gun shy about biting the bullet and telling certain long time guy friends that I have transitioned. Now, I truly have the element of surprise in my hands.

“Dear Longtime Fraternity Brother. Contrary to popular belief, I did not drop off the face of the earth. No, it’s far worse than that, I have transitioned from male to female and am now Lynda…” I am going to be attending my 40th college reunion next fall and it’s time to lay some groundwork and see who might be coming. As usual, I have a scheduling conflict because my 40th reunion is scheduled for Halloween. But then again, maybe I can use this to my advantage. I love attending the Henri David Ball in Philadelphia on Halloween, but one must make choices, and I plan to make the most of the Reunion Weekend.

I had managed to keep in touch with three of my fraternity brothers, trading Christmas cards with them. Back in the day, the four of us were all geology majors and three of us played soccer (two very well, me not so much). After college, we covered a lot of ground and scattered across the continent.

Sadly, one of our group, Steve, passed away five years ago from brain cancer and I have been keeping in touch with his widow, who coincidentally is also named Linda. Steve and Linda lived out in Seattle and I bagged on the memorial service, which involved hiking up Mt. St Helens to deposit his ashes. I had intended to write Linda a letter about all the cool stuff I did with Steve when we were working together for the same environmental consulting firm in Hawaii. Steve played a role in how I met my ex in California, and I was the guy who recruited Steve to work with us in Hawaii. I also played a peripheral role in helping Steve meet Linda. After the Hawaii gig, Steve wound up transferring within the firm to the Seattle office, which is where he met Linda.

About ten days ago, I got a Christmas card from Linda addressed to me as Mark, and I knew that I had to fill her in on my transition. My card turned into a six-page letter explaining my transition and some of the really great things that Steve and I did together in Hawaii, like ride in the MS 150 Bike-A-Thon around Oahu. I have a hard time believing that Linda is still single, as she’s quite a catch in my book. I figured that she would have remarried by now. But then there are very few guys like Steve.

Then there’s my buddy Chez, who is a professor of volcanology out in Illinois. He and Steve went to the same graduate school together and they were super tight. Chez and I grew up about 15 miles apart in New Jersey. Each year during the Holidays, Chez and I would rendezvous for beers at a New Jersey dive bar or strip club (think Bada Bing from The Sopranos) and recount our adventures. Chez has traveled the world studying volcanoes and dated foreign women who barely speak English. It’s nearly impossible to top his stories.

Chez has been robbed at knife point in the remote mountains of Central America, appeared in an episode of Nova about Super-volcanos, and had the field area in Indonesia he was planning to study during a sabbatical wiped out by a tsunami caused by an earthquake (he wound up at studying at the Smithsonian in D.C. instead). My all-time favorite Chez story was the time he broke his arm riding a motorcycle in a remote part of Indonesia while doing fieldwork for his PhD dissertation. He had to ride 12 hours over dirt roads on the back of his field partner’s motorcycle, back to port with a bottle a whiskey to kill the pain of his compound fracture. Then, he boarded a boat and sailed another 12 hours to get to a city with a small hospital for treatment. His advisor back in Michigan had to wire money to the hospital before the doctor would operate.

And then there’s Deano, who was the co-captain of the soccer team and who dated girls who were in many cases good friends with the girls I dated. In addition to playing soccer, Deano ran track in high school and he was all kinds of fast. He taught me how to run in college. He wound up in California and lives up north of L.A. in Ventura County. Last I heard he was serving as a geologist for the City of Malibu, assessing the geologic hazards at the mortgaged mansions of the rich and powerful who live along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. Hmm… I wonder if he has checked out Caitlyn Jenner’s house? (Hmm, is my column beginning to sound like one of those run on Christmas letters, where we recount the status of all family members including the pets and recent home improvement projects? Hope not.)

It’s time to fill Chez and Deano in on my personal life and let the chips fall where they may. Hopefully, they will be accepting, but I am not going to fault them if they aren’t. These days I have a wonderful circle of friends in the transgender community and some of my very closest friends were with me at the Independence Business Alliance Holiday Party at the Curtis Center in Philadelphia. I went all out for this festive occasion and wore a full-length gown. Definitely overkill, but I like to play dress up. It’s one of the few things I am good at. And while, I am hoping to see Chez and Deano at the reunion, the reality is that it’s highly unlikely either of them will play a key role in my life going forward.

This, devoted readers, will be my last column for a while as I am taking a break from my literary career to have my GCS surgery in February. The Holidays are a tough time emotionally for many of us. My recipe for beating the Holiday Blues is to concentrate on getting together with my friends while continuing to work out. I’m a big fan of staying active and I want to be in the best shape possible before my surgery. For me, working out helps me to stay emotionally balanced. It also helps to give me the stamina to shop for presents at the mall, and run to the grocery store for hors d’oeuvre ingredients. I can’t arrive at intimate holiday gatherings empty-handed can I? Nope. I gotta work on my hors d’oeuvre repertoire. I also gotta get some sleep. As my friend, Deano used to say: “Life is a game. Play it.”

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Tags: featured, Identity, Transgender, Transition

Category: Out & About, Transgender Body & Soul