Acidentally Gay

by Lucky Bradley

  Accidentally Gay: The True Love Story When a Wife Becomes a Husband © Lucky and Wolsey Bradley 2019

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For more information contact:

  Riverdale Avenue Books

  5676 Riverdale Avenue

  Riverdale, NY 10471.

  This book is published under the Magnus Books imprint.

  www.riverdaleavebooks.com

  Design by www.formatting4U.com

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  Digital ISBN: 9781626014954

  Print ISBN: 9781626014961

  First Edition February 2019

  Dedication

  For every couple that has to navigate the uncharted waters of transition,

  and to Lucky’s parents, John and Mary

  for the unconditional love and acceptance that they offered.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction by Lucky and Wolsey Bradley

  Chap 1: How We Met

  Chap 2: The Day Wolsey Came Out

  Chap 3: No Support for Partners

  Chap 4: Dawning Concerns

  Chap 5: Telling Lucky’s Parents

  Chap 6: Safety as a Gay Couple

  Chap 7: To Deny the Past or Not?

  Chap 8: The Witch Hunt

  Chap 9: Do I Miss Her?

  Chap 10: Fighting for Medical Coverage

  Chap 11: Top Surgery

  Chap 12: Change in Surgery Plans

  Chap 13: “The Surgery”

  Chap 14: The Verdict is In

  Chap 15: Our 25th Anniversary

  About the Authors

  Introduction

  Accidentally Gay was created as a blog when Wolsey, my then-wife, confessed to me that she was actually a man and I couldn’t deny “her” truth. She became a him to me, and I loved him with all my heart, and wanted to be with him. I stayed. I knew it would be incredibly tough as I had never dated a man, and had been perceived by the world as a cisgender, heterosexual white man. I scoured the web for help, but I was never able to find any sources on men staying with their transitioning spouses.

  After a few weeks of searching, I felt I needed to record my experiences. I was hoping maybe it would help people in the future. I would have been happy if anyone else had done so.

  Our story had gotten out and we were interviewed by multiple media outlets including The Advocate, NY Magazine and some podcasts. We had received offers to be on television shows and to write for international publications because of our essays on the blog Accidentally Gay.

  This is the story of a man and his transgender husband, who accidentally became a homosexual couple. It is the story of what we went through during Wolsey’s transition and how it made each of us feel. We also detail the help, support and sometimes opposition of our journey.

  A note about this book, and pronoun usage.

  We thought we’d open each chapter with a post from The Accidentally Gay blog, then give an update on how Lucky feels today, followed by how Wolsey feels. Each chapter will explore what we thought were significant events regarding Wolsey’s transition, and how they affected Lucky up until Wolsey’s surgeries.

  We also wanted to explain our pronoun usage for Wolsey. Pronouns are very important to transgender people. Pronouns are like small celebrations and affirmations in a world where transgender people are stigmatized.

  Wolsey used female pronouns before deciding to transition, and we often refer to Wolsey as she historically. We never meant for this, but it’s something that evolved early on. As time has gone on, that has faded more and more, but it does lead to what would be classically considered misgendering of Wolsey.

  Make no mistake, Wolsey is absolutely a man and uses male pronouns, but during this early transition period, think of it as Wolsey giving everyone a grace period to catch up to his reality.

  It’s always good practice to refer to a transgender person as their identified gender pronoun. If you are not sure what to do, just ask the transgender person you are addressing. They will guide you to what they feel comfortable with.

  —Lucky and Wolsey

  Chapter One:

  How We Met

  From the Accidentally Gay Blog: How We Met

  Posted on July 23, 2016

  Are you stalking me? Because that would be super.

  —Ryan Reynolds

  (Wolsey and I talked, and thought it would be easier here to refer to him with feminine pronouns. It helps paint the picture of what he presented as, and how I’d have interpreted his gender back when we met. This was a long time ago, and neither of us had any concept of what being transgender even was.)

  A common question I am asked is how did Wolsey and I actually meet? Was it fate? Was it some quirky romantic comedy situation? Was it maybe perhaps a horror show? The answer to all of that is no, or maybe yes in parts. Overall though it was pretty straight forward, or at least that is how it seems now.

  I had recently moved up to Bellingham, Washington right before I turned 17. The first thing I did there was meet a group of friends with whom I played Dungeons & Dragons. It was a household where several friends lived, almost a flophouse. A middle-aged single mom owned the house, and was taking rent from all the teens she allowed to move in. Most of these kids were nearly homeless, and this was a welcome, viable option for them. One of the people I met there was my future husband.

  Wolsey was a damn cute punk rock girl, at the time. She was a sassy smoker, drinker and very alternative in her outlook. She had that intensity you only see in movies. She was something between a hard-rocking Joan Jett and a manic pixie dream girl. Strangely enough, even with all that, she seemed to like me and wanted to hang out.

  Over the next couple of years, she ended up dating my best friend, Doug. I was pretty shy and had run away from a few different girls that had approached me with my Dungeons & Dragons books as a shield. It wasn’t much different with Wolsey when she showed interest in me.

  Funny enough, Wolsey was the one who enjoyed playing Dungeons & Dragons with me the most. Her tough exterior was captivating as she role-played a cleric full of healing. She really wanted to help tell a story which was unlike all my male friends, who just liked to kill everything they encountered in my games. Even Doug would give both of us a hard time for liking the story-telling aspect of the game. I should have known that this was a good thing since Wolsey and I continue to play these kinds of games 30 years later.

  With Wolsey dating Doug, at the time, I was around her a lot more. She became my best friend, while Doug drifted off into a world I didn’t want to follow. I would be lying if I didn’t say I had a mad crush on her for a long time. We would wander off by ourselves while her boyfriend decided to hang out at home, and I just liked spending time with her. I had no expectations she would date me. I just felt like she was a really good friend.

  It was sometime during this time period that my parents met Wolsey. They already knew Doug, and he brought her over, and they liked her. For a time, Wolsey lived a half a block down from my family and my father went over to borrow the phone regularly. That is when he noticed that Wolsey, who was presenting as a woman at that point, was cute, and seemed to be focused on me. This went on for a while, when eventually my mom and dad asked how serious Wolsey and Doug were as a couple, and that they thought Wolsey would be perfect for me. I could not take the suggestion seriously because Wolseyand Doug were my friends and dating each other. I also just couldn’t believe that she was interested in me like that.

  Eventually Wolsey and Doug broke up, and Wolsey asked me to meet her for coffee. I freaked out. I wanted to be with Wolsey
, but I was positive she didn’t feel that way about me so I ditched her... at least twice. I look back now, and I can’t help but think I was such an idiot. At the time, I felt there was no way in the world someone as cool as Wolsey would want me and that I would just be making her uncomfortable.

  Some time went by and I lost contact with Wolsey, as I became involved in my first live-in relationship. That partner decided to jealously block several communication attempts by Wolsey, something I hadn’t heard about until I broke up with that partner a few months later.

  After this first major relationship break-up, I moved into a room in the same house where I had met Wolsey. This time I was the one living there and not Wolsey. During this time, I had changed four or five jobs in the space of a few months and was working in the paint department of Kmart.

  That’s when I got an announcement over the intercom saying there was a phone call for me on line three. I remember it with clarity.

  I picked up the phone and it was Wolsey’s voice. She seemed excited and maybe a little out of breath. All she asked was what time I got off. I was confused and excited. I hadn’t seen Wolsey in months. I had missed her but I figured she was off dating someone and doing her own thing. Her words to me on the phone were, “Don’t go anywhere.” It was a pretty commanding tone and I agreed to wait.

  Twenty minutes later I hear stomping boots coming down the aisle and there she was, dressed in a leather jacket, facial piercings, a very tiny shirt that revealed her feminine body quite explicitly, a Mohawk, make-up and the cutest purple crinoline skirt. I was getting off work about this time and she came up and hustled me to her truck and took me home.

  We spent the next hour and a half talking. Over the next couple of weeks, we talked a lot and she kept showing up at my room. Wolsey was homeless at the time, but that didn’t bother me. I invited her into my room and let her stay on my twin bed, while I slept on the floor. I left out cans of ravioli, with a can opener and a spoon, for her to eat if she was hungry. Wolsey was always hungry and this was the one thing I knew she liked to eat.

  Within a couple of weeks we were dating and she moved me out of that horrible room and into our own apartment. We had a tumultuous first seven months and ended up breaking up for six months. I had been working graveyard shift as a taxi dispatcher and it had created a huge scheduling problem between us.

  While I might have dated another woman and lived with her, this was the first relationship that I wanted to last permanently. I had a lot of preconceived traditional, unexamined, views and expectations about relationships. I was confident though, so I asked Wolsey to marry me. I was surprised when she said no. I think I was too surprised to be crushed. I wouldn’t be crushed until later.

  Now as I am older, I can admit I didn’t handle the relationship in the most mature way, and I suspect she thought I was someone I wasn’t. I kept putting forward this ideal of a relationship that didn’t exist anywhere. Instead of following my parents’ lead, or maybe one of my friends in a successful relationship, I clung tighter and dug in deeper.

  The whole time, these decisions felt like a jigsaw puzzle that almost fit, but not quite. Wolsey was trying to get her hair styling degree and I pressured her a lot to pay attention to me. I was trying to work 18 hours a day and I can’t do ten hours a day, let alone 18, without becoming someone I don’t like.

  The relationship ended quietly a few days before Thanksgiving, and our third roommate decided he was going to move out with Wolsey and one of her friends, who didn’t like me. I was left without roommates, in an apartment I couldn’t afford.

  I ended up living with my old best friend, Doug. Unfortunately, he had developed a more serious drug and alcohol problem, and I still ended up paying all the bills on my own. When I complained, he brought me pizza he had found in a dumpster. This was not an easy time in my life.

  The next six months were brutal and I drifted through multiple jobs and had multiple places to live after I had grown tired of living in that situation with Doug.

  I ended up living with that same ex-girlfriend from before and her boyfriend. This time I was just a roommate with another person sharing my bedroom.

  Throughout all of this, all I could really think about was Wolsey, and how I had made things bad and how I could have handled things better. Even the things that really bothered me during the relationship now seemed insignificant.

  What I knew was that Wolsey had gone hitchhiking to California with another gutter-punk. I didn’t know if she was OK. I didn’t know if she was dating the guy, and it really did rip me apart. It bothered me so much I ignored other women that pursued me.

  Our town was small, and I had heard that Wolsey had gotten back from California. I noticed her in the video store and I did everything I could to avoid her, my heart pumping so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear the TV’s on display. I didn’t say hello, but turned away.

  A couple of days later I was told I had a visitor by a very annoyed ex-girlfriend and roommate. I came downstairs and answered the door, and there was Wolsey. She looked tired, hungry and a bit sad. She looked worried. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen and sadly enough I almost shut the door on her right there. I was so terrified I didn’t know what to do.

  Fortunately, she did. She stayed in my room a couple of days while we talked about things. I followed her back to her new place (the one with my old roommate and supposed friend.) Their household broke up within a couple of days of me visiting Wolsey and it ended up with Wolsey and me renting the house, with new roommates who were much better.

  Wolsey decided to change. I can’t tell you exactly what happened but she cut her Mohawk off and got a job at Mervyn’s at the mall in the shoe department. We started working out our finances and she made it clear how much she loved me.

  She asked me to marry her on the couch while I was playing one of the iterations of the game, Mega Man, on a Nintendo gaming system. She said she never wanted to be with anyone else in her life and I told her I felt the same. There was no way I wasn’t going to accept the proposal. She was everything I had dreamed about for years.

  We were married on Halloween of 1992. It had been less than four months since we had gotten back together and while we were married by a judge who had just issued a bench warrant for my father and kept asking where he was throughout the ceremony. It was the most fantastic evening of my life and made funnier because my father was downstairs waiting the whole time. Marrying my spouse is the only decision in my life I have never regretted.

  To this day I can’t see a cute girl in a Mohawk, a can of ravioli or smell the smell of cigarette smoke on a person without thinking about Wolsey and how much I loved him when we met.

  That my friends, is how Wolsey and I met and got together, well in a few words at least.

  Lucky’s Perspective Now

  A disclaimer one more time, I am referring to my husband as a woman in this chapter for two main reasons. One, it better completes the image of what happened as it happened, and two, sometimes it is hard for me to override how I thought of my husband before his transition. It is just easier for the writing this way and he is already OK with me doing this and has given me his blessing.

  It has been over a year since I wrote that entry, and I am even more amazed that I am with the most wonderful person in the world. He is still everything to me in my world, and to be honest, it is sometimes hazy what he looked like back when we were teenagers. Well, at least until I see an old picture and it rushes back to me.

  I was an idiot as a teenager. I had always assumed I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t scared of women per se, rather it was that I felt I wasn’t worthy. I felt this way strongest around Wolsey. When I first met her and saw her, I was in love. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I knew she was different than any other woman I had met. Not just in clothing, or looks, but just what she was about. She was the ultimate sexy tomboy and pretty much ticked every box for me that I found attractive. Then again, I have always been attrac
ted to more masculine women for their behavior.

  Wolsey disproved the whole idea that women didn’t game as well. Currently gaming is filled with women and more and more are coming into the hobby. At the time it was unheard of to have women play, and Wolsey was the first of several that started playing with my gaming group. They enjoyed telling a story of living a different person’s life in a far-off world. I wonder if that is partially what attracted me to Wolsey.

  We had so many hobbies in common, even if she and I came from different worlds. Wolsey came from an upper-class family but she was living a street life as what would be termed “punk” now while I came from a homeless family headed by a Vietnam Veteran who lived in poverty and was often in trouble with the law.

  When Wolsey dated Doug, it was a difficult time for me. He was my best friend. Wolsey and I were becoming very close friends, and she would eventually supplant Doug as my best friend. She was also someone I cared about deeply.

  The old song “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield reminds me of how I felt back then. I realize now it wasn’t the healthiest crush I could have on someone, but it was what I had.

  It didn’t help at all when my parents shared their belief that Doug and Wolsey wouldn’t be forever. The cracks of their relationship were apparent to the adults around them, even if the rest of us teenagers never saw it coming.

  My parents approved of her fully and treated her like part of the family. Wolsey was always considered one of their kids by my parents, and I got a lot of advice on how to approach her, none of which I followed up on.

  When Doug and Wolsey broke up, I got stuck in the middle. Being friends to both, and especially since Doug wasn’t taking it so well, meant I had to focus on him. I will admit now that a big part of that was because my attraction to Wolsey was huge and I was terrified of attempting to date her while my close friend was still hurting from the break-up. I didn’t want to lose my friendship with Doug. I also didn’t want to find out that Wolsey didn’t like me that way.