Acidentally Gay

by Lucky Bradley

  Wolsey was so surprised that I hadn’t even really hesitated, and that I already knew. I mean there was a surprise that he had actually, finally, said he wanted to transition, but I knew it had been coming for a long time. The only sadness I had about him saying it was that I wished he had said it ten or 20 years ago. It bothers me that he has lived in a body he didn’t want for so long.

  Wolsey stated up front that he would not go through transition if it meant I would leave him. I stated clearly back that if someone tells someone else not to be who he or she feels they are, then they should leave. I would fully expect (and hope) that Wolsey would leave me if I refused to accept him. People deserve better, and keeping yourself unhappy just for your spouse or family is such a bad thing that I would counsel anyone to leave.

  I want to address the fact that your mileage may vary. Our situation is very unique, and I realize a lot of spouses out there will be hit out of the blue by this revelation. I don’t think I can do anything but empathize with someone who didn’t see it coming.

  Lucky’s Perspective Now

  Even to this day I think I should have known that the most important person in my life was masculine in every sense. Wolsey has always been masculine of center in almost all the stereotypical ways. He liked to work on cars, and always had a thing for muscle cars.

  When we owned a mobile home, he rebuilt it to be as comfortable as a house, and on the inside it looked like a full house. He was the one to crawl under the mobile home to look for problems (eww… bugs, no way I am doing that). He laid tile, rebuilt the bathrooms, but in one of his few non-masculine mannerisms, he didn’t even consider messing with electrical (he knew it was beyond his skills). Growing up he had a very masculine view of sex that involved one-night stands, and wanting no commitments. He doesn’t even like asking directions.

  Don’t get me wrong; when we first met, my husband was an incredibly attractive woman. He dressed in a very punk rock/alternative way.

  For the next 20 plus years of marriage, his style did shift. The punk style changed to Lolita, then to a weird colorful alternative, with a brief foray into steampunk. Through all that, even with him dressing sexy in his feminine form, his style was always more masculine.

  While he mostly wore pants and masculine clothing, he did sometimes wear more feminine clothing. Even when his skirts were short, or his neckline dropped, his masculinity was obvious, as you could see the masculine tattoos and piercings. His hair flashed through a myriad of colors, but not once did it become pink or some other feminine color.

  For 20-plus years he had dressed like this, a very masculine/tomboy type appearance that often enhanced his pre-transition body. Even with all the changes, I never remarked on them because they all fit him perfectly. It is almost as if he had “eras” of dress much like an artist has a period of a specific type of art they made. I watched him go through his Lolita phase, his punk rock phase, his hippy phase, and more.

  No matter the look, his style always had a masculine quality that accented his femininity at the time. People sometimes asked if it bothered me that he was such a tomboy, but I couldn’t give them an answer because he didn’t read as a “tomboy” to me, he just read as my best friend.

  I realized things had changed after our 20th anniversary. We had gone in and dressed up in costume, and got remarried by the “Purple Wedding Chapel” on Halloween as we had originally been married on the holiday. It was a nonreligious wedding chapel, and Reverend Barb didn’t even bat an eye that Wolsey wore a pan costume and I wore devil horns. That was the exact point I noticed Wolsey’s “test.”

  Unbeknownst to me, sometime earlier Wolsey had begun a test that included wearing only extremely feminine clothing. He had switched to wearing skirts and dresses, along with a large increase in cosmetics. I noticed he wanted a lot of new make-up, but there was a disconnect, and it didn’t dawn on me that there was a big change. Before the experiment, the most he would usually wear was lipstick and eyeliner used in an alternative way.

  We had started buying him top of the line Sephora and Ulta cosmetics. I know he was worried because it had meant an investment of hundreds of dollars, but I have always wanted to buy him whatever he wanted. I really should have picked up more clearly on what was happening. After 20 years of marriage, if your spouse starts buying a lot of cosmetics that should say something is up. Not necessarily something bad, but someone changing their habits at that point is a sign of something.

  We had also gone on a spree of buying skirts, tops, flat open-faced shoes, and even heels. Wolsey had started doing up his face a lot.

  For an entire year, we had gone through Wolsey’s dress up period. Don’t get me wrong, he likes nice clothes, whether he makes them himself or buys them from eclectic shops. Buying stuff for him wasn’t too unusual. What was unusual was during this time, every single purchase was for feminine clothing.

  At this time, I was starting to get worried and uncomfortable in our relationship. I was worried Wolsey wasn’t happy. He behaved with more of a traditionally expected feminine persona. That may not sound like much, but Wolsey is very much a front and center kind of person. He always moves forward at his own speed. He can be loud, but even when he isn’t loud, he is always a focus in any room he is in. During this year, he had sort of retreated a bit and I think now that was because he was adopting a more feminine role. That was never something that I expected from him.

  Things had shifted enough during the year that I was worried he was getting tired of me. I worried that maybe we were growing apart, or maybe he was more interested in someone else. He never said this, and he never acted like that was happening. It was purely me being worried because his newfound femininity came on top of a move to a new town, and a new job that I hated.

  This was unsettling enough that we had started fighting a little more that year. We normally aren’t a high friction couple, but with everything going on, the arguments were more frequent than usual. Tempers flared fairly quickly, and instead of realizing he was dealing with who he was in addition to school, work and money, I would assume more and more he hated being with me. This made me constantly worry that he was tired of me. He was my best friend and the person I loved most in the world, and I didn’t want to lose him. This made me not as open and available for him.

  Don’t get me wrong, I find femininity beautiful. Girls who dress up are definitely attractive. However, I have always been attracted to more alternative-looking women. This is partially why I was so attracted to Wolsey when we got together. He was very punk rock, and looked hardcore. It’s a look I have always been drawn to.

  Additionally, Wolsey picked up a new habit of reading romance novels. I found this bewildering. I have always liked romance stories, especially supernatural, science fiction or fantasy, but Wolsey has always dissed them. He reads voraciously, but the relationship focus of stories wasn’t his thing. His liking of romance was another nail in the coffin of my fears.

  Summer had hit, and Wolsey had obviously become more distracted. I realize now it was because his yearlong test was wrapping up. At the time, I was panicking that he was looking for a way out. I don’t know if it was a specific event that caused the more obvious shift in Wolsey, or if the year was just too long, but it was pretty nerve wracking on my side. The worst part was I didn’t know how to approach him about it. Wait, that is a lie, I think I knew how to approach him, but I didn’t want my fears to be revealed so I avoided talking about it.

  Eventually, one Sunday we had lain in bed together. I was running him a solo based roleplaying game, and we had just finished playing. His breathing had become very shallow, and he looked nervous. My hands went cold and this weird piercing anxiety hit me like a hammer. He had a very similar look on his face as when we had broken up for a few months at the age of 19.

  I squished my fear down because I knew he was bothered, and I couldn’t handle my partner being in obvious pain. I shoved all my emotion away, and muttered something along the lines of “Are you doing
OK?”

  My husband stopped and looked like he was going to freak out. I had never seen him so panicked before. That is when he said it, that he thought he was man, and that he was transgender.

  I honestly don’t think I even knew what to think for a short while. I wasn’t hurt, and I wasn’t angry. I was just mad at myself for not seeing it. It was there the whole time in every interaction, and every duty we split between us in our relationship. I came back to myself and realized he was panicking even more at my silence, and he started to gush that he wouldn’t transition if it bothered me. That he wanted me more than to be a man.

  Then I started to panic myself. Did this mean he wanted to leave me? Did he want either another guy or a woman? My low self-esteem kicked in, and that panic didn’t leave my thoughts for quite a while.

  Once I got that thought under semi-control I realized for a moment that I didn’t know how to calm him. I didn’t know what to say to make him stop worrying, and he was pretty close to crying. I didn’t even understand why he thought I wouldn’t want him as a man. I muttered something about if he needs to transition, then he needs to transition. After all, why would I give him advice differently than I would any of my other friends?

  It didn’t change how I felt about my spouse one bit. I loved him, and it didn’t matter what he looked like. I realized there might be growing pains, and I warned him about it. I might take a bit to really understand it sometimes.

  He was shaking like a tiny Chihuahua. He looked so vulnerable and I never wanted anyone to hurt him. I leaned over and grappled him, pulled him to me and hugged him. I love him so much, and I couldn’t even imagine my life without him. I did think it was weird he didn’t struggle. Normally there was a struggle when I wanted a hug. The panic I was holding back snuck out and I asked him if he was leaving me.

  He hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out why I would ask that. When he realized I was panicking, he started to reassure me. The panic faded for the time, and once again all I could do was think of him.

  At no point in time was I surprised. Once I looked back at him over the course of our life together, it all made sense. Even today I can’t understand how I missed that. He was still shaking, and I uttered everything I could to reassure him that I loved him.

  It never even dawned on me that we would be seen differently by the world. I was still married to Wolsey. It didn’t matter if he looked like a boy or a girl. This whole time I kept reassuring him, making sure he knew I was there. I decided it might be nice to ask him if he wanted to go clothes shopping. He seemed excited about it.

  I realized then what the whole femininity thing was for the prior year, and that he didn’t have the clothing he would need. I asked him about the dresses and he confirmed my thoughts. I should have known. It was so obvious.

  He seemed so surprised when I asked him to go clothes shopping, and I was surprised he couldn’t understand I wanted to do this for him. He was, and still is, everything to me. When I took his hand, and we got in the car, it was to start a new adventure.

  Wolsey’s Perspective Now

  Statistically, the odds were not in my favor. Most married transgender folks find their partners can’t live with the idea of being married to someone whose gender might not be what they thought it was.

  The horror stories abound. There was the podcast where I listened to a transgender woman discuss losing her wife, kids and her grandmother’s house because she came out. There was a transgender man I talked to online who managed to keep his kids, but his husband bailed on him leaving him the sole provider of multiple children, with rent due in days. These stories are pretty common for us.

  Although I didn’t have kids or a house, I did have a marriage that spanned decades to a man who was my best friend. I knew I didn’t want to lose him. In my life, without family of my own, my relationship to him was more important than anything else.

  I knew just bringing it up might be all it took to break my marriage, yet I found myself in our bedroom in the nicest apartment I’d ever lived in, about to broach the subject for the first time.

  It was early summer, and I’d just finished a one-year long project to make sure I was transgender. Without telling anyone, I had decided to dive into all things feminine with 100% effort and conviction. It was important to me, to make sure I wasn’t just a tomboy, or expressing my femininity in a nontraditional way.

  This had included make-up, clothing, movies and books. I had a wardrobe filled with clothing from great shops, actual high heels and $2,000 of the best make-up money could buy as the result of this project. I had played the gender role I had been assigned with 110% effort.

  It hadn’t made me feel feminine at all. Instead, I had felt like I was wearing a Halloween costume every day for a year. I picked out the clothing the way someone dresses a character for TV. I learned make-up the way I learned a new art form, like painting watercolors. It never once felt natural or like I belonged. It only made me feel worse, actually.

  It wasn’t all bad because I learned some great things. Romance novels are actually kind of cool. Especially paranormal ones that showed healthy relationships. Makeup is an incredible skill and fun to do. Not all romantic comedies are stupid. Legally Blonde is one of my favorite movies of all time, now. I’d have never learned to be okay with traditionally feminine things if I hadn’t tried.

  However, it wasn’t me. I had come to that conclusion, and knew that I could dress up all I wanted, and say and do all the right feminine things, but, for me, the quiet certainty that I was a man didn’t go away. In fact, during that year, the quiet voice that had whispered this to me for my entire life, had started screaming.

  I was sitting on the bed looking at my feet. Lucky, my husband, was sitting next to me. He was asking me if something was wrong, and I couldn’t get the words out. For me, that’s rare. I can talk to anyone about anything, 24 hours a day. However, I was rendered mute by the fear that just saying that I was transgender would destroy everything I had. It had done that to so many others.

  Finally, with his encouragement, I stuttered out that I was pretty sure I was transgender, and that I was a man, not a woman. I blurted it into the room, while staring at my feet. I didn’t look up. I didn’t breathe.

  The room was so quiet. The morning sun was bright across the bed, and the windows were open to let the breeze in. We sat in silence for only a few minutes, but for me it was an eternity.

  To fill the silence, I rushed to tell him that if he wasn’t okay with my being transgender, that I wouldn’t transition. I told him that my relationship to him was more important than being seen as a man by the world, that he was the most important thing to me.

  After a few minutes, he shook his head, and finally spoke, “Nope. If you need to transition, you need to transition. I’d tell that to anyone.”

  I remember asking, “But I don’t want to lose my relationship with you.” Then I finally looked over to his face. I was so worried I’d see disgust. Instead, he looked concerned. I could tell he was worried for me, but he wasn’t disgusted by me.

  He said back, “I can’t promise that there won’t be issues I have with it, but I love you and we’ll work it out.” He then reached over and pulled me into a hug.

  I’m not the kind of person that hugs, but that hug was what I needed so badly. I wanted to know that I’d never lose him, and that even if I was this unknown transgender man person, that he’d still be there with me.

  I was scared of what it meant to be transgender in this world. I had learned about it years before, thanks to the ever-helpful Internet. I’d talked to people, and listened to others. I knew the risks of violence to my person just for trying to transition.

  I also knew that thrusting my marriage across the line of heterosexual “normality” to obvious gay couple was an additional issue. There would be stigma, and the possible violence that would come with that. Not to mention, whether my husband would be okay being perceived as a gay man by everyone we met.

 
; I had so many questions and worries about what was to come, the biggest of which was if my husband and best friend would stay on this journey with me.

  We then talked about it more. It wasn’t a complete surprise to him that I felt this way. I might have been wrapped in a tiny feminine package, but my personality was anything but. He laughed at me, and said he should have seen it coming.

  Lucky was being the most comforting man on the planet. He reassured me over and over that he had no plans on leaving me for this. I could tell he was scared, too, about what it would all mean in the end.

  Then he asked me, “This isn’t the first step towards you leaving me, is it?”

  I was shocked. Here I was treating my being transgender as if I had cancer, or that I was some sort of odious thing I was asking him to deal with. It never occurred to me his biggest fear was that I would want to leave him. It was the only concern he had about the entire issue.

  I kept hugging him, and found myself reassuring him that nothing could be farther from the truth, that keeping our marriage, our relationship and our friendship together was the most important thing in the world to me.

  Lucky then asked if that was why a year ago I had suddenly gone ultra-feminine. He knew me so well. He knew that was as out-of-place for me as you could get. He laughed at me, and said it finally made sense. He was happy to shop for girly clothes for me, indulge my expensive make-up habit and watch romantic comedies, but it had all seemed so fake.

  Then, without missing a beat, he said, “Okay, come on. You’re going to need new clothes then.”

  It took me a few minutes before I caught on. He had not only accepted that I was transgender in that conversation, he had decided he had to help move things along. Without further ado, we were in the car and he was buying me clothes I felt more comfortable in.

  Statistically, the odds weren’t in my favor, but that day I might as well have won the lottery.