Acidentally Gay

by Lucky Bradley

  Can we take a moment to discuss this? If I had a dollar for every person out there that was completely shocked to find out I’m transgender and then told me they had been able to tell? I’d have a steady income.

  I’m not sure why people do this, but for some folks it’s so important to tell you they could always tell, that they weren’t fooled by you, as if this is some magic trick they’d figured out. It’s just so important for them to make sure you know you never looked your gender. That those biological things you can’t change? They’d noticed them right off. This is all despite being shocked so much by it, that their mouths fall open.

  There has never been a transgender person that has wanted to hear anything along those lines. It’s pretty rude.

  This was the beginning of the end of that job. It was a terrible job to begin with, and now I had a nosy woman who liked to play “I know a secret” about me to everyone without actually telling people I was transgender. It’s not keeping a secret when you wave some hidden knowledge around the office like it’s a prize.

  She’s not the only one that has done this to me. I’ve had “friends” do this, when I’m not even in the closet. I had this one “friend” do a giant song and dance about how she wouldn’t tell our acquaintances, instigating them to dig into my life to figure out what she was talking about, so she could then gossip all about it once they guessed.

  Nosy law office gal had something juicy on me. It was something I wasn’t even sure I wanted to keep as a secret. I just really needed a job.

  The office environment was pretty terrible too. We had a boss that had a history of literally screaming at people, and was probably one of the worst bosses I ever had. She once kept yelling about how she hated my face, and she liked me! I felt it was kind of a Lord of the Flies office dynamic. She never figured out I was transgender. She was just truly an awful boss.

  I started getting pinged on my Linkedin.com account. Folks at work were digging in my background. The problem was I had done some writing for a science, feminism and skeptical blog under my own name. My husband had also been referencing my transition on his YouTube Let’s Play channel. He had thousands of videos, and if you went back far enough, there were pictures of me pre-transition. My Facebook account was not secured and had a lot of pre-transition stuff, too. Both of ours did.

  My fear was that if my terrible boss, and the terrible lawyers, found out I was transgender, I was going to be fired. At that moment, I was one of their more competent people and I knew my crazy boss was angling me into a position to take over more accounts. I was pretty sure she was going to get rid of a large percentage of the folks there and leave a skeleton crew of the rest of us.

  I wasn’t sure that would be the case if she knew what I was. I had student loans and leftover school expenses. I simply could not afford to lose even the crappiest under-paid job that came my way. It took too long, as a transgender person, to get a new one.

  My husband offered to shut down his YouTube channel. He’d worked on it so much and I was devastated for him. For this weird witch hunt to hit him as well bothered me deeply.

  Even more, I felt very attacked. I didn’t know who I could trust at work. I’m a pretty resilient person, but it started to take its toll. I stayed in that position for nine months and every day I had no idea who was trustworthy or not. I never knew if I was going to be verbally, and even physically, attacked for being transgender.

  The bathrooms had male coworkers that checked my gender, and made me feel unsafe. I’m not one to shy away from a physical fight, but at work? At a law firm? I needed the job so much more than my dignity. After that first incident during the first couple weeks on the job when one of my coworkers aggressively gender checked me, I just tried to avoid bathrooms at work.

  My strategy was to literally not drink any beverages until after work. If I didn’t have to pee at work for eight hours, there’d be no reason to have to get into a conflict. It would be another day with pay.

  If I really needed to go, I’d drive to the Subway shop and buy $1.50 in cookies, and use their bathroom. It was worth it to get out of the toxic environment.

  All of this stress eventually took its toll. I’d been there nine months and I was trying to get the day off to see my doctor about refilling my testosterone script. My horrible boss freaked out and gave me a 20-minute rant on how asking for a day off was going on my permanent record.

  I told her the job wasn’t for me and took my stuff and left. I think she was genuinely shocked, because she actually liked me. I had been hired on full time, with a raise six months earlier.

  By this time, I had applied to my current job, at a government agency with protections for LGBTQ folks, where my husband worked. Everyone there knew I was trans and there were no issues. In fact, they went out of their way to make me feel comfortable.

  I felt the toll on not only myself, but on my husband, was too much. He was using Jello as my code name in the Accidentally Gay blog and had started a fresh YouTube Let’s Play channel from scratch. Only now, two years later, does he have a similar number of subscribers.

  I consider this mild harassment because I know it could have been so much worse. I have transgender friends that get let go from positions, harassed about bathroom usage and physically attacked.

  For me, this was just a bit of a harrowing social situation, but I was never truly worried about being beaten. I had a much rougher upbringing and didn’t see these guys as too dangerous. I just saw them as inconvenient assholes.

  I was also actually getting paid. Getting into the door of any job was so hard, I was willing to put up with it just to get a paycheck.

  Therefore, I felt the real victim was my husband. He didn’t sign on to have his entire online presence ripped apart by bigots. I kind of knew it was possible, but I always felt it was so unfair for him.

  He never begrudged me the extra protection of closing everything down. He offered without me asking. I think for Lucky, it was the first time he saw how awful it can be for transgender people. He was angry and frustrated on my behalf.

  It led to my quitting that job a month before I started the next one. Lucky preferred to be broke than have me work in that situation. I ended up agreeing.

  I don’t think that would be an issue now. We are in a better financial situation. I have been on testosterone long enough to have a beard and nobody questions my gender. However, it’s still something I keep in mind, when I consider job hunting.

  Chapter Nine:

  Do I Miss Her?

  A key to keeping your husband is getting him to miss you. That keeps a marriage fresh.

  —Tori Amos

  From the Accidentally Gay Blog: Do I miss who my husband used to be?

  Posted on August 2, 2015

  I got a question over on Tumblr. I always want people to ask any questions that come to mind, so here is the following:

  Anonymous said to Accidentally-Gay:

  Do you ever miss the person your husband use to be?

  I had to think about this for a few minutes. Of course, the first answer is no. Then I thought of the revised short answer of “it’s a complicated no.”

  I do have a longer answer, one that indicates why it’s a “no,” but there are sometimes weird jarring instances.

  I am more fortunate then a lot of people in my situation. Wolsey has always acted like Wolsey. When he presented as female, he was constantly told he needed to act like a lady. He was denigrated for acting like a guy and told he would never find someone that would love him. For our entire relationship, he has acted the same. What you saw in behavior was what he was. None of his behaviors have changed, except he is less upset and argues less. Living as yourself is definitely less stress inducing. He is the same person, just the package has changed.

  However, there are some weird instances that come up. Occasionally we will be doing something and Wolsey will do what he normally does, but I will get a weird feeling of déjà vu. It will almost be as if I have double visio
n, like a super-imposed image of his old self and his real self in front of me.

  Take for example this last weekend. We were out on a date overnight. During dinner, he reached over and took one of my maraschino cherries from my drink (DON’T JUDGE ME!),and ate it in his quirky manner.

  For a brief second, though, I saw his old identity in front of me doing it exactly the same way. He has done that move for decades with me, and most of it in his pre-transition body. It actually made me hesitate in our talk and I was briefly confused about who was in front of me.

  I explained what happened. He was really supportive and we both know this happens occasionally. It’s bound to happen since we were together for 21 years before his coming out in this form.

  Funny enough, sometimes I look at old pictures of him and it is jarring because seeing the female form in the picture doesn’t match with what is in my head. I guess we rewrite memories regularly and being with him for the last two years in his real body has rewritten a lot of what I remember.

  I guess that was a long-winded way of saying no, I don’t miss who he was, but there are weird instances when I see, smell or hear something from his past.

  I do suspect though that normally people in my position miss the old person. I think it is normal because it is the person you originally fell in love with. I do believe it becomes less so over time and your memory rewrites itself. Distance makes the dissonance less. That is a rougher spot to be in and I hope anyone in that position has all the support they need to get through it.

  Lucky’s Perspective Now:

  When Wolsey first told me that he was transitioning, he told me he understood if I couldn’t be with him. That morning, the serious set of his jaw and the fear in his eyes worried me. I couldn’t imagine my life without him and I told him so.

  Even with that, in the very beginning he wasn’t sure he wanted to do testosterone. I had assumed he just didn’t want to put his body through any more hormonal issues since he had almost died from Grave’s Disease (hyperthyroidism) only four years before and was just barely in remission. I now think he was holding off because of me and the fear that I couldn’t accept him.

  For the next couple months after he came out, he voiced these concerns often. To be honest, I hadn’t even considered it would be a real problem. I loved him and it didn’t matter what he looked like. He didn’t seem to believe me and I tried to convince him otherwise. It was something that could only be proven through time. Eventually though, almost four months after coming out, he started testosterone.

  As the testosterone started to affect him, he got more and more worried. I tried to explain it didn’t matter, but he was so sure that I would miss how he looked before.

  Don’t get me wrong. He was a beautiful woman with curves that would stop anyone who liked looking at the feminine form. However, it didn’t matter to me. Even when he threatened that he would be a pudgy guy with a beard that wouldn’t grow in right.

  I don’t think he understood. We had always been gamers, from the time the original Dungeons & Dragons came out, up until this day where we play any one of a dozen games.

  During that time, we had played games and he would sometimes play a male, sometimes a female, or sometimes someone in between. No matter who he played, I could always clearly see what they were supposed to look like. They could have been a tiny woman, a hulking man, or some non-human demon, and each time, even though I could clearly see what they were supposed to look like, I could feel him inside of them.

  There was always something about his personality in there and I would get a crush on his characters. I was attracted to his characters as much as him. Because of that, I knew no matter what he looked like in the flesh, I would still love him. On top of that, I would still be sexually attracted to him. There was never a point in time that I didn’t believe that. He was gorgeous no matter what his appearance.

  The constant theme at this time was Wolsey’s fear. We had both read the odds of couples staying together, but that didn’t matter to me. I knew I loved him, and it was forever. The only small fear I had was he would shift and decide I wasn’t what he wanted. Maybe he would decide he was straight and wanted to be with a woman or that I wasn’t in good enough physical shape. I tried to keep that to myself though.

  As the testosterone started to take effect, he began to change. The first thing was his voice. To be honest, it was damn funny. He would talk and out of the blue it would crack and he would stop, looking confused, almost scared at what came out of his mouth. It reminded me of puppies that would scare themselves when they barked.

  He was so worried and kept reassuring me that he would understand. I personally found his voice attractive. I think I especially found his new growing confidence even more attractive. I explained I found him attractive no matter what.

  Wolsey began to pass regularly in public and I was proud of him and the effort he put into this. Not necessarily that he “passed,” but rather that he was willing to go out there and put himself on the line. This meant his confidence kept growing and I just kept loving him.

  The next part was his muscle growth. I can say without a doubt that my love for him never wavered. I also experienced my first jealousy. I am a big guy at 6’2”, but I’m not overly muscular, even when working out steadily. Whereas he just has to reach down and pick up a can of food and he developed his muscle even larger. The funny part about this was he always had built a lot of muscle, even before the testosterone. I always wondered if that was a sign we should have noticed earlier.

  Wolsey’s growing facial hair was always my worry. I wasn’t worried I wasn’t going to love him, rather that it might cause some sort of dissonance to see a beard on him. We talked about it for quite a while and I let him know my worries. Fast forward to three years after transition and he can grow some decent facial hair, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

  The most recent step was his breast reduction/ removal surgery. I initially thought that this would be the hardest part for me. I always loved his breasts. When we first got together in our late teens/early 20s, he had the smallest chest, much like some sort of sylvan/elfin creature. As we got older, he inherited his family’s tendency to grow a cup size every decade, and by the time he was in his 30s, he had double D breasts. I can’t lie and say there wasn’t a part of me that was nervous.

  By the time he was healed, Wolsey’s chest looked a little painful but already was taking its new shape. He was flat to the body, and showing off his pectorals. He was gorgeous.

  Even though I knew I would find him handsome and attractive, that just reinforced how I felt. I think the joy on his face, when he looked at himself in the mirror erased any possible negative feelings about his surgery.

  Since then I think his fear has receded. He isn’t shy being around me naked and he isn’t really shy around anyone anymore. This was especially reassuring as he wasn’t shy before he started his transition.

  The funny thing about the transition is the repeated questions I get from different people. I get questions about my sexuality, about who is on top both literally, and figuratively. But the one I get the most is whether I miss who he used to be?

  The answer is no. I don’t miss him because I still have him. He sits with me every morning and lies beside me every night. What he was, is, and will be is right here.

  With that said however I should clarify some things. I sometimes catch myself referring to the pronoun “her” when something from our distant past comes up. It’s rare, only a handful of times in three years, but some memories are hard to overwrite. I assume it’s because it has been there so long in my memory that sometimes my brain just spits it out.

  I see pictures of him before and I still find that he was incredibly attractive, confident and just awesome looking. When I look closer though, the actual body he had back then seems more like a distant memory. More like pictures of an old girlfriend. Even when we talk about old times, I find myself more and more imagining how he looks now, as if my brain is in
deed rewriting memories.

  I still keep all of the pics of him from before, even the ones more adult in nature, and I find them attractive, but I don’t miss it. I think that it comes down to the eyes. His eyes have always been incredibly bright, intense and curious. I still see those eyes looking at me now. The ones that showed me love when he was 19 are the same ones that look at me now, just with even more mischief and affection.

  No, I don’t miss him because he is still here.

  Wolsey’s Perspective Now:

  When my husband signed on to my medical transition, I was elated. I still had reservations, though. I feared that when the testosterone reshaped my face, and lowered my voice, he would find me to be too masculine to love.

  This was a constant worry for me. Every time he said he loved me, every time he supported me, and every time he smiled, I would think “for now.” That worry dogged my every thought for the first couple years of my transition. It was like having a frenetic gerbil rattling around in my skull, always reminding me.

  These worries didn’t form in a vacuum. I know transgender people who have spouses that were initially OK with the transition. Then the social and cultural pressure got to them. Sometimes, it’s because the spouse didn’t really fully understand that the trans person meant really really and every single day. Some thought it was like cross dressing, where they’d do this weird sex thing with it, and be a “normal” spouse in public.

  Sometimes the spouses that leave really do feel like they could still love a transgender person, but the deeper into transition it goes, the more they realize they cannot reconcile their sexuality to being with someone that reads as the same gender as them.

  This was my worry. That Lucky would love me, and try his damnedest, but come up too straight to be with a man. I was worried that as my outer body evolved into a masculine look, he would find he was no longer physically attracted to me. I was worried he’d find he just couldn’t love a man.