Acidentally Gay
Page 17
I know a lot of spouses might have left rather than stay with someone who was supporting their parents, despite their parent’s history of drug and alcohol abuse. These were serious issues.
Yet for me? I feel like it wasn’t a big price to pay. I grew to love his parents because I could see who they were through Lucky’s eyes. Now that they are gone, I’m glad I was as close to them as I had been. They were an unexpected blessing that Lucky gave me when I married him.
What Lucky’s parents gave me was something I never had anywhere else. They accepted me and loved me unconditionally. Lucky’s father taught me what it meant to be a man and really was the one that helped me become who I am today.
That’s just how it works for Lucky. He just gives his all to everything he does. When it was taking care of his parents, he was all in. When I had a thyroid storm and was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease he dropped everything to make sure I was taken care of, too.
I suppose I shouldn’t find it surprising that my transitioning from female to male would be no big deal for him. He loves so deeply, something as ridiculous as gender just can’t stand in the way. Mostly I just go back to feeling like I won something with all of this. I don’t think I will ever stop feeling like I won the lottery.
Even if we get another 25 years together, it won’t be enough. I’ll greedily want more.
About the Authors:
Lucky Bradley (on the left)
Lucky grew up on the other side of the tracks. With the help of his husband he managed to pull himself out to become an auditor, accountant, a storyteller and the very last person you would think would be in a long-term marriage with a transgender man. Something he cherishes.
He has been interviewed by The Advocate and NY Mag, interviewed on several podcasts and published his first work in the Norwegian LGBTQ Queer Culture Journal MELK. He has been keeping a blog for five years on his experiences of learning about the LBGTQ experience as a spouse of a transgender man, and how his life has changed being in a same-sex marriage in the United States.
Wolsey Bradley (on the right)
Wolsey started life on his own in his mid-teens where he mostly worked out the intricacies of becoming a functional adult. He has had a career in nursing, then escaped to a career in accounting. He is an artist and a writer. He has also been a wife and found being a devoted husband much more to his taste.
Other Riverdale Avenue Books/Magnus Titles You Might Like
Burn the Binary:
Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer and Nonbinary
By Riki Wilchins
TRANS/Gressive:
How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights,
Feminism, the Media and Congress
By Riki Wilchins
Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender
By Riki Wilchins
Queer Theory, Gender Theory: And Instant Primer
By Riki Wilchins
Hiding in Plain Sight
By Zane Thimmesch-Gill
Finding Masculinity: Female to Male Transition in Adulthood
Edited by Alexander Walker and Emmett J.P. Lundberg
Outside the XY: Queer, Black and Brown Masculinity
Edited by Brooklyn Boihood
Queering Sexual Violence:
Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement
Edited by Jennifer Patterson