I promised some more specific blog posts but I am feeling pretty blue right now. Relationships....enough said. So instead I am going to be vain and post a bunch of selfies I took in the car (Bettie) after a visit to the salon.
Yes, I used the beautify filter on camera, heck I just had a 45 minute electrolysis touch up session the same morning, cut me some slack.
I really liked the photos so dear constant reader I am sharing them with you. I know I know my benevolence knows no bounds.
I am wearing my pale pink suede jacket, hair was highlighted a little lighter than normal and trimmed. I snapped the photos while waiting to pick up my youngest daughters from school.
you can see the wrinkles in this one LOL
In my last post (featured in the T Central banner no less....I will endeavour not to let the fame go to my head....does it come with a tiara?) I talked about forgetting my past. I am still struggling relationship and career wise but not a day goes buy when I don't have a quiet moment to thank God, gods, the universe, Elvis that I was able to transition and that I am a woman now.
If you know in your heart it is transition or die, have faith, it is possible, for worse and better your life will never be the same. We few, we happy few, we live two lives in one lifetime.
Here are two fifties pop standards re-imagined from the Stubbs The Zombie video game soundtrack:
In a quiet moment at work I had the opportunity to jot down a list of topics I wanted to blog about, tolerance and intolerance, spring, hate, fashion and dating.
In the interests of quantity over quality I will address each topic separately over the next few posts or not depending on whether something far more interesting happens in my life.
In the last few weeks I have had the strangest feeling, I forgot that I am transsexual (was transsexual), that I used to be a guy (ugh shudder....I think I threw up a little in my mouth).
I am lucky that I pass, don't use the term "won the genetic lottery" if I really did I would have born female. Don't think for a minute I take this ability for granted.
the fifth Ramone....Bettie Ramone
No longer do I break into a cold sweat when entering a crowded room, meet a new person or go on a job interview or date....same thing really....am I right girls! Of course there was always that little voice in the back of my head reminding me to check the pitch of my voice, the strength of my hand shake.
That voice has not been completely quiet but I have realized in my day to day interaction with co-workers, friends and potential romantic partners I have forgotten that I used to be a guy, I am April, the woman they perceive me to be.
Plans are made to get together for brunch with just the girls, a date is going well and I happily imagine a potential future together...as if I was always female.
Of course this self realization comes at a price, as soon as I realize that I am seeing myself as who I am now and not who I was, reality comes crashing back around my ears.
I fear that the friends I have made would shun me, co-workers would whisper behind my back, I would no longer be April in their eyes. Even worse are relationships. Would they be horrified and feel lied to or cheated.
Make no mistake there are amazing people out there both cis men and women who are accepting and can look beyond a person's transsexual history.
I am stealth but I have too much history to hide my past forever from a potential partner. In addition I know that I could not have a meaningful long term relationship without the other person knowing everything there is about me.
Not dwelling on ones transsexual past and getting on with living ones life is a great thing, however I still feel the weight of my history. Perhaps as I move forward that burden will become lighter.
The other week I was invited to a murder mystery dinner. I was told that the mystery would be based on the Clue board game. I was Mrs. Peacock, the religious wife of a Republican senator who was running for President. Talk about type casting!
All I was told was that I needed a blue dress and pearls. I found a great deal on a pale blue dress with black lace trim at Winners. Even better than the price was the fact that it was a size six!
I had a great time but was somewhat disappointed that I wasn't the victim or the culprit, the murderess turned out to be that hussy Miss Scarlet.
Here is a great pop tune from Transvision vamp with just enough rockabilly attitude to grab my attention back in 1988, maybe it was the name of the band or perhaps it was lead singer Wendy James' sexy look.
Time for some humble bragging, as I think I have mentioned before customers at work have more than a few times asked if I am or more realistically were a model.
doing my best Russian super model selfie pose
To be asked if I am a model is flattering and really makes my day. Most of these welcome compliments come from older women so perhaps to them I don't look completely over the hill. To be serious for a moment I never dreamed that someone would ever say that about me. It was only a few years ago when I hated to look at myself in the mirror and that I feared that transition would be an impossibility, that I was too ugly too male. The other day I was feeling rather unattractive when one such customer approached me. She said, "you must be a model, you are so tall and thin"......followed by a pregnant pause....then she added "and pretty too". LOL, she had no idea how close she came to death at that moment. Oh well two out of three ain't bad. Later in the day a very well dressed and rather handsome man came in. He said that I looked like a Russian super model.
damn, I wish
For once I was at a loss for words (did I mention that he was really hot). A quick discussion of my racial/ethnic background followed. No, I told him I am English but perhaps there is a rouge Viking gene in there (you know from all the raping and pillaging) to account for blonde hair and blue eyes. Honestly I am often asked if I am Scandinavian, I usually joking reply that yes, I am pure Aryan. Later in the day I was speaking with my mother about the super model comment and she told me an interesting story. My parents emigrated from the UK to Canada when I was very young. Passage had been booked on the Queen Elizabeth but a strike meant that they sailed on the German liner Bremen. Not the one sunk in 1941 obviously but rather the post war Bremen, the flagship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd line (North German Lloyd). The Bremen was actually the former French troopship Pasteur that was refitted at great cost in 1957-1959 for sixty-five million DM.
On July 9, 1959, she began the Bremerhaven - Southampton - Cherbourg - New York route. A luxury ship she was considered one of the most beautiful passenger liners of her time.
OK sorry for the history detour, I can't resist, back to the story. My pink skin, blonde hair and blue eyes were apparently the subject of much on board appreciation. One German couple took a particular interest remarking that, "I was exactly what Hitler wanted". Yikes...shades of Boys from Brazil. That reminds me of the Nazi Lebensborn program to promote the breeding of pure Aryan children between SS men and racially pure European women.
cheesy 1961 movie about Lebensorn program
The most famous child of this program was Frida Lyngstad, the dark haired singer for ABBA.
end note: The Breman made its last New York run in 1971, after going through a series of owners the proud ship that was first launched in 1939 and took Canadian troops home after the war and French troops to Vietnam sank in the Indian Ocean in 1980 on its way to be broken for scrap in Taiwan. Perhaps a better fate....
Greetings cats and kittens, the weather continues to be siberian in its intensity but we soldier on.
work outfit, any colour you want as long as it is black, luckily black is both my favourite colour and the colour of my aura
I have been focusing more on my career job search than dating and although success in either promises happiness I know how deeply I want to be in a real relationship.
This is a quick post as I have two resumes to get out this evening.
Despite the weather, I have not experienced the crushing depression that had me in its grip since well before Christmas. But lets not count our chickens before they hatch, I am celebrating this small victory and hoping it will last.
Perhaps only Cassidy at Cassidy's Quest knows how awful the last few months have been for me and who helped me get through it.
In the spirit of celebrating small victories, happiness is a full gas tank
and a 1UZ-FE to turn all that yummy crushed dino juice into power and global warming. Local Petro Canada had run out of regular gasoline so I was able to fill up on high test at regular prices! woot woot!!!
Sometimes the best rockabilly is Italian rockabilly...
I recently returned to a dating site and so far I have had offers for casual sex, fake profiles (eighties era photos), Benin nationals (its besides Nigeria) and finally someone asking if I was an escort.
I don't know whether to be offended or flattered by the last question....
I was feeling very positive about a follow up interview with a software company in Toronto. Won't know anything till March or April. They must like me as this is my fourth visit!!!
driving back from interview on the 401 highway
It was interesting as only a few minutes into what turned into a two plus hour meeting, the president says how at ease and personable I am compared with my last visit. It was like "I had become more comfortable in my own skin". OMG I could have elaborated on that statement! Personally i think it was the red nail polish and matching lipstick....red is a power colour after all.
bathroom interview selfie, I know in this photo the suit is very Marlene Dietrich but I wore with a black skirt and pumps
In my defence on the prior visit I was defending a marketing analysis I had written on a very complex industry. Apparently they really liked what I wrote but I came off as a bit subdued. Yeah I was trying hard to get the job and was still a little worried about passing.
At this point on my journey passing has become less of a concern. I pass in my current job and no one there knows my history. As far as I know no customers have ever read me.
It is amazing to look back and realize that I have not worried about passing for a while, that I can meet new people in either in work or a potential romantic setting and forget that I was ever someone else. It is beginning to feel that who I am now is who I have always been. In a sense that has always been true but now it shows on the outside too and I am finally beginning to realize that.
I worked Valentine's day, spent the evening with my daughters then went home alone. I do want a relationship, I see friends around me finding happiness together and I long for that.
The winter drags on and the promise of spring seems impossibly far away. My vintage cars are in storage so I have no artistic outlet. I went to visit my Stutz the other day, to pay for the next few months of storage and make sure no mice had dared go near her. The goal is to debut the Blackhawk at next years Detroit Autorama....see you there cats and kittens.
Hugs,
April
Here is Dave Edmunds, Never Been in Love, I still have this one cassette
Like an idiot I said I would work today, driveway is shovelled (or one L, shoveled in American English) but Lexus is rear drive and even with snow tires will not get through unplowed neighbourhood streets to get to highway.
