Numeric ID: 15
Date Received: 11 JUL 2000
Idea From: Seafox
Written By: Seafox
Email To: Seafox@mailandnews.com



"B-b-b-b-b-Bradley?"

*Mom!!!!!!*
"Uh, Hi mom. What are you doing here?"

"I drove in from Midland because I hadn't heard from you in a while and
Jim said you were sick when I called yesterday."

"Oh, thanks, Mom. I'm feeling better, but I'm not quite well yet. In
fact, I need to sit down."

As I sat down, I realized again what I was wearing. Mom looked me up and
down, still stunned.

"Dear, why are you dressed like that? Are you," she paused. "A
Transsexual?"

'Well, mom, I," I shut up all of a sudden. Did she just say what I
thought she said? How did my mother learn that term? She's a housewife
in Midland who doesn't read much and almost never watches TV.

"Mom, what did you just say?"

"Are you a Transsexual? Gender Dysphoric? Do you feel like a man trapped
in a woman's body? Do you have the feeling that you are somehow the
victim of a birth defect that has given you the wrong body?" She seemed
rather emotional about it. But something was truly not quite right...

Playing along, I responded, "Well, just for the sake of argument, what
if I am?"

She shook her head and sobbed in her rather deep alto voice, "Ohmigod,
ohmigod, somehow, some way, this is my fault. It's all my fault. Larry
is going to freak when he hears this." Larry is my dad.

"Mom, what is going on here!!!!"

She started crying, and it is not a pretty sight to see my mother cry.
Mom is a big woman, with broad shoulders. When she gets worked up, she
shakes. And her crying fits can go on for hours.

"Mom, get a grip. I'm still sick, and I don't have the energy to go
through one of your crying fits right now. And I'm starting to get
really annoyed by all of this. So either you tell me what is going on or
I'm going back to bed and locking my door."

She fought back the waves of tears as she tried to compose herself. I
started to move, but she held up one finger and motioned for me to wait.
She took a deep breath.

"Son," She paused at that word -- she was obviously working out the
logistics of seeing her adopted child dressed as a cute co-ed. "Being
trapped in the wrong body is a terrible thing to go through. I know how
you feel. If we can do anything to help, we will. There is a good clinic
in Galveston that," I didn't hear another word as I fainted dead away...

* * * * *

When I woke I was lying in bed. Mom was sitting next to me. I looked at
her for a long moment. It all fit. Her height, her square build, her big
hands, her strength.

"Oh shit."

She looked at me. I could see her face so differently now. "Bradley, are
you going to be okay?"

I propped myself up in the bed against Jim's headboard. "Make you a
deal. You tell your story first, then I'll tell mine. " She took a long,
slow breath and began.

"I never felt right with my body. All my life I spent playing with girl
stuff, doing things with my girl cousins, and for all intents and
purposes, being a girl. Dad, your grandfather, pretended not to notice. 
He was so busy with the oilfields and running the family company that he
could pretend it wasn't happening. This was all long before we lost
everything in the oil crash."

"Well, it got worse. As I grew, I made it clear that I didn't want to be
a boy. I would refuse to wear anything except for dresses, skirts, and
blouses, and Mother and I would get into long arguments. She hired a
private tutor so that no one at school would see me that way, and things
calmed down for a bit. Until Dad finally noticed."

"He took a week off to try and beat an ulcer. He couldn't help but
notice me wandering around, dressed in a very un-boy-like fashion. He
and mom got into a huge fight. Finally, he stopped yelling and called in
a shrink."

"Dr Penderson spent about 5 hours asking me a lot of questions, and then
asked me to wait in the room while he talked to my parents. He told them
that he was convinced that I was gender dysphoric, and that I would
never be happy living as a male in our society. He recommended a program
of hormones, phased in as I entered puberty, and then sex reassignment
surgery -- they called it a sex change back then -- no later than when I
was 15. This required a lot of under the table stuff, the good-ole-boy
network, and a lot of money to keep things quiet. He also told them that
from now on I was a girl, and that everyone should treat me as such,
including a name change, redecorating my room, and getting all legal
records fixed."

"Everything went off fairly flawlessly, and soon after my surgery I met
your dad. I told him all about it, but he didn't care, so we were
married. Dad even gave him a job at the family oil company. Then, we
adopted you and your sister and settled down to have a happy little
family. When the oil crash hit, the family company failed and your dad
lost his job. He took the job as a store manager at a shop in the mall,
and we've been struggling ever since."

She leaned back and took a deep breath. "So now you know. And somehow,
I've infected you with it too."

Uh oh. "Uh, mom, that is not exactly the way things are. Let me
explain..."