I have felt uncomfortable posting this story because I don't wish to disrespect or upset anyone who has been through gender reassignment or is part of the wonderful trans community that is growing and hopefully becoming more and more accepted by the bigoted society we live in. I am not trans. I'm a cis gendered woman. But I wrote this based partly on the story of an old friend who had FTM gender reassignment decades ago when it really was quite a struggle to be accepted. He, Buzz, loved the story and said it really resonated for him and although I realise that no two peoples journeys are ever the same, regardless of what connects them identity wise, I hope maybe it resonates for others too. I enjoy putting myself in someone else's shoes to try & understand what inhabiting another identity feels like and writing is a good way for me to do that ... The picture btw is me with a courgette stuck in my knickers...cos I just wanted to see what it might possibly feel like to have a penis 😂 yea, I'm sure nothing like that but fetishistically, I've always been intrigued...

Rebirth

Is this the moment I’ve been waiting what feels like a lifetime for? A lifetime indeed…a life and a person who, in perceived terms at least, are no more. My new life stretched out before me like the vast un-quantifyable ness of the sea, unfathomable, with shape and form but no detail, no colour as yet.
As I sit in the late summer twilight focusing avidly, almost meditatively on the smells of the city as they seep through the gap in my sash windows, propped up precariously with two self-help books, I can feel the shift from the post work shuffle to get home to the excited early evening pulsation and my confidence to walk out amongst my fellow man begins to grow. I have done this every day for the last four months, waiting till dusk to emerge like some kind of creature that lurks in the shadows of teenage horror/fantasy books…which to some perhaps I am. But this evening, rather than heading for the door as my cue to emerge seeps in, I find myself sat at the foot of my bed, my ‘going out’ clothes all ready and folded on the chair in front of me, waiting…and staring…staring down between my legs and eyeing my relatively new penis with what has become a standard (albeit very fleeting nowadays) timid curiosity.
The surgery itself took place in early Spring, march the 28th to be precise and although yes, to all intents and purposes I am fully healed in the physical sense – all the soreness and strange swellings, followed by lack of sensation, followed swiftly by lack of courage in my conviction that I’d made the right choice – have all but disappeared. My new penis, smaller than I’d wanted or anticipated, is beautiful, perhaps more symbolically than aesthetically but beautiful all the same and I am beyond merely grateful for all the support and encouragement I’ve had in this last few years, that I finally got to the point of stopping the deliberation over should I shouldn’t I and just got the ball rolling as it were.
But I have felt, in many ways, not vastly different to how I felt anyway, having been living as a man for 7 years prior. Did I expect to feel more…changed? Somewhere deep inside of me I think I did and I gather from my focus groups and one to one time with my therapist that this is not an unusual experience – post op expectations that I never really knew I had not quite matching up to the reality.

Acquiring a penis hasn’t as many would imagine made me ‘feel like a man’. I have always felt like a man, I just knew that physically I was not. Getting a penis has just rubber stamped it, made it official so to speak. What makes me feel like a man, is the raging hormonal fire that burns deep within that colours my every thought and action. The desire to do and be certain things that I don’t see in my sisters or mother but that on an instinctual level I relate to within my brother and father. I don’t, as many would anticipate have any inkling to change my lifelong, ingrained and fully congruous sexuality. I have always been attracted to (other) men and I don’t see any reason why I should start wanting to sleep with women now that I have physically changed my gender. I haven’t gone through major surgery so I can fit neatly into a box for the pleasure and comfort of Joe Public.
Now, I am deemed a Gay man as opposed to a straight woman, how interesting that by not changing my instinct in regards my sexuality I have altered my perceived sexuality by the masses. Is it this perceived shift in my sexuality that is making me feel so strangely uncomfortable with the imminence of my first romantic and potentially sexual rendez-vous with a man, as man this evening? Or is it simply that this particular strand of this adventure I embarked upon 7 years ago when I wore my first bust flattener, cropped my hair and went out as a man is ultimately one that will be so very defining, in terms of the acceptance I feel it will fill me with…to be accepted as a man, by a man who is attracted only to men is what I crave physically, emotionally, spiritually and practically.

The grand father clock in the corner of my tiny West End flat chimes 7pm... My date is at 8. Time to get up, have a shave and get ready to meet my first potential lover as a man that, hopefully can.