At Least I’ll Own a Dress…

So, where did I leave off? Oh, right at 4. I’ll restate the obvious, or perhaps not the obvious, but there I stood in the middle of the living room for all to see and I felt, I felt pretty. There I said it and it wouldn’t be the last time, but lately trying to “get to pretty” is not so easy, neither in mind, nor in deed. But I digress, so on to the rest of those plot points along my “graph” – Kindergarten, my mother sent me to a private one, kind of a Summerhill for 5 year olds, sans the cigarette smoking (that would come later). If you’re not familiar with A. S. Neil’s Summerhill, I’ve taken the liberty to rip this from their homepage; Imagine a school…Where kids have the freedom to be themselves…Where success is not defined by academic achievement, but by the child’s own definition of success…Where the whole school deals democratically with issues, with each individual having an equal right to be heard…Where you can play all day if you want to…And there is time and space to sit and dream…(you get the picture? Don’t you just love the rhetorical? That was rhetorical.)

There was one day in particular that comes to mind and I have an inkling that this, what I’m about to tell you, happened more than once. There in the middle of the room was a box, a large, rather tall cardboard box and open at the top. Inside were bunches and bunches of clothes, yes boy’s and girls things, grown-up stuff mostly and believe it, or not, but when I begin, just now, to relive that day, (it was a drizzly New England afternoon, Autumn I recall and the wondrous aroma of the wet Oak leaves matted like an extraordinarily colored quilt upon the ground wafted through the partially ajar windows of White Wing Kindergarten – Nashua, NH) my heart races at an incalculable pace, as I remember so very clearly how girlish I felt when my hands landed upon “that dress” buried somewhere among the contents of that box. I thought absolutely nothing of putting it on and dancing around and again receiving acceptance, not scorn, nor disapproval, but by the smiles and laughter coming from my classmates and teachers, I was anything but ashamed. Of course it was all in good fun and more than likely one of the first moments I became aware of my proclivity to entertain, even at the expense and or possibility of being ridiculed. But again, I remain committed to stating that I was in no way made to feel bad for my actions. Now you might likewise think that perhaps the other children joined in, in my game of “Dress-up”. But not really, not the way I had undertaken this opportunity to revel in total liberty at wearing what “belonged” to me, donning the familiar. Was my mother informed of my “theatrics”? Perhaps. But this I do not remember, but knowing me and my M.O., I probably told on myself, you see I’ve been doing that all my life, that is with the exception of my transsexualism. That one, that one thing would be the “my deep-dark secret”, the one I would hold onto for a very long time, even to the point of not admitting it to myself and that one would ultimately come close to killing me and that’s not hyperbole either.