It has been two years since Musetta’s story was first posted at BCTS. Now it’s time to see more of the story as Musetta originally wrote it. Musetta, born Marcus Meyers, had an indifferent childhood, a disastrous early adulthood, and a very fulfilling adulthood. This is her story as she wrote it. She had not originally intended it to be published; however, changed her mind later on. Several chapters were omitted from the original edition due to her involvement with an individual who was still living. That person is now deceased, and with his previously given permission, the missing chapters are now included.

This story follows The Narragansett Fork in the California Saga Series. Other than some minor corrections, nothing has been changed from the original chapters; however, there are three additional chapters at the end plus some comments by Dr. Fanny Essegian. If you have not read the story before, I hope you enjoy it this time. If you have read it, I hope you find the additional chapters enlightening. More of Musetta’s life is also revealed in The Redhead and the PM which is to be published soon.

A big ‘Thank You’ to Holly H. Hart for helping with the grammar and punctuation.

This work is copyrighted by the author and any publication or distribution without the written consent of the author is strictly prohibited. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to persons living or dead is coincidental.

Preface to the Revised Edition

It has been twenty-six years since Musetta Gigliotti O’Donnell passed away; however, the memories of her are as strong or stronger than they have ever been. What limited duties there were as executor of Musetta’s estate were passed on to me after the death of my parents, Dr. Josephine O’Donnell and Captain Michael O’Donnell, eleven years ago. My mother, Musetta, and I had long discussions prior to Musetta’s death about certain chapters and the events recorded in them. There were further discussions after Musetta’s death, including a discussion with the individual whose relationship with Musetta had been omitted from the first edition of Musetta’s story. That person gave his permission for the omitted information to be published after his death. Those chapters are now included.

Fanny (Frances) O’Donnell Essegian

Prologue

This has been a very sad day for me and yet it has been a wonderful day. My late husband’s funeral was this morning, and for the first time in the last 33 years his son and daughter-in-law have been in his presence. I can’t say that I blame them for not seeing him all these years, and actually they didn’t see him today as according to his wishes he was cremated. He wasn’t disfigured. He didn’t die in a horrible accident or anything like that. In fact for a man of 87, he was quite handsome even in death. The thing was his son had vowed never to see or speak to him again. His father had been a very cold, cruel, murderous man in those days. Three people died because of his misguided efforts. He tried to kill his daughter-in-law at least twice, and almost killed his son in the process.

The reason he was cremated was that he wanted his family, at least his children to come together in his presence so he could say how sorry he was for what he’d done and how thankful he was for what they had done for him. Because of the efforts of his son and others, my husband’s life sentence was commuted. We were married a month after he was released, and we had ten very wonderful years together. He was a wonderful father to my children, and made my life everything I could have wanted. I fell in love with Richard almost 27 years ago. He was one of the kindest, most gentle men I had ever known. The trouble was we were cellmates in Folsom Prison at the time.

I’ll bet that got your attention. I need to go back a lot further. You might say my life has been interesting. It was very painful at times, both physically and mentally. I tried to grow up once, and couldn’t do it. I grew up again, and the second time I was much better at it. Richard helped tremendously. Dr. Josephine O’Donnell was there when I needed her. Dr. Prentice Holman helped me twice. He helped Richard find out who he was, and he helped me become the person I always knew I was. I am fifty-seven years old now, and I am without a mate for the first time in quite a while. I’ve lost two husbands, but I have five wonderful step and adopted children. I am wealthier both monetarily and spiritually than I would have ever thought possible, and I found that I have another family that is welcoming me in ways I never thought possible. I have learned a lot about the O’Donnells, Beebes, Essegians and their friends over the last 27 years and without really knowing at the time that it was happening, I have been brought into the folds of their welcoming arms.

Chapter 1

It’s difficult trying to be someone you’re not. What’s even worse is trying and not knowing why you are trying. You just know that people are not happy with you, and no matter how hard you try, you don’t meet their expectations. Where do I start? I didn’t understand about ‘normal distribution’. Everything seemed based on reaching a certain level of expectation. The problem was I didn’t have that ‘a priori’ ability or knowledge to reach or exceed that level in many cases. Oh, I was intelligent enough. That was probably my only saving grace. The problem was I had a learning disability. I didn’t know how to learn. There had to be a logical progression. If I could establish a firm foundation about some concept, things would stay in my mind. If the matter was subjective, I couldn’t remember shit. It could be explained to me and 10 seconds later it was gone. There had to be a ‘hook’ and if that hook wasn’t there, it just didn’t stick. I have an extreme difficulty in memorizing anything verbal. I almost failed a class because I couldn’t memorize the Gettysburg Address. A person can introduce himself or herself to me, and literally 30 seconds later I couldn’t tell you their name if my life depended on it.

There were a lot of other problems too. For some reason I was expected to be an athlete. I don’t mean a great athlete; however, I found out early on that a boy’s worth was based on his abilities on the athletic field. One had to be able to run fast, kick the ball far, not strike out in eight out of ten at-bats, catch the ball every time it came your way, and then be able to throw it on a line to the correct place. It didn’t help either to be physically weak and undersized. It didn’t help either to have a name like Marcus. God, how could they come up with a name like that? Yeah, my name was Marcus Meyers. It certainly wouldn’t have been my choice for a name for a first born son.

I guess I didn’t explain that in the beginning, although you should have figured it out. My name on the birth certificate was Marcus Frederick Meyers. There was a little block with two squares. One was signified with an ‘M’ and one was signified with an ‘F’. Unfortunately, on my certificate the one with the ‘M’ was checked. That wasn’t an error, at least not physiologically speaking. It took a long time for me to figure out that there should have been two blocks. The M/F blocks were in a square labeled ‘Sex’. The problem was there should have been another block marked ‘Gender’. The ‘F’ square should have been checked there. Maybe if someone had been around to explain what the difference was I wouldn’t have gotten into all the trouble I did.

Dr. Holman told me I shouldn’t be afraid of people finding out about me. I had a problem and took care of it. If someone can’t accept me for who I am they are the ones with a problem. He told me to write my story down, to go back to my early years and review what had happened. Now that I understood things so much better, maybe I could get rid of some of my anger. Richie, I always called him Richie, kept all my letters, and I kept all of his. When I got out of prison and went back to school I became much more computer literate, and started writing down my story when I had time. I was able to buy an inexpensive computer, and that made things much easier. Back many years before, when my parents kicked me out of the house, I couldn’t afford a computer or access to the Internet. I didn’t know either that there was free access to computers at public libraries. When I went into that horrible death spiral, the people I knew didn’t tell me about these things either, and I became trapped in their horrid world. They supplied me with some of the hormones I needed, although not nearly enough, and once I could see and feel they were doing what I wanted, they had me hooked. I may have been intelligent, but I was so ignorant, so stupid. I could have paid a tenth of what they charged me for them.

I know. I’m rambling again. There’s so much on my mind and sometimes I have trouble organizing my thoughts and everything sort of tumbles out. So where did it start? I used to ask that question a lot. I used to wonder what I did wrong to make it so that I couldn’t do anything right. Why did I have these strange thoughts? Why were my parents so upset with me? Why was it when I had people that wanted to be friends with me that I would do something stupid and drive them away? I knew so many nice people. Why did I hurt my brothers and sisters?

The subconscious is a funny thing. Dr. Holman explained it to me, and everything began to fall in place. My conscious actions were being directed by the immediate affects of my environment. I could see and hear what people did and expected me to do, and trying to do what I thought I had to do created serious conflicts with my subconscious. My subconscious was processing all these inputs and sorting them according to my persona, my real self. There was a serious battle raging inside me. Much of what I tried to do was in direct conflict with what I really wanted to do. It took a long time to resolve those conflicts and it almost killed me.

When did I first feel the affects of these conflicts? It was probably very early. Every once in a while my subconscious would attempt to make itself known. We lived in a pretty safe neighborhood, and there were a few other boys and several girls my age. For some reason I was given pretty free rein and would wander several blocks from my house in every direction. I knew where the kids lived and would just show up. The girls would be playing with their friends, and it usually involved tea parties and dolls. I sort of enjoyed that, but sometimes they would chase me out, in a friendly way, saying that what they were doing was for girls, and I wasn’t a girl.

You have to remember I was a small boy trying to be a small boy. There weren’t any instruction books, so all I could do was try to emulate what the other boys did. The boys were definitely more of the exploratory type and would go to all sorts of places. It was rather fun; however, I learned early on that I was not able to do everything they did. I certainly tried but my physical limitations kept me from doing a lot of what they did. Somewhere along the way I developed rather severe acrophobia, a fear of heights. It would probably be more accurate to describe it as a fear of any exposure to bodily harm. It was just at that age most of the life threatening situations involved climbing trees, fences and other things. Going up wasn’t too hard, but once there, getting down was a different matter. I would freeze and several times had to be rescued by a nearby adult.

Some other interesting things were happening at this time. As I may have said earlier my parents never discussed sex. There were boys and there were girls, and boys did boys’ things and girls did girls’ thing and ne’er the twain shall meet. End of discussion. When were the first seeds planted? What should have told me that I should be concerned about something? I don’t remember what happened first. It may have been the OZ Book. I loved to read, although I could never remember details about what I read. One of the OZ stories is about a young boy, Tip, who has lived all his life with an old hag or witch. Towards the end of the story it is discovered that Tip is actually a fairy princess who was enchanted and hidden as a boy. When the enchantment was broken there is a lovely young fairy princess to behold. When I read that, it was like floodgates opening. There was a huge release of ‘I don’t know what’: adrenaline, I suppose. I was on fire. My face burned. Dr. Holman would explain that that was probably the first time my subconscious was really trying to make itself known. There was a later episode that I remember very clearly. There was a boy who was a pretty good friend, but he was around for only about a year when his parents moved. About a year later there was a new girl in another class who could have been the boy’s fraternal twin. That huge flush hit me again. Had my friend been turned into a girl? I was too afraid to ever approach her and by the next school year she too was gone.

It bothered me a lot that the boys would sometimes do things that weren’t really right and then brag about it. I couldn’t understand what was good about this. I guess it was testosterone beginning to rear its ugly head and I didn’t seem to have a whole lot of it.

There was this whole dominance thing. Boys were supposed to fight. It didn’t matter about what. I can remember one kid who lived down the street. His name escapes me for the moment. I think it might have been Arthur Friedman. Anyway, he was pretty cool and his sister and my sister were friends. He had a great comic book collection, and I could read them for hours. I’m sure they were destroyed somewhere along the way. I’ve seen some of them on the Antiques Road Show and they are worth a small fortune now. Anyway, Art and I were playing in my back yard and we had a disagreement about something. The next thing I know we are throwing punches. No, that certainly wasn’t it. Arms were flailing, at least from my end. I think some of the other kids were making a big thing about it and our parents came out of the house to see what was wrong. Neither his father nor my father did any thing but cheer us on. They were getting off on it. I wasn’t doing very well defending myself and eventually a fist got through and contacted my nose which immediately started spouting blood. I used to have a lot of nosebleeds. I burst into tears and quit any pretense of fighting. My father wouldn’t defend me, basically calling me a sissy for stopping the fight and crying. I was a sissy for not being able to fight, and yet he would never take the time to teach me the art of self defense. This was stuff I was apparently supposed to know.

It was during this time I became the neighborhood punching bag. It didn’t matter who was around, I became a subject of physical domination. Kids would actually come around to our house to physically dominate me. The brother of one of my sister’s best friends took pleasure in coming around and taunting me, frequently to the point of tears. His approach and that of many others was to physically overpower me to the point of total helplessness before leaving me in tears. I couldn’t do anything about it. Of course this would evolve in my bullying my younger brothers and sisters. I was becoming a real shithead to them.

The humiliation I suffered at school was horrible. There were several self appointed leaders and it seemed they were always the ones that chose up sides. In fourth, fifth and sixth grades there were only two classes in each grade. Many of the game activities were shared by the two classes. When the teams were chosen I was always the last chosen. That is, until one of the few true friends I had made a sincere effort to stop the humiliation. My athletic abilities were still at the lower end of the scale, but he started picking me second or third. I don’t know if he ever knew it, but he certainly helped my self esteem. I lost track of him when I went underground. I still think about him and if I ever see him again I am going to give him a big kiss, if he can handle it.

There were a lot of other environmental problems as well. My parents were grossly homophobic. It was never discussed, but there were always the innuendos. Other things were never discussed either, such as sex and sexuality. They also used to take us to Sunday school, but would never attend church themselves. I can remember the Sunday school teacher trying to make us memorize the Psalms, or at least the ones they thought were important. You know, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ and all that stuff. I just couldn’t buy it, this God thing. I think very early on I found out about the difference between myth and reality. I was devastated when a neighbor’s kid revealed that there was no Santa Claus. We were playing at their house when I mentioned they didn’t have a chimney and how was Santa going to get their presents to them. “There is no Santa Claus you dummy. Your mom and dad bring the presents.” The clarity of the coalescing thoughts I had was amazing. The tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, and deity based religions were all myths. It was all a hoax perpetuated by some well meaning and some not so well-meaning individuals and groups. The vividness of the whole concept was amazing.

Unfortunately, being eloquent or articulate has never been my strength, and I would retreat into my shell whenever challenged by some proselytizer. It would be many years later when I would finally met some people who understood my frustration of not being able to articulate what I felt so strongly about.

I can remember girls starting to change during sixth grade. Many of the first changes were enhanced by padding in appropriate places. I do remember a friend asking me if I ever wanted to ‘fuck’ a girl, and I said I didn’t think so. His return comment was well you can’t have any children if you don’t. Well, I eventually did fuck a girl, actually quite a few; however, I only made love to one girl, and she made love to me. She was my first, and it was a wonderful experience. She was so sweet and understanding.

Junior high school started the downhill slide. It was slow but a definite decline. Academically, I had skated through elementary school. Other than the fact my handwriting was shitty, there weren’t many problems. The trouble was I believed my own press. I didn’t know shit about how to study and all of a sudden I found out I didn’t really know much about anything. I had been isolated from the real world and didn’t know it. Not only that, I didn’t know how to read. Seriously! I could read for enjoyment and entertainment, but ask me details about the story later and I couldn’t tell you who the characters were, what the point of the plot was and any thing about the details. It was the same problem with academic reading. It came in through the eyes, got chewed up and spit out nothing was retained except a few trivialities. Some of those I remember to this day, forty-five years later. How could I go from being a good, not great, student to just an average student and in some cases a much worse than average student?

Puberty hit me late. There wasn’t even the least hint of it before I was 16. Still, I found the developing female body to be a beautiful thing. Did I want to fuck them, did I want to make love to them or was my attraction something else? I think those friends I had and the male banter encouraged the sexual direction of my thinking. I think my sexual attraction came from several directions. I looked at the male schoolmates around me and I never thought that I wished I was any of them. I admired what some of them did on the field and it was easy to get caught up in the fervor; however, I never wanted to be any of them.

Finally the testosterone began to kick in and my sexual fantasies began to appear. Still, the thing that I wanted more than anything else was the companionship of a girl. I wanted to be able to cuddle. I wanted the warmth. My shyness with women was devastating. I know now that there were several girls who wanted me to ask them out and what was really a shame was that I dreamed about going with one of them. I was just so inept. Besides, I didn’t drive, and was afraid to learn. Any chance I had with them slipped away due to my inaction.

The bigotry I had learned was also popping up at the most inopportune times. I said things that had more or less been programmed into my persona. I said anti-Semitic things in a group because I was taught it was funny. Only it wasn’t, especially to the Jewish people who were there and one girl that I really liked who happened to be Jewish. I wanted to die.

Then there was the other problem. I was about five foot eight, maybe weighed 120 pounds soaking wet and I had a bubble butt and really had an androgynous appearance. I had narrow shoulders and a small ribcage. There were two guys, Ken Frazier and Ron Everest. Frazier I think was voted best athlete my senior year in high school. He and Everest were always together. It started my sophomore year. If junior high was bad, senior high was worse. It didn’t matter where I was, they always seemed to be around and I was always greeted the same way: “Nice ass, Marcia.” “Hey, bubble butt.” “You sure are looking nice, Marcia.”

I wasn’t the only one who incurred their stupid harassment. I had a male friend who had the misfortune to have been born with a significant heart defect. He was a bit overweight and had a pale pink complexion. They went out of their way to poke fun at him. It didn’t matter where he was or who was present they always called him ‘Pinkie’. I’ll have to admit he was a good sport about it. Unfortunately, his heart gave out a few years later. I carried a deep hatred for those two for many years and often thought that I was probably close to pulling a ‘Columbine’ on them. I think I really would have enjoyed it. Fortunately for me and a lot of other people, they were killed attempting to kidnap the daughter of a dear friend. One of them drowned and the other was literally torn apart by a high powered sniper’s rifle. I wish I had been able to pull the trigger. That’s all past now, but it’s good to get it off my shoulders. Dr. Holman says I should talk about it. Part of my problem was that I let all this hatred build up in me and I just didn’t know what to do about it. I’m rambling again, I know.

I need to talk a bit more about expectations. I never understood why I couldn’t do well in school when I was supposed to be so damned smart. I really tried; however, if I couldn’t make the right connections, nothing stuck. What I didn’t understand was that there was this interfamilial rivalry between my father and his brother. I think it was a one way rivalry. My father’s family was a multigenerational family of doctors. My great, great grandfather was a doctor in Munich and they moved to this country when my grandfather was a young boy. He became a doctor and it was a foregone conclusion that both my uncle, the older of the two brothers, and my father would become doctors. My first cousin who was a year older than I made it known very early that he was going to be a doctor.

This was something that I didn’t know about for a long time; however, the fact that my father did not want to become a doctor caused some serious problems. From what I can determine, there was a fierce rivalry between my father and his brother. My uncle was valedictorian for his high school class and although my father did very well in school he wasn’t the very best. All I can remember was that I was always being compared to my cousin academically and every time I saw him, I was reminded about how much better he was doing academically than I was. Don’t get me wrong, I liked my cousin and looked forward to seeing him and his brothers, sisters and my aunt and uncle. Still, I think this rivalry rubbed off on me and there were times I became very envious of them and what they had.

My father had an MBA from a prestigious California university and worked for many years for a major accounting firm. He eventually struck out on his own and created a small firm that did very well. The firm is still family owned. The only trouble was, in spite of some math abilities, I had no desire to be an accountant or to do anything else associated with management. I basically had no desire to do anything.

After graduating from high school, the only thing I could think of doing was to continue going to school at a local two-year college. Maybe I could find something. Besides, this school was known for its population of beautiful young women. It was then that several events happened that precipitated the direction I was to follow for the rest of my life. I did okay my first two semesters and actually managed to maintain a B average; however, it was at this same time my sexuality or at least my confusion about it started to really push to the surface. I was in the library researching for a paper on human sexuality for a ‘Health and Marriage’ class, and came across a book called ‘Second Serve’ by Dr. Renee Richards. I had heard of her and took the book back to my table. I read it in two hours, and I remembered most of it. Then I found Jan Morris’ book ‘Conundrum’. Over the weeks and months I found a number of other books about the same subject: women trapped in men’s bodies. I was hooked, and it all came boiling to the surface. Yes I wanted to be with women! I wanted to be with them because I envied them, I wanted to be them. There was a girl inside me screaming to get out. She had been trying to tell me that for years and I just didn’t understand it. I wasn’t a boy trying to be a girl. I was a girl trying to be a girl and I was in the wrong package.

The earliest part of Musetta’s tale was written when she was in her 30’s. She continued to write in her computer journal for the rest of her life. In the next few chapters she will discuss her mental transition and her first steps toward a physical transition. Some of what she discusses may be disturbing; however, she does not go too deep, detail wise into what she experienced. She writes about her failings and bad decisions. She discusses how she was manipulated. It was an interesting, but not too pleasant a journey; at least, not for a while.