Part 21 of 29

Monday, September 9, 2013
Much food for thought in Psychology today. Only the second class and my head is spinning. The prof dug right in with personality types. The old Greeks decided there were four: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. Meyers-Briggs thinks there are sixteen. Other people throw other numbers into the pot. Kind of like a lottery but nobody is a clear winner.

So If I've got this right the choleric is goal oriented, logical, analytical. Melancholic is conservative, traditional and very social. Gee - sounds like my Dad at church! Sanguine is lively, optimistic, risk taking. Now who does that sound like in my life? Hint - she gets to read this journal. Finally there is phlegmatic, they like harmony, relationships and charity. That one's for my Mom.

So where do I fit in? In the middle, as always. I see parts of me in all four of those categories. Which the prof said is pretty much the norm.

Me, normal? Psychology is not an exact science, eh?

I took a personality test that the prof recommended and came out ENFJ, which means a teacher type. ENFJ stands for extraversion (E), intuition (N), feeling (F), and judging (J). Interesting, but not interesting enough to pay the nineteen bucks for a detailed report.

What was really interesting is that ENFJ is rather rare and is very rare among men. I guess that makes sense since I want to be a historian and historians usually end up teachers. Since I'm living my life as a woman, that part makes sense, too.
 

Friday, September 20
I haven't been writing much, too busy finding my way around the school and working out how Mary Ann and I will cope with going to different schools. I think we're starting to figure out how we can live separate lives and still be a couple. I guess that's something everybody has to learn sometime.

It took a bit of planning, but I got to have a professional visit with Audrey today at the school. Knowing Audrey outside her professional office might be a problem for some people, but I am comfortable with it. She does have some doubts, but we decided that if we set some limits we could continue. Actually, knowing Audrey as a whole person makes me very comfortable talking to her about intimate topics.

I told Audrey about the personality stuff I was learning in Psychology and she made a face. Her opinion was that the guys who wanted to reduce the human being to an alphabet soup of letters and diagnostic codes were, in Freud-speak, anal retentive. She also said we all knew what comes out of an anus, so just put the answers down on the test and think of better things.

It would be fun to take her to class sometime.

Then we got down to business and we talked about how Mary Ann and I were learning how not to be together all the time but still close. She pointed out we could do worse than look at Grandpa and Eve, they seem to have come up with a very healthy relationship.

Of course, getting engaged and publicly coming out as lesbians occupied much of our time. She's a very perceptive lady and we delved into those deep-down religious strictures that I grew up with. I have pretty much decided that my father's religion is not for me, but it isn't so easy to throw off eighteen years of indoctrination.

Audrey was interested in how I used the word indoctrination. After a few weeks of looking at life's hard questions in Psychology and Philosophy classes, I had realized that I had been indoctrinated in my father's religion. The dictionary defines the word as to teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.

And there's the rub: uncritically. I can't do that. All through high school I was wondering about the things I learned at the church, but wasn't ready to just abandon what I had known all my life. Meeting Mary Ann and her family accelerated that process; free inquiry is their watchword and once I started thinking logically the religion just didn't wash. When Mary Ann and I first made love the sky didn't fall and Satan failed to drag me off to hell. My father's dire predictions just didn't happen. Same with wanting to live as a girl, not even a good thunderstorm since I started living as a girl.

As Audrey pointed out, logic can only take you so far. The paternalistic bully of the old testament still lives deep in my brain, and can pop up at the most inopportune times. That's when I need to be honest with Mary Ann and the rest of the world. It may be as simple as remembering that love will eventually triumph over hate, but it isn't going to happen magically. I'm going to have doubts, that's the time to talk to Audrey or Grandpa and Eve or maybe even one of my professors.

Did I have any real doubts, she asked. That's when we got into if I wanted to live as a girl for just a little while or was it going to be for the rest of my life?

The rest of my life? The big bully in my head tossed a couple of lightning bolts and threw in a thundercloud for a few moments, then the weather cleared. I told her how Mary Ann and I had talked about that very subject. Her attitude is that she loved me and she was perfectly happy to live with me as Angel the Woman for the rest of our lives. She had even offered to help pay for the breast implants so we didn't have to fuss around with forms and glue all the time.

I didn't mention her caveat about keeping my male genitals. I don't think either one of us would be happy to give up traditional sex together. That would be permanent. Was I ready to make that decision after only a few months?

'Yes,' I answered firmly. I had been mulling it over for the last couple of weeks, ever since Mary Ann and I had first talked about it. The idea of having my own breasts was something that I longed for.

RLT Angel? I may consider Audrey ad friend but she is a shrink with her own ethics. No permanent changes until I've lived a year in the feminine role.

I knew that, but…

We went way over the allotted hour, but I was the last client on a Friday afternoon, so Audrey kept at it until we were both satisfied as to where I was going. But right now it just feels so darn slow!
 

Thursday, September 26
Adventure club? What was Mary Ann talking about?

"I'm going to join the Women's Adventure Club at school. Don't you want to go on an adventure with me, Angel?"

"Every day with you is an adventure, my love."

"I'm gonna barf!"

"Should I get a bag?"

"Angel Airlines?"

"Flying on a wing and a prayer, except that I don't pray much any more."

"But you still believe."

"Yeah, I still believe, just not what my father believes."

"Someday he'll come around. If his God is what they say it is then there's always the chance that love will overcome prejudice."

"I try to believe that, really I do, but we seem to have drifted from your adventure club."

"How do we end up doing that all the time? Don't answer that or we'll end up on another tangent."

"Which is a sine of your quick thinking."

"Angel!"

"Good thing I'm marrying only you. Having wife is monogamy. Having two wives would be bigotry. Having three wives would be trigonometry."

"Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!"

"You're cute when you groan. Ouch! OK. OK. Adventure club."

"Women's Adventure Club. They do cool stuff like horseback riding, tours, whitewater rafting, amusement parks, all kinds of stuff. They're an offshoot of the Adventure Club, but some of the girls got tired of the macho assholes who seemed to think it was an adventure to see how many girls they could screw during a trip."

"Sometimes I'm ashamed to have been born a man."

"But you've come over to the side of the Angels. Maybe your dad was prescient when he named you."

"I don't think he would agree."

"His loss, my gain."

"Anyway, it sounds interesting. I take it they have something coming up you're interested in."

Yeah. They're planning a campout over Columbus Day weekend and I think it would be fun to go with them."

"Camping? I never did much like camping, even as Angel the Boy."

"I take it you're thinking about church camp."

"I suppose I am."

"And it was heavy on the church and not so much on the camping?"

"We got a lot of 'look at the wonder God hath made.' I just wondered why getting mud all over me and slapping mosquitoes counted as something I should thank God for."

"I think the Other Guy came up with mosquitoes."

"I'd be glad to send every one of them to his place."

"He's welcome to them. You don't have to worry, though. All the skeeters will be dead by October."

"OK, I grant you no skeeters. How about the pup tents, rain, mud, cold, bears and wolves? And the outhouses. Don't forget the outhouses!"

"My, you are just so optimistic!"

"Like I said, I've been to church camp. Satan's sulphur reek had competition from the outhouses."

"Do you seriously think a group of college women would be sleeping in pup tents and shitting in outhouses?"

"What? Do they join the bears that shit in the woods?"

"Angel, they poop in the flush toilets and wash their hands thoroughly in warm, soapy water. And sleep in a very nice bunkhouse. This is the college retreat property, not the ROTC."

"And you call that camping?"

"We can use Grandpa's queen size air mattresses and sleep in luxury."

"Grandpa goes camping?"

"He did when he was younger, not so much any more but all the stuff is still in the garage."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, he's done just about everything else in the world."

"That's my Gramps. So, want to go camping with me?"

"With how many other people in the room with us? You do remember I would have a hard time maintaining my feminine persona in a nightgown."

"Aren't you glad those pretty little titties don't come off?"

"I'm not all that worried about my titties. But aren't you worried about all the other pretty little - and not so little - titties I'll be seeing?"

"I trust you."

"Thanks. The other question is: can you go three days without sex? You're too loud to do it quietly in a room full of other people."

"That could be a strain, but I can try. If I can't then we can go off in the woods by ourselves."

"That could be interesting. You really want to do this, don't you?"

"I do. We should. I asked, the showers are separate, as are the bathroom stalls. You should be able to make it without any problem."

"Unless seeing all those pretty titties causes me an untoward reaction."

"You have a gaff. You have several gaffs. Just don't make a gaffe when we're there."

"Do they have sewing machines there?
 

Friday, October 4
Philosophy again today. The prof talked about sexism in philosophy, a topic that made me a bit nervous considering my current lifestyle. Especially when I was asked to answer a question from the woman's point of view! I remembered Grandpa and his petard thing. I was well and truly hoisted and didn't know what to say.

I hadn't really realized just how sexist an atmosphere I had grown up in until I started seeing Mary Ann. Now that I am living as a woman I have the whole sexist culture thrown in my face with some regularity. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that women philosophers were marginalized and written out of the learned tomes of the field.

I think I may be in love with Marie de Gournay. Good thing she died 300 years ago or Mary Ann would be jealous. She had some pithy things to say in her letters to Descartes. Naturally the Big Boys who edit the major philosophy books have excluded her and all her kin.

She said things like: "Blessed are you, reader, if you do not belong to the sex of those who are deprived [a proper education] so that ignorance, slavery, and the capacity to play the fool are established as woman's only happiness." and "The vulgar man [who] lacks the intelligence required to recognize a blow delivered by a female hand [nonetheless] will always win the contest either because he has a beard or because he has a proud simulated ability."

I think I'm going to spring for a copy of her Leters to Descartes and see what else she has to say.

My father would probably want to burn the book because he still thinks The Bible has all you need to know, but since I'm getting it in electronic form, good luck to him!
 

Friday, October 11
Early session with Audrey so we can be gone on our adventure weekend as soon as I get done with Philosophy. Knowing the second session on women in philosophy was coming up shortly, I groused about the whole sexist mess.

She laughed at me. Really! She wished that every man had the guts to do what I'm doing for just a month and then maybe they would stop thinking with their minor appendage.

Yeah, she actually said 'minor appendage.' So I started laughing. I don't know too many men who would consider that appendage minor!

Naturally she asked the how does that feel? question and I had to think a bit before I answered. Does being pissed off at men in general qualify as self-loathing? After all I spent eighteen years as a man (well, boy) before admitting I felt more like a female. I was never that thrilled by jocks and macho types, but they never beat on me or gave me too much grief because I wasn't a football star. If anything I was pissed at my dad because he named me Angel. Now I kind of thank him because being Angel the girl makes me very comfortable with my name.

Has anyone figured out I'm trans, she asked.

I don't think so, or at least nobody has started screaming at me and calling me a pervert. Actually, being known as a lesbian has kind of thrown everybody off the scent of being trans. Deep cover, like in spy novels.

And this weekend? Mary Ann swears it will be perfectly safe, after all I made it through the communal dressing for the Labor Day parade, didn't I? So why am I nervous? Didn't I just write down how much better I feel as a girl and how much easier it has become not that long ago?

I'm glad I had the chance to talk to Audrey before leaving, I was still nervous but she had some good advice. Since I'm alive to write this late at night in the cabin, obviously I made it safely to the shores of the Sea of Femininity.

But tomorrow?