My "transition" went so smoothly and work was still the same as before. No one gave me any "stick" about the changes and even my book signing went smoothly, albeit a little sparse in the sales department.

My neighbors accepted Cathy as easily as they had Keith and my housemate and best friend just kept on being who she has always been toward me. I have shopped everywhere with nary an incident of any kind, and been in the VA hospital as well as my local emergency room again with nary a comment from those attending. My local grocery mart store, has several employees who I worked with as a male, back when I was a store detective, and they all, without exception greet me with a cheery "Hi Cathy. How are you today?"

I don't understand all of this. Why didn't I have more trouble, as have so many have had, in transitioning? Even changing documents was no hassle. Was I THAT bad at being the guy I was? Granted, I didn't date much at all, but still... one would think that such a major change in my life would surely have elicited SOME kind of negative response?

Now I will say that, before I went full time, I DID lay meticulous groundwork, polling the people I worked with and even went so far as to write out a letter which I had distributed to everyone at the company, letting them know what I was about to do and eliciting their responses, saying that if anyone had questions, comments, whatever, that I was willing to sit down with them and try to help them understand things from my point of view. In each and every case, when dealing with changing identifications and documents, I have had the proper forms and letters ready for presentation so again, there has been no difficulty there. When I got my new Driver's license, I was presenting fully female, had all the right papers and they even marked the big "F" on the license without my asking them to do that. New pic? No problem.

I have read SO many things about people having major problems when they began their transition, and my heart goes out to them, but only from the standpoint of wondering WHY they had such awful things happen to them. I can honestly say that I do not cut a very good looking female figure. Certainly it's good enough that I can sort of fool myself and look in the mirror and say to myself..." Well that's not TOO bad. At least I don't think I'll frighten the horses and children." 5'7" and 200 pounds does not a trim, svelte female presentation project... and yet... No one EVER says anything to me, or within my earshot except what one would normally hear about any woman. In all of this, I have managed, or had the good fortune to have easily accepted by my friends with two exceptions, and most of my immediate relatives. One sister and one niece seem to think I'm some sort of sinful anomaly and don't want me around.

Hence my confusion. I apologize to anyone out there who might be reading this and experiencing the very sort of things I seem to be moaning about NOT experiencing, but it makes me wonder again. WHY am I not experiencing them? What makes me any different from the thousands of transwomen out there who get hassled or worse every day of their transition?

So WHY have I had so little trouble when so many others have had nothing BUT trouble? I live in a small city which I affectionately call "Redneck north." There are more bars than churches and one national drugstore sells more beer than any other store in their entire chain! I would think that it was inevitable that some drunk redneck would consider it his "duty" to fuck up the freak... but nada.

I mean, I am content with the seeming fact that folks around here just don't to give a ratsass what I look like or how I dress, don't get me wrong. I am grateful that I haven't had any kind of trouble with all of this transition stuff, but as I stated, it makes me wonder why.

Catherine Linda MIchel