I’ve tried very hard to write this before but it was far too painful. Just so you know, I am going to post this and go to bed, no drama, so please, nobody worries, OK? Zoe Taylor’s, “Boys Don’t Cry” inspired this. It is only a vignette, this time, I intend to publish this irregularly until it is complete and then to publish it publicly.
This story is absolutely true. There is not one iota of embellishment in it.
This is not for the faint of heart or those who are easily triggered. You are warned.
She’d been sitting quietly with the family around the puffing wood stove. The rest of the rooms in the un-insulated 1860’s shack were chilled to the point that water in a glass would sometimes freeze at night, but this room was quite pleasantly warm, and in fact so warm that she’d actually lain on the worn, bare unfinished wooden floor in front of the stove to get out of the heat for a while.
The old house on rural farm land in the Willamette Valley, Ladd Hill, Oregon had no inside plumbing save one cold water faucet that ran into a sink that drained through the wall and out to the grassy area at the side of the crude wood structure. It had been built of pine poles with the bark still on them, and sided with still barked, wood “half rounds” from some mill. The “half rounds” weren’t really half a log but the rounded section on the edge of a log that the saw cut off before they began to cut dimensional lumber. There was an outhouse in the back yard for sanitary needs, and once a week baths were given in a washtub in the primitive kitchen; the water heated on the wood cook stove.
Lying there, she’d looked up at the clouds of cigarette smoke that hung stratified at different levels in the room. It looked so surreal, and in the very early 50’s no one had any idea that the smoke could be harmful to anyone.
Cooled somewhat, she got up and sat back down in the chair next to Sis. The conversation drifted from how much the over fired wood stove was shaking, to how much easier it was to use the tractor her brothers had purchased to run the huge buzz saw to cut the fire wood instead the two man cross cut saw, and then on to how the boys wanted to rig the horse plow to the tractor so they would not have to use the horse to pull it.
Her illiterate Amish step father was telling her big brothers that the horse was the better way to plow; pointedly letting them know it was how men folk did it. To her, he was really stupid because he’d angrily told her that she was a boy and not a girl like mommy and sis. Her stepfather had been raised in an extremely abusive house hold near Lancaster, PA. So he knew all about living simple and how children were seen, but not heard.
At the time she did not know that he’d soon beat her half to death again, this time telling her, you will act like a boy or I will kill you. He’d repeat the same speech several times in the coming years every time she let her true nature out too much, it would happen again. Most other nights of the week, he’d look her up as soon as he got home from work and start yelling at her for not getting some chore done the way he wanted it, then she’d hear the slap of his belt as he took it off. She’d stand there quaking; knowing he would beat her mercilessly despite her most impassioned pleas to not hurt her. Then, when he’d finish, rather than let her weep until she could stop, he’d angrily tell her, “God damn you, stop crying or I’ll give you a reason to cry, you little son of a bitch”. So, she’d sniff, and try to stop shuddering, all the while he looked at her. “God damn you little fucking sissy, pull that lip in you little shit”.
Eventually, he’d leave her alone if she was quiet enough and then she could sneak off to her bed to hide. She’d quietly begin to sob again, being oh so careful so that he could not hear. Once she’d gotten too loud and he pulled her out of bed to beat her again. After that, she worked very hard to conceal her emotions; something very hard for a 5 year old.
She was extremely afraid of him because the first time she met him, it was back in San Diego. She’d been playing in her room and suddenly she could hear this new man that she’d never seen before and mommy arguing, “But Cliff, Gwen is just a baby, don’t hurt her.”
“God damn it Lucille, Gwen is a boy and I am gonna fix that long hair right now”!
They fought back and forth for quite a while and then mom starting crying and screaming, really frightening her.
He’d stomped into the room, grabbed her by the arm, and tore off her little dress, leaving only her panties. His rough handling, loud cursing and threats made little Gwen begin to quake in fear. He got these hand operated clippers, which were dull and began to cut her hair off so that it was very uneven and almost scalp length. The clippers painfully pulled, making her scream in pain. So, he’d alternately hit her with his open hand and then cut some more hair. When it was done, she was nearly bald, and so shaken that mom took her into the bath room to wash off the hair, put a fresh diaper on her and put her to bed with a bottle.
Gwen sat there looking around the room at her three big brothers and Cliff, her stepfather. ‘I’m not like them. They are so mean to me.’
Then she looked at her step sister and mom. ‘No, I want to be like them. I hate the mean ones.
With that, she got up and went into Gloria Jean’s room. Seeing her skirt on the back of a chair, she put it on. It was so long that she had to pull the waist band up under her arms. Then, she walked back into the front room with the family and sat down by her mom. Now she’d made herself more like the girls, not the men. She hated the men. They were always so mean.
It was really quiet when she sat down by mommy.
“Mom, Gwen has my skirt on”. Gloria shouted in indignation.
“Gwen, go take Gloria’s skirt off right now”. Mom said.
Gwen’s step father just had to get into the act too. “God damn you little shit, what the fuck are you doing? You want to be a girl”? He shouted.
Still not getting it, Gwen said, “Yes, I want to be like mommy and Gloria”.
“OK, God Damn you, I will make you a girl.” Confused, Gwen looked at him innocently.
Even as young as she was, Gwen knew that he was mad and was going to hurt her really badly this time. He grabbed one of his sweat shirts and put it on her after Gloria had taken her skirt back. Then he began to taunt her; making fun of her, ridiculing her. Gwen began to cry; mom remaining silent. Everyone else in the family was silent too because none of them wanted to be his next target.
“God damn you, you little sissy, shut the fuck up or I’ll give you a reason to cry!”
She eventually stopped crying, and it terrified her to be sniffing deeply once in a while. She was unable to control that.
To this day, it is one of the ways she knows that she is upset. She’s so adept at hiding her feelings, even from herself, that she’d never know it were it not for the uncontrollable sigh that escapes then. It is very hard to dig around in her own head, find the feelings and console herself. No one else is there.
Around 1959, the family moved from Ladd Hill into Portland because her stepfather had a double hernia from straining too much while using a horse drawn earth scoop to dig out the hole for the foundation of their new house.
The previous one had burned down several months ago. The cause was an old belt drive refrigerator whose belt had started squeaking and to stop that, Cliff the stepfather, had oiled it. Later the oil ignited and the flames rapidly spread to the house, and the wood with pine pitch all over it went up like a torch. The house was a small pile of ash in less than 5 minutes.
She had been the last one to escape it, and probably only survived because she was too short to reach the superheated layer of smoke above her head. When she did awaken, it was dark, the lights were off, it was hot and she could hear both the roar of the fire and indistinct hysterical shouting. Becoming frightened herself, little Gwen screamed for Mommy several times before anyone heard her. No one could find her, not believing that she could still be in the house. Finally, Mommy came up on the porch, close to the raging inferno, and coached Gwen to the front door. At first she went to the wrong side of the door and got pinned to the wall when Mommy opened it, but in a moment, she could feel Mommy’s hand reach around the door and grab her tiny arm.
Mommy rushed her off the Porch and as they reached the ground, the porch and the rest of the primitive structure collapsed literally at their heels. Mommy quickly took her out to their 1947 Chevrolet Sedan and put her in, admonishing her firmly to remain in the car.
A few minutes after the house was just a shallow pile of ash, the rural fire department arrived. Far too late to do any good, they did not even take hoses off their trucks.
As She stood on the back seat looking out the back window of the car, watching her home burn to the ground, little Gwen felt really sad, and missed the days in her old home somewhere else. As she grew, she’d find out that her old home had been in San Diego, California, where she was born. She missed the warm sunny days, and the soft, pretty dresses that Mommy used to dress her in until the mean man came into her life.
After that, he angrily cut her pretty hair, took away her lovely dresses, called her a boy, and beat her if she cried. What was happening lay outside the understanding of a 5 year old.
Life after that was joyless and sober. One thing was for certain. Almost every night as he drove up the ½ mile long driveway, she knew that a beating was coming. Stepfather was raised in an Amish family, and was so severely beaten by his father, that one night he ran away to his grandfather’s home. From comments she heard from him from him in subsequent years revealed that his grandfather was nearly as bad as his father.
Stepfather was born in 1913. In WWII he served as the driver of an amphibious landing craft in the South Pacific. Somehow, he did not go into the Navy until near the end of WWII.
I was born in March of 1947 and met him some time in the late fall of 1949. That is when he cut my hair and took my nice clothing. He wanted to make me a man, and in actuality it never worked very well. I remained very small through my High School Years, not weighing over 100lbs and quite short until I was in my Senior Year. He tried to make me a Man, but it just was not there.
With the constant beatings and berating by my stepfather, I simply gave up in school; knowing that if I made D’s and a couple of C’s, I could squeeze by. There was no concentrating on homework with all the tension and the oppressive atmosphere. I graduated 3rd from the bottom of my class with a 1.95 GPA. You could say I was shat out by the American educational system; ignored, without value, to be gotten out of the way. I would not understand until years later, that this injustice would fill me with sufficient rage to help me to succeed in spite of them. For the rest of my life, it would always be a subtle fight against “them”.
Around 1961 I was having a lot of burning in my eyes and begged my Mom to take me to the Doctor. I simply did not understand the financial pressure she was under and argued with her. She threw a beer bottle at me, hitting me in the right eye. We were both out of control emotionally, and I ran out the door to leave home. My memory of the incident is foggy, and somehow she ran over my bike to keep me from leaving. Head strong, I left anyhow and went down to a friend’s house to spend the night.
The next day, I appealed to the school counselor for help and he called the police and child welfare people, who placed me in a temporary juvenile detention home. The girls were housed in the upper floor of an old house, and the boys were in a long low structure that had been a chicken barn. It did not smell of chickens but the coarse screens were still over the windows, and glass had been placed inside.
I don’t remember a lot of detail about the days I spent there. At night, I learned that there are things that are more painful and degrading than being beaten half to death. I only remember the pain and blood next morning. The rest is concealed behind a veil of horror.
When the time came for the counselors and my mother to meet, she was so angry that she completely cowed them. I was given an ultimatum to get in the car, and since the counselors were silent, I did it. For the next two years, I was grounded and allowed to only go to school, come home and be in my room, only coming out for meals. There were no friends, phone calls or outside activities. I learned that the only way to survive was to be absolutely compliant, no matter what I thought. The time spent reading and day dreaming was isolating but not painful. I developed Passive Aggressive personality traits that I fight to this day.
In looking back, I must have “forgotten” about wanting to be a girl in the active sense very soon after that beating in the family room. I must have been around 5 or 6. Oh, when I secretly played games and daydreamed, “Gwen” was very much there deeply hidden in my heart. I have often wondered what it would have been like with a family where the siblings did not hate each other, where Father loved me and where Mother was not distant.
In looking back, Mother suffered unspeakable abuse by her Father. Her abuse was made worse because he was a lay pastor at church, but would go out and get drunk on Friday night. I do not know the exact nature of her abuse, but from hearing her occasional comments, one can only imagine. My stepfather did also at the hands of a stern Amish family near Lancaster, PA. Years after he grew up, he tried to have an Amish farm with us. He did not attend church, and was violent, especially toward me. So, much of what he taught lacked any credibility with me or them. My 6 siblings and I all tried to understand why he singled me out.
He beat and abused me nearly every night from the time I was 4 until around 15 when he came after me, and I picked up the hatchet to defend myself. He of course knowing how to fight took it from me and got ready to beat me. “You will have to sleep sometime”, I told him. It was the first time I ever stood up to him and that seemed to shock him. He did not beat me that night nor after.
"Brown"
This is a true story, but does not include violence and trauma
So, by the time I was in my late adolescence, I had somehow submerged Gwen the girl, just to survive and think that I completely forgot about her for the next 20 or so years.
I finally did graduate High School in 1965, and was promptly thrown out of my parents’ home. It was fortunate that I was also a volunteer fire fighter, and was allowed to live at the Fire Department until I had to go into the Army during Vietnam. (66-69). In the meantime, I met a girl who I soon found out was being verbally abused by her Father, physically abused by her Mother and molested by her two step brothers. She was very nice and we hit it off, often commiserating about our experiences growing up. By March of 66, I knew I was going into the Army because of the draft, and could not face leaving her in the hell she was in, so with special permission of a Judge we married.
After the 16 weeks of training, I was assigned to Ft Wainwright, Alaska, just outside Fairbanks, and was able to bring her there to live with me. She had by that time turned 16 and was able to work in the Ski Shop while I did my assignment as Military Police (Mostly in the office, since it was deemed that I was too small to be a proper Policeman.). After a year and a half in Alaska, I was then assigned to Ft Sill, Oklahoma, where I served out my last 11 months. Our son, Scott was born in September 1967 and we drove from Fairbanks, to Portland in February of 1968. The trip, while it seemed a great adventure to us, was uneventful save for one service station attendant trying to put Diesel in our car. We were fortunate because in Fairbanks we’d had a couple of weeks of -40 F, but the morning we left, it warmed up to -25. According to locals, that was nearly the ideal winter temperature because it was not excessively cold, but it was cold enough that the ice was not very slick. The day before a snow storm had come through, so we basically drove the roads right after the plow cleared them with no ruts.
After discharge from the Army, I got a job working as a Pesticide Sprayer and tree pruner, while I attended College. I hated that job but it helped support the family. By then we had a son, Scott (Sept 6, 1967) and a Daughter (March 3, 1969).
In 1974(?), I was able to secure a job at a local saw chain manufacturing plant and remained there 20 years. It provided a steady income and I learned a lot. During that time, in the early 80’s I could not shake my depression. At the time, I did not even remember what would cause that depression. I wound up in a group called “Survivors of childhood sexual abuse”. It was then that memories of my childhood started to surface. There has been discussion about patients picking up false memories in these situations, and if someone wants to discuss that, please leave me out of it.
Along about that time, Kaiser put me on Haldol 200 mg/day. In looking at present day dosages of the drug, 200 mg seems very high, and records from Kaiser can be secured to confirm that. The Drug definitely levelled things out but I realized after I took it for 2 years, life was still very messed up, so I stopped taking it.
My first experience at being diagnosed as transgendered (GID) happened around 1984. The woman first said I was co-dependent with my wife. Later she said she thought I had multiple personality disorder. Later she said I was transgendered and needed to start living as a woman. 30 years later, I realize I just hated men and being one of the enemy.
The diagnosis was so shocking, that when my wife and I talked later, we re-iterated our love for each other, and then she said that though she loved me, she could not live with me if I were a woman. This whole transgender business was completely new to us and was quite shocking. As we talked, we felt that what I had was daemon persecution and we agreed to pray that away. (I was not then and never have had a homosexual experience) I was never unfaithful to my wife and have never had penetrative intercourse with anyone but her.
So, after that, we worked very hard to stay married, and be loving and faithful to one another for another 20 years. Along the way I encountered many types of counsellors, most of whom wanted me on medications of some sort, and I mostly refused to take anything, believing that it would be better to squarely face my problems and solve them. I worked very hard to ignore my issues, choosing to bury myself in service, and recreation instead.
I left the manufacturing plant in 1992, and worked for various Electrical Contractors as an Electrician until being hired at Hillsboro, Oregon as the City Electrician in 1996 (?). In 1998 Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras, and my wife went down there twice as an RN to work in disaster relief soon after. I went down there in 1999 and 2000 to work in damage abatement for a total of 5 weeks. Then in rapid succession she went to Bosnia and Mozambique with NW Medical Teams. In April of 2001, we both went to Kenya as temporary missionaries (3 weeks) and then on to Israel for 10 days.
Bosnia was very hard for both of us because in Scoder, where they were staying, the hotel across the street had a bomb go off. She was really shook up, and I perhaps was not taking it any better than her.
I came home from Kenya absolutely shattered and did not know it. Conditions for the people living around Nyeri and Nanuki were so much worse than for those living in Honduras. ¾ of the people in that area were dead from AIDS. It was completely heart breaking. We vowed to send money to the people in Kenya but I have to say that it is nearly impossible without paying so many fees that the people who do it get only a fraction of what we sent. We eventually gave up.
We got home in April and in September came the 9/11 attack. In just a month after, the situation at work went from a relaxed, cooperative atmosphere to a tense 4th Reich feeling nightmare. In my work as the City Electrician, I had business contact with City, County, State, and Federal employees. Suddenly, the atmosphere was full of mistrust, illegal government activities, and security clearances. I once left the FBI sitting in the cold late at night because the furnace was in a room that I no longer had authorization to enter. And, the situation only got worse. One city man involved in the illegal wire taps was eventually fired.
Eventually, I simply had a nervous breakdown (colloquial term)., characterized by disassociation, depression, and lack of sleep. It was during that time that they put me on Celexa, Welbutrin and Trazidone in what are today considered massive doses. The effect of this medication was to actually exacerbate the depression and to completely dis-inhibit my mind from dealing with lifelong issues any longer.
In those days, GID was a legal diagnosis that carried the stigma of being disabling, but in 2014 it is no longer seen that way. By now, it had been 10 or more years since I had been told I had GID, and who was I not to believe the Doctors?
I mistakenly interpreted my hatred of men and my being one as actually having Gender Identity Disorder, and in my clouded mental state, due to the psych meds, began to move toward changing genders. And, there are just lots of people, supposedly professionals, around that saw me as being transgendered. There were no gate keepers. This situation had been slowly developing since the mid 80’s and now in 2014, I have no idea if any of what I was being told is correct.
By 1990, secretly nursing my feminine feelings, I was no longer wearing any male clothing, having secured androgynous looking female clothing for use at work and this situation slowly progressed as my mind became less and less effective at dealing with what I now know to be past trauma.
I continued to “impersonate” a male through the 90’s and later, though felt that I was female and seem to have unconsciously slowly started adopting female mannerisms and deportment, and felt very conflicted. I was in effect living two lives; a very male one as an Electrician, with the family, and in the larger community. When alone, I was female. Much to my utter dismay, this increasingly led to female masturbatory fantasies that produced so much guilt and revulsion that I began to plot personal castration though working it all out would take years. I had seen videos of self-castrations on YouTube and felt I could do the task albeit being a bit dangerous. In those days I was in a great deal of pain, so had copious amounts of Vicodin and Motrin around.
As I think I said before but an not going to go back and look it up, post 9/11 after my wall banging nervous breakdown, I was put on one drug after another Starting with Welbutrin, then Celexa, and finally Trazidone in such doses as I was legally intoxicated as the present laws of Oregon now reflect.
During October of 2004, it all began to work out, but new to my situation, due to the drugs I was increasingly suicidal. By happenstance, in late November I found a Urologist that would castrate me for $1000 and I planned to do it in April. At this point in my life, the purpose of the castration would have been to stop the sin of masturbation, not to begin to live as a woman. No matter my personal feelings of being a woman, I had three children and a wife whom at the time I thought was faithful, though later I would find that in error. Fate was to intervene and change my plans as “No Plan Survives Contact with the Enemy”.
I had gotten sufficiently suicidal that I called a Kaiser help line, and the woman almost immediately called the Police and the officers that showed up at the door were friends of mine. Gah !! What followed was a week in the psych ward involuntarily, and they gave me a shot in the Butt that made me spill my guts about everything. This was pre-Hippa, so they ran out and told the whole family and the Milk man.
I had been attending a Fundamentalist church and they trashed me faster than the speed of light.
I am feeling crazy now so will publish this and begin to work on the final chapter when I feel able.