my fifth step

[honeydumplin]

What I'm about to tell you has rattled around in my head for a very long time, going into so many different directions as to how exactly to reference the subject matter, and in what way it can be discussed without portraying myself as something, that in various social circles, I will be considered just
the same.

To say that it hasn't been analyzed inside of my own head would be an understatement. In hopes of some sort of personal transcendence, I've searched for origins, suspicions of childhood abuse or anything that could be used as a determing factor that would have the potential of these results, to no avail.

The bouts in and out with the guilt over the years are something that I do feel has more of the "nurture" aspects than that of my personal "nature". And this is just my opinion, but maybe it is because the majority of our society automatically label something like this as a forbidden taboo, thus multiplying animosity that often accrues through narrow-minded hatred over certain sectors based on indifference.

This is where recovery has played a much more major role than anything I could have possibly imagined to accept. Acceptance of what it may be like to "walk a mile in another man's shoes"--to accept the concept of what some other person may have been born like, or what he or she, through the course of both childhood and adulthood, had to endure by either choice or powerlessness, and to be grateful for the fact that we are not all the same, but that through our differences, we can build unity, adapt and grow.

It is here that I wish to begin yet another journey into the unchartered
waters of the past that has not begun to yield itself to that aforementioned
vacuum. Oh the outside, albeit obscure, has been revealed, which enabled
me to relinquish the guilt and the shame. But the context and the in-depth
analysis, of what terms I have until the present point, deemed unmanageable,
were embedded in my psyche, that through the passage of time, prohibited
the ultimate fruition of one ninth step promise.

In detail, my conscience continues to tell me, that maybe further amends
are needed. And given the circumstances of what demons due haunt me,
perhaps the amends is to not only myself, but a living amends, to members of the human race; those which are cerebrally held in contual contempt for who and what they are, regardless of my own either skewed, or equal, nonjudgemental self-perception.

Subsequently, as long as this prejudicial, discriminatory criteria to broadly brush about which, for the sake of discussion, could only be termed as a sexual continuum, I would have forever been at odds with my own sexuality, and thus unpervasive. Regretting the past; sealing the door shut. That is the thorn that threatened my early recovery, usually in the heat of a restless, irritable, and dicsontented night. It was imperative to shed the light on this, lest I lie, tormented in its wake.

It is when I geniunely see other people as God's creations, and try to sincerely love them the way they are, and live as an example, that I really feel things that up until the point of sobreity, were completely foreign to a drunk like me.

Be assured, I do not wish to use this venue to defend myself, nor do I wish use this revelation as any kind of metamorphosis. It is really just the biggest secret of my past.

At a recovery workshop awhile back, during the first stages of being sober, when I couldn't figure out what was so funny. A guy shared from the podium a story about picking up a woman, and later discovering that she
was really a man.

At that point, I wanted to stand up in the middle of everybody and go, "Oh yeah, buddy? You know what? I was your nightmare. I was the drag queen!"

Ever since I can remember, I've had a fascination of women. The things they wear. Their shoes. Their conversations when they're not around men. The way they lead us on, then back off, again and again. The way that some of them play with their hair in the rearview mirror, when they're waiting on the stoplight to change. I'm taken away by all of it, almost to the point of intoxication.

Of course, like so many other areas of my twisted perceptions, anyone with any grasp of the world in general, knows good and well, that this was not reality at all. Its a magnified imagination, running amok, taking something that is only exposed from the outer edges, and turning it into mere fantasy. I mean, any man that has ever lived with a woman for any period of time is well aware of the fact that it ain't all lingerie, make-up, and high-heeled shoes.

I'm not a transsexual, and have no desire to be a woman. The whole scope of sexual identity has been compartmentalized into practically every possible combination imaginable. You're either a man or a woman. There's transsexual men, who've become and lived as men, and transsexual women, who've lived as women. But as far as someone all of a sudden discovering that they want to become a member of the opposite sex, it's just another psychological disorder. This is just my opinion, based on experience.

I knew something was wierd with me when I excited myself as a kid. And I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say, it wasn't what I would call "normal". That remained the only tangible key I had in this feeble attempt to understand why I am the way I am.

Sure, the cosmetic transformation, the euphoric rush of nylon, and other superficial qualities about this and that can point recognize for thousands of stereotypes to throw stones at the whole thing. But somewhere therein, grew the sole unlocking mechanism.

I was intrigued with so much stuff that didn't add up. I'm more of a butch,
than a sissy. I don't have a dislike for gays, but I've always had this sorta built-in empathy for them. I've worked with them, lived with them, had drunken encounters with them both sexually, and platonic, and have been basically be whatever I wanted to around them, which made me comfortable. But as far as having a relationship with a man, I can't say that I've ever had the desire to.

Also, I can't tell you a specific point in time when my secret began taking on a much greater part of everything bad in my first marriage years ago. I knew that alongside various other problems we were experiencing, it was the straw that broke the camel's back in that marriage. And when my divorce was over, the drinking, drugs, and chasing any kind of prositute took over.

I've took me a very long time to realize that there's so much more to a relationship than any kind of sexual adventure I could have ever conceive.

Given the fact that I was a crossdresser weighed heavily indeed in an overall
context of my fifth step, debated and dissected similarly to the declarative that I drank a lot of scotch. But the statement comes up short and fails to solidify, the addictive behavior turned into an obssession, and like gangbusters, and destroying people, places, and things in its path, including the addict himself.

All from a man, that upon limited observation, basically took a drink of scotch. Far from a judgment call, it is more cause and effect,
and wrongs done to others.

Beside my own devices, an appetite for abnormality, grazing on
the edge of extremes is not atypical. A specific acquaintance, a frolic
on the beach, the one night stand, or a random fantasy may describe
in a general way what I used to be like. I can even implore you with
reproductions of historical soliloquy, poviding the progressive stages,
and further establish the needed objectives of what actually happened.
It is on the cusp of coming to terms with what I am like now, that
I am suddenly stopped in reality, and it is only through the threshold
of my sociopathic admission, that I am truly allowed to be set free.

Things that read more like a laundry list on the road to debauchery,
than an unadorned guy in drag with his fiance on Halloween. Not the
mere prevailing absence of a father figure, or a family that triangulated
itself during crisis, or the adolescent shower of motherly affection,
but more the man who shaved his legs the night before his first wedding,
got drunk, then jumped into bed with his future wife and her maid of
honor, then trying to have an affair on her with a high school girlfriend
shortly thereafter, and hiding notes underneath the mattress, then getting caught doing both was not enough. I had to raid her lingerie drawer
and try on all of the bikinis.

Every indication that I was somehow a pervert couldn't be
sugar-coated anymore with sweet stories about a shy and lonely,
thin-skinned child, who melted like putty at the very thought of criticism,
and constantly sought approval from his male peers. My pursuit of
infedelity, and blatant disrespect for her personal belongings had nothing
to do with my poor body image, or my gregarious erogenous zones.
Far removed from the quintessential storyline rapturing visions of genetic
girls, discovering that their husbands were transvestites, this woman
had essentially married a morally challenged man, and an inebriated
cactus attached. As far as she was concerned, the party was
over. For me, downward spiral had only just begun.

The bed on the other side hadn't even got cold, when cruising
the streets started the hunt for my next victim. It didn't matter if they
were gay or straight, as long as they somewhat resembled
the pages of my juvenile mind. The looks were deceiving, and so
was I. Finding what I wanted was inevetible, and finding what I
had to have was another illusion, always seemingly, just out of
reach.

And although the scenery changed, the episodes grew worse.
I furnished her with booze and pot, then proceeded to pursue
even more of what she didn't have. Her girlfriends didn't have it
either, but that didn't stop me from chasing them too, along with
any hooker with a pipe and habit. The one-night stands, and
twenty dollar tours only teased the insatiable, leading to more
and more. And so I ran away from everything that lasted longer than
a date on a milk carton, and toward anything newer than a loaf
of bread.


Look, a lot of what I did was just plain wrong. But there's also
the other side of my past that had to be opened. If no honest revelation
about my past had been told, I was to never completely get my head around
all that happened, while I participated in this. That will not only keep me sick in the sense of secrecy and fear. It will get me drunk.


Putting it all into some gigantic box with a ribbon on top and labeling
it does the exact same thing, as another person trying to do it for me; its uncalled for. An unsolicited evaluation, based on nothing more than opinion, which usually borderlines bias misconceptions, often accompanied by a narrow-minded view of society in general: another thing from which, I wish to distance myself. To surround the intricate motives, innate desires, genes, physical make-up, and mental states of those involved, is to navigate a minefield of bigotry designed primarily to distinguish certain sectors in an inferior, and/or superior suspension of equality, and to further sustain the judgement that I had for other people, which was way off base.

Personal adventures have also proven that this demagoguery isn't
limited to outside observers, and onlookers exclusively. Condescension and
prejudice along the different plateaus of this mosaic are frequently regarded
with the same fervor as the ones who originated them. The allied aversion created by a select few militants broadcasting their slights and slangs often runs rampant, identifying people with labels, until they're final label lands them, appropriated into the subculture's lexicon. Nevertheless, throughout the midnight raves, the dyke bars, dance floors, and pride parades, one practicality strikes a chord inside the beaten path. Sometimes a duck is just a duck.

Whether I accompanied a stormy cast of voyeurs walking a provacative plank of prostitution, lip syncing a Donna Summers tune in private, or lying dormant on a couch in front of a psychiatrist confronting the confusion of it all, a common theme will forever carve its niche among the deviant, destitute, and the dominant, and that is to wallow in guilt, shame, and self-pity of it all, or to somehow change the opression and adversity quite common with the entire lot.

Vaguely, I do recall both of these choices hammering their way into the
recovery process. Not unlike the symbolic angel, and devil, that on my shoulders stayed, the compromise and sacrifice, began to temper my unjust nature, into the scarcely scatched surface of a guided obedience, I so desperately craved.