I can use this graphic to talk about many many things. I will. Roberta has not ceased to think, and her thoughts include many sources. The basis of this brainstorming device goes all the way back to college, when I did my English honors thesis on two books, Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. I regarded them as equal works of genius. In studying them I was examining the difference between male and female experiences of time, one not better than the other but distinctly different. I got two female graders in an era when it was offensively incorrect to posit any difference between male and female but genitalia. I was denied honors on account of my ignorant perspective. We’ve come full circle. I will write more. I believe history suggests I was right then, and I have transitioned because I accept there is no future before us and the time-present mentality of the female is vitally important to my survival and my sense of security and peace of mind rig

 No, I don’t know who she is. I don’t even know who he is. What if you looked like me? Have you ever looked this good a single day of your life? I know who they are… And I know a good joke when I hear one. I also know me.  So I’ll try this look on for a while… Actually, I still look like that. He simpered…

  That first post was a mite heavy, n’est-ce pas? Sorry. The mere fact that I can talk and be listened to by other women is so novel I can’t resist the temptation to talk. Sorry. Sorry for saying sorry. What we do, right? Why? I’ve got the hormones in now, and I find myself weeping a lot. I’m not going to spend much time talking about sex. Womanhood is not mostly about sex. Except for men, of course. Flowers make me weep. I don’t know. The smell, the perfect petals. I just find myself crying. Here are some fun things about new womanhood. I get to pose in front of the mirror, take hours doing my makeup. I can use as much time as I want preparing and sipping tea. But flowers? When I was on the other  side of the fence, I never knew. They used to be a chip in the game. A chip you always knew to play when you cheated or had forgotten important anniversaries. Now I know there are NO unimportant anniversaries. Important, fun things. First, flowers. Like a baby on the doorstep. You can cradle

I won’t tell you how old I am, a new privilege of my new gender, but I have lived like most of you on both sides of a long picket fence, painted white and frequently resharpened. It won’t be news to most of you that nothing ever seemed to fit, not my clothes, not my toys, not my body, not my mind. Still don’t, those things. But better. Am I happier now? I would say yes, but I have been inherently female long enough to know that happiness is beside the point. Ours is a life of small, and sometimes huge, satisfactions. They liked the brownies, he called when he said he would, the baby was born healthy(!), that woman at the PTA held her tongue for once, and I wasn’t embarrassed parking downtown for once. For once. We use that term a lot, don’t we? Our lives are made up of little things, which is also true of men. They just don’t know that little things are little or that they can mean the whole world in the morning light. These are the kinds of things I want to talk about with you all, to

  Yesterday in the backyard. As I’ve observed on both sides of the fence: What life is like. This time I was moved to do some research. The name of the cat goddess is Bastet . Which made me all sentimental. I love that about my new self. I went a big chunk of a lifetime without ever crying.

Alive and dead. Simultaneously. Until you open the box and choose. How did I get here? Crossing the gender line for good and all. Truthfully, I was always both. Never homosexual but always ambiguous in behavioral terms. I have never seduced a female. They have always seduced me. The celebrity I was most mistaken for was Bowie, another ambiguous character women couldn’t resist. I don’t think this is terribly unusual. Everyone is some combination of male and female. And everyone is full time in the business of suppressing the other sex that resides within them. Not talking about sexual preference here. That’s pretty hard-wired from childhood. I’m talking about soul identity, which is why our current controversies are so clumsy and confused. Age is a factor that drives the sexes together via fading hormones, as women become more visibly mannish, even growing mustaches and sometimes beards, men growing man boobs (moobs!) and gradually losing their physical courage and sexual desire. I’ve b