Sex and the single trans girl: A sexual history and lack thereof
By: Just Stephanie
Tags: Sexuality, Transgender, LGBTQ, Teens, Growing Up

Sex and the single trans girl: A sexual history and lack thereof

As a corollary to my prior essay on being gay, I thought it would be relevant to talk about my sexual history and orientation. Being trans means having a complicated relationship with our sexual selves.

Is being deeply feminine a siren call to men interested in boys? My first sexual encounter was when I was raped by a male relative when I was between the age of 10 and 12. It was not consensual and that’s really all there was to it. Did I like the attention, yes, did I like the touch, yes, did it make me uncomfortable, most certainly. Subsequently, sexuality was confusing to me. Every male (who thinks they are hetro) and is called gay wants to prove they are not, and in my case, being a cross dresser only exacerbated the need to feel normal.

Two men played a role in deepening sexual confusion my senior year in high school, setting the stage for a rather painful freshman year in college.

I was raised strictly Catholic, so I had a very traditional view of sex and love. Enter the priest. Father Richard Mayer was the cool young priest when I was going to Catholic education classes on Monday evenings during my high school years. He taught a section personally and interviewed candidates. Screening for the most vulnerable and likely to be compliant. I was excited to be selected to his Senior year class on Leo Buscaglia’s book, Love. This class was a massive trap for his own sexual gratification. I was a rebel and rarely took him up on the offer to join a few select kids for beer and other activities after class. I caved to pressure one night and went up. My priest quickly maneuvered next to me on a couch. After a beer or two he leaned over and started kissing me. No fireworks. It was a distinctly unpleasant experience with his bushy mustache and tongue tasting of cigar and whiskey. He then grabbed my hand and placed it on his crotch; hard member and all and said “we are going to have some fun tonight” eventually, I made an excuse to go to the bathroom, got up and kept on going, out the door and down the block.

The other rather devastating sexual incident also occurred that spring. I was walking home from my after-school job and a car pulled up. The man rolled down the window, and he said he was lost. I gave him directions and he said he had tried but hadn’t been successful. Would I show him the route? Like a naive child, I agreed to go along. Having grown up with no one listening, might as well be an adult, it wasn’t difficult for me to spill my life story to “Dan”. I had a unique family size, and I am sure I told him about my father, the doctor. Of course, he wasn’t really concerned about directions. I thought I was careful not to give him my last name and my home address

That summer, I received a phone call. Dan had tracked me down. He wanted to offer me a job elsewhere and wanted to talk about it. With a deep desperation to leave my parents house, I accepted. We met on a Saturday evening and he picked me up in his car. I used the excuse that I was going to a party to get out of the house. Oddly enough, we stopped at Walgreens and he told me to buy what I thought was lotion and turned out to be petroleum jelly. Boy, I really was innocent in those days. He drove me to a secluded spot I knew of. It took what seemed forever for his goal to become clear to me and to be honest, rather taken aback the request for sex, right there in the car. My first reaction was disbelief. “I was not that kind of girl” It was demeaning. I really didn’t have a clue about homosexual dynamics, and it did throw me. I was a virgin and he certainly was not my type. Because I was such a girl, I did say maybe we got to know each other, you know courtship, dating maybe then. Not like this.

I did manage to get out of the car safely and walked several hours to the party that was going on, but I was really shook up. I felt at the time and do now, that this was a pivotal moment in my life. Strangely enough, serial killers Like John Wayne Gacy roamed the Chicago suburbs those days, it could have been a tragic decision. Did I attract this attention because of my feminine energy? This kind of thing didn’t happen to other guys. It messed with my sexual orientation even further.

My freshman year of college was an exercise in futility, I desperately wanted to have sex but, had not the understanding of how to get it. I wanted a romance, being such a girl. All around me were hookups casual sex, and I wasn’t part of it. I was a jerk and, in the end, the one relationship with a girl I did care about had a bad ending. I drowned my confusion in alcohol and joined a fraternity. Not strangely, my favorite memories were of sorority Wednesday afternoons at the local bar. I happened upon it, and it became my routine. Following my life’s pattern, I was the only “guy” in a bar full of women, happy as can be, with my people I could relate to. In the end, the summer came, and I dropped out for a year to mature, work, and clear my head.

I worked for the local grocery store stocking shelves, the work was dull and repetitive but paid well for those days. The previous manager’s daughter was petite and blond, bubbly, and cute. She worked in the produce department and we hit it off. The slow gentle story book romance that I always had been searching for came to fruition and we dated for around three years. She wasn’t to be my last love but certainly my first.

In the end when we were breaking up and it was over, to convince her that I was unworthy of love, I told her my horrible secret. She was the first person outside my family to know about my cross dressing. She took it well, but it reflected the depth at which I felt my feminine self was unworthy and broken. That would take a long road and a long time to heal.