They dragged me in front of the Principal, but if it hadn’t been for the facts that, firstly, several kids and at least one member of staff witnessed the incident, and secondly, the injured kids were well known for picking on younger kids, I would have been suspended. As it was, they sent me to see the school shrink for anger management counselling.
The shrink was a young woman called Michelle. I liked her, so used to look forward to our sessions. She encouraged me to talk, so I did, about everything, even that part of me that I hid from the whole world, even from me for most of the time.
See, like all teenagers, now and then, I just wanted to be normal, but my real problem was that I wanted to be a normal girl. I just believed that I was in the wrong body, as if someone mixed up the order at birth. I wasn’t gay, and I didn’t necessarily just want to dress as a girl, I just felt I should have been born as one. I had never shared this with anyone, hardly even admitting it to myself, but I told it to Michelle. Or rather, she managed to squeeze it out of me bit by bit.
My other problem was that I started to grow. In the space of a little more than a year, I went from 5’6” to 5’10”, and started to broaden out. In order to pay my way, I went to a local gym and got a job sweeping the floor, collecting towels and clearing up. A tough ex-US Marine called Mike Reid ran the gym.
Mike had lost his leg in Korea and was the toughest guy I knew. Part of me wanted to be like him. There was another part of me, however, who wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe, so as you can imagine, I was having serious difficulties keeping sane.
Michelle diagnosed me as suffering from ‘temporary gender dysphoria’, as a direct result of my father leaving my mother. It was a relatively new disorder, so no one knew whether it was treatable or not. As in my case, it meant that the subject, me, was convinced that they were in the body of the wrong gender, and there were only three options.
One, to suppress all such desires and urges, and to try to live out ones life as the gender one was born; two, to dress, act and live as the opposite gender, taking limited hormones to create the effect of that gender. Or, three, the go whole hog and have a sex change operation, which was a lengthy, costly and relatively unsatisfactory procedure that meant taking hormones for the rest of your life, yet, as far as society was concerned - never really becoming a complete woman.
Michelle convinced me that we could take option number one, so she tried to analyse the shit out of me. I was content, as she convinced me that I could never be a real girl, so I just worked hard at being the best man I could. I learned to suppress all of those feelings and was, for the most part, successful. I started to live my life without those dreaded inner feelings and desires.
At the same time, Mike took me under his wing and taught me to box. I started exercising, doing weights and working out. I grew some more, so by the time I was fifteen, I topped 6’2” and was developing a body like a brick outhouse.
The school football coach noticed me, selecting me for the football team. I kept training, boxing and doing weights. When I turned sixteen, I was 6’4” and weighed 210lbs. No one picked on me any more, so I even convinced Michelle and myself, that I no longer had any silly thoughts about wanting to be a girl. She was pleased, as she believed that I was her first success. I didn’t tell her the feelings were still there, just hidden deep down.
I was a jock. In my last year at high school, I had the pick of any of the cheerleaders, and, hey, I didn’t do too bad.
My mom’s health was bad, mainly from the booze and the cigarettes, so I left school and enlisted in the Marine Corps. I sent most of my pay home, so my younger brother and sister could get a chance at college. I could have got to college with my football skills, but my academic grades were not good enough, besides, I wasn’t convinced the laid-back life at college was any good for me.
By the time I was twenty, I had stopped growing, and was now 6’6” and 225lbs of pure bone and muscle. I was a corporal and had a reputation of being one mean son of a bitch. I went back to High School for a reunion, wearing my uniform, with the few medals that I collected in the last few days of the Vietnam War.
As I walked into the gym and looked at the kids that had been my contemporaries, I realised that I now belonged to a different world.
I was tall and lean, with broad shoulders. I was physically fit and capable of taking on anyone in the room and winning. I had very short hair and my face was tanned from my time in the open air. I walked proud, with a sense of purpose and an air of power. These kids had long hair, pale and spotty complexions, unhealthy habits, scruffy colourful clothes, and generally had contempt for the values I had sworn to protect.
I was very restrained, as I didn’t hit anyone in the first ten minutes. Then this hippy kid called Darren, dressed in floppy flares and with hair all over the place dared to call me a puppet for the capitalist warmongers of Washington. I asked him quietly to retract that treasonous remark, but he laughed at me, despite his six friends getting my message very clear.
They were pulling him away, when he shook them off, saying, “I am not afraid of this robot, he is incapable of independent thought, without getting an order to …”
Darren never finished, as my single punch broke his nose and rendered him unconscious. Satisfied he was still alive; I turned and walked out, never to return. I suppose he's a fancy lawyer now and there's probably an arrest warrant out for me.
When I was twenty-two, whilst on home leave, I met a girl called Jeannie. We had a good time, but she fell pregnant. I thought I loved here, so I did the decent thing and married her. We had a little boy, Scott, and then another child a couple of years later. We called her Michelle, after my shrink.
Jeannie was from a small town, so at the start everything was new and exciting for her, while it was a good time for me at the start, but then somehow it didn’t hit the spot any more. She loved the first few years, but then the Corps sent me on a long tour abroad, so she found someone else. When I got back, she left me, although I was sad because of the kids, but I have to confess that the main emotion I felt was relief.
Then, as an unattached, experienced NCO, I volunteered for everything and anything. From the jungles of SE Asia, to the deserts of the Middle East, I saw action. I could drive most forms of ground transportation and anything that went on water. I even was sufficiently familiar with helicopters that I reckon I could even fly one of them too, if my life depended on it.
I was familiar with every type of weapon, from throwing knives to rocket launchers and tanks, and was skilled in five martial arts. I was a Marine. Hell, I'd been wounded for my country and I was prepared to die for it. I twice very nearly did.
I all but lost touch with my kids, but occasionally heard from my brother, who was now a lawyer in San Francisco, thanks to his college education paid for by his big brother. He never said thanks, but I never wanted him to. My mom died of lung cancer in 1980. I was abroad at the time, so I never even got to the funeral.
My brother was embarrassed more than anything else, as he knew it had been my money that had put him through college. On the one occasion I'd visited his home just after Mon died, I so hated his pretentious friends, social climbing wife and phoney life-style, I left after three days. We'd never met since.
My sister, Maria, is the only person with whom I keep in regular touch. She’s married to a cop in Worthington, Ohio, and they have four kids already. I occasionally stay with them, just to catch up on old times. The kids think I’m something else, as I always bring them weird gifts from abroad, so they love my visits. Steve, Maria’s husband, is an ex-Marine, so he and I often drink beer well into the night. He is the only person outside the corps that I can relate to, or even call my friend.