We write words. Some short stories. Twitter haiku. Limerics. Free-form Poems.
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She & He (by Sean)

She dances in the dark,
Internalizes pain.
She constructs the parts
And brushes her mane.

She pretends it’s fine.
She can be the man.
She knows every line.
Yes, she understands.

The parts already hers.
She can walk, talk and grunt.
Her butch cars, they purr.
She can learn to hunt.

But it’s so unnatural.
The performance false.
And what is factual?
Her female heart’s pulse.

She must be honest.
Recall who she was
Before she was lost
In the land of Oz.

She will now grow her hair,
Learn the art of make up,
Will care what to wear,
And, daily, play dress up.

And people may stare,
Say odd things out loud.
But she will not care.
Instead, she’ll stand proud.

And state with conviction
With a voice that is clear,
And without contradiction,
Absolutely no fear….

“I am made with perfection.
I am ‘she’, that’s inside.
I don’t need your reflection.
I hold my own sense of pride.”

He plays with the fire,
Internalizes pain.
He hides the desire.
Hurts when moons wane.

He performs a role,
Decided when born.
Attempts to control.
Too long, has felt torn.

He plays the part well.
He walks talks and smiles.
He must be a girl
And learn how to shop miles.

It’s a complete lie,
Opposite is his truth.
Transition or die
And this is his proof.

He must be honest.
Recall who he was,
Before he was lost
In the land of Oz.

He’ll stand tall, be brave,
And know what is fair.
He’ll learn how to shave,
And cut off his hair.

Some people may laugh,
Or say that it’s weird,
And that it’s a farce,
When he grows a beard.

Though people aghast,
It can’t go awry.
He knows complete trust,
Now this is his cry….

“I am made with perfection.
I am me, no one else.
I don’t need Psych attention.
This is me in good health.”

Gender dysphoria

Transphobic hormonic nycturia
Assailed a boy named Victoria
Her doctor said ‘Look, it says in the book
Your problem’s medical dysphoria

Same sex marriage

I’m queen of sun and flowers 
Each in its place glowers 
In the union of the two 
The sunflower towers

Alternatives to ‘him’ and ‘her’
Who am I?
Put there by others
I live in a box
Not all girl, nor am I boy
They call it genderfluid
Genderqueer, transgressive
I am my ancestors, a universe. 
I am me.  

Suicide 1
Overwhelming unbearable
The feelings that assail us
As we face stigma stigmata
Of gender fluid incongruence
 
We seek in closet reflections
Mirrors of our soul’s dimensions
But we find the same old prisons
Imposed by preconceptions
 
There’s one permanent escape 
To helpless, hopeless, aloneness
Born from victimisation
Discrimination and fear
 
Take a razor to the image
Hold it close and sharp and still
Slash through the preconceptions
Find the sunshine land beyond.
 
It’ll do you the best of good
No more deep depression
No more powerless, no more lost
Just the calming end of all-
things
 
But suicide’s contagious
Others watch in awe.
Ponder their darkest daemons
And raise their razors too.

Suicide 3
Take the knife from the sheath
And slice my soul in two
Take the ice from my heart
Excise the part that’s you
 
For now I realise
That the me I used to be
Is something more than fiction
But something less than me
 
Let the world see who I am
It isn’t much to see
What you see is what you get
And what you see is me.

Don’t laugh
Don’t laugh when you see me
Because I don’t fit your idea of girl
Don’t laugh when I speak because
I don’t sound the way I should
Don’t laugh when I cry because
I hurt in a way you can’t imagine
 
Listen to my eyes the way they plead
For acceptance when there is none
Listen to the message from my body
Trying to be something it isn’t
Listen to the way I can’t say
The way I feel each moment of the day.
 
Don’t laugh at what I am not
But listen to what I don’t say
I’m with you here today
Sharing the magic we call life
It’s not what I’m not that matters
It is the I who hides beneath.
 
 
Don't call me mate
Cycling uphill today,
A guy passes – hi mate
Nice of him, it’s what you do…
To be nice…but I’m not his mate
Never was a mate
Even to mates, so
Don’t call me mate.
 
It wrenches my inside
All it assumes
Wrapped in a happy hi
Guys greet guys with it
It’s safe, close as they get…
To be being nice, but
Don’t call me mate.
 
In Lycra I look guy
My whole body is guy
The way I hold myself,
Square jaw, thick calves
Hunched, so un-girl
But I am girl, so
Don’t call me mate.

 
 
 

The First Time - Part One

‘Hello, I’m Stephanie,’ I said by way of introduction, in my best attempt at a husky feminine voice. This was my first time at the Carrousel Club, and indeed my first venture out of doors dressed as my preferred gender. How did it come to this, when just two weeks before it was furthest from my mind?
Looking back I remember dressing as a girl at the age of eight, if not before. I had been in a school play and my role had been that of a girl. I wore my big sister’s tennis skirt, and had on lipstick. After the dress rehearsal I had rushed back to the football changing room to check out what I looked like in the mirror. But before I could make it to the shower area I had to run the gauntlet of sneers and sniggers from a bunch of lads fresh in from the muddy rugger pitch. I never did see myself in the mirror. But I do recall trying on the skirt again as I walked home with my mate, Nick. We giggled a lot in a good natured way, so I thought it was alright. Still curious, I dressed up as a girl at home, much to my delight, and I couldn’t wait to tell Nick about it. When it came to the point, however, I decided that maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to tell Nick. So started my lifetime of secrecy.
My next significant memory may have been even earlier, I can’t tell. I overheard that my sister was developing breasts. Great, I thought, breasts are good, I can’t wait to get my own. ‘Mum, when will I grow breasts?’ ‘Only girls develop breasts, silly boy.’ I was heartbroken. It seemed so unfair. 
My sister was certainly a good source of clothes. They smelt so good, I could happily wander around in a daze from the scent alone. My mum was very small, so her clothes were another rich resource for dress-ups. Hers didn’t smell so good, but she had these fancy ball gowns that fitted me to tee. I swear I nearly wore them out with all the good use I put them to in my locked bedroom. Dad found me out once. I was sleeping in my sister’s bedroom for some reason. Naturally it was an opportunity not to be missed. I put on her green party dress with sox for boobs, and pranced around. Dad had come up to kiss me goodnight, and he was very quiet. As he came in, I leapt into my bed and hid under the covers. ’I saw a little green fairy,’ he said. ‘Go away!’
In my twenties I met my future wife. She had her own problems, and bemoaned the fact that she was struggling while I had not a problem in the world. ‘Not true,’ I said, ‘I like dressing up as a girl.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Uh huh.’ ‘Oooo…K.’ It didn’t seem to bother her much at the time. But as I went through cycles of more active cross-dressing and denial, she only saw me in femme-mode the odd occasion when my secrecy slipped a little. Years passed, and the whole thing, still barely talked about or acknowledged, started building barriers between us. She felt less adequate in regards to intimacy whenever she discovered I had felt the need to dress-up. 
A particular example occurred just a few weeks ago. The pain on her face told me things weren’t right. So I said we should talk. I explained that it wasn’t just some sexual fetish, but something I had struggled with all my life. ‘I don’t know the right words to describe it,’ I said, ‘though I know the literature is full of scary labels. The plain truth is that I feel more comfortable dressing and being a woman than I do being a man. The male gender role wears me down with stress, and dressing as a woman relieves that stress so I feel I can breathe more easily. No I’m not about to cut off my willy. It isn’t that I am so far gone that the choice is between suicide and sex-change. I am somewhere in the middle of the range. According to freely available gender tests on-line, I am a shade more on the feminine side than the masculine. However, authoritative sites suggest that the gender tests are more akin to horoscopes, than to scientific tests. I can live with that. The main thing is that they asked some pretty confronting questions. For instance, there was one about whether I would choose to be female or male if there was a magic potion that could change me into either one with perfect satisfaction. I chose female. Perhaps I was just being emotional – showing my feminine side?’
Our discussion changed the life-scape overnight. She was relieved, I was relieved – oh, was I relieved! I no longer had to make do with water filled balloons for breasts, as I could order breast forms over the Internet without fear. My two wigs were so wrong, one cheap and black, the other not quite so cheap, but blond. Neither suited me. I ordered a brown wig, and for the first time in my life I actually thought I looked vaguely female. We even went shopping for women’s clothing together in Harbour Town, giggling sotto voce in the women’s dressing room as I tried things on. I came back with some clothes that actually fitted me.
The remaining problems were still many, and caused me a great deal of anxiety, panic attacks where I could barely breathe, and sleepless nights (unheard of for me, as normally I can sleep anywhere at any time). The next problem on the list was to tell my youngest daughter, who was still living at home. I sat down next to her as she was eating her late dinner and blurted out,
‘Ever since I was a little boy I have liked to dress like a girl.’ Her eyebrows went up, and the next mouthful didn’t quite get as far as her mouth. Then I was explaining it all as best I could, and all the things I knew about the condition, and all the little stories of how things went in my lifetime of cross-dressing. Her reaction was,
‘Why did you wait so long?’ I apologised to her for not living up to normal standards. She just hugged me and said, ‘Love you Dad.’ After that I had two sisters in crime, both more than glad to help me prepare for my next big test – going outside dressed as a woman. And that was where the Carrousel Club came in. 
Even the interview had me in jitters. I met up with Geena in the Director’s Hotel, the gatekeeper of the club. But she assured me that she didn’t bight. She told me a lot about herself, and that made it easier for me to talk about myself  and accept that this is what I wanted. The next meeting of the club was the coming Friday, just six days away. With nerves on edge, and still so many days to go, my brain was in overdrive. 
Come the day I left work early, as concentration was flagging. My wife however, was herself in a hurry as she was going out too. Things had to happen quickly or not at all. Fortunately, she had been on a makeup course recently, and knew precisely how I should look. We got half the job done before she had to rush off. But then my daughter arrived home, in time to finish the job. The eyes needed doing, so she told me how to do them properly. And my nails – ‘do you have any nail polish I can use?’ I asked. ‘DO I?’ she said, bringing out an economy sized Tupperware box brimming full of little bottles of nail polish. ‘Do you want bright pink, like these four, or startling red?’ I just went for some pale pearly colour that didn’t shout too much to look at my over-large hands. ‘Can I drive in heels?’ I asked. ‘Depends on the heels, and how comfortable you feel about it. You can always take them off.’ So wise for such a young thing.
And that’s how I arrived at the Carrousel Club – heels on and ready to rock and roll…well, ready to be a shy little damsel, anyway.

The First Time - Part Two

Geena greeted me when I arrived at the Carrousel Club and introduced me to those who were already there. Standing around the kitchen were people just like me – dressed to kill in women’s clothing and immaculate makeup. Kelly cheats I have to say on account of her born-like-that gender, but she made me feel very welcome nevertheless. Most welcoming of all, however, was Kelly’s gem of a daughter. The others had varying degrees of look-like-a-woman-ness. But it struck me that they were all comfortable with that, whatever ‘that’ happened to be. It reflected well on the Carrousel Club that people could hang out in the way they wanted to look, have fun together, with no fear of someone looking down their long nose at them.
I introduced myself with my newly minted name, Stephanie. I found it a little awkward trying to remember that I, as a girl, was no longer Stephen. More importantly I realised that I would get used to seeing them cross-dressed until I saw them simply as friends. They would no longer be cross-dressers or trans-this or that to me. They would become just Geena, Jess, or Betty.
I also realised that these people were my lifeline. If they were not there for me then I would have no get-out-of-gaol-free card. They darn well better become my friends or… I will be sad. The consequence of this is that I will need to be there for them. From not daring to go outside my own home, I could see that I would need to prepare myself to go out into the wider world as a trans-woman. I would need to brace myself to suffer the consequences of such openness, but I also knew that I would enjoy the liberation from bondage that it would give me.
All this flew through my mind while I absorbed the social chatter and banter that enveloped me, as I clutched my newly acquired handbag, puffed hair out of my eyes, and acted the frightened little damsel that I felt. I think I smiled a lot, and why shouldn’t I? Here I was for the first time in fifty years enjoying being a woman in the company of others. I recognised that my voice needed a lot of work, and my wig slipped a few times so my grey hair showed. Nobody minded, and I was sure that they would help me with all the issues I had…and there were many: where is it best to shop for clothes and shoes, how do I try them on, how do I remove unwanted hair, who can teach me to apply makeup, how do I learn to change my voice, what looks good on me, how do I pass as a woman?
After a good dose of idle chat we were called into the meeting room. Kelly, the Chairperson, welcomed us and went through the general business, before introducing a guy from Bfriend. This organisation provides an interface between people in need of help concerning their gender or sexual identity, and people who could provide that help. The talk suggested to me that there is much more help out there in the community for people experiencing sexual orientation issues (such as whether they might be gay or lesbian), compared with those experiencing cross-gender issues. This highlighted the value of the Carrousel Club. If, for example, it meant that we could save just one potential suicide, then any amount of support is surely worth the effort.
After the formal talks were over we were allowed to partake of the delectable comestibles. In true party fashion there were hot sausage rolls, and a smorgasbord of other Aussie favourites. It reminded me of when I was little and no party was complete without sausage rolls. While munching on several of these, pastry crumbs adhering to my lipstick, I reflected on the events that the club organised and how imaginative and varied they were. There were tennis, bowls and picnic events. The latter sounded very English, so I thought that we should definitely invite the Queen to the next one. Dancing sounded interesting, but wouldn’t we step on each other’s feet while we worked out who was supposed to lead? However, any suggestion that we should dress up to the nines, with a prize for the most gorgeous gal, then yeehaaa…it sounded good to me.