The first

I guess I might as well start with the inspiration for the title. When I was nine or ten, I can't remeber the exact date my mother spoke those words to me. What inspired them was the fact that my mother had found a stash of girls cloths I had been wearing. I was born with male genitalia and was raised a boy, but it didn't stick. This encounter with my mother is just one instance of how being a male didn't stick. What my mother found was some cloths I had been using occasionally that were in a gym bag. Why she looked in the gym bag I'll never know since she died seventeen years ago. What she didn't know was that was the tip of the iceburg. Every night for a long time I went to sleep as a girl. I taped falsies to my chest and wore a bra and panties to bed. She never found out about that.
What drives a boy to do such things? I certainly didn't understand it at that age. It wasn't the beginning.
I remember before I went into the first grade, dressing in my mothers cloths. That's not so special in itself, but the feeling I remember having was special. It felt so good and natural that I remember it to this day. Right along with that memory I have one of me dressed and accidentally locking myself in the bathroom. A neighbor had to climb into the bathroom window to unlock the door. I remember embarassment from that. Just before the first grade and during that year I was picked on by the kids both older and my age. My father was in the military so we moved frequently. By the second grade I had figured out that being a sissy wasn't a good thing. I was never picked on again.
I am describing the experiences of a person who was born with a male body and a female brain. When I was young it was very hard to figure out how to be. No matter how hard I tried to be just an ordinary boy, it didn't quite work. I was always a little out of step with the rest of the other boys. I was clever enough to keep from being tormented, but I couldn't solve the issue. Well my mother solved the issue for a short time. I was so embarassed and so afraid of being further found out that I disposed of all the evidence and stopped. Yes, I stopped. I had cured myself. Well what actually happened was that I started to grow facial hair and my voice changed and I got tall. This all happened when the girls around me were getting softer and rounder and they weren't growing facial hair. More embarassingly I started to have nocturnal emissions (wet dreams.) This all said to me -"you are a boy so stop the foolishness." I tried to be a boy. I was a Boy Scout and played baseball. I ran track. I played war. My father even taught me to box and to use judo. I rode horses and lifted bails of hay. I was a boy, right? Not so fast. I still had some hurdles to deal with; dating and girls.
Now girls were a definite turn-on and they still are. The problem was that I couldn't be agressive. I struggled with my sexuality and I was in the midst of adolescance. I ocassionally would sneak into my parents room when no one was there and dress. I would do it for only short periods and only occasionally, but I did it none the less.
In my Junior year of High School I met a girl I eventually dated. We were both in the Drama club together. At first we didn't get along very well, but as time went on we hit it off. I think she was my first true love. Her name was Mary. She was intelligent, talented and above all feminine. I would walk her home everyday from High School. It was a long way out of my way home, but I loved just being with her. We talked on the phone until my parents or hers made us hang up. I had no thought of bing a girl or dressing in those days. I basked in her femininity. We were an item for several years. We spent as much time together as we could and we got just next thing to having sex. She was Cahtolic and I am Protestant and she wouldn't. We wqouldn't have been able to use birth control even if we had and with my luck she would have gotten pregnant. Condoms were illegal in Rhode Island in those days. The pill just didn't exist yet.
We went to different Colleges after High School. I went off to study chemistry and she to study design in New York. We kept in touch and saw each other during breaks. We kind of grew a little distant I thought and I was beginning to think that things were over when I got a letter from her saying "I love you. I need you." It floored me! I was thinking things were over and then her letter came. I wrote her a love letter back, but never sent it.
I guess I chickened out when things seemed to be getting serious. During Christmas break I planned to see her and apologise. I even bought her a gift. You guessed it, I chickened out then too. As I think about it I probably saved that dear sweet girl from the grief that was sure to follow.
The rest of College was a real nothing. I hung out with the artsy crowd and was one of the stranger fixtures on campus. Years ago I had switched to Philosophy as my major. I took as many minors and credits as I could. I was a Bohemian. I developed some friends who were female and I seemed to feel more comfortable in that environment. That worked until their boy friends started to complain about them being close to me. I just then hung out with a small circle of friends.
It was the beginning of the Viet Nam war and young men were being drafted. Being in College gave me an exemption. For the first two years of College I had to take R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officers Training Corps). Some of my friends stayed and took two more years and ended up in Viet Nam. It was a strange time. I could have finished my undergraduate work midterm my Senior year, but I might have been drafted. I therefore took extra courses. I ended up with six minors. On top of that I had two jobs, one for the Philosophy department tudoring Logic, and one for the music department managing the band. I also took Greek on the side. I had to get tutored in Greek because the University didn't offer it.

The Summer after graduation I worked in a Summer Camp. The girl counselors were very hot and horny. The problem was that they were for the most part still in High School. That was a real test in self control. I was ready to exert some maleness, but that Summer wasn't the time.

Next off to Yale for Graduate School.