And so it goes

Life back East was very busy. The Church was very demanding and the Diocesan Camp, though a pleasure was a lot of work year-round. In the parish I began trying to reverse a lot of the damage the previous priest had done. I did a lot of visiting of families, especially families who were on the rolls but not attending. It was tough work. I also tried to get people to volunteer for the many things that needed to be done, like the Sunday school. I met with some initial success, but eventually that would be undermined by some of the forces in the parish. It seems strange to tell, but there were parishioners who worked at thwarting anything I tried to accomplish. Unfortunately that is a reality in the church. The Sunday school was one thing that seemed to go somewhat well. There were several teachers, including my wife. Eventually, the teachers were driven away through criticism, mostly. There came a day when my wife was the only teacher. One Sunday she had all the children and several of them got away to the bathrooms and began laughing and screaming. They were clearly heard in the church and one of the grumpier parishioners went back and blasted my wife. S proceeded to quit being a Sunday School teacher and so ended the Sunday school for a while.

I am getting a bit ahead of myself though. That first year I discovered the reality of doing both jobs. In January I had to begin advertising and hiring camp staff. The church had no secretary and neither did the camp (there was support only for camper registrations and for bill paying.) I did it all and continued my parish work. I worked without taking a day off each week. I had to take my vacation during the winter months because I had to be at the camp all summer. Taking time off was very difficult. My blood pressure went up. I had never had high blood pressure before in my life, but now I had borderline high blood pressure. I was put on diuretics. The diuretics eventually made me feel very irritable and I had to take potassium supplements.

In many ways I was too busy to cross dress, but I did take hormones. On the hormone front it became obvious to me that I was going to have a problem. I had been forging prescriptions. In Kansas it had been easy because the KU Med Center was far from Lawrence and the pharmacists were accustomed to not knowing the Doctors. In Connecticut the pharmacists were familiar with all the Doctors and I had to stop forging prescriptions out of fear of being discovered. I found a natural source of estrogen at health food stores, freeze dried bovine ovary. I found that that source helped me feel better and didn't cause quick breast development. It also didn't interfere with sexual functioning. Once I started using those pills breast development continued, but slowly and I felt much better. The discomfort I felt without hormones is hard to describe, but I felt sort of uneasy in my own body. Without estrogen I felt constantly on edge. I used these pills for years after this.

This was in 1978 and 1979. As a family S and I and my son were mostly happy. We were near S's parents so we saw them frequently. They doted on my son as did my parents. Though some things were difficult most went well. Even the church seemed to make some gains and the camp registrations were at max with waiting lists. Life was pretty good.

As I look back on my life, I think I might have been primed for a gender change in 1976-1979. I had researched transsexuality and I was taking female hormones quite regularly. I had not sought out counseling and I truly did not believe myself to be transsexual. Ironically I was only a short distance from help and did not know it. A priest at the Cathedral in Hartford was an authority in transsexuality and a leader of both a support group and Gender clinic. Several things lead me away from seeking further help, at the time I had no desire for Sex change surgery and I was oriented totally to women. In those days transsexuals were supposed to want male husbands and that wasn't what interested me. Sex change surgery just seemed out of reach. I wanted female sex organs, but surgery seemed impossible. I was aware of some rather profound changes from taking estrogen. Those changes were not just physical, but they were also mental. The risks at that time would have been very great. My denomination had barely accepted female clergy much less trans-female. I certainly would have lost my wife and child along with my jobs. I had decided that I was not really transsexual because I wasn't oriented to men and that would make surgery impossible. I also didn't want to loose sexual functioning. At the time the sex change surgery was still in it's infancy and most post-op trans women didn't have sensation which allowed orgasm. In any case I made due with taking estrogen and cross dressing occasionally.

Tags: Trans, transsexual, ts, tg, priest, episcopal, religion