Perception Is Reality

Masks can change your appearance, but can never change who you truly are. Your appearance does though have a huge effect on the way you’re treated. Maybe this is fair, maybe not, but it’s true and yes, it’s true for men as well as women. I recognized this at an early age.

I recognized early on that I could decide what impression I wanted to be giving out, and shape my appearance around that. If I looked good and hung out with good-looking girls it would have a positive effect on almost every interpersonal aspect of my life. It was the beginning of the construction of a lifelong sentence I was putting on myself in the closet

Being in great shape isn’t that hard – if you’re just a little leaner and in shape, you’ll stand out. I always played sports, so I was always in shape when I was younger. Likewise, it’s fairly easy to dress better than most people, and to take better care of your skin, grooming, etc.

I was always “dating” a girl in school growing up. I don’t think it had much to do with looks or anything like that, but mostly for perception. In my mind, I thought I would be perceived in a certain way if I had a steady girlfriend. I was uncomfortable being perceived as unlikable and having a girlfriend always gave me a sense of others thinking I was acceptable at least to the girl I was regularly seeing.

I knew I wanted girls around me and I knew that was somehow different as my buddies didn’t much car about girlfriends or anything like that.

It is difficult to think back on life and determine when I knew I was different. I wonder when it began where I tried to develop my David personality.

I recall watching TV shows and movies and meeting people and saying, that's the personae I will emulate. I remember always looking to another as to how to be perceived and never thought it acceptable to just be.

I recall as a ninth grader chasing down another kid with an angry mob standing around wanting me to exact my revenge, because the kid (who was bigger than me) called me a woman. The mob was a bunch of Junior High kids that thought they were going to see the popular guy defend his name. Nobody would ever get away with calling me a woman - I had to defend the closet I had built for myself.

I remember thinking as I walked with the mob dozens of blocks to finally catch the boy. He was just trying to go home. The mob was just wanting to see how it's done when someone defames you. I was trying to determine how this boy got it right. How did he know I actually loved my feminine side? How did he know I’m queer? Did I somehow let my guard down? Nobody else said anything. How did he know?

I was expected to enact revenge on an honest boy. All while I am walking in the mob, I'm thinking that he saw something. My barrier must have broken down. Somehow my hiding from my true self wasn't working.

I have always felt I was a girl in a man's body. I have always developed a personae that would suggest otherwise.

I loved playing with barbies with my sister, but played with Hotwheels, because that's why boys did.

I watched women walking by in their pretty dresses and gloves as they paraded into the Catholic Church across the street on Sunday. I wore one of my mother's old green gloves (she lost the other one) and said I was pretending to be the green hornet when all along I was imagining strolling down the street with a matching flowing dress.

I was five and knew I liked softer girly things and already knew that this was a bad thing for a boy to like in 1968. I remember when I realized that we were playing catch on the front lawn. The beautiful ladies paraded by and rather than watch, I told my Dad I wanted to be a catcher in baseball like he was.

I became a catcher from age 12 to age 18 and not a beautiful woman in a flowing dress. I developed that David from a young age to be who I needed to be perceived to be and stuffed deep down any remote desire of who I felt natural being. Perhaps if the 60s or 70s were more affirming for someone like me, my courage would have moved me to transition.

Life is ironic like that. I was the catcher on the baseball team and free safety on the football team because of my mental toughness. The catcher directs the defense of a baseball team and the free safety sees and calls out much of what was going for a football team's defense. Of course the coach would direct the infield as to where to shade a batter and the defense of our football had a defensive coordinator that called the defensive alignments, but I was told in both cases that I would be an "All American if I just had some speed - you are the smartest player on our team." I had no foot-speed due to a neuropathy I would learn about later in life, but I still took the coaches comment as a positive.

I was mentally tough and smart in sports - if they only knew all that I was trying to keep track of during those times. I mean high school has its own issues for a teenagers discovery of how they fit in, so in looking back, I easily recall working twice as hard as anyone I knew to understand and develop a passable David.

Even as I write that I realize that everyone has their issues they deal with. I'm not trying to compete suggesting my issues of hiding were more difficult to navigate than someone else's issues, but rather to suggest that my hiding my true personality was unique and very complicated and I'm convinced it damaged me for life in some way, shape or form.

Actually, the more I write about it the angrier I get that perception was the rule rather than authenticity when I was growing up. Yes, I created this for myself, but I learned it from an intolerant world.