After my appointment at Beth Israel Medical Center, my day continues with two more reveals.

Damn the torpedoes, etc, etc.

The thing is, as happy as I am about my appointment at Beth Israel, I’m still nervous. Really nervous. And this time it’s mostly my own doing.

I dropped an email to a former coworker, and to be honest, I’m not sure how he will take the news. I mean, he’s a really good guy. But he’s a guy’s guy. And we hung out together as guys.

To complicate the problem, I phrased the email asking to have lunch rather awkwardly, leaving him to believe I had dire news to share with him. Like I’m dying of cancer news.

And don’t just take my word for it. Enjoy my masterfully subtle email:

Long time no talk. I was wondering if you have some time next week to get together. I have a few things I’d like to fill you in on before things go public, so to speak.

Yeah, I’m an idiot. A cute idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.

We connect for lunch and I can see the look of concern on his face.

Are you okay? I’m here for you, man.

If I weren’t so nervous, this would be a pretty funny episode of Three’s Company.

So on the way to the restaurant I assure him. Not gay. Not dying of cancer. You can cross those two off your list. Though I do admit to working on a really crazy cover story to mess with his mind. “Yeah, I’m starting a porn site and I want you to be the star.” Something that would elicit Billy Bob Thornton’s classic line from Bad Santa, “Are you fucking with me?”

We settle in at a Chinese restaurant and I start my spiel. Deep breath aaaaand… transgendered.

He is immediately and unabashedly happy for me. He tells me about a trans friend with whom he is helping to create a vast photography project. He is crazy supportive. And not in the let’s-talk-about-fantasy-football way I have come to expect from guys.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I am blessed with an extraordinary collection of friends. I never thought I would receive so much support. In a way, I feel guilty for doubting them.

Amusingly, the guy sitting behind him is trying to eavesdrop on the conversation. Not sure if I can blame him as it is probably the juiciest conversation in the whole restaurant. I am tempted to ask him if he needs me to repeat anything but I let it go. This is a day for being positive, not jaded. That can come next month.

We part with a hug, an honest-to-god hug, and I head back to work in a great mood. But I still have one more coming out tonight, with a young woman I used to work with. A wonderfully sweet girl.

We meet for drinks and after some idle chitchat, I launch into my standard pitch. Moving to New York, yada, yada. Stuttering, blah, blah, blah. Aaaaand… transgendered.

She is fascinated by my story and by my journey and we have the most delightful evening talking about being transgendered, being a girl, shaving legs, the effects of hormones and nicknames for breasts.

Yup, I go there. I mean, guys always have the raunchiest words for breasts. Melons, knockers, hooters… hell, they don’t even need to be real words. Gozongas, yabbos, hoohas. But I’m intrigued to discover what words women use when guys aren’t around. And I get two delightful examples.

The Girls. And the Twins.

I must admit that I don’t exactly have women’s breasts at the moment, but if and when I do, at least I’ll know what to call them.

Wednesday morning 3 A.M.

Not just a Simon & Garfunkel album anymore. It’s me in my hotel room and I can’t sleep.

I send a note of gratitude to my boss for her wonderful and loving support, and continue pacing the hotel room.

Why? Because in the morning I have my appointment at Beth Israel Medical Center about my self-medicated hormone use and subsequent blood test. On the positive side, my nurse practitioner is transgendered so hopefully she’ll be understanding what I’ve been going through.

I finally fall asleep, but awake hours later and the pacing continues.

My wait finally comes to an end and I arrive at Beth Israel on 14th Street. Everyone there is extremely nice and supportive, and I am directed to fill in my personal information.

I am then confronted, for the first time in my life, with a new choice. Male. Female. Transgendered.

I smile and circle Transgendered. I smile again and can’t suppress a laugh this time. “I accept!!!”

I wish I could recount more epic tales of bravery, but I panic when it comes to my insurance. Do I want my insurance company to know I’m transgendered? Do I want that on my permanent medical record? I blink and decide to pay out of pocket for now. I’ll cross that road at another time.

I am beckoned in to have my blood pressure taken. Yeah, that shouldn’t be too high, especially for one afflicted with white coat syndrome (artificially high blood pressure due to anxiety about having your blood pressure taken). But to my surprise it’s 113 over something.

Maybe I’m more at ease about all of this than I thought.

I then meet my NP (I’m new to the world of medical acronyms, but officially Family Nurse Practitioner, Board Certified. FNP-BC for short. NP for really short). Regardless, she is a delight and let’s me nervously share my story over the next half hour. She intersperses my running dialogue with head nods and comments like, yup, that’s normal.

Normal. Not a word I ever expected to hear when it came to being transgendered.

She seems satisfied with my story, progress and therapy, and innocuously asks if I want to continue my hormones. That catches me off guard as I was expecting to be reprimanded for my previous self-medicated use, and taken off all hormones until I had proceeded further down “official” channels.

I think about it and nod my assent. Yes, I would. The subtle changes so far are welcome, and I feel like I’m making progress. She gives me a release to sign about the hazards of estrogen and before long I have my prescriptions.

She then catches me off guard a second time with another question. What pronoun would I like to use? I suddenly have a vision of the Bugs Bunny cartoon with Daffy Duck, Rabbit Seasoning, where Bugs repeatedly tricks Elmer Fudd into shooting Daffy.

Daffy Duck: Let’s run through that again. 

Bugs Bunny: Okay. 

Bugs Bunny: Wouldja like to shoot me now or wait till you get home? 

Daffy Duck: Shoot him now, shoot him now. 

Bugs Bunny: You keep outta this. He doesn’t hafta shoot you now. 

Daffy Duck: Ha! That’s it! Hold it right there! Pronoun trouble. 

Daffy Duck: It’s not: “He doesn’t have to shoot *you* now.” It’s: “He doesn’t have to shoot *me* now.” Well, I say he does have to shoot me now!

I don’t think I’m ready for “pronoun troubles” just yet and request that we just use “DiG” for now. Pronouns can be sorted out on another day.

I then get my blood taken and finally depart for the front desk. As I’m about to pay, I decide, screw it. I am transgendered. I circled the damn word on the form. Damn the torpedoes, let’s submit to my insurance company and let the chips fall where they may.

Okay, I may be brave, but I still torture analogies with the best of ’em.

I leave Beth Israel feeling great. And again can’t suppress a laugh.

You, my friend, are officially transgendered.

If it’s Tuesday, I must be in NYC.

And this time I’m excited. Really excited. It’s time to tell my current boss, a former colleague and a friend from my days at AOL. Our current gig together is wrapping up shortly, so even if, on the oft chance it does go south, it shouldn’t be too awkward for too long.

I actually was hoping to tell her last week as part of my initial reveal, but fate has a funny way of tossing you curveballs, and I prefer to go with the flow.

Another mutilated analogy. <sigh> I fear you’ll have to get used to that, as Captain Jack Aubrey appears to have become my muse.

Back to the story at hand, we opt to have our chat in the office since everyone else clears out for lunch. I’m surprisingly NOT terrified, though I can feel my heart thumping in my chest.

Deep breath.

She reacts much the way I had hoped. She smiles infectiously, is so genuinely thrilled, and gives me a big hug, before leaping into a million questions.

As usual, I only have so many answers. This is step two of my master plan. Step one, the hair ties on my wrist. Step two, no more hiding. Step three, the evolution of boy and modes. Steps four and beyond, not sure yet. One step at a time, each step in its own time.

But the questions are wonderful. It allows me to dispel myths about being transgendered. It allows me to share details of my journey, not what other might assume or guess it to be. And perhaps most importantly, it allows me to talk about something I’ve never been able to talk about openly. I don’t think animated conversations with myself in the mirror quite count.

I tell her about my blog (this blog) and she thinks it’s a fantastic idea. An opportunity to share, an opportunity to teach.

Life being what it is, we only have an hour, but she promises me a shopping trip. “We are going to have a so much fun dressing you up!” I smile. I’ll take all the help I can get.

We hug again, and it’s good. Really good. In fact, we are much closer than before our chat. There seems to be a bond of friendship created, at least between women (well, in my case, almost woman), when confessing emotional vulnerabilities and sharing a part of one’s soul. It was the case with the first woman I came out to last week and it happens again here. After all this anxiety, after all this fear, I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends.

The day passes and I head for another reveal in my black women’s high tops. They don’t look like women’s high tops, they are fairly androgynous, but I know, and it feels like progress.

I grab drinks in midtown with a former coworker, another woman. But this time the response is a bit more sedate. Not bad, just sedate. But I’ll take what I can get, and after an hour, I bound off to therapy.

My therapist seems genuinely surprised at my progress. I mean, I’ve come out to, what nine people? I’m starting to lose count. But I tell her I like to jump off cliffs every few years. I like the unknown. I like the exhilaration. I might even like the fear.

It’s another hugely positive session and I leave feeling happy and alive and ready to conquer the world. Okay, maybe not the world, maybe just my corner of it.

My son heads to school at zero dark thirty Monday morning, and I decide today is boy mode. No need to push it. I have all the time in the world, to paraphrase Louis Armstrong from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. As long as I’m not shot by Blofeld in the end, I should be good.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not making progress.

Now that I’ve told my son, I can literally come out of the closet. Or at least my wardrobe can.

But first things first. I need to pack up my comic book collection from the Ikea shelves in my bedroom. Yes, I am a geek. A divorced geek. And to quote Jonathan Coulton, “Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men.”

It’s a long process as I need to catalogue what goes in the short boxes (didn’t I tell you I’m a geek?), but I finally start to create some space. One shelf unit for girl t-shirts. Another for yoga pants and jeans. And a third for long skirts.

It’s a small step. But a big one at the same time. No more hiding.

Before long, my son comes home from school and we start to discuss what adjective we should use to describe this experience.

I mean, it’s crazy. And it’s nuts. And it’s insane. But we need something non-disparaging we can both use to get across the fact that this is not exactly what someone expects out of life.

Weird? Too negative.

Odd? Ditto.

Strange? Houston, we have a problem.

Funky? Hmmm… this one has potential. As in, this music is funky (hopefully not like, that cheese smells funky).

To quote Urban Dictionary: Different, but cool/nice.

Yeah, I kinda like that.

Funky.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner.

Sunday comes and I decide I’d like to spend the day in girl mode.

My son is cool with it (again), so I change into a long burgundy skirt. My top is another story. I find myself trying on a series of different long sleeve t-shirts. Too fat. Too tight. Too bright. Too sexy (!). I then put on the one that looks just right. The black one. Modest, slimming and appropriate for a lazy Sunday.

Just like a girl, right?

I come downstairs, no clogs this time, and my son smiles again. Skirt or yoga pants, I ask.

Definitely skirt. This one’s a charmer.

We spend the day catching up on Sleepy Hollow. A normal Sunday with my son. But in girl mode.

I am a lucky man. Or girl. Or whatever. Not sure how that works yet.

In between episodes I decide to paint my toenails. Unfortunately, I’m still at the stage of painting more than the just the nails and sheepishly scrape the excess polish off my toes. Not as much as on previous attempts, but it’d be nice to master the art of toenail painting eventually.

Night comes and my son votes pizza for dinner. Okay, let me change into boy mode for the delivery guy. No need to freak out the locals. Let’s give that a few more weeks.

My son gives me a look and says, no, let’s pay cash and I’ll handle it.

For a moment I feel a little weird about that. As if I’m hiding. And I’m done with hiding. But he talks me into it.

Pizza ordered, pizza arrives and it’s all good.

Now it’s important that you know something about me. I am incapable of eating dinner without dripping stain-inducing blobs of food on myself. Usually when I’m wearing a white shirt. But the burgundy skirt goes with the sauce, so it doesn’t portend to be a complete disaster. That said, I’ve learned to drape a tea towel over my skirt when I eat. And shockingly no spills this time.

We end the evening with me still in girl mode and it’s wonderful. I literally have never spent the day with someone whilst in girl mode. Ever. And the best part is that it’s starting to feel almost “normal.”

I wake up early Saturday and my mind is racing. About everything.

And in a moment of extreme clarity (or extreme insanity), I make a decision.

I’m selling the house and moving to NYC (and yes, the line, “Fuck it, I’m going to Narnia” does run through my head).

Why? To be brutally honest, nothing is keeping me in Maryland once both my boys are in school. Because NYC is one of the few places that might accept me for who I really am. More so than Maryland at least. At least I won’t get stares for colorful hair ties on my wrist.

I suddenly feel free. To be who I am. To start a new life.

That said, I wouldn’t be moving until August, but I feel like the decision has been made. The dice have been rolled. So let it be written, so it shall be done. Blah, blah, blah.

I start padding around the house (in boy mode) exclaiming wildly, I don’t need THAT. Or THAT. Or THAT chair. GONE!

It’s like I’m purging my old life to get ready for my new one. Amazing year indeed.

My son wakes up and I tell him my decision. And we are perhaps closer than we’ve ever been. Laughing, joking, dancing. Okay, I’m dancing, he’s staring at me like I’ve lost yet another marble.

He works at the nearby movie theater and due to Computer Tsunami 2014, my playlist has been stagnant for nearly three weeks. Why don’t you provide the music for our drive?

He looks at me, thinks for a moment, then smiles and says, yeah, that’d be cool.

We get in the car, he fires up his iPhone and selects the first song. A Brony song.

Pony, pony, blah blah blah, then…

Isn’t it great to be different?
Isn’t it wonderful to be exactly who you are?
When you learn to start accepting yourself
You’ll become a shining star

We hit a stop light and I ask him to hit pause. He stares at me, a little taken aback.

I laugh through another bout of tears and tell him I’d like to get him to work without crashing the damn car due to another crying jag.

We both laugh and it’s all good. In other wave of synchronicity, the song is by Forest Rain, his favorite Brony musician. And transgendered.

It seems the person I feared who would be the least understanding of my plight is perhaps the most supportive. Genuinely supportive.

Perhaps this won’t be so lonely and scary after all.