I’m not a little girl anymore

The last week has been momentous: I had my first genuine gynecological exam, and I lost my girlginity.  Either one would have stood as a momument on its own, but coming as they did, separated by days, is almost overwhelming.

I write these words without kink.  The metaphorical sense of being a baby has been very real for me.  I was reborn as a woman just 4 months ago.  The scars on my body are so like those of pregnancy, the products I used are so bound up with post-partum experiences.  My vulva was swollen as if I had had a baby.  The scars on my belly are the marks of a surgeon not totally dissimilar to those from a c-section, only I have five, and they are small.

The underwear I wore for two months were “paper” boy shorts, designed to hold a swollen vulva with delicacy and comfort, purchased in the pregnant-mama section of Target. They also doubled as a perfect barrier for an ice pack.  I wore ice packs between my legs and on my vulva almost constantly for nearly three months.

My healing is going great.  There is still some swelling on the mons veneris, the female pubic bone, which almost feels as if it has become more prominent–and some of that is not swelling but hormones.  And my inner labia are swollen.  The outer labia are almost “normal” by now.  Whether I will need cosmetic touch-ups remains to be seen (monsplasty and vaginoplasty are common out-patient procedures and very understandable)—some people love “fat” pussy lips.  I am not so sure, and there is the practical reality that if I wear my favorite style of underwear, the thong, my lips have a tendency to poke out.

The helpful advice, “don’t wear thongs,” is falling on deaf ears…even though women who wear thongs are substantially more likely to develop UTIs than those who don’t. You know how it is, “a girl’s gotta suffer…”

My gynecologist said, “this is incredible.  You can’t tell from the outside,” meaning my vulva ‘passes’. Trans ironic humour.  Of course from the inside anyone can tell because my canal doesn’t end with the cervix, but in a dead end (at least I would hope anyone could tell).  Only the gyno could not reach full depth with the tools she had on hand.  She was delighted about that, about losing her own virginity of inserting a speculum into a trans girl vagina, and gave me the all clear.

Can I just appreciate Italians for one sec. I mean, this woman looks at vaginas all day…but she was just so visibly and emotionally bowled over about how “normal” and beautiful my vagina and vulva looked that she was just bubbling. Its kinda nice.

The ring to the entrance of my vaginal canal, and the tissue just below, the fourchette, is sensitive, and she suggested that I massage it daily.  It does hurt a bit, and this comes forward each time the dilator goes on. But vaginal massage? More excuses to play with myself? Its a wonder I get any work done at all.

When I lost my girlginity the woman noted how everything looked and felt the same–“it’s just like all the other girl’s I’ve felt’. I just love women so much. Don’t you?  Both of these two people have such different lives, but they share at least one thing in common: both have seen many vulvas.  Way more than me. And they were pleased, which makes me so happy I feel high.

Being fxxked feels as if it is more than just a symbolic end, or some small event.  It is momentous, and it marks the formal closing of my transition period.  Of course there are many other transitions I will have, including the almost daily changes in my mind, body, and life resulting from hormone therapy and living out.

Why on earth do we call it “losing my virginity?” Surely we should say we have found out maturity? Or, that we have grown up. Or that we have opened the door to the enriching life of the adult.

It’s all so weird for me. I have been an adult in a real and profound sense for so long, but my sense of being a little girl is very real. Weirdly real. She’s growing up fast, and she’s going to be a boss baddie, but she has so, so much to learn. And thank goodness I am a submissive, slave type, because it means I soak people up: I listen to them. Seek to learn from them. Can’t get enough. And in this regard, about my body, my new body, boy, I have a lifetime of catch up to work through.

The “Sex Change” phase of my life is over.  The vast majority of my legal documents have been changed: birth certificate, social security, passport, driver’s license, most credit cards, email address, name I live by…there are still some stragglers, but it is mainly done.

It was a beautiful period, one that I will cherish forever.  I did live as a baby for much of those 3-4 months.  I wore diapers for much of it because pads were not perfect for bleeding, particularly at the beginning. How convenient, right? But it isn’t the same when you have to do it, or there are practical considerations…it wasn’t like some sexy hot Mommy type was making me do it.  

I was totally dependent on my caregivers for 6 weeks, confined to my bed except to go to the toilet and to get up very briefly to eat.  People read to me.  I slept most of the time.  And I lived in this blissful bubble of total love. Falling asleep when someone is reading to you stays so delicious that it is the first thing you think about when you wake up, how delicious it was to fall asleep. It is so utterly gentle and cuddly.  Surrendering into the feeling of being cared for is something I haven’t done as a conscious adult, perhaps ever.

It was beautiful.

My posse has cared for me profoundly and deeply, and this has given me time to find my feet, to surrender to myself, and to take my first baby steps into life as a woman.

When I “decided” to finally step into my truth, acknowledging to myself and the world that I am trans and that I would become a woman in all ways, I accepted that the path of being her would be difficult.  It would not be as smooth or easy as anything I had experienced.  And the truth is that the path as a trans woman is similar, but has additional challenges.

We are freaks.

Some people, mostly women, have an appropriate love for that freakishness.  They feel into the vulnerability and magic that it is made of, and when we are seen in this way, held, appreciated, listened to, we blossom.  From this position we have extraordinary power to give, to love, to make magic. The good ones love us for our choice. Especially ones who know what we are giving up.

Others fetishize us, and that is not great, but it is also not bad, or at least not as bad as benign tolerance, which is really just a form of concealed hate, and then of course, there are outright haters.

What I can’t help but think about is that the “party” is over.  That I have to grow up now.  That it is time to find a seat at the table as an adult woman.  I am making the 1^st of September my official start date.  Interestingly, I will be at a BDSM party in celebration of the dominant female on that day.  The last time I went as a dominatrix, however, I met a woman who I ended up submitting to, and had my first real whipping.  And I mean, real whipping.  She will be there, but I am not sure I am ready to go back down that path.  Something is changing in me.

I approached a domme I admired a week or so ago about exploring play with her.  We arranged to chat online.  In the end, I cancelled.  I paid anyway, but I cancelled.  I did it because I don’t know why I would see her in the first place.  I already have a domme I love and cherish, I have other people I play with—I don’t need anything else. Did you hear that? Did I hear that? I have enough. I don’t need anything else. Maybe I have too much.

And I just spent the weekend with a gorgeous woman from my civilian life who is a budding young domme who has expectations of her own of me.  And my children have expectations of me.  So suddenly it is time to grow up.

But I am still just a girl, even though I step into my responsibility.  Most days hammer this message home to me.  I may be a grown up in a certain sense, but I didn’t grow up female.  I missed being a pre-pubescent girl, going through puberty the first time not as a girl, and I didn’t grow into sexual adulthood as a woman.  

When we think of our sexual selves, and how we relate to others in ways that involve dress, how the body moves, how it exists, how we exist in society, the words we use, the way we carry ourselves, all these lessons of being female have been missed.

I was recently with a woman I treasure and admire and she was taking pictures of me.  To help me to see what she meant she would do with her own body what she wished me to do with mine.  There was a lifetime of seduction in her gestures.  This is a kind of learning that it is hard to consciously articulate or ever know before it is happening. Seeing her, watching her, listening her is not a kind of book learning, but a body learning, one that has to be felt into. It just has to happen. And when I talk about “big sisters” it is these kinds of things that I need to learn: how does she react in certain situations, how does she move or carry herself…it is a kind of existential language, one that we learn as either male or female children, and it affects every aspect of our lives. To learn all of this now, as an adult, whoa. I will be learning what it means not just to be a woman, but to be female, for the rest of my life, and still won’t know, in part, because I know how much I missed.

Speaking of which, ballet class season resumes imminently, but I have also signed up for burlesque.  Striptease and sexy dancing.  I want to learn how to move my body in a sexy way.  Sultry.

Right there is a part of why becoming a Sex Worker is important to me–as a woman, being paid to perform as a woman is not just hot, it is existentially affirming. As one of my children put it, “you aren’t doing it for the money, you’re doing it for you.” A jarring but truthful statement. No greater affirmation than someone paying you because you have a body that you created in order to keep from going insane or killing yourself. The money is pretty cool too though.

Even though I am grown up, and have formally stepped from my baby cocoon, my own womb, parts of me will just have to play catch up.  And unsurprisingly, it may be forever, that from time to time, I need to cuddle up in bed with a plushie and suckle, and feel the baby inside of me.

Oh, how mysterious life is, and such a joy.