You sit there, with a friend, a relative, a spouse and you
turn it over in your mind for what must be the thousandth
time. What if she knew? How would he respond? But you never
do it. Exposing the truth of your gender identity is just
too daunting. So you continue to hide it and by doing so,
you sacrifice a part of your 'self' and live a life that
has a lie at its core, a life filled with the fear of
discovery and of shame. How sad.

Easy for me to say? Yes. It is now. But if it wasn't for
the mean-spirited nature of a woman whom I foolishly
thought really cared for me, I'd still be hiding those
clothes in an attic crawl space and sneaking away whenever
I could to give vent to that secret part of myself which I
denied for most of my life.

I'm sure that at the time she thought she was hurting me.
But looking back on it now, I see that she was the one who
was feeling ashamed, not me. She was having an affair with
a co-worker and wanted to end our marriage of ten years,
but for reasons I didn't understand at the time, the rules
of community property weren't good enough for her. She
wanted more. And the best way to get it was to blackmail
me. "Include $10,000 in cash in the settlement," she said,
"and I won't tell your family, your children, your friends,
that you're a...a transvestite." (She spit that last word
into the phone like a whip snapping at a horse's buttocks.)


Transvestite. Her word, not mine. Before we were married, I
told her I was a crossdresser, and she accepted it. Or so I
thought. And we adopted a 'Don't Ask-Don't Tell' policy.
She didn't know about the clothing in the crawl space or
the times out of town when I'd dress up and go out. She
didn't want to know. And so I didn't tell her.

But then the divorce negotiations began and suddenly, it
was convenient for me to become a pervert; a transvestite.
And if I didn't pay, she was going to tell the world.

What she didn't count on was the effect of all those years
of hiding, of having reached a point where shame was
replaced with anger and I finally realized that so long as
I was ashamed, I had no power. It's our secrets that give
them others over our lives. And so it was that I reached
the decision to take control of my life. No one, I decided,
no one should have that power over me. If someone is going
to 'out' me, I concluded, I will be the one to do it.

That, of course, was the easy part. Actually taking control
was the hard part, as one by one I began to tell others:
first, my friends. Then my family. And lastly, my children.
With each one, the old fear and shame rose in me once more
and I had to struggle with it all over again. What will he
think? What will she say? How can I tell them?

But I did it. I did it not out of courage, but out of
anger. "Damn it," I kept thinking, "you will not do this. I
will not let you."

And to my surprise, no one went screaming from the room. No
one squirmed with discomfort or grew nausous at the news.
In fact, their reactions were more like my friend Joe, who
shrugged and said: "Yeah...so?" . More suprising was my
friend Max, who first said "Really?" and when I nodded
said. "You know, I always wanted to do that. I just never
had the guts."

Most surprising was my son, twenty-three years old at the
time, whose response was simply "Cool." (He and his wife
and I have spent the last few New Years eves together.)

And the wife who wanted the $10,000? In addition to helping
me come out, she also gave me a very nice divorce
settlement. You see, her attempt at blackmailing me was
left on my answering machine and I took the tape to my
attorney who pointed out to her attorney that blackmail is
a criminal offense. By the next day we had an equitable
settlement.

But my point is not to brag about how my ex-wife
unwittingly made my life so much better. Admitting that I
would not have had the courage to 'come out' on my own
isn't something I'm especially proud of. My point is to ask
YOU, dear reader, to consider your own dilemma. Are you
trapped by your own fear and shame? Are you the potential
victim of the dark secret you carry? Will you continue to
give over control of your life? Or will YOU be the one to
stand up and take charge?

What will it take?
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