Transitioning

Not Tiina. A stock photo.

In a spirit of inclusiveness, the enlightened have realized that it isn’t enough to be sympathetic only to gays and lesbians, but also to bisexuals and the transgendered. I have known many bisexual women — or at least women who’ve cavorted with other women a time or two, just to be able to say they had, or because they really liked it — and two purportedly bisexual men, though it looked to me, during our brief friendship, as though Bowie’s sole interest was in gals, and Danny’s in pretty young men. I’m proud to be able to point to a record of sympathy for the transgendered that goes back nearly to the beginning of this century.

I met Tina at one of the gala fetishfests my future bride Mistress Chloe hostessed in Santa Rosa, California, the one attended by the celebrated fetish photographer Eric Kroll. Arriving a bit late, she made an unforgettable entrance. In her very high-heeled platform shoes, she was close to seven feet tall, and strikingly pretty. We would learn later that, on the occasion of her 40^th birthday, she’d treated herself to plastic surgery that had made her features rather finer, more feminine. She seemed a very nice person.

She was indeed a very nice person, albeit one with a ravaged heart. She’d always felt herself to be female, but had fathered no fewer than five children — including triplets — before deciding to transition. Her estranged wife, understandably, hadn’t been thrilled to discover Hubby’s intention to become a woman, and vindictively denied Tina access to the kids, which devastated her.

She worked as a checker in a supermarket down in Marin County. It turned out that she was a drummer. Mistress Chloe and I were at the time finishing up the Mistress Chloe album Like a Moth to Its Flame, and it occurred to me that a backing band featuring Tina on drums and our friend Mistress Antoinette on bass (she owned one, and had taken lessons), would almost certainly attract much attention.

Tina accompanied us to a big fetish event in San Francisco one evening. We were denied admission when it emerged that Mistress Chloe, a citizen of the UK, needed to display her passport. Our informing the doorman that we found this idea idiotic somehow failed to change his mind. Tina, fetching in a black latex minidress, and, as usual, nearly seven feet high, was wonderfully gracious about our change of plans. We repaired to a bar on Geary Street popular with persons in transition, and she danced up a small storm, reveling in her new-found femininity and allure as she watched herself on a mirrored wall.