Please enjoy this preview of the first four chapters of LANNIE! My Journey from Man to Woman. Read it below, or look below to the right to listen to the audiobook version.
Introduction
Do you know about the great gender divide over clean underwear? I didn't either, until I changed my sex. When I stopped living as a man and began living as a woman, I learned about clean underwear and many other remarkable things, such as:
- My life may have been easier if I had just been gay.
- I could spend a thousand dollars on cosmetics and thoroughly enjoy the experience.
- A family's love may not be all it seems.
- A rose by another name does not smell as sweet, Shakespeare notwithstanding.
- Sex reassignment surgery hurts! So does electrolysis.
- Monkey Brains can get their feelings hurt.
- What goes on inside the women's locker room?
- Guys can be jerks but they can also be charming.
- Sometimes, if you're lucky, life lets you have do-overs.
- You truly can become anything your heart desires, as long as you are true to yourself.
This book is about me, but in a larger sense, it's about the differences and similarities between women and men. It is the chronicle of my journey of discovery as I grew from manhood into womanhood, experiencing those differences and similarities first hand.
I wrote the source material for most of these pages during the period when I went from thinking I was a typical cross-dressing man until well after my sex reassignment surgery (SRS). If the opinions I express in some places seem to contradict my opinions in others, it's because I was growing, changing, and learning a lot during this period.
As you read my story, you will probably be struck by how terribly superficial and self-centered I was. It was all about the clothes—the sexier the better—and it was all about me. I make no apologies for this. I spent forty-six years of my life with testosterone coursing through my veins, causing me to become sexually aroused whenever I saw a cute woman in sexy clothes. Talk about Pavlovian training! Is it any wonder that I wanted to be that woman when I got the chance? Is it remarkable that my idea of what it meant to be a woman was so heavily tied up in the clothes? Besides, I didn't have a clue about what it really meant to be a woman until I was accepted into women's circles and given the opportunity to share their lives, and that didn't happen until I began living as woman myself.
Another thing to consider is that it wasn't until I started living as a woman and taking female hormones that I experienced my female puberty: I was just beginning to learn about boys, and sex, and being a woman, from a female point of view. In terms of my female emotional development, I was only a teenager; isn't it normal at that age to be obsessed with clothes, and my own life? I was going through a Cinderella stage, which also accounts for why I thought of myself more as a girl than as a woman, despite being nearly fifty years old.
As for being self-centered, I spent all that time trying to be the man my parents and the rest of world seemed to want me to be. Wasn't I entitled to take a few years for myself? The fact of the matter was, I had to. I needed to fix myself before I could move on to other important things in life. This book is about how I fixed myself. By the way, the human heart is self-centered, too, you know: It pumps blood to itself before it nourishes the rest of the body.
These events took place primarily in and around Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) and San Francisco from 2001 through 2005. Please note, whenever I identify a person by first name only, I changed the name to respect that individual's privacy.
Now, hold on to your seat, the first chapter is pretty strong stuff!
