I have no idea what to title this.

Hey guys. With summer coming up and talks of beach trips and such, I want to talk about some stuff a lot of people don't realize trans men have to deal with. My main thing, and if you know me in real life you know I complain about this a lot, is not being able to grow facial hair. Don't get me wrong, I have a few hairs on my chin and I can grow one of those shitty 13 year-old-boy mustaches in two months, but it's not the same. I have baby face, so I look younger to society than I actually am. Growing a beard or mustache or goatee would help counter-act that, but I can't grow these things. I won't be able to until I can afford testosterone, either. There are a lot of hoops one has to jump through to acquire hormones and surgeries. The one doctor I found, located in New Hope, charges $400 dollars a year for hormones, not including other medications and blood tests and other things you need to get hormones. Sure, $400 a year is only 34 dollars a month, but hey kids, Uncle Aiden is unemployed, in debt and struggling just to keep his bank account open. Not to mention, I have bills to pay. Not even fancy shit like cable and internet, no I need to pay rent, I need to buy food, I need gas and car insurance and clothes. There is a place in Philly that will work with you if you're unemployed or uninsured, but even then you need to be able to afford the trip down to Philly, you need time for commute and examinations. Even if I could get a 4 month supply for $75, it would cost time and money to go get it and who knows if I could get it that cheap. 
Next that bothers me is my chest. Mother and all the woman before her were, uh....well endowed. A gene that does not seem to skip a generation. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I could knock someone out cold with these things. I stay heavy to help pass because they're so big, but some of the weight I gain goes to them. If I was as skinny as my mother had been at points, they'd still be large. I think when she was at a slim, healthy weight they were still like... D's. At least. Do you have any idea how awkward and embarrassing it is to be a dude with boobs? Every guy always jokes around, "Oh, if I had boobs I'd play with them all the time", no you wouldn't. After playing with them the first day you'd fucking hate it. I don't get to just jump out of bed, throw on a t-shirt and run out the door. I have to purchase $80 binders made of spandex off the internet. If you can't afford that you get to work with ace bandaging or layered t-shirts. The lucky ones, the trans men with almost no chest at all can get away with ace bandaging or layered shirts or even tight sports bras. But if you're me, bandaging fucking hurts. It's constricting, you can't move and you can't breathe. So, ok, I have these binders. They're like bike shorts for your chest, tight and keeping everything held down. Kind of. Mine don't work as magically as that, they compress but you can still tell something is off. You can see outlines of my chest. And fuck, if my binders aren't clean I don't leave the house. I hate walking my dog on a short 15 step walk outside without a binder on. Oh, and binders make you sweat. In places you don't want to sweat when you have tight spandex clinging to you for 16 hours. Baby powder helps, but it's another thing where if you don't remember it could ruin your whole day. But alright, I have these binders, I can go out in public and pass fairly well to society. They just think I'm some dude that's fat as hell (they're right). But let's talk about going to the pool, the beach, swimming. I remember being a kid and hating the swimsuits but loving swimming. I was a fucking fish when it came to swimming. I'd jump in around 10am and I wouldn't come out except to eat, go to the bathroom and...and yeah, that's it. Everyone is running around playing tag? Fuck you guys, I'm gonna do some mother fucking underwater hand stands. But as I got older, as puberty hit, I went swimming less and less. Now I'm not that strong of a swimmer because of it. I used to boogie board (fuck I loved boogie boarding, I wanted to learn to surf when I got older), not I won't even go in the ocean. Partly because of some recent fear of swimming in natural bodies of water, partly because I know I can't handle swimming out there. Waves beat the hell out of me and I'd be totally fucked if I got caught by a current. "So," some of you might say, "buy some swim trunks, wear a t-shirt and go fucking swimming again." I do wear a t-shirt when swimming, I also wear a binder. And it fucking sucks. I hate nothing more (Ok, I probably hate a few things more) than wearing wet clothes. Even in water. They get soggy and heavy and...chaffed. Seriously, it takes away from the joy and fun of swimming. Not to mention pools that won't let you wear a T-shirt in the water. Then I'm just shit out of luck. But the one that really gets my depression going is the fact that I can't take off my shirt at the beach or pool like my guy friends. Not that I would want to in this endowed state, but I want to be able to. I want my chest to be right so I can feel semi-normal. I cannot convey how much it sucks. There is nothing more to it than that. I hate that, in these kinds of situations, being trans holds me back. It disables me from being who I want to be.
Alright, this one is going to get a little awkward, but bear with me. I think I might just list a few things more that I can't do and then be done with this little rant.

• I can't stand up when peeing. I'm that dude that goes in the men's bathroom, checks if it's clear and then uses the stall. And I fucking hate it. I feel like everyone knows.
• I can't have sex. And not in the, I can never have sex ever kind of way. In that, I can't have sex like I envision myself having sex. Sure, I could buy and wear a strap on but it's not the same. 99% of the time, I don't let people touch me when it comes to sex. I'm not comfortable in my body to let that happen. It takes a lot of time and trust to get to that with me. And fictional god knows I don't have many woman in my life that I'm attracted to have that trust. And by many I mean none. I'll er...provide. I've had time to practice satisfying girls (ladies, I can do things with my mouth that'll make you see stars), but I still feel inadequate because I can't satisfy you the way an atomically correct man could. 
• Filling out job applications or having to show ID is fucking weird for me. My license still says Megan because the someone that promised to help pay for my name change dropped out of my life. So my ID, my social security card, my debit card, bank account, blood donor card, they all say Megan. Believe me, I get more than my fair share of weird looks. I am not looking forward to getting carded in bars in a few months. When I went to get my contract cell phone, I had to show multiple proof of ID because the sales guy thought I had a stolen credit card and a fake ID. Seriously, that's shit I put up with on a daily basis. Trying to get a job is even worse. If I have to use Megan (some places specify legal name), I get weird looks at the interview and have to explain that I prefer Aiden and male pronouns. I was once hired based solely on the fact that the hiring manager was sure he'd get sued if he didn't hire me. It doesn't work out in my favor anymore. If I fill out an application that says Aiden, I have to explain why my ID and social security card say Megan. It drives me insane. I hate how I feel like I have to out myself this way. And I can't get rid of that big F until I have bottom surgery, which brings me to my next point...
• Surgery is expensive! Just bottom surgery, all added up (because every little thing is a different surgery) is over 40k. Let me say that again, for basic bottom surgery I would have to pay over 40,000 dollars. My dick would cost more than an average new car. And the surgery doesn't do that great of a job. I would not have the dick to end all dicks. It would be fairly puny and unimpressive. I probably wouldn't have much feeling and the ability to get erect would depend on how well surgery went. Oh, and that 40k? That doesn't include balls. No, under testicular implants it says consultation needed. So basically I would have a shabby cock that might end up average sized, might let me pee standing up, might get erect, might have feeling and might not embarrass the fuck out of me the first time I show it to a girl. All that and a side of no balls. 
• There is more to it than hormones, top and bottom surgery. I would need voice coaching, to keep my voice deep. I would need therapy, which is hard to come by because who wants to be a gender therapist? I would need jaw strengthening to give me a squarer, sturdier jaw line. I would need an artificial Adam's apple put in. Yeah, I worry about the fact that I don't have one. After watching a documentary on Brandon Teena, a FTM trans man raped and murdered New Years Eve after his "friends" found him out, this became a worry of mine. John Lotter, one of the perpetrators in Teena's rape and murder talked about how he now looks for an Adam's apple when talking to a guy. You may know of Teena's story if you every watched the Academy award winning film, Boys Don't Cry. Watch a documentary on it, it's scarier than the movie.
• Being murdered is a serious fear of mine. I fear new people finding out because this is real shit I worry about. I wouldn't be the first trans person to be murdered and I certainly won't be the last. Living in such a small town, with such conservative and sometimes redneck residents, I have the right to worry. People fear what they don't understand and being trans is one of those things. Gender is such a set thing for everyone. If you're a girl, you just know that you are a girl. If you're a boy, the same goes for you. But when you're someone like me, it's not so set like that. My mother and grandmother tried so hard to make me a girl, but that's not me. I have never desired to be a girl. I do not want to be a mom, a wife, a daughter, a niece, a sister. I. Am. A. Guy. That's all there is to it. Mentally, I am a guy. Physically, I am not. And it's torture being in the wrong body. I have not found something that sucks more. 
• I cannot join the army. For that matter, I'm pretty sure I cannot join a police force. For a lot of high school, joining the military was something I could fall back on. But back then Don't Ask, Don't Tell was still in effect. Even now I couldn't join. If I filled out a recruitment app and listed myself as a man, I would automatically fail the psychological test. The US Military finds something psychologically wrong with me because I say that I am a man when I'm biologically not. I have to look into the police force thing, but I find it hard to imagine a force that would take me and let me stay a man. But, alright, let's say we live in an ideal world where the military or a police force would take me. A. I know of accounts where soldiers were murdered by their fellow soldiers because they were gay, I'm sure being trans would go over far worse. B. Even if they didn't kill me while I slept, could you imagine the hazing and bullying? And not the friendly kind you see officers giving rookies in the movies. I think I would have a hard time finding somewhere that didn't want me gone.
• My kids, should I choose to have them, will never be mine. Now, to be fair my chances of having kids if I were "normal" are slim anyway. I don't produce eggs (saying that still makes me shiver). Ignoring that, if I met a girl and fell in love, got married and we decided to have kids... I would not be able to impregnate my wife and watch our child grow in her belly. Now I of all people know the biological aspect does not make a great father. My dad was a better father to me than my biological father ever thought of being. But... there is something special about watching a child grow over 9 months inside your wife and knowing part of you helped create that. I will never have the aw, the pleasure of looking at a cute little newborn boy or girl, admiring all ten toes and fingers, seeing he has my eyes and she has my smile and knowing I did that. That was a part of me that made this little human being. I don't get that. Not ever. I think the reason I caught myself saying I don't want kids over the last 2 years is because I know I won't get that moment. I won't get that chance ever in my lifetime. My friends will. Hell, they're even developing a way to use a guy's DNA in sperm, move it to an egg and have it fertilized by another sperm. In 5 to 15 years gay men could be having their very own child made just by the two of them. And it's not fair I won't get that feeling. There are people who don't even want kids, who aren't suited to be parents that get that. I've been told many times I'd make a great dad. And I think it's true, I think I would make an awesome dad. But I will never get that feeling. And knowing that sucks.

Just an insight on Aiden

I had started this post about a month after things with someone very important went down hill. I figured at the least it would be good insight on me as a person and maybe bring understanding the next time I go 6+ months without updating.


It has been a very, very long time since I have updated this. Truth is, I'm kind of a flake. I guess that's how we know I'm my father's son. I've bailed on more people than I like to admit. This was made apparent to me in the last month or so.

-end

Junior Year Pt 1

I...am a silly bitch. I thought I had put this up on Sunday BUT I DIDN'T. Probably because I had no sleep and may have been drinking, I can't remember. But yeah. Here is part one that I thought I posted, but didn't.


Junior year was as close to having a blast as high school came for me. I started school and was made President of the GSA. I immediately jumped at the task, making a large amount of recruitment posters by hand to kill time at home. A lot of them were torn down by both students and facility. One of the most in your face posters contained the simple wording of "Gays exist. Deal with it." One of the schools local "security guards" (if you could call them that; he also sported a Hitler 'stache, not sure if that was coincidence or not) was the one to tear that down. My adviser didn't tell me until much later and I still want to punch the guy whenever I visit. I tried my best to get my school interested. In October on National Coming Out Day I set up a seminar during the lunch periods for speakers such as myself tell the tale of how we came out. I was the only one to show for all 4 periods. My whole club wore homemade shirts supporting the day. The Matthew Shepard vigil held every year was broadcast to my school during the morning announcements, it held interviews, information and a moment of silence. I think that video was the closest I ever got to having the whole school involved in GSA.
That same month I had my first and only in-school girlfriend. She wasn't 'out' until we went to Homecoming together. Homecoming took a lot of convincing, neither of us had been in that situation before. It thankfully, went off without a hitch. Of course, me being me, I thought I loved her. So when we broke up it felt like my world had ended.
We only lasted a month, but she's the whole reason I got involved in Drama Club, which was a huge passion for me the last two years of high school. I was sitting with her during one of her rehearsals and the adviser approached her cast and crew about getting ads for their playbill to finance costumes and sets and stuff. I raised my hand and asked if I could bring in money, can I be an extra in the play? To my surprise she said yes. So I did just that, I used family ties with local businesses to get them to buy ads. My first play was a fucking blast. I was an extra but man did I get into that role. I named myself 'Edwardo' seeing as how I was an unnamed soldier and a party guest. Edwardo was a swag mother fucker, his favorite pick up line being "Hello. My name, is Edwardo....but you....you can call me 'tonight'". I made friends with two freshman, one of them being Luna. She was quickly adopted into our little group.
Home life was fairly uneventful. I got the chance to go out and after much arguing got the OK to do drama club (after I had already signed up). Of course my parents never believed I was at rehearsal, they thought I was off smoking pot and having crazy orgies (the pot didn't come till later, the orgies I'm still waiting on). Occasionally I'd have to get a note from the adviser explaining that yes, I was there and yes I was involved and supervised. School work became unimportant to me, I excelled at English because it was easy. I could usually do it without reading much of the assigned books, too. Math and science were always my lowest scores. And of course I got a ton of shit for it, but some how I worked around it. The play went off without a hitch. Dad came, my grandparents came, I think even my Mother came...I think. After the play ended, we started prepping for The Outsiders, after auditions was when I got dumped. But I got another extra part, so drama club continued in my life. We practiced daily over winter break. Jack was also involved in the production playing Sodapop, the handsome one. It was not long after the play had ended that I found out Jack was dating the same girl I had been with back in October. I felt betrayed, to say the least. I told him I was fine with it, after they unsuccessfully tried to keep it from me, but my actions proved other wise. Most of the group didn't much care for her at the time, so I felt justified in my hatred of their relationship. Looking back I just feel dumb. I didn't love the girl, not really anyway, so it shouldn't have mattered. But it was the code, man. You don't date your friends ex. I still feel that way.




That's part one of junior year, things get spicier in the next update. For example, the first time I try pot. Good times....anyway, if you celebrate have a happy Easter. If you're like me...enjoy the candy and free food. And remember kids, spread me like mint jelly on lamb. 

Character Clearification

This is so everyone can successfully keep track of people I mention in my blog. Most I haven't gotten to yet, but they're coming up so it's important you know who's who.


FAMILY
Mother- My one and only biological mother
Step-Father- My mother's current and 3rd husband. Father to my youngest sister, Munchkin
Munchkin- Daughter to Mother and Step-Father and the apple of my eye. Been caring for her since 13 and still love her to death at 20
Brother 1- Son of Mother and Dad. Ruined my only child streak that was 4 years running. Great kid, didn't escape the emotional damage inflicted by Mother and Step-Father
Brother 2- Second son of Mother and Dad. Not as close to me as Brother 1 or Munchkin, relatively free of emotional damage. Mother takes slight interest in his activities and he gets along with Step-Father decently.
Dad- Mother's second husband and the one good one out of her streak. Closest I have to a hero, man I looked up to and learned from as a kid. Father of Brother 1&2. Was there for me when Biological Father bailed.
Step-Mother- Wife of Dad
Biological Father- He's just the dude that provided the sperm.
Wicked Witch of the West- Wife to Biological Father. In entries previous to 4.6.12 may have been mentioned as Stepmother. Deep hatred of me, convinced Biological Father to drop his custody and bail on me.
Step-brother- Son of WWotW. Unimportant. Generally a dick


FRIENDS
The main clique from high school
Jasmine- First true friend from the clique, met in math class. Still friends today. Best female friend during high school. Had our ons and offs but generally remained good friends through it all. Eventual girlfriend of Murphy. Grade below myself.
Jack- Best male friend through high school. Also had our ons and offs (mostly over girls), especially after high school but buried the hatchet within the last year. On and off boyfriend to Katherine. Same grade as myself.
Katherine- Never close during high school, best friends with Jasmine and on and off girlfriend to Jack. Plays a bigger role after high school. Grade below myself.
Murphy- Boyfriend to Jasmine, grade above myself. Still a close friend to this day.
Luna- Drama club buddy during the later years of high school. She's the one who set me up with Danielle my junior year. Eventual foster sister (seriously). Two grades below my own.
Danielle- First serious relationship. Went to a different school, two grades below me. Best friends with Luna.

Sophomore year

Sophomore year was a decent year. I lost my virginity that year. Ran away from home for the first time, had my first cigarette that very night (don't smoke, it's bad for you). Much like many of the fights I had with my mother and stepfather, it was over something stupid. Vacuuming the couch incorrectly. Oh yeah. That was a common argument. I remember that being the first time I told my mother to choose between me or her husband. She didn't, so I left with nothing but the clothes on my back. I wandered around my hometown until I found a classmate from middle school I kept acquaintance with. I smoked and slept on her friends couch, who was a few grades above me. He became a regular contact to get my smokes from. After an intimidating phone conversation with my mother, I gave up and told her where I was. She brought along a town cop and brought me home. Of course instead of solving the problem, I was grounded instead. Grounding was my mothers knee jerk reaction to me acting out. It was never much the punishment she wanted it to be, seeing as how I was a teenager who spent most of my time in my bedroom anyway. I was an avid reader and those 'punishments' just gave me a chance to do school work and blow through stacks of literature. As sophomore year progressed I kept my grades around B's (except for math, I was and am rubbish at math) and was still actively involved in GSA. That was the last year my beloved English teacher was around. Besides some poetry slams the Matthew Shepard vigil and the annual GSA dance (I was in the local paper for both the vigil and the dance) put on by the county(I think), we didn't do much that year. Most meetings were spent in total chaos. Looking back I wish I had known how to make a bigger impact on my school, but the GSA still struggles to make headway with students and faculty so I guess it wasn't much up to me.
I made friends with a girl in my math class that I'm still friends with today. This friendship broadened my group of friends into the clique I spent the rest of my high school career with. I was still with my first girlfriend up until June. Around the time of the break up was when I realized I hated being in the body I had. I had no idea what that meant, I was pretty ashamed of it for a long time. I had never heard of such a thing and was seriously convinced I was some kind of freak. I admitted to my first girlfriend that I had fallen out of love with her (you don't realize you have no fucking clue what love is until it smacks you upside the head and fucks with you around age 20) and that I couldn't be with someone who was gay when all I wanted was to be a man. It took almost another year before I could admit that to my friends. By the end of sophomore year I had made great strides in my social life. The final day of classes I went to a friends house with our little group and had a blast. We fooled around on her trampoline, walked around the town goofing off at the park and visiting the candy/party shop that was there on Main St. It was the first taste I really got of having true friends and it was everything I wanted it to be. Sadly, over the summer I was back to feeling locked down and very rarely got the chance to do that kind of stuff with them. But thankfully it didn't hurt my friendships and when I did get the chance it was such a relief.
Before those bitter sweet times, I had my most memorable run in with hate and bullying. It was spring, possibly April or May. My girlfriend had taken the bus from Massachusetts to visit me for a long weekend. We had been hanging out with a few people at the local PeeWee football field; except for some kids around my age playing a game of baseball at the nearby diamonds we were alone on the field and too far off to be a bother to them. I checked my watch and noticed it was about the time to be getting home for dinner. So my girlfriend and I say our goodbyes and head across the field and past the diamonds to take the shortcut home. As we walk past the baseball players, holding hands and lost in our own world we hear "Fucking dykes!" I was used to the occasional torment but most of it stayed behind my back. And even then, none of it was this direct and so unprovoked. I was caught with my guard down and I didn't like it. I stopped in my tracks, dropped my girlfriends hand and went to charge down the jackass who was all up in my biz. My girlfriend grabbed my shirt before I could get any distance, yanked me back and threw me in front of her, pushing me towards home. The exact wording is hazy due to my fuming anger at the time, years of gap and more bowls of pot than I care to admit to my audience but it was something along the lines of "Why don't you be normal and fuck a guy" and "Which of you has the dick in the relationship?" I was literally trembling with anger and my girlfriend blew them off verbally and continued pushing me towards home. I was so furious! Never again have I faced such open hatred. The kids were ones who went to my high school. I had been in class with one of them since 1st grade, played with him when we were younger because him mom and my biological father were friends. One of the others was the son of a previous teacher I had the year before. I never caught crap from them again, at least not to my face. But even just thinking back on it makes my blood boil.  


Anyway, depending on how long this sleeplessness lasts, I may put up part one of Junior Year sometime later this afternoon, if not expect it within a week. My Facebook fans can bug me for updates. I do apologize for not updating in over 6 months, I've had a lot of shit going on. Which we'll eventually come to. Names may start being introduced (changed for others benefit of course), just to make things easier to follow. If the posts seem a little hard to follow let me know, it's a little hard when you remember bits and pieces and have no way of ordering it. You guys know you can always message me or leave comments. And as usual, spread this around the internet like the Republican GOP candidates spread bullshit. Peace.