Being Jenny I have seen a lot of stories about boys being feminized by their mothers, or occasionally by their aunts. And I've even read a few about men being feminized by their wives. These stories are okay, but for someone who actually was brought up as a girl, they don't ring true. So I'm writing this account, in the hope that people can see what it's really like when a boy is brought up as a girl. You won't find any coercion here; I was a willing--no, an eager-- subject, as I think must always be the case when this happens in real life. And I'm afraid you won't find much sex, either. I. My life changed from hell to heaven when I was seven years old. I was a little kid, and weak, and not aggressive; and the other boys picked on me unmercifully. School was hell for me, and even my own neighborhood was hell. I used to come home in tears almost every day, until finally I couldn't take it any more and rarely left our house except for school, which was unavoidable. For companionship, I played with a neighbor girl instead of boys. That Summer, we were about to move to a different town, and one evening my mother sat me down and asked me the question that was going to change my life. She was embarrassed, and very ill at ease, and it took her a long time to get to the point. But here, in essence, is what she said: "Jimmy, you've had such a terrible time living here, and I've felt so sorry for you.. If I had a nickel for every time you've come home in tears, we would be able to *buy* our new place. And I've been trying to figure out some way of protecting you or for keeping this from happening. I've only been able to think of one possibility." She hesitated. Then, "You used to play with Sally next door until they moved. Do you remember...the day you were playing with Sally and she put you in one of her dresses?" "Oh, Mom, that was her idea! I never...." "No, there's no problem. Yes, I caught the two of you, both of you in dresses and playing with...what was it? Her tea set? Yes. But you know, what I remember about that afternoon was not so much your embarrassment when you saw me watching you, but how peaceful and contented you were before you saw me. Yes, you were upset because I was watching you, but I had been watching you for almost five minutes, and up until the moment you saw me you just seemed.... Well, I can't remember a time when you looked so serene." "Well, we were sort of...." I trailed off, at a loss for the right word. "Relaxed? At ease together? I thought you were. I liked watching the two of you. You seemed so calm and happy, the only time you've ever been happy except when you were home here with me. And...I don't know, I've been thinking about this, but still it sounds so crazy when I mention it, but...I wonder...have you ever wondered what it would be like living as a girl?" I had, as a matter of fact. I'd better explain this, so you don't get the wrong impression. I didn't dislike being a boy. I didn't dislike having a boy's body. At seven, I still had only the vaguest notion of the physical difference between boys and girls, but if I had known more, I would have wanted to keep those boy parts, at least back then. But I hated the life I had to live as a boy. We never talked about "sex-role stereotypes" in those days, but if we had, that's what I would have objected to. The insane, compulsive machismo. The nearly constant violence. The disdain for every kind of activity except athletics. The strong back; the weak mind. And yes, sometimes, on really bad days, I would go to bed and pray, "O God, please make me into a girl." But I was praying for relief from the masculine stereotyping and abuse that tormented me, not for a different body. Not back then. It wasn't so much not being a boy as not having to live as a boy. That would change later on, as I'll relate, but that's how it was then. Okay; now we've got that straightened out, I'll get back to my story. In answer to Mom's question I said, Yes, I had thought of it and sometimes wished for it. "It's been so awful that sometimes in my prayers I've asked God to turn me into a girl," I told her. Her eyes widened. "When you put on Sally's clothes, did you like them?" I nodded. "You've put on some of my underwear once or twice, too, haven't you? I could tell. Did you like that?" I should say that, ever since my father died, Mom and I had been very close. Most boys would have been petrified if they had been putting on panties on the sly and their moms had confronted them like that. But we were always on such easy terms, I simply said, "Yes, they felt good. I just hope I didn't disturb them too much." "Nothing but a few pieces out of place, Dear. But here's what I'm driving at. We're moving away, to a place where nobody knows you. So it's a place where you could make a fresh start, if you wanted to. A really fresh start. And I've wondered whether this might be a good time for you to live as my daughter instead of my son. It would solve so many of your problems. "You know I love you, Jimmy, and I love you for who and what you are. But I can't stand seeing you miserable. Maybe if I could turn you into a girl--if I could grant that prayer of yours--I don't mean for good, I mean just temporarily, just for a few years, those years when boyhood is so nasty--maybe you would grow up into a happier person afterward. Not scarred for the rest of your life by all that nastiness. And I do so want you to be happy." You see what I meant about a change from hell to heaven. It took me no time at all to make up my mind; I had made it up while she was talking to me about the possibility. I said Yes, and I think she saw the light in my eyes when I did so. But she was cautious. "I think you should try for a couple of weeks, or maybe a month, starting now, before we go," she said, "so you can see what it's like. I won't want you to do this if you don't like it. But I can get you a dress to try wearing, something that will really fit you. It's Summer; you don't have to go to school; you hardly ever go outside anyway. So maybe you could just try dressing as a girl, around the house, until we move. In fact, that will give you two opportunities to change your mind, the first one when we move. If you think you like it, then we can finish out the month after we've moved and then make up our minds about whether you'll continue. And if you decide you don't like it...well, we'll hope you find nicer boys in our new place." The idea had caught on in my mind. I was half listening to her and half contemplating the new possibilities her proposal had opened up. And the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. In fact, I was surprised to realize how much it appealed to me. Mom was being so careful not to pressure me; but I was sure I would like it, and my only regret was that I wouldn't be able to dress up as a girl right away, right that evening, but would have to wait until to-morrow for Mom to get something for me to wear. I thought about this some more when I went to bed, before going to sleep. This was going a genuine adventure, I realized. This wasn't just *playing* at being a girl, the way I might play at being a policeman or a pirate or an airplane pilot. This was going to be real, doing something with my life, experimenting with it. And it wasn't just something in my own mind; dresses and panties (panties! ...gosh!) were things that had an objective, material existence out there. They weren't even costumes. They were real clothes, and I was going to wear them. What would I call myself? As a girl I'd have to be something other than Jimmy. I lay in bed, considering the possibilities. I wanted something that sounded frilly and feminine. Not just plain Mary or Martha. Cheryl?...Madeline?...Stacey? The girl in school who wore the prettiest dresses was named Lorelei. H'mm, how about Lorelei, in honor of the pretty dresses I was going to wear? Nope. Too risky. Suppose we bumped into each other some time...I could just hear Mom saying, "Lorelei, this is Lorelei." Too silly. Finally I had it: Somebody (was it our teacher in school?) had told a story about a sad ballerina named Giselle. (I had somehow missed the crucial point that Giselle was the name of the character, not of the dancer herself.) I pictured myself in tights and a tutu with the name Giselle. That was it. I would be the Sad Ballerina Giselle. The next day Mom came back from shopping with an armload of packages. She had obviously gotten more than just one dress. I was beside myself with excitement. THIS WAS IT!!! My escape into femininity was at hand. And sure enough, instead of taking the packages into her room, as she would have done ordinarily, she took them into my room, and we unwrapped them there. Little girls' panties. A little top (I was still too young for a bra). Little white and pink ankle socks. A skirt. Some blouses. Another skirt. A yellow dress trimmed with white lace. And a pair of little girl's shoes. Slowly, my hands trembling with excitement, I put the things on. I chose the yellow dress for my debut as a girl. Boys wore their hair fairly long in those days, so Mom only had to comb it back and put a yellow ribbon in it. Finally she was done fussing over me, and I looked in the mirror. I thought I made a pretty convincing girl, as long as the person looking at me had never seen me as a boy. Mom gave me a little kiss. "My little girl!" she exclaimed. "What's your new name, dear?" I hesitated. Suddenly, "Giselle" seemed ludicrously exotic for the simple, pretty American girl I had become. "Well, come on, sweetheart. Surely you've thought of a name for yourself. You can't go on being Jimmy, now, can you?" I didn't have a name to fall back on. Finally, my hands behind my back, my eyes downcast, in a tiny voice--a little girl's voice, if I had realized it--I whispered, "Giselle," and turned red as a beet. One of the reasons I love Mom so was that she never laughed at me. And even then, with this absurd answer, which, even now, I'm embarrassed to remember, she didn't laugh. "That's a lovely name, dear," she said, "and if that's the name you want to take, then we'll do that. But you must remember you're an American girl, not a European one, and people may find you a little more...well, convincing...if you have a plain American name." "No, Mom," I replied. "Giselle was a dumb idea. Let me think about it some more." I had no idea what I would come up with. "All right," Mom answered. "For the time being, I'm going to call you Jenny, which is pretty close to Jimmy. And once you've settled on a name you want, we'll change it then." As it turned out, I never did think of a better name. In fact, I was too busy being a girl to worry about details like names, so from that day, the 20th of July, I was Jenny. Jimmy Taylor had been born on the 14th of December, but Jenny was born on July 20, and from then on I thought of July 20 as my birthday. That fact alone should have been enough to tell me I was going to be a girl for keeps. II. On my first full day as a girl, I woke up early--about 6 AM--and then, remembering what I was to do that day, I was too excited to go back to sleep again. I hadn't felt like this the times Sally would put me in a dress when we played together. This was going to be different; this wasn't going to be just playing at being a girl. I kept watching the clock as it inched toward eight, my usual hour for getting up. At seven thirty I couldn't wait any longer. I got up, took off my pajamas, and then looked over the modest assortment of things Mom had gotten me. Should I choose these panties, or those? What a luxury, what a delight, actually to have the choice, actually to be allowed, and in fact expected, to put on panties! I chose a pink pair. This was to a month's trial, to see how I liked living as a girl. But as I put on the panties--oh, gosh! how soft they felt! how smooth on my legs!--I knew that, for me, the trial was already over. If this was what it was like to wear dresses, I was all set to wear nothing else for the rest of my life. Just then I remembered how I had once prayed for this moment, and on a sudden impulse I dropped to my knees, still with only my panties on, and folded my hands. "Thank you, God," I said. "Thank you for making me a girl." (Years later, a wonderful Jewish girl who was my dearest friend told me that every orthodox Jewish man thanked God every day for being born a man instead of a woman. I said, "You'd never have caught me doing that!") I chose a light blue blouse and a plain denim skirt. I thought Mom would be pleased that I had selected matching colors and that I had not picked anything too dressy for day wear. I put on a pair of ankle socks and the shoes. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. It seemed to me that I looked a little less convincing than I had the night before. There was still half an hour to go before breakfast, so I spent the time rearranging my dresser drawers, pushing my regular boy's socks and underwear out of the way and putting in the girls' things Mom had gotten me. Then I did the same in my closet. As I hung up the other skirt Mom had gotten me, I realized that I was going to need skirt hangers. For the time being, I just folded the skirt over an ordinary hanger and carefully hung it up. Mom was pleased when she saw me at breakfast already dressed as a girl. She gave me a light kiss and said, "How's my pretty daughter this morning?" My heart leapt up. "Your daughter is feeling just great, Mom!" I answered with a hug and a kiss. Breakfast was filled with happy talk about my new life. I told her how good I had felt getting dressed that morning, how impatient I had been to begin, and how I had spent the extra time putting away my girls' things and hanging up my new dress and skirt. "You actually put your own clothes away?" she exclaimed. "You've never done that before! If I'm not going to have to pick up after you the way I used to have to pick up after Jimmy, I'm never going to let you change back!" But after breakfast we settled down to work, and I began to learn how much more there was to being a girl than just wearing a dress. The first lesson was walking--how to walk like a girl. Smaller steps. Weight less heavily on the heel with each step. "When you're old enough to wear heels, Dear, you're going to have to learn to put toe and heel down almost together. So you might as well get ready for that right now." As I walked back and forth across the living room floor, I thought about wearing high heels. And that made me think about wearing nylons, too. What a terrific adventure this was going to be! Next came sitting down. How to approach a chair. How to sit down in it. How to smooth my skirt so it wouldn't get wrinkled. How to cross my legs so men couldn't see up it. "The real test is going to be how you look when you aren't wearing a dress," she pointed out. "Suppose you put on blue jeans and a T shirt, with sneakers. Girls wear things like that. When people see you that way, are they going to think you're a boy or a girl? You can't fall back on your clothes then. You have to move like a girl; you have to act like a girl; you have to think like a girl. If you just wear dresses, you're only being a girl on the outside. If you don't want to be caught, you must be a girl from the inside out." "Now run, Dear. Start in the kitchen and run all the way out to the foyer." I set off at a run. Mom stopped me. "Not that way, Jenny. That's the way a boy runs, pumping your arms back and forth. Hold your elbows in and your hands out--" she demonstrated "--and keep your balance by waving your forearms from side to side. Your elbows should be almost still as you run." As she explained this, images of all the girls I had ever seen running sprang to mind and I realized she was right. It was tricky, running that way, and it felt completely different. This was going to take work. "Now, Jenny, here's your homework," she said. "I want you to practice walking, running, sitting down, and standing up. Do that for at least an hour this afternoon. And every time you sit down, here or in your room, remember you're a girl and remember how I told you to do it. Okay?" It was just about as okay as anything could get. I saw how much more there was to being a girl than just the clothes, and I realized that the more deeply I managed to feminize myself, the better it would be. I sauntered around all day, trying to remember all the details about holding myself and moving. III. So that's how it started. I think back now and bless the memory of those bully boys who, unknowingly, pushed me into being a girl. Mom had planned on a month's trial, but it wasn't going to take a month. I knew this was what I wanted the very first day. This kind of thing works only when the chemistry is right. I realize now that Mom had secretly hoped for a little girl instead of a little boy. And, at some deep-seated, unrecognized level, I wanted to be a girl, too. It had been more than just the bullying by the other boys; that had only been a trigger. So once the possibility was opened up to us by circumstance, it was inevitable that we would do what we did; we snapped into our respective roles like a couple of magnets brought together. When my dad had died, he had left a pretty good estate. We weren't rich by any means, but as long as we were careful and lived on a modest scale, Mom didn't have to work. And that was the key to the second part of her plan. "I'd like to keep you out of school altogether, Jenny," she said one morning, "so you can keep on being a girl. I can do that provided I teach you myself. It's known as homeschooling, and I've been reading up on it. So IF you'll be a serious pupil, and IF you work hard and don't fool around, and IF you don't whine when you have to study boring things, and IF you don't try to take advantage of me, then you won't have to go to school at all, at least not until high school and maybe not even then." Not having to go to school...! I had been dreading school. A month's trial was all very well, I had thought, but I hadn't been able to see how I could go back to school as a girl. Now Mom, wonderful wonderful darling Mom, had found a way that I didn't have to go back at all. All those IFs...if she had told me I would have to work in the salt mines in order to avoid school, I would have jumped at the chance. She went on. "It will mean extra work for me, teaching you as well as doing housework. So I'm going to ask you to help with the housework while we do this. I'll try to pick girly chores for you to do, the things you would have been doing all along if you had been born a girl. Those can be part of your training." Once we had moved, Mom made the formal arrangements for home- schooling, and the day they were complete we had a celebration. It was another milestone in my life as a girl. I had already started living full time as a girl, but this was the point when we decided the trial was a success--well before the month was over--and that I decided was going to keep on being a girl, at least through grade school. We spent mornings and afternoons on schoolwork. I worked hard, because that was the price of freedom. It was either that or having to go to school as a boy. But in addition, Mom discovered that she loved teaching me, because, she said, she was learning so much herself. Some things, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, one uses all the time, but other subjects, like history and geography, tend to fade with time, and Mom loved learning these subjects anew and in greater depth than when she had been a girl. And her own enjoyment showed in her teaching and made me enjoy them, too. Part of what she was supposed to teach me was some kind of performing art, and for this she chose singing and dancing. She wanted me to be able to dance like a girl, and she thought dance training would help me learn to move like a girl in other ways (although, under Mom's vigilance, I was beginning to be good at that anyway). She had an ulterior motive in having me sing, too: she wanted me to develop a girl's voice if I could. It's true that the difference is more in mannerisms and vocabulary than in pitch and she wanted to get a feminine way of speaking firmly in place as soon as possible. But she thought that singing would make me conscious of how I used my voice and get me into the habit of controlling it. She thought it would be good for me to start this early, before my voice changed. My vocabulary changed, too, because girls use different words for many things. For example, I decided right away that from now on Mom was going to be Mummy, and I never again called her Mom. Mummy decided that my handwriting should be more feminine, too. This was a tough job, and we labored over it for months, because young boys don't have as good control over their fingers as young girls have, and my writing was sloppy. Mummy wanted it to be neat and rounded, with little circles over the i's instead of dots. I hated this work, but I kept at it, because I was beginning to appreciate that the secret of feminizing myself was going to be lots of tiny details. I had a sort of dirty blonde hair, and as Jenny gradually began to take over from Jimmy, we let it grow to shoulder length, and Mummy started teaching me how to take care of it. Among my pictures from that time is a portrait of me in long hair with little ribbons on either side. Mummy wanted a photographic record of this entire project. "If you keep on being a girl, you're going to want these pictures so you'll remember how you started out and how you looked then. And if you don't keep on, I'm going to want these pictures as a way of remembering the sweet little game we played for a while." I already knew in my heart that, however sweet, this was no game, and it was going to last longer than a while. I remember when Mummy took that picture, because I was so pleased when it came out. It showed nothing but my head and shoulders, so although I was wearing a dress when she took it, you could only see a touch of flowered fabric and a lacy collar. But even so, I look like a girl in the picture. There is something about the face. I think the way I thought about myself was showing in my eyes. By the time she took that picture I was already thinking of myself as a girl all the time. It was only when I took baths (I had given up showering as too mannish) and when I put on my panties in the morning that I was reminded that I was, biologically, a boy. And those reminders, I should say, began to grow irksome. My little penis and balls reminded me of rough cotton underwear and rough boy clothes I used to have to wear and, above all, of the terrible life I had led as a boy. And as the years passed, I came to think of them as the things that were preventing me from achieving complete girlhood. Mummy's schooling continued through all the grades. It was a happy time. By her example, she taught me to love learning and to regard our studies as a treat. And having seen the products of our public schools, I think the instruction I got from Mummy was far superior. So often she would find out what course materials they were using in the public schools, look at them, shudder, and go off and find better ones herself. And her schooling in girlhood continued, too, but at a reduced level, since it was getting to be second nature to me. After a year of training, she judged that I could safely go out, and we would take walks together afternoons. That gave me a chance to observe other girls my age, study how they behaved, and adopt some of what I saw myself. When I was ten, I started running errands for her-- getting some of the groceries and taking things to the cleaners. IV. Those were years of happiness and contentment. But when I reached the age of 12, a new threat loomed on the horizon: Puberty. Mom had explained to me about sex. With her usual thoroughness she had gotten books from the library for me to read, but most of the information came from her. I found out about babies, and about what men did to beget them. My first thought was how much I would like to be a mother. Mummy didn't laugh when I told her this, bless her. But she did explain that it was impossible, and she took me back to the books and the anatomical drawings to show me why it was. I wasn't satisfied. I might never be able to be a mother, but I had no interest whatever in being a father. By this time I felt so completely at ease as a girl (a rather pretty girl, I might add, which helped a great deal) that I had come unconsciously to assume that I was going to be a girl for the rest of my life. The thought that I would grow a beard and that my penis would start to get bigger filled me with dismay. I didn't want a bigger penis; I wanted breasts. The more I thought about this, the more upsetting it was, and I started to brood over it. Life in those years was so sunny and happy that I used to go about the house singing quietly as I did my studying and my housework. But now, under this new threat, I was more subdued days, and Mummy must have noticed that. And sometimes at night I would cry into my pillow at the thought that my life as a girl would come to an end. One evening after dinner, Mummy found me silently weeping over my books. "What's the matter, Dear?" she asked me. She seemed almost as distressed as I was. Having to say it out loud was too much, and I started to bawl. Finally, I got it out: "I don't want to have to stop being a girl. I don't want to be a father. I don't want to be a husband. And I don't want to grow a beard. If I can't be a mother, can't I just be an old maid?" I smile, remembering the poor little girl-boy who said that he wanted to be an old maid, but, as always, Mummy refused to laugh at me. "But, Dear, you were only going live as a girl temporarily, so you wouldn't have to deal with other boys. It's bound to come to an end sooner or later. What are you going to do in high school?" "I don't want to go to high school," I said, sniffling. "Not if I have to be a boy. I hate boys. I hate the idea of being a boy. I don't want to be Jimmy, I want to be Jenny. Jimmy's *dead!*" I started to cry uncontrollably again. "Four...years of happiness," I wept, "...four years of being your little girl...and now...THIS!" I pointed between my legs. "I wish that had never been there. I wish it would just...shrink, or drop off, and leave me in peace." By this time Mummy was weeping, too. But she calmed down before I did, and she said, "It's not going to go away, Jenny. But...well, let me see whether there's anything we can do. I don't want to hold out any promises, but...well, let me just see." I didn't know what she meant. But Mummy was the one sure thing in my life, the one person who could heal all my wounds and solve all my problems. She would think of something. She always did. Clinging to that hope, I stopped crying and managed to get to sleep. Two weeks later, Mummy announced that we were going to see a doctor. The doctor was in a different town, and we had to take the bus to get there. During the trip, Mummy was very mysterious; she didn't say anything about where we were going or why. But she had the air of someone with a happy secret, not a guilty secret. When we got there, the doctor turned out to be a woman. "Dr Madison, this is Jenny," Mummy said when we were seated in her office. Dr Madison--not her real name--was a middle-aged, gray-haired woman. She had bedside manner in spades; I took one look at her and liked her from that moment. She was warm and pleasant and inspired immediate confidence. It struck me that this was the one other person on earth I wouldn't mind knowing about Jimmy. That was good, because she started asking me about Jimmy right away. Gradually, very gently, she got me to tell her the same story I've told you: about my miserable boyhood, about the experiment we had tried, about how successful it had been, about how deeply I loved being a girl. "Jenny's having to face manhood now," Mummy put in, "and she's distraught. I found her the week before last crying her eyes out, and she said she wished she wouldn't have to be a man. That's why I came to see you." Dr Madison looked straight at me. She intended her remarks for my mother, but she talked to me; this was typical of the way she treated her patients: with respect as well as kindness. And she never once called me Jimmy. "Jenny, I don't know whether we can do much. Your body is going to produce hormones, chemicals that affect the way you grow and the way your body develops. Those will be male hormones and you will grow up to be a boy, just as your mother's told you. "Now, it's true that there is a procedure called hormone replacement therapy. It means taking pills that replace the male hormones so that their bodies become more like women's. In your case, because you would be starting before adolescence the female hormones in the pills would make you develop as a girl instead of a boy. Do you understand me?" Understand her!! My heart was pounding. Mummy had done it again, pulled off one of her miracles, like the miracle of making me a girl, the miracle of schooling me at home. And now she had found this wonderful doctor. It must have shown in my eyes. "But there's a problem, Jenny. You are still a minor, and the law doesn't look kindly on people interfering with the natural development of minors. There are laws that regulate just how much we can do, and some of those laws would apply even if your mother gave her permission." "You mean the law wouldn't let you give me those pills? You mean," --I fought savagely to keep the tears back--"the law could condemn me to live a life that I hate? You mean the law would deliberately make me miserable? What kind of hateful law is that? "I want those pills, Dr Madison, those...hormones. I am NOT going to let the law or anybody else make me into a boy. If you won't do it, I'll get a knife and *cut them off,* I swear I will!" Mummy was aghast. "You don't know what you're saying, Jenny!" "Perhaps she does know," Dr Madison replied. "Children often see much more clearly than we give them credit for. And boys have been known to mutilate themselves when they were in Jenny's position." She went on. "All right. We won't give up right away, Jenny. But whatever we do, we mustn't act in ignorance. So first, I want to give you a complete physical examination, and I want to give you a battery of tests to analyze your body chemistry as well as we can. Then we can decide what, if anything, we can do, and try to lay out a course of action. Therapy, if we can manage it. And I want you to see a psychiatrist, so all of us will know just how deep-seated your feelings are. Because if we did go outside the law--I'm not saying we will, but if somehow, let's say, those pills were just to happen to fall into your mother's hands--their effects would be irreversible. You think now that that's what you want, don't you?" "Irreversible...you mean, once you've changed me I can't change back?" "That's right." "I *know* that's what I want. I'm a girl now, and my body's threatening to change me back. That's why I was crying. I don't want to be changed back. I want you to fix me so I can't ever change back." "That's what you think now," Dr Madison continued. "I need to be assured that that's what you'll think after puberty. That's a big change in your life, and we will need to know what to expect and how to deal with it." Now she turned to Mummy. "If we did this, it would be, frankly, an experiment. I'm very reluctant to do anything to your daughter. Tampering with young people's bodies is tampering with their lives. In any case, I have no intention of doing anything until I have the test results back and an evaluation from the psychiatrist. Then we'll see. "There's another detail. Usually we require that a patient live full time as a girl for a year before we take any action. For someone Jenny's age, I would want longer than that. But you say she has been living full time for four years, so I think that may do. I'll know better once I've heard from the psychiatrist." In spite of Dr Madison's cautions and repeated warnings, I left her office walking on air. Dr Madison took care of the physical checkup that afternoon, except for the hormone assays, which were going to be carried out by a lab. But I had to stay in town for the interviews with the psychiatrist. There were two of these, the second a day after the first. The shrink took me through my childhood and my life before and after I started dressing. He wanted to know when my father had died (when I was four), how well I had known him (not very well), how well I remembered him (just a face now), what my relations with Mummy were like (wonderful in every way), what my relations with other boys had been like (uniformly disastrous), and so on. Not surprisingly, we talked a long time about my life as a girl. He had me stand and walk around and sit down, and I silently blessed Mummy for the training she had given me. The third day found us back in Dr Madison's office. "The psychiatrist thinks you would be a safe bet," she reported, "so the question that remains is how your system would react to HRT." "HRT?" I asked. "What's that?" "Hormone replacement therapy," she said, "the treatment I outlined Monday. Your tests indicate hormone levels that are normal for a pre-adolescent boy. That suggests that if we intervene now, we should be able to sidetrack altogether the male puberty process that would normally start in a year or less and give you a girl's puberty instead." I can't tell you how happy this made me. Then there was the question of how the proper hormones could be made available for me. To protect the people who helped me at this crucial time, I'm not going to give the details here; let's just say that Dr Madison recommended a course of action that worked. I was on my way! Dr Madison gave me my first shot of hormones as an injection, saying, "You don't know what I'm doing or who did this to you." I've never liked needles, and giving the blood sample for the tests had been a torment, but I actually looked forward to being stabbed by Dr Madison's needle full of hormones, I was so keen on my transformation. Then she gave Mummy a list of the different kinds of pills I would be taking from then on, together with instructions for using them. V. I'll tell you right now that the experiment (if that's what it was) with the hormones was a success. I may have been imagining things, but it seemed to me that the hormones started working right away. I've since read that it takes a week or two, so this may just have been wishful thinking, but I could swear my nipples began to get sensitive the very next day, and I thought I detected some breast growth a couple of days after that. Then Mummy came up with the logical solution: every Sunday night before bedtime, she passed a tape measure around my breasts and recorded the measurement, both after I had inhaled and after I had exhaled. A month or so later it occurred to us to include other measurements as well--height, waist, and especially hips. I still have those figures, and I can see the way I gradually developed into a real girl over the next three or four years. I grew breasts, slowly, instead of a beard; my hips widened out naturally; my voice never changed; and although my penis didn't shrink away to nothing, the way I had hoped it would, at least it didn't show any unwelcome signs of growth. That was another of the good periods in my life. Just as my body began to develop as a woman's body, I was also of an age to start dressing as a woman instead of a little girl. For my thirteenth birthday Mummy gave me my first garter belt and my first nylons. I felt so grown up putting on nylons! At first, I wore them with everything--dresses, skirts, even under jeans. I wonder, do genetic girls appreciate their clothes as I did? Do they take the same pleasure in silky, delicate underwear, in fluffy, frilly dresses, in colorful fabrics, in ribbons and lace? Or is wearing those wonderful things just part of the day's work to them? For me it was a sensual delight, and getting dressed every morning was a celebration of the clothes I put on and of my growing femininity. I still don't take these lovely things for granted. I remember once Mummy found a record of a song from an old musical comedy. The song was "I enjoy being a girl." She bought it and brought it home as a joke for both of us. We laughed, but that song spoke to me. I learned it off by heart, and sometimes when I was getting dressed, or maybe just doing homework or tidying up our apartment, I would sing it softly to myself, "I adore being a girl." Yes, I did wear jeans and a T-shirt occasionally, and sneakers, and, thanks to Mummy's careful tutelage, I was as fully a girl in those as I was in any dress. But the dresses were so lovely...! And the fabrics themselves...has anybody ever noticed how nice and feminine their names are? I used to get dreamy just thinking of their names ...cashmere...chambray...chenille...cretonne...lame'...organdy... pique'...velvet...satin...tulle...tarlatan. And taffeta! ...what ordinary, "normal" man ever has the opportunity, the good fortune to wear taffeta? The poor sap would probably be embarrassed to tears. It was the same with makeup. Mummy had to restrain me here because, like most young girls, I tended to overdo it. But I would sit at my vanity (yes, Jenny had a vanity in her room now) and imagine myself like the lovely Myrrhina in a poem my mother used to quote, who sat at her vanity With eyelids closed as soft as the breeze That flows through gold flowers on the incense trees. The only problem was that when I closed my eyes, I couldn't see the effect of the eye shadow I had put on. The hormones had another effect on me: I started noticing boys. I had never had any even remotely gay tendencies before that, and although I'll never know for sure, I don't think I would have if I had had to grow up as a boy. But now I was turning into a thoroughly heterosexual girl, and suddenly I began to notice things about boys, things I liked to look at. Their lean flanks. Their arms. Their shoulders. Their butts. The little lump--and sometimes not so little--in the front of their jeans. The denim tended to wear in that spot, and as a result that interesting area was always graced by a little highlight. And I liked to watch the slight unconscious swagger that that lump seemed to put into their walk, on every one of them, even the wimpiest--so different from my own feminine walk, which by now was second nature. The plan was for Mummy to continue homeschooling me until my junior year in high school, but my development went faster than Dr Madison had anticipated, and I started going to the public high school in my sophomore year. The first thing we found out was that I was in advanced standing in nearly every subject. Don't tell me home- schooling doesn't work! By this time also, Mummy's lawyer had managed to get my birth certificate and other records changed from James (male) to Jennifer (female). He regarded this procedure with prim and stiff-lipped disapproval, but Mummy could be very emphatic when her mind was made up, and he ended up having to carry out our wishes. With me in high school and no more homeschooling to do, Mummy took a job. The medical bills had been high and we had had to retrench; Mummy's administrative skills soon had her earning a nice salary and we were living better than ever before. In high school, I started dating boys. I was delighted not to be a boy myself, but nevertheless I found the creatures fascinating. I liked the hardness of their bodies and the way they looked at me. I liked kissing them, and I liked to watch their lips when they talked. I liked another kind of hardness, too, as I found out the first time I put my hand inside a boy's pants. I couldn't let him into my pants, of course, because of what he'd find there (rats!), but I fell back on the old time-of-the-month excuse and had a grand time giving him a blow job--my first ever. A penis was a splendid thing, I decided, as long as it wasn't on my body. VI. I finished high school as Jenny, and I started college as Jenny. I applied for, and got, a scholarship that was generous enough that we would actually be able to get some money ahead. And then, the first Summer after my eighteenth birthday, I told Mummy I wanted to finish the job. "What do you mean, Dear?" she asked. I think she knew. "I mean I want surgery. I don't need these things--" I pointed between my legs--"I don't like them, and I want to get rid of them. I want to be a woman, not a chick with a dick." After a phone conference with Dr Madison, I took the bus to see her and we talked. I said that I wished she could have done this right away when I was still a boy. She said it would have been out of the question at that age and that the hormones had been a risky enough proposition. "But I'm eighteen now," I said. "I'm legally an adult and I'm past my adolescence." "You're past most of it," she corrected. But she had no strong objection. "Do you want me to do the surgery?" "Yes, Dr Madison, I want you especially. It isn't just because you're the top surgeon in this field, although that's important, of course. It isn't just because you're a woman and that it would mean a lot to me to have such an operation performed by a woman. But you're a friend, someone who has already saved my life once, and you're the one person I would trust." She consented, and we scheduled a tentative date: July 20, which would now be Jenny's birthday in yet another way. "There's one request I have. Can you do the surgery under a local anaesthetic? I would like you to do that and rig a mirror. I want to watch the operation. I want the satisfaction of seeing you cut them off." She gave me a surprised look. "No, Jenny, I'm afraid I can't do that. You have to be out cold, under general anesthesia. And you know, it isn't just a matter of taking a scissors and going snip- snip-snip. It's a very long and very complicated operation. I not only have to remove things; I have to give you a vagina as well, and there's a lot of...well, heavy construction, and rewiring...that has to be done." I was sorry to hear this. I had had my heart set on watching myself being...castrated, I guess I should say. I asked her whether she could at least videotape the operation, and she got a little huffy and said this wasn't just a fun thing for home movies. So I let the matter drop. I did cajole her into giving me an advance look at the operating room, however, although only a glimpse through a window. I saw the operating table and the stirrups above it, and I thought, with a thrill, "MY legs are going to be in those stirrups!" My last memory before the surgery was riding down the hall on my gurney to the operating room, caroling out at the top of my voice, "I enjoy being a girl!" VII. After the operation, Dr Madison reminded me of my request to watch. "I couldn't arrange that, as I explained. But I understand why you wanted that. So I saved your testicles and what's left of your penis, if you want to see them now." "No," I told her--rather brusquely, I'm afraid. "I'm sorry you bothered. I spent all my life seeing them. I'm sick of seeing them. I wanted to see them come off, but I don't want to see them again. Ever. Throw them in the garbage. That's all they're fit for." That was a year and a half ago. Things went pretty smoothly after the surgery. And dilation was, after a couple of painful experiences right at the beginning, a dream. Another advantage of being a TS: having to stick a dildo up your vagina, under doctor's orders! I've never heard of a doctor ordering a man to play with his penis on a regular basis. I had my first man--oops, no; that's not the way to put it--I was had by my first man about six months ago.. It was only our second date, but he was urgent, and I thought, why not? Am I an easy lay? Jenny round-heels? I suppose I am; if all the other men in my life turn out to be as much fun as he was, I'm sure I will be. **** So that's my story. I never dedicated it when I started writing it; let me dedicate it now. To my three dearest friends in the world: Mummy, Dr Madison, and my nice, new, pretty vagina. Princess Pervette February, 1997