Tuesday August 2, 2016 - Road trip

I am leaving today for a 4-day road trip with my only two first cousins. My father had a sister and my mother was an only child. My aunt had two daughter and we all grew up in the same town. One cousin is 1 year older than me and the other is two years younger than me. With my sister, the four of us were born over a four year period.

We had a lot of fun together growing up. We recently located a long lost second cousin who we lost contact with in the mid 1970's. We heard he had moved with him mother, once his parents divorced, back to Mississippi. Thanks to Facebook, we found him last year. He is one year older than us and is battling cancer.

My two cousins are flying into Atlanta today and we are driving to Meridian, MS to spend 4 days with him.

What is interesting about this cousin, is that his older brother was trans. In 10th grade, his older brother, Jeff, came out of the"closet" by going to school dressed in female clothes.

This was in 1970, WOW. How brave he must have been and how powerful is gender dysphoria  was. He was thrown out of school and his Dad threw him out of the house. My Dad tried to mediate the situation because he was school board president and it was his cousin's son. I suspect my Dad helped him financial.

I remember the reaction by family members and friends. My friends use to tease me about my cousin being on the streets looking like a girl.

By this time, my parents knew about my crossdressing. So my Dad did not run for reelection so he could spend more time with me. I would be going into high school and they increase my time with the therapist. As I told them in 1990, it did not cure me because I was not sick, but all of this drove me deeper in the closet. I could not disappoint my parents or younger siblings.

Because Jeff was out on the street, he became a "female" prostitute. In the mid 1970's he left N.J. for Seattle Washington. My Dad stayed in communication with him by mail. In 1982, when my Grandmother died, he came to the funeral. I had not seen him in 10 years and he was dressed as a male. He had found God and returned to NJ.

I can still see him sitting in the corner of the room by himself. I was so busy, I did not get a chance to talk with him. Maybe I was afraid to. This bothers me to this day. He dies of AIDS in the mid 1980's.

Later, my father gave me the letters Jeffrey wrote to him. In one of those letters from the late 1970's, he complained that his friends were dying from some mysterious illness.

Seeing Micheal this week will bring back some of those memories and I hope he will talk about it. In the meanwhile, I have told my two cousins about being a transwoman and they are very supportive. So I look forward to talking about this on the trip.