Join us for our Saturday morning stroll through the Gayborhood.  Today, meet our co-editor, Margo Moon.

Nobody told me what the secret was when I was growing up.  But, when it happens, I  feel all springy fresh like I do when I get out of a long, warm shower and every inch of my skin is totally alive.  It happens in that minute when you know you’ve bumped up against somebody who can make you better at the things you love to do most.

When I was a kid, I would head down to our basement rec room with my two younger brothers and kick their asses in darts.  It didn’t take much, we all sucked; me just less than them.  I never really got better and the results were too predictable to make it fun for long.

But, I loved the idea of darts.  I loved the precision and the skill it required to win.  I just didn’t have it in me to do it well.  Then, I met a bunch of dart leaguers when I was in the military.  They were awesome.  Unfortunately, they got less awesome as the pitchers of beer which always accompanied the game settled, eventually challenging their eye/hand coordination to such a degree that their tossing darts reminded me of my nearly-blind, senile great grandpa trying to drive down Main Street.  My competitive eye watched their wrists and their points strategy – just before I bought them the next pitcher. They still made me better.

When I wanted to rise up in my job after spending years stalling out at what I described as my version of the Peter Principle, I found a job with a hard-driving but mentoring boss who taught me some tough lessons, allowed me to stretch, fall, get up, fall again, and ultimately stand tall.  And once the bruises faded from my battle with my own ego I moved onward and upward; all with her blessing and full support.  She made me better.

Long about three years ago, give or take, I got a comment on my personal blog from someone with the funny name of Margo Moon.  I went to her brand new blog and started reading.  Immediately, I fell in love with the character Margo and the star of the show, Starr Ann.  Then I read other fiction she’d written and that springy fresh feeling was hot on my trail.

Somehow, she got me to write a very short piece of fiction.  I felt inadequate, but excited.  When I had an idea for a short story, republished here last Sunday, she was the very best kind of editor – encouraging but direct in areas that might need work.  My story was better for it.

We’ve never met in person, but she is one of a handful of people I trust with passwords.  Secrets.  Blunt observations.  She sees the world with child-like wonder and reminds me when I fall too deeply into spreadsheet mode that my child needs to come out and play and she does.  That’s trust.  That came in time, but this was a friendship truly borne of words.  And, I’m better for it.

We as co-editors have a shared vision for what our site is and what we hope it will become regardless of our different, yet ultimately dovetailing approaches.  We want the writers here to grow in their craft and we want to provide our readers with something that might strike a chord and make them better in some small way for having stopped by.

When I was four years old and went into the bathroom with all of my classmates during preschool, I witnessed other little boys being able to stand and pee.  Instantly, I was jealous and insulted by the fact that I had not been born with that ability.  I knew that one day I would and I made that my life’s mission. Well, not quite.

I really knew when I was that young I wanted to be a boy.  There were a lot of mornings I’d wake up before the rest of my family, put shaving cream on my face, and pretend to shave it off with the back of a comb.  After a bath, I’d lock myself in the bathroom and try to style my hair like John Travolta’s character in “Grease”.  When I played house with my friends, I always wanted to be the dad or the dog, but mostly the dog because that was gender neutral.  These events seemed normal to me at the time.  I just thought every little girl wanted to be a boy, and so did my family.  They thought it was a phase and they called me a tomboy, certainly thinking I’d grow out of this phase by the time I reached my adult life.  I certainly hoped it would pass, but deep down, I wasn’t convinced it would.

As I got to high school and even through college, I wanted to deny being who I was as long as I could because it was just so out there.  No one really seemed to know or to want to know what being trans was, including me.  I didn’t know anyone who was trans either, which didn’t help.   All I knew was that the portrayals I saw of trans people in the media and on TV showed them to be prostitutes, mentally unstable, outcasts of society, and these types of labels were not the ones I wanted to be associated with.  Being gay was hard enough for people to grasp.  So, I tried as hard as I could to be the butchest, baddest lesbian around, and it stuck for a while.

At 25 though, I decided to turn in my butch badge and start my transition, hormones and all.   I realized that the only way to be completely happy is to stop denying who I am and to embrace it. And who I am isn’t a lesbian (although I did make many femmes swoon when I donned my butchwear).  I am just a guy who is attracted to girls. I had just been born into the wrong body.

So, here I am two years later, and I couldn’t be happier, well I could be, but with other things like the economy, healthcare, you know. These issues affect me just like anyone else, (I’m no different just because I was born into the wrong body).   But my quality of life has improved immensely, truly.  I actually like being trans, it’s really not as scary as everybody would probably think.  Going through puberty for a second time was worth it especially because I finally attained the masculine characteristics I had dreamed of: facial hair and muscle mass.   When I look in the mirror, I am still me, just with the handsome face I had wanted for so long.

I actually think there are a lot of great benefits to being a trans person.  Because I was born a woman and socialized that way, I have a unique perspective on a lot of things.  My girlfriend is especially appreciative of my ability to empathize with her when she’s PMSing or dealing with her period.   My male friends like that I can confirm that it isn’t their fault that sex is always on their minds.  The best benefit of all though is that I am able to draw from my past experience as a woman and my current experience as a man to successfully talk to people and educate them.   I’m able to let people see for themselves that trans people are human beings just like everyone else.

The pursuit of happiness really is embracing who you are, or at least, it is for me.   I went through life for so long unhappy and uncomfortable in my own skin.  It is remarkable to note the difference between how I felt before I transitioned and after.  The greatest lesson I learned really was I should never be ashamed of who I am, no matter how people judge me.  The greatest discomfort I ever felt was when I wasn’t comfortable with myself, not when other people were uncomfortable with me.   I am proud to be who I am. I have a lot of great qualities that define me in addition to being trans.  It’s time to let the world see that.

After seeing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen tell Congress that they supported the repeal of the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, I knew I had to get ready. Despite being Groundhog’s Day, it appeared, for once, as though history might be changing, a legacy of injustice slipping through the fingers of my sworn nemesis, Captain Hetero, that erstwhile guardian of American bigotry and ignorance, who had defeated me so many times before. Recognizing that his grip over his Defense Department mouthpieces was faltering, I knew that the masked darling of the Religious Right would pivot quickly to mediate the effects of Mullen’s and Gates’ testimony.

My one spy amongst Captain Hetero’s minions, a lesbian named Shanette who, in exchange for the use of my trailer, had infiltrated his Virginettes Dance Team, had already told me that there was a rally planned for the next day, and that many of Captain Hetero’s congressional loyalists would be in attendance. The Virginettes were scheduled to perform their “Only the Straights Are Great” routine, she’d told me, and the list of speakers included officers in Captain Hetero’s Dick Army, who were to profess their fears of sodomy and unshaven women before the gathering. Captain Hetero himself would also be in attendance, doling out cash and baptizing the faithful with his sugary Kool-aid before proselytizing on the desired sexual proclivities of the ideal, Christian-American soldier.

At the completion of my senior year in high school, I was 5’3” and weighed a whopping 88 lbs. (with clothes on). Breasts? Is that what those little pimply-looking things on my chest were supposed to be called? Honestly, I longed for the day that I could grow enough boob to fit into a 32A bra.

When I first began trying to peek into lesbian life, there weren’t very many places to go for information.  Today there are many ways to get information, to help young lesbians through the early years of identification and acceptance.  I had met a few lesbians in my teen years.  My parents paid for private tennis lessons one summer, and the instructor, Marion, was a lesbian.  I didn’t know it at the time, and I didn’t feel an attraction to her then, but I worked out the details later.

I had been taking lessons for at least a few weeks.  She was living in a spare bedroom in a fancy house in what was the wealthiest part of town, and the house had its own tennis court where we met for my weekly lessons.  The woman who lived in the house was in the middle of a divorce and needed income, so she rented out the space.

As some of you know, there is a man in my life. He has been here since September, living with my partner and I in our home. Sure, we didn’t have a lot of room and weren’t looking for a man to move in, but when we heard his story, we just knew we couldn’t say no. He is differently-abled, you see.

He walks with a wobble. Sometimes he falls over, but he picks himself up right away and keeps on going. He trembles and sometimes has seizures where he ‘spaces out’. Not the big seizures we are used to seeing, but seizures of a different sort. The way in which he arrived and promptly took up residence in our hearts and home is nothing short of a miracle.

Oh, I should probably mention that this man who has taken up so much time in my life is named Tiny Timmy and he is a little kitten. He is a rescue and had been exposed to toxic over-the-counter flea and tick products that caused him to have extreme neurological damage.

Rocky Horror Picture Show has its moments, and the erotic, “swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh” song titled “Don’t Dream It” is one of the best. It’s a visceral invitation to make real your most compelling dreams, to live the life that whispers and pleads for notice deep within your heart.

Yet, as vital as the being is to the dreaming, it is the dream itself that makes all realization possible.

I’m been having some trouble with being “progressive” lately. People talk about being “progressive” but really don’t seem do anything but whine and complain all the damn time. I’m not a whiner by nature. Complaining makes me feel bad both emotionally and physically when I give too much energy to things that are seemingly “wrong” around me. If this makes me sound like a “Pollyanna” type, well so be it, but mainly for most of my life, I’ve been too busy getting things done to worry about the people who wanted to sit around and tell me why I couldn’t do them.

Merriam-Webster online defines “progress” as:
1. A forward or onward movement (as to an objective or to a goal) and
2. Gradual betterment, especially (italics theirs): the progressive development of humankind.

Today, I would like to speak to you about a very serious matter.  Valentine’s Day.  I didn’t remember how Valentine’s Day got started.  I know they told us in grade school. All I remember was that in 1st grade we made a giant cardboard “post office” and as we each took turns as “postmaster” delivering those cheesy little Valentine’s Day cards with those little candy hearts with messages on them (and who knows what kinds of kid germs smeared all over them as kids pulled them out of their pockets to load up the little envelopes).

President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act into law on October 28, 2009. This law expanded federal hate crimes legislation to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability.

Before Obama signed this law, those opposed to LGBT rights warned us of many Great Harms that would result from this expansion. Today, we are going to examine whether any of these predictions have come true yet.