Transman in TX land

following the life and struggles of a transgender, latino from a religious family in the south

[skyyftm]

One of my fave shirts

[skyyftm]

The life of a latin transman and drag king

Let me start by introducing myself. I am a 29yr old Hispanic transman. My family is big on religion and we weren’t raised Catholic like most latins. I guess it has to do with the fact that we’re a mixed family. My mother’s side is spanish and German so she’s 75% Spanish and 25% German yet she claims she’s Mexican, I don’t get it. My father, well he hasn’t been around since I was 13yrs old. I still speak to him here and there, he’s only a call away. That I know of his side of the family is Mexican. However the family last name is not that of Mexican descent. Traces back to Spain also. I won’t sit there and ask that family though because it’s lost in translation, literally. I don’t speak Spanish well enough to ask. I identified as a lesbian stud/butch for majority of my life but knew something wasn’t right about that. I was thrown out of the closet at 14yrs old and my bible thumping mother beat me. I guess she assumed she could beat the gay out of me. She was wrong, it just made me lose the bond I used to have with her. Her and my big brother tagged team me on the beating. For the longest I felt alone in my family and hated to go home. I began cutting to remind myself I was still alive. There were times I contemplated suicide but couldn’t go through with it because I knew it would devastate my grandmother. Which her and my grandfather(my mother’s parents) are the only ones that actually took care of me during that time. I used to go to their house for refuge, since my father wasn’t around. I battled a lot of demons and overcame a lot at an early age. My mother used to charge me rent to stay in the house my father built. This started after I was beat. She kept me out of school a week after that beating, that caused me to miss finals my freshman year. Which resulted in my having to attend summer school. To keep away from her I joined JROTC and other after school activities. I’d do competitions and never invited her to come watch. That was my free time away from her. I graduated early to get away from her. She’s a teacher in the district I attended, so even when she wasn’t around she had people watching me. I hated it. When I came of age I went far away from her. About seven hours of a drive away to be exact. This was during the time I was dating the first person I had settled down with. We would go watch drag shows at local bars. I remember being 19yrs old and telling her I wanted to do male drag. Miss A.Crawford was the first queen I ever saw and was hooked from that point on. Fast forward to 2013 I had lost 70lbs after a break up. I had been basically married two and a half years to an awesome woman who couldn’t handle my sarcastic ways. My family has had a way of molding me into this sarcastic, cold hearted person. I’m not actually cold hearted, just not well with showing emotions. Needless to say after our split I focused on losing the weight I gained while with her and than some. She could have literally poisoned me with her cooking and I still would have eaten it. I gained confidence in myself when I realized that women I probably would have never gotten a second glance from, were stopping and looking. I briefly dated someone whom I mentioned to that I wanted to do drag. She mentioned that her older sister was dating a local drag king. Apparently there was a world of drag kings that existed and I never knew about it. I thought I was going to be the first to attempt this. I contacted the local group of drag kings, met with them that week and began performing the next. Within two weeks of performing I had managed to perform twice and compete in a pageant. The shyness I once had began to vanish. I had managed to snag runner up in a pageant I prepped four days for. Over the course of roughly a year I became much more comfortable in my drag form. I realized that this is what I was missing from my life this entire time. I came to terms with realizing that I am transgender. I’ve never been one to like the female attributes my body was born with. However when my chest is binded I feel whole.I never played with girls growing up. My best friends were two boys that I was raised with. We did everything a typical little boy would do. The only difference was on Christmas, while they were getting all the cool action figures I got Barbies. The awesome thing though was that they accepted me for myself and let me play with their toys too. I have now been on my journey, six months to becoming the man I’ve always been.