So, I'm in the process of putting my life back together after nine months of unemployment and the insanity that has ensued since then. I called my credit card company—well, the one I hope to keep—and explained to them that I was recently employed and that as soon as I got my first paycheck they were getting everything in the past-due pile, and they seemed happy with this. I managed to pay a few of my bills. I may even have the nonsense with my previous bank sorted out to the point that I can close my old accounts in good conscience and then work towards opening some new bank accounts to handle my money.

Last Thursday morning, I went to open an account with National Penn Bank, because they had posted some really good mortgage rates, and I'm looking to get out from under Navy Federal Credit Union as quickly as possible, thanks to some really poor customer service policies and a financial screwup between them an MBNA.
I'd like to find a local bank, since I'm looking at keeping my house for the next five years at a minimum to build up some equity in my home, and because I'm increasingly running into problems with national chains of any sort in which customer service is any sort of issue. WalMart and Giant, they're fine, insofar as I never have to deal with anyone in charge of anything and they have better prices than the mom-and-pop stores that they drove out of business. Banks, insurance and other financial institutions, however, need a lot of interaction skills, and NFCU really blew it badly when a large pile of excrement impacted the circulation device.

So, I went into NatPenn and I very politely explained to the counterstaff that I would like to open an account but I've had some financial difficulties in the past, and I wasn't sure what my old bank is saying about me to the credit companies. The branch manager with whom I spoke was very sympathetic, said she understood my employment problems, and went to research my credit history in the federal reporting system. She asked me if I was from Texas natively, and I told her I moved to Pennsylvania five years ago and gave her my driver's license and Social Security card. She took them, compared a few things, and opened my account without a hitch.

That afternoon, I took Jessie to the local branch to get her added to my account, and the counterstaff there was very nice and took Jessie's information and went to enter it into their database. We waited a few moments, and the woman got a very puzzled look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and managed to peek uwop-ap!sdn at her computer screen, which says "ID CHECK FAILED" on it. She said that Jessie's information in the computer didn't match the information we had provided. We asked to see what the computer said, and she handed us a print-out.

The computer had tried to match on three pieces of information: name, address, and birthdate, and all three had failed. For name, the computer had her pre-transition name, minus one letter, indicating a transcription error. The address was five years out of date; it had the apartment in Texas into which she had moved when she first came down from Michigan, the rathole we abandoned shortly after arriving. For birthdate, they had no month or day. They only had a year, which was off by two. 

Something was very, very wrong.

We explained to the counterstaff that their computer had incorrect and long-expired information in it, and she said, "Well, I'm sorry about that, but we have to go with what the computer system tells us, because we get it right from Social Security, so you'll need to contact the Social Security office to fix your data, and then we can add her."

That night, a quick call to the Social Security office verified that, in fact, all her information in their database was right, and that the bank was using some kind of third-party verification system that had been populated with invalid information. The SSA official, in fact, suggested that we have the bank manager call in to verify the information over the phone. I was actually quite amazed to discover that someone who worked for the American government could actually be helpful without coercion.

Friday, I called the local NatPenn branch to ask them about the situation and told the woman on the phone that Social Security had verified what we told the bank, and that we were confused as to how and where they were getting their obviously-old information. The woman on the phone said, "Oh, we have an outside vendor provide all of that to us. You'll have to deal with them; we can't help you." I tried to find out from her who the vendor
was, but she wouldn't tell me, only that she couldn't help us because of the mismatch between supplied information and computer records, despite the fact that we had the Social Security office on our side telling us to have the bank call them to verify Jessie's records.

Today I called NatPenn's main office to tell them that their "third-party vendor" for credit reporting was five years out of date and that I would like to add my wife to my account and that we needed some method of either bypassing their obviously-inaccurate reporting system or else to get their information verified. The person with whom I spoke made no effort to find out to which account I was referring, or even to investigate the matter. She merely asked me at which branch I had had a problem, and then transferred me to that branch office.

When I got a representative on the phone at the local branch office, I did my best to calmly and politely explain that there was a problem in their outside vendor's financial data and that I would very much like to get my wife added to my account but that their third-party provider had some old information that was causing a problem with that. She said, "one moment, sir" and put me on hold.

I sat there, literally stunned, by her statement, until she came back and asked me "sir, what is your name?" I told her my name, and she in turn sat for about ten seconds in dead silence before saying, "I'm sorry". She then asked me for my wife's information and pulled up the record of trying to add Jessie to my account. I explained to her, in a not-quite-so-calm-and-polite fashion, that whoever their vendor was had lost track of my wife since before her sex change and that they really weren't inspiring consumer confidence. She said that there wasn't anything she could do to help me because the Social Security office would need to be informed first. I told her that Social Security had the right info and that it was the vendor with the errors. She said she didn't know what to do, then, but that she knew at that point she couldn't be of any further assistance.

I asked for the manager. She said the manager wasn't there, but that the assistant manager was. I asked to speak with the assistant manager. She said, "She's busy with a customer."

I told her I'd wait, and she stuck me on hold for seven minutes.

When I came off of hold—just beeps, no music—the assistant manager at the local branch informed me that the onus was mine—or more accurately, Jessie's—to get the matter corrected. I asked her if she was at all worried or concerned about the fact that their outside credit-check vendor was displaying inaccurate information. She replied that the "third-party vendor" I was so gleefully decrying was in fact the national credit checking system, and that they were required by law to treat it as authoritative unless we could supply overwhelming evidence to
support our claim that the reason it was out of date was that Jessie hadn't held a bank account in five years. I asked them what they would take as proof. She said that we had to provide proof of legal name change, a new
Social Security card, and something with the address and birthdate on it like a state identification card. I asked if the new SSA card was enough, as we had to have the legal change of name to get the card. She said she had to
have the legal name change paperwork to show when and on whose authority the name change was executed legally, that the SSA's claim was not enough.

Throughout this phone conversation, she continually attempted to insinuate through tone and wording that if we weren't trying to defraud the system then at the very least we were somehow responsible for proving we weren't
liars and cheats. She seemed utterly uninterested in the fact that the national database had bad data in it, insisting that she could override the faulty information with sufficient proof of our claim, but any attempt to discuss anything less than a filing cabinet's worth of paper was met with curt answers and "our hands are tied by the PATRIOT Act; we can't help you".

So, my question to the world at large is this: what is your typical banking experience? For those of you who have been through some sort of financial nonsense involving name changes, being out of the loop for a few months,
or otherwise not fitting the standard profile of the American Consumer, who do you use for your financial needs, and what sort of experiences have you had? I don't want or need discussions on the merits of the world of finance or of micro- and macro-economics and whether they're good for people or not. I'm just trying to find out if every bank is staffed with poor-quality customer service representatives. If so, I'm better off sticking with the moneymaker. If not, then I'd much rather go with a bank that is is more sympathetic to its customers' needs, even if they don't make as much money.

My desire at this point is to find some place that's actually got good customer service people working at the counter, explain to them my situation, open an account with them, then go back to NatPenn and publically close the account and cite the lousy customer service we received from four different representatives. I'm frustrated by the volume of legal bullshit that continues to plague us despite being long past the point at which we should
have both been done with this hassle, but that's not what broke the deal. The bank could have been patient, polite and concerned with our needs. They could have taken the time to point out what we needed to do. The customer
support staff could have even said, "hey, we're not really trained for these edge cases; we'd better refer you to the manager so someone can really help you". They did none of these things, and if I can at all benefit by going elsewhere, I will.

We deserve better than this. 

Today is a day of mixed emotion.

Today, in Massachusetts, same-sex couples began receiving marriage certificates. Gay couples are lining up to tie the knot, and aside from a few snot-nosed punks from Westboro Baptist Church, the protests have been civil. Even the opponents have said, "what they're doing is legal, even if it's not moral; let them have their happiness," which I think is really big of them considering how hard they fought against this.

Today, an insurance agent told me that despite being legally married to Jessie, we're not "a couple" for insurance purposes because we're both women. Aetna has defined a couple in their guidelines as "one man and one woman with a marriage license," and the fact that we have one of those conditions doesn't mean we meet them both. I mentioned the whole Boston thing, and she said "Yes, ma'am, but that's not Pennsylvania, and the underwriters in
Pennsylvania have opted at this time to ignore the social progress happening in Massachusetts, though they reserve the right to change their minds later." At least she didn't shut me out completely, but it's still
highly irritating to be told that we may be married, but we're not a couple for purposes of insurance underwriting.

Today, I explained to a recruiter for the nth time that I lost my job for reasons I don't really understand. Thursday, April 22nd, I was an employee in good standing. Friday, Apreil 23rd, I was out on the street. I got a performance-based salary increase in November, and I got an out-of-cycle performance-based bonus in January. I never received a formal warning of any sort about my job performance, either written or verbal, prior to being let go. The company then fired the Director of Technology a week later for "performance issues" two weeks after he finished migrating a fifty-machine server room plus the rest of a major office space. Every recruiter to whom I've told all of this has been incredibly sympathetic, but none of them have jobs open for someone with my skillset
right now.

Today, the chair of the department of CIS at DeVry told me she wants to schedule an interview "some time in the next four weeks" for an adjunct teaching position. She was impressed enough with my perl and my database skills to pull me in to teach a class on programming and SQL, but it sounded like she didn't think I had enough meat on my proficiencies to be a full-time professor. It's still income, just not as much as I'd like. With any luck, though, I could do that part-time and get a full-time job elsewhere, which would be enough to keep me in the black.

Today, I made arrangements to rent a truck to go pick up some furniture that Tanya's uncle is donating, and then move the rest of the contents of the apartment into the house we've owned without use for five months now. The
doors are all off the hinges because the place had hardwood and now it has carpet, and the doors weren't meant for carpet, so they all have to be shaved to fit, but hopefully the repair crews are taking care of that detail as well. I won't know for sure until I hear back from the company, though, which should be tomorrow.

Today, I realized just how much packing and cleaning I have to do in three days. Despite all the boxes we've moved into the new place already, it feels like there's no way we're going to get everything moved in time on the
schedule I want to move by. My only hope now, really, is to clean and sort as much as possible between now and Friday and plan on picking up boxes from Tanya's workplace—since she works for a grocery store and they have all the boxes they want—and packing into the boxes when they show up, meaning we have to pack and move and then at least unload all over the same two days. This weekend is going to be painful.

Today, I found out that in four months, insurance companies consider me middle-aged.

Today, I reread all my old letters from my transition, the letters from my therapist and my clinical observer clearing the path for me to become legally and physically female, or at least the best approximant thereof possible in the World of Today.

Today is the greatest day I've ever known.

Today, I learned that the income I thought I would have by June 1, I won't have for some time afterwards, meaning I don't have enough to make ends meet unless I get a job real-damn-fast or I live on the credit card. I'm not angry about it, any more than I'm angry at losing my job in the first place, but I wish I had known things would go that way in the beginning so I could plan accordingly. This is going to require emergency measures to correct.

Today, I wondered where my home was.

Right now, I am livid. I use that word a lot when this sort of thing happens, but I know of no better word for it. I feel an impotent anger directed at a faceless system whose representatives are trying their hardest to accomodate
an unexpected situation within a broken paradigm.

Jessie got her legal gender fixed on Saturday. Great. Wonderful. She's a chick now as far as the state of Pennsylvania and the Social Security Authority are concerned. Excellent. This means that we're now in a legally-married same-sex relationship. I am apparently the source, or at least a source, of the downfall of Western civilization.

I've chosen to start with Independence Blue Cross.

I called my benefits rep to get Jessie's information fixed on Friday, in anticipation of the success at the DMV—a success, mind you, which went far beyond either of our expectations, and for which I'm inordinately proud of her—and she said at first that there shouldn't be any problems, then later called me back to tell me she'd hit a snag with updating Jessie's information in the computer system.

It seems that IBX has their software set up such that when two people are entered into the system as a married couple, the sex of the one listed as "spouse" is instantiated as a dependent field, linked to the sex of the one listed as "applicant". This is there to prevent typos, but it also locks out updates if one member of the married couple should happen to have zir sex legally changed. There isn't even a "try it and see" option. The field is locked. It can't be changed.

Their software will allow same-sex couples into the system, but not as a married couple. It calls them "domestic partnerships" and simply refuses to acknowledge them as anything but. That option then is forced into a different category of insurance. They're no longer married as far as IBX is concerned. They're "partnered" and it's a whole
different ball of wax as to whether or not we're covered.

Now, the benefits rep told me all of this on the phone and later again in an email, and she said to me that I needed to call IBX and ask them for an exception or an override in their system so that the claims that came back that had Jessie listed as female wouldn't get rejected. I know they can do this because they did it for her prescriptions so her premarin wouldn't get rejected. That took a doctor's note, so I called IBX to find out how to get this override put into the computer.

They told me on the phone that no such option exists.

Now, to their credit, they did tell me that I had options. I could contact my company and ask them to have domestic partnerships added to our insurance options, or I could have Jessie removed from my policy and added as a separate single enrollee not linked to my entry in the database. Neither of these reflect the actual legal status of our relationship, but while they acknowledged that verbally on the phone they also seemed totally oblivious to
it. It was amazing.

I managed after much waiting and wrangling to get someone in the Enrollments department on the phone, who cheerfully explained to me that domestic partnerships didn't cost anything(?!?!?!) to add to a group policy and that having our policy holders add that to their insurance coverage would make the whole problem simply go away on its own. When I finally got a word in edgewise, I asked why Jessie was no longer covered on my policy. The conversation went something like this:

• $buni->say("Jessie and I are legally married, yes?");
• $rep->say("Yes.");
• $buni->say("My group policy covers legally married couples, yes?");
• $rep->say("Yes.");
• $buni->say("Thus, Jessie should be covered under my policy, yes?");
• $rep->say("No.");
• $buni->say("Why not?");
• $rep->say("Because Jessie is now female.");
• $buni->say("At what point in my previous two statements did I say anything about male or female?");
• $rep->say("....");
• $buni->say("You do acknowledge that we are legally married, yes?");
• $rep->say("Yes.");
• $buni->say("And you acknowledge that the policy my company uses covers legally married couples, yes?");
• $rep->say("Yes.");
• $buni->say("So, does it not logically follow that Jessie, as my legally married spouse, should be covered under my insurance policy which covers legally married couples?");
• $rep->say("No.");
• $buni->say("Why not?");
• $rep->say("Because Jessie is female.");
• $buni->say("This sounds like a defect in your software.");
• $rep->say("Oh, no, ma'am! This is no defect. You have to have domestic partnership coverage if you want Jessie on your policy.");
• $buni->say("We don't have a domestic partnership. We have a legally recognized marriage according to the state of Pennsylvania. Where in this discussion did anybody mention domestic partnerships?");
• $rep->say("Well, Jessie is female now, isn't she?");
• $buni->say("....");

Again to her credit, she said she would call our benefits rep on my behalf and ask them to ask IBX to add domestic partnerships to their coverage package at no charge(?!?!?!) to the company, so that our situation would be resolved transparently without ever having to do any of the following: 

• admit that IBX's software is defective because it does not take into account the concept of a legally-recognzied same-sex marriage
• consider the possibility that the software, or the policy, should be corrected in advance of the situation surely to follow when Massachusetts, California, and New York all finish with their legal folderol, assuming the federal government doesn't FSU with its FMA
• apologize for the insult of telling me repeatedly on the phone that my legally-sanctioned marriage is somehow "not a real marriage" because their software is not in error when it rejects the correction to
  Jessie's gender, saying that we need domestic partnership coverage for that

She could've outright refused to help me on the phone. She could've done a lot of things that would have really gotten under my collar and made me blow my stack in a very audible way, even from the front conference room. She was as helpful as I'm sure she thought she could be. That in no way mitigates the fact that I feel as though I have been verbally insulted. I tell myself I shouldn't take offense, but it's hard not to feel demeaned by the whole
experience. I didn't have this much trouble when I changed my sex, but at the time we weren't legally married; we were just fighting for recognition as a couple, and not even that actively.

I can only hope that the upside to this is that my company will add domestic partnership coverage to its policy, but doing so doesn't fix the real problem. We're not a domestic partnership. We're married, and yet they sat there on the phone and told me without malice or regret that despite being married they couldn't cover Jessie as my dependent because she's a chick now, and that wasn't marriage according to their software. The real fix
is correcting the software, but try telling that to a midlevel bureaucrat.

I should've asked to speak with a supervisor. Barring that, I should've marched my way up the chain of command. The rep with whom I spoke is supposed to call me back this afternoon or tomorrow morning. If the answer isn't "your situation has been resolved" I'm going to have no choice but to start pushing my way up the line to talk to someone who can fix this, 'cause this time the fault isn't mine. It's theirs.

Now I just have to convince them of that.

---

As an afterthought, what really blows my mind on this is that twice on the phone with me she said that it cost a company nothing extra to cover domestic partnerships as equal to marriage. Nothing! Not one red cent more! Not a single penny over what we currently had to pay!

So why don't more companies cover domestic partners?

Every HR rep with whom I've ever spoken about it has said that the cost of covering the extra people on the plan didn't justify the personal savings the employees who needed it would see, but here on the phone someone from the enrollment group openly and actively said to me that it didn't cost them anything to add it! This can only mean one of two things: 

1. The woman on the phone was lying to me.
2. The HR reps were lying to me.

I would very much like to know which it is.

---

I just got a call from the benefits rep, and she said basically that if I ever get a bill for anything, I'm not to call IBX and complain, or the doctor's office to challenge it. I'm to fax it to her and forget about it. This isn't supposed to be my responsibility; it's hers. This is her job. This is what she does.

I feel like I've been pardoned.

I'm still angry that the situation exists, but I'm at least relieved of the responsibility of worrying about it. This is Someone Else's Problem.

I wouldn't wish days like yesterday on anyone.

I found out first of all from my doctor that there are no endocrinologists in the area that do hormone replacement therapy that take my insurance. This means I have to pay for all of my treatments up front and then hope that I get reimbursed afterwards, which means I have to budget far more than I would like for medical bills that, supposedly, should be the domain of my insurance company. After all, isn't that why we have them?

Next, my passport application has hit another snag. Now they want proof of my surgery. "It doesn't matter what your driver's license says; it's what's between your legs that counts." No, that isn't a direct quote, but that's the essential tone of the letter I received. Thankfully, they also said that if I hadn't had the surgery yet and needed the passport for the surgery, I could submit all of my other docs and a note from my surgeon saying when my surgery is scheduled. It's not a problem, but it is one more delay in getting the damn piece of paper that clears me for overseas travel, and they've flat-out admitted that they've lost my old one so if they don't give me the new one, there's going to be a real problem.

Finally, I contacted my bank to inquire about personal loan interest rates and found out that they don't offer them! They've got home, home improvement, car, et cetera, but nothing that doesn't involve some kind of major capital
purchase, and medical doesn't count. Again, it's not a crisis, but it's a delay in getting things settled and prepared for my trip. A friend of mine has offered to vouch for me to get a Navy Fed account, and according to him they'll give out loans on practically a handshake, so I'm not panicking but I am annoyed.

My weight was back up to 260 yesterday morning, and that always depresses me. I did such a good job of losing the weight, but I did it by punishing myself and generally starving myself, with the help of appetite suppressants which are no longer available over the counter. I even spoke with my doctor about getting back on them, and he just said the prescription strength ones weren't covered by insurance, which prices them out of my range for now.

If all of the above weren't enough, I've been worrying a lot about my finances these days. Trying to schedule a loan from the bank, I've felt increasingly under the microscope to pay off my debts to my credit cards and get back onto an even footing, but... 

... this is where my life gets extremely complex, or at least it feels like it does.

As I have established elsewhere in these writings, I am a very easily dominated person in certain basic ways. I'm very submissive, and I am, by my own admission, too easily influenced by the emotional states of my peers. The idea that one of my friends, someone I trust, being upset or mad at me, or even unhappy if I have the means of "correcting the problem," makes me sick to my stomach. I can take on any depth of self-deprivation if I know (or believe) that doing so will benefit someone close to me. I try to save the universe, and I fail because I don't know how to save myself first, no matter how much Ayn Rand I read.

Is it a fundamental lack of self-esteem? I don't think so. I do think, though, that it's a result of having grown up alone. All through my childhood, I made friends by doing things for them. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I suspect, is the fear that saying "no" to my compatriots will make them leave me. Jessie suggested it last night, and I denied it then, but looking at it, I suspect it's closer to the truth than I might like to admit.

I'm still afraid of being alone, and I'll hurt myself to make sure I'm not. I don't go in for masochism, but I'll put up with a lot of crap from people that claim to want me around. My first relationship is a good example of this.

The budget, then, is a major source of emotional headache for me. Because I control the purse strings in the family, my job is to say no to the requests of others, and every time I say no my guts clench up and I want to curl up in a corner and die. I'm still trying to win the approval of those from whom I know I don't have anything to prove. I don't make enough money to be able to say yes to everything, but I can't say no without feeling bad, and when it comes to money this is a dangerous game.

---

I'm going to change tacks for a moment, and switch over to a related subject. A few weeks ago, I entered into a dominant/submissive relationship with someone with whom I've grown very close over the years we've known each other. It satiates the screaming demons inside of me, to serve and know that even when I misbehave, my servitude pleases my mistress.

By "mistress", it's pretty clear I don't mean Jessie. Zie knows, zie accepts, zie doesn't understand entirely but zie supports and even encourages it somewhat.

So far, it's only been online, mostly because of the distance between us, but in part because of all of the above factors and because of my own mildly obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I fixate on things very easily, and in something so reality-warping, this would be a very dangerous thing again. I trust my mistress implicitly, even out of scene, not to do anything to hurt me, but she and I both agree that this should not become a relationship that overwhelms or controls either of us. We both have mates outside of it, and we both have lives, and if it ever interferes with either, it should be ended.

Over the weekend, I had the chance to actually play out some small measure of this, with someone not my mistress. Despite my would-be top not being overly skilled or interested in the scene, I still found it very seductive. I feel protected, knowing that at least within the confines of the scene, someone is going to take care of me, and that even if I'm punished it's out of tenderness. I know that to truly be a submissive, one must want what the dominant wants, even if it's self-detrimental, trusting in the top to protect and make safe. 

It's this sense of giving up control that I find so darkly attractive and so dangerous. I already struggle with the fact of being the primary income in my family. My mate, as much as I may love Jessie, is not well-suited to being "in charge". (If zie were, I think zie and I would have entered into that kind of relationship long ago and never regretted it.) The chance to not be in charge is one that I could far too easily accept as proper, and if I were to try I'd likely hurt many more people than just me. 

Having the chance to explore it in person, to actually experience the role of the submissive and then have someone critique me afterwards and give me pointers on how to be a better pet left me breathless and anxious. I walked around with the collar I had been given around my neck for the whole of the weekend and even wore it into the office on Monday as a piece of jewelry before realizing that I had been letting it take over my thoughts and removed it.

There is, I tell myself, a time and a place for everything. However, it's hard to confine an emotion that one would like to feel at all times to a limited set of times and places, even knowing that only by doing so does it become possible to experience it at all.

---

Now to tie these two threads together.

Jessie hasn't worked in eight months. Zie gets up when zie wants, goes to bed when zie wants, knows that the money is there to pay for small indulgences without having to think, has never been denied anything by me, and has, in general, little in the way of responsibility beyond keeping the apartment looking nice. Even that doesn't have to happen if something interrupts, or even if zie just forgets, zie knows I'll be irritated but I won't kick zim out.

In short, zie's been leading the life that I wish I could have, albeit with a bit more freedom than I might necessarily want.

I dumped core last night, telling all of this to Jessie at two in the morning. I've felt that Jessie hadn't taken the job search seriously. I'd had a background nervousness as the sole income earner for a while, but it's been really heavy lately with everything else going on, the times I've spent in the control of someone else putting the times I've
had to be the bitch about money into sharp relief and making me more uncomfortable.

I don't want to give up the satisfaction and happiness I find in servitude, but I need some way of keeping it from becoming an escape mechanism, and the best way I know to do that is to lessen the negative impact everything
else has. The fastest path to that end involves Jessie getting a job so that I don't feel I'm the only one supporting us and thus making all the decisions about where the money goes. It's probably a strange coping mechanism in my head, but it's there and I work with it and I've led a happy life so far, even with all the ups and downs.

It's been almost a month since I updated this; you'd think I were losing interest or something. It's more the case that I have all these little things that happen that, when I think I should update my page, don't seem significant enough on their own to warrant a second glance, but taken as a whole represent a lot of activity that I should record somewhere.

My emotions about my job are steadily declining. This is mostly due to two major factors:

First, I have nothing to do all day in my cube. This leads me to feel as if I could be fired at any minute, the instant they realize that I contribute nothing to the company structure. They hired me en masse with a bunch of other people, half of whom they laid off when they realized that they had not enough work for us all. They still don't have enough work for us leftovers, but they don't want to get rid of us 'cause it'd be bad for publicity or something, so I still have my job, but it's only a matter of time before that stops.

Second, the bathroom situation is disintegrating even further. The legal department has ruled that even if I were to internally transfer to a division within the company at which nobody knew of my past, they would feel obligated and compelled to inform human resources of my situation and require me to avoid using the ladies' room until after I had finished my surgery. I consider this a gross invasion of my privacy and I'm trying to get a meeting set up with the legal department to express this to them direction instead of taking out my frustrations on HR, but in light of the other issue mentioned above, pushing my luck with trying to get equal recognition is only hastening my employment demise, so I'm trapped.

The only way I see out of this dual bind is to find another job, and I've been looking heavily for one, but as of yet I've met with remarkably little success. I have a résumé that screams out for an administration job, and I'm trying to get back into development because I don't enjoy being sysadmin work, but nobody wants to believe that I have any development skills because I haven't put them to use since I graduated, my Master's Degree notwithstanding.

So, for now, I've been advised by both of my mates to sit down, stay quiet and keep my muzzle shut about the bathroom issue, so that I can make a clean getaway into another position. I emailed the ACLU, though, a few days ago, and I'm interested in hearing what they have to say about the whole situation.

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Ryan just came through for a visit, and I always forget how much I miss being around some people until they're not there. I hadn't seen him in nearly six months, and the chance to cuddle with him, to talk with him, to share with him again was wonderful. We watched Being John Malkavich, and I had about the same response to it that I had to Blair Witch Project: it was artistic and technically superior, but not a film I would want to see twice. We ended up staying up for several hours after we'd planned on going to sleep that night, talking about the movie and then related threads in this huge webwork of connections until the sun was coming up and we were yawning every third word.

We watched I Married a Strange Person again, and I'm still in love with Bill Plympton's animation style. I wish I could find that on VHS; I refuse to buy a DVD player until I can get a PS2, 'cause there's no point in me paying for two separate units. I'm not enough of a videophile to care that there're artifacts or bad decoding or whatever it is that's the complaint of the week about why the PS2 is a bad unit to own; my eyesight is so bad I couldn't tell the difference between the digital and tape versions of Toy Story 2 that Jessie insisted were dramatically different in quality. Ryan's computer monitor made a nice substitute TV in the short-term, but I wouldn't want to try to do that too often.

Once again, I managed to miss seeing Network, which is a movie that Ryan's been trying to get me to watch for two years now and that I keep saying I'll see but that I never manage to remember to rent. I finally have a television on which I don't mind sitting down to watch movies, but I never think about going and renting any because I'm forever using it as a monitor to my PSX or Jessie's old Nintendo. I'd hook my Zircon Fairchild up to it, or go and get my Atari 400 back from my father if I thought I could get it back from him. I probably could; he never plays it any more anyway. At some point, I'm going to remember to see this film so I can tell Ryan what I think of it, and I just hope it's worth the hype and the two years of waiting. We differ so greatly on what makes a good movie that I'm almost afraid to see it and ruin the magic.

In the end, I'm so glad he stopped here on his way. It's always nice to have family around, and he's been close to me for a very long time. I'd be lying if I claimed I weren't interested in him, but he's taken and hopelessly homosexual, and thus I'm simply pleased to call him my brother.

---

Speaking of visits, my old roommate from Australia, David Basden, came through here a few weeks ago. After having not seen him in over a year, I found out almost out of nowhere that he was going to be taking a round-the-world trip out of Australia to see the sites and wanted to stop by my apartment. I was pleasantly shocked and said yes almost instantly. Seeing him at the airport and the look of recognition and surprise on his face was worth everything.

It felt to good to be able to reconnect to a piece of my past that I'd thought I'd lost. The last time I'd seen him in person, I was still struggling to hold together the shreds of my identity as a male, to keep a relationship that I
had known for years was doomed to failure but was afraid to leave, to maintain the facade of nothing having changed in the last seven years. Being able to be myself and still have him recognize me for who I was, and who I wanted to be, was a wonderful experience.

There was some bitter in the sweet, but there always is at times like this and I don't regret any of it. I learned a lot about my ex-boyfriend that I wish I had had the courage to face years ago, but I'm glad I learned them. If you're reading this, I want you to know that I forgive you. I should have left you five years before I did, but I forgive you anyway.

It feels so good to be able to say that. 

This situation is becoming ludicrous.

Yesterday evening, I came to work to find a note from my boss that Human Resources had resolved to simply require me to continue using the ladies' restroom. They had no explanation as to why. They had no reasons. They
simply said that I would use the unisex bathroom at work until further notice.

Before I had had my gender legally changed, I agreed that this was a fair compromise and I accepted that I wasn't legally female and thus if the company caught any flak about me using the women's restroom, they could be held accountable. Now, however, I had the law on my side. Now, admittedly, I may have erred in not presenting this fact to HR immediately, but as I didn't think it would change anything since they said they had changed my internal paperwork already, I didn't worry too much about it.

When I heard Human Resources' decision, I sent a rather strongly-worded email to both my manager and my department head telling them that I felt HR's policy was ill-conceived and discriminatory, and that I would be
escalating the issue as high as it took to resolve the matter. I am legally female now, and I deserve the same treatment that other females receive at this company. I told them as much and I asked for the name of the person
that made the decision and the appropriate means of going over whomever's head.

Today, I got a response from the head of my department, telling me that he had passed on my concerns to HR and that he was trying to arrange a face-to-face meeting with them to resolve the issue of bathroom usage. I'm
perfectly amenable to this, but I hope that that department understands I won't consider anything less than being allowed access to the proper restroom. If they want to say "don't use this one; give the people who are uncomfortable a place to go without your presence" then I'll live with it, despite not liking it. Even saying "only use this one women's room" would be an improvement over the current situation.

At any rate, I know my manager and my department head support me in my efforts. I regret things have come to this point, but I don't regret anything I've done along the way.

I also found out last night that my gender had not been corrected on the other internal paperwork; I went to fill out my benefits enrollment form for next year and found that the wrong box was checkmarked. I now feel doubly cheated, because I was under the impression that they would change this before, and now I've learned that they haven't. I may be wrong in this, and if so then they haven't lied to me, but I feel as if they didn't have the decency to fix what they knew would be in my documentation at some point. It's highly frustrating.

I still want to believe that this is a good company marred by a lousy HR department. However, I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that, and despite my positive review last week I have no desire to move to New York. If I continue to pursue that option, it will only be as a means of last resort, if everything falls through with Gary's company. I hope that doesn't happen.

I try very hard not to hate the general populace for its ignorance and blindness, but there are times I fail miserably.

My boss called me into a meeting yesterday. Someone had complained about my using the ladies' room at work. He admitted that he thought it was a stupid complaint but he had to address it. When I first started my transition, I naturally started using the women's bathroom at work as one would have expected, but someone complained and so I was asked to use the unisex restroom at the front of the building, the one reserved for visitors outside the secured area. I guess I should have been fortunate that the bathroom was there, but I was irritated at the inconvenience and what I considered the discrimination. At the time, I was told it was because I wasn't legally female and that if I had been, there would have been no issue. Thus, when I got my gender legally changed, I simply went and began using the appropriate facility. Someone again complained.

Now, I admit that I didn't tell Human Resources about my legal gender change. However, all of my corporate paperwork already said female on it anyway, so I figured the issue was behind me. This was probably a mistake
on my part, but in hindsight it may not have mattered. I found out later that my HR department is horrible, according to my manager and my head of department.

At any rate, they called me in to ask me what I understood of the agreement I had made about the bathroom. I told them that I was legally female now and entitled to use the appropriate facilities. I then handed over my driver's license and waited while they blinked and very rapidly agreed that the thing to do was chastise HR for allowing the complaint to get out of hand like this. However, in the meantime, they asked me to please go back
to using the bathroom up front until they could hammer out something with Human Resources.

It isn't the bathroom that bothers me, really. That's an annoyance, but at least the facility is there and I don't have to use the men's room or something equally dumb. What bothers me is that the complaints are allowed to affect me at all. One person has a problem at my workplace with my transition, and she has the ability to determine where I pee, and possibly more. I can't talk with her, reason with her, or otherwise address her because I'm not supposed to know who it is. Everyone in a position of authority over me thinks it's stupid that I have to go through this, and yet they still put me through it because someone above them doesn't think it's so outrageous.

I am so hoping to get a job at a place where I am simply accepted as female from day one and never have to fight this kind of battle.

I swear, there are people who live their entire lives on automatic.

Yesterday morning, I went back to the courthouse and had my gender legally changed. I found out last Wednesday that the judge I had had before, the one who had seemed so nice and polite and concerned, was the one who refuses to sign anyone's gender-change. Going back, all I had to do was get a different judge and it was a matter of five minutes and a few strokes of a pen.

I'm now legally female. It's still a bit mindboggling, both in that it's true and that I had to get a piece of paper to prove it. It seems like such a pointless formality, and yet now I can show off my driver's license to anyone without worrying that they'll notice that little detail. It's comforting that there's nothing left to get in my way beyond the details of surgery and such.

I took my new court papers, ink still wet, with me to the Department of Public Safety to get my driver's license fixed. After standing in line for about an hour, I got to the counter and told the clerk that I needed to have my details updated.

She said, "Oh, did you move?"

I said, "No, I had my gender legally changed."

The woman behind the counter looked at me, looked at the court order, looked back at me, looked at my old driver's license and then looked at the court order again. She got up, picked up my driver's license and court order, and went over to talk to someone. Then she talked with someone else. Then she talked with a third person. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but the gist was obviously along the lines of "what do I do with this" with a smattering of "is this legal" for variety. Everyone with whom she spoke apparently told her the same thing, which she didn't want to hear, because she kept on asking. Finally, after her fourth person, she came back to the counter and started making the changes in the computer.

The actual process, once she started, took less than five minutes, picture and all, though she did insist on three pictures so she could get the worst of the bunch. I think, though, that this is common for drivers' licenses. Anyway, after all was said and done, I paid my ten dollars for the new license. Then, as I was picking up my paperwork, guess what she said to me?

"Have a nice day, sir."

I stared at her in dumbfounded shock. She asked five people in the course of this whole escapade what to do. She had five people tell her to change my driver's license. The court order said "female" on it, and the only thing that had any indication of masculinity at all was the M on my old license and in the computer which was changed. I have breasts sticking out of my sweater, for crying out loud. Yet, despite all of this, what does she say?

"Have a nice day, sir."

I can only imagine that she was running on autopilot. I quite literally stood there in front of her for five seconds, shocked. The whole time, she stared back at me placidly, totally unaware of what she had said. When I finally came to my senses and corrected her, she did apologize, but the fact that it happened at all stunned me.

Are most people this clueless? If so, this would explain why I keep getting mistaken. I seem to find three types of people. The first see exactly what's happening and call me "ma'am". The third see absolutely nothing beyond what's presented, and they also call me "ma'am" It's the group in the middle, the ones who see enough to know what I was but not enough to figure out what I am, that keep getting it wrong.

I hope this third group is not as large as it appears to be.

One might think that, with all that's happened in the last few days, I would have been more actively editing my diary, adding to it as things have happened. I'm not disillusioned with the project, but in a strange way, the things that have happened have somehow failed to feel genuinely significant.

I went Monday to have my name and gender legally changed. I arrived at the courthouse at 07h00, well before anything opened, and I had a lot of waiting around to do before I could start anything. I had a few pieces of my paperwork out of place, but I was all set to see the judge at 09h30 and have my new identity intact by 10h00.

It didn't work that way.

To give a brief sidebar to this discussion, let me point you to the Christie Lee Littleton Homepage. To summate, some time back in Houston, Christie Lee Littleton's husband died of medical malpractice, and Littleton sued her doctor for wrongful death. Their defense had nothing to do with the details of the case. They relied entirely on the fact that Christie Lee Littleton was a post-operative transsexual and that, because she was born male, her marriage to her husband was illegal and thus she had no right to sue.

The trial court sided with the defense, the appellate court agreed and the Texas Supreme Court refused to review the case.

In short, transsexuals in the state of Texas are now recognized only as being of their sex at birth. When I went before the judge, he very apologetically crossed out the line of the Order Granting Change of Name of Adult that said that I was female. I did show him my therapist's letter requesting the change, but he said his hands were tied by a higher court and a lack of any hard law to point to the contrary.

Four state workers said the same thing at the Department of Public Safety when I went to get my driver's license changed on Tuesday.

This puts me, and every other transsexual in the state, in an odd predicament. I now legally have a feminine name and am presenting full-time as a woman, but all of my documentation still has the old sex on it, which means that if
I do ever have to use it for anything, I open myself up for questions and the like. The questions don't bother me, but it makes "living full-time in the chosen gender," one of the requirements of the real-life test I've supposedly started, very difficult.

Come to think of it, I have started it, haven't I? Last Friday, my human resources department held a meeting with my coworkers and a counselor and explained my situation to them all. I've been dressing for work now for three days, and every comment I've gotten has been positive. I don't think there's anyone left in my life that doesn't know. A few people at work have had trouble adjusting to the new pronouns, but they've gotten my name right
at least. 

At any rate, the whole matter of the courts and my legal gender have escalated something that had been reviewed once before. Jess and I have often talked about moving out of Texas; the weather here is extremely inhospitable and the people in general only slightly less so. When two of my closest friends detached from me emotionally, we decided that it was time to start looking at moving. With this recent development in the legal system, it's almost
certainly time to move.

I've contacted the head of Human Resources for my company's New York office. They've got some positions open for which I almost certainly qualify, and I've given her my resume. She said she'd contact me later this week or early next to let me know how things look. My HR department here is talking with the insurance company to see if they'll cover my hormones and bloodwork and such for transition, but I won't know more about that for a few days. Right now, I'm just biding my time, waiting to hear back about all the questions I've asked.

I once described this sort of situation as "living in a holding pattern." I'm not losing any ground, but I'm not getting anywhere, either. I'm just... waiting, watching and learning. I did it once for six years, and I hated it. I hope I don't have to do it too long now.