Men Are From Mars...

"Men are From Mars. Women are From Venus." I've never read the pop-psy book by that title, but the first half of the name rings true enough. A quick google search reveals the surface temperature of Mars to be as low as -170 degrees fahrenheit. That's probably about right for the typical male heart.

I'm sure most my readership is familiar with the class of men who vie for the attention of transgender women. If you are like me and dream of some prince charming to come along and sweep you off to "happily ever after", you have probably come to find that its pretty slim pickings if you are transgender. I'm sure its hard enough to find a man for the average girl, but for us t-girls the pool of available bachelors is far more limited.

If a guy is serious about looking for someone to spend the rest of his life with, and is truly interested in having a woman specifically, why would he choose me? I can't have children. The majority of mother's would flog their sons if they knew they were interested in someone like me. 32 years of living with a male hormonal makeup has ravaged my appearance. At best someone could perhaps say I have a certain exotic beauty. At worst, it could be said I look like a man. Besides that I'm sexually incapable of most everything a straight man would want, and completely unwilling to do the things I am equipped to do, because I hate those parts of my body.

So really why would a handsome, sensitive guy ever give me serious attention? I wish I had asked myself this a few weeks ago instead of now. Perhaps I could have spared myself some emotional anguish. At that point in time the notion that, just maybe, I had finally found Mr. Right was barely more than a glimmer in a dream.

I've never really been someone to let my guard down for someone I've met online. Most I recognize as people curious about transgender women and looking for one night. Others seem like tawdry online trash, running from one single night encounter to the next. I've never give these sorts more than a "thank you" for compliments, and a polite bit of conversation here and there. Most lose interest quickly. Occasionally men have found me who seem interested in something beyond that, and some I have talked with at length, but never have I assumed that thigns are as they seem. Always I kept my guard up, looking for reasons meeting in person wouldn't be a good idea, never letting myself imagine anything more than a date. It was always a one step at a time approach.

Until I met the man in question. What started as fun, flirty banter captured my imagination almost immediately. Eventually we were on to discussing more serious things. He seemed so sweet. So sincere. He made me feel beautiful. Desirable. He had me imagining things I had not with any of the others.

Some nights, we would stay up chatting til incredibly late, talking about anything from random silliness, to things more romantic. Sometimes I wanted his touch so badly that the distance was heart breaking. It felt so nice to be able to think like that, especially since most of my life I have not been confident enough in my physical appearance to want such things.

Eventually, we decided to meet in November. He is a college professor, and he was to fly down to see me over fall break. One night as we chatted, he was looking up accommodations in Lexington, trying to find a nice room to surprise me with. I could imagine everything. I could imagine meeting him at the airport with an amazing kiss. I could picture us sitting at some quaint little cafe with my friends, as we get to know each other in person. I could even imagine everything going perfectly and deciding to return to his room with him. Everything right up through waking by his side every morning until he needed to return home.

But at one point things changed. He suddenly seemed distant, and I didn't feel I had his attention. Saturday, a little over a week ago, he had time to chat, and I could just feel that his interest was waning and I would have done anything to have it back. In the end, I did give him more than I should have, and I knew it almost immediately. It was all online, but at the time I felt like I had sacrificed my dignity out of sheer desperation. I can't even begin to explain how it feels thinking back now.

For a week after that he was not online. When he resurfaced Saturday morning, he didn't bother to message me, and eventually I had to break the silence. The distance was there more than I ever. I knew I had lost him.

That night, I came home from a great day with my friends, resolved to end it and get some sort of closure. Again, he was logged in to messenger but silent. As it turns out he was not at the computer at all, but I sent him a short series of messages dismissing him as cold, callous, and uncaring, and asking him not to speak to me again. I left out the worst of my suspicions. It hurt a little to do it, saying goodbye to my charming prince, but I had come to realize he never existed anyway.

This morning he logged in with a quick hi, and it was obvious he had never gotten my messages from Saturday. For a moment I felt awkward, flat footed, like perhaps I had been wrong about everything. Then he admitted that all Saturday he had been in bed with some other girl at her apartment.

I didn't know what to say. In a way I was feeling numb to it all, because I had pretty much decided this was what was going on anyway, but the final conformation felt so much more awful as the feel of it started to settle in. I tried to stay calm and end things civilly. I wanted to be mature. I wanted to show that it wasn't important enough to upset me. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how thoroughly he had tricked and hurt me.

In the end I had to leave the conversation because I was crying in my office, and there's just not enough privacy for that. But when I returned, I said all the things I should have said earlier. I had deleted him from my contact list already, so I could not see his status. I don't know if he got my messages or not. In the end, I just wanted him to know that he isn't anything special; that he's the same poor caliber of loser I turn down quite frequently, and that the only distinguishing thing about him, is that he happened to know just what to say, to make me think he was something more.

I feel emotionally sore today. The first day after a three day weekend, and the office is a flurry of activity around me, yet I can't focus enough to get anything done. The day spins around me like a cyclone, but right now its someone else's problem. I sit in the eye of the storm, desperately trying to let go of memories of my imagined prince.