Being (somewhat) stealth at my new job

I only have two more nights left at the gay bar where I have been working for a little over a year. It's time to move on.

I'm not going to write anything bad about Babe's or the management. I'm sure you've heard all the complaints you'll ever hear. The truth is it was a job that payed decently when I really needed a job. One way I'm different than I was four years ago is that I'm not so quick to quit a job because it isn't perfect. I've had a couple of job offers since I've been looking but where I am now is the one I accepted.

And I think it's going to work out REALLY well for me. I'm proud of the food the kitchen puts out, I'll have the freedom to get creative and be able to create some of my own recipes, I think it's a kitchen where pretty much everyone is on the same page, and I'm comfortable with the menu and atmosphere. It's very close to what I would like to open up if I were to open up a restaurant.  I'll also have much better hours.

Oh and no one except the owners know I'm trans. I discussed it in my cover letter and said I'd rather my co-workers don't know. This is what I want to write a short entry about.

It is so wonderful. I'm treated like a normal person for the first time since I started transitioning. That isn't exactly a fair statement to my other friends and co-workers. It isn't that I've been being treated like someone weird or something; everyone has been incredibly accepting. It's just that I've been different. I'e been a woman who isn't quite a woman. I've been a man who is becoming a woman. I've been someone in transition. Now I'm just Natalie, a woman who works in the kitchen and is probably a lesbian.

Well actually in that regard I outed myself the other night when I complained about my current room mate who is also an ex-girlfriend. And everyone knows I'm coming from the lesbian bar.

Of course I don't consider myself a lesbian. I'm still figuring this one out. Maybe pansexual; I think that fits me better than most. Odd how many trans people identify as pansexual, but anyway...

I really hope my co-workers don't find out, which might be next to impossible considering how many people in Richmond know me, but it is giving me the chance to taste what life in another city might feel like. I think I want to move elsewhere after I get my surgery.

Being trans for me is really just an embarrassing medical condition. I mean I'm not a man who really really wanted to become a woman. I'm a woman who had a severe prenatal hormone imbalance, or something. Anyway I do seriously believe that my mind and spirit are as female as any other woman's. And I guess when people aren't aware of my past that believe the same thing.

I feel that in hiding the fact that I am trans from my new co-workers they are actually forming a more honest opinion of who I am. I think they are better able to see the real me. and I guess this is one big differenence from being gay and being trans.

When people assume that I am exclusively attracted to men I feel like I'm hiding from them a big part of who I am as a person. When people assume I'm not trans I don't feel like I'm hiding a big part of who I am. I mean it's more like I've had a trans experience rather than actually being trans.

I've written before that being transsexual is not being transgender. I think that's why I'm glad no one knows at work. I don't want everyone to know what medications I have to take and what surgeries I need to get, especially since "transsexual" carries so many assumptions about queerness that I don't feel paint a realistic picture of who I am.

Really what I have at this new job is what I've always wanted: to feel like people see the real me.

I wonder if I can ever truly have that in an environment where everyone know my trans past.