The First Love – Excerpt from An Unremarkable Girl

Before I transitioned, I didn’t think I’d ever fall in Love with a capital “L”. I felt sexual attraction for people, I had crushes, but as long as I hid beneath the facade, I couldn’t really love, with all the intimacy and vulnerability that word implies. As I began my transition in March of 2015, I then became afraid that I might fall in Love but that no one would reciprocate. I still had that image from the early days of discovering my identity, the image of the foolish and not quite right looking transgender woman, in my mind. I was still afraid that all the hormones and female clothes in the world would never make me look like what I thought a woman should look like. I still hardly knew any transgender people, MTF, FTM, or otherwise, so I didn’t really know what transition could do on the visceral and personal level.

Three weeks into my transition, there were still very few noticeable physical changes. My face maybe looked softer, but I wasn’t sure if I was projecting a hope when I looked into the mirror. I still looked much the same as I had before starting transition, and I was worried that perhaps I’d always look like that. At about the same time, a friend of my mother’s had recommended to her that I should meet a young transgender woman who worked for her, and so I passed along my phone number. I learned that the young woman’s name was Hailey, and I arranged to meet her on Wednesday, April 1st, just two days after I’d returned from a stressful St. George trip.

We set up a meeting at six at a coffee shop in downtown Salt Lake City, Café Nostalgia on 1st South. I got there rather early, at 5:40 or so, but thankfully I came with a book, Volume II of Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs. I was very nervous, and so despite trying very hard to focus on the avuncular Soviet premier’s recollections of his contribution to agricultural policy (which normally would have made for enthralling reading, at least to me), I was glancing up every few seconds to try and see who this “Hailey” might be. I admit that I was looking for the negative image that had grasped my brain, of a very mannish person in feminine clothing.

As I cast around looking for an obviously transgender woman, a tall willowy thin girl with long dirty-blonde hair and an aquiline, graceful visage came up to my table.

“Hi?” I said awkwardly.

“Hi, Beatrice?”

I did a bit of an internal double-take. This was Hailey? Not only did she look completely and naturally feminine, she was outstandingly beautiful.

“Yes…, You’re Hailey?”

“Yeah, it’s nice to meet you!” she replied brightly.

Her voice, too, was girlish. It was neither falsetto nor deep. It was a sporty kind of voice, unpretentious and playful. Perhaps it seemed that way because her whole manner of being was actively delightful to me.

After ordering cups of tea we began to talk. I wish that I could say what we talked about, but I can only recount that we were deeply engaged in our conversation, engaged so deeply that when her parking meter ran out we decided that rather than leaving it at that we should go to dinner together. She suggested a sushi place that she enjoyed, and I happily agreed. We got into her car, a brand-new little Fiat convertible, and set off.

In general, I’m nervous in cars. No doubt due to my suicide attempt in 2011, I have very vivid fears about crashing. This nervousness is usually exacerbated by fast drivers. Hailey was a very fast driver. But she was also a very skilled driver. So where I normally would have been terrified, I was rather thrilled as we sped down State Street, and I giggled when she angrily urged other drivers in German to have “Macht schnell, bitte!” “More speed, please!”

Over dinner we talked more, and talk turned to romantic inclinations, sexual history, and sexual preferences. At some point I ventured to say that she was very beautiful, and she blushed and smiled widely, exposing her very white and rather pointed teeth. While I had found her attractive from the start, and was becoming progressively more smitten with her, that was the moment that I really fell for her. Seeing that sharp smile, the glimmer of excitement in her almost cobalt blue eyes, pushed me well over the edge.

When we finished dinner she kindly offered to drive me home. As we pulled onto State Street, I felt a strong urge to compliment her further.

“You know, when you came into the café and came up to my table, I was really confused?”

“Oh?”

“It’s just you look so totally feminine- I didn’t think you were trans. You’re really transcendently beautiful.”

“I- that’s-”

She was actually speechless. She wasn’t quite smiling, but her face radiated a mix of happiness and surprise.

It took a few blocks for her to recover.

“Thank you, Bea. That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Well I meant it,” I pressed, “your face is so graceful, your smile is just exquisite, and your eyes? Girl, your eyes are something else. I know it’s cliched to say this but they really do sparkle.”

Again, she was speechless. After a few minutes she managed to speak again.

“You are really amazing Bea. Really,” she said, and the compliment was so genuine, so sincere, and paid to me by a woman who earlier that day I couldn’t imagine existing, much less paying me such a kindness that it was my turn to be speechless for a bit. I’d never felt so thrilled in all the years of my life.

When we pulled up in front of my house in the Avenues, I suggested that perhaps we could go for a walk into the park. She agreed. It was around nine at night by that time, dark. The sky was overcast and the air was cool. Very cool. Hailey, who was very thin, soon started to shiver. By the time we reached the park, only two blocks away from my house, her teeth were chattering.

We sat on the edge of a planter at the corner of the park, which was deserted. I said something sympathetic about how cold she must be. She nodded. I then put my arms around her. She leaned against me, and if anything shivered more. I also shivered, not from the cold, but from the thrill of having this exquisite beauty in my arms. I took her hands in mine and then looked at her, smiling like an idiot I’m sure. She returned my gaze, and I felt a completely new sensation. I felt desired.

“May I kiss you?” I asked.

She nodded shyly.

We kissed. It was my first kiss since I had begun hormone replacement therapy, since every sensation had been heightened. It was magical. Long after I have forgotten the particulars of my first sexual encounters, I am sure I will remember that kiss. At that moment, I felt like the shy young girl I never really got to be, and at that moment I fell in Love. Not lust, not a crush, not a fleeting interest, but hormonal, crazy, chemical, irrational love.

We dated properly only for a month, and had some intermittent romantic encounters over the next nine months or so. We remained friends for a while, but have since drifted apart. I suspect, however, that I’ll always love her. More than her being my first real love, she gave me hope like I’d never had before. Hope that I could be so quintessentially a woman as she was, hope that I could be loved as a woman, even the hope that I could be beautiful. At that moment in time, when the initial thrill of transition had worn off and before the major physical changes buoyed me, I was worried that perhaps it’d all been for naught, that I’d be as miserable transitioning as I was before. Hailey dispelled that. Any hardship that I’d feel more personally because I no longer hid behind a facade was worth it, if only to know the joy, the rapture, of being in Love.