I'm new to the archive and after reading philip1's true story "becoming a eunuch" I felt I could/should share my complete story here as well. Like philip1 I too hated what was "down there" from an early age. It really became an issue in adolescence when I also discovered I was gay. Not only did I have issues with my testes and penis but also with my attraction to other boys. I was miserable from 12 until about 17.

However at 17 I discovered "him." "He" was another boy in school, just a year younger than me, and I fell in LOVE. This distracted me from the hatred of the penis and testes. I worked my way into his clique and finally we became good friends. After a time we became lovers. Although as many things in youth are bound to be temporary so was our relationship. After we broke up and I graduated I started to think about getting out of the small town where I lived. I joined the Air Force and went on a whirl wind tour of the world ending in 1991 in the desert of Saudi Arabia. After the war I returned to the US and got out of the service (good riddance).

In my post Air Force period I managed to finish up my college education and settled down in one of the larger cities in Ohio. I adopted a "gay" lifestyle and started "clubbing." I eventually settled into a relationship with a man about my own age. We had a few good years but eventually my gender issue started to reassert itself. I started seeing a psychologist. Although I did not fit the normal "trans" profile it helped quite a bit to talk to this person and her support group once a week. During this period my relationship with my lover became strained. He was not comfortable with my desire to have my testes (at least) removed. We broke up and went our separate ways. We later became friends again, and are to this day, but we will not be lovers again.

After our breakup I was devastated and needed to run as far away as possible. I moved in with some friends in the UK (I had been stationed there during my AF time and had made many friends there). I stayed there for nearly two years getting in touch with myself before making the decision to return to the US. It was in that time I discovered Dr. Felix Spector in Philadelphia. I moved back to my home in Ohio and soon made an appointment to have Dr. Spector take care of the "boys" for good.

I arrived in Philly late in 1999 (what a way to end a decade ). Dr. Spector and his staff performed my castration (strangely after my castration I no longer wanted the penis removed) and I spent the next several days getting to know him and Elease, his assistant RN. Felix (Dr. Spector) was not one to tell his patients to "take it easy" after the surgery and so I had a different experience than many who have had Dr. Kimmel do their surgeries. Kimmel's way is better though. I returned to Ohio, but kept in touch with Dr. Spector for a time. Sometimes in your life you "click" with someone and I "clicked" with Felix. About a year later Felix' lover (I guess lover, I never really figured out their relationship) left and he invited me to move there with him. I did. We had a good time together and I noticed there were tons of ways to improve his practice. One thing was to get the surgery OUT of his personal apartment and into a proper doctors office on Broad Street.

Unfortunately, even with the new office and new policies, Felix was declining in his abilities. By 2001 he finally decided he needed to retire. An opportunity to go to Ohio and start a business presented itself and so Felix and I moved to Ohio. He continued to support the transgendered community for some time, in fact turning over his patient base to his old friend, Murray Kimmel, who then started to do the castration surgeries.

By 2003 Felix had been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. A lung condition with no known cause that eventually fills the lungs with scar tissue. On my birthday in 2006 Felix fell and broke his hip. This soon put him in a nursing home as I could not properly take care of him at home. One year later, this very December 2007, he passed away from pneumonia.

So this brings me to the current moment for me. I now have the time to become more involved with the eunuch community and decided to join this forum. My experience as a eunuch has been somewhat different from many of the stories I have read here. Of course the first couple of years were full of all that BS "hot flashes" / mood swings, etc. that everyone goes through. And although there have been times of depression my overall life as a eunuch has been very rewarding. It has been so far everything I had hoped for. I have the body I wanted (although I gained a good bit of weight - I am on a diet now, a promise made to Felix and have lost 40 lbs as of this writing). I have the "eunuch calm" and the feeling of being "in control" I always desired. So for me at least, life as a eunuch has been pretty ideal.

Well, there you are. My story, full of sound and fury and signifying what????????? Dunno!

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for sharing your story. I sense in your story some confusion (falling in love distracting you from the gender stuff), the joy of loving another, sadness over loss, discovery of your true self sounding like it's led you to the happiness you feel today. I'm working on male to eunuch gender stuff. I suspect for many of us, even if it seems very clear this is who we are, there's a long, winding path such as you describe that eventually takes us to where we need to be. I relate to falling in love distracting my attention from the gender stuff. For me, L was never able to love me back. He's still working on getting over the death a partner, 3 years ago. They'd been together over 20 years. Still, that love thing was heady stuff. Sounds like you've lived a pretty full life so far. Congratulations on becoming the person you are today. There aren't many of us who can say life is ideal. Thanks for posting.

-todd

Danya (imported) wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:28 am I suspect for many of us, even if it seems very clear this is who we are, there's a long, winding path such as you describe that eventually takes us to where we need to be.

I think that's true. Everyone's life path is more of a winding back road and less a straight line motorway

Danya (imported) wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:28 am I relate to falling in love distracting my attention from the gender stuff. For me, L was never able to love me back. He's still working on getting over the death a partner, 3 years ago. They'd been together over 20 years.

Very sad. 20 years, I can only imagine being with someone I really love for that long. I'm tearing up, seriously (you know how eunuchs are that way). That's very sad and that grieving will go on for some time to come I'm sure

Jeff

Jeff

Thanks for joininng the EA and for the back story on Felix.

Like you I have been distracted from finishing the job by my relationship with my partner.

Thanks for being a part of this community.

Steve

BroBear

jeff_macadams (imported) wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2008 9:27 am I think that's true. Everyone's life path is more of a winding back road and less a straight line motorway

Very sad. 20 years, I can only imagine being with someone I really love for that long. I'm tearing up, seriously (you know how eunuchs are that way). That's very sad and that grieving will go on for some time to come I'm sure

Jeff

hi Jeff , thanks for the glimpse into an interesting life , knowing you only lightly touched on the key elements in a timeline style bio , whets my appetite to know more, nice to meet you and look forward to future posts if you feel so motivated. Smooth sailing and hope things settle into something you can feel comfortable with.

estragen (imported) wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:14 pm hi Jeff , thanks for the glimpse into an interesting life , knowing you only lightly touched on the key elements in a timeline style bio , whets my appetite to know more, nice to meet you and look forward to future posts if you feel so motivated. Smooth sailing and hope things settle into something you can feel comfortable with.

I suppose I could fill in some details of my life (if you like)

I guess the first installment of my expanded story would be my late teens.

Late Teens part 1:

Everything that happened before this helped shape me but it was these years that really made the greatest impact on the adult I would be. At the age of 17 I was ready to come out of my shell and start experiencing life. I had been a nerdy, geeky kid and desired to be one of the “accepted” kids. The turmoil of the “gender identity” issues that had consumed my early puberty would now give way to the desires of my homosexual feelings in late puberty (although the gender issues did not go away, they would surface again later and lead to castration). Living in a very small Ohio town with all these confused feelings was very difficult. I had been hazed a great deal. Called “faggot” and “queer” and the usual derogatory terms that farm kids called boys like me. I was bright, a very high I.Q., very sensitive and I really was gay (although I denied it and lived in a closet).

Now, at 17, I started a double life. On the outside I tried to be the “cool” kid. I reinvented myself (as I have done many times over the years for various reasons). It seems that when you are so different you become, by necessity, an actor. You learn how to project the kind of image other people expect of you. It's little wonder that so many actual actors are gay. On the outside I was the kid who was cousin to the “bad boy” of the school and I nurtured that image. My cousin (I'll call him Jim although that is not his name) was a hard boy who hung out with the rough hot rod car crowd in a local city. On the weekends he and his buddies would race on the streets and hang out at a local hamburger shop. I guess having some of the kids fear me a little (because of my cousin's bad reputation) was as good a thing to me as respect. Especially after how many of them had hazed me in the past, it was an empowering feeling. I changed my entire image around this new persona. I stopped wearing the “break dance” clothing of the early 80s and started wearing jeans, a t-shirt and an old Army jacket.

I purchased a fast Camaro and started racing in the streets. This is when I found my friend (I'll call him Timmy although this is not his real name). Timmy was a year younger than me and at first he was thrilled to be able to cruise the strip in a very nice hot rod. As time went on we became friends and started doing all kinds of things together. Eventually I could no longer resist and on one “sleep over” I made my move. Timmy was responsive to this and we became lovers. This was a teen relationship though, fraught with all the emotional turmoil that teen relationships are prone to. After two years we broke up. By this time I had graduated and decided that I really wanted out of this small town in rural Ohio. I joined the Air Force in 1986 and this became the next part of my life's journey.........

Actually, if I'm gonna do this little auto biography thing it probably belongs over in biographies section. So look for the continuation of this in a new thread over yonder.