Alaskan Transcendentalist

Everyone knows what to expect of best friend status it seems. It is all over the media and on Facebook and myspace and movies. It's even used in commercials for dogs or diamonds. Everyone has that someone they consider their best friend, including this crazy mess of a transman. Yes, I have amazing friends and actually refer to several people as my best friends and some who were best friends at one point in time but eventually we drifted apart. Now, my ultimate best friend isn't really what you would think.... My BFF is strong; courageous; brave; heartfelt; sweet; loving; silly; goofy; gorgeous; intelligent; street smart; professional; crazy; talented; and amazing. My BFF is also a WOMAN. Yep- that's right- a woman! Now, having been a woman at one point in my life this shouldn't be an issue but of course life sucks sometimes and hurdles get in the way. For example, what happens when your significant other doesn't like or disapproves of your best friend? Well fu...

I like my job. Don’t get me wrong. But seriously something needs to be done with my desk and the file drawers. I need a new shape for this desk as well. Plus the ability to raise part of it so I can stand up if I need to because of my back problems. I need more organizers and a way for my chair to fit in my space better. I need more ergonomic friendly supplies. I also need more frames with photos for my walls because I get really bored sitting at the front desk doing nothing sometimes. Actually while they are at it, they might as well just let me move into one of the private offices with a window because my anxiety and my need for music are absurd. Yeah I’m not high maintenance at all. What seems to bother me most of all however, despite the absolute un-organization of this office, is my bottom file drawer. It NEVER stays closed unless I lock it- however, that keeps me from getting into the other two drawers I get into on a constant basis. I am surprised my legs are not permanen...

I recently went on a weekend camping trip with a buddy. We camped Friday night & had a full day kayaking trip planned for Saturday. We had been looking forward to this trip all summer. So we packed up our lunches, power bars and some water then headed to check in. We pulled into Millers Landing just outside of Seward, checked in, met our guides, and got all of our gear. We were set and totally excited to go on a big, manly adventure. Our kayak guides, Nick & Tramp, looked just like I had imagined wilderness guys to look like, only they were super cool guys and kept everyone excited, positive, and were very helpful. Just hanging around them made me feel more manly and happy that I was dirty, sweaty, and stinking. It was the musk of men.   Nick & Tramp got us set up in our kayak and shipped us off. My buddy and I were in a double kayak as everyone had a buddy in a double. The guides were the only singles. We left Millers Landing and absorbed the amazing view a...

Being transgender can make it feel like your life is all about how you look and what your body image is. Oh wait, isn’t that most of the world now? As human beings we are constantly looking out for the next big fashion, the next fad diet on how to lose weight, what plastic surgery options there are- well what happened to just loving ourselves? What happened to natural beauty? Who knows, but as someone who is stuck in the middle of the gender war, it is really difficult to figure out “what should I be like?”             It seems that magazines are always flaunting sexy beach bodies on their covers and then showing someone who might be 10-20 pounds overweight and saying such awful things about them. I’m such a big guy that 20 pounds is nothing. I fluxuate with gaining and losing 20 pounds all the time and no one notices, and I’m okay with that. Once I figured out it was my gender that was the issue, my insecurities about my wei...

Many times in public people come up to me and ask where they know me from. My first response is always that I’m a performer and have performed at Mad Myrna’s as Danny Cockring and elsewhere with The Last Frontier Drag Kings. About 90% of the time that is where they recognize me from. This discussion also gets brought up in casual conversation when people ask what I do (which is actually a long list). After I use the word Drag King, however, people look confused. Unless they have watched me perform, they assume I am a Drag Queen. The next question is always to see if I sing live. Well I don’t have the talent for that, so I say that I dance and lip sync. That I perform as a male. “Well then what is a drag king?”             While their questions are valid, it sometimes gets old having to answer the same questions all the time. The only time it’s not is when cute women hit on me and can’t believe I’m not a biological man. Yeah t...

            One of the most difficult things for me as a transman is trying to figure out whom to come out to. I have a hard time keeping secrets and sometimes when I talk about my past I forget to switch pronouns. I think the worst example was talking to someone about growing up Mormon and talking about earning my Women in Excellence Award and how I loved going to Young Women’s and was a leader in all my classes; the person I was talking to kept getting confusing looks on their face and eventually I realized what I had done. I inadvertently came out to some stranger about something very private and personal. In the back of my head I was praying that they didn’t whip out a .38 special and pop me one to leave me dead on the sidewalk. Luckily they just stumbled away towards a bar.             You would think that I’d have learned by now to keep my mouth shut but nope; in...

A transman: what is that? What does it mean? Well if you look it up in the dictionary it’s not there. Trust me, I tried. My own definition of a transman comes from my own experiences and the best way I can define it is that a transman is a person who was born physically female but identifies as or takes permanent steps to become physically male. Sound simple enough right? Wrong. Being transgender, an umbrella term used to describe any gender identity other than fully male or fully female, is a difficult and often emotional journey. My name is Danny, and I am a transman; I’d like to take you through my life and journey to share my experiences so hopefully the world can see that we’re really not all that bad. In fact, sometimes we can be quite humorous. I have known my whole life that I was different. At the age of four I told my mother that I was a boy not a girl; that didn’t go over so well, especially since I grew up in a very religious home- we were Mormon. I’m not complai...