Alexa – dauntless.love

Short Fiction: Beyond the Rainbow by Alexa Jade

Arrival

I find the parking lot easily enough, right where they said it was. I pull in and take the ticket. Five bucks a day isn’t too bad. I guess I’m lucky it’s not more. I grab my travel bag and leave my two suitcases for later.

I knock on the door. I’m a little nervous. I don’t know this woman, not really. We’ve talked a dozen times online. Now I’m moving in, even if it’s only for a couple of weeks… till I can find a more permanent place.

The door opens. She’s younger than me. She certainly looks it. I’m guessing mid-thirties. Pretty. She’s smiling.

“Lexa?” she asks.

“Hi,” I say, feeling even more awkward. I’m twenty years this woman’s senior. I should have my shit together by now. I should NOT be driving all the way across the country on a week’s notice. I should NOT be abandoning my apartment and most of my stuff.

In my defense I did have my shit together… till someone else took a huge dump on my life. God damn Ron DeSantis, may he burn in hell. I’d still be in Fort Myers if it weren’t for him and his Nazi-loving fans and fuck-wits.

But I need my Estradiol. I’d rather die than go back to that life.

So I packed my bags. Everything I could carry. Phone, laptop, favorite clothes, a few photos, most are digital now. Shoulda scanned them long ago, maybe one day.

I was lucky. Someone in my support group knew someone in San Fran. They were taking in people. Refugees. Never thought I’d be a refugee in my own country. For a minute I’m reminded of the Tom Petty song.

Shit, I’m still standing at the door. She’s still looking at me.

“Is that all you have?” she asks.

“I’ve got two big suitcases in my car. I parked in the lot you told me about.”

“OK, we’ll get them later. For now, come on in. I’ll show you the bedroom. How long were you driving?” Her voice is musical.

“Like three, four days. I’m not sure now. Is it Tuesday? If it’s Tuesday it’s been four days.” I say as I step inside.

She shows me to a bedroom. Nice. Small, but I’ll only be here for a few weeks… I hope. I already have a job lined up. One good thing at least.

Story Time

“Dinner’s ready,” I hear her call.

I’ve had a shower and feel ten times better. First one since I left. I’ve been on the road the whole time, sleeping at rest stops when I needed to, fast food. I’m too old for this shit, I tell myself.

I go downstairs and this woman feeds me. I’m so grateful. I feel OK. I feel safe here. She’s asking questions. This is the price… not money, but re-telling my life story. How I ended up giving up everything and moving three thousand miles with a week’s notice.

She’s a collector. She knows other people’s stories. The people who came before me. I’m sure I’m not gonna be the last. At least she’s kind. No expectations. No judgment. She listens, I talk… and talk and talk.

It seems like it’s been all night, but finally, I’m in bed. Tomorrow I go to the doctor’s office to interview. I’m sure I’ll get the job, this is just a formality. There’s a shortage of electrologists. I don’t have enough to open my own practice, but I could get a job in most places.

But there’s no sense in going somewhere that’ll just go to shit next year. Florida is one of the first… but the writing’s on the wall in so many other states. How many more of us are doing what I’m doing? It was easy for me. No spouse, no kids, no house, transportable skills. I’m practically the poster child for “ready to be dispossessed”.

So many people have roots. They’ll bleed so bad when they have to cut them away. But they’ll be worse off if they can’t. Death is their final solution. Shit, that got dark. I’ve gotta remember to be grateful for what I’ve got. Who I’ve got.

I’m staring at the ceiling as I fall asleep. Tomorrow it starts getting better. No doubt.

First Day

I’m standing in front of the doctor’s office… or at least what’s supposed to be the doctor’s office. There’s supposed to be an office building here, but there isn’t.

I got off the BART at the right stop. I’m standing on the right street. But instead of a shiny new office tower, there’s a little two-story building. The bottom has a second-hand clothing store in it. It’s just one in the line marching down the street.

I double-check the building’s address. I know it’s right.

I recheck my phone. Yup, this is supposed to be the place. I’m gonna call the office. They’re expecting me. This is so weird.

The phone is just ringing. Fuck. What the hell?

I’m debating going back to the house when this guy walks up to me.

Ugh, nope. I’m too old to get hit on. But that’s not it; he’s lost, wants directions. He’s trying to find an orphanage. I can’t imagine he’s in the right neighborhood for that either. This is clearly a business district.

I try to find the address for him on my phone, but I can’t find the place he’s named at all. He’s looking pretty upset. Tells me it’s for a friend. He’s parked just down the street. Would I mind walking back to his car? Maybe his friend has more information about the place… something that will help me find it with my phone.

I’m thinking sure. He’s pointing down the street. It’s only a few hundred feet. Same block.

Damn, his car is a wreck. It’s the same as mine, except a bit older maybe? Totoya Corolla. Red. I can’t believe this thing still runs, but it got here somehow. It looks like he rolled it.

The right door’s gone. Just gone. The windshield is a web of cracks. Both back doors look like they’ll never open again. The rear window’s missing and the trunk is definitely not closing anymore.

There’s a guy in the back seat who leans forward past the space where the front passenger seat would be, if it was still there, and asks “Did you find it?”

“No” my chaperone says, looking apologetic. “But this woman may be able to help.” He’s indicating me. The man in the car can’t be twenty. He’s still got the baby fat in his face. He looks at me with some hope, some desperation.

“Please,” he says, “I’ve got to find my baby girl.”

“His girlfriend ran away,” my escort explains, “she’s pregnant. We think she’s giving up the baby.” I have a sour taste in my mouth. If the woman ran away, she probably had a good reason. I’m not interested in helping this guy strong-arm a pregnant woman. Fuck that shit.

But he’s looking at me with such an expression. He must know what I’m thinking.

“Please,” he says, “I just need to talk to her.”

Orphanage

Somehow, I’m in the rickety old Corolla and we’re driving. I have to say, the breeze from the missing door is kinda nice as we limp down the highway with the flashers on. We’re in the slow lane since this bucket’s barely got any life left in it. I expect it to give up the ghost at any moment and leave us stranded.

I’ve figured it out… this is a dream. I must still be asleep at the house. This is my anxiety or something. But it’s clearly a dream, ’cause I’d never get into a car with two strange men and go looking for anything, let alone the orphanage where one of them thinks he’ll find his missing girlfriend.

I don’t even know how we got out of the city. We were driving down the street, and suddenly we were on the highway. Is this what they call a lucid dream? I’ve heard about this. If you “wake up” in a dream, you’re supposed to be able to control it, right? I know I’m dreaming, so I can make the dream anything I want, right?

Let’s try it… I want to hear Purple Haze on the radio… OK. I’m thinking about it. I’m really concentrating. Ugh, nothing’s happening. It’s not working. It’s still playing some sort of Mexican folk like you’d hear in the background at a restaurant.

I’m looking at my two traveling companions, and I feel like I’ve known them forever. I don’t even know their names. But this is a dream, right? So whatever… I’m just going with the flow. Along for the ride, as it were.

I turn back to look at the road, and I find we’re on some little country lane. It’s windy and we’re kinda in the woods. The trees filtering the sun as we move is mesmerizing. The way the light and shadow dance around the inside of the car. I see we’re leaving the trees and we’re out into rolling green fields.

Over the next rise, I see a huge lone house. It looks like one of those farmhouses where they just kept adding on for each new generation. We’re turning into the long circular drive that runs past the wrap-around porch. We pull to a stop in front of the door and I move to let the other passenger out. He runs up to the door before our driver even gets out of the car.

He’s disappeared inside when I hear the sound of laughing children. I’m walking around the house. Our driver is following. Clearly, the sounds are coming from the backyard, where we find a huge playground area and about a dozen children running and laughing, chasing each other, climbing on a tree, and swinging on a small swing set. There’s an older woman on the back porch watching over them.

I’m guessing she’s a nun from her black and white outfit. She has to be because why else would you wear all those clothes on a day as hot as this one unless you had to? Our friend is talking to a woman by the swings. She’s really pregnant. She’s so far along, I think she may need a hospital at any moment. I wonder where the nearest one is.

They’re not arguing. They’re talking. Nodding. I see him feel her belly. They look happy. A little girl is clinging to his leg. OK. He’s coming back. He just walked past us. What’s going on? I expected more. Fireworks, shouting, something. He just walks back to the car. We’re following.

He climbs in the back and sits down. Our companion asks how it went. He clearly knows the back story I’m missing. I have no idea what’s going on. We came all this way. Are we just leaving now? He just smiles and says “We’re good.”

I turn to look at our driver and he nods, heading around to the other side of the car. I turn back to ask, but our friend is gone. I don’t know where he went. There’s nowhere for him to go… he’s just not here anymore.

Riding Home

I’m climbing in the back alone. I want to know what’s going on.

“I don’t understand,” I say to my remaining companion.

“He never knew why she left, what happened to her or their little baby.” He tells me.

“She explained what happened?” I ask.

“I guess he finally made peace with it.” He replies.

I’m sitting in silence. We’re driving back to the city maybe, I’m not sure. So much is running through my mind. I’m thinking about all those years I had to lie about who I was. Hide from the world. Even the people I loved and said they loved me. I found out not all of them did. I guess I knew that, deep down. That’s why I hid.

But when I came out, I found others. People like me. Wounded by the world. So many hidden and forgotten and pushed away. All types of people. Yet despite our shared circumstance, there were lots of differences too. So many were better off. So many had advantages I never did. And I was better off compared to some. I felt sorry for the people less fortunate, and jealous of the ones better off that didn’t seem to acknowledge their privilege.

It didn’t bother me that they had things I couldn’t… That’s the story of the world. But I hated the fact that they could talk about “their struggle” without acknowledging others had it worse. Those of us who came before could never reach the place they got to start from.

That’s only natural I suppose. I’m glad they got to start where they did. It’s proof that we did something right… something to help. Somehow the world is just a tiny bit better today than it was yesterday.

Oh, we’re back in the forest now. I love the feeling of the sun and shade alternatively hitting my face.

I’m so tired. I think I’ll close my eyes just for a bit.

Departure

I open my eyes… I must be awake.

I’m looking at the sky. It’s so blue, with big white fluffy clouds. They’re drifting by gently, lazily, as if they have nowhere to go.

I must be on my back. Am I in a field? Do I smell grass? It’s faint. There are too many stronger, worse smells covering it up. Still, I smell the grass.

Then there’s shouting.

“Over there” someone yells.

I turn to look, what’s going on? But I can’t look. I can’t turn my head.

Something is wrong.

“Medic” someone yells. It’s a deep voice, maybe a man? He’s close.

Then I see him. He’s blocking out the sky. I feel him take my hand.

What’s wrong? I want to ask, but I can’t.

He squeezes and I squeeze back.

“It’s gonna be OK.” He says. He has a kind face, dark hair, beard. He looks young. Twenties? Early thirties, maybe.

He turns away and there’s more shouting. I’m looking at the sky.

Suddenly a song pops into my head. One I haven’t heard in years. I used to listen to it all the time when I was in school. I can’t hear the music, but I hear the melody and the singer’s voice. It’s about not wasting your life searching for something and appreciating what you’ve already got.

Funny how things come back to you at the oddest times. That song always made me cry. I think I feel a tear slip down the side of my face.

There’s more shouting. The man is back.

“Don’t worry, you’re gonna make it.” He says.

Another squeeze.

The sky is so blue…

“We’re losing…” I hear him shout.

We’ll be alright, I want to tell him, Just don’t give up hope.

Never give up hope.

Timing Surgeries

Since I’m older… it has been important to me to compress my surgical timeline as much as possible. I expected to need five surgeries to complete my medical transition and have completed two so far. I am about 4 months behind my ideal at this point because when I planned things, I didn’t have enough information.

I’d like to discuss what I didn’t know in the hope that it helps others when it comes time to plan their own surgical journey.

When I came up with the list of procedures I would require and started researching doctors, I was careful to consider several things: how impactful the procedure would be for me (how much dysphoria I thought it would alleviate); how much it would cost and how I would budget and pay for it; how available the various surgeons were and what their schedules looked like; and finally the expected recovery times for each surgery.

Here is the thing I didn’t understand or consider. A procedure can have two different “recovery times”. One is how long before you can return to your normal routine. For example, go back to work, resume your normal diet and exercise routines and engage in unusual but normal activities (such as travel).

There is a second stage to recovering from a surgery and that is… when you will be able to endure another surgery. While all of the surgeries I needed fell into the “3 months to recover” for the first category… one specifically had a different timeline for when I could have an additional surgery.

I’m going to use my specific experience as an example, but this could apply to any surgery depending on the surgery and the surgeon’s protocol for recovery. In fact, even the procedure I’m talking about has different “recovery windows” for different surgeons and variations of the procedure.

Definitely talk to your medical provider about both the “recovery time” and “when will I be able to have the next surgery”. This is going to be specific to your case and the surgeon’s practices and even to your (unknowable in advance) recovery and healing.

I’m thinking about my vaginoplasty. There are different variations, but I had a penile inversion vaginoplasty. One of the results of this surgery is that vaginal dilation is necessary after the surgery. This physical therapy follows a schedule that is dependent on your body’s healing process and the surgeon’s recommendations, but generally a surgeon can tell you what their “normal” schedule is, as well as the “worst case scenario” could be.

The reason I’m talking about this is the following: I was “recovered” after 8-10 weeks. I returned to work, resumed exercise and generally did not have any pain while going about my daily routine… however, I could NOT have a surgery at that time. This is because I was on a dilation schedule of three times a day for an hour at a time. It was critically important that I not miss or skip a dilation unless there were no other option because doing so would threaten my continued healing.

Obviously, there is no way you can be sedated for most of a day for a 6+ hour surgery and then recover for days in a hospital and convalesce for weeks if you need to perform an hour of PT approximately every 6-8 hours. This means that until my dilation schedule was reduced, I could not have another surgery that would demand that much “time off” from PT.

I hope this helps you when you consider the order of your surgeries if you require more than one and timing is important to you.

Insurance and Surgery Fees

I’m about 40% of the way through my planned surgical journey and feel like I’ve gotten enough experience that I can share some things and hopefully help others when they are thinking about and planning their own surgical transition.

One thing I have learned that I think it’s important to tell people is about insurance. Lots of people I know who have health insurance are worried about whether their insurance covers some specific procedure or another they want or need. This is always important to find out, but there’s an additional layer you should be aware of. Some doctors are “in-network” with a provider, but an awful lot (maybe most) are “out of network”. This means that while the insurance covers “the procedure”… it probably won’t cover much of the surgical fees.

To be more precise, surgery can be broken down into facility fees (hospital or surgical center costs) and surgical fees (what the surgeon and anesthesiologist cost). Usually a hospital will be “in-network”, but often the doctor will not be. When this happens and the insurance “overs” the procedure, the insurance company will have a schedule of fees it is willing to pay for various surgical services. They will pay a percentage of the fee they decide the procedure should cost, regardless of the surgeon’s fee. You get to make up the difference.

Here’s an example: Surgery is $20,000.00. Hospital cost: $10,000.00. Surgeon fee: $10,000.00. Insurance “covers” surgery. Hospital is “in-network” and insurance covers 80%… so you pay $2,000.00 to the hospital. Surgeon is “out of network” and insurance says the procedure “should” cost $2,000.00. They pay 80% of that, or $1,600.00… that means you pay the surgeon $8,400.00. Your total cost for the “covered” surgery is $10,400.00 out of the $20,000.00 total cost.

You see how this works. Be certain if your insurance “covers” a procedure that you know not only what is covered and at what percent, but what is “in-network” versus “out of network” and what the schedule of fees they “expect” a procedure (or breakdown of any services) to cost.

Finally, don’t forget to get as much as you can “pre-authorized”. If you do not, you end up fighting after the fact for reimbursement. I should add that pre-authorization will not guarantee you won’t be fighting for a reimbursement… but not having something pre-authorized guarantees you will have to fight for your money.

Anonymous Email

Whether you’re completely out, completely in, or somewhere in between… being safe is paramount, and being safe online is particularly challenging because there are so many “holes” through which your information can leak.

First, let me be clear… for me, online safety is about controlling my privacy. Who has access to what and what I reveal. For example, I’m not out publicly, so it’s important for me that no one can search by my public name and find my online presence. At least, not until I’m ready to let that happen. But no matter who you are… being safe online and controlling who has access to information about you is always a good idea.

Unfortunately, companies have a vested interest in “outing you”… obtaining ALL the information they can about you specifically so they can re-sell that to other companies. It’s a multi-billion dollar business that wages a never-ending war on our privacy. Worse, there are lots of things that identify you (besides a SSN). Your name, address, drivers license (or other ID numbers), bank account numbers, etc. are all going to link to you in some way, and there are lots of things that “rat you out”: your phone, most of the apps on the phone, your web browser, your desktop/laptop OS, not to mention every company you’ve ever done business with, especially your payment processors like your credit card company and bank. That’s not even thinking about the many ways you unknowingly give away your privacy if you use ANY social media stuff (i.e. Facebook).

Let’s put social media aside because it’s a whole other can of worms and just talk about communication. Specifically email. Everyone wants an email address… and every time you put one in it links you to everyplace else you put that same email address into. So… did you create an account at the supermarket? Do you have a loyalty rewards card… they know how often you buy that spicy salsa, you know. Oh, also signed up for Victoria’s Secret sales notifications? They know what you like to wear in the bedroom… it’s not hard for a 3rd party to link your likes up from all of these sources and build a profile of you. Even if you don’t disclose your age or race or gender… they can figure all that stuff out about you to a terrifyingly high degree of accuracy based on your likes and buying habits.

The best thing you can do to foil this is use a different email address and a different phone number every time you sign up for anything! Seriously. Unfortunately, that’s really difficult. I know of no service that will give you unlimited phone numbers that ring back to your real number. You can do this with email, but it’s usually limited to a time window. If you care to create a unique email address for every thing that’s the best policy, but if you can’t a single email that isn’t linked to you is still better than using one that is.

Because this is time-sensitive stuff (it changes all the time) I put links on the resources page. I’ll try to make sure that’s up to date. Feel free to let me know if it isn’t.

High or Evil: The Game

This morning my sister sent me an article about how most Americans thing congress members should be drug tested… and it inspired an idea. You know how SNL will have hilarious game show skits like “Black Jeopardy”? How about a game show called “High or Evil” in which contestants hear about some government figure doing/saying something and they have to decide if they were “high” or “evil” from that…

The scene plays out this way… there’s a host that introduces the setup and the three contestants. They start playing and it’s clear one contestant gets every question right and the other two never do. The host stops the action to ask “what’s your secret?” and the winning contestant declares they have a system: Democrats are always “high” and Republicans are always “evil”. Everyone else is incredulous that that’s actually that simple, but after some examples and reflection, they all realize it’s ALWAYS true and they declare the game over… never to be played again!

What do you think? I’m not sure I’m doing it justice in print, but please spread the idea around… maybe somebody will actually make a version of it. If they do, or anyone finds something similar already out there… please come back and post here to tell us all about it!

Laser Hair Removal for the Body

In May of 2019 I needed to do something about my body hair. I’m hairy… as in hairy Italian kind of hairy… and I finally HAD to have it as gone as possible. I’d read a lot about hair removal and over the years I’ve literally tried every crazy thing you’ve heard of and some you haven’t. Let me tell you NONE of it worked. Including at least a thousand dollars worth of home laser/IPL devices.

I decided I needed a professional so I started googling around for options. I knew electrolysis was probably going to give me the best result, but I couldn’t afford the expense (or the time) for that. The next best solution for me was laser. I contacted three places, one a national chain, one a local “jack of all trades” doctor and one a clinic specailizing in laser procedures.

I’ll write something about the specific provider I chose for the curious, but I’d like to keep this generic in the hopes that my experience can help the next person get a better result than I’ve had.

Now if you don’t know much about hair removal, have a look at the resources page (or Wikipedia), but the short answer is: “Rome wasn’t built in a day”… and hair doesn’t get killed off in one shot. Because hair grows in 3 stages and it can only be impacted in one of them, and you can’t know what stage any given hair is in… it’s a bit like wack-a-mole where you swat it and it comes back and you swat it again and again until it stops coming back. Additional complications being you can have multiple hairs in different stages growing out of the same opening in the skin and so forth!

Suffice it to say, hair removal professionals know this and will sell you a “series of treatments” intended to eventually get the hair in the right stage by simply repeating the treatment on a time schedule. The schedule is approximate and imprecise and the timing of every human’s hair growth cycles/stages are going to be different. Even to the point that the location on the body and hormone levels impact this. There’s a LOT of luck involved since every single hair can be on a slightly different schedule, and there’s nothing you can do about that aspect except hope the professional’s experience is enough to guide them to making the best schedule choice for you. You can help them out if you know your hair is fast/slow growing… but chances are you don’t because you never actually tracked the growth of specific hair follicles… no one does.

Anyway, the thing you do have control over is the intensity of the treatment. The laser is just a tool that delivers energy into the skin at the site of the hair growth. The idea being that enough energy will overload/kill the cell. Particular lasers are used with particular wavelengths of light to “target” the hair as opposed to the surrounding skin. If the laser delivers the energy to your skin… you end up in the ER with a burn, so you do NOT want that.

The problem is that the laser light is not smart or anything… the way this system “targets” the hair is by targeting cells by color and depth. The laser won’t penetrate inches for example (and doesn’t need to since the hair is within 3/8 of an inch of the skin surface). But the laser effectively targets a color… the pigment of the hair cells will absorb the light, generating heat (energy) and hopefully causes the hair follicle to die. The issue is light hairs are impacted less, and dark skin is impacted more… the ideal candidate for laser treatments is an albino skinned person with jet black hair. Chances are good that’s not you. (It wasn’t me either). But at least I’m relatively fair skinned and most of my hair is between light and dark brown. Anyway, the point here is this… if you have darker skin and/or lighter hair… the treatments will be less effective (or perhaps completely ineffective). Again… there’s nothing you can do about this… you have what you have. The only advice I can give here is: age will lighten your hairs (reduce the pigment amount/darkness), so tackle this before you get too gray.

So… back to the point… the level of laser application is all that’s really completely under your (and your providers’) control. But it’s important to know that there’s no way for them to assess how much energy is too much! Because of that, they’re going to err on the side of caution and start you off low. They have to walk a fine line between enough to get the job done and so much you end up in the ER!

Your job is to let them know if you can take more… This isn’t a day at the spa… it’s not going to be fun, relaxing or even pleasant… if the laser is doing it’s job, it’s going to hurt… the difference is it shouldn’t HURT!!! I can’t really explain it except that it’s like working out… if you’re not sore after the workout… you didn’t do it right, if you know what I mean.

I ended up with the laser at its highest setting and it was still barely noticeable. The problem for me was we didn’t dial it up to 10 until the 4th treatment (out of 6) which means 50% of my treatments were at sub-optimal levels… and therefore substantially less effective.

I wish I understood this from day one when I walked in or I would have told them not just that I didn’t feel anything, but that we should do a test where they treat a small area with several levels and see if there’s any damage/effect. Had we established that I could go to 10 without any burns BEFORE I started treatment I’m sure I would have had a much more successful outcome.

So, let me boil this down to two pieces of advice:

Tackle this before your window of opportunity closes due to age/graying of the hair.
Demand that the provider determine the maximum level of energy for each area of your body BEFORE you actually start the treatments you’re paying for so you get the maximum return on your investment.

I hope this helps… those are the two key things I wish I had known twenty years ago. I doubt it would have changed my timing… career and financial restrictions certainly circumscribed my opportunities (as they probably do for most of us), but the second thing would have made a huge impact for me… probably to the tune of many thousands of dollars.

Good luck!

About

This site is my little attempt to collect information and maybe give people a place to share. I’m hoping to make something for the Trans community (the big umbrella term) where someone may read a familiar story and know they’re not alone or find some helpful information.

A bit of a warning though… I live around Baltimore, Maryland… so when I’m talking about local stuff… it’s local to me, in and around Baltimore/DC, so your mileage may vary, sorry about that 😉

Why dauntless…?

When I was a teenager, my family took a vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial. I have always been a sucker for triumphant underdog stories and the tale of two bicycle repair shop owners years-long endeavor was inspiring. I left with a poster of the Wright Flyer schematic surrounded by the inscription on the memorial:

“In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conceived by genius achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.”

I hung it on my wall for many years. I recently found it in some things stuffed in the back of my storage unit… faded and yellowed with age. The inscription was an inspiration… more than that… as a young person pursuing a profession in academia it almost became a mantra. I wanted to experience just one flash of the genius of the brothers Wright. I saw my path in that phrase “dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith”. When I was tired, fed up, beaten down, ready to give in… I turned to that poster. To that quote. To this day, I cannot read it in silence without tearing up. I can barely quote it to someone without my voice breaking and starting to cry… it means that much to me.

That may be silly, I know, but as I sit here dabbing my eyes and typing this I can’t help but think of the sacrifices others have made… far more than any I’ll ever make… that have afforded me and all of us the lives we live today.

When I decided to start this web site, I needed a domain name. I started with the word “trans” since I wanted to use it specifically for my trans experiences. But I quickly decided it felt too clinical or political or something… something wasn’t right. I moved on to other descriptive words when I decided I didn’t need to use something that made sense… after all, so many things in the world have meaningless words for names.

I started to think of things I liked… a poem perhaps could offer inspiration, but all the poetry I recall is dark, and was not setting the right tone. As I was entering things in a domain search, I was surprised at the massive array of top level domains offered up when dotcom/net/org were not available. The last time I shopped for a domain it was those three or nothing. Wow, how things have changed. Anyway, I got to thinking maybe the domain extension should be part of the name. I also had decided I wanted a word that was real and meant something.

I had been talking to a friend a few days before in which flight and the Wright Brothers came up (he’s a former pilot) and I remembered the quote and thought for a laugh I’d try “dauntless”. As I scrolled down the list of possibilities I saw “dauntless.love” and knew it was special. I had to use that!

Even though it doesn’t relay ANYTHING about what this sight is about… it captures how I hope to live during and after my transition. Because this is a word generally out of favor these days, pushed aside for the more popular yet somehow less sophisticated “undaunted” I give you the Oxford definition:

Dauntless: showing fearlessness and determination

That’s what I’m hoping I’ll be able to live up to… in love and life.