GiniHarmon's Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAsa8scVNrM

We were born just months apart and a few miles apart in 1958 in Texas.

We transitioned together and visited Dr. Biber in Trinidad, Colorado just months apart in 1983 to become Biber Dolls. We both suffered public outings on our transsexual pasts and lost jobs as results. I was on faculty at a major world renown medical center, (1987) she was a Las Vegas Showgirl (1993). We overcame adversity and learned to live authentic lives instead of continuing in counterfeit lives.

Jahna was always a lady. A true Texas Lady she had style, grace, humor and love. She was kind and generous, never inhospitable. She set a standard of femininity that others envied and blazed our pioneer trail with grace and elegance.

Jahna will be missed by the community she helped to create and by the many lives she touched.

Jahna, you are loved.

I can't say that I left Texas because the state grew too small for me. I suppose the truth is that I became too much for the state. I was too well known in three counties to get away with much that did't get talked about. My family was known throughout the state, especially in the capitol. My grandfather's tolerance could only be expected to stretch so far. As you might imagine, I had a knack for stretching tolerance much further than most people were accustomed to in those days. As a matter of fact, I had been scrutinized rather heavily due to my nonconformist behaviour for quite a few years. At the age of twelve I was banned from participating in the Texas State Fair Baked Goods Entries because my Bohemian Braid was suspected of having professional origins. I had never cooked nor baked for money, though I had been trained by my Nanny Verana, the Czechoslavikian woman that ran my family's smoke house and kitchen. She and Mamie Kathryn were reknown cooks and had raised me in the kitchen helping to prepare meals for our large household since I was four years old. I was expected to pay attention and to do things right. We canned, jellied, preserved and pickled our own field grown fruits and vegetables. We butchered hogs, poultry, beef and venison as well as smoked meats and home made sausages. My great grandmother, known across Texas and Louisiana as "Aunt Becky," taught me how to make soap and fabric dyes from the resources found on our property. As much as I loved being in the house with those old women and my grandmothers, Miss Cora and Momma Newton, I was also expected to work in the fields and with the livestock. I was determined that I would be well suited for ranch life and make some lucky ranch man a good wife. Truly big aspirations for a Texas boy, wouldn't you say?

I suppose I never quite expected to inherite the family ranch so much as to marry well, (one of the favored hands) and remain on in a significant role as a rancher's wife. I knew even then that I was living in a fantasy world. As I came into adolescence my fatehr and grandfather teased me by saying I'd "grow up to make some man a good wife someday." I don't believe for a minute that they saw themselves as prophets, nor were they being mean or unjustly cruel. I was as good at house work, cooking, putting up and entertaining as the best women in my family's generation. On a ranch where our nearest neighbor was twenty six miles away we had settlements of Mexican, black, Native American and old European families that share cropped and worked the land with us. Mamie Kathryn and her husband Shoto were black and Caddo Indian. They ran the estate and the slaughter house. They treated me like one of their own and I guess I thought I was. Shoto took me on rounds of the barns, cribs and corrals every day. He taught me to birth calves and horses. Mamie Kathryn taught me to milk cows and churn butter. I learned to butcher and make sausage with them in the slaughter house.

By the time I reached 14 years old I excelled in artificial insimination of cattle and bison. My grandfather intended for me to attend Texas A&M to study Animal Husbandry and Veternary Science. My path was laid out for me. When I told my family that I had no objections to any of this so long as I could marry the man of my choice I was met with unexpected scepticism. Apparently they had expected me to grow out of those things which they had seen as secondary to my upbringing and embrace the aspects of our family's ranch life that men aught to. All of the men in my family were exceptional cooks. They all knew how to sew, tool leather, build tack, braid rope, and preserve foods. It wasn't apparant to them I suppose that this was my preference. I preferred a woman's life to a man's life. My grandfather laughed and stated that I could have it both ways but I could not just have it that way. I chose that time to tell my family of my intentions to become a woman rather than a man. Talk about a turd in the punch bowl!

I had worn my hair long for much of my life. Due to my Native American heritage, Caddo and Kiowa, I was naturally dark brown with wavy sun lightened hair. At times I was mistaken for being a Mexican girl and called "nina." I took advantage of this identity as often as I could. I went into shops and bought female clothes. By the time I was seventeen I was dressing as a girl every opportunity I had. I made friends with a boy at school that I knew to be gay. We conspired to be one another's dates for the senior prom. At some point in the evening I was recognized and outed to the local newspaper. Reporters with cameras arrived and interrupted our fun. I feared things were about to change drastically for me. So we took off for the city. We finished our prom date in Houston's gay bar, The Old Plantation. The drag shows were fabulous! I met one of the queens there, Naomi Sims. She told me about her trips to New York City. She talked about doctors that gave female hormone shots and helped boys become girls.

My family was none to happy about my appearance in the newpaper and other publications. My grandfather eliminated my cattle brand, obsorbed my herd and paid half of the market value for them to me. For five hundred head of cattle I received $4000 and a one way ticket on Delta Airlines to New York. I left the day after my graduation at the age of seventeen.

I used to be such a private person. In the past four years I have been experiencing a slow emergence from privacy, from stealth. Stealth, I spent twenty years in stealth. At times I regret having given up my privacy. Its not something you can get back once you've given it up.

Thirty four years ago when I was only fifeteen, I made a decision about my life. I decided to change who I was and how I lived. I knew that the decision I was making would take me far from my home, my family and all that was familiar to me. To choose such a metamorphosis knowing that the price would be so great only indicates how sure I was of my course. In 1976 I left my rather large family in Texas and moved to New York City. I was such an innocent at seventeen. I imagined NYC to be a magical place where my dreams would come true. I expected glamour and elegance in the city. New York was dirty, crowded, dangerous and often unkind. I was brash, bold and perhaps a bit too proud to return home with my tail tucked timidly between my legs to admit defeat. Instead of letting the city devour me, I fought back. I not only made my dreams, I made them come true.

I suppose that I must be hopelessly and patheticly romantic! I tell myself not to watch it again, then there it is, seemingly the best thing on. How can that be? How can Notting Hill be the best thing on out of 999 channels? When nothing else grabs my attention, there it is, on the telly and I watch it.

Happiness isn't happiness without a violin playing goat.

Its really about the complicated love story, the music and the sadness.

Melancholy, is how I seem to have come to be. Not completely sad, just less than brilliant. I used to be upbeat, jolly, quite glad too much of the time. It isn't in any way clinical, just situational. Perhaps, I take too long to nurse a broken heart, or I linger on the things that I miss because they were important to me. Life changes, always has, always will, yet, while I look forward to new opportunities, I savor even the sensation of loss. If a thing was ever worth the having, isn't it worth longing for once its gone?