(This piece is what I submitted for the book called “Trans People in Love,” published by Routledge, June 6, 2008.  The editors are Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox.  “Sex and the Single Trannie” is Chapter 12, on page 111.)

By Monica F. Helms

“NO! I refuse to believe you!”

“Sorry, Monica. Once you start hormones, you’ll lose your libido.”

“I will NOT let that happen.”

“You’ll have no choice.”

“We’ll see about that.”

One may ask, “What does libido have to do with love?” This is, after all, an anthology of transsexuals and love and very little about sexual desires. That maybe so, but I cannot separate the strong connections between all of those parts of my personality.

Most people understand that humans are extremely complex biological organisms that have the capacity to experience a large range of emotions, including the elusive one known as “love.” They also can feel a multitude of physical sensation and understand what they all mean, especially sexual pleasures. Over the course of the last decade, I’ve experienced love and sexual pleasures on so many levels that it would be hard to isolate one special moment or one special person. Others in this book may have a partner or someone special, but I don’t. Yet, I have loved and lost enough times to know what the experience feels like.

(Break)

While writing my autobiography in 2005, I had a chance to scrutinize the experiences I had with women while living as a man. I didn’t have many encounters with women, so the ones I did have stood out rather vividly. A connecting thread between all of those loves began to emerge, surprising the hell out of me when it became obvious. This thread occurred because Mother Nature had endowed me with such a miniscule “tool” that it forced me to find more creative ways to satisfy women. Not surprising, many of those ways have been used by lesbians since the dawn of time. It appears that Mother Nature actually gave me a gift, preparing me for my future life as a lesbian.

As a man, I truly enjoyed making love with women and I enjoyed the pleasure they gave me. But, as I approached the time to start hormones, I became more and more worried that I wouldn’t even feel like making love to anyone because of losing my libido. To not find intimacy exciting any longer sent a chill through the Italian blood coursing through my veins. My brain couldn’t conceive of the idea of being asexual, so I decided to do something to ensure I would still desire lovemaking with another person. At that time, it could have been with either a man or a woman.

According to the dictionary, the word “libido” means: 1.) The psychic and emotional energy associated with the instinctual biological drives. 2a.) Manifestation of sexual drive. 2b.) Sexual desire. If there is a psychological component to a person’s libido, then couldn’t the brain be trained to maintain the same level of libido after a male-to-female transsexual begins hormone treatment? I felt truly motivated to find out the answer to that question.

The physical affects of taking female hormones were not only well documented on the Internet and in books, but my friends provided me with their first-hand experience on this matter. The penis would shrink and no longer feel the same sensations it felt before hormones. That idea didn’t bother me, because I would eventually have it inverted for my new vagina. Of course at that time, I didn’t think I would live a full decade without getting sex reassignment surgery. If the penis couldn’t feel pleasure and I didn’t want it to, then where on my body would that pleasure come from?

The first place I concentrated on was my nipples. They had proven to feel sensitivity in the past, so I focused on finding the right way to make them feel it again. In a very short time, I discovered that if I wet the tips of my fingers and very lightly rub them over the tips of my nipples, I would feel some tingling sensation. It took me awhile to actually magnify that sensation and “train” my brain to understand that this was a new erogenous zone. It worked.

As satisfying as my nipples felt during that “training period,” I knew that there had to be more. This time, I turned my attention a bit further south, a place where my future vagina would reside. I knew that the nerve bundle in the area between the testicles felt some form of sensation, but nothing prepared me for what I would discover when I started concentrating on that area. To say I found my ultimate G-spot would be a gross understatement. Nothing in my life has ever felt that amazing and it didn’t take any time for my brain to register this new erogenous zone. I created these new pleasure points BEFORE I began taking hormones and my penis had shrunk. Feeling a female-like orgasm without getting an erection made me ecstatic. And, having multiple orgasms opened a whole new world for me. My journey as a female had begun.

In later years, I had a conversation with a therapist who not only worked with transgender people, but with paraplegics and quadriplegics. She would help them find sexual pleasure in the areas where they still had feelings, training the pleasure center of the brain to accept these locations as their new erogenous zones. It appears I had followed her methods before I knew that sort of brain-training existed.

Knowing that I had the ability to enjoy a full and wonderful sex life as a woman – whether I had surgery or not – strengthened my libido rather than diminished it. I looked forward to finding the love of my life rather than shrinking away and avoiding love altogether. It made me less afraid to wear my heart on my sleeve, less afraid to open up to someone and less afraid to have my heart broken.

Just before and after I began living as a woman, I felt a need to experience love with men. I had fantasies of actually living with a man and having a happy home as a married woman later in my life. I quickly discovered that the men who found pre-operative, male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals exciting looked for just one thing. They want a “chick with a dick” . . . the mystical “Best-of-Both-Worlds” creature. They do indeed exist in the form of she-males, but an MtF transsexual has a different motive for living as a women. Since taking hormones causes a pre-op, MtF transsexual’s penis to shrink and not get erect, then this may turn off many men who want to date a pre-op.

Sex with men felt exciting, but as time went on, I needed more than a quick roll in the sack. My attraction to masculinity faded, replaced completely by the need for the softness and emotional gratification I had always received from women. It meant I really didn’t change whom I found attractive, so by definition, I went from being a heterosexual man to being a gay woman. Only the labels changed. I now tell people I’m “historically bisexual,” since I did have sex with men at one time in my life.

Now that I finally discovered my true sexual orientation, what would I do next? Only Fate would place me where I needed to be. In early 2000, I met an attractive, post-operative, MtF transsexual who seemed to find me attractive as well. We met in Phoenix while she attended a political activism meeting I had put on. We hit it off rather quickly and later in the evening, she and I went dancing at the local lesbian club. While on the dance floor, she pulled me close to her and kissed me. My first kiss from a post-op woman and it felt so good that it made me weak at the knees.

Sadly, the evening didn’t find us sharing a bed together. She made an odd blanket statement stating that post-op transsexual women do not want to make love to pre-op transsexual women, because it reminds them of their past. To her, it felt like “going back in time.” She also said that it makes the pre-op jealous. At that time, I believed her statement was widely-accepted by post-op women, but later I found out that her attitude only reflected her own personal feelings and nothing more. Over the last seven years, I’ve had the pleasure of making love to several post-op women, so I’m now positive not everyone accepted her viewpoint.

My first true love as Monica came only five months after kissing that woman on the dance floor. She, too, was a post-op MtF transsexual, having had her surgery eight years earlier. I met her on a list for trans people, but it didn’t have many members from Arizona. The two of us talked on the phone for a while then decided to get together one Saturday to go to a movie. For this story, I will call her “Brenda.”

Brenda and I hit it off rather well and found out we had at least a few things in common. She told me that for the last twelve years she had been living with a man, but it just didn’t feel right to her. Since she begun her transition during the days when the doctors insisted a person follow very strict rules, she had to convince them of being straight or they wouldn’t let her continue. The doctors wouldn’t allow any transsexual to identify as being gay. Many lied to the doctors, some so convincing that they believed it themselves. Thus was the case with Brenda.

I found Brenda attractive, but the words of the other woman five months earlier still rang in my ears. “Post-ops don’t want to make love to pre-ops.” This meant Brenda and I would be nothing more than friends, which I could easily settle for. However, Fate stepped in once again and threw me a most interesting curve ball.

After going to the movies and having lunch together, we came back to my place and began talking about all sorts of things, including our past and how our families treated us. I cannot remember who broached the subject first, but the topic of sex and love came up. Sometime during that subject, she asked me, “Have you ever made love to post-op?”

I said, “I got the impression that post-ops didn’t want to have anything to do with pre-ops.”

Brenda found that statement to be completely ridiculous. To prove it, she leaned in close and gave me a long and sensual kiss. Wow. What made me so lucky to get a kiss from such gorgeous women? They say that what comes around goes around. Whatever I did to deserve such good karma, I needed to keep doing it.

After some extensive foreplay, Brenda and I ended up in bed together. I’ve had memorable times making love to another person, but that first night with Brenda topped anything I had ever experienced up until then. (But, my future had better things in store for me in later years.) She solidified my sexual orientation. From that evening on, I would never consider making love to a man . . . except a trans man. Why, you may ask? Or not. Trans men have a quality about them that non-trans men don’t. Some will admit it, while others won’t. Their past gives them a much deeper appreciation for women, so they know how to treat a woman right . . . at least most of them do.

Over the next few weeks, Brenda and I had fantastic nights together; nights that burn deep into my memory with the passion we felt for each other. However, life would not allow us to continue our relationship. Just before I met Brenda, I had applied for another job in Atlanta, staying within the company I worked for. They accepted me and asked me to arrive in Atlanta by June 12, 2000. I had to leave just as our relationship began to heat up. She and I remained friends for a few years after I left, but as of today, she won’t take any of my calls. I would like to find out if she has a happy life.

My life in Georgia would be totally different than what I experienced in Arizona. The people at my new job accepted me completely and I had more challenges on the job than I did in Phoenix. Other opportunities opened up to me as a political activist, putting me in a position to meet many people in the area and nationwide. My experience with women didn’t take off until I had been there for about five months. “Five months?” Again? Is this a reoccurring pattern? I wonder . . .?

Transgender people are great with trigonometry, because they love to go off on tangents.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Five months after I arrived in Georgia, I met another post-op transsexual at Atlanta’s first Transgender Day of Remembrance. I will call her “Olivia.” Something about her caught my eye. I felt drawn to her looks and intelligence. What can I say? I find highly intelligent women very sexy and Olivia fit the bill on that, as Brenda had earlier. For the next two months, we had a torrid relationship. The fact that she lived in Athens, about 90 miles away from where I lived at the time, caused a bit of a problem for me. Getting there took up a lot of my time and gas.

Even though everything seemed to be going smoothly between the two of us, Olivia had something boiling deep in the bowels of her psyche. She had a dark past of disturbing incidents that had left her emotionally and psychologically scarred. Many transsexuals experience horrible things in their life and none of them make it through unscathed. Some are harmed far more than others. Olivia carried the wounds of a family rejection, physical and mental abuse that stayed hidden just below the surface like an emotional Mt. St. Helen, waiting for the right – or wrong – moment to erupt. That eruption took place about two months into our relationship.

On the day it happened, I stayed over night at Olivia’s apartment. The next day she seemed all lovey-dovey when we got up and we planned on seeing a movie that afternoon. Before the movie, I stopped at an eyeglass store to get new glasses and she wandered through the mall. After I finished getting everything ordered, I waited and waited for her to come back. When she did, she seemed distant and didn’t want to talk. We went to the movie and during the entire time, she leaned away from me, not making any physical contact.

On the drive home, she remained silent. I knew then that she wanted to break up with me. I asked, “Is it over?”

“Wait until we get back to my place.”

I started crying. She showed no emotion. The pain cut through my heart.

When we arrived at her place, she turned to me and in the coldest tone of voice, she said, “I want you to leave.”

“Why? What happened? We were okay just this morning.”

She said nothing and still showed no emotions. It appeared to me that this post-op transsexual shifted into a mode that I hadn’t ever seen in woman, breaking up with me like any man would break up with a woman. I felt like an emotional basket case on that long drive home.

In later years, Olivia told she shouldn’t have let me go. My friends and I later found out that Olivia lead a transient life, not wanting to get a job and had tried to con others into giving her money. I also found out just recently that she now lives in San Francisco and has been stalking a prominent facial surgeon, trying to get him to do surgery on her for free. Olivia has even tried to commit suicide several times. She really needs help.

Losing Olivia when I did couldn’t have happened at a better time. Not only did I dodge the bullet with her early on in the relationship, but it freed me to begin looking elsewhere. A couple weeks later, I attended a Georgia Stonewall Democrats meeting and I told a female friend of mine, Susan, on how Olivia had treated me.

Susan asked, “Does this mean I can now ask you out on a date?”

“Ah . . . ah, yes. It does.”

I found Susan to not only be highly intelligent, but she and I had several things in common. We both love science fiction and we both love to write, though her writing focuses on non-fiction, whereas I have a love for fiction. In school, Susan considered herself a computer geek and looking back at myself in school, I was a nerd. At the time I met her, she worked as an editor for a trade magazine, but had also written for the local LGBT newspaper and wrote for CNN.

On our first date, I took her to an Italian restaurant and we talked about several things. I found her attractive and felt comfortable being with her. That evening, we went back to my place and made love on the couch in the living room.

Wrong move.

My roommate, another transsexual and owner of the townhouse I lived in, confronted me the next day and ordered me to move out in six months. She never said why she gave me so much time, but I figured she needed extra money to help pay for her up-coming labiaplasty. I discovered later that the whole reason she needed me to move in was to help her get the final amount of money she needed for her sex reassignment surgery. Once my usefulness had ended, I would be kicked out anyway. My evening with Susan accelerated that. The next day, I began looking for a place and found one much closer to work and to Susan. My former roommate would have to find her money somewhere else.

Susan and I had an interesting relationship. For four years, we called each other “girlfriends,” using the lesbian definition and not the one used by straight women when referring to their female friends. We expressed our love for each other in many ways, but we never had a sex life after that first date. I found out she had a bi-polar condition and because of the medicines she had to take, she completely lost her libido. Of course, my libido remained as strong as ever during the entire relationship.

I once asked Susan, “Do you find any woman on Earth sexually attractive?” She responded by saying “No.”

If Susan felt that way about every woman, then I didn’t have much of a problem with our lack of sex life, at least at first. It became clear to me as time went on that it had become a growing problem. She encouraged me to seek out others for sex, which I only found someone twice in the entire four years. Later, her doctor gave her a new drug that helped to restore her libido, but it became quickly apparent that she still didn’t want to make love with me, even when her libido returned. It became the start of our downhill slide.

As time went on, other things contributed to our eventual breakup. We kept growing apart until my lack of enthusiasm forced her to call it quits. The moment of our breakup felt sad, but necessary to give me a chance to grow and expand. My relationship with Susan did me a lot of good and helped me to further understand myself in many ways I couldn’t have had if her and I had never dated. We remain friends to this day.

In April of 2005, I met a woman, Cindy, at a local lesbian nightclub called My Sister’s Room (MSR.) Since this nightclub sat across the tracks from the all-woman’s college Agnes Scott, it drew in a lot of women in their early-twenties. I could easily tell that Cindy didn’t fit that age bracket because of her gray hair.

Cindy and I stayed together for a few months, even though she never felt comfortable seeing me completely nude. I had to hide my penis by wearing panties, yet she didn’t mind eventually being totally nude with me. She wouldn’t allow me to give her oral sex, so we had to use other ways to take care of her needs. However, she spent very little time taking care of my needs.

Because Cindy lived forty miles away and didn’t have transportation, it became hard on me. Also, she shared her house with a much older woman whose attitude forced Cindy to not invite friends over without causing a big fuss. I had to drive to Cindy’s place, bringing her back to my apartment so we can go out or have dinner together, then drive her home the next day. This became too much after awhile, so I broke it off with her.

The week after I broke it off with Cindy, I met another woman at MSR. This time I went there to just enjoy myself and not try to hook up with someone. But, hook up I did and in a huge way.

The woman I met that night, Glenda, had something about her that I found intriguing. Normally, I’m attracted to fem women, but Cindy and Glenda didn’t fit that category one bit. However, I found Glenda very attractive and interesting to talk to. She works as a lawyer for a firm that helps to patent biotech creations for companies. This job was tailor-made for her, since she has a degree in both biology and law.

After we left MSR, we grabbed a bite to eat at an all-night diner, then she took me to her place. The fact that she didn’t care about my “plumbing irregularities” surprised and thrilled me, since I told her well in advance about me, back at MSR. Her lack of shyness felt refreshing after my experiences with Susan and Cindy.

That evening began a five-month relationship that rivaled anything else in my entire life. (Again, with the “five-months?”) Our lovemaking took me to a new level of ecstasy that I never believed existed and I had only heard rumors of over the years. I place the stories of that kind of intense lovemaking in the same category as ghosts, angels and UFOs. I’ve heard of them, but I never personally encountered them. We did things together that I would have never expected from any woman. I fell in love once again, only this time in a hard way.

Glenda had separated from a woman whom she had a committed relationship with just six months earlier. She was the biological mother of a five-year-old girl and shared joint custody with her ex. One weekend Glenda would have the girl and the next weekend her ex would, so we “hooked up” on those weekends when she didn’t have her daughter. However, we would go to dinner and do things together on the weekends she had her daughter.

During the course of our relationship, Glenda told me that she had a repressed sex life since her early years and after separating from her ex, she had finally liberated herself to explore the hidden desires within. Since we went on that exploration together, uncovering the various facets of her sexual desires, I told her that we were like Lewis and Clark heading up the Missouri River into the mountains, finding new wonders around every bend. I couldn’t believe the beauties of what we found along the way. Thinking of those nights still makes me smile.

One of the most touching moments of our relationship took place on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, 2005. Glenda’s daughter asked if I could “sleep over” that night so I could spend Christmas morning with them. Glenda agreed. I fully expected to sleep in a spare bedroom, but I ended up in Glenda’s bed. I made sure I had a complete pair of pajamas on, because I felt a bit apprehensive about her daughter being there and possibly wandering into the room. It all turned out fine.

The next morning, I once again experienced the wonder of Christmas through the eyes of a small child, something I hadn’t felt since the early 1990s. No other Christmas during the entire time living as Monica felt as wonderful. I would have pledged my commitment to Glenda that very morning if she had asked me.

One funny thing happened on Christmas that still makes me laugh when I think about it. Glenda’s daughter received a little girl’s makeup kit as one of her gifts. After opening it, she turned to Glenda and asked if she could help in putting on the makeup. Glenda laughed and said she was the last person to ask on how to properly apply makeup.

Monica to the rescue! I piped up and said, “Well, it looks like this is an area I’m familiar with. Let me help you.” Glenda’s daughter was excited.

While Glenda made breakfast in the kitchen, I showed her daughter the proper way to put on makeup. Since I had two sons, I never felt the joy of helping a young girl apply makeup properly.

What factored heavily into why Glenda and I had a short relationship had to be the “rebound syndrome.” Even though we had a short-lived and intense romance, we ended it as very close friends. She has become one of the few people I know who I can confide in with the most intimate details of my life. We stay in touch and have breakfast or dinner together occasionally, along with her daughter. When my Mother came to visit me for a week in April, the four of us went to the new Georgia Aquarium together. My mother had nothing but high praise for Glenda.

I haven’t had a steady girlfriend since Glenda and I broke up, but I’ve had some rather interesting romantic moments during that time. In late September 2006, when the Southern Comfort Conference took place in Atlanta, many of my friends from across the country attended. I had the chance to make love to two trans women at the same time, one post-op and one pre-op. It may sound exciting, but part of the evening, the other two spent a very long time concentrating on each other. I even got up and got dressed before they noticed I was in the room. And yet, I suggested having the threesome in the first place. I thought that if I would ever have the fortune of being with two women at the same time, each of us would be treated with equality. I may not suggest that in the future.

I did learn one thing during that threesome. I quickly found out that the pre-op had the same erogenous zones as I have. Very interesting. Once I discovered this, I wouldn’t stop until she begged me to. I can easily say she enjoyed herself, as did I.

During that Southern Comfort Conference, I did something else exciting and new. I asked a good friend of mine, a professional photographer, to take nude photos of me, in black and white. She took nearly two rolls of pictures that day and in some of the photos, someone else was there with me. As I write this piece, I haven’t seen the pictures, but the other person in them with me has. She said they turned out great.

After reading this, one might think that I’ve had a rather exciting sex life with all the women I’ve met. Yet, I finish this piece up with nothing more than a sigh to comfort me. Like I said, I don’t have that one special person to share my life with at this time. No one is near me, reading over my shoulder, begging me to save what I have typed and come to bed. Do I want someone? Yes. Will I stop after getting my heart broken again and again? Never! If I did, the next person I would have met could have been “THE ONE,” so I continue to move forward.

My life has had many moments of shear pleasure and beauty, surrounded with mundane days, weeks and even months. But, I’m encouraged that Fate has more interesting moments ahead. And who knows, maybe the next time transgender people are asked to submit a story about how love works with them, I will be able to write an extensive piece about my life-long love. Until then, I will have to be satisfied with the cards Life has dealt me.

(This is the 3rd and final installment in the “Stuck in . . . ” series.)

We all know that loneliness does not limit itself to LGB or T people. This feeling probably strikes 100% of the human population at one time of another, many living in perpetual loneliness for most of their lives. A person can feel lonely because they have no one special in their life who loves them. Others can be lonely in a crowd of people who do love them. A majority of people don’t go out of their way to choose to be lonely, yet some do. But, loneliness goes out of its way to chooses us.

Even though the feeling of loneliness does not differ between LGBT people and straight people, the causes can be different. If we can believe the figures for the number of LGBT people in the population, between 5% and 10%, then that means that there would be far less LGBT people in the world to find your special someone from. Of course, bisexual people have more numbers to choose from, as do straight transgender people. If an LGBT person lives in a rural area, their chances become zero in many cases. However, numbers alone don’t keep people from feeling lonely.

Loneliness in the lesbian community is such a large issue that it generated a joke. When two lesbians fall in love, one quickly rents a U-Haul so they can move in together. It might seem funny, if it didn’t have its basis in reality. For gay men, you’ll find dozens of cruising bars in large cities to accommodate their need to cure loneliness, even if it’s for just one night. Everyone tries to cope the best they can, but loneliness keeps its own time.

(Break)

I find the Religious Right’s obsession with gay people having sex is such a far fetch and ridiculous notion. I imagine that these people happen to be so sexually repressed and lonely that they can’t stand it when someone else enjoys themselves more than they do. But, the myth of gay people having sex all the time happens to be far different in reality, otherwise the term “bed death” would not have been coined and used in the LGBT community. Bed death happens to couples who have been together for a long time, but have long since stopped having sex. I can tell you from my previous experience as a straight married man, it happens to straight people as much as LGBT people.

In the LGBT community, loneliness causes a higher incident of smoking and drinking, since the “cure” for loneliness is supposed to be found in a bar, or so some think. When a person needs to conquer their loneliness for one night, they might have unprotected sex as the result, which will lead to many other problems. Some have even taken their own lives because of depression from loneliness. I guess with unprotected sex and suicide, we can easily say that loneliness kills.

I want to focus on what causes trans people to become stuck in loneliness. What I have seen and want to address has happened to some trans people, but not all of them. Some have a multitude of reasons to feel lonely. The biggest would be the stigma from society that we are somehow not “real” men or women.

Some straight women and some gay men may not want to date a trans man because he doesn’t have a penis, or at least not a functional one. Some straight men and some lesbians would not want to date a pre-op MtF because they still have a penis. And then, there are some straight men and lesbians who won’t date any transsexual woman, regardless of surgical status, because they still consider them men. The existence of a penis at birth is all that matters to them and the rest of that person’s life or personality doesn’t. One easily sees that when it comes to romance, many trans people can find themselves facing loneliness.

Loneliness comes in other forms for trans people. Being rejected by family members can be devastating to many trans people, but gay, lesbian and bisexual people also face this very same loneliness. I experienced it myself. It took seven and half years to become accepted by all of my family members, but my father had to die before that happened. Yet, I’m one of the lucky ones.

Other forms of rejection can cause loneliness, such as losing long-time friends after starting transition or coming out, which I also experienced. And, losing work friends and have others harass you at work, even though your company allowed you to keep your job. Yep, I had that happen, too. All of these made me feel lonely at one time or another, but I got over it. Sadly, others don’t.

Another cause for loneliness is not seen as loneliness by some trans people. Body dysphoria causes many to avoid intimacy until their body fits their mind. The feeling of an incongruent body becomes a real and viable reason for a trans person to remain alone. Some trans women even refuse to touch their penis, except with a wash cloth. Once they have surgery, for the most part, they become happier and end up with enjoyable love lives.

Other trans people never get over their loneliness, even after all of their surgeries. Some start transition thinking that life would magically become better after surgery, regardless of how many people told them differently. They spend all of their time and effort making sure they reach their goal that they had no time or energy left learning how to socialize in their new gender. I see this more in trans women then trans men.

Some of these trans women never learn the skills socializing as a woman and decide that being lonely is much easier than learning those skills. Some even become bitter and lash out at others, blaming them for their loneliness. Socializing with others takes the edge off of loneliness, but it may not fully remove it. I play in an all-women’s pool league to help take the edge off of my loneliness. It’s the highlight of my week, even if I lose. (But, I don’t like losing.)

Loneliness can be a debilitating feeling that causes depression, isolation and in some cases, death. I feel it is one of the least known human feelings, but one that therapist have spent a lot of time talking about. Loneliness hits every individual for different reasons and at different intensities. However, it can be conquered. Some cases, the “cure” takes a lot of work to overcome. If you are without friends, then an effort has to be made to bring new people in your life. If you just broke up with someone, then go through the grieving process, but keep hope alive. If your family has rejected you, then don’t cut off communications, or you can make a new family with close friends. No matter how loneliness has taken a hold of your heart, its grip can be broken. Time is usually the answer.

For me, I hold out hope that she is out there, waiting to pry the loneliness from my heart. I just know she’s there, waiting to prevent me from being stuck in loneliness.

Think of how dull the world would be if everything came in just twos. We would only have two different colors, two different smells, two different tastes and two different sounds. People would appear in just two different varieties for each sex, and only thinking in just two different ways. From our diverse perspective, it would be a boring existence, except that in that world, boredom would only come in two forms as well.

Being a science fiction fan and writer, I can easily imagine how a world of true binaries would look. I’m envisioning a novel coming from that right now. We should consider ourselves lucky that Mother Nature can think beyond binaries. Unfortunately, even with all the evidence in front of us, Human Nature cannot think beyond binaries.

I should clarify that last sentence. When it comes to all that exists around us, we easily bask in the beauty of a world that goes way beyond binaries. We see flowers of all colors and varieties. Our pets come in all shapes, sizes, species and temperament. One could take a decade sampling all the varieties of food the world has to offer. Yes, we don’t live in a binary world, yet in some forms, binary thinking exists in people.

(Break)

If Mother Nature can think beyond binaries in every form of creation, then it stands to reason that sex, gender and sexual orientation also go beyond binaries. Try telling that to most of humanity, including some gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight people. Yes, even some transgender people cannot think beyond binaries, which has caused some rather heated discussions on blogs and lists at times.

Noticed I didn’t include intersex people on that list. Overall, I have found that because an intersex person can have so many different issues that would make them intersex, their life situations force them to think beyond binaries. I have learned a lot from my intersex friends, and they still have more to teach me.

So, where does a lot of this binary thinking come from? Easy. “The Bible says that God only created man and woman. The Bible says that men cannot lie with men and women cannot lie with women. The Bible says that men cannot wear the clothes of women and women cannot wear the clothes of men.” How often have we heard these examples from the Bible used as weapons to beat us over the head with? Yet, we hear nothing about stoning our children if they disobey, nothing about not eating pork and shell fish, nothing about not divorcing and remarrying, and nothing about not wearing clothes made with different materials. Seems those get swept under the evangelistic rug for convenience sake. Welcome to the “pick and choose” religious world.

Because binary viewpoints on sex, gender and sexual orientation exists with a majority of humans, we get amendments to state constitutions that say men can only marry women, and visa versa. Yet, in all of those state constitutions, you will NOT SEE a definition for what constitutes a man and what constitutes a woman. If you try to pinpoint a definition for them, you will find many exceptions to whatever one you pick, leaving out some of those fine, upstanding evangelist citizens in the process.

Why? Because Mother Nature (God) never follows a binary model when creating humans. Scientists have even identified over 600 species of plants and animals that can change sex based on the needs of the species, further blurring the binary lines. If binaries don’t exist in nature, then why have so many states based laws and amendments on vague and undefined terms such as “man” and “woman?” Who allowed them to get away with it?

Let’s also look at God for a moment. If you were God and could create anything, ANYTHING, then that means you would have no limits. You are not stuck with binary thinking and can mix and match all sorts of features when creating humans. Yet, a misguided portion of society wants to put limits on God’s abilities when it comes to the sex, gender and sexual orientation of people. How arrogant are those people? On top of that, if you don’t choose the right one of the two – such as sexual orientation – then you’re not following God’s plan, as if they had absolute proof of how God thinks.

There are five known sexual orientations – heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality and pansexuality. For those who don’t know, pansexuality, or omnisexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire for people, regardless of their gender identity or biological sex. Pansexuality has been described as a “means to skip the binaries and essentialism of bisexuality.” I personally see an overlapping of the two.

When the Ex-Gay Movement comes up in conversation, people’s binary views of sexual orientation frustrate me to no end. You have straight people saying they can cure a person from being gay and gay people saying that a person will always be gay. Neither side cares to even acknowledge the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the person isn’t gay or straight, but somewhere in between.

The AMA recognizes twelve to fourteen various chromosome patterns to designate a person’s sex. If XX designates female and XY designates male, then what sex are the others? The AMA, in order to bend to the pressures of the Religious Right, has designated some of the other patterns male and the others as female. But, are they right? I refuse to believe they can be so positive on the person’s sex if they do not have either XX or XY. And, Mother Nature, in all of its non-binary wisdom, has even created male-bodied people with XX chromosomes and female-bodied people with XY chromosomes. I have a female-bodied friend who has XY chromosomes. This proves that using chromosomes to justify a binary model for sex just cannot be done.

Failing the medical determination, we can go with a person’s gender, specifically their gender identity. What their mind says has to be the strongest deciding factor when medical evidence becomes too vague. Even there, no binary exist, otherwise Leslie Feinberg wouldn’t have embraced gender-neutral pronouns. Some people feel they have a neutral, an undefined or fluid gender, thus shattering binaries in gender as well.

Binaries for sex, gender and sexual orientation are nothing more than creations by people who will not accept a variety of possibilities, or want to make it easy to place people in neat little boxes. Nature has no concept of boxes. The lines between everything in nature become blurred and undefined when studying them carefully. Too bad some people ignore solid evidence in order to push their brand of intolerance, but that has been happening for thousands of years. The more we push aside binary thinking and embrace the wide diversity of nature, the harder it will be for the bigots to thrive. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

I’m sure blog readers have heard the phrase “Friends with Benefits” quite often, since they consist of some rather sophisticated people out there.  Whenever people hear “FWB,” it conjures up all kinds of lustful images in their minds, mostly about noncommittal sex with a good friend.  This phrase came in existence in about the late 80’s, early 90’s by the younger crowd, but it has worked its way to all generations.

This subject has come up on occasions with some of my friends and ex-girlfriends, discussing it at lengths, which made me feel the need to write about my feeling on this.  The Internet has plenty of pages on FWB, so I’m not breaking into new territory.  Of course, most of what you find on the Internet has been geared toward straight people, but the idea has become common in the LGBT community as well.

(Break)

Casual sex should not be entered into casually, especially with a friend.  The implications can end a friendship if the possibility of casual sex has not been discussed in detail beforehand.  Rules and boundaries need to be set in the beginning before the sheets are pulled back.  Yes, rules for FWB do exist.  Here’s what I have found on one web site.

1.)    Be clear about what you want. To make your friends with benefits experience a good one, know what you expect from the relationship. Take the time to really think about it. There is no one-size-fits-all formula. Having a basic understanding of your needs and being able to articulate those needs could help you save lot of drama in the end.

2.)    Choose your partner wisely. This is by far the trickiest and most important step. Being friends with benefits requires a delicate balance. Your partner should be someone who you enjoy spending time with and someone looking for the same things as you in a friends with benefits relationship.

3.)    Set the rules. Every friends with benefits relationship needs a clear set of boundaries. Sit down with your partner and decide what those rules will be. Make sure you are both satisfied with the choices.

4.)    Stick to the rules. It is easy to get sidetracked. Maybe you spend the night once or twice. Maybe you start to spend more time together than you should. Just remember that the rules should only be broken if you decide to change the nature of your relationship.

5.)    Get out before it gets too heavy. Friends with benefits relationships have a short shelf life. They tend to morph into something deeper for one or both partners. If your casual relationship starts to change, end it unless you are happy with the changes.

Interesting enough, it appears that the “Friends with Benefits” term seems to be associated with sex only.  I’m sure that the people who first started using it intended that to be the case, but why go that far?  Since two people set the rules and the boundaries of intimate encounters, then could FWB be something as simple as just holding hands?  Could you cuddle and kiss, but nothing beyond that?  I’m sure I’m not the only person who sees FWB as having very flexible boundaries.

One of my ex-girlfriends introduced me to a wonderful book called “The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities,” by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt.  Not only do they talk about friends with benefits in detail, but many other aspects of love, sex and relationships, casual or otherwise.  They even go into polyamory, bisexuality and transsexuality with some detail.  The book opened my eyes to the possibilities that FWB was not such a difficult concept to embrace, though the book had many other areas that didn’t appeal to me personally.

In some ways, FWB seems to be far more difficult and far more structured then a relationship can be.  Rules get laid out, boundaries need to be set, times to get together are discussed, and who to tell and who not to tell needs to be explored.  Maybe new relationships could benefit the same way by utilizing a bit more structure and a lot less haphazardness.  In my opinion, in a FWB situation, both people have to be far more in line with each other’s thoughts then a regular relationship has to be.  I see that relationships are flexible, but FWB is not.

Not everyone will be comfortable with FWB, even if they have no one currently in their lives.  People’s upbringing has a great deal of affect on whether they can embrace FWB or not.  Bad past experiences, family situations and physical embarrassment can be a factor.  Some trans people experience body dysphoria about having incorrect parts, so they shun many relationship possibilities.  An FWB situation could work for them, because a friend would be more understanding then someone new.  But, broaching the subject with their friend will be very tricky.

Past relationships can also be very tricky if one brings up the idea of FWB.  If the two of you had been intimate in the past, had a relationship and have broken up, but remained friends, one or both of you may not be inclined to even attempt intimacy with that other person once again.  The fear of falling in love and all the baggage that came with it in the first place weighs heavily on their minds.

This is where the different levels of FWB can be explored.  The fact that two people remained friends after a breakup shows that there had to have been some part of their relationship that neither one wanted to lose.  Why be afraid to explore how far that can go without tipping the scale to a full-blown relationship?  They may find that they liked everything about the relationship, except for the C-word, “commitment.”  Remove the burden of commitment and you may have a good time with each other once again.

But, human emotions are not always that simple.  Our minds get flooded with all of the “what-ifs,” and that can be very frightening.  I suggest they explore the little things, such as cuddling and kissing, and leave sex out of it, at least at first.  Easier said than done, which makes it more imperative to set ground rules ahead of time.

Friends with Benefits will forever remain in the American language for years to come.  It will be something for some people to try and something many others will not.  For those brave souls who wish to venture into this volatile territory, they need to be well prepared for the trip, like going to the Moon, but much more dangerous.  Make sure you pack all of your protective gear, and have fun.