235. Posted by Nye , Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 10:46 PM, in

It's a surprisingly chilly Thursday morning and I'm standing on the sidewalk of what essentially is a typical street in the guts of inner city Sydney. I've got my backpack slung over one shoulder and am hunched against the slice of wind that should be reserved for winter. Fuck it's cold. Wish I'd brought a jacket.

Peter's voice runs through my head. "Soft cock." I chuckle.

I'm staring up at three little numbers with my hands jammed in my jeans pockets, people moving around me, all in a hurry to be somewhere. 235. Two hundred and thirty five. Macquarie street to be precise. It's been less than 24 hours since my encounter with the GP and I've managed to wedge myself into a cancellation at Dr Toohey's offices. Yep, on level 4 of that building is the next guy I have to make understand I'm a dude.

So I can get another letter to go somewhere else. It's a strange game of 'scavenger hunt' that I'm playing here.

I'm standing on the street because the problem is that I'm something like an hour early for this one, unwilling as I was to brave running late in the scandal that is Sydney morning traffic. Although I could've taken the train and probably gotten here about 5 minutes before my 8:50am, public transport and I are not friends, so my beloved drove me in, dropped me off and made a beeline for the nearest Kinokuniya bookstore.

There's a cafe next door so I hunch my way in there and take a seat in the corner, scanning the billboard menu. A guy who obviously owns the place heads over.

"Good morning sir, what can I get you?"

I smile wryly, pleased with his gender pronoun but knowing what's about to happen even though I'm speaking in my low, rough morning tone.. the closest thing I've got to a guy voice.

"Can I grab a French Toast, no extra fruit, no cinnamon and the syrup on the side please. Uh, and a chocolate milkshake too thanks."

He goes red and fumbles the order onto his notepad, mumbling an apology to the 'ma'am' sitting in front of him, then retreats behind the counter to cough out an order to the cook.

I sigh. Really, people feeling embarrassed and like they've offended me leeches the joy out of being recognised correctly, and I feel so bad about it. I'm looking forward to that going away more than I can say.

My drink turns up in double time. The french toast takes a little longer because they screw it up and make me pancakes for some reason, so I get it to go and then dump it in a bin out of sight up the street.

The time's upon me now and I walk up three white marble steps into the main marble lined foyer of the building. It's a stately old set of offices, the wall plaque to my left covered in brass name chits - doctors and lawyers all. I scan the board.. my guy is on the 4th floor so I step past them and into a lift that feels like something out of the 40's. Punch in level 4. Here we go.

A slightly hair raising ride later I get out of the lift as fast as I can. A single brown door confronts me from across the hallway that I proceed to try and open. It's locked. Hrm. I knock a couple of times and get buzzed in, tripping over a pile of mail leaning against the doorframe.

A kindly looking man in his 60's, grey hair and average height greets me as I lean over to pick up his letters with the quip of "Mail-call. Special delivery." He laughs and ushers me into his office which is conspicuously bare of any of those laying on couch things you see on TV. I take a seat on the 3 seater leather couch while he settles into a single seater across from me.

He asks for the GP letter and has a quick read, before commencing the session. I instantly front with my carefully prepared joke about spending part of the day of my 2 year anniversary in a shrinks office. He does me the courtesy of not writing down that I use humour to deflect uncomfortable situations.

I'm not going to go into a blow by blow of the session, needless to say that for most of it I wanted to leap across the room and steal the paper he was making so many notes on. I have no doubt of his complete professionalism and completely recommend him to any FtM's or MtF's that may need their letter to proceed to hormone therapy because he was amazing.. I'm just not great under such a bright personal spotlight.

His questions centered around my childhood, my friends, my family, my anxiety levels during my life and when I started to realise what was wrong with me. He had to keep pulling me back with questions like 'But how did you feel?' and 'Tell me how that effected you - I really want you to feel it.' all the time.

I guess, on reflection, I was drawing the conversations naturally away from focusing on me via deflection techniques that seem so natural I don't even know I'm doing it. He was understanding though and we got there in the end. As he was preparing the paperwork I'd need for the next step he left me with one very important piece of information.

"Nye - I want you to accept the anxiety you feel about your situation, you don't have to be strong about this, but allow it to flow up and then work with it. At the moment, it's completely repressed and that's not healthy. While I don't want you to allow it to disable and overwhelm you, to do need to accept that it's effecting you and then work through it."

That statement alone said volumes to me - ie: the deflection thing. As you will have seen from my previous posts, my life consists of a daily churn of screwed up due to my GID, and that's something I guess I've just come to accept. I have the philosophy in life that if something is fucking with you, no amount of tears, screaming, fighting, drugs, breakdowns etc are going to make a difference - you have to DEAL with the thing that's fucking with you.

Once that gets done, everything is fixed and you're happy again. That makes sense to me.

I thank him, and he refers me to an Endocrinologist who is a personal favourite of his, asking me to call him when I have an appointment booked so he can send the letter I need directly to her seeing as I don't have a GP. It's the best possible result I could've hoped for.

I pay for the session, $330 bucks that is mostly covered by Medicare, and then go back down the crazy elevator, and back out into the biting cold.

Step 2, done. The next step is booking that appointment with the Endo so they can take up bloodwork and fit me out with the best 'T' for my system.

It's all coming together.