Four years after marriage and 3-1/2 years of marriage counseling, I left husband #2 by driving away in a new motor home I had just purchased with the monies made from selling my condo. The only way ‘out’ from our house on the small mountain in La Mesa (San Diego) was down a steep hill with many curves: the scared-as-hell feeling (this was my first trip) was compensated by the true feeling of freedom I hadn’t had in four years. I had to agree with Martin Luther King, I was “Free at last”. I knew that I would never return even though I had promised the husband that I would.

After three years in RI (my home from birth until age 16), it finally occurred to me that one can never ‘go home’. I didn’t have any family and no children to worry about – I was free as a bird. I had imagined that I would return to RI and pick up with all the friends I had made in my youth but I discovered that they were parents of grown children and some were even grandparents. How did they get to be so old! Having lunch with a handful of friends once in a while wasn’t enough to hold me so I sold almost everything I had in that little rented beach house and I took off in the motor home which had been sitting for 3 years – except for a few trips to Maine and NH and Vermont to visit other friends.

As I was getting the motor home ready (new batteries, tires and engine checked) I had heard about a group of single people, each with their own RV, who belonged to a group which met up all over the United States. Adventure! Sounded great and maybe I would meet a nice man! Wrong. I learned very quickly that the odds were good that I would meet some man but the goods would be odd. With more single women traveling alone, the few men were in great demand by women who didn’t care about their character – all he had to be was a male. Fortunately, there were several women with discerning tastes and we became friends: not man-haters, just not wishing to become one a string of affairs. One of my favorite men, with whom I am still friends, told me that he called all the women he had been with ‘his team’: he told me that I could be part of his team if I wanted to but I informed him that I really wasn’t a team player. And that is why we are still friends after ten years. But I digress.

I began traveling and caravanning with a few singles groups of RV’ers and had a great time: loved the campfires and the pot lucks and hiking and dancing. There were about 100 of us in Ajo, AZ for the National Fiddlers Contest, although some fiddled around, none of us played a fiddle. The attraction was we could park at the Moose Lodge out in the barren dessert (for free) and the hall where the contest was held had a huge, beautiful dance floor. Because the women outnumbered the men by three to one, at least, the ‘rule’ was that the men ‘had to’ dance with all the women, even if they had a current favorite.

I happened to be asked to dance (didn’t happen very often – for a few reasons, I am guessing: one being that I was a bit taller than many of the men and maybe, but I’m still just guessing, a little more outspoken about how I felt when the men peed on my tires – like a dog, marking their territory.) I have a very bad habit that if a man isn’t going to lead, then I will because someone needs to. So, in the middle of that wonderful and fairly crowded dance floor, the man I was dancing with stopped, and in a very loud voice said to me, “Did you want to lead or are you going to let ME lead?!” Being known for having a caustic sense of humor, I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry. Ever since the sex change I forget sometimes.” Well, he no longer held me close but now at arms length and we finished the dance – with me still leading. I think he was too shocked to tell anyone because other men did ask me to dance and they managed to know how to lead.

Every morning, the group would meet out in the compound area for something called “Hugs and Mugs”. The women hugged everyone but the men only hugged the women – they shook hands with the other men. I saw the dancing partner way across the compound and decided to sashay all the way over to him. I got up real close and said “Well, I’ll bet you don’t know whether to hug me or shake my hand” and I gave him a little smile (well, it was more like a smirk) and off I went. The events of the day were discussed at these Hugs & Mugs gatherings and some were going to go hiking or sightseeing or three-wheeling. A few of us decided to clean house or cook or read or just hang around. Things were quiet and I assumed that my lack-of-lead dancing partner (although ‘partner’ isn’t really accurate) hadn’t said a word to anyone about my comment and that was a good thing. What a fool I was to be so naïve: not only had he told someone, he had told the leader of the group. There was a little knock on my door and there stood the leader – at that time it was a rather tall and overweight woman – and she told me that I couldn’t be part of the group if I had had a sex change. I was so flabbergasted that the ‘partner’ had actually believed it: I thought he might tell someone as a joke but not for real. I stood there looking at this huge woman and just couldn’t keep myself from blurting out, “Oh, I’m so sorry to have started this trouble because it isn’t true.” As I was about to continue and tell her how it came about (with the bad leading) she interrupted and reiterated that it wasn’t acceptable. Since I had already kind of tired of the group (because I found them boring, without any purpose other than to try having fun, and because I was just waiting for the patent to come through) I thought, ‘what the hell’ and I QUICKLY said, “When I said it wasn’t true, that is actually only a part of the story – you see, I couldn’t afford the whole sex change so I just took hormones and it affected me from the waist up. If I can save enough money, I’ll have the other half done.”

I’m still in touch with many in the group because they understand that it is my sense of humor which is a little strange – not my body.