Damien & Roman: Forever (Part One)

Blurb:

Damien & Roman Forever:

     Meet Roman.  He is a gay romance writer, a screenwriter and a father of quads.  He also used to be a woman.  Roman was born Rachelle and after coming out to his parents and having surgery is now living his life as Roman.
     Meet Damien. He is an architect who is also an out and proud gay man. He is a father of quads and is happily married to Roman.
     Join Damien and Roman as they share the tale of their lives.  Their coming out stories, how they met, fell in love, started a family and coped with being not only a gay couple, but an interracial gay couple raising children in modern day America, with one of the parents being transgender.
     Told as if Damien and Roman are being interviewed, "Damien & Roman: Forever" gives you the reader a chance to experience a side of the LGBT community that few if any, are ever privy to.

Part One:

Roman's Introduction

     I'd always hated my vagina.  I think that's the reason it was so easy for me to get the surgery done.  I had spent most of my life pretending as if it didn't exist.  I walked around, acted and even fucked as if I was born with a cock in between my legs.  I should have been born that way.

     By some strange twist of fate, divine, pre-retribution for all of the shit that I would create later on in life, I was born a woman.  Not even a curvaceous, sexy one at that.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I had my moments.  There were times when even I stood and stared at myself in awe, but they weren't many.

     My parents had five other children.  I was just one of six, so I was expendable, replaceable, which they proved to me the day I sat them down and told them I was a gay man on the inside and not the straight woman that they expected me to be.

     I expected the anger, the venomous words, the Scripture that they hurled at me, the fire and brimstone that they tried calling down.  I didn't expect the hysterical laughter that proceeded it.

     "I'm a gay man too Rachelle," my mother giggled, sitting between my father and stepfather.  Bot of whom grinned widely at what they thought was my obvious sense of humor.  I'm hilarious.  I spent a lot of time making people laugh, but I'd only recently come to the conclusion that if I made them laugh then they were too busy to see how miserable I really was.  It was why I had devoted most of my life to making others smile and being the life of the party, making sure that everyone had fun and that they were all laughing.  No one paid much attention to the ravaged look of hopelessness and despair on your face when you were making them laugh all the time.

     My parents continued laughing and I let them.  Their hysterical laughter was so much better than what i knew was coming.  When their laughter stopped I cleared my throat and handed them the pamphlets and the copies of the receipts that I had made for my genital reassignment surgery.  The surgery wasn't cheap, neither was the therapist that I'd been seeing so that I could get the surgery.  I had invested a lot of time and money into this.  This chance, this opportunity for me to be happy finally, to be comfortable in my own body.

     I was serious.  And now they knew.

     I told them that I'd had to do therapy first, and then I'd had to take testosterone treatments but that I would be having the surgery soon...with or without their support.  They said it would be without it...seconds before kicking me out of their house and disowning me.

     It was a good thing I'd already packed up my car.

     I didn't look back.  I just grabbed the keys to my white SUV that I'd left on the kitchen counter and walked out of the door.  I climbed in my vehicle that was stuffed with all of my belongings and drove away.  I had no idea where I was going, only that I was going.  I drove for hours with a large smile on my face, singing along to Lady Gaga's new album.

     I may have lost my family, but I'd found myself, which was so much better.  And you know what?  If I had not left that day, I wouldn't have ended up where I did.  I wouldn't have met Cody who is married to Kelvin who has a brother named Damien, who ended up being the love of my life.