Prologue:
I’m driving away from my dusty driveway in the hot Oklahoma sun, watching as my mother, Natasha Still Water, stares longingly in the distance. Two things she couldn’t deal with, me being Two Spirit, and another thing she didn’t know, I am kinky. BDSM was a foreign word to me, I barely knew the term, but I knew it was a part of me since birth. I just wanted to experience it with someone…My mother had to take care of my older brother Joshua and younger sister Aiyanna. Our father, Brad Peterson, left her after a rocky marriage because the Muskogee nation couldn’t take my mother marrying an Anglo man. He was irresponsible, and didn’t care much for us kids anyhow.
My father left when I was seventeen, he was a heavy smoker, alcoholic, and domestic abuser. It would pain me to see the welts upon my mother’s face and body after he had stormed out of the trailer to visit the local bar to get further drunk. Also, he was eyeing me because I was still female bodied, and thought he could try to get away with sexually molesting me or worse. My older brother, Joshua, was luckily there to protect me from any further advances my father might’ve tried to make. I often had to shield my sister Aiyanna from any advances he’d tried to make on her.
Finally, when I turned twenty-two, I decided to join the local Two Spirit group within the community, denounced to my mother not knowing. It would take a couple years for her to figure out that I met every Wednesday, and Friday with a secret congregation of queer folks. Joshua reassured her I was just “hanging out with the girls;” or “experimenting” something my younger sister hasn’t tried yet.
“It’s just… I worry about Brianna,” Natasha murmured. “ I don’t want her getting caught up in the wrong crowd.”
At times I would tend to the horses, their subtle body movements spoke more to me than any capable oral tongue. But somehow, after all this struggling, I had to come out and tell her. First, I told my mother that I was pan sexual, and she thought I had a love affair with pots and pans. When I turned 28, I came out to her as transgender.
Chapter 1: Introductions
I took a trip to Los Angeles (by truck) because I had to escape the doldrums of the reservation.
On the way, I had fallen in love with a honey-blonde, long haired, petite beauty at the local Starbucks.
Little did I know, that several years from now it would blossom into a full fledged relationship.
I was escaping the wrath of my mother, the confusion of my older brother and younger sister, and reminiscing about the Anglo father I never knew growing up. I changed my birth name (Brianna) to Bronx, cut my hair to reflect the style most young men wore at that time, and began to deal with my life as a transgender male. Yeah, I was a wreck. My mother was expecting me to marry a young man within the Muskogee nation, but I kept telling her that I was struggling with myself. I was in the wrong body, the conformity was too much for me, and I wanted a change of scenery from this constant sadness that plagued me day in and out.
So, here I am in April of 2006, in my late twenties, wearing a binder around my already size B cups- pre-everything. At the table next to me, was the honey-blonde, long haired beauty reading out of her UCLA law book, wearing a pink sweatshirt and gray tight fitting yoga stretch pants. I gently walk up to her, eyeing the empty seat, and in my teenage cracking boy voice ask her, “ Is this seat taken, is it alright if I sit next to you?”
Expecting a rejection, from someone so fine, I cringed inside. She looked up from her law book, and inquisitively asked me, “Are you a long way from home? Sure, you’re most welcome to sit with me. I’m Brycee, I figured you’re not a native to Los Angeles…”
I hoarsely laughed. “ A bit, and I’m not a native of Los Angeles, but I am Native…The name’s Bronx.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Where from?”
“Oklahoma, Muskogee/Creek nation.”
“It’s just, the first thing I noticed about you, Bronx, was your smile, and your hazel eyes.”
My neck flushed. “Uh, thanks, you’re quite stunning yourself. I had to escape my hometown, because as nice as Oklahoma is…I feel like I’m trying to run away from something bigger than me.”
“Well,” Brycee mused. “ My parents and I have a guest room in our ranch in the Napa countryside! I’m sure we’d be willing to help you out if you need it…”
So that’s how our relationship started, and as you can imagine the rest is history…
