Better Than Sex

Music is my ultimate drug. It picks me up when I’m low and soothes me when I’m keyed up. It’s instant bliss on tap. Music lessened the Hell of my teenage years and breezed me through four years of military service. It kept me from killing myself during the loneliest and most desperate parts of my transition in the 1980s and several hideous life periods after that. It saved my ass over and over.

I was a late bloomer when it came to Rock. My first music was Classical and the folksy, hip stuff my mom enjoyed during my grade school years. (Think Simon & Garfunkel.) Rock music entered my consciousness when I was fourteen. Robin Trower and The Who threw an internal switch and connected my overly sensitive soul with the visceral, heart-pounding energy of guitar-centric rock.

In the 1970s, long before the Internet, record stores offered a plethora of choices on vinyl platters and cassette tapes. Having discovered marijuana, I loved mind-expanding Prog Rock—Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Yes, etc.—as much as I did Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy and Led Zepplin. By the time I hit 18 there was nothing better than puffing on a joint or dropping LSD, slipping on headphones and immersing myself for hours in a myriad of intricate and even bizarre melodies.

I began playing electric guitar in the Air Force. Music beat even marijuana as an antidote to the regimented boredom of military life. Music saw me through 56 hours of nonstop driving from an Air Force base near Chicago to San Francisco. To this day, the haunting beauty of Jeff Beck’s “Diamond Dust” brings me back to the desolate, midnight highway on I-80 in Nevada, 44 hours into the trip— dazed but at perfect peace.

During my Air Force service I hung with civilian rock musicians in Phoenix who were my guitar tutors. The more I learned to play, the more deeply I connected with it. The same held true for singing. By the early 1980s, my musician friends started to see me as a potential lead singer. However, I was inexorably drawn back to San Francisco, where a huge revelation would eventually change my life forever.

In 1985, soon after I turned twenty-seven, I finally admitted I was a transsexual woman. With no small drama I left my marriage to pursue my physical transition. Over the next year I faced ridicule and rejection on a daily basis. Even my musician friends shunned the new me. I thought I’d never be in another band again. Even the heroin and PCP I dove into couldn’t salve my pain like the music could. Music somehow made my tears less bitter. Sometimes my guitar did my screaming for me.

In mid-1988, when I finally got clean and sober, music was the only drug I had left. For years after, I missed being able to take a few puffs off a doobie to enhance my music listening pleasure, but eventually I found I didn’t need drugs to appreciate the complex tapestry of the instrumental music I most favored.

In 1994, I formed an original rock band with an amazing female guitar player. We played our first gig in San Francisco in early 1995, recorded a CD in 1996, eventually moved to Los Angeles, and played our last gig in late 2001. At 44 years, I was too old to continue the insane hours and hard work required of indie musicians. But I got to live my dream of playing live for seven amazing years. And I still sing and play guitar every day.

I only hope that you, Dear Reader, have at least one thing in your life about which you are as passionate as I am about music. I won’t presume to hold forth on The Secret of Happiness. However, I urge you to discover what give you joy and give yourself to it. Don’t be surprise when it gives back to you many times over.

Selah.