After I had healed completely from sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and had stretched my new vagina out to what was truly impressive capacity beyond anyone told me to expect, my life became all about sex for a while. I didn't just take the new body out for a test drive, I took it on the racing circuit.

Sex had always taken serious mental gymnastics before my gender transition. And when pre-operative and living full-time as a woman, it was an even greater minefield. After SRS and labiaplasty -- which was my very last surgery among several, including facial feminization surgery -- I was complete, and wanted to make up for lost decades. And boy howdy, did I. I am embarrassed about what I slut I became.

Sex became so important and such a constant focus, I started to doubt my own motivation for transitioning.  I had always told myself I did it because I always felt like a woman born into the wrong body.  But I began to wonder if the people who thought of transsexuals as just fetishizing female bodies to the ultimate extent were right. I was obsessed with sex. I wanted it and needed it as often as possible. And not just regular sex. I wanted it every weird, kinky and extreme way I could get it. In some bizarre way, all that varied sex validated me. Every time someone fucked me or did something new to me, it screamed "female!" in the depths of my soul. I guess I was still insecure about the fullness of my newfound womanhood, and had to prove it to myself, over and over.  It became a repeated act of urgent desperation.

I became an exhibitionist, so happy with my new body and sexuality that I wanted to show it off to anyone who would see. I had sex with men, women, couples and groups. I engaged in sex shows for live audiences and later for web audiences. I did things I had never even heard of before. And every, single time I used it as "proof" that I had reached my goal. After all, if I can get so intimate as to fuck you and let you do kinky things with all parts of my body, and if I can do it with multiple people and with people watching -- and if no one realizes, "Hey! That's a transsexual!!!" -- then I somehow prove to myself that I can blend in as a female in every possible situation.  And if I can even do the ultimate thing that female bodies are made for, without anyone suspecting anything unusual about me, then who can tell me I am not woman enough to have a woman's life?  Who can say that I am a freak, or sick, or immoral, or to be relegated to the fringes of society, a virtual outcase?   And all that in turn meant that as far as the entire world was concerned I was finally and completely a woman.  Not a woman with an asterisk.  Not a man in a dress.  But woman enough for a straight man (or a gay woman) to fuck and feel only good about it.

Today, my behavior during that time horrifies me. Not because I'm ashamed of what I did, for I am not.  One of the things I had to give up when undergoing my transition in front of everyone I knew was my sexual shame. When absolutely everyone in your life can see your darkest secret play out in front of them in slow motion, you learn to give up shame. Instead, I am horrified because now I realize how dangerous it was. All it would have taken was for one of those multi-male groups or sex parties to realize who they were fucking, and I could have easily wound up dead.  There is nothing so dangerous to one like me as a straight man who suddenly realizes that he is being sexually intimate with a person who used to have a penis. There are very few straight men in America who could meet that discovery with aplomb. I was very, very lucky. And stupid. And more lucky.

I'm not sure when the fever finally went away. But it took a long time. Years. Eventually, though, I started finding real life much more important than sex. I guess somewhere along the way I finally convinced myself that I really was able to live life as a woman, without my past threatening to steal it all away. After enough men -- and women! -- got up close and personal with every millimeter of my naked body, and not once expressed any feeling that something wasn't quite right, I finally started believing in my own success. 

Then, sometime later, I went off hormones completely, and my sex drive pretty much dried up.

Today, I enjoy sex when I have time and energy for it, but it's not a priority in my life. Part of that is because I am older. Part of it is just becoming comfortable and experienced in my new life and body, such that sex has found it's rightful place in my life.  I no longer have anything to prove to myself or to the world.

And I am relieved to find that I am not some extreme fetishist after all; I'm just a woman, with a job and a family and bills to pay.

They say our gender transitions continue long after our surgeries are complete. I guess mine did. I think my huge, perpetual sex binge was just part of my transition to womanhood. It was something I needed to do to prove it to myself in the face of decades of negative messages heaped on me from all parts of society.

I'm just glad I skated and didn't pay dearly for my stupidity.