 Right. Mr. Sian, thank you very much for being part of Inside Another History, the fireside chat. Well, thank you for having me. This is really exciting. Great. So when we were preparing for this chat, you said about the Christian Jorgensen story, that that was actually your story. For the benefit of the audience, would you explain who Christian Jorgensen was and why this story so relates to you? Well, I'm going to practice a little bit by saying that when I was young, my family used to go to drive-in movies. They were kind of original, like, once or twice a month. And one night, we decided to go to this movie, and they set double features back then. So the second movie that was in the feature was called Christian Jorgensen Story. And I was, you know, younger, and I remember my age. But it was about a person who went through transsexual surgery in Denmark, a successful transsexual surgery. And I remember seeing that movie, and it resonated with me. I felt like that was my story. It was the first inclination I had that I was different in power. But it scared the crap out of me, actually, because there wasn't anything that I'd seen or heard of back then. There was no reference. All I could see is this movie about this person that I felt I could identify with. So that's kind of the story behind that one. Why did it register so strongly with you? What was going on with you internally, emotionally with that? Actually, there wasn't anything at the time that was... It was just something that I identified with. I was actually too young. It was very pre-cubescent. So I was not dealing with any kind of sexuality or anything. But I think, and I believe that gender is not something that you are socially influenced by. It's how you're wired. And I think that was an indication to me about how I was wired. Now, how it affected me a little bit later is a different story. Because it scared me. I pretty much kind of went into denial about it for the rest of my life. But for a large part of my life. Let's take a bit of a step back. Please, tell us a little bit about your early life, your family, where you're from. I was born in New Orleans. My mom was originally from Belfast, Ireland. My dad was born in New Orleans. Overseas or in New Orleans. And my mom was not a very healthy person. I was the fourth child being born, but the first one had survived. I had two sisters and a brother that didn't survive with miscarriages. And I had a 50-50 chance. I had asthma and stuff. And I was about seven years old. The doctors had told my parents that the climate like out in California was much better for me. And would be a little bit better for my health. So my dad went ahead and made arrangements with the company he was working for. To get transferred out here to Los Angeles. So we moved out here. And we lived actually not too far from here for the first year. And my dad bought a house in Corvina, which is about 30 miles east of here. And that's where I pretty much grew up. And my family life was pretty normal. I had a younger brother as well, by the four years. We had a pretty tight family, but my dad had, after buying the house, had to work a lot of overtime. To make sure he could pay the bills, pay the mortgage and stuff. And my mom, who had not been healthy, was diabetic. She had a lot of coma, she had bad liver. She had to work with a lot of medical men. And the stress of my dad working a lot and things and her health, she started drinking. And unfortunately she became an alcoholic. And it was, I mean I had a really great childhood. I was never mistreated really. I was never, I mean we had a good family life, but with my mom, would drink. She was not a nice person. So she would be verbally abusive to my father. And my dad has a patience of saint. So growing up I got to witness a lot of different dynamics about behavior and about self-control and about addiction. Which influenced me a lot in my later life about how I grew up. But there were also teachers. And they taught me a lot of lessons about, for example, I was taught to question things. Not to believe everything that you're hearing. I was told that the only thing I was given when I came into this world was time. And how I used it was my choice, but once I realized that once it ran out there was no more. And no matter how much money or how successful you could be, when your time comes it comes. And you're never going to know if it's the next day or in 70 years so you could use time wisely. So I pretty much kept those with it. It wasn't spectacular or unusual other than kind of living my kind of secret life inside as a, to myself. But taking a step back to your family, you said that you learned a lot of life lessons. You learned a lot about people and a lot about life. What are some of the main points you took from that? What sorts of things did your parents teach you about people and life and things? Well, important in the South, it was all about matters. And that was very important. My mom had a lot of the ideals from Ireland and Europe itself about behavior. I remember Spain, discipline to my parents was maybe sending me to my room and that explained to me why it was wrong and what I did if I got in trouble. It wasn't about necessary punishment. It was about you need to know what you did wrong so that you can correct it. You know, people can say they're sorry all they want but it's their actions that matter. And I was pretty much brought up to say that, which I kind of modified a little bit later years, but I tell people that we all fuck up. We all make mistakes with what you do naturally that defines who you are and your character. And that was one of the lessons I learned early on too is that don't be afraid of failure. Don't be afraid of being wrong. It doesn't make you a bad person. And to use any kind of failure as a lesson. Lesson to be better in life. Lesson to improve on yourself. Or in the lesson that you can learn by somebody else's behavior. Sometimes not what to do, but what not to do. Coming back to your younger years, you said that you really enjoyed Batman and Capri. Tell us a bit about that. Well, I grew up in, I'll be 65 next week actually. You know, I grew up when the Batman series was in regular rotation every week. And it was always a two-part show. And at the end of the first episode, they were always captured by the villain. So it was always kind of a predicament. It was never that they were going to, you know, shoot them or pretty much that. They then tied up and swinging over a pendulum or some kind of silly thing like that. But to me, the bondage was exciting. I enjoyed it in that. I was like, that's just cool. And as far as Caprim, when it goes out, you know, I'm so glad it's boring. I kind of identified with that character. I thought she was hot. But you know, if I had to be anybody in that show, that's the one that I would want to be. But yeah, it was probably my first beginning to realize that I had a king. Okay, rather than anything sexual or gender-wise, it was all I knew was that stuff at the end of the first episode, and then getting tied up and being a predicament bondage and stuff, was always the exciting part for me. Did you have any idea of the implications of this? No. But I do know that when I think of my brothers and his friends and stuff, they said, you know, if it was Cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers or whatever, I had a lot of joy in doing the capturing and tying them up or being captured and being tied up. So, and as I started to get a little bit older, and I started experimenting in my room, you know, at night, after bedtime and right with the sleep, you know, get some rope tied to ankles or wrists or do something and all, I knew it was really exciting. I was still too young to, you know, to get sexually aroused, but eventually that happened. But for many years, you harbored a secret inside. What was your secret? Why were you keeping that secret? Well, again, it went back to that self-identification with transgender. I knew that it was different. I was somewhat, basically I was denial publicly, but inside I knew there was something. I knew how I felt. I knew what was comfortable to me as far as my identity towards other boys and girls. And when I started going to a library, the only thing I could find in that library was things about it being a mental illness. Homosexuality, transsexualism, all those things were medically and psychologically bad. And then to complicate it, as I started to realize the key part of my life when I was looking at those kind of things, then that wasn't necessarily the same kind of sickness, but it was considered a perversion. It would sound as bad to me too. So it's like, oh my God, everything that I'm into, the world is against, everything that I'm into is bad. I'm this thing that nobody wants this accepting of. If I tell somebody they're going to think I'm sick, I'm mentally ill, I'm psychologically not okay. And I didn't think so. I thought I was just fine. It was something that I was not about to disclose. At that point in my life, I started getting involved in sports with the asthma that had been cleared up pretty much. And so I used my participation in sports to become an overkeeper and to kind of hide the fact of who I was. And it wasn't until later in my life when I went to therapy that I found out what I was doing and thought was living my life to be the person that other people wanted me to be. But I was afraid it wouldn't accept me for who I was. So I excelled in basketball. I excelled in baseball. When I first started running in high school, my first two-mile race in cross-country stuck. I remember it was like 13 minutes and 44 seconds. But I worked really hard. Because that was my epic growing up when my parents taught me. It was 110 percent. And I worked and worked and worked. And by the time I was a junior, I had fast time in the league. I was going to state finals. And also it was really good because I had this letterman's jacket. I had more medals than anybody in the school. And I could be that macho person, that jock. And thinking that nobody will know about me. And I still wasn't sure whether I was straight or gay. Because I identified more with being female than dating female. I mean, not that I didn't feel that I was gay. Because I'm very confused. Because I like girls. And I like being with them. But I didn't really picture myself sexually. And I didn't act with them. So that was pretty much my secret from a long, long time. And it wasn't until later years with some publications like Hand Health Variations and Forum. And things that people would have the letters that they would describe some of their activity. That I realized that there's more people in the world that are not the only one. And I may not be that bad person that I read the medical books and then I gave my hand up. But when you were reading these, you were learning that it was viewed as something bad. What did that evoke for you? Did you feel that you need to suppress it even more? Did this cause difficulty? It had to be very confusing. Oh, extremely. I mean, you have self-doubts. And I think that's why I tended to overcompensate in things. Whatever I did, if it was schoolwork, I did good to be the best in the class. If it was sports, I wanted to be the one that was going to win. And it wasn't only to feel accepted or to fool everybody. It was also something that I thought that I needed to do for acceptance. I was afraid, and it wasn't even conscious at that time, it was subconscious, that I wanted my parents to be proud of me. I wanted people to look at me and respect me for my achievements because if they really knew what was inside, then they would associate it with mental illness and stuff. And having three siblings that didn't make it, I felt kind of old-pressured to be the person that... I wanted to be the person that my parents wanted me to be. I mean, like all parents do, they want your children to be successful and stuff. And in my mind, I was already... I already had two strikes against me. I was feeling like I was transgender and kinky. And all these things are telling me that these are abnormal. You know, inside, you're telling yourself, you know, I'm the pride in joy. I'm the first one that lives. And now I'm flawed, I'm sick, I'm abnormal. You know, those are pretty intense. But fortunately, because my family was supportive and I had a good family, I could say that I was lucky enough to never go through a suicidal. It's hard that I never put myself in a situation where I wanted to die. I felt that I was happy in life. I had a secret. I could live with that secret, nor he needed to know it wasn't affecting me outwardly, only inwardly. Did you ever try to explore that side of yourself at all as a young person? Did you simply ignore it and pursue your other achievements? Or did you ever explore that? As young, I did not explore it outwardly in those books. I think there was a part of me that didn't want to know more everything. And actually, you know, back in those days, there was no internet or anything. So you went to a library and you looked at the card catalog for things. And I literally looked up everything I could in that library on transsexualism, transvestism, you name it. And you went literally, it was like three or four references. So I felt that I went through everything I could in the library and there was nothing positive about it. So at that point it was kind of, you know, do I really want to know more and how do I know more? I've read books and read everything I can read and all of these medical books and psychological books in there. But I can't, I don't want to tell my family. And I sure as hell don't want to go tell a doctor because they're the ones that's writing and telling me that I'm bad, you know, sick and I'm perverted and I'm not normal. So it was like, this is something that I can deal with and I will find another outlet. And that other outlet was something that was going to make me happy that would keep my focus externally rather than internally. So you followed convention and you got married. You had three children. Tell us your thoughts on that. Have you any regrets about that time in your life? Oh, no. I mean, when I got married I was because I was in love. And, you know, and then, by the time I got married, I had already started, let's come back to this a little bit. When I was old enough to go into an adult book store, I went into the store and I saw publications about this. And all of a sudden that's when I felt that I'm not alone. There are more people like me. And maybe it's not that bad. So then they had books like Everything You Want to Go About Sex. They had like five pages on bondage and SNM. And so that was a book that was not negative. That was a book about the people in general. So I bought that book and I read it. And those thoughts about being sick and perverted were starting to fade away. And maybe then people that wrote those books didn't understand. So when I got married I had already learned a little bit more about that there was a king out there. I started to explore that king through publications and reading different magazines and books. So when I got married I kind of at that point thought that when I was as bisexual and I was a cross-chessor. So I still had come to terms with being transsexual. So I thought, I'm in love. I'm enjoying sex. I'm still attracted to men. But I love women and I'm having sex with women and it's really good and I'm having fun with it. And another woman I love with and we had kids and I would have changed that for the world. My first son was born to Sarah. My second one was born in the birth center. My daughter was born at home in our bedroom. And I held a liver. Was that intentional? Yes. We had planned it. We spent that life having helped give birth to my daughter and hold her right there in our bedroom and stuff is something that I would not trade for the world. It was kind of no regrets. And probably the only regret that I would say and I have right now is that a little bit often with my father my mom died when she was 46 from cirrhosis because we were drinking. My dad was 70 and I weighed back and forth for a number of years to tell him about me and I never did. And I guess we can maybe talk about that after but I think he knew and he think he was trying to let me know he knew but I was afraid to say something. But my family, my kids and I raised them to be open minded. My son is very accepting of my lifestyle. My gender change. My daughter works with me here at Sanctuary as one of my directors, board of directors and as operations and CFO. I have been blessed when it comes to family, my many. Did your ex-wife know about this? It's an interesting one. I kind of broke it to her with everything you want to know about sex book especially paying attention to the king part and the cross-dressing part. So we started experimenting and playing with it and she was fine with it because it was spiced everything up. I still was not honest about my inner feelings but again there was still part of me in denial on it because I thought that it might be bisexual but now Kinky is okay. And I had someone in my life that I could share that with and we could play with bondage and things and explore. Okay, do you still enjoy a good relationship with her? Yes, I got divorced in 2007 with her. We're still friends. I am currently married. I got married since someone I had known. I had known now for 13 years and developed through RDS and evolved into more and got married in 2017 and very happy and my ex is friends with her. My ex is also married so everybody still gets together on holidays and both families because when bonds are together still it's effective for young children which are all grown. My oldest one will be 41 this year and my youngest one will be 34. Tell us about your coming out. How did this evolve for you to finally be who you were inside? A couple different paths. It took a little while but I'm originally when I came to college I went into the corporate world and since I had a corporate background the company I was with was going to be moving to North Carolina and I didn't want to go and at that job I was the director of operations and some of the people that worked there were the music business. I got to meet musicians and producers and stage managers and I got involved and I always loved music. I couldn't play it, I always loved it. I got to meet all these people I started working with these bands and helping them out so when the company decided to move I decided to work get involved in the music industry and I started working on putting on small concerts and rock and roll shows and doing that gave me a couple of things in life I was happy doing it I could dress and be in power one and since this was kind of in the day with heavy metal I could wear leather I could take in a I was very improgenous I had the I made that black fingernail very tight pants and dry and full leather jacket and when I came out to the community, to the world so to speak I thought I was afraid of rejection I was afraid that the people who I worked with was going to have a problem the bands that I managed was going to have a problem my friends were going to have a problem but it was just the opposite when I told everybody because I transitioned the way I did kind of gradually it was more like now it makes sense we didn't know if you were kind of in a glam God-seeing or whether you were gay or we didn't know but now it answers questions and everybody accepted it and I learned later on from the therapist my therapist said when people have a problem with their transitions sometimes it's because they show one day a 3D suit and then they dress and you're dealing with maybe your whole life with other people in your life that's all of a sudden wide opening and it takes a little time to deal with it and adjust to that now when that was my coming out publicly a little earlier than that I had already transitioned in early my transition I had my male outside life and being out inside life when I went to do the stuff in the music business I was Pat and when I was in my real mode I identified as Katie so my went back to my divorce which didn't go smoothly because when I did kind of branch this to my ex I was coming when I was into it and I thought that it might be a little bit more than that but she came up with something and she started doing some research and I think she inspired her I think she thought she was losing her husband and we had a serious conversation about she didn't want to be involved in this anymore and so I purged and I put everything up on my clothing and she was very cold for a while and she finally told me that she was upset because I didn't throw it away that it was still there so it means that it wasn't out of my life and that was the beginning of our separation and as our separation went both farther it got a little uglier and she had moved away of North and wouldn't let me know where my kids were and so it was very traumatic and my son had an accident in school and they had taken him to the hospital and then unbeknownst to me at the time she had had my kids with her father and she had a problem with getting to see him because she couldn't act any and I went up there and we reconnected and I came back to LA and I got a call one day and my kids my son and my daughter wanted to come down instead to bring rape with me and here I was transitioning like I can't live what I'm doing now so I took a road of utter snail mail filled in and explained everything about my transition and my thoughts were that I was going to be I was going to receive something back and the kids aren't coming down there stay out of our mind and so on and I got a call a few days later which terrified me and she said I got your letter and I'm really happy for you I'm glad you realized that kind of knowing for 10 years you were going to do this and I'm glad that you finally came around to it and said wow right? and and I said well how do you feel about the kids? you're probably fine with the baby too I'm obviously the last one to know I think and so my kids came down and they spent a great break with me and then my son went back up north my daughter went with me the rest of the year went to school things got better this was in the 90s my ex came down here again in 2000 worked good until about 2006 but we grew apart not necessarily in a bad way so my transition has been kind of different aspects of things but I have to say that again the toughest part of that my transition was myself accepting it because I was still concerned about what other people were going to think what other people were going to do what other people were going to lose in my life and my therapist who was gay told me that before I started to come out you're living in life you're trying to be the person that everybody wants you to be the person you are because you're afraid that they're not going to like who you are and if I went out there when I transitioned and did come out some of the ones I thought were going to reach at me the most it embraced me the most and it said to me we're your friends because of who you are not what you look like but it said that the inside is still the same so you may look different but we're fine with it nobody talks with you but it's normal for you to ask is the law some relationships a major problem a major hurdle for people who transition I think so I think we're our worst enemy because we fear rejection and I now in 2019 as open as things are there is still that and there is still the danger of rejection I mean I know people now who are afraid to come out of their family or have come out of their family and they're disowned they're made to feel that they're sick and that God is against them and they're nothing but a mistake or a litigation I mean I've even heard people who are Christian say things like maybe that's the one good thing about abortion and I mean how can we say that to somebody and let somebody feel good about themselves I think it's that fear of rejection and of rejection which causes so many suicides we often hear of suicide being a major issue with people who transition what do you feel you had that other people didn't that prevented you from going down that road I think I hold the upbringing I think I was brought up about morals and being proud I don't think I don't think question whether that movie with Christine Jordan was an accident I wonder because I was so young I don't know and I never had an opportunity to talk to my parents before they passed away was it something they saw in me I think in this case I felt like I was the last one to know and I often wonder did they see something in me as a child that made them think that maybe that was different and when that movie wasn't it was it the accidental thing about the double feature that was something that maybe they wanted to learn more about and I'll never know fascinating switching gears a little bit you worked as a pro doctor tell us about that still do well in my in my life my king life being able to accept myself after going out into therapy and transitioning I started to regain all that self esteem self respect I had as a child about my accomplishments and things and no longer felt that there was anything wrong with me none of that I felt that everything right with me was brought up about you know with manners and about trust and I mean the foundation was there so I I also learned in my transition about how you how you tell people about something is going to have a big bearing on how they accept it if you're kind of quiet about don't tell anybody but I do this it's going to be accepted that that must be something it's not going to be good you're hiding something but if you openly discuss it like there's nothing to hide that people are going to take it a lot more positive I made a determination when I came out about being trans that the weight of the world felt like it was lifted on my shoulders you know something I am no longer in my life going to carry another burden that you have to carry by choice so by then I started learning about the king I had started exploring outside rural of kink I came across some publications in an adult bookstore that was full of ads and not only did I realize that people out there liked me but I realized that there was people in the same things and that they were out there looking to hook up so I contacted them made connections got to meet them got brought into that world and during that time you didn't have dungeons like sanctuary or the lair or threshold or anything like that people had play spaces in their home and they were very selective about who they met in their home and it was also something that it was still considered bad socially accepted so you need to trust people and that's one thing I've known about the community then you can tell us the money in the lifestyle you need to start a secret something that it would never be divulged and these days it's more like if you tell your deep dark secrets it's information today and ammunition tomorrow which is kind of sad to me but that's a whole other story I'm like again on the kink part of it I met people I moved into a house in Riverside and the house sold and I had to make her a land buy a bedroom house every second Saturday of the month and one day the woman who owned the house said to me I got somebody coming over to do a scene would you like to join us I was like oh sure never gonna turn around play so we did this scene and it was a lot of fun and after it was all over she handed me some money part of this and I was like wow what's this for and she explained to me about what the whole domination was it wasn't about sex or about everything sensual but there were people in their life they couldn't share it with significant others or anything else so they couldn't see professionals or they couldn't have marks they couldn't come to someone they could be safe or not getting into a relationship and they couldn't fall in love with no strings attached and I thought oh my god you mean I could do this and actually possibly make a living with it and so I couldn't spur you on and that was another thing my family my dad told me about using my time money and I was always brought up about my main focus on life was on which money I could make it was about the quality of life because again it was reinforced to me that I could give him my truck tomorrow and it wouldn't mean anything so we know live every day of your life happy be happy