So who am I and why do I have a blog?

The fifth anniversary of my little gender epiphany. At home, in the house where I grew up, January 9, 2013.

Who am I? Well, as another person born as Francis might have said, I’ve been a journalist, a DJ, a man, a woman, a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king and a lot of other things. Or something to that effect. But that’s life …

In short: just another girl with a little something extra trying to get by and stand out and make something of herself among the 7-plus billion on this wretched and overcrowded planet …

I’m Fran Fried – pronounced freed, spelled fryed, pronounced the latter by telemarketers and Californians. But I’m not living in California these days – in August 2012, after eight years in exile, in search of a steady job, and also because I really needed to come back while my parents were still alive (Mom’s still here; my father died in 2016), I moved from Fresno, the cowtown of a half-million where I lived for eight years, back across the country to Connecticut, where I lived most of my life.

My age is STFU! – at least that’s what a lot of people tell me when they learn, since I often get pegged for 35 to 40. Usually I feel about 30 spiritually; rock’n’roll is the ultimate youth serum, after all. And I’ve survived the wildest, weirdest, most turbulent and soul-searching time of my life. Talk about going through adolescence and mid-life crisis at the same time … emphasis on crisis … and I swear it’ll be my book. In fact, it’s part of why I started this here blog in February 2010 – to capture some of my experiences and firm up my writing for when I do get to my albatross of a book.

You see, I’ve navigated two major and unplanned life changes at once – gender transition (once is enough) and unemployment (several times over, which is way more than enough) – the past dozen years. One of the two alone would be enough to stop a horse. Even though, as a hardcore Gemini, I feel fully equipped to live dualities, this has been a hell of a lot to chew off. And I can’t believe I’m still alive to talk about it. I’m a recovering journalist who has spent more than half her life working with words as a writer and editor, both at print and online media outlets on both sides of the country and as a freelance editor, op-ed columnist and copywriter. I also have a big mouth, though my dentists would beg to differ; I’ve hosted radio shows, narrated a documentary and also done commercial voiceovers.

I pass very well; you wouldn’t know unless you knew. (Well, now you know, right?) And along the way, the support I’ve gotten from most people, friends, kin and strangers alike, has been far more than I ever could have hoped for; I must’ve racked up a supertanker full of karma points. I drank the Facebook Flavor-Aid in January 2011, and my circle of friends on both sides of the country exploded. I wrote about my experiences in op-ed pieces in the New Haven Register (where I twice worked) in June 2011 and May 2015, and online in The New York Times in May 2015.

But my jobs and my gender in no way define all of me. I’ve lived a cool and interesting life; that’s for damn sure. Not quite Zelig-like, but I’ve met and talked with enough famous people that you’d accuse me of being a shameless namedropper.

Music has always been my big passion. I was a music writer for 20 years at my first two papers, as well as freelancing album reviews for awhile for the Boston Phoenix. From January 1991 until my move west in March 2004, I hosted radio shows at WPKN, a 10,000-watt nonprofit community station at 89.5 FM in Bridgeport, and I still host occasional fill-ins. And on Jan. 4, 2011, the 20^th anniversary of my first show, I had my coming-out to my radio listeners. And since February 2013, I’ve hosted Franorama 2.0 weekly on a Connecticut-based online station, Cygnus Radio, and now have regular listeners from Stockholm to La Jolla.

But there are a lot of other cool things in my life. For years, until my economy went south, I collected Hot Wheels. (Or, as I call them now, the stupid toy cars.) I may have a girl’s fashion sense, but I’ve always been a sucker for cars. I have a monster collection by average standards, though small compared to some of the hardcores. And I still harbor dreams of owning a full-size Hot Wheels. (Wish list: a ’65 Impala SS convertible, 327, Artesian Turquoise with white interior, killer sound system and mad white/silver paisley trim. Or a ’70 Boss 302 Mustang in yellow or Grabber Orange.) More of my favorite things: pinball, paisley, purple, sushi, history and current events. And shoes, my first visual cue as a child that I was a little different …

And Jeopardy! I’d wanted to be on the show since childhood. I made it to the auditions in San Francisco in 2004, 2007 and (as Frannie 2.0 for the first time) in 2010, and in New York in April 2017; two months after that last audition, I got the call at long last. My appearance was shot Aug. 3, 2017, and it aired Oct. 17. As far as we could gather, I was only, as far as I can figure, the fourth trans contestant in the show’s history. Let’s just say I was involved in one of the wildest, most epic finishes of all times. Maybe it opens some doors somehow.

So anyway, this blog is about a little of this, a little of that, and a lot of passion. It might help you understand the whole gender-transition thang and what I’ve gone through. It has also gotten me back to writing about music from time to time. And it keeps my writing chops up, gives me a little bit of structure … and the blogging was great therapy. And again, it’ll be part of the framework of my book at some point.

So strap in – here goes nothing …

LAWYER-TYPE DISCLAIMERS:

1) All the opinions in the blog are mine, and are not necessarily the beliefs of any employer past, present or future, except by coincidence.

2) All blog entries are original – written and copyrighted by me and not plagiarized in any way, shape or form. In the spirit of the journalist I once was and perhaps will be again, any passages I take from elsewhere, such as quotes or pieces of a news story, will be accompanied by an attribution at the very least, as well a link to the original source occasionally.

If you see someone lifting any of my material without attribution, please let me know. Hell hath no fury like a woman plagiarized …

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