I’M FINALLY LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Welshman born a woman finds love and new life in the States
ON July 20, Billy-Joe Newington married the woman of his dreams in a low key ceremony in the USA.
Staring deep into his new wife’s eyes, you believe it when he says it was the happiest day of his life.
Harder to believe is that Billy-Joe was once a little girl with long blond hair called Connie and growing up in Cardiff.
The journey to become a loving husband has been far from straightforward, but now Billy-Joe is almost there.
Handsome, with piercing hazel eyes and a mop of silver-tinted hair, well-defined muscular arms and a deep manly voice, Billy-Joe can even pee standing up – a surprisingly defining moment for those transitioning from female to male.
It has been a life filled with confusion and unhappiness, one attempted suicide, numerous surgeries, two engagements, a move to another continent and, now, a wedding.
“I have loved every minute of turning my life upside down,” said BillyJoe.
This is his first ever Christmas as a married man and with some money to spare.
In 2014, we told how Billy-Joe’s story was about to undergo ‘bottom surgery’ or phalloplasty – an operation to create a penis from his stomach. At that point, he had already had a double mastectomy and had been taking testosterone – or ‘T’ as it is known in the biz – for a couple of years.
Ever since he was four years old and named Connie, Billy-Joe Newington had been desperate to be a boy.
He started taking male hormones when he was 23 and had a double mastectomy in 2014, but that was not enough. He felt that to become a man he would need a penis.
Billy-Joe, who lived in Penarth before his move to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, said: “I couldn’t carry on living with a vagina basically.
“I knew I wanted to have a penis created and my vagina taken away because I felt it would complete me.
“I never had real doubts or worries about it – even before I knew what it involved – I just knew I needed it and had to have it.”
The phalloplasty – a series of four operations – was supposed to be the final step for Billy-Joe.
And so, in late 2016, Billy-Joe succumbed to the knife for his first operation.
The skin from under his bellybutton was rolled together – like a Swiss roll – and stitched up again to make the main part of the penis.
Then surgeons cut skin from the sides of his stomach to cover the exposed flesh.
The following days were agony.
“It took six to seven weeks for me to stand up straight,” he remembered.
Most of all, Billy was looking forward to peeing standing up.
He said: “Stuff naturally born males take for granted. Since I was a kid I thought why can’t I stand up to pee? It’s something that affects my dysphoria quite a lot. For me personally it’s a massive deal.”
And then of course, there’s sex. Surgeons had planned for Billy-Joe to have as normal a sex-life as possible, by incorporating his clitoris inside the base of the new penis.
They assured him there would be no loss of sensation and a system of pumps and tubes would give him a “rock solid” erection.
But it was fitting that erectile device that caused the first major problem in a long line of successive operations.
Up until then, he had been “lucky”, he said.
He was sent home from the London hospital, instructed to keep his new penis erect for six weeks, to stop any scar tissue forming.
But in the days after, Billy-Joe knew that something wasn’t right – the pain was intense, he could only wear baggy jogging bottoms and he could hardly sit down.
Billy-Joe had got an infection and the only option was to remove the pump. It was the last straw.
He said: “The whole surgery process was emotionally draining to o go through everything. I got to the final hurdle and then it failed. I had let et go of all my strength.
“Physical recovery ery was less of an issue. e. I didn’t realise how ow much of an impact it was having mentally y until they said they y were taking it out.
“When they fitted the erectile pump, I had a 5% chance of an infection. It was literally the last hurdle .
“They were like no worry, we’ll just do it again, but I had given up.
“I mentally couldn’t take any more surgery. I decided to delay the e final op. Then I moved d to America. I don’t ’t know when I will be back.”
For more than six ix years, which spanned ed most of his FTM trannsition, Billy-Joe was in a relationship with th girlfriend Celyan. After fter that final op, the couple, ple, who had got engaged, ed, mutually ended it.
But they remain great reat friends, said Billy-Joe. .
“It was unfair to deny who she was after I had been fighting to be who I was,” he said.
Afterwards, he decided to remain single. “I thought, I’m not going to get with anyone because there’s not anyone in the world.”
But then along came Kristen.
Kris, who lived in Kentucky, contacted Billy-Joe on Facebook after watching his YouTube channel.
“I friend-zoned her for fear of not changing my life and she was living in the US, but she said she wanted to fly over to the UK to meet me,” he said.
In November 2017, she booked her flights and the pair spent five days exploring Cardiff together.
“I knew I liked her but I didn’t know how or what to do with those feelings,” said Billy-Joe.
“The day after she left, I called her and told her how I felt and within six weeks she had quit her job, sold her house and came over to the UK to be with me.
“We quickly decided that we wanted to marry and unfortunately I never had the chance to propose.
“A year after we got together I came out to the US and that’s where we wanted to start our lives together.
“It’s been a whirlwind to say the least but we’ve hung on tight and never let go.”
It might have “rinsed” every penny the couple both had, but things are looking up. Billy-Joe, who turned 31 on November 29, is working in a pharmacy in his new American hometown. Kris, 34, is an assistant nurse at a family asthma clinic.
The only thing missing is Skyla the dog, who is still in Cardiff.
“Things cost money, a lot of money. It took everything we had,” said BillyJoe. “I’m doing this so I can be with my wife, but I have just fallen in love with my life here.”
The couple married on July 20 and are happily planning their future.
“We want to have kids. I always thought I would have kids by now. I would go down the adoption route rather than surrogacy or sperm donor,” he speaking before the Christmas break.
“This Christmas is our first proper Christmas together.
“Last year I wasn’t working so I couldn’t do much. But this year I can buy gifts and presents.”
And his views on how life differs as a man, compared to being female?
“I have to say, society is different when you’re a man,” he said. “I feel safer walking down the street, men don’t approach me to ask for things or make rude comments. As a woman if I had to change a tyre people would offer help, as a man, they don’t.
“Strangely, I noticed that in a supermarket I’m offered help a lot as a man, but as a woman I wasn’t.
“Here’s a funny one – as a man you’re expected to somehow be faster at peeing and as a woman I could take all the time in the world and it’s like an unspoken national rule.”
Handing out compliments as a man is a minefield, Billy-Joe added.
“One that bothers me the most is that as a man I feel like I can’t compliment a woman without them thinking I want something, which is a massive shame because spreading good vibes isn’t a crime. So I just refrain from giving compliments now.”
Body image is also different for men, he said.
“I feel like I don’t need to care anywhere near as much now as I did when I presented as female.
“No-one judges the guy in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt on a night out, but you’d never see a woman go out wearing that.
“But saying that, that’s why I always prefer being in gay clubs, there’s zero judgement there. It’s just a case of wear what you want as long as you have a good time and treat people with respect. I love that.”
While he might be living the American dream now, there was a point Billy-Joe didn’t think life was worth living.
Growing up in Cardiff and going through school and into early adulthood, the nightclub DJ initially tried to conform to society.
He said: “When I was a teenager I was living with double feelings – this is how I feel and this is how society wants me to be. I tried to fight against it, I tried the whole make-up thing, the long hair and the straighteners, but it wasn’t me.
“I’m so happy with where I am today – even though the journey has been so incredibly hard, it was all worth it.
“There were definitely times where there was no light at the end of the tunnel, but my friends and family guided me through the dark.”
“One thing I remember was something a friend said when I was feeling very low: “If you end things right now, you’ll be dying a woman”.
“I knew I didn’t want that, and it saved my life.
“I remember thinking why am I different, why can’t I be like the other girls at school. I desperately wanted to be because it would have made me fit in and I pondered about that all the way through school.
“I was afraid that before I was 16, the doctor would have to relay it back to my parents.
“I was already prepared for someone to sit me down for weeks on end and say you’ve got to think like a girl and act like a girl.”
But the doctor explained to BillyJoe about being transgender and outlined the steps he could take.
As Billy-Joe left the clinic, the doctor said: “I’ve just got to tell you that nothing happens overnight.”
In fact, once the testosterone injections started, things did move pretty fast. Billy-Joe’s voice broke and got deeper, his Adam’s apple became more pronounced and his facial hair started to come through.
He also struggled to control his moods and found his sex drive going “absolutely mental”.
But it took another eight years before Billy-Joe walked into the London clinic for his ‘top surgery’.
“Once I had the top half operation I instantly felt like I could finally be me,” he said. It was also the moment of greatest acceptance from those around him.
“My mum got quite upset after my surgery, I think because she did not realise I was so unhappy,” he said.
“I think she saw it from my perspective.”
Billy-Joe also wanted to cry. But they were happy tears,” he said.
“I was overwhelmed because I had been wearing a binder for six years. Though I remember looking down and thinking, ‘Is it supposed to be this flat?’”
Billy-Joe is finally the man he always wanted to be.
“If I’d gone on living as a woman, I wouldn’t be here,” said Billy-Joe.
“Often people assume that surgery is a choice for me and that I don’t really need it. But I know that it isn’t at all a choice for me: it’s something I have to go through.
“While it’s not hard being me, it was hard becoming me. But I’d do it all over again to achieve this level of happiness that I once thought never existed.”