PORTLAND, Maine — From an early age the dream was to become a rock star, and to make that happen Cindy Bullens moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s.
“I was 23 years old, skinny and wide-eyed,” Bullens writes. “I had a hundred bucks in my pocket, a backpack, and my guitar. I had a reel-to-reel demo tape of my songs. What I had most of all were dreams.”
What followed is a life that is anything but ordinary, defined by dizzying highs (performing with Elton John in Boston in front of 80,000 fans) and crushing lows (drugs, booze, busted record deals), all of them recounted in Bullens’ compelling new memoir, “TransElectric—My Life as a Cosmic Rock Star.”
The cruelest blow came when Bullens’ younger daughter, Jessie, died of cancer at the age of 11. A journal entry reflects the unfathomable pain: “Sixteen days since Jessie died. I’m feeling horror, emptiness. I gasp for breath disbelieving. I cry. And I cry. My baby is dead. How could it have happened? So suddenly. So fast.”
Through the years, in good times and bad, one thing remained constant. Bullens never felt at home in a body that just didn’t seem right.
“No one would ever understand that even though I didn’t have guy parts, I was a guy,” he said.
Finally, at the age of 61, Bullens decided to transition from female to male and became Cidny Bullens.
“Transitioning is hard,” he writes. “No, brutal.”
Yet it was also liberating. He added, “I am not only alive, but I am once again being reborn.”
Bullens, who has lived in Maine off and on for years, tells his story with honesty, humor, sadness, and passion.
After finishing the book, Carl Bernstein — the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter of Watergate fame — called Cidny to share his thoughts.
For Bullens, it was a bit of a surreal moment as he stood in the frozen food section of a supermarket, listening to one of the most influential journalists of his generation tell him how much he loved “TransElectric.”
One could talk for days with Bullens about all he has been through, and as our conversation came to an end, I asked a straightforward question: How’s your life now?
“My life is a life that I could never have imagined,” he said, mentioning just some of the things for which he’s grateful.
“The book. New music’s coming. I’ve got four beautiful grandkids. I’ve got a great wife," he said. “I’ve got a great life.”