When Cassandra Cass was 16, she mustered up the courage to tell her dad a secret she’d held in as far back as she could remember.

“Dad,” she said, “I know I was born a boy, but I want to live my life as a girl.”

Her dad, Jim Forrester, curled down his newspaper and stared at his child, a student at Lincoln High then going by her birth name, Casey.

“You’ll be one of the ugliest women ever,” Forrester sneered. “And who would ever want to be with that?”

Cass retreated upstairs, downed a bottle of pills and sobbed as she waited for the room to fade to black.

But Cass woke up — literally and figuratively. Life didn’t magically become some paradise in the years to come — she spent time in a group home and almost turned to prostitution before becoming a burlesque star and on-the-verge actress — but, still, this particular memory holds special meaning.

In that moment, Cass decided she not only wanted to be alive, but she wanted to live — which in her world, means owning her space and radiating positivity, preferably under spotlights and covered in glitter.

Sitting in the lobby of the Hilton downtown, overdressed (in the best way) for a Des Moines afternoon, Cass finds herself at another milepost. After years of avoiding her home state, she is here to celebrate 10 years of marriage equality in Iowa, perform at the Garden, in the East Village, and reconnect with family.

But, really, she’s here to reclaim Iowa from the jaws of painful flashbacks in what she is calling her “full-circle moment.”

By her side throughout most of it will be her father, Cass said.

Cass, the epitome of Broad City’s “Yas, Queen” confidence, suddenly quieted on this point.

“Coming back — I’m not going to lie — I was doing my makeup today and I was kind of stressing,” she said. “I also don't want to run from it, because there are people in Iowa that I really love and who supported me.”

As a woman who came into herself before Caitlyn Jenner became the face of transgender issues, Cass practices radical honesty. She’s open about who she was before transition (“an Iowa farm boy”), which surgeries she’s had (all of them, she says, adding she’s “seen more knives than a culinary academy”) and how much she has spent on those procedures (more than $250,000).

She’ll tell you anything but her age, to which she will reply, “timeless,” or still, ummm, beddable.

She lives so out loud that she immediately imbues those around her with confidence and a touch of bravado. But, deeper into our conversation, we get to the heart of the matter: That, as much as she is herself and happy to be, thank-you-very-much, she is still seeking approval from one person: her father.

“I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to make myself as physically perfect as possible and prove not only to myself, but in some weird way to him, hey, I'm lovable,” she said.

“I want my dad to see me.”

Rocky childhood

Cass always knew she wasn’t a boy, but she didn’t have words for what she was until she watched an after-school episode of that bearer of high-culture, Maury Povich.

“This was before he was super trashy,” Cass interjects.

The episode featured Caroline Cossey, a transgender model, Playboy playmate and former Bond girl better known as Tula. Cossey was on a publicity tour to get Britain to allow her to legally change her sex, but the message wasn’t what mattered to this Iowa pre-teen.

It was Cossey herself that took Cass’ breath away.

“That showed me that we weren't all freaks,” she said. “That we could be beautiful.”

But a rocky childhood forced Cass to put her transition on hold. When she was 8 years old, her parents’ divorce pushed her dad further into alcoholism, and drug addiction caused her mom to “abandon the family.”

Cass lived in a group home for a few years before she moved back in with her father to attend Lincoln High.

This was the '90s, she cautions, so all her perceived differences made her a target for bullying. Being kicked and punched was a regular occurrence, and, once, a student spent an entire class period shooting spitballs into her hair.

At night, she snuck away to the Garden, a Des Moines gay bar in the East Village. There, in what felt a real-life island of misfit toys, she could feel normal — feel at home.

“Once I knew that there was a stage and I started performing, they took me under their wing,” she said. “Gay men taught me how to love myself, how to do my makeup, how to walk in heels.”

Becoming Cassandra

After high school, Cass sought out and reconnected with her mother, who'd gotten clean. Soon after their reunion, her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and Cass nursed her as she slowly died.

That loss was the spark Cass needed to truly change her life.

She moved to Florida, threw out all of her men's clothes and started living as Cassandra, a portmanteau of her mom’s name — Sandra — and her birth name — Casey.

The choice to transition meant she lost touch with her three brothers. Weddings, births and other revelries came and went without invitations, making Cass feel like she didn’t exist, she said.

► Read more on what it's like to be Trans in Iowa.

On top of that, she couldn’t find a job because she was transgender, she said.

Alone, desperate, hungry and scared she might lose her apartment, Cass seriously considered selling herself for money.

“There was this, like, a heavier set … umm … OK, he was a troll,” she said. “He looked like Danny DeVito, and he came up to me and I was, like, I need to pay my rent. What am I going to do?”

“So I wrote $300 down on a paper and he came home with me, and I couldn't do it.”

She hadn’t spoken to her dad in years, but she called him, the helplessness in her voice palpable. He gave her enough money to keep her head above water while she landed a gig at the mall and began the process of physically transforming.

"I've had my teeth done," she rattled off. "I've had my nose done, my cheeks done, my boobs done, my hips done. I've had a full SRS (sex-reassignment surgery)."

"I tell people the only thing natural about me now is my heart."

Today, her look is a hyper-feminine mix of Jessica Rabbit, Beach Barbie and '90s Playboy. She’s not just a woman, she’s a sexual, sensuous woman, which she understands makes her a lightning bolt for people’s opinions.

“It makes them uncomfortable,” she said. “And I think that’s sad because they’re missing out on someone who I think is pretty damn amazing.”

The next act

Coming to meet me in the lobby, Cass passed the maid in the hallway and flashed back to the brief interlude she had in Des Moines before she moved to California 15 years ago. She'd left Florida and moved in with her dad to save money, again finding herself without a job.

Her friend got her a gig as a maid at a Holiday Inn, a position, she was told, that would keep her behind the scenes and out of the public eye. She tied her hair back and kept her head down for a year before chasing her dreams in Los Angeles.

A lot has happened since then — not only to her, but in the transgender rights movement. Transgender people now can have public jobs, hold positions of power and find love, openly, she said.

Still, Cass is routinely harassed on the street and asked — in very polite terms, of course — to help people understand her “choice.”

"I just tell people, 'It's not for you to understand; it's for you to just treat me like a human being,'" she said. "And it's not that difficult to understand — I wasn't comfortable with myself or my identity as the sex I was born in, so I changed it.

"Let's move on, and let's go get a beer."

In addition to touring as a burlesque dancer, Cass is a cast member on the Whoopi Goldberg-produced reality show, "Strut," about transgender models, and she’s waiting for callbacks about three TV exciting projects.

“I just thank God for Botox and good lighting,” she said. “But I honestly thank God that I'm still here and still current.”

Her relationship with her dad is improving, she said. He watched “Strut” and called Cass to tell her she was beautiful — the first time he’s ever said something like that.

“He said, ‘You remind me of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield,’” she recalled. “I was, like, ‘Wow.’ And then he said, ‘But you better hurry up and find a man because you're getting old.’”

"So, we still go through it," she added with a sigh.

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Cass is a joker, but in all seriousness, Cass feels like the best is yet to come. She’s focused, and she’s happy. And how can she not be, she offered, when she came from getting spitballs thrown into her hair and is now headlining at the Garden.

"There are kids right now who feel, like, 'My dad doesn't understand me or my mom or my family,'" she said. "And, honestly, I am living proof that there's always hope."

She pauses, quieting a bit. "As long as we're breathing, there is hope."

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. In 2016, she wrote the award-winning series, "Trans in Iowa." You can reach her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.