GenderBendy

Engaging Senator Nass

I was out this morning (in male mode) as a volunteer for the No On 1 campaign, asking folks at the Cornish Apple Festival to sign cards pledging to help preserve Maine's new law allowing same sex couples to marry by voting against the people's veto of that law which will be on the November ballot.  I approached a distinguished-looking gentleman of late middle age who was standing watching the crowd.  He had a conservative haircut, intelligent eyes, and a superior expression.  He agreed to give me a minute, so I went into my spiel.

"Hi, I'm Dave, I live in Wells, and I'm a volunteer with the No On 1 campaign..."  I got no farther.  He interrupted and told me that he was Richard Nass, my state Senator, that he had voted against the law, and that he would be voting for the "repeal," as he put it.

We're trained to move on if someone says they're a "yes" vote, but this guy was my elected official, so I stayed and engaged him.  I asked him what his objection was.  He had the practiced politician's slipperiness.  He lectured me on the theory of people's vetos, as though the existence of a provision in our state's constitution allowing them meant that all such measures should pass.  He told me he had taken an active role in extending civil rights to non-married couples, as though the playing field has been completely leveled (far from it.)  And he talked about the burden to the state of taking care of "all these children." 

The unspoken prejudice behind this last point seemed clear:  that gay and lesbian couples can't be good parents.  As a trans-parent I found that personally offensive and called him on it, or tried to.  I tried a couple of times.  He wouldn't answer, dodging neatly into tangents about policy.

I found myself really wanting to reach this guy.  I asked him if, as his constituent, I could tell him where I was coming from on the issue.  He said I could, so I told him that I had been married for 16 years as a man to a woman.  That post divorce I'm living in Wells and that my children live with me half time.  That I'm trans and may someday become a woman.  That I'm still attracted to women and may someday want to marry a woman again.  And I asked him, if that happened, if he thought I would no longer be a fit parent, to my own children, to her children, to children we might have together.

He did not answer the question.  Once again he evaded.  By this point I wanted to get away, so I shook Mr. Nass's hand, thanked him for his time, and walked off shaking.  He was standing with another man and I heard one of them say to the other as I passed out of earshot, "Yeah, there's a lot of them here today," and the word them had that unmistakable tinge of smug dismissal it can so easily be given.

I was feeling upset so I called Levi, the campaign coordinator who was leading our little group of canvassers, on his cell phone and asked him to come talk me down.  He came and sat with me on a porch.  He listened to me vent.  He was supportive and helpful...but he also couldn't help smiling a little, watching me struggle to come to terms for the first time at a personal level with the complacent bigotry of the privileged straight white male elite.  What was hardest for me to stomach was how impervious the man was:  ensconced in his comfortable world view, secure in his power, and behind his courteous front clearly contemptuous of me, having in an instant decided who I was. 

I continue to learn what it is to be "other."  It is not pleasant learning, but definitely valuable. 

Besides being given a useful lesson about people and politics, I gathered 21 signatures, identified a new volunteer, changed (apparently) at least one person from a "yes" to a "no", and munched my way through a huge Rome apple so fresh off the tree the dusty bloom was still on it.  All in all, a fruitful morning...ba-ba-boom.  :-)

Names

When I was five my besotted mother took me several times to play with a very pretty little girl named Lisa.  I was besotted too...my first crush, I used to think, and that still feels at at least partly true...but obviously it was more complicated than just that, because when I was asked for the first time post-revelation what my femme name was I just knew, and the name I breathed with a sense of blooming joy and release and coming home was hers.

Then I was writing an article about being trans and needed a pen name.  Back in high school I took part in a curious three-way note-based flirtation among my friend Robin, a pretty girl named Cynthia, and myself.  It was their flirtation at first, but he let me add to the notes.  That flirtation gave me an elusive yet powerful thrill, which, it now occurs to me, probably arose not out of the ugly-duckling yearning for her attention I would have named at the time, but out of my secret love for him.  The name I chose for the notes was Pomeroy.

Then lisa.pomeroy was already taken on gmail, so I added the middle initial for the name my mother told me she had picked out for me had I been born a (physical) girl:  H for "Hillary."

Then my sister asked me if I was abandoning my family name, which I emphatically did not and do not wish to do; and at the same time I started experimenting with "Dee" as a transitional all-modes nickname...my male-name initial, and a perfectly fine femme name too...and so now my working draft for a final name post-transition is Lisa Dee Bunker.

Stay tuned for further revisions... (*sigh*)

For the time being, I have started asking some old friends and most new acquaintances to call me Dee.  I'm not consistent about it yet, though, so I'm confusing people.  Metamorphosis allowed to happen at its own pace gets bumpy sometimes. 

And, when I talk to myself (as I habitually do) I find I'm also still using "Dave."  I'll keep gently correcting myself to "Dee" for a little while at least to see if it starts to come more naturally.  (I do still feel totally at ease calling myself "Bunker," which is a fine name to spit out when one is annoyed with one's more idiotic moments... :-) )

The other self-referential wrinkle is, I still call myself "man," and I've puzzled for a while about a good alternative to that and to other half-ironic pep talk names like "Bucko". It took me until today to think of being tender with myself...so now I'm trying out "Sweetie" and "Darling" and "My Love"...and I find that when I call myself by these names, I feel noticeably better than I did the moment before. 

Hey, it turns out I can sweet-talk myself.  :-)  Useful to remember when, as they sometimes do, the clouds get darker...

The thing about a cell

...is it becomes cozy;
The enwalled heart
comes to cherish
Each speck of grit,
And the tiny melodramas among them
Make world enough
For quite a spell.

Is it any wonder then
That when the crooked turnkey
Cracks at last the lock
The sear of out
Contracts one's self
Into a shell?

Is is is becoming
And it transpires
That scale proves a fallacy...
Out in the free air,
Given time,
One finds room to,
Ecstatic three, swell.

The seafood man

I had an instructive encounter last night.

There was a new man behind the seafood counter at the grocery store.  As I approached he was just starting to fish seven female lobsters out of the holding tank for two very particular French-speaking Canadian men.  (They liked the eggs, one explained to a shopper who asked).  I noted that my favorite salmon was on sale, and while I stood waiting for my turn, pleasantly anticipating a treat for dinner, I watched the seafood man work. 

He was a large man, thick and solid-looking through the chest and shoulders especially, with heavy arms.  His hair was grey and conservatively cut.  His face was stony, and that and his forceful way of moving and the jerky fast rhythm as he chomped his gum gave him an air of masculine aggressiveness.  As I often do I started making up details about his life:  ex-marine, immune to tenderness, sometimes threatens his girlfriend with physical harm.  His customer service, as he pulled lobsters from the tank and sexed them, was perfunctory at best, verging on rude, but the Canadians were manly men too, muscular and frank, and I sensed respect between the seafood man and them...that vibe of men being men among men which so often in my life I've had to bluff my through.

Uncurling the hand

No new post for more than a week, but that doesn't mean nothing has been happening.  Rather the opposite.  I spent the last week working my way through the new height up the beach of my most recent wave of femme-ache.  Last time I posted I trembled on the edge of telling my children this would be my last year living as a man.  Now I've settled back to a healthier-feeling, more centered place...resolve undiminished, but wary of excessive urgency; practicing mindfulness through meditation again; and, rather than pushing forward, simply trying to hold myself open to the next stage of metamorphosis, whatever it might be, trusting it to happen when it is what must be.

I continue to wrestle with the question of how to balance my needs with those of my children, and this un-driven openness to change seems the best answer.  A deadline by which I will be living full time as a woman frightens me, let alone them.  It provokes anxiety and stress, and anyway, it's stupid...so much can happen, too many variables...how can you set a plan and then follow it blindly in such a complicated situation?  You can't. 

Conversely, I find I am unwilling to resolve to wait, no matter what, until Son14 is out on his own...the want is too strong.  I have discovered, it seems, at long last, a limit to my impulse to self-sacrifice.  That said, in the end I might still end up taking long enough to get where I'm going that he will never have to explain to puzzled vice-principals that his dad is now his other mom. 

No, best is to wait, stay open, stay busy, and concentrate always always on loving them, parenting them.  Whether I am a man or woman or in between, they need me.  And what I have found is that, by setting no deadlines, I avoid having to have Talks...instead, through living with me and through the moments of conversation and awareness which naturally arise, they are witnessing my process, participating in it.  I don't have to Tell them anything.  They are smart, observant, open-hearted children.  They can see for themselves and ask when they need to and, in the end, find their own answers.

And I find, I don't feel required to feel guilty about that, even though it could be hard for them.  I am as I am.  I did not choose this.  I resolve only to attempt to walk the path before me with as much grace as possible, trusting my children to find their own peace in their own time.  And, to always love them, with all my heart...but that doesn't require resolution.  I do love them will all my heart, naturally, helplessly, and I always will.