The Memo

I'm planning to come out at work.  Work is WMPG, Portland, Maine's community radio station...we have a paid staff of 5 and about 250 volunteers.  I'm the program director there.  I have written (and rewritten and rewritten) an e-mail with the working subject line "Who the heck is Dee?" in which I explain that I am trans, note that I am planning to transition, and asking everyone to call me "Dee" as a transitional  nickname from now on, because "Dave" just doesn't feel right any more.

How this started:  a week ago Monday we had a meeting of the paid staff in which I saw and took an opportunity to tell them that I was planning to transition.  I had previously come out to all of them as trans, but had not yet spoken of a firm intention to become a woman.  I tried to keep it as light as I could, and my dear friends stared at me with unreadable faces.  I asked them to start calling me "Dee," and my friend Dale Robin asked, "Are you going to change your e-mail?"

I had thought of starting small by asking paid staff and a few friends among the volunteers to use the new name, in hopes that it would spread over time, but now that she mentioned it, the idea struck me as a good one.  So, I switched.  "Dave" became "Dee" in the name and signature fields of all my station e-mails.  I started answering my phone with the new name too.  (I had already begun to use it on air, but DJ aliases are commonplace at 'MPG, so that by itself had not been provocative.)  

My old tightly controlled self hardly ever acted on impulse like this.  It's scary, but it feels right.

Naturally people noticed.  A few asked (I gave evasive answers), a few said "cool" without seeming to need an explanation, several folks just took the new name up, one person guessed why (or I should say, guessed and asked if she was right) and there were various small awkwardnesses.  I sensed a definite hum of curiosity about the place...and so I started drafting the memo.

I have other justifications too:  for example, I hadn't counted on this being as difficult a request as it turns out to be.  I have been friends with some of these good people for many years, and all that time they have known me as Dave.  They are struggling with the switch.  Maybe witnessing me ask everyone will help.  Also, I quickly saw how confusing it would be to have some people calling me one thing and some another; and I hate it that so far I have been having to ask the friends I have come out to to keep my transness secret from those to whom I have not.

These are all valid reasons, but none of them are the deepest reason.  The deepest reason is, I just want it.  I want to be out.  I am no longer the person I have been,  I want the world to know who I am now.

The other morning, dozing between snooze-button pushes, I experienced a sudden and intense dream-image.  Everyone I knew, everyone in the world, was crowded into a hotel banquet room, squeezed around tables, laughing and talking and eating and drinking and flirting and just being alive together.  I stood in a dusty shadowy stairwell, listening to their din and watching them through double glass doors.  I glanced up the stairs...it was even darker up there...the way back up to a lonely cell.  Up there was death.  I looked down.  My hand rested on the crashbar.  All I had to do was summon up the courage to push the door open and walk through.

And so I've prepped my boss and a couple other key people higher up in the University administration...I've tweaked the memo a few more times (and will a few times more)...and I've carefully considered my timing.  I've got a big project with a deadline to finish, so I probably need to get that done first.  Maybe Thursday afternoon...but on the other hand, project or not, I may not be able to hold off until then.  :-)

I do believe I am ready to take another big step forward into the light.

Comments

[Zack]

Good luck. :)

[Dawn on MDI]

good luck. I will be thinking of you. (and please tell me you have talked with Sarah, right? good.)