GenderBendy

Hide and seek

In my dream I was a tender vulnerable girl in love with a pretty boy. We lived together in a big house, and nobody knew we were there. He was gentle and sweet with me, and we played kissing-each-other-all-over-our-bodies games. I knew something about him though. I knew that he wanted to hurt and kill not me, but other women. In our house though, it didn’t matter. That was someplace else. We were safe together.

Except at the time of the dream there was only one other woman besides me left, and then I knew he had killed her too...right there in our house. I knew she was in the next room, and if I looked up I could see her. I started to look, but whatever it was was so horrible that my mind blanked out my eyes when I pointed them toward it. He was holding me, murmuring sweetness to me, but I knew I was no longer safe.

So, I hid. I knew a little secret space behind a wall in the attic of our house. I had found the door long before, and had furnished the place with fun and comforting things. It was my secret clubhouse of one. I loved to go there, shut the door, and then listen to the rumor of other people vibrating up through the bones of the house -  their footfalls, the rumble of their voices - knowing they could not find me. A little hot coal of pleasure glowed in my solar plexus when I hid there. It was my secret, and I was safe.

As I shut the door behind me I thought, waking: and there was no one left to dream. Because the pretty boy from whom I had hidden was also me.

Was I traumatized as a child? Did someone hurt me in a way too horrible to remember? Did I hurt someone else in a way too horrible to remember? There are therapists who would help me answer these questions “yes,” whether or not it was actually true.

But, I don’t think so. I think I was just such a sensitive little thing that I experienced the regular trauma of being a young human - of first feeling desire, fear, anger - as glaring menace and imminent death, and fled.

And, I was shy and secret by nature. That little hot coal of pleasure in hiding was real, whatever else did or didn’t happen.

So maybe it took me so long to say who I am because I decided to play hide and seek, but nobody knew I existed, so nobody sought. Then I forgot I was hiding, and before I knew it 45 years had gone by. Oops! Too bad, honey. That time is gone.

Susan Swartz Bunker, 10/7/33 - 4/8/92

Dear Sue,

How can it be twenty years since I sat by your hospital bed, stunned by the calamity of your aneurysm? “It couldn’t be much worse,” the neurologist said bluntly, and the nurse had to keep clearing your breathing tube after you coughed...they said on top of whatever else the flood of blood in your brain was putting you through, you were also giving up smoking. They said if you lived on in the coma your tendons would shorten, so Susie went out and bought a pair of black high-top sneakers to keep your ankles bent.

You did not live. You died without regaining consciousness, though there was that moment when I asked if you could squeeze my hand and you did, just one little twitch. “Oh, yes, I’m here, I love you!” I cried in a rush, squeezing convulsively back. It was our last communication. The memory of it still brings me to tears.

I wish you were still alive. I want to introduce you to your grandchildren. It still rips my heart apart that you died just before Mad was born, though it is a consolation that you at least got to know she was on the way. I still smile when I remember telling you on the phone we were thinking of “Cosmo” for a boy. “No,” you said, and I loved the flat presumption to veto in your voice. For all your tight-lipped silences over the years, or perhaps because of them, when you spoke you could imbue your opinions with the force of moral certainty.

Oh my dear mother, what would you have made of me? It would have been terrifying, telling you I am trans. Would you have denied it outright, the way you did our whimsical baby-name choice? I imagine you might have; but this time, I would have had to insist.

Would you have been angry? Would you have disbelieved me? Would you have shut me out for a time? Perhaps all of these reactions...but I can’t imagine you would have shut me out forever.

And what might you have been able to tell me about other denials long ago? I can’t remember if I stifled myself, or if you stifled me, or a combination of the two, but if it was you, I bet you didn’t realize what you were doing. If I ever asked you timidly if I could, say, try your lipstick, I bet you never guessed I was telling you who I was; nor that when you said no, it was another turn of the key in the lock of my secret gender prison.

I remember you as an emotionally elusive woman, and I feared your anger, but I also remember your sly sauciness and your laugh. I remember how when I was small you used to rub my back to soothe my distresses. I remember your tender acceptance when I was soft, emotional. I remember songs you taught me. I remember cutting your hair for you, one straight slice across with the sewing scissors after you clipped it back. I remember how one Christmas evening when I was sitting by the woodstove absorbed in a gift-book, you brought me a plate of little sandwiches made of leftover turkey with mustard on crusty bread. I remember, after I brought hugging home from college, feeling your bird-bone shoulders under my hands when we hugged. 

One thing I can’t remember is your voice. I wonder if the voice I’m searching for sounds something like yours. I do find, as I settle into my natural womanhood, that I look somewhat like you, and that I use words and phrases and gestures you used to use. I take after you, it seems.

I can’t imagine you would have shut me out forever, so I must imagine that at some point you would have accepted me, called me by my name, used “she” and “her”...called me your daughter. What a gift that would have been: a second giving of life. In your absence I have had to birth myself this time, and it has gone fine, but I grieve that I will never get to show you who I really am. I just have to live with that.

Mother dearest, I was a girl the whole time, and I am a woman now, and I miss you, and I love you.

Your daughter,

Lisa

 

Maine's Transgender Revolution video

I'm turning 50 next Tuesday. If I figure out what that means, you can be sure I'll post about it. ;-)

In the meantime, video is now available online of a panel discussion I recently helped put together about the past, present, and future of the trans experience in Maine. The panel was presented by the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine on March 21st, 2012, on the USM Portland campus, and it went really well. My fellow panelists - Margaret Cook, Jamie-Lynn Emma Kane, and Alex Roan - were all excellent, sharing personal stories and general insights in a wide-ranging conversation which was variously funny, touching, profound, and inspirational. We also had some wonderful input from the audience.

Links:  Part One  Part Two

Brief personal viewing notes: I hate my voice still. I have *got* to do something about that. But, I thought I rocked the dress pretty well...panel day turned out to be the first really warm day of spring I anticipated in this post.

Anyway, if you decide to check any of the video out, happy viewing! :-)

The wheel dips low again

My name is Lisa. How many times do I have to say it before I can end the feeling of being pulled back? When do I get to permanently emerge? This is taking so long, and I’m so tired of having to insist on my femaleness every day. I can’t feel it sometimes. Or I need to redefine what I mean by feeling it, or something.

Home sick, unshaven, in schlumpy unisex sweats, I know right now I still look like a man. Since I stopped the Spironolactone - it was dehydrating me, fucking up my intestines - and dropped back to just the estrogen, my testosterone has come back some, and I feel sexually more male again, and my chest hair is more noticeable again. Oh, I have to be patient. In four months and a bit the testicles will be gone gone gone forever. It is so fucking hard to wait.

This is unfair.

But everyone has challenges. That kid who called me at the station yesterday - 12 years old, name of Hunter - “I’m a blindo,” he says, all matter-of-fact. “I’m blind.” Then natter natter flighty brain random bunch of questions - a typical annoying kid.

So, I’m a trans woman. Sometimes I can be matter-of-fact about that. Other times I want to break down the walls, destroy something, kill someone, I don’t know...such rage. Such hurt. Such loss. It’s no fucking fair. A typical angsty middle-aged woman? I doubt it.

And then, love. I may never find it. I may never find someone who can love me as I am and accept the love I have to give. I have said all these things before, so I hesitate to write them again, but they are still true, and they still hurt. Watching movies today, crying every time a female character showed love to a male character. I’ve never gotten to do that, never in my whole life.

Just went looking for pictures on line of the boy I hung with in high school, and I found a shot of him with his family - wife and two kids. They all look happy except maybe him - he’s kinda slouchy behind dark glasses, unreadable - but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to contact him. What am I going to say: “Guess what, I was a girl all along, and I was in love with you?” If he was single, maybe, though it would still be so hard to click “send.” As it is, out of the question.

And writing is just as hard as it ever was. I thought it would be easier now that I’m more me. Why can’t I just write? I’ve publicly announced this memoir project to pressure myself to do it, and I’m procrastinating, avoiding like crazy. Why is it so hard?

Maybe because a writer is what I am, so I feel the rejection all the way down. When you reject my writing, you reject me. And it’s a tough tough world out there - 199 noes for every yes. “Feel firm in yourself - separate yourself from the work...” Yeah, right, easy to say that.

Maybe the old male feeling is back because I’m writing about that life. I really think I gotta write this book though. I feel the writing sickness in me, along with the cold viruses. No rest, no peace, until it’s done. The interminable slow squirm. Fuck.

I hate that I’m repeating myself, but here it is again:

I! WANT! A! DO-OVER!  

I! WANT! MY! LIFE! BACK!

Fuck.

Reporting from home sick, wallowing in self-pity, and avoiding memoir-writing, this is Lisa. Yeah, Lisa. Lisa. I’m Lisa. Lisa. God fucking dammit, Lisa!

Hey baby, click on me!

The feeling of wanting a special someone in my life has been building for a long time, and I guess with my surgery scheduled I could finally give myself permission to look, because earlier this week I went to Zoosk.com and submitted a “woman looking for men” profile. I picked Zoosk because of their hip young vibe, figuring they would be more accepting than the stodgy old established dating sites. This was my self-description:

Well, I'm trans. I hate to lead with that, because it is not nearly the most important thing about me, but I figure it's good to be clear from the start. In short, I was born with a male body and lived the first 46 years of my life as a man, but that was all a mistake and is in the past, and now I am totally grooving on living as the woman I was always supposed to be. (I am in the process of getting the male body issue fixed). Aside from that, I'm a non-profit manager with sidelines in writing and crossword-puzzle construction; I have two teenage children, one in college and one in high school; and my big project right now is to become fluent in French. I have a dream of moving to France someday for a while to teach English, so if we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, darling, you better be willing to travel... ;-) (Note: I'm curious whether the gatekeepers at Zoosk.com will allow me, an out trans woman, on their site. If you're reading this, they did, and good for them. But if you are the gatekeeper and you are about to reject my profile, shame on you.)

Yep, shame on them. Everything I entered was rejected with boilerplate e-mails citing “inappropriate content.” While deleting the last shreds of my profile I wrote in the “why are you leaving?” text box that I felt I had been discriminated against and would appreciate an e-mail back with an explanation of the rationale of their decision. No reply.

Next I went to match.com, whose services I had used when I was dating as a man looking for women. According to one ranking table I found they have the largest customer base of any dating site. Lo and behold, my profile, with the same descrip above, was accepted! Good for them.

In my first 24 hours my profile has been viewed 54 times, and I have been winked at about a dozen times.

It’s gratifying, of course, to be winked at, but I wonder if some of these guys have done anything more than glance at my headshot before they wink, because with about half of them when I clicked to view *their* profiles, they had become unavailable. I take that to mean they went back to learn who they had winked at, discovered I’m trans, and shut me out.

Yes, I am assuming rejection. I wish I wasn’t, but on the other hand, I already know from abundant experience how freaky my mere existence is for most men. Kinda cute, still has a penis...fuck fuck fuck, run screaming from the screen! Also, most of the guys who have winked at me live thousands of miles away. Tulsa? WTF? How did you even find me?

I’ve done some searching too, and winked at four guys, discovering in the process a little more about who I am looking for. All four sound cerebral, and look and/or sound unconventional and quirky; I detect humor and engagement with life in all of them; they can all spell and write; and they are all tall. This last is shallow, I know, but I *do* so enjoy feeling petite and svelte standing next to someone... :-p I sent one, a writer in Mass, a one-line e-mail, because some word-play in his profile made me smile. No answer so far, and no other e-mails.

So here I am, sweet 49 and never been kissed. I’m feeling vulnerable and tentative, but also curious and eager; and as with surgery, I hardly dare imagine how good it might be. I might discover, for the first time in my life, what love and sex are both really about...which would be terribly sad in a way, but which could also be fucking incredible.

The Trans Explosion

The article I wrote recently for Out in Maine, the LGBT quarterly supplement to the Portland Phoenix, has been posted on line. In the article I assert that trans really seems to be *happening* right now in crucial ways, and, using local examples in Maine, explore how personal trans narratives are driving this change and vice versa. If I have piqued your interest, you can check it out here...

OK, it's different doing comedy for straight people...

I did it - comedy open mic at Slainte, earlier tonight. Way more people in the room than when I went before to check it out - actual audience members, this time, instead of just the Soggy Biscuit Club. (Don’t ask me, I don’t know - some inside joke among the regular core comics, sure to be disgusting). I asked for the second slot, Brian the MC introduced me, I stepped up and did my routine...and the room was almost completely silent the whole time. I could tell some of my lines struck people as funny, because there was this whisper of suppressed laughter, but the rest of the time everyone sat frozen. Scanning the room I saw some listening faces, some carefully immobile faces, some clenched faces, and some crossed arms and heads down. Scattered applause at the end.

Did anyone read me until the moment I said my first line, "So, I used to be a man"? I don’t think so. That’s when I felt the room freeze. Not freeze like ice cold; freeze like deer in the headlights.  Possible thoughts among the audience right then: "Oh fuck, for a second I thought she, I mean he, I mean she, I mean he, was hot!" "Jesus, a fucking tranny." "Jesus, a fucking faggot." (The prejudiced are not always precise with their labels.) "So what?" "I don't want to know about this."  "Woah...she’s so brave!" "Cool!" And maybe mostly, "Shit, am I allowed to laugh at this?"

Did I, as they say, bomb? I don’t know and I don’t care. I went in wanting to work the material and get a little more stage experience...mission accomplished. I do believe I made some people squirm though, and upon reflection, that makes me smile. Fuck yeah. I’m a tranny, I’m smart, I’m funny, I’m kinda cute, and worst of all, I’m actually pretty normal. Deal, my dears. Unpucker your assholes and deal.

I caught Brian the MC between intros and gave him my e-mail address with a request for honest critique. I wonder if he’ll respond, and if so, what he’ll say. He did look me in the eye and talk normally to me, so he at least was not completely freaked out by my transness.

A couple of friends came to cheer me on - thanks Katz and Sophia! And thanks Chris for videoing! Katz and Sophia stayed after I left, so I asked Sophia to tell me if anyone ragged on me after I was gone. Will the PC impulse keep them mute? Will the juiciness of the material be too much to resist? I’m really curious if they will, and if they do, what tone it will take.

Will I go back? Not sure yet...it’s not out of the question. Tonight turned out to be about the one-shot opportunity to surprise a whole roomful of people. That won’t happen again...so, really I think I should go back at least once more and see what happens when they already know I’m trans as I approach the stage. We’ll see.

I get told I’m courageous a lot, which is really nice, but honestly I don’t usually feel courageous. Usually I’m just doing what I have to do to be me, sane, and alive. This was different, and this time I'll own the label: this *did* take courage. Yay for me! :-)

Voice truth through comedy

Almost a month since I last posted. Sorry! It’s because of a big development still in process, which I’m not ready to write about. Soon. In the meantime, a reverie on performance and voice.

I posted back in early August about my first experience performing on stage - a monologue I presented as a guest in the Femme Show which came touring through from Boston. Well, tomorrow night, it’s stage two of my performance project: I’m trying out a completely new routine (this one for straight people) at the comedy open mic at Slainte in Portland.

I am so not nervous, which I love. Of course, as in the Femme Show, my heart will be beating as I step up, but there is none of the old male-era fear - just an eager hunger for the rush, the heightened awareness, the challenge.

Last month I went with my friend Jessica, who has comedy performance experience, to check out the venue. Small crowd, young, male - mostly comics waiting their turn. The comedy was generally raw and profane, often pushed hard in an attempt to shock. Jessica leaned and whispered, “This is why I stopped doing stand-up...it’s such a boys’ club.”

Interesting wrinkle - I don’t think anyone read me that evening. “You ladies,” the MC said, addressing Jessica and me, and then we were the two ladies at the front table. Just in the past few months I have been passing more and more; and once people read you one way, I find, they really seem wired to stick with that. Illustrative anecdote: I presented a workshop at a conference a few weeks ago, and at the end, after an hour of me talking, one of my participants complemented me on my voice - she said it was so deep, I sounded just like Lauren Bacall. When I have to talk a lot I tend to drop back into male range, but she had read me as female in the first minute, and that remained her take.

Anyway, I hope that tomorrow night I continue to pass right up until the reveal of my first line - it’ll be more fun that way. Might be the only time too...if I keep doing this, soon I’ll be known as that trans woman comedian, and I may never get to startle an audience with my transness again.

I’ve had a lovely exchange of e-mails about comedy theory with my friend Dan who does volunteer voice work (of a very high caliber) at my radio station. He’s a serious student of standup, and gave me valuable critique of the video of the Femme Show routine. He has also urged me not to worry about whether I get big laughs or not, but just concentrate on the material and be as real as I can. This has always been exactly my plan, so I was grateful for the corroboration. And, he offered advice about finding a character’s voice, about letting go into it - and he was talking about “Lisa” as the character.

Hm. Fascinating. First reaction: no, that’s not right. Lisa is me; “Dave,” that guy you knew before, he was the character. But wait: I played Dave for my first 46 years, non-stop; I didn’t speak a single word myself. Surely at some point it’s not acting any more, it’s just being. And also: when I stop thinking about talking and just talk, I still sound more male than female. And I do continue to struggle with voice, so much...not to find a “feminine” voice, whatever that is, but just to find a voice I can be comfortable speaking in - a voice which sounds like me to me. Also, there’s no changing that I got a male vocal instrument - so the reaching for feminine feels artificial, often strained. So: am I Lisa who used to play Dave, or someone as yet unnamed playing Lisa, or what? No. I’m Lisa. But finding my voice is still much more a fruitless and frustrating labor than a natural relaxing into deeper realness, and it’s making me crazy.

Which brings me back to tomorrow night: the dominant vocal sound at the open mic was loud and deep....one male voice after another. The MC was particularly in our faces, as though he was projecting to a thousand-seat coliseum rather than a narrow bar. I think my best approach when I step up to that mic is going to be to take a deep breath, let most of it out again, and then nearly whisper my first line...and then, all the way to the end, keep it light, gentle, glinting with twisty little touches of humor in pastel hues. One of my worst lines at the FS was when I went loud and deep to convey vehemence. So, emphasis with vocal music rather than vocal strength. Capricious; whimsical; eccentric. Breathe! As I interpret my routine, I’ll be feeling deep for the sweet strong bizarre feminine voice I know I have hidden somewhere in me...striving to let it free. Breathe! The more radically my work differs from the dominant male mode of the room, the better it will be. Breathe! Take the time to be in the moment, then see the bigger joke this all is and ride the wave. Breathe! Yes, OK, I believe I'm ready.

Date bars for snowblowing

I came out to my next-door neighbor, D, back in the fall.  D is single and lives alone. He's in his early sixties, I guess, and works as a handyman. The coming out was a spur-of-the-moment thing during a casual conversation at the border-line between our backyards. He's a bluff masculine man, and I gather he's conservative and religious, but he said something like "I respect that...a person has to do what a person has to do," and it seemed we were fine.

D has a snowblower, and these last two big storms he has come over and cleared my plow berm for me. This was a real help. I'm not getting any younger, and the hormones have taken some of my upper body strength. Also, doing the first big shovel back in December I ripped something in my shoulder. It still hasn't healed, so I have been hurting.

It was a novel and not unpleasant sensation, having a man do something for me like that...something I would have found it hard to do for myself. Watching him work I realized I wanted to do something in return; and the impulse which came to me was take him some baking. I had already been planning to make some date bars, so I made a batch and a half. By the time they were done, though, he had left for the weekend. Word is he has a girlfriend down in Mass.

No matter. I bided my time; and this evening when I got home his van was in his driveway. So, I arranged the remaining bars on a paper plate (tasting the crumbs on the knife to make sure they were still fresh), covered them with foil, and put on my coat to take them over. Then I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror.

Purple nubby hat with my ponytail peeking out, pink coat, scarf, earrings still on from work, plucked eyebrows...my usual look, not provocative, but definitely femme. And I realized I was nervous. At the tender age of 48 I have still basically zero experience as a woman talking to men. Would he think I was coming on to him? Would he reject the gift? Had he decided upon reflection that I am a contemptible faggot and would he therefore offer me abuse, violence? Would he invite me in? Would it be terribly awkward?

Fuck it, I thought. I have had a generous impulse...I'm going to act on it, come what may.

Knock, knock. (No doorbell.) He comes to the door, wearing a vest and reading glasses, looking milder than his usual outdoor appearance...like an avuncular priest. I have a confused impression of a brightly lit, highly decorated, and somewhat feminine room - a plush couch covered in flower-print fabric, overlapping carpets, trim new-looking wood-veneer furniture, a large pristine aquarium glowing by the door. A friendly cat. I stammer my gratitude...we can't find a conversational rhythm, stepping on each other's lines...it is tolerably awkward. He accepts the plate with thanks. He invites me in, casual and friendly-like. I demur...gotta go get my dinner. He doesn't press the point. We wrap it up quickly and I'm away, feeling better than when I went over. Like a good neighbor. And, womanly.

Interesting experience. Nice guy. I hope he likes date bars.

First day working as Lisa

Wednesday I sent out The Memo; Thursday and Friday I took off; so today was my first day back at work in full Lisa mode. It was, I am happy to report, remarkable mostly for being unremarkable...precisely the outcome I was hoping for. :-)

Everyone was cordial as usual...and also perhaps just a little wary. This may have as much to do with the fact that I was wearing a skirt as with my request for the new name and pronouns, but anyway, it didn’t bother me. It really was like a first day at a new job...everyone checking you out out of the corners of their eyes. Who is this Lisa person? Can she be trusted? I don’t blame anyone for wanting to reassess.

The other thing which might have seemed different about me today was my voice. What with everyone calling me Lisa and my skirt swishing around my calves, I suddenly found myself using a higher, softer, and breathier voice than I’ve ever managed to come out with in public before. And, oh my, darling, didn’t that feel *good*! I have struggled so much with voice, and now at long last, I seem to be getting somewhere with it. What a relief!

Today also featured the first few of many conversations I will have in coming days, telling apologetic people not to worry about pronoun and name slips. I was working with one volunteer today who says your name a *lot*, like every other sentence, when he’s talking to you...poor man, he was coming up with Lisa half the time and Dee the other half, evenly mixed. He might get it faster in the end though...practice makes perfect. :p

There was a second Memo to send out today, too, to the whole University...the first was just within the radio station. As with the first memo I got some lovely notes back from people, saying nice things like “Welcome” and “Congrats” and “Thanks for making it clear how to interact with you” and so on, which I appreciated very much. Ever the gracious lady, I answered each one promptly and personally.  :-)  So far, I have not gotten a single nasty-gram. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

Two e-mails I got today meant a little more because they were from other trans folk (neither of whom I knew before) saying “Nice to know I’m not alone,” and “Wanna talk?” I have also particularly enjoyed answering a few select notes with something like, “Thank you for being one of my role models of empowered femininity.” And there was one other sweet touch...someone left me a present in my mailbox of four chocolate letters, L, I, S, and A, and an unsigned note: “You are what you eat...Merry Christmas”...to whomever gave me this gift, thank you! You made my morning! :-)

Oh, and as a bonus...I stopped on the way home and did my weekly shopping at my local Hannaford, still wearing my skirt. I’d like to tell you if people stared, but honestly, I didn’t care enough to notice if they did or not. Ha! So there! :-D