GenderBendy

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

Aunts and Uncles

My parents are both long dead, and one of the most difficult parts of my transition turns out to be coming to terms with never being able to re-introduce myself to them as a woman. They never knew me when I was un-self-suppressed. They never knew me as anything but their bio-son.

It would have been incredibly hard to talk to them. I would have been terrified. And there’s no guarantee they would have responded positively to my news. But I still grieve for the lost chance to show them...to ask them to still love me. It’s a thing I can never have, and I just have to live with that.

There is a thing I do have, though, and that’s aunts and uncles.

I am not particularly close to any of my parents’ siblings. They all live thousands of miles away, and I’ve not seen any of them more than a handful of times in my adult life...mostly at weddings and funerals. I don’t correspond regularly with any of them. They are still family, though, and that turns out to matter.

With my parents gone, the aunts and uncles became to my mind almost parents by proxy. This was hardly fair to them, I suppose...they don't really know me...but it was my emotional truth as I contemplated telling them my news. So, I procrastinated for a long time, and when I did finally send the “guess what I’m trans” e-mails, it was with a sense of trepidation. I yearned for their approval and dreaded their disapproval.

(I also wondered if there were any family secrets waiting to be revealed...a cross-dressing grandfather perhaps? But nothing like that has come to light.)

I needn’t have worried. My father’s two sisters and my mother’s brother all responded with expressions of acceptance and support. And, each responded in her or his own unique style--gracious, blunt, peppery--which made me smile. I know these people mostly from childhood, but I do love them, and it’s charming that they still are who I remember them to be from when I was small.

The e-mail from my mother’s brother moved me particularly deeply. He was closer to my mother than my father was to his sisters, so I had a stronger feeling of his response standing in for what hers might have been; and I also I felt an extra level of anxiety because the name I have chosen for myself, Elizabeth, was his and my mother’s mother’s name, and I wasn’t sure how he would feel about that.

He didn’t reply right away, and I squirmed for several days before sending another short e-mail saying, “I don’t know how to read your silence, and your response, whatever it is, matters to me...could you please respond?” And he wrote back, kind and supportive...and opened with “Dear Elizabeth.”

It was the first time anyone had ever addressed me by that name. Everyone else calls me Lisa, the Elizabeth nickname I have been generally giving out.

I burst into tears. I’m crying again now as I type this.

The glow of his acceptance, and of the acceptance from my father’s sisters, is always with me now. It’s not my parents’ acceptance...but it’s enough. It’s enough.

Nancy, Joanna, Blair...thank you.

Squeeee!

Yesterday I was walking down Congress Street in downtown Portland, wearing women’s cut jeans, my elegant dark green short-sleeved top, and a reasonable amount of silver jewelry - rings, bracelet, earrings. My hair (recently salon-colored medium brown) was loose and blowing around in the fitful wind. I was in a good mood, smiling to myself.

Suddenly I heard someone close to my left ear doing a passable imitation of a pig squealing:  “Squeee!” I turned and looked. Two young men sat on a retaining wall, giving me impudent eye-contact, smirking. The second one giggled at what the first one had done. I scowled at them and swept on by.

My first thought: Assholes.

My second thought: They saw me as a woman! (I know...<eyeroll>)

I don’t believe this was an incident of prejudice against a trans person. Nah. It was just plain sexism. It was the arrogance of a young man presuming to express offensively to a stranger-woman that he thinks she’s ugly.

Forty years of feminism, and yet there they are: the next generation of jerks in training. What’s up with that? Could it be that chauvinism is such a natural impulse of the human male that it can never be eradicated? I hope not, but I fear it might be so.

They were quite young...maybe they were just trying the attitude out? And maybe they’ll decide it’s not for them? The second boy at least had the decency to look uncomfortable.

Hm. Maybe.

Interesting to note: I hardly felt the insult at all. Other earlier incidents of male assholery have sent me into major tailspins (see these posts: the seafood man and girding my loins, such as they are). No more. A twinge...feeling the hurt of their contempt, but immediately beginning to let it go...a safety check...are they a danger to me? No...and so walking on, good mood spoiled, but essentially unharmed.

I’m learning.

Pretty much done with man-clothes

One morning a few weeks back, getting dressed, I looked at the thick waistband of my jockey shorts and thought, I don't wear these any more.  So I put on one of the few pairs of cotton panties I had acquired up to that point, then stopped on the way to work and bought a couple six-packs more of basic knickers, and it's been girl-underwear ever since.

A few days later, I more or less retired most of the rest of my male wardrobe.  I haven't taken big bags to Goodwill yet, but I have been dressed as a woman for the last couple of weeks, and it is my plan to go on dressing as a woman for the rest of my life, from here on out.  The only time I am still wearing man-clothes is when I go running...and I'll fix that too at some point.

The thing I didn't figure out looking forward to this moment was that I could wear shorts and tops and shoes which, while definitely from the women's clothing half of the store, would appear as basically gender-neutral out in the world.  I thought it was going to be man-jeans and man-shirts until one day it was skirts and blouses.  Androgyny-play, yay!  :-)

Turns out many of my women friends shop routinely on the man-side of the store, and hardly any of my acquaintance of either gender dress very femme at all.  A few weeks ago I went to a play in a dress and heels and was the only woman in the audience wearing a dress or heels.  Getting into dressing femme begins to feel like rediscovering some arcane lost art...Japanese Tea Ceremony...

An advantage emerges of having come out as trans early in the process.  Now everyone around me knows about my gender work, and basically gets along fine with however I am presenting.  On Friday I did push over the line, with the frankly femme white top, big earrings, and hair soft and full with an elastic headband, and saw my friends and coworkers' eyes flicker as they figured out how to deal...but it was OK.   I was still wearing it all when I got home, and waved at a couple of neighbors who stared back, so I'm coming out now in my neighborhood...I used to fear, now I just don't care...people deal.

That's the most important thing I'm learning.  People deal.  Meaning, they just don't care that much.  I mean, think about the big things I've learned about some of my friends lately:  life-threatening disease, sexual orientation, matrimony...and none of these pieces of news has moved me to more than easy condolence or congratulation...I'm as self-centered as the next person...and I take comfort in knowing that you're the same.  So thanks for bothering to read all the way to the end.... :-)

Radio pronouns

Back in January I came out at work, which is WMPG, Portland's community radio station, where I am Program Director.  Response from station volunteers to my announcement has been uniformly supportive, which is wonderful. 

This week we're fund-raising, which means I've found myself on air with various different volunteers, some of whom I don't see very often, and in the course of our begging for donations two of them have called me "she".  (In my coming-out e-mail I said male pronouns were fine for the time being.) 

One of those two was an old friend who likes to make a point of things, so I felt sure his "she" was deliberate (and kindly meant).  

The other, though, was from a volunteer I don't know well, and it came fleetingly and unstressed in the full flow of her begging, without facial expression or body-language of any kind, so that I really felt that she had used the word unconsciously...and the only reason I could think for her to do that is that she has at least begun to accept me as female.  It's not the first time I've been surprised by how quickly some people have just switched my M to an F in their minds.

It's funny, though, the timing, because, while I still want to be a woman just as much as ever, for the first time in many weeks I feel free of the drive to get there as fast as possible...I think because I've got it all lined up:  a medical team I trust, children seemingly reasonably comfortable, everyone at work already getting used to thinking of me at least in between.  So now I linger for a bit in what is left of my old maleness, holding off on hormones, honoring the slow passing away of a good old self.

I'm glad that maybe my gender issues can take the back seat for a while.  My daughter is graduating from high school this spring and going off to college in the fall, and that's a big transition.  I haven't been ignoring her, but fair to say I've been preoccupied.  I very much want to be fully present in every minute I have left with her before she heads out into the world to begin her adult life.

And, there's a practical reason for staying male for a little while longer:  I've just gotten hired by the US Census to count transient people, and I'll feel a lot safer doing that with my hair pulled back and a Red Sox cap on than in my current workday earrings-and-scarf combo.  :-)

Bits and pieces

I fear my last post built a little suspense which I have since failed to provide the release for...apologies to anyone who was on tenterhooks.  :-)  My sister was visiting from Colorado over the weekend, and then fund-raising started at my radio station (that number again: 874-3000), so I've not had a second to post again until now.

The setup was, I proposed to change into full femme mode in the bathroom at my work in order to be on a panel at a trans conference taking place across campus, then walk back and change again after.  I did it, and it went all right.  I got one scoff-and-eyeroll, but also some smiles and, my favorite, a truly blasé response from the work study students.  There really does seem to be a generational difference:  people my age and older often seem uncomfortable with my gender non-conformity; people under 30 tend to just roll with it.

The panel was interesting because our audience was mostly health professionals - nurses and counselors and such - and it was clear from the questions that most of them had very little understanding of what it means to be trans.  I'm finishing a query letter and book proposal which I will soon be sending out, trying to get an agent for a memoir, and I find myself feeling newly motivated by the sense I brought out of that session of just how much basic education remains to be done.

While she was here my sister took some pictures of my face for me...front, three quarters, and profile, hair pulled back, no makeup, muscles carefully unsmiling...so I can send them to a woman in the UK who specializes in photoshopping what you could look like after facial feminization surgery.  When I have my before and afters, I will post them here.

My most recent development:  I suddenly found myself today coming out to Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!  I had called her to record a pitch for our fundraiser, and she remembered me from previous similar conversations and asked about the name change, and there I was stammering my explanation.  She offered congratulations and best wishes, which was very kind of her.  Who knows what might come of that someday?  In any case, yet another proof is one was needed (it wasn't) of my newfound lack of shyness.

One more thing I've been wanting to record here...a couple of weeks ago now my daughter decided after some trepidation to tell her friends at school about my trans identity.  She was a little surprised, I think, at how well it went.  As I understand it one of them laughed, one just nodded, and the third asked a bunch of questions.  Then they gave me a wonderful gift:  another new name to add to my growing collection.  She texted me:  "They've decided to call you Madame Deeve."  With their permission I have changed the spelling, and whatever other name(s) I also end up using, I will proudly answer from now on to Madame D'Yves.  Isn't that elegant?  I love it! :-)  Thank you Sarah and Cheyenne and Sam!