GenderBendy

Three years and a day and counting

I recorded the following audio file on my hand-held flash recorder during my commute the morning after posting the last post. It's a rebuttal of sorts, or a next step which, in retrospect, I was still working on when I wrote that last post. 

3 years and a day

 Since I made this recording it has further occurred to me that "please yourself" can mean both "strive to reach your own standards," and simply "try to get what you really want," and I have been experiencing a curious new sense of freedom from worry about what other people think and expect of me. Perhaps a major step...the changing of a lifelong mental habit of existing in a perpetual state of anxiety to please others...hmm, we'll see.

 

Monsieur A & Monsieur B

Earlier this week I came up with a new dream. Inspired by my planned visit to Montreal next summer I have once again taken up the study of French, and my new dream is, maybe someday I could move to France for a while and teach English. My teacher says there are jobs for Americans because of French businessmen wanting to learn to speak with an American accent.

I like this dream for two reasons. First of all, I just like it. Sounds like the new adventure I crave, and I’d become fluently bilingual, which I’d love to be. But, also, I like it because it has nothing to do with gender. Honestly, I’m bored of gender, of thinking and talking and writing about it all the time. The gender work I’m doing still matters to me just as much as ever, but I have it well in hand, and these days it feels at best routine and at worst tiresome. Several other things in my life interest me more right now, e.g.:

• Parenting: Goes without saying, really - just always need to be there for each kid as each kid needs.
• Writing: I got an article published by the Phoenix (in their Out In Maine LGBT supplement) and the editor wants more of my work. I’m writing professionally! Yay!
• Money: I still need to figure out a way to make more of it.
• The smell  in my house of some small animal decaying: Where is it coming from and how can I get rid of it?

Et cetera.

Oh, and one more big one: I’d really like to date a male-bodied, masculine person now. Doesn’t mean I’m done with female-bodied people, but I’ve tried that. Nope, for now I’m feeling hungry for masculine attention and ready to reciprocate with feminine attention. Which brings us to Messieurs A and B.

Monsieur A was my best friend through junior high and high school. He was a quiet, introverted boy with a sweet smile and the strength of character to hang out with that weird kid with the long hair who looked like a girl. We shared common geeky interests, private humor, and even for a while a private alphabet, in which we would write each other messages on the chalkboards of classrooms. From time to time he would pat me on the head. With A I felt cared about, safe, and (not clearly, but in a way which still mattered), seen. In retrospect it is clear that, in a hopeless never-to-speak-its-name way, I was in love with him.

Just one time I felt an intense moment of attraction toward A. It was during a rest stop on a hike. We were sitting on rocks, sipping water and talking of nothing in particular, and all at once I felt conscious of his closeness in a way I’ve only experienced a few other times in my life, always with men. It was more than just sexual, though it was that. I yearned to merge with him...two selves becoming one new whole. All I could make of this at the time was that it meant I was gay, and in those days I had not even begun to deconstruct the homophobia I had learned from my father, so the moment upset me. I thrust it away and expressed nothing, then or later.

A and I lost contact after college. Just once, about ten years ago, I sought him out during a business trip in his city. We had dinner at a restaurant and walked around a little, talking. Same quiet somewhat elusive man, married to a woman I have never met, with children. I felt a faint echo of the same tingle. And, recently, I’ve been thinking about him. The other day I found myself fantasizing about meeting him again...about him taking me (now him, now me) in his arms and kissing me...and I burst into tears.

I had been thinking I had come out to everyone, but I haven’t to A. Should I write him an e-mail? Hm...that’s good for butterflies.

Monsieur B is one of those few men of my present acquaintance who have started to talk to me in an unguarded way, new to my experience, which I take to mean that they see me simply as a woman. Most of the men I know are wonderfully accepting and supportive of my transition...and subtly cagey. Their eyes jitter as they compute moment by moment how to talk to me. With all the power I have lost, I have gained the power to make men squirm.

But B just talks to me. His face is open and candid, and if I meet his eyes he meets mine right back. He’s willing to confide in a minor way - everyday thoughts and feelings about work and such - and he also listens with apparent interest when I confide. He has a quick mind, which I find attractive, and he’s passionate about what he does, which ditto. So, sometimes when we talk, I find myself having to make an extra effort to pay attention to what he’s saying because I’m becoming mesmerized by his moving lips and tingling a little all over.

This is neither complicated nor deep. I’m enjoying feeling attraction toward specific present men, making a few shy attempts at flirting, and hoping that something might happen. I realize this is a passive stance, but at least for now that feels right. I can always get brazen later on if I want. In the meantime, if Monsieur B asked me out to dinner, with heart a-flutter I would say yes.

Might *you* in fact be Monsieur B? That would be telling. ;->

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.

Up side update

A friend e-mailed me the other day to ask if I was OK. She was feeling motherly concern based on a couple of my recent blog posts (this one and this one), which, reading  back, I can understand. I was doing hard emotional work when I wrote both of them, and they are dark. I don’t want to minimize those posts; but on the other hand, I’m doing fine overall, and it occurs to me that if I want this blog to reflect my total transition experience, then I’m overdue for an up side update. As a matter of fact, many parts of transition are going well.

Parenting: Transition is a narcissistic process, and from time to time I have become so engrossed in myself that my parenting has faltered. Most recently this took the form of pointing both my emotional neediness and my stress about money at my children in ways which were unfair to them. In effect I was asking them for the kind of support one might expect from an adult friend or partner rather than from one’s teenagers. Sensible and empowered as they are (I do have amazing offspring) they called me on it. At their request we went together to a short course of family therapy, and talked a bunch of stuff out. End results: I’m feeling better and stronger about my parenting than I have for a long time (and, I trust, doing a better job at it); I also got to say some things I think they needed to hear; and in our little household the tension-level has gone way down and the fun-level has gone way up. Yay for all three of us! :-)

Hormones: It has been about a year now since I got up to full doses in my hormone regimen, and I am totally digging the physical changes. I’m already happy with my new breasts; even if they don’t grow any more than the modest amount they have so far, I have indefinitely tabled the idea of surgical enhancement. My face also looks much more feminine, mostly perhaps because I’ve lost about twenty pounds, but there could be skin changes and fat-distribution changes too. (Likewise with my neck, shoulders, arms, legs.) Some days at least I think maybe I’ll never have to get facial surgery, and considering how desperate the need for that has sometimes felt, that’s big. I can’t quite say I’ve tabled it indefinitely, but at least for a couple of years I have, and that eases the money worry. And, one other hormone plus: back hair completely gone. That makes me smile every time I think of it. :-)

Surgery plans: I have pretty much settled on a surgeon and a date for Sexual Reassignment Surgery (Dr. Brassard in Montreal, summer of 2012), and have a working plan for how to pay for it (retirement savings, which I recently discovered I have more of than I thought). The Montreal SRS experience sounds about as wonderful as it could be: Dr. B is by all accounts as good as any other SRS surgeon working, and for a day before and several days after your procedure you stay in a residence with other patients, nursing care, full meals...and all for the same price as other surgeons who send you off on your own after a couple days in the hospital. One of the things I was dreading most about SRS was a week spent recovering in some anonymous hotel room, which seems to be the dominant model here in the States. A week of pampering and peer support for no extra dollars? Yes please!

Performance/writing: As noted in previous posts, I recently realized a lifelong ambition and performed a piece in a show. (Gushy post here.)  I want to see what it’s like to perform for a straight audience next, rather than a room full of twenty-something lesbians, so I’m going to check out the comedy open mic at the Slainte winebar here in Portland. One visit to get the vibe, and then work up a routine and step up to the mic. Oooh, butterflies. I’ve got the bug bad...performing is *such* a rush, and I turn out not to suck at it, so, onward.

Meanwhile, after several false starts, I have figured out a way to write long-form about my trans experience. Success as a writer is my earliest, most intense, and most enduring ambition in life, so when a project is going well I feel a deep sense of fulfilment and happiness which nothing else can give me. It’s going slowly, but it’s going...joy!

Feminine life: the daily experience of living as woman in the world has lost the gee-whiz factor which leads to blog posts, but it continues to be deeply satisfying. I’m not sure how, but I’ve managed to reduce my anxiety about presentation (dress, carriage, mannerisms, and especially voice) almost to zero and just focus on enjoying every moment. I still get such pleasure from such simple things; a nice new pair of earrings, walking down Congress Street in a skirt, an unforced and natural “ma’am” at the grocery store.

So, in sum, yeah, I have money troubles, and sometimes my self-esteem plummets, and sometimes I feel desperately lonely, and I have no idea at this point even what sort of partner I want, let alone might ever find...but overall things are going well. The curious burden of being trans is also the source of most of the pleasure and sense of forward motion in my life, and it is *never* boring.

Next time the rollercoaster dips down into one of those low tunnels, remind me to come back and re-read this post.

A five-star rush

The Femme Show performance went great! Doing my piece was both intensely exciting and deeply self-affirming. The house was full and the crowd enthusiastic; I got laughs and cheers and applause...not always on the lines I thought I would, which was interesting, but I was able to roll with that. I achieved my main ambition going in which was to relax into the performance and take the time I needed to feel the sexy symbiotic give-and-take with the audience. And I got lots of compliments after, which was of course gratifying; especially meaningful were those from my fellow performers, whose work I admired, and the one from a trans man who had been in the audience who thanked me sincerely for speaking for us T's of the LGBT. My fellow performers were kind and accepting and supportive, and I learned an enormous amount about theater, writing, and performance from them in a very short time - soaking up that thespian lore like a sponge. From the bottom of my heart, Femme Show darlings, thank you for including me! :-)

So I am already mulling next steps...I definitely want to do this again...new material, new venue...I need more experience...maybe a one-woman show someday...hmmm...happy mulling...

And, since I don't have to try to entice you to the show any more, here is my script from last night, if you're curious:

Enter all trannied up - breast forms, hip pads, tranny-mane wig, high heels, etc.

Hi, my name is Lisa, and I am a tranny - which I get to say because I am one. I’m so happy to be here tonight, being seen by you!

As you can see, I have put on for you this evening the best patiche I can manage of the hyper-sexualized stereotype of femininity foisted upon us by our hetero-normative, cis-gender dominant, masculinity-privileging culture.  I hope you like it.

Actually, let me say that again: I hope *you* like it, because honestly, I don’t. This is fun to put on every once in a while, but it’s not me. Literally, this is not me.

Pull out a breast form:  *This* is not me...
The other:  And this is not me...
Take off hips: And this is not me...
Wig off:  And this is not me...
And the shoes...I do love the shoes, but I’m already too fucking tall without them. Take off shoes.

That was four layers of gender right there: a trans woman born in a male body, double re-crossdressed as a man in drag!

Now that I am less complicated and more comfortable, I’m here this evening for two reasons. The first reason is, whenever there’s an LGBT event going on, I do like to do whatever I can to make sure that the T is not just hinted at, but, you know, really *firmly* tacked on the end there.

And, the second reason is, I have something to say about the subject of the evening, femininity.

And you might be saying to yourself, yeah, right, who made you Ms. fabulous queen expert on the subject? Well, think about it: a trans-woman has to study and theorize and practice and then dare to assert every single aspect of her femininity in the world...so, we tend to have very clear and detailed ideas of what we mean by that word. In fact, I myself, through my gender work, have discovered the elusive golden secret of femininity....and I am here to share it with you...maybe, if I feel like it.

While you’re waiting to find out if I am in the mood, I *can* mention right off a couple of things that we are definitely *not* talking about this evening.

Scenario one: my grandmother’s generation:

Yes dear. Whatever you say, dear. (My goodness, you are so stupid sometimes.) Whatever you say, dear. (I cannot believe you just said that.) Whatever you say, dear. Whatever you say.

Debunked forty years ago, thank goodness...and good riddance!

Scenario two: my mother’s generation:

I am as good as any man, and I am going to prove it by being as much like a man as I can be. I can and will out-masculinize my husband and all those other macho male-type manly men out there. So there. I mean, huh!

Which admittedly had some good ideas in it, and lead to some beneficial social changes, but I don’t think we’re there quite yet.

Which brings us to this generation, the present day...and I guess I’ve tantalized you enough, so I’ll tell. The elusive golden secret of femininity. Here’s how it goes. Hold my hand...and I’ll just tease you some more.

Sorry, I can’t seem to help it. But I’m running out of time...so here it is for real. Hold my hand (and take me to dinner and buy me flowers and tell me I’m beautiful), and I’ll just tease you. But: take me in your arms and kiss me with tenderness and passion...and then I’ll whisper a hint in your ear. Just a hint. Would you like that? I know I would.

I am aware that I am still teasing. I do so enjoy it. But on the other hand, I am extremely empathetic, (Oh, darlings, I *do* feel your pain), so I will always give you satisfaction in the end....probably.

OK, all teasing aside...I am really, REALLY, going to tell you now...the elusive golden secret.  Hold my hand (and take me to dinner and buy me flowers and tell me I’m beautiful), and I will just tease you some more. Kiss me with tenderness and passion...and I’ll whisper a hint in your ear. But if you want the Truth with a capital T, the Answer with a capital A (hey, T and A, how about that); if you want me to share the elusive golden secret with you; then...well, then, you must promise to love me and treasure me and cherish me for always and always...and then...well, then I’ll *show* you.

Ta-ta, darlings! It’s been fun. Catch me if you can!

Exit.

I am speaking, my dear, of the theatah!

I’m gonna be in a show! I’m so excited! :-D

Here’s how it happened: I went to this show last year, the Femme Show, touring up from Boston, and really enjoyed it. It’s a variety show - theater, readings, dance, etc. - looking at the femme identity in queer culture from various angles. I was nodding and laughing and learning stuff, but I also thought, hm, no trans women up there, and also, hm, I’ve got a bunch of funny things to say about femininity; and I felt this intense impulse to perform. So I wrote some e-mails, and on the strength of the writing here at Genderbendy I got in. Just for the Portland show tomorrow night, not the whole tour, but still...a chance to try strutting my stuff! Glee!

I’ve been feeling the impluse to perform all my life, actually...watching people on stages and thinking resentfully, *I* could do that. But whenever I thought of actually doing something, I was immediately paralyzed by extreme self-consciousness and dread. Hardly surprising, given that at the time I was 100 percent committed to clamped-down hyper-controlled male mode.

No longer! The deeper cool thing about being in this show is that I am hardly nervous at all. I’m feeling confident and joyful. All eyes will be on me; all minds engaged with my words...amazing. And I look forward to trying to find that sweet natural rhythm of give and take I know can exist between performer and audience, riding the wave of their response. No doubt at show-time my heart will be beating in my throat, but hey, bring it. The adrenaline, the flash of the lights when I go out on stage, launching into my first line and off we go...sounds like a total rush. I hope so. I’ll report after.

Oh, and, what am I doing? All I can say is that it involves three or four layers of crossdressing, breast-form gags, and the elusive golden secret of femininity...and if you want to know more, you’re just going to have to see for yourself tomorrow night, darling! Wish me luck! :-) Useful link here.

Loathing and revulsion

It turns out my trans-narrative is darker than I’ve been telling it.

My stock explanation of why it has taken me so long to express my gender-truth has been that somewhere around age five I made a fateful decision to try to please my parents and the world by being the best possible male I could be. I have also surmised that I made this choice after showing my nascent femininity to my mother and having it made clear to me that whatever I was doing was for girls and that I was a boy. Mind you, I don’t remember either such a decision or such a scene with my mother, but this story has felt psychologically and emotionally true. Things to note about this version: it rejects the idea that I was abused; and it assumes at least some self-awareness on my part.

The new version still rejects the abuse theory, but it involves less self-awareness and more emotional turmoil. My source is a packet of notebooks which I have carried around with me since college. Into these journals, during my sophomore year, at the suggestion of a counselor, I released a burden of repressed emotion unexpressed up to that time; and recently, for the first time since writing them, I have been reading them again.

I can’t go into details. It is still too raw, and besides, there’s enough material for a book. In general, the journals alternate between defensive intellectualizing and the spewing of pent up rage, grief, hatred and self-hatred, guilt...and unexpressed love. I can still feel echoes of some of these feelings - being angry at my parents for divorcing, at my father for dying; feeling like I had somehow failed the world and myself and feeling so sorry for that; and also realizing for the first time through writing it how much I loved my family. (One good thing which came out of that therapy was my telling my mother that I loved her. It took months to build up enough courage to do it. I’m so glad, now, that I did.)

There is one thread in those notebooks, though, which I had forgotten. As I wrote them I kept returning to the idea that there was something inside me which I couldn’t access or express; and this thing, whatever it was, felt so black and evil that every time I approached it I recoiled, full of loathing and revulsion. I wrote my gender truth more than once: “I’m mostly female; don’t tell a soul, nobody knows” - but I couldn’t feel the force of truth in these statements. I couldn’t connect them to the awful hidden thing.

So here is my new theory of why and how I repressed my femininity for so long. In my first few years, like all children, I was whirled along in a tornado of elemental emotions: jealousy toward my little brother; sexual attraction to my father (that Freudian chestnut); hatred of my rival for his affections, my mother (likewise); terror in the face of her anger; hunger for love; fear and guilt around these other feelings...and so on.  I was a wild passionate vulnerable girl, completely unsocialized - and so, of course, my parents did what parents do: they taught me and and corrected me, and I also taught and corrected myself, to control my deepest emotional impulses.

And here is the key part of this new theory: this teaching was gendered. I learned to survive the maelstrom specifically by being a *good boy.* Then this socialized maleness became my bulwark against the unabated storm inside me, and in later years, the harder that storm raged, the more I clung to the safety of my identity as a rational intellectual man.

All those years I hated, feared, and felt disgusted by my turbulent ungoverned girl-soul. What a wretched way to live.  Exhausting too. Fucking eternal vigilance. I’m doing OK, you know...better than OK...but sometimes I do feel so sad and bone-weary. Fuck. :-(

Chatted up

Last night during the First Friday Art Walk, for the first time in my life, I got hit on. As a woman, I mean, by a man.

It was at the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA. I was staring at  the work “Sturm und Drang,” by Stacy Howe, when a strong masculine voice spoke next to me. “Powerful piece, isn’t it?”

He was maybe 60, casually dressed, with artfully unkempt grey hair and beard, full unsmiling lips like my father’s lips, and aggressive eyes. Despite our similar heights I felt loomed over. I arranged my throat for the feminine voice I had been practicing all day. “It’s intense and disturbing,” I agreed.

He began to explicate, pointing out features. His voice was deep, and he spoke loudly. His comments were insightful, knowledgeable, and stated as fact. I felt invited to admire.

As he spoke he contrived to step back and give me the full-body once over. I was rocking the femme: sandals to show off my lavender toenails, a swirly above-the-knee black skirt, a skin-tight curve-enhancing spangly purple top, big twirly silver earrings, and my new ultra-femme designer glasses. I had my hair clipped back for a soft over-the-shoulder fall, and had made up my eyes.

I listened with my arms fenced across my front and felt acutely my lack of experience responding to a man on the prowl. I wondered if I thought he was attractive, but I was too discombobulated to tell. All I knew was that I didn’t have a clue what to do, and that I wanted to get away.

This proved hard to do. He controlled the conversational rhythm. He would pause for an affirmation, but then cut in again, leaving me no chance to disconnect.

I saw another woman approaching, attractive, physically confident, stylishly dressed. She tapped him on the shoulder. He made an impatient “wait a minute” gesture and turned to her. Clearly at least friends, they greeted each other, hugged, bantered. I gathered from their conversation that he was an artist, and retired. I could have walked away, but I didn’t.

Then he was focused on me again. The other woman hovered. Scraps of coherent thought flitted through my brain: should I drop a hint that I’m trans? He certainly seems practiced at this. Hm, I don’t feel required to have any ideas of my own. What’s with the frown line - doesn’t this man ever smile?

The other woman somehow snagged him back again, and I saw my opening. I touched his shoulder. “Sorry, I have to go,” I said. “Nice chatting with you.”

“Nice chatting with *you*,” he said, like a last reaching out of a hand, and then I was away, feeling giddy, relieved, gratified, womanly.

Whadayathink: should I go back next month?

Three men

    Yesterday at work a campus policeman showed up with a clipboard. He was doing an inspection and needed access to the furnace and such, so I grabbed my keys and led him downstairs. I was dressed particularly femme - turquoise skirt, sleeveless top, sandals - and feeling confident, in a mood to twinkle and flirt with the world. I could see in his body language and eyes the wariness of the politely ill-at-ease to which I am becoming accustomed. Still, our interaction went OK. He asked questions, I answered them.
    On the way back upstairs he noticed the black steel door in the corner of the basement. “Does that go outside?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is it alarmed?”
    “No.”
    I don’t know why I did it - impulse of the moment - but I timed it perfectly, just as he turned the knob: “Dwee dwee dwee dwee!”
    He jumped back, then gave me a sheepish glance. “OK, you got me,” he said, and the rest of our talk was natural and easy.

    Later another man came around the mailboxes to the corner of my desk. His clothes said he was from facilities. He had football-player shoulders and a manly moustache. He shied when he saw me and then stared into the corner. “Is Jim around?” he stammered. Jim is my boss.
    “No, he’s out today. May I help you?” Open, warm. I was still feeling fine.
    “I wanted to ask him a question.”
    “What’s the question?”
    He glanced at me and away again. “No, uh...when will Jim be back?”
    “Not until tomorrow. What’s your question?”
    He was edging away. “It’s just a question about the door.” They had installed a new front door the day before.
    “Ask it.” Pointed now. I was starting to feel offended. It was more than his obvious discomfort. I felt as though he had concluded in the first instant that I could not possibly have any authority, and/or that I wouldn’t be able to understand what he had to say.
    Reluctantly he explained: he had a heavy workload and couldn’t put the door-closer back on for a week...was that going to be OK?  Yes, I said, that would be fine; but still his face was clouded and his eyes skittered away.
    At this point Dale Robin showed up - our other manager. He turned to her with obvious relief and explained his business again. She gave him the same answer I had given him. His shoulders relaxed, and he smiled and thanked her.
    She asked him to look at a sticky window, and off they went. I sat at my desk, trying to absorb the experience. Earlier in my transition it could have triggered a tailspin, but now I just felt stung, as though I had been slapped. In the front room DR was chatting with the man as he ripped apart the casement with his screwdriver...so I went and joined the conversation. He still addressed his remarks entirely to her, except at the very end, when, in response to something friendly I said, he gave me the first and only open-faced glance of our encounter and answered me directly.

    Still later, still feeling fine, I went to drop off an application for part-time work at Trader Joe’s. I had thought of applying there because they hired Eleanor, another trans woman I know.
    The man behind the customer service counter was flusteringly handsome. Eleanor had tipped me that they hire based on personality, so I made an extra effort to smile and meet his eyes. He met mine right back and thanked me warmly for my application. He glanced at it.  “Elizabeth?”
    “I go by Lisa.”
    “Why Trader Joe’s?” He had the uptempo conversational cadence of the quick-minded.
    Oh shit, impromptu interview. Presumable trans-friendliness wouldn’t do - I needed something not self-focused. “Because I like the feel of the place. It’s got a good vibe, you know?” True enough. Attentive, he waited for more. “And I’m a customer - I, you know, shop here to fill around the edges of...” I flapped my hand toward my other store. Fuck. Oh well. I couldn’t say I shopped here only, it not being true. “And I love dried fruit.” The same quip from my application - oh well again.
    “What about ginger?” I stared at him blankly. “We haven’t had any ginger for a couple of weeks. Our regular customers are upset about it.”
    “Oh? Why’s that?”
    “An FDA thing...it’s complicated.” He held out a hand, I shook it, and we exchanged thanks. I left not sure whether I had just ruined my chances, but feeling I had been heard and respected.

    And what useful conclusions might a person draw from these three encounters? From the first two I glean additional evidence that people will have a harder time labeling, dismissing (fearing, hating) you if you can somehow get them to see you as an individual human; and that humor does this particularly well. Also, it clearly makes a difference to try to re-engage after a first snub - you might teach the person something, and in any case it matters to assert one’s dignity. From the third, I conclude that having someone else respond to you from the first moment based entirely on what you do and say is a precious gift.

    Do you suppose it is only coincidence that first two men were white, the third black? And, hey, another femme first: I teased a policeman! ;->

Still more new rightness

Two and a half years into her transition, Elizabeth gradually became aware of a feeling of natural ease in self which she had never experienced before in her life, unless it was in the first few years, as a tiny child...but that was beyond memory. Time rolled on, as ever, but somehow now there was room which had never been there before; room to breathe before speaking, to feel before acting.

For all the long man-impersonation time, she now understood, she had acted on peremptory impulse out of a defining sense of anxiety. What would a man do now? I must do it instantly! Life had been speech before thought, action before centeredness.

It was ironic that for the past nine years she had been telling hundreds of radio trainees to breathe. But then, who needs the teacher’s lesson more than the teacher herself? And how could so many cis-gendered people still seem so unhappy, if they had always felt this natural and free? But then, one who has found peace through seemingly endless struggle will naturally treasure that peace more than those who have always known it.

The new rightness threaded through every part of her life. At work, in conversation with needy or vulnerable volunteers, she found herself more able to pause and then respond in a way which might help. At home she experienced a new, specifically maternal sense of tenderness and pleasure in the raising of her still-growing teens. In performance on the stages of life generally she found herself capable of a deeper level of self-trust in the moment than ever before. Thus aspects of her true personality began to show forth more clearly: a fundamental impulse to nurture; flashes of extroversion, sauciness, and flamboyance; a recasting of the old man-steel strength in whip-thin willow.

Of course she still sometimes said and did things she regretted, but less than ever before. The joy of her long unclenching ebbed and surged, but over time it continued to well up inexorably, engendering ever new and deeper senses of rightness.