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.

 

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.

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?

So not done

The ache is back. It went away for a little while after I changed my name and went full time, back in December. For a few months, reveling in having claimed womanhood in the world, I felt at ease in my skin in a way I had not done since before my initial gender revelation in ‘08...or maybe ever. For the first time in my life I felt as femme as I wanted to feel.

The respite is over. Once again I begin to squirm on the pin of my resurgent, imperious drive to inhabit femininity in voice body mind sex soul culture society life, every instant for the rest of my days. I begin to think that the name change and social transition were the easy part. Overt, dramatic, exciting...I got lots of nice attention and support. And there was nobody to say, maybe you shouldn’t. There was no question in my mind or anyone else’s. They were clearly natural steps to take, and aside from the intrinsic risk of bigotry, safe.

The work I still have to do is less public, which means less positive feedback and support, and it’s all laborious, and some of it is expensive. Some steps, already begun, continue: hormones, electrolysis, voice - so far I have not been able to find a voice which sounds even a little like me to me - and the social part too...I still have almost everything to learn about being a woman in 21st century America. But I also face the question of surgeries: Sexual Reassignment Surgery and Facial Feminization Surgery. Here there *are* risks, and also people around me saying maybe I shouldn’t.

Well, actually there’s no question in my mind about SRS. I am not repulsed by my current genitals, but I have no use for them either. They’re wrong, and fixable, so I’m going to fix them.

FFS is the real puzzle. I have many lovely friends who say such nice things...you look so pretty...you already look like a woman...I don’t think you need facial surgery at all...and it’s wonderful and warming. But on the other hand, just today, despite my usual care with clothes hair voice carriage and mannerism, four different people have given me “he” or “him.” Two of them were friends, and when I gently corrected them they both looked at me blankly, not understanding...they weren’t even aware of what they had said. I am still a man to them.

FFS is risky and expensive and loaded down with thorny issues of gender norms and the old bad gender binary and the barbed complexities around the concept of beauty and out vs. stealth...but I just want it. I want it with the same adamant will which made light work of 40 years of self-negation; so my anxiety about money, already chronic, ratchets up another notch. I can’t even afford my simple pared-down-to-absolute basics life, let alone major surgery, but I have to find a way. I have to find a way, or perish trying.  

In sum, I’m not done, or even close to done, transitioning, and oh my, is it hard work. <Big sigh.> OK, let’s get going on this...one step at a time...honor the process...*trust* the process...when you practice patience, all times are soon. Oh, but patience is hard too.

Trans chess, and the center of the Queer universe

Yesterday I had two different instructive adventures in trans.

The first was a visit to the Mechanics Institute Library and Chess Room in downtown San Fran. I have visited other chess clubs in other cities, including bullshitting my way in for a brief glance at the famed Marshall Chess Club in NYC, and based on that experience I was expecting something run down and seedy. Ha! The Institute is housed in a downtown highrise: imposing brass and glass doors, a uniformed attendant with a magnificent grey walrus moustache, spiralling marble stairs with ornate iron bannisters, 20-foot ceilings. Most of this was the library (members only), not the chess room, but still. The chess room was a pleasant space on the fourth floor with an attendant in an office. There were four long rows of old wooden tables with the chess boards built into them, and on the walls pictures of various chess legends who have passed through the club over the years. At four in the afternoon there were only about half a dozen players there, all older gentlemen. I played six or seven quick games and had a delightful time.

As noted in my previous post I wondered if my transness would cause a stir in the chess room, and perhaps discombobulate an opponent. What I forgot was that, while there are not huge numbers of trans chess players, I’ve hardly ever met a chess player who wasn’t eccentric some way or another. No one batted an eye, and my long list of places where my being trans doesn’t matter at all is now one place longer.

The other instructive trans adventure was a program called “Girl Talk” at the LGBT Community Center on Market Street. I had a couple of mistaken assumptions going in:  One was that I was going to be attending a panel discussion between trans and cis-gendered women; it was actually an evening of spoken word performance. The other was that the topic would be what I deal with every day, which is the complex of connections and failures to connect between trans and straight cis women in the straight world. Silly me. The topic was the complex of connections and failures to connect between trans and Queer cis women in the Queer world.

All of the performers were talented writers and readers.  There were some great lines and powerful insights, some very funny moments, some seriously artistic moments, and a great deal of community spirit. There was a lovely underpinning of vibrant activism. And, the audience was large, responsive, and enthusiastic. One comment: I could do with just a little less of the hard-driving short-phrased hip-hop-rhythmic poetry slam style of delivery...Honey, just talk to me...

I did garner one important political insight: clearly, even here, trans still struggles to establish and define itself within the larger context of LGBT culture. A great deal of work for change still lies ahead.

Now, in that room I got a strong sense of a nurturing, insular, and complete counter culture which I have the credentials to join if I want. Some aspects of this culture:  a complex set of social rules; an emphasis on self...self-expression, self-actualization, self-consciousiness, self-involvement; and a stance of difference and defiance toward the straight world. I felt that I was standing at the center of the Queer universe...but I didn’t feel sure I belonged there.

Why not? First of all, most of the people in the room were ten to twenty younger than I. Second of all, a dominant theme of the evening was sex, which I don’t care about much these days. Thirdly, visiting all these big city folk from my little Maine town as I was, I was feeling rather provincial. And fourthly and most importantly, all my life I have lived and worked in the straight world. That hasn’t changed post gender-revelation; and by long habit and circumstance, if nothing else, that’s still where I feel at home. I am conducting my search for love in the world generally, not just within the Queer world. There’s at least a chance that I will end up partnered with a straight man. And, if I get facial feminization surgery, I will be able if I choose to pass almost all the time as a straight woman.

It seems I get to choose which world to live in. Is that an exclusive either/or choice? Can I change it depending on circumstance? Am I actually demonstrating that I am Queer by agonizing about whether I am or not? Who the hell am I really? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions.

Reporting from the Orinda, CA public library

Halfway through a week’s vacation in San Fran, and travelling trans has turned out to be utterly routine. Either I’m passing, or not noticing when people read me, or both. I do still want to be seen as female...but all I can muster when I’m not is a slight mental shrug, and on we go.

What’s turning out to matter on this trip is mostly family. I’m staying in the guest cottage of an aunt and uncle I’ve only known slightly until now, and I am very much enjoying becoming better acquainted with them, their daughter, and a couple of their grandchildren...preteen cousins whom I met for the first time yesterday. I’m enjoying talking family history with my aunt, my father’s sister. Last night I leafed through her baby book. I find myself fascinated by the women of my family, and I stared hard at pictures of my grandmother as a young woman. She had a hard life and was in some ways a hard woman, but she also had a strong smile and a twinkle and was frankly sexy in a couple of shots...in one picture showing off long muscular legs as she poses in shorts, straddling a bicycle. And my father’s two sisters were both gorgeous young women, and all girl...very feminine.

I have yet to connect with SF’s LGBT culture, but I will tonight; my friend Jamie put me onto an event (and is now insanely jealous that I’m going...sorry girl, I promise to tell you *all* about it) at an LGBT community center in the city, a panel discussion featuring both trans women and cisgendered women talking about femininity and feminism, and featuring a couple of bona fide stars...particularly Julia Serano, trans activist and author, and one of Jamie’s idols. Also, I’ll be taking my cousin out tomorrow for a well-deserved night out (she’s a single mom) to see the play M. Butterfly, the main character of whom is a trans woman. I’m looking forward to dressing for the occasion...I brought my kick-ass pumps, tights, red skirt, and other finery, and I am determined to wear them at least once. Even if it is pouring.

And, I have one other activity planned for this afternoon which may include an interesting gender-facet: I’ve found a chess club in the city where, apparently, you can stop by, pay a fee, and play some pickup games. I have not played face-to-face chess since before I started to transition - only on the internet - and I’ve wondered for a while now how my current gender expression will play in that world. Chess is still a heavily male-dominated sport, and there are still plenty of guys who hate to lose to a woman. How will they feel about playing me? Will they become flustered? Will I win games I would otherwise not have won, as a result? Am I in fact taking unfair advantage of their poor sensitive male egos? Do I care? ;-)

Locker room denoument

So today was my first day in the women's locker room.

I gave some thought to The Moment this morning as I was dressing and selected both my over-the-jeans knee-high boots and big flashy earrings; for additional femme triggering/moral support I also wore the flamboyant black-and-white striped plush bucket-hat I picked up on sale at Target the other day...it makes me look like a slightly batty society matron out shopping on the avenue.

At the gym I stopped in at the office first to write a check for my yoga class, and expressed again my trepidation (see previous post) to Wendy, the nice woman who works there. I asked which door I should go in to have the shortest shot at a private changing stall, and she offered to walk me down. I accepted gratefully.

On the way down the stairs she mentioned that just inside the door she was taking me to there was a handicapped bathroom stall, and suggested I might be more comfortable changing there.  I felt a twinge. I was braced for the full experience, all ready to elbow my way through the teeming crowds of naked women without batting an eye...and also I wondered just for a moment whether I was being gently shunted to a side-path (equal but different)...but I let both thoughts go and decided just to see how it was and figure out what do to in the moment.

We entered the door. Short hall, turn right. No one in sight. Big fans humming loudly. A glimpse of two young women in racquet-ball outfits chatting way down at the other end of the room. A ten-second tour from Wendy of the shower area, where the other changing stalls were...the sound of someone showering around a corner, otherwise deserted. I opted for the handicap stall, changed into my yoga clothes, and left the locker room without meeting another soul.

Yoga was more that fun...it felt like finding something I’ve been looking for for a long time. I am stiff and weak and couldn’t do some of the poses at all, and I’ll be sore tomorrow.  I am definitely going back next week.

When I went back to the locker room after class the handicapped stall was taken, so I ended up in one of the private stalls in the shower area after all. Wet floor...had to carry my socks and boots out into the hall after to put them on. Didn’t meet or even see anyone this time either.

To summarize, no big deal. Anticlimax. The outcome I was hoping for. Yay! There still may be uncomfortable moments in the future, but I know my way around now. I’m good to go.

The most obvious differences between the men’s and women’s locker rooms at this particular gym: The tiles, lockers, walls and floor in women’s are prettier colors than in the men’s; every shower stall in the women’s has a curtain, while  men get the “gang shower”; both facilities are clean, and the men’s doesn’t smell bad, but the women’s smells nicer; and, the voices murmuring far away had a higher softer timbre, gentle and unaggressive. I liked it. I felt I belonged there.

From ecstatic to blasé in two years - First Event 2011

On Saturday I dropped in for the day at First Event, one of the major trans-gatherings that happens each year in the U.S.; it takes place each January at a Marriott in Peabody, MA, an hour’s drive south of my house. 

The First Event two years ago was the first time I ever wore women’s clothes in public, just a few months post-revelation, and it was an epiphany - one of the most intense experiences of my life. The second one, last year, was not quite as big a deal, but still, in those undercover days, a rare and exciting chance to go deep femme for *two whole days*. [Posts from last year here: getting ready (including a descrip of the first year), first day report, second day report]. This year I wasn’t even going to go until I mentioned it to my friend Jamie-Lynn and she agreed to come.

The day did yield a number of interesting moments:

Shopping for earrings in the marketplace, which was mostly focused on the needs of M to F crossdressers, I found myself passing by rack after rack because everything was just too over-the-top glam. I finally found a pair I liked at a little consignment table...quirky silver danglies featuring a variegated blue-and-grey stone bead. It was only when I got home that I realized they were clip-ons. (I still like them.)

In a panel of facial feminization surgeons, the frighteningly egotistical Dr. Z bustled in late and then hijacked the session to attack the work of Dr. O, considered by many to be the preeminent FFS surgeon in the world. He had slides of what he said were some of Dr. O’s patients (closeups of naked skull, the forehead skin clamped back), and was explaining how the work was fundamentally flawed. Dr. O was not there, but his devoted assistant Mira was...Mira who, in a session last year, told us reverentially that Dr. O is a Michelangelo. She stood up and interrupted Dr. Z’s tirade. He overrode her. She muscled in again. I left at that point - I hate that sort of conflict - but Jamie stayed, and told me after she interrupted to ask a question, which apparently derailed the battle...good for her!

I also had an interesting encounter with Jennifer, who was in the audience with me in a session. She asked a question, and her voice work was superb...a gentle, natural-sounding, and attractive womanly tone...so I began to observe her. She was about my age, height, and build, and had not, so far as I could tell, had facial surgery, but she snapped strongly femme. Her hair was soft and full and attractively styled; if it was a wig, it was a more natural-looking one than most around us. Her clothes were elegant and understated. She had a woman’s mobile face and quick soft smile, and she held her body folded softly in on itself, arms and legs crossed, spine pliable, head lowered diffidently. Her eyes also had a tendency to flit down.

I approached her after the session and introduced myself. The first thing she said was “I’m sorry.” I was impressed by how feminine that was, and at the same time my inner feminist wanted to lecture her: “Honey, don’t apologize for yourself!” She shared voicework hints with me with which I am experimenting today: put your hand on your chest as you speak and make sure there is no buzz in the chest-cavity at all; visualize your voice as floating in the air out in front of your nose; and record and listen to yourself (yeah, yeah...I know that’s key, but I hate doing it.) My overall impression was of a person whose femininity is just shining out of her, completely unmannered and unselfconscious. She was inspiring.

And, there was the panel of trans youth with their parents. There were two trans girls and three trans boys there, ranging in age from 12 to 22 or so. It was the little 12-year-old trans girl who captured my attention. She had a child’s version of Jennifer’s natural femininity...to all appearances a pretty young girl in a baby-blue girl’s top, her long brown hair held back with hairpins just behind her ears. She was sitting next to her mom and paying close attention to all that was said, completely at ease, smiling often.

As we heard each family’s story in turn, I felt tears start to come. I had to leave for a while. It was the love and support of the parents on the panel which reached me the most. I so ache sometimes for my mother’s love...for her to know me and love me as a girl...and I can never have that. I could have been like that little girl, supported by her parents, planning an early and complete transition. I could have had forty more years of life as a girl and woman. It’s not the first time I’ve mourned these losses, and I don’t suppose it will be the last.

Jamie sat with me and gave me hugs...she was great. And it was fun sharing the conference with her...telling her backstories, pointing out VIP’s, listening to her network with the activists at tables in the marketplace, and just gabbing in the car on the way down and back. In the short time I’ve know her, she has become a dear friend.

So that was First Event 2011. The main insight from the day: I have come a loooooong way in a fairly short time. From ecstatic to blasé in two years...how ‘bout that.

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

Interview about voice

Leela Sinha, a columnist at the site transenough.com (among *many* other things, including poet, sex educator, and UU minister), recently interviewed me about voice work and transition...the text, should you care to read it, is here. 

For good measure, Leela's blog is here.

Happy reading! :-)