GenderBendy

Biography of a former self

It has been a month since my last post, because I’ve been waiting for The Letter. Suzanne at the Montreal clinic told me to expect my official surgery letter early in the new year, at which time my first down payment would be due. That down payment is non-refundable should I chicken out about the surgery, so I see sending the check as the final proof that I’m going to go through with this. (I am, but still.) The Letter hasn’t arrived, and as a result transition has been on pause while I crouch, braced for its impact.

Well, fuck that. Some domino has fallen on its own. Today or tomorrow I will e-mail Suzanne (in French - I’m enjoying conducting as much of my SRS business as I can in French) and ask quand est-ce que la lettre va arriver. And today I am going to work on a project I have long procrastinated about: a book proposal for a memoir. I am going to try to sell my story.

Since the transition story has already been told many times, and since what is most unusual about my own story is that I was not self-aware until recently, my emphasis will be on the biography of my former self. From early childhood on a female person born by accident into a male body feels so pressured by society to be male that she never consciously thinks “I am female.” What sort of maleness does she project into the world? How does her gender truth still peek out through the mask? How does it at last emerge? I hope these are questions provocative enough to interest an agent, then a publisher, in a book.

Which is not to say that the story of transition won't be in there too. After some false starts I have found a narrative approach I like, alternating between third-person narration of vignettes from my old life as a boy and man with excerpts from the written record of my revelation and transition - journal entries, e-mails to early confidants, blog entries. I’m now well along in my second, accelerated life...why not tell both stories in parallel? Offer the reader the opportunity to compare and contrast?

Speaking of books, one of my final procrastination moves, back in January, was to impulsively join with an old friend in a documentary project. She was going to make photographic portraits, and I was going to conduct and transcribe interviews, with enough trans Mainers to fill a book. We were going to fundraise (grants, Kickstarter) and pay ourselves for doing this work.

This seemed like a really good idea for a couple of weeks, but then I began to have misgivings. It began to feel icky to seek to profit from telling other trans peoples’ stories. Also, for many trans folks being trans is of so little importance, it seemed rude to ask to tell their stories because of it - as if to say that it were the only interesting thing about them. And, I realized I had a problem with proposing to “explain” trans experience through this project. Trans stories do need to be told again and again, so that the world can learn, but my (still evolving) sense, for now at least, is that this telling needs to be done by the trans folk themselves - if not by writing or performance or activism or whatever, then simply by living. 

So I bowed out of the project and am back to staring at a blank computer screen and ordering myself to write.

There was another, more personal reason I left the documentary project, which is that I am beginning to think that I don’t want to be professionally trans. It’s a workable shtick, and I’ve been playing with the idea - trans comedy, the trans doc project. And, yes, the trans memoir - but the plan is to write it and then write a second book about something completely different. I have desired and sought success as a writer my whole life. I don’t mind if I finally achieve it because it turns out I have an unusual story to tell; but I would want to sustain it simply by being a good writer.

The curious thing about that is, for the first time in my life I wonder if I really do want to write for a living. Perhaps the hot kernel of that desire arose out of my self-repression. I couldn't truly live, but at least I could write. Now I can truly live. Hm. Tell stories, or live them...or both. We'll see. 

I'll do it if I have to, is what it comes down to. Just like transition.

Man in a dress no more

Yesterday I bought a dress. So what? Yeah, you’re right, not earth-shaking, but the moment does provide an object lesson in layers of becoming.

One of the first things I did after my gender revelation in ‘08 was buy a grey knit sweater-dress with a big floppy collar, at Reny’s. Oh, my, I was in state - terrified and ecstatic. I couldn’t conceive of trying it on in the store, so I took it home, discovered it was too small, and went back in an even more heightened state to exchange it. The flat hard look the young woman behind the returns desk gave me was my first encounter with the judgemental eyes of the world.

I had fun with my new dress. I put it on along with my new garter-belt stockings and black pumps and costume-jewelry pearls from Walmart and my outrageous rolled-up-sock-with-filbert-nipples boobs and posed for the camera. It was the beginning of figuring out who I was.

As time went on I acquired more dresses, of two types: fancy ones from the evening gown racks at Goodwill, and simpler everyday ones either bought without trying on or given by friends. I continued to have fun wearing both kinds at home, but the only time I wore a dress in public was when I put on one of the fancy ones for a soirée - the USM drag show, the EQ Maine dinner, a holiday party - and it was always a big deal. I never wore the simpler ones in public, even after I was completely out and living full time as a woman, because I just didn’t like the way I looked in them.

Yesterday I met Susan for a shopping date at the mall, and on the sale rack at Banana Republic I found a light soft grey-and-white V-neck dress in stretchy cotton. I tried it on and stood looking at myself in the three-way mirror. Susan looked with me.

Me, to myself: Shoulders back, dear. Chin up. Relax the lower back more, let it curve. Is it binding or bagging under the the arms? No, seems to be just right. Wow, not bad at all.

Susan: Oh, that’s really nice.

Me: I don’t know...I just don’t wear dresses. People don’t, you know? So it’s a thing.

Susan: What do you mean?

Me: Well, I have dresses, and I put them on and look in the mirror, and I see...I don’t know, I’m so tall, my shoulders are still so broad, my hips are narrow...I still see a man in a dress.

Susan: You don’t look like a man in a dress. I’m not just saying that. I want you to feel good, but I would say if you did. You don’t look like a man in a dress.

Me: Thanks, I needed to hear someone say that.

I bought the dress (Only $18 on deep discount - score!), and in a few months, maybe on the first really warm day of spring, I’m going to wear it to work. No back-up outfit in a bag in case I chicken out. I’m going to commit to the dress for the day. And honestly, I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal. Check out how far I’ve come:

12/31/2008:

1/15/2012:

Insight on the holiday gauntlet

One day as the Christmas season approached Elizabeth told her 16-year-old son that she wanted him to stop calling her “Daddio.” She told him that every time he said it it felt like being punched in the stomach. Looking uncomfortable, he reluctantly agreed. The next day, she followed up: she said she was repeating the request so he knew she was serious about it, and that she also wanted female pronouns and gender words. He listened silently and did not refuse; but as the week went on he used the same masculine gender words as before, and scowled at her when she corrected him.

A few days later, when Elizabeth picked her daughter up from college, she told her that she was asking these things of her too. Her daughter, having recently claimed Queer identity herself, was more accepting, at least to talk about it, but as the days passed she avoided pronouns rather than switching to “she,” and also still said “Daddio.”

Several days went by. Elizabeth wept often, thinking of her long-dead mother, as she often did in the weeks before Christmas each year, with grief and fury and aching need for maternal comfort all balled together in a black mass...and her will to push her children to greater acceptance faltered. She couldn't see a way to back off from having pushed them without returning to the old bad man-box, but she knew it was wrong to have turned to them in her need, so driving her son to school one morning she said, “About the gender words thing...”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, wiping at his eye.

“Wait, let me finish. I think you’re going to like what I’m going to say. You have told me you can’t deal with this right now, and I’m accepting that. I’m backing off.”

“Thank you.”

That felt right, but it didn't stop the storm of pain and sadness, which loomed just as black as ever. Elizabeth held herself together in hopes of making it to her next therapy appointment...but at the appointed hour the door did not open. She waited fifteen minutes, then knocked. There had been a scheduling snafu; her therapist was seeing another patient. “I need to see you,” Elizabeth said. Text me later, said the therapist, and Elizabeth stumbled downstairs.

In her parked car she burst into wild sobs. “I want my mother!” she screamed. And, “I deserve to exist in the world! I do! I do! I deserve to exist!”...needing to say it so vehemently because of a terrible fear that it wasn’t true. Her courage and strength had failed her, and she felt as at other times at this same nadir the crushing weight of so many years of existence with self denied, of existence only through the mask of maleness, of shadow-life. She sobbed in her car for nearly an hour, then texted and asked if she could come back in, and her therapist texted back yes.

The session was oddly strained. Even in the midst of blurting out her dilemma Elizabeth sensed her therapist groping for responses...she sensed impatience, annoyance. Her therapist defended the children’s right to process in their own time, and to be parented by Elizabeth even as she struggled with her own pain, and Elizabeth agreed. But what about her own terrible need then? With time running out, the therapist said the words which Elizabeth needed to hear: “You do deserve to exist in the world.”

In a grateful rush: “Yes, thank you...I needed to hear someone say that. Thank you so much.”

“You do. You deserve to exist as Lisa you deserve to exist as Dave...”

“What? I wish you hadn’t said that last part.”

In a vehement note-to-self whisper: “I’m never going to say that name again.”

The last few minutes of the appointment were awkward, and Elizabeth left without making another appointment.

On the way home, bumped out of her rut of self-pity by irritation, Elizabeth formulated a new thought: OK, for the past twenty years I’ve been mising the presence of a mom in my Christmases...so fuck it, I’m gonna be the mom. My children can call me what they like, but what they’re getting is mothering.

She put her thought and heart into selecting presents; she cleaned; she bought herself a mixer and baked enough not only to satisfy her household’s sweet teeth, but to take plates to neighbors too; she wrapped; she played the piano while her daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend decorated the tree. In a word, for the first time in her adult life, she committed to the holiday, not as a religious nor a commercial celebration, but as the simple family gathering it had been for her when she was growing up...and the children seemed to have a good Christmas.

And, what about Elizabeth? Well, she survived. The amount of hurt she felt running the seasonal gauntlet was not less than in previous years; but in trying to make a real warm holiday happen in her own home she felt more joy in the day than ever before since her mother’s death, and she figured that counted as a victory.

Adventures in cyberdateland

I’ve been on match.com for a well over a week, and have had several interesting and instructive encounters. Not in person...I’m being too cautious for that. E-mail exchanges.

Case #1: Creepy guy
Him: So you’re trans, cool, and you look fantastic!
Me: Thanks! Gonna post a pic? Tell me more about you...and hey, it’s cool you’re so cool about trans.
Him: No pic - I don’t want backlash at work. Not much to tell about me. I had someone in my family go through transition, so I know what it’s like. You should know for me this is a straight heterosexual relationship. You look amazing!
Me: (thinking: “relationship”?) Uh...thanks! Tell me more about your trans relative...I’d like to hear the story.
Him: Not much to tell; it just helps me understand who you are. You should know, at the age we are I expect to get sexual early in a relationship.
Me: Bye.
Him: Don’t deny your sexuality!
Me: (no answer)
(True confession time: while I would never hook up with such a person, his aggressiveness was good for a tickle of titillation. Such forthright single-minded desire, for me! My, my. *fans self*)

Case #2: Self-effacing guy
Him: So you’re trans...wow, you’re so brave.
Me: Thanks! Tell me more about you.
Him: Oh, I’m just an ordinary guy. I'm boring, really - not like you. Nothing much to tell...I live with five cats and my former girlfriend.
Me: Good luck, bye.

Case #3: Courteous guy
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: I just found someone, but best of luck in your search.
Him: So sorry, Madamoiselle, I didn’t put your name in my first e-mail.
Me: No worries. Thanks for the reply.
(This conversation was conducted in French.)

Case #4: Religious guy
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: Thanks, I just found someone, but there’s this book you really should read...it changed my life...(4 long paragraphs I didn’t read).

Cases #5 - 8 or so: Polite rejections
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: (polite discouraging reply, good luck)
Me: (polite thanks, good luck)

Cases #9 - 25 or so: Impolite rejections
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: (no answer)

And, finally, Case #26: Tingle tingle
Him: Your profile is unusual. I’m intrigued. Wanna get coffee or a glass of wine sometime?
Me: Thanks! I like your profile too - it’s quirky and funny. And thanks for the invitation...I’d like to, but this is new for me, so I’m feeling cautious. Could we exchange a few more e-mails first? And, please tell me more about you...
Him: No problem...we’ll go at your pace. About me: (some interesting deep stuff about life as a journey, overcoming struggles, attitude about the remaining years...)
Me: I think we have some things in common...thanks for sharing so freely! And here’s some lighter stuff about me: (description of my day, mentioning work, parenting...trying to convey an idea of my life)
Him: (no answer for two days)
Me: (checking e-mail frequently, wondering if I somehow scared him off, wondering if I should e-mail him again, aware that I will feel disappointed if I don’t hear back or get the brush-off now)

I wonder, how different would this experience be if I was cisgendered? Hmm...maybe not much. And, hey, #26, if you ever read this, as of this writing you've already touched me, and whatever happens, I will remember you fondly as the first man to express honest-seeming gentlemanly interest in me as a woman on line. That's actually pretty big...so, thanks. :-)

Hey baby, click on me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trans Explosion

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

Out of a flame war, pandemic love

Last night my 19-year old daughter Madeleine posted on facebook some whimsical wordplay based on terms she is trying out to describe her sexuality. She has already claimed “pansexual,” (which I also am coming to prefer for myself), meaning attracted to people based on who they are as people, regardless of biological sex or gender; and she’s trying out the word “demisexual”, meaning not tending to feel sexual attraction except to a person with whom one has first become emotionally intimate (which I also like for myself...I hope you don’t mind, dearest, that I’m co-opting your words). “Demisexual” is a new-minted word, courtesy of the asexuality movement, for an old-fashioned idea: sex as an adjunct to, an extension and expression of, love. So Mad’s line was that she’s a “pandemic romantic,” which, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny.

A few of her friends posted light-hearted comments, and then one particular friend, whom I will call X, posted this: “‘Pansexual’ is an orientation. ‘Demisexual’ is not. Neither is ‘romantic’. Just sayin'.”

An escalation ensued. Points got misunderstood, feelings got hurt, and what could have been a substantive conversation about the complexities of identity quickly turned personal. An hour and 40-some posts later, several people had posted things they are probably regretting today (if they’re done fuming), my daughter had defriended X, and various friends both in cyber and real space were giving her hugs in commiseration for having been the unwitting trigger of, and scorched figure at the center of, a doozy of a flame war.

This incident has helped me crystallize some thoughts about sex, gender, and queer identity. First of all, I respectfully disagree with X. Demisexuality and being a romantic *are* both orientations. In fact, in a way, they are more radical orientations than the L, G, and B of LGBT, because, just as pansexuality challenges the unquestioned assumption behind these letters that gender matters, they challenge the unquestioned assumption that sex matters. They are a “none of the above” option. They say: “If I, whoever I turn out to be, should happen to want to go to bed with my sweetie, whoever my sweetie turns out to be, it will be because I love my sweetie and my sweetie loves me. Love is different from sex and knows no gender, and love is what matters most to me.”

I am *not* saying that LGB folk don’t understand or care about love. Completely not. But queer culture does seem to me to be as obsessed with sex as our culture as a whole is. I don’t really have a problem with that, though as a person who cares less about sex than love it makes me feel marginalized at both cultural levels. And I could hardly blame people fighting for equality for their sexual identities if they felt threatened by the idea that sex doesn’t matter. I do have a problem, though, when it becomes politically incorrect to speak of non-sexual or only-incidentally-sexual love.

And, I *am* saying that the emphasis on traditional concepts of gender inherent in the definitions of L, G, and B sometimes feels inimical to the interests of us T folk. My dear LGB friends: I thank you most fervently for the enormous amount of help and support you have given me in my gender work, both individually and, by fighting a version of the same fight first, on a global scale. I have learned and benefited from your struggle. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the forces of prejudice and hate which so seldom distinguish between us. And, I enjoy your company, feel at ease with you, and am so grateful to have been welcomed in under the big LGBT umbrella. But, alas, all that said, I do also sometimes see you as part of the gender hegemony against which, all my life, I have struggled. I will never self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, hetero or homo, because all of this terminology fails to challenge and continues to perpetrate the bad old binary concept of gender. Until I come up with something I like better, I am a pandemisexual romantic trans woman.

May I invite you to join me and Mad in seeking new ways of talking about ourselves and each other which celebrate the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of gender as thoroughly as we have celebrated the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of sexuality? And could we all, please, get at least part of the way back to the charming old-fashioned notion of speaking reverently of love?

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. ;->

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.