Author: Helen Boyd

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End of the Century

Or more like the end of an era. Today CBGB closes its doors. Thanks, Hilly, for all those years of punk rock, for influencing 30+ years of music, for great unannounced gigs, hardcore Sundays and stacked chairs.
Sometimes it’s almost seems like all signs are telling me it’s time to leave NYC; it’s not my city anymore, at least not the one I fell in love with, anyway.

< — & Yes, that’s me & Betty (she’s in the tux & I’m in the gown – nutty, right?) on our wedding day. & Yes, those are DMs I’m wearing: Johnny Joey DeeDee, good times, indeed.

I think Richard Hell got at some of it in this Op-Ed for The New York Times, in which he said,

“We all know that nothing lasts. But at least we can make a cool and funny exhibit of it. I’m serious. God likes change and a joke. God loves CBGB’s.”

But you know, we tend to come to regret when we don’t step in and save a well-loved institution or two, and I thought we’d learned that by now in NYC. But alas, apparently not, but I think we will come to regret this loss, to be honest.

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Transgender Legal Rights @ NYC Bar Association

Our lovely and talented friend Donna is moderating a panel on Transgender Legal Rights this coming Tuesday, October 17th. Here’s the info:

A panel dicussion about current judicial, legislative, and political developments on the local, state, and federal levels, affecting the legal and civil rights of transgendered persons.
Where & When:
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York
42 W. 44 Street
New York, New York 10036
October 17, 2006, 7-9 pm
Moderator: Donna M. Levinsohn, Counsel, Warshaw Burstein Cohen Schlesinger & Kuh, LLP
Speakers:

  • Pooja Gehi, Staff Attorney, Sylvia Rivera Law Project
  • Sharon M. McGowan, Staff Attorney, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project
  • Pauline Park, Chair, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
  • Franklin Romeo, Kirkland & Ellis Fellow, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
  • Michael Silverman, Executive Director & General Counsel, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc.
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Exit: Eve

Betty and I learned the sad news this week that the founder of the Jean Cocteau Repertory and one of the regular directors of the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Eve Adamson, died suddenly this week. She was 69 years old.
She started the Cocteau in the 70s in the East Village; she was the first to stage the Ballet Trocadero in New York. When Betty went to her to explain her gender issues, she didn’t miss a beat, and reminded us that she knew Candy Darling.
She was that kind of artistic person, a New Yorker who was around when New York was reinventing the world, & art, & culture. It was people like her who created the New York I wanted to live in. It seems somehow fitting to me that she would make her exit the same month that CBGB will finally close its doors; they were both of an era that is over.
But more than that, she was a woman who formed a theatre company in the 70s, when the theatre world was still very much a man’s world (which, some say, it still is). But there is no doubt it was in the 70s, and she did the classics – but always insisted on them being relevant to today’s audience.
Seeing her direction of Oedipus in the days after 9/11 with the actors intoning, “My city, my city…” brought that out a little too clearly.
She directed the last play that Tennesee Williams would see premiered in New York in his lifetime.
Without women like her, I couldn’t be doing what I do now. It is reassuring in her death to know that she did what she wanted to do for most of her life; she kept doing her art, she kept telling her actors to find their light, she kept breathing new life into classic plays and bringing whole new audiences under their sway.
Eve, theatre will miss you, New York will miss you, & I will miss you.
Her friends and fans are free to leave their own messages here.

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5th Preview of She's Not the Man I Married

This preview of She’s Not the Man I Married comes from Chapter 5: Wearing the Pants. I read from this chapter the other day at Columbia, but not this section.

Women in relationships with trans people often already feel forced to accept change they’re not excited about, and so they dig in their heels. But one of the things I ask partners to do when I’m giving workshops or lending an ear privately is to define what “feeling like the woman” in the relationship means to them and what it would take for them to feel that way. “Feeling like the woman” is not about the natural order of things but about how you feel about the person you love, and how the person you love makes you feel about you. When we partners say such things, we usually mean some specific things: Some women mean they want to be seduced; others really like the little mash notes or presents their husbands have left for them; still others want the sense of security that having a provider-husband gives them. For me, it was Betty’s love and attention, her pride in our relationship, that always made me feel “like the woman.” It was the little things he did that made me feel prized; he always kissed me before he went to the restroom, even if I were engaged in a conversation and might not have noticed he’d gone and come back. Identifying those things that make you feel the way you want to in a relationship helps you preserve what makes you feel valued and special. For us, it provided the chance to work things out despite these seismic shifts in our lives.