Category: trans

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Me @ The Tool Shed, MKE

I’ll be doing an event on Thursday, April 7th in Milwaukee at the awesome Tool Shed as part of Milwaukee’s SHARE (Sexual Health and Relationship Education) week.

Here’s where you register for it.
Here’s the Facebook event.
Here’s the FetLife listing.

And here’s SHARE’s FB page, if you want to keep informed of what they’re doing – they have a whole week of educational events set up, with so many awesome people, including Reid Mihalko (Rough Sex for Nice Folks), Sophia Chase (Sex for Survivors), and Jiz Lee (Coming Out Like a Porn Star). Looks like it’s going to be an amazing week & I’m happy to be part of it.

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Alive.

A regular on the MHB boards recently posted that she was turning 50 and remembered, and re-posted, this piece from when she was turning 44:

February 12, 2010: I’m 44 today and I want to die.
Today is my 44th birthday, Yippyfuckinyahoo.

I am sad, big time.
I am disappointed, hugely,
I have no one to blame but myself.

Here’s the deal:
Two days ago I found myself driving stupid again, how stupid, lets just say that the speedometer was pegged. I didn’t care, I didn’t care if I got a ticket or arrested, I didn’t care if I wrecked, I didn’t care, I found myself trying to stop thinking about being a woman, about the pain in my head, the depression that is setting in heavy and hard.

Shit! I couldn’t even scare that voice in my head into shutting the fuck up.

I didn’t talk to my wife about it when I got home. I did my Anatomy & Physiology Lab Report and baked my birthday cake, went to bed. Yesterday morning I promised myself I would be good, I won’t be stupid, I will go to work and get through my day. I was also looking forward to my A & P class as I always do. But as I drove, alone with my thoughts the worse it got and the stupider I became. I thought about calling my wife just to talk with her, just to hear her voice but I didn’t call, she was at work and she doesn’t need this shit – especially there. I got to work OK.
Yesterday, they cut my salary by 15%, then it became a real shitty day.

I was already having a real bad day, upset and sad from Trans-stuff that’s been building up and bothering me, Then my day got so much worse since I now really cant afford any more treatments to my face and that’s been helping to ease the hurt in my head, not feeling prickly. My sessions with my therapist are now on hold because I don’t know if we can pay our bills let alone therapist fees that are not covered by insurance because I have “life style choice issues” So after a bit of recuperation I took a late lunch as I had to run a few errands, I needed to pick up a few items for my birthday cake.

A short time later I found myself in Michael’s searching the cake decorating racks for rice paper for my cake. If you don’t know what a Michael’s is, they are a chain of arts and craft supply stores. I searched the first cake decorating aisle, and then the next, no luck. I went back to the first aisle in case I overlooked something to search again. There standing the middle of that short, narrow aisle was a middle aged woman with medium length black wavy hair in jeans and a black leather jacket looking at the wedding cake accessories. Being me, and the fact that the aisle was so small we couldn’t help but trip over each other in our quests I asked, “So are you’re planning on making a wedding cake?”
“Oh No, If I only could, I have a birthday cake to make for my Dad he is going to be ninety.” she replied with a kind and inquisitive smile.

With that I began a ten-minute conversation with some stranger regarding cakes, parents, kids and some such stuff. And for 10 minutes I was Paula, I didn’t look like a Paula and I could see her confusion in her eyes at first, I think she was taken aback a bit at first by this man who she was having a perfectly normal woman to woman conversation with. I have seen that look before when I slip, whether at the office, at school, or any place else for that matter, I have seen the stunned look of confusion before. It occurs when my gender appearance and my personality clash. It’s a questioning look of surprise and curiosity at the same time. We exchanged introductions, pleasantries, good lucks and good byes as we went our separate ways. Her name was Connie and her dad still plays tennis twice a week at seven o-clock in the morning.

So there I was in Michael’s having this perfectly normal conversation between two women and for ten minutes everything was right in the world. There was no noise in my head; there I was standing in this arts and crafts store with a feeling of peaceful contentment like I haven’t felt before even if for a few fleeting moments. After I left the store and made my way out to my ride, I barely made it behind the wheel when the tears started flowing down my cheeks, the sobbing started, Paul was back and so was the noise.

After class and getting home late, I dropped my books and coat at the door and gave my wife a deep and long hug, I was still feeling down, I was glad to be home and I so needed the hug. Then it came; she pushed me back to look into my eyes with her hands firmly at my elbows.

“You know you have to stop this! You have to put all this out of your mind and carry on, for us, the boys and for me, sometimes you have to just put it out of your mind and forget about it. All this blogging, support groups and friends you talk to keep reminding you, they keep telling you things and you are effected by it all.” Its time to forget about it and carry on with your life.”

I was shocked! Here I was in pain and quite obviously down and blue and she tells me that I am choosing to drive myself crazy. She went on to say maybe its time for you to “Man up”

No. I thought, its time to woman up, I can’t carry on like this and pretending to be a man is killing me. Here I am on my birthday at 44 and I want to die, I want to end this noise in my head, I am tired of battling, I am tired of the fight between my heart and my head. I know that with transition I will loose m wife, I will loose my youngest son. So choosing between stopping the hurt in my head and the family I love is a decision I cannot make. I am hurting. I need to take the steps, I need to transition but I cant.

I have email sitting in my drafts folder for my therapist asking for an appointment and outlining specifics that I’d like to discuss and yes it includes what I have to do next, beginning HRT, beginning the process. I have to hit send and it’s the hardest choice I’ll ever have to make. Transition or my family or not choose either and die. Option number three is quite inviting however an easy way out it seems to be I cannot follow through with it. I will not harm myself, I will not do that to my family. I will NOT and I cant carry on any longer like this.

Its my 44th birthday today and I want to die.

Six years later:

I’m 50 today and I’m Alive!!

Today this body of mine has spent 50 years on the top side of the grass but I have only been alive for the last 5 or so. I often think of that conversation with Connie and often wonder if she still has her Dad. That moment was a hint that this body was possessed by a female soul and spirit I just had to do the hard work to make life as a woman possible.

I AM SO GRATEFUL I DID NOT DRIVE MY DURANGO HEADLONG INTO A DUMPTRUCK.

For anyone suffering in a body they wouldn’t choose and considering that final option listen to me, DON’T DO IT! Life has a way of turning itself around with enough effort and determination it can happen.

Yeah that moment 6 years ago was super painful leaving me with this empty hollow feeling. Today I am beyond living, I am alive, so much so that some days I just bounce and laugh for no reason other than shear happiness. No way could I even imaging it when I was at my lowest point in life.

Yes I am a lucky one, I have a family that loves me a paying job in career I love, but life is far from perfect. I want to be loved as in fall head-over-heels-in-love. My wife and I are now just housemates, that is the price I paid to live my life alive. It sucks watching her suffer for the loss of her husband and her childhood dream smashed to pieces. Our marriage is over everywhere but on paper. Yet we still punish ourselves by remaining under the same roof solely out of financial reasons and old habit. When People ask me out on a date I say thank you but I am in a monogamous uncoupled relationship. Sadly true.

Life is still good, I have a long way to go for life to be great but I am making headway. I know know now that, after many hours between my ears, I need to be fully female. At 50 time is suddenly running short, I have more years behind me that I do in front of me. I was reminded of this when My AARP card came in the mail on Monday, “Gee thanks for the reminder”. I feel like I need to hurry to get to where I want to be transition-wise to experience as much life as I have left fully female but I feel stuck. Yes, even with the heavy maintenance that is required I want to have a female body to match the spirit within. But life is getting in the way and there seems to be a daily drudgery keeping from realizing my much desired female form.

Today I am happy and alive yet still not female. I am going to share my 50th birthday with my boys, their SOs, my folks and wife. Nothing special is planned just pizza, wings etc and a cake that I baked. Of all the gifts I am sure to receive there is only one thing I want and wont come wrapped in a box.

Stay alive.

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Two Good Things

Here are two good things that are now/newly available:

The documentary about Kate Bornstein, Kate Bornstein is a Queer & Pleasant Danger, is now available for purchase by high schools and universities. (I did an interview with her for this blog back in 2006.)

The second is that Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl garnered a second edition, for which she wrote a new preface, and garnered a new cover (gone with the pink one!). I did an interview with her back in 2007 when it first came out, if you want to check that out.

 

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For Bryn

I have not written about Bryn’s death because it knocked the stuffing out of me. We were not close friends, by any means; we knew each other the way two people who do trans work and live in Brooklyn know each other; she hung out with people we know, she dated someone we know, she was at things we went to.

But she was 10 years younger than us, part of a younger set of trans people we met through theatre and writing and activism; I used to say there was something in the water in our part of Brooklyn because it was as if everyone we knew was trans or dating someone who was.

And there is something about being a decade older than a lovely, bright, spiky, vivacious young person that makes you hope that their struggle will not be as hard, that they will find a way to make a good living and find love with someone who respects them, or, if they don’t, that they will find ways to make art that will allow them to feel loved and respected; that they will have friends to drink with and dress up with and at least have great sex with. But mostly, that they will live to be old, at least as old as you are, so that together you might end up at a party and look at the people a decade younger and wish together that their lives might not be as hard, that they will find a way to make a good living…

Bryn had both an old soul and a young, young heart. She was beautiful – the kind of beautiful you tried not to stare at – and she wore her beauty as if it was nothing important. I know it had to be because of the work she did – hair and makeup for others – and she seemed the same about her writing. My memory of her was that she had a “this old thing?” ready for any compliment paid her.

Then you read this, this big hearted, funny, sexy, deeply loving piece that she wrote to her fellow trans women, and you wonder how in the world we will get along without her voice:

“I love your profound insecurity. I love you even when you lash out at the world, at your loves, and at yourself. I love you when you’re hurting. I love the myriad forms your pain takes. I love how funny you can be when you’re ripping someone to shreds with your tongue. I love that when you observe something hilarious that no one else has noticed, because you’re so good at noticing the ridiculous. I email my love to you when you stop talking to anyone for three days. I love your wild and volatile sexuality. I love your quiet and conscious affection. I love your emotional acumen and your emotional black spots that you could drive a truck through. I love female energy, whatever the hell that is, all I know is that you got it. I love getting all our bodies and ourselves over the nitty gritty stuff that our bodies go through, and the ingenious methods we invent to access care. I love how we are each other’s best therapists and worst enemies. I love it when you embarrass me. I love it when you inspire me. I love it when you make me laugh. I love it when you read me the filth. I love it when you make yourself vulnerable. I love it when we feel safe with each other.” 

(You can watch her read this piece at the 33:27 mark of this video.)

I wish there had been something, anything, I could have done or anyone could have done to keep her with us.

Please, my beautiful trans peeps, grow old so that I can run into you at a party and we can look at the younger people in the room and hope against hope that their lives will not be so hard, so full of struggle, that they will find a way… Mostly I want to run into you at a party and wish, with you, that all the beautiful fucked up young people will live to grow old and join us in wishing that next bright generation a bright, smart, glamorous, sexy kind of peace.

Love to you Bryn. You took a piece of this skeptical, disappointed heart with you, and I’m sure you had no idea how many of us loved you. & Love to all of you who knew her well, who knew far better than me what kind of light we have lost. Please take care of each other, and please never ever think twice about reaching out to me if you need to.

Her memorial is on February 6th at Saint John the Divine at 7:30PM. I so wish I could be there. I am hoping those of us who can’t be there might spend the day reading her work, alone or to others, but if you haven’t, make sure you read her Other Balms, Other Gileads.

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When Your Wife Becomes Your Husband

There’s a nice article by Roni Jacobson in New York magazine just now about men who stay with trans masculine partners; I was interviewed for it but it is mostly an interview with the guys of the blog Accidentally Gay.

Here are some highlights:

After Jello transitioned, did it make you think about your personal identity any differently? Do you think of yourself as gay now?

Lucky: I have a hard time thinking of myself as gay because I’ve kind of felt this way the whole time. That’s the one thing I have a hard time with with the LGBT community. I don’t know how to fit in.

Jello: You were worried people wouldn’t accept you.

Lucky: That they would call me fake-gay. And there’s still that. Sometimes we’ve had occasional weirdness.

Jello: Sometimes gay men are not that accepting. Go figure.

Where did you encounter that attitude?
Lucky: The first time was at this support group for trans people and their partners. Weirdly enough, from some of the lesbian partners of trans women. They were nice enough. No one has been outright rude.

Jello: It’s usually the frozen smile and this kind of pulling back from accepting you. I wanted to meet other trans guys. Which turns out is not easy to find. It was mostly older trans women and a couple genderqueer kids. I love the genderqueer kids. Genderqueer kids are, like, so accepting.

More accepting than the trans women and their partners?
Jello: Yes.

Lucky: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Jello: Older people sometimes have a really hard time with us. Most groups tend to be mostly transgender ladies. And transgender ladies, I think they need more support anyways, because society is crap and nasty to trans women. I think there was some frustration, too, like some ladies in the group had serious losses of partners, and here I come trotting in with a handsome man. Because the fact is that most partners don’t stay. And here I am. I end up winning the lotto with a dude that’s willing to be gay for me. I don’t think they wanted to invest in him because they didn’t think he was gonna stay. We were asking for resources [for people with FTM partners], and we looked and we literally could not find anything.

Lucky: Almost everyone I talk to in this community, their spouse is female. I’ve never met a guy who has stayed with a transitioning spouse. It’s all women who are staying with their partners.

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The Toe Rule for Allies

I’ve been working on trans issues as a non-trans person for long, long time, and there’s really one rule that I find the most useful. Not that I’ve always managed it, but still.

Here’s the deal: when you step on someone’s toe and they say “OW, damn, you stepped on my toe!”, your response is not:

“Why was your toe there?”

“I hardly stepped on it!”

“But I didn’t mean to!”

or even

“Why are you using that tone with me?”

No, when you step on someone’s toe you say “I’m sorry.”

So when you’re called out for being a dick in whatever way – and believe me, I’ve been called out a gazillion times – you check with the toe rule. If you’re responding initially with anything but “I’m sorry, what did I do?” then you’re not responding right.

That doesn’t mean the charge is always just. It doesn’t mean you meant to step on that person’s toe, or that you did it maliciously, or that you make a habit of stepping on people’s toes. You just did, and it’s better to say sorry and sort out the rest later.