whatever.odt
JD O'Meara
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 JD O'Meara
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank my primary readers for their critical insight and helpful comments on my multiple (and occasionally disastrous) drafts. Jackie, Jody, and Liz, this text would be a lot less coherent if weren't for you.
I also need to thank Becky, Bob, David, and Linda. The conversations sparked by your comments and questions ultimately made me believe that this text is worth publishing.
And finally, this text would never have happened without my fab four: Mom, Dad, Jerry, and Derek. I have no words for you guys. Thank you for your love and unwavering support, even when I'm being difficult...which is most of the time.
~ ~ ~
Table of Contents
~ ~ ~
Because many ebook readers do not properly display symbols, I had to make compromises on the representations of three of my chapter titles. Modifying the SOS chapter title from the symbolic dot and dash format to a combination of periods and hyphens works to an extent. Having no common punctuation symbols with which to create the upper case Greek letter Sigma and the lower case Greek letter Lambda, however, forced me to simply spell out those chapter titles.
I also opted for the epigraphs to substitute the titles of the songs for their file name representations that I originally used. Thus the original Table of Contents for whatever.odt -- and the version of it with which I am most happy with as a writer -- looks as follows.
A link to the Cited Material page is included the first time a work is quoted. Following the "back" link at the end of the citation will return the reader to that spot in the text. As indicated at the bottom of the Cited Material page, I do not include documentation of all 5331 Yahoo! comments with this version of the text. I do, however, make that documentation available to everyone.
The name of the font on my cover is "Schoolbully." *grin* Yeah. I even appropriated your font.
~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~
An exhausted traveler sits in a hotel lobby in the wee hours of the morning. A valet holding a pair of key cards approaches. The traveler motions toward the Front Desk, where a second traveler negotiates heatedly with an attendant. The valet then joins their discussion.
A casual observer would see nothing unusual in this exchange. And frankly, I didn't either. But the reason I saw nothing unusual in it is kind of unusual.
The exhausted traveler -- that's me. I'd been on the go for hours. Security had been particularly strict at both Detroit Metro and LaGuardia, in part due to the fact that the date was September 11th. Or had been, anyway. It was now a little after 2 am on the 12th. And I was still green from Mr. Toad's Wild Ride from the airport.
The first room we'd been given had a bad air conditioning unit. Long story short, after 40 minutes or so of being on hold alternately with the Front Desk and Maintenance, a guy with a toolbelt came sauntering in. After less than two minutes of looking at the unit quizzically and slamming his closed fist down on it (in much the same way, I should note, that I myself had done, before queasily falling face down on the bed), he pronounced the unit broken and advised us to move to another room.
Another 20 minute, on-hold bonanza ensued. Why there was such a wait to talk to the Front Desk at 2 in the morning is a mystery to me. But then again, when I'm face down on a strange bed at 2 in the morning, a lot of things are a mystery to me.
An argument erupted.
"We've already called the Front Desk about this once. No, we already had a guy from Maintenance come look at the air conditioner. We need a new room. What do you mean, you don't have another room? You're telling me that there are no vacant rooms in the entire hotel? On the 47th floor? Ok, can we have a valet meet us up there so we don't have to come down 48 floors just to turn around and come back up 47? What do you mean, no? The 19th floor? You just said that there was a room on the 47th floor. Yes, you did. You just said 47. I heard you myself. You just said it."
Suffice it to say that a lot -- and I mean, a lot -- of words were spilled on both sides of this conversation.
My travel partner slammed down the phone.
Two minutes later we were dragging our luggage back to the elevator. My attempt to stab the button for floor 19 was thwarted, however, by the fact that the lowest floor served by that particular elevator was the 20th.
I looked blearily at my travel buddy. It might have been my imagination, but I'm pretty sure I saw smoke wisping from her ears.
I couldn't keep up with her stomp toward the front desk, so I opted to sit with the luggage while she handed the Front Desk attendants their collective asses. I flopped onto a bench -- feet on the ground, elbows on my knees, head in my hands -- and stared at the floor.
I blinked.
The first time we'd come through the lobby, I'd thought the floor was gray. But now that I was staring at it, I noticed that it was actually composed of small alternating black and white squares.
I squinted.
And actually, the whites weren't even white and the blacks weren't even black anymore. The scuffs accumulated through regular usage had rendered them more alike than different. Was a shame, really, to have invested all that time and energy into the black and white squares when the floor ended up being gray.
A pair of shoes, worn by the aforementioned valet, entered my field of vision.
“Hello?”
I looked up slowly.
“Are you the ones moving to the 19th floor?”
I attempted but failed to reply in time.
“Excuse me, son. Are you the ones moving to the 19th floor?”
I grinned and motioned toward the front desk.
“Oh, your mom? Thank you.”
The shoes disappeared, leaving me to ponder both the floor and how accustomed I am to being referred to as "son" -- which is a little unusual for a 35 year old chick with a PhD (so technically, I'm "Doctor Son") who in this particular case was in New York not with my mother but on business with my boss, who isn't even 10 years my senior.
~ ~ ~
And save regrets for the broken
Will you even look back when you think of me?
All I want is a place to call my own
And mend the hearts of everyone who feels alone
You know to keep your hopes up high and your head down low
A Day to Remember, "All I Want"
~ ~ ~
I should probably warn you that I generally can't tell a story for shit.
I never know quite where to start.
Sometimes I'll be all into a story and look up to find a bemused look on my listener's face, usually indicative of my not having started the story back far enough. Other times it's the glazed look, for starting the story too far back. There's also the confused look, for neglecting a critical detail; the annoyed look, for taking too long to make a point; and the irritated look, for failing to make any semblance of a point at all. And then there's the noose-tying look, which is useful because it scales as needed: the 'please hang me' look, for when I'm off on a tangent; the 'seriously please hang me now' look, for when I've interrupted myself to go on a tangent; and the 'fuck this, I'm going to hang you instead' look, for when I've interrupted a tangent with tangential interruption.
Occasionally even I myself will realize that a story has devolved into a poorly-authored choose-your-own-matrushka-adventure, but I'm usually told to shut the hell up before it gets quite that bad.
Take my story here, for example. I have no idea where to start.
I'd like to just dive right in, but I've learned be wary of looks. I've seen too many. And I'm not talking about the ones my lousy storytelling generate. I'm talking about the ones the me and my story generate -- the ones that me and my sisters and my brothers and all of our stories generate.
'At the beginning' is of course the obvious place to start, but this assumes I know when and where 'the beginning' actually is. And I don't. But even if I did, I wouldn't start that way anyway. Sounds too much like 'in the beginning,' which isn't what I want at all.
Saying that it all started 'back in the day' might ingratiate me with the non-academic crowd that I'd like to have hear my message, but I happen to know that would make my friends and colleagues in the academy break out in hives. And I'm actually starting to itch a little bit myself after having typed that just now.
'Once upon a time' doesn't have the right ring to it, and neither does 'a long time ago.'
I am, like many of my generation, partial to 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.' For that matter, I'm also a huge fan of 'far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy.' But both of those beginnings are a little too...I don't know...galactic.
I guess I could start with some basic information about myself, like the stuff you'd put in an online profile -- but really, does anyone ever tell the truth on those things? I know I don't. I have profiles splattered all over the web, none of them the same and not one of them entirely truthful. My usernames and aliases are quite the motley bunch, and many of them are connected to email addresses that aren't even registered in my real name. Sometimes I literally don't know who the hell I am.
Still, this text being what it is, I suppose some truth is in order.
I was born on All Saints Day, but the day before would have been more appropriate for a variety of reasons. The year was 1973 and the time was right around 4 pm. Nearly all of the descriptions that I've read of the Scorpio, the Ox, and, more specifically, the Water Ox are essentially accurate.
My grandmother says that everything happens for a reason. This I believe. She also says that the world contains more assholes than asses. This I also believe. The best advice I ever got was to look both ways at a green light. It was given to me specifically in a driving context, but I find it to be useful overall. I'm a downright lousy liar, and this I'm proud of.
Most people say I'm a rotten driver. I cite my squeaky clean driving record to the contrary. But frankly, I don't give a shit. I was told that we would have flying cars by now anyway.
The world (like Camelot) is a silly place. I see amusement anywhere and everywhere. I often get the giggles. I've pulled muscles playing air hockey and sprained joints in epic tubing wipeouts. I'm always looking to add to my crazy hat collection, and I'll usually be the first to laugh at myself. I'm called 'doctor' most often in jest, typically after I've done something that is reflective of neither my age nor my intelligence. "And so, doctor, you got stuck in that tube slide -- how?"
I wrote an essay in 11th grade that said I wanted to be Roger Rabbit when I grew up. In college I knocked the door off of our oven with my french horn case. I was recognized as an Academic All-American on the bowling team in graduate school, and routinely use an analogy involving Dairy Queen to explain why Milton's God isn't responsible for the Fall even though He knew it was going to happen. Not bad for a kid who was kicked out of kindergarten.
I believe that bodies are to be lived in and enjoyed. Terribly cliché as it is, I can tie a cherry stem into a knot using only my tongue. I can also, however, affix an ice pack to nearly any part of my body using only a t-shirt, and I play Guitar Hero only on expert. All foodstuffs fall into three groups, according to whether they can be improved with the addition of ranch dressing, cheese, or chocolate. If it doesn't fit into one of these groups, odds are I don't eat it. Ice cream works wonders on emotional bumps and bruises, and the world would be a happier place if we all just wore cotton, flannel, leather, and silk.
I'd consider leaving my husband for Brian Griffin, but that's probably just the midlife crisis talking. When I --
"You're too young to be having a midlife crisis," they tell me.
I object once.
"You're too young to be having a midlife crisis," they tell me again.
*sigh*
Maybe they're just trying to make me feel better. Maybe they don't know how condescending it is to assume that they know more about how I feel than I do. Maybe they have no idea how dismissive it is to deny my feelings and experience.
I'd rather they just told me to shut the fuck up than silence me like that.
Now how on earth, you might wonder, could anyone be silenced in this day and age? Blogs are free and plentiful. Social networking sites abound. The intertubes are bursting with vlogs, and the microblogging sensation allows everyone to announce in real time to the world and Google when they're taking a particularly satisfying dump. So how -- do tell, how -- could anyone possibly be silenced?
Let me tell you.
It doesn't take much.
~ ~ ~
I always had a sense that I was different from other kids. Most of the ones I went to school with never let an opportunity to tell me so pass them by. I never really internalized this difference, though, until my first high-school soccer banquet.
I began playing soccer when I was 9. I started in the local recreation league, but soon advanced onto a premier team that played out of a different city. I remember being well-liked among my teammates. Looking back now, I see the reason that I was able to tolerate school at all was because I had this other support network of peers. No matter how much the kids I went to school with teased and bullied me, my soccer teams provided me with a haven.
The premier league played year-round. My teammates and I saw each other only in a soccer context: we travelled to tournaments, played twice a week, and practiced for hours. Our season never ended, so to speak, so there was no need for banquets or other social gatherings.
This changed in high school, when I played for the first time on a team with kids from my own school. My teammates and I saw each other in the hallways: we gossiped about cute guys, talked about teachers, and bitched about homework. I was still badgered and insulted every day by most of my schoolmates, but I did feel to a certain extent that I had on my team, if not friends, then at least a group of allies that wouldn't join in on the abuse.
The end of the high-school season was formally marked by a soccer banquet, which was a dinner for players and parents, an awards ceremony, and a send-off to the seniors, all wrapped into one. Our coach informed us of the banquet date one April afternoon via memo.
The memo contained the statement that to this day still haunts me.
"Proper attire is required."
It sounds silly, I know. But it's no laughing matter.
I showed up at the banquet in the required attire, which was specified in that and in every other such memo that I'd brought home at least once a year since 6th grade as "a dress or a skirt and blouse for girls." My teammates were all there, also all 'properly' dressed.
And it was, just like that, painfully clear to me. I was the only one who was so uncomfortable that I couldn't even speak.
I had, you see, come to assume certain similarities between myself and my teammates. We hated the color pink. We stomped in mud puddles and had spitting contests. We threw elbows and took out ankles.
And yet, they could wear 'proper' attire and I could not.
Why?
My search for the answer to that question, in essence the search for my own identity, was complicated -- I repeat, complicated -- for years by the fact that I am what most people would call heterosexual.
I ended up playing only one more season of soccer before opting instead to go back into the band, where I felt the least uncomfortable during my final years of high school. It would, however, be seven long years from the time of that soccer banquet to when I would truly feel like I was part of something again.
I know now that there are a lot of people who understand where I'm coming from and what I'm talking about. I wish like hell that I would have known at the time.
One such person is Daphne Scholinski, who tells her story in The Last Time I Wore a Dress.
The academic in me, I should note, feels compelled to pause here to include a literature review and a sprinkling of footnotes to impress you with how much I appear to know about Scholinski and her text. The edupunk in me says fuck that. You know how to use a web browser.
Scholinski was bounced in an out of mental institutions, treated primarily not for the depression or for the sexual abuse from which she actually suffered, but rather for what her doctors deemed a Gender Identity Disorder.
He rolled his pen between his fingers for a moment. He said the other diagnosis was something called Gender Identity Disorder, which he said I'd had since Grade 3, according to my records. He said what this means is you are not an appropriate female, you don't act the way a female is supposed to act.
I looked at him. I didn't mind being called a delinquent, a truant, a hard kid who smoked and drank and ran around with a knife in her sock. But I didn't want to be called something I wasn't. Gender screw-up or whatever wasn't cool. My foot started to jiggle, I couldn't stop it. He was calling me a freak, not normal. (15-16)
Part of Scholinski's medical treatment for GID was to make her more feminine -- to make her a more "appropriate female."
Every week my staff advisor, Nanette, who had a calming voice, sat on my bed beside me and reviewed a piece of paper outlining my weekly treatment plan. This included: "Pt to spend 15 minutes with a female peer in A.M. and comb and curl hair. To experiment with makeup; to look into mirror 1x day & say something positive; Pt to continue to spend 15 minutes with female peer working on hygiene and appearance in A.M."
In addition Dr. Freeman suggested I learn how to dress more like a girl.
"How am I supposed to do that?"
He suggested I talk to my female friends about what kinds of clothes they wear, and what kinds of clothes boys like. (117-18)
What drew me to The Last Time I Wore a Dress was the title. What horrified me about it is that its events take place in the 1980s. Not the 1880s. The 1980s.
The soccer banquet occurred in '88.
I'd been refusing to wear dresses since the mid-70s.
This could have been me.
I too was freakified by the medical establishment. Family Therapy, they called it. Solo sessions alternating with ones that included my mother, father, and brother. My parents dragged me there when I was in 7th grade. They were concerned as to why their straight-A, generally well-behaved daughter had begun acting out.
"Everything isn't a contest," the therapist told me. "You don't always have to win."
All I could do was smirk. If that was the case, then why was I on the losing end of every interaction with my peers?
I remember one particularly disastrous therapy session. I had just hours earlier brought home a 'proper attire' memo, this one for an upcoming honors assembly at which I would be honored with numerous awards.
Even though I was only 12 or 13, I had already been fighting with my parents for years about clothes. Looking back, I realize that those early fights were more or less tantrums -- to which, I confess, I am still prone. The force of my denials had always been in their volume and sheer persistence.
So there I sat on the proverbial couch. I didn't like therapy, and I definitely didn't like that therapist. She asked me what was on my mind, and I blurted out that I had brought home that fucking memo. She asked me questions and responded to my tearful answers with all of the softness and understanding of a Brillo pad. I told her repeatedly that I didn't want to wear a dress, but ultimately failed to come up with what, according to her educational training and professional opinion, was a satisfactory explanation of why.
Her lack of sympathy was upsetting. Her advice to drop the argument and simply wear the required clothing was distressing. But her assurance that I would look beautiful in a dress was completely unbearable.
Mark Rees echoes this sentiment in Dear Sir or Madam.
She tried to reassure me of my femininity, even telling me that I was pretty, which was about the worst thing she could have done. (35)
What exactly happens when I'm in a dress is impossible for me to articulate. You'd think I could, what with a fancy PhD and all...but I can't. It's like I disappear. I can't think. I can't speak. I can't be. Everything I am is silenced and erased.
Scholinski was forced to wear makeup as part of her treatment at Michael Reese hospital. I understand wholeheartedly her reaction to seeing herself made-up.
I sneaked a glance and it was a jolt. My beige face gave me a creepy dead look. The blue eye shadow, the blush -- I looked like a stranger. Michelle's friend, Linda -- the one who would let boys do anything to her and who could stand to lose about a half a pound of makeup from her face -- laughed her mean ha-ha laugh in my ear.
Over the edge, they said at Michael Reese, when Anne started throwing paper cups of juice in the lounge. She's gone over the edge. I knew this edge. I felt it now under my sneakers. You had to walk the edge without looking down, casual-like, so you didn't let them know you were on it even though, like now, your neck felt hot and your legs trembly as if you might sway and tip over. Going over the edge -- I'd never done this, exactly. It was tempting. I could feel myself sliding a bit because it wasn't me with the makeup on my face, it was happening to someone else, but it was me, and it would be so relaxing to take the fall, to join the ones who tilted and babbled and threw things. Although, in spite of my own violent reputation, I wouldn't be a thrower. I'd be the one in the corner, rocking herself, my arms around my curled-up legs, like my dog Pudgy under the coffee table. (119-20)
I know that disembodied feeling, what it's like to look at someone else staring back at you from the mirror. I know that edge, and have walked it with my own trembling legs. I have been the thrower, and I have been the one in the corner.
I know the feeling of unreality described by Jay Copestake in "Butch."
I cannot remember when it became clear to me that no wedding, job interview, family gathering, or bar mitzvah was going to convince me that putting on a frock or feminine attire was a viable option. And certainly it didn't feel right! In my early twenties, on the rare occasion that I wore a frock or a skirt, I felt like a fraud; somehow it seemed inauthentic, like I was playing dress-ups. (264-65)
I don't remember this ever becoming clear to me, either. It just always was.
I'm not supposed to wear a dress.
I regret that it took me so long to find these writers -- so long to find others who would understand and validate my feelings and experiences. I at one time felt the fear incited by the House of the Freaks in Carson McCullers' female protagonist in Member of the Wedding, Frankie Addams.
The last booth was always very crowded, for it was the booth of the Half-Man Half-Woman, a morphidite [sic] and miracle of science. This Freak was divided completely in half -- the left side was a man and the right side a woman. The costume on the left was a leopard skin and on the right side a brassiere and a spangled skirt. Half the face was dark-bearded and the other half bright glazed with paint. Both eyes were strange. Frankie had wandered around the tent and looked at every booth. She was afraid of all the Freaks, for it seemed to her that they had looked at her in a secret way and tried to connect their eyes with hers, as though to say: we know you. (20)
My fear, however, has matured into a sense of connection, much like the one Scholinski felt to her fellow patient, Sandra.
At dinner she sat at the table with the rest of us and it was as if she wasn't there. I studied her. One of the attendants whispered -- as if she could hear. "Faggot," he called her, and I told him to shut up.
Putting her meal tray back into the metal cart, Sandra slipped and fell and her dress flew up. We saw she was a man, even though we already knew. We saw it. Her wig slid off her head, lay on the floor next to her bald head. I sat in my seat frozen, scared. A thin line connected Sandra and me, I didn't know how or why, but I felt it. (60)
This line. This thin line. It connects me to Scholinski. It connects me to Rees and it connects me to Copestake. This thin line connects me to my sisters and brothers, and to their sisters and brothers, and to their sisters and brothers in turn.
The more I follow this line, the more it empowers me. And I believe this line has led me to where I finally belong.
~ ~ ~
The date was August 10th, 2009. I am sure of this not because I’m a whiz with dates. Far from it. I actually got married on Christmas Day in part so I would never forget my anniversary, and have nonetheless forgotten my anniversary nearly every year since.
I remember shuffling through the mail one holiday season, opening Christmas cards and taping them to the back of the front door. One of them mysteriously read “Happy Anniversary to my Son and his Wife.” Weird card, I thought to myself.
And then it hit me. I was on a mad dash back to the mall before the card fluttered its way to the floor.
Definitely not a whiz with dates. I know that it was August 10th because I jotted the date down after I laughed my ass off.
I had finished reading Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There and had returned to the library to grab two other books that Boylan had mentioned: Mildred L. Brown and Chloe Ann Rounsley's True Selves and Richard Russo's Straight Man. I was standing by the circulation desk, surveying my surroundings. I was absolutely out of my element. It was only the second time I’d been in a public library in well over 15 years. The first time had been just three days before.
A short, homely lady wearing a thick gold cross around her neck ambled toward the desk, bringing a cloud of perfume and cat dander with her. I handed her my driver’s license and the two books.
She punched up my account.
“Oh, it looks like you already have a book checked out.”
“Yeah, I do,” I answered casually, not really paying attention.
“A life in…” She trailed off.
The subtitle of Boylan’s book is A Life in Two Genders.
At that point she picked up the True Selves book and gave a little gasp. That I noticed. Her eyes widened as they met mine.
The subtitle of that one is Understanding Transsexualism for Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals.
She quickly scanned the book and put it face down on the desk. She then grabbed the Russo book and looked back up at me. At this point I’d figured it out, and was looking amusedly right at her.
I think she wanted to cry.
She hurriedly scanned the second book, took another look at my license, cleared her throat, and stammered a quiet “thank you, Jennifer.” Her attempt to push the books toward me was weak at best. And her “have a nice day” was easily one of the most ridiculous ever uttered.
The librarian’s reaction is just one of the many that I’ve evoked over the years. Fear, curiosity, anger, revulsion -- I’ve triggered the whole gamut, really. I myself am fortunate enough to have walked away from most of these run-ins, if not laughing, then at least physically unscathed. Many of my sisters and brothers aren’t so lucky. They’ve been carried away from their run-ins in body bags.
People don’t like when they can’t determine your gender. No. Let me rephrase that. People don’t like it when they think you’re not displaying your "true" gender clearly and accurately. Hence the question, “what are you?”, or, more frequently, “what the fuck are you?”
My answer is simple. I am what I always have been.
My domestic spaces neither are nor have been any more integrated than usual in terms of gender. I have many childhood memories of parties at my aunt’s house, with the women in the kitchen preparing side dishes and the men in the yard barbequing the main course. The scene remains the same today, the only real difference being that, given the advances in technology over the past 30 years, the chef standing over the barbeque can now singe not only his own eyebrows, but also the eyebrows of anyone foolish enough to stand within a three foot radius of him as well.
As for me, I’m the go-between.
My uncle sends me to fetch the cheese for the burgers. My aunt hands me the cheese and tells me to bring back the plate the patties were on. I hand him the cheese, he hands me the plate, he asks me to bring back a platter. I hand her the plate, she hands me a platter, she gives me the buns. I hand him the platter, he asks for the buns, I hand him the buns. Flames flare, I duck, and he sends me for a beer to replace the one he douses the fire with.
I move seamlessly back and forth. Accepted in both spaces. Expected in neither. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Boylan uses the term ‘boygirl’ to describe a particular stage of her transition from male to female.
I seemed to pass from being perceived as male to female at a moment's notice, depending on whom I was with, where I was, whether my hair was tied back or loose, how I crossed my legs. (152)
For Boylan, this boygirl stage in which she could easily alternate between being read as male or female was a temporary state, and one that most transexuals understandably want to get through as quickly as possible.
I, however, live in this state. I embody and embrace it.
I decided to write my story because it isn’t quite like any of the others I’ve read. It's not a coming out story and it's not a transition story, although on some level it's a little bit of both. It's kind of hard to explain, given there is no language to explain it with. Hands down the most difficult question I'm asked nowadays is "what's your book about?". "Me" never seems like an adequate answer, but in a lot of ways it's the only answer I have. It's the only word I have.
I can, on the other hand, tell you exactly how I wrote this book. I started thinking in a serious way about it after I traumatized the librarian. A friend of mine suggested I check out the NaNoWriMo website, which challenges its participants to write 50,000 words during the month of November. The idea is to put your head down and go.
I went.
I ended up with well over a hundred pages of text. Random thoughts, unfinished ideas, and marginally coherent passages were jumbled together in over thirty different documents. It was a hell of a thing to try to read.
I then began the delicate and deliberate process of creating the Frankendraft.
Using a pair of scissors, a roll of tape, and a ream of paper, I literally cut apart what I'd written and taped the pieces back together in a way that made sense. I reread. I dug up memories, drafted them, and taped them in. I reread again. I dug up more memories, drafted them, and taped them in. And so I worked, repeating this process again and again, stitching my story together.
This book represents in both form and content my various and, some would say, contradictory facets.
You might like.
You might hate it.
But either way I hope you'll accept it for what it is.
~ ~ ~
Oh just when you think you're in control
Just when you think you've got a hold
Just when you get on a roll
Oh here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again
Oh here it goes again
I should've known, should've known, should've known again
But here it goes again.
Ok Go, "Here It Goes Again"
~ ~ ~
The desk clerk motioned unenthusiastically toward a stack of clipboards.
“Also need a copy of your insurance card.”
My husband rolled his eyes and dug for his wallet. I took a pair of clipboards and flopped into a nearby chair.
Derek eventually sat down next to me and leaned over, I assume, to remark how foolish it was that we had to fill out New Patient paperwork when it was in fact the desk clerk who was new.
She interrupted him.
“Your son can fill out the paperwork but you have to sign it.”
We looked at each other. The screwed-up face he made set me a-giggle.
“She's not my son,” he replied.
I turned and saw that the couple adjacent to us had tuned in to the exchange. They were both smiling. I grinned back at them.
She said it again.
“Your son can fill out the paperwork but you have to sign it.”
I snorted a laugh and started coughing.
“She’s my wife,” Derek replied, this time a little louder.
An amused murmur swept through the rest waiting room.
The clerk began a third time, but Derek cut her off with a loud bellow.
“She’s not my son, she's my wife!”
At that, the whole waiting room erupted in laughter.
The incident to this day remains one of my favorites.
This sort of thing happens all the time. I am frequently read as being younger than I am. I am occasionally read as being much younger than I am. Women almost unanimously tell me this is a compliment; some men backhandedly so. A handsome security guard carding me in Vegas once told me, “You’re gonna look good when you’re fifty.”
:/
One summer I went to Disney with a cousin who is 16 years younger than I am. We dined one evening at the Italian restaurant in Epcot. The hostess gave me a children’s menu when we arrived, and the server gave her the bill when we were ready to leave. I was in college at the time.
On another occasion I was in graduate school. Our family had gathered at my grandmother’s house the Spring after my grandfather had passed away. I was raking the front lawn when a little kid on a bike stopped, introduced himself, and said that he had just moved into the neighborhood. I have no idea what I said back to him. I do, however, remember him asking me was what grade I was in, and his surprise when after a moment of calculating I replied, "twenty-second."
These incidents are funny as hell. I take them seriously too, though, as they form the fabric of those thin lines.
Mark Rees was read as a youth on numerous occasions.
It has been said that female-to-male transsexuals, after role-change, look considerably younger than their chronological ages. My own experience shows this to be so before, as well as after, reassignment therapy. (73)
In Conondrum, Jan Morris describes her transition from male to female as a journey backward in time.
Hasty calculation suggests to me that between 1964 and 1972 I swallowed at least 12,000 pills, and absorbed into my system anything up to 50,000 milligrams of female matter. Much of this doubtless went to waste, the body automatically discharging what it cannot absorb; the rest took its effect, and turned me gradually from a person who looked like a healthy male of orthodox sexual tendencies, approaching middle age, into something perilously close to a hermaphrodite, apparently neither of one sex or the other, and more or less ageless. (105)
...
The change was infinitely gradual. I felt like a slow-motion Jekyll and Hyde, tinkering with test-tubes and retorts in my dark laboratory; but the effects were so subtle that they seemed not to be induced at all, were not noticed for years by everyday acquaintances, and seemed to be part of the natural process of aging. Except that, fortunately, they worked backwards, and rejuvenated me. (106)
...
All this helped to make me younger. It was not merely a matter of seeming younger; except in the matter of plain chronology, it was actually true. I was enjoying that dream of the ages, a second youth. (107)
I dig the metaphor. I too am both scientist and offspring, shaping and transforming myself and my text.
I find it interesting that we might share something somewhere in our hormone soup. I am afraid, however, that the white coats might descend and attempt to eradicate it.
A mentor of mine once called me the Doogie Howser of PhDs. "Doctor Doogs." I like it.
I was in my late 20s when I made a beeline for an exit row seat on a Hawaiian island-hopping flight. As soon as I sat down, a flight attendant appeared and apologetically asked me to move: all exit row passengers had to be at least 16 years old. My family laughed during the entire flight, and the other members of the crew held a contest amongst themselves to see who could guess my real age.
I was in my early 30s zipping around a lake on a jet ski when I was stopped by the sheriff. I flipped the seat and grabbed the fire extinguisher, figuring that’s how he was going to nail me. Instead he asked me how much experience I had operating a personal watercraft. I grinned and told him a little over 15 years. He scratched his head, apologized, called me ma’am, and went on his merry way.
Best. Sheriff. Stop. Ever.
Truth be told, I actually don’t feel my age. I peg myself at about 19.
Derek and I discussed my sense of self over dinner the weekend I turned 36. We were sitting in a restaurant at Hotel Breakers, just outside of Cedar Point. The Halloweekend was in full swing and the park would be open for several more hours, but I’d already had enough. We'd been on all of our favorite rides, my body had been thoroughly rattled, and I’d be sore well into the next week.
The park had been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Magnum, which had at one time been its most badass coaster. I was caught in a Damn, I'm Old reverie, remembering in detail when that ride first opened. I was 15 that summer. Not even old enough to drive.
When I told my therapist that I see myself as a 19 year old, he asked what happened when I was 19 that might have caused the development of my sense of self to arrest. Sipping my double chocolate shake as we waited for our appetizer, I explained to Derek that I don't like that question. It's implicitly pathologizing. But more to the point, it's the wrong one. The better question is why the development of my sense of self couldn't proceed.
In order to grow up, you have to grow up into something. Girls grow up into women. Boys grow up into men. Makes sense. And it works for the majority of people.
We see in Becoming a Visible Man that it didn’t work in quite that way for Jamison Green.
In the process of my long self-investigation, it finally dawned on me that I had not been able to grow up fully because I was never going to be an adult woman. I knew that the only way I could grow up – really be an adult – was to become a man. (22)
Green ultimately did grow up, but only after his female-to-male transition.
But people like me are stuck in perpetual adolescence.
Our culture only recognizes men or women as adults. If you fail to exhibit the accepted cultural markings of either a man or a woman, the prevailing assumption will be that you've not yet grown up. And if you've not yet grown up, then you're still a kid -- not only in the eyes of others, but in your own eyes as well.
Mine isn’t a case of arrested development. Mine is a case of culture failing to provide a space for me to grow up into.
Derek and I finished our meal and paid the check. I still had about a third of my shake left, and so asked the server if he could get me a traveler.
He soon returned, red and embarrassed, apologizing that these were the only plastic cups they had. He scooted away as quickly as possible.
On the table he’d placed a brightly-colored kiddie cup, complete with lid and straw hole.
Derek and I looked at the cup, looked at each other, and both laughed out loud.
~ ~ ~
Memories from when I was actually a kid are much less fun to recount.
Not a day went by that I wasn't subjected to some sort of verbal abuse from the kids at school. The torment was continual. It happened before school. It happened during school. It happened after school. It even happened in my sleep.
I suffered at the hands of both the boys and the girls. They sensed my alienation, and gleefully reinforced it. They let me know every day that I was different, and that I was neither wanted nor welcome among them.
I quickly learned that to confide in teachers was pointless. My antagonists would simply deny their words or actions, leaving the teacher to arbitrate a he said/she said, she said/she said, or -- as they said -- an I said/it said situation.
If the teacher happened to have heard or seen the incident, the situation was even more absurd. The teacher would preside over a forced and insincere apology that effectively gave my assailant another shot at me, this time in the presence of the authority figure who should have been protecting me.
"Sorry I called you a stupid queer dyke faggot."
Sure you are.
The worst part of these apologies, and the part that to this day pisses me off, is that I was then forced to acknowledge and accept them.
Talk about a triple kick in the ass.
I promised myself a day would come when I would no longer accept such apologies.
I remember one time when the boys asked me if I wanted to play football at recess. They told me they needed another person to make the teams even. I eagerly ran out to the field, but I didn't get to play. Nobody had even brought a football outside. They all just stood there and laughed at me, because they knew I'd fall for it. Because I was a guy. Because I was a fucking faggot dyke that wanted to play football like a guy.
Another time they did let me play. One play. I caught a pass. Everyone on both teams then tackled me and piled on, all yelling "smear the queer" at the top of their lungs.
That effectively ended my football career. Lucy had pulled her last ball away from this Charlie Brown.
I didn't fare much better among the girls. They called me names incessantly, but at least didn't try to physically hurt me. Except for the bully. I always tried to avoid her. She seemed to go out of her way to get me.
There was one time in particular when she caught me off guard during recess. She feigned throwing a ball in the opposite direction but instead whipped it right at me, hitting me square in the gut. When she came over to retrieve the ball, she told me that I should take my fucking dyke ass to K-Mart and get a sex change operation.
And I was so accustomed to such abuse that my first thought was "really now...K-Mart?"
Middle school wasn’t any better. Our elementary school merged with two others, and I hoped my new classmates might be more accepting.
They weren’t.
The assholes had networked during the summer. I was barraged with insults on the first day of school from people I didn’t even know. I thought one guy in particular was cute. When I finally gathered up the nerve to say hi to him, he replied, “you must be that fucking queer.”
Gym class rather than recess now provided opportunities for humiliation. Despite being one of the best female athletes, I was regularly chosen last. I was tripped, pushed, blocked, and elbowed. I was hit by basketballs, volleyballs, and floor hockey pucks. I was intimidated, badgered, and belittled. This was all either denied or said to have occurred on ‘accident.’
Bullshit.
They knew exactly what they were doing, and so did I. I couldn’t fight back. I was outnumbered. I couldn’t tell on them. That was useless, and just made it worse for me the next time around.
The only thing I could do was shut up and take it.
In silence.
I thought at the time that this abuse was specific to me. It’s not. My sisters and brothers around the globe experience it too. People like me -- girls and women deemed not feminine enough, boys and men considered not masculine enough -- we are abused every day. And often the only thing we can do is shut up and take it.
In silence.
I now know that what I experienced as far as physical abuse was very mild. Violence against us is all too common, perpetrated by strangers and acquaintances, by friends and loved ones, and by authority figures.
The fact that I didn’t experience significant physical abuse makes me aware that I have and that I write from a position of white, middle class privilege. My story varies significantly from those of my sisters and brothers who are not white and whose socioeconomic status differs from my own. This variance, however, in no way weakens the bond I share with them. Our similarities are more important than our differences.
I also have the benefit of an extremely supportive family. I learned only recently that when I was 8 months old, my grandfather stood over me and said to my parents, “don’t stifle her.”
I am thankful they never have.
As an individual, I would like nothing more than to forget all that I’ve suffered. As a member of my community, however, I think it's important to remember.
We all still suffer, sometimes on a global stage.
~ ~ ~
It took all of three minutes for August 20th, 2009 to become a day I would never forget.
I’d finished reading the Scholinski book and wanted to type up some thoughts. Instead of opening my word processing program, I inadvertently popped the browser, which fired me over to the newly redesigned Yahoo! homepage.
The top headline: “Gender test for track star.” The tease: “A world-champion South African runner will be tested amid concerns she may not qualify as a woman.”
A needle scratched loudly across the record in my mind.
I read the story. There was nothing particularly remarkable about it.
The comments, however, were quite another matter.
They were being posted as fast as I could read them. Memories washed over me, flooding my mind. I felt like I was drowning. Like I was being eaten alive. Like I was being violated in every way possible.
I was powerless against it. All I could do was read.
In silence.
People wonder why I don't go to my class reunions. Why I take evasive action when I see someone I went to school with. Why I still hold grudges after all these years.
"People grow up," they tell me.
Too late. I don't give a shit what kind of people they've grown up into.
Name calling troubles me.
On one hand, it's important to consider the source. I've heard that many times. The world is full of intolerant assholes. Ignore them, and don't dignify their comments with a reply. They're the ones with the problem.
On the other hand, it's important to realize that words are incredibly powerful. Names can and do, in fact, hurt -- and the wounds they make can take a hell of a long time to heal, if they don't go septic first.
Language is in many ways the most potent weapon we have.
I suppose we could discuss where on the scale of relative cultural importance Yahoo! comments fall. That seems, however, more like an exercise I would do with an undergraduate rhetoric and composition class.
“Should we take these comments seriously?”
The students would stare at me apathetically. Papers would be shuffled. Gum would be snapped. A phone would vibrate so violently that the thing might as well have just rung out loud. A student might even answer it.
I'd repeat the question and let it hang there, eventually looking at my watch or leaning deliberately against a desk to signal that I have no intention of letting them off the hook.
Annoyed at my persistence, someone would say no.
I'd ask why.
“Because people just post stupid shit online without thinking.”
Bait taken.
I'd elicit a few more responses and jot them down on the board.
“Comments are posted by kids and people with nothing else to do.”
“People post and read comments for entertainment.”
“It's easy to be an asshole when you're anonymous.”
“We don't know whether the comments were intended to be serious.”
Good enough to start. Time for the Socratic questions.
Is there a universal consensus of what activities qualify as entertainment? Must I ignore what I see as the negative political or cultural implications of an activity simply because someone else considers that activity to be entertaining?
Does the identity of the individual who posted a comment matter? Does the intent of the individual who posted a comment matter?
If people post stupid shit online without thinking, does that mean that I have to read the stupid shit without thinking? Does that mean that I have to ignore what I see as the seriousness of the stupid shit? Does freedom of speech also grant freedom from the implications of speech?
Most of the students will get it, or will at least play along.
The Yahoo! story was relatively short in length and on facts, as I recall. I have no idea if that has anything to do with why Yahoo! eventually removed the story. I suspect not. At any rate, its previous url is now a dead link, and I can't find the original story or comments online anywhere. And believe me, it ain't for lack of trying.
I'm not sure how many people actually read the story anyway, though. The single part of it that generated the most comments was the idea that the determination of gender/sex (which, again, if I'm remembering correctly, were collapsed into the same thing) is a complex process that would take a panel of various experts several weeks to complete. The overwhelming majority of the comments, however, focused on either the appearance or the name of runner, or -- in true internet fashion -- on something else entirely.
The loss of the story isn't as much of a bummer as the loss of the comments. I do, thankfully, have a record of comments 1-5331, the last of which was posted at 9:46 am on August 21st. The frenzy by that time seemed to have abated, and it was shortly thereafter that I began to copy and paste the comments into a document of my own.
Just for the record, 5331 is an insane number of comments. Commenter 209 notes that even that many is a lot, and that was well before things even got rolling.
To read the 5331 comments straight through is quite an experience. My .pdf file of these Yahoo! comments -- single spaced, with an empty line between each comment -- is 771 pages in length. Little appears to be known about sex, gender, sexuality, and the relationships between them, several notable exceptions notwithstanding. Insensitivity and intolerance abound. And many of the comments in terms of grammar, spelling, and overall expression are either train wrecks or comedies of errors, and in some cases are both.
The athlete featured in the story was Caster Semenya, a middle distance runner from South Africa. Questions about Semenya's gender were raised following her victory in the 800 m at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany in 2009.
The Yahoo! commenters offer three main theories as to what is wrong with Semenya. The first involves hormone levels.
684. Posted by gpearlman53 she does look like a man, but some parts of her body dont resemble what a man athlete would have, such as larger shoulder muscled. she probably has a lot more male hormone factors, could have been ready to be a boy until the female hormorns took control.
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