On Saturday, I finally told my son J. about my transition.
He's five. I had just supervised his life-jacketed form flying off the dock at my family's summer place—lucky us, I know—and now he was warming up in the sun on top of the boathouse. I had refused to swim since the thought of me in a bathing suit for either gender makes me want to puke.
Anxiety mounting inside me, I watched him. He prattled on about bugs and jumping off the dock and kids at school and whatever else, as usual; just happy to be with me after so many weeks of sporadic togetherness.
After a couple of fruitless lip-puckerings, I spat it out: "J. I have something I need to talk to you about."
He stopped chattering and looked at me expectantly.
"Umm..I'm switching from being a boy to being a girl."
"You're switching from being a boy to a girl!" He was smiling, almost laughing out loud, at the outlandishness of the news. Even at five, one's Dad coming out as transsexual is cause for raised eyebrows. “How do you do that!?”
I laughed. “Doctors will help me. I’ve already changed a lot. I’ve lost weight. I’ve grown my hair. I will change my voice.”
“How do you change your voice?”
“It takes time and practice.”
“You’re really switching from being a boy to being a girl?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Shit. It’s not like I didn’t expect him to ask, but it was still hard to know how to explain how unusual this is, but not to make it sound negative. “I had a hard time being happy as a boy. Actually, it was impossible for me to be happy being a boy. That’s very unusual; most people are happy being the sex they’re born as. So, I’ve been experimenting with being a girl—trying it out—and I think I’ll be happier as a girl. Well, actually, I know I’m happier as a girl.”
Highly amused, he smiled widely. “You’ve been experimenting? You’ve been trying it out?”
“Yes. Do you think I’m different now?”
“Ahh….yes!” he said, incredulous at my stupidity like only a five year old can be.
“Do you care?”
“No!” and he smiled again.
“Because I’ll still be your Daddy, and I’ll always be your Daddy.”
“How can you still be my Daddy if you’re going to be a girl?”
Smarty pants. “Well, I’ll always be your parent. And you can call me whatever you want to. You can still call me ‘Daddy’ if you want.”
I’m fervently hoping that he won’t want to call me Daddy forever, but I would like him to decide how and when (and if, I guess) he wants to change it.
“J., I’m going to be me-as-a-girl—not anyone else. I will look different, but this won’t change the way things are between us.”
“Are you going to get the vagina?”
I nearly choked on my juice box. “Why do you ask that?”
He grinned. Another stupid adult question. “Because girls have vaginas!”
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe,” I responded, “but we don’t need to talk about that now.” And being the lovely child that he is, he honoured that small request and backed down.
We went back to chattering about our surroundings and whatever else came to mind.
He has asked about the vagina a couple of times since, though. He has also wanted to know when I would be fully a girl, how the doctors were going to help me, whether I would still be good at building things (!), how to spell Dee (my new name), and probably several other things I’m forgetting.
We’ve spent a few hours with me in woman mode, which amounts to me wearing boobs and a skirt, but otherwise looking the same. He felt that I looked different (the boobs make ALL the difference, I suspect), but he was so natural, it was seamless.
Actually, it was like folding myself into the embrace of a cozy blanket on a clear winter’s night. He has been so cute about it. It’s so overjoying for me to get to be myself around him in an unfettered way. To finally not have to hide from him. To get a chance to feel my chest-swelling love for him with less of the taint of my maleness fouling my mood
A., his mom, has been wonderful too. She is awe-inspiring. Even though I’m resigned to losing her, she still breaks my heart.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Falling down the Spanish Steps
The liver thing is really messing my life up. One day, I'm counting down less than a week's worth of days until I go on Estrogen. The next, I'm going off all my medications, and my transition is regressing. What a blow!
The liver worsened, rather than instantly improving as I'd hoped it would. I don't have the results of my most recent tests, but according to the tests I took before before I went to Italy, my liver is one unhappy organ.
I wasn't prepared to be sucked into this cruel vortex. I have lost control of my life (after just regaining SOME control), and that's depressing. My hormonal transition is on hold indefinitely, and that's hugely depressing. On top of that, I have to go off all my mood meds. Overall, I'm happy to be getting off them, but the timing couldn't be worse. I seemed to have left most of the depression behind, and now I've suddenly plunged back into it, over my head. Yet, here I am going off anti-depressants that I've
been on for more than three years.
When I was in Rome, I visited the Spanish Steps. As you might expect, the steps cover several stories in elevation, and are made of marble. My life has been knocked off its feet at the top of this staircase, and I'm tumbling bumpily down the stairs. I have no idea when I'll reach a landing, whether I'll be able to stop myself when I do, and how bruised I'll be from the fall.
And when I do come to rest, I'm going to have to climb back up.
The liver worsened, rather than instantly improving as I'd hoped it would. I don't have the results of my most recent tests, but according to the tests I took before before I went to Italy, my liver is one unhappy organ.
I wasn't prepared to be sucked into this cruel vortex. I have lost control of my life (after just regaining SOME control), and that's depressing. My hormonal transition is on hold indefinitely, and that's hugely depressing. On top of that, I have to go off all my mood meds. Overall, I'm happy to be getting off them, but the timing couldn't be worse. I seemed to have left most of the depression behind, and now I've suddenly plunged back into it, over my head. Yet, here I am going off anti-depressants that I've
been on for more than three years.
When I was in Rome, I visited the Spanish Steps. As you might expect, the steps cover several stories in elevation, and are made of marble. My life has been knocked off its feet at the top of this staircase, and I'm tumbling bumpily down the stairs. I have no idea when I'll reach a landing, whether I'll be able to stop myself when I do, and how bruised I'll be from the fall.
And when I do come to rest, I'm going to have to climb back up.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Pepe Le Pieu Sexully Assaults Transsexual!
One of my better outings last week was a trip to the Prada outlet in Montevarchi (which had more than Prada, but nothing not nice), near where we were staying for the wedding.
The last time I was at this particular store--three years ago or so--I was there as a straight man, on my honeymoon with my straight wife. That time, I bought one man thing (a vest), but spent most of my time picking out things for A. to try on. This time, I bought a few things for myself! And I also bought a few things for A, because she couldn't be there, and that's the sort of exes we are.
I spent last Saturday night (July 5/08) in Rome. C. and I shared a room, and M., H., and their baby, N., stayed in another. We stayed at the Hotel Rex., which was pretty nice, and nicely priced.
I arrived in Rome separately, but not long behind the rest of the group. When I arrived, I needed to practice yoga. So I sent them off ahead, and spent some time unwinding my body.
I then got dressed in a leisurely fashion. I decided to try out some of my new stuff, which ended up seeing me a little dressed up for a touristy wander around Rome, which was fine, because it's Italy, after all. I grew to regret my shoe choice, but the rest of the outfit was comfortable, and it was nice to look stylish while peering into boutiques on Via Nazionale.
As per usual, I was smoking the occasional hit of weed from my pipe while on my wander. Unaccompanied women in their 30s don't often get seen smoking weed on the street at dinner-time. At home, I employ a fake cigarette, and that's very unobtrusive. In Italy, I had a small pipe. So, I was a bit more obvious, cupping my hands around the pipe bowl and the lighter, leaning my head to one side to tip the bowl towards the wind-driven flame, then never rising from this posture with a lit cigarette in my mouth. If you watched, you knew I was smoking a pipe.
At one point, near the Colliseum, I took a break sitting on a large marble block, barely in the shade of some massive ancient building or other. I packed my pipe.
I was fairly careful to time my pulls to moments when the sidewalk near me was relatively uncrowded, but it was windy, and sometimes it would take so long to get a light that someone would have gotten close in the interim.
I think I breached one poor woman's world-view. There I sat, a stylishly dressed, relatively young woman, taking a break in the shade. She must have been thinking: But why was it taking so long to light her cigarette? Wait a second! There's no cigarette there! Wait! Is that even a woman?! But it can't be a man! OH! What in the world!?
Her expression grew steadily more disconcerted as she drew nearer. When she was passing by me, I was done smoking, and I tried that quick "I mean no harm" flash of a smile that women aim at each other, but she was having none of it. She just stared back, her head turning so that her eyes stayed pointed at me as her body carried the rest of itself past.
Once she was gone, the little smile broke into a big grin, mostly because she was just looking so hopelessly disturbed by my very existence. I'm getting more used to upsetting people. The only real answer is to laugh.
Shortly afterwards, I connected with the rest of the group by phone text message, and I set off to find them in the rather large park surrounding the Domum Aureus ruin site, opposite the Coliseum. Unfortunately, I cut uphill too early, and was separated from them by some band of ruins or other.
The part of the park that I found myself in wasn't all that beautiful. The grass was browning, and there were few pedestrians. C. was reporting their location to me by text, and I continued towards them.
When I arrived at their ostensible location, there were no children present, and it wasn't really the right place for a 1-year-old. There were about five people in sight, and all looked dubious in one way or another. One was sprawled across a bench on his back. A slick of liquid had leaked from a can that lay below his out-flung arm.
C and I determined that they were below me somewhere, further down the hill, and I backtracked to get around the ruins that separated us. I had passed what looked like promising pathway not far behind.
I was walking across the grass, cursed (but wicked) shoes in hand, towards the path in question when someone called out. I ignored the call (tranny instincts--head down). He called again. I glanced up, and sure enough, it was a man on the sidewalk, a short distance away, and he was shouting at me.
I waved him off, and continued walking. He called again, and when I turned, he pantomimed his admiration for my beauty and all that. I didn't really know what to do. He wasn't an unattractive man. He was young, and well dressed, as Italian men tend to be. I don't even like men, but I was flattered, and flustered. So I blushed, and turned away, and continued walking.
Shit! I thought immediately. That blushing head-turn, inadvertent though it was, felt risky. And it was. I kept my head averted for a few steps, and then glanced left, and he was halfway across the lawn to the path I was on, beseeching me, inviting me, into his arms.
As though anyone but gay men just get together in parks like this! I sternly waved him away. But he persisted. He was like Pepe Le Pieu from the Bugs Bunny show, chasing that poor inarticulate cat like a moronic automaton while she makes it very clear, non-verbally, that she wants nothing to do with him.
The man kept coming towards me. I quickened my pace, heading for the steps leading down the hill. After a few more steps, he reached my side, and began walking next to me, breathing on the side of my head, with his hands held wide as though ready to grab me, but also not hiding anything. One was behind me, and one in front of me. He was walking beside me, half-turned towards me, crooning in Italian.
I had no idea whether he knew I was trans, but I suspected he didn't. He saw me from a distance to start, and cognitive dissonance would help him preserve his initial impression. I decided that giving him the deep booming man-voice might escalate this from chasing me through the park to beating the shit out of me.
So I kept making myself clear in my modulated, androgynous voice. I said some very unambiguous things, like "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" to his face, which was well within my personal space.
He kept on beseeching me, crooning at me like I was some sort of pigeon that he was feeding bread, and hoping to stroke.
A moment later I felt his hand slither across the back of my neck. I grabbed his left wrist and flung his arm away, told him to go away again, and began half-running (in a determinedly feminine way so as to avoid being outed and shit-kicked) down the steps shouting "help!" and "M!" and "C!" in the hopes that my friends were within earshot.
They weren't. My assaulter kept pace with me easily, still trying to talk pigeon to me. He groped my neck again.
I was forced to stop to put on my shoes, and he moved very close, and darted his left hand across my chest and slid his fingers across the underside of my breasts (which, of course, are fake, but that would be hard to detect through a bra from that angle).
I screamed "FUCK OFF!" into his face, and stormed off again. A few steps later, I broke onto the main path, heels clacking, jogging towards a couple having their wedding photos taken. He remained behind, and I never looked back.
It took another 10 minutes or so to find my friends, and another 20 to calm down enough to move again. Holy shit! Talk about taking the bad parts of womanhood along with the good!
The last time I was at this particular store--three years ago or so--I was there as a straight man, on my honeymoon with my straight wife. That time, I bought one man thing (a vest), but spent most of my time picking out things for A. to try on. This time, I bought a few things for myself! And I also bought a few things for A, because she couldn't be there, and that's the sort of exes we are.
I spent last Saturday night (July 5/08) in Rome. C. and I shared a room, and M., H., and their baby, N., stayed in another. We stayed at the Hotel Rex., which was pretty nice, and nicely priced.
I arrived in Rome separately, but not long behind the rest of the group. When I arrived, I needed to practice yoga. So I sent them off ahead, and spent some time unwinding my body.
I then got dressed in a leisurely fashion. I decided to try out some of my new stuff, which ended up seeing me a little dressed up for a touristy wander around Rome, which was fine, because it's Italy, after all. I grew to regret my shoe choice, but the rest of the outfit was comfortable, and it was nice to look stylish while peering into boutiques on Via Nazionale.
As per usual, I was smoking the occasional hit of weed from my pipe while on my wander. Unaccompanied women in their 30s don't often get seen smoking weed on the street at dinner-time. At home, I employ a fake cigarette, and that's very unobtrusive. In Italy, I had a small pipe. So, I was a bit more obvious, cupping my hands around the pipe bowl and the lighter, leaning my head to one side to tip the bowl towards the wind-driven flame, then never rising from this posture with a lit cigarette in my mouth. If you watched, you knew I was smoking a pipe.
At one point, near the Colliseum, I took a break sitting on a large marble block, barely in the shade of some massive ancient building or other. I packed my pipe.
I was fairly careful to time my pulls to moments when the sidewalk near me was relatively uncrowded, but it was windy, and sometimes it would take so long to get a light that someone would have gotten close in the interim.
I think I breached one poor woman's world-view. There I sat, a stylishly dressed, relatively young woman, taking a break in the shade. She must have been thinking: But why was it taking so long to light her cigarette? Wait a second! There's no cigarette there! Wait! Is that even a woman?! But it can't be a man! OH! What in the world!?
Her expression grew steadily more disconcerted as she drew nearer. When she was passing by me, I was done smoking, and I tried that quick "I mean no harm" flash of a smile that women aim at each other, but she was having none of it. She just stared back, her head turning so that her eyes stayed pointed at me as her body carried the rest of itself past.
Once she was gone, the little smile broke into a big grin, mostly because she was just looking so hopelessly disturbed by my very existence. I'm getting more used to upsetting people. The only real answer is to laugh.
Shortly afterwards, I connected with the rest of the group by phone text message, and I set off to find them in the rather large park surrounding the Domum Aureus ruin site, opposite the Coliseum. Unfortunately, I cut uphill too early, and was separated from them by some band of ruins or other.
The part of the park that I found myself in wasn't all that beautiful. The grass was browning, and there were few pedestrians. C. was reporting their location to me by text, and I continued towards them.
When I arrived at their ostensible location, there were no children present, and it wasn't really the right place for a 1-year-old. There were about five people in sight, and all looked dubious in one way or another. One was sprawled across a bench on his back. A slick of liquid had leaked from a can that lay below his out-flung arm.
C and I determined that they were below me somewhere, further down the hill, and I backtracked to get around the ruins that separated us. I had passed what looked like promising pathway not far behind.
I was walking across the grass, cursed (but wicked) shoes in hand, towards the path in question when someone called out. I ignored the call (tranny instincts--head down). He called again. I glanced up, and sure enough, it was a man on the sidewalk, a short distance away, and he was shouting at me.
I waved him off, and continued walking. He called again, and when I turned, he pantomimed his admiration for my beauty and all that. I didn't really know what to do. He wasn't an unattractive man. He was young, and well dressed, as Italian men tend to be. I don't even like men, but I was flattered, and flustered. So I blushed, and turned away, and continued walking.
Shit! I thought immediately. That blushing head-turn, inadvertent though it was, felt risky. And it was. I kept my head averted for a few steps, and then glanced left, and he was halfway across the lawn to the path I was on, beseeching me, inviting me, into his arms.
As though anyone but gay men just get together in parks like this! I sternly waved him away. But he persisted. He was like Pepe Le Pieu from the Bugs Bunny show, chasing that poor inarticulate cat like a moronic automaton while she makes it very clear, non-verbally, that she wants nothing to do with him.
The man kept coming towards me. I quickened my pace, heading for the steps leading down the hill. After a few more steps, he reached my side, and began walking next to me, breathing on the side of my head, with his hands held wide as though ready to grab me, but also not hiding anything. One was behind me, and one in front of me. He was walking beside me, half-turned towards me, crooning in Italian.
I had no idea whether he knew I was trans, but I suspected he didn't. He saw me from a distance to start, and cognitive dissonance would help him preserve his initial impression. I decided that giving him the deep booming man-voice might escalate this from chasing me through the park to beating the shit out of me.
So I kept making myself clear in my modulated, androgynous voice. I said some very unambiguous things, like "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" to his face, which was well within my personal space.
He kept on beseeching me, crooning at me like I was some sort of pigeon that he was feeding bread, and hoping to stroke.
A moment later I felt his hand slither across the back of my neck. I grabbed his left wrist and flung his arm away, told him to go away again, and began half-running (in a determinedly feminine way so as to avoid being outed and shit-kicked) down the steps shouting "help!" and "M!" and "C!" in the hopes that my friends were within earshot.
They weren't. My assaulter kept pace with me easily, still trying to talk pigeon to me. He groped my neck again.
I was forced to stop to put on my shoes, and he moved very close, and darted his left hand across my chest and slid his fingers across the underside of my breasts (which, of course, are fake, but that would be hard to detect through a bra from that angle).
I screamed "FUCK OFF!" into his face, and stormed off again. A few steps later, I broke onto the main path, heels clacking, jogging towards a couple having their wedding photos taken. He remained behind, and I never looked back.
It took another 10 minutes or so to find my friends, and another 20 to calm down enough to move again. Holy shit! Talk about taking the bad parts of womanhood along with the good!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Celebrating real life and love in all its fragility in Tuscany
I've been in Italy all week, staying at a really fabulous villa atop a Tuscan hillside. We're here for the wedding of my friends D. and A.
Italy is great, just like it was the last time I was here. The food is nice. The buildings artfully terraced across the hilly landscape are breathtaking. Everything has this amazing patina. Their built environment is so much more beautiful than ours. It lifts the spirit.
We wandered around and had conversations about Jane Jacobs, and the social value of livable civic space. We drove around crazily--like the Italians do, which is the only way to do it if you want to avoid being run over--on winding hillside roads laughing, aghast at the drivers whipping by us on short straight-aways with blind corners just ahead. Italian drivers love to occupy two lanes at once. That's bothersome if you have two lanes or more in each direction, but harrowing when the lane-straddler is in the oncoming lane. So far, they've all (perhaps five of them!) swerved back into their own lane in time
The wedding was completely beautiful. We sat on a grassy lawn on a terrace, looking over the shoulders of the bride and groom, far across the Arno river valley, during an early evening graced by perfect weather. It was beautiful. They both looked beautiful, and everything was seemed perfect. Then, they surprised me, and made me proud.
The two of them, a Canadian-Italian man and an Irish-Cantonese woman, elected to include the part of the Jewish ceremony where the newlyweds share a glass of wine, and the groom stomps on the empty glass, and we all shout "Mazel Tov!" It symbolizes the troubles that undoubtedly lay ahead for this newly married couple.
I loved this part, sitting, as I was, three hours drive from the equally beautiful and exceedingly familiar place where my ex and I spent our honeymoon about three years ago. All week, there has been a strong overtone of bittersweetness for me. Lots of the things I see here remind me of what I've lost, and being at a wedding where most of the other friends are straight coupes, I'm constantly reminded of my singleness--my aloneness. I can see them depending on each other, and I feel beset, and alone. Loved, but alone. So I felt really happy being part of a ceremony that spoke to my experience too--that marriage is fraught and challenging, and life is crazy, and it's great to tangle with it as a couple, but let's celebrate real life, and real love, and human striving and suffering and stories instead of the storybook perfection too many weddings aim for.
Italy is great, just like it was the last time I was here. The food is nice. The buildings artfully terraced across the hilly landscape are breathtaking. Everything has this amazing patina. Their built environment is so much more beautiful than ours. It lifts the spirit.
We wandered around and had conversations about Jane Jacobs, and the social value of livable civic space. We drove around crazily--like the Italians do, which is the only way to do it if you want to avoid being run over--on winding hillside roads laughing, aghast at the drivers whipping by us on short straight-aways with blind corners just ahead. Italian drivers love to occupy two lanes at once. That's bothersome if you have two lanes or more in each direction, but harrowing when the lane-straddler is in the oncoming lane. So far, they've all (perhaps five of them!) swerved back into their own lane in time
The wedding was completely beautiful. We sat on a grassy lawn on a terrace, looking over the shoulders of the bride and groom, far across the Arno river valley, during an early evening graced by perfect weather. It was beautiful. They both looked beautiful, and everything was seemed perfect. Then, they surprised me, and made me proud.
The two of them, a Canadian-Italian man and an Irish-Cantonese woman, elected to include the part of the Jewish ceremony where the newlyweds share a glass of wine, and the groom stomps on the empty glass, and we all shout "Mazel Tov!" It symbolizes the troubles that undoubtedly lay ahead for this newly married couple.
I loved this part, sitting, as I was, three hours drive from the equally beautiful and exceedingly familiar place where my ex and I spent our honeymoon about three years ago. All week, there has been a strong overtone of bittersweetness for me. Lots of the things I see here remind me of what I've lost, and being at a wedding where most of the other friends are straight coupes, I'm constantly reminded of my singleness--my aloneness. I can see them depending on each other, and I feel beset, and alone. Loved, but alone. So I felt really happy being part of a ceremony that spoke to my experience too--that marriage is fraught and challenging, and life is crazy, and it's great to tangle with it as a couple, but let's celebrate real life, and real love, and human striving and suffering and stories instead of the storybook perfection too many weddings aim for.
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