On Monday night Oct 8, 2018 our household--Lynette, myself,
and Anthony, and our new kitten Ponyo--gathered around my old Epson video
projector, set to project onto my possibly too-large-for-our-living-room,
8' wide school-salvaged pull down movie screen. A long A.V. room metal-gray thing
which hangs diagonal one end wired to the living-slash-dining room archway, and
the other end off the frame of my also probably too-large-for-our-living-room 8' x 12' "Blue Angel w/ Roses
and Bones" oil painting. Itself, unable to find enough square footage on
any of our walls, finds a home, suspended 8 inches below our gold-painted cove
ceiling in a spread-eagle-style fetish-fashion, and levitates there 8 inches below
the only surface in our house expansive enough to accommodate it.
As we eat a planned family-group dinner off plates balanced
on knees, save Ponyo who prefers to chase the mouse pointer along the bottom of
the screen, we watch the first episode of Dr. Who season 11. The first time Dr.
Who regenerates as female since the program debut in England November 1963.
I love eating group dinners. The kind where everyone
contributes something and helps cook and clean while sharing their days with
each other. But because of all 3 of our erratic schedules, a group dinner, for
the most part, rarely happens.
Monday night, however, which coincidentally is the same
night iTunes releases the BBC Sunday Dr. Who broadcasts to its subscribers
world-wide, is the singular night all 3 of us are free. The decision is made to create household Dr. Who slash group
dinner Mondays, which we do till just before Lynette and I drive to the
Rochester Mayo, check into our hotel, and I go into surgery.
In 1963 I am 3. Already understanding something is different
about me, I love sneaking into my Mom's closet to study rows of different color
high heels, their structure and lines. Seeing how my feet might feel standing
in them. I marvel over how garter fasteners work, fastening and unfastening
them in secret. Metal hoops over attached flat rubber disks.
Nothing in my Dad's closet interests me at all until I am
maybe 8 or 9 when I discover a double set of 1940's pin-up-girl playing cards
tucked far back and to the left in the top drawer of his closet dresser. I find
them. A double set of cards lying side to side, all gold edged and stacked face
down. Neatly waiting inside an intricately textured black on black designed
flat square box. As I lift one set out I see the box is lined by a finely
flocked purple inner surface.
I study each card almost daily. Each a themed photographed
image of a different partially clothed woman. Each carefully staged. Each color
saturated high-fashion photo-studio shot captures me. Finally I observed direct
action of those incredible garter fasteners holding back-seamed stockings in
place. I see how the line of those well crafted, colorfully healed shoes work
stylistic magic as they extend the length of each subject's legs.
And there is also this:
I become aware that my attraction is not sexual. Not per se.
Not in the normal boy-way. Not as the observer.
It is sexual as in it sparks my early understanding of body.
However, I find I want to be the observed, not the observer. I want to feel these
stylized pin-up see-through costumes surround me. Enveloping my skin as
clothing. Not brushing against my skin as if someone is next to me.
As I grow older this difference I discover in myself
magnifies. It pulls me down impossibly complex paths year after year decade
after decade until I find myself sitting in a Rochester Mayo hospital
admittance room dressed in a surgical gown ready for gender confirmation
surgery.
A few months earlier Lynette and I both are awarded a 2019
Minnesota State Arts Board grant to write our individual memoirs. Each book we
hope will describe multi-complex
gender-identity pathways which pull at us both. Even
so. That is, even though we did and do advance this winding path together, each
book will describe the process individually. Each in our unique individualistic
ways and each from our unique individualistic perspectives. A singular
gender-complex rock and roll relationship embarked upon initially by two punky
kids in 1983 stumbling blindly forward now 35 years later two individualistic artists
emotionally & committedly tied to one another for better or for worse.
My memory includes waving to Lynette from a bed being
wheeled into a hospital room from along a hallway and nurses around me telling
me she was already there waiting. Previous to that I remember the surgical
prep. Helping a nurse shave my red pubic hair by pulling skin this way and that
to create a smooth surface. Yes I am a ginger. Who knew? Well, for one, me,
obviously. But I have worked diligently since the age of 19 when I embraced
punk as a thing and began to bleach and dye my hair any which way. My red hair
re-surfaced rarely after that and only for short amounts of time. My freckles
however remain a constant.
I remember dialogues with my surgeon and the team.
I remember being wheeled along a more clinical hallway and
through double doors into an operating suite filled with what seemed like 20
people, all of who gave greetings.
Finally I remember being lifted onto the surgical table, a
narrow plank with two additional planks along which my arms were pulled to form
a kind of crucifix situation. My last memory is thinking how similarly that
surgical table resembled the tables in movies exploring the subject of the
death penalty which still exists in some states. And how odd it felt to be
lying on it.
In 1983 Lynette and I married.
In 1988 I came out to Lynette, and to myself.
In 1993 I formed my band All The Pretty Horses and came out
to my band mates who up until then thought I was just being artistic.
Between 1993 and last Tuesday I have been a trans-activist. Being
as public as possible about my gender identity, and moving through long
plateaus of gender contentment. The last plateau being one of the longest as my
body after 20 years on female hormones transformed into a hybrid of gender
dualism. One body but truly a third gender in every way. It behaved as such in
how it functioned; visually, emotionally, aesthetically and sexually.
The gender-path from there to here is long and winding, and
my trans-activist self now demands that I clearly state: my path is my path. It
cannot reflect or be seen to represent a transgender norm in any way. We are
all individuals. Our individual gender paths are at least as individualistic as
ourselves. No one should imagine confirmation surgery as a normative end. For
some of us it will never be part of our journey.
For me it now is.
On the 27th of December I will be two weeks along in
discovering a new body from the inside out. One which I still don't really
understand. I can say this event is singular in its profoundness.
My emotions have hit every extreme. I have struggled to gain
functionality over what can only loosely be described as a kind of re-birth.
Perhaps a re-generation, if I might borrow from my love of the Dr. Who series. I
do feel a connection of experience and memory with the person, me, previous. At
the same time, I absolutely feel a disconnection. A break which I did not
expect from the person, me, previous the 13th, and me, who looks forward toward
an unimagined future.
Unimagined save for one thing, it is one which absolutely
includes my only true love, Lynette.
