Being Emily (Anniversary Edition)

by Rachel Gold

  “Transgenderism isn’t a word,” she told him. He paused long enough for her to say, “People are transgender. It’s not an ideology.”

  As if she’d said the exact opposite, he continued right into how the transgenderists were rewriting history. Pretty ironic, since that’s what he was doing.

  Claire tuned him out. Pastor Alan’s words were meant for someone who wanted the conventional, the picture-perfect, the safe. They didn’t pertain to her life. The bread in her hands smelled yeasty and hearty. The warm scent created a boundary between her and Pastor Alan.

  The cross drew her attention again with its plain, solid strength. She’d always liked the teaching that the arms of the cross represented the sacred world reaching down through the material world. She worshipped a God who reached down into the world, like the top of the cross, and held it up, like the bottom. God took care of people and didn’t make life harder than it already was.

  She could listen to Pastor Alan’s arguments and refute them, but he’d keep arguing. It came down to a choice between two worlds. Did she believe that God made some people bi, lesbian, gay, transgender, queer just so they would have to overcome that? Or did she believe in a God who so loved variety and diversity that He created all manner of things and loved them all?

  Not only was it in the Bible that queer and trans people were beloved of God—but it was obvious in the physical world. Hundreds of animal species had homosexual pairings. Some animals had a lot more than two sexes. There were animals that changed sex, some more than once a day. People were the ones stuck on a frozen, limited idea, thinking that was perfection. God created wonders.

  Claire held the roll in her palm toward Pastor Alan and his words paused. She told him, “I’m sorry but I disagree with everything you’re saying and I think we should eat these while they’re warm.”

  “What?”

  “This is a picnic. I’m supposed to be eating with Chris and his family. Can we talk about this other stuff later?”

  “Oh yes.” He stood up.

  Claire followed him toward the exit. “Who was that with the rolls?”

  “Sorry, I’m still new here. I have no idea. Hope to see you at church.”

  She went into the bright afternoon sunshine. The basket of rolls sat on the end of the nearest food table and she grabbed one for Emily. And then three more, for Mikey and Emily’s parents.

  She found them on their blanket under the tree.

  “I got rolls. They’re really fresh,” she said, like that excused her absence. And it kind of did.

  “We got you a brat with mustard, Chris says that’s what you like? And some salad.” Emily’s mom held out a plate to trade for her roll.

  Claire watched the families with their kids, people walking from blanket to blanket, talking and laughing. Some day, in the not too far future, she wouldn’t be welcome here. Not just here, but maybe at her own church as well. And she’d miss the simple ease of fitting in.

  She’d enjoyed it last year at school, being Chris’s girlfriend, being almost popular or at least acceptable. She liked feeling safe. But what good was it to feel safe if the people she loved the most didn’t get to feel that way too?

  And she had people to feed, starting with Emily.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I thought we were going to a movie, but Claire told me to drive to Dr. Mendel’s office. At first I stared at her because I couldn’t figure out what movie theater or restaurant was anywhere near that office park. Plus, Claire was wearing a red T-shirt with her jeans, which made me wonder what was going on with her.

  “Why are we going there?” I asked.

  “Because you have an appointment,” she told me.

  “No I don’t.”

  “Come on, drive, we’re going to be late. I made you an appointment with Dr. Mendel. Hit the gas.”

  As I turned the car in the direction of her office, my heart lifted and the headache around my eyes relaxed. I hadn’t dared hope that I would get time with the doctor.

  “How did you make me an appointment?” I asked Claire.

  “It’s called a telephone,” she said. “You punch in numbers and someone answers, remember?”

  At the office building she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the waiting room. Dr. Mendel smiled when she saw us sitting there, but a sad smile where her eyes didn’t crinkle. I’d curled slump-shouldered in my chair and Claire gripped my hand as if I was going to bolt. If it had been Dr. Webber instead of Dr. Mendel, I would have. Instead I let Claire pull me into Dr. Mendel’s room and push me toward the couch. Claire remained standing.

  “Emily’s all messed up,” she told Dr. Mendel. “She won’t tell me all of it, but I’m hoping she’ll tell you. Dr. Webber’s been saying some crap to her, and I think she’s starting to buy it. Can you straighten her out? Err, so to speak.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Dr. Mendel said.

  Her reading glasses hung over her chest, taking the place of the pearls that she wore when my parents came to the appointment. She had on a bluish lavender knit sweater with short sleeves and I loved the color. It made her bright blue eyes stand out, but when she turned them to me, the lines around them were tight with concern.

  “Great, I’ll be waiting,” Claire announced and skipped out of the room.

  I stared at the closed door. “She just told me about this,” I said.

  “You don’t look well,” Dr. Mendel offered. She pulled her chair two feet closer to the couch and sat near enough that I could have reached forward and touched her knee. “Have you been taking care of yourself?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Life has sucked since we left here. Mom grounded me for life, Dad doesn’t talk much and I ran out of hormones so I’m a rage-monster again. And then I freaked out after this dinner thing. Well, Mom freaked out first, but I really lost it and started cutting up my boy clothes and beating the crap out of my door.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not seriously. I couldn’t.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And then they asked me to go back to Dr. Webber and said if I saw him for a month I could go get hormones.”

  “That’s an interesting strategy,” Dr. Mendel said neutrally. I got the impression that “interesting” was a euphemism for “screwed up.”

  “He’s crazy,” I told her. “He thinks he can cure me of being transgender. He thinks I get off on thinking about myself as a woman.”

  “What do you think?” Dr. Mendel asked. Something in her voice got me—the way she asked and then got quiet to listen to me. Whatever she believed, one way or the other, she wasn’t going to push it on me. She honestly wanted to know about me.

  I started crying, the tears hot on my cheeks. Not like the helpless tears I’d cried in the past few weeks, these were pure grief mixed with all the hurt and rage and fear that I needed to get out of me. She handed me tissues and let me cry for what seemed like the whole hour.

  “I don’t think I’m crazy,” I managed at last. “I don’t think this is all in my head. I know I’m a girl, that’s all. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand?”

  “Probably for many of the same reasons it was hard for you,” she said. I had to smile at how gently she reminded me that I’d had years to understand what it meant to be transgender and my family only had a few weeks.

  After a pause to let her words sink in, she continued. “I know there’s a simple answer to this question, but I want you to look beyond it: why are you so hurt by what Dr. Webber says?”

  “I feel insulted,” I told her, “but that’s the simple answer. And I feel invalidated, like he doesn’t see me at all. And I’m afraid—sometimes, I’m afraid he might be right.”

  She nodded, so I went on.

  “You know, I have some girl clothes that I’ve worn out in the world a few times. And before Mom went nuts, sometimes I’d get up in the middle of the night and put them on. I liked to surf the web, do homework and st
uff when I was dressed like myself. But sometimes when I’d get dressed up in the girl clothes, I would get aroused, like Dr. Webber says. I get afraid that maybe I’m just deluding myself and maybe I am a guy who gets his kicks dressing up like a girl.”

  She nodded again. “You’re worried that if you get an erection while wearing women’s clothing that you’re a fetishist and not transgender?”

  “Yeah,” I said, knowing I was blushing a deep beet color.

  “You know there’s no test by which we could determine externally whether it’s right for someone to transition or not. Only you can say if this is who you are and what you need,” she said. “But I can tell you a few things that might help you answer it for yourself. There isn’t a one-to-one connection between getting an erection sometimes and being aroused by the idea of wearing women’s clothing. As I understand it, you’re basically thrilled any time you get to participate in life as a girl.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And your body doesn’t always know the difference between that excitement and arousal. As a teenager, you have so many hormones flooding your body. Have you noticed other times when you get an erection for seemingly no reason at all? Or when you’re excited about something but not necessarily turned on sexually?”

  “Yeah, I have.”

  “Do you find women’s clothing sexually exciting?” she asked. “It’s all right if you do.”

  I thought about it. “Not really. I mean, not the clothes themselves. But sometimes when I’m in them I think about having a woman’s body and what that would feel like to be able to touch someone and be touched without feeling like the Frankenstein monster.”

  “Frankenstein?”

  “Like I have extra parts clumsily bolted on,” I said, so embarrassed by this whole conversation that I thought I’d probably melt through the floor before the session ended.

  “That makes sense,” she said. “You’re the only one who can say what’s going on in your mind, but it’s not unusual for a person who knows herself to be a woman to be aroused by the idea of being made love to as a woman. If you’re aroused by the idea of being a man who presents as a woman, we can talk about that. For example, if some of the arousal comes from the idea of being discovered as a man, or perhaps being a man who is somehow forced into womanhood. Those are both also valid ways to be.”

  “No, I don’t want to be a man at all, I never have.”

  “Then consider that the only difference between you and Claire, for example, is that when you think about sexual activity, you imagine a body different from the one you have now. She takes it for granted how her body is, but I suspect that she also pictures herself, imagines her body, when she thinks about sexual activity. She just doesn’t realize it. Imagining your body doesn’t mean you’re attracted to yourself as a woman. It means that you understand for intimacy and attraction to be present there need to be two bodies involved. Your imagination is simply doing the work of seeing yourself—as you see yourself.”

  “Oh…yes. I want to be in a body that feels right to me. Otherwise it’s hard to feel close to Claire. So when I think about us, I think about me the way I am, not the way I look on the outside. Wow, thanks.”

  She smiled. “No one else has the right to tell you who you are, no matter what degrees they have. Are you committed to going to the rest of your appointments with Dr. Webber?”

  “I want the hormones, and that’s the only way my parents are going to let me have them.”

  “Then let me give you one bit of advice, though I’m not in the habit of doing that: Don’t get angry at the rain.”

  “What?”

  “When it rains and you get wet, you dry off again. You know it’s not raining on you personally, so you don’t get upset at it. You know the rain falls on everyone the same way. You take whatever steps you need to dry off and take care of yourself. Dr. Webber is like that. He’s raining and it’s falling on you, but it’s not personal. He would treat any teen who came to him and said ‘I’m transgender’ that way; he’s not addressing who you are, Emily, as an individual. He’s not talking about you.”

  I’d have hugged her, but she was a therapist and I didn’t know if that was cool, so when we stood up I shook her hand for a long time. Before I opened the door, I paused. “My mom and dad don’t know I’m here, do they?”

  “I doubt it. Claire set up the appointment and paid for it.”

  “She paid for it? Wow. Can I do that too?”

  “Of course you can. Call a few days in advance and we’ll set it up.”

  I slipped into the waiting room and half-lifted Claire out of her chair into a huge hug.

  “Hey it worked,” she exclaimed. “I got you back.”

  I kissed her. “You’re a great protector,” I said.

  “Claire the Mighty.” She grinned.

  * * *

  I couldn’t say I was looking forward to the next trip to Dr. Webber, but at least I wasn’t dreading it as much. I even played with him a little. At one point I volunteered, “I’ll tell you some of the fantasies I have about being a woman.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  I was trying hard not to smile. “In one, I go out to dinner with my girlfriend, Claire, and the waiter says ‘What would you ladies like to order?’ Oh, and then there’s the one where I’m shopping, and I go to use the women’s restroom and there’s another woman in there and she looks at me and says ‘Nice shoes.’”

  Mostly I put up with him trying to guy-bond with me, and talked about my childhood memories of my dad. Dr. Mendel’s advice made a huge difference in the visits too. No matter how stupid they got, I’d come home and take a shower and imagine washing off any crap he said. Then I’d towel off and imagine I was drying off the rain.

  “It’s not personal,” I’d tell my reflection in the mirror, repeating it until it sank in. And then I’d go down to dinner.

  August continued to be one of the strangest times of my life. Now that I was out to my parents, I didn’t try so hard to act like a guy. I started being myself as best I could and a weight lifted off my shoulders and skull. Around the house, though, my self-expression met with mixed results.

  “There is no way Sabretooth could beat Starfire in one-on-one,” I told Mikey one evening as we sat at dinner, punctuating my points with finger jabs. “If Cyclops can blast him away, so can Starfire.” I illustrated the rising and falling arc of Sabretooth’s defeated body.

  “Well what about Nightcrawler versus Starfire?” Mikey shot back. “He can teleport.”

  I grinned at him, about to propose Starfire vs. Warlock, when I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Turning in my chair, I saw Mom glaring at me.

  “Stop waving your hands around,” she snapped.

  I crossed my arms and turned back to Mikey. “I think that would be a cool fight to watch,” I told him.

  A moment later when Mom went to the garage to get Dad for dinner, Mikey whispered, “I bet no one yells at Starfire like that.”

  I grinned and ruffled his hair. “I bet you’re right.”

  Dad never said anything, but twice while he was watching TV with Mikey and me, he simply got up and left the room. When he didn’t come back, I reviewed the last few minutes in my mind. He’d left right after I crossed my legs above the knee and folded my hands together in my lap.

  * * *

  One afternoon in the middle of the month, when I went into the garage to see what Dad was doing, he put down his wrench and sat back on his heels. “I made you an appointment,” he said brusquely. “You need to send a letter.”

  It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. “The endocrinologist?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Yes, he’s in the Cities. I’m going with you. If he says this isn’t safe, I want you to promise me you’re not going to make a fuss. You’re going to do what the doctor says.”

  “Of course.” I skipped across the room and put my arms around his shoulders, giving him a kiss on the cheek. �
��Thanks, Dad.”

  “And you need to talk to that doctor, the one you like, she has to send him some kind of letter about you.”

  “No problem, I’ll do it,” I told him.

  He grumbled and got back under the car. Knowing I had that appointment to look forward to made the last couple weeks with Dr. Webber bearable. Mom came in with me one time to complain that I was acting effeminate around the house.

  “I’m not acting,” I said, but it fell on deaf ears. Dr. Webber suggested that my Dad take me to more sporting events.

  We compromised and went to a car show. Not only did I honestly enjoy it, but I used descriptions of it to fill up most of the next Dr. Webber visit.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  For the trip to the endocrinologist, Dad put on a suit coat. He only had two of them; I was relieved that I got the gray one for church and not his black formal dinner-and-funerals jacket. I wore my usual jeans, but dug out a nice T-shirt. I wondered if I should wear something more feminine, but I was already on eggshells with Mom. I’d given Dad the names of two doctors that had been recommended to me by Dr. Mendel, and he went with one of those, so I was sure this doctor had a good sense about how to work with transgender people.

  On the drive in, I couldn’t keep my legs still. When I tried to stop them, my right hand danced up and down my thigh, picking at the seam of my jeans. Finally I managed to settle on wiggling my toes in my shoes on one foot and then the other, back and forth. I could tell Dad was tense too, because he didn’t bother to make small talk. We listened to the radio most of the way, or at least tried to.

  Funny thing: the appointment was just like the physical exams I’d gotten every year since I could remember. The nurse checked my blood pressure, weight, temperature, all that stuff, and then put me in a little room to wait for the doctor. Dad came in with me because he had questions.

  The doctor walked in reading my file. His white coat and the bright blue-and-white-striped dress shirt underneath it gave his dark brown skin a gray hue. His short, black hair was stylishly brushed up rather than back, but his walrus mustache looked like something from my dad’s generation. He pushed his rectangular glasses up on his nose with one hand and closed the file, then introduced himself to Dad and me as Dr. Dinesh Gopal.