by Tara Sivec
Before I became Roberta Alexandra Holiday with impeccably highlighted cheekbones, a collection of Louboutin shoes that most people would envy, a penchant for grabbing men’s junk without their permission, and enough make-up to stock twenty-five Sephora’s, I lived another life. I lived what most people would call a “normal” life if they were outside looking in. It was a life completely opposite of the one I’m currently living and while it wasn’t filled with drag queen bingo and Friday night roofies, I was still happy. Looking back on it now, I know I would have continued with that “normal” life forever and been perfectly content in doing so, but fate had other plans.
“Are you going to let me read this memoir when it’s finished?” Noel asks, her eyes finally leaving Christy’s face to tilt up and meet my eyes.
“You already know all of my stories. This is for future generations. I expect you to read it to Christy and any other offspring you may have. Particularly the chapter I plan on titling How Not to Gag on a Dick and Other Fun Games for Thanksgiving!”.
“Pretty sure that won’t be an appropriate bed time story for children,” she informs me.
“Fine, then wait until they are at an age to appreciate my knowledge. I’m thinking somewhere in the angsty, hormonal teen years when Christy is annoyed by the sound of your breathing. It will be a great bonding experience. And in the meantime, stick it in your nightstand drawer as a study guide. I don’t think you’ll get any complaints from that husband of yours if you brush up on your dick swallowing skills. It’s all about breathing through your nose so you don’t gag on-”
“And on that note, I think I’ll head back into the kitchen to help mom with the Christmas cookies,” Noel interrupts, giving Christy a kiss on top of her head before pushing up from the couch.
I watch her walk back across the room, pausing by the Christmas tree in the corner to straighten one of the ornaments, nodding to herself when it’s perfect again. She’s so like her mother it’s not even funny. And she’d kill me if I told her that.
“You are exactly like your mother!”
Eh, fuck it. You only live once.
I chuckle to myself when Noel growls under her breath and with her back to me, lifts her middle finger up in the air as she exits the room to go help my sister shit out enough Christmas cookies to feed an army.
I’m sure a lot of people wonder why I spend so much time at my sister and brother-in-law’s home when I’m a grown woman in her forties.
Okay, fine. Fifties.
Oh, fuck all of you. Early sixties and that’s my final answer, now shut up. A woman never tells her real age so that’s all you’re getting from me.
That woman who just flipped me off? That red-headed spitfire who curses like a sailor and rolls her eyes at me so much I’m surprised those things even work at this point? Yep. She’s the reason. The reason why I’m not afraid to be who I want to be. The reason why I didn’t completely fall apart when my life went to shit so many years ago. Out of everyone in my life, Noel is the only one who accepted me for who I am without any hesitation. I’ve never regretted not having children of my own, because I had her. Watching her grow into the beautiful asshole she is today has been the highlight of my entire life, and my reason for wanting to write all of this down. I want her, and everyone else in this family to know that being a Holiday is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Careful not to wake Christy, I grab my notebook and pen with my free hand and gently scoot further into the couch. With my great-niece tucked into the crook of my arm, stockings hung on the mantle with a fire crackling in the fireplace, the twinkle of lights from the Christmas tree, and my favorite kind of big, fluffy snowflakes falling from the sky outside of the window next to the tree, I rest the notebook on my lap and get back to work.
2
Roberta Alexandra Holiday (aka Robert Alexander Smith): A Memoir
Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t come out of the womb with perfectly highlighted cheekbones, double-fisting martinis. Although wouldn’t that have been fabulous?! I entered this world as a blonde haired, blue eyed adorable bundle of all boy. On the outside at least.
My father decided I should have the manliest of man names, and after weeks of arguing back and forth with my mother, Robert Alexander Smith is what they decided. I could have saved my dad so much time making lists of all the manly men he knew named Robert to prove a point to my mother. They could have named me Savage John Wayne or Hercules Lone Ranger and it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d still currently be wearing a pair of red lace panties that fit like a glove and gold, sparkly Louboutin’s that make me feel like my toes are being stabbed by all of Santa’s elves with tiny little elf knives. But, since they make my legs look magnificent, I’ll deal with these torture devices on my feet.
Anyway, I was your typical little boy for the most part. I played in the dirt, got into things I shouldn’t, broke things I wasn’t supposed to touch, and was content to play with things like little toy cars and little toy soldiers and footballs.
And then, one day when I was three years old, my parents brought home a teeny tiny baby girl, wrapped in a pretty pink blanket and told me I now had a little sister to watch over and protect for the rest of my life. I’d like to say that from the moment my mother bent down and showed me little Beverly Elizabeth Smith I puffed out my little boy chest and gladly took on the job of her big brother and protector, but that wasn’t exactly the case.
As soon as I met my little sister, family and friends started ringing the doorbell to meet the new addition to the Smith family. I spent hours listening to everyone fawn all over her, telling my parents how beautiful she was with her full head of red hair and freckles and long, dark eyelashes. They gushed over her adorable pink outfits with matching shoes. They showered her with pretty blankets lined with lace and pretty bonnets decorated with flowers and all they could talk about was just how pretty of a little girl she was.
It wasn’t fair! I wanted to be pretty too! I didn’t want to wear boring, navy blue overalls stained with dirt and ugly striped shirts that didn’t even match those stupid overalls. I wanted pink and lace and pretty. I was jealous of all the attention my new little sister was getting, but it was more than that.
Remember how I said I was “content”? I didn’t realize just how much that word and its meaning sucked until I started sneaking into my sister’s room those first few years to wrap myself in her pretty pink blankets and shove just my toes into her pretty, colorful shoes and stand in front of the mirror, holding her pretty floral and lace dresses in front of me.
I didn’t realize how boring and ugly I felt until the first time I held one of those dresses in front of my little boy body and twirled around the room. Obviously, at such a young age, I had no idea what was happening or what I was doing. I had no idea that this moment in time would be the catalyst to changing my life forever. I just knew that being “content” wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I knew that being overlooked all the time whenever my little sister was in the room didn’t give me the warm fuzzies. I didn’t like being jealous of her and the attention she received.
I knew the things I felt were wrong as soon as I started going to school and hanging out with other boys my age who had sisters. They never gushed about a new pretty dress their sisters got or talked about holding their sister’s clothes up to their bodies, wishing they could fit into them. So, I kept my thoughts to myself and continued sneaking into her room when no one was around, touching her pretty things and wishing they were mine. Wishing people would tell me I was pretty and stop my mother in the supermarket to tell me how beautiful I was.
I’d like to say I outgrew this, but you all know it isn’t true. With each passing year, I grew more and more miserable, not feeling comfortable in my own skin and definitely not feeling comfortable in the stupid, ugly clothes I had to put on each morning. I won’t bore you with the details of how awful it is having to hide something like this from your family, knowing they’d never understand or accept
it.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I finally told someone my secret. Technically, I had to tell this someone my secret when she caught me trying on a pair of her high heels, but that’s neither here nor there.
Mary Beth Martin, the prettiest girl I’d ever seen (next to my baby sister, of course). Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, did you forget the part where I was married? I met Mary Beth on the first day of high school when she sat down next to me in English class. She was wearing a pink tea dress with white polka dots and a white cardigan sweater and the first words I spoke to her were, “Your dress is absolutely gorgeous and I need to know where you got it!”.
She never thought it was weird that I always wanted to talk about her outfits and her shoes. She never thought it was strange that I wanted to tag along with her and her mother when they went shopping. And when she went to the bathroom and I couldn’t stop myself from trying on a new pair of pink patent leather heels she’d bought to wear to our school’s winter formal, she didn’t scream for her mother when she found me standing in front of her full-length mirror, admiring how they were a perfect fit and made my legs look spectacular.
Mary Beth was an only child. She didn’t have any sisters to share clothes with and had always been jealous of her friends who did. That day, with her bedroom door locked, she let me try on everything in her closet. She let me twirl around in her dresses and dance in her high heels. She put lipstick on my lips and blush on my cheeks. She showed me how to apply mascara with a steady hand and she taught me how to blot excess lipstick off with a tissue. She let me be me for the first time in my life. That was the day I fell in love with Mary Beth Martin. That was the day I knew I’d found my soul mate. The one person in the world I knew I’d never have to hide anything from.
We were inseparable from that moment on. From the outside, we were the perfect couple who were the envy of the entire school. We were prom king and queen and our senior year, we were voted best couple and most likely to get married. I begrudgingly put on a suit and tie when we went out in public, and was rewarded for my efforts at the end of each night by getting to try on all of Mary Beth’s new clothes and shoes. And getting to feel her up and eventually lose my virginity to her in the back of my dad’s Buick the night of our high school graduation.
I promised I would never embarrass her by letting my secret out, and she promised to accept me and love me forever. It was the perfect arrangement and I knew I’d never be happier. We went to college together and much to my mother’s delight, we got married a week after our college graduation.
Mary Beth worked as a secretary at a local manufacturing plant, and I worked as an accountant for a local CPA firm. I dutifully went to work each day in a suit and tie, and when I came home, relaxed at the dining room table wearing one of Mary Beth’s dresses, eating a meal we cooked together every night while wearing matching white, frilly aprons.
We spent twenty-five glorious years like this, each one better than the last, until my feelings about growing up unhappy and uncomfortable in my own skin faded into distant memories.
I know you’re all pretty confused right now. “But, you said your wife left you when she caught you in her closet trying on all her clothes!”.
That’s the story and I’ve been sticking to it. Until now. That was the story I told Reggie and Bev, and that was the story I had to confirm with all of our friends when the news broke that we were getting a divorce. To say people were shocked was an understatement. First of all, in their eyes, we were the perfect couple. The couple who were blissfully in love and would stand the test of time. The couple who found out after the first few years of marriage that they couldn’t have children, and refused to let it ruin their relationship. And second, no one saw the fact that I liked wearing women’s clothes coming. I was Robert Alexander Smith. A manly man. A man who wore suits to work every day, watched football on Sunday and played poker with the boys on Monday. Naturally, they all sided with Mary Beth. They all commended her for getting out of our marriage as fast as she could when she “found out” what I liked to do in my spare time. They made her casseroles and sent her flowers and let her cry on their shoulders.
And once again, I found myself miserable and alone and with no one who understood me.
Here’s the truth, folks. The cold, hard, depressing truth. After twenty-five years of marriage, I came home early from work one day to find Mary Beth on our couch, with her boss balls deep in her vagina. I found out they’d been having an affair for months. To this day, I have no idea when things went south for her. I have no idea what the turning point was for her when she decided she’d had enough and gave another man what she promised would always be mine and mine alone. Maybe she got tired of keeping my secret. Maybe not being able to have kids really did ruin us. I thought we were happy. I thought we would be together forever. The week I came home to find her spreading her legs for her boss, I kicked her out of the house and she went to stay with a friend. Mary Beth told this friend we were having some problems and we just needed a few days apart, obviously not wanting to tell anyone that she was the main reason for our problems at the time. After one too many glasses of wine, she spilled my secret. And her friend naturally assumed this was the cause of our separation. This friend told her she needed to pack her things and get away from someone so “disgusting”.
My wife was letting another man plow her for months, but I was the disgusting one because I liked pretty things.
I let Mary Beth have this lie that spread like wildfire throughout our friends and our small community to save face. Maybe I was an idiot, maybe I should have stood up for myself and told everyone the truth, but after twenty-five years of marriage and thirty-three years together, no matter how many dicks she sucked or how thoroughly she ruined me, she was still the love of my life. She was still my soul mate. She was still the first person in my life who accepted me for who I was with no questions asked, and that’s not an easy thing to forget about or let go of.
And that brings us back full-circle to where this memoir of mine began, to my niece. Sure, Reggie and Bev and Nicholas are supportive of me for the most part now. Now, being the keyword in that sentence. The day I came over here to tell them what happened between me and Mary Beth, things went exactly as you might imagine. I walked right into this house wearing a cap sleeve, rose gold sequin Badgley Mischka evening gown, with matching sparkly rose gold stilettos and a stunning shoulder-length red wig curled to perfection. I figured, go big or go the fuck home.
Let’s have a reenactment, shall we? Places, everyone! Let me set the scene for you. It was a lovely summer evening in early July and Beverly invited me over for a wine and cheese party and to discuss the upcoming holiday picnic they would be hosting at their house.
Me: “Soooooo, when we were little, I used to sneak in your room and play with all your pretty clothes because I liked pretty things. I still like pretty things and I like feeling pretty. I wear women’s clothes, and I’ve done so for years. Doesn’t my ass look fantastic in this dress?!”
Beverly: *Sobbing uncontrollably while she stares at a tray of cheese on the coffee table*
“For feta’s sake, Robert, do you hate me this much?! What in the habanero cheddar have I done to deserve this?! No one loves me and now the Fourth of July will be ruined!”
Me: “This has nothing to do with you, Beverly. And I’d like you to call me Roberta from now on, please and thank you.”
Beverly: “Your behind does look quite nice in that dress. Is it vintage? It’s so sparkly! Reggie, get Bobbie a drink. Oooooh, Bobbie! That just popped into my head and that’s what I’m going to call you from now on!”
Nicholas: “Oh, my God. What will all of my friends think?! This is so embarrassing.”
Noel: “Shut the fuck up, Nicholas. No one cares what you think. I think Aunt Bobbie looks stunning and she should do whatever she wants with her life as long as it makes her happy.”
Reggie: “God damn democrats. That’s why this
country is full of the gays. I told you they’ve been putting gay stuff in the water for years.”
*Smacks bottle of water out of Nicholas’s hand as he brings it up to his mouth*
“DON’T DRINK THAT! IT’S GAY WATER!”
End scene.
As soon as Reggie started bitching about the democrats, Noel grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the living room and into the kitchen, where she made me a martini and stood there watching me until I drank the entire thing. Then she gave me a hug, asked me if I was happy, and the rest is history. Like I said, from day one, that girl was never embarrassed of me, never blamed someone or something else for my lifestyle choice. She accepted me. She literally embraced Roberta Alexandra Smith and never judged me.
Regardless of what my dear brother-in-law said, just because I like to dress in women’s clothes, doesn’t automatically mean I’m gay. I still don’t exactly classify myself as gay. I didn’t have my first sexual encounter with a man until a year after Mary Beth and I divorced. I am a lover of people. Man or woman, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m attracted to what’s on the inside. If you are a good person with a kind heart, I like you. It also doesn’t hurt if you’re of the attractive variety. I will say, though, I’ve kept my distance from women for the most part. Well, my heart at least. A few other body parts have come in contact with some wonderful women over the years. A part of me thinks Mary Beth ruined me for all other women. I don’t trust them as much as I do men. At my age, I don’t see myself ever settling down with anyone again. Right now, I’m having too much fun not hiding who I am and being free.
And yes, I legally changed my name to Roberta Alexandra Holiday. No, I did not secretly marry Reggie and turn this shit show into some weird, sister-wife situation. As much as this family gets on my last fucking nerve, and even though they weren’t fully on board the moment I walked through this door dressed as a woman, they are still my family. They support me in their own ways. Beverly loves to take me shopping and play dress-up with me. Nicholas learned to not be embarrassed by me the first time I hung out with him and his friends at a bar and drank them all under the table, then taught them how to harmonize a marvelous version of “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher, which brought down the house that night, let me tell you. Reggie still blames the democrats for my life choices, but he’s quieter about it now. He doesn’t exactly tell me I’m pretty when I show up at his house in full drag, but he’s always standing in the foyer with a martini in his hand for me, and that’s all the acceptance I need from him.
