Tomboy Survival Guide

by Ivan Coyote

  “Is there a family change room, or a gender-neutral bathroom there, anywhere I might be able to get changed? A large tree next to the parking lot?”

  Gyms and change rooms are hard places for me. Pools are harder. Tourists don’t help. They are entitled, and often white and straight and from America. Used to getting what they want. Used to their comfort zone.

  “You know, that is a very good question. I’ve never even thought about that before.” I looked at her long brown braid, her manicured hands, her amethyst necklace and her open, friendly face. “How about I call ahead and just warn them you are coming? I also have a coupon here for a free admission somewhere. Let me dig it up.”

  She disappeared into the back office for a minute before I could protest, and I could see her pick up the phone and make a short call while she fished around in a filing cabinet. She saw me watching her through the window in the office and wiggled her fingers at me, smiled reassuringly. Came back out to the counter bringing a waft of perfume with her. Something woodsy. Amber, maybe?

  “Here’s your free coupon, and a map. I called my friend to tell him you are on your way. It’ll be fine. Just talk to Steve at the front desk. And thanks for the show. My stomach was sore from laughing this morning. Just what I needed.”

  I thanked her and left. It was about an hour-long winding drive along the shoreline of the lake, and a perfect early fall day for it. I cranked up the stereo and rolled the windows down, stuck my left hand out to surf the passing wind. I could smell sun and cedar trees and dust. All the way there, I wondered just what she had said to Steve on the phone, and what Steve had said to her.

  The parking lot was nearly full, which I wasn’t expecting, because it was the middle of September. Used to be that most of the tourists were off the roads by then, at least up North, but I guess some folks live in those big fancy RVs year round now.

  There was a t-shirt and bathing suits and sandal shop, and a tired looking guy working the front desk. On either side of the desk were two arched doorways, one with MEN’S painted in hand drawn letters over the arch, the other WOMEN’S. On the wall beside the entrance to the women’s change room was a giant sign that listed all the rules. No cutoffs. No t-shirts. No running, spitting, roughhousing, no alcohol. No outside shoes.

  I stepped up to the desk and the guy looked me over. “You must be the Coyote,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he thought this was a good or a bad thing.

  “You must be Steve. You don’t have a family change room here, huh?” I asked.

  “Nope. But I just talked to Carol at the Chamber of Commerce. She warned me you were coming. You can just use the ladies. It’ll be fine.” He handed me a large thick plastic bag for my belongings.

  Again I wondered just what Carol at the tourist info place had said on the phone to Steve, but I didn’t ask.

  “I have proper swimming trunks, but only a t-shirt for a top,” I explained, pointing my thumb over my shoulder to the list of house rules.

  “It’ll be fine,” Steve reassured me with a shrug. “Enjoy.”

  It wasn’t that fine, but I’m used to it. There were four ladies in the change room, all in their sixties or seventies, as I expected, chatting amicably together until I rounded the corner. They all fell silent and stared at me as I smiled not too wide and not too little and headed for a private stall. I stripped quickly and stuffed my clothes into the plastic bag. Shrugged into my men’s trunks and a plain black t-shirt.

  There was a damp narrow tiled hallway that led out of the change room and I padded barefoot down it, not looking back. The women resumed talking as soon as I was out of sight.

  Right next to the door that led outside to the poolside was another desk, with a different guy behind it. He snapped his gum and reached across the desk for my bag of belongings. There were no lockers in the change room, that wasn’t the system. This guy took your bag of stuff and traded it for a numbered plastic fob on a giant brass safety pin, and put your bag of stuff in the cubbyhole in the wall behind him that matched the number on your fob.

  He shook his shorn head at me. “No cotton t-shirts allowed. Says so right on the sign in the lobby. Proper swimwear only. Take it off and put it in your bag.”

  “Steve said it would be okay,” I explained.

  “Steve is wrong. And Steve just went for lunch.”

  “I have … surgery scars on my chest,” I said, a ball of discomfort beginning to swell in my chest and throat. “I would rather not go shirtless in the pool.”

  “Well you can’t wear that shirt, sir.”

  I had just stepped out of the hallway that led out of the women’s change room, and the entrance to the men’s change room was ten or twelve feet away on the other side of the counter behind him, so I have no idea why he referred to me as sir, but over the years I have grown so used to the gender confusion and panic of others that I have long since ceased to expect any logic to enter these exchanges, so I didn’t say anything. I just took my shirt off and handed it to him to put into my bag of stuff, which was sitting on the counter between us.

  His eyes widened and rested on my bare chest. I had had top surgery about three months before, and my scars were still pretty pink and fresh looking.

  “Oh. I … I … we can lend you a shirt. It just can’t be cotton. The fibers gum up the pumps.” He turned and faced the wall of cubbyholes beside him. There were two cardboard boxes on the shelf, one that had MEN’S SHIRTS written on it in black felt pen, and the other WOMEN’S SHIRTS. He turned to look at me one more time, visibly uncomfortable, and then reached up and dragged down the box of women’s shirts.

  By this time the ball of discomfort in me had turned to humiliation, and I was willing my eyes not to well up with tears. I nearly grabbed my bag of stuff and bolted. Hot springs in a cave, I repeated silently to myself and took a deep breath.

  The only shirt in the box that wasn’t pink or pastel yellow was a turquoise, cap-sleeved (my ex taught me what that means) nylon LuLulemon yoga shirt about three sizes too small for me. I squeezed it over my tattooed shoulders and tried in vain to pull it down far enough to cover the patch of hair that trailed from my belly button down into the waistband of my swimming shorts.

  The dude swallowed awkwardly and handed me my plastic number on a safety pin. I gritted my teeth and stepped outside into the chilly, steaming poolside. Tried to ignore the stares. I was pretty much the only person there by themselves, most patrons being elderly white heterosexual couples, or foursomes of Texans, the ladies in conservative one piece swimsuits and the men in sagging trunks and faded Marine Corps tattoos. Nobody made eye contact or spoke to me. I could tell they were all wondering why the young single fella wasn’t at work in the middle of a weekday, and why he was sausaged into a ladies yoga top three sizes too small for him, but nobody asked.

  The shine still hasn’t worn off of the feeling of swimming since my top surgery. I think my body remembers swimming when I was a kid, that skin feeling of lake and river slipping over and down my still flat chest, the wood and dirt smell of weather bleached boards on the dock warm from the sun underneath me, the unexamined freedom of being in my younger body before it changed and grew and swelled to become something else. I think water reminds me of that now, and each and every time I submerge myself it immediately becomes worth it. Floating. Breathing. The change rooms and the stares and the stupid turquoise yoga shirt became smaller in my heart somehow, and there was only me, in my only body, and that nearly too hot water soaking the road out of my bones.

  The caves were pretty cool, and dark enough that I got to feel anonymous in there. I do admit that at one point in my visit I lowered myself slowly into the cold pool and pissed long and luxuriously, while making unbroken eye contact with a particularly judgmental lady with diamond rings on nearly every finger on both of her hands. I wasn’t about to brave the ladies’ room again unnecessarily to use the toilet. Besides, I figured, the management was kind of asking for it.

  Last week at a school gig, a gra
de eleven kid waited a long time to talk to me after. She waited until it was just her and me left. She told me her favourite class was drama, because she got to maybe be someone else. Told me one time she got to play a man in a play because she was the tallest. Told me she only had one friend. I told her one good friend is a gift. I told her school was almost over. I told her the kids who called her names were missing out because she was awesome.

  I WISH MY SON

  This spring I got another letter. This one read:

  Dear Ivan:

  I just read your book Gender Failure. It led me to find you on YouTube and watch a few of your stories as well as interviews. A stalking of sorts.

  I am a mom to four sons. That’s the first time that I’ve said that. It’s usually “a mom to three boys and a girl.” This still feels strange.

  My third child was born female and a little over a year ago we were told that she was a lesbian. We were shocked but supportive. She ran away about a year ago for two weeks ... and again in April and wouldn’t return home until July.

  Without dragging this on too long ... let’s just say it was about six months of sheer hell. This is NOT normal for ANYONE in our family or extended family to run away. I was terrified, heartbroken, confused, etc.

  In July we learned that he identified as a boy and soon he was calling himself Cameron.

  Finally! An answer to the rebellion. I won’t say it was easy, but my husband and I and his brothers have all been very supportive. I have gotten myself educated on as much as possible. I’m actually a bit embarrassed at how many online forums and meetings and books that I have read etc. I have read all of your books.

  But my son is worse than ever.

  He isn’t happy. His pot use has escalated. He is disrespectful, hard, cold, negative. He has lost all drive and passion for anything.

  He has a girlfriend and seems happy with her, but he is just so incredibly awful to me.

  He sees a therapist on a regular basis. He starts testosterone on the 23rd. He says that I am the one with the problem.

  I guess I’m just wondering. You have your “stuff” together. You have supportive parents. Did you ever hate your family for no reason at all?

  I want so desperately for my son to have the confidence I see in you.

  I want him to be happy and kind and respectful.

  I don’t recognize him. I was told that gender “dysphoria” is when your body doesn’t match your brain. Well doesn’t that mean that my kind loving thoughtful child should still be there? I feel like he died.

  Any insight is appreciated.

  Thanks for what you do.

  I get these letters. I get these letters I can’t possibly write enough or ever be wise enough to answer properly. I get these letters from good people with real questions and they turn to me with their hope and their hurts and their wondering and their whys and once I have read them they haunt me like ghosts, ghosts that follow me and whisper into my ear when I think I’m alone in the elevator. They walk half a step behind me on the sidewalk as I totter around the block with my old, deaf, and blind dog and ask me over and over just what I am I going to say to that?

  I am sorry it has been months and I am just writing you back now. I am writing you back but I have to say this right at the start: I don’t have anything figured out all the way. Just today I scared a woman again enough for her to scream at me in the women’s change room at the gym, and you would think I would be so used to this by now that it wouldn’t bother me anymore, but I cried alone in my truck in the underground parking after because I have been working out at that same gym now for twenty-three years and everyone knows me by name except the new folks like her, but still she felt like she belonged in there more than I ever will. She felt like she belonged in there enough to decide that I didn’t belong. And I know what you are thinking, but I can’t use the men’s change room because I have been working out there for twenty-three years and what would all the old ex boxers with their bleeding tattoos and their silver chest hair have to say if I all of a sudden started peeling my jeans off next to them in their change room? Public bathrooms and change rooms for me have always been a choice between very uncomfortable and potentially unsafe, so I try to be polite about it because if I get angry it becomes so much easier for them to dismiss me, plus, an angry someone who looks like a man in the ladies’ change room? Then I am seen as even more of a threat. Then it’s even more all my fault.

  Most days I bend and stretch inside the bit of space I have made for myself in this world, and breathe a little deeper in the spaces trans people are fighting to make bigger. Most days I can see the changes happening. Most days. Then there are other days when I cry in the truck on my own because it happened again and I’m tired of talking about it, tired of talking to anyone.

  But some days the world piles up behind my eyes and on my shoulders and the fear gets in. I had a panic attack about it in the shower this morning. I haven’t even told my closest friends. I’m only writing this to you now because the ghosts in my ears demand that I write you only the truth, because the truth is all that I have to give you.

  It’s true, my mother is very supportive. The other day we were talking on the phone and she told me about a recent trip she and her partner had taken to Skagway, Alaska.

  “Remember that little fish shop that used to be right down on the wharf in the marina?” she asked me. “Well, it burned down so they rebuilt it, and when I went in there to use the washroom, they had two bathrooms, and instead of men’s or women’s, the signs on both doors read EITHER/OR. So, they nearly got it, but not quite, right? I mean, they were not gendered bathrooms, so that is a definite improvement, but either and or kind of still supports the claim that there are only two genders and every body has to fit into one, right? But at least you could be safe in there. I’d love for us to go back to Skagway again together sometime. You loved it so much when you were little. All those waterfalls and artists.”

  It’s hard to describe the love I felt for my sixty-six-year-old, born-and-raised-and-still-living-in-the-Yukon Catholic mother at that moment, that kind of love that threatens to tear a hole out of your eyes or your chest or your heart because it just got so big so fast and there nearly wasn’t enough room inside me to hold all of it.

  I could tell you that there were a lot of long hard years between that conversation and the one I had with her when I was eighteen years old and just coming out of the closet. I could tell you that I found it easier to write the words “I am trans” down on paper and publish them in a book that perfect strangers could pick up and read than it was for me to come right out and speak those words out loud to most of my family. I could tell you that there are things about me that my mother learned from reading my books that I still don’t have the ovaries to say right to her face, to this day.

  I could tell you that my father, most of my uncles, and one of my aunts refuse to call me by anything but my birth name, even though I have been going by Ivan now for longer than I used the name I was born with. Even though it says Ivan in my passport, even though I lose a little bit of my heart every time anyone I love calls me by my old name, even though I wouldn’t think to turn around anymore if I heard it called out on the street. Some trans activists call this my “deadname.” I feel uncomfortable with this term but I still haven’t figured out why.

  How old is your son? You didn’t say for sure in your letter, or in the short response to my quick email I first wrote you telling you I was going to need some time to answer you. My guess is around seventeen? I wonder if it would be of any comfort for you to time travel with me back to 1987 in Whitehorse, Yukon? I wonder how confident I would seem to you in grade twelve? I hadn’t even come out of the closet as queer, and I wouldn’t dare to even whisper the word trans in the mirror for nearly two more decades.

  I see my friends from high school still, mostly on Facebook, we are all pushing fifty now, somehow, and have all learned the hard hard lesson that the things that gave us swagger and g
ot us laid in grade eleven don’t amount to much bank when it comes to getting a promotion at work or paying for your kids’ braces or helping your aunt kick breast cancer.

  All this to say that I wouldn’t put too much stock in your son’s confidence levels just yet. He is learning to be a man in a way that probably none of the men he has ever met will be able to help him with. His own father, father of three other sons, doesn’t know yet how to help this son.

  Except to love him, which it sounds like his father does. This is a gift.

  I don’t hate my father. I just know there are places in me, things about me, that he will never understand, that he doesn’t want to understand. I try not to let this hurt anything but the surface of me, but it pushes a space between us, a little wider every time I hang up the phone or wave goodbye. He never asks me how I am, what I am doing, who I love or who loves me, so every day that passes I become more of a stranger to him, I guess. I have learned to make this our normal, and try to concentrate on the things we have in common, the interests we share, but I don’t get out boating or fishing too much these days, so mostly I just listen.

  My cousin Dianne’s son is about to graduate from high school. His name is Liam, and he is seventeen, a huge strapping kid just like his father, who I knew back in high school. He read Gender Failure and did a report on it for his English class. He wrote me an email to ask me some questions for his project. My favourite part of his letter was:

  “My research paper, aimed mainly at the general public who have never even thought about how gender isn’t black and white, attempts to explore thoughts on being trans and how it differs from and should not be categorized as a disorder. I recently read your book Gender Failure and it gave me the inspiration for my research paper. I was hoping you would be able to give me some more insight on the topic and maybe answer a few questions. I can prepare questions and email you, or if you would prefer you can come up with questions you think would be most beneficial for my research.”