by Sam Tranum
*
I am ashamed that my first banshee yodel was not enough to send me packing. When I’m sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs, when I finally call Richard by his name, when I’m terrified Laurie will think this is what a wife looks like, I see a passing oxcart that appears full, but I make room. I pile on my favourite blue leather recliner, my books, and, of course, Laurie, the only one left at home. I take what I need, not a finger more.
But something is not right. In spite of my small load, my balance is off. I know immediately what it is.
I throw my piece of night sky caught in a lasso of stars into Lake Roland. The circus is waiting. No sequinned leotard. No safety net.
4.
Janus: A Path to the Future
Nod Ghosh
It was a Sunday when you told me you’d decided to transition from male to female.
After more than half a lifetime together, it can’t have been an easy revelation. Your anxiety showed in the way you twisted your hands, wrapping them one around the other, like you were washing a sheet. It wasn’t clear if we’d be travelling the same route together, or whether we’d met a fork in the road. You’d go your way and I’d go mine. But you invited me to share the journey, if I wanted to. I did.
You had genuine fears about how the world would accept a six-foot-one ‘tranny’. You worried for our children, and how other people would perceive them: fatherless, with two mothers. You delayed telling them until we could meet face to face. By that time, you had started on testosterone blockers and were wearing oestrogen patches. Your hips were filling out, and you’d managed to prang the car whilst reversing out of a supermarket car park. Some things hadn’t changed. You’d always cried more readily than I did when watching sentimental films.
You had concerns about the world of employment, the uncertainty about fundamentals that provide a raison d’être and put bread on the table. Your livelihood could potentially be eroded by insidious prejudice or overt bigotry. We made two lists of friends, family and colleagues. One included those we guessed would accept the change. The other was for those who would likely shy away. Ultimately, not everyone slotted into their anticipated category. We lost some acquaintances as we journeyed along the precipitous route, and we gained others. But, in those early days, it was the fear of the unknown that haunted me.
You wondered if I would still love you. I speculated about whether you’d still want me, or whether you’d be attracted to men once your hormonal profile changed. I’m more epicene than ladylike, but perhaps my hair-speckled chin and I-don’t-give-a-toss attitude wouldn’t be enough. It took a while to learn that gender identity and sexuality were independent variables.
On the flight to Belgium to see ‘Dr Bart’, I reflected on how long I’d known your internal woman. Bart was going to perform the first surgical procedure of your transition: facial feminisation. There were too few surgeons in New Zealand who specialised in that area, so we’d had to look overseas. The surgical plan sounded like something from a horror film. Amongst other things, it involved peeling back the skin of your forehead, flattening the male bony bossing at the eyebrow, shaving a few centimetres from your jawbone, and transplanting flesh from your abdomen onto your lips. He would be like a sculptor, hewing a woman out of a male rock exterior – the woman I’d always known you’d harboured within.
When we got together thirty years earlier, I was aware of a powerful female element to your psyche. You kept Her hidden from friends, family and colleagues. You wouldn’t generally appear in public wearing a dress or in full makeup, unless copious amounts of alcohol were involved. At fancy-dress parties, other stubble-chinned males in dresses commented how well you carried yourself as a woman, whilst they fluffed up their artificial bosoms and flounced voluptuous wigs. They wouldn’t make anything more of it, as the conversation veered towards rugby, cars, mountain biking and other areas within the male domain. But we’d be glad to give Her an outing. She was comfortable at home, with only the two of us around. For years I thought that was all She needed.
Flying from New Zealand to Europe is a slow process. There are many air miles one can give over to thinking. As we landed in Dubai, I looked at the segmented building and thought about how your decision to transition had come as a bolt from the blue for so many. I had hoped that others would have glimpsed Her over the years – something in your eyes or your stance that revealed your femininity, without the need for ballet flats or mascara. I had hoped they’d have seen what I’d seen. But it seems no one had.
Through the years, you readily took on female roles, but what rational male of our generation wouldn’t? You were not the type to be reticent about shopping, cooking or child rearing. You made baby clothes for nephews and nieces, and took several years out to be the house-parent when our own children were born. But you’d still go to the pub with the lads, partake in extreme sports and appreciate an attractive woman as much as other guys. You may not have been an archetypal ultra-masculine man, but you wore your male totems and jumped through the appropriate boy-hoops.
We started telling people about your transition in late 2012. That New Zealand summer seemed to burn on for months. It was a slow and cautious rollout, a hierarchy of friends and relatives that had to be told in a specific order, to avoid hurting someone because they’d been told after others in the wider circle. The careful orchestration required many late-night phone calls to our native UK, so brothers and sisters would receive the news simultaneously. Revealing your plans to elderly relatives was especially daunting.
‘Do you remember when I was a kid and I used to insist I was really a boy?’
‘I remember you always said ki korbo? Always asking what to do next.’
My eighty-four-year-old father was a little hard of hearing and very adept at changing the subject.
‘Yeah. I know I bugged you and Mum all the time. Sorry about that.’
I tried to get back on track. The long-distance call was punctuated with random whistles and purrs, making it even harder for Dad to hear me.
‘Yeah, but remember I was always saying I was a boy and refused to wear dresses?’
‘Mum used to …’ and he was off in a different direction again, reminiscing about my dead mother.
‘Yeah, but about the boy thing. There are some kids that really are that way. They don’t grow out of it. They go on to have sex changes.’
‘Is it evening there?’
‘Yeah, nine twenty New Zealand time. Must be eight twenty in the morning for you? But you’ve heard of sex changes, right?’
As a rule, my father was uninterested whenever I talked about you. There was a certain amount of history there. Fathers rarely think their daughters’ partners are good enough for them. I was about to throw a can of petrol on that fire. I persevered. The phone carried on making its odd whirring and buzzing sounds.
After fifteen minutes, I asked him if he understood what I’d said.
‘No,’ he replied, and carried on talking about something entirely unrelated. It fell to my siblings to break the news to him, and to deal with his shock and anxiety.
Telling our colleagues proved a little easier. We chose the day after the marriage-equality bill passed its third reading in New Zealand’s parliament. There was a lot of discussion on the subject, and a strong feeling of support in many circles. We celebrated the fact that we wouldn’t have to have our marriage annulled. You baked me a cake, which I shared with my workmates.
We landed in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris on a Friday, thirteen days before you were due to go under the knife. Leaving our luggage at the Gare d’Austerlitz, we walked through Le Jardin des Plantes. Wandering through the uniformly pruned plane trees that vaulted over our heads, I saw you smile. Soft drizzle dusted our faces as we looked at polygons of grey light filtering through the branches. You reminded me we’d walked through these same gardens in the 1980s with our one-year-old daughter. As we walked hand-in-hand, we contemplated how she would cope with this monumental st
ep. She was struggling with the changes. Naturally close to her stay-at-home father, she had an immense feeling of loss. I’d tried to explain that you were still you. Different, but the same. Less strength in your upper body, but more articulate. Still able to share all the same memories, but so much happier – not living a lie. I dropped your hand, self-conscious, not yet bold enough to parade my new gayness with confidence.
We found a cafe, shared a beer. The block opposite held apartments, four stories high. Occupants had placed ornate rows of topiary, like regiments of neat soldiers, on the tiny balconies. You commented on how full the air was, full of the shouts of invisible people, and the sharp smell of unknown solvents. Sometimes all we can hear in our New Zealand home is the plangent call of dairy cows and the soft sound of our own breathing. The air is tinged with the brash green fragrance of a freshly mown lawn, or the smell of hissing rain on the hot rock of the Port Hills.
We walked along the Seine towards Notre Dame. I took photos of you posed beside hulking sculptures – some of the last pictures of your familiar face before it was altered forever. The discordant clang of bells from a smaller church pierced the air. We came across the Pont des Arts. The sun poked through the clouds and picked out the glint of shining metal as we approached the bridge. Had I known of the tradition of engraving a padlock with lovers’ names, I would have got one made with your newly chosen name carved next to mine. Another lock to add to the thousands packed tightly on the grill of the pedestrian bridge. Not everyone approves. It brings to mind the bra fence in Cardrona, in Central Otago, New Zealand. People loved or hated the collection of bras that appeared in the late 1990s. There were hundreds of them. The council cleared them in 2006. I’ve heard a rumour the bras have recently reappeared. I will take you there one day, and we’ll leave a bra each.
We talked about our hopes and fears over a sashimi meal, before racing on the TGV to Reims. Every time we see old friends, there is a process to go through. You first met Sophie in the mid-1980s, whilst busking in Paris with friends from the North of England. She was married to an American at the time. A group of you played music and drank into the small hours every night. Then you’d hit the Metro in the afternoon. A bunch of guys with amps, guitars and drums that you’d lug onto train carriages along with your voices. You’d play Irish jigs and reels mixed with a collection of homemade songs.
Sophie was waiting for us in her silver car at the station. There was that look of uncertainty in her eye, a certain hesitance. I’ve seen that look numerous times over the months. A questioning stance that asks, ‘Is my friend still there?’ You still had the same face, but modified by the unmistakable trappings of femininity. Light make-up and dangly earrings. You are one of those lucky transgender women who still have their own hair. There are those who opt to only go so far down the path of change, avoiding surgery or hormone therapy. Others embark on it too late in life. Some end up with the round dome of male pattern baldness. Unlike birth women with alopecia, or those undergoing cancer chemotherapy and radiation treatment, trans women are destined to wear wigs or hats – it is difficult to ‘pass’ as female with a hairless head, when other subtle differences belie a male origin.
We stayed with Sophie, her partner and son for a few days. Over that time, the uncertainty disappeared, and the laughter resounded as it always had. We walked through Reims, scrutinising the ninth-century cathedral with critical tourists’ eyes. Sophie told us Muslim scholars had been brought in to calculate the forces the vaulted ceilings could withstand, and to design the flying buttresses characteristic of architecture from that era. Apparently the cathedral was never completed. Some of the spires are missing. We walked sedately amongst the throng of visitors, four adults, reading plaques about King Clovis and Joan of Arc. Sophie’s eight-year-old son ran ahead of us, chirping like an excited bird, running in and out of cubbies and between the pews, causing an unholy riot in the sacred space.
We ranked the stained glass windows in order of preference. Sophie rated the blue Marc Chagall window. She pointed out the painterly figurines to her youngster, coaxing him to stand still for three or four seconds. I captured Imi Knoebel’s geometric designs with my camera: bold blue, red and yellow panes projecting shafts of cobalt or blood red onto the stone slabs of the church floor. You liked the sea-green and grey windows that flanked images depicting local champagne production.
Before leaving France, we visited Sophie’s aging mother, Alice. The ravages of dementia had taken her mind. Initially, Sophie was reluctant to take us. She wasn’t sure how to explain your transition to her mother. I recalled my conversation with my father and was sympathetic. However, when we bought flowers for her to give her mother, she relented and said we should take them ourselves.
Alice perceived that someone she once knew was visiting. Her smile spoke volumes when you pressed the flowers into her hands. She practiced a few sentences of English. The old lady was still in the family home she’d occupied for decades. The garden was overgrown to the point where it was impenetrable, shrubs more than four metres high poking towards the sky – a gardener’s nightmare or a magical a maze for an eight-year-old. Pictures of Charles Aznavour and Picassos forged by Sophie’s late father were scattered over the walls.
I felt a shiver of familiarity when I walked into the room we’d stayed in years earlier, in 1999. Memories flooded back. A total eclipse of the sun was to be visible from a tract of land that cut through the south of England and parts of Europe. Our children were young. A picnic on a hill. Streams of people climbing up, carrying hampers. Excited chatter in French and broken English. We sat and waited. Champagne glasses clinked. We hoped the clear skies that had emerged that morning would remain long enough for the show. The light developed an eerie quality until, eventually, the sky darkened. You held my hand. The children looked on in awe as cows lay down and sparrows began to roost. A shadow raced across the land. We peered through our sun-filtering glasses as a textbook corona formed, a fiery golden ring.
You came and found me, shook me out of my reverie. It was time to go.
We spent another day in Paris, visiting the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou, feasting on a plethora of iconic art we could only dream of in New Zealand. There followed a week in the UK, visiting friends and family. I wondered how you felt when you faced everyone, people who would be seeing you in your female form for the first time. It was like replaying what had happened in France over and over again. You coped well, though the effort of explaining everything about transition was a little wearing at times for both of us.
Two days before you were due to be transformed, we took the Eurostar to Ghent. A short taxi ride from the station brought us to a haven called ‘Garden in the City’. A married gay couple who welcomed people in your situation owned the place. Beyond the hustle and bustle of the street was a garden with pots of vibrant flowers. Vines cascaded down the side of the flat at the end of the garden. It would be our home for a few days. Mr Tom and Diego, the two resident cats, wandered aimlessly in and out of the apartment.
That evening we walked on the riverside and made our way to the historical quarter. Buildings with crenulated façades flanked the river. Some had their construction dates displayed on plaques. Multi-storey seventeenth-century edifices teetered like sandcastles. They used to build tall and narrow, apparently because of the prohibitive building taxes on the waterfront. We walked nervously past brick walls with visible bulges. Coming from a region so recently devastated by earthquakes, we were a little cautious. But nothing moved.
The next day, we visited Gravensteen, the eleventh-century castle in Ghent built by Philip of Alsace. Inside was a museum displaying torture devices. The local judiciary had been located in the castle in the past, and the various spikes, shackles and straitjackets had been used not only to control criminals, but also to restrain people with ‘mental illnesses’, including epilepsy. I wondered what would have happened to people with gender dysphoria in the thirteenth century. The dank basement with its beaten-earth
floors had a residual stink of terror. Pools of water from the river seeped in through the walls. I thought it prudent to get out of there before the haunting image of a circular, halo-shaped device encrusted with sharp spikes reminded you too powerfully of what was about to happen to you.
We sat by the river sharing Belgian chocolates.
‘Are you scared about the surgery?’ I ventured.
‘A little.’
‘What worries you most?’
‘Nerve paralysis.’
I pulled a face, mimicking someone who’d lost control of their facial muscles. A line of chocolaty drool dripped onto my knee.
‘Not supportive.’
I snapped my lips back into position.
‘And what do you fear most after that?’
‘That it won’t do what it says on the tin, that I’ll come out of it still not looking feminine.’
‘And you can’t realistically assess the results for nearly a year?’
‘No. At least that long for the swelling to settle and for everything to fall back into place.’
Swarms of beautiful young things passed us. Ghent is a ‘young’ city, with several universities and colleges. We wondered what had happened to all the ugly ones. Perhaps they’d all been to visit Dr Bart, and had had their ugliness ironed out of them. Yellow-helmeted workers were erecting a pontoon across the river for the Ghent Festival, which would take place in a few days.
‘Do you care if you don’t turn out beautiful?’
‘I’m fifty in ten days.’
‘So it doesn’t matter?’
‘That’s the sad thing, you see. It does.’
‘You’ll always be beautiful to me.’ I squeezed your knee.
‘Then you’re not a very objective judge.’
‘No, I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘You see, I think you’re gorgeous, but when I think about it objectively … well you’re a bit of a dog.’
‘Fuck off! Here, wanna share the last chocolate?’
