Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

by Chris Bohjalian

  "What time do you think you'll be back?"

  "It won't be late. We're meeting at seven o'clock. So I'm sure I'll be home by ten-thirty or eleven."

  "There might still be a few kids here then."

  "That's okay." She dipped the brush back into the bottle for the last time and screwed on the top. "Are you coming home tonight after dinner with Dad and Patricia?" she asked.

  "I doubt it. But I'll call if I change my mind."

  She nodded. "Will Michael be here Friday?" She tried to sound casual, but Michael had become a pretty loaded word in our house. My mom thought I'd made a tremendous mistake when I broke up with him back in May. She certainly agreed we should separate before college, or at least come to what she called an accommodation, but she also feared I had dumped him for no other reason than a desire to get the inevitable over with early on.

  Not true. I had broken up with Michael because I didn't want to spend my last summer before college like I was married. I didn't want to feel a moral obligation to spend every minute with the boy when I wasn't wheeling shrubs in and out of the sun.

  Besides, it's not as if there was this incredible spark. Michael was just a nice guy who was always willing to use a condom. Sometimes, I think, my mom liked him more than I did.

  "Probably not."

  "Miss him?"

  "Nope."

  "Well. Good for you."

  I swallowed the last of my juice and gave my mother a quick kiss on her forehead. And then I left for the fast-track world of philodendron.

  My mom lives in a tri-gable ell that was built in 1885. It has three stories, a Queen Anne porch with fish-scale trim on the clapboards, and a set of bay windows on both the first and second floors. It's been white for at least as long as I've been alive, and the shutters on the windows are green.

  My dad's house is a two-story Greek Revival cottage that dates all the way back to 1851. It has its original slate roof, gingerbread trim, and stained-glass windows around the front door. These were added toward the end of the nineteenth century. The house is a very light yellow.

  I know these details about my parents' houses because my eighth-grade class did a booklet together on "Historic Bartlett," and I wrote the chapter on architecture.

  It seemed like the radio was always on in my dad's house when he was home, and it seemed like it was always tuned to Vermont Public Radio. Sometimes it was on just loud enough for a person to tell whether the station was broadcasting music or talk, and sometimes it was like there was this other person in the room with you who was constantly trying to interrupt--and constantly being ignored.

  Occasionally, my dad would raise his hand and signal time-out, and Patricia and I would make faces at him while he listened intently for a brief moment.

  By the time I got to his house that day, All Things Considered was long over, and even Marketplace was winding down. In my dad's house, we often told time by the shows on the radio:

  "What time is it?"

  "Let's see, Fresh Air is ending. It must be a few minutes before five."

  In reality, my dad isn't all that psycho about work. He just thinks he should know what's on the air at any given moment.

  He was outside barbecuing when I got there, and so the kitchen window was open with the radio aimed toward him. Patricia was standing up by the dishwasher, thumbing through the mail, and I figured she must have just arrived home herself because she still had on the skirt and blouse she'd worn that day to work. She was a lawyer in Middlebury.

  Though Patricia had been married to my dad for five years, we still hadn't figured out how physical our relationship was supposed to be: I had no idea when I was supposed to hug her or kiss her, and it was so clear that she hadn't a clue either. We liked each other just fine, but we both understood on some level that my loyalty was always going to be with my mom, and we would never be very close--sort of like college roommates freshman year who understand from day one that they're never going to be great pals. They might know all sorts of personal details about each other--what that other person sleeps in at night, and the kinds of shampoo she will use in the shower--but they don't really talk about those things that matter.

  "Hi, Patricia," I said when I walked into the kitchen, beelining straight for the refrigerator so I'd have something to do with my hands and my mouth.

  "Evening, Carly."

  "Dad outside?"

  "Mr. Barbecue."

  "Dead things?"

  "And plenty of vegetables for you," she said. My dad and Patricia viewed my decision to become a vegetarian largely in terms of the way it seemed to complicate their dinner menus. For the first few months after I gave up meat, they tried to convince themselves that birds weren't animals and I'd eat chicken if they served it. And when that didn't work, they tried to persuade me to eat fish. It had only been since Easter--when I'd refused to eat the lamb my dad had spent all of Good Friday trying to butterfly--that they finally realized my resolve was unwavering.

  She put down the last of the mail and looked up at me. "You haven't been wearing sunscreen, have you?" she said, and she compressed her lips together the way she did whenever she was worried about something.

  "I did the other day," I told her, but I knew my answer sounded pretty lame.

  "You should wear it every day," she said. "You don't know the damage you're doing."

  I did, of course, and in all honesty it wasn't vanity that kept me from wearing sunscreen. I really didn't care that much about having a tan. But my hands were always covered with peat moss or dirt, or I was wearing these big heavy gardening gloves, and I just never seemed to remember sunscreen when it was convenient.

  "I'll try tomorrow," I told her, and I took my can of diet soda and joined my dad on the patio. His house sat at the very base of North Mountain, which meant that the woods began at the edge of the backyard and then climbed straight up a solid fifteen hundred feet. Even though the front yard got a reasonable amount of sunlight, the backyard was always dark and depressing, in my opinion.

  Mom's house was smack in the middle of the village--only a block from the commons and the gazebo, and right across the street from the library--which meant that while there was considerably less privacy, it was also a lot less gloomy.

  "How's Mom?" he asked after he'd hugged me. He rarely asked about Mom in front of Patricia. Sometimes Patricia would bring her up, but it was always in very general terms. School budgets. Class trips. Single women.

  "Fine. She's thinking about going bicycling for a couple of days in Maine next month."

  He nodded. "With whom?"

  "A couple of girlfriends. Maybe Nancy Keenan. Molly Cochran."

  "She like her film course?"

  "She does." I watched him use his index fingers to flip a skewer with red and green peppers. The skewer was hot, and so he touched the metal for just the tiniest second: A quick flick with two fingers, and the peppers were turned.

  "She always liked movies," he said.

  "This one's filled with dogs. But I think that's the point."

  "A whole course devoted to bad movies?"

  "Well, it's books and movies. The guy who teaches it put it this way: 'It's not whether the books or the movies are any good that matters. It's how the movies were changed from the books.'"

  "You've met him?"

  Instantly I realized my mistake. The only thing I hated more than talking about Patricia with Mom was talking about Mom's latest boyfriend with Dad. For a person who hadn't lived with his ex-spouse for over a decade, he still seemed to have an awfully strong interest in her new squeeze.

  "Once. It was real informal."

  "Where? Did you join your mom for a class?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Not exactly?" I'm sure he thought he sounded unconcerned, but his interest clearly was piqued and his voice had an edge.

  "Mom invited him to her party last Friday night."

  "Really?"

  "Yup. But I think it was just because she thinks he's sort of pathet
ic."

  "Old guy?"

  "Oh, you know. Middle-aged. Like you and Mom."

  "In his forties?"

  "Sort of," I lied.

  "What's his name?"

  "Dana. I don't know his last name."

  He flipped the swordfish with a spatula. "Nice guy?"

  I wondered if Dana ever barbecued, and decided that he didn't. It wasn't that barbecuing was so clearly man's work in my mind and Dana wasn't manly. But barbecuing is communal cooking: People who live alone aren't likely to fire up the hibachi.

  "I guess."

  "Well, I hope he is. I only want your mom to be around nice men."

  The coals were spitting from the moisture that was dripping onto them from the fish, and the smoke was starting to make my eyes water. I backed away from the grill, hoping Dad could sense my discomfort with the subject of Mom's professor. I certainly didn't plan on mentioning the fact that the pair were going out to dinner in a couple of nights, or that Dana resembled my dad.

  "Dinner looks just about done," I babbled, deciding that their fish and my vegetables were close enough to cooked that I had an excuse to cut short our conversation. "I better go inside and wash up."

  Patricia usually went up to bed before Dad--at least when I was there--and so my dad and I watched one of those police dramas on TV. Unlike the rest of Vermont, Dad and Patricia hadn't broken down yet and bought a satellite dish, which meant they only got two stations and there wasn't a whole lot of programming choice.

  But it really didn't matter, because the TV show was just an excuse for us to be together and chat. I always felt a certain duty to stay up with Dad when I was at his house, because by my last years in high school I was spending so much less time with him than with Mom.

  Most of the evening we talked about my departure for Bennington at the end of the summer, and what sorts of things I planned to bring with me. But we also discussed a public radio conference he'd attended over the weekend, and then--as the program on TV was winding down--we talked some more about Mom. I knew it was coming the moment he took off his eyeglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  "You know I'd never, ever tell your mother how to live her life. But do you think it's safe for her to go bicycling in Maine?"

  I shrugged. "Sure. She'll have one or two other women with her."

  "Will it be part of a bicycle tour? Will there be guides?"

  "No, I think it's just her and her spandex."

  "How long will she be gone?"

  "I don't even know if she's decided to go for sure. She may not bother. It's just an idea she had with Nancy Keenan the other day, because her film course ends next week, and she was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her summer."

  He shook his head. "You know something? Your mom and I just don't talk enough anymore."

  "Divorce will do that."

  "We're still friends, Carly, even if we don't live together. I mean, I didn't even know she was interested in this professor character--that fellow she had to her party."

  I almost told him that I wasn't sure she was interested in Dana, but then I remembered the two of them were going out on an honest-to-God dinner date in a couple of nights. And so I stared at the TV and tried to nod ambiguously.

  "Dana, right?" my dad asked.

  "Uh-huh."

  He didn't ask me any more questions; once again he knew exactly how far the interrogation could go. But I didn't miss the fact that he had brought up my mother a second time that evening, and that he had remembered Dana's name. I hadn't sensed any tension between Patricia and him at dinner, but they had both been unusually quiet and the idea crossed my mind that--as the radio shrinks like to put it--the two of them were having some problems and their relationship needed some work.

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Monday, September 24

  CARLY BANKS: ... and so Dr. Meehan has been performing what is now called sexual reassignment surgery since 1981. Last year, his Waterman Gender Clinic in Trinidad, Colorado, helped eighteen women become men, and a hundred and fifty-nine men become women--including Dana Stevens. Meehan estimates that over the last two decades he has performed sexual reassignment surgery close to four thousand times.

  DR. THOMAS MEEHAN: Gender dysphoria is as old as time. Let's face it, Eve was made from Adam. Herodotus was chronicling what he called the Scythian illness--the decision by Venus to change the Scythian men into women--some twenty-five hundred years ago. It may only be the surgery that's new. And, in some ways, the concept of surgery isn't even all that modern. It's only the techniques that are new. But the Greeks, the Romans, and the Phrygians all did their fair share of castration. Philo of Alexandria describes it. Cedrenus cites it. Priests were regularly castrated in worship services for Cybele.

  BANKS: The Waterman Gender Clinic is one of a half dozen sites in the United States where the vast majority of sexual reassignment surgery is accomplished, but it is among the oldest, having been founded by Meehan's predecessor in 1971. And though the number of patients Meehan sees every year has fallen as a result of newer competition in Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, and Wisconsin, he still does about a third of the procedures.

  MEEHAN: We all know the "big" names. Tennis pro Renee Richards. Writer Jan Morris. The real pioneer, Christine Jorgensen. But most transgendered people are simply anonymous members of their communities. They're lawyers and firefighters and bureaucrats. Ever heard the name Leslie Nelson? Lady on death row in New Jersey. She had her sex change in 1992.

  BANKS: Dr. Meehan says that perhaps half the transsexuals who come to the Waterman Gender Clinic are involved in a relationship, but adds that a relationship should never be the reason for a reassignment.

  MEEHAN: I can only think of one case in which a person underwent the procedure for that reason, and I can assure you he wasn't a patient of mine. I'd never have done it. He didn't fit the guidelines for surgery, it was that simple.

  BANKS: But Dr. Meehan did meet the candidate when he flew to Colorado for a consultation.

  MEEHAN: Male stockbroker, lived somewhere in Boston. Married for three years, when his wife decided she was gay. Well, he loved her very much, and he finally found a surgeon who would do the procedure--which was just ridiculous. Insane, completely insane--on both their parts.

  About six months after the surgery, the wife decided she was wrong, she wasn't a lesbian. And so she walked out. And now there's this poor guy in Massachusetts who's trapped for the rest of his life in a woman's body. Oh, we could re-create for him a limp penis, and we could take him off hormones. Remove the implants in his chest. But he'll never have working testicles again, he'll only be at his best a cosmetic man.

  My point? Gender dysphoria and romance don't have a damn thing to do with each other. Transgendered people fall in love exactly the way you and I do, but it should never be the reason for surgery.

  Chapter 4.

  allison

  I REMEMBER LYING CURLED UP IN A BALL IN MY bed that fall after I heard Dana's plans, and trying my best to be reasonable. But reason doesn't come easy, especially when you're awake in the middle of the night.

  Maybe, I would think, I could be a lesbian. Wasn't it conceivable that I might still love Dana after the surgery? Perhaps love had absolutely nothing to do with sexual preference. Perhaps you just fell in love with a person--gender be damned--and it just so happened that I had always fallen in love with men.

  Or, perhaps, it was all nurture: I'd been conditioned from an early age to be heterosexual. Once I renewed my relationship with a post-op Dana Stevens, I'd see how possible it was for me to fall in love with a woman.

  But then I would back off. I was forty-two: Did I really want to travel down that path at midlife? Not likely.

  After all, I'd certainly never had those sorts of desires.

  But alone in one's bed, the mind wanders into some very strange corners. Once, I climbed out from under the sheets and turned on the light, an
d took an antique silver hand mirror from the top of my dresser. I then sat on the edge of the bed and spread my legs, and used the mirror to study my vagina. How in the world could a doctor build such a thing? It wasn't like breasts; it wasn't the sort of item you could fake with a pair of silicone implants.

  Maybe a surgeon could shape skin into labia, but how do you begin to construct a clitoris? How do you fabricate a G spot, a cavity, inner walls that grow moist?

  It was beyond me, completely unfathomable.

  And while I thought I loved Dana, would I really want to make love to a doctor-built vulva? I wasn't even sure I wanted to make love to one made by God.

  None of this would have been an issue, of course, if I'd known Dana's plans when I met him that summer. I know I would not have grown interested in him if I had realized he was on female hormones and planned to have a sex change soon after Christmas.

  And the fact is, at first I wasn't romantically interested in him anyway. I merely saw him as a professor who was smart and funny and just a little bit catty. I thought he was cute, but I also thought he was gay.

  I should be precise: I thought he was a gay male.

  The signals? No wedding band. No references to a partner or spouse. Eyebrows that clearly were plucked.

  When I invited him to my house for a party, it never crossed my mind we might wind up as lovers. Inviting him was a spontaneous gesture, because I thought there might be a friendship in the offing. He made me laugh in class all the time, and I was certainly learning a good deal more from his course than I'd ever expected.