Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

by Chris Bohjalian

  And that's exactly what NPR did. They gave her the ball. And she ran.

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Monday, September 24

  DANA STEVENS: ... and I think that's why most people at the university tolerated me in dresses that fall. They rarely had to see me. And so there weren't all those uncomfortable issues about which bathroom I should use, or whether my students would be able to deal with the fact that Professor Stevens had shown up for class Monday morning in a burgundy broomstick skirt.

  I mean there were some dirty looks, especially the first few times I appeared on campus. But I like to believe by, I guess, a week or two after Thanksgiving, I was passing. Passing completely. You know, I was invisible. I didn't ever want to be one of those pre-ops who wears his wanna-be gender on his sleeve.

  CARLY BANKS: For some transsexuals, and for Dana Stevens, that moment when they first "pass" in public is almost an epiphany.

  STEVENS: It was a Friday afternoon, and I emerged from a grocery store in Burlington with a big brown bag in each arm. Out of the blue, this very distinguished older man--a retired banker, I imagined--raced over to me and insisted on carrying both of my bags to my car. He even opened the front door for me, once I'd placed my groceries in the back! You could have knocked me down with a feather. No, I take that back: You wouldn't have needed a feather. You could have knocked me down with a puff ball: a dandelion puff ball. Poof! And I would have been on my knees.

  LINDA WERTHEIMER: When our series continues tomorrow, Dana Stevens leaves Vermont for Colorado, and prepares for sexual reassignment surgery.

  Chapter 9.

  carly

  IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SIMPLE TO GET ON A BUS any Friday in autumn and go home for the weekend. It takes a mere two hours and forty-five minutes for even a slow-moving motor coach to slog between Bennington and Middlebury. But I didn't. I didn't want to get into the habit of going back to Bartlett anytime I got homesick or depressed, or fell into a panic because it just seemed like there was more work than I could handle.

  Besides, I would have felt a moral obligation to invite my roommate to join me if I went home, and there was always that off chance she might say yes. Not likely. But it was possible. And the idea alone of having to entertain June Ramsey for a weekend in Bartlett was torture. June and I were simply not meant to live together, even in the context of college. She was very smart and--when she wasn't hopelessly unhappy--she may have been very nice. I'll never know about the second part, because I don't think I ever saw her in the mood to smile.

  The problem was that she was all wrong for a place like Bennington. It was obvious she came from gobs of money--which, actually, is pretty normal for the place--but she didn't belong at a school in which a third of the students do really scary things to their hair and most of the faculty don't know the meaning of the word requirement. She was from a ritzy suburb of Boston, and she would have been much better off at a college that had lots of mandatory freshman courses, embarrassing hazing rituals, and parties with guys in blazers who served everyone gin and tonics.

  The only reason she'd wound up at Bennington was that she fancied herself a poet, and there had been two high-profile poets in the English Department there when she'd been choosing a college in high school. Unfortunately, one of them had left by the time June arrived, and the other was taking the year off.

  And so she was miserable. A couple of times I tried taking her with me to the battery factory not far from the college gates. As part of a film course I was taking, I was making a documentary on the closest thing Vermont had to proletarian factory degradation, and I thought June and I might become friends if we left the environment of our dorm room. Nope. She was every bit as angry and irritable off-campus as she was on it, even when I let her do whatever she wanted with the college camcorder I was using.

  By Columbus Day, it seemed, the only thing we talked about was whether she should try and endure a second semester at Bennington or transfer to another school.

  In any case, I didn't go home until Thanksgiving break. The school shut down the Friday before the holiday and didn't reopen for ten days.

  I wasn't sure what to expect from either of my parents that week. I knew that both of their lives were in chaos, but they'd both been so secretive and coy on the phone that I didn't know exactly what was going on.

  Certainly I had inklings: I knew, for example, that my dad and Patricia had begun to see a couples counselor, but my dad hadn't said who had initiated the sessions. And while I figured he would have told me if he or Patricia were about to move out, on the bus home I began to fear that they'd begun sleeping in separate bedrooms, and they would both be unbearable to be around.

  Likewise, I knew that my mom and Dana had split up at some point in September, but it didn't sound like their breakup had lasted very long. I had the impression that once more they were an item. Yet my mom had also said she had some news to share with me about Dana, but whenever I'd tried to press her for details, she had vehemently refused to tell me a thing on the phone.

  My suspicions? At first I'd surmised they were going to get married, but my mom had denied it. Then I'd asked if he was sick--cancer or MS or some weird hair thing that gave him rainbow-shaped eyebrows--and she'd said that wasn't it either. But she had paused, and so I'd wondered if I was getting close.

  And when I'd finally asked her to tell me simply if it was good or bad news, she'd become downright incoherent, babbling about how it wasn't for her to say whether it was good or bad, it just ... was.

  Still, it was clear to me that it wasn't great news in her opinion, and I was confident that it had something to do with whatever had occurred between them in those first few weeks after I'd left for college.

  Sometimes on the bus home I would doze, and sometimes I would just watch the snowflakes floating to the ground outside the bus window. It would be dark by the time we got to Middlebury, and a lot colder than when I'd left Bennington after lunch. I realized at some point north of Rutland that I'd gone from being uneasy to being nervous: The difference, it seemed to me, was one of degree. The closer we got to Middlebury, the more uncomfortable--and awake--I became.

  My mom met me at the bus, and all the way home and for much of the night we talked about college. She made me my favorite dinner (French toast that she actually bakes in this honey-pecan sauce), and she asked me all the right questions: My roommate, my classes, my movie. My friends.

  But although she was pretty candid about what she knew about Dad and Patricia's problems, she was vague about Dana. Moreover, she never once brought him up. Always it was me who would initiate any conversation about the man who, it was evident by the time we had finished with dinner and wandered into the den, was still a very big part of her life.

  Finally, when we were settled on opposite ends of the couch, both of us in our nightgowns, I asked, "Will I get to see Dana this week?"

  "Do you want to?" she asked.

  "Sure. Why not?"

  She was sipping a mug of hot tea, and she placed it on the table beside her. I thought she was about to touch me--she started reaching her hands toward me, as if she was going to pat my curled knees or rub one of my ankles--but then she let her hands fall into her lap.

  "Just how much has your father told you?" she asked.

  "About Dana? Why would Dad be talking about Dana?"

  "He hasn't told you?" She sounded almost incredulous.

  "No. I don't think Dad's mentioned him."

  She shook her head, surprised. "Well. I guess he really is focused on his own troubles."

  "Patricia?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "So: What's going on? I'm a big girl, Mom, I can deal."

  She smiled. "You think so?"

  "That awful?" I asked, and for the first time I got a little scared. Her smile was anything but reassuring.

  "Oh, I think that depends on your perspective. Dana's actually very happy."

  "Good. I like Dana."


  "I do, too. Very much."

  "Are you in love?"

  She hesitated. "With the man we both know? Absolutely. And it's clear he loves me."

  "But there's a problem ..."

  "If you're okay with this," she went on, as if I'd never interrupted her, "I'd like him to move in with us."

  "Is that what the big deal is?" I asked, almost laughing out loud. "Is that why you've been so freaky about him on the phone? God, Mom, I don't care. It's your house! You can live with anyone you want to. Besides, I'm away at college nine or ten months of the year, I'm--"

  "That's not what the big deal is."

  "Oh."

  "He won't move in until after Thanksgiving--if it's okay with you. He won't move in until after you've gone back to school. And he might only be here for a couple of months. He'll be in Colorado for at least the first part of January, and I don't know quite what will happen when he returns."

  "This all sounds fine," I said.

  "His living here will be an experiment."

  " 'Cause you haven't lived with a man since Dad?"

  She sipped her tea, and then did something I'd never before seen her do: She slipped her pinkie into her mouth and gnawed off a piece of her nail. I noticed for the first time since I'd been home that she'd begun biting her nails.

  "Because I haven't lived with a woman since college," she said.

  I nodded. For a moment, it seemed, that explained everything: The fact that Dana's face was as smooth as mine, the way he'd fixed my barrette the night we had met. The smell of his shampoo. Dana, I concluded, was actually a woman who for some reason was trying to pose as a man. Maybe she had something to hide. Maybe she had someone to hide from. Maybe, pure and simple, she was a lesbian who was still figuring out what it meant to be butch. I had already met a girl like that at Bennington.

  But then my mom added the relevant details, and what for a few brief seconds had started to make sense grew confusing.

  "Maybe I don't understand," I said. "Dana's a man?"

  She puffed out her cheeks and sighed. "Most people would say so."

  "But he doesn't think so?"

  "No," she said. "That's what I meant when I said he's a transsexual."

  "Woman inside. Man outside."

  "In this case, yes. But it can work the other way, too."

  In my mind I saw a penis--flaccid, a pretty generic unit at first, but then I saw it dangling below Dana's torso. And then I saw it in women's panties underneath a dress. A bright dress with flowers. Maybe the sort of flowers I'd cut at the nursery that summer.

  And then I saw it gone.

  "He's been living that way for well over a month now," my mom was saying.

  "In women's clothes ..."

  "Yes."

  "Have you seen him?"

  "In women's clothes? Yes, of course. Any number of times. We're still dating."

  "So when the two of you go to movies, you're both wearing dresses?"

  "No, not necessarily. Wednesday night he was in stirrup pants. And I was wearing a tunic top over a nice pair of jeans."

  I wanted to ask what people were saying, but I was disappointed in myself for caring. And so I tried to phrase my question a little differently. "Do people think you're a lesbian?" I asked. I had tried to sound grown-up and progressive and open-minded, but I know the word lesbian had caught in my throat.

  "I don't think that matters."

  "I guess not."

  "What matters is whether I think I'm a lesbian."

  I expected her to say something more: Which, of course, I'm not. Or: And, obviously, I'm not. But she didn't. Instead she took a long sip of her tea, her eyes focused on nothing but the tea bag on the surface of the amber-dyed water.

  "Do you still want to see Dana?" she asked finally.

  I wasn't at all sure that I did, but I also didn't think I had a choice. Although Mom had made it clear that this was my call completely, it seemed to me that I would be letting her down if I passed. Moreover, it would be like I was, somehow, less hip than my middle-aged mother. And so I shrugged nonchalantly. "Sure," I said. "Why not?"

  "Brunch on Sunday?"

  "If it's real late."

  "Absolutely. I know you need your beauty rest."

  "Can I ask you another question?"

  "You can ask me a thousand questions."

  I noticed a small drop of blood near the tip of her pinkie. "Does it hurt?" I asked.

  She thought for a moment. Then: "Yes. Less now than when Dana first told me. But I'm still disappointed. And I still feel betrayed."

  I nodded as if she had answered my question. I decided not to tell her that I'd only been wondering about the surgery.

  No one likes to imagine their mom or dad making love--not with each other, not with other partners. So to keep those images at bay when I went to my room that night, I tried to concentrate upon my mom's remark that she hoped Dana would still change his mind. She doubted he would, but she said that a part of her fantasized he'd be so happy once he'd moved in with her that he'd postpone his surgery indefinitely.

  I also tried reassuring myself that my mother couldn't possibly be a lesbian. After all, she was forty-two. One would think she'd have figured out her sexual orientation before midlife.

  But then I began to wonder. I began to wonder about her, and I began to wonder about me.

  She'd said that she'd fallen in love with a person named Dana. After his surgery, she had observed, he would still have the same brain, the same soul, the same sense of right and wrong. The same sense of humor. The same understanding of exactly how much fresh mint should go into a summer pea salad. Why, she had asked me, would the things that she loved most about him have to change once he'd had his surgery? The fact is, she had said, they wouldn't.

  And so it was at least a possibility that the two of them would stay together after his operation. They'd certainly remain friends. As for the rest? She just didn't know.

  Which, in the dark of the night, made me begin to doubt myself. I didn't assume lesbianism was genetic, but that evening I did find myself questioning my own sexual orientation. Why had I been so quick to break up with Michael last spring? Why didn't I have a boyfriend at Bennington?

  I hadn't really given a whole lot of thought to exactly what lesbians did sexually, but when thoughts of a post-operative Dana and my mother crept into my head against my will, it dawned on me that most of what would go on in their bed wouldn't be dramatically different from what went on between heterosexuals.

  There was that penis, of course ... or lack of one.

  But even Michael and I had done more than simply fornicate. And he was an inexperienced high-school boy!

  I thought of the half dozen lesbians I knew at Bennington, and I decided they probably weren't lesbians the way I might be a lesbian. For them, it seemed, it was more of a political statement than a sexual orientation. I had a feeling at least two of them were actually closet heterosexuals and would probably come out once they'd outgrown the thrill of being marginalized.

  I'm not sure how long I had lain in my bed before finally falling asleep, listening to the rumble the furnace would make when it would kick on, or to the sound of the leafless hydrangea branches as they scratched against the bay window below my bedroom. I was exhausted, but it still took me forever. The last thing I remember before finally nodding off is the feeling I'd had the night Dana and I met, when he gently touched my lips with the edge of a paper cocktail napkin. I had felt, I decided, cared for and happy and warm. If he made my mom feel that way, it probably didn't matter whether or not he had a penis.

  Chapter 10.

  dana

  HOW DO YOU HIDE YOUR PENIS?

  It depends upon what you're wearing.

  I started cross-dressing that autumn in Vermont, so it's not as if I had to hide it under some risque tank suit or slinky bikini. (Reason #1,701 why I fled sunny Florida before coming out ...) And Allison and I did not exactly have a calendar jam-packed with proms and cotilli
ons that fall, so there were no events that would have demanded that I try to pour myself into some champagne flute of a gown.

  Most of the time, a quality pair of panty hose or tights would flatten the penis out to my satisfaction.

  Of course, it's possible that my standards weren't very high or I wasn't particularly demanding. Jordan and Marisa, for instance--two girls from my support group--insisted that they couldn't possibly wear even stirrup pants without looping a little string around the tip of their penis, and then pulling the string back between their legs. They'd attach the string to a thin band they'd wear about their waist like a belt, tying it to the cord at the very base of their spine. The result? Balls and all would be tucked like a little baby between their thighs.

  Was I nervous when I first started wearing women's clothing? Lord, yes. But I also felt movie-star fabulous. I'd been dieting, I'd been on hormones, I'd grown my hair long. And, I discovered, wearing women's clothing in public because I was in transition was a very different sensation from wearing it in private because I was experimenting. You can't imagine what it's like after a lifetime in the wrong attire to finally feel the right clothing energizing your body.

  And energizing, it seems to me, is exactly the right word. Dressing the way you were meant to is very, very invigorating, the first time you do it.