Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

by Chris Bohjalian

  It is not, I should add, erotic. At least it wasn't for me. I'm sure there are transvestites in this world who get very turned on once they're cinched inside some sleek little ottoman rib dress--and, in all likelihood, some transsexuals as well--but this wasn't a sexual experience in my case. Not at all.

  But it was exhilarating. Downright rejuvenating. This, I was practically singing to myself in my head, is what it feels like to dress like a woman! To dress the way I was meant to!

  I felt like I was in a movie musical.

  And while I had most certainly been frightened the first time I walked into a meeting at the university, or the first time I walked down North Winooski Avenue in Burlington, it always was worth it. Even when, the first few times, I'd hear some teenager on the street calling me names.

  The moment that fall that probably gave me the worst case of the shakes was the first time Allison was to see me in a dress. I wanted to look good. I wanted to be attractive. I didn't want to, once more, scare her away. I'd done that back in mid-September, and I didn't want to do it again.

  Earlier that fall, she'd taken my confession (what a horribly unfair word!) about as well as could be expected: She'd been furious. We had walked back to my car in absolute silence, and she didn't say a single word to me as I drove her home. I had assumed we were finished, and when I got back to my apartment mid-afternoon, I just collapsed on my bed and sobbed.

  I sobbed because I had lost a woman I loved, and I sobbed for the reason I'd lost her. I sobbed because, yet again, a person hated me the moment I stopped living the big lie.

  But then she called me two days later. That Monday night I was home alone, missing her so much that I actually wished I had a stack of papers to grade or a class to prepare for. I don't think I had spoken to anyone other than my sister in Florida and a waitress in a downtown diner since we had parted on Saturday. Ah, but then she called, and in an instant I went from gloomy to giddy.

  "I want to understand more about your plans," she said. Then: "I want to see you again. If you still want to see me."

  "God, yes!"

  She told me how angry she was that I hadn't told her sooner, and I admitted it was indefensible. She told me she didn't have any idea what wanting to see me meant.

  "Maybe I just want closure," she said.

  "I could see that," I said. "But I hope that's not the case."

  "I know you do. So be warned: Maybe I'm just calling you to get your hopes up so I can dash them--the way you dashed mine."

  "That wasn't my intention. I just wanted--"

  "You just wanted a lot of things. You wanted someone to hold your hand through the next four or five months. You wanted someone to be your guide when you started to dress up. You wanted someone to teach you to be a woman. We both know that."

  "No, that's not it," I insisted. "I fell in love. That's all. I fell in love."

  "I believe you. But let's be honest: You fell in love with me because you needed to fall in love. I don't know who your friends are, but I haven't met any. And everything you've told me about your family suggests they're not going to be particularly supportive. So you needed someone. And, if only because I was there, you chose me."

  "It didn't work like that."

  "Maybe you didn't plan it like that--"

  "Trust me, no one ever plans it like that. No one plans to fall in love, period--at least the way I've fallen for you."

  "Perhaps not. Still ..."

  "If you really believe that, then what is it you need from me? Tell me. What did you need in July? What do you need right now?"

  She was silent for a long moment at the other end of the line. "I don't need anything," she said finally. "I only want to see you."

  We saw each other four times in late September and early October. I was dressed as a man on each occasion, though I was spending more and more time dressed as a woman. And when I showed up at a meeting of the Green Mountain Gender Benders for the first time in months, I appeared in a button-front skirt and suede zipper boots. Some members of the group were a little cold to me, since I hadn't shown up in so long, but they were still proud of me for finally coming out.

  In hindsight, I wore way too much makeup that night, but most girls go overboard when they first start experimenting with lipstick and mascara. (Of course, most girls get to make their cosmetic explorations when they're teenagers, not when they're flirting with middle age.)

  I had a sense that that meeting would be the last one I would ever attend: My surgery was barely a season away, and already I was viewing myself less as a transsexual and more as a woman. My chest was starting to bud, thanks to the hormones, and the hair on my head seemed thicker and more lustrous. I felt the muscles in my arms and my legs starting to melt, I felt my skin beginning to grow young. Truly: young. I could see it in the mirror.

  And, best of all, Allison had called. The support group met on Thursday nights, and Allison had phoned me that Monday. We had dinner together on Friday, the night after I'd donned boots and a skirt for the Benders.

  For Allison, of course, I wore blue jeans and penny loafers. The evening when I would spend literally hours throwing clothing onto my bed, and then--when I had finally found something that didn't make me look like a construction worker in drag--applying and reap-plying makeup, was still a few weeks away.

  "As far as I can tell," I told Allison Friday night, "transsexuals either go into a deep denial and overcompensate like crazy, or they just give up and start planning for surgery."

  "Women transsexuals, too?"

  "You mean boys born in a female body? I can't speak for them, but it's probably true. Still, I can only speak for girls like me."

  I'd chosen an Italian restaurant near the office parks that ringed Burlington's southeastern suburbs--the sort of place that depended upon a business lunch clientele and was virtually deserted for dinner. This way we could be assured of some privacy. Moreover, because the restaurant was far from my downtown apartment, the turf would be vaguely neutral, which seemed to make sense. I didn't want Allison to have any fear that I harbored some delusion that we'd go back to my apartment and make love.

  "What do you mean they overcompensate? They try and be super macho?"

  I nodded. "We're talking construction worker macho. I know one girl who was a Navy SEAL, for God's sake! And the doctor who will be doing my surgery has done army sergeants, an air force colonel, and a submarine commander. For a group that wants to make our penises disappear, we spend a lot of time with phallic symbols, don't we?"

  "But not you."

  "No, I just gave up early on. As a teenager, I was simply one endless train wreck--oops, there's another one of those symbols. We just can't help ourselves, can we? Still, I'm quite serious about this: You cannot imagine how unhappy I was. How miserable. There were months in my last two years of high school when I spent far too much time gazing longingly at razor blades, steak knives, and big bottles of aspirin."

  Allison was nursing her wine, sometimes resting the edge of the goblet abstractedly against her lower lip. It was clear that she wanted a second glass, but she was too far from home to risk getting potted.

  "You didn't ever really try killing yourself, did you?" she asked softly.

  "When I was a teenager? No, I never actually tried it. Thank God. It's just that I had a pretty good idea what kind of future loomed before me, and I wasn't happy. I remember one afternoon I came across nude pictures of transsexuals in some adult skin magazine. Eureka! I thought. There you are, Dana: Superfreak."

  "I'm sure they weren't transsexuals like you. Not if they were posing for an adult magazine."

  "No. Though one was really quite pretty. But they were still presented as disgusting outcasts, and they certainly didn't do a whole lot for my self-image. The pictures weren't exactly designed for men to get off on."

  "Probably not."

  "And already I was drinking way too much. I'd begun sneaking my parents' scotch in eighth grade when I started getting chest hair, while al
l the girls around me were getting these perfect little breasts. It was awful. Oh, God, did I hate my body--did I hate myself. It wasn't until I began to realize that surgery was a genuine possibility that things began turning around."

  "Did you have friends then?"

  "In high school? Certainly not boys. I wasn't into that compensation thing."

  "Girls have boys who are friends."

  "But those girls are still treated as girls! Or at least viewed as girls! Whenever I hung out with boys, they'd want to do boy-type things that didn't interest me. It had been that way my whole damn life. Let's play combat! Let's play race car! Let's go build a tree house! Oh, please. And it certainly doesn't get any better when you're a teenager. In fact, it gets worse."

  "At least they're not playing soldier anymore."

  "Hah! The soldier's just on leave now. He's got his four-day pass, or he's gone AWOL. But with all that testosterone coursing through him, he is still every cell the warrior. Of course, by then, even if I'd wanted to play football or drink beer or talk about some poor girl's hooters, the boys wouldn't have wanted me hanging around."

  "Too ... effeminate?"

  "I was considered quite the girly boy. Naturally."

  "Well, did you have friends who were girls?"

  "A few. And I always seemed to have a girlfriend, which at least gave me a little power in the eyes of the boys. But it was all very, very difficult. Especially when I was still trying to figure out what was going on. I'd see a beautiful girl, and I'd want her sexually, but I'd also be desperately envious of her. My sister said it's like this friend of hers, a man who can't walk, and she's absolutely right. That guy is incredibly jealous of people whose legs work, and sometimes he gets seriously pissed off at life. He was in some sort of accident when he was nine or ten, and now he's stuck in a wheelchair. It just doesn't seem fair."

  "You'd desire a woman? And be jealous of her?"

  "Still do. God, Allison, I look at your body, and I just want every part it, and I want it in every imaginable way. I wish my feet were as petite as yours, and I wish I could dab red polish on my toes while watching TV--just like you do. I wish my waist were your waist, and I wish I had hips--"

  "Trust me, you don't want my hips."

  "I do! And forgive me for confessing this, Allison, but half the time when I lick you, I'm turned on and resentful at once. After all, even when I have a vagina, it will never be as creamy as yours! I'll never be naturally moist! I'll never--"

  "I get it," she said. "Thank you."

  "I'm sure you do, but it's only because you're very intuitive and very smart. I haven't begun to tell you how shitty my years in high school really were. I haven't told you a thing about the eating disorders and the dieting and the vomiting--anything to prevent my body from bulking up and becoming a man's. I haven't told you about the times my mom would start crying when I would get drunk and try to tell her what I was feeling. Or the way my dad couldn't stand to be in the same room with me for more than five minutes--and, in fact, still can't. He's not mean to me: He just doesn't know how to deal with his pansy son."

  "And your sister?"

  "She's terrific. But she's five years younger than I am, so she wasn't much help two decades ago. When I was fifteen and sixteen years old, she was still in elementary school. So I would spend days and days alone in my room with absolutely no one to talk to, because, basically, I had nowhere to turn and no one to confide in."

  I watched her drain the last of her wine. "I shouldn't have another glass," she said, "but I think I will."

  "I have that effect on people," I said, and I motioned for our waiter to return.

  When we were waiting for our check after dinner--long after we'd finally given in and ordered and finished a bottle of wine--Allison reached across the table for my hands and wrapped her fingers around mine.

  "What will it look like?" she asked, the worrisome urgency of a mother in her voice. Honey, do you really think a tattoo's a good idea? Do you really think you should dye your hair purple? Maybe you'd like to talk to someone about this self-mutilation thing?

  Of course I knew exactly what she meant. I'd asked it myself of doctors in three states and in Montreal. And each time I'd used that very same word. It.

  What will it look like?

  Each surgeon had known instantly what I was talking about.

  "Will it look like ... any other woman's?" Allison asked when I didn't answer right away.

  I shrugged and then repeated what the surgeon I had chosen in Colorado had told me. "It will look exactly like what it's supposed to look like," I said, and then added what he'd said to reassure me. "Apparently, it will fool anyone but a gynecologist ... and even gynecologists, at first, will assume it belongs to a g.g."

  "G.g.?"

  "Genetic girl."

  We had both had way too much to drink, but with the little reason that remained we agreed it was inadvisable for her to try to drive back to Bartlett. We decided instead we would leave her car in the parking lot of the restaurant, and she would spend the night in my apartment in Burlington.

  There, at her urging, I showed her my special closet with my secret wardrobe, and then we made love on the bed. The next morning, I knew, we'd regret both decisions. But it was late and we were drunk, and we were just two chicks having the best time in fantasy land.

  Our next three dates were very different. We went to dinner. We went to the movies. And then we went to our separate homes. We knew I was in my waning days in Jockeys for Him, and neither of us could cope with the notion that our passion might not survive my transition. My castration. My rebirth.

  *

  PART II

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Tuesday, September 25

  CARLY BANKS: Stevens says she honestly didn't know whether Allison Banks would accompany her to Colorado.

  DANA STEVENS: Really, I didn't. But I hoped she would. I wasn't afraid of the surgery--I was actually looking forward to it. But I wasn't sure I could bear being alone. I'd spent so much of my life as a male that way that I wasn't sure what I would do if I woke up as a woman and my world was as empty as ever.

  Chapter 11.

  carly

  "GENDER MATTERS," DANA ONCE TOLD ME. "SEXUAL orientation doesn't."

  And while that mantra makes sense to me now, the bombshells my mom dropped on me the night I came home from college had left me shaken. The fact that I thought Dana was a pretty good-looking woman Sunday afternoon didn't help. He'd come over for brunch, and I wasn't honestly sure what to expect, but I certainly hadn't anticipated a tall, attractive woman in jeans and boots and a sweater.

  Dana was wearing more makeup than my mom wore, perhaps, but this was still no Cockney aunt from a Monty Python sketch.

  Apparently, he hadn't always looked so good in women's clothes. The first time my mom had seen Dana in drag, she said there was no way he could have passed for a woman. This was despite their decision to meet in some dive on Colchester Avenue with rotten lighting. By the time I came home from college, however, my mom had had six or seven weeks to whip him into shape. They spent whole afternoons at the big-and-tall-girl shops in the strip malls outside of Burlington when my mom was done teaching for the day, and once they went to some big-and-tall-girl factory outlet near Montreal.

  Dana was in heaven: racks and racks of dresses just his size.

  I wasn't sure what to say when he arrived early Sunday afternoon, despite having lain in bed most of that morning trying to figure it out. Fortunately, Dana made it easy for me.

  "It's my hair," he said, hanging his leather pocketbook along with his jacket on the coatrack just inside the front hall. "That's what's different. I've let it grow out." And then he hugged me, and I smelled his perfume.

  It was only the three of us that afternoon, so my mom was probably more comfortable with Dana physically than she would have been had there been other people with us. Nevertheless, I was still struck by the wa
y they touched each other. After he handed her a big wooden salad bowl he'd gotten down from a cabinet high above the oven, Dana swirled his hand on her back, like her back was a window he was washing. I saw my mom squeeze his fingers after she'd given him the corkscrew for a bottle of wine. And they must have kissed each other at least three or four times.

  Once, I saw Dana kiss the tips of my mother's fingers where she had bitten the nails down to the cuticles and the skin was ragged and raw.

  My mom, I knew from experience, wouldn't have been that physical with a regular boyfriend in front of me. Dana, of course, wasn't a regular boyfriend: He had some of the advantages of one, such as the height to get down the salad bowl without needing a stool, and a lifetime of pulling corks from bottles of wine. But he was softer than a man, and he moved more gracefully through a room. His jeans may have been androgynous, but his blouse and his sweater were very delicate. Once or twice when he moved quickly in the kitchen and his cardigan flared behind him like wings, he reminded me of a dancer.

  And when my mom and he touched, it was like they'd been friends since childhood: just a pair of women who'd played tea party together at four and Barbies at five, now putting together a brunch on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Two women who'd been pals forever.

  When we sat down to eat, the two of them were so busy asking me about college and the film I was making at the battery factory that for long periods of time I completely forgot the strangeness that loomed before the two of them. I complained about my roommate, my lack of sleep, and about the way so many kids at the college were from cities and suburbs and couldn't cope with rural Vermont.