Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

by Chris Bohjalian

  "They work with banks, too," my mother said softly.

  "Look, I know the statistics," I said, careful to keep my voice even. "I know women earn less than men. I know the numbers."

  "And they're not treated as equals. Ever. And you can't know what that's like, having been born a man and treated as a man. Do you have any idea how difficult it is for your mom to be heard in some of her committee meetings? Sometimes the men don't let her get a word in edgewise."

  "So no one's been mugged?" I asked. "No one's been attacked?"

  "Attacked? Why would you think such a thing?"

  "For a moment I'd been afraid that was where this conversation was going. I'm very relieved."

  "Dana, we just don't think you have the foggiest idea what it's going to be like to simply conduct your life nine to five. The business world--"

  "I'm not in the business world, Father. I'm a tenured professor at a fine university."

  "Must you interrupt me?" my father said.

  I sat back and folded my hands in my lap. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."

  "If you go through with this, it's going to be much harder than you realize to do almost everything," he said. "I can't wait till you try and get your next car loan. Or a mortgage."

  My mother pushed her sunglasses back against the bridge of her nose and turned to face me. "And just watch what happens the first time you bring your car in for a tune-up," she said. "They'll find things wrong with parts of the engine that you didn't even know existed."

  "Let me make sure I understand this: You two think I shouldn't have my reassignment because an auto mechanic might charge me for some gasket I don't need?"

  "That's an oversimplification," my father said.

  "And it may be a small thing," my mother added, growing animated for the first time that morning, "but most of the time, life is nothing but small things. Getting the oil changed in your car. Convincing the plumber to come and fix a leaky shower. And it's harder when you're a woman. A lot harder. I know. I've been doing it for almost sixty-one years."

  My father glanced at the models and then back at me. Then he took a deep breath and said, "Will you do me a favor? One small thing?"

  I knew exactly what was coming, and so I lied: "Of course I will."

  "Think about this some more. Think about how hard your life is going to be. How difficult. Would you at least reconsider your plan?"

  I knew I had forty-eight hours to go in scenic South Florida, two more days with my parents. And so in the interest of making the visit as pleasurable for them as possible, perhaps even keeping the peace for the remainder of my stay, I pursed my lips and tried to look thoughtful. Pensive. Sincere.

  "Okay," I repeated. "For you two I will."

  But, of course, I didn't.

  I strolled up and down the streets of South Beach Saturday afternoon, and I was blissfully invisible. Perhaps there were people who knew or suspected what I was, but on South Beach they saw such things all the time. I loved the warmth from the sun on my shoulders and my arms. I loved to have my toes naked but for my finely woven sandals. I loved the whoosh my dress made against my legs as I walked.

  My parents were so relieved by the notion that I would reconsider my plans that I began to fear lying to them had been a mistake. I probably shouldn't have gotten their hopes up, since I'd be dashing them again so very soon: In only six days I would be getting on an airplane for Colorado.

  Briefly I wondered what would happen if I didn't tell them. In theory, they'd never have to know I'd had the reassignment. After all, I wouldn't exactly be wandering around their house naked when I next returned, I wouldn't be flaunting my new vagina. They hadn't seen me without my clothes on since I was seven or eight years old, and there was no reason to believe they would ever see me that way again.

  And withholding the truth would certainly make my lifestyle less frightening to them. It would certainly make them happy. Well, happier. They could always tell themselves that at some point I might return to my senses, that someday I might climb back into my clothes as a man.

  "And Allison really doesn't mind?" my father had asked me Friday night as he'd stared at the pictures of her I had brought.

  "She isn't sure if she minds or not," I had answered. "She just knows what I'm going to do."

  "She's so feminine," my mother had said, unable to mask her surprise. I have no idea what she had imagined Allison would look like, but I have a feeling she was still expecting me to bring south photographs of a man. "She's so pretty."

  "I'll tell her you said so."

  "And if you go through with this, she's going with you?"

  "When I have the operation? Indeed she is," I had said, and--to be completely honest--I know there was pride in my voice. Unattractive, I realize. Downright manly.

  But it wasn't simply the idea that I was involved with or possessed a beautiful woman. It was the idea that I was involved with a beautiful woman who had volunteered to stand beside me through my operation.

  That was more than my parents had offered to do.

  I stopped into one of the faux deco bars across the street from the ocean and sat down at a small table by the window. I ordered a cranberry juice and club soda, and watched the people go by. In six days, Allison and I would be in Trinidad, and four days after that I would have my reassignment. Ten days. At that exact moment in ten days, I would in fact be flat on my back in a hospital bed, woozy from anesthetics and painkillers, my body just starting its road back from the knife.

  I decided I had to tell my parents the hard truth. Here I was having the procedure because I was tired of denying who I was. What I was. It certainly didn't make sense now to encourage my parents' continued denial, or to place myself in the position of having to lie to them for the rest of my life. It wouldn't be fair to Isabel, who would certainly know what I had done, and it wouldn't be fair to Allison. If she could be brave, so could my mother and father.

  I decided I would tell them Monday morning. Over breakfast I would tell them that I'd thought long and hard about my decision for almost forty-eight hours, and I hadn't changed my mind. There wasn't a single lingering doubt anywhere inside my gray matter. I was going to live what I hoped would be the rest of a long and healthy life as a woman.

  And then, after telling them, I would hug them.

  I looked at the polish I'd applied to my nails. I sipped my drink. And I think I glowed.

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Tuesday, September 25

  DR. THOMAS MEEHAN: The bed nucleus is a tiny region in the part of the brain called the hypothalamus. It's no bigger than a BB, really. But here's what's so interesting. The study found that in men--gay, straight, it didn't matter--the bed nucleus was two-point-six cubic millimeters. In women, it was around one-point-seven cubic millimeters.

  And in male-to-female transsexuals? One-point-three.

  Imagine, half the size. That's telling.

  Of course, we're not sure whether those differences are the result of something that occurs in fetal development, or something that occurs years later. At least I'm not.

  Moreover, there's a problem with the study. It only included six transsexual brains. And it took the researchers eleven years to track down even that many.

  Chapter 15.

  carly

  "THERE WAS A VERY WEALTHY WOMAN IN PHILADELPHIA who wanted to look like a cat. And they did it. The doctors, that is. It took three or four operations--maybe more--and Lord knows how much it all cost. And how much it hurt. But she looks a bit like a cat now," my grandmother said, shaking her head.

  "Whiskers, too?" Dana asked.

  "Very funny. Mostly they worked on her eyes and her cheekbones."

  "Would you like more sweet potatoes, Mother?" my mom asked, clearly hoping to change the subject.

  "Oh, why not. They're delicious, Dana."

  "Thank you."

  "Isn't Dana an awesome cook?" I said.

  "Ve
ry good," my grandmother said. Unlike the rest of us, she was still wearing a dress. After the Christmas Eve service--the early one, the one that began at seven o'clock--my mother and Dana and I had all climbed into slacks or, in my case, blue jeans.

  "I guess you can see my point," she went on.

  "I can," Dana said. "But, honestly, Mrs. Cronin, I'm not doing this simply because it can be done."

  My grandmother has always been very sporty, perhaps because she'd been a surgical nurse until age forced her to retire. Nothing in the world, it seems, can faze her. The Christmas before my mother met Dana, my mom's friend Nancy Keenan spent Christmas Eve at our house. After drinking a little too much eggnog, Nancy told all of us--including my grandmother--about her brother's car accident the month before. He was going to be fine, but he'd had to be cut out of the car by the rescue squad, and so everyone saw exactly why he'd wrapped his Subaru around a telephone pole and broken both of his arms: He was using this thing called an Auto Suck, and he'd lost control of his car when he came. Very stupid, it seemed to me. And I couldn't believe that Nancy was telling us the story in front of my grandmother.

  But my grandmother hadn't seemed bothered at all.

  "Did it use batteries?" she'd asked Nancy.

  "Nope. Plugged right into the cigarette lighter."

  "See?" my grandmother had said. "No good has ever, ever come from smoking."

  Nevertheless, I was still amazed by how comfortable she was discussing Dana's plans Christmas Eve, and offering her opinions. She was, after all, somewhere in her early seventies.

  "This isn't a nose job, Dana," she went on. "This has to be a major operation."

  "Oh, it is."

  "What would you do if the procedure didn't exist? If it wasn't possible?"

  "Suffer."

  "Is that what--and I want to use the right word--transsexual people did until someone figured out how to do it? They just suffered?"

  Dana took a piece of bread from the basket and delicately broke it in half. "Essentially, yes. They lived very unhappy lives."

  "So there was a ... demand for the procedure? Some doctor somewhere thought it was something we needed to figure out how to do?"

  "Market forces at work," Dana said.

  My grandmother sat back in her chair. "When it's done, will you tell the next man you meet how you came to be who you are?"

  "I don't think I understand what you mean," Dana said, and then motioned for my mother to pass the butter.

  "The next time you fall in love with a man, and things proceed to the bedroom: What will you tell him? Or will you have told him already? I guess this is a question about sexual etiquette. Obviously it wasn't an issue for my generation."

  I glanced at my mother, and she was already looking at Dana. Dana looked crestfallen: doe-eyed and sad and surprised. Clearly my mom hadn't told her mother that she and Dana were lovers, and somehow my grandmother had missed the fact that they'd slept in the same bedroom the night before--or, if she had noticed, she had simply viewed it as two middle-aged gals bunking together.

  Dana sat up very straight, turned back to my grandmother, and said in a tone that was as controlled as it was polite, "I'm having this operation so I won't have to hide who I am. I like to believe that I'd only fall in love with a person who's completely comfortable with that. With me."

  I don't know if my mom was planning to tell my grandmother about Dana and her and just hadn't yet found the right moment, or whether she was hoping she'd never have to mention it. But I could see how hurt Dana was, and certainly my mom could, too. And so she rallied. She took Dana's hand in hers and said, "And I'm that person, Mother. Dana and I have been dating since the middle of the summer."

  My grandmother pulled off her eyeglasses, folded the ear pieces flat, and placed them on the dining room table. "I didn't realize," she said.

  "It's true," my mom said. Dana, I saw, was actually blushing.

  "And you're having the surgery next week?" my grandmother asked.

  "A week from today, as a matter of fact."

  My grandmother nodded, and I thought that for one of the few times in her life she was actually embarrassed. But I was wrong. She was displeased, but she wasn't flustered. "Well, dear," she said to Mom, "we all need to try new things now and then. Let's face it: The first person to eat a lobster must have been a very brave man."

  "Or," Dana said, smiling, "very, very hungry."

  I stayed up watching television well past midnight Christmas Eve, and so I was the last one to go upstairs. For a long moment I stood in the dark at the top of the steps, and then I tiptoed down the hall to my mom's bedroom. There was a string of light under the shut door, but I didn't want to disturb them and so I didn't knock. But I stood there for a long moment, entranced, wondering what was going on at that exact moment on the other side. Were they reading? Had one or both of them fallen asleep with the light on? Were they, at that very moment, making love?

  I tried not to think about Dana naked, but I did. I tried not to think of either the breasts that were starting to blossom, or the penis that would soon be gone. But I did. I thought of both.

  I imagined Dana and my mother were having a variant on makeup sex: Dana, in my mind, was filled with gratitude because my mom had announced at the dinner table that the two of them were lovers, while my mom was, finally, liberated from the guilt she must have been feeling for days at having hidden that very fact.

  Nevertheless, I found it interesting that my mom was still so uncomfortable with her relationship with Dana that there remained people from whom she hid the gory details.

  It may have been the apparent fixation of everybody around me on genitals, and it may have been the odd tensions and euphorias that filled the house; it may even have been the simple fact that I'd finally gotten some much-needed sleep after my first semester of college; but I realized, suddenly, how powerfully horny I had become, and I retreated as fast as I could to my bedroom. If it hadn't been Christmas Eve and if I hadn't known it would have sent my ex-boyfriend, Michael, exactly the wrong message, I would have called him up that very moment and told him to come over to my house and fuck me silly.

  The women in my family have always seemed to do okay without a man permanently under the roof. My mom hadn't lived with one since I was in elementary school, and her mom hadn't lived with one since my grandfather died when I was a toddler.

  Nevertheless, I knew my grandmother was very disappointed when her daughter and Will Banks had divorced. She liked my dad a lot.

  We went for a walk through the village early Christmas night, just the two of us, savoring the lights and the decorations on the houses that ringed the green. Mom and Dana had prepared another monster dinner and refused to let my grandmother or me do a thing--even help clear the table when we were done.

  "We don't get snow like this in Philadelphia," she said, and she waved at the white quilt on the commons, and the drifts piled up against the gazebo. "I wish we did."

  "Trust me: It loses its luster in February. Sometimes you're pretty sick of it by March."

  "Do you know what kind of weather they'll have in Colorado?"

  I was careful to walk pretty slowly, because there were little patches of ice on the sidewalk and I didn't want my grandmother to fall and break her hip. Aside from the damper it would put on the holiday, it would have complicated my mom's travel plans in a big way.

  "Cold, but not too cold. Twenties and thirties at night. Forties during the day. And there's no snow where they're going right now. They might get some, but supposedly it wouldn't last."

  "Like Philadelphia."

  "Maybe."

  "I still can't believe what doctors can do today. And believe me, I've seen a lot of changes over the years."

  "Me too. It's pretty amazing."

  "What do you think of him?"

  "Dana?"

  "Excuse me. Her."

  "It's okay. None of us can keep up with the pronouns. Except for Mom."

  "Well, she is a tea
cher."

  "I like Dana," I said.

  "Oh, I do, too. But do you think she's normal?"

  "Nope."

  "Me either. I think she's as crazy as a loon."

  "Still, you'd be surprised how quickly you can get used to the weirdness of it all."

  "Have you?"

  "Gotten used to it? Not always. But most of the time. And the important thing is that she makes Mom happy."

  "For the moment, anyway," my grandmother said. "No one, it seems, has been able to keep your mother happy forever. I guess your father still holds the longevity record."

  "I guess."

  "What do people in town think of Dana? Not much, I'd wager."

  "I was gone most of the fall, so I'm probably not a good person to ask."

  "That was a very tactful answer, dear. Forgive me. I didn't mean to try and make you rat on your mother."

  We passed by a massive yellow and blue Victorian house that had been a bed-and-breakfast for as long as I could remember. There were electric candles in every single window, and small wreaths on the shutters.

  "I really haven't had to talk to anyone about Dana," I said, and then thought to myself, yet. I knew it was only a matter of time.

  "Not even your father?"