Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

by Chris Bohjalian

  But at eight o'clock Glenn's son took off his headphones, snapped shut his math book, and turned on the television. He was watching a prime-time soap opera aimed at teens, and I found the dialogue I could hear in the hallway unbearable. I didn't believe the boy was a part of a little conspiracy his father had engineered, I didn't believe he was intentionally trying to torment me, but the show was quickly growing unendurable. Adult angst is bad enough; teen angst is pure torture.

  And so at ten after eight, when I'd been kept waiting for forty minutes, I finally yelled up the stairs:

  "Hello? You off the phone yet, Glenn Frazier?"

  I'd tried to keep my voice light, but I doubted I had. At the very least, I saw, I had made the dog's ears twitch, and I might very well have sounded livid. Because, of course, I was. I was furious.

  The boy came out of the den and said he'd go see what was keeping his dad. Then, a moment later, they both appeared at the top of the stairs. The boy retreated back into the den, and Glenn stood before me for a moment in the hallway. He managed not to apologize.

  "That phone call was endless, wasn't it?" he said.

  "Yes, it was. It must have been very important."

  "Actually, it wasn't. I just couldn't find an out to escape," he said, and he shook his head as if he felt bad. But it was clear he didn't feel bad, and it was clear he wanted me to understand that.

  "Where would you like to talk?" I asked.

  "Will this take long?"

  "It shouldn't."

  He looked around the hallway, and for a second I thought he was going to suggest we stand where we were. Finally he motioned toward the kitchen, and so we went there and I assumed we were going to sit around a mahogany table fresh from an Ethan Allen showroom. But he remained standing, his back to a sliding glass door.

  So I stood, too, still with my coat in my arms.

  "I guess you know why I'm here," I said.

  "You were pretty clear on the phone."

  "Was I?"

  "Yeah. Perfectly. Is there something you want to add?"

  I considered asking him how I had insulted him in that conversation, but I knew that wasn't the issue. The issue was that I had told him I wanted to stop by to discuss Allie and Dana, and that I wanted him to give them his support. To stop making their life any harder than it already was. Perhaps, I had even hinted, to intervene with Judd Prescott and the school board, and get them to stop pressuring Allie to take a leave of absence.

  And, somehow, that had not simply irritated him: It had, in his mind, demeaned me. In his eyes, I had become a traitor to the cause. Gone native, so to speak.

  I realized that I had endured the indignity of standing in his front hall for forty minutes for absolutely nothing. There was no reason for me to be polite, because there was no way I was going to change his mind. There was no way he was going to ask anyone or anything to back off. Not the school board, not the parents. Certainly not his own sense of right and wrong.

  "I guess not," I said, "I guess I was clear." Then I walked myself to his front door and I left. I figured he was still standing in his kitchen when I started my car.

  Usually by the time a program we have produced has aired, I've lost interest in it. By then it has come up in so many meetings at the station and I've heard it in so many stages that it no longer holds any surprises. Moreover, by then I'm usually immersed in something else: the next series, the new hire, the latest transmission crisis.

  The story about Allie and Dana was different, in part because I had made the professional decision to distance myself from it as much as possible during production. But there were other reasons, too. The subject matter was--as Kevin had said--all very strange, especially since it was a story that hit so close to home. Certainly I had understood that when I first had the idea, and then when I proposed it to Allie and Dana. But I hadn't realized how much I would change as the program date drew near. Something was different for me now, and I wanted to grasp what it was. I wanted to fathom that strangeness.

  Moreover, I actually wanted the program to help Allie and Dana. I wanted it to get the people in Bartlett off their backs. That was a lot to ask of a story, and I honestly didn't have any expectations that it would accomplish such a thing. Has any newspaper editorial ever changed anyone's mind? I doubt it. And it didn't seem fair to put that kind of pressure on this series.

  But I did.

  I listened to the program alone in my office because it seemed inappropriate to listen to it with Allie and Dana. They, I knew, were planning to be at their home those two days when it aired, and I imagined them listening in their warm and cozy den. Twilight in March. Allie home from school, Dana home from ... well, just home. Knowing how embattled Dana was feeling those days, I imagined she hadn't gone anywhere.

  Carly, I knew, was going to listen to it in her dorm.

  And Patricia? I had told Patricia about it, and I figured she would listen as well. Despite the breakup of our marriage, I believe she would have gone to the legal mat for Allie and Dana, if only on principle. Principle and the fact that she didn't dislike either of them, even if she believed my interest in Allie was excessive and unhealthy. Probably, like me, Patricia would be in her office when the programming aired.

  The one time I may have crossed that Berlin Wall between station president and Allie's ex-husband was when I decided the Wednesday before the two-day series would begin to increase the rotation of the prerecorded promos. Normally, we might have run the spots five or six times in the course of a day, but I suggested to the program director that he might want to double it--especially during Morning Edition and All Things Considered, the big drive-time news shows we bought from NPR. Allie and Dana's story would in fact be run during one of our local ATC cut-ins, just after five-thirty in the afternoon.

  Nevertheless, when the program finally aired the third Monday in March, I was hearing it very much like my listeners. Some parts of it were as new to me as they were to them: There were moments in the first section, such as when a surgeon was explaining Dana's operation in some detail, when I found myself crossing my legs. There were portions during day two when I shook my head in astonishment: Had someone really spray-painted such a thing on their door? Had I really helped clean it up? Yes and yes. But already those events seemed to have occurred a very long time ago. Not necessarily in another life. But clearly one when a simple little thing like voluntary castration and the surgical creation of a vagina could make me queasy.

  Dana phoned right after the first segment aired and told me she loved it. She said she was embarrassed by all the attention and didn't believe she was as interesting a person as Kevin had made her seem. But she was very happy. And so, therefore, was I. It was good journalism, and Dana was pleased.

  I hung up and shut down my computer for the day, and prepared to leave. Briefly I marveled at the idea that when Dana and I were through talking, I hadn't asked to speak to Allie. A part of me was oddly self-satisfied--I had finally stopped courting the approval of a woman I hadn't been married to in years--and a part of me was quite sure that I must have simply assumed that Dana had phoned on behalf of them both. But I did call back to speak to Allie, telling myself that it had been rude not to ask her what she thought. We chatted for a warm fifteen minutes, and I was glad that Allie was enjoying the story, too. Then I went home.

  Later that night, however, while eating my dinner alone and then getting ready for bed, I wondered at what I had not done in that first call, and the things I hadn't felt the need to ask. A part of me wondered if I should view this as emancipating. But another part of me worried that I should be scared.

  Chapter 33.

  dana

  AT FIRST THERE IS NOTHING SEXY ABOUT DILATION. It is, alas, akin to flossing; it's simply a part of one's better hygiene regimen. You brush your teeth, you wash your face, you dilate your new vagina. Sometimes, in fact, it was downright inconvenient, because it takes fifteen to twenty minutes, and you need to do it four and five times a day those first m
onths!

  But, almost imperceptibly, something began to change when I would work the different dildos inside me that spring. I began to understand the desire for--radical feminism be damned--penetration. Anal penetration still held no allure, but I began to understand how the biological pieces might fit together for a woman born straight. The line between dilation and masturbation grew increasingly hazy, and I'd stare at the wand in my hand when I was through--still wet with lube, and slippery with me--and in a fog I would wonder what my new body was trying to tell me.

  Marisa, one of my trannie friends from Burlington, had wanted us to call the police about the obscenity someone had spray-painted on Allison's door, but of course we didn't.

  "It's a hate crime!" she'd insisted.

  "Almost all crimes are hate crimes," I'd said.

  "No, it's a legal hate crime," she'd continued. "There's a statute against exactly this kind of personal attack."

  A part of me thought she was right and we should phone that fine young gentleman who insisted on giving me speeding tickets and calling me sir, if only to make the bastard sit in our house and act deferential. But mostly I agreed with Allison. The last thing she wanted was to draw further attention to it, especially after the wondrous show of support she'd received the night before at the talent show.

  And so we never called the police, and Will and I had the door looking as good as new by two-thirty or three that very afternoon.

  Nevertheless, sometimes when I absolutely had to go out in Bartlett, I'd try to look people in the eye to see if they were the ones who had been responsible for defacing the door. I'd glare. I'd walk to the Grand Union for the butter I'd forgotten to buy in Middlebury, and I'd stare back at the teen boys who were staring at me, or at the parents who I knew had signed that abominable first petition. The adults, it seemed, always looked away when they saw me looking at them, but sometimes the teen boys could hold my gaze for a moment or two. But they always blinked first. And while my angry scowl may not have made those forays to the grocery store any more pleasant, it certainly made them more interesting. An irate gape competition? What fun!

  Ironically, though Allison and I never told the police or newspaper reporters what had been scrawled on the door, without any discussion beforehand we found ourselves telling the VPR reporter. Somehow it seemed the right thing to do, especially since we hadn't made a big deal of it publicly when it happened. As a result, we sounded magnanimous. Charitable. Forgiving.

  The days before the Vermont radio program aired, I began to wonder seriously what effect the story would have--if any. Certainly I'd gotten my hopes up before that things would change and people would come to accept me, and so I tried not to expect too much. In truth, I tried not to expect anything. But I would still find myself hoping, despite what all experience had taught me, that things would be different once people heard what I had to say. I began to tell myself that it might somehow make the town more tolerant of me. Maybe it would actually cause the more rabid of my critics to leave me alone--to leave Allison and me alone.

  I think that's why I decided to see Mr. Judd Prescott myself. It was a Friday morning, and the show would air in three days. I was hopeful. I didn't know then that Will had already visited Allison's principal, and I'm glad. I suppose if I'd known what had happened at Glenn Frazier's house, I wouldn't have had the audacity to appear unannounced at the office of the school superintendent.

  Oh, maybe I would have gone anyway. Who knows? I'm not sure what I expected would occur, but I thought it was unlikely I'd make things any worse. And I had to do something for Allison, I had to at least try and help.

  And so that morning I arrived at his office, wearing the most androgynous khakis in the closet, a bulky ski sweater that any man could have worn, and just enough makeup to smooth out my skin. I put my hair back in the sort of mannish ponytail I'd worn just before I'd begun my transition. I wanted to look unthreatening and conservative, and--odd, isn't it, how much baggage we bring to clothes?--like a woman who didn't need to flaunt her femininity. I was afraid that if I wore the sorts of skirts and dresses that gave me the most pleasure, I'd look, in his eyes, as if I were trying to throw my sex change in his face. And I didn't want to do that.

  Allison had no idea I was there. I didn't tell her beforehand because I knew she would have asked me not to go. I decided I would tell her that afternoon when she came home from school, and I would imply that it had been a very spontaneous decision. The superintendent's office was right around the corner from the Middlebury grocery store where I would be doing our shopping in any event. I'd tell Allison I had just wound up there.

  Inevitably, the superintendent was in a meeting somewhere else in the building when I arrived, and so I sat in a little chair by a table without a single magazine for over an hour--until eleven-thirty, when he came back to his office to return phone calls before going to lunch. I didn't make his secretary uncomfortable, and I thought that was a promising sign. She was a young thing, barely three or four years older than Carly, I guessed, and a little on the plump side. But she was immensely professional, and not at all disturbed by the fact that the odious transsexual from Bartlett, the one who was complicating her boss's life, had arrived without an appointment. She simply kept typing some report into the computer on her desk, answering the phone, and asking me every so often if I'd like water or coffee or soda. I'd have to pay for the soda from a machine down the hall, she said apologetically, but the water and the coffee were free.

  "I'm fine," I'd say, and I'd smile broadly. I wanted to keep her as my friend.

  Finally Judd Prescott appeared, coming through the very same door I had passed. At first he didn't know who I was, and I was thrilled. But when I stood up and his secretary introduced us, his back arched and his mouth hung open for a very long second. He was a big fellow, with a wonderful thick crop of silver hair, and he was wearing the sort of gray tweed blazer in which I had once lived.

  Quickly he regained his composure and asked me into his office. "We don't have long," he said. "But, please, come in." He took with him a thick pile of phone messages, and a small part of my heart went out to him. He spent his life putting out fires, and here I was before him, a bone-dry plot of forest and a blowtorch.

  His office was small, but it was in a corner of the building and as nicely appointed as a college dean's: heavy leather chairs, the desk crafted from fine cherry wood, and a pair of attractive oil paintings of Vermont mountains on the two walls without windows--Mount Mansfield in one case, Camel's Hump in the other.

  "So, Monday night we become radio celebrities," I said, hoping I was offering us some commonality. I knew he, too, had been interviewed, and I tried to present our radio experience in a neutral sort of light. "I'm a little nervous."

  "Oh, these things come and go. Whenever a newspaper reporter misquotes me, I get angry, but a day or two later no one even remembers what I didn't really say."

  "Did you like Kevin?" I asked, referring to the VPR reporter who had interviewed Allison and me. "I did."

  "Nice young man."

  "Yes."

  "So." He folded his hands on his desk blotter. "Why are we here? This meeting is about ... what?"

  "This meeting is about the very best schoolteacher in the Bartlett Elementary School. A dedicated and thoughtful and hardworking sixth-grade teacher who is absolutely beloved by her students."

  "All twelve of them," he said with a sigh.

  "Thirteen," I said, correcting him.

  "All thirteen of them, in that case. Forgive me. But I hope you see my point."

  "I do."

  "Okay, then. What about Allison Banks?"

  "I feel that you're trying to punish her because of me, and I don't want you to do that. Surely you understand that she doesn't want to take a leave of absence."

  "So she's said."

  "Why are you making her, then?"

  "I'm not making her. I'm simply encouraging her. And I'm encouraging her because right now there are two sixt
h-grade classes at the Bartlett Elementary School and--as we both just determined--one of them has thirteen students, and one of them has twenty-five. That's not a good situation. And it's not going to change next year. Nor is the distraction that is currently rippling through the entire school. That's not going to go away either. Over seven hundred people signed that petition this winter. That's a lot. Make no mistake: That's a lot."

  "And so now you're using some field trip from the fall to try and bully her out. Is that fair?"

  "I would have investigated the field trip regardless of whether you were living with her. That's the truth."

  "But you wouldn't have pressured her this way, I believe. Is that true, too?"

  He stood up and motioned for me to remain where I was. Then he put his head out the doorway and asked his secretary if the lawyer had gotten back to her on what he called the Banks letter.

  "Yes. I think you're all set," I heard her say. "He had one tiny change, and I typed it in this morning."

  "May I have a copy, please?" he asked, and a second later he walked past me once more and returned to his heavy leather chair.

  "You can't take this with you," he said, handing me a piece of letterhead, "but I'm going to let you read it. You can tell Allison what's in it if you'd like. She'll get her copy on Monday."

  The letter was short and to the point: After reviewing what had occurred during the field trip to the maritime museum in the fall, the superintendent's office had determined that although she should not have allowed children to swim without parental consent--and never should she do such a thing in the future--she had done nothing in direct violation of her teacher's contract and no disciplinary action was needed.