Trans-Sister Radio (2000)

by Chris Bohjalian

  I went upstairs to bed a few minutes later, and when I fell asleep, she was still in the den. When I woke up, I heard her in the shower getting ready for school, and I made a decision. I would check the book bag that would, inevitably, be hanging off the top of a ladder-back chair in the kitchen. If she had finished grading her kids' tests, I would go to Washington that summer. If not, I would stay.

  I tiptoed down the stairs, though I couldn't imagine she could hear me in the shower--and, if she did, why it would matter. Sure enough, her canvas bag was in its usual morning spot on a kitchen chair. And then, for the only time in my life, I snuck a peek at its contents.

  The papers were all done. They were corrected and graded, and my mom had written little notes on the ones that were particularly good or bad. And so a few days later I went to Washington. I left convinced that my mom was mending and very soon would be her old self.

  It was perhaps a month later that I would learn I'd been wrong, and that my mother would in fact have to get worse before she'd get better.

  "My dad says she's grieving," I told Dana. We met in Burlington, at one of the tables in the bar of an elegant restaurant on Church Street. The awnings were up and the windows were open, and the spring air felt terrific. We could watch people as they wandered up and down the pedestrian mall smack in the center of the city.

  "He says it's like her lover has died," I continued. "You, that is, when you were a male."

  "Your father is a very smart man."

  "Yeah, he is. But he said he was only repeating what Mom had told him."

  "Oh."

  "It doesn't matter who said it. It makes sense."

  I was having an iced coffee, and she was sipping a glass of wine half filled with club soda.

  "She hasn't answered any of the E-mails I've sent her. Or any of the letters," Dana said.

  "Have you called her?"

  "I have. In early April. She begged me not to."

  "My mom doesn't beg for anything."

  "Forgive me: She insisted that I not call her again. She told me she'd call me when she was ready," Dana said, and she looked down at the slender goblet on the table.

  I wondered what people saw when they saw us. It was like that night at the restaurant in Montpelier. She was too young to be my mom, but too old for a friend. And I was incredibly underdressed next to her. Her silk blouse alone must have cost more than my top and sandals and jeans combined.

  Maybe they saw an older stepsister. A sister from a first marriage. Or maybe people recognized her as that professor from the university who had had the sex change, and they thought I was one of her students. She still had another three months of her sabbatical remaining, but maybe they thought I was going to be one of her advisees.

  And maybe they thought I was a transsexual, too. A young and slim, newly made woman.

  It didn't matter, of course.

  But for a moment I liked the notion, bizarre as it was, that if people understood that Dana had once been a guy, then perhaps once I could have been one, too. I liked the idea that gender could be that fluid. Maybe in reality it wasn't, but Dana was pretty and Dana was feminine and the Dana before me across a little table was never again going to be mistaken for a man.

  "And she will call you," I told her. "My mom's good about her word."

  "I know. Your mother is an amazing woman."

  "Well, so are you," I said, and I was completely serious. I meant it.

  "Thank you," she said, and she gave my wrist a gentle squeeze. "I'm so glad you're so together about ... well, about everything. Are you still seeing that boy with the bright hair?"

  "Sort of. His name is Neil. But he lives just outside of New York City, and that's where he'll be this summer. So we'll only see each other a couple times over the next few months, I guess. A few weekends, maybe. So who knows if it will last. But I like him. He's smart and he's cute. And you?"

  "Me?"

  I smiled. "Yes, you. Are you dating anyone?"

  "Oh, there have been a few girls. But nothing has really clicked."

  "Are you happy?"

  "You know what? I think I am. I'm actually looking forward to teaching again. I honestly can't wait to get back to the classroom."

  "And everything else?"

  She raised her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

  I shrugged, embarrassed at my imprecision, at the way I had shied away from asking what I really meant. "The sex change. Was that the ... the right decision?"

  "Oh, God, yes! Carly, you'll just never know how good it feels to wake up every day with the right body, unless you've spent a few decades in the wrong one. Oh, it was worth it, it was worth it: Everything I endured over the last year, it was worth it. Everything. And you know what? I'd be grateful if you would tell your mother that for me. Everything she did? Well, it was more wondrous than you can imagine, and more important. I think she knows that, but would you remind her for me?"

  I nodded and smiled. Somehow it would have been hurtful to inform Dana that my mom didn't even know we were having a drink together, and I had no intention of telling her anything.

  I discovered my first days in Washington that my dad had a ton of friends at NPR. He had been working for public radio for almost as long as I'd been alive, so a part of me wasn't at all surprised. Besides, my dad's a nice guy. So why wouldn't he have a lot of friends?

  Still, I was very proud to meet so many people so far from home who knew him. I was always introduced as "Will Banks's daughter," and I liked that. It made me feel more like I belonged there, and less like a complete nobody from Vermont.

  Or, even better, that it was possible to be from Vermont and be cool.

  Of course, being Will Banks's daughter also meant that everyone seemed to know about Mom and Dana. Either they knew because Will Banks had once been married to a woman who had gotten involved with a transsexual, or they knew because they had heard the tapes of the VPR stories that had aired in March. The tapes--literally, the plastic-housed spools of magnetic ribbon--had a certain underground cachet to them, and I saw copies here and there on credenzas and desks my first week in Washington. I'd be introduced to somebody, and they'd hear my name and instantly grab the cassette from underneath some pile of papers or a magazine, and say, "Your mom? Really?"

  And I'd nod.

  I guess it was only a matter of time before someone was going to ask me how well I knew Dana. I guess it was inevitable.

  And it was probably pretty likely that it was going to be Nicole Wells. I spent lots of time with Nicole because she was only eight or nine years older than I was, and she had also gone to college in New England. She did a lot of the softer, lifestyle stories for All Things Considered because she was still pretty young. But she was a comer, that was clear, and I was really flattered that she was willing to spend so much time with me.

  We were in a cab together when she asked the question. We were on our way to interview a chef whose restaurant had crickets and grasshoppers on the menu. Kirsten Seidler, a woman who produced a lot of stories with Nicole, was with us. I was in the middle. I didn't know Kirsten very well, and so of course the conversation began the way most of my early discussions with NPR people began:

  "Your mother sure had one heck of a winter, didn't she?" Kirsten asked, though she didn't really expect an answer.

  "Sure did," I agreed, and for maybe half a minute we bumped along in the taxi without speaking, staring out the windows and listening to the Middle Eastern music that was on the car's radio.

  Then, without looking at me, Nicole asked, "What was it like living with Dana?"

  It wasn't the first time that Nicole and I had talked about Dana, but I honestly believe it was the first time that Nicole had seen in my mom and Dana's story something other than the chaos and confrontation that had been the focus of the Vermont version. Nicole isn't especially romantic, but she was the one who had the very specific idea of seeing if my mom and Dana's experience might work as a part of ATC's "The Nature of Love"--a periodic
series All Things Considered had been running throughout the year.

  "Most of the time," I answered, "when it was only the three of us, it was like I was just hanging around with my mom and one of her friends. That's it. It was only strange when there was someone else there."

  "Like your father?" Kirsten asked.

  "Like that," I said.

  "Exactly how well do you know Dana?" Nicole then asked, and I understood instantly why she wanted to know. I don't know how I knew, but I did. Really, I did. Maybe it's because on some level I'd been hoping someone would see what I'd seen since arriving in Washington. Maybe it's because in so many ways I really am my dad's daughter. But I knew that very second that Nicole saw the same potential for programming in my mom and Dana's relationship that I saw, and once we were done with our feature about "microlivestock" and a restaurant that served a mealworm bruschetta, we would discuss the idea further.

  Maybe--and this may only be hindsight--I knew even then I was going to ask Nicole and Linda Wertheimer if I could be involved. Seriously involved. Maybe not. But I think I understood from the very beginning that if I worked on the story, I could make sure that the tale was told right and that nothing was done that would embarrass my parents.

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Friday, September 28

  DANA STEVENS: Oh, I learned things. Really. For starters, I learned just how much closet space my apartment really had. Once I'd given all of my suits and ties and Dockers pants to the Salvation Army, I had absolutely massive amounts of closet space. Massive! It was like I had this whole new apartment.

  Chapter 38.

  dana

  DOES THE SOUL HAVE A GENDER? I BELIEVE IT does, but my friends in the university Religion Department have given me books that argue it doesn't. And I came across one extraordinary essay that contended that the soul is androgynous: It wasn't simply without gender, it had elements of both genders.

  There were moments after Allison and I separated when I would like that idea a lot.

  But then I would have a drink with someone in the Psychology Department, and afterward I would labor over the distinction between spirit and soul. Suddenly semantics would preclude me from resolving the issue in my mind. The soul was something other than me, it was something autonomous, it was certainly something over which I had no control.

  And so, for all I knew, it was indeed completely free of gender. It didn't give a roiling damn about chromosomes, or genitalia, or which side of the shirt had the buttons.

  Today? Today I tend to believe that there is a spirit within us that is without question either female or male. Unequivocally. Not neither. Not both. It is one or the other.

  How's that for male hubris and assurance?

  "You gotta understand," I hear my old, masculine voice insisting dogmatically.

  "You gotta ..."

  But I do indeed believe--at the moment, anyway--that I will be a woman in heaven. No mistakes there.

  At least that's my sense today.

  Tomorrow? Who the hell knows what I'll believe tomorrow. I sure don't. I've given up completely trying to predict what I'll believe even two hours from now.

  Ah, but for the moment ... for the moment, I am confident that I will be a woman in paradise.

  After all: It wouldn't be paradise for me if I had to be a man.

  I must have heard from a dozen newspapers and magazines after the stories ran on Will's radio station, including some of the national news and entertainment weeklies. But I didn't do any more stories.

  Besides, Allison and I had parted by then, and so I really wasn't newsworthy anyway. I was merely another transsexual.

  And that's not news. The truth is, we're everywhere.

  And so I got on with my life. I accepted the blessing of the time I had been given with Allison, and the reality that it was a blessing with boundaries. I had one summer, one fall, and one winter. I stopped calling her and E-mailing her, which was what she wanted, and I settled back into my life as a university professor in Burlington--albeit one who was still on sabbatical, which meant I had way too much time on my hands.

  Consequently, I went to movies and I read, and I prepared lesson plans with a thoroughness that absolutely shamed my previous decade and a half in the classroom. When I strolled the streets, I was not exactly anonymous, but I was able to shop without obvious glares, and without the need to stop and discuss my decisions. By the end of June, I imagine, I was actually blending in fairly well.

  And, of course, I continued to date. Not a lot. But I met a few women, and we went out. One girl knew I was a transsexual before I told her; two others simply assumed at first that I was merely statuesque. All three were slightly uncomfortable with the notion that I had been born a man, and one of them came right out and told me that she thought her interest in me was inappropriate. Politically incorrect, if you will.

  Twice I went out on second dates, but I never made it to a third.

  One of the girls I saw a second time kissed me when I walked her back to her apartment. She was a dermatologist who lived about six blocks from me, on the edge of the university campus. As you might expect, she had the most beautiful skin.

  She kissed me on the steps to the brick house in which she lived. Her apartment, she said, was most of the second floor. I feared that she was going to invite me upstairs when we pulled apart, but she said--as if she could read my mind--"This isn't going to work, is it?"

  I shook my head. It wasn't.

  Though, in all fairness, I was prepared to give our relationship a third or fourth date to see if things might improve. At the very least, I knew, she would have incredible advice about my complexion, and what to do with a face that had endured so much electrolysis.

  Still, it was clear to us both that in too many ways she still viewed me as a man, while my mind--my libido--was elsewhere. Unengaged, if you will. A part of me simply wanted to pine for Allison Banks forever. A part of me felt some moral responsibility to remain uninvolved, almost as if I were widowed. After all Allison had done for me, it seemed wrong in some way to see other women.

  Moreover, I had begun to realize that although I wasn't exactly confused about my sexual predilections--no one simply wakes up in the morning and decides that she's no longer gay--preference is inevitably more fluid than gender. Let's face it, I had never been confused about gender: I knew as a little kid that something screwy had happened and I'd been dropped inside the wrong skin.

  Now, however, almost half a year post-op, I was clearly continuing to metamorphose. The thoughts and images I would find arousing grew, well, more diverse.

  Some days I'd wonder if there was more to hormones than I realized, and it was the chemicals I was swallowing that were suddenly making me find different stimuli so interesting. I realized, for instance, that while I still thought women were beautiful, my daydreams were becoming increasingly peopled with the male of the species. I pondered on more than one occasion what it would be like now to be kissed by a fellow with a hint of stubble on his cheeks, to be held by a man whose arms were stronger than mine. One Sunday afternoon I grew way too interested in those TV commercials for home fitness machines, the ones that showed men whose stomachs were rippled with muscles, and whose arms had mountains and valleys shaped by thew, flesh, and brawn.

  I even began to fantasize about sex with men, and to imagine a penis inside me. For a woman--and, before that, a man--whose sexual reveries would have made much of the world just a tad uncomfortable, it was downright disturbing to have desires for such basic meat-and-potatoes sex. Intercourse in the missionary position? Moi? Oh, please! At least hoist my ankles in your hands, you big brute, and take me off the bed!

  The whole idea that a penis might offer sexual gratification sometimes gave me the giggles, and I'd find myself more than a little bemused when the image of Dana Stevens having Doris Day sex would pop into my head.

  Oh, but pop into my head it did. Increasingly often.
r />   And while I could objectify the male torso and the male arm, while the very notion of an erect penis could interest me, in the end it wasn't anonymous male body parts that were turning me on, I decided. If I was going to have a casual dalliance with someone who mattered to me solely as a sexual partner, I still think I would have wound up with a woman. It's what I knew, it's what I loved.

  No, it was, in the end, a single man who was inadvertently leading me astray. It was a fellow I saw more and more often in April and May, and who I knew was as bewildered by me as I was by him. After all, we were introduced when I was still living my life as a male, which meant we were more likely to repulse each other than find each other attractive.

  Yet attracted to each other we were. We were. It was undeniable. We both knew something was happening: We could feel our dinners together were growing charged, we could sense the way the coffee we would share some afternoons was oddly electrifying. He had never seen my apartment and I had never seen the inside of his home.

  But I was quite sure it was only a matter of time.

  It was just before the Fourth of July weekend when Carly called me from Washington. I was painting my toenails when the phone rang, and I was savoring something genetic women take for granted: My breasts and my thighs would press together when I curled a knee and dabbed polish upon the tiny stamps at the ends of my toes.

  I hadn't spoken to her since we had a drink together in late May, and it was an absolute joy to hear her voice. She sounded very happy--and very professional.