Undercover Girl: Growing up Transgender
Jill Davidson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Jill Davidson
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Undercover Girl
Growing Up Transgender
Jill Davidson
We tell stories about our past to make the future
Chapter 1: Island Soul
I needed a restaurant not far from our schools, with comfortable seating, some privacy, and interesting food. Island Soul fit the bill. I found street parking on the block behind, and then walked around the corner, and down Rainier Avenue.
I got to the door at noon. It looked like I was the first customer.
“Hello, will you have a table for one?”
“For two, thank you.”
The server led me to a table not far from the door.
My thoughts were racing. I was glad I got there a few minutes before Mary arrived. Rehearse how to start. But I’d been through this before, I even had a script. It wasn’t much different from when I told Linda. Why so nervous?
The server brought two settings, two waters, and two menus.
I studied the menu, trying to forget the conversation I was about to have. Conch fritters? What will Mary think? Coconut shrimp? Will she still be friends with me? Tostones? I ordered the conch fritters. Mary would probably like sharing those.
Anne had suggested I tell a few female colleagues. They could keep an ear open for workplace gossip, and may have advice. That had been six months before, and I am slow at homework. It was three months since starting hormones, and the changes were starting to show.
I am a school psychologist. I’m closer to psychologists than anyone else, and Mary is my closest friend among the psychologists. When Anne gave me that assignment, Mary was the first I had thought of telling. Mary had come out to me five years before. She had asked if I thought it would be alright for her to bring her partner to the department’s holiday party. How could it not have been alright? Mary and I became friends. We shared a love of writing. Maybe I could be out to her. But this was a different kind of coming out. Mary would be the easiest. As I change, everyone will know. How do I tell them all? How many losses?
Mary arrived soon enough. “Hi John, so sorry I’m late. It’s hard to pull away. It’s good to see you.”
“It’s great to see you, too! I just got here. I need to get with a student by 1:00. I ordered some conch fritters if you’d like to share. How are you?”
“Those look great! I’m OK. Have you ordered yet?”
“Just the fritters. I’m thinking either the jerk chicken or the curry.”
The server was back, looking at Mary. “Do you need a few minutes?”
“Yes, please.” The server attended another customer, who had just walked in. “How is your year going?”
“I’m behind as usual. Seven cases are due before the end of the month. I should stay late to catch up. But it’s hard to stay much later than I do.”
“You’ve got that long ferry commute. “
“It’s not as bad as it seems. How many people get to sleep on their commute? On a sun deck? Or watch orcas?” I wasn’t convincing, even to myself. “Or write. Except that I never seem to write.”
“I protect writing time. Work bleeds over if I’m not careful. It’s good not to be working on Friday and I can spend the whole day writing.”
I sipped my water, absently swallowing ice chips. This was hard.
“Can you write on the boat?”
“I could do that. But I’ve got a stack of newspapers, journals, magazines, and I like to read. Sometimes I just like to lie in the sun and dream about orcas.”
“You should write. It’s like running. I’m getting in better shape the more I write.”
“You’re right, of course.”
The server was back. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll have the jerk chicken and a diet Coke.”
“That sounds good. I’ll have the same.”
“Very good. It will be just a few minutes.”
It was now or never. “I bet my e-mail puzzled you” I began.
“You did have me curious.” She was smiling gently.
“Forgive me for being mysterious.”
More customers arrived and were led past us.
The server set down two diet Cokes. “Your chicken will be just a few more minutes.”
“Thank you”, I said, looking down at the table. The server leaves, heading back to the kitchen.
Why is eye contact so hard?
“Do you know what kind of sauces these are?” Mary asks, both of us distracted.
“I think the pink sauce is a garlic aioli thing. The other is something citrusy, like mango.” We both use conch pieces to sample each sauce. “I think I like the garlic one best.”
I gather my thoughts again. “I’m sorry for being mysterious.” I feel Mary staring but I am still looking down at the table. “I didn’t feel comfortable just putting it in an e-mail. Mary, there’s something I’ve been dealing with for the last forty years, and I decided to do something about it.”
The door opens, and two men enter, laughing loudly. I watch them, as they take seats at the back of the room. Do I want to do this? What will these guys think if they hear me?
I was still looking down at the table. “Well. I’ve been feeling this way for a long time. Hell, I’ll just cut to the chase, Mary. I am transgender, the T in LGBT. I identify more with women than with men. I’ve been getting gender therapy for a year. I started hormones a few months ago. My therapist told me I need to start telling people at work.” I was staring down at my hands, at the fritters, at the tabletop. I took a sip of Coke. Too late now, the genie was out of the bottle and there’ll be no getting her back in.
There’s another pause.
Mary’s eyes go above my head. “Well, I didn’t see this coming.” The server set down two loaded plates of chicken.
“But, I heard you order the same thing as me.”
She laughed. Another pause. “This is big news.” She seemed to be mulling it over.
“I know it’s strange.”
“It’s not so strange. You mean you dress like a woman? Like on weekends? How is Linda taking all this”?
“Um . . . yes. I dress, like a normal woman. I’m not like a drag queen. It’s more than the clothes. Linda has been greatly supportive. She goes shopping with me. She calls me her ‘Big Barbie’. I’m sure it’s not what she wanted, but she is supportive.”
She is smiling. “That is amazing. You two have such a special relationship. She loves you.”
“Yes, she does.” I look around, conscious of the other diners.
The server is back. “How is everything?”
“This is wonderful”, I say.
“Fabulous.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
“I think we’ll be fine for now” Mary says, and waits for the server to move on. “So your therapist said you should tell people?”
“Yes. I’ve been on hormones. My appearance is changing. People are going to think something is wrong. My friend Jody, she told people at her work, because she didn’t want them to think she had a serious illness, like cancer.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Skin changes are the most visible so far. My skin is smoother, the pores finer. It’s the first thing Linda noticed. When I was a kid I had bad acne, the worst my dermatologist had ever seen. It disappeared from my face when I was 19, but still I had a lot on the rest of my body until this year. It’s clearing up.”
“That’s good!”
“It is good. There have been other changes. I’m losing upper body muscle mass. And my chest . . . I’m . . . I’m growing there.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel great. I am sleeping better. And I think I’m calmer. I used to get such bad panic attacks. You know Red Square at UW? I wasn’t able to cross it. I could walk around the perimeter, but not across it”
“What would happen if you tried to cross it?”
“I felt like I was going to fall off the face of the earth. Or that I would go crazy and have a screaming fit. Open spaces did that to me for 30 years. But here’s the thing. Those panic attacks stopped five years ago, just after I told Linda. And I used to get bouts of depression. I now know those were related to testosterone surges.” I look around, conscious of the other diners. Am I too excited?
“This is amazing! It’s a good thing for you then?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What are you going to do? Are you going to live as a woman?”
“We call it transition.” Plates of food are being set down behind me. Too hell with it, I don’t care that people hear me. “I told Linda transition feels like a black hole that I’m orbiting. Maybe I will transition. I don’t know. It depends how viable I will be as female. We do this in small steps. There’s a cross dressing social club in town, Emerald City. I’ve gone out a few times with them.”
“Cross dressed?”
“Yes. Getting comfortable, learning how to dress right, learning makeup, and learning how to move right. I don’t want to look like a drag queen. I just want to look normal, ordinary. Golly, Mary, I should tell you my name! It’s Jill. Jill Davidson.”
“Wow Jill! I’m glad to meet you.” She smiled, I smiled, and we shook hands. “Does anyone else know in our department?”
“You’re the first. There are a few people outside our department. Do you know Catherine Erickson, the person who heads up the Employee Assistance Program? She knows, and Lisa Love. But no one else in our department knows yet. I’m going to be coming out slowly. I’m not sure who to tell next. But I figure one at a time.”
“I’m honored you told me. I think this is a good way.”
I was talking so much. I consciously had to start eating my chicken, which was untouched and cold.
We talked for an hour, longer than I had expected. We needed to get back to our schools. We paid up, and headed out the door, both of us walking in the same direction. To our mutual surprise, her Mustang was parked in front of my Explorer, a block from the restaurant.
She gave me a hug. “I love you like a sister.”
“I know”, I said. “And I, you. Thanks for listening.”
I got in the car, and headed down Rainier towards Alaska on my way back to Kimball, feeling relieved, but uneasy. Mary was not outright rejecting, in fact she sounded supportive. But someone at work now knew about me. Is it too big a burden, to give a friend a secret? What if she is offended, but feels too loyal to me as a friend, or is in too much shock, to show how she feels? Linda and I felt close to Mary and her partner, but that was when everyone thought I was straight. There had been tension between the lesbian community and the transgender community. Being lesbian doesn’t mean she would be accepting of someone trans, even though she had been my friend until now.
I parked in my usual spot, near the walkway, under the maple, on 24th. Locked my car, and walked up, unlocking the gate. I unlocked the outside door of the portable, and then, my office door. Good, no messages. I got set up for Rosalind. I completed the front page of the Woodcock-Johnson cover sheet, wrote her name, today’s date, her sex (female), her birth date, checking everything against e-SIS. Examiner’s name: that would be me, John MacDonald for now. This particular form doesn’t ask my sex. I got the easel open to her page.
I went up to Sara’s class. They had already come back from recess, and it was time for silent reading. Sara looked up from her book, walked quietly to Rosalind’s seat. She bent down.
“Rosie, honey, Dr. MacDonald is here. He’s wants to do some testing with you.”
I crouch down; my eyes level with Rosie’s, smiling.
“But I don’t want to be tested!”
“This isn’t like other tests. He plays games with you.”
“Games?”
“Well, they’re not really games” I say. “I want you to do your best on them. Some things are going to be easy for you. Other things will be hard. We won’t stay with anything for long.”
“Rosie, they’re really fun. You’ll have a good time.” A familiar voice is next to my ear. What was her name?
“I don’t want to miss Art. We’re having Art soon.”
“Art is at 2:30” Sara said.
“I’ll make sure you don’t miss Art.” Great, we’ll have an hour. “C’mon, Rosie” I say, “It won’t take us long. Let’s go down to my office.” Rosie stands up, looks doubtfully at her friend, and then follows me. “My office is this way.” We walk down the corridor, past the commons, and outside, the sun warm and glorious, the Cascade peaks glistening. “My office is in Portable 4, down the stairs.” Rosie is silent. “Do you like recess Rosie? What do you like to do?”
“I like to play on the big toy. And I like to run. Sometimes we play tag.”
“That was my favorite game when I was in third grade.”
“I don’t like math, it makes me sick.”
“I know, Rosie.”
We got to the portable, I unlocked the door and we went back, to my office.
“Remember, I said we won’t stay on anything for too long. With each test, we start with things made for people younger than you, and those parts are going to seem easy, then we move on to work on things that are made for people older than you, and those parts are going to seem hard. When I say older people, I mean people in middle school, high school, or even college. I don’t want you to worry if it seems hard. I just want you to do your best, OK?”
Rosie nods.
“OK. Let’s start here. Rosie, what word is this?”
“Besides”
“Very good. Read down the rest of this list for me.”
“When . . . said . . . every . . .around . . .green” She proceeded through the list, reaching a ceiling: “able-ish” [abolish], “confide-int” [confident], “solo-try” [solitary], “poor chase” [purchase], “min-ore” [minor].
“That was good, Rosie. We’re going to do another reading test next.” I open the workbook. “Rosie, this sentence says ‘Dogs have four legs’. Is that true?
“Yeah – except for my aunt’s dog, he only has three.”
“But for most dogs, most of the time, it’s true, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So we’re going to circle the Y for Yes, because most of the time it’s true.” I circle the Y. “Now read this sentence. This says ‘We eat milk with a fork’. Is that true?”
“No.” She giggles.
“So we circle the ‘N’ for ‘No’. Now, you read these next four sentences, and decide if the answer is yes or no. Work as quickly as you can without making mistakes.”
She goes through each sentence, and circles the correct answer on each.
“Good job, Rosie! Those are all correct.” I turn to the next page. “Now, when I tell you to start, I want you to read each of these sentences and decide if the answer is ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Work as quickly as you can without making mistakes. You’re going to have three minutes. If you finish before I say stop, let me know. You can start . . . right . . . now.” I start the chronometer on my wrist watch, and watch her work down the page. Then the three minutes are up. “Good job, Rosie. You worked hard and got far. Now . . .” (I turn to the next page in her workbook) “we’re going to do some math.” She makes a face. “I want you to start here, with number 4, and do each of these in this row, then go on to the next row, and keep working to the bottom of the page. If you come to one you don’t know how to do, you can skip it.”
She starts working. [2 + 5 = “7”], [9 – 4 = “5”] . . . [51 – 29 = “38”]. Rosie looks up. “I hate math.”
“I know Rosie… Just do what you can.”
“My Dad says I don’t have to do math. He says girls don’t need it.”
“What do you think?”
“I think my Dad is right. Math is hard, and I don’t want to do these.” Tears are rimming each eye.
“Rosie, remember I said some things will be easy, and some will be hard? I need to know what you can do, and what you don’t know how to do yet.”
“I told you! I hate math! I don’t want to do these!” She is shaking.
“OK. Let’s come back to this test another time. I want to know what you can do, and to find that out I need you to be at your best. Would you like to draw for me?”
She nods.
“I’d like you to draw me a picture. Anything you want.”
She draws a picture of a girl drawing at an easel. There’s a bigger person standing next to the girl. That person looks like a woman, wearing jeans and a long shirt.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“That’s you, watching me draw!” She finishes the drawing in about 10 minutes, labels and all. She is smiling.
“That is a great picture Rosie. Can I keep it?”
“Sure!”
“I think next we should do some writing.” I take the workbook out again, open to Writing Samples. “Rosie, this is a picture of a horse. Write a good sentence that tells what this animal is.” We proceed through the writing test.
She is still smiling when we get to the end of the writing test. I now shift back to math.
“Rosie, let’s go back to where we stopped before. I want you to try each problem. If you don’t know how to do a problem, you can skip it and try the next one.”
She makes a face again, but she picks up the pencil, and starts working where she left off. She completes three more. I see her looking, questioning each one to herself, for another six items. A ceiling?
“Rosie, do you know how to start this one?”
“No, I have no idea.”
“OK.” I proceed to ask her about the other items.
We complete two more reading tests, one more math test, and one more writing test, and now it was 2:25. I already knew she had severe difficulties with calculation and math reasoning, and she had low writing fluency and math fluency. She had become upset again during a math reasoning test and I wasn’t sure if what I got was accurate. “It’s time to go to Art, Rosie.”
“No, I want to stay here.”
“You like Art. Besides, I need to figure out how you did and what we’re going to work on the next time I see you”
“Will you walk me to Art?”
“Of course” We walk outside in the sun, up the stairs. I unlock the main building door; we walk down the corridor, and back to her class.
Rosie takes her seat, and motions to me. “Stay here,” Rosie says.
Sara smiles at her. “Rosie, we’re drawing a vase with flowers. See the model on the board?”
I watch Rosie draw. After a few minutes, she is giggling with other girls. “Rosie, I need to go back to my office to work on things. I’ll see you next week, OK?”
“OK.” She is smiling. I go back to the portable.
I score her tests so far: Calculation, 28th percentile; Math Fluency, 3rd percentile; Applied Problems, 2nd percentile; Basic Reading Skills, 65th percentile. This is an interesting kid.
I found myself staring at the wall, in slanting pale sunlight.
I like my job.
What’s with Rosie? Is it a math disability? Is it math anxiety? Both? Is she experiencing some kind of sexism? Absorbing a toxic message? And I looked at the picture she drew. That is definitely a woman standing next to Rosie. She said it was me.
What had I done today? How did Mary feel? Had I offended her? But she hugged me. I couldn’t have offended her too badly. But now the secret was out.
Chapter 2: Theater
In the days that followed, the generally good feeling I had, letting Mary know, was fading. Did she think I was nuts? Did I take advantage in some way? How was she handling this? I know this must be normal for coming out. How can anyone know how someone takes it? Get a grip.
Three weeks after my conversation with Mary, we had a monthly Department meeting. This time I was on time, and I took a seat in the middle, off to the side of the room. Other psychologists arrived, and the seats were beginning to fill up. Mary appeared, and took the seat next to mine. She was smiling. “Hi there!” she said.
“Hi, how are you?” I said.
“The question is: how are you?”
“I’m OK. Thank you for listening to me the other day.”
“Thank you for listening to me five years ago. You are a very brave person, you know.”
“I am? You’re OK with what we talked about?”
“How could I not be OK? You’re my friend.”
“Thank you.”
The meeting got underway. There were the usual nuts and bolts housekeeping. Test protocols should be in; reminders that Information Management needs our evaluation reports by the 27th of this month. No more need to complete Medicaid tickets. Several people have birthdays this month, and there will be a baby shower. Health Impaired and ADHD, we need to get a physician’s statement. I decided to let that go. Mary nudged me. I didn’t say anything. I know to choose my battles.
The meeting ended, and I headed from SoDo to the ferry. There was a crowd of cars for the 4:40, but I at least made the 5:30 boat. Nice sunset and smooth sailing.
A couple of weeks went by. There was an e-mail from Mary.
“Hi Jill, Janis and I saw that there was a play you and Linda might be interested in. It’s called Act a Lady and it seems to have a transgender theme. What do you think?”
“Sure, it sounds good”, I wrote back.
I was at the same time in Second Life, chatting with a few people at the Transgender Resource Center (TRC). We had been chatting, in fact, about our first comings out, and I had just told them about my lunch meeting with Mary.
“Have a look at what my friend Mary just sent”, I said, and pasted Mary’s message.
Sharon wrote: “Just wait. There’ll be a second message. They’ll want to meet Jill.”
My e-mail dinged. It was from Mary.
"J, just wanted to let you know that if you would like to go to the play as though it were ‘girls’ night out’ it wouldn't bother us at all. After all, we’ll be going to Capitol Hill.”
My jaw dropped. “:)” was all I could manage in my return message.
I put on my A.N.A. blue jeans, blue-green sweater, and clogs. Underneath, my B forms. I got my wig on, and Linda helped me do my eyes. I wore the teal pea coat Linda had gotten me. We had planned to catch the 4:00, but it was more crowded than we expected. It would have to be 4:40. I called Mary. Not to worry, we’d still have plenty of time to talk and eat before we needed to leave for the theater.
We parked in Mary and Janis’s driveway. I was shaking. We knocked, and their dogs greeted us. Then both Mary and Janis opened the door, and greeted me as Jill.
We talked in the kitchen as they got dinner ready. They said that I looked great. I think they might have been expecting someone more drag queen-y. I told them that wasn’t who I was. My goal was to blend in and look as ordinary as any other woman.
I was fumbling for something in my purse.
Mary took out her wallet, and told me how everything she used to put in her purse, she could put in her wallet. Wallets were so much better. I told her how I liked having sleek empty pockets. Mary talked about how she envied her brothers that they got to do things growing up that she wasn’t allowed to do.
“Did you ever wish you were a boy?” I asked her.
“No.”
“That’s what’s different about us. Rationally, if I think about it, becoming female makes no sense. Do I want a thirty percent pay cut? Women are treated like crap in society. Why the hell would I want to become one? It doesn’t make any sense to me. And yet, there it is. I can’t explain it.”
Dinner was lovely, and time passed quickly. It was time to head to the theater. We decided to go in only one car. Parking is tight around the Jewel Box.
We arrived and Mary picked up the tickets. I had asked Mary to order them, and then reimbursed her. Not having any female ID, I had thought that I might not be able to pick up tickets if I didn’t look like John’s ID. We went inside, and chose our seats.
I saw a familiar figure. Audrey, from Emerald City, was sitting a few seats down in our row. I waved “Hi,” and went over and chatted.
The play itself wasn’t great. Men in 1920 in a small town in Michigan like to put on “pageants”, where they play all the female parts. A woman who is a Hollywood director passes through town and decides to help the men put on their shows. I don’t remember more details than that.
The play was over. We chatted with Audrey, and then headed out the door. Mary took a picture of Linda, Janis, and I, and Janis took a picture of Mary and I. We headed to the car, Janis driving.
Mary turned to me in the car. “You have to blog about this! Forget the damn civil war novel. You need to write your life now. It’s so rich! You need to blog about this!”
If no one tells the story, it didn’t happen.
Chapter 3: Normal American Childhood
I never wanted to be trans. It’s just always been there, like my beating heart. I don’t remember a time that I didn’t want to be a girl.
My life is a river. I’m taking you on a walk along a stream. The stream takes us past many landscapes. We walk along the stream for a ways, then it disappears, then it emerges again. But it’s always with us. Sometimes you’ll hear its presence, sometimes you wonder if you’ve lost it, or if it has dried up or gone underground. You see it merge with other streams from places unknown. In time it emerges, a majestic river, fast and impossible to ignore. Eventually you come to a place where steep cliffs make it impossible to keep going without letting the river take you. You realize it’s converging on one goal, its run to the sea. But it doesn’t end when it meets the sea. The sea is just many streams coming together. Sometimes the sea flows backwards, overwhelming you in its flood.
I was born in 1955, the middle of the postwar baby boom, youngest of four children in an Irish-American Catholic family in South Orange, New Jersey, a bedroom community for New York City, with a station on the Erie-Lackawanna rail line. The Village is proud of its Victorian character, streets still lit with gas lamps, the sidewalks lined with tall oaks and maples. We lived on Richmond Avenue, up the hill east of the train station, with the Maplewood town line running along our front yard. Kids far outnumbered adults.
I have a sister and two brothers. Dad was a stock broker, and my mom, a full time homemaker then. We were wealthy enough that we had maids, all of whom were black.
Home
My earliest memory was when I was two. My grandmother Morrison was stuffing hard boiled eggs into my mouth. My mom had told her it’s what I would eat for breakfast. I was choking, trying to push them out, and still she persisted. To this day I can’t eat whole hardboiled eggs without gagging, much as I love crêpes and anything else made with eggs. I learned that I wasn’t the boss of me. There were unpleasant things people could make you do, even if they loved you.
I loved my grandmother. She would take me to Lord & Taylor’s or Bamberger’s and we would have lunch or tea in the restaurant. I wonder what she would think of me now.
But she passed away from a heart attack when I was four. I heard her gasping. The rescue squad came to take her away, and then I was told she was in heaven. I wondered when I would see her again. My parents took me several times to visit her grave in Gates of Heaven cemetery. I learned people come and go. My uncle Bill’s diabetic golden retriever, Ginger, passed away soon after Grandma Morrison died, and Uncle Bill moved out of the house. I thought Ginger would be in heaven with Grandma, but my brother told me dogs didn’t have souls.
I didn’t understand how the natural world and the spirit world worked. There was heaven, where my grandparents were, and where I thought we came from. I had an active imagination, and where something didn’t make sense I tried to force sense on to it. I thought we were immortal, that there was a God, and that there were angels and fairies everywhere. That God answers your prayers if you are good; that boys and girls were different because of what they wore, how they fixed their hair, and how they felt.
My dad was 45 when I was born, my mom 38. My parents were not as playful with me as they might have been at 25, but these were different times. A man was expected to come home after a long day and have a cocktail and cigarette. My dad would get home from work at 7, drink cocktails, and have dinner. He never played outside with me. Never went for walks, never went swimming, never played ball. When I was told to go to bed, he would let me lie in his bed with him and he would tell me ghost stories. I craved that closeness with him. I was never bitter about Dad not playing with me. It was just the way things were. On weekdays, the neighborhood was a female ghetto for adults. Women were moms, men disappeared. On weekends, dads were there, but they all had projects.
My parents’ age meant that a lot of relatives in the previous generation were dying. I lost my last grandparent when I was seven.
My sister left for college when I was seven, and was married later that year. She was pregnant, her belly visibly growing. I asked my mom how the baby would come out. I was worried that when I had a baby, it would hurt. I thought I would hold off on having a baby as long as I could, although I loved babies.
My sister moved out when she got married, and then my mom was the only other female in the house. My mom used to refer to things that happened when she “was a kid”, and for some reason, I thought kid and boy were synonymous. I thought gender change was common, or that being a woman was something that just happened when you grew up. That it would happen to me.
My brother Pat joined the Army the year after Mary Ann left, and so he had moved out.
Even my parents, who lived in the house, came and went. I spent time with our maids and ate meals in the kitchen with them. The youngest of us ate dinner early in the kitchen with the help. My parents had dinner in the dining room at 8 o’clock.
By the time I was 9, the maids had left too.
And I began to sink deeper inside myself.
My parents were having increasingly loud arguments as I lay in bed. My dad would complain about my mom’s cooking. With each dinner, I would hear him yell, “What is this crap?”, and hear mom crying. My mom’s cooking wasn’t all that bad, just predictable. Fried chicken, Minute rice and peas on Sundays, meat loaf on Mondays, spaghetti or goulash, occasionally pot roast, occasionally shepherd’s pie, always fish on Fridays, always baked beans and black bread on Saturdays. Occasional chop suey, which she knew was my favorite, on my birthday. My Dad complained that she never made his traditional favorites. One night she tried to make fin n’ haddie, and the house filled with acrid smoke.
Gender
Watching my mom and dad, I might have developed poisonous ideas about women. That women were meant to cook and clean, and be humiliated if something wasn’t up to par. That the way to get your way was with shouting and fists.
But it didn’t work that way. I’d like to say that I helped my mom cook and keep the house up. I liked keeping her company and she taught me to cook. I especially liked helping her make cookies and cakes. We talked a lot. She didn’t have a clue about what I was dealing with, but our talks were pleasant. I had no way of talking with my Dad. His deafness got in the way, and he would talk to cover up his difficulty listening.
My earliest specific trans memory was playing with my sister's cosmetics at age 4 or 5. I don’t remember much. I don’t think I was punished, nor was I strongly encouraged. I was trying to figure out what was different about boys and girls. Why did we look different? Why did people expect different things from us?
My mom took me to a shoe store when I was 7. After trying several sizes and then measuring my feet, the salesman said I had feet shaped like a girl's feet. I think he was thinking out loud about sizing. My brain seized on this, wondering what he meant. Wondering if it had something to do with my wanting to be a girl, that I might be some sort of hybrid creature.
I was living a boy's life. I loved running, climbing, and rough-and-tumble play with my friends. At three I had a baseball uniform. At five I had a cowboy outfit with cap pistol and holster. I had a pedal tractor that I pedaled around the block. I also had trucks that I loved to play with in the mud. I had an astronaut helmet. The neighbors called me "John Glenn”. My family and the neighbors saw me as a normal boy. At seven, I got a four-seat pedal merry-go-round and was the most popular kid on the block for a while.
My parents often gave me presents that were too advanced for me. At my third birthday they gave me a baseball uniform, bat and ball. I’m sure they thought it was cute, I’m sure they thought that it was just the thing to get a young boy. But I hated it. I already knew that men and boys played baseball, girls did not, and I didn’t like it. There is a picture of me, on the edge of tears, that night. I was probably made to put on the uniform when my father came home. There are also pictures of me laughing in the backyard with the bat and ball. Had it been a more egalitarian time, had I seen girls play ball, it might have been a joy to play. As it was, it was a reminder that I was a boy and there was no escaping fate.
I had great difficulty understanding what I was supposed to do in baseball, in football, and in basketball. My father gave me a Visible Man kit for my seventh birthday, which I think I had insisted on, and a Visible V-8 engine kit when I was eight, a Visible Head when I was nine. These were just beyond my skills to put together and understand and left me feeling stupid. Teaching me baseball was the same. I wasn't ready. My interest in those visible body models was related to my trying to make sense why our bodies were different and what makes us work, but probably every kid wondered that. I was sure I would be a doctor when I grew up.
School
At 4, I was at Mrs. Field’s Nursery School. She had a big backyard with swings and a sandbox. She had an upright piano and every day we would sing. She would read us stories. There were all kinds of toys that we had access to. A girl a year older had me in tears one day, and they told me boys weren’t supposed to cry. At 5, I started half-day kindergarten. I was standing in line one day. A girl near me dropped a pencil. I picked it up and gave it to her. "Such a little gentleman!” Ms. Miller said. Everyone laughed, and I was embarrassed.
In first grade I had to do things that I didn’t know how to do. I was always trying to figure out what was going on from looking at what other people were doing, and being lost. We had our names in big block letters on our desks, and we practiced the sounds of each letter, and the letters in our names. I remember going through a period of weeks thinking there was another child named John MacDonald, and not answering when that name was called. It’s not that I thought I had a different name, or that I rejected that name. But I was convinced, when John’s name was called, it didn’t involve me, it involved this other child, the boy who wasn’t me.
Being in a Catholic school, we learned that there were truths to be memorized (catechism), and that there were mysteries that no one could solve: miracles, the nuns told us. Gender was a set of mysteries.
By first grade, I hated school. I learned how to fake being sick and often stayed home. One day I think my mom had enough. She got me in the car. When she got to the top of the hill above my school, she couldn't get me out. Mr. Preston, who ran the funeral home on that street, picked me up and carried me into the school. I was sentenced to kindergarten for the day.
I struggled with learning to read in second grade, although I don’t remember much. At the beginning of fourth grade, I was switched from the lowest reading group to the highest. I was now with the smartest kids, and they told our teacher that she had made a mistake, that my reading wasn’t good enough. But she said no, she hadn’t made a mistake. During fourth grade, I read my brother’s entire Hardy Boys collection, while listening to the first Beatles tunes, much of that reading done by flashlight under the covers. When I was done with the Hardy Boys it was on to my brother’s textbooks. Reading would help me make sense of things.
The irony of my school's name, Our Lady of Sorrows, was not lost on me, and the acronym OLS was emblazoned on our ties. Our alternative name for it was Old Ladies School.
Children at Play
My playgroup cut trails through the yards, and had hideouts and clubhouses in garages and trees. I played with two or three girls on our block. Deirdre was taller than me and athletic. She often dressed like me in jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers. She taught me to do cartwheels. I know that I also played dolls and house with other girls in the neighborhood and I have no memory of being discouraged. My Dad told me when I was about nine that he thought it was weird that I had friends who were girls. He said I was supposed to hate girls, and wondered if I was "growing up too fast.” I was puzzled. I liked my friends who were girls as much as my friends who were boys.
Our crowd was aware of other groups on other blocks, some of whom we got along and formed alliances with. With others, we had scary fights with rocks and steel poles and lots of shouting. I learned to fight and enjoyed the adrenalin. There's nothing like the sense of power you get when you're screaming and smashing things. Even grownups stop what they are doing and pay attention.
After first grade, I was friends with kids on Coudert Place, a few blocks east of our house. Our home base was Mike and Vinnie’s house, and there were eight of us, including one girl, Colleen. We made several tree houses and forts in Vinnie and Mike’s backyard. The first one was “boys only” at Vinnie’s insistence, but soon I convinced him that Colleen and other girls were good to have around. Vinnie was the leader, a year older than Michael, who was my age. I helped build forts, helped map strategy against gangs on other blocks, and was an enforcer, who could be counted on to terrify the enemy. I was tall, strong, and loud. I grew out of them in fourth grade when Vinnie started designing capes for us to wear in battle.
Sports
I was encouraged to play baseball, football, and basketball, but I hated them and had trouble learning the rules and understanding the goals. When I was nine I was put on a Little League team. During the third week of practice, I tried to catch a high fly from our coach, and as it fell, it went through my glove and into my mouth, cracking several teeth. Blood flowed freely. My coach drove me home. I had two days of root canal surgery. The pain was so bad I ripped the arm off the dentist's chair. The dentist threatened to charge my parents the damage. My parents told me the dentist needed me to feel the pain so that he would know where my nerves were, an idea which kept me away from dentists for a long time. Because I was about to get braces, I was left with half an incisor, leading to a lisp that wasn’t repaired until my teens.
My coach kept calling, telling my parents that I needed to get "back on the horse". But I was a terrible hitter and a worse fielder. Truth be told, I was scared, too scared to get good, first scared of being hit, then of not being good enough, and by implication, not a good enough boy.
I was a slow learner with motor skills. My parents got me a bike with training wheels when I was in first grade. It was late in third grade that I mastered it, and it was like finding the keys to a magic carpet. Soon I was riding not just around our block and to Coudert Place, but all over the dozen blocks that was the larger neighborhood. I knew if given enough time that I could master any individual skill like bike riding, but team sports were different. I thought there was no way I could ever be good at those.
I formed the idea that I wasn't good at team sports because I should've been a girl. It was easier than thinking I was simply a failed boy. There were no girls, either on our Little League team, or on any of the teams that we played. This was long before I met girls who were successful athletes. As an adult, I knew that girls could be great athletes. But those models were few and far between in 1964. This was before the days of Title IX.
My brother used to hang out with kids at the house cattycorner to our backyard. I often tagged along. They would play basketball, and I would play on their swing set. I was there once without my brother. Joe was shooting baskets and offered to teach me how to do a layup. I said I wanted to keep playing on their swing. He called me a girl for that, and I didn't mind. Later I had several dreams where we were all playing together but I was a girl.
By the way, to all my friends born female who wish they could have done those boyish things, I wish that you could have, too. Sexism sucks. You would have been welcome to play with me. Being a boy was fun, most of the time, and it certainly came with perks.
But be careful what you wish for. Each gender has its joys and hells.
Be a Man
I was in Cub Scouts for a year. My mom was den mother and we had den meetings in our basement. We had some meetings where we learned some skills, but often fights broke out. The worst fight was when Tommy picked up my father's hammer and was about to implant the claw in Frankie's head. My parents said I could no longer be in scouts. They let me continue my subscription to Boy's Life, so I got to see all the fun I was missing. I liked the stories. In fact the first science fiction I read outside of comic books was in Boy's Life. But it reminded me that I was a failed Boy Scout, maybe a Failed Boy. I couldn't shake the idea that it was my fault I wasn't in Scouts. The slightly disguised militarism of Scouts was a reminder of what I might face in the Army when I was a Grown Up. Most of the neighborhood dads were World War Two vets, including Frankie's dad, who had been an Army Ranger in Europe. My Dad had a health deferment during the War. I idolized these other men. I had fantasies of growing up and being a soldier's soldier. But being a failed Scout and a Failed Boy, I was not measuring up to my delusion of what it meant to be a man.
The Farm: Growing my Self
My parents had the good sense to invest in a vacation place. "The Farm" was 264 acres of forest and meadow on rolling hills in Hartford, Washington County, New York. Every year they took us there as soon as school was out in June, and we wouldn’t leave until Labor Day. The farm had lots of space to wander off and lie in grass under shady trees. Once out the front door, I was alone for hours at a time. I could spend summer days surrounded by wilderness, running off to secret places, places that none of the adults seemed to know. My imagination ran wild. From age five, I would follow logging roads through the woods, or the trails that my brothers would cut.
Two miles behind the main house was the ruin of a farm built by Elisha Burrows, who had been a prisoner of the British during the Revolutionary War. The site had a house foundation, a well, a road with a stone culvert, and an ancient apple orchard. I sometimes sat in the orchard, pondering that he escaped from a prison ship into the life that he wanted.
My parents bought the farm from the McGann family. In the 1920s, John McGann had burned down a farmhouse, and then ran into the woods, never seen again.
The woods were spooky at night. The open fields were bright as day in moonlight, but on cloudy nights it was dark. Once it was lights out in the house you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The hills would create whispering galleries so you would hear quiet things for a distance, like a tree branch rubbing against another branch. Sometimes neighbors would have parties, their voices echoing ghostly through the dark woods. One of the noisier neighbors was the riding stables two miles down the road.
There was a whip-poor-will nesting above my window. I would be dreaming, and just as dream characters were about to reveal a deep secret, they would start singing "whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.” It was the laughter of the Universe, a koan for a developing child’s mind. Eastern tribes thought of whip-poor-wills as guardians of the soul. There is a modern shamanistic tradition that says the whip-poor-will’s call reminds us to listen to our dreams.
There were frequent thunderstorms in summer. I would lie in the dark, hearing these ghostly voices coming from the woods, low rumblings of thunder, and the sounds of far away cows, now and then punctuated by loud thunder. No wonder I had nightmares. I was a haunted child in a haunting place.
My mom signed me up for swimming lessons when I was nine. She would drop me off in Granville, 7 miles from The Farm, at the Middle School, where 40 other boys would be waiting. A yellow school bus would pick us up and drive us over to Lake St. Catherine, a glacially carved lake surrounded by steep mountains and green meadows of hay.
I was terrified of these strange children. I made a few friends, but there was much taunting. I got tired of the repeated jokes. “I know you are, but what am I?”, “Give me some scissors, and I’ll cut it out.” One terrible day there was a fight at the Middle School, with about 20 boys on one side, and I and two others on the other side, all throwing rocks at each other, and screaming. Adults intervened, but I wouldn't stop screaming and throwing rocks. They let me scream myself out.
Traveler between Worlds
My life ran in cycles, with 10 weeks each summer, and winter and spring breaks spent at The Farm, the rest of the year in New Jersey. I had the idea of living in different worlds, or "dimensions" as my comic books called them. The Farm was one world surrounded by an invisible barrier. At the farm, I was safe from the strange kids at the Lake, and safe from school. South Orange was another dimension. I was a secret agent and I traveled across worlds. The worlds had different rules. I could be different people. I did not have to share knowledge of one place with the other.
The summer I was nine, I met two neighbors. Bobby lived a half mile down the road, the son of a logger, and was two years older than me. They heated and cooked with a wood-burning stove, so their house always smelled like wood smoke. Bobby had a pet pig, a raccoon, ducks and chickens. He had a fire pond, a deep hole in the ground about 100 feet across, filled with water, where we would go swimming and tubing. He and his sisters and my brother and I built a softball field on the hill across from our house. We played ball nearly every night. Bobby and his sisters were good. I played, still unaware why I couldn’t catch a ball. His sisters didn’t prove that girls could like sports. I thought they might be the reverse of me, like girls who were boys inside. They were tomboys; tall, skinny, and dressed in denim cutoffs and t-shirts. I liked them intensely.
Brian was a year older than me. His family owned a large dairy two miles down the road. During the day Bobby and I would hang out with Brian, helping with chores. Those included shoveling silage from a steamy silo, retrieving missing cows, and harvesting corn silage. Once I helped pull a calf out of the birth canal, actually putting my hands inside the cow. There were beautiful places in the hills I found only because lost cows had led me there.
Searching for lost cows, I found hidden spaces that felt spiritual. One was a flat clearing in the woods atop the ridge across from our house, full of long grass, wildflowers, and butterflies. The headwaters for Johnson’s Creek were here. I would follow the creek off the ridge, as it would roll and crash over boulders. I would wonder where these waters came from and where they would go. As the creek reached the road at the bottom of the hill, it fell into a pool, covered with cress and scented with spearmint, and then it rolled through a culvert, to a swamp north of our house. There were often frogs and salamanders in the culvert. The swamp was big with messy sinkholes. You could sink to your knees in muck. If you crossed the swamp, you could pick up the creek and follow it as it flowed through Johnson’s farm, and then it dropped in spectacular falls on the way to Big Creek. There was another sacred place, full of wildflowers and butterflies, half a mile downstream of the swamp. If you were ambitious, you could follow Big Creek to the Champlain Barge Canal, and go north through Lake Champlain down the Richelieu River, and down the St. Lawrence, or go south, down the Hudson River, all the way to the Atlantic. Maps fascinated me. I set about mapping the Farm, to find all the sacred places.
It was in these sacred places I would sit for an hour or two, listening to the hum, or chanting to myself: “I’m a girl.” I used to think I would magically change if I said it right. Nothing ever happened.
My parents bought me a used bike. I explored the roads in the hills to the south, beyond Brian’s farm. These roads were single lane dirt. You could see a car from miles away by the dust cloud, and you could taste the car's dust for ten minutes after it passed.
Our road was widened and paved the summer I was ten, several hillsides regraded, and the Johnson Creek culvert enlarged enough for grownups to crawl through. The highway department moved our barn and carriage house back from the road, removing the chicken coop and milk barn entirely. They’d leave earth moving equipment parked on the hillside at the end of the day. After dinner my friends and I climbed in the cab. I don’t think they ever left the keys.
My sister’s family lived with us that summer. It was fun, and strange, to have toddlers around, just starting to talk. Jimmy, the oldest, was starting to name things (“Cows!” were among the first). I tried to get him to call me Uncle John. There was a lot of upheaval that summer.
Brian, Bobby, and I got into fights often. Wrestling taught me to stop and think in the middle of an angry situation. I had to think strategically, what holds would work when. It was better than the blind lashing out of fist fighting. I won about as often as I lost, and usually our emotions settled after a match. We had to get along if we were going to hang out.
Brian had a Shetland pony named King. We’d pack King with a tent and sleeping bags and go camping in the hills. We’d build a fire and tell crazy stories. Brian teased me about my fears, yelling "John McGann's gonna get ya!" at the darkest times.
Dreams
I had dreams that I had changed into a girl while sleeping, and Brian and Bobby had their way with me. Those were pleasant dreams. I had no idea what gay meant. I never said anything while awake. I knew those thoughts were dangerous.
I believed dreams were from a separate reality beyond our waking time. They were messages from God, or from spirits. I tend now to think of them as windows into the things that scared me and how I tried to make sense of them. Thinking of them as messages from God was fine for nice dreams. The nightmares told me something was wrong, and it took me years to figure it out.
The worst nightmares were between ages 4 and 8, so terrifying I would pray I wouldn’t fall asleep. I had several recurring nightmares.
A large tractor is chugging out of the woods on the logging road. When it comes into view, I see that it is driverless, and headed through the garden toward the house. It is big and loud. I can’t stop it. I wake just as it is reaching the house.
I’m walking through the orchard by the Burrows site, two miles from home, on a dark night. From out of the woods, along the road-trail home, comes a car with high-intensity headlights. It’s weaving erratically, on and off the road. As it approaches, I see there’s no driver. I realize it’s chasing me from the only trail home, and I run. But I can’t run fast enough. It follows me over rocky fields. Running with all my might, I stay only a few feet ahead of those lights and engine heat.