Some Fine Day

High School

High SchoolSo there I was, from fourteen to seventeen, the high school years, ‘the best years of your life’, which was terrifying to hear. And we were all so naïve back then. For instance, there was the belief, and it was stated in almost every song as well, that there was one man for every woman. So when the first one came along, I thought that would be the only chance I would ever have to do this woman thing ‘the right way’. Remember, the only role model I had on how to be a woman was my mother. None of this being female thing came naturally to me. My body did what female bodies do, much to my horror, since I did not have the brains/understanding/ natural instincts even, to go with it, Or deal with it. And after tenth grade, I had crushes on guys. I can’t today understand if it was in ‘a gay way’. Besides not knowing what s*x was, I don’t think I even knew what ‘gay’ meant.

Like I said, to this very day, and I’m 75 as I write this, not one other person in my graduating class of about 100 people, has come out as being gay or lesbian or transgender. Not one. Not likely. But we didn’t know then. Are there some still in the closet, or did my class defy the odds?

There was one boy who died at that time, and his best friend is still single, so maybe…. And there were three girls who never married; well one did, but it turned out very badly. Another became a bit of an international explorer and another a singer. So maybe…. But as ‘out’? Nope. Just me.

The first real person I had a crush on, that is after the two movie stars who were real, but not in my life real (Audie Murphy and James Dean, sexy and courageous! And lately, Sal Mineo. Holy cripes.) Where was I? Oh yeah, John. He never knew, and never looked at me. He died quite young.

I had been kissed already; I was about ten, and it was the boy next door. We kissed standing between the houses. His name was Jimmy. The next one I kissed was also named Jimmy; I spent two hours on his lap one night, and all we did was kiss. I must have been fourteen or fifteen. Did I want these men/boys or did I want to be them? If the latter, I certainly wasn’t about to let anyone know, including myself, because that would be crazy wouldn’t it?

I still had never even heard of lesbians by then. I find it lucky now that I was so interested in boys, though being married to a woman, now (albeit a trans woman!), it surprises me that I’m still attracted to men. I’m not going to act on it, but there it is. I think as a teenage girl, I subconsciously knew that this was one area that was a good thing, a ‘normal’ thing, for a female.

Even before my friends or I could drive, I would go to the park in the next town. Sure it was a long walk, but what else was there to do on weekends when you lived miles away from town or any of your friends? We’d go to the park and look for boys. Not that we knew what to do with them if we found any, which happened occasionally, and involved talking or looking or teasing each other about which one we liked best.

When I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license, I started needing to go to the ‘library’ quite a bit, and that was also, hey, in the next town. Sorry Mom, I sometimes drove by it just to sound honest, but most of that time I was in the park, or drag-racing up Main Street, or out to Telegraph Road or the new freeway, to open up Dad’s ‘39 Mercury which ran much better after my taking it up to 90 mph.

Most of what I was doing were not exactly girly things. Girly things my classmates were doing involved hair and buying new clothes at The Little Shop, which we couldn’t afford.

Okay, moving on; this whole ‘picking up boys’ thing. Is that still a thing? Since everyone at our school knew us (and didn’t like us) we’d look for the boys from other schools, preferably ones who didn’t like the girls in their schools, outsiders, like us. Or at least, like me (and God knows, maybe there were some like me). Not once, out of all the times we met boys our own age, did anyone ever try anything related to s*x, well, there was one casual ‘groping’ which at that time was just annoying, not first-degree r**e. You think women shouldn’t put themselves in bad situations where they should ‘expect it’? We were too stupid to know that there was anything to ‘expect’. Apparently, the boys were about the same way. The fifties were stupid.

All I got out of this sort of thing were stories, dozens of short stories that nobody has ever seen, and never will. They’re as gone as my memory of each single time. Except the time we got shot at, and I was late getting home. Everyone was always sober so we all would remember that. And the time Julie’s car caught fire, that was different. Er, the time the police caught us necking in the park. My stories didn’t have as much fun as I did, and that was pathetic enough. I had characters running away from home, sleeping under bushes, getting beat up, etc. etc. Maybe it made me feel better. I don’t know. Maybe it helped me be able to keep him in his place.

In TGPLay, an online email group, years later, I redid these years in fiction and had a lot more fun.

What kind of friends does a tomboy/silent trans boy get? Whatever she can. Whoever is willing or outcast or like-minded. Or, in my case, poor. Julie, whose father wasn’t in the picture. Her friend Dee, likewise. Diane, whose mother was a housekeeper and they lived with the person in his home. Mary, who was fairly normal and was wealthy, but loved horses more than people. Gloria, a Navy brat who moved away. And later, Sharon, and Judy…I may even be missing some. No permanent friends from ‘picking up boys’; however, I did sort of date one, Flick, or was it Carl? I don’t remember, except years later I noticed a bar named ‘Flick’s’; so there’s that.

Back in school, I always befriended newcomers, but really, Mary was the only one who ‘took’. Another who did not ‘take’ at the time, just apologized, recently. She’s one of very few classmates I keep in touch with, and answered a few questions for me about that time. She wrote: “I had no idea of your suffering. I’m so sorry. Nor did I notice any hint that you felt like a man. Of course, that concept would have been virtually unknown to me then. Lack of social graces? I strongly remember how kind you were to me, a new student from Texas in our sophomore year. I regret having been too immature to follow up on that much. I remember you as quiet and smart. Your demeanor was certainly unlike that of the other girls—nothing ‘girly’ about you. But you weren’t the only one.”

This seems to be a thing I still do; get people started on a voyage to being confident and or where they need to be, and then watching them move on. Is that ‘my gift’? Curse? Blessing? I don’t know. (I should title this book ‘I Don’t Know’ or ‘I Still Don’t Know’, instead of ‘Some Fine Day’.)

C. remembered me like this: “As Carol, I remember you as cute and shy, with a dry wit that would make me laugh. I remember you and your sister, Judy, as very brilliant and scholarly. Unique. The brightest kids in our class. Gender differences would never have entered my mind in those days when so much was hidden in everyone’s closets. Few ever said anything too personal in our class or social life. So in many ways, other than one person, I didn’t have close friends where personal issues and problems would ever be discussed.” An interesting point she made was to call me Carol, because: “I’ll still call you Carol since that’s who I knew you as. Much later, I would find out through reunion news, you transitioned to male—of course that would be someone I wouldn’t know.”

Obviously, like M. and C., others would find their own level or clique. The third and only other person from those years to respond to my questions, said, “In high school, all I knew was that there was an ‘in-group” and then the rest of us in all sorts of Hell. I think each of us was seeking to survive and find some acceptance—but perhaps so engrossed in our own lack of self-esteem that we didn’t really ‘see’ the others. No—I was CLUELESS IN GROSSE ILE! Given the political culture of the times and place—I’m not sure it would have been helpful to know what we know now.” She will remain anonymous, like the others, as she may or may not be ‘family’ as well. She also brought up the fact that there were other class and cultural divides as well, things I never knew. For instance, black children who lived on the Naval Air Station never made it to our schools, and we didn’t even really know the Catholics or Jewish kids, either.

At that time, I had no idea why or how ‘finding your own type’ was done. (Well duh there was only one of my type, as far as I know.) I insisted, however, that anyone who wanted to could and did sit with us at lunch. There was one girl, S., who may have been autistic, or even ‘special’ as it is called now, who was nonetheless in the grade below me (where I would have been had I not skipped third grade), and she sat with us. I’m not sure how much we included her in the conversation, but looking back, we didn’t have much in common with her, and she really never spoke to anyone. But she sat with us, because I made sure she did. And I think I must have brought that dynamic to the planet with me, for we didn’t really act that way—inclusive—at home. I think you have to be different, an outsider, to ‘get it’.

Some of our teachers asked us to draw circles of our friends, connecting us in a way we did not understand. They used that to determine who the most popular kids were (as if we couldn’t have told them ourselves), and when there was anything special that only one or two kids could do or have, like the tour of an ore boat, it was given to the person with the most friends and the widest circles of associations. It seems to have been an early version of the ill-fated ‘trickle-down’ theory that came out later. I wanted to do that ore boat tour so much, so much in tune for my inner boy, but it never happened. I don’t know who did it, but I never heard anything about it. It was another door slamming in my face, like the time in grade school where I had to dance the female part in the minuet, because my partner, M., was taller.

Along those lines, of popularity at the times, and for all I know still true, I just came across this aspect in a book. It’s probably obvious, but it says, social standing in school was based on class, on whose parents did what, how much power they had, and how much money they had. “I was beginning to realize,” it says, “that each student possessed a sense of self-worth that translated into a certain position on the social ladder.” ( ‘Honky’ by Dalton Conley, Vintage Books, 2000, pg. 73.)

In Marine City, there was nothing like that; it was more like the school would be in a ghetto, where everyone came from the same economic background; you made your own place by your own abilities.

I often wondered, as I wrote, dreamed and day-dreamed as male, if I’d grow out of it. Just last night I dreamed I was a woman. I was with my son when he was a toddler; so it was appropriate, but unusual; probably a result of all this looking back at who I was. I still daydream and write as that seventeen-year-old boy, coming to grips with his own reality, not wanting to believe it, and with his family not happy about it. Then things happen, and they turn out okay. As my publisher once complained about my eBooks that some old guy comes along and fixes it (‘and there’s always a dog!’). Since she no longer publishes much young adult, I have aged my stories, and it hasn’t been an issue any more, but it made me wonder, which is me; both? Am I both the child and the wise elder? And what could I possibly have been trying to work through—I mean most of this thinking/writing is not pleasant, bad things happen (“put them on a cliff and throw rocks at them” is one piece of writing advice I grabbed onto) but still, what is it that I am ‘stuck on’? Whatever it is, there’s nothing in my memory to cause it; there’s nothing I can do about it; and why do I continue to revisit or imagine painful times. Considering how much I still contend with depression, I’m actually fairly happy and content most of the time.

What? I complain all the time? Well, yeah…. That too! I do wish at least one of my various early therapists had helped me gain some insights, but no luck with any of them. All I got is a collection of stupid statements on their part. “War! War is bad!” for instance. Duh, no s**t, Sherlock.

Moving Right Along, Doing That Whole Woman Thing