Some Fine Day

Ages Five to Ten: The Fun Times

Ages Five to Ten: The Fun TimesMy first knowledge of being male was announced when I was five years old. Picture it: Andrews Avenue, Milford, CT: 1948. I knew I was supposed to be a boy even then. I distinctly remember my fifth birthday, when my mother took me to the toy store to pick out my own gift. I had on shorts, a misbuttoned sweater, scuffed heavy brown shoes, and a big bandage around my left knee. I wanted a set of cap guns. She pointed out a set featuring Dale Evans, but I told her firmly that I was not a cowgirl, I was a cowboy. The picture later shows me grinning like a monkey, standing with my hands on my hips and my elbows out. The guns are sagging around my waist, and wrist cuffs are on my arms, and a big cowboy hat sat angled back on my head just so. The response from my parents: I got the sort of ‘oh isn’t that cute’ thing that people give kids when they don’t know what else to do and probably don’t know there is anything to do. I doubt my mother even bothered to tell my father.

I was content with being a girl child, doing girl things, most of the time…dolls were great fun, especially if you could feed one to the dog. The things I got into were certainly more indicative of a male child at the time—adventures you might say, though I lived through them. They filled my need to act, and since this was circa 1950, society was such that we kids were pretty much on our own much of the time. The thing with Milford, and the other two towns we lived in at that time, was, there was always something to do; the whole outdoors, the woods, the river or ocean, and friends all within walking distance. In 1948, I walked alone to school, at five years old. Supposedly with my sister, but not always. Maybe I was six or seven the time I almost stepped on a big snake coming home ‘the back way’, through the woods. Maybe I didn’t get kidnapped, taking a ride from a strange man when a hurricane was coming. Maybe I was so smart back then that I knew to stay away from the huge dangling jellyfish I was watching out in the sea, while still timing my retreat to dry ground above the sea wall as the tide came in. I probably haven’t been that smart since. At that time, I didn’t know I wasn’t whole, or at least, that it didn’t matter at the time.

I have symptoms of ‘covert’ s****l abuse. Unless it was my father, and I don’t think so, it may have been my cousin Ray who was a nephew of one of my parents. I have no memory of it, if indeed there was anything, but I wrote a short story about the time he stayed the night with my sister and me, ages nine and five, in the loft area of the house we lived in, in Waterford, CT. Did something happen to me? I have no idea, but Ray was later murdered, with his case profiled in a detective magazine. (“Daylight Found the Bishop Bludgeoned”, Front Page Detective, December, 1981.) My mother never mentioned there were allegations of homosexuality, r**e, and possibly p********a involved.) I wrote my story with some of these issues in it, and in it, my relative was guilty. In reality, I have no idea. I’ll revisit this later with more information. (“Reservations” by yours truly, Boots, Dogs, and the Sea, pg. 101).

Did this contribute to my carelessness about my sexuality and sharing it with others later, as a teen? Or was it the fact that as a hidden transman, I really didn’t care what happened to my body below my neck; I lived in my head. Funny thought that, as I always pictured myself as imprisoned in a basement closet somewhere, like the coal cellar, with no way out.

So as a cowboy not a cowgirl, where was I? In the woods, falling into the river, down by the ocean watching the poisonous jelly fish and the tide coming in. What was I doing? I was floating down the river on a raft that came untied, while my girlfriend beside me screamed in fear as I paddled us to shore. I was wading out into the flooded front yard dragging the boat back up to higher ground while the rain still pissed down. I was shooting my water pistol through the open driver’s windows of cars while hiding in the bushes. I was behind the altar rail handing out carrot sticks to the other kids…see, it wasn’t all total juvenile delinquency. I was lighting all the candles in the foyer of the Catholic Church with another friend. The nun that found us was not best pleased.

I was the one falling through the ice and for some reason only one leg went through…or there would be no story to tell. I was the one late to school because of slides, snakes, and hitch-hiking. That was all lower elementary…later I was the one walking five miles home from school because of the sheer pleasure of woods, bugs, and finding my way with no path.

When not outside, I was listening to radio programs, playing with my dolls, or my older sister, except I never got to be the hero, always the side kick (which has paid off well in life for me over the years). Inside, we watched Milton Berle on the first television in town which Dad bought just because of Milton Berle (who cross dressed, remember). And Howdy Doody and whatever else came along.

In Connecticut at ages five and nine we went to the movies on Saturday, with my older sister in charge. We watched Alan Ladd and Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and, sometimes, science fiction movies. They don’t make them like they did in the fifties any more.

I started ballet as well, and credit my years of that with my not being as clumsy as I would be otherwise, and also, in Ninjutsu which I picked up later when my son came out as gay.