Some Fine Day

Ugh, Grosse Ile

Ugh, Grosse IleAnd then, we moved again, and I went from being the most popular kid in fifth and sixth grades to the new, socially awkward and least popular kid in school. Although we’d moved every two years or so until then, this is the place we stayed for six long years. Right there in Grosse Ile, where money and conformity ruled the waves. My ‘inner boy’ went deep, deep underground and was locked securely in that coal cellar, not that I called it that until years later. Occasionally ‘he’ would peek out, and I’d feel whole, but it never seemed safe to him, so he disappeared again. Then I’d miss him very much, even though I never wanted anyone to know about this crazy idea I had about myself. I was ashamed and wondered what was wrong with me. In my heart and spirit I knew, but I had no words for it at all. We moved to Grosse Ile in 1953. There was no knowledge even of Christine Jorgensen at that time. All of a sudden, periods happen, breasts start to grow, and the pressure to conform, with the prison walls keeping your true self hidden, get very, very strong.

How did we, as children, get the knowledge that being queer or transgendered, if we even knew what that was, was dangerous and shameful, horrid? That it had to be kept hidden? There were always older kids around teasing, writing ‘bad’ words on the bathroom walls (that’s where I first saw the word ‘s**t’, in seventh grade). There were always movies that someone’s parents or older brother or cousin had seen, and word passed down about blackmail, or murder, or shame. The movie ‘Victim’ for instance, or events closer to home that were only talked about when the ‘kids’ were in bed (or more likely, sitting on the stairs listening to every word). Insults and slurs were passed around with the cocktails. Books or magazines were hidden in parents’ underwear drawers; every kid finds their parents secrets, anyhow. You grew up knowing something was dreadful, even if you didn’t yet know was ‘it’ was. The movie I mentioned was produced in 1961. While watching it just now, I thought it must have been in the late forties, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. And nothing of a s****l nature was even mentioned.

One of my mother’s close friends had several daughters; one committed suicide as a teen around that time frame. One can’t help but wonder.

Speaking of my mother, in 1955 I had to see ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ as James Dean was one of my heroes, the other being Audie Murphy. I had to take my mother in order to go, but that was okay as long as I got to drool over James. I had no clue that there was anything s****l about Sal Mineo’s character wanting to be close to James, who wouldn’t want to be his friend? As an adult, married to a transsexual woman, I label myself as gay, but am not going to act on it. At least now, I can see the gay s****l undercurrent of the movie, and think Sal Mineo is one of the hottest actors I’ve seen. (Move over, James.)

One time in the park, I stopped my car and asked some boys if I could help polish their car. They didn’t know what to make of it, neither did I, really, but it was fun, anyhow, and I was my real self for a few minutes. Another time, I crept around an abandoned house like the hero of one of my stories, having ‘run away from home’. One time I hid a beer I’d liberated from home, deep in a bush, and wrote a story about that. One whole beer, Carling’s Black Label. I liked it.

Who was I, now, when I wasn’t my female self or my pretend self? I was James Dean. I was Audie Murphy. I was invisible and quiet. My yearbook quote was ‘Still Waters Run Deep’. They had no idea. Did I have friends those six years of junior and senior high? Yes, I did. The other half dozen (female) outcasts. I never told them, either.

I wonder if it would have been easier if I’d been a lesbian. Maybe, but, then, I’d never heard of lesbians either. I’m not sure I even knew about gay men. We had a graduating class of 100—who were the other nine LGBT people? I still don’t know. No one else is out. Are they that afraid to this day, or did they just hate school as much as I did?

I had massive crushes on boys whom I’d want to be, almost more than I’d want to be with. Flirting is still fun, though, even though I compare it to a dog chasing a car. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught one. There was one time in high school, maybe junior year, when I was walking in the basement hallway and coming the other way was Darrell, a newcomer whom I had a minor crush on. He walked right up to me, and we put our foreheads together and just stood there, breathing (I think I was breathing). Neither of us said a word; we parted and went on our ways. Is it possible he was as shy as I was? Oh how I’d like to go back and try that over again, only with not being so horribly shy!

I loved all the male TV and movie role models, any adventurous, handsome, rugged or rebellious type of man or boy, i.e. James Dean, Audie Murphy, Alan Ladd. I memorized what I knew of them, mostly of course, that being what I’d see on TV and in their movies. I memorized all their lines. Any time I pretended, dreamed or daydreamed, I was one of them and could reenact, in my imagination, every scene.

My one sister is four years older than I am. My sister may have wanted to be with our mutual heroes, be their girlfriend or do what they did as herself, but I needed to be them. My pretend play was satisfying and a lot of fun, until puberty hit so young.

The fact that, somehow, I was a girl who was going to be a woman, and not somehow grow into manhood, hit me like a bus on steroids. Puberty hit me upside the head so hard it could have dislodged a chicken bone.I knew absolutely nothing about transsexualism. All I could think was that there was something horribly and shamefully wrong with me, and that since everyone saw me as a girl, then it must be all in my mind. ‘Becoming a woman’ physically was devastating. I stuffed my secret so deeply inside myself that it was as if I’d locked ‘him’ even further into that coal cellar of my own making. How could you be ‘all right’ if you could be so wrong about your own identity? I was not ‘all right’.

What I did have, that kept me going, however, were times when ‘he’ popped up, as if to look around and see if it was all right to come out yet.

As a side note, I still like men; and not just as someone to be like or to be, but as a teenager whose crushes and romantic interests were male. I don’t know if being straight before and ‘whatever’ now, after transition, has made it harder or easier. I’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter now.

Anyhow, at age fourteen, when it was obvious that I wasn’t going to magically turn from a girl into the man I knew I should be, I decided to ‘do’ the best female I could. Notice I never said ‘be’, but ‘do’. Fortunately, my mother was very codependent on me, emotionally, very close to me, as I had no innate knowledge of how to be a woman. I copied everything she was, knew, and did. These were not always the best choices, but she was the only roadmap or model I had, at least, for reality. Much later on, I had a therapist tell me, ‘You can’t grow up without a gender’, and I’m sure that was true in my case, as a lot of me froze at an early teenage year. When I first transitioned, many years later, I came in at an emotional age of ten, zipped to about fourteen (not much change there, ha-ha!), and I’m not sure I’ve matured much more since then.