This deals with transsexualism, gender dysphoria, and depression, just to warn you beforehand . . .
A Cycle Completes
Sixty years ago today I was a fetus approximately three months in the making. I was life not yet born into the world, probably going through the developmental and hormonal processes that would set me apart from the norm and much later in life labeling me as transsexual. My brain, normal in every way as far as I was concerned, was developing as most female brains would. However, the hormonal signals that were sent to the parts department told them to build a male body. I now know that this happens quite often and has happened throughout human history but being pushed out into a very “male or female” world made my life a challenge from the first moments I was able to express my “self”.
The importance of it being sixty years is that it completes the five, twelve year, element cycles of traditional Chinese astrology. Now, years of the Western calendar do not entirely correspond to the Eastern system so, because of a placemat in a Chinese-American restaurant I had for so many years believed that I was born in the Year of the Tiger, 1950, but in fact, since the Chinese new year didn’t start until February 16th, both my fetal development and birth happened in the Year of the Ox, quite a different character indeed. Both seem to fit, however.
I’ve always loved and admired tigers. I think they are the most beautiful creatures ever conceived by nature. I always felt akin to their solitary nature, being so alone myself. Not that I wanted to be alone, not at all. I wanted the love of my parents like any three or four year old but that love came with conditions. The harshest one was that I had to stop thinking of myself as a girl even though I knew perfectly well what I was, at least on the inside. I was quite verbal as a tot and remember saying one evening watching our new black and white television with the doors that swung open to reveal the round screen, “That would be a nice dress for me.” referring to the shapely songstress in the very shiny gown. The reaction to that harmless statement was a look of disgust and horror on Mommy and Daddy’s faces and a barrage of lecturing on why boys don’t say those things and I was never, ever to say anything like that again. Maybe I had been saying things like this all along but this was the one moment that was imprinted on my mind for all eternity. So, it was clear that they wanted a boy and I would just have to act like one or else, though I did manage several times to get my Mom to paint my nails when she was doing hers but at the risk of my father catching me and giving me the “I don’t want a sissy for a son” lecture.
Now, back in 1954, and particularly in my house, sex and private parts were not something one talked about and being the only child at the time and having never seen my parents naked I truly didn’t know that girls and boys were different between the legs. I thought everyone had a Peenie. The revelation and mental imprint number two came when I was playing with two little girls on the block and one said on a whim, “Let’s pull down our pants”. Nothing wrong with that, I thought until the truth was revealed. I remember nothing after that other than the horror that someone had cut off her peenie. I’m not sure how I told this to my Mom and I can’t recall getting a decent explanation from her, only that boys have peenies and girls don’t. This is when I began to see myself as a mistake. They, my parents, were seeing me only from the outside, not where I really was behind my eyes. I was trapped! Each night after the obligatory “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .” I prayed inside my head (where I was sure God could hear me) that I would wake up the next morning as a little girl and all would be forgotten. No such luck . . . and then the dreams started . . . same dream each night but all wrong. Trapped in an empty room in an old house, a witch comes in, the evil one from Snow White, I believe, and with a hideous cackling, transforms me into a girl. Just what I wanted but why so scary? Waking up was always a disappointment. I also began to see God as an evil witch.
So, I began my acting career at a very early age just to hustle a little affection and each night lay in bed with my big stuffed cat, lonely and confused. I don’t remember its name but that cat was important to me. These memory imprints seem to be based in trauma and this scene comes to mind where my mother walks into my bedroom, grabs the cat and says “This is too worn out. It’s time to throw it away.” Throw it away? Could she throw me away just as easily? I needed that cat! Who would I hug at night? And the only words imprinted on that scene of kitty being summarily marched off were “Stop crying!” Stop crying . . . I heard that a lot. In fact it’s the most common phrase in my memory bank for that era. Life just got a whole lot lonelier for a four-year-old girl living behind boy’s eyes.
It’s time to introduce my parents, Leo and Shirley. They’re gone now so I doubt they’ll object to me using their real names. (no one’s innocent in this story) Dad was a good singer and he loved to sing to me. I remember that most. Songs in French, (we were French-Canadians living in the French-Canadian projects for low-income factory workers . . . Montreal must have been some shit-hole if New Bedford, Mass was where the grass was greener) from his growing up and cowboy songs that were popular then on 1950’s radio. Sitting on his lap in a rocking chair . . . “Cool . . . clear . . . water”. That was as close as I ever got to my father and I shouldn’t complain, he put the music in me. Not that Mom wasn’t equally gifted, she sounded just like the radio when she crooned those songs by Dinah Shore and Doris Day. I knew she wanted to be like them, so did I for that matter. But back to Dad, my namesake, yes I was a “Junior”.
