There are times late at night when we
have been talking for hours on the telephone
that I stop and say "Mitch, will you tell me one
of your boy stories?". On one of these nights
you tell me about the days in your junior school
when you were taught to dance.
"There was an odd number of boys and girls in
my class", you say. "The teacher wanted every
girl to be paired with a boy, but there were not
enough boys. So, to solve this problem, she made
a sign that was to be hung around the neck of
the extra girl; that sign said "BOY".
"I wanted that sign so badly", you tell me,
"but of course she never gave it to me". You
tell me of how you longed to dance with a girl
as a boy.
I think back to my dancing classes in junior
school and remember how it was: the girls lined
up on one side of the gymnasium and the boys on
the other, the teacher directing the boys to
approach and choose a girl to be their
partner.
I remember the nervous, fumbling boys with
their sweaty hands and seven feet. I didn't want
to be chosen by a boy, I wanted to dance with
the girls. In 1979, in suburban Perth, these
were the only two choices I knew - I did not
know then that in America there was a girl who
wanted to dance as a boy.
WHEN WE MEET online, you tell me early on
about your dark decade of gender struggle when
you would turn away from the body in your
mirror. You tell me that you have since found a
sense of peace and self-acceptance as a butch.
But it is not long before I notice that you talk
about women with the deepest sense of mystery:
you talk of women as though you are not one and
of women's bodies as though you don't have
one.
When I meet you for the first time, face to
face, you are Michelle. You take me home to your
small Southern town to a red rose petal strewn
bed. One day in that first week, you look up at
me and say "are you my girl?" "Yes", I say
happily, "yes I am". And then, I hear myself say
"are you my boy?" We both look at each other,
the truth of the question dangling between us,
and she is silent and suddenly I am worried that
this question that came from some unknown place
inside me is all wrong and I ask "are you ok?
was it ok to say?" and she says "yes, yes, yes,
I've just never had a girlfriend who has called
me a boy before..." I say "you are, you are my
boy", and you smile.
When I meet you the next time, four months
later, you are Mitch. You stand so tall at
Atlanta airport. You are binding, you are
shaving, you are packing, you are my boyfriend
from Alabama who wants to transition. Once
resignedly lesbian, then butch, for a time
transgendered butch, you now understand yourself
to be transsexual - FTM.
I ask you if you would like me to use male
pronouns, but you tell me no, that only reminds
you that you are not yet how you want to be.
Your answer remains the same to this day, but I
find that I sometimes use male pronouns because
it makes more sense to me.
AT VICTORIA'S SECRET in Alabama, you sit on
the velvet, heart-backed chair while I ponder
colour and style, cleavage and wow-factor in the
dressing room. There are women in both dressing
rooms either side of me and I can hear the
assistants exclaiming, reassuring, making
suggestions and scurrying off to find size and
colour for them. I had seen earlier the support
and encouragement these same assistants had
given men in the shop.
You and I are ignored. At the registers, we
are treated with disdain. I can sense your anger
and frustration and remember our trip to Ann
Taylor in New Orleans and how you had felt
invisible. Much had happened between that time
and this. In New Orleans, as we were crossing
Canal Street, you began "if I was a man...".
Now, in Alabama, I listen as you say "when I
have transitioned...".
There are times when I forget that others
cannot see, hear and sense you as I do. When I
look at you, I do not see a woman. When I hear
you, I do not hear a woman. When we make love, I
do not sense a woman. Friends say to me "you're
going to have a boyfriend". I tell them "I have
a boyfriend".
It is odd but true: you could strip us both
naked and stand us side by side before you and
see quite similar forms, but I can tell you that
I have never known such a body. I say to Mitch:
"I love your body, I love how different it is
from mine". She says to me, teasingly, "oh Jo,
you ain't seen nothin' yet".
The male body is a like a foreign land to me:
I've never explored it. But now I find myself
scrutinising men in films. In Oliver Stone's
Any Given Sunday, I watch the muscles rip
and flex. I observe the V shape of the body, the
graininess of the upper lip, the cartography of
the hairline, the way clothing drapes over arms
and buttocks and cocks. This is new for me. And
then, when I am out, I find myself trying to
spot the transman in the crowd.
As we look at some of Loren Cameron's
transsexual portraits online together, you ask
me a number of questions.... "Do you like this
one, Jo? ... do you think it looks odd to see
top surgery but no bottom surgery... what do you
think of this bottom surgery as compared to
that? It is as though you are trying on this new
aesthetic and want to know how it looks.
I had Amazon send Mitch, Loren Cameron's
Body Alchemy. It was delivered with a
gift card that said Happy Birthday, Grandpa. We
both laughed at the thought of Grandpa receiving
a book of transsexual portraits and the
explaining that Cisely and Ed, who signed the
card, would have had to do.
TWELVE YEARS AGO, as the Melbourne lesbian
sex wars spilled over into the pages of Labrys
newspaper and the glove and dental dam gained
notoriety as twin symbols of either the evil
degradation or exhilarating eroticisation of
lesbian sex, the condom escaped relatively
unscathed. It was, generally speaking, ignored.
Some years later, during that brief fling that
mainstream women's magazines had with the
lesbian community, Frances Rand would tell
Cleo magazine that lesbians use condoms
too.
"Well, not me", I thought. "I will never buy
or use condoms".
It is true: you should never say never. I
discovered this some time ago, but thought of it
recently when in San Francisco's Good
Vibrations store I found myself wondering if
I would really like grape. Perhaps, I thought, I
should really only buy two of those.
YOU RING TO TELL ME that you have seen "As
Good as it Gets" on the movie channel. "Want to
know what my favourite line is?"
"Tell me", I say, sensing your delight.
"When Helen Hunt asks her mother "Why can't I
have a normal boyfriend?" and her mother replies
"there's no such thing".
My mother is wondering why I can't have a
normal girlfriend. After all these years, from
my seventeen to thirty one, she now finds that
her friends and relations regard lesbianism as
more a curiosity than an unacceptable blight.
But not so transsexuality, it seems.
My sister is pregnant with her second child.
My mother has a pendulum, a suspended amethyst
crystal that she looks to for answers to life's
questions. If it swings clockwise, the answer is
yes. If it swings counter-clockwise, the answer
is no.
I am on the phone to her and she is wondering
about the gender of my sister's baby when
suddenly she exclaims "the pendulum - why didn't
I think of it before". I am suddenly on speaker
and can hear her rushing to unearth the divining
crystal. "Have you got an answer yet" I ask.
"No, I'm still waiting", says my mother. She
sounds perplexed and I ask what the pendulum is
doing.
"It's not moving much".
"Well, what does that mean?"
"It means that it is undecided, unclear".
"Perhaps Amanda is having a transsexual", I
say. This is not a welcome suggestion, but that
day, for the first time, my mother called my
lover Mitch and not Michelle.
I HAVE BEFORE ME the Midsumma Festival
membership form. Flipping over, I find the
questions I answered in only a second last year.
But now I get to the 'how do you identify'
question and I am a statue. "Gay, lesbian,
bisexual, heterosexual, transgendered" - these
are my choices. And for the first time, I find
myself wishing that there was queer. There is,
of course, "other" and a line adjacent that
reads as a "please explain".
Once lesbian, then femme lesbian, I now find
myself identifying as a transensual femme. I
have discovered that transgendered butches, FTMs
and transmen - to borrow a phrase from my
Southern lover - really crank my tractor. Twelve
years ago, my earnest nineteen-year-old lesbian
self could not have conceived of this shift. But
just as Mitch has her boy stories, I am finding
that I have my transensual girl stories. They
begin later, but I am finding clues... a tape of
an old Donahue show on FTMs, articles on boys
who were once girls that I have clipped and
copied, tales of inverts on my bookshelf, and a
memory of a girlfriend who wanted reassurance
that I appreciated her femininity as well as her
masculinity.
For the first time in my life, I have a
boyfriend. I am shopping not just at the David
Jones Food Hall, but on all the levels above it
(I have found that I have a good eye for a tie);
I am reading up on testosterone and various
surgeries; I have borrowed Men Are From Mars
- Women Are From Venus from a straight
friend; I am loving being a girl and I am
wondering 'what next'?!
