homecomings

I wished for a different body, a different mind and soul, even, than had developed over the last fifty years.

I wished it badly enough that I was now wearing a bra to work under my shirt, and taking it off, with a sigh, when I got home.

Something was going to have to be done.

I went to a counselor.

He inquired into my childhood. He listened to my vocabulary, enunciation and phrasing. He watched my body language. I had a feeling I was not femme enough for him.

After eight sessions, he was still cagey with me about where this was going; I pressed him; he opined that I was a crossdresser, nothing more.

I went away crushed.

But determined. And just as frightened as ever.

Would this cost me my family, my friends, my job?

Wondering if I might not divine my proper course with a bit of self-study, I brought home a digital camera and set it up facing my bureau mirror.

It was the evening of August 7, 2003.

I had shaved a beard that had occupied my face for most of the preceding thirty years. It was easier to see myself without the beard. I'd begun growing my hair, too.

It was time to see where all this was going.

I tie a bandanna round my head to hide the oncoming male pattern baldness. I snap on clip-on earrings, drape pearls untidily around my neck. A bit of lipstick. Sit in front of the mirror, fire the camera.

I download the image, look at it on my computer, and look again.

"Whom do you see here?" I ask myself. "What do you really want to do with your life?"

Something ticks over from A to B.

I logged on and placed an order at a website I'd heard of.

I reached out to give Beloved a hug. She said: "not today, OK?"

I walked unsteadily into the bathroom, going through the motions of getting the hot water, the towels, the shampoo. Cleanliness being existential.

I fell apart, and stuffed a washrag into my mouth to stifle the wails. I sat in the bath, leaning against the cold porcelain, weeping. I looked down, through a blur, at my breasts.

They’re not going anywhere. Another thing that's existential is you can't rewind life.

Beloved heard my crying and invaded the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub. "God, don’t treat everything as a tragedy."

"How is it not a tragedy? You don't ever want to be touched, I always want to be touched."

"Well, it's kind of been like that all along."

"Yeah, well ..."

"And we've lasted over twenty-five years."

"Think about it," she added. "Who would I drink coffee with in the mornings?"

:::

"So, you want cream in that?"

It was. We had passed through golden light, by sparkling lakes and river waters, for twenty-four miles, getting to know one another at the stops or on the long downhill glides.

I nod, handing him crackers & cheese.

:::

Daughter, I came out to you when you were thirteen.

You demanded, at the very beginning, a sign. I modeled for you. I knew the straps, the fasteners, everything. I unhooked my bra and drew it out though one sleeve of my blouse.

"Oh my god," you said. "You’re not kidding, are you?"

You said, "I gotta think about this."

You thought.

You asked me to hold off transition till after you got through puberty. I said I would try.

You gave me a doll that first Christmas: a princess in pink. When we raise her arm in benediction, there is music in the air.

You gave me shampoo and conditioner, in separate bottles.

You gave advice on eye shadow.

You gave silver bangles. I have worn them ever since.

You grew up, gave me my permission, turned eighteen, emptied the nest.

I'm home now, in my room. It's been a long day. Beloved is asleep at the other end of the house, in the big bed. She needs to be in good shape early in the mornings, as her responsibilities are spread over half the county. I have this room because I like to sit up late to unwind, writing, transcribing, reading, listening to Bach, Mozart, or blues or reggae, sometimes jazz.

I also do my morning stuff here, except for coffee, which Beloved likes to bring to me by the fire, in the dining room, where we can watch birds at the feeder before she leaves for work, usually before I do.

We give it about ten to fifteen minutes, and it's an important ritual. She says it's her symbolic nurturing thing to do for me, in recognition of my decades as the breadwinner.

She earns more than I do, and I enjoy fixing dinner for her before she gets in: trout, homemade bread, salad. Things from the garden in season. Definitely not "in season" just now. So the coffee is only fair!

Everyone should have one small vice, and be pampered with it. Coffee, tea, chocolate, a glass of wine, or a small bit of Gouda. But then take your health seriously the remainder of the day. And walk a lot.

On the wall of my room are portraits of a few of my heroines: Georgia O'Keefe, Anaïs Nin, Colette. Lives lived to the full, without apology, able to move on from hurts or to use them to build new strengths.

A small picture of Jan Morris is affixed to the top of the large mirror on my dresser.

She reminds me that it takes courage to be a woman, and that not all womanhood is in makeup, perfumery, and obedience. She's easy in slacks, with her own hands and her own face, a writer, first, last, and always. Goes her own way. I've written this about Morris (It's based on passages in her transition memoir, Conundrum [1974]):

There are on the dresser a seashell, a rock from a stream bed in the High Cascades, and a greenish slip-fired clay pitcher that my grandmother got for her wedding day, in 1884. There's a snapshot of me with my friends from PFLAG, taken at the AIDS walk. There's a small portrait of my daughter in a square glass frame, captioned: "Where you are/There is the sun."

Hanging from the mirror's corners are necklaces and strings of beads. There are hair ties, bracelets, a Venetian mask, a princess doll with a bright tiara. Scattered across the dresser are driftwood, shells, faux pearls, a small vase with dried lavender. These are steadying things, chosen from all that I have, to see upon retiring for the day and to see when awakening. They are, mostly, found, or gifts from my spouse and daughter and best women friends.

I'm hiding in this room, nursing a wound.

It's my first rebuff.

I'd complimented someone on her cookies. She managed to thank me, but couldn't look at me, and I felt as if I should go away, preferably go away and die, or maybe go away and die horribly: multiple choice. This was someone I had always counted a friend.

I went to a meeting, later, where activists were planning to pull together a beleaguered community — gays, old lesbians who had been together for forty years, ministers, transmen, transwomen, queer-questioning youth.

A new friend asked how I was doing. I burst into tears (blame the hormones if you like), told her what had happened, and she wrapped me in her deep and healing embrace and said the kind words I needed to hear.

I'm up late; it's 1 A.M. and I do go to work in the morning.

Dear sisters, lend me a bit of your courage to face the day, and sometime when I'm feeling braver, I'll lend you mine.

I go in way more for that stuff, though I try to have a sense of proportion about it; I keenly dislike grotesquery and try to avoid exaggeration.

Later, I read to her in bed. She likes this "chicka-chicka boom boom" book and I'm just getting into the rhythm of it.

Went to the new counselor again and she was pressing me some about my not wanting to show my feelings concerning last time — and I finally fell apart and cried, which seemed to help us both somehow — I mean, I hear her saying she gets that I really mean it and ...

... suddenly we're talking about options and schedules and it starts to sink in ...

... that she sounds like I'm going to get to be me.

I'm a girl.

I'm a girl!!!

I mean, I knew that. But now it sounds like she knows that.

I think.

And if she knows that then it means my driver's license is going to know that. And that a surgeon could know that. So, it's not a question mark hanging over my head any more.

So I'm not some sort of indecent thing.

Umm ....

I get to live.

I don't suppose she saw the little jig that I did down at the end of the driveway.

Later in the day, I went to the tiny hospital up-valley, where they had re-calibrated the bone density machine for me, and everyone was so nice.

So I drove out to the rails-to-trails bike path along the river, and walked for a mile. No one was around. Only the cottonwoods, ash, black oaks, and a few crows got to see me break down in — this time grateful — tears.

So, today, after work, I went shopping.

I called Beloved to see if she could go with me, and she couldn't, which meant that I'd, umm, have to go alone, and, uh, hmm, I'm dressed up an awful lot for shopping in a said-to-be-very-homophobic logging town, but, well, this was going to happen sooner or later, and since I've got two months' Real Life Experience, better get on with it.

So I planned my approach.

There was only so much cash on hand (a twenty) so I headed for a store not known for its posh clientèle. Years ago, we went there when it opened, and for several years thereafter, when pretty much all their stock seemed to be in one-gallon or number-ten cans. Since which time, it kind of got to be the neighborhood grocery and five-and-dime. For some reason they now have decent vegetables, at half what I'd pay at the nose-in-the-air store over by the university, so I parked there, gathered my courage, went in, and the place was wall-to-wall shoppers, looking markedly grouchy, with screaming-meemie babies hanging half out of all the carts.

I almost ran away.

I mean ... I was wearing a red bandanna, hoops, makeup, a ribbed turtleneck, carrying a purse ... and needing to go to the ladies room ... if anyone said, "jump," I would have broken my neck on the ceiling.
But nobody said it. Nobody even looked at me. Not from the left. Not from the right. Not from down the aisle, coming my way. Behind me, I don't seem to care about.

I was invisible. This hadn't really happened before, you see. I wove in and out, picked out two red bell peppers, two orange ones, two green ones, two yellow ones, some baby carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and a small brick of pepper jack.

But they didn't have good dip, which I didn't expect them to anyway.

So I checked out ... nice chat with the cashier ... and headed for the next place, a kind of miniature big-box membership store that's employee owned, and wheeled my cart around awhile ...

... with the spironolactone-induced need pressing on my bladder ...

... and went to have a look at the door to the ladies' room.

Almost ran away.

Again.

But took a deep breath.

And stepped in.

And everything was (flush, wash hands, check mirror) fine.

As in anticlimactic.

As in what had I been worried about all that time?

So I picked up two boxes of cookies and two boxes of wheat crackers, an eyeliner, and a coffeemaker, and paid with my new credit card: cardholder Risa S. Bear. And chatted with the cashier.

Now for the tofu dip. I drove across the highway, entered the neighborhood's upscale grocery, wandered around lost, asked for directions, got the dip, got in line, paid, stepped out ...

... by now it was getting dark. There was ice on the railings of the cart-return rack. Best get home.

But all my missions were accomplished. I had shopped, solo, as a housewife, for two solid hours.

For some folks, that might not be a big deal, right?

But it has been a banner day.

I understood from an early age that if my parents found me in my mother's dress, wearing her bracelets, necklace, brooch, earrings and lipstick, wobbling about the living room on her high heels, there would be trouble.

Big trouble.

So I learned, painfully and always awkwardly, but with massive will and attention, to play baseball, to hunt, to fish, to sharpen knives, clean rifles, strip outboard motors, clean game, punch boys, tease girls, play football, tie a Windsor knot, wear cufflinks, carry my books on one side instead of in the middle, and part my hair on the left.

It was a relief, later, that my Adam's apple came in, my voice deepened, and my shoulders broadened.

I thought to myself, Now no one will ever know. I'm safe at last.

Over the decades, secure in my testosterone-mandated masculinity, I would drive bulldozers, boss forest fires, cruise timber, and skid logs with the best of 'em. I was able to forget, for the time being, the solemn promise I had made to myself when I was eight: when I grow up, I will be a girl.

Our family went to church. We practically lived there.

Our church was one of those where Communion appears in every Sunday service, small unleavened crackers on a silver plate, along with a silver dish with some forty holes in its lid, each bearing its own tiny shot glass of reconstituted grape juice. The sermons were often about Hell, the place permanently maintained for all unrepentant sinners, and about the appropriate demeanor of wives, and the importance of supporting the church. Financially, of course.

We were given many opportunities to become familiar with Scripture. There were two Sunday school sessions before the eleven o'clock service, another at 6:30, before the 7:30 service, another on Tuesday at 7:30 and one on Wednesday at 6:30, before that 7:30 service. And there were constant Bible bees:

"Shortest verse?"

"'Jesus wept', John 11:35!"

"Very good!" (Head pat.)

I attended them all. Each of the 66 books of the King James Version was gone over at least five times by the time I left high school. We read and discussed everything from the Levitical proscription against eating anything that goes on its belly, or all fours, or has many feet ("for they are an abomination," Lev.11:42) to the prophecies of Revelation. We spent much time on the instructions to the church of Laodicea, (Rev. 2-3), though I was never sure why.

One of our activities was a role-reversal where the congregation's young people ran the bible classes and the services for a week.

Once, I was assigned the Wednesday service.

I gave the choir their numbers, chose the hymns, and gave the order of service to the Church secretary. I wrote the prayer of invocation, the prayer for forgiveness of sins, the collection prayer, the communion prayer and the invitation, and labored for days over my sermon, neglecting dangerously my school paper on the distinctions between the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of geological time. I didn't see any contradiction there between my two worlds; one simply doesn't when raised not to question such matters.

The day came. I directed the music, got through the prayers, and began my sermon.

It was on that resounding passage, from Paul, the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, ending: "...and now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity."

Our sermons ran about half an hour. I constructed mine as a meditation on each of the thirteen verses, drawing connection to love-in-action passages elsewhere: The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46), the question of the greatest commandment and Jesus' response (Luke 10:25-37). The small mid-week congregation seemed to like it well enough. I was ecstatic.

I can do this, I thought. Perhaps I should go to Bible college.

The following Sunday the preacher asked me into his office for a few minutes. "We appreciate the effort you made last Wednesday night, son;" he began. "I'm concerned, though, as are some of the elders, that the approach you're taking could lead someone not grounded in the Faith to take some things out of context...." I was not asked to lead any more services.

I was crushed. It's not all about love, then? So ... why am I here?

It was decades before I found my way to a church that seemed to share my understanding of the Bible passages I had found so compelling.

Fast-forward, now, to the twenty-first century.

Daughter, who is nineteen, has moved back in with us. I take advantage of this by asking her to accompany me to a rally at the state capital for moral support. She's a natural-born rabble-rouser, and, unlike me, absolutely fearless.

We find the freeway heavily fogged-in on the valley floor, which was once a seabed and is now a flat expanse of farmland mostly given over to industrial-strength grass seed farming. It's always beautiful, even so, with mountain ranges on either hand.

Huge flocks of sheep flash by, alternating with heron-haunted wetlands. From one of these a ragged gaggle of white snow geese lifts off, flashing past our windshield in the first blaze of sunlight.

At the capital, we park on a back street in a quiet neighborhood, one of the few in the vicinity with no parking time limits posted, check our faces in the mirror, gather up our purses and walk toward the State buildings.

LGBTQ people and allies have descended upon the State Capitol Building to lobby for a bipartisan human rights bill, introduced by a Republican, written to end discrimination against citizens on the basis of sexual preference or gender identity and expression and legalize civil unions.

A thousand of us march round to the front of the Capitol, where a few well dressed senators and other politicians will address the crowd. Across the sidewalk, about eight dour-looking men, holding placards with slogans on them, shout something to the effect that God hates fags and we will all burn in Hell.

Brave men, carrying their convictions in their hands amid a sea of angry opponents. Somewhere in my heart, I admire them and wish them well.

I feel moved to shake hands with a very tall, quite handsome, well-dressed, bearded counter-demonstrator. "How do you do, sir?"

He almost reaches for my hand, then peers at me suspiciously.

I have been on hormone replacement therapy for two years and electrolysis for one, am wearing my best cranberry ribbed turtleneck, black elastic-waistband slacks, silver hoop earrings and have worn my curlers for ten hours the night before, in an effort to look my best. I'm sure I've got the voice right, too. But something tips him off. Is it the big shoulders? Hand size? Some aspect of posture? Or maybe it's the slight Adam's apple?

"You, you ... y-y-you're a sodomite!" And he withdraws his hand.

An abomination. Mustn't touch.

"Umm ... I don't think so, sir. I've been married to the same woman for twenty-eight years." And worked five days a week the whole time, took my kids to your Vacation Bible Schools, and paid my taxes, same as you, I mean to add. And: I did it your way, dammit, until I could no longer stand having to bear false witness.

And: I almost lasted it out, all for you. So you could give me a little credit here.

But he is gone already. He fades back into the tiny pack, glaring at the crowded steps above me, shouting with redoubled effort.

My daughter puts her arm around my shoulder as we march up the marble steps past them, looks me straight in the eye to be sure I'm paying attention, and says "I so love you, Mamacita."

It was one of those stunningly defining moments that give life to a parent's soul.

And we go and stand with my people, gay, straight, trans, queer, and intersex: grandmothers, infants, school children, mothers, kids in purple hair, old men in their seventies and into their eighties. A couple of white-haired women standing near us have been together for forty years. One achingly beautiful child in a rainbow dress, with rainbow ribbons in her hair, poses with her moms, one white, one black, for an entire roll of pictures, her smile growing more and more radiant with each click.

We hear, enjoy and applaud the speeches, but my daughter and I find ourselves more interested in the inscription on the wall behind the podium. This was carved, in letters a foot high, to the left of the entrance many years ago:

A FREE STATE
IS FORMED AND IS MAINTAINED
BY THE VOLUNTARY UNION
OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE
JOINED TOGETHER
UNDER THE SAME BODY OF LAWS
FOR THE COMMON WELFARE
AND THE SHARING OF BENEFITS
JUSTLY APPORTIONED.

As in!

"Justly apportioned."

No one is to be denied equitable access to the commons.

I remember then the passage from the prophet for whom one of my sons is named: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6:8). And at that moment, I join hands with my queer sisters and brothers, and sing, weeping.

:::

As we drive home in the uncharacteristically bright winter sunshine, my daughter asks about the apparent belief system of the men who had shouted at us to go back in the closet. "What do you and Mommy-One think about the Bible and gay people?"

What to say? "Judge not, lest you be judged" will come across as a little pat. Everyone knows that one already, and the bigots never seem to think it applies to them....

So I resort to a story of a story.

"Well, dear, people used to crowd around the country rabbi and ask him things.

Some of them were hotshot lawyers whose job was to know all the proof texts, so the power structure dudes sent them to hang out in the crowds and see if they could trip him up on his teachings and get him arrested for stirring up the people. Agents provocateurs. The same sort of thing that has been tried on labor organizers, civil rights leaders, peace march people."

"Trolls!"

"Right. So this young man, who's trained all his adult life in the laws of Moses, stands up and says, "Hey! Rabbi! What do I do to get to live forever?'

"It's a trick question. The two ruling parties at this time are the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees don't believe in the afterlife and the Pharisees do. Technically this rabbi, or spiritual teacher, is a Pharisee, but he's been on their case about paying too much attention to the letter of the law and not enough attention to mercy. This question is kind of about the letter of the law, since the answer needs to be from the Torah, the books of Moses. And his answer is supposed to show which box he's in, Sadducee or Pharisee. It's really about authority. The Pharisees are asserting it here.

"'What does it say in your Book say about that?' replies the country rabbi.

"The young lawyer knew the answer all along, so he recites: '"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

"'That's right', says the rabbi. 'If you do that you're gonna live forever.'

"Everybody's standing around, looking at these two, and thinking, uh-huh, the quick-thinking traveling preacher has got the big shots by the beard again.

"So the lawyer looks around, sees people grinning at him, and he sticks out his lower lip and spreads his hands in a kind of apologetic shrug.

"'Sure, but that's just it. Who exactly is my neighbor?'

"The rabbi looks him over. The kid has been moving up through the infrastructure, but he seems earnest. Might be worth saving.

"'Tell you what. Sit down a minute, I've got a story for you.' Everybody moves in close to hear the story.

"'There's this traveling salesman, puts up a load of shoes or whatever on his donkey to sell down at Jericho. On the way there, in the middle of nowhere, a bunch of local toughs relieve him of his stock, his gear, his transportation, his clothes, and his last water bottle, and beat him senseless for good measure. Then they clear out, leaving him there for the vultures to find.

"'After awhile, along comes a priest. He sees the guy lying there, not moving, covered with, by this time, dried, caked blood.'

"Everyone nods. They know the priest is in a bind; he'd go over and check the situation out, but he has responsibilities — spelled out in detail in Leviticus — to the people up in Jerusalem. If he handles this person, he'll have to touch the blood — and/or the nakedness — of another man — and that means he won't be able to do his job, because he'll have been polluted.

"'So he goes around a ways off, making a mental note to send some flunky back to check out the situation.'

"'Nothing happens for awhile, and the vultures are starting to pay attention. But then here comes this other guy. He's a lawyer, of course, just like you.'

"Significant glance; crowd chuckles. Again, a good person with duties and responsibilities who mustn't get polluted. He skips on by, maybe making the same mental note as the priest. These people are notable in that they not only represent the Law but are obeying it in this instance.

"'So he's been gone awhile, and the sun's getting really hot now, and the first couple of vultures are hopping toward the body, and now a third person shows up.

"'Any idea who?'

"Here the lawyer shakes his head. People in the surrounding audience turn to left and right, raise their eyebrows, make a few suggestions to one another, shaking their heads, some of them shrugging.

"'Well, as luck would have it, he's from Samaria.'

"Here a collective groan rises up from all the rabbi's hearers.

"They should have known; they can see where the story's going now, and almost nobody's happy with it.

"Samaritans, like boiled lobster, infants born out of wedlock, fried shrimp, nocturnal emissions, lepers, roast rattlesnake, men with crushed testicles, bacon bits, camels, bloody victims, menstruating women, truculent sons, fried rock badgers, baked hares, pickled sea urchins, boiled octopus, male homosexuals, dead cows, shirts made of two or more kinds of fabric, or any amount of interest charged on a loan are, of course, abominations, meaning God can't abide 'em, and so neither must the chosen people.

"The complete list is very long.

"You can find it in a book in the top drawer of the dresser in every motel room in the United States.

"You don't marry a Samaritan, eat with a Samaritan, pray with a Samaritan, sleep with a Samaritan, give the time of day to a Samaritan, sit down to a cup of tea with a Samaritan, or even read a book by a Samaritan, if you can possibly help it. Because, although they are not Jewish, they insist on worshiping the Jewish God, but haven't got the rituals and such down right and so technically can't possibly get to Heaven.

"You can imagine the expression on the young lawyers' face at this point. His whole career is jeopardized if he goes where the rabbi is going with this.

"So the rabbi says: 'The vultures hop away as Mr. Abomination walks over to check out the body. He discovers signs of life, rolls the salesman over, gives him a drink of water from his own bottle, pulls off his own cloak and wraps him in it — blood all over it by now — loads him on his Samaritan-sweat-bedewed donkey — maybe has to leave behind some of his own load, I forget — and slowly and carefully, falling farther and farther behind on his own schedule as he does so, because there's a really broken-up man saddle-bagged across his donkey's back, and the road's rough — takes him to the next little town down the way.

"'Right about sunset he pulls up outside the local roadhouse, unloads the still half-conscious victim from the donkey and carries him in, and asks the manager for medical attention, a bath, hot meal, and a bed for him.

"'Look here, man,' says the Samaritan to the manager, 'I'm really running behind now, so I gotta keep going' — here he hands him his Visa card—'just run a tab on this poor guy while I'm gone, and when I make my return run, I'll settle up with you. Cool?'

"Cool. But don't let's shake on it, the manager says with his eyes.

"'Kay,' says the rabbi, standing up and brushing off his robe a bit, looking around at the crowd, then returning his piercing gaze to the young lawyer. 'Of these three, which one was a neighbor to the shoe salesman?'

"The lawyer looks up at him. He can't even bring himself to use the word that names the abomination. 'The ... the ... the one that was kind to him,' he says, reluctantly.

"The rabbi gives him that unsettlingly kindly smile he's famous for. 'That's right,' he says, softly. 'Do just like him, and you will live forever.'"

Daughter has been watching the roadside pass by as I'm telling the story. The sun's going down, setting spangled fire to the mountains on our left, and there are flocks of Canada geese gliding down to the rivers and lakes all around.

I wonder if she's been listening.

She reaches across and briefly takes my hand.

I'd been asked to bring in all my makeup; she didn't like my mascara and lipstick and sent some of my companions on a quick trip to the department store across the hall.

Then we did face.

All this sounds simple enough, but I was in that chair three hours.

Okay, now a quick drive back to the library. I understood there would be a potluck, but it was a full scale surprise birthday party. Twenty of my fellow library workers were there, and some special friends, and some of my student workers as well.

There were presents (more makeup), and speeches.

At the gas stations, convenience stores, and restaurants it's been "ma'am" the whole way. I had no idea there were so many nice people!

For some reason, my anti-androgen, which is also a diuretic, seemed to be affecting me more than it had for awhile, and I found myself going to the restroom at almost every rest stop on the way. And no one screamed, or snatched her kids away, or called her husband to come beat me up. No, I stood in lines. And it was "how are you doing, dear?"

Great! And you?

At the hotel the uniformed gentlemen took me in hand and got me to my room with a kindliness and attentiveness that surpassed anything I had ever experienced in hotels. Flustered, I lost a lens somewhere from my glasses, and, bless them, they found it and brought it to me.

My room already had an occupant, which worried the uniformed gentleman, but I explained that I had a roommate, and that she had engaged the room the previous night. He found a note on the bed that was addressed to me from her, and was reassured. I gave him what I hoped was a generous tip, based on advice I had begged from the clerk.

My roommate showed up ten minutes later. When she had seen me last, I had a beard, and I had brought her up to speed, but only via e-mail. So we found we had a lot to discuss. The talk lasted an hour, and ended in a hug — the kind you only get, if you're a girl, from your really good girl friends.

My presentation was first thing in the morning. The projector was being balky, so I called the home office and had them talk me through the problem, which of course had to do with the laptop's operating system, and then I spent the next hour talking about my project at the Library to a room full of interested people — really the best group I've ever had.

I could tell I was "out of voice" after the first fifteen minutes, but all that came of that was that afterward another lady came up and offered me a cough drop!

I went to the meals and receptions, and it was during one of the chats in this setting that I had my most confirming experience to date: I was talking about my kids and a remark was made that would only make sense if I was understood to be the birth mom!

It's this easy? Passing?

Next, I visited the grand old mansion with its collection, including the stars of the Huntington, the Gainsborough Blue Boy and Lawrence's stunning Pinkie. I remarked to the young lady guarding the room that it was great to see the Blue Boy and all that, but frankly I preferred Gainsborough's watercolor studies in the other exhibit. She replied that she really liked the watercolors too.

Overcome by all that I had seen, I walked to a shaded fountain outside and called Beloved in Eugene, on the cell phone. She agreed it was sad she wasn't there with me, and told me that my mom had called — "she sounded kind of upset."

:::

I lay down in the grass, looking up into the "blue vault of the heav'ns" and dialed my mom's number. She picked up immediately.

"Hey there," I said. "Something up?"

"Well, dear, it's your daddy. I don't have good news for you."

"Have I lost my dad?" It could easily be heart attack, stroke, embolism. I felt a sob gathering.

"Well, sort of. He's the most upset I've ever seen him."

"Oh." That's all. Relief. "So you showed him his letter?"

"Yes, though, mind you, I don't think he's actually read it. He has said the most ugly, ugly things about you all day. And he said he would never talk to you again."

"Well, that would be about what we should expect at this point. Girl, you know he'll be that way for weeks — and I predict — he'll chase you off to go shopping at some point and his curiosity will get the better of him and he'll look it over again. He's a sucker for science, just like me. That was the best letter I had in me, and it's all verifiable."

"I know that, it's just — he can be so poisonous. And of course it gets to be all my fault, and the blood of my family, and..."

"Well, now, I remember he told you once you ought to leave him because everybody in his family was crazy. I'd be just more proof of that along with his whole crowd!"

"That's true enough."

"Hey!"

"You said it, I didn't."

"So you could tell him all that."

"I just might."

"So are you gonna come see me, then?"

"Yes, I am!"

"And don't worry about the old man, I was gonna be a shock to him from the time I was six, I just kept putting it off to try and outlive him."

"I told him that. I said, 'that child has never really lived, and it was all for you.'"

"Well, no need to try to make him feel guilty."

"Listen, the way he was ranting about you, I would try anything I could get my hands on. I mean, it was ugly, ugly things."

"Well, let's just figure out how to get you out here. I bet with some time alone he'll start thinking through things a little bit."

"Well, I hope so, son — daughter — whatever you are — Risa."

"Love ya."

"Love you too."

I switched off the phone, rolled over and wept into the grass.

10.

I was setting up an exhibit on gay history with my friends over at the City Library — well, they were setting it up and I was kibitzing — and I ran into the glass doors twice, so I was sent on an errand for my own protection, to find some LGBTQI books and videos to use in the exhibit ... and so that's how I found myself climbing the big spiral staircase with an armload of books from the second to the third floor ... and met this guy coming down.

He's a good 6'1".

About forty-five. Trim mustache. Khaki shirt and shorts. Lean, strong body. Tanned. Even his legs are tanned. He looks like he's spent the last six months excavating ruins in Egypt, and reading Homer in the original on the lunch breaks.

I swooned. And he noticed.

Damn! I may even have blushed.

Now, he could have been amused. He could even have laughed out loud. I'm, to put it nicely, not young.

Instead, he smiled graciously. Wooooooo.

When I got to the landing, I did not turn to look back.

Some things are ... not meant to be.

But it was nice that he was nice about it.

:::

A day later, I'm with Beloved (which has a lot to do with what is or is not meant to be) at the local department store and she goes to buy a throw rug and I head for the outdoor sports counter. There are two guys there, an older manager and a youngish salesman, against a background of things I used to know about, like pump action twelve gauge shotguns and stacked boxes of hollow point 180 grain .30-06 ammunition, and the like.

"Yes, ma'am, and what can we do for you today?" says young Hugh. He looks like he's been out of high school about four years, didn't go to college, has two kids by now and trips over toys in the yard about every third day. Sunday school regular, too. I'd be wary of him but old Fred is right there, just like Hugh but thirty years farther on, and more steeped in retail wisdom. I'll chance it.

"I'm ready for my fishing license, if you please, without tags or hunting."

"Certainly," says Hugh, and I give him my driver's license. He swipes it through the machine, it thinks for about fifteen seconds, and prints out a fishing license, which he turns around and places on the counter in front of me to sign.

But I see a problem.

"Umm, I'm so sorry, I can't use this one; it has my old name on it."

Whaaaa? Hugh's mouth falls open. He takes a look at the license, and freezes. Fred comes over, ready to do damage control.

Beloved arrives at about this time, and, feeling tension in the air, checks me out from a discreet distance. I seem calm enough, so she turns the cart around and heads for the sewing supplies.

Old Fred unsticks Hugh from whatever is panicking him and puts him to work confirming with the Fish and Game office, eighty miles to our north. Their computer has scanned my driver's license number and printed out a record from their own database. Clearly, their database doesn't automatically update when the Department of Motor Vehicles updates theirs.

I had half expected this. After all, how many men change their names? Some places, a name change gets sticky, and Fish and Game can be among the worst. Their system does other things besides give you the right to chase undersized fish around with thirty thousand dollar boats — for example, it's used to track deadbeat dads (and maybe impound their thirty thousand dollar boats).

Fish and Game looks at DMV, corrects my record, Hugh hangs up and reprints, and there's my new fishing license, ready to sign. It still says Male, but, then, so does my DL. Only, now there's one less problem if a trooper asks me if I've got the right to wave a fly rod over the bow of my kayak.

"Thank you, sir," I say to Hugh. It would be a bit rude to curtsy, but it's in my voice. His eyes narrow a bit.

They've been lying to him about me in Sunday School, I can tell.

Fred leans across the counter, a bit in front of Hugh. "You are welcome," he says, in his best retailer's manner. "Thank you for your patience."

On our way out, Beloved checks up on me.

"How are you doing, dear?" she asks, with a small Public Display of Affection.

"Really well, actually. How about if I take the rest of the day off and go paddle around on the lake?"

:::

A couple of months ago, I went for a walk with a dear friend, hashing out some plans for the PFLAG fundraiser, and mentioned to her that I would soon have my official name change in hand. "Oh, that's wonderful, my dear," she said. "You should have a naming ceremony." She checked my expression, and sensing assent, said, "I'd like to do that for you..."

We found stone lanterns and candles lit on the front doorstep, and a sign, "come in." So we did.

They have a little alcove in the entryway, lit dramatically from above, with a Japanese scroll, a plant, a Nepalese bell, and a crone's staff. The house seems larger than it is, because it's well laid out, and the windows open onto brilliantly thought-out gardens that seem to reach into the distance, even though it is a tiny lot and the house is very near the street.

Beloved and I sat side by side, holding hands. I wore a simple black print dress and a four-string necklace of faux pearls, and she wore a red crafter's dress with dime-sized mirrors embroidered onto it at intervals.

Nearly all present, some dozen, were women. Two were gay men, and one was a two-spirit shaman, specially invited to help with the ritual as she is a pipe carrier. She began with an explanation of the pipestem and the pipestone bowl, both handmade and very sacred, and then invoked the six directions with prayers to father sky, mother earth, and each of the four winds. Her movements were among the most graceful I had ever witnessed, a fluid epiphany of concentrated, effortless grace.

The candle was lit, and a poem by my former self was read aloud by our other ritual leader, which was "Handcraft," a depiction of our wedding day 28 years ago.

One gave me a feather and said that it was to "welcome you into the company of women." I spent much of this time crying, and when I lost track of my handkerchief, a dear heart stole quietly away from the circle and found a lovely box of tissues for me.

Beloved was recognized by our ritual leader with a beautiful speech, thanking her for her support of me, and presenting her with a miniature potted rose bush bearing several carnation-colored blooms and one peach-colored one.

We then stood up and our leader read a blessing she had written. I was given a dozen white roses and a scroll, made by our leader's daughter, with my new name on it. Everyone applauded. I was then asked to blow out the candle and received it as well.

The ritual was now declared to be over, and everyone headed for the dining room to have potluck dessert. One of the men, known for buying cakes to bring to meetings, had baked, from scratch, a superb German chocolate cake for the occasion. I had only a few bites, having eaten everything in our house not nailed down, out of sheer nervousness, before we left.

Beloved and one of our gracious hostesses gathered up my "loot" and took it all to our car while I collected my goodbye hugs. When I got to the car, I climbed into the passenger side, shut the door, looked over at her, and burst into tears.

"That was really something," she offered.

"Omigod," I blubbered.

"You aren't going to accuse me anymore of being the one that has all the friends, I hope."

"Omigod."

"We go now?"

"Omigod."

"Righto." She started the car, and we splashed away into the night's rain.

:::

I have been preoccupied with fishing for some years, as a result of my dad's influence. In a way it was the last hurrah of my many "manly" activities.

I haven't been out in the "kayak" much this year, except for just paddling. There have been a number of factors. The weather has been rough, and I'm more susceptible to cold and exposure than I remember; my name change was so slow, and the Fish and Game are so paranoid about name changes; I'm increasingly domestic; I'm not as predatory as before; I've been active in anti-fascism, and the few nice days have coincided with the interminable indoor activist meetings.

Since I'm a chair-bound office worker, I'm developing a terrible roll around my middle. We have a walking group that does a mile around the campus on breaks, but I can't always go; and mowing is exercise but — you know?

So, yesterday, immediately upon getting home from work, I changed into a bra cami, shorts and sun visor, dug out the boat from the garage, slipped it into the back of the station wagon (it's that small!) and headed for the reservoir, eight miles point to point.

Such a beautiful place to live!

All my necessary gear is in the boat, and I carry it to the water in one trip, one-handed. I've carried heavier suitcases. I'm glad I chose this boat because not only is it durable, stable and seaworthy, it's very light —17 pounds unloaded. This is proving to be more and more important as I lose muscle mass.

I set the boat down on the swimming beach at the marina, put on my vest, assembled the paddle, arranged the few items of fishing gear, clipped the landing net onto the deck line, assembled my fragile old fly rod, and tied a streamer on a nine-foot leader.

Yes, apparently I can still do and enjoy these things.

This type of boat, neither canoe nor kayak, is not easy to get in and out of, so I like to launch from flat, shelving locations. It's like climbing into a motorcycle sidecar. So one is still practically on land when setting out, and this activity tends to draw a crowd of onlookers. They're sure I'm going to have to climb out and "do it right," but one shove with the paddle on the sand and a little hunch forward, and you're ten feet out and drifting away.

There were eight three-meter sailboats racing between two orange floats, half a mile away. An antique yawl with orange sails bobbed on the swell behind a zooming runabout. An eagle hovered, looking for a free meal. Almost peaceful; it would be, if they'd ban the big motorboats. But extraordinarily scenic, and different every day. People become obsessed with this place; their sloops show up in the marina and never see another body of water again. There's a regatta every Fourth of July that looks like a sailing fleet from a period film.

The lake is used by rowing teams, and one went barreling past me, an eight, all girls. One of them I've seen round the university. They were sprinting for home and didn't look up, but a couple of single sculls came by and we chatted a bit.

There was a bite on for about fifteen minutes, around seven o'clock under gathering clouds. There's often feeding activity with a slightly falling barometer, and I had the fortune to be in the right spot at the right time, and the fly looked good to a passing school. I hooked six and landed three, about two hundred feet from the darkening shore.

It was a very satisfactory experience. Yes, I can still do and enjoy this. Girls do, you know.

Beloved likes to eat trout, and I like bringing them to her, and making a dinner featuring them. These are not wild trout. The Fish and Game puts them in the lake and they live for three or four years, never reproducing, because there is no gravelly stream to spawn in.

I paddled back to the beach, hopped ashore, broke down my paddle and stowed it, then shucked my vest. The elderly park ranger, a retired volunteer, who knew me when, had recognized my odd little vessel on the water and ambled down to see how I had done. As he neared, he took in the hairdo, earrings, lipstick, cami, shaved legs, and new shape. In fact, he might have missed me entirely, but he knew the boat.

He raised one eyebrow.

"Things are a little different this year," I said, nonchalantly. Then, going for broke, I added, "I bet I'm the only tranny on the lake, ha ha."

"Nahhhh," he said, eying my catch appraisingly. "Some 'a them rowers is trannies. Looks like ya done good, here..."

:::

Coming home, I needed to gas up and so pulled into the station we both use. In Oregon you don't pump your own, so I handed my credit card out the window to the grizzled old geezer on the afternoon shift. He glanced at it, puzzled over it for a bit, and said, to himself, as if his brain were hurting him, "Bear ... Bear ... "

I told him Beloved's name. He brightened up. "That's right. She comes here all the time."

He peered in the window, clearly not meaning to pry — some piece of the equation just wasn't working out for him.

"You're related?"

"Yes."

Tonight I went to a public hearing of the city's Human Rights Commission on proposed legislation adding transgendered people to the list of protected classes in employment, housing, and public accommodations.

This time all but one of those who spoke were in favor of at least most of the code change.

One man testified in opposition.

He seemed like he might be a nice enough man if one could get to talk with him, but he was gone immediately after the session. I had the impression he was running, from what imagined demons I wouldn't know.

So much for asking him to coffee, which was what I'd hoped to do.

His testimony was the usual.

1. We choose to be like this, unlike black people or women, who are born different from white males.

2. so the "special rights" we're "demanding" trample on the rights of the majority.

3. The right of the majority is to go to the bathroom safely, and women and children will not be safe in public restrooms if transgender protections are added.

4. It's criminal of the City to contemplate doing this without a vote of the people.

Hmmm...

I'd like to note that protected classes currently include "race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation."

So, he was born, what, Protestant? Religion is a protected class, and yet, at least theoretically, a matter of choice.

And why, if we're not to be protected because we choose to be trans, does the current code have "sexual orientation?" Gay people have rights protected, but trans people shouldn't? I think he probably didn't mean to argue that gays are born gay and Protestants are born Protestant, but this is, in effect, what he argued.

In nature there are privileges. In society, too. But civil society establishes rights. It's for giving the less privileged more of an even break. By guaranteeing participation to all, we maximize our collective potential — to create wealth, if you like.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, among other things, states:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

and

... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Amendment does not grant "special rights" to the freed slaves; it tells the states not to infringe the rights of human beings. The rights are held to be a priori; the people in question, and all other citizens as well, had rights all along; therefore laws making them property were henceforth to be regarded as invalid.

But that's because, according to the Constitution, there aren't any.

There are only rights.

Protections aren't rights, nor do they create rights. They protect those, already in force, of people whom the majority habitually regard as not having rights at all.

Race, because one race, or several, may regard another or others as not fully human — and therefore not deserving of full human rights.

Religion, because one religious group, or several, may regard another or others as not fully human — and therefore not deserving of full human rights.

Gender, because one gender (read "male") may regard the other (read "women") as not fully human — and therefore not deserving of full human rights.

Sexual orientation, because some may regard those who are attracted to the same sex as not fully human — and therefore not deserving of full human rights.

So the Constitution is given the task of protecting pre-existing rights from a tyrannizing and uncomprehending majority. You may find the full argument in the Federalist Papers, number ten.

And jurisdictions within the United States are tasked with seeing to it that their laws do not "deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws."

Which is the task my city is attempting to carry out, having identified a population that is regarded by some as not fully human and therefore not deserving of full human rights: transpeople.

Currently, I can be fired in my city for being trans. I can be evicted in my city for being trans.

I can be denied access to a homeless shelter in my city for being trans.

All of these are infringements of my rights. But if I go to the housing authorities and allege that I was evicted for transitioning, they can say they are forced to shrug me off, because in my state's laws and my city's laws there is nothing about transpeople.

I have to be able to show that the thing for which I was evicted is a thing for which it is forbidden to evict me, you see.

The danger is to transpeople from others rather than the other way round. When taboos are enforced, it's usually by large, angry men.

People who are prone to regard me as a pedophile or rapist because I believe myself to be a woman just aren't thinking clearly. Or have been lied to so often, by people with an agenda, that there's little hope of reaching them with common sense.

But the fourth point: what about that vote of the people?

Ummm ... did we get to vote directly for our presidential candidate? Did we get to vote on the Patriot Act? Did we get to vote on our tax appraisal? Did we get to vote on whether to invade Iraq? Did we get to vote on whether to study surplus stem cells? Did we get to vote on whether to protect the roadless areas? Do we get to vote on North Slope oil? Do we ... well, I could go on forever, yes?

This is representative government. Legislative, executive, judicial, with checks and balances. We have voted for our City Councilors so that they can do what seems best to them in their wisdom, such as it is, to comply with the directives, as a jurisdiction within the state and within the United States, of the Constitutions thereof.

In other words, they have to protect the rights of all the citizens, not those of some.

If, to the disappearing gentleman, I'm less than human, the Constitution, at least, disagrees with him.

As I suspected, the disaster with the last one has set me back one year.

It's very hard discussing that episode. Seems like I go through a whole box of his tissues whenever it comes up, and of course that ruins my face for the rest of the day. But no surgery is going to happen until March of next year, regardless.

I did finally ask about getting that "F" on my driver's license, though, and he said he would begin the paper work, and also had a question for me to ask the SRS surgeon that I've corresponded with.

Gee, nice.

But it's been three years, people.

A few months ago I would have jumped around on the sidewalk afterward, screaming for joy. But the harsh experience I had last year has tempered my expectations somewhat. Things might turn out the way they seem, or other hurdles may throw themselves across my path.

Best not to get carried away.

Breathe, honey.

Day by day.

:::

I went to the airport to pick up my mother and her best friend. They would be here for a week, and the purpose of the visit was for my mother to meet her new daughter.

The previous day had been a long one, including a landmark counseling session in which the counselor promised me a letter for my gender on my driver's license in our next appointment, and then I had waited at the airport for hours late into the night, not knowing the Ladies had been held up in Salt Lake City by a missed plane.

Once again, on Saturday afternoon, I watched hundreds of people go by, dwindling to a trickle, followed by the aircrew in their uniforms, chatting among themselves and wheeling their identical little luggages behind them. A moment of despair —

And then there they were. An attendant was pushing my mom in a wheelchair, and her lifelong buddy, my "Auntie," was trailing along behind.

They clearly weren't seeing me as they began to pass, ten feet away.

What were they expecting to see?

I wore medium-length hair, bangs, and light makeup, and was wearing the blue jumper with the princess seams and a short-sleeved peasant blouse, with brown shoes — no socks — and carrying a matching brown leather purse.

I stepped from the crowd, touched the arm of the wheelchair, and said, "Hi, sweetie."

Jaws dropped.

The attendant said to my mom, perplexed, "That's who you're looking for?"

Aha. There's been pronoun confusion. A harbinger of things to come.

As the rental car was delivered to the curb, I was distracted for a moment from the chair by luggage issues, and my mom rolled away, unchecked, toward the curb. Fortunately the car was perfectly placed to catch her as she pitched forward, but it was an awkward moment, to say the least. Several of us tried to reach her before it happened, but to no avail.

After we settled her again in the chair on the sidewalk, with the brake properly set, a young man who had joined in the rescue attempt knelt before her with strong emotion in his face. He held both her hands and said, "Ma'am, I tried to reach you in time but I failed you. Please, please forgive me."

This struck me as interesting. Clearly, I too, as well as Auntie, had tried to reach her, but we were no part of his narrative of rescue attempt and apology.

Oh! It's because we're girls. He felt the sole responsibility because he was the only man present. A tiny detail among many to come, no doubt.

When we reached their motel room, I remarked on this. My mom merely observed, "welcome to our world." Then she remarked on having watched me walking through the airport to retrieve their luggage.

"You got your walk down, honey; maybe just a little too well, 'cuz the men were watching your bottom."

Oh. I would never have known. Uhhh...wouldn't I be too old for them?

From the moment the Ladies arrived, I knew I had a problem ... despite their determination to be supportive of my condition, they cannot rewire fifty-six years of habituation. They would even argue with each other as to who was blowing it:

"Yew called him him again!" — Auntie's voice is permanently set for crowd-control megaphone level.

"Did not!" Mom's is not much softer.

"Did too."

"Did not! And anyway yew just called 'im him yourself!"

"I never!"

I would turn away, to the waitress. "Umm, just water for me, please."

We went shopping. This was successful, notwithstanding the dreaded pronouns, flung back and forth across the stores with wild abandon.

I have had a horror of my mom's general taste in things, especially gold-toned costume jewelry and all sorts of pale green clothing, accessories, and geegaws. She even had a car once in "her" color, purportedly aquamarine. And her ideas about boys' clothing and possessions always gave me hives.

But something about my being her daughter has changed everything.

I found four dresses, two skirts, four bras, some panties, a pair of shoes, a purse, a matched set of imitation amber earrings and necklace in silver settings, reading glasses and non-prescription sunglasses (I'm now wearing contacts), a blouse, and some nightgowns.

She also brought old treasures, of dubious value but much loved, from her jewelry box.

Daughter and I pawed through these and exclaimed over the variety — glass dogwood blossom earrings and pin, faux pearl string and matching earrings, service pins, glass strawberry brooch, and half a dozen little wristwatches, all gold-toned and all needing batteries.

During the visit, I called to check on my dad; also to see if he would talk to me. It turned out he would, which was pretty much what I expected. We didn't say much.

"Hey."

"Oh ... hey."

"I caught a three pound trout."

"Did?"

"Umm, how's the dog?"

"Oh, she's ok."

"You sound a little poorly."

Well, blood pressure's low; I'm laying in bed and if it gets any worse I'll get the neighbors to take me over to the V.A."

"Does Mom know about that?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah"

"Well, I just wanted to see how you were holding up."

"Yeah, I am, kinda. Yeah.Nobody lives forever."

"....All right, love ya."

"Bye."

Well, it was a start. Afterwards I only had to blow my nose once.

:::

Beloved and Last Son and I spent much of one evening visiting with the Ladies in their room. I had to go home early to take out my new contacts (which is still excruciating for me to do) and Beloved stayed to talk longer. She gave my mom a hug and told her she loved her (which was a new experience for them both) and thanked her, and Auntie, for their support of me.

Son and I took the Great Ladies to lunch, next day, at an Italian place that we both really love, forgetting that my mom doesn't like "fancy cooking." As she looked over the menu, she began grousing. I lost control of myself.

"We can go somewhere else, you know!"

"What's with you today, son? You been waitin' to jump on me all day."

What had just happened?

Other than my being outed to my sixth waitress in a row ...

I realized I had revealed resentment in my tone.

None of it took.

Not that she doesn't have standards — she regards my dad as uncultured — and her standards in manners are high, if a little dated. But she regards as suspect anything that might be "foreign" or "new" and often rejects out of hand experiences toward which I try to lead her.

I had forgotten. And so I had taken her to an Italian place with a terrific chef, when what was wanted was a hamburger and fries from a fast food place. The gift was simply inappropriate.

We had embarrassed each other.

And I had shown my claws.

I excused myself from the table and ran to the bathroom and dissolved in a flood of red-eyed tears. I washed my face, washed it again, dried it, washed it again and dried it again, took my three deep breaths and, putting on sunglasses, returned to the party and sat as quietly as I could, dabbing at my nose with a handkerchief whenever I thought no one was looking.

"Have yew been cryin'?" shouted Auntie between bites.

My mom touched my knee in a conciliatory way.

I gave everyone my best fragile smile.

Back at their room, I curled up on my mom's bed for a bit of rest. She put away her cane and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, then lay down .I curled my legs around so she could rest against my backside. This was a thing no "son" in our family could ever have done; it was, for us, strictly a girl thing.

As they began gathering up their belongings to pack, my mom handed me an envelope marked "Risa."

Inside was a card. On the front of it there was a drawing of a vase with a single flower. The copy read: "You bring out the happy in me."

She had added, "Thank you for a wonderful week. God Bless you and keep you safe. Mom."

We looked at each other.

Auntie roared, "Yew two start cryin' agin' an' I will hit yew both."

12.
 

I had a splendid meeting with my counselor; toward the end he gave me the letter for the Department of Motor Vehicles. I cried. I mean, I really cried.

"This means so much," I said, redundantly, while reaching for his box of tissues.

From his office I drove directly to the DMV. The one in the city has a trans-unfriendly reputation; word is they are saying that there is a list of counselors that are approved to write gender letters. Mine is not on that list yet, even though he has a doctorate. But some people called DMV headquarters in the state capital and they denied ever having created such a list. Rather than wrangle with that DMV office over whether their list is an arbitrary and perhaps discriminatory hurdle, I headed for the much smaller one in the suburbs.

My number was 59. The screen showed 50. I took a seat.

Clerks shouted their availability over the general hubbub and crying babies.

"Fifty-one. Fifty-one."

"Fifty-two. Fifty-two...fifty-three."

"Fifty-four."

"Fifty-five. Fifty-five."

I got up and walked around. My knees were weak, and I was a bit light-headed.

"Fifty-six."

"Fifty-seven. Fifty-seven ... fifty-eight, fifty eight."

"Fifty-nine."

I got the youngish brown-haired lady, whom I'd picked out as the most likely easy clerk. I showed her my driver's license and my letter, and briefly explained my mission. She checked both, said, "hang on a bit," and disappeared into the manager's office.

Where's she going with my letter? Hey!

All calmness went out the window. I did deep breathing exercises.

She reappeared around a wall in front of me. The boss's desk must be in a room with two doors. I could see that she still had the letter, and was placing it on the glass plate of a small office copier. I chose to take this as a good sign.

She came back to the counter.

"Here's your original; we just keep a copy for our records. They might ask your counselor for more information, you never know, but this looks good." She picked up my driver's license, which was all of three months old, and stashed it below the countertop somewhere.

She turned her computer monitor toward me. "Is all this correct?"

"Yes. Well, there's "Altanta" — should be spelled a,t,l ... "

"Oh, yeah. Lemme fix that." Clickety-click.

She looked at me. "You're wearing contacts?"

"Yes."

"It says here you need both outside mirrors. Is that about your vision?"

"No, I'm seventy percent hearing impaired." I lifted my hair to show my hearing aid.

"You do pretty good."

"That's what they tell me."

"Still a donor?"

"Yes."

She typed a few things and hit "Enter."

"They'll call your name and take your picture. That'll be twenty-one dollars, though."

I have never been happier to write a check!

I found her rather deadpan, but if she was thinking "oh, yuckies," I couldn't detect it. There are times when I don't ask for more than that. I thanked her warmly.

He made a wry face. "OK, I guess."

He handed me his new driver's license, still warm from the laminator. We looked at it together, shoulder to shoulder.

"Oh, it's very nice!" I said, and meant it. He beamed.

"Rice-a Stephanie?" called the camera lady.

I hopped up. "Bye!" I said to the young man. Trotting over to the counter, I said, "Ree-sa Stephanie."

"Oh. Well, okay, stand on the mark, put your shoulders on the wall, look riiiiight here — "

She indicated a picture, cut from some magazine, of a mop-topped parrot of some kind, mounted just below the camera lens. Cute. I smiled.

Click.

A couple of minutes later, I was called back to pick up my new license, still warm. I balanced my reading glasses on my nose and looked.

Not bad.

Not bad.

The picture was not bad at all. Even good, though I had missed some hair on top of my head with the brush. Happy girl face. Looks Spanish, actually. Adventurous. Clearly I could use a little facial feminization surgery, but with prices what they are, I may have to make do with me.

And Risa is Spanish for laughing, y'know.

I let my eye travel to the right.

There it was.

Sex: F

Finally.

Stepping into the hot, bright summer sun, I took about ten steps toward my car, and burst into tears (again).

Three years.

Three years of counseling it had taken me to get that little consonant.

I opened the credit-card purse, put on my reading glasses again, and studied the whole license, front and back, half afraid it would vanish.

I closed the purse again and looked out the front window of the car at the parade of pedestrians going about their business beyond the parking lot.

"No one," I said, to no one in particular. "No one."

And I turned the key in the ignition.

No one will ever take this away from me.

:::

I attended a book-signing and packing party at the home of a local member of an organization I belong to. The house sat well above the street, with a fresh-smelling staircase zigzagging up through some well-considered xeriscaping. I was ushered into the presence of about fifteen people, some of whom knew they knew me and some of whom didn't know they knew me, depending on how long ago they had last seen me.

I had coffee and cookies, chatted with all and sundry, packed books for shipment to fulfill pre-orders, and spent as much time as I reasonably could talking with one of the authors, my friend who was my roommate in Pasadena.

As the party began to break up, the group's secretary, who had last seen me two years ago, cornered me for some clarifications. She had an incorrect email address for me. I fixed that, then said, "But I've been getting chapter and national email both just fine at my other address."

She peered at me for a few moments over her glasses.

"Umm ... don't I know your husband?"

And she spoke a name.

Now, in a way that was a lovely thing to hear, because it's independent confirmation that my presentation has become effective. I thanked her and brought her up to speed.

But I also realized what a shock it was to hear "my" old name.

It really felt like it was someone else's name.

I had no idea the guy was so ... gone.

I could say, "he's no longer with us"— there would be some truth in that.

I could say, "well, no, I never married him but we were in a kind of a relationship but that's over" and there might be some truth in that. Chuckle.

When she asked the question I actually mentally pictured "him" in exactly the way one does when asked about a friend or an acquaintance. I didn't know I could do this — it's a level of dissociation with the past about which I have heard very little, even from post-ops.

OK, if he's that person over there, in my mind, and I'm over here, where was I when I thought I was him?

I mean, I must not be so very ashamed of him. I've kept links to his old writings, on my website. Some of it I've stolen, by changing the byline, some of it I've obscured by making the first name into an initial.

I'm not hiding behind that. Those who try can find out who I was with little effort.

No, it's for me. It's very hard for me to hear his name. Maybe that will fade, I have no idea.

It's like if you wake up in the hospital bed and slowly realize that someone else took over your body and mind forty years ago ... and now you're coming back into yourself ... but nobody knows you, they only know this other person, the interloper, who has re-sculpted your body, changed your voice, and lost you a lot of your hair ... involved you in nested puzzle boxes of relationships you'd maybe have never got into on your own ... provided you with descendants who have no clue as to who you really are ...

... and, worst of the worst ... you have no memories of your own. They're all his.

So you set about cleaning house. Medication will be necessary. New clothes, new deals, redefined relationships, new ID. And slowly you begin to have memories of your own. Eventually you are yourself even in your dreams. And then someone uses that other person's name ... even if they aren't talking about you, it still terrifies you ... even when you know they are "safe" to out yourself to ...

As if he might try, you, know, to come back.

But why would he? He was a very unhappy person, and even tried to die once ... maybe multiple times ...

I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not him.

So I don't really know what he did all that time.

Y'know?

:::

On the way, the young one asked a question.

"If a guy loves a guy, that's gay, right?"

"Right."

"Uh, umm-hmm. And a girl loves a girl is lesbians."

Beloved glances over from behind the steering wheel. Kid looks like she's doing a math problem.

"That's right."

"And some people are born one way but are really the other and have to switch over."

"Yep."

"So, Papa Risa is a girl now, and you're a girl."

'Yes, we're both girls."

"So, you're lesbians?"

"Not really. We're kind of old, and it's sort of got to where that's not the point for us."

'Nah — you're lesbians!" Big smile.

"Whatever."

Granddaughter rides in silence for a bit, thinking.

"So, does she still have anything in front?"

"Nh? You mean, like boy parts?"

"Uh-huh."

"Yes. But she's going to have an operation."

"Ow!"

"Yeah, ow."

Granddaughter pats Beloved on the knee.

Kids seem to me to have the purest view of the world.

I don't mean that the way we often do — like they're wearing wings and a halo.

I mean that their powers of observation are relatively unclouded.

They go to the hearts of things, and they also absorb the things adults are really telling them rather than the things the adults think they are telling them. They imbibe the world view but without the blinders that come with that — until later.

Granddaughter discusses LGBT people in a matter-of-fact way, because her parents regard us as a normal aspect of the world. She may not define me exactly the way I would, but, then, I am to her a person first and an interesting topic second.

Children her age, when they spot me, read me instantly — even though the adults with them see just another late-middle-aged lady — and smile.

On the other — way other — hand, when adults do hatred, even if they don't say much, if anything, about it, the small children among them pick it up and amplify it with a clarity the adults, except for very childlike ones, lack.

These children also spot me at the mall.

And even if they are as young as five, they cling tightly to Mother's hand and glare.

Mother, meanwhile, has no idea that one of "those people" — the ones the preacher told them last Sunday were dressing up as women in order to go into restrooms and rape them and their daughters — is passing by — has, in fact, just used the public restroom along with them without incident, for, like, the three hundredth time.

The impulse is strictly genocidal.

Once they get it that these other, rarer kids ought not to have been born, they set about letting them know it — perhaps instinctively aware that by setting apart the "different" kids and making their lives miserable, they are doing exactly what the adult world wants done, at least by implication — culling.

If they did, of course, it might occur to them that the child's self-revelation is not the result of a "lifestyle decision" — only the decision to tell.

It's known, though it's federal policy at present not to admit it, that a strikingly large proportion of youth suicide and other deaths, such as by alcohol poisoning, accidents, drug overdoses, and outright murder, occur to young people who have or are believed by their peers to have sexual orientation or gender identity issues, who are responding to the messages of "go away and die" from their tormentors.

They're being successfully culled from the pack.

But my condition went steadily downhill over the weekend, and I lay around during breaks, and sometimes entire sessions, on the corner couch, while very well-meaning conferees regaled me with toothache horror stories and recipes.

The hygienist searched the x-ray and pursed her lips. "I can't find an abscess. You sure it's that tooth?"

By this time I was steadily weeping. They were all, even the office people, distressed by the shape I was getting into, and another dentist was brought in from next door to provide emergency prescriptions. Beloved drove to the pharmacy and I lolled about, moaning, in the car while the prescriptions were processed. She got me home, medicated me as best she could, but soon had to return to work.

Right after she left, I threw up spectacularly. I almost drowned on the previous day's spaghetti, a lot of which also showed up when I blew my nose afterward.

Then began a period of screaming. I now had mouth scores, about twelve of them, scattered across the inside of my mouth, soreness in the right Eustachian tube, behind the right eardrum (where I could hear gurgling) and a rapidly swelling lymph system in the right side of my neck. Also my throat was closing.

I took and aspirin. Threw it up. Took a penicillin. threw it up. Hmm. I'd seen this before; my system was shutting down. The last time that happened was when I'd survived pancreatitis. I paged Beloved.

She called back. "Was that you? Sounded like a prank caller."

"Whrrrngh."

"Right, I'm coming straight home."

I was bundled up and taken directly to the urban hospital emergency room. Beloved left me at the counter to go find parking. The intake clerk taking my data seemed to have little patience with my hearing impairment and my addled responses.

Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard.

She started typing again, worry lines forming at the corners of her mouth. Why do I get all the weirdos, I could almost hear her thinking.

I was given a plastic bracelet. On it I saw, Bear, Risa S.

That was encouraging. But directly beneath it: [M].

That could be trouble. This hospital is Catholic.

I lay looking at the dangling tube of the IV, and the bottle, still unopened, hanging from its hook four feet away. Why is it, I thought, that these places are so watchful of patient behavior, when their staff is just as human and error-prone as we are?

After an hour or so, I asked about the IV when I saw the third intern.

"Oh, heh, heh. Let's get that in right away."

The nurse was brought back, a bit flustered, and set up the bottle on its rack. The IV was wonderful; I think it may have had a little morphine in it.

While I waited on the gurney I asked Beloved to look in the cosmetics bag in my purse and find a small pair of teardrop-amber earrings and help me put them on. I tugged at my bangs a bit but they kept falling back, exposing my receded hairline.

"We can't do everything, dear," she said gently, and smoothed down the blanket she'd begged from a passing nurse and draped over my shivering body.

Ultimately the interns sent for an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist. He appeared about sunrise, looking a little unhappy about being roused so early, poked around in the now-massive swelling around my jaws, called for a cat scan, and admitted me to the depths of the sprawling hospital.

On the second day, I began to have brilliant, wicked, and seemingly endless hallucinations. the doctor called for another scan and an ultrasound. After much prodding and zapping I was sent to the O.R. at 6 p.m. and prepped.

A new IV was inserted, and I drifted away from all identity whatever.

:::

I pressed the pain button on the same schedule.

Time had almost completely stopped.

The horrible nightmares had gone away — totally — during the drug sleep. Sometime after sunrise, I found I could lie down, and fell into a welcome sleep.

:::

When I awoke, I was in a private room in an ICU. I was drenched in sweat but feeling energized and cheerful. I reached for my ditty bag, arose, unplugged my IV tree, hung its power cord over its hook, arranged my tubes over my arm, and trundled off, clattering, to the little bathroom.

Dare I look in the mirror?

Oh ... my ... Lord.

The original wreck of the "Hesperus."

I washed everywhere I could reach, using the pink liquid soap.

Cried over tiny tits.

Best wait on the mascara. Who knows what weeping lurks in the shadows of the day?

The specialist arrived and changed my dressing.

"You had a big pocket of ill-defined pus in there; I don't like to chase after those but you didn't seem to have more time. Lucky us; I landed right on it. We got four cc's out and I sent it to be cultured. Could take awhile to hear back what it is."

"Strep?"

"Or staph, one or the other. We'll see. Anyway, you look a lot better than you did yesterday."

He met Beloved in the hall and gave a her a cheery update. She and Daughter came in. After tears and hugs, I dried my eyes and did the mascara, then Daughter unpacked her kit and started on my nails.

"I love you, Mamacita."

"Love you, kid."

"Love you, love you, love you."

"Not gonna die on you, y'know."

"You wouldn't dare. Now hold still and don't curl up those fingers."

:::

My counselor asked, "So, what thought have you given to the future?"

Oh, my.

There are really only four places a transperson can go from right here.

It's because of these that the Benjamin Standards were evolved and widely adopted. Someone who has mistakenly opted for surgery is going to have a hard time living happily ever after.

A second option is to simply continue with what one has been doing for the last year or so — living the life one has attained, maintaining the same level of hormone replacement therapy. Many do this , as well. Surgeries are expensive, invasive, and pose tangible and intangible risks, and present far less reversible scenarios. Many realize that the Real Life Test has for them simply evolved into the Real Life — after all, gender is a matter of referendum; if everyone sees you as your target gender, then it is your gender, whether or not it is your sex.

A third option, for male-to-females, is orchiectomy. This is less expensive, less invasive, and not as risky as sex reassignment surgery, greatly reduces the need for hormones, and, again, for many, especially older people, sufficient. A surgeon will give you a letter after an orchiectomy saying that irreversible surgery has been done, and in most cases the federal clerks will accept the letter and not insist that it specify full SRS.

A lot to be thinking about.

The counselor is waiting.

“Well,” I begin, “When I was about eight, maybe nine, I remember I would take a bath, and make, you know, bubble-bath breasts, and I'd tuck, and ... "

"Tuck?" His brow furrowed a bit.

"Put my, umm, private parts out of sight behind my legs, kind of."

"Oh, right. And?"

"And, I'd, umm, look down at myself and say, 'Okay, this is how it's supposed to look.'"

A long time later, he asks, "Well, what do you think?"

"Uhh, about what just happened?"

"Sure."

"Well, I think we had better do the whole thing."

"Reassignment surgery."

"Uh, huh."

He'll talk to some counselors to see if anyone has an opening for "second letter" work. And he did say I could write to Dr. Reed, my first choice for surgery, and start an account.

"It's all a formality; I have to do it this way, but, as you can see from the letter you have in your possession, I'm satisfied that you are a woman. So we have made some progress and I don't foresee any difficulties."

Well, March beats never.

Outside, afterward, I'm wondering if I should do my victory dance. A car pulls up.

"Ma'am? Could you give me some directions?"

Sure.

Now that I know the way myself.

:::

"These things happen," said Beloved. "You'll just have to rebuild."

I snuffled a little on her shoulder, then she was off to work.

Mirror, enemy mine, let's get a good look.

I can't dodge work today, even though the medications are keeping me dangerously woozy.

So I put a face cream all over everything, let it soak in, then unpack a brand new set of blades to shave, practically skinning my upper lip, and then cover with the heaviest foundation I've ever put on. Up close, this won't be pretty, but from ten feet away it hides a lot. Mascara, eye shadow, lip liner, lip color, and blush to finish. Brush hair, special attention to bangs. Add a really busty bra underneath the sun dress. Silly, but it helps with the convincing presentation.

Yah, I can go to work, but just barely.

The infection is down, but not out — after three weeks of penicillin and other antibiotics round the clock. I think we are entering a new era with strep and staph infections.

I've been working half days, then hiding in my bed all afternoon and through the night. Don't feel like writing, going out to the garden, cooking, or much of anything. Just lie there in a torpor.

I'm a little upset with the hospital; such wonderful nurses, but the doctors accidentally interfered with my HRT when they saw my liver profile. I had to drop the meds or they would have never let me go home.

The Benjamin Standards are designed to prevent the Big Mistake, should it be one, because once it's made, they say that one will never be able to Go Back.

Excuse me? Go Back where?

All this should be taken into account because, as old-timers, we shouldn't be doing drugs that can damage our livers. So, for us, the Real Life Test with its year or more of waiting represents a health danger that could be greatly reduced by having faster track to the SRS appointment.

Right now I need 5 mg/day of estradiol and 200 mg/day of spironolactone to preserve my presentation and my sanity. After SRS I would only need 1 mg of estradiol.

Tired ... must ... nap....

:::

Fall is, as they say, drawing on apace, and the orb-weaver spiders have moved into the tomato patch.

I get out and harvest what I can. It's the most relaxing thing I can think of to do.

I'm at war with the mirror, lately, because the hospital stay robbed me of a good half of the gains I made on two years' HRT. The icon at upper right is about as good as my looks ever got. I'm a bit of a tired harridan right now, and not at all cheerful about it.

This is forcing me to work hard at the makeup.

Beloved, of course, generally uses none at all, nor do many of my friends. I, on the other hand, curl up and die when I discover I've left the little zipper bag at home.

It adds an extra half hour to my morning to mess with this stuff, but the results lead me to believe I can face the day, and that's reason enough to pursue this art.

Whenever I played at gender crossing, I would dash on a bit of lipstick, too red, and that feeling of being able to, say, leave lipstick on a glass, along with wearing the blouse, skirt, and shoes, seemed to fill a need — as I've said before, more a yearning than getting a buzz. It was easily wiped off, and my secret world was fairly secure.

I check the night's disasters in the mirror, then wash briefly — too much soap adds to the trouble — and towel off briskly, then apply, then and there, a fairly liberal mask, almost, of lotion. This is allowed to soak in, while I run hot water and get out the razor. My brand, triple blades, pink handle and all, is pricey but nothing else I have tried works as well so far. And I have to have a good razor.

In spite of 18 months of electrology, I'm shaving quite a bit. Most of the hair visible most of the time, on my chin, cheeks and neck, is now white, because my operator is going after all the black hairs first. A girl with a white beard can be kind of weird looking, though, so I apply a tiny bit of gel, with hot water, and take the "trees" off at "ground" level. Afterwards I clean and dry the razor, using the blowdryer if necessary. This gets me many more shaves.

That takes care of the beard until late afternoon, but if I'm going somewhere in the evening and can't come back to the house, I have another razor with me for emergency touch-ups. That pink soap in the dispenser in the ladies' room will do for this. I'm shy, so I go into the disabled access stall if there is one, which often has its own mirror.

Electro Day is Friday, and I tend to avoid meeting new people or going to power lunches on Friday, as I'm not very self-assured with a day-old grizzle all over my chin.

After the shave, I may use a second layer of lotion. The excess I rub into my arms and hands.

My next move is to even out the tone of my face a bit by going after age spots and other blemishes with concealer. Mine comes in a tube like lipstick, and works best if it's tapped lightly against the blotch rather than rubbed across it. This has to match one's overall skin tone well, and as I tan I may shift to a darker color.

Next, I apply a thin coating of foundation but only where required. I'm using an inexpensive but, for me, effective product. Its name stretches the truth a bit, but I have seen worse. I work around and on the nose, under the eyes, along the cheek bones where I have sun damage, and a few age spots. Oh, and the chin. What I'm doing is taking out red and brown zones to get the same pink all over that I have in the better places. This, too, is not smeared on but patted into place, using a fluttering motion of the fingers.

Now I reach for lipliner, a major tool for me. The idea is to draw the mouth you want, adding more bow on the upper lip, for a fuller mouth that is a bit "closer" to your nose. I fill in toward the real lips until it's all blended.

Instead of lipstick, currently I'm using lipcolor, in something between pink and coral. It's actually still there at the end of the day, even if I've gone out to lunch.

My eye shadow, which I do next, is my one seriously spendy cosmetic. Only one brand will do for me. If I'm out, and need to retouch, it doesn't require a brush or sponge and goes on smoothly and effectively with a middle finger.

The blush that came with my compact is the only one I have ever tried. I use the brush, a generous size, that came with the compact, and make a softly blended triangle from below each ear to a point about halfway across the cheekbone toward my nose. It's a good color for me. One of my students gave me this for my birthday.

The mascara is either brown and, different strokes ... I do the lower lashes first. just downwards from above, then the uppers first from above and then below, sweeping outwards. The effect is very pleasing and it can be powerful — the difference sometimes between being "read" and not read, in a crunch.

Hot weather is hard on all this. You can help it a bit by "setting" your face with a decent finishing powder. The powder puffs that come with this is absolutely unmanageable for me, so I splurged on a really nice powder brush. The bristles are extra fine and wispy, and fan out about three-and-a-half inches. I dip the brush, tap it on the inside of the lid to dislodge enough powder, and then whisk the powder up, as when one stirs powdered green tea. Now there is a light dusting of the powder all through the brush. This I whisk onto my face pretty evenly everywhere, including my lips. If the result looks a little too dull, there's a tube of pale pink lipstick in the compact, with a little bit of gloss, that matches the lipcolor reasonably well and can highlight it a little.

Done!

Oh, and if I've worn curlers all night, I take them out now, shake down my hair, brush it lightly and I'm off to get dressed, put in earrings and the like.

Hair care for me is not fancy — yet. I shampoo twice a week and rinse every other day with conditioner — I don't get the shampoo with the conditioner in it, except maybe in a tiny bottle size for travel — brush forward, blow dry until almost dry, and flip back.

Late! And I forgot breakfast — again! I grab a slimming drink on the way out the door. It's not ladylike to drink this stuff and drive, but at least my face is done.

It must be working, because I've taken a friend from the library to lunch, who offered, "The rest of us drag in, in our sweatshirts, with bags under our eyes, and you always dress sharp and look great. How do you do it?"

Ah, music to a girl's ears ... I know I don't look quite "great," but there seems to be no substitute, in this department, for effort.

Hopefully it's paying off.

14.

I have two counselors now, which is what it takes to get the green light from my surgeon: a letter from one with a doctorate, and a letter from another, which basically says, "yeah, the other shrink is right, she needs the operation."

They've basically told me, yes, this is going to happen, so I sent my deposit to Dr. Harold Reed and told my doctor's office to send him my medical history.

One feature of all this activity is that it is now time for me to begin what we euphemistically call "south pole work."

That is, electrolysis of the genital area. Hair needs to be gone from everything that will be inverted or become labia, a month before the surgery date.

Eeek.

So I asked my electrologist, Terry, about this.

"Yeah — I do that. If I'm comfortable with the client."

"So ..."

"You're fine." With that look she gives me when I'm being timid or indecisive. Come to think of it, Beloved gives me the same look.

"I'm, uh, not shy, but, umm, I worry. I mean, I get pretty jumpy when you do my eyebrows or upper lip."

"Well, what you do is, you get your doctor to prescribe you some lidocaine. Put it on the target area in quantity about an hour before you come in, and cover everything up with plastic wrap. Then it won't be too bad."

So I got the cream and took it to work with me, and went to the ladies' room an hour before going to see her, and did — I hoped — apply liberally. Then, growing number by the minute, I drove out to Terry's country place.

For the first few minutes on the table, it wasn't so bad.

Then she shot a hair and it lifted me right off the table.

"NUNNNNHH!"

She lifted her jeweler's lenses and regarded me mildly. "Maybe we'd better do face."

"Umm, up till that point we were, um, okay; maybe there's are some spots I covered better than others?"

"Sure, I'll try here."

Bzzzt.

"How was that?"

"Uhh, way better. I can go with that."

Bzzzt.

"What it is, is, you didn't put on enough."

Bzzzt.

"I said, in quantity."

Bzzzt.

"Yes'm."

We lasted forty-five minutes, then moved to face work.

"Didya use enough?" Terry asked.

I could see her sheep grazing out the back window. Shears them herself.

"Hope so," I said.

In fact, so far as I could tell, I was completely desensitized from hip to hip — Dr. Reed could go ahead and operate — the entire Green Bay Packers could kick me there — All Quiet on the Southern Front.

Bzzzt. Didn't feel a thing. Yay!

Bzzzt.

But five minutes later, I could tell what she was doing.

Five minutes after that, I began strangling the hanky that, for some reason, I had in my hands. Ten minutes after that, I began counting the blossoms on a flower-print ceiling hanging that she has — 1,028 forget-me-nots. Ten minutes after that, beads of sweat formed on my upper lip and eyelids. I began talking to distract myself.

"I reached up tentatively and felt the clammy object covering my mouth and nose.

"It was a human hand!

"Well, I just about fainted. But since the hand didn't seem to be doing anything, I thought I might as well investigate further.

"There was a naked forearm attached to the hand. I found the elbow — here the arm took a right-angle turn — I continued feeling my way up the arm till it came to my shoulder.

"My own left arm had fallen "asleep" on the edge of the cot and as I rolled over it had slapped me silly."

As soon as she did, so did I, and we guffawed, snorted and whooped for about three minutes.

We had to "move the clock."

"Heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh."

Bzzzt.

In a couple of minutes we started laughing again.

"your own hand!" She snorted. "Talk about identity problems!"

After awhile we caught our breath.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

Finally — she shot a hair and it lifted me right off the table.

"NUNNNNHH!"

She looked at the clock. "Well, that stuff has worn off, I reckon; we've gone fifty-nine minutes. You want to call it a day?"

Yes, actually.

As I made myself presentable, she remarked, "I'm glad they don't need any more taken off than they do — that's always a hard angle for me, because this is my only table."

"Do people sometimes need more done than that?"

"Well, not for the operation. I get people who, for reasons of their own, want it all done. I tell em, 'let's do the bikini line first, then we'll talk about the rest of it.'"

She grinned.

Since I can only afford an hour a week, we'll start alternating bottom and face work until we're done with the bottom. At fifty dollars an hour — sixty for the South Pole work — all I can afford is one hour a week.

:::

My hearing aid gave out, and I took it to the nonprofit that I've used for hearing aid purchases and repairs for thirty years.

We had the usual back-and-forth about name and address, and we experienced the confusion that the person on the records is who I used to be. They were charmed by it all, though, which I find really is the usual response, and the desk ladies typed up the changes and then gathered around and oo-ed and ahh-ed over my driver's license picture (nobody else seems to have a good one). Also, for good measure, pictures of my granddaughters.

I picked up the hearing aid the next day and got it from a different desk.

And the lady there didn't have a copy of the new records, I guess, because as I was leaving, she said (and I quote):

"If your husband has any trouble with it, tell him to just bring it straight back..."

This is all taking so long.

I have been going to counselors for three years, and I still don't have a surgeon letter.

Which means the Social Security Agency knows my name but not my gender. And my birth certificate knows neither.

It's very surreal, because other than when I'm asked a question by a curious friend, or writing this journal, I actually don't think about this stuff that much. I get up, have breakfast, put my face on, take out my rollers, brush my bangs, grab my purse, check that the coffeepot is turned off, check that the cats are out, and go.

As in, I'm really all done, I'm me, I can think about other things again.

Except there's this one thing ... literally.

As a friend said, sitting with me on a park bench:

"Umm, uh, have you, you know, done it yet?"

And, having had the same exact thing the day before from someone else, I'm afraid I got a little cross with him.

Beloved, on the other hand, is more directly involved, so she asked last night for a scenario.

"Well," I said, "I go off hormones for a couple of dreadful weeks — cold turkey — We get reservations, we pack, we drive to the airport, we park long-term, we go to Miami, we check into the motel, I see Dr. Reed — his clinic is next door — he checks me out, and gives me these bottles of really vile stuff to drink, and it reams me out overnight, and I present myself to Anne the next morning and they prep me and roll me in for the anesthetist. Then I wake up in the recovery room stuffed with packing and feeling like hell, and they tell me I did fine, and when they're ready they send me back to the motel. Then I watch TV and cry and moan a lot for the next few days, and Dr. Reed comes in once a day to change my dressing and check out my progress. You get DVDs and chicken sandwiches for me and hold my hand a lot. Then he says we're free to go and we fly back here and I hobble out to the car and we drive carefully home and you build me a nest in the living room and you go back to work. If we're lucky, I'm also back at work — in three weeks. But I'm not as young as most of the others doing this, so let's say six weeks. Then there's some daily work with dilators. No more spironolactone. Way less estrogen. That's about it."

"But all very ouch."

"Yes, all very ouch.

"But so important. Sometimes I can't even tell why, it just is. Even at my age."

I leaned on her shoulder, and she comforted me.

It is a very powerful thing, this need to come home.

:::

After a weepy day, I dry my eyes, go into the bathroom to unbuild my face and put my hair up in curlers (mine are pink, as it happens, and hers are blue) and slip into my nightgown and go to bed.

Gracie, the grey tabby barn cat, is waiting.

Gracie hasn't had all that much to do with me in her many years, but in the last month she has begun her decline, a fast one. And she knows it. For some reason she's chosen me to "talk" to about it, and as soon as I'm under the blanket, she's on my chest, looking into my eyes. I give her a deep rub, and I'm painfully aware of the disappearing musculature and the startling prominence of her spine and shoulder blades. Gracie was a huge cat in her prime and now, when she lies down and curls up, it looks like she's almost able to tuck her entire body up under her massive, still-dignified head.

She looks and looks into my eyes.

"What's coming? What is this?" she seems to ask.

I can't tell her. But I can sort of relate. She and I are both facing things we can't see from here.

The stormy weather has hit. The coots are rafting together on the reservoir, the blue heron's hunching her narrow shoulders, and townspeople are scurrying about under a wide variety of umbrellas, some of which are blown inside out already.

We gave each other the scant news of our lives — which are so busy, we might as well "text" each other: ruok? imok, lol. ttyl. Or whatever it is the young people are saying to one another with their thumbs on the keyboards of their postage-stamp sized phones as they run from class to class.

"I believe Gracie has died today," I added.

She nodded, almost absent-mindedly, then remembered to look sad. No, that's not fair. She was sad, just too tired to show it.

"I think," I said, glancing up at the clock and the calendar both, "that I will go look for her now and wrap her up in something nice, and do the funeral tomorrow ... after work, when there's enough light to dig properly."

"OK. I won't be able to make it."

"That's all right. I don't think she's bothered about it one way or another."

I changed from my work dress into jeans and a jacket, tied a bandanna around my head, and walked around the corner of the house with a flashlight in one coat pocket and a lovely old shawl in the other, to wrap her in. Kneeling in the wet grass, I pulled open the hatch to the crawl space and shone the light inside. Shreds of fiberglass hung everywhere; cobwebs covered everything; the height of the space averaged about eighteen inches. A tighter squeeze than hands-and-knees. More like snake-on-belly. And Gracie would be on the other side of the partition, meaning it would be about sixty feet to her and sixty back again.

I worked my way to the partition gap and shone the light around the corner. She was there, stretched out and very still, right where I expected her to be. It took me awhile to negotiate the corner and get to her body, which was unexpectedly long and heavy, after so much of her had melted away in the last month. I stroked the grey and white fur along her left side, and began crying ... such a beautiful cat ... who would start a universe and put such stunning creatures in it, only to let them shrivel away into nothingness?

The evangelicals deny a soul to cats, but Gracie had looked into my eyes, demanding an explanation. Only my equal before any gods that might be could do this as she did.

If we have souls, then so do the animals. If they do not, we do not.

I wrapped her shrunken body in the shawl and crawled away with it from her last lonely hiding place.

:::

Two days later, Beloved and I attended a gathering to which we had been invited in a very small town nearby. They had successfully raised quite a lot of money to relocate their all-volunteer library and hire a real librarian, and were celebrating with a community feed, concert and book talk.

I had a moment of alarm on entering the community hall; there were close to a hundred people, only about three of whom I knew, and they were almost all what might be called the Grange type. Beefy guys in NFL caps who drive tractors and trucks all day, and nervous, skinny wives trying to control their kids' desserts and laugh at their husbands' jokes at the same time.

We are a de facto lesbian couple, new enough at this not to be good at avoiding "public displays of affection," and we weren't about to sit apart, even in this roomful of Big Truck belt buckles and keepsake bracelets. And I'm still in the dark, a bit, as to how well I can pass in this kind of setting.

Not to worry.

The wives pulled me into line, chatted me up, filled my paper plate and cup, made room for me at the long tables, and traded admiring looks at pictures of children and grandchildren with me. Old Home Week. Beloved squeezed my hand under the table, pleased to see that it was working for me.

I went for a coffee refill for us both, and a huge jolly looking white-haired man, who clearly didn't see me, cut right in front of me at the urn, talking over my head to a man behind me. I waited patiently, and he almost backed over me as he turned, never skipping a conversational beat. I got my refill and then Beloved's — she uses twice the sugar and cream that I do — and as I stepped away to return to the tables, Mr. Big began to back over me again, from yet another direction. I was saved by the man he was talking to, who grabbed him and hauled him out of my path.

In all this time, he never knew I was there.

I found a word rolling around in my mouth, as if I had never tasted it before: boorish.

So present to the wives, so invisible to the husbands! "Welcome to our world," I have been told more than once.

To wild acclaim, four men, as unlike one another in looks and build as could be imagined, wearing red blazers, ascended to the stage. I recognized my heavy-set nemesis among them.

They were the local barbershop quartet, and I could see from the faces around me that they were highly regarded.

After regaling us with some doubtful but gently tolerated humor, they launched into "My Home Town," with marvelously tight harmonies. My Santa look-alike turned out to be the tenor, and a remarkably talented one at that. We all erupted into applause. The smallest of the four, the lead singer, with a boyish face and smooth, ruddy cheeks belying his sparse white hair, stepped forward.

"Now, all you ladies out there worked really hard to bring us all together this evening, and we fellas want to show our appreciation, so we are dedicating this next song to you."

He stepped back into line, and the baritone reached into his pocket, brought out a tuning pipe, and blew a short note. "Hmmmm ..." went the four of them. The lead began, and one line at a time, each of the others joined in, as when singing a round.

The effect was electric. I found myself sitting up straighter, proud to have a song dedicated to me, even if I did come late to the party. Around me were women who had made more than 40,000 beds; perhaps that had indeed taken the bloom from them, in a manner of speaking, but you could see they regarded it as having been, in a way that has been important for thousands of years, an honor.

And I don't think I was the only lady present who reached for her handkerchief.

15.

I remember thinking, once upon a time, that sex was just about all there was.

I held that view from the age of fourteen to about the age of forty-eight.

I was also extremely heterosexual during all that time. I wasn't just blocked about gay issues, I found the thought of two guys together repugnant; I could feel the repugnance, as though it were an axiom of nature.

Well, it was. It was an axiom of my nature at the time, which was a combination of two factors, over and above any social training: genetics and hormonal levels. If you have XY chromosomes and plenty of testosterone and you are, from before birth, predisposed to respond to female pheromones, you get to be, normally, heterosexual in your orientation. Your body chemistry will tell you: sex with men: bad.

Other factors being equal, of course, such as that you don't have androgen insensitivity syndrome.

Now, suppose you have XY chromosomes, plenty of testosterone, and are from before birth predisposed to respond to male pheromones. Your body chemistry will tell you: sex with men: good. And you may find the thought of a man kissing a woman repugnant accordingly.

Ditto for women: If you have XX chromosomes and plenty of estrogen and you are, from before birth, predisposed to respond to male pheromones, you get to be normally heterosexual in your orientation, whereas if you have XX chromosomes, plenty of estrogen, and are from before birth predisposed to respond to female pheromones you get to be normally lesbian in your orientation. And you may find the thought of a woman kissing a man repugnant accordingly.

All of this is normal biologically. Scientists are beginning to realize that heterosexual and homosexual orientations and behaviors occur in pretty much all mammals and quite a few birds and reptiles as well.

I fully expected, because I was highly attracted to my partner before I began transition, to have a "lesbian" orientation.

Didn't happen. I stayed "straight" and so did a flip-flop, suddenly noticing guys.

We're still happy together, but it's different. As she said to me, if all this had happened to us when we were thirty, she would probably have had to leave me.

And that's fair. She wanted to have kids.

All this tells me that those who theorize that I'm a suppressed gay, spending a fortune to avoid admitting it, or that I'm a fetishist, spending a fortune to have a female body handy to play with, are influenced by their own sexual issues and drives.

See, nearly all of them are male — and nearly all of them mean Male To Female rather than Female To Male when disparaging transsexuals — they can only "see" a world in which only hetero is normal. That's what their bodies tell them. So they theorize to fit the world picture their bodies show them.

They should be made to take a month's worth of estradiol before being allowed to pontificate on the matter.

Testosterone and estrogen are psychotropic.

Think about that.

So, in the real world, you have some born straight men and women and some born gays and lesbians and also some people who are in between or none of the above. All of whom are, given whatever combination of factors they were born with, normal.

And then you get another layer: intersexuals and transsexuals. Not normal? If this were all about sex, I might agree.

But once you can, as many well-educated people do, distinguish sex from gender, a lot of nonsense simply falls by the wayside.

Here's the thing: I was wandering through the stacks in my university's library, one day, back in the nineties, and pulled out a book, having seen the word hermaphrodites on the spine, and it turned out to be a study of a number of women from a village somewhere in the Caribbean. Many women in the village were sterile, apparently, which may be what originally called medical attention to them.

There was a problem with what is now called the sex-determining factor, in utero.

There turned out to be a recessive gene that had cropped up due to inbreeding, resulting in XY individuals with very convincing feminine bodies, though their vaginas lacked depth.

Typically, these women married and adopted children.

I looked at the grainy photographs, with the little black patches covering the eyes. I read the captions. I found the anecdotes. My heart raced. My breath came in ragged gasps. Anyone watching might easily have concluded I was a fetishist or typical male looking at soft porn.

Women with XY chromosomes.

Not men. Women.

With XY chromosomes.

Suddenly there was hope for me.

Because I might not be a "pervert" after all.

Just a person.

All it would take would be for those around me to believe it.

:::

What am I being asked to release? What am I being called toward?

If I were still writing poems I might write this:

Things are moving a little faster now.

I had an appointment with my counselor, and ran through rain to get there, and we talked for an hour and he gave me my copy of my letter, and I cried on it, and then ran through the rain with it to the car, so it's awfully splotchy.

But mine.

Yesterday I emailed Dr. Reed and he replied right away (he's extraordinarily accessible) and advised me to talk with Anne, the woman-of-all-trades, about a date.

That would be, like, first thing in the morning.

So I drove (through rain you could cut with a cold knife) to my electro appointment, and lay still though two hours of torture, and got back on the freeway, heading home, through yet more torrential rains ...

... and failed to negotiate the curve on the exit.

I sailed out into the median between two exit ramps at fifty miles per hour, and hit the mud going just a bit sideways, driver side. I could feel the station wagon getting ready to flip. So I slowly cut the wheels to the left. The vehicle responded well (for a wagon) but then slewed to the right. So I slowly cut the wheels to the right. Just like hitting an ice patch.

There was sufficient momentum that I somehow got across the miniature wetlands in the middle without bogging down ...

... and found myself, undamaged, in an undamaged vehicle, on the other off ramp, going in the right direction ...

... and, this being the country, not only did I not hit anyone, I had no witnesses to the miracle, other than a couple of rather bemused deer.

And I thought: oh, please, not now. Not when I'm so CLOSE ...

... and drove slowly the rest of the way through the black night ...

... and got home and went to bed and slept ten hours.

:::

This morning I got up with enough time to spare for the phone call. There was a breakfast fire and coffee waiting; Beloved had already gone to work and still didn't know about my practically out-of-body experience yesterday.

I dressed to the nines, checked the mirror, and, to calm my nerves, transferred all the numbers from cell phone to address book that hadn't got there yet.

Then picked up the phone and called Anne. She picked up after the first ring.

We established that my idea of going to Miami for Spring Break was unrealistic as the doctor isn't in during the last week of every month, and after that would be at a conference. So we investigated the available dates and came up with March 14th.

Wouldn't you know it ... my mother's birthday. That's in, hmm, 73 days.

A lot to do between now and then, my dears.

:::

Beloved and I met, after driving through unbelievable rain, at the credit union to move money around for the surgery.

I sat in the waiting area, reading Good Housekeeping, as other women walked back and forth between tellers, loan officers, restrooms and the coffee machine. The lady at the information booth craned her neck around, looking at the vaulted ceiling far above.

"Have you got a leak?"

"It doesn't show, but, yes, we've finally sprung one. The water goes down the underside of the roof and down a wall, and it's getting into the carpets."

We sighed together over the long, dark and wet winter, and then she greeted a very wet Beloved.

The loan officer was very sweet to us both, and we each signed document after document till we came to the last one.

I froze.

"This is not my name on this one."

"We have to use this," purred the bank lady, "because it is the name on your deed."

"Even though it's not her legal name?" asked Beloved, shocked.

"Until you change it at the county assessor's office."

"But we never got it back! Your office was supposed to send it to us in October."

"Oh!" Clickity-clickity. "You're right; we'll fix that. Apologies. But if you want this at this time, it has to have that signature, I'm afraid."

Oh, god.

I picked up the pen with a shaky hand and wrote as in a dark dream. I felt the tears coming; and as she continued her soothing monologue I reached for my purse on the floor, fished out my handkerchief, and folded and unfolded and refolded it on my lap, until the dam burst.

Everything around us seemed to come to a standstill for a moment; not that it was loud sobbing or anything untidy like that, but as I sat with the hanky over my face, a shock wave of grief went out into the lobby behind us.

The bank lady started crying too.

She asked Beloved if she could get me a glass of water or anything.

"No, I ... I'm fine," I offered in my most reassuring voice. "It was just unexpected."

After we rose and shook hands and Bank Lady, her composure regained, left the cubicle, Beloved noted that some such things had yet to be dealt with.

"There's the car insurance, for example."

Yes, there is; but on that one I'm holding out ... if I'm in a wreck I don't want one thing to say 'M' and the other 'F'. It was bad enough having that rude letter on my bracelet at the hospital...

We ate small cakes from a food cart in the outer lobby and decompressed. The older people at the next table were cheerful and friendly, and it became a bit like a tea party. I could see that they were family of the cart lady, and, noticing a figurine of a Chihuahua on the counter, I asked if she had Chihuahuas.

"Yes, how did you know? One's a purebred, the other is half Schipperke."

"And they are a riot," put in the other lady.

"Eat you alive," said the old man at the other end.

"Will not! They're sweet, and you know it."

"There aren't that many Schipperkes here," I offered.

"Do you have some time? I'll show you their pictures."

We admired each portrait of her little darlings, and made the appropriate noises. The whole time, we were conscious of the other mementos at the food cart. Intense Evangelicalism. Perhaps, if she knew my background, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But we were, and I enjoyed its cheerful companionableness.

I began to breathe again.

It's beginning to reach me that something is going to happen soon.

I have gotten serious about food, and my weight is down from a holidays-induced high of around 190 to about 183. Aiming for 175 or better.

I’m walking, as able, in the wettest winter here since 1996, and also stair-climbing on the Library's great central spiral staircase, three times a day. I did 8,300 steps the other day, just working or on breaks here in the building.

And I’m eating with care: cottage cheese breakfast, water bottle with dissolved multivitamins all day, supper of one veggie burrito, with fresh veggies diced and lightly steamed before wrapping.

Peppermint tea at bedtime. In bed by nine every night.

I'm supposed to leave my index fingers unpainted for oximetry. Sure, it's six weeks away, but I have done this anyway — polished eight nails. Every time I look down I see the index fingernails and it reminds me how much is at stake here. Helps me focus on the diet and exercise.

I print out my surgeon's requirements and take them to my doctor for a brief consultation.

The nurse takes my weight and blood pressure ("120/70, you're as healthy as a horse, girl") and turns me over to her boss, who comes right in like she's waiting in the wings. I like her new hairdo and say so.

We go through the requirements and write out a series of lab requests. I'm out of there in ten minutes with her blessing.

Downstairs, I go first to the Medical Records window and update the release so that lab results can be sent to Dr. Reed. Then I backtrack to Lab and sit down at the intake window.

"What can we do for you?" asks Young Thing, whom I haven't seen here before.

"Just a CBC today, thanks," handing her the form. She asks the usual: date of birth address, insurance ...

Knitted eyebrows. Here it comes.

"Ummm ... is [boy name] your husband?"

"No, he's my former self," I offer a fragile smile.

Young Thing Number Two In Second Window looks over at us, eyebrows cocked.

Do I see a little extra color in Young Thing Number One's cheeks?

From there, I drive over to Terry's new office for “south pole” work. She's on the second floor of a clinic and general office building; I miss her country house and her splendid Golden Retriever. I'm not due to arrive for another hour and I know she's not in, but I need someplace to prep and a little food in me to go with the meds.

Next door there's a fast food place. I pop in, and I'm the only customer. I sail through the winding queue ropes anyway, wings extended, which brings a chuckle from the staff.

"Umm, chicken sandwich?"

"They're two-for-one right now, getcha two?" asks the cashier. She's a cute, round butterball with dimples.

"Noooo, If I take two, the other one will disappear before I get home."

"You're that hungry, why doncha eat it?"

"Gotta lose weight."

"Oh."

"Operation coming up."

"Oh." Makes a sad face, then a happy face. "Here or to go?"

:::

I lock myself in their restroom later, pull up my dress, and lather myself from a tube of lidocaine, cover the mess with plastic wrap, and waddle primly out to the wagon.

Rummage in car pocket.

No painkillers. Disaster!

What to do? My meds are fifteen miles away. Appointment in half an hour.

Wait! Brainstorm. In the far back there's a plastic tub, taped shut with duct tape — my 9/11 kit. I dig it out, peel the tape, and read labels in the fading light. A 35 mm film can marked "pain" swims into view. Gotcha! Provided I don't drive for a few hours ...

"How ya doin'?" she greets me.

"I'm here."

My stock answer. This always throws people off the first couple of times, but what I mean by it is that I don't know how I'm doing, because the day isn't over yet. The present, which is where everything is, happens just before we're aware of it, that is to say, consciousness runs in the memory's wiring. In a sense, we can only look back. We have no idea where we're going. So, for me, it's the honest answer. Not Dead Yet. Ergo, pretty good really.

"If you say so. Are we gonna do an hour, or more?"

"I'm set for an hour below, and as much as we care for of face after."

"OK, hop up here, I'm all set."

I like her new office. She has a clean sense of style and is adding Persian rugs with matching chairs, prints, and plants — including the biggest jade tree I've ever seen — one at a time, getting a feel for how the place is going to be. The layout — waiting room, medical-secretary station, examination room — looks like it was set up for a one-doctor practice.

Bzzzt.

"O.K?"

"O.K. so far."

Bzzzt.

In this position, reversed on the table, I can wear my hearing aid to listen to my surroundings and also converse. My eyes travel around the ceiling and walls, courting color, seeking details to dwell on. But the needle is insistent.

In my hearing aid, which i don't wear during face work, there's a tiny pop just before the buzz of the electricity and a matching tiny pop after. Haven't heard that before. Must be a switch on the rod or something.

The pain is already reaching the no-go level, with half an hour left.

I start singing.

I don't know a lot of songs; love to sing but prefer to have a hymnal or songbook in front of me.

I try out "Careless Love," "Wreck of the 97," "Waiting on a Train" (with the yodels) and "TB Blues."

Bzzzt.

You know anything cheerful?" she asks.

Umm, not really. "How about “'Kumbaya?'"

"Oh, come on!"

"Well, there's 'Put Another Log on the Fire.'"

"Let's have some radio." She reaches for the boombox on the side table.

Sigh.

Bzzzt.

After awhile, she moves around to the other side.

"Ahh, well ... it was Rufus."

"Rufus?" She's chuckling.

"What ... you prefer, maybe, Andy? George?"

Bzzzt.

"And anyway," I add, "It's all moot now."

"What's his technique? Your surgeon, I mean? Heh, heh. Sorry for how that came out."

"Uh, eclectic, he says. Meaning adapts to your presentation or something. But it's mostly penile inversion."

"Hollow it out and turn it around?"

"Mm-hmm. But he's way more interested in depth and looks than I am. You have to go twice."

"Second one's for pretty?"

"Labiaplasty, right."

"Are ya worried? Or excited?"

Bzzzt.

"Not worried ... not about the surgery."

"What about, then? If ya don't mind my askin'."

"I'm worried about the thallium stress test. He has to know how well my heart works."

I sit up and try to look her right in the magnifying glasses. Except she's rapidly getting blurry.

"I — it's — I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't do the surgery ... hnnnnnn ...wuh ...wuh."

"Here's some tissues."

"Thanks ... "

Walking in any direction from the Library I seem to be going upwind. I had taken to walking hunched over, or with my index finger holding down my bangs, or both.

"What are you doing?" asked a friend. ""You look like you're hunting for pennies on the sidewalk. Or in pain."

"Hair. It outs me."

"Nnh?"

"See?" I held up my bangs for her to see the globular, shining forehead, going, way, way, back.

She sees.

"Indoors, no problem. But out here, every time there's the smallest breeze, people who have just walked by me look a bit shocked."

I patted the bangs back into place, and, making my nails into a comb, raked at my forehead in a vain attempt to look like — well, me.

Something was going to have to be done.

Later, picking up the phone book on my desk, I learned that there was a "wig boutique" about two miles away. I wrote up a longish lunch hour on the office whiteboard and drove over.

I could see from the street that this was not going to be an obviously accepting kind of place. Walls — almost creepy. Furniture: old. carpet: faded. Station chairs: holes in the forearms. Proprietresses: in their seventies.

Putting my courage to the sticking point, I marched in using my best body language.

"May I help you, my dear?"

"Yes ... my, my hair has been going away in front and I have — I have a pony tail of my own hair, but the top's, too-oo, thin to hide the clippies well..."

"Mmm, hmm, that happens a lot. I think you are ready for a wig, my dear. I'm wearing one right now. A survivor, you know."

She settled me in the worn beauty-shop chair before a huge mirror. All around were shelves, floor-to-ceiling — there must be a ladder somewhere — each laden with a row, carefully spaced, of expressionless styrofoam heads, each wearing its own distinctive counterfeit of a woman's glory.

"Did you have a price range in mind?"

"Well, I don't have a six thousand dollar head ..."

"Right. We run one to two hundred. Now, size is a factor; these 'smalls' cost less than the 'mediums', and I don't think you need a 'long' ... "

"Umm, right."

"Now, I'm tucking your hair up both ways from the back, into this hair net, see? Above the ears, right along the forehead, and don't let it roll up or it will cut your circulation. I don't recommend human hair in this climate. The rain droops and frizzes it unmercifully. "

" ... does, doesn't it?" I rejoined, weakly.

"Right. Now here is a 'medium', much like your own hair, but teased nicely in front."

And it did look nice. But ...

"Too much red? I think so too. Not that they can't be recolored or trimmed as needed, though they don't ever look the same again, and of course they can't grow."

She reached to a higher shelf.

We peered into the mirror again.

Too light; too youngish, really; I would need bare feet and a posy. She pursed her lips.

"You are aware you have an Audrey Hepburn neck? It's your best feature." Now that was pushing things a bit — but I knew from that moment I was about to buy. A master saleswoman. "So I want you to try a bit shorter — you see?"

Oh, god. What had taken me so long? Yes, I did see. "I'll take it."

As I left, I checked, as is my habit, my walking style in the storefront window. Upright already, a woman to reckon with, going into the wind. This was going to work.