Trans-Sister Radio (2000) (20 page)

And then I left. I went straight from Allie's to the Grand Union to replenish the pantry that Patricia's nieces and nephews had pillaged Christmas Day. It was there that I ran into the principal of our local elementary school.

I did not, as some people probably believed at the time, call Glenn Frazier on the telephone. I did not make a special effort to see him, I did not tattle on my ex-wife.

I simply bumped into him in the cereal aisle, our carts almost clanking together as we met. And at some point in our conversation--when we were beyond the holiday pleasantries, when we were done praising the original Shredded Wheat biscuit--the topic invariably turned to my ex-wife. How could it not? People were aware that we were still friends, and people knew who she was living with now. People knew what she was doing with her life.

And since Glenn seemed to know so much about her involvement with Dana, it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that he knew as well what Dana was planning to do in a couple of days in Colorado. And that my ex-wife would be with him.

Certainly I wish now I'd kept my mouth shut, because the last thing I ever want to do is to complicate Allie's life--or mine. (We seem to do that well enough on our own.) The fact is, when I opened my mouth and started talking about Allie's and Dana's trip, I had no idea that Glenn didn't know where they were going, or that he would have such a strong reaction to their travel plans.

I had no idea that events, after that, would sprout beyond anyone's control--certainly beyond mine.

It was all a bit like mushrooms in a wet summer.

In a way, it was a bit like the transgender tapes. My station devoted a whopping twenty-two minutes to transsexuality over two days in March, and most of it was focused on Allie's battle with some local parents. Later that year NPR would see in the story five days of programming on the nature of love.

At that moment, however, on the day after Christmas, I wasn't thinking about programming. I was merely making small talk in a supermarket. Nothing more, nothing less. To me, it was just a little grocery store banter.

*

PART III

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

All Things Considered

Tuesday, September 25

DR. THOMAS MEEHAN:
If you get beyond what some people consider the grisly details of the surgery, there's something very primal going on here, something very basic. A profound human desire. And that's my point. We--and I mean the doctors, but I guess the same could be said for the patients--are all playing Creator. Some of us do it better than others, some of us do more of it than others.

But man has always wanted to remake man. Look at the Frankenstein archetype. Look at the whole history of bioengineering.

Let's face it, right now we put the genes of arctic fish in tomatoes, we clone all kinds of mammals. You and I both know it's only a matter of time before we start cloning humans.

And that's a big part of the enticement science has for the scientist--or, in my case, for the surgeon. That sense of creation. Of control. The whole idea that we're doing something that's never been done before.

Hell, in that regard, what I do is nothing compared to a lot of my peers. Compared to them, I'm just a cut-and-paste pieceworker.

CARLY BANKS:
And yet like all surgeons who perform sexual reassignment, among Dr. Meehan's critics are those people who insist he is taking advantage of transsexuals--who suggest he is, in essence, preying on a mental illness.

MEEHAN:
Preying? God, no. I'm healing. Or at least trying to heal. I'm giving them their best shot at a normal, happy life. Therapy doesn't cut it with these people. Surgery does. That's the reality, whether you like it or not.

Chapter 17.

dana

THE FIRST THING YOU SEE ARE THE HUAJATOLLA--Ute for "breasts of the world." You'll be driving south on the interstate, and suddenly you'll notice a pair of massive geologic hooters rising from the rough plains. The Huajatolla are northwest of Trinidad. Igneous rock. Twin mountains that tower well above twelve thousand feet. Ghost white in the winter, an almost neon green in the summer.

There are tales that gold can be mined in the rivers that snake through them, but my guess is they're packed mostly with coal, just like the other peaks that circle the town to the south and the west and the north.

I've met trannies who hated Trinidad and simply couldn't believe they had to go there for their surgery. I know one girl who actually chose Palo Alto for the sole reason that it was in California, and another who went to Portland, Oregon, just so she wouldn't have to spend a couple of weeks in a shell-shocked little mining town in southern Colorado.

But I rather liked Trinidad, and I liked it for all sorts of reasons. Certainly the karma felt right. Not only does the approach to the city have mountain-sized mammaries to greet you, but the river that weaves through Trinidad is called the Purgatoire--an ever-flowing boa of water whose very name celebrates the betwixt. The between. The transgendered.

And in ways the city will never admit, it likes the transsexual business. For a time, the town lived off the mines and the railroads, but no more. The last mine went belly up in 1995. And while there will always be boosters who will try to bring tourism to "historic Trinidad"--Gateway to the Rockies, Bat Masterson Territory, Kit Carson's Personal Rest Stop--the fact is, the town is in the middle of nowhere. Southeastern Colorado. Nearest city of any size? Pueblo, eighty-five miles to the north. And, as far as I can tell, lawman Bat Masterson only tried to keep the peace there for a year. He actually lost his bid for reelection as marshal, having taken the townsfolk for a thousand dollars each month playing cards.

And while Indian fighter Kit Carson indeed visited Trinidad throughout his career, my sense is that coming
in
Trinidad mattered much more to him than coming
to
Trinidad. He'd struggle in after who knows how long on the Santa Fe Trail, and climb into a hotel bed with some company for as long as the money would last.

Once, when the mines were thriving, a good thirty thousand people lived there. Now there's barely a third that many. For a time, the city had boasted a two-level Main Street that stretched four solid blocks, and the shops possessed lower floors that were accessible from the sidewalk. When the population dwindled, however, there was no longer a need for all that space, and the underground was buried in cement--literally drowned in mortar and sand and stone, and then paved over with asphalt. You'd never know it was there, except for a tiny section of one subterranean block that has been preserved--two dark store windows--and may be accessed by an unmarked flight of steps on the corner of Animas and West Main.

Trinidad's big employers these days? A junior college. A prison. And the hospital where people like me come for our surgery.

Certainly, there are upright citizens in Trinidad who don't approve of the surgeons who help the trannies who pass through the town, but most of the folks are tolerant and helpful and kind. They need us and we need them. The relationship is downright symbiotic.

Allison and I landed in Colorado Springs just after lunch and arrived in Trinidad about three in the afternoon. Trinidad is 130 miles south of Colorado Springs, but the speed limit on the interstate is a glorious seventy-five, and the weather was fabulous: a cerulean blue winter sky, a balmy forty degrees. The driving was easy. And though there was plenty of snow on the mountains to the west, there was absolutely none on the ground in our strip of the state. All in all, it made Vermont seem positively glacial.

And so we were settled into the Holiday Inn just south of the city by the time the sun had set, and we were wandering down Main Street hand in hand in search of a restaurant for dinner by six.

The next day, Saturday, we went sight-seeing, and that must have killed a solid forty-five minutes. It isn't that Trinidad has nothing to see, but there isn't a whole lot that's open in December. Trinidad History Museum? Closed. Old Fire House Number One? Doors shut and sealed. The Archaeology Museum at the junior college? A vault. And the illustrious A. R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art? Boarded up--like a lot of the city, it seemed.

Fully half the storefronts in the town were vacant, the glass either replaced by plywood, painted over by children as part of a school art project, or filled with some unrealistically optimistic real-estate agent's large lease or FOR SALE sign.

In all fairness, the city does have a great many buildings from the early boom years that are absolutely exquisite, and practically the entire downtown--
El Corazon de Trinidad
--is a National Historic Landmark District. I especially liked nineteenth-century cattle rancher Frank Bloom's Victorian mansion, which I am quite sure was the inspiration for the home in which the kindly Norman Bates would live with his mother in
Psycho
.

But my favorite structure, of course, was the five-story stone bank building where I knew Dr. Meehan had his offices. Arched windows, magnificent detailing along the pediments. My surgeon toiling away on the very top floor when he wasn't in the operating room at Mount San Rafael. The building was constructed in the 1920s, in the waning years of the Trinidad coal country heyday.

Mount San Rafael, the hospital that would be my address for a little more than a week, was about a mile outside of town. Allison and I went there Saturday afternoon, and we visited the shrine on the small bluff above it. The Ava Maria Shrine. It looks down upon the two-story hospital. The Trinidad Ava Maria is inside a little white stucco chapel, rich with the exterior detailing we expect from our most cherished roadside art: neon lettering, a neon star, a life-size painted statue of a monk.

The chapel was locked, but there was a little grotto beside it. Allison and I sat for a moment on one of the blue benches and looked at the icons of Jesus and Mary under glass. We were both quiet for a long moment, and then Allison asked me if I'd been praying.

"No," I said. "But I will before we leave. I think I'd feel guilty if I left here without praying. And with major surgery in a couple of days, it seems to make perfect sense to hedge my bets. And you?"

"Me?"

"Praying: Were you praying?"

"As a matter of fact, I was."

"May I ask what for?"

She stared at the plaster Christ on the cross and took my hand. She found it without looking.

"I was praying for you to be happy. For this to be the right decision," she answered evenly.

"That's very sweet."

She clicked her tongue in her mouth. "I'm one hell of a sweet girl."

There was a slight edge to her voice that I'd come to recognize: Frustration. Incredulity. A hint of despair. Instantly I convinced myself that in reality Allison had been praying that I would yet change my mind. Maybe have a last-second submission to the chromosomes and plumbing I'd been given at birth. Perhaps accept the shell I'd endured for three and a half decades.

"You're so good to be here," I said. "I will always be more grateful than I can tell you. You know that, don't you?"

"I do."

"And if there was any way in the world I could change my mind ... well, for you, Allison, I would. I surely would. But I can't."

She took back her hand and placed it inside her coat pocket. It was just cold enough that we could see our breath when we spoke--little curls of steam that rose up in the air and disappeared amidst the white latticework that surrounded us.

"Don't worry," she said, "I wasn't praying for that. I don't pray for things that specific."

"No?"

She shook her head. "I see no reason to court disappointment in this life. It seems to come often enough on its own."

There's a story that one night in 1908, when Trinidad physician John Epsey was leaving the hospital, he saw a flickering light on the hill before him--despite the snow and the wind and the fact that at the time there was nothing but scrub pine and rock on that bank. And so he wandered toward it, perplexed, and discovered there the 250-pound statue of the Virgin Mary that is still a part of the chapel today. No one knew where it came from, no one understood how it got there.

Inspired, that very year the townsfolk built the grotto in which Allison and I sat for a few minutes our first Saturday in Trinidad.

Today, some of the locals insist, if you come at the perfect time of the day or if the moonlight is right after dark, it looks as if the statue of the Virgin is crying--sobbing, in theory, because of the surgery that occurs right in front of her. Literally, right under her nose.

Allison and I were told these stories when we were having a cup of coffee after visiting the shrine. The waitress at the diner regaled us with stories about Trinidad, especially the tales she'd heard about the trannies who'd come before me. Initially, I was a little perturbed that she saw so quickly what I was; I was a little frustrated by the fact that I had so clearly failed to pass.