Trans-Sister Radio (2000) (44 page)

And then the notion of kissing her would become considerably more unappealing. And unlikely.

In June I invited Dana to the edge of the airport runway. Recently I'd started taking my laptop there, and I would write the necessary station memos from the front seat of my car--memos about fund-raising and programming, about personnel hires and the use of our new performance studio--while the planes departed and arrived.

"You need a vacation," she said when I suggested she join me. We were having coffee together at a shopping mall in a restored woolen mill just outside of Burlington, and the mall was near enough to the airport that the planes roared overhead no more than four hundred feet above the ground.

"I need more than that," I admitted. "But it's more fun than you'd realize. Little kids love watching the planes come and go. Teenagers are hypnotized by them. It's just grown-ups who won't allow themselves to be wowed by the miracle of flight."

"That's not why you sit there."

"I don't know why I sit there," I said. "But that is at least part of it."

It was nearing late afternoon when we finished our coffee and left the mall. By the time we got to the dirt by the chain-link fence near runway one-five, it was after four o'clock. The wind was warm and the sky was blue, and we leaned our backs against the front grill of my Explorer. I told her what airplanes were due momentarily, and which ones were worth waiting for: I didn't much like the angry whine of the engines that powered the Delta Connection's Saab 340s, but I enjoyed watching their slow, gradual ascent. There would be three before dinner. And there would be a pair of the smaller Dash 8s. And USAirways would have a DC-9 arriving from Philadelphia and a 737 from Pittsburgh, and everything about the planes--their size and their speed and the noise from the jet engines almost as tall as a man--would dwarf the opening acts.

There was no haze that afternoon and there weren't any clouds.

I realized that because she was wearing her loafers, Dana and I were about the same height. Had she been wearing heels, she would have been taller.

We were completely alone. And when the first of the Saabs had flown over us, their propellers whipping up just a hint of dirt and dust, I kissed her. My hands were folded across my chest as if I were bored, but that's simply how I keep my hands when I stand. I don't recall exactly where hers were. We pulled apart briefly, and then I kissed her a second time, and when I did, her hands came up from wherever they'd been, and I felt them on the back of my neck. They were gentle and soft and there wasn't a hint of strangeness.

I knew then that I would see her apartment for the first time that night, or she would return with me to Bartlett for the first time since March. But my sense was, we would go to her apartment in Burlington. My home was too close to Allie's. My home was too close to people who'd loved Dana and people who'd hurt her, and to that period in her life when she had bid farewell, once and for all, to the man in whose skin she had lived for thirty-five years.

When we pulled apart, I was aware that my tongue was tingling and my legs had started to shake.

Chapter 40.

carly

MY MOM HASN'T DATED MUCH THIS FALL, BUT I don't read anything into that. She hangs out with her friends, mostly. And she's happy to have her classroom packed with students once again. She'd forgotten how much she likes the chaos, how much she thrives on the energy you get from a roomful of kids.

Because of
All Things Considered
, I only came home for three days before I had to start my sophomore year. I got home from Washington late on a Thursday night and was home through Sunday afternoon. And I actually worked a good part of Friday morning, listening over the telephone to segments of tape that Kirsten and Sam--the producer and the engineer--were splicing together on the computer.

But my mom and dad didn't mind that I was only home for a couple of days, because they'd gotten to see me in late July and the middle of August, when I returned to Vermont to interview both of them and Dana and some of the people who'd been a part of their story earlier that year.

My dad was going to leave for New Mexico a few days after I'd returned to Bennington for the fall. He was going to be the general manager of the public radio station in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and I think he was very excited. He'd been running Vermont Public Radio for a long time, and it was clear he needed a change. And so he'd rented his house to a young professor at Middlebury College and her husband for the coming year, while he decided whether he liked the Southwest enough to move there once and for all.

Dana, too, I guess. The plan was that she'd fly out there a weekend a month, and my dad would fly home every third or fourth week for a couple of days. They expected to spend all of their vacations in Santa Fe, so they could see if they liked the area.

They actually talked about Dana moving west when the spring semester was over.

The main thing that struck me about Dad was how happy he was. This is an awful thing to discover when you're nineteen years old--pretty close to twenty, actually--but it's true: It was only when my adolescence was all but over that I figured out how unhappy my dad had been for most of my life. It was only when I was a grown-up myself that I understood the fog in which he'd been living since I was about seven years old.

And so I loved seeing him that weekend at the end of the summer.

The fact is, I had loved seeing him in July when we all descended upon him and Dana with the microphones and tape recorders, and when we spent hours in the studios of his very own station. Nothing at all had seemed to faze him, and he was a much funnier man than I'd realized. He held hands with Dana when they were walking down the long corridors between the offices and the studios, and he hugged her in the parking lot as if they were married when we were done with a segment and Dana had to return to the university for some committee meeting.

Sometimes people asked me how I felt about my dad's decision to head west with a transsexual. Molly Cochran said she thought it was the most interesting midlife crisis she'd ever seen.

I told her--I told anyone who asked--that I didn't think it was a crisis at all. I told people I was very proud of my dad.

And, in a lot of ways, I was proud of Dana, too. Just like Dad, she had to see past the anatomy. She had to give whatever spark they shared some kind of chance, despite the fact that my dad's a man and she'd always been interested in women. That can't be easy, especially since Dana had always labeled everyone and everything, and put us all in these neat little boxes. Gay. Straight. Transsexual lesbian.

Let's face it: In reality, it's all just about muscle spasms that feel really good.

My sense is that my mom will start dating again when she's ready. She's smart and she's beautiful and she's an incredible amount of fun to be around. She'll never have trouble finding men.

Or women either, I guess, should her interests ever wander that way.

But she, too, seems pretty happy these days, and that's great to see. I'd worried about her in July. We all had. But she's resilient. She's tough.

And someday she might even fall in love.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

All Things Considered

Friday, September 28

WILL BANKS:
... So far I like the Southwest. I could settle down here. I think we both could.

DANA STEVENS:
Definitely. It's so warm, I could wear a sundress almost year-round. I like that idea: I think my collarbone is among my best features.

CARLY BANKS:
Stevens insists that she wouldn't mind giving up tenure at the end of the school year if they decided to stay.

STEVENS:
It would be a trade-off. But I'd be fine. Hey, I've done far crazier things in my life--at least in some people's eyes.

CARLY BANKS:
For love?

STEVENS:
Nothing--and I mean nothing, Carly Banks--is crazy if you're in love.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the members of the transgendered community--transsexuals, their partners, and in some cases their parents--who were kind enough to endure my questions, and read all or parts of this novel in manuscript form. I am especially grateful to D. C. Merkle, Kara Forward, and Liz Trumbauer. Ms. Forward and Ms. Trumbauer allowed me to spend time with them in not one but two states.

I also want to thank two transsexual surgeons: Dr. Stanley Biber of Trinidad, Colorado, and Dr. Sheila Kirk of the Transgender Surgical and Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their knowledge (as well as their patience) is astounding. I am deeply indebted as well to their assistants. Pamela Kirk--who is Dr. Kirk's life partner as well as professional assistant--is a thoughtful, sharp, and encouraging reader. Marie Pacino, who works with Dr. Biber, is as indefatigable as she is resourceful.

Other readers offered different--but no less important--varieties of technical counsel, especially Phoebe Barash and Bill Jesdale, each of whom is an educator and school principal; Ken Neisser of the Gersh Agency; Mark Vogelzang, president and general manager of Vermont Public Radio; and Tom Wells, attorney and bookseller. Writers Jay Parini and Dana Yeaton were also kind enough to read early drafts of the novel and share with me their wisdom.

The transgender canon is large and (not surprisingly) diverse, and most authors who plumb the subject bring experiential passion to the subject. Some are more supportive of sexual reassignment than others, and some are more likely to link sex and gender with politics and power. The books that I found most helpful as a novelist--because of the author's insight, wisdom, or honesty--included:
In Search of Eve
, by Anne Bolin;
Gender Outlaw
, by Kate Bornstein;
Sex Changes
, by Pat Califia;
Body Alchemy
, by Loren Cameron;
Speaking As a Woman
, by Alison Laing;
Conundrum
, by Jan Morris;
Transsexuals: Candid Answers to Private Questions
, by Gerald Ramsey, Ph.D.;
The Transsexual Empire
, by Janice G. Raymond; and
The Transsexual's Survival Guide I
and
II
, both by JoAnn Altman Stringer.

Four novels were particularly inspiring and thought-provoking:
The Extra Man
, by Jonathan Ames;
Stone Butch Blues
, by Leslie Feinberg;
The Illusionist
, by Dinitia Smith; and
Myra Breckinridge
, by Gore Vidal.