Trans-Sister Radio (2000) (7 page)

But I've never been much of a joiner. And once Allison had said she would stick by me, at least until I came back from Trinidad, I lost interest in the group. I still had drinks now and then with Jordan, and once Allison and I went out to dinner with Pinto and Marisa. But I no longer needed their shoulders to lean upon, and I no longer needed their advice. Suddenly, I had an honest-to-God genetic woman by my side to make sure I didn't inadvertently choose clothing that made me look like a harlot.

When do you know you're falling in love?

I think you know pretty fast.

I knew I was falling in love with Allison Banks by the time she left my apartment after our very first date. And so I almost didn't ask her out a second time, because I didn't want to pull her into the unpredictable gravity of the world on which I was planning to land and rebuild my life. I had everything in place for the final step in my sexual reassignment--sabbatical, surgeon, a date with the knife just after the first of the year--and I didn't want to risk the possibility that she might fall in love with me, too. That wouldn't be fair.

But I did ask her out again, didn't I? I simply couldn't stop myself, and Saturday morning I sent her an E-mail.

Was that selfish? Of course it was. Indefensible.

But the heart does many things well, and rationalization is right up there with powering the circulatory system. If you don't connect with her, I told myself, she'll think it's her fault. She'll think she did something wrong, she'll think there's something about her that you found unappealing.

Which simply wasn't the case. There was nothing about Allison that I found unappealing.

By early August I was completely smitten, and by the middle of the month, when the leaves were starting to turn in the hills surrounding Bartlett, I'd reached that wondrous point of no return where I would think of her constantly when I was awake, and then dream of her incessantly when I slept. I imagined us transcending--or, perhaps, simply ignoring--those little details that I, too, would soon be a woman, and Allison wasn't gay. I hid from her exactly who I was, as I hid it from almost every person I knew.

Why? Was it simply the realization that I would lose her once she knew? Surely that was a part of it. But that was only one of my reasons for remaining underground.

First of all, it would suggest a massive ego to presume that she was thinking of me in the same way, and was beginning to fantasize that we were destined to be together forever. And while people who've conditioned themselves to hide who they are can be many things, ego-monster isn't high on the list.

I also kept my arrangements to myself because I didn't want to make the month of August any more difficult for Allison than it already was, on the off chance that I really was more to her than a mere summer fling.

Let's face it, we met when Carly was about to leave for college, and she was more than a little shaky. This was, after all, her only child who was about to depart. And while Allison was used to being alone in her house a couple of nights every week, she wasn't prepared to be on her own for weeks and weeks at a time. She wasn't sure she was ready to go months without seeing her daughter.

I could also see there was all that baggage that must come with looking at your daughter one morning and discovering she's an adult. Suddenly, Allison realized, she was Mom to a grown-up. Here was a woman who still liked painting her toenails a fireball shade of red, and abruptly she had to cope with the notion that her little girl was her height and allowed to vote.

And so I didn't want to make August any more difficult for her--or for Carly--than it already was. She was planning to take Carly to college on the thirtieth, the Friday that began the Labor Day weekend. And so I vowed I would tell her no later than the end of the second week in September. By then, I figured, we couldn't possibly be so profoundly entwined that she couldn't unfasten the knots and get on with her life. Me too.

Clearly I figured wrong.

A woman takes her index finger and presses the nail or the fleshy print at the tip against her cheek, and she raises her eyebrows and smiles. She dips her chin just the tiniest bit. Without opening her mouth, she has just said, "Moi? Little ol' me? You can't be serious!"

A man--at least one who wants to be taken for a heterosexual--needs words to convey the same idea:

"Give me a break. You're out of your mind!"

I was in a phase where I was toying with mannerisms and gestures when I met Allison's ex-husband, and so I probably made a bad situation worse. We didn't get off to a very promising start.

It was the second week in August, a Sunday afternoon, and Allison and I were outside on her terrace. Earlier that day we'd had brunch with a group of her friends, and we really hadn't been back at her house for very long.

About four o'clock, Will arrived. He'd taken Carly to Burlington, where the two of them had been shopping for the higher-tech toys she wanted to bring with her to college. A new CD player was the big item, but they were also getting a floor lamp and a new printer for her computer. Will, it seemed, helped Carly hunt for those consumables that were rich with wiring and plastic and silicon chips, while Allison escorted her on the pricier clothing excursions.

I imagine there was a chance that Will would have come in and said hello to Allison regardless of whether there was a car he didn't know parked in the driveway. But the fact that an unfamiliar Honda was sitting smack in front of the little horse barn that Allison used as her garage guaranteed it.

We didn't hear them pull into the driveway, but we did hear them in the kitchen. Allison raced inside to greet them, and I watched from the terrace as she took from Carly what looked through the screen door like a tiki torch, and then gave her daughter a hug. Will put a pair of pretty good-sized cardboard boxes down on the floor. I considered venturing inside to say hello to Carly and meet her father, but at that moment they looked like such a cozy and intimate family unit that I decided to wait outside.

Probably, I should have stood. I should have paced around the wrought-iron table, or hovered with my hands along the back of the wrought-iron chair. I should have sent a body message into the kitchen that said in a polite but manly sort of way, "Don't forget to say hello to the guy outside on the porch."

But I didn't. I sat in my chair and crossed my legs and sipped my cranberry juice.

Then, when Carly and Allison finally brought Will out to meet me, I considered for just the briefest moment responding to the introduction the way I would in a few months, once the surgery was behind me. I considered remaining in my seat. Perhaps extending my hand to Will. Perhaps not.

It was a stupid idea. Inane. Selfish.

And so quickly I stood, but already it was too late. It wasn't that I had seemed feminine to Will by refusing, at first, to stand and greet him: On the contrary, I must have seemed almost threatening. Confrontational. Downright combative. I must have seemed like the new male in the pride, the young lion who can't wait to show off his fangs and his claws and his newly found power.

"Will, this is Dana," Allison said. "We met at the university."

"It's a pleasure," he said, taking my hand in his and attempting to make flour from my four metacarpals.

"My dad just bought me the coolest CD player," Carly told me, shaking her head and rolling her eyes toward heaven.

"Oh, good. You'll need that at college," I said, surprised that my voice sounded normal with my hand in a vise.

"I know she's only going to listen to classical music on it," her father said lightly, finally releasing my fingers.

"Can you stay for a drink?" Allison asked him.

"Yeah, I have time. Sure."

"Want a beer? Juice?"

"A beer would be great."

"Hungry?"

"I can always eat."

"I'll see what we have."

Carly and I sat down when Allison returned to the kitchen, and I know I expected Will to sit down, too. Nope. Oh, he went to a chair, but only to pull it out for his daughter. Instead, he remained on his feet right beside me, so I got to look up at him as if I were a recalcitrant elementary-school student, or perhaps a suspect being questioned about a string of serial killings.

And then the interrogation began. He wasted barely a breath on the weather--we agreed we could both feel the fall coming at night, but that was the extent of our meteorological commonality--before getting to the agenda that really mattered to him. Was I in the English or the English and Communications Departments? Where did I go to school, did I have my doctorate? Where did I live? Was I as friendly with all my students as, apparently, I was with Allison?

Now, it would be very unfair of me to imply that Will Banks was some sort of bully that day. He wasn't, at least not consciously. But he was on the terrace behind the house he'd once owned, and he was a mere fifteen or twenty yards away from the woman with whom he'd once lived. He was sufficiently belligerent that Carly said her mom would probably need some help carrying the food and the drinks, and chose to leave us for the kitchen.

In all honesty, I wasn't much better. I was angry about his juvenile power games, even if, inadvertently, I had triggered them by failing to stand. In any case, I decided I could be testy, too.

Just before Allison and Carly returned with a plate of cheese and crackers and a tray of drinks, Will began circling around the foremost issue on his mind. Did I have any children? An ex-wife? And then, boom, ground zero:

"So," he said, "I gather you're dating Allison."

I wondered if he had ever before used the tone that he put into that little observation: dubious and condescending and protective at once. Certainly he would use it again someday, when Carly brought home the man who had asked her to marry him:

So, I gather you want to marry my Carly
.

Clearly I'd been thinking about affectation and gender more than was healthy or normal or wise. It seemed to me that if Will could be threatened by the notion that his ex-wife was dating another heterosexual, he would be devastated by the idea that she was dating a fruit.

And so instead of answering his question with words, I recrossed my legs, swinging my left over my right with great histrionics, and planted the tip of my finger deep in my cheek. Then I raised my eyebrows like the two sides of a drawbridge, dipped my chin, and--for good measure--batted my lashes like butterfly wings.

Moi? Little ol' me? You can't be serious!

It wasn't a kind thing to do and it wasn't a smart thing to do. But Carly had spent Saturday night at her father's home, and Allison and I had spent our very first night together. In her home. In her bed.

For better or worse, the Sunday afternoon I met Will, I was feeling pretty damn ballsy.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

All Things Considered

Monday, September 24

CARLY BANKS:
How do you tell a lover you're not the person she thinks you are? It's a question that can haunt a pre-operative transsexual. How, for example, would Dana Stevens tell a woman before reassignment that he was sure in mind and in spirit ... he was a woman?

DANA STEVENS:
It was never easy--at least for me. But I always wanted to be honest. I always wanted to tell the woman I was seeing that I was, in reality, a part of the tribe. It seemed only fair. But how? How do you begin?

Well, the fact is, usually you beat around the bush. At least I would. You know, you drop hints. You want to gauge your partner's tolerance for this sort of thing. How does she feel about homosexuality? Bisexuality? Cross-dressing? What kind of transgender urges has she experienced?

With one partner, I remember, I shared my dreams. And when my actual dreams weren't clear enough, I made up some new ones:

"Wow! You can't believe the dream I had last night. I was in the most hideous automobile accident--just awful! The only good news? I suffered only minor injuries. Scrapes. Bruises. Castration."

The thing is, sometimes I really would have dreams like that, and they weren't nightmarish at all. I'd wake up, and in that never-never land between sleeping and waking, I'd believe for just the briefest moment that it hadn't been a dream at all, and I would be so happy!

BANKS:
Dana recalls once leaving a newspaper story out for her partner.

STEVENS:
It was one of those alternative newsweeklies, and it had an article in it about a male-to-female transsexual and her female lover. I left it out on the kitchen table, and I circled all the parts about the transsexual's unusual brand of teenage trauma and angst.